String Theory_ Fusion (Book 2) - Kirsten Beyer [11]
“I didn’t mean to imply…”
“No, Seven… you never mean to imply anything. But you just… never mind. We’re not having this argument again. You’ll just stand there, a picture of frigid inflexibility, and I’ll end up wanting to break your nose, and at the end of the day, we’ve really got much bigger problems than your unbearably inflated ego!” B’Elanna spat hotly, unsure if she was more annoyed with Seven, or herself for once again allowing Seven’s implacable demeanor to destroy every good feeling she had ever had about the woman.
The Key to Gremadia, a gift that had been presented to Janeway by Kaytok, one of the scientists who had aided Voyager in their recent successful attempt to destroy the Blue Eye and escape from a subspace fold, sat in front of its intricately carved case in the captain’s cabin, precisely where she had left it less than twenty-four hours earlier. It shared a place of honor among some of the other personal souvenirs that Janeway had collected during Voyager’s long journey in the Delta Quadrant, among them a coin-actual currency used on Earth in the mid-twentieth century-given to her by Amelia Earhart before they had left her and the other 37’s on the planet that had been settled by their descendants; a necklace that had belonged to the wife of an Alsaurian resistance fighter named Caylem, who had mistaken Janeway for his daughter in the last tortured days of his life; and a rock that had played an integral part in her journey on the Nechani homeworld to find the ancestral spirits in order to save Kes’s life. Once she had completed the ritual, her Nechisti guide had suggested she keep the rock as a reminder that oftentimes our experiences are limited rather than enhanced by our expectations.
To the naked eye, the Key was roughly the same size as the Nechani rock, though it had formed or been carved into a perfect circle. Janeway fully intended at some point to analyze the extremely hard yet porous sphere for any scientific or archaeological data it might reveal. But since Tuvok’s strange departure had forced them to leave Monorha abruptly, she had scarcely given the gift a thought. Nor had she noticed that almost as soon as she removed it from its ornately carved case and placed it on a small glass table beside her door, it had begun to vibrate almost imperceptibly.
By the time the first intruder had entered her cabin, emerging from the bulkhead in the form of dozens of plasmatic energy tentacles that oozed down the walls, seeking the strange vibrating sphere, the Key to Gremadia had begun to glow as if lit by an internal pinkish gray light. The second intruder barely arrived in time to activate an energy barrier around the Key, protecting it from the one who it knew instinctively had come to destroy the Key, and anyone who got in its way.
“Bigger problems than inching through a section of space that seems to defy every law of physics in search of our head of security, who has gone absent without leave?” Janeway asked, entering the astrometrics lab and the fray at the same time.
B’Elanna and Seven turned to face the captain simultaneously, and Janeway couldn’t help but think that at this particular moment these two eminently capable women resembled nothing so much as errant children who had been caught with their hands in one of her mother’s antique cookie jars.
B’Elanna looked to Seven, who nodded with only slightly condescending grace to indicate that she should begin their explanation to the captain.
“Well…?” Janeway demanded.
“I’ve been scanning the singularity, Captain. So far the gravimetric interference has made it difficult to get any clear readings, but in the last hour or so, I’ve managed to clean up enough of the signal to see this.”
Janeway spent a few moments studying the readings, but quickly turned her attention to the large display screen beyond the workstations that bordered the room. Walking calmly up to the staging area just in front of the display, she allowed her mind to integrate both the visual image and the numeric data scrolling beside the