Survivors - Jean Lorrah [13]
He stopped, as the raw data suddenly coalesced into meaning, a tragedy of love and betrayal, made even more profoundly sad by the fact that its chief player was the woman before him, a person he regarded as a friend.
Inwardly, he damned his eager memory banks, turning up information with no regard for its emotional impact. For, all unwitting, he had accessed and blurted out facts that could not help but stir up painful memories for Tasha Yar.
When she had changed the subject, why had he not respected her obvious wishes and let well enough alone? Or at least kept silent until he had accessed the entire file on her relationship with Adin? Then he would have known better than to say anything.
Now he could do nothing except stop, with a mumbled apology.
Tasha was blinking, fighting tears. “It’s not your fault, Data. I should have realized you had all the records anyway. Now you know why I don’t talk much about my days at Starfleet Academy. It was so wonderful there, learning to live the ideal I hadn’t dreamed possible-safely breaking out of the shell of cynicism and disillusionment I had grown to survive on New Paris. And then it all came to an end, when the very person who had made me want Starfleet-the man who meant Starfleet to me-betrayed everything I had learned to believe in.”
She fell silent. Data looked over at her, and saw her staring out at the stars … but he could tell she was seeing something else. Something from long ago.
Chapter Three
STARFLEET CADET TAHSA Yar lay on her belly in the mud, beside a rushing river. A few meters away she could see something that ought not to be there: a boat. Not a primitive dugout or bark canoe, but a large, modern lightweight synthetic craft with a powerful automatic propulsion system.
No such contrivance should exist on Priam IV; its presence was in direct conflict with the Prime Directive.
Which meant it did not belong to Starfleet-but by order of the Federation Council only well-briefed and carefully disguised scientific observers were allowed on Priam IV. Permissible visitors, in fact, did not include one battered, exhausted, hungry, insect-bitten cadet, but Yar was not here of her own choice.
When the scoutship U.S.S. Threnody broke up in an ion storm, she had survived with two other cadets in an escape pod-but when its navigational sensors failed they had crash-landed more than a hundred kilometers from the legal landing site where-if their last frantic message was received-Starfleet would look for them.
T’Pelak and Forbus died in the crash of the escape pod. Only Yar survived-and tried to find her way to the site where Starfleet would look for survivors. To add to her isolation, the crash beacon had not survived the crash either, nor had any of the other electronic equipment. The final explosion that had thrown Yar free cracked the main storage battery. Forbus was crushed, T’Pelak electrocuted, and their phasers, communicators, tricorders, radio, and all the mechanized survival equipment turned to useless junk by that final power surge. Yar was alone and unarmed except for a machete … but she was far from helpless.
The environment was changed, but her position was little different from what she had known on New Paris. Yar had little doubt she would survive; it was whether she survived as a member of Starfleet that concerned her. Without a communicator, her only chance of being picked up was to reach the landing site. If she missed the search vehicle, she would miss continuing with her class into her final term of study.
She’d have to seek out the Federation scientists “gone native” on Priam IV. She knew the radio frequency that would silently place her message on the hidden console they were supposed to check daily-but the frequency did her no good without a working