The Murdered Sun - Christie Golden [32]
Steadying the tricorder on the console, his fingers found the comm transmission area. With a silent prayer, he pressed the intership key.
It worked: the tricorder began to blink, signaling that the subspace transceiver assembly was activated.
Hope rose within Kim. It hadn't shorted out so far.
"Link successfully established with the Akerian computer," he informed Tuvok. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that Janeway had stopped recording on her own tricorder and had turned to watch him.
Nothing like the captain herself watching you to turn the pressure on, he thought.
"Attempting to transfer data to the Voyager. Watch that secure partition, Mr. Tuvok." He licked suddenly dry lips and pressed the pool key.
"Receiving information, Ensign Kim. There appears to be no difficulty in the transfer," said Tuvok's voice.
Kim sagged slightly with relief. "That's music to my ears, Lieutenant."
"That is an inaccurate statement." Tuvok sounded completely unperturbed. "I did not sing the words. Therefore, they could not be interpreted as music."
A grin spread across Kim's face as he caught Janeway's eye. She returned his smile. "Transfer of information should take about ten minutes," said Kim. "Let me know if there's any glitches."
Janeway stepped over to him and placed a gloved hand on his padded shoulder. Well done, said the strong grip. Harry smiled with pride, shifted his weight, and waited for the transfer to finish.
***
While Torres was busy examining the alien's engines and Kim sat engrossed in attempting to set up the transfer, Janeway kept busy herself. She set her tricorder to record images and slowly walked around the Conquest's bridge.
The captain of the Voyager was a woman of tolerance and compassion but also of strong opinions. And her opinion of the aesthetics of this Akerian design was extremely low. She liked the elegant, graceful lines of starships, their ergonomic chairs, their egalitarian marriage of beauty, comfort, and efficiency.
Even Klingon vessels had more to offer their crew than this chock-a-block construction.
She glanced up at the two bodies floating around her, wondering if she ought to try to take hold of one and attempt to remove its mask. She wanted to know what these creatures looked like, wanted to see what kind of face sat in front of a brain that had no remorse in destroying an entire planet of gentle beings.
She decided against it. We've dishonored the dead quite enough by killing them in the first place, she thought. Leave their corpses to the stars. We'll find out enough about them when we analyze the data from this computer.
The bridge was enormous, at least four times that of the Voyager's bridge. The Akerians were clearly a strong, agile people, judging from the fact that there were no steps or ramps, only rungs and protruding cylinders that served as footholds.
There was a second level above Janeway, and she directed the tricorder at that for a while.
But what drew her attention the most and what she had kept for the last was the almost overwhelming panorama of stars at the bridge's bow.
Finally, almost as if she were giving herself a reward, Janeway walked toward the railing and peered down.
Indications of graviton activity suddenly shot up on her tricorder.
Below and slightly in front of her, its sphere cut cleanly in half by the windowlike shield, sat what the tricorder reported as a graviton generator. It was not alone. There was a total of four round generators, spaced out evenly on the top, bottom, left, and right of the viewing window. Two of them, the one above and to Janeway's left, were dark. The other two, the one below her and the one to her right, blinked on and off like the lights. When active, the circular generators were a dark orange-red hue. Janeway cast her mind back to the recent conflict, remembering the four red dots--and one in the center.
The lights and the generators went off. She waited,