The Murdered Sun - Christie Golden [47]
"I know I sure do," Chakotay admitted. "Out with it, B'Elanna.
I've known you too long."
She hesitated, then her words came out in a rush. "They're so close, Chakotay! They've almost got it! Nearly everything I'm seeing indicates that they were just a couple of generations away from figuring out cloaking, shielding, perhaps even a superior way to cross distances than warp drive."
Suddenly he knew what she was getting at and realized his hunch had been right. He didn't like it. He felt his stomach sink to his toes.
But he had to make her say it, put it into words, so that he could coldly, calculatedly, shatter her hope. The uniform he wore, which felt right to him most of the time, now felt like it was smothering him. Duty was a damn heavy thing sometimes, never more than at this moment.
"If you'd just let me add a few things--put in some shielding capabilities--they'd be able to fight the Akerians on something resembling equal footing! Starfleet technology would do so much--" "Come on, Torres, you know better than that." Chakotay's voice was harsh in his own ears, and each word seemed to cost him. "I can't do that."
She let out a frustrated, unhappy sound, somewhere between a whimper and a growl. "I wouldn't do much. Like I said, they're so damn close already--" "Your job is to help them get their equipment up to speed, Lieutenant, not put in new technologies. That's a violation of the Prime Directive, and you can lie to yourself and bend it around all you want, but you know I'm right."
Her breast heaved with anger, but when she spoke, there was no trace of Klingon rage in her surprisingly soft voice. "Chakotay, they're good people. They deserve a fighting chance."
"Nobody knows that more than I do," he replied, his voice equally soft.
"But we made promises, you and I, when we agreed to wear these uniforms. Sometimes the right choices aren't the easy ones."
Sometimes, he thought bitterly, the right choices aren't even very good. "Don't waste your time thinking about what you can't do for these people. You're one of the most brilliant engineers I've ever seen. Use that brilliance to its best advantage within the limits you've been set. You can still make a difference but not if you spend your time being angry about the differences you can't make."
She averted her eyes, staring at nothing. Then with a speed that shocked even him, who ought to have known better, she slammed her fist angrily down on the floor of the vessel. Startled, Paris and Kaavi turned around. With a small shake of his head, Chakotay indicated that they should ignore the outburst. Paris nodded his understanding and began asking questions again, gently redirecting his liaison's attention.
Chakotay waited. One thing his culture and his life experiences had taught him was patience. He often thought that Torres had entered his life simply to be taught that lesson by him. That thought led him back to his animal spirit's strange advice: You area teacher. You are also a student. You teach the ways of your people. That is easy to do.
What is harder to do is to be wise and teach the ways of people you do not know.
But now Torres was looking directly at him, and he had to put his animal guide's words aside. "Permission to bring more hands down from the Voyager. This work will go faster if there's more than one person working on it."
"Agreed," he answered swiftly. That much, at least, he could do.
Torres seemed calmer, at least a little, and eased herself up.
She stood awkwardly, her muscles clearly stiff from being in the awkward position, and Chakotay extended a hand to help her. She twisted away from him, not meeting his gaze, and exited down the ramp.
He was not offended. They'd clashed before, he and she, and he knew this was how she handled what she regarded as a setback. He heard her speaking to Carey as he followed her off the Conviction and heard