The Murdered Sun - Christie Golden [78]
Quickly Janeway scrambled back into her chair.
"Did we get them?" she cried, meaning the pods.
"Affirmative," Tuvok replied, "and the Victory took some damage as well. The only problem I can foresee--" But the problem was upon them before he could finish his sentence. Light, orange and red and yellow and as beautiful as it was dangerous, suddenly engulfed the ship.
Grunting a little in pain, Janeway instinctively threw her arm up to her face, shielding her eyes.
She knew what had happened. In his desperate and ultimately successful attempt to avoid the pods, Chakotay had brought Voyager directly into the stream of burning hydrogen that flowed in a luminous, flooding tide into the hungry maw of Sun-Eater.
Voyager bobbed and weaved, and Janeway was reminded of a small toy boat caught in a rampaging white-water river.
Chakotay was fighting like mad to keep the ship level. "Kim, the shields!" demanded the captain.
"Holding, Captain," came the reassuring response from the ensign.
"Paris, report'" "We're all still here, Captain," came Paris's voice, unsteady with the motion of his craft.
"Chakotay, get us out of this hydrogen stream. Engineering, do you copy?"
"Here, Captain." B'Elanna sounded calm. Silently Janeway thanked her for that.
"In a few seconds we'll be entering the gravity well," said Janeway, speaking rapidly. "I want you to transfer all available power to the shields. As we go in, I want the strength at different areas---fore, center, and aft. We need the most resistance at the point where the gravity is greatest. Do you understand?"
"Aye, Captain. If Ensign Kim will--" "I'm on it, Maquis," replied Kim, hitting touch pads rapidly.
"All nonessential energy is being diverted to Engineering."
At that moment, with a mighty surge, Voyager pulled free of the river of light.
"We're going in... now!" cried Janeway. "Tuvok, monitor the shields along with me."
Quickly Janeway hit a few commands on her own console to her left.
Damn, but the pressure was extraordinary. But true to her word, Torres was transferring the most power to the shields as the pressure descended. Satisfied that her plan was working, Janeway turned her eyes toward the screen.
They were inside Sun-Eater.
***
Garai was fearful for First Warrior Linneas's sanity.
Garai was a true Akerian. He loved his planet and his people deeply.
He had been in the Akerian military for a long time now, and he was military to the bone. He had absorbed the discipline, the unbreakable determination, the willingness to die for what was right, that is, what advanced the Akerian way of life.
He was willing to kill. He was willing to die. And had this been all Linneas had demonstrated, Garai would have found nothing amiss.
But Linneas seemed to have lost the ability to reason. He jumped from one decision to another. Already, Garai knew, one crew member of the Victory was dead, choked by the first warrior himself, for having questioned Linneas's decision to block the path of the sleek, pretty, dangerous ship called Voyager.
Such behavior was not appropriate. Again, Garai rejoiced that he was no longer directly under Linneas's heavy hand. But commanding his own vessel was proving to be almost as stressful
Repeatedly, Linneas had refused to talk to the captain of Voyager, Kathryn Janeway, even though Linneas, indeed none of the Akerians, knew just exactly what it was that she wanted inside the concavity. Linneas thought he knew--"They will try to steal what has taken us centuries to harvest!" he had snarled--and had issued an order that none of the Akerian warships was to respond to Janeway's hail.
Back and forth he had gone. "We need to continue harvesting the planet, therefore, we need to have slaves!" he would proclaim in one breath. In the next, he would announce. "We must destroy the Verunans utterly!" How, Garai wondered