back. There was no way she was going to cry in front of
him, no way she'd let him know this unfair punishment meant
anything to her. She lifted her chin and looked him right
in the eye.
"Yes, sir, was she snapped, and turned on her heel and
stalked out. As she left, she heard Hobbes talking softly
with her father, apologizing, trying to take more
responsibility for the incident, hoping to spare Kathryn.
She hated him for it.
Indignation mounted in her. How could her father treat her
like this? He was never around anymore, always off
conferring with Starfleet officials-what right did he have
descending on her just to mete out punishment? The unju/s
of it enveloped her like a noxious fog.
But those thoughts didn't suppress the one that had tickled
her mind ever since they had climbed up the rockface from
the quarry: some day, she would go back there. She would be
prepared. She would dive into the quarry, enter the cave
opening, and explore the Olympus Mons system. No matter
what her father had to say about it.
"REPORT." CAPTAIN JANEWAY STRODE
ONTO THE BRIDGE WITH renewed determination.
She had managed to sleep for another hour, and now felt
focused and clearheaded.
"Repairs still under way, Captain. Warp engines are still
down, but impulse could be on-line shortly. The weapons
array is partially restored; we have one phaser bank
operative."
"Any sign of the Kazon?"
"As far as we can tell, they're still in orbit of the
planet. This nebula fogs up the sensor readings a bit, so
we can't track them as accurately as I'd like."
Janeway sat at her chair. "Bridge to Engineering."
"Torres here, Captain," a voice answered.
Janeway had no doubt that B'Elanna Torres, the half-Klingon
chief of Engineering, had been hard at it since the attack.
"What's your closest estimate on impulse capability?"
"Within the hour."
"And warp drive?"
There was a silence. Then, somewhat carefully, "I'm not
sure. We're having some problems."
Janeway thought it through. They couldn't show their face
to the Kazon without warp capability and with only one
phaser bank. They would be completely vulnerable. Better to
take a little more time and get every system working.
"Keep me posted, Lieutenant," she said, and signed off.
She had just turned to Chakotay when Tom Paris interrupted,
urgency in his voice. "Captain, we've got activity in the
nebula. It's a ship."
"Kazon?"
"I think so. In this soup it's hard to tell for sure."
Janeway's mind raced. Without weapons, without warp, with
sensors inaccurate, it was folly to try to engage the
enemy. They were going to have to be the fox in this hunt.
"Go to minimum energy signature. Shipwide.
Set shields to scatter active scans." As soon as she'd
spoken, lights began to blink out and there was a decline
in the ambient hum that always accompanied life on Voyager.
Consoles flickered to darkness; only a few dim emergency
lights near the deck provided illumination. It was a
ghostly atmosphere. But with all systems offline except
lifesupport and passive sensors, they would be almost
impossible to detect.
Now, they simply had to wait and hope the Kazon would tire
of the hunt and go away.
Jal Sittik stood in the midst of an overgrown copse,
trying not to let his men know how perplexed he was. The
Federations were proving remarkably elusive. First they had
vanished into the depths of a thick grove of trees and
brush that Sittik, following, had found impenetrable; then
they reappeared on the other side of the copse, almost
within view, registering clearly on his sensing indicator.
His squad should have overtaken them easily. But they were
nowhere to be seen, and had all but disappeared from the
indicators. Sittik put his hands on his hips again, a pose
of confidence that he felt would satisfy his men while he
tried to decide what to do now. But to his irritation Jal
Miskk approached.
Miskk's headdress was only slightly less elaborate than
his own, another fact that irritated Sittik. He believed
Miskk cheated with his markers, claiming kills that were
not personally his, but those of the entire ship. Sittik
would personally never stoop to such deception, and it
annoyed him that others might think that Miskk could claim
anywhere near the number of kills that he had.
Miskk now looked at him with a gaze that was unmistakably
insolent. "Well," he sneered, "where are they?"
Sittik glared at him, swelling his chest as much as
possible in order to intimidate Miskk. "Are you saying you
don't know?" he sneered right back. Miskk's eyes narrowed
and the two men stared at each other, the challenge
charging the air between them.
Sittik enjoyed these moments, for he had a stare that could
wither even the most arrogant of his comrades. And, after a
moment, Miskk looked away. Sittik crowed inwardly, a silent
cry of victory. He loved conquest. The moment caused him to
envision briefly the barely clad bodies of the women who
would be awaiting his triumphant return to their colony.
He swept his sensing indicator along the horizon, arm
extended fully-a gesture of power.
His men would see his strength, his confidence, and realize
this momentary setback was just that, a minor obstacle to
their eventual victory.
He pointed toward the thick grove of fruit trees that lay
less than half a kilometer away. "They've taken cover
again," he announced.
"Your group will flush them out."
"If they're so close, why are there no readings on our
sensing indicators?" "I see life signs in the grove,"
retorted Sittik. "Do as I say." "I don't believe the life
signs are those of the Federations-was "Miskk, I am in
charge of this mission. Obey my command or it is you who
will spend two weeks in chains."
Sittik was gratified to see Miskk flush with color, start
to speak, and then swallow his reply.
With a curt nod, he gestured to his men and they moved
toward the dense grove of trees.
Then Sittik resumed his scanning, desperately trying to
figure out where the Federations really were.
Harry Kim was getting frustrated. But it was better than
sitting around, wondering if the Kazon would find them.
He and Kes had begun to explore the underground structure
as soon as Tuvok had organized the group into teams. It was
proving to be vast, and so far was producing more mystery
than enlightenment. There were kilometers of mazelike
corridors that would have taken days, if not weeks, to
chart. But that was all.
Corridors, all constructed of that strange material which
possessed organic qualities.
No chambers that he could detect, in spite of the most
sensitive of tricorder readings. No bodies, no skeletons,
no drawings, no artifacts. Nothing that might be expected
in a tomb of what had seemed to be such a ritualized
society. After he and Kes had been searching for half an
hour, he turned to her in frustration. "I don't understand
it. They went to great lengths to hide this structure; it
must have been of value to thembut there's nothing here."
"There must be something here. We just haven't found it
yet.
"Tricorders aren't showing anything that would give us a
clue." He turned in a circle, tricorder extended. "Just
stone . . . stone . . . and more stone.
Or whatever one calls this stuff. It looks like an inert
mineral, but it definitely has an organometallic
component."
Then suddenly his eyes widened as he spotted something
besides stone on his readout. "Kes-are you getting a
reading? Up above ground?" Kes lifted her arm to point in
the same direction he was, and he saw her brow furrow
slightly. She looked over at him. "Kazoo," she said grimly.
Unmistakable Kazon life signs flickered on their
tricorders. The Kazon were above them, tramping through the
sod that served as the ceiling for the underground tunnels.
They couldn't hear anything-the ceiling piece was half a
meter thick and well insulated with sod-and they assumed
the Kazon couldn't hear them.
Yet they found themselves whispering. "Kim to Tuvok."
"I'm here, Ensign."
"I'm picking up Kazon life signs above us."
"Acknowledged. We have the same readings. All teams should
be at the ready. But stay where you are.
I'd rather have us spread out in order to make it more
difficult for them to detect us."
"Yes, sir." He turned to Kes, who continued to study her
tricorder intently.
"If we read their life signs, you'd think they could read
ours." "Maybe they can. But figuring how to get down here
is a different story. I found the mechanism because I
realized what the pattern on the ground represented. But
I'm betting the Kazon were just tracking us. They haven't
gone through the thought processes I did. As far as they're
concerned, we were on the surface, and now we're not. I
don't think they'll figure out how we got here."
"I hope you're right."
"Let's keep going. I'd like to find out what this
underground maze is all about."
She nodded and they moved off down the corridor, scanning
continuously, wrist beacons bravely knifing through a
darkness that seemed to have been undisturbed for-how long?
There were nothing but questions here. For another fifteen
minutes they wound their way through corridors, carefully
charting their course on the tricorders; without that map,
they'd never find their way back to the others.
They searched the walls, the ceilings, the
floorseverything, for a sign, no matter how tiny, of
something besides the strange building material. And came
up empty.
"I'm stumped," Harry admitted. "There just doesn't seem to
be any reason for all these passageways. Can you imagine
how long it must have taken to build them?"
"Whoever did had a lot of patience. Maybe that's something
you could use a little more of."
He looked sidelong at her and grinned. Kes was softspoken
and unassuming, but underneath her dainty exterior was a
will of iron and an insight into others that was
extraordinary. Of course, she had unique mental abilities-even she wasn't quite sure what they entailedbut even
so, she had a way of getting right to the point of things.
"Noted. But the unbelievable amount of time they spent on
this layout only supports my argument: it was extremely
important to them. Something's here, something they wanted
protected above all else."
"A leader's body? Treasure? A map?"
"Any of the above. Or none of them."
"Whatever it is, I can't imagine that it could be of much
use to us. Maybe we should think about getting back to the
others."
Kim had already begun thinking the same thing, but he
didn't want to admit it. "I'm not curious because we might
find something useful. I'm curious because it's so
mysterious. All those skeletons, and now this underground
maze-I just want answers."
Suddenly he heard her emit a little gasp, and he stopped
immediately, shining his wrist beacon toward her. In the
glare of the light, her eyes looked like those of a cat's
in the moonlight, wide and wary.
"What is it?"
"I don't know. Something. . ."
Harry studied her carefully. She was partially telepathic.
Was she sensing something there in the soundless, lightless
corridors? Slowly, she turned in place, eyes closed now, as
though trying to locate the source of some vague, faint
melody. Her mouth was slightly parted, and he could hear
the delicate sound of her breathing. Then she shuddered
slightly. He waited, not wanting to interrupt whatever it
was she was experiencing.
Finally, she turned back to him, eyes open once more. "I
seemed to hear something . . . something far away . . . and
then it faded." "What did it sound like?"
"It's hard to describe. Maybe-like water, dripping onto
wood." "Could you tell where it was coming from?"
She shook her head. Clearly the moment had passed. "Didn't
you hear it at all?"
"Nope. Not a thing."
She took a breath, then looked at him a bit sheepishly.
"It's gone. I can't get it back."
"Then let's keep walking."
They proceeded down the corridor, scanning carefully,
until they reached a bend that forced them to turn right.
When they did, they saw three armed Kazon warriors
straight ahead of them.
The first strike of the Kazon ship arrived with only
seconds of warning, snapped by Tom Paris from the conn
position. "Kazon weapons powering, Captain."
A scant heartbeat later Voyager was rocked with the
unmistakable thooop of percussive plasma flares.
"They're trawling," said Chakotay softly.
"Just sending out flares and hoping they hit something."