Part 28 (2/2)
”I've not yet earned enough seniority to receive private accommodations,” Torvig said. ”Since my return, Ensign Worvan has asked me one hundred thirty-four questions about what I observed during our incarceration in Axion. He's been most persistent in his efforts.”
Keru tilted his head and smirked. ”Gallamites are like that.” He looked out the narrow gap to see the majestic lines and ma.s.s of Axion, s.h.i.+ning against the sprawl of the cosmos. ”Is something bothering you, Vig? You seem...out of sorts.”
”I'm unaware of any direct irritation to my person.”
”No, I mean, are you experiencing anxiety about something?”
Torvig s.h.i.+fted his weight back and forth, from one foot to the other, and his mechanical hands clenched the railing in front of him. ”Is it true that the Borg armada has reversed course and is on its way here?”
”Yes,” Keru said.
”Then my answer is yes. I'm feeling anxiety.”
”It could be worse,” Keru said, heaving a disappointed sigh. ”While we were in Axion, a lot of people from here and the Enterprise and the Aventine boarded a Borg scout s.h.i.+p and fought in close-quarters combat. We lost Rriarr, Hutchinson, Tane, Doron, and about half a dozen other really good people. And sh'Aqabaa might live through surgery, or she might not.” It was a bitter sting for Keru that he had been denied the chance to fight the Borg face-to-face. Even after so many years, he would have found such violence deeply cathartic for his beloved's death at their hands. Now, facing much less forgiving odds, he doubted he would have such an opportunity again.
He looked at Torvig and realized the squat, short ensign was quaking. ”Calm down, Vig,” he said. ”Officers don't s.h.i.+ver.”
”I apologize, Ranul,” Torvig said. ”I'm having trouble remaining objective about our circ.u.mstances. Until now, I'd considered the Borg as a phenomenon, or as an abstraction of accessories and behavioral subroutines for a holodeck program. Now that I'm about to face them, I realize that I'm not ready.”
Keru squatted next to Torvig and patted the Choblik's armored back. ”You'll be fine, Vig. Nothing to be scared of.”
”At the risk of sounding insubordinate, I disagree,” Torvig said. ”Do you recall my tests of the crew? The ones I used to verify a link between my crewmates' anxious behaviors toward me and their feelings about the Borg?”
Rolling his eyes, Keru said, ”How could I forget?”
”I now have a greater understanding of one part of that equation,” Torvig said. ”Now I'm afraid of the Borg, too. It was a mistake for me to compare their cybernetics with those of the Choblik. The Great Builders' technology was a boon to my people-it gave us individuality and sentience. The Borg's technology takes away those things. It debases its members.” He let go of the railing and lifted his bionic hands in front of his face, flexing them open and shut. ”I imagine my mechanical elements betraying me, and it frightens me. That's what it would be to become one of the Borg.” Looking plaintively at Keru, he added, ”Don't let them do that to me, Ranul.”
Keru reached out and clutched Torvig's bionic hand, thumb to thumb, flesh to metal, and he looked his friend in the eye. ”I won't let it happen, Vig. To either of us. You have my word.”
Most of the beds in the Aventine's sickbay were still full when Captain Dax walked in, and Dr. Ta.r.s.es and his medical staff looked wrung out by a day of gruesome surgeries. She caught his eye with a wave and waited while he walked over to her.
”Thanks for coming,” he said.
Up close to Ta.r.s.es, Dax saw that the young doctor's hair was matted with sweat, and his eyes were red from exhaustion. She nodded and said, ”Where is she?”
Ta.r.s.es took a few steps and motioned with a tilt of his head for Dax to follow him. She walked with him past one row of biobeds, and then past a triage center, into a recovery ward. All of the beds in this compartment were occupied as well. Near the far end of the ward was the person Dax had come to talk to. She reached out to Ta.r.s.es and tugged his sleeve. ”I'll take it from here,” she said, and he acknowledged the dismissal with a polite nod and let her continue past him.
Dax approached the problem patient without hesitation and placed herself at the foot of the bed. ”What's this I hear about you not wanting to return to duty?”
Lonnoc Kedair stirred from her torpid, dead-eyed languor to meet Dax's accusing stare. ”It's not about what I want,” the Takaran woman said. ”It's about what I deserve.”
”If I could, I'd give you a month's liberty,” Dax said. ”I read Simon's report. You got mangled pretty bad on that Borg s.h.i.+p. Unfortunately, we have about four thousand more of them on their way here, and I need my security chief back at her post.” She frowned as Kedair turned her head and averted her eyes. ”In case I wasn't clear, I'm talking about you.”
”You were clear,” Kedair said. ”I wasn't. I'm not saying I deserve time off. I'm saying I deserve to be in the brig.”
Just what I didn't need, Dax brooded behind a blank expression. Something to make my day a little more interesting. ”Care to elaborate, Lieutenant?”
Kedair seemed unable to look Dax in the eye. The security chief shut her eyes, ma.s.saged her green, scaly forehead, and combed her fingers through her wiry black hair. ”On the Borg s.h.i.+p,” she began, and then she paused. After a grim sigh, she continued, ”I made a mistake, Captain.”
”Stay here. I'll convene a firing squad,” Dax quipped.
”Curious choice of words,” Kedair said. ”Because that's basically what I did.” Looking up, she added, ”I caused at least three friendly-fire deaths during the attack, sir. Maybe more.”
Dax stepped to the side of Kedair's bed and moved closer to her, so that they could speak more discreetly. ”What happened, Lonnoc? Specifically, I mean.”
”I was looking out across that big empty s.p.a.ce in the middle of the s.h.i.+p,” Kedair said, her eyes turned away while she searched her memory for details. ”I thought I saw an ambush closing in on one of our teams. It was so dark, and everybody was wearing black, and with TR-116s in their hands, at a distance, they looked like Borg with arm attachments.” Dax nodded for her to go on. ”With the dampeners, we didn't have any comms, so I fired a warning shot at the team that was-that I thought was being ambushed. I signaled them to turn and intercept.” Kedair closed her eyes, and her jaw tensed.
Wary of pus.h.i.+ng too hard, Dax asked, ”What happened next?”
”The first team took cover and waited for their targets to close to optimal firing distance. Then they-they lit 'em up.” She shook her head. ”A few seconds later, the squad leader called cease-fire, and they popped off a few gel flares. That was when I saw what had happened.” She bowed her head into her hands for a few seconds, then she straightened and added, ”Lieutenant sh'Aqabaa's still in critical condition. The rest of her squad from t.i.tan is dead.”
The rest of Kedair's actions on the Borg scout s.h.i.+p after the boarding op were starting to make sense to Dax. ”Is that why you volunteered to stay behind when the Borg Queen attacked? To try and make up for your mistake?”
”I did that because it was my duty, and because it was the right tactical choice,” Kedair said defensively. ”Please don't psychoa.n.a.lyze me, Captain. I can always go see Counselor Hyatt if I'm in the mood for that.”
”I think Susan might echo my diagnosis,” Dax said. ”But you're right, it's not my job to give you therapy. It's my job to give you some perspective and put you back at your post.”
”You ought to put me out an airlock,” Kedair grumped.
Sharpening her tone, Dax said, ”That's enough, Lieutenant. Listen to what I'm telling you. You did not pull the trigger on Lieutenant sh'Aqabaa and her team. It's not your fault.”
”How can you say that? I flagged my own people as a target. I gave the order to fire. How can it possibly not be my fault?”
”It's called the 'fog of war,'” Dax said. ”You go into sensory overload. Everything happens so fast, you can't process it. Mistakes happen.” She sighed as she confronted painful memories from her years on the Destiny and on Deep s.p.a.ce 9. ”I saw it a lot during the Dominion War. It had nothing to do with how well trained someone was or the quality of their character. In combat, you have no time to think. Information gets scrambled. You're surrounded by chaos, and you try to do the best you can-but no one's perfect.”
Kedair's eyes narrowed. ”Sounds like an excuse,” she said. ”And not a very good one, either. I don't want to make excuses, Captain. I should have verified the target before I told my people to fire.”
”I've read a lot of reports from squad leaders who were on that s.h.i.+p,” Dax said. ”I doubt you really had the time to check every target. No one did. Under the circ.u.mstances, I'd say your actions were entirely reasonable.”
Angrier, Kedair replied, ”I was sloppy. I lost track of where my people were. It was my job to know.”
Vexed by Kedair's toxic brew of self-pity and self-loathing, Dax leaned forward and took hold of the security chief's collar. ”I'm trying to be patient, Lonnoc, but you're not making this easy. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. This is war. It gets b.l.o.o.d.y. People die. Deal with it.” With a shove, she released Kedair and continued, ”The team on the other level could have fired gel flares first, just to see who they were shooting, but they didn't. That was their call, not yours.
”Add up the facts. You had no communications, in the dark, in hostile territory, while under attack, and you made an honest mistake. You want to blame yourself? Go ahead. Wail and gnash your teeth and cry yourself to sleep at night-I don't give a d.a.m.n. There was no criminal negligence here and no criminal intent-in other words, absolutely no basis for a court-martial.
”So I'm giving you a direct order, Lieutenant: Get your a.s.s out of that bed, and report to your post on the bridge. We're less than ten hours from facing off with a quarter-billion Borg drones in more than four thousand cubes, and I don't plan on letting you gold-brick your way through it. Understood?”
Kedair stared at Dax in shock, her eyes wide, her jaw slack, her back pressed as deeply into her pillows as she had been able to retreat in the face of Dax's harangue. The Takaran woman blinked, composed herself, and sat up. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up, facing Dax.
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