Pathways
Page 19
James’s friendship nurtured B’Elanna at a pivotal point in her life, and she valued it immensely. But she was never unaware of the fact that she was, from those first fateful moments, completely in control of the situation. It was an empowering feeling, but the message it had given B’Elanna was of the potency of sex. She was convinced that had James Chesney not lusted for her, he would have ignored her. But what she could do with this knowledge, this power, she had no idea.
• • •
Her first stroll through San Francisco was emotionally overwhelming. It seemed at once sweetly familiar and wildly alien, for while many of the sights she had pored over in books and pictures were just as she had expected, nothing had prepared her for the reality of the jewel-like city by the bay. It was more beautiful, more energetic, more charged with activity and determination than she could have realized. Everyone she encountered seemed imbued with a sense of purpose, of mission, that she found exhilarating. She wanted to steep herself in those same energies, to take on some noble challenge, to accomplish grand and unimaginable goals. As she walked the hilly streets of San Francisco, she felt capable of anything.
Two months later, she wondered why she’d ever come to Earth.
She had been completely unprepared for the rigid disciplines in place at Starfleet Academy. Her fantasies of taking only the courses she enjoyed, of reading simply for pleasure, evaporated. Every minute of a cadet’s day was programmed, planned, and charted, and any off hours were consumed with studying. Every teacher seemed to think his or her course was the only one the cadet was taking, and piled on so much work it was impossible to stay abreast of it. She got by on no more than three or four hours of sleep a night, a feat that was easier for her than for many species, but that ultimately became debilitating.
And she missed James. She realized she had taken his friendship for granted, hadn’t appreciated how it buoyed and sustained her. Now, in its absence, she was unbearably lonely. But she had never developed socializing skills, and didn’t really know how to go about making new friends. Flipping them to the ground and lecturing them didn’t seem to be reasonable options at the Academy.
She and James spoke together frequently at first, and then, as happens, less and less as time went by. He was clearly absorbed in his studies, and his new friends, and eventually they had little in common to talk about. With sadness, she acknowledged that they had moved far apart.
She began to challenge her teachers, questioning regulations, confronting precepts. Her temper grew more intense and less controlled, and with each outburst she felt herself becoming more isolated. She had no one with whom to share these feelings; her mother had opposed her coming to the Academy in the first place, and she had made no real friends here. And so she did what she had done for most of her life: relied on herself, and tried to figure out what she was going to do with her life.
The night was cool, as she had been taught would be the case on Tresorin III. She had also been taught that she would be lucky to get off the planet alive. To come there alone was probably foolish, but she needed to test herself.
The first assailant burst out of the woods, which were shrouded in heavy fog. He was so large his armored body brushed the tree branches as he plowed through the forest, giving B’Elanna time to react and prepare for his attack. Without that slight warning, she knew, he would probably have overpowered her before she could turn to face him.
The moves that would save her took shape, not as conscious thoughts, but as instinctual reactions: crouch low, ready to spring . . . anticipate his first blow . . . use his bulk against him . . .
His head was huge and grotesque, plated like his body but misshapen and distorted so that it lacked any symmetry. Tufts of a furlike substance erupted in patches among the plates, and his eyes gleamed like laser points. He was emitting an earsplitting bellow from an orifice that was dripping a foul-smelling gelatinous substance.
Just the type to take home to meet Mother, B’Elanna thought as he lunged, and before she could wonder where that thought had come from, he was on her.
His first blow was predictable, a slashing-downward chop from his right arm. B’Elanna grabbed it as it descended toward her head and used his own momentum to take him down, flipping him onto his back and then kicking him solidly in the throat. He clutched at it, gasping for air through the crushed windpipe. He would fight no more.
This time, there was no telltale sound to warn her of the attack. The second assailant was behind her before she could register his approach, and she took a staggering blow to her left shoulder. Pain rippled down through her arm and hand, little shock waves of anguish that made it all but impossible for her to focus on what she had to do.
The blow had driven her to her knees, and she continued the motion, rolling in a tight ball away from the armored attacker, trying to collect her wits. She tried to push upright with her left arm, but found it was, for all intents, useless; it was nothing more than a thousand tiny fire points, and failed to respond to any command she gave it.
She saw the sweeping kick coming at her head and barely threw up her right arm in time, intercepting the kick and finding purchase with her hand on one of the armored plates. It was surprisingly spongy in texture. Using her legs to drive upward, she toppled the monstrous assailant, who fell to the ground like a giant tree, smashing his face against rocky shale.
B’Elanna massaged her left arm, hoping they were done with her, but doubting it could be that easy, and was proven right when two of the aliens—even larger than the first two—crashed from the woods at opposite ends, galloping toward her, bellowing like Tovian bulls.
She made a quick decision and turned toward one of them, running directly at him, head down. Her small size was actually an advantage with a creature so tall, as he had to bend down to get at her, throwing himself slightly off balance.
He was also somewhat perplexed that she was coming at him, and hesitated slightly as she neared. Then he roared again, and bent down to strike at her small, compact form, just as she dived at his knees. He went sailing over her head and landed directly in the path of the other, who stumbled over the crashing form.
These guys are big, she thought, but not too bright, as she rotated into a flying kick.
And felt her leg almost torn from its socket.
She screamed involuntarily and fell heavily to the floor, muscles and ligaments straining against the force being applied to them by yet another assailant. Without even knowing what she was doing, she rotated with the force, turning her body in the same direction in order to take the pressure off her hip socket. Then she was free of his grip and the pain in her leg triggered an overwhelming response: rage. Fury pulsed through her like a wildfire, igniting everything in its path, turning her into a woman possessed, ferocious and inexorable.
Her hand clutched at the ground beneath her, grabbing for the shale, breaking off a shard of it and then swinging it upward, right at the distended head of the creature, right toward the orb that seemed to be its eye, driving the rocky stake deep into the mass of pulp, plunging it the full length of the shale until her fingers touched the eye.
Then she pulled it out and whirled toward the others, who lay in a tangled heap on the ground, and drove the spike into the eye of the first one she reached, listening with satisfaction at the bellows of pain she was causing. Something feral was loose in her now, a heat to the blood that burned away restraint and urged her to slake her blood-thirst.
“Computer, delete program,” said the disembodied voice behind her, and everything disappeared—the woods, the rocky ground, the assailants, and the shale spike that had become her weapon.
Gasping for breath, she whirled, crouched, ready to take on this new presence, to destroy it as thoroughly as she had destroyed the marauding aliens.
Standing in the empty holodeck was a Starfleet officer, Commander Stern. He wore the red uniform of command, which did not become his florid complexion. He was balding, with only a fringe of brown-gray hair ar
ound the sides and back. He spoke quietly, but his voice was steel. “That’s enough, Cadet.”
B’Elanna stared at him, trying to reconcile the officer’s presence there, swimming up from a consuming fire, forcing her mind to reintegrate what felt like disparate elements: This is a holodeck, that is an officer, I am Cadet B’Elanna Torres.
I’m in trouble.
“This is an unauthorized use of the holodeck, Cadet,” said Stern. “What’s going on?”
B’Elanna took a deep breath, tried to get her racing heart and her breathing under control. But her voice came out ragged and gasping. “Sir, I’m just putting in my self-defense exercise time. Five hours a week, required.”
Stern’s gaze, from pale blue eyes, was cool. “Sensors indicated a holodeck program being run without the safeties in place. That’s strictly forbidden.”
She started to feign innocence, but hated the thought of lying to this fussy little bureaucrat, and instead lifted her head, looking him directly in the eye. “I know that, sir. But sometimes I like to push myself just that extra bit harder. After all, there won’t be any safeties when we’re on actual missions.”
“The Academy has rules for a reason, Cadet. It’s not your place to decide whether or not they work for you.”
B’Elanna felt anger simmering in her again. Authority for authority’s sake. Everything in her rebelled against these gratuitous expressions of control. Who did this icyeyed autocrat think he was? Rules, rules, rules. That’s about all she’d heard since she arrived at the Academy a year and a half ago. She took another deep breath and tried to quell these rebellious feelings. “Sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.”
He was still staring at her, pale eyes squinting. “You’re Torres, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If I remember correctly, you’re already on report for causing a melee on the hoverball court. I’ll check the logs, but if I’m right, this means a four-day suspension.”
“Don’t bother checking. It was me.” Her voice was surly, even to her ears. Stern’s eyes snapped to hers.
“And that’ll be another day for insubordination.”
Every pore of her body cried out for her to leap on him, fingers raking his face, thumbs plunging into the sockets of his eyes until he was left writhing and sightless on the floor. But with supreme effort, she managed to hold herself still and return his gaze. “I understand, sir.”
“Report to your quarters.”
“Yes, sir.” She exited the holodeck without looking at him again, imagining the satisfaction of squeezing his eyeballs in her fists until they ran like jelly.
• • •
When she entered her room, she felt the dark gaze of her roommate, a compact young woman named Mary Ellen Regan, known as Mellie. She was, in B’Elanna’s mind, the most perfect person she’d ever met. Strikingly lovely, she was also intimidatingly intelligent and talented in any number of fields: she sang, she played the flute, she was a graceful gymnast. She made B’Elanna feel unworthy and even unclean.
“You’ve gotten another transmission from Mexico,” said Mellie. “It’s logged on to your console. I thought you’d want to know.”
“Thank you.” B’Elanna, still smarting from what she considered Commander Stern’s unprovoked punishment, marched to her bed and flopped down on it, arms under her head, gazing up at the ceiling. Mellie regarded her carefully.
“A bunch of us are going to take a picnic dinner to the park. Would you like to come?”
“I’m on suspension. Confined to quarters.”
“B’Elanna, I’m sorry. What happened?” Mellie’s concern was genuine, but B’Elanna didn’t feel like recapping the incident in the holodeck.
“Let’s just say I messed up again.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I really just want to be alone. Don’t worry about me— I’ll be fine.”
Five minutes later, Mellie had departed, and B’Elanna heard the laughing calls of a group of her peers as they left the quad and moved off into a balmy evening, enjoying the camaraderie and ebullience of youth. B’Elanna felt as though she were a hundred years old, trapped in her room, isolated and bereft.
Her eyes flickered toward her console. She knew very well who was transmitting from Mexico, and the knowledge hung over her like a pall. She stared at the darkened monitor, knowing all she had to do was press a few controls and she could access the series of messages.
She lay like that for almost forty minutes, then rolled off the bed and moved toward the console and, with studied casualness—though for whom she was feigning indifference she wasn’t sure—she activated her comm system to play the messages she had been saving.
The man whose image appeared on the screen was in his late forties, hair dark and wavy, flashing eyes almost black, smile broad and warm. He was, in B’Elanna’s eyes, almost unbearably handsome, and she felt a wave of something foreign and ineffable rise in her. It wasn’t pleasant, turning her hands clammy and her stomach queasy. She drew several deep gulps of air.
“B’Elanna,” the man said, “I’ve been in deep space for over a year and I just learned you were at Starfleet Academy. I’m so proud of you . . . I’d love to visit you. Please let me know if that’s all right.”
That was message number one, which had come in months before. Each succeeding transmission—and there were seven in all—was increasingly urgent. She had replayed each one over and over, night after night, without responding. Tentatively, she tapped the control that would play the latest one.
“B’Elanna, it’s possible you’re out in the field, or sick, or on leave. But I’m reasonably sure those things aren’t true and that you’ve chosen not to answer me. I’m sorry for that . . . it hurts me . . . but I can understand it. I wish we could talk, so I could explain some things to you. I didn’t leave you and your mother because I didn’t care about you, I swear to you. Now that you’re grown, maybe I could put things in a context that would make what I did understandable. Maybe even forgivable.”
There was a pause as the intense black eyes stared at her. “I love you, B’Elanna. I’ve missed you every day of my life. I’d do anything if we could find each other again. Please— don’t shut me out.”
The screen went dark and B’Elanna deactivated the console. Her chest felt constricted, as though pressed by stones. Her stomach twisted like a loose eel, forcing gorge into her throat. Her fingers hovered over the controls that would allow her to reply to these messages, and she told herself that when she’d counted to ten, she would do it. She counted to ten seven times before she admitted she wasn’t going to be able to summon the courage.
She made her way on trembling legs to her bed, and fell on it in a dead weight. The room began to spin dizzyingly, and she closed her eyes, trying to draw air into her lungs. She felt fevered, ill. She turned on her stomach and pulled the pillow over her head, trying to insulate herself from this onslaught of feelings, and presently she fell into an unquiet sleep.
She waked a few hours later. A cool breeze was pouring through the window as the ubiquitous San Francisco fog gathered for the night. She felt calm once more, her head clear and focused. She realized she had made a decision in her sleep, and it had cleansed her of the anguish she was experiencing.
She was leaving the Academy. She was going somewhere far away, many sectors from here, maybe into another quadrant. Any place where she could be sure her father couldn’t find her.
“More power! More power! What are you doing down there? I need more power!”
B’Elanna sighed and brushed her hair out of her eyes, leaving a dark smudge on the ridges of her forehead. It was impossibly hot in the engine room, and sweat stung her eyes and dampened her shirt. “I’m doing the best I can, Mesler. It won’t help to yell at me.”
The Bolian’s voice on the comm was shrill and tinny. “I’m on a strict deadline! This cargo has to be at its destination by seventeen hundred hours! We’ll never make it!”
“Klingon fool! You claimed you were an engineer! I’ve been duped!”
Irritation gave way to anger. B’Elanna swung out of the engine room of the Bolian freighter and climbed four ladders to the cramped, utilitarian bridge. That’s about all the ship consisted of: bridge, engine room, and four decks of cargo space. She and Mesler, the pilot, were the only crew, which suited B’Elanna just fine. It was all she could do to deal with Mesler; if she could’ve found a situation where she was the only crew member and could devote herself solely to the ship’s systems, it would’ve been even better.
Now, she burst into the bridge and was gratified to see the rotund, blue-faced Bolian jump in alarm at her unexpected entrance. His eyes widened with apprehension as she stood before him, fist raised.
“If you ever . . . and I mean ever . . . call me a Klingon fool again, do you know what I’m going to do to you?”
Mesler’s face took on a green tinge as he stared up at her. “Don’t get yourself upset, Torres . . .” he began, but she barreled on.
“Feel this?” she asked as she put one hand around the back of his neck and applied pressure to the sides of his neck with her fingers. “It’s a pressure point—see how it makes your mouth pop open? I could reach in right now, twist your fat tongue out of your throat, and eat it. And that’s just what I’ll do if you ever denigrate my heritage again.”
“All right, all right,” he croaked, squirming under her grip. “Just do whatever you have to to get those warp engines at peak efficiency. We can’t afford to lose any more time.”
B’Elanna dropped her grip and turned on her heel. “You’ll get them when you get them,” she growled, and made her descent once more to the engine room. The problem was in the freighter’s aging warp propulsion system, and she’d had to be endlessly creative in order to keep the ship running. Now she wasn’t sure how she was going to remodulate the plasma injectors in order to restore warp speed, but a little bubble of an idea was forming in her brain. She stared at the injectors as the bubble swelled, and then it was full enough for her to grasp and roll around her mind, testing it for weaknesses.