“I’m assuming you’re talking about the real stuff?” Cambridge asked.
“What do you take me for, a barbarian?” Sal replied.
Cambridge hadn’t asked because he was remotely interested in joining the good doctor. He had asked because he needed to know exactly what he was seeing.
“Doctor, I need you to focus for a moment.”
Sal chuckled. “For you, anything. Oh, wait, you’re an ass.”
“You’re not wrong, but can we set that aside for a moment? I need to know something about Ensign Gwyn.”
“Ensign Gwyn? Lovely girl. Sorry about unintentionally activating that recessive gene. Do you think she’ll forgive me? Hang on, I did that to save someone else’s life, didn’t I?”
“Doctor, am I going to have to order you to sickbay for an anti-intoxicant or can you possibly get a tighter grip on your horses?”
Sal seemed to seriously consider the question. “Go ahead.”
“Ensign Gwyn. A few days ago, you unintentionally initiated the finiis’ral in her, a biological imperative unique to Kriosians that should have required her to bond with another individual, a process that would have permanently altered her mental state to force her to become that individual’s perfect mate.”
“I did. Didn’t… didn’t mean to, though. That antiproton therapy… what the hell was she doing on that damned asteroid anyway?”
“Stay with me, El’nor. We were all worried that if she didn’t complete the finiis’ral she would die.”
“I know. It’s horrible. I’d really like to understand what evolution was thinking when it selected for that trait.”
“Be that as it may, the process apparently reversed itself. Do you remember?”
“No, it didn’t,” Sal insisted. “She completed the finial, finn … fizzer…”
Had Cambridge possessed the ability to reach his arms through the data screen and slap Sal, he would have done it. “The finiis’ral?”
“Yep. That one.”
“But how?” Cambridge demanded. “You had a theory, but there wasn’t time for you to explain.”
“She bonded with the baby. I didn’t tell you that?”
“How is that possible?”
“Dunno.”
“In your studies of the Kriosians, did you ever encounter another instance of such a bonding?”
“Nope.”
“Then how can you be certain that—”
“There’s no science to explain it,” Sal said gruffly, cutting him off. “At least none the Kriosians are willing to share with the rest of the class.”
“In a normal bonding, can the connection between a Kriosian and their perfect mate span great distances?”
Sal’s forehead fell into deep wrinkles as she pondered his question. Finally she released a long, slow sigh. “In theory, yes. All of them are low- to mid-level telepaths and the bonding is both a physical and mental connection. I’m not sure where Gwyn falls on the psi-scale, but wait a minute. Why are you asking me this?”
“Because Ensign Gwyn believes that the baby is still alive.”
“Wasn’t the baby on board the Galen when…” Sal trailed off as the potential ramifications of this hit her. “Shit,” she finally said.
“I’m going to send a medic to your quarters to get you back on your feet, Doctor. You’re going to need to make a full report to the admiral within the next hour regarding Gwyn’s condition.”
“That’s going to be some trick, seeing as I can’t remember where I left my boots,” Sal opined.
“We’ll talk soon, Doctor,” Cambridge said, signing off. He then dispatched the necessary orders to Vesta’s medical staff.
He knew that Gwyn’s feelings were a pretty flimsy strand upon which to base an argument that everything they currently believed about the Galen’s fate was false. He also knew that Admiral Janeway and Captain Chakotay would grasp for anything remotely hope-shaped at a moment like this and move heaven, Earth, and every astronomical body in between to prove her right.
5
GALEN
“Remove the switch plate carefully,” Conlon said in the same tinny voice with which Lieutenant Velth had become all too well acquainted during the last two hours.
“How about I just rip out the entire housing, Chief?” Velth asked—kidding—as he gingerly began to tug at the plate’s edge.
“If you have a spare one in your pocket, sure thing,” Conlon teased right back. “If you don’t… well, how badly do you ever want to talk to the rest of the fleet again? Maybe I should have asked before you went out there.”
Velth silently thanked whoever had developed the EV suit’s engineering gloves. Someone had clearly given thought to the manual dexterity required by engineers toiling in the vacuum of space. They maintained his body temperature perfectly and felt much like a second skin. Work like this would be damn near impossible without them.
“Almost got it,” he said.
“Carefully. Like an egg,” Conlon added.
Velth held the edge of the plate as delicately as he could, applying just enough pressure to ease it out. When it slipped free undamaged, he released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
“Got it.”
“Show me,” Conlon requested.
This was the lieutenant’s cue to lift the plate to his own eye level. The EV suit’s imager transmitted what he saw directly to Conlon on the bridge.
“Rotate one hundred and eighty degrees, please,” Conlon ordered. He did so, gently. After a moment she said, “There it is.”
Velth studied the back of the plate. To his untrained eye, nothing seemed out of sorts.
“There what is?” he asked.
“The primary relay is fused.”
“That sounds bad.”
“It’s fixable. Set the plate down on your mag panel. Then go to your case and find me a sixteen-beta-four head. Attach it to your decoupler and target component DX9RQ.”
Velth did as he had been ordered. “Are you sure that a reasonably well-trained monkey couldn’t handle this?” he asked.
“We have monkeys on board?” Conlon retorted. “See, that would have been helpful information to have a few hours ago. Monkeys would have been done by now.”
It took Velth another twenty minutes to replace the fused relay. Returning the component to its housing was completed without incident.
“Stand back, Lieutenant,” Conlon ordered as Velth finished stowing the tools he’d used to perform the meticulous repairs.
“How far?” Velth
