He’d already presided over the destruction of one such ship and now had suffered through a second. Troi would have been surprised, considering his mental state even before their current troubles, if he wasn’t somewhat withdrawn now. The problem was, if they were to survive, he would need to process this and get through it sooner rather than later. Much sooner.
She could feel his emotions boiling inside him like an infinite sea of lava beneath his apparent calm. It was too much energy to bottle, and if he couldn’t let some out now, the eventual blow would be as catastrophic to him as what had happened to the Luna.
“Xin,” she began again. “This was not your fault. You know that.”
“Yes, of course, Counselor,” he said eventually and obviously lying. “This was just an unfortunate result of dangerous explorations.”
“Yes, Xin,” she said. “We don’t even know that Titanwas destroyed.”
“Commander Vale seems fairly certain,” he said.
“Chris is under a lot of pressure,” said Troi. “It helps her to think the worst has already happened.”
“A prudent response,” he said, reaching for the isolinear filaments.
“Not really,” she said. “Only a natural one. Pessimism is a waste of intellect.”
He worked away in silence, apparently puzzled at the tricorder’s stubborn resistance to his ministrations. None of the energy-manipulating devices had worked properly at first. Something about the transport or the nature of this planet had scrambled them. Watching him work on the thing, methodically resetting commands or repairing damaged filaments, gave Troi a deeper understanding of how his mind worked.
He was an entirely compartmental being, having simple but solid walls drawn between his emotions and his intellect in a way that reminded her of Vulcans but that was infinitely more complex. Vulcans shoved all their emotions behind the same wall, denying them access to the surface of their being. Ra-Havreii didn’t have a single wall but a maze. He certainly felt things and showed it, but only what and when he wished. She wondered if all Efrosians were this way or if it was a particular quirk of the engineer’s.
“One of my colleagues on the Lunaproject felt that way,” he said eventually, frowning over the exposed guts of the tricorders in his lap. “Dr. Tourangeau felt that our work was in the nature of a competition, with us setting ourselves against the limitations imposed by nature and finding ways around them. ‘Sometimes you get the sehlat,’ he would say. ‘Sometimes it gets you.’ ”
“It’s a good way to see life, Xin,” she said.
“I pushed myself to follow his example,” said the engineer. “I completely redesigned the drive systems of the Lunaclass, you know. I changed the mixture rates, streamlined the force-field networks. It was like making art rather than building machinery.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about engineering,” she said, smiling. “But I know your work is considered to be cutting edge.”
“Yes,” he said. “We were always seeking that edge. Living on it as long as we could.”
“They say that’s where the best discoveries are found.”
“Mmh,” he said. “It is also the place where Dr. Tourangeau and several hundred others were caught in the matter inversion event that was born of my ‘artwork.’ ”
Seeing the questioning look on her face, he explained the horrible consequence of matter inversion and how its single positive attribute was a quick death for those caught in the center of the effect.
The maiming and mutilation of bodies unlucky enough to be at the periphery, like those of his friend Tourangeau and so many others, was something he never let himself forget anymore.
“I promised I would never lose another ship,” he said at last. “And I would never kill another person or harm another friend. And yet here we all are.”
She could feel him folded inside himself, like layer upon layer of steel. His pain was deeper and, strangely, more rational than she had ever thought, and in the face of it, she wondered if any amount of quiet conversation could ever lessen his burden.
“I am sorry, Xin,” was all she could muster. She knew it wasn’t enough, that perhaps nothing could be. Worse, his certainty that he had somehow failed to prevent the death of another ship and her crew sent a sliver of ice through her own soul.
Seeing that she wouldn’t press him further, Ra-Havreii closed the tricorder’s access panel and switched it on. The green lights lit and the familiar chime sounded, signaling that he had got it working correctly again. To look at him, one would think he had just performed this miracle in the comfort of some workshop on Titanor at Starfleet Headquarters.
He smiled at her, a surprisingly warm smile, stood and moved off to test the tricorder’s basic functions.
Keru burst out of the jungle as if a horde of Borg drones were on his heels.
“We’re going,” he said, and immediately set to packing up the campsite.
He wasn’t panicked exactly. Troi could tell the big Trill had more control of himself than to allow panic, but he was nervous and in a hurry.
“What’s happened, Ranul?” she asked, moving to help him gather up their meager store of equipment and supplies.
“The commander stepped on something,” he said, closing up the first pack and tossing it to her. He looked around, noticed the engineer was not present, and asked about it.
“He got a tricorder working again,” she said, finishing the second pack. “He’s still testing it.”
Keru swore. Seeing that Troi had the packing in hand, he dived into the area of the jungle where she indicated Ra-Havreii had gone. He and Vale had the only working combadges as yet, and she could hear his voice relaying the situation to her for a few moments before the sound was eaten by the jungle. Almost immediately she heard, from the opposite side of the little clearing, the muffled sound of phaser fire.
She finished the fourth pack and was about to round up the stray bits of equipment when Vale appeared. She was winded and sweating, and she held her phaser very much at the ready.
“No sign of the others,” she said, catching her breath. She cast a glance around the small campsite and frowned.
“Keru and Xin aren’t back yet,” said Troi. She tossed the younger woman her finished pack, watching as she quickly slid her arms through the loops. “What’s happening?”
“Stepped into a nest of some very angry bugs,” she said, gathering up the other hand weapons and handing one to Troi. “I think the phaser scared the first few hundred, but the others are massing behind them.”
Troi nodded, slipping on her own pack and gathering up the other two.
“Vale to Keru. We’re leaving in one,” said Vale. “I don’t care what Ra-Havreii’s into. Stun him if you have to, but get back here now.”
“Already on it,” said Keru, emerging from the sea of vines with a very unhappy Ra-Havreii in tow.
“Glad you could join us, Doctor,” said Vale, grabbing one of the packs away from Troi and throwing it at the Efrosian. “The counselor tells me you’ve got that thing working again?”
“Yes, Commander,” he said.
“Think you can find the shuttle?”
“I was just telling Keru that I could when he-” The engineer was interrupted by a sound like a thousand turbines spinning in unison.
“Bugs?” said Troi. Vale nodded.
“Let’s go, people,” she said, as if anyone present needed to be told.
The swarm stayed with them for two kilometers, right up to the moment they found a wide creek of clear running water and, despite Ra-Havreii’s protest, plunged in.
Their scents sufficiently masked, the team watched from under the water as the horde of alien insects swept over them. It took only seconds for the swarm to pass-an army of things like crimson locusts the size of small dogs screaming through the brush with blood in mind.