Cohesion

  “How is he, Harry?” the captain asked.

  Harry hadn’t seen her come onto the bridge, but his attention had been fixed on his patient. “He’s okay, I think. Are you all right, Captain?”

  Captain Janeway instinctively touched her stomach, smiled wanly, and said, “Fine,” but then her expression became stern. “What happened? Where are we? Give me information, Harry.”

  Kim looked up at the main viewscreen. Either something was wrong with the exterior cameras or they were being blocked by some kind of forcefield. Where only moments before there had been a field of stars and the burnt-umber arc of Monorha in the screen’s lower edge, now there was only a black field occasionally broken by pinprick flashes of white. “The planet’s gone,” he said, but felt inane as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

  Without excusing himself, he stumbled to his station and began checking the sensor logs. Data flowing back to him was a confused jumble. Only minutes earlier, Harry had been cataloguing radiation from the Blue Eye, hoping he could send some useful information to B’Elanna about how to modify Monorha’s shield generators, but now there was virtually no radiation at all, but only energy sputtering and arcing without any discernable pattern.

  “Were the engines engaged?” he asked.

  “Negative,” Knowles shouted back. “Nothing. The engine room reported we were in standby mode. Impulse only.”

  None of this makes any sense, Harry thought, and shook his head. Something’s wrong with me.

  “What hit us, Harry?” Captain Janeway asked, but her words were slightly slurred. “What can the sensor logs tell us?”

  Sensor logs. Good idea. “Checking, Captain,” he said. “Scans say that four minutes ago…” Four minutes? Only four minutes? “Four minutes ago we were hit by an energy wave that emanated from the surface of Moronha…. Sorry, Monorha…The surge covered most of the northwestern hemisphere. I can’t make sense of what the scans are saying. There was a shock wave in the atmosphere, but none of that reached us up here.”

  “A shock wave caused by what?” the captain asked. “In the atmosphere? On the surface? How powerful? Was anyone on the surface injured?”

  Harry shook his head in frustration, his thoughts sluggish. “I can’t tell, Captain.”

  “An underground test, perhaps?”

  “Possible,” Harry said. He knew that they used to do underground nuclear tests back on Earth before someone figured out the effects such blasts had on the biosphere.

  “What about the shuttles?”

  Shuttles? Harry shook his head again and was tempted to smack his own face. “Shuttles,” he said aloud. “Wait. Sorry, Captain, let me check.”

  “We’re all feeling it, Harry,” she said, “but shake it off. I need you to focus.”

  The turbolift doors snapped open and two crewmen and Tuvok stepped off the car. Pointing the crewmen at Grench, Tuvok called, “Is everyone else all right?”

  “None of us is great,” the captain said, “but we’re still here. Take care of the ensign.”

  The Bolian was already on the stretcher and was floating through the doors guided by the crewmen. Harry was glad to see him getting help, glad that sickbay had been able to respond so quickly.

  “Shall I stay on the bridge, Captain? I am not as disabled by the problem plaguing the ship as some others.” But Harry could see that “not as disabled” didn’t mean “unaffected.” There were dark circles under Tuvok’s eyes, evidence of the strain he was experiencing.

  “Stay, Tuvok. Harry is examining the sensor logs, but I want you to check the shields. If this disorientation is caused by something external…”

  Tuvok didn’t even respond, but stepped up to his station and began checking shields.

  “The shuttles, Harry.”

  Shuttles. Right. He did the simple thing first and checked the shuttlebay logs. “Commander Chakotay and his party were on board when the energy surge hit, Captain. Looks like he’s okay, though the bay forcefields flickered. Some debris got sucked out.”

  “No crewmen though?”

  “No, everyone is accounted for.”

  “What about B’Elanna and Seven?”

  Harry searched the logs for a sign of the second shuttle’s fate. There they are approaching the atmosphere. Here’s their signature crossing into the daylight side of the hemisphere. And then…“I don’t know, Captain. I see them getting tossed by the same surge, but I can’t tell what happened. The shuttle didn’t break up, but I can’t determine what else might have happened after we were hit.”

  “But hit by what, Ensign?” Captain Janeway snapped, rising from her chair. “Where are we? Where are the stars?!”

  Dumbstruck, staring, Harry ran his hands over the control panel, trying to make sense of what was happening. The captain is shouting at me, he thought. This wasn’t the first time it had happened and Harry knew that he wasn’t so thin-skinned that a shout should bother him so much, but he was all too conscious of the fact that he was close to breaking into tears. It’s this space, he thought. There’s something wrong with it. But the scanners can’t scan it.

  A new idea struck him: Maybe the scanners were out of calibration. Maybe the energy surge blew out the configuration files and all he needed to do was do a reset. I’ll do that, he thought. I’ll reset them and everything will work and I’ll figure this out and the captain won’t yell at me anymore.

  * * *

  The shuttlebay forcefield dropped. Just minutes earlier, Chakotay had settled the shuttle onto the deck, shut down the engines, and was seconds away from touching the control that would have opened the hatch. Then, for no reason that he could name, Chakotay looked out the bow viewport and watched as every loose item in the bay abruptly began to tumble and fly across the deck toward the main door. Klaxons sounded and the handful of technicians who had been working on shuttles either quickly shut themselves into their vessels or managed to seal themselves in the safety pods that lined the walls for exactly this sort of situation.

  Chakotay heard the hurricane rush of air even through the shuttle’s walls and wondered if he should strap back in and restart the shuttle’s engines. If Voyager was being attacked, he might be able to do more good outside the ship. Or I could get the environment suit out of the locker and try for the airlock, he thought. All the atmosphere is going to be gone in a minute. The solid bay doors would already be sliding into place—he couldn’t see from where he was standing—but the flight deck was a large, open space and would take time to repressurize.

  “Smothers,” Chakotay said. “Restart the engines. We might need to get out of here.”

  Smothers wasn’t listening. Chakotay turned to see what he was doing and saw his copilot staring back into the passenger section at the Monorhans. Chakotay looked back at them, too, and they stared in response, both leaning into the center aisle, polite, but curious.

  “Smothers,” Chakotay repeated. “Respond. Restart the engines.”

  Nothing.

  Chakotay shook his shoulder, but the ensign was completely unresponsive.

  “Commander Chakotay?” Sem asked. “What is happening?”

  He shook his head, and with his tongue feeling thick in his mouth, Chakotay said, “The forcefield door failed. An accident maybe. It’s all right, though.”

  “Your crewman is all right?” Sem asked. Behind her Morsa rose and seemed to fill the entire rear third of the shuttle.

  “I’m not sure,” Chakotay said, leaning over to get a closer look at the glassy-eyed Smothers. “I think I should call the bridge and find out what’s happening. It may turn out to be safer for you if we return to the planet.”

  “We hope not,” Sem said. “We came to assist. If something has gone awry, we wish to stay and offer our services.”

  Chakotay nodded. “I appreciate the offer, you dog-faced alien. If I can think of anything that needs fetching, I’ll…” He felt his own eyebrows sliding up his forehead and his mouth hanging open. What did I just say?

&n
bsp; Sem looked at him curiously, her long neck snaking to the left, then right. “Something is wrong with your translator devices, Commander. I could not understand what you just said. What does ‘dog’ mean?”

  “Yes,” Chakotay replied. “I heard it, too. Something is wrong with the translator. Maybe it’s related to what’s happened to the hatch.” Nothing is wrong with the translator, he thought. That was me, though they have no way of knowing it. What’s happening to me?

  “Commander?” the second Monorhan (what was his name?) asked, his voice rumbling loudly in the small space. “What is wrong?”

  “The light,” Chakotay said, shutting his eyes. Suddenly, the overhead lamps began to strobe fiercely. Chakotay heard a series of brief, sharp popping sounds from inside the bulkheads.

  “Commander,” Sem asked. “What was that? I felt something.”

  Smothers whispered, “Yes, the light.”

  “Commander?” Sem asked. “What light?”

  “Over your heads,” Chakotay said. “Can’t you see it?”

  “I see nothing,” Sem said, a note of worry creeping into her voice. “Except what was here only a moment ago. Perhaps you are ill?”

  Perhaps I am, Chakotay thought. Could the shuttle be leaking atmosphere? But, no, that was ridiculous. How could they have made it to the ship if it was? He tried to open his eyes against the glare, but quickly spun away. Unclenching his eyes for a moment, Chakotay looked at Smothers, but was baffled to see that his features were not, as he had expected, bathed in light. Instead, oddly, tears were running down the ensign’s cheeks, though they did not appear to be tears of pain, but rather of some rhapsodic joy.

  “The light,” Smothers whispered.

  “What light?” Sem asked, her voice sharp with impatience. “Is this some game, Commander? Are we your prisoners now and this is how you will torment us?”

  “No,” Chakotay shouted in reply. “Whatever is happening, we’re not doing it.”

  “He’s right,” Morsa said, his voice now surprisingly soft. “There’s a light.” Chakotay heard a thump as if something heavy had fallen to the ground.

  The next thing he heard was Sem saying, “Morsa, get up. Get off the deck. Morsa, look at me. Look at me!”

  But Morsa, apparently, did not or could not. Facing the viewport, Chakotay thought it was safe to open his eyes, but the urge to look back over his shoulder was almost overwhelming.

  * * *

  “She disappeared,” B’Elanna said.

  “Play it back again slowly.”

  “I’ll try,” B’Elanna said, “but the scan rate is low. Look how grainy the image is.” A moment later, she had the tiny silhouette of Voyager back on the monitor and ran the recording forward as slowly as the satellite’s playback would permit. “See?” she said. “It happens practically between two frames: one second there; the next, gone.”

  “And no evidence of debris.”

  “None. They weren’t destroyed.”

  “A cloak?”

  “Did you build a cloaking device? If you didn’t and I didn’t, then I’d say no cloak.”

  “Then where are they?” Seven asked.

  * * *

  Harry completed his check of the sensors, pleased with what he had found. He had been right: The whole system had reset when the energy surge hit. Now all he had to do was recalibrate and he would be able to answer the captain’s question again and she would like him again. He smiled goofily. All would be well.

  With what he felt was an appropriate amount of flourish, Harry pressed the control sequence that would bring the sensors back online. When he touched the last control, his arm sank into the console up to his elbow.

  * * *

  “Put him on the examination table, gentlemen,” the Doctor said to the crewmen as Paris finished closing the wound on Ensign Chilkis’s forehead. Chilkis had said he’d “come over all funny,” only one of a couple dozen similar complaints Tom had heard after returning to sickbay.

  Tom was glad to be useful, though he wasn’t sure precisely how useful he was being. He was fumble-fingered and he was finding it difficult to remember formerly well-practiced routines. Even now, closing a scalp wound, Tom had difficulty keeping the stud on the skin regenerator depressed while running it lightly over the wound. The worst part was that he knew he was being stupid, but wasn’t precisely certain how much smarter he usually was.

  Fortunately, whatever was affecting Tom (and, apparently, most everyone else on the ship) wasn’t affecting the Doctor. He was his typical prickly, officious self. “Ensign Grench, my, my, what have you done to yourself?”

  More than anything, Grench looked abashed and confused, as if he wasn’t completely clear why he was in sickbay. Or anywhere, for that matter. “Don’t know, Doctor,” he said. “Just feel…funny.”

  “Mr. Paris—my tricorder, please. We must find out why Ensign Grench is feeling so humorous.” The Doctor smiled as if he had just said something funny. Tom knew enough to smile, then remembered that he was supposed to be getting a tricorder.

  “Here you go, Doc,” Tom said, then realized that he was handing the doctor his skin regenerator. “Oops. Sorry. Let me get it.”

  “Mr. Paris, is it possible that you are being even less useful than usual?” the Doctor asked. “It hardly seems likely, yet here we are facing the question.”

  “Sorry, Doc. I said it once before and now I’m saying it again: Sorry.” The surprising thing was that Tom felt genuinely aggrieved, his cheeks unexpectedly flushed.

  The Doctor regarded him curiously as he removed the medical tricorder from Tom’s hand. “Never mind, Mr. Paris.”

  “I’m okay,” Tom said, embarrassed, but trying to sound businesslike. “Can Chilkis go now?”

  “Did you sterilize the wound after sealing?”

  “I think so.”

  “You think so?”

  “I mean, I’ll check.”

  The Doctor frowned. “A somewhat more satisfactory reply, though by this time I would have expected the answer to be ‘Yes, he’s ready to be released.’”

  “Sorry.” Tom hung his head and turned back to his patient, hoping and praying the conversation was over.

  Hearing the medical tricorder purr, he knew it was, at least for a while. “Let’s see what we have here, Mr. Grench. The report says you collapsed and had a bit of a seizure. Is that correct?” the Doctor asked.

  “I think so,” Grench said. “I don’t remember. Is that why everything looks so funny?”

  “Funny? Funny how?”

  “Kind of bright and glowing. There’s a prism around everything, like colors, but glittering.”

  “Very descriptive, Mr. Grench.”

  Tom finished with Chilkis, then looked to see who was next and was surprised to find that he was finished. “No more patients, Doc.”

  “Yes, the last few were frightened away…. No, please don’t look like that, Mr. Paris. I cannot abide another long face. What’s wrong with everyone today?”

  Tom and Grench said in chorus, “I don’t know.”

  “Of course you don’t. This is why I’m the doctor. Oh.”

  Tom didn’t like the catch he heard in the Doctor’s voice.

  “Something wrong?” Grench asked.

  “What? Oh, no. I think Mr. Paris may have miscalibrated the tricorder. Yes, that must be it….” Tom turned to the Doctor, wondering what he might have done, and was shocked by his sour expression.

  Afraid to hear the answer, he asked, “Did I break it, Doc?”

  “Something did. Something must have or I don’t understand what I’m seeing….”

  Abruptly, Grench let out a sharp gasp and went rigid, arms stiff by his sides, toes pointed, and eyes staring wide.

  The Doctor shouted. “Mr. Paris! Quickly!”

  Tom ran to the biobed, sick with worry that his clumsiness with the tricorder may have created a problem. “What? What do you want?”

  “A stasis field!” the Doctor shouted as he spun to the dru
g dispenser. “We may only have seconds! I’ll see what I can do with…”

  But they were already too late. His face fixed in a grimace of pain, Grench inhaled once so deeply that Tom thought his sides might burst, then released it in an explosive grunt. His stiffened arms fell over the sides of the biobed and Tom watched in fascinated horror as first one and then the other stretched out like ropes of maple syrup. The elongated limbs folded over onto themselves, then dribbled away from Grench’s shoulders. A moment later, the Bolian’s body wobbled, then lazily oozed away from the center of the bed in rubbery sheets until the only thing left was a sticky residue.

  Tom and the Doctor stared at the viscous mess spreading around their feet, both of them rendered speechless for a count of one, two, three seconds. Then, without looking away, the Doctor said, “Computer, this is the chief medical officer, requesting a voice verification.”

  The computer replied blandly, “Verified.”

  “Quarantine.”

  Chapter 9

  “We should stay.”

  “We must go.”

  “Stay.”

  Seven refused to reply. Stupid Borg, B’Elanna thought. Doesn’t even know how to have a decent argument.

  “The shuttle’s self-repair routines will only go so far, Seven,” B’Elanna said, trying to sound persuasive, abandoning the much more satisfying prospect of verbal combat. “If we stay, the two of us working together can have Montpelier off the ground inside a day.”

  “By which time any chance of assisting Voyager will have long passed,” Seven replied tersely.

  “How do we know we can help her? Especially dirtside. If we can get airborne, we could go inspect the site where she disappeared, maybe get a better idea what happened.”

  Seven sat down heavily in the copilot’s chair, cradling her side cautiously. “And if we contact the Monorhans, we may be able to persuade them to let us use a spacecraft.”

  “We don’t even know if they have any more spacecraft,” B’Elanna said. She was eyeing the tool locker, itchy to do some real work. The sitting-and-talking was beginning to grate. “This isn’t Earth, you know. No shuttle in every garage.”