“Humans do not have shuttles in their garages,” Seven said.
“My point is, these people just aren’t that technologically advanced.”
“Someone was sophisticated enough to produce the energy wave that brought us down and is probably responsible for Voyager’s disappearance.”
Or destruction, came the grudging thought. B’Elanna rubbed her eyes and successfully resisted the urge to scream. While shouting at Seven would be satisfying, she knew it wouldn’t produce any useful results. Logic might, though. “The city we were heading toward is probably still hundreds of kilometers away. We’ll never get there without the shuttle.”
The tiny lines around the corners of Seven’s mouth turned downward—her version of a grimace—and she pointed at the sensor readout. “I have already shown you this,” she said. “Using the data collected before the sensors failed, I have determined that there is a ninety-two percent chance that the energy wave was centered not ten kilometers from here. We could walk there in a matter of hours.”
“Yes, you explained that,” B’Elanna relented. “What you haven’t explained is why we would want to go to the epicenter of the blast. What if it was a bomb? What if they were using nuclear weapons? Can your scans tell us that?”
Seven lowered her arm. “I cannot,” she said. “However, if the shock wave was the result of an atomic blast, you would be showing signs of radiation sickness by now.”
“Not with all the drugs the Doc pumped into me,” B’Elanna said, hoping it was true. “And you still haven’t answered the most important question! What could be there?”
“The device that affected Voyager,” Seven replied coolly. “She was not destroyed, but the energy from the blast somehow pushed the ship out of phase. It is the only possible explanation.”
“And I maintain that if we can get the shuttle off the ground, we can find the answers in space.”
“Our journey to and from the epicenter will require less than twelve hours if we leave now. Would the shuttle’s self-repair systems be able to finish their work before then?”
B’Elanna sighed resignedly. Seven had finally found the best argument: Even with both her and Seven working constantly, they would still have to wait for the shuttle’s automation to repair key systems. She clenched her hands and shut her eyes. I don’t want to go explore a mystery with you! she wanted to shout. I want to stay here and fix things! That’s what I do! “We don’t know what we’re going to find,” she finished weakly, the only other defense she could offer.
“Of course we don’t,” Seven said flatly. “But we may find our way back to Voyager. Or, at least, we may find a way to contact her.”
B’Elanna nodded, but deeply resented her acquiescence. She hated the fact that Seven could find a way around her argument. She hated it when Seven was right.
* * *
Too many things were happening at once.
“Captain,” Tuvok said. “The shields have dropped…”
“My hand!” Kim said with rising alarm. “Did anyone see what just happened to my hand?”
“Bridge, this is sickbay,” said Paris from the intercom. “Captain, the Doctor has just placed us under quarantine. And Ensign Grench, ma’am…I don’t know how to say this…” Janeway heard a staccato burst of small explosions in the bulkhead nearest the science station. A new set of alarms blared.
Another channel cut off Paris. “…Is the shuttlebay. The doors are shut, Captain, but Commander Chakotay just…I don’t know how to say this, but he blew himself out of the shuttle and shot himself across the bay to the airlock. I think he may have hurt himself and I don’t know what’s happened to the Monorhans…”
“Captain,” Ensign Knowles said about every ten seconds, “what’s our heading, ma’am? Where are we going? Which way, ma’am?”
Janeway’s head hurt worst than it ever had. Once, long ago when she was eight or nine years old, she had come down with some kind of flu, something her father had accidentally brought home with him from a mission that the usual decontam screenings hadn’t caught. She remembered lying in her bed for three days with the house automek constantly pinging at her, giving her such a headache that she could barely contain her rage. When she had finally been well enough that she could sit up, the first thing young Kathryn had done (after her mother was out of the room) was swat the awful device a shot with her pillow. Of course, it immediately beamed a message to her mother about what she had done, but that wasn’t the point.
But what was the point?
The point was her head hurt. Janeway was certain it would stop hurting if everyone would simply be quiet for thirty seconds and let her collect her wits, but, no, everyone was talking, talking, talking to her, asking her things, pleading, demanding. Why wouldn’t they just do what she wanted?
“Everyone!” she shouted, and everyone turned to look at her. Janeway wanted very, very badly to say simply, “SHUT UP!” But training ground so deeply into her being that it had virtually become part of her genetic code took over and she said, “One at a time.” Turning to Tuvok, she asked, “Shields are down?”
“Yes, Captain.”
Janeway almost yelled at him then, her oldest friend and advisor. She almost shouted at him the same way that she was fairly certain she had shouted at Harry Kim a few minutes earlier, but she stopped herself. Instead, she asked, “How are you feeling, Mr. Tuvok?”
The question caught the Vulcan off guard. He cocked his head to the side, thought for a moment, then replied, “Peculiar, Captain. I do not feel fully in control of myself.”
“Neither do I, Mr. Tuvok.” A chorus of me-eithers ran around the bridge. “No one does. Think about what you need to do to get the shields back up, Tuvok. Remember the sequence?”
Tuvok looked down at the console and laid his hands on the controls. “Yes, Captain.”
“Do it, Tuvok.”
Tuvok pressed a series of controls, and a moment later, the fog that had wreathed Janeway’s mind thinned and the headache eased. She heard audible sighs all around the bridge.
“Better, Tuvok?” she asked.
The Vulcan stretched the muscles in his neck, first one, then the other, then arched an eyebrow at her. “A distinct improvement.”
Janeway turned to Ensign Knowles, who was glancing back over her shoulder every ten seconds, though the expression of panic she had worn twenty seconds earlier was gone. “Hold this heading, Knowles, whatever it is. We’ll try to figure out where we are in a moment.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Bridge to sickbay,” Janeway called, tapping her combadge.
“Sickbay. Paris here.”
“Where’s the Doctor, Tom?”
“I’m not sure you want to know, Captain.”
“Tom!”
“He’s scooping up what’s left of Grench into a tub!”
“Put him on, Tom,” Janeway said. “I need him.”
Thirty seconds later, the Doctor came on. “Captain,” he said in clipped tones. “I’ve placed sickbay in quarantine. There may be a disease agent on the loose that is fatal to Bolians.”
“I don’t like to argue with you, Doctor, especially about medical matters, but I believe we have an entirely different kind of problem. Scan sickbay for radiation, please.”
Over the comm, Janeway heard the distinctive whine of the medical tricorder and the Doctor muttering, “Oh, dear.” Another minute passed.
“Doctor?”
“Another round of hyronalin, Captain. Bolians first. I’ve scanned Ensign Grench’s, uh, remains and it would appear his people are particularly susceptible to the radiation permeating the ship.”
“Understood, Doctor. Please get right on it. After you take care of the Bolians and get the process under way, come to the bridge. Oh, and check on Commander Chakotay in the shuttle hangar. I think he may have injured himself.”
“Understood, Captain. And I will be calling off the quarantine.”
“Thank you, Doctor. Now hurry, please
.” Janeway marshaled her resources and turned back to Tuvok. “I’m going to the engine room to see what I can do to give Joe Carey a hand with more power for the shields. You have the bridge.”
Heading for the door, she caught sight of Harry Kim, who was staring intently at his hand. “What’s wrong, Harry? I know you can still feel it, but it’s not as bad now, is it?”
“No, Captain,” Harry said, his voice little more than a hoarse whisper. “But, Captain, a minute ago…” He pointed at the console before him, then reached down beside him and fumbled for his tricorder.
“What is it, Harry? Did the sensors go offline, too?”
“Yes,” Harry replied. “But that wasn’t the problem.” Flipping open the device, Harry clumsily scanned the console, then his hand, then turned the display toward the captain so she could see the results. “Look,” he said softly, as if he were afraid to speak too loudly. “Molecular cohesion tables.”
Janeway studied the tables for several seconds, then tentatively tapped the console with her index finger. Looking Harry in the eye, she said, “Whatever it was that happened to Grench…”
“Yes, Captain?”
“I won’t let it happen to you.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Harry nodded cautiously.
“Continue your scans, Ensign. See if you can find out what caused that Klaxon to go off. That was the bioneural circuitry alarm, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And find out what happened to the stars.”
* * *
Ziv, Diro, and Jara stepped aside to let the pair of human medics enter the airlock and tend to their injured comrade. The second airlock door that led into the shuttle hangar was still sealed, but Ziv watched the atmospheric indicator on the wall climb toward normal. Soon Morsa and Sem would be able to leave the shuttle and then, well, things would unfold as they would unfold.
“Commander?” asked one of the medics as he waved a device over the fallen human. “Can you hear me?”
Chakotay, the captain’s first, opened his eyes and nodded minutely. His eyeballs were dark with blood and the flesh around them was bruised. Liquid was dripping from his nose and ears. Ziv had seen depressurization damage before and knew the human would probably live if he was at least as tough as a Monorhan, though he would be in terrible pain until the bubbles in his blood subsided.
The second medic worked silently and skillfully, first injecting what must have been an analgesic because Chakotay’s painracked frame visibly relaxed. Even as they worked, the bald-pated doctor from the ship’s hospital bustled up and inserted himself into the process. “Commander Chakotay?” he asked. “Can you hear me?”
“I already said, ‘Yes,’” Chakotay said.
“It is me, Commander, the Doctor. We’re treating you for exposure to vacuum, sir. You should be fine in a few minutes, though you’ll be weak for a time.”
“Understood,” Chakotay croaked. “The Monorhans?”
“All fine, Commander. They had the sense to stay in the shuttle.”
“And Smothers?”
“Still in the shuttle, too, sir, though he appears to be unconscious. Commander, what happened? Why did you leave your ship? Didn’t you know the bay had no atmosphere?”
Trying to push himself up, Chakotay groaned. “Yes…. It just didn’t seem important.”
“Most of the ship has reported feeling muddled and confused, though I myself have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Ziv listened carefully to the exchange. He had gathered from the ship’s status reports (Diro had figured out how to get the ship’s computer to give them regular updates) that most of the Voyagers had been ill, but were better now. One of them had died in a peculiarly gruesome fashion and others were concerned the same might happen to them.
“You were in sickbay?” Chakotay said.
“Of course.”
“Deep in the ship,” Chakotay muttered, as if thinking aloud. “Sickbay and engineering are the best-shielded areas on the ship.”
“Correct,” the Doctor said.
“That might explain it. And the shuttlebay…”
“The least shielded,” the Doctor agreed. “I understand now.” The two medics had opened a pair of packs and assembled a stretcher. Now they wished to lift their injured commander onto it. “We’re taking you to sickbay now.” He glanced at the atmospheric indicator. “I’ll go check on Ensign Smothers.”
“Be careful,” Chakotay said softly, then moaned as he was lifted onto the stretcher. “The light…”
The Doctor’s eyebrows rose as he said, “Yes, Commander. Of course.”
* * *
Moments after the commander and the medical technicians disappeared into the lift, the airlock indicator turned green and a bell chimed softly. The doors parted and Ziv stood face-to-face with Sem. Behind her, the one called Morsa stood with a human—presumably Smothers—cradled like an infant in his massive arms.
Sem looked at the Doctor and asked, “Where would you like him?”
The Doctor, temporarily without a stretcher, said, “Please come with me,” and began to examine the unconscious human as Morsa stomped down the corridor toward the lift. Catching the look in their harat’s eye, Diro and Jaro followed.
As soon as they were out of earshot, Sem said, “They are all insane.”
Ziv decided that it might not be an entirely bad thing that she thought this…for a while, at least. “Perhaps,” he said. “Though they are also very powerful. I recommend…restraint.”
Sliding her arms into the opposite sleeve of her garment, Sem brushed past Ziv and began looking around her. “What is happening here, Captain Ziv?”
“I do not understand precisely, though I believe we can find out quickly enough. They are very free with information.”
Sem strode three paces down the corridor and looked up and down the intersection. “No guards?”
“In some areas,” he said under his breath. “And I believe they have automated defenses, too, if you were planning to order us to take the ship.”
Turning to him, then wrapping the long sleeves of her robe around her body, Sem said, “I’m here to advise the captain of this vessel, Ziv, and to lend moral support to my hara. You have all suffered a devastating loss, haven’t you?”
“More than you could ever understand, Sem.”
Ignoring the jab, Sem continued, “The humans…they said they saw some kind of light. Morsa did, too, though now he says he doesn’t remember it. Do you know what they were talking about?”
Ziv shook his head. “No, though it concerns me that whatever was affecting them did not seem to affect either me or my hara.”
“Worries you? Why? That would seem a good thing to me. Though I have to confess I felt something. A strange tingling, like I feel when I am linked to a large hara. Then there was a sound and the sensation stopped. Do you know what it was?”
“No, my rih, but I have been thinking about this radiation, if that’s what it is. We may already be accustomed to it. We may be so full of it that there is no room for any more.”
Sem took a step closer, then reached out and touched Ziv’s cheek lightly. “You were always the cleverest shi-harat, Ziv. I have never felt completely safe since you left. Why did you do that?”
Ziv flinched away from his rih-hara-tan’s finger, not out of fear of Sem, but because of how desperately he desired her after one simple touch. “Sem,” he said. “For the sake of all those who died today, I beg you…”
“Ah, yes,” she said, lowering her hand. “How could I have forgotten? The excitement of my arrival has affected me. I should speak to your haran, reassure them.”
For a moment, at the thought of Sem touching her mind to that of his haran, he considered reaching out, catching her by the neck, and simply snapping it. He could, Ziv knew. The universe would be a better place for her passing. But what of Diro? What of Jara and Shet and Mol? They would be made to pay for his moment of weakness. With a wave of his han
d, he indicated the exit from the shuttlebay. “After you,” he said, but thought, As if I would give you the opportunity to be at my back.
* * *
“Do you want to stop and rest?” Torres asked for the fourth time in an hour.
“No, Lieutenant. Do you?”
“No,” Torres replied, her voice faint with exhaustion. “Not if you don’t.”
“I have already indicated I do not wish to rest,” Seven said, though she allowed her pace to slacken as she spoke. She would never admit it to Torres, but her resources were becoming depleted. Though the planet’s terrain was not particularly demanding, the arid atmosphere and the haze of fine particulate matter made breathing difficult. Also, the pain in her side where the ribs were slowly knitting did not make the process any easier. Her last complete regeneration cycle had been more than twenty-four hours earlier, so Seven was certain the nanoprobes in her bloodstream that repaired and maintained both her biological and cybernetic systems were slipping into dormancy.
“Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?” Torres rasped.
“We are,” Seven said. “I’m sure.” Stopping briefly, she pretended to rub grit from her eyes. For a brief moment, the thought of assimilation crossed her mind. Imagine how much more…compliant the engineer would be. Who would know? The answer, of course, was simple: She would know. And if Captain Janeway asked her what happened to her chief engineer, Seven would respond truthfully. While Seven was confident that some on Voyager would understand the desire (she had noted that Torres was considered abrasive by many), the captain would be displeased, and keeping Captain Janeway pleased with her was very important to Seven.
Sighing, she became aware of the coating of fine silicate particles in her mouth and trachea. Seven willed nanoprobes to lubricate her throat, but their resources were needed elsewhere, so she chose an alternative method to alleviate her discomfort. “May I have some water?” she asked.
“Are we…Oh, sure,” Torres said and handed her the canteen. “I thought your suit reprocessed sweat and other fluids and kept you rehydrated that way.”
“When all is working optimally,” Seven replied, “yes. But I was injured and have not been able to regenerate.”