Cohesion

  “Remind me to never make Seven angry,” Kaytok said, staring at the monitor. B’Elanna said the shuttle’s systems automatically tapped into the EC’s communication network so they could watch Seven, this despite the fact that B’Elanna always seemed to know what the other one was doing. Their bond was much stronger than anything he had ever seen among his own people, but Kaytok was concerned about a sort of merging or blending he was observing. “I think the commander is unconscious. Some of the other soldiers are raising their rifles.”

  “Emergency liftoff,” B’Elanna said. “We have to get clear of the building,” she added, and then, “We’ll be there in a second. Don’t get shot.”

  He was not sure what she was going to do next. Undoubtedly, the shuttle possessed some kind of weaponry, but used at such close range, an attack would be as likely to injure Seven. Kaytok’s knees buckled under him as the shuttle surged into the air, clearing his lab’s roof in less than three seconds.

  “Hold on!” B’Elanna shouted. Glancing at the monitor, Kaytok saw that the soldiers were arraying themselves in a half-circle around Seven. Some in the back rows were suddenly distracted, one pointing up into the sky. Seven stood very erect, seemingly untroubled by any of the rifles pointed her way.

  “Transporter status?” B’Elanna called.

  “What?” Kaytok asked.

  A pleasant but assured voice replied, “Functioning.”

  “Lock on to Seven of Nine.”

  “Transporter lock established.”

  The shuttle was not dipping down toward the ground, but continued to dash skyward. “Aren’t we going back for Seven?” Kaytok asked.

  “Computer, energize!” B’Elanna shouted.

  Energize? Kaytok wondered. She was firing a weapon? Was B’Elanna sacrificing Seven for the greater good? He heard a whining sound and wondered if a cannon or particle beam weapon was being charged. “We’re not going to get Seven?” he asked again.

  “Seven is right here,” Seven said, touching Kaytok on the shoulder. The Monorhan leaped away, so startled that he released his grip on the console, which did not budge a centimeter. “Though just barely.” This last comment was directed at B’Elanna. “Could you have cut that a little closer?”

  “It was necessary to get clear of the building,” B’Elanna called from the pilot’s chair. “The transporter lock was fluctuating. Something in the building’s structure, I suspect.” Kaytok saw that the sky through the shuttle’s front windows was rapidly shifting from blue to indigo. He was flying in a vessel far above the surface of the planet and would soon be well beyond the atmosphere. Strangely, the idea induced more curiosity than dread.

  “Get on the comm,” B’Elanna said, sounding more like her old self. “We have to contact Voyager and see if they’re ready for us.” Through the window, Kaytok could see tiny pinpoints of light—stars, though they did not twinkle, but shone steadily. “Harry better have his new toy all ready to go.”

  “And if he does not?” Seven asked.

  “Then this is going to be a very short trip.”

  Chapter 18

  “What do we do first?” B’Elanna asked over the comm. No one else on the bridge spoke, afraid they would miss vital information.

  “Fire the Monorhan’s energy wave,” Janeway said. “As soon as you do, we’ll lock on to the frequency, then fire the trilithium into the Blue Eye.”

  “And what will be happening to you?” Chakotay asked the engineer.

  “We’ll probably be in free fall trying to restart the engines just like last time. I didn’t have time to build in any kind of shielding, so I expect the same thing will happen.”

  “Couldn’t you fire the shield generator from outside the gravity well?”

  “We could,” B’Elanna replied, “but we want conditions to be as close to the original circumstances as possible. Besides, you can always beam us out, right?”

  “Right, B’Elanna,” Janeway agreed, but something in her chief engineer’s tone made the captain wonder how hard Torres would try to restart if Voyager failed to emerge from the fold. A shock wave coursed through the hull, rattling Janeway’s back teeth. The gravitonic waves were coming more frequently, no more than three or four minutes apart, and it was difficult to think, let alone speak, when one rumbled and thrummed through the ship. An alarm bleated, but when the captain looked around the bridge she could not see any obvious problem. “What’s wrong, Chakotay?”

  “Nothing here, Captain. That’s coming through B’Elanna’s comm signal.”

  “Enemy ships approaching!” Seven of Nine said, her tone uncharacteristically enthusiastic. “Energizing weapons!”

  “Patience, Seven,” B’Elanna replied. “There’s no way they can catch us.”

  Seven barked, “But they were rude to me!”

  “Seven! Relax!”

  Janeway and Chakotay exchanged confused looks. “Are you two all right?” Chakotay asked.

  “Fine!” the pair answered in unison, but then B’Elanna took control of the conversation. “Get ready to fire your torpedo. I’ve got to ditch these guys first or maybe let Seven shoot at them a little first.” Pause. “She has a scary glint in her eye.”

  * * *

  Within seconds of signing off, B’Elanna realized that her problem was more complex than she had anticipated. The Monorhans, she discovered, had developed sophisticated high-altitude combat aircraft, and two were close on her tail. The desire to engage in an aerial dogfight was almost overwhelming, probably spurred on by Seven’s yearning for revenge. Several confusing seconds ticked past until the sensible solution occurred to her. “Strap in, you two,” she called to her passengers. “And make sure the console is secure.”

  “It isn’t!” Kaytok said. “It’s on these antigravity things!”

  “Then it will be fine,” Seven said, her cool aloofness reasserting itself. She helped Kaytok with his buckles and belts, then settled into the seat directly behind B’Elanna.

  We are ready.

  The first fighter fired an air-to-air missile, which burst harmlessly on the shuttle’s shields. The sensors informed her that the second craft had a lock on them and was about to do the same, so B’Elanna did the most efficient thing she could conceive: she cut the shuttle’s engines. The fighter craft cruised past the shuttle at five hundred kilometers per hour and were twenty kilometers away before either pilot could realize what had happened. By then, B’Elanna had spun the shuttle one hundred eighty degrees and was racing for the ionosphere.

  “Well done,” Seven said. “Though I would have enjoyed some shooting.”

  * * *

  Tuvok was pleased with how quickly Ensign Kim assembled the torpedo mechanism, but was troubled when he saw the calculations for how much trilithium to use. “These are approximations,” Tuvok observed.

  Kim looked up from his workbench and slid the HUD goggles up onto his forehead. Both heard another shock wave ripple through the ship, but did not feel its effects. Tuvok made his weapons teams work in zero-gravity environments since so many of the materials used in phaser systems and quantum torpedoes were sensitive to jostling. Starfleet had made training for the technique available to crews only a short time before he had left on his undercover mission to the Maquis, but as soon as he returned to Voyager he had initiated his teams in the practice.

  “That’s true,” Kim said. “All the captain and I had to work with are the rough models. It’s not like this has been done very often.”

  “How many tests were completed?”

  Kim shrugged, then glanced nervously down into the torpedo’s inner workings. He had just finished infusing the trilithium compound into the quantum core. “Maybe a dozen,” he said uncertainly.

  “Maybe fewer,” Tuvok said, “if these are all the results.”

  “Maybe fewer, then,” Kim said irritably. “Tuvok, what’s your point? That we don’t know exactly what we’re doing? I concede that, but I haven’t heard any suggestions for better ideas. Don’t you trust me??
??

  “If I did not trust you, Ensign, we would not be having this conversation. The question is, do you trust yourself? Will this work?”

  The corners of Kim’s face tightened and Tuvok saw how exhausted the young man was. Like most of the senior staff, Kim could not have slept more than a few hours out of the past thirty. “It has to work,” Kim said tersely.

  Tuvok said, “I agree.”

  Kim slid the goggles back over his eyes and began to seal up the torpedo.

  * * *

  Ziv decided that he had died when the transport had disintegrated. Everything that had happened since then—encountering the Voyagers, becoming trapped in a “fold” in space, reencountering Sem—all of these memories were elaborate constructs created by his subconscious in the infinitesimally tiny slices of a second between when his body was destroyed and his mind accepted the idea. His fear—a dread greater than the wish not to die—was that this sensation might go on forever and ever. How long could his mind continue to stretch out the millisecond? Would he continue to torture himself indefinitely if some sick, guilt-stricken portion of his consciousness decided he deserved to have his agony prolonged? Could he find ever newer, ever more horrible scenarios to torment himself?

  For example, he was sure the Sem in his sick fantasy was pregnant. He couldn’t be certain how he knew this was true, but there was no doubt in his mind. More, he was certain the child was his. Though their single, forbidden encounter had been many months ago, Sem’s body could have held his seed in reserve.

  So, Ziv realized, in this nightmare scenario, he had attempted to kill Sem and the child she carried. He was surprised to discover he had such a flair for the dramatic. What other horrors could his mind visit on him? He settled deeper into his misery, then pulled it over him like a blanket. He had only to wait a little longer and death would catch up with him.

  * * *

  “B’Elanna? Are you ready?”

  “We’re ready, Captain.”

  “Fire the shield generator.”

  “Firing, Captain.”

  * * *

  Kaytok the engineer was very pleased about how well the generator seemed to perform. The monitors showed a regular sawtooth waveform—precisely the configuration B’Elanna had asked to see. Everything seemed perfect until the lights went out.

  In the darkness behind him, Kaytok heard the two Voyagers, their voices now sounding eerily similar, speak each other’s thoughts.

  “Same old,” said B’Elanna/Seven.

  “Same old,” said Seven/B’Elanna.

  The shuttle, aerodynamic as a brick, dropped like a brick.

  * * *

  “They’ve fired the shield generator, Captain,” Chakotay announced. “We’re registering a frequency.” Tense seconds ticked past as the first officer studied the display on his chair arm. “Logged and entered.” He looked up at the screen and pointed toward the Blue Eye. “Tom—now!”

  Paris touched the sequence of controls on the navigation board, and Voyager, like a thoroughbred racehorse that had been too long reined in, leapt forward. “Hang on, everyone!” Paris shouted. “This is going to be bumpy.”

  * * *

  Down in the torpedo launch bay, Harry waited with his finger on the button.

  The open channel from the bridge crackled, “Torpedo away.”

  Harry touched the button and he briefly regretted that there was no satisfying “Click!” Switches just weren’t built right anymore. A green light was all the satisfaction he would receive. That, and being permitted to say, “Torpedo away.”

  * * *

  Tom Paris knew that the timing on this run would be tricky. He had to stay far enough behind the torpedo that he didn’t outrun it, but close enough that he could slip through the crack around the Eye when it appeared. None of the theoretical geniuses, not Tuvok or Harry or the captain, had been able to tell him how long the crack would remain available, so there was that problem, too. What to do, then? Go with your gut, Paris thought. Feel where B’Elanna is and head in that direction. The method hadn’t failed him yet.

  * * *

  “Anything?” Kaytok asked. “Please.”

  “Not yet,” B’Elanna/Seven replied. “Working.”

  Without power, there was no way to know what their airspeed was, but a quick mental calculation proved they had reached terminal velocity.

  Whiner, B’Elanna/Seven thought.

  He is frightened, Seven/B’Elanna thought. He does not wish to die.

  I don’t, either, B’Elanna/Seven thought. But I’m not afraid.

  I’m not letting you be afraid, Seven/B’Elanna thought. Fear diminishes efficiency.

  Agreed, B’Elanna/Seven thought. But fear can also motivate.

  An interesting idea. We should discuss it more later.

  I agree. B’Elanna/Seven pressed the restart sequence again. After we get the engines started.

  * * *

  “Torpedo contact in five, four, three, two…”

  The countdown did not reach “one.” The Blue Eye did not, as anticipated, temporarily cease to seethe and bloom. Black patches did not appear as atomic processes were momentarily halted. Nothing happened precisely as planned.

  The Blue Eye burst like a balloon.

  * * *

  “Captain,” Tom Paris called. “We still have a lock on the frequency and there is a gap forming.” Tom watched the tenuous scarlet matter fly past on the main monitor. He decided it looked like red cotton candy or sunset clouds or sea spray or, more apt, a mixture of all three since he was beginning to see that different layers had various textures.

  “The Eye is blowing off its fusionable materials, Captain,” Chakotay called from the science station. “We’ve accelerated some kind of end-phase process.”

  “This shouldn’t be happening,” Janeway said. “The star didn’t have enough mass!”

  “It’s collapsing,” Chakotay said, and Janeway was certain she heard his voice crack. “It’s going to form a singularity.”

  * * *

  The word and the deed always seemed like one in Janeway’s memory. Voyager had been pacing herself, moving at a steady, controlled rate at her master’s command, but when Chakotay spoke his dread pronouncement, the captain gave her order and the ship, true-hearted, ever faithful, obeyed. “Helm,” Captain Janeway said. “Go!”

  * * *

  Stars! There were stars on the main viewscreen, but they were limned in blue as if they were being pulled away from Voyager at speeds beyond imagination. The sensors were unable to process the visual data and return meaningful images. What do you see when you look into the eye of eternity? Chakotay wondered, but then chastised himself for permitting errant thoughts.

  The ship had plunged ahead, inertial compensators briefly unable to accommodate their speed, and Chakotay had been pushed back into his seat. Unaccountable energies pulled on Voyager: warp engines pushing them forward, the steep incline into the deepest of gravity wells pulling on them from behind. Chakotay knew which must win if they were inside the event horizon. Worse, he knew that the moment, drawn out like a thread through a spinning wheel, might last a literal eternity and none of them would ever know the difference.

  “Engineering!” Kathryn called.

  “Carey here, Captain. What’s going on?”

  “Don’t ask questions, Joe! If you’ve got anything that you’ve been holding in reserve, give it to us!”

  “There’s some nonstandard rerouting that Lieutenant Torres did that I think might give us…”

  “Do it!”

  “I haven’t really had time to study…”

  “Do it!”

  * * *

  Carey crossed his fingers and said a silent prayer. Chief, he thought, I hope you knew what you were doing.

  * * *

  In the torpedo launch room, Harry Kim sagged against the control board as he felt the conflicting energies release their hold on him. Resting his head on the cool plasteel, he thought, What did I get wrong? What
? Lifting his head, Harry said, “I’m sorry, Tuvok. I thought I had it right. The calculations…” Tuvok was not standing by the console where he had been a moment before. The ship lurched to port and a limp weight rolled against Harry’s legs. Kim looked down. “Tuvok?”

  * * *

  Chakotay sagged back into his seat and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “We got them,” he said, then exhaled sharply.

  Kathryn lifted her right hand and punched the air. “Yes!” she shouted, and the bridge rang with cheers and applause. Tom Paris half-rose and bowed as much as was possible without taking his hands off the navigational controls or his eyes off the main viewscreen.

  The shuttle had been less than two hundred meters from the ground when Voyager zoomed past Monorha. Their warp field had collapsed as soon as they had emerged into Monorhan space, but the ship was still moving at a considerable percentage of the speed of light. Paris had used every trick he knew to shed momentum or Voyager would have raced past the planet and out of transporter range.

  “Their Monorhan guest is a little worse for wear,” Chakotay continued, “and the transporter chief says Seven and B’Elanna are acting very odd.”

  “Odd?” Kathryn asked. “Odd how?”

  “They’re completing each other’s sentences,” he says. “And Seven was cursing the transporter.”

  “I’d better go down there,” she said, and rose.

  “What you’d better do,” Chakotay said softly, rising beside her, “is go to your quarters and get some sleep. The crisis is over. Now we need a few hours to pick up the pieces before we decide what to do next.”

  “And I need to talk to the Emergency Council,” the captain protested, walking toward the turbolift, “to find out what they thought they were doing…”

  Chakotay paced her step for step and pitched his voice low enough that no one else could hear them, but there was no mistaking the urgency in his tone. “What you need to do is go to your quarters and turn off the comm. Eight hours of sleep, Captain, or I tell the Doctor to order you.”

  “We don’t have a doctor currently, Commander.”

  “Then I’ll appoint myself chief medical officer and order you myself.”