CHAPTER 1

 

FIREWORKS BROKE HIGH ACROSS THE INVERTED REFLECTION OF THE city lights on black water. San Francisco Bay shimmered with colored streams and rediscovered the night sky. On the newly refurbished Golden Gate Bridge, an icon so long established that no one could imagine these waters without the great suspended structure, thousands upon thousands of spectators cheered at the spectacular explosions in the sky. The city in its dazzling livery, millions of jewel-like lights bundled into geometric shapes, began to flicker on and off from building to building in a coordinated tribute. Though the bridge was old and the fireworks an ancient art, this was a supremely modern scene that could only happen in a population center.

 

Out of the gauzy clouds the enormous cetacean body of the starship swept downward, almost touching the teaming balustrades, only to rise at the last moment. The reflection of her nacelles glowed brightly in the gunmetal water below as her oblong primary hull rose to blow the geodesic fireworks into a blizzard.

 

On the bridge, the crowd roared and waved their arms wildly.

 

The ship passed over their heads in a tidy maneuver, came about, and made another pass.

 

The starship looked somewhat old-fashioned now despite the patches of alien armor defiantly fixed to a quarter of her hull area, and the other three-quarters scratched and scarred by turmoil. She was like an old warhorse, still holding her head up despite her bleeding flanks and ratted mane.

 

"These should be familiar images to everyone who remembers the U.S.S. Voyager's triumphant return to Earth after twenty-three years in the Delta Quadrant. Voyager captivated the hearts and minds of people throughout the Federation, so it seems fitting that on the tenth anniversary of their return we take a moment to recall the sacrifices made by the crew."

 

The newscaster wasn't very inspiring. Maybe he'd overre-hearsed.

 

Still, quite a show. That business of the city lights' flashing in a coordinated performance was a new thing. Well, new ten years ago.

 

Ten years. Seemed like forty.

 

And twenty-six years in space, lost, toying daily with hopelessness, struggle, challenge, isolation . .. whush.

 

Funny how the toughest tests in life could turn out to be the best part of life. The things people often said they wanted most--peace and quiet, easy advancement, security-weren't really the most satisfying experiences after all, or the ones that kept people together.

 

Thus, nostalgia. Kathryn Janeway found herself peeling back the pages of her life to that stressful quarter century rushing at high warp through the Delta Quadrant, out of place, away from comfort, without help, struggling by the day to keep a ship and crew together with a single ideal and making sure that ideal didn't fade.

 

Had she been right or wrong to push them onward? There had been other civilizations they could've joined, lived out a life on some nice planet, more fulfilled, have other careers, more family, a chance to be captains themselves if they wanted. Maybe if she'd known then about the twenty-three years . . .

 

Oh, how old was that question? Older than the whole voyage, now. Old and shriveled. She'd combed her hair with it every morning since the ship found itself propelled seventy thousand light-years into deep space with no shortcut home. She'd made a decision and stuck with it. Why look back now?

 

But twenty-six years . ..

 

She picked up her old coffee cup, one of the last links to her great long struggle, and turned it a little to avoid the chip in the rim. Six times she'd had to rescue this cup from attentive yeomen who wanted to get her a new one.

 

"Earlier today in the Tri-Nebulas," the newscaster went on, "corruption charges were brought against a Ferengi gaming consortium-"

 

"Computer, end display."

 

Janeway stood up from her Victorian couch and moved past the Bombay wicker table to the vast curved window. In the soft glass she caught a faint echo of her silver-streaked hair and rather liked the image. Maybe she was indulging herself with a touch of vanity, but other than the streaks, she thought she hadn't changed that much. A few lines here and there-a few.

 

Beyond the reflection lay the always stunning expanse of San Francisco Bay and the bridge. This fan-shaped wing of apartment buildings had been architecturally designed to give all residents this view. It had become a favorite living space for many admirals who wanted to remain close to Starfleet Command but not live on the grounds. To Janeway, though, the bridge and the

 

bay meant something more, she truly believed, than to all the other admirals. At least something different.

 

She hoped that after today it would still mean something good.

 

Invasion.

 

Another reunion.

 

The apartment was filled now with people, all kinds of people, human and alien, young and old, Starfleet and otherwise-the surviving members of the Voyager's crew and their families. Thank God some of them had enough time left to have families. Drinks and hors d'oeuvres, soft music, laughter, some smiles. Janeway hovered behind the umbrella tree and watched as one of the kids approached Harry Kim and tapped his arm, breaking a conversation he was having with somebody else.

 

Kim was a Starfleet captain now with his own starship, the only one of the remaining crew who had pursued such command. The studious effort had taken him a while and grayed his hair, but he'd made it. Oh, yes, Janeway had to admit to herself that she'd pushed a few buttons for him, and he had a leg-up just from the Voyager's reputation. Why not?

 

"Hello," Kim said to the child at his elbow.

 

"What's your name?" the little girl asked.

 

"Harry. What's yours?"

 

"Sabrina."

 

"Naomi's daughter? You've gotten so big?"

 

"I don't remember you."

 

"I haven't been to one of these reunions in four years." Kim straightened, rather proudly. "I've been on a deep-space assignment."

 

"For four years?"

 

Janeway smiled. To a child, this was eternity.

 

"Compared to how long I was on Voyager, it seemed like a long weekend. Can you find your mother for me? I'd love to say hello."

 

The little girl nodded and merrily departed, giving Janeway her opening. She wanted to talk to Kim, but only to him, not to a knot of smiling relatives trying to pretend they were having a great time-again.

 

"Here you are, Captain," she began, circling in on Kim with a fresh drink for him.

 

"Thank you, Admiral." Kim nodded toward the little girl. "I haven't seen her since she was a baby."

 

"It's amazing how fast you've all grown up," Janeway said.

 

Kim shrugged, then his smile faded. "How's Tuvok?"

 

"The same." She wanted to tell him the truth, but this was more gentle.

 

His expression suggested he knew more than he was saying. "I thought maybe I'd go see him tomorrow."

 

'That would be nice."

 

And it would be nice if we were more honest with each other.

 

"I'm sorry I missed the funeral," Kim went on. "I should've been there."

 

Janeway took his hand. "You were on a mission. Everyone understood." They looked at each other in mutual discomfort, but with genuine affection too. "It's good to see you, Harry."

 

She started to say more, but her throat closed up. There was no clever way, after all. How could she tell him she needed him and his ship out of her way?

 

This reunion was the tenth time she'd fielded these awful sensations, so much that she had come to dread such events. People had been kind and generous, certainly ... she'd been given citation after medal after doctorate after award, and each one diminished her sense of accomplishment. As she glanced around at the

 

faces of her crew, her friends, the awareness of being a celebrated central figure in this great drama of space exploration pressed her again with the feeling that she'd failed. She couldn't shake it.

 

Every time they had a reunion, they wanted to feel more like they were home, and every time satisfaction slipped a little farther away. They'd been lost for twenty-six years, the prime of each of their lives. When they'd returned, their families had grown, died, changed, forgotten, or dreamed of possibilities no longer possible. The Voyager had done the impossible-it had come back from the dead.

 

The crew had stayed dead.

 

She had brought them back, but too late. Though she had dreaded this reunion, it galvanized her sense of purpose. Her mission wasn't over.

 

 

CHAPTER 2

 

THIS PARTICULAR REUNION WAS MORE TROUBLING THAN THE OTH-

 

ers. Janeway moved away from Harry Kim without saying what she had planned to say. She'd given him plenty of orders in the past and demanded he not question her judgment or plans, but today he was a Starfleet captain and things were more complicated. He had a right to ask why. She wasn't ready to tell.

 

She floated about the room, attending everyone but not really engaging in conversation. She was going through the motions. They all were.

 

Pretending to involve herself with a small crystal plate of munchies, she paused and watched as Tom Paris went to answer the apartment door. In his New York casuals and with those silver temples, he had a Dashiell Hammett look about him these days-she suspected he worked on it. Well, why not?

 

"Doc!" Paris exclaimed in an "about time" tone.

 

Through the door came Voyager's one-of-a-kind shipboard physician, looking exactly as he did the first day he was activated. Holograms had that advantage-eternal life. Dressed in

 

civilian duds, the Doctor entered with a young woman on his arm, definitely a source of curiosity for Janeway and everyone. After all...

 

"Mr. Paris," the Doctor greeted merrily, and drew Paris into a particularly casual hug. "Where have you been hiding yourself?"

 

"I've been busy."

 

"A new holonovel?"

 

Paris smiled, not without pride. "I'll be sure to get your input before I send it to my publisher. Aren't you going to introduce me to your date?"

 

"Tom Paris," the Doctor said, beaming, "say hello to Lana, my blushing bride."

 

Paris couldn't control this particular expression. " You're married?"

 

"Tomorrow's our two-week anniversary," Lana said. A musical voice, for sure.

 

"Congratulations!" Paris absorbed the news, then huffed, "I guess my invitation got lost in subspace?"

 

"You should be flattered," the Doctor said. "We took a page out of your book and eloped."

 

Lana eyed her husband. "Joe has a real flare for romantic gestures."

 

"Joe?"

 

"I decided I couldn't get married without a name," the Doctor clarified.

 

Paris struck an expression. "It took you thirty-three years to come up with 'Joe'?"

 

"It was Lana's grandfather's name."

 

"Oh ... so you're not..." Paris looked at the girl, and from behind the couch Janeway buried a chuckle. She'd had the same question and probably the same look on her face when she first

 

heard about this. What kind of a woman marries a computer-generated-

 

"A hologram?" Lana finished for him. "No."

 

The Doctor raised his chin. "Frankly, Mr. Paris, I'm surprised you'd even ask. I thought we were beyond those sorts of distinctions."

 

"Are you kidding?" Paris lit up. "I think it's great! I'm in a 'mixed marriage' myself, remember?"

 

"Speaking of which, where is that wife of yours?"

 

Janeway took that as a cue and turned into the outer corridor of the spacious apartment. "They're looking for you," she said.

 

In the corridor, B'Elanna Torres peeked out and gestured her closer.

 

"Why are you hiding back here?" Janeway asked.

 

B'Elanna eyed the doorway. "The Doctor's new 'wife.' How can he have a wife? I can't get used to it."

 

"As far as we can detect, he qualifies as a life-form. You know that."

 

"Oh, I know it... I just can't feel it yet. Do I have to get used to everything? Everything?"

 

"No, I suppose not. When did you get back?"

 

"Just this morning. I had to arrange for two special transports and one stowaway leg just to get here tonight."

 

"Good thing," Janeway said. "If you'd missed the reunion, Harry would've started asking questions."

 

"Not to mention my loving husband, the curious Captain Proton. It always makes him nervous when 1 have to tap my Klingon blood."

 

"Don't tap his curiosity, whatever you do," Janeway warned.

 

B'Elanna eyed her. "You'll have to be careful too. There are rumors starting to flitter about those conversions you're making

 

to your personal shuttle. You might have to make up a new story."

 

"Never mind the shuttle for now. It's almost finished anyway, and I'll have it moved before inspections. What did you accomplish? Am I in?"

 

"The High Council had a lot of questions."

 

"What did you tell them?"

 

"The truth," B'Elanna said with a shrug, "with a Klingon twist. I told them my beloved former captain, who saved my life many times in glorious battle, would consider it an honor to submit Korath's House for consideration."

 

Janeway pushed down a twinge of worry. This couldn't be so easy. "Do you think it'll work?"

 

"I'm just the Federation liaison," B'Elanna downplayed, "but I'd like to think I have some influence. You still haven't told me why you're trying to help Korath."

 

"He's an old friend."

 

Fibs, lies, deceptions, and redirections. How much could she protect her friends-the real ones-from what she planned to do?

 

B'Elanna didn't buy it. "Would this 'old friend' have anything to do with the mission you sent my daughter on?"

 

Janeway hid her misgivings in a smile. "Sorry, B'Elanna, but you know I can't talk about that."

 

Can't, won't-small distinction.

 

"Couldn't you at least have delayed it till after the reunion? She really wanted to be here."

 

"She'll be home soon," Janeway said, answering the question B'Elanna was actually asking. "I promise."

 

"May I have everyone's attention, please? Attention!"

 

A spoon clinked madly upon a champagne glass on the other side of the living room. Janeway and Torres turned and stepped

 

out of their hiding place in the hallway, to see Reg Barclay quieting the gathering so he could make his announcement. In his uniform, with the rank of commander, he seemed at ease in front of a crowd-quite saying something for Reginald Barclay.

 

"Ten years ago tonight," Barclay began with a touch of drama, "this crew returned home from the longest away mission in Starfleet history. Twenty-three years together made you a family ... one I'm proud to have been adopted by. So let's raise our glasses-to the journey."

 

"To the journey!"

 

Around the room glasses clinked and smiles flickered.

 

Admiral Janeway raised her own glass too, but she didn't drink to that toast. She had one of her own.

 

"And," she began firmly, "to those of us who aren't here to celebrate it with us."

 

As around her the extended family of Voyager affirmed her sentiment, Janeway pressed her lips to the glass and blocked the rest of her statement with a sip of champagne. Better buried in bubbles than spoken yet...

 

May things change for them and for all of us, suddenly and soon.

 

 

CHAPTER 3

 

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN ... MEET THE BORG."

 

The Borg. Still, after decades, a terrorizing presence that had yet to be subdued. Some neighbors you could live with. Others-

 

A Borg drone shimmered into formation at Commander Barclay's summons. Bulky and robotic, the drone had just enough left of the humanoid element to be essentially paralyzing at first, second, and third glance. They were a ghastly-looking bunch, the Borg, with their underlying living body infected with mechanics, threaded with artifice down to the last fiber, until they didn't even need blood anymore.

 

Yet, there were those eyes . . . impenetrable, uninfluenced.

 

The old Pathfinder research lab, once used for radical communications to call out to the lost Voyager, had been converted into a classroom. The Borg hologram rotated gracelessly before a cluster of Starfleet Academy cadets on tiered seats. Some of the kids flinched at the sight-and it was indeed harrowing.

 

And even more for someone who had dealt with the Borg, as

 

Kathryn Janeway had. She sat on the dais while Barclay continued addressing his class.

 

"Over the course of this term, you're going to become intimately familiar with the Collective. You'll learn about the assimilation process, the Borg hierarchy, the psychology of the hive mind."

 

Barclay paused, letting those words sink in, for they had great eternal significance even though they were spoken quickly. Assimilation ... the hive . . . what a civilization!

 

Janeway repressed a shiver.

 

"When it comes to your performance in this class," Barclay went on, enjoying himself, "my expectations are no different than those of the Borg Queen herself . . . perfection."

 

Several cadets laughed, breaking the sensation of impending doom always brought on by the sight of a Borg, and the mere idea of their queen.

 

"This semester," Barclay continued, "we're very fortunate to have a special guest lecturer, the woman who literally 'wrote the book' on the Borg. Admiral Kathryn Janeway."

 

Janeway smiled, but not because of the applause. Poor Barclay, always pontificating for effect-Janeway hadn't really written a book. Didn't he know what "literally" meant? Oh, well, if he weren't trying too hard, he wouldn't be Reg Barclay.

 

Speaking before groups of all kinds from students to Rotary Clubs, support leagues to historical societies, had lost its gloss for her years before. The sheer redundancy of the questions quite effectively offset the hero worship. Certainly she appreciated being treated so well, and understood the need of others to focus their own dreams, their fears, and needs for a happy ending.

 

Ten years made for a lot of public appearances.

 

She stood up to the applause of the starstruck children of

 

Starfleet's near future. Before very long, these would be the helmsmen and spectrographers and analysts and officers of the next batch of Starfleet ships spreading out into the settled galaxy to discover the new and tend the established.

 

Most of them didn't even shave yet.

 

"Thank you," she said when the applause settled. "I'm glad to be here ... a question already, Cadet?"

 

One of the kids in the middle of the class had his hand up. He was glancing at his classmates. Janeway recognized the symptoms of a put-up job.

 

"I suppose it could wait till after class, Admiral," the kid said skittishly.

 

"As they say in the temporal mechanics department," she encouraged, "there's no time like the present."

 

The kid turned a few colors and screwed up his daring. "In the year 2377, you aided the Borg resistance movement known as Unimatrix Zero-"

 

"Sounds like someone's been reading ahead," Barclay commented.

 

Janeway glanced at him, then looked at the cadet. The kid had moxie, she had to admit that. "I thought you had a question, Cadet."

 

"Yes, ma'am . .. when you informed the Queen that you were going to liberate thousands of her drones . .. could you describe the look on her face?"

 

At first she didn't have a clue what that meant. Okay, she still didn't.

 

Was she missing something?

 

When in doubt, play smart. She broke a grin and smiled right at the kid as if she knew exactly what he was fishing for.

 

The cue was right-the other cadets broke into laughter.

 

Whatever fraternity he was pledging for, he'd probably just guaranteed his membership. Janeway was about to give him extra ballast by actually trying to describe what he asked for, but a Starfleet yeoman drew her attention when he came into the classroom and hurried down the steps toward her. So much for chitchat.

 

When the yeoman whispered to her and Janeway excused herself from the class, she thought this might be a good lesson too-that speaking to a group of cadets was leisure, not mission, and that even an officer without an assignment had priorities. She left without any more explanation and heard Barclay redirect his students to nanotechnology, but felt his curious eyes tug after her.

 

They'd all understand, eventually, why her behavior had become so quirkish. Time would tell.

 

Once in her own office, a cluttered echo of her ready room on Voyager, she went immediately to the desk monitor, whic h was flashing INCOMING MESSAGE CLASSIFIED.

 

Classified and time-sensitive. She touched the controls.

 

Instantly a youthful face replaced the words, a girl in her mid-twenties. Miral Paris, the daughter of Tom and B'Elanna.

 

Janeway pushed down that last part, and forced herself to see a Starfleet ensign instead of practically her own granddaughter.

 

"Sorry to pull you out of class, Admiral," Miral said quickly.

 

"Did you see it?" Janeway asked immediately.

 

"Yes, ma'am."

 

"And?"

 

Miral smiled conspiratorially. "It works!"

 

Janeway allowed herself a deep breath of relief-good news, great news.

 

"Korath has agreed to the exchange?"

 

Miral's smile fell away. "Yes..."

 

"But?"

 

"He's insisting on handing it over to you personally."

 

"I'll be there as soon as I can. Good work, Ensign Paris."

 

The girl nodded-now, there was hero worship.

 

The monitor blinked to a dark screen and the cryptic conversation ended like a snap. They were engaged in dangerous games, and no mistake, but there was something engaging about all this.

 

Janeway settled back in her chair. She could easily have resisted, sent a message to Korath that Admiral Janeway didn't just sally off to a Klingon stronghold at his first beckoning. She probably should've toyed with him, led him on, made him believe she wasn't interested in dealing with him or helping him advance his family's influence. He'd have known she was lying and he would've lied back at her and this could've gone on for a while until they were both good and ready to lay things on the line.

 

No sense dragging out the inevitable. Korath knew what he wanted and Janeway did too. So they'd skip over the general playbook and get right to the end zone.

 

The reunion was over. Miral had reported in. Korath was primed. Janeway's private shuttle was refitted and ready to fire up. The key pieces were in place. She was thinking clearly and had retired all her doubts long ago.

 

Just one more obligation.

 

The day was bright and spectacularly beautiful, as if nature had a proclamation to make. Each time Janeway went outside on such a day, she found herself charged with justification. This, this, was why she had driven so hard to come home, this spectacle of Earth, a blue diamond in a sea of stones. Earth was the

 

jewel, the prize, the one planet against which all others constantly paled. Planets all over the cosmos dreamed of being Earth someday. She had been to the Delta Quadrant, farther away than any human had traveled, and she knew how rare such a place was in the greater galactic scheme.

 

She inhaled the sunlight, the velvety green lawn, and even the magnificent elongated building that seemed to float upon the verdant sea. Well, she was here ... might as well go inside.

 

Anticipating the contrast, she steeled herself. These visits were never easy, mostly because they were just visits. There was never progress.

 

Inside, the hospital made a charming attempt to be as cheerful and uplifting as a long-term medical facility could be, taking every chance to appear less of a hospital. There were potted plants, both real and not, children's paintings, and even a resident collie. The rooms were as homelike as such an arrangement could provide, given that cleanliness was a factor and simplicity helped in that respect. There was personalization without clutter, and the nurses and doctors generally wore street clothes rather than lab jackets. Somehow the effort at not appearing to be a hospital tended to ram home the reality of the place. People came here who had nowhere else to go, who needed so much minute-to-minute monitoring that even the most loving of relatives couldn't provide enough attention.

 

Janeway easily cleared into the place through the residential security. She was a regular.

 

Without escort she saw herself through the pleasantly curved corridors, through the garden area and into the north wing. Without even thinking she went to the third door on the left and before she knew it she was there. She pressed the coded locking mechanism with her thumb. The mechanism took her finger-

 

print, bleeped happily, and opened the door panel. She stepped into the near-darkness.

 

In the room a single candle softly glowed, casting a very faint coloration on the floor, which was patterned with discarded pieces of paper. Hundreds of them. Each piece of paper was crammed with handwriting, numbers, indecipherable encryptions, and carefully executed shapes. There were papers on top of other papers, weeks' worth of frustrated calculations. The candleglow caught the edges of the papers, some curled, some crumpled.

 

In the middle of the carpet a man's form crouched on both knees, back arched, elbows to the carpet. The furious scratch of a pencil on paper was the only sound in the room.

 

They'd tried music, but he hadn't liked it. Videos, movies, ship logs, travelogues... he'd rejected every attempt to ease his obsessions. All he wanted was the candle, the paper, and a pencil. Not a pen. A pencil.

 

Janeway stood at the doorway, daylight from the hall windows flooding the entryway.

 

"Hello, Tuvok."

 

It was hard to sound normal, casual, not patronizing.

 

'The light."

 

"Sorry . . ." She stepped away from the door. The panel closed behind her, locking out the sun, the hope, and any hint of change.

 

Only now did he look up at her. His Vulcan features were aged, but not so much with time as stress. Unlike the stoic logician he had once been, settled and steady, secure in his identity and purpose aboard Voyager, he was easily confused and anxious, his eyes lost, his mouth bracketed with tension.

 

"I know you..." he spoke, disturbing himself with his own voice.

 

'That's right," Janeway said. "I'm your friend. Kathryn Janeway. Remember?"

 

His gaze hardened with skepticism. "You're an impostor."

 

Janeway's stomach knotted up. She'd come here on a final kind of whim, to get the strength to fulfill her plans. It was working.

 

"No, Tuvok," she insisted. "It's me."

 

"Admiral Janeway visits on Sunday. Today is Thursday. Logic dictates you are not who you claim to be."

 

Pleased with his conclusion, Tuvok turned again to whatever he was scrawling on his piece of paper. Well, he had her with that one. This wasn't her usual day, and like a religious tribute she had kept scrupulously to her Sunday visits. Almost everyone else did too, including Tuvok's own family. They had all worked out a specific schedule of visitation and no matter how they felt from day to day, they stuck to their assigned dates and times. Why?

 

Because Tuvok took his only comfort in regularity, in patterns and dependable, repetitive habit. Spontaneous visits, no matter how enthusiastic, had sent him into fits of panic and weeks of rejection. The only thing that had calmed him down was a set schedule.

 

"How are you?" she asked.

 

"I'm close to completing my work," he told her, his eyes on the paper.

 

So nothing had changed here either.

 

Janeway sat down in the nearest chair, hoping he might take her cue and stop crouching like a frog on a lily pad. "I'm glad to hear it."

 

He kept his nose to the paper. "It's difficult with so many interruptions."

 

"I'm sorry. Would you like me to leave?"

 

Tuvok contemplated the question as if it were complicated, and made a royal decision. "You may stay."

 

Janeway watched him for a few seconds. She could indeed have sat here all night and he might not acknowledge her again, having welcomed her into his delusions and accepted her as a fixture. She'd tried that a couple of times-just sit and wait, give him a chance to start a conversation. He never seemed obligated.

 

The pencil continued to scratch on the paper. The markings were unrecognizable, almost hieroglyphic. From what dark grotto in his disturbed mind had he dredged them?

 

She wondered if she should ask. Would he tell her?

 

Would it help?

 

She had come here today to stiffen her spine, to remind herself of the painful parts of success, of the losses her small family had sustained, and of the failure that everyone else saw as a victory. Her resolve toughened as she sat here, watching one of her best friends sink deeper and deeper into a black lonely pit. If she had any lingering doubts about what she had to do, this visit smashed them.

 

"Tuvok, there's something I need to tell you," she began. "It's very important."

 

The pencil continued scratching.

 

"I'm going away," she continued. "I may not see you again."

 

At this he surprised her by looking up. Did he understand? Were there thirty seconds of sanity in there for her to make him understand? His dark eyes flickered with the candle's flame as if to say / must forbid this.

 

Janeway forced herself not to expect more.

 

"Commander Barclay and the Doctor will continue to visit you," she said. "They'll bring you anything you need."

 

He seemed to be fighting for reason, to respond to the real

 

problem she had just put before him, but then lost it before he got a good grip. "The Doctor comes on Wednesdays . . . Commander Barclay's visits are erratic."

 

A frown crossed his face suddenly, sharply. He knew that was the wrong answer, the wrong angle of thought. Like a boy casting a line into rapids, he'd lost the direction of what he was fishing for.

 

But Kathryn Janeway had gotten what she had come here for.

 

She stood up quietly, careful not to rustle a single paper with her feet, and moved toward the door.

 

"Goodbye, Tuvok."

 

The pencil continued its scratchings. They say to never look back, but she did.

 

Last-minute second thoughts. She banished them with vigor.

 

It'd been a long time since she had packed to go away. One trait common to most Voyager alumni was the lack of wanderlust.

 

She laid out a few items of clothing the way she had back in her days of undercover work-the toughest fabrics, the simplest cuts, the least fussy necklines.

 

"You must be the only doctor who still makes house calls," she commented.

 

A few steps away, the Doctor produced a medical tricorder and began scanning, but wi th an attitude.

 

"What are your symptoms?" he asked.

 

She looked up. "I'm perfectly fine."

 

"For thirty-three years, you've fought me every time you were due for a physical. Now you ask me to give you one ahead of schedule?"

 

He bobbed his brows at her with a you're-sick-or-else delivery.

 

"I'm taking a trip," she told him. "I just wanted to get our appointment out of the way before I left."

 

Lies, lies. Had to admit, she was getting better at it.

 

"That's all?" he prickled.

 

She managed not to nod. "That's all."

 

Accommodating what he perfectly well knew was a red herring, he eyed his tricorder and uselessly reported, "The good news is, you're as healthy as the day I first examined you."

 

"Hm. Well, now that that's out of the way," she said with a gesture, "have a seat. We didn't get to talk much at the party."

 

"No ... I suppose we didn't."

 

"So how's married life?"

 

Wasn't this silly? She knew, he knew, and still they continued.

 

"Wonderful," the Doctor accommodated. "You should try it."

 

She laughed. "I think it's a little late for that."

 

Thoughts surged back of her long-ago beau, Mark, and those lighthearted days many years ago, just before Voyager's ten-minute mission that had turned into twenty-six years. Funny- she'd thought she was "mature" then, possibly too mature for marriage, for a whole new start, and she had turned Mark down twice. We'll talk about it later... don't complicate things... let me get this next assignment out of the way, and maybe then...

 

In fact she'd been young in those days, younger than she knew, the captain of a starship with a crew even younger. As she gazed back for just an instant, she recalled how senior and settled they had all believed themselves, as if nothing could go wrong or send them on a fool's mission.

 

Imagine.

 

"Marriage is for the young," she said, forcing herself out of her musings. "Like your wife."

 

"I can only hope," the Doctor commented, "she ages as gracefully as you have. I, of course, will be the same handsome hologram twenty years from now that I am today."

 

Janeway smiled. What could she possibly say about that? Could she talk about facing life together-at the same pace?

 

No point. The Doctor was a whole brave new world unto himself. Those troubling details were for his wife to hammer out.

 

"I've been meaning to ask you," she began again, "are you familiar with the drug called 'chronexaline' ?"

 

A little surprised, the Doctor nodded. He seemed to understand that this was the real reason he had been summoned here by her flimsy cover.

 

"We've been testing it at Starfleet Medical," he said, "trying to determine if it can protect biomatter from tachyon radiation."

 

She stopped fiddling with her duffel. "And?"

 

He looked directly at her. "It's very promising. Why do you ask?"

 

Ah, the slow dance.

 

Or a jig. "I need two thousand milligrams by tomorrow afternoon."

 

This time she really did surprise him.

 

"Why?" he asked.

 

"That's classified."

 

She was asking for his trust, a long-range act of faith, a ridiculously illegal cooperation based on nothing but their mutual past. A few seconds ticked by.

 

"Will you get it for me?"

 

"Of course, Admiral. You'll have it by 0900."

 

He sat on the couch with his hands on his tricorder.

 

For a moment she thought he might know more than he was

 

saying, or at least suspect more. Then, as she gazed at him, she realized he was extending that secure chain of trust. She didn't really have any command authority over him anymore. Apparently she didn't need it.

 

"Thank you," she said. She closed her duffel bag and put it near the door. "I'm taking my private shuttle. Deliver the package to receiving at the Oakland Shipyard. If anyone asks, I'm on vacation."

 

The Doctor pivoted, still sitting. "Space leave, Admiral?" She smiled. "Yes, space leave. Take care of Tuvok."

 

 

CHAPTER 4

 

BORG GRAPHICS SCROLLED ACROSS A MONITOR SCREEN AT HIGH

 

speed. Quick glimpses of the Borg cube schematics shot by, ferociously complex and yet recognizable, and suddenly a blend of intersecting warp corridors skated by in patterns of light and mismatched indecipherables.

 

After hours, the Pathfinder Lab was dimly lit, with only a few worklights on along the walkways between the tiers. Anything more would attract attention from the security scans.

 

Even after all this time and experience dealing with the Borg, the images rushing past on the screen were processed by Kathryn Janeway's mind more as a recurring nightmare than useful data she was downloading for a purpose.

 

When the computer shut the screen down and announced, "Download complete," Janeway flinched as if someone had struck her.

 

"This should be everything you need," Reg Barclay said as he handed her the padd with all the operative information stored neatly inside.

 

She had no idea what else he might've stored in the device, but suspected there was more than what she had just seen, anything he could think of that might be of use in a clandestine mission.

 

"The shuttle?" she asked.

 

"Waiting for you at the Oakland Shipyard," he confirmed. "I wish you'd let me come with you."

 

"Sorry, Reg, but this is my mission. Besides, if you leave, there won't be anyone to teach those cadets about the Borg."

 

She was joking. Or was she?

 

Barclay didn't seem to think so. "I made you some fresh tea for the trip. Not the replicated stuff." He handed her a thermos from under his console desk.

 

Wasn't this ridiculous? Grown-ups who had known each other for years upon years, gone through times both terrible and glorious, dealt with forces and peoples unknown to any of their kindred, and all they could talk about to each other was tea and who was getting married and frivolous beatings around the bushes. There was more to be said and everyone knew it. They weren't happy. They were home, but they weren't at home.

 

The fractured excuse for conversation galvanized Janeway's sense of purpose and slayed her last lingering doubt. She had to do something, even if it were something crazy.

 

She took the thermos out of Barclay's hand and rewarded him with a gaze of honesty.

 

"Thank you," she said, "for everything. I wouldn't have been able to do this without you."

 

Barclay forced a little smile. "Don't remind me."

 

"Any final words of advice for your old captain? Wait-don't tell me. I'm being impulsive. I'm not considering all the consequences. It's too risky."

 

Anything else? There was more, plenty, all of which she would be saying to anyone else about to go off on this wild quest. As Janeway stared down at the reason for her sudden determination, the wind blew across the grass and fluttered it on Chakotay's name, carved over the dates of his birth and death, on a flat polished piece of marble.

 

She thought about talking to herself more, using him as an excuse, but instead knelt on the moist grass and touched the stone.

 

"Thanks for the input, but I've got to do what I think is right." Her voice faltered. She fought to get it back. "I know it wasn't easy living all these years without her, Chakotay ... but when I'm through, things might be better for all of us. Trust me."

 

What kind of officer was she? Choked up, doubtful, troubled, alone . . .

 

The sensation of being alone struck her in the chest. Her longtime first officer was gone, her friends either dead or disengaged from each other, and now she was doing what she had always admonished the others never to do-go off alone, unsupported. How easy it would've been to call Paris, Torres, Doc, and just ask them to come with her, to be a crew again, risk their lives for the sake of... their own lives.

 

No, she couldn't. This was better. This way, if she failed they would still have whatever happiness they had managed to chip out of their return to the Alpha Quadrant.

 

When she stood, she was once again absolutely sure. Her pledge hung in the air between her and Chakotay, still possessing of its mystery. If she didn't return, at least she wouldn't have to face another reunion.

 

She turned and walked away from the grave, feeling Chak-otay's hands gently push at her back.

 

"Five-three . .. three-one . . . seven . . . one . . . five-three . .."

 

The room was ransacked. The bed was overturned, desk too, papers scattered everywhere, under and above the tumble of sheets and blankets, the splattered candle, a few pathetic personal effects.

 

"I'm sorry if I pulled you away from something important, sir, but he won't let anyone near him. I thought you might be able to-"

 

"You did the right thing." Voyager'?, former ship's doctor gazed down at the crumpled, muttering form of an officer he had once admired for his control and grace under pressure.

 

Commander Tuvok had once been the steadiest man in the Doctor's limited universe, a kindred spirit of sense and logic, the closest thing a living creature could come to computer perfection-a Vulcan professional aboard a Starfleet ship.

 

Hardly the picture before the Doctor now.

 

Tuvok today sat crumpled in a corner of his cubicle here in the Starfleet Medical complex, a sorry echo of his past stability, racked instead by a neurological disease that had simply outpaced the technology to do anything about it.

 

Both the Doctor and his young colleague, a Starfleet intern in charge of reviewing records on this wing, gazed sorrowfully at the commander. Tuvok still held his rank, thanks to Admiral Janeway's influence. He had, after all, been stricken with this affliction in the line of duty.

 

Until today Tuvok's behavior had been damningly consistent. He slept fitfully, sometimes with medical assistance, and spent his days insisting upon near-darkness, assuaged by only his single candle, which his family and friends dutifully replenished.

 

During those days he sifted through his Vulcan mind's tremendous stockpile of knowledge and experience and committed data unendingly to paper with a pencil, also replaced almost daily. What he searched for as he scoured his mind was a mystery. No one had been able to figure out what he was trying to accomplish. No one could help.

 

"Five-three . . . three-one . . . seven . . . one . . . five-three ... three-one ..."

 

Tuvok's eyes were fixed on an imagined distance. They were focused, sharp, purposeful, not the vacant orbs usually associated with patients who had lost their grip on reality.

 

Neurological disorders remained among the most complex and confounding of medical troubles. In that, the Doctor could take some comfort. They were doing, and had done, everything within their powers for Tuvok. Until today, there had been neither any changes nor any breakthroughs.

 

The Doctor was unsure about which of those two he was seeing now.

 

Beginning at dawn, Tuvok had smashed his room to splinters. He even broke one of the walls.

 

"His condition's never been associated with violent behavior," the Doctor observed, fishing for confirmations or rumors.

 

The other physician, a young hotspur who was used to success, had been whittled to worry about this noble Vulcan who couldn't be helped. "He seems more frustrated than violent."

 

Perhaps the young man was just doing Tuvok a favor, giving him the benefit of the doubt.

 

"Three-one ... seven ... one ... five-three ..."

 

The Doctor made a point to note those numbers and the sequence. Certainly they made some sense, had some bearing, or

 

served as a clue. Even in his least connected moments, Tuvok had always made some glimmer of sense.

 

He left the intern at the door and moved closer to Tuvok. As he came into the Vulcan's periphery and knew Tuvok could see him, the number recitation suddenly stopped. The Doctor did nothing, but stood still and waited. Tuvok's troubled eyes narrowed as he struggled to think.

 

"Long-range sensors . . . have detected no trace . . . her disappearance remains a mystery .. . I'm deeply concerned . . ."

 

The Doctor knelt at his side. "What are you concerned about, Tuvok?"

 

"Her disappearance."

 

Tuvok's firm inflection implied that the Doctor should know what he was talking about. So he knew who was in the room with him.

 

"Whose?" the Doctor asked, cautious not to put any tone to his question.

 

But once again Tuvok drifted away.

 

"Five-three ... three ... one-seven ... one ... five ..."

 

Behind them, the young intern said, "He's been repeating those same numbers over and over. Five-three-three-one-seven-one. It might be a stardate ..."

 

"Stardate 53317," the Doctor considered. "If my memory files are accurate, that was the day Captain Janeway was abducted by the Kellidians." He gazed at Tuvok and spoke in the most normal, nonpatronizing tone manageable. "Is that who you're talking about? Captain Janeway?"

 

Tuvok became instantly more agitated, his breath coming quick now, his eyes twitching and troubled. "Her disappearance remains a mystery . . ."

 

There seemed no solutions to be found here today, and though

 

Tuvok spoke of mysteries, the Doctor could find none. At least now he knew what Tuvok was trying to remember,

 

"You solved that mystery, Tuvok," he offered gently. "You rescued the captain and brought her back to Voyager safe and sound. Remember?"

 

"I'm deeply concerned . . ."

 

The floor creaked and the papers ruffled as the other physician stepped closer. "Maybe if the admiral paid him a visit," he suggested, "showed him she's all right?"

 

"Unfortunately she's out of town," the Doctor said. "I'm not sure when she'll be back-"

 

Tuvok's hand shot out and seized him by the arm, dragged him close and held him until they were eye-to-eye.

 

"She's never coming back!" the Vulcan growled.

 

The intern jolted and stumbled away toward the door, only to stop himself at the last minute. The Doctor, however, didn't look away from Tuvok's troubled eyes. Something was in there, some clue, some knowledge that did apply to today-he was sure of it! They knew each other well enough. Some nodule of reality was trying to force its way from the tangle that had become Tuvok's mind.

 

As quickly as the lucid moment appeared, it dropped away. Tuvok's hands lost their strength. His eyes went dull again and lost the doctor against the dim roomscape.

 

"Her disappearance .. . remains a mystery . . ."

 

The Doctor stood up quickly, before Tuvok became once again disturbed, and stepped out of the Vulcan's periphery. Perhaps it was the vision of himself that had triggered this outburst. Would the same thing happen if Tuvok had seen Paris or any others in the Voyager's crew? He was tempted to experiment, have each surviving member of the command crew visit Tuvok and test this theory.

 

Haunted by the tidbit of reality he thought he had witnessed in Tuvok's manner, the Doctor stepped past the intern into the hospital corridor. "Record anything he says for the next twenty-four hours. Report to me if there is new data of any kind, anything that is not repeated."

 

"What does that mean?" Desperate, the intern hustled after him.

 

"The door," the Doctor reminded.

 

"Oh! Computer, close and lock compartment 200B."

 

With a swish the panel closed behind them, sealing Tuvok in with his demons.

 

The intern hurried to catch up again. "Do you have a procedure in mind? Is there some form of therapy-"

 

"Not yet. I have to find more information. And I think I know just where to look."

 

"Voyager to Pathfinder-come in, Pathfinder."

 

"Doctor!"

 

1 The Pathfinder lab was unoccupied, except for its dedicated professor, Mr. Barclay.

 

The Doctor looked into the lab from the doorway, offering a grin before starting trouble. He could tell as Reg Barclay shot up from his chair and the pile of padds he was working over that Barclay was nervous and expected something like this. The reaction confirmed many suspicions-at least that the suspicions were justified, though still unclear.

 

"I forgot about our golf game again, didn't I?" Barclay attempted.

 

"Relax, Reg." The Doctor strode down the aisle to the desk. "It's not until next week," Of course, they both knew this had nothing to do with the golf game. "I'm here because I need to get in touch with Admiral Janeway."

 

Barclay's lack of a poker face was legendary. "She's out of town."

 

"I know. Did she tell you where she was going?"

 

"I'm afraid it... never came up. Is something wrong?" Barclay rubbed his hands together.

 

"I'm not sure. I paid a visit to Tuvok this morning. He had ransacked his quarters in a fit of rage. He's been disturbed, of course, for a long time, but never to this extent, so much that his attending physician deemed it necessary to bring me in immediately. I saw a glint of lucidity during which he seemed to think the admiral is in some sort of danger."

 

Barclay came around his desk. "You know better than anyone how confused Tuvok can get..."

 

"Yes, but I've been worried about the admiral too."

 

"Why?"

 

"Two days ago she asked me for a large quantity of an experimental medication. When I asky why she needed it, she said it was classified."

 

"Then you shouldn't be telling me about it, should you?"

 

"I spoke to Director Okaro at Starfleet Intelligence. He assured me that the admiral hasn't been involved in any classified work since she began teaching at the Academy."

 

Though his hands gave him away by suddenly turning pale, Barclay tried to cover his nervousness with a joke. "You know how sneaky those 'intelligence people' can be. Maybe he was just trying to throw you off."

 

"Maybe ... but still... she's been talking for months about how excited she is to be teaching with you. Then, just as the semester's starting, she goes away without even telling you where." The Doctor turned and zeroed in on Barclay. "Don't you find that a little troubling?"

 

"I'm-I'm sure there's-there's a perfectly reasonable explanation," Barclay struggled. "I'm s-sorry, Doctor, but I have p-paper-papers to grade."

 

"You're stammering, Reg."

 

"S-s-s-o?"

 

With his suspicions confirmed, the Doctor followed Barclay, who was trying to get away by looping around the other side of the desk as if he couldn't be found over there.

 

"I haven't heard you do that in years," he charged. "I think you do know where she is."

 

Barclay tried not to meet the Doctor's steady eyes. Being a hologram, the Doctor didn't even have to blink if he didn't want to and knew he could drill the truth out of the other man with a good long stare.

 

"She's one of the most decorated officers in Starfleet history," Barclay insisted, his voice shifting higher. "I'm-I'm sure s-s-she can take c-c-care of herself."

 

"You wouldn't be saying that unless she was doing something dangerous!"

 

Barclay backpedaled as the Doctor followed him around for the second time. "You're putting words in my mouth ..."

 

The Doctor vectored back and met Barclay at a corner. There, he stopped him with a grip on both arms and a bulletlike glower. When he spoke, there was no more pretense, no more dancing or fishing or any other hobby.

 

For an organized collection of photonic particles, he had a hell of a grip.

 

"Tell me where she is, Reg "

 

 

CHAPTER 5

 

A KLINGON FORTRESS ON A CRAGBOUND MOON. THERE WERE A thousand rumors about what these makeshift strongholds really looked like. Even to this modern day, few humans had been allowed the right to pass within such monolithic respositories of survival and tradition. Klingons were volatile and not particularly resourceful, so when they found something that worked and stood the test of time, they stuck with it. Such was the case with rock shelters. They still used them, even though modern construction methods were perfectly available to them.

 

The moment Kathryn Janeway materialized inside the fortress, she smelled the telltale odor of synthetic rock. Apparently Korath wasn't so stuck in tradition that he was beyond making use of some modern conveniences. Synthetic silk, synthetic ivory-why not synthetic stone?

 

Torchlight confused her eyes briefly, compounded by the whine of transporter beams, which always set Janeway's teeth on edge. Though she didn't have to, she usually held her breath during transporting. No idea why. Just a reaction, slightly t rou-

 

bled by the idea of leaving her shuttle on autopilot in orbit. The vehicle was secured by code and every other available trickery, but she still found herself wishing there were a living accomplice up there, just in case.

 

The moon had no atmosphere, which meant this place had to be airtight and secure-another good reason to go technical. The scent of artifice gave her a thrill of confidence. She could understand this manner of living. The image of the primitive was fake, and probably shored up by plenty of mechanics to stabilize everything from life support to aesthetics. She could work with that.

 

Before her as the fortress came into form she made out the dim figures of two Klingons-easy enough to identify just by the torchlight-backed silhouettes-and the smaller, less-armored form of Miral Paris between them.

 

Beyond them was a corridor of jagged stone lit by wall torches. The effect was decidedly medieval, yet the stones had an artificial sparkle and gloss along their edges.

 

"Welcome to the House of Korath, admiral," Miral said, speaking firmly and loudly, to establish beyond doubt that Janeway was to be accepted here.

 

"I love what he's done with the place." Janeway's voice echoed.

 

The Klingon to Miral's left suddenly erupted, "Guv'ha gor! Nu'Tuq mal!"

 

Miral snapped to him and barked, "P'Tak! Gaht bek'cha tuq mal gun'tnok!"

 

The Klingon fixed his hands into a set of claws at his sides, but otherwise made no other threats. Miral skewered him to some silent promise, then approached Janeway without either of the guards.

 

"What was that about?" Janeway asked. She had picked up a couple of words, though the delivery said more.

 

In the torchlight, Miral's one-quarter of Klingon blood seemed to show more in the soft brow ridge on her forehead than it did in ordinary light. Or perhaps the effect of this place was simply working on Janeway's imagination.

 

"He said your demeanor was disrespectful."

 

Janeway glanced at the Klingons. "I hope you told him I didn't mean to be rude."

 

"I told him if he didn't show you more respect, I'd break his arm."

 

With a little chuckle of admiration, Janeway shook her head. "You're your mother's daughter."

 

Miral beamed, but managed not to smile. That might've been taken by the Klingons as a sign of weakness at this juncture. "Korath's waiting. We should go in."

 

So much for small talk.

 

The girl started to lead the way through the caverns, but Janeway put out a hand. "Sorry, but this is where we part ways."

 

"Excuse me?"

 

"You're dismissed, Ensign."

 

"Admiral, I really think-"

 

"I can take care of myself."

 

Miral pivoted to face her. "With all due respect, I've been working on this for six months!"

 

"And you've done an exemplary job. But it's over. Understand?"

 

Miral Paris had grown up on the decks of a starship, aboard which Kathryn Janeway was the captain, the all-powerful benevolent dictator who kept their small segment of the universe safe and even on its keel. All things had to be approved by the captain. All problems lay at the captain's feet, all dangers and threats kept at bay by the captain's resolve. There was nothing short of hero worship in the girl's eyes now, coupled soundly

 

with a desire to gain the approval and trust of this monumental paragon before her.

 

She still wanted to go.

 

"Yes, ma'am," she said anyway.

 

Janeway couldn't help but empathize. Passings of the torch were sometimes hard to swallow for those doing the passing, especially when the torch went to a higher authority who hadn't done the footwork. The girl had done her job, better than most and with fewer questions. Possessiveness over an assignment was one of those things Starfleet encouraged, and generally it went along with plain old human nature-and Klingon nature. Miral had all that going for her. She wanted to finish what she had started.

 

But Kathryn Janeway had set herself upon this course single-handed and she meant to finish it alone. All these other untidy ends had to be shunted aside. She could be considerate later, if things worked out.

 

"I happen to know your parents are anxious to spend some time with you," she suggested, being deliberately vague and even condescending. If Miral resented this enough, the girl would get off this rock and take herself out of the equation as a possible target or hostage. "Take a few days' leave," Janeway added. "Go and see them."

 

Few people truly understood the tenuous nature of dealings with Klingons more than those with Klingon blood, Klingon rage surging through their veins, however removed. The surge of temper, of passions and determinations; involuntary drives of single-mindedness were sometimes indescribable. Miral Paris, unlike her mother, B'Elanna, rather embraced the mystique of her ancestry, but that was because she had never really lived among Klingons, but only dabbled in the idea. For her this was still adventure and not a way of life. She was a Starfleet ensign

 

on an undercover assignment. Her ability to speak Klingon without a him of accent, another gift of genetics, had been an advantage, and even more, Janeway had wanted to give this girl a chance to prove herself as more than just a daughter of the famous Voyager crew, just a survivor along for the ride. Everybody deserved that.

 

Miral swallowed whatever insult she found in the admiral's dismissal of her at this critical moment, and with fierce self-control she simply nodded and gestured the admiral down the correct corridor.

 

There, in the torchlit cavern, Janeway left what she hoped would be the last of her "clan" involved in this new trick.

 

The corridors were long, curved, and arid. The air was perfumed, but circulating and cool. Led by the Klingon guards, Janeway passed by several untidy antechambers. She saw no one else moving around.

 

Ultimately they turned left, and left again into a larger room with poor lighting, cluttered with incongruous pieces of machinery, some recognizable, others alien contraband. At the center of this jagged junk heap was Korath.

 

For a species that considered themselves rebellious, the Klingons did all they possibly could to look alike. Korath was as typical an old-man Klingon as any Janeway had ever seen. He seemed to be going for cliched image-the long gray hair, uncombed, the exaggerated brow ridge that got more prominent as Klingons aged, the unnecessary body armor and uncomfortable clothing, the sour attitude. He was working on some kind of laser tool to adjust a hand weapon that Janeway didn't recognize.

 

The two Klingon guards paused at the entryway. Janeway continued into the lab as if she visited every day.

 

Korath knew she was here, but kept working on his toy. After

 

a few moments of time-wasting, he turned the tool off and held up the weapon.

 

"A Cardassian disruptor," he boasted. "I've modified it to emit a nadion pulse."

 

Fine. Can it knit and purl?

 

"Impressive," Janeway bothered to say, unable to think of anything more original. "But that's not what I've come for."

 

"No, You've come for something far more dangerous."

 

In no hurry, he picked up another tool and went on tinkering with his disruptor. If he thought he was really impressing anybody, he'd been in these caves way too long.

 

"Where is it?" Janeway demanded. All the deals had been dealt. Why was he stalling?

 

"Somewhere safe," he grumbled.

 

Oh, brother. Pseudo-superiority. Did he have to be so brac-ingly predictable?

 

Janeway decided to play the uninspired game for a minute or two. "I went to a great deal of trouble to get you your seat on the High Council. Now give me what you promised."

 

Korath moved to a monitor embedded in the fake rock of the cavern wall and activated it. A rotating graphic of Janeway's personal shuttle, the one in orbit right over their heads, popped on. A little grainy, but accurate enough. At the side of the screen, Klingon text scrolled ceaselessly.

 

"I've scanned your shuttle. You've made some interesting modifications."

 

He hit a button, and the graphics zoomed in on a single component.

 

"Your shield generator is of particular interest," he concluded. Janeway watched the monitor with a little more pride than she had practiced. "It's not for sale."

 

Korath smiled craggily. "Then what you want isn't available either."

 

"We had an agreement."

 

The old Klingon made a gesture to the two guards and without much theatricality said, "Show the admiral out."

 

She strode back into Korath's throne room and announced, "I've reconsidered your offer."

 

"I thought you might," he said.

 

"I'll give you the shield emitter," she continued, as if he'd said nothing at all, "but not until I've inspected the device you're offering. To make sure it's genuine."

 

Korath's dark face flushed purple. "You question my honor?"

 

"No," she said. "If you had any honor, you wouldn't have changed the terms of our agreement. Show it to me or I'm leaving."

 

Her ultimatum was so matter-of-fact that Korath seemed to believe her. She half believed it herself.

 

Janeway held her arms and legs very still. Klingons might take any twitch as a signal that they had some advantage, psychological or otherwise, or perhaps even judge any movement as tension. They might interpret unease in any of a dozen ways that would work against her. She fixed her eyes on Korath and focused her whole physical self to a single end. The two guards might as well have been stone carvings, for all the attention she offered them.

 

A large section of the rock wall shimmered and frizzled out of existence-a holographic projection. When the picture of rock went away, the chasm revealed a storage locker. Inside the locker was a table, and on that table was a temporal deflector.

 

Until now, she had held in store an idea that the temporal deflection science was a myth running around between the raggedy Empire and the Federation and a few other concerns about a device that could do what this one supposedly could do. Miral had

 

said it w orked, but young idealistic ensigns could be deluded. They wanted so much to believe . ..

 

If it could do what the rumors said, why was its price as low as a seat on the Klingon Council?

 

Then, there was no accounting for taste-or ceilings on ambition. Some people just wanted to get the best of their mothers-in-law. Korath wanted to be able to look down on all the other Klingons from the only pinnacle that meant anything to him.

 

The deflector's casing was more aerodynamic than Janeway had imagined, built with more artistry than necessary. The streamlined device would fit well on her shuttle. She could already see the way to fit it on and connect it to a power source.

 

She pulled her tricorder around from where it had rested on its strap under her arm and activated it. Casual, casual.

 

With strict inner control she said nothing, but went about analyzing the device like a good science officer indulging a bit of curiosity. Everybody deserved a little confirmation now and then. Korath didn't stop her. If she had explained, he might have grown suspicious. So far she wasn't doing anything unexpected, other than possibly moving too close to the device.

 

Six steps... five ... she had to be within range, no margin of error.

 

Why was he dumb enough to let her get so close? Ah, the small favors of life and luck.

 

Korath moved closer too, watching her every move, listening to the twitter of the tricorder, measuring just how much information was enough. He had his Cardassian disrupter in his hand. Janeway hadn't missed that little detail.

 

She had no weapon of her own. The fortress's shields would never have let her beam through with a sidearm. All she had was the tricorder and its merry scan.

 

Which was good enough for now. She looked up at Korath. "This'll do just fine."

 

Like a cat batting a toy, she slapped the deflector device on the midsection of its casing, leaving behind a small magnetic transporter enhancer. With the other hand she thumbed the control plate of her tricorder with a predetermined code, then held her breath. The air around her began to whine.

 

Both she and the deflector began to dematerialize.

 

"Stop her!" Korath's shout echoed through the caverns. He raised his disruptor.

 

The two Klingon guards pulled their weapons also and

 

opened fire.

 

Janeway hunched her shoulders. The heat of weapons fire crawled across her skin. Whether the transporter would operate fast enough or the disruptor fire would cut through the beams first, she couldn't calculate.

 

As for Korath and their deal, she had already paid in full.

 

 

CHAPTER 6

 

"COMPUTER, DEPLOY ARMOR."

 

Janeway gave her shuttle its marching order before she had completely materialized in the cockpit. The shuttle hummed with a surge of power, and began to enjoy a pokpokpok sound as plate armor unfolded in successive shingles across the outer hull. What a terrific sound. The benefits of dealing with aliens in far-flung corners. Still a few tricks up her sleeve.

 

Without taking the time to enjoy her advantage, she stepped to the nav board and tapped in the numbers. "Lay in a course for these coordinates-"

 

The shuttle rocked hard to port and almost knocked her down. The Klingons here already? Korath had more influence than he thought. Of course, she'd just put him on the High Council, which hadn't hurt his ability to muster firepower.

 

Janeway glanced at the armor readouts-holding. Good stuff. Just to be annoying, she tapped the trigger for the incoming comm receiver. Korath's image flickered on a monitor, transmitting from his rock cave.

 

"What do you want?" Janeway asked

 

"You'll pay for your deceit, ghuy' cha! The House of Korath won't rest until you 've been drowned in your own blood- "

 

"I'd love to stay and chat, but I'm on a tight schedule."

 

She hit the control that cut him off and the monitor snapped dark. Oh, that was fun!

 

"Computer, warp six," she added. Time to get down to business.

 

Double-crossers like Korath were always easy targets. She had dealt with so many aliens and such varied psychologies in the Delta Quadrant that handling Klingons was a picnic.

 

As easily as that, she left Korath and his insulted ego behind.

 

She settled into her pilot seat and forced herself to relax, a trick she had practiced from long ago. A shuttle at warp six wasn't like a starship speeding along. There weren't twelve decks between her and space, no heavily insulated cushioning, no superstructure to absorb the effects of speed impossible in nature. Here, in this shuttle with its skin of alien armor, she could feel the warping of space upon her skin and in her muscles, behind her eyes and on the back of her neck.

 

Suddenly she thought of Chakotay. He could never feel it. He always said it was her imagination, that she couldn't really wake up out of a sound sleep and know whether or not the ship had gone to warp speed.

 

She had that sensation now, felt the thrill of high science racing across the tiny hairs on her arms. Even a hothead like Korath knew better than to chase her, and if he did the armor would confound him. But he wouldn't.

 

Had Miral cleared the moon and made good on her escape?

 

If I were all that sure of myself, I wouldn 't worry.

 

"Approaching designated coordinates," the computer informed placidly.

 

Janeway sat up quickly. "All stop."

 

"Warning vessel approaching, vector one-two-one mark six."

 

She leaned forward and confirmed the sensor reading. Who would be out here?

 

Other kinds of alarms went off in her head. Had she failed to keep her plans completely to herself? To keep all the secrets? She and her crew had become deeply skilled at reading each other's silences-had she involuntarily given herself away to them?

 

"Oh . . . damn," she murmured as the hail came through. "I knew things were going too well . . . computer, retract armor."

 

Pokpokpokpokpok-the shuttle drew in its alien shingles.

 

Through her forward viewport, Janeway peered at a starship, one of the newly commissioned line, huge as it hung over the shuttle. On the comm monitor, a family face appeared.

 

Janeway sighed. "Harry ... and people are always saying space is so big."

 

"Lower your shields, Admiral," Kim ordered, "and stand by for transport. I'm taking you into custody."

 

"You have no grounds for taking me into custody, Captain," she told him.

 

He really didn't. All she'd actually done was take a drive in her personal shuttlecraft. Nobody else knew about Korath, and that wasn't Federation jurisdiction anyway. What was he going to do, arrest her for skipping class?

 

Harry still had a boyishness about him despite the passing of years, and he didn't like doing what he was about to do. She could see that in his eyes, and in his hesitation.

 

"Reg told the Doctor everything," he said. "And the Doctor told me."

 

"You'd think I'd have earned their loyalty after all these years," Janeway complained, not without a grain of truth.

 

"They care about you too much to let you do this. And so do I,"

 

Janeway held up her hand before he made a direct command to anyone on his bridge and had her beamed aboard. "On one condition-you let me explain why I'm doing this."

 

"Done. Prepare to beam over."

 

Janeway hardly had time to walk into Harry's-Captain Kim's-ready room when he laid into her. "Chronexaline? A Klingon temporal deflector? Miral Paris in Klingon territory at your order. . . Chakotay's funeral, the tenth reunion. .. Admiral, it doesn't take a sixth-grade graduate to figure out what you have in mind. You have no idea what the consequences would be!"

 

"I know what the consequences are if we do nothing," Admiral Janeway said. "So do you." Suddenly empassioned, she leaned forward. "I have a chance to change all that!"

 

"If Starfleet command knew what you were trying to do-" Kim cut himself off.

 

Janeway took a moment to glance around Kim's ready room. A Kal-Toh game, a few photographs, and a weathered hockey stick showed her that while Harry might be a captain now, he was still in part the young man she had know so many years ago. "You haven't told them?"

 

"The Doctor and I decided to keep things in the family."

 

She understood his problem from both sides. He was a Starfleet captain now, sworn not to do the bidding of his former

 

captain, or even to look after the well-being of shipmates past and present, but to oversee the welfare of the entire Federation. His job was not to consider how the past had mutilated the present, but to defend the present as it had become.

 

Yes, what she had in mind was a fabulous risk. Everybody in Starfleet knew how touchy these experimental missions could be. But they had been executed before and had worked out-if you could believe the logs of heroes and dreamers . ..

 

"What about your crew?" she asked. After all, he had a new "family" now.

 

"I told them I needed to take you back to Starfleet medical because you'd contracted a rare disease."

 

She smiled. "I hope it's not terminal."

 

"No" he said. "But it's been known to affect judgment."

 

"I know what I'm doing, Harry."

 

"Do you? Can you say with absolute certainty that it'll work? Because if you can't. .. even if it weren't a violation of every rule in the book, it would still be far too risky."

 

Well, that was the obligatory argument, the one he must make by rote, the most obvious and cliched of scoldings. At least it was out of the way. Risk had never been their problem. They had eaten it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every other day. None of the Voyager crew would be put off by such a claim anymore. Risk? Who was he kidding?

 

She found herself smiling at him. As he watched her expression, he started to twitch. "What?" he asked.

 

"Oh, I'm ... remembering a young ensign who wanted to fly into a Borg-infested nebula, just to explore the remote possibility that we might find a way home . . ."

 

"/// remember correctly," he pointed out, "you stopped me."

 

She nodded, caught in her own strictures. "We didn't know then what we know now."

 

"Our technology might ha ve improved, but-"

 

"I'm not talking about technology. I'm talking about people. People who weren't as lucky as you and I."

 

He was starting to waver. Janeway could read his expression. Harry Kim had no poker face at all. He might be a starship captain, but when he found himself dealing with the woman who had been his captain for virtually his entire life-well, he hadn't been in that command chair long enough to cancel out the schoolteacher effect.

 

And there was more ... he knew that she would be doing the same thing if he were one of the unfortunate among them. Their losses were so random, their dissatisfactions so deeply seated, he could hardly ignore the purity of her reasons for doing what she planned. Yes, there were hazards, but there always had been. Harry wasn't here to protect the whole Federation against a well-established risk factor. He was here to protect a member of his family from stepping into the busy street from which they had so barely escaped.

 

She could use that. None of them were happy enough in their lives here to justify his stopping her.

 

"You said," she began, "that you and the Doctor wanted to keep things in the family. But our family's not complete anymore, is it?" A few seconds passed as she let her words work on him, and all her silent thoughts pass between them without overtalking the things they both knew. "I'm asking you to trust my judgment, Harry .. . one last time."

 

His expressive eyes crinkled a little. Janeway doubted that anyone on his bridge would even notice.

 

"I'll do better than that," he said. "I'll help you."

 

Once he had made such a decision, he stuck to it. There were no more doubts or cliches running behind his expression when he beamed over to her shuttle. Together, without taking the added help of any of Harry's crew, they wrestled the deflector into position on top of the shuttlecraft and jury-rigged it into place, then fixed it to the shuttle's appropriate power streams. They spoke no more of risks.

 

"If Starfleet Command finds out I had anything to do with this, they'll demote me back to ensign," Kim commented when they were back inside the shuttle and at work on the interior modifications.

 

An ironic comment, considering everything.

 

"You worry too much, Harry," Janeway told him. "It's turning you gray."

 

"This device of Korath's, it produces too much tachyo-kinetic energy. It could burn itself out by the time you get where you're going." He looked away from the monitor that was giving him this information and added, "You wouldn't be able to get back."

 

"I always assumed it was a one-way trip."

 

She was at peace with her decision, but Harry's face was still pale with concern. He didn't point out any other drawbacks or suspicions about the technology, or that Korath could have this all completely wrong and this thing on the outer hull might be a very fancy washing machine indeed-or tissue scrambler, whichever came first. Like the first experiments with transporters, she could be betting her life on neo-voodoo.

 

"Ready for the last-minute flight check?" he asked.

 

"Go ahead."

 

"Cue monitor four."

 

A rotating graphic of the shuttle popped on, complete with the temporal device mounted on the hull like a hat on a rabbit.

 

"You're sure I can't talk you out of this," Harry mentioned, then answered his own query. "Right. . . stupid question."

 

He stood up, turned to her, and she gathered him into her arms. The concept of command fell away. They were two close relatives saying farewell, no uniforms, no rank.

 

She broke the embrace before they were both plunged again into the whole picture of what this might become.

 

Harry stepped back and tapped his combadge. "Kim to the Rhode Island. One to beam back."

 

The Rhode Island made good on its captain's promise and warped out almost immediately. No witnesses. Harry couldn't be faulted for failing to log something he hadn't seen or traces his scanners never read.

 

Again Janeway was alone. She had toyed with the idea that maybe she wouldn't feel quite so isolated now that Harry Kim was on her side, and knowing the Doctor and Reg were with her in spirit.

 

Didn't work. She was by herself, with her own commitment, and she felt every moment go by with a pinch.

 

Still, she couldn't shake the very real sensation of holding all their lives in her hands. She didn't really want to shake that feeling-it was very real.

 

At least she didn't have to talk anybody else into letting her follow through, didn't have to trick any more Klingons or endanger any more ensigns. Now she had only to speak to the computer on her shuttle, and it would follow her every command to the smallest degree.

 

"Computer," she began, and drew a long breath, "activate the chrono-deflector."

 

A low hum with a two-note harmony vibrated through the

 

shuttle's hull, growing in depth and volume. The power-source connection was solid. Now, if only the device didn't spin her into the tenth century B.C.-

 

"Warning," the computer spoke. "Ship approach, mark four-two."

 

"Now what?" Janeway punched the controls. "Identify!"

 

But the computer never got a chance. Two gull-winged cruisers decloaked in near space and opened fire.

 

Klingons!

 

 

CHAPTER 7

 

THE KLINGONS ROARED IN BLAZING. No TALK, NO THREATS, NO deals.

 

"Deploy armor!" Janeway shouted over the scratch of disrup-tor fire.

 

"Unable to comply. Ablative generator is off-line."

 

Boom-the shuttle rocked again.

 

"Evasive pattern beta-six!"

 

The autonav system flared to life and the roller-coaster ride began. Janeway would've been thrown to her knees if she hadn't known which direction the shuttle would veer first.

 

"Open a channel to the Rhode Island!"

 

The comm bleeped, and a picture of Harry Kim appeared on the comm monitor. Before he had a chance to ask why she had hailed him, Janeway said, "Harry, I'm under attack. How fast can you get back here?"

 

"Two minutes, tops. Full about!"

 

"Acknowledged. I can hold on for two minutes. Evasive pattern alpha-z!"

 

The shuttle took a nosedive. Two Klingon disrupter streams crossed in space and mutually detonated, rocking Janeway with ambient energy, but otherwise missing her. She made a bet with herself and duplicated the move on the starboard vector.

 

Sure enough, the Klingons tried again to triangulate on her and ended up blasting each other's disruptor streams. The shuttle rattled, but burst through clean. The computer didn't even report any damage.

 

Twice more in a row, for nearly a whole minute, she was able to cause the Klingons to completely waste their shots before they realized what she was doing. Once they almost raked each other wing to wing. After the near-collision, they paused firing for a few moments, trying to get her into their scopes without boxing each other in.

 

She took those moments to tap the comm system.

 

"Well, Korath, when you hold a grudge, you really hold it high, don't you?"

 

"Surrender, cheat!"

 

"I didn't cheat you," she said. "I gambled and won, that's all. I'm sure you know the type of game we're in together. Sometimes we have to play through, or no one wins."

 

Stall, stall...

 

" You stole my device!"

 

"I'm no thief. All I did was bruise your pride. You have your payment in full. You would never have attained the position you have now if not for my influence. Your price was a high one for a Starfleet officer. It cost me a piece of my reputation."

 

"/ have reputation to protect as well, Janeway. You and your alien science make a threat to my people. As a member of the High Council, it is my-"

 

"Oh, you've got to be kidding," she drawled. "I've heard of

 

tortured logic before, but spare me this shadow of nobility! You're on the High Council, so you have to protect your people against me, who put you there? You missed your calling, Korath. You should've become a song-and-dance man."

 

"Klingons do not dance."

 

As long as he was talking, he wasn't shooting. The other ship made a few shots as Janeway's shuttle swerved and plunged, but without Korath's lead ship giving it a fighting pattern, the second vessel had no cue to take. He obviously wasn't a skilled battle leader, or he wouldn't have been so easily distracted.

 

The shuttle was smaller than either of the two Klingon ships, and far more maneuverable in a tight area. Janeway disengaged the autonav and took the pilot controls herself with one hand, while with the other hand she recalibrated the generator and found power for the temporal deflector. She piloted a spiral pattern, stressful enough for the narrow-bodied shuttle, almost impossible for the Klingons.

 

Whoever was in charge of the second Klingon ship was smarter or maybe just more experienced than Korath. The second ship anticipated her next two moves and opened fire. When she came out of her spiral, she ran straight through the disruptor stream.

 

Deadly energy crackled across the shuttle's hull amidships and across the port flank. Only by turning up on her quarter at the last instant did Janeway protect the precious device affixed to the shuttle's upper hull. Sparks erupted inside the cockpit, both before and behind Janeway. She was suddenly working in a sea of smoke and heat. The controls began breaking down under her fingers; the shuttle began to shake uncontrollably.

 

"Stabilize, stabilize," she mumbled, but nothing worked. The shuttle couldn't regain steadiness.

 

"This is the Starship Rhode Island. Stand down your hostile action or we will open fire."

 

"Harry! A little early, too. Very nice." Janeway leaned into the controls and increased speed to get the shuttle out of the way as the starship swooped back into firing range.

 

The shuttle was cracking in half. She could feel it losing its grip, hissing atmosphere into space, grinding against its own bones as the systems tried to keep their bloodlines going.

 

In her periphery as she fought t o keep her shuttle together, she saw the Rhode Island plunge into the scene and bite at the heels of both Klingon ships without breaking a sweat. The two ships split formation and raced into wide evasive maneuvers, but didn't leave the area.

 

"Stand by for transport, Admiral," Harry's voice ordered.

 

Janeway glanced at the comm monitor-yes, there he was.

 

"You know where I'm going, Harry, and it's not to your ship."

 

"Your structural integrity is failing."

 

"Just get these Klingons off my tail."

 

The starship instantly veered out of transporter range and blasted fiercely at one of the Klingons, effectively disabling the baddies with a bitter strafe. As the Klingon went streaming off on a crooked trail, Rhode Island roared after the second while Janeway coaxed her shuttle to hold together and still find the power to charge the deflector. Now she could afford to pay attention to what she was doing and forget about Korath and associates.

 

"Computer, activate the tachyon pulse and direct it to these spatial and temporal coordinates."

 

Temporal coordinates-dangerous words.

 

Space began to stretch and blur before her. From over her head, a wide-angle pulse shot out from the deflector and created a cut in space, a broad wound in the universe.

 

Janeway aimed her shuttle, damage and cracks and all, toward that crack and leaned on the impulse speed until there was no going back, until not even the braking thrusters could veer her off her course.

 

Above her head the temporal deflector hummed and pulsed its beacon into the wound, black on blacker. The great mouth of space opened and gulped her down.

 

 

CHAPTER 8

 

Starship Voyager The Delta Quadrant Twenty-six years earlier

 

SOMETIMES HE DREAMED OF DRIVING THE SHIP. THE IDEA THAT anybody else could do it the way the ship liked ... surge up on those solar winds and skid down the weak side ... read the spectral shifts and avoid the rough spots ... it wasn't what people thought. Still, he wished the ship had a yoke or a wheel, the real thing, to let him feel the movements through his hands the way he could in the holograms of early flight-you could really lean into a plane in those days, or a motorcycle or a bike-so why couldn't a starship have a joystick?

 

"Tom."

 

Of course, nobody else knew about the skid traction trick. He'd invented that himself, and never told anybody. Okay, so it was a little egotistical, even rotten. Didn't hurt anything. Everybody had their little tricks, ways to do their own jobs that

 

made them look better than anybody else. There-solar flares from a blue giant. The best kind!

 

 

"Tom."

 

"I'm 'sleep."

 

"It's time."

 

"Mmmm ... for what?"

 

"I'll give you one guess."

 

Were the lights on? Why would she put the lights on in the middle of off-watch?

 

Tom Paris's eyes popped open as his brain crawled out of the navigation dream and suddenly hit high speed. He almost fell off the bed-almost right out of his T-shirt.

 

Beside him, B'Elanna was sitting up in bed as best she could, her eyes serious and wide as she contemplated her once-svelte body, looking very much as if she'd swallowed a pumpkin.

 

Paris felt his back muscles scream as he jolted up and slapped his chest, looking for his combadge. "Paris to-Paris to-"

 

Where was it? On the nightstand!

 

"Paris to sickbay! It's time!"

 

Over the system the Doctor's voice was annoyingly arid. "Remain calm, Mr. Paris. Can she stand?"

 

"Uh-I-uh-" He found his feet and turned to ask her, but she was already up and putting on her robe. Extra-large.

 

"Affirmative," Paris said into the combadge.

 

"Then 1 suggest you report to sickbay."

 

"What about B'Elanna?"

 

"Her too."

 

She was already heading for the door as he dragged his own robe off the floor. "Maybe we should use the transporter-wait for me!"

 

B'Elanna was taking small shuffling steps, bat moving right

 

along at a quick enough pace that Paris had to step lively to keep up.

 

"Don't you think we should-"

 

"I can walk. I'm pregnant, not crippled."

 

She sounded mad. Was she supposed to sound mad? Who was she mad at?

 

Uh-oh.

 

"Can I-is there anything-"

 

"No, Tom, you've already done everything you could possibly do to me. Sorry-for me."

 

"Aw, come on," he implored, daring to take her elbow. "You wanted this, didn't you? It's a little late to change your mind, isn't it?"

 

"I haven't changed my mind. I don't want to be pregnant anymore. I can't eat, I can't breathe, I can't walk, I can't fight, and I feel like a damned Trill. And don't touch me."

 

For somebody who couldn't breathe, she was doing a good job talking. Not touching her was hard-he wanted to help, guide, lead-something. All she would let him do was open the turbolift a second before she got there so she didn't have to break her stride.

 

Two decks seemed like twenty. Then came the long corridor to sickbay. Paris felt as if they were crossing a tundra.

 

The Doctor was saucily stoic as Paris more or less herded B'Elanna into sickbay. "Right here, please," he said, indicating his favorite diagnostic couch. "So, Miss Torres, you believe you're ready to deliver this parcel?"

 

"I'm ready," she said on a little gasp. "I'm beyond ready. I'm-"

 

"No talking, please." As B'Elanna struggled to lie back on the clamshell, the Doctor studied her from shoulders to knees with his medical scanner and was done damnably fast.

 

"Well?" Paris urged. "Any minute now, right? Can you hurry it up somehow?"

 

The Doctor ignored him and doubled his scan. Finally he clicked the device off and cryptically said, "You're going to have a very healthy baby. But not tonight."

 

"Tell me you're joking!" B'Elanna grumped.

 

"You're experiencing false labor, Lieutenant."

 

"Again?" Paris blurted.

 

"As I explained the last time, it's a common occurrence, especially among Klingons-"

 

B'Elanna struck the sides of the couch with her sharp fists. "I want this thing out of me!"

 

"Misdirected rage," the Doctor commented. "Another common occurrence among Klingons."

 

Paris felt as if his face were about to fall off. He rubbed it and moaned, "Can't you induce?"

 

"I wouldn't recommend it."

 

"If this keeps happening, we'll never get any sleep."

 

"You think it's bad now?"

 

Paris exchanged a contemplative gaze with his wife, who looked every bit as dismayed as angry. Well, she could be as angry as she wanted to, couldn't she? This one little person was the only creature in the galaxy who didn't particularly care how much she ranted. The baby was in charge.

 

Captain Janeway was glad of the interruption when Chakotay streamed into her ready room and rescued her from having to scan the power ratio reports from belowdecks. During these long periods of busy work-which really did have to be done for the sakes of preparedness and conservation-she always tried to remind herself that the boring times in space were offset by truly

 

dangerous and ghastly adventures. Still during one she often craved the other.

 

"It happened again," Chakotay mentioned right off. His strong features and gentle charming eyes brightened the ready room and set off a competition between stars passing outside the viewport.

 

Janeway stretched back and smiled. "That baby's leading us on. When did it happen?"

 

"Oh four hundred."

 

She winced in empathy for Paris and B'Elanna. Another night's sleep ruined. "How many false alarms does this make?"

 

"Three. That we know of."

 

"That baby's as stubborn as her mother."

 

Chakotay smiled. "Harry's starting a pool to see who can guess the actual date and time of birth."

 

"Tell him to put me down for next Friday, twenty-three hundred hours. Anything else?"

 

Chakotay shrugged lightly, every bit as bored as she was. Technically he was in command now, and he almost never bothered her during her off-watch hours for anything other than two good reasons-acute danger to the ship, or acute boredom for the first officer.

 

"Crewman Chell's asked about taking over in the mess hall full time."

 

Whew-they really were scraping the bottom of the barrel. A flash of reality struck Janeway that on a ship of the line, the captain and first officer would never even hear about who was handling the mess hall. The whole structure of running a ship simply prevented the minute details of life belowdecks from filtering up so high. This was more like silly gossip than a problem for command officers.

 

True, the ship's cook Could make or break the quality of life

 

belowdecks, especially in a near-survival situation, and could keep the crew going, but this just wasn't the kind of thing she should have to be discussing with her first officer.

 

Janeway threw it a bone anyway. "Neelix left some pretty big pots to fill. Does Mr. Chell think he's up to the challenge?"

 

"Apparently so," Chakotay said casually, and handed her a padd. "He prepared a sample menu."

 

Janeway scanned the information and crinkled her nose. "Plasma leek soup? Chicken warp-core-don-bleu?"

 

"If his cooking's as bad as his puns, we're in trouble."

 

"Oh, I don't know... I wouldn't mind giving his red-alert chili a try ... feel like having lunch?"

 

"I'd love to. But I already have plans. Rain check?"

 

"Absolutely." He turned and headed for the door, which in fact opened at his approach before he changed his mind and peered at her over his shoulder.

 

Janeway felt his gaze even though she had gone back to the work on her desk. When she didn't hear the door close, she looked up. "What's wrong?"

 

"Yes. What's wrong with you?"

 

"Psychic, are we, Chakotay?"

 

He strode back toward the desk and pressed one finger to the black surface. "You've been more nervous than Tom. You're not giving birth to this baby, you know. It's Tom and B'Elanna's problem."

 

"Is it?" She drew a long breath. "I thought I'd put my misgivings to rest."

 

"Kathryn, you can't stop them from starting families. It's one way they feel less captive."

 

In a kind of annoyed fitfulness, Janeway pulled her fingers through her hair an d tried to relax. "A long time ago, I came to

 

a decision that there would be no children on Voyager. Remember?"

 

"I do remember. You suffered over that decision. And if memory serves, it was just a few months before Naomi was born."

 

She nodded at the irony. "Yes, it was one of those brilliant command decisions that lasted about six seconds before I had to swallow it."

 

"The only other option is find a planet, park the ship and plant a colony, and start our lives over there. The idea has come up before."

 

Janeway's chair squeaked under her as she pivoted and put one foot up on the leg of her desk. She fixed her eyes on the part of the wall where the viewport met the bulkhead and got very interested in the seam. "I've been over and over this. Voyager is a Starfleet ship on a mission. It's not our ship ... it belongs to the people of the Federation. They built it, supported it, educated all of us and sent us into space with this fabulous resource .. . it's our sworn duty to return this vessel and its power back into their hands.

 

"Our priority is to return this ship and its strength and all we know about the Borg to the Federation so we can mount a singular plan to deal with them. That's our mission. Our only mission." She stood up and stretched her legs-how long had she been sitting? "If we forget that, we're just the passengers on some vague journey whose end we can't plot out."

 

"No one's forgetting that," Chakotay pointed out. "No captain in Starfleet has ever had to command the kind of ship you have here or this kind of mission. We only brought half the 'the book' to the Delta Quadrant with us."

 

"Seven years, Chakotay . .." Janeway murmured. "Two years longer than the usual deep-space mission, and those are usually punctuated with home leave from time to time. And our mission

 

wasn't a long one anyway. They crew was expecting to go home after a few months at the longest. Paris didn't even know B'Elanna. Tuvok has a wife and five children. Five! You and I were on opposite sides of a local conflict... my setter had had puppies ..."

 

"I think we can forgive ourselves for improvisation, don't you?" he suggested. "You're mourning the fact that we've been lost for seven years. How about giving ourselves credit for having survived seven years when we didn't in any way intend to be out so long? Most ships are provisioned for months before a voyage like this. We've actually learned to be comfortable."

 

"Too comfortable," Janeway complained. "Naomi was one thing; an entire second generation, growing up on this ship, makes me very conscious of the time that's passing. Tom and B'Elanna will have one child to worry about, but I have a ship full of crew to think of.

 

"What if I have to order Tom or B'Elanna to put their life at risk? A captain has to be ready to do that. I don't know how the Galaxy-class captains handled it. Can I put the best officer to a dangerous task? Or will I unconsciously pick and choose among those who haven't married or had babies? That's not fair to the other crewmen, if certain people can opt themselves out of the risk factor-"

 

"You're overthinking." Chakotay leaned back a little.

 

She folded her arms, lowered her chin, and stated, "I'm not. I hope Tom, or B'Elanna, or the other parents to come, if and when, and their children can forgive me-or you-when we have to put one, or both, or all of them ... on the line."

 

"Cargo bay."

 

His watch ended before he noticed. The captain came to take over before Chakotay was really ready to leave the bridge.

 

Something about their conversation troubled him and made him want to stay up there.

 

The turbolift hummed around him, content in its purpose to deliver him to the bay as ordered. At least it knew where it was going.

 

But with Janeway there and no emergency, he made himself let go. For countless men through the history of Earth and of other planets, life on ships was an accepted way. But she was right-it was no kind of family life. Usually it made for long periods away from kith and kin, but months, not years upon years. Even the longest whaling voyages of Earth, hundreds of years ago, were two-year missions, and the crew on board all understood what they were in for.

 

He had to admit Kathryn was right to worry. They could pretend these things weren't factors, but only pretend.

 

What else? Stop their shipmates from forming relationships and starting their lives until they were back in Federation space? Voyager was an island unto herself, a little community living inside a floating fortress.

 

He was glad he hadn't made the mistake of telling the captain where he was going for lunch.

 

The cargo bay, oddly, was one of few places aboard a ship where there was lots of space but no people. Alway immaculate, because the faintest filth could clog up a shuttle's systems and cause big trouble on the go, the bay smelled of cleaning fluids and other control elements-and lunch meat?

 

The lights were dimmed, and a skyport had been opened to show the stars-as if Voyager's, crew hadn't seen enough of stars for a couple of lifetimes. In the middle of the bay's launch roundhouse tarmac was Seven of Nine, quaintly crouched as she spread out a checkered blanket.

 

Seven was a gorgeous woman standing or sitting, no doubt

 

about that, and the one-piece molded suit that creased every crease and followed every curve simply added to her mystique, but squatting on the tarmac and using those long arms and spindlelike fingers to spread something as mundane as a picnic blanket absolutely shattered any hope of propriety. Chakotay paused at the entryway for a few seconds, appreciating nature's talent for sculpture.

 

After a moment, he forced himself to stride in. If she saw him watching her, she wouldn't understand. Deprived of a normal human childhood and adolescence, Seven had never been at ease with the way men looked at her. Having no barometer of social tenderizing with which to judge things as fleeting as physical presence, she didn't know she was an eagle's cry from average.

 

"What's all this?" he asked.

 

Seven glanced up at him, then began unpacking a plastic container full of food. "A picnic. My research indicated it was an appropriate third date."

 

"You didn't have to go to this much trouble .. ."

 

"If this makes you uncomfortable, I could prepare a less elaborate meal."

 

"No-don't change a thing. This is perfection."

 

He sat down on the blanket and crossed his legs. The reduced lighting caused glossy bands on Seven's tightly rolled blond hair. Her large eyes were like cactus flowers on a dune, somewhat severe in their mystery, banded by the few remaining Borg implants on her smooth skin.

 

Perhaps some people would think it odd that Chakotay had crossed the line and attempted the dreaded 'r' word with her ... a relationship. More than a friendship, more than crew-mates, a step beyond the wisdom of equality the captain had just been talking about, a bond of affection between two people on

 

Voyager was a species unto itself. This was a closed society. Most of the prospects for romance that the crew would ever encounter were already here. Certain crew members' courting others wasn't unheard of-just rarely successful.

 

If pressed, Chakotay might've been made to admit that he saw something in Seven, despite her flat-toned voice and her mechanical approach to daily life, leftovers from existence as an assimilated Borg drone. She wasn't the only drone who had been liberated from the Collective, but somehow he sensed she had never been fully assimilated. Somehow her human spirit had survived in a chilling environment and she had remained connected, by however thin a thread, to her individuality. He sensed she didn't perceive her own inner strength, that the captured human child had been pervading enough to cling to herself somewhere deep inside her invaded mind, and she had been assimilated for a very long time. Chakotay doubted he could've hung on so long.

 

Actually, the picnic was perfection. She had "researched" exactly what was supposed to be in the typical, traditional, prescribed picnic. There was even soda pop in replicated bottles and meat that had been rolled out into sandwich-sized squares, and some suspiciously papery potato chips.

 

"Where did you get all this food? Chell's running the mess hall with an iron hand, if a tongue in cheek. I don't think he'll be as much of a social lubricant as Neelix was."

 

"Neelix spoke with him over the long-range subspace. He likes the idea of playing 'matchmaker.' "

 

Chakotay watched her eyes. "You don't know what that means, do you?"

 

"Yes," she said, and left it at that.

 

"Have you spoken to Neelix?"

 

"We have a standing appointment every third day to play kadis-kot by remote, at least until Voyager is out of range."

 

Chakotay tipped his head sadly. "As difficult as that day will be, we all hope it'll come soon. Sometimes I don't think we know what we really want. If it weren't for the captain's ability to cling to one vision and a sense of purpose, I think we would've all scattered long ago, gone off in sixty different directions, searching for some kind of fulfillment... or just not survived. Instead we have picnics, games, food .. . and babies for shipmates. Not all bad."

 

She tried to understand, but he could tell most of his idle chat was floating past her without taking a grip. Seven knew only two kinds of life-the Borg Collective, and the starship.

 

"You're very pretty in this light," he mentioned.

 

"Thank you," she said, handing him a plastic plate. "You're very pretty too."

 

"Oh ... thanks. My mother used to tell me the same thing."

 

"I didn't realize." Seven finished laying out the food in a very specific pattern of right angles, and sat down beside him, her spine rod-straight.

 

"Realize what?" he asked.

 

"The similarity I bear with your mother. I shall take it as a compliment. Most people regard their mothers with a positive attitude."

 

"Depends on the mother," he said, "but I liked mine." He picked up one of the bottle s of pop and hoped there was something inside other than colored water. "You don't really remind me of my mother. You just made me think of her for a second."

 

She looked up. "What's the difference?"

 

He slugged the drink. Cold, but no carbonation. Half right. "I don't know ... you're not like her in very many ways-hardly any, actually. But she was curious about the things around her.

 

You both have curiosity in common. And she was a strong person. You have that too."

 

Seven raised her hand and flexed it.

 

Chakotay smiled. "Not that kind of strong."

 

"What other kind is there? Odor?"

 

This time he rocked back and laughed. "Y'know, you're a lot funnier than anybody gives you credit for."

 

Perplexed, she watched him laugh. "I did not mean to make a joke."

 

He nodded and leaned back on his elbow. "Seven, that's the best kind. Hand me a sandwich."

 

Commander Tuvok sat at the kal-toh table in the mess hall, opposite Icheb. He was becoming accustomed to having liberated Borg on the ship, sooner than he had previously calculated. It was Icheb's move.

 

The glittering pile of tiny rods on the table, each precariously positioned into a geodesic, testified to nearly an hour of gaming. Though the formation appeared chaotic, it could not be so and still maintain its dimensionality. Putting his complex Vulcan faculties to work on the formation, Tuvok calculated the stress points and engineered a multidimensional replica of the geodesic in his mind, then established every possible future arrangement with added rods.

 

Icheb seemed unable to calculate any possibilities at all. He hovered, a rod in hand, and began to make his move.

 

A spontaneous cough from the side interrupted Icheb's attempt. A few steps away, Mr. Kim was making a pretense of disinterest. Thus affected, Icheb changed his strategy, moving the rod to a new position.

 

Tuvok cast a disapproving glance at Kim before addressing

 

Icheb directly. "In the interest of fair play, I should inform you that Mr. Kim has never defeated me at kal-toh."

 

Icheb paused, considering the new information, processed it, and altered his strategy once again. He moved his rod back to the original position and inserted it into the structure.

 

Kim sighed. "You should've listened to me."

 

Icheb said nothing, but clearly doubted himself. Curious that a former Borg, so deeply intertwined in an orderly structure, would be easily confused. Of course, a typical drone had a limited program for purpose and was not encouraged to act independently in any way. Even a simple game was, for Icheb, an insurmountable challenge of mind and design.

 

On the sideline, Harry Kim's foot accidentally brushed the leg of Tuvok's chair. Tuvok blinked out of his thoughts, analyzed the altered structure, made a conclusion, and inserted his own rod into a position near the top of the geo-design. The structure began to shimmer, and changed its own shape to adjust to his installation.

 

"Kal-toh is as much a game of patience as it is of logic. An experienced player will sometimes take several hours to decide his next move. In some cases, even days are necessary to properly assess-"

 

Without taking this as a suggestion, Icheb simply pushed another rod into the structure. Almost immediately!

 

The structure shimmered again, but this time with vigor, and crackled into a perfect symmetrical shape.

 

"Kal-toh!" Icheb cried in victory.

 

Kim actually left the deck briefly. "You beat him!"

 

Impossible!

 

Tuvok controlled his reaction in a way he hoped would be admirable to his forebears. Still, the shock penetrated his chest and caused him to skip a breath.

 

"Congratulations," he said, perforce.

 

Icheb fidgeted as if he had done something wrong. "I'm sure it was just beginner's luck, sir. I'd offer you a rematch, but I'm due in astrometrics--"

 

"Another time, perhaps."

 

Apparently eager for escape, Icheb exited with dispatch. Kim, however, quickly slid into the seat opposite Tuvok.

 

"He may have to go," Kim said, "but I'm free. And I'm feeling lucky!" He rubbed his hands together and contemplated the sparkling structure between them.

 

Tuvok forced himself to inhale, then to breathe normally. The structure between them was the manifestation of random chance. It must be. There was no other-

 

Deceit. Self-deceit.

 

He stood quickly. "Excuse me, Ensign."

 

As he stepped abruptly for the door, Kim called, "It's only a game, Tuvok ..."

 

He went straight to the sickbay. His arms and legs seemed stiff, his joints aching. Tension could produce those repercussions.

 

"Tuvok?" The Doctor met him near the door as if expecting him. "Self-diagnosing again?"

 

"Doctor, you must examine me earlier than scheduled."

 

"I really don't think there's a reason to-"

 

"I lost a round of kal-toh. To Icheb."

 

"Oh . . . please make yourself comfortable. I'll see to you immediately. Icheb's an exceptionally bright young man. Did it occur to you that he might simply be a better player?"

 

The Doctor collected his medical tricorder from its recharge base and began to scan Tuvok even before he was completely settled.

 

"My loss was the result of another lapse in concentration," Tuvok told him.

 

The tricorder murmured at his ear. Indeed it seemed several decibels louder than usual. He concluded that he was more sensitive than usual. The device could not be adjusted for volume. Thus it was he, himself, who was malfunctioning.

 

"I am detecting lower neuropeptide levels," the Doctor ultimately admitted.

 

Tuvok did not meet the searching eyes of the hologram. "As I suspected. My condition's deteriorating."

 

"It's a minor change," the Doctor said. "We knew it would happen. I simply need to increase your medication."

 

The Doctor was prone to understate critical problems. Tuvok knew that, yet also appreciated the attempt to comfort him in his concerns. There was no denied fact. The Doctor had no way to treat a Vulcan neurological defect on a long-term basis. Voyager's medical files were up to the highest Federation standard, but that standard had stopped advancing seven years ago. There were no new data to enhance the system, no flow of brilliance from many quarters. Except for information gathered about alien life here in the Delta Quadrant, Voyager's medical facility was in a kind of stasis. When it came to Vulcans, Tuvok himself was the only case study. Thus, the Doctor might log the progress of this disease for use on other Vulcans at a future time, but Tuvok knew his own prospects for improvement.

 

At which point would he become useless to the ship? Would he sense the changes accurately? Would he be able to be of use to the captain long enough to make a difference for the crew's future?

 

Should he begin to train someone else in his duties? Simply by virtue of his being a Vulcan, three crewmen would be required to replace him.

 

He had never wanted to be a teacher...

 

A hypospray pressed to his arm and shook him from his troubled thoughts.

 

'Thank you, Doctor," he said. Soon his mind would clear.

 

He stood up, steadied himself, and moved toward the door.

 

"Commander-"

 

Tuvok paused, and turned at the Doctor's summons.

 

The Doctor's expression was solicitous. "I understand your desire for privacy, but maybe it's time we informed the captain."

 

"/ will inform her," Tuvok said with unnecessary force, "if and when the disorder begins to affect the performance of my duties."

 

He managed to exit before the .experience began to show upon his face or in his stride.

 

Was fear an emotion?

 

 

CHAPTER S

 

"YOUR MOVE."

 

"Green, grid twelve-ten."

 

The astrometrics lab was working on automatic, scanning the skies. Seven of Nine listened to the readouts as they murmured in the background, but gave them no undue attention. The machines were at their finest tuning possible and would alert her if there were some disturbance in the scans.

 

She concentrated instead upon the kadis-kot board on top of her console. On the domescreen optical, a large picture of Neelix's face added a sense of community to the otherwise antiseptic lab. Community was important.

 

"Red," Seven said, "grid three-thirteen."

 

She moved her chip accordingly.

 

"Tricky," Neelix said.

 

Was this approval of her move? She believed so.

 

"How is Brax?" she asked as she waited for him to consider his response tactic.

 

"Wonderful," Neelix said with enthusiasm. "Thanks for asking. I know I can never replace his father, but. . ."

 

His voice trailed off.

 

Seven offered encouragement. "I have no doubt the boy looks up to you."

 

Neelix smiled in a way that gratified her. "Yellow, grid one-one." As she moved his chip in representation of him, he added, "I haven't told anyone, but I'm thinking of asking Dexa to marry me."

 

"She'd be wise to accept," Seven said. She had found Neelix to be a forthright person, friendly and accepting. Such a marriage would be a prized union.

 

Neelix was smiling at her. "Enough about my love life. How's yours?"

 

Something about the question made her aware of herself. This self-awareness was one of the more interesting and disturbing elements of her life without the Collective, yet somehow she was always excited by it.

 

"I don't have a 'love life,' " she said.

 

"Oh? What would you call your relationship with Commander Chakotay?"

 

"It's your turn."

 

Why did she wish so much for privacy on this subject? She had never cared before what was said between herself and the commander, or who overheard them. Neelix had been kind to her, and encouraging in this new venture, this concept of romance and the joining of two people in a special bond. Perhaps he was succeeding, for this kind of mutuality was traditionally personal. Did she have "a relationship"?

 

"Actually," Neelix said, "it's yours. At least tell me how he liked the picnic."

 

She glanced at the domescreen and allowed herself to confide in him. "It was an enjoyable experience for both of us. Thank you for suggesting it."

 

"Any time." He began another question, but was interrupted by a unit alarm.

 

Seven dismissed herself from the game board and attended the wailing console.

 

"What is it?" Neelix asked. His tone of voice suggested that he wished to be back aboard Voyager, participating in whatever was about to occur.

 

"Long-range sensors are detecting extremely high neutrino emissions," she read off the monitor, "accompanied by intermittent graviton flux . . . approximately three light-years away."

 

Very close. Why had such readings been silent until the ship was so near?

 

"A wormhole?" Neelix asked.

 

"I'm not sure. I'll need to run additional scans."

 

"We can finish our game tomorrow."

 

Lost in her work, Seven nodded without meeting his gaze. "I'll contact you at the usual time."

 

She affixed her eyes firmly on the strange readings and forced the equipment to focus, then focus again on the impulses flying into the sensors. The readings were cluttered, indecipherable. Wormhole... the data seemed correct, but skittish. It kept changing position.

 

Seven changed the focus of the sensors several times on a nebula that the starship was quickly approaching-less than one light-year now.

 

Suddenly the calibrations snapped to clarity. When they did, Seven's human heart began to pound.

 

Voyager's bridge was the town square of their universe. When critical information arrived, it came here first. Captain Janeway, Chakotay, Tom Paris, and Tuvok had mustered to hear a stunning report from Seven and Harry Kim, and to look at the graphic of the huge churning golden nebula they now skirted. The nebula was heavily clouded, with distinct edges, probably held by magnetic forces that might someday draw all this matter into a single spatial body.

 

The main screen showed only the stirring sight of the nebular gases. However, an auxiliary monitor brightened with additional information, an analytical graphic of the nebula.

 

Kathryn Janeway peered at the graphic and fought her churning stomach. The sight wasn't making her ill-it was making her excited. The core of the nebula, like the eye of a hurricane, was clear of gases or matter. Inside that clearing were hundreds of blinking dots.

 

Seven of Nine stood near the monitor, reporting what she knew so far.

 

"The emissions are occurring at the center of the nebula," she said. "There appear to be hundreds of distinct sources."

 

Harry was nearly bouncing on his toes. "Which could translate into hundreds of wormholes!"

 

Though everyone fidgeted with the thrill of this discovery, Seven remained anchored to the data. "The radiation is interfering with our sensors, but if Ensign Kim's enthusiasm turns out to be justified, it could be the most concentrated occurrence of wormholes ever recorded."

 

"Any idea where they lead?" Janeway's question gave voice to the frustrated eagerness she felt churning around her from every member of the bridge crew.

 

"Not yet," Kim said, "but if any one of them goes to the Alpha Quadrant-!"

 

Choked by his own surge of anticipation, he couldn't even finish the sentence.

 

Tom Paris smiled at him. "Who knows, Harry? Maybe it'll take us right into your parents' living room."

 

Janeway glanced around at her crew. They were holding their breath-or pretending not to-and waiting for their captain to pick the right wormhole in the next five minutes and drive through it to the rousing cheers of their families at home.

 

Home. . .

 

But Janeway wasn't a tour director. It was her job to nurture their hopes while also guarding their very lives. She turned to the main screen and gazed at the enormous lightning-racked tumor in space with puffs of energized matter boiling in great thunder-heads the size of entire planets.

 

"Alter course, Mr. Paris," she began, measuring her volume and degree of enthusiasm. "Ensign Kim, when you speak to your mother, tell her we may need her to move the sofa. All of you, take your duty stations. Seven, tune astrotelemetries to prioritize those neutrino fluxes."

 

"Yes, Captain."

 

Janeway looked around and noted with satisfaction the sudden activity her orders had caused. They still behaved like a ship's crew when it counted. Chakotay was looking one by one at each monitor as he stood near Janeway. Tuvok and Kim went to their stations on the bridge. Seven had quickly gone to the lift and disappeared, heading for astrometrics.

 

"Mr. Chakotay, let's have red alert. Call all hands."

 

"All hands, Captain." He pressed the comm on his link panel. "All hands on deck. Red alert. All hands to emergency stations. Report readiness to the first officer."

 

"Secure for turbulence," Janeway added. "Batten all systems.

 

Secure deflector shields and man all primary and auxiliary stations shipwide. Clear the outer areas and flush the nonessential plasma systems."

 

"All departments complying," Chakotay confirmed, monitoring the changes on his private readouts, with each segment of the ship flashing from red to green as the crew mustered from their quarters or the mess hall and systems were manned and locked down. "Uh-oh... B'Elanna requests permission to report to engineering."

 

Janeway glanced at him. "Denied. She's to report to sickbay."

 

"And you want me to tell her?"

 

"I'll tell her, if you're not up to the challenge."

 

"Something tells me we'd rather have you alive. Maybe I'll have the Doctor tell her."

 

"Good idea."

 

She fell to an uneasy silence. She had to keep her mouth shut now. Sometimes the captain's job was to let everyone else do theirs. They needed time to get settled, countercheck and secure all ship's systems, make sure the shields were stable and the ship was battened down for the storm of storms. Luckily, unlike in a battle situation, she had the time to give.

 

While she waited, she communed with the nebula. Nebulas were one of the most unpredictable of natural phenomena. They had no patterns of action, and almost no similarities that could be counted upon. Each one was unique, and even once you were inside the currents couldn't necessarily be plotted, considering thousands of individual storms working upon each other at conflicting pressure levels. They were in for a ride.

 

"Captain, we're secure for turbulence," Chakotay reported, sounding eminently pleased with how well they were doing despite their lack of a chief engineer.

 

As Paris turned the starship toward the murky mass, the over-

 

whelming size of the nebula began to make itself known. It was greater than any sea. They could barely read the width of it, never mind the height from their vantage point about a third of the way down the body of the obstruction.

 

"Maybe Chell should add Nebula Soup to his menu," Paris commented when the first shocks of electrical disruption washed across the primary hull and pressed the nacelles downward.

 

The second jolt was harder. Janeway grabbed the rail. "Shields?"

 

"Holding," Tuvok responded.

 

"Bridge to astrometries."

 

"Astrometrics. Seven."

 

"Any more data on those neutrino emissions?"

 

"Negative, Captain. I still can't get a clear scan,"

 

"Distance to the center?"

 

"Six million kilometers."

 

The ship no longer jolted, but now began to shake with a bone-deep vibration that didn't stop. Rather it increased with every kilometer.

 

"What is it?" she asked.

 

Tuvok answered, "I'm detecting a tritanium signature, bearing three-four-two mark five."

 

"Whatever it is," Paris added, "it's close."

 

Tritanium. . . certainly wasn't anything naturally created in this maelstrom that now kicked them from side to side.

 

"Evasive maneuvers," she ordered by way of precaution. This wasn't the time or place for a collision.

 

Paris already had a pattern plotted and slid the ship into a new angle of entry. The vibration began to subside.

 

"Was it a ship?" Chakotay asked.

 

"Possibly." Tuvok kept working.

 

Janeway's instincts wouldn't turn down the alarms in her

 

head. The ship seemed to be moving smoothly, but trita-nium . . . why would there be tritanium?

 

The main screen was a fuming yellow-green cauldron now, red-veined and flashing, with no points of reference, no way to judge visually the distance between clumps of active gas and the poisoned expanses pressing them apart. Even the experienced eye could make no dependable judgments. Everything would be a guess-instinct.

 

"Another tritanium signature!" Kim shouted. "Right on top of us!"

 

The captain parted her lips to give an order, to change the angle of entry again in favor of their strongest shields, when the ship suddenly boomed again with vibration, ten times worse!

 

On the main screen, the murk parted and with stunning clarity a gargantuan Borg cube cut through the mustardy cloud, on a dead-ahead collision course with Voyager!

 

 

CHAPTER 1O

 

'TOM!"

 

Janeway never even had the chance to choose a direction for evasive actions. She blurted the single cry to Paris, lost in the roar of engines and vibration, but the ship was already moving. A good helmsman wouldn't hit something just because he didn't have an order not to.

 

The ship veered sharply down and to starboard, missing the icebreaker prow of one of the cube's corners. A Borg cube! What were they doing here? Why hadn't the ship's systems recognized the- When the pressure in her head changed, she shouted, "Get us out of here!"

 

But Paris had anticipated the obvious and was already turning the starship in a stomach-bending loop downward and under the cube, around and toward the outside of the nebula. Within the first second the nebula gases swarmed in to cut the two vessels off from each other.

 

On the sensor graphics, the Borg cube's trajectory ran in

 

nearly a straight line, a completely different angle from the vector Voyager had just taken.

 

"Full impulse!"

 

Paris's voice was hoarse. "Impulse two-thirds ... full impulse."

 

Every heart pounded. Their thud racked Janeway's mind. She gritted her teeth and felt her cold hands on the rail. Five seconds ... ten ... the nebula parted and belched them out.

 

"Aft viewers," Chakotay anticipated, and brought up several angles of the nebula as they ran away from it.

 

"Tom, vector one-eight."

 

"One-eight. . ."

 

The ship turned upward and to port. He knew what she was after-to completely change course again in a random direction so their trail would be harder to trace. Every ship had emissions, and those might prove a problem. She might have to shut the impulse drive down and let the ship drift to create a cold trail. Also dangerous . . . momentum could be hard to build, and she might need it.

 

"Are they in pursuit?" she asked, breathless. "Did they see us?"

 

For several seconds, no one answered. If there were any hints on any dynoscanner, it could pop up almost anywhere. For such big beasts, the Borg cubes could be shockingly stealthy.

 

Tuvok was the first to dare a conclusion. "There's no evidence that the cube detected us."

 

No evidence. That meant nothing at all. Just because no evidence was found didn't mean there weren't reams of it tucked under covers.

 

"Where is it now?" Chakotay asked.

 

Janeway touched the nearest comm. "Astrotelemetrics, have you got a location on the Borg cube? Seven?"

 

"Yes, Captain, I triangulated on it as it passed. It's now almost three light-years away."

 

"How could they have not seen us?" Paris asked. "We came within ten meters of their hull!"

 

"The Borg wouldn't knowingly risk a collision," Tuvok told him. "The radiation must have interfered with their sensors as well as ours."

 

Harry Kim turned to Janeway. "If they can't detect us, we should go back!"

 

"1 wouldn't recommend that," Seven said from belowdecks. "My analysis of the tritanium signatures suggests there were at least forty-seven Borg vessels in the nebula."

 

"We can't just give up on those wormholes!"

 

"Oh, yes, we can," Janeway inflicted before this went too far in the wrong direction.

 

"What if we tried to modify the-"

 

She raised a hand. "Sorry, Mr. Kim. You may be the captain someday. But not today."

 

They didn't know what she meant. She felt the scouring gaze of every crewman. They wanted to go home, and they wanted to run away. The fear of Borg assimilation had become very real and immediate for Voyager's, crew. Visceral reactions told them to run for their lives.

 

But run where?

 

Then, there was the other side of the coin. A herd of angry bulls lay between them and a chance to get home before they were all too old to care. They wanted to go in and take their chances.

 

Why couldn't they just have a stroke of luck without the baggage?

 

Forty-seven Borg cubes ... forty-seven ...

 

"How're you feeling?" Tom Paris escorted his unhappy wife from sickbay toward their quarters before going back on duty.

 

"I feel put upon, strangled, and insulted."

 

"Come on! Who insulted you, B'Elanna? You haven't talked to anybody but me and the Doctor-"

 

"The captain," she grumbled. "Confining me to sickbay during red alert. Me! Sickbay! I'm the chief engineer!"

 

"Not this week, you're not."

 

"Why isn't this baby born? What takes so long? She's ready, I'm ready-we should just use the transporter."

 

Rather than argue with her, he cleared the door of their quarters so she could waddle right inside without pausing. She hated to pause. The momentum was hard to get going again.

 

She went straight to the only chair in which she was comfortable these days. He provided leverage, and soon she was seated, looking like a pressure cooker about to explode.

 

He smiled, but ruefully. There wasn't exactly joy in his anticipation, though he found some amusement in her. He flopped down on the edge of the bed and stared at their four feet generally mixed up down there.

 

"Forty-seven Borg cubes, B'Elanna... what were they all doing there? Did we stumble on Borg central? The terrible part is that I don't really care. I don't want to go back there, no matter what we find out. The whole episode scared me down to my socks."

 

"It's not like you to be afraid," she said.

 

With a shrug he admitted, "I'm not usually so shaky. I don't know, I've never felt this kind of scared ... not like I felt when I saw that cube ten feet off the bow. Poor Harry ... you should've seen his face. He wants to do more than just communicate with his parents over the Pathfinder. He really wants to be back there. Me, I've got nothing to go back for, but usually I can make my-

 

self forget. When I looked into Harry's eyes when we turned away from the nebula . . . B'Elanna, all I saw was the reflection of my drive to get out of there and never go back in. What does that make me? A coward?"

 

"You're not afraid for yourself," she reasoned. "I know you better."

 

"But I am! I've got a responsibility to stay alive now like never before. I can't take the kind of risks I used to take because now an innocent life is depending on me. I've got no business sticking my neck out anymore. Those are Borg out there, not Klingons!"

 

She gave him a quizzical glare and silently scolded him until he realized what he'd said.

 

Paris pressed a hand to his face. "I-didn't-mean that the way it sounded."

 

B'Elanna slouched a little deeper into the chair. "Let me get Seven up here and you can critique us both."

 

"Don't even joke about it," he moaned. "If we'd been collectivized ..." He lowered his voice and forced out the rest. "... what would've happened to our daughter?"

 

His wife's harsh expression mellowed at the idea and a brief silence fell between them. Neither of them could voice the true prospects. Would their child have simply been "removed"? Killed as a sort of useless parasite? Or assimilated with no chance for life other than as another Borg drone?

 

His head spun with terrible waking dreams. "We pretend that all the risk and danger and the not knowing whether we're going to be alive next month isn't here because there's nothing we can do about it. Why worry about something we just have to handle? But we became so casual about it that we're having a baby! What kind of world am I bringing a child into? What business do we have doing this?"

 

"Little late," she muttered. "But if you don't live life all the way while you have the chance, you're already dead. What's the use of surviving?"

 

He grumbled a halfhearted agreement and slipped back on an elbow. "This is tough. I feel like sending a long-range to my father and apologizing for what it was like to raise me! Do you have any idea what kind of kid I was?"

 

"Would you rather have died seven years ago," she asked, "so you didn't have to go through what we've all gone through together?"

 

Surprised by the strange question, he paused to decipher what she meant. "Well... no ..."

 

"Don't you think our daughter will feel the same way someday? If you asked her if she'd rather be alive on a starship, in trouble now and then, or never be born, what do you think she'd say?"

 

"Would she say, 'I want to be infiltrated with mechanics and turned into a living robot'?" He shook his head and tried to free himself of the recurring image of that Borg monstrosity rushing toward him and his arms aching as he wrenched the ship away from the very near miss. "When I saw that cube, I suddenly realized that my life really is different now."

 

Exhausted and lacking a night's sleep in days, B'Elanna suspended her physical frustration and brought out a touch of the circumspection she would need to juggle the coming event with her shipboard responsibilities and the fact that she too had a new set of priorities to work out. She shifted her unbalanced body a little to the left and placed her hand over his until he found the courage to look her in the eyes.

 

"Welcome to fatherhood," she said.

 

The frustrating evening led into an even more frustrating next day. By now everyone knew the captain hadn't made an adventurer's decision.

 

The crew's reaction ran about fifty-fifty, and tended to change by the hour. At first, the proximity to Borg cubes-so many, many Borg cubes-had pretty much chilled any daring spirits, with the exception of Harry Kim's. As the hours passed, some people grew more hungry for a chance, however speculative, to get home.

 

Tom Paris, whose hands shook for a good hour after the nebula encounter, had no trouble fixing the ship on a course away from the nebula. A nest of Borg cubes was plenty to crush him back into place.

 

So when Harry chased him down in the corridor on the way to the bridge, he had an idea what it was about.

 

"Tom!"

 

Paris had almost made it to the turbolift. He thought about hurrying, maybe pretending he had wax in his ears. His boots thumped on the corridor deck and guilted him into slowing down so Harry could catch up.

 

Harry's innocent face appeared beside him. "What are you doing when your watch ends?"

 

"No plans," Paris said. After all, he couldn't exactly make any plans, considering his family situation. "Why?"

 

"I've been thinking ... you and I should have some fun. One last adventure before you get too busy being a father."

 

Although Paris knew perfectly well what Harry was hedging toward, he tried to redirect. "Did you reserve some holodeck time?"

 

"I've got a better idea."

 

They stopped walking as Harry handed him a padd.

 

Paris almost didn't want to look at it. Unfortunately it was already in his hands and only one glance was needed to confirm the trouble he was very near getting into.

 

"This is your idea of fun?" he challenged.

 

"It'll work!" Harry insisted. "We just need to make a few modifications to the flyer-"

 

"We might as well just hand it over to the Borg!"

 

"How could that happen with the best pilot in the quadrant at the helm?"

 

Paris handed the padd back, rather roughly. "Nice try."

 

He started to walk away.

 

Harry gripped him by the arm. "If we go to the captain together, she'll be much more likely to approve my plan!"

 

"I don't want her to approve it."

 

"Where's your sense of adventure?"

 

Empathizing with his friend's deeper hopes, Paris freed his arm from the hard sell. To reject Harry this way, and to have to be harsh-it chafed.

 

"I left my sense of adventure in the nebula," he said sadly. "And I'm n ot going back for it."

 

Again he tried to step away.

 

Desperately, Harry called, "Don't you want to find your way home?"

 

"I am home, Harry."

 

Instantly, Paris regretted snapping at him. Just the tension ... all kinds.

 

Luckily, Harry's reaction of hurt didn't mar his attempt to lighten the moment with one last bit of bait as Paris stepped into the turbolift.

 

"Captain Proton would never walk away from a mission like this," he suggested.

 

Paris tried a smile, but it didn't convince either of them that his mood had improved or his fears mellowed.

 

"Captain Proton doesn't have a wife ... and a baby on the way." When the turbolift closed between them, they had more problems than they'd had when they met a few moments ago.

 

Chakotay sensed the change around the ship. Everyone was quieter, more introspective, dealing with the fact that they had run rather than taken on the complex challenge of finding a wormhole in a Borg haystack. Strange, though-nobody disagreed with the captain's decision to move on. There had been a time, however, when this ship's mission had not been so much precaution and forbearance.

 

Things had changed. There was a difference from their early days. The crew had flexed, changed, won and lost, released some crewmates, accepted others, and not all of them had signed up for a battleship. Kathryn was right-there were babies now, children, families. Even the crewmen who had intended to spend their lives in uniform had never imagined a single one-way mission where very little could be predicted or planned. They were on this ship, and apparently they were going to be here for a very long time.

 

Tom and B'Elanna had the right idea. Until now, Chakotay really hadn't been so sure. The change was subtle, but suddenly everyone aboard had concrete confirmation of where their futures were. No wormhole, no magic, no luck, no shortcuts home. If they wanted more than their general duties, they would have to build it for themselves, right here, today.

 

The astrometrics lab was a quiet place. Usually Seven was here alone, as she was this morning. She seemed surprised to see him when Chakotay entered, and reacted in a charmingly human way. Her eyes were like birds, the rest of her like a hungry dream.

 

"If you've come for my daily report," she offered, "it's not complete."

 

Chakotay tried not to swagger. "Actually, I'm here in an unofficial capacity. I was wondering if you'd like to get together again."

 

"To do what?"

 

Ah, the old-time loaded question. Did she have any idea of the sheer number of possible answers to that one? He ought to rattle off a few and completely confuse her. She was a lot funnier than she thought.

 

Or maybe Chakotay's sense of humor was warped. He should have himself tested.

 

He leaned on the console and shifted a little closer than officers usually prefer. She didn't back away.

 

"That would depend on your 'research,' " he said. "Would a quiet dinner be an appropriate fourth date?"

 

Seven's eyes widened. "I believe it would be a more appropriate fifth date."

 

Now who had the sense of humor?

 

He smiled and played her game. "I'm willing to skip ahead if you are..."

 

"How far ahead?"