Star Trek - Voy - 009 - Invasion, Book 4 Of 4 - The Final Fury

 

 

By Dafydd ab Hugh

 

 

PRELUDE

 

 

The war raged for a hundred thousand years.

 

 

The Furies once were hosts of heaven; but heaven was all but closed to them now. The Unclean swept across the vast expanse of space, across the 217 million star systems known mapped, and held in heaven by the Furies. The new enemy was unlike all those who had preceeded it: alone among the sentient races of the galaxy, the insectoid Unclean were unaffected by the Terrors unleashed upon the disobedient by the lords of heaven.

 

 

Taken by surprise, the host--six hundred and sixty-six separate races bound together into a single people--were driven first from the planets at the rim of the galaxy, whence the Unclean invaded, drinking energy and draining away the life-force of entire armadas of a million ships or more. Perhaps the Unclean were the cursed union of vermin and castaway subjects, fleeing their rightful lord on the Throne of the Autocrat. Perhaps instead they came from outside, and were not of this galaxy at all; the latter was the more popular speculation among the war leaders among the Furies--it mattered not, for the Unclean burst upon the

 

 

righteous hosts like an ocean upon the volcano, washing them away.

 

 

A fragment of a story dating from that dark time hinted at a greater darkness: that the subject races cast their lot with the Unclean, rebelling against their righteous masters. They stood their ground even when the Furies sent the Terrors. Though the subject races died like bugs beneath the Fury heel, and though the Terror lash was used against them over and over, still they maintained, fighting until the end of the first millennium--when the Furies were forced to retreat from the rim of the galaxy.

 

 

The farthest provinces were lost.

 

 

For century after century, the Furies retreated. There were battles--many times, the hosts stood against monstrous swarms that flew through the starry void without ships, without life-support. The first great stand engaged 93,109,907 Fury vessels carrying enough warriors to people a hundred planets against Unclean too numerous to count; but the records left by Subcrat Ramszak the Ok' San, who stood four meters tall and sported a hand where one ear should have been, gave the count as more than ten Unclean for every Fury.

 

 

The last great stand involved a mere fifty thousand ships, give or take, with warriors spread thin among them. Tiin,

 

 

the Cannibal Whose Bed Would Not Be Shared, commanded the final defense, this time from the Autocrat's chair, Tiin traced his ancestory back through an entirely male line for a thousand generations to Ramszak himself but he fared no better than his illustrious but defeated ancestor.

 

 

A small fleet of a few thousand ships lured the main contingent of the wasp like Unclean by attacking them from out of the black. The attack broke a four-century truce; but the hosts of heaven were not bound by promises made to insect minds.

 

 

The Unclean responded to the taunt. The entire remaining field-unity of Unclean pursued the marauding fleet; and when the last Fury ships retreated, they numbered twenty-one out of more than four thousand.

 

 

The enemy approached them from different vectors; but

 

 

when the swarms assembled for attack, and the Furies prepared to die, a blast of light engulfed them. The Furies fell through non space, their minds reeling from the passage.

 

 

The enemy made to follow the hosts... but as they approached, the light changed, their space-born, space living bodies melted, fused, reduced in seconds to atoms, and then less than atoms, and everything at last, after many steps, over the space of microseconds, transmuting to dead.

 

 

The light was so great that scientists among the subject races would be able to detect it even after three or four millennia. The swarms were decimated but not annihilated; the remaining wasps fell upon few remaining Furies as they passed through the swirling, gaseous debris that had once been living members of the Unclean.

 

 

Tiin was unprepared for his responsibility, he was, in the end, a poor representative of the line that had begun with Subcrat Ramszak. He lost control of his few ships, and the captains panicked, firing wildly... almost as if they were suddenly bathed with their own Terrors--though all Furies were, quite simply, immune to fear themselves.

 

 

Against the backdrop of a sky turned negative, black suns silhouetted against a sky yet white from the collapsing stars, a single, small host made the journey along the entirety of the wormhole, a trip that took four years--or no time at all. When they reached the other side, the light faded. Wherever they were, there would be no return to their bright black heaven.

 

 

It was not until they found and settled a planet that they realized the enormity of the Unclean victory... for the Furies were trapped in a hellish realm of space, so far from heaven that they sickened and began to die from sheer loneliness. The Fury surgeons studied the disease for hundreds of years. The symptoms were always the same: black depression, followed by ennui, then anomie, the loss of all ethical and moral boundaries. They grew their population, even while the best and most promising were struck down in their prime of intellect and will by the Factor, as it was called.

 

 

D'Mass, the greatest Autocrat-in-Exile, who was the last to unite all the Furies, himself diagnosed the Factor: they

 

 

had lost their way, their purpose, their reason for existing. The hosts of heaven were born to rule heaven, not watch it from so far away that the light they observed was generated by the stars of heaven at precisely the moment when Ramszak had staked everything on an all-or-nothing bid to destroy the Unclean... and had lost.

 

 

Under D'Mass, all of the Furies worked together to develop and construct an artificial wormhole to bring them back home. But when D'Mass died, his two sons fell to quarreling between themselves.

 

 

In the end, D'Vass sought to leave with nine-tenths of the Furies to found a new world and forget about heaven; while his brother Bin Mass chose to stay and direct all efforts to the artificial wormhole. But Bin Mass could not afford to lose the talent in D'Vass's host; they battled from dawn until dusk, then slept together as brothers, only to wake and do battle again.

 

 

Millions of Furies died in the war, slain by their brothers out of heaven. At last, D'Vass fled-but with a greatly diminished host, a mere forty thousand.

 

 

Bin Mass had conquered the hearts of his people; and by rededicating the Fury hosts to reclaiming heaven, no matter how long it might take, he conquered the Factor as well. No longer were the Furies lost and wandering; now they were focused and driven.

 

 

They would eradicate the Unclean from the blessed place, no matter what the cost. The time would be ripe someday; the moment would come. And when it did, the galaxy would tremble once more to the cold, brittle voice of the Autocrat.

 

 

CHAPTER

 

 

Captain Kathryn Jane way of the U.S.S. Voyager sat behind the desk in her quarters, swaying gently, trying to avoid actually becoming ill onto the stack of duty rosters littering the desktop. The ship rolled back and forth, causing the fluids in her inner ear to perform acrobatics.

 

 

Well, I knew it was going to happen, she thought; this far from the Federation, from the nearest star base, without any chance for maintenance or repair other than what the crew did themselves, Jane way knew the ship systems would begin to fail, one by one.

 

 

Unfortunately, the most recent one to fail was the inertial damper/gravi tic stabilizer system. Motion that ordinarily would be damped down to a slight vibration instead became a lurching, rolling gait that was causing terrible havoc with crew health... and morale.

 

 

Is this the torture that sailors on the old oceangoing ships had to endure? she wondered, swallowing several times. If it is, I wonder how anyone survived to cross a small lake, let alone an entire ocean!

 

 

She stood, feeling the air clammy against her sweaty skin.

 

 

Like most everyone else in Star fleet, Captain Jane way had ridden on sailboats, sloops, four-masters--in the holodeck. Controlled by a friendly computer that understood the unpleasantness of seasickness and minimized the roll, pitch, and especially yaw.

 

 

But the present nauseating dance was constant, uncontrolled, interminable... and worse, it included the fear, haunting the back of her mind, that if the ship hit a subspace fiber bundle, they would lurch violently--as they already had once, throwing everything, including Captain Jane way herself, to the deck in a heap.

 

 

Or into a bulkhead, headfirst; the holographic doctor was already treating one crew member who had fractured one of his vertebrae and suffered a serious concussion, the next time, someone could be killed.

 

 

Jane way cleared her throat, swallowing again.

 

 

"Jane way to Torres," she croaked; her voice was so strained, it took the computer a moment to recognize her.

 

 

"T-Torres here," said the equally strangled voice of the Voyager's chief engineer, Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres; Jane way felt an uncaptainlike pleasure when she noted that Torres's vaunted Klingon half did not prevent her from being as space sick as the rest of the crew.

 

 

"Do you have a new time estimate?"

 

 

There was no need to specify any further, the only problem on anybody's mind on the ship was the failure of the gravi tic stabilizers.

 

 

"Estimate... excuse me, Captain." The sound cut off momentarily. When it returned, B'Elanna Torres's voice sounded a bit weaker.

 

 

"Estimate unchanged. Twelve to twenty-four hours, depending on..."

 

 

"On?"

 

 

"On whether we can fix it at all, using these damned bureaucratic, stupid, useless--"

 

 

A new voice chimed in, annoyed; Lieutenant Carey rose to defend Federation procedure against un orthodoxy.

 

 

"Depending on whether someone who shall remain nameless will just stick to the process, instead of trying a hundred so-called shortcuts!"

 

 

Damn, thought the captain; they've been doing so well! It must be the nausea, she decided; everyone was edgy, including Jane way herself.

 

 

The captain reached into the depths of her soul, bypassing as well as she could the depths of her stomach; she spoke with the Command Tone she had learned at the Academy.

 

 

"That is enough, people. We're in a difficult enough situation without you two bickering. Torres, would it help if I were to reconfigure the stabilizers to run off the replicatorholodeck power grid?"

 

 

"Nothing will help," said the half-Klingon engineer, letting her pessimistic human side take over.

 

 

"We'll never get the ship steady. I'm sick, and I just wish I were back in a nice, safe Maquis ship without all this weird, bioneural circuitry!"

 

 

Jane way forced the conversation back to solutions.

 

 

"I'm going to redirect the power, keep working, stop arguing, and give me a better time estimate in fifteen minutes. Jane way out."

 

 

The captain stood; it was hard to maintain balance with the deck rolling beneath her feet, but the nausea was less intense.

 

 

If the Voyager struck another subspace fiber bundle, she would just have to hope she didn't break anything on the way down.

 

 

Her stateroom was spacious by Star fleet standards... almost as large as any bachelor apartment in a minor city on any insignificant planet in the Federation. But she loved it; it was hers. The entire ship was her stateroom.

 

 

A voice full of peeved indignation invaded her space. "Neelix to Captain Jane way!" Neelix, the ship's Talaxian cook, had never quite caught on to the fact that he did not need to bellow when initiating communications; the computer would figure it out at normal speaking volume.

 

 

"Jane way here. What's wrong, Neelix?" She was glad not to be in Neelix's kitchen; she could imagine the carnage wreaked upon pots, pans, and vats of food by the failed stabilizers.

 

 

"What's wrong is this insufferable turbulence! I'm trying to prepare a bravura meal for the crew, and I can't even keep my ingredients from flying off the counters onto the floor!"

 

 

"Neelix, don't you think if we could stop the rolling, we would have already?" Ouch! Didn't mean to be that harsh.

 

 

"We're working on it, Neelix." She leaned against her desk as the ship lurched again; a stack of reports fell to the deck with a loud clatter.

 

 

"Well, why don't you simply stop the ship until you fix the problem? Surely we can afford one or two days' delay. But we can ill afford a crew too sick to even enjoy the simple culinary pleasures."

 

 

Jane way rolled her eyes, grateful that the comm link was auditory only. She waited a couple of beats until she could speak calmly.

 

 

"Neelix, if we stop the ship in our present situation, without gravi tic stabilizers, the angular velocity of the warp-core reaction itself will cause the ship to start spinning like a top."

 

 

"Really? What an odd design decision."

 

 

"We're going the speed we're going precisely because it minimizes the roll."

 

 

"This is the minimum?"

 

 

"This is the minimum, Neelix. Now please return to your duties and let me return to mine. Jane way... wait, what did you say you were cooking?"

 

 

"I didn't say. I'm cooking pate of Den ethan blood bladder, Ocampan cream punch, and a Federation dish whose recipe I found in the computer... Three-Cheese Quiche!"

 

 

"Oh," said the captain, feeling her stomach begin to roll in the opposite direction from the ship.

 

 

"Very--very good. Carry on.

 

 

Jane way out."

 

 

Swallowing repeatedly, she shuffled forward through the door and onto the bridge.

 

 

"Captain on the bridge," chimed the computer protocol program, but as usual nobody paid any attention; Captain Jane way was long on performance but short on ritual.

 

 

Everyone on the bridge looked grim-faced but determined; determined not to disgrace himself by actually succumbing to space sickness, she thought. The curved bridge console actually seemed to warp slightly, another trick of the instability.

 

 

Lieutenant Tom Paris used his elbows to

 

 

steady himself against the helm; his hands played across the console, making minor adjustments. Jane way didn't know whether they did any good; perhaps it just made Paris feel better to be "doing something."

 

 

Ensign Harry Kim hunched over his console, staring at his viewer, he had nothing much to do at the moment, but he continued scanning the sector anyway... probably for the same reason Paris made continual course adjustments.

 

 

Jane way was surprised to note that even Lieutenant Tuvok, who normally stood at his tactical station, was seated.

 

 

She stood at the door to her ready room, preventing it from closing, and surveyed the bridge crew more carefully assessing their health. Paris looked jovial and full of bonhomie; but he sweated profusely, and his face was white. Tuvok appeared at first glance to be unaffected by the ship's motion, but Jane way knew him well enough to understand that he felt as sick as everyone else; he simply placed the feeling in the same category as an emotion--something to be ignored and suppressed.

 

 

Commander Chakotay, sitting in his command chair, looked inquiringly at the captain, his face asking whether he should relinquish command. His face also looked slightly green.

 

 

Jane way smiled, gritting her teeth.

 

 

"I see the ancient nausea remedy of your people worked no better for you than it did for me."

 

 

Chakotay tried unsuccessfully to smile.

 

 

"It only works when the water comes from the Long Woman Mountains not the replicator."

 

 

Of all the crew on the bridge, Kim was the only one completely unaffected by the rocking and rolling of the ship... a fact that Captain Jane way found both annoying and perplexing.

 

 

She sat heavily in her chair, whence she checked the forward viewer, the computer stabilized the image, but it couldn't stabilize Jane way's head. Thus, she saw the stars as jagged lines, rather than dots; the effect was disconcerting, to say the least.

 

 

"Ensign Kim," she called.

 

 

Harry Kim eagerly swiveled his chair around.

 

 

"Yes, Captain?"

 

 

"I wrote a--excuse me--I wrote a program that transfers power from the replicator-holodeck power grid to the gravi tic stabilizers. Implement it."

 

 

"Aye, Captain."

 

 

"Activate Emergency Medical Holographic Program."

 

 

The doctor's face suddenly appeared on the viewer; Jane way found him much easier to look at than the star jags.

 

 

"Please state the nature of the emergency," said the doctor as programmed; but he immediately appended "that is, if it's something different from the emergency I'm already very busy attending to."

 

 

"Doctor, please tell me you can do something."

 

 

If it was possible for a hologram to look pained, the doctor managed it.

 

 

"Captain, the situation is unchanged. As I've told you, all my remedies lose efficacy over time. I presume that the ship will at some point, actually stop rolling. If you insist upon allowing the ship to continue rolling indefinitely, there is nothing I can do.

 

 

"The situation is unchanged here as well," said Jane way, softly.

 

 

"Correction," said Lieutenant Tuvok from his station; "the situation has changed rather dramatically."

 

 

The captain held up her hand to the doctor and turned to her science officer.

 

 

"Captain," continued Tuvok; "I am picking up a distress call."

 

 

"From whom?" asked Jane way, simultaneously grateful for the distraction and irked at the poor timing.

 

 

"Is it any race we're familiar with?"

 

 

"Yes," said Tuvok, "we are quite familiar with the signal.

 

 

The distress call is coming from a Star fleet shuttle craft." In the shocked silence, Captain Jane way asked,

 

 

"Another wormhole? Is the signal current?" Once before, they had been fooled by a communication that came through a freak wormhole; but that transmission from a Rom ulan ship turned out to have come from decades in the past.

 

 

"The signal is of the type currently in use by Star fleet," said Tuvok, "it comes from a Galaxy-class starship shuttle craft, the Lewis, which Star fleet records indicate is attached to the U.S.S. Enterprise."

 

 

"Does its star date match ours?"

 

 

"Yes, Captain. I do not believe the signal is coming to us through a wormhole. The indications are that the shuttle craft is, indeed, in this quadrant, approximately two-point-one-five light-years distant."

 

 

Tuvok stood; Jane way noted that even the Vulcan had to grip his console to steady himself.

 

 

"Captain, it is reasonable to assume that we are not the only representatives of the Federation in this quadrant. Despite the distance, which ordinarily is far beyond our capacity to scan in any detail, I picked up a single life-form aboard... a human male. He is not moving but is alive."

 

 

"How is this possible, Tuvok? That you could scan him, I mean."

 

 

"I can only conclude that something is boosting both transmissions, our scan and the shuttle craft's distress call."

 

 

Jane way sat back, nonplussed. A Federation ship and pilot?

 

 

She had dreamed of such a break for so many months; and now, maybe... maybe...

 

 

She dismissed the daydream. As captain, she had a job to do; she had a ship to protect. She could not allow her reason to be overwhelmed by what she wanted to be true.

 

 

"Shall I lay in the course, Captain?" asked Paris.

 

 

Captain Jane way hesitated. Under ordinary circumstances, she would have assented even before Paris finished the question. But the circumstances were not ordinary.

 

 

She looked at Lieutenant Paris, who still wore his frozen smile, holding down his nausea by a great act of will. He sat poised over the helm console, ready to engage the course he had already computed.

 

 

Everyone stared at Jane way. Oh well, she thought, I guess this is why they let me wear the four pips.

 

 

"Stand by, Lieutenant Paris." She raised her voice.

 

 

"Jane way to Torres. Lieutenant, have you been monitoring the distress call?"

 

 

"I just picked it up," came the engineer's voice, stronger now.

 

 

"Captain, it might be a trap! We're being lured closer....

 

 

There couldn't possibly be a Federation ship out here."

 

 

"I might point out," said Tuvok, with impeccable, Vulcan logic, "that there is a Federation ship out here: the U.S.S.

 

 

Voyager."

 

 

"Tuvok's right," said Jane way; "if we can be sucked here by an unknown force, so can someone else."

 

 

"I can feel in my gut that there's something wrong with this entire setup," insisted B'Elanna.

 

 

Again, Tuvok spoke up.

 

 

"Captain, Star fleet protocols require that we--"

 

 

"I am well aware of Star fleet protocols," sighed Jane way.

 

 

The question was, did the safety of her ship take precedence over a shuttle craft distress call? And so far away from the Federation, was there even a Star fleet, let alone protocols?

 

 

As soon as she asked herself the question, she knew the answer. Wherever there was a Star fleet ship, there was Star fleet. "Lieutenant Paris, lay in a course and engage. If the door opens in one direction, perhaps it will open in the other direction as well."

 

 

"Everyone hold tight," warned Paris; "without the stabilizers, this is going to be a rough turn."

 

 

The captain braced, but she wasn't prepared for what she felt: the Voyager felt as though it suddenly accelerated backward at several g's. It was a trick of perspective; all the rolling was ultimately an illusion. Under classic subspace theory, she recalled, the ship doesn't really exist at all at warp speed; as near as Jane way could judge from watching the crew sway, no two members of the crew reacted to precisely the same motion.

 

 

They all reacted to a horrific forward force when they turned, however. Jane way felt as though she were dangled upside down by her feet with a kilogram weight attached to each eyeball; but when Paris completed the turn, the ship returned to the familiar enemy of stomach-churning rolls.

 

 

"En route to intercept the shuttle craft," gasped Paris swallowing hard.

 

 

"En route to intercept the shuttle craft," gasped Paris, swallowing hard.

 

 

We had better have a plan of action long before we arrive, she decided.

 

 

"In my ready room," said the captain, rising as smartly as possible under the circumstances.

 

 

The senior staff assembled around the discussion table--or the "peace rock," as Chakotay jokingly thought of it. Chakotay looked around the room, trying to gauge reactions: B'Elanna looked suspicious, Paris excited, Kim nervous, and Jane way worried.

 

 

The captain turned to her helmsman.

 

 

"Mr. Paris, how long to reach the shuttle craft?"

 

 

"I'd give it a good two days to be sure."

 

 

Chakotay spoke up.

 

 

"We might be able to shave that down to twenty-four hours by accelerating to warp seven, but at that speed, we might lose some crew members to sudden gravi tic neutralization."

 

 

"I'm not willing to risk killing my own crew," said Jane way. "The castaway will have to wait the extra day."

 

 

She looks haggard, thought Chakotay; she's lost track of her spirit guide. Of course, so have we all, he mentally appended; when mind and body were out of balance, mistakes became more likely.

 

 

"Mr. Tuvok," asked the commander, "how did you first pick up the signal?"

 

 

Tuvok still controlled the space sickness that had laid low everyone else except Harry Kim.

 

 

"Commander, the signal appeared mysteriously, already activated. I cannot be certain, but I believe I caught a faint echo from the wormhole itself. I was only able to scan at such a long distance by using the distress beacon as a carrier wave."

 

 

Jane way typed at her console, possibly playing with some equations.

 

 

"People," she said,

 

 

"I've modeled every variation for power-boosting I could think of, and I simply cannot come up with a scenario by which a shuttle craft could project a distress beacon two light-years. A starship, maybe... but the power is simply not present on that shuttle craft."

 

 

"The signal must be boosted somehow," said Tuvok.

 

 

B'Elanna Torres, sitting next to Chakotay, called up the schematics of the shuttle craft; the commander watched over her shoulder.

 

 

"You're right," said B'Elanna to the captain. '"I knew there was something wrong with this entire scenario! It is a trap, and this proves it. We should get as far away from here as possible, Captain."

 

 

Ensign Kim sat on Chakotay's other side; the young man appeared to want to say something but was worried about interrupting his elders. Chakotay knew how he felt.

 

 

"Mr. Kim, you have a comment?"

 

 

"Sir," said Kim, "when I was a kid, my best friend and I had a pair of communicators his mother gave us. We used to talk late at night, when we were supposed to be asleep comparing interpretations of Paganini and Bizet."

 

 

B'Elanna stared at Kim for a moment, seemingly embarrassed.

 

 

She opened her mouth to speak, but Chakotay put his hand on her arm.

 

 

Kim continued.

 

 

"Then Alex moved to Singapore, far outside the range of the hand communicators we had. But we were still able to communicate: at prearranged times, we each got near the local comm-sat repeater, and it picked up the weak communicator signal and bounced it off the satellite. We sort of piggy backed the signal."

 

 

Tuvok had been quietly typing on a terminal from the moment Kim mentioned a repeater.

 

 

"Captain," he said "the signal does show evidence of having been boosted by a repeater, similar to Ensign Kim's scenario; the records indicate a faint subspace echo in the original signal, which our computer filtered out before we heard the message."

 

 

"Lieutenant Torres," said Jane way, "are you satisfied with this explanation? Does it seem reasonable?"

 

 

B'Elanna hesitated a long time, her rational, human side arguing with the warrior mentality of her Klingon side. She gave a questioning glance at Chakotay, who reassured her with a smile; you are taken seriously, he tried to convey.

 

 

"Well... it is possible, I guess," she said.

 

 

"I--I withdraw my recommendation that we ignore the signal, Captain."

 

 

"Good; I don't like to buck my senior crew. I much prefer we all sign on to a particular course of action."

 

 

Chakotay blinked.

 

 

"Say, does anybody else notice anything different?"

 

 

B'Elanna was the first to speak.

 

 

"Yes; the ship isn't rolling anymore!"

 

 

"To be precise," corrected Tuvok, "it is still rolling at approximately twelve-point-three percent of the former range of motion."

 

 

"I can live with that," mumbled Paris, his face slowly returning to a more normal shade. His smile did not look quite so strained to the commander.

 

 

"So," said Torres, "it seems I was wrong about your power-shunting trick as well, Captain. I seem to have been wrong about everything. Not the best quality in a ship's engineer. "

 

 

Uh-oh... Lately, Chakotay had noticed B'Elanna's self confidence dropping. He knew her better than anyone; this is more serious than a momentary phase, he realized. He would definitely have to talk to Jane way about it.

 

 

The captain tried to reassure her engineering officer. "B'Elanna, it was just an idea I remembered from an systems problem set back at the Academy."

 

 

"Maybe I should have stuck it out at the Academy."

 

 

"You're a good engineer, B'Elanna. Just because you didn't take the full course at Star fleet doesn't mean--"

 

 

"Captain, may I return to my station? I want to fully incorporate your innovation to eliminate the final twelve percent of roll."

 

 

Worse, thought Chakotay. B'Elanna's Klingon half would never allow her to admit her insecurity, she would not be able to turn to anyone, not Harry Kim--not even Chakotay himself.

 

 

"Certainly, B'Elanna," said Jane way.

 

 

"Let me know when you think you'll regain full control of the stabilizers."

 

 

Chakotay winced as he heard the captain emphasize you'll in the order; B'Elanna picked up the emphasis in a heartbeat, and she took it as patronizing. He had known B'Elanna for a long time, and that was definitely the wrong approach. Chakotay could see her stiffen visibly.

 

 

"I think we've discussed about all that we usefully can

 

 

before arriving at the signal," said Jane way.

 

 

"Now, let's get back to work."

 

 

B'Elanna Torres left the ready room and returned to the engineering deck and quickly brought up a visual representation of the wave equation the captain had uploaded. Torres told herself the slight tremble in her hands was a lingering effect of space sickness.

 

 

Space sickness also accounted for why she had not seen before what was so clear now that Jane way's casual idea was the nucleus of a damping field that could entirely replace the gravi tic stabilizers. Of course; the stabilizers are basically redundant using the new system. All the time I spent repairing them was just wasted time, now that the captain has solved the problem by waving a magic technowand.

 

 

You failed, whispered the tiny voice in B'Elanna's ear, failed failed failed failed--and here comes Carey to gloat.

 

 

Lieutenant Carey sat down beside his division officer, obviously very upset.

 

 

"Sir, I'm really sorry I undercut you like that in front of the captain. I was very queasy, but that's no excuse."

 

 

"Thank you, Carey. But you were right about Star fleet procedures, and I was wrong."

 

 

"Well, I didn't figure it out either! It's the captain; she's just so--well, if she weren't a captain, she'd be the best chief engineer in Star fleet. Let's forget about the argument and just get on with the job. Deal?"

 

 

"You're right," said Torres without emotion. Without audible emotion; even she did not know which statement she was agreeing to, what Carey said out loud or what B'Elanna was convinced he really meant.

 

 

Within thirty minutes, building on the brainstorm of her friend and commanding officer, Torres fully controlled the ship's roll. She went through the remainder of her duties hollowly, wondering when the axe would fall, when Jane way would realize that Torres was really just an impostor in a Star fleet monkey suit.

 

 

CHAPTER

 

 

Jane way cheerfully gave the order to increase to maximum sustainable speed; the jury-rigged stabilizers held, and the Voyager shaved the travel time from two days to just under one day; but the distress signal ceased transmission only three hours into the journey.

 

 

When the signal died, so too died the side banded scan by which Tuvok could still report a living but immobile human being.

 

 

The captain sailed into inky blackness, unable even to tell whether any sort of reception committee awaited them.

 

 

She lay on the couch in her quarters, staring up at the ceiling. Her door chirped; it was Tuvok and Chakotay, arrived at last. The Vulcan had detected an anomalous reading regarding the star nearest the distress signal, and Jane way's executive officer had thought it important enough to bring to her attention.

 

 

Tuvok's first words, however, were

 

 

"I suggest we not discuss this matter with the crew."

 

 

"Why not?" asked Commander Chakotay.

 

 

For a former Maquis, you have an odd antipathy toward secrets, thought Jane way.

 

 

"I fear the data may spark more fears of trickery."

 

 

"What's the reading?" asked Jane way.

 

 

"Captain, the spectral signature of the star indicates that it should be emitting a great deal more radiant energy than I detect. The light is red shifted far more than it should be, considering the distance, indicating some force drawing energy from the system."

 

 

"What could suck energy out of a star like that?"

 

 

"I would suggest a very high gravitational field, except the star's gravity appears to be normal for its position on the main sequence. The planets orbit at their proper distances and speeds."

 

 

Jane way thought for a long time. It was not that she did not trust B'Elanna Torres; it was just that...

 

 

"Why throw gasoline onto the fire?" muttered Chakotay.

 

 

"Gasoline?"

 

 

"Yes, Captain," said Tuvok; "the highly inflammable liquid used--"

 

 

"Yes, yes, I remember," said Jane way; "but what do you mean, throw it on the fire, Chakotay?"

 

 

"Why encourage further controversy?" explained the commander.

 

 

"All right. If both of you think we should keep it quiet, I'll have to agree. But slow our approach as we near the system; keep us out of sensor range--assuming there's anyone to scan us.

 

 

And assuming they have sensors roughly equivalent to ours."

 

 

For the next eighteen hours, Jane way and B'Elanna between them tweaked the gravi tic stabilizer into holding; at last, Jane way gave the order to match velocities with the star.

 

 

"Put it on visual," she said, standing in front of her command chair with her hands behind her back. She had found she generated more command presence when she stood, the obvious center of attention.

 

 

"Shall I scan for life-forms?" asked Harry Kim, currently -manning Tuvok's station while the Vulcan joined Torres in engineering.

 

 

The captain almost said yes from force of habit, but she

 

 

caught herself.

 

 

"No! Let's leave the searchlight turned off, shall we, Mr. Kim?"

 

 

He looked perplexed for a moment; then he nodded.

 

 

"Passive only, Captain: here's what we can see from this distance."

 

 

The tiny image of a bright dot of light appeared on the forward viewer.

 

 

"Full magnification," said Jane way, but Kim was already magnifying the image.

 

 

The dot exploded into a disk that nearly filled the viewer.

 

 

The image wavered, giving the captain a headache; they were so far out still that not even Voyager~s image enhancing computers could fully compensate for the slight vibration of the ship.

 

 

Jane way saw a peculiar grid design against the star's image.

 

 

She squinted, just about to say something when Tom Paris asked first.

 

 

"What are those lines? Is that an interference pattern in the buffer?"

 

 

"I'll check," said Kim. He worked diligently, then shook his head.

 

 

"No, Lieutenant; those lines are in the original image."

 

 

"But what are they?" wondered the captain.

 

 

The image was crisscrossed by thousands of great circles forming a faintly fuzzy mesh around the star.

 

 

"We'll have to get closer, Captain," said Kim.

 

 

"I can't get any better resolution."

 

 

"Computer," said Jane way, "open a comm link to engineering and maintain it. Mr. Tuvok, can you get a better focus on the image down there?"

 

 

"Negative, Captain; you're seeing our enhanced image already."

 

 

"Are those lines natural or an artifact?" "Unknown, Captain. But if they are artificial, then we are dealing with a civilization that is far advanced over our own... at least in the field of astronometric architecture."

 

 

Jane way caught herself fiddling with her hair; she lowered her hands and carefully placed them behind her back again.

 

 

"Ahead two-thirds impulse. If you detect any sensor sweeps, Mr. Kim, tell me."

 

 

They approached carefully but detected no scanning. The turbo lift doors slid open and Neelix entered, followed by Kes.

 

 

"Neelix, are you familiar with this star system?"

 

 

Neelix stared at the screen.

 

 

"What are those funny lines across the star? Is your video equipment malfunctioning?"

 

 

"Well, that answers that question," said Chakotay quietly.

 

 

"No, the lines are actually there, Neelix. We were hoping you could tell us what they were--and where we were."

 

 

Neelix shook his head.

 

 

"I've never been here before in my life."

 

 

"Without being able to make a sensor sweep," said Kim,

 

 

"I

 

 

can't tell if this star system is inhabited or not. There's no coherent electromagnetic radiation, but that might just mean they use fiber optics, tight beam transmissions that don't leak, or channeled subspace broadcast. There are no ships that I can detect... and I still don't pick up the shuttle craft's distress call."

 

 

Well, did it repair itself and fly away? Or did someone find the beacon and turn it off? The latter possibility disturbed the captain far more than the former.

 

 

"Tuvok," said Jane way,

 

 

"I want you and Torres to make a complete, passive scan of the area for an ion trail that a shuttle craft would leave behind. If it came through recently enough, maybe we can track it to wherever it landed. Take us in a little closer, Paris."

 

 

The Voyager closed inside the orbit of the only planet; Paris abruptly declared,

 

 

"I don't believe it. It's impossible!"

 

 

It was a reasonable reaction. What had looked like an optical illusion from the cometary halo was in fact a wire mesh sphere or cage that surrounded the sun at a radius of seventy million kilometers, or approximately four light minutes.

 

 

The cage comprised millions of cables, each thicker than a Star fleet shuttle craft, crossing in an elaborate pattern of X's and stars. The "holes" were hundreds of kilometers wide... and even they were strung with smaller filament that passed beyond the limits of resolution without an active scan. Jane way was willing to bet a hundred bars of latinum that those gaps were st rug with even finer filament, as well.

 

 

She scowled, still perplexed.

 

 

"What is it? A protective field? Some kind of shielding?"

 

 

A soft female voice spoke up from near the turbo lift. It was Kes.

 

 

"Um... Captain? Is it possible it's an energy collection grid?"

 

 

Everyone turned to stare at the Ocampan.

 

 

"Energy collection?" demanded Paris.

 

 

"From the sun?"

 

 

"Yes, Tom. It just occurred to me because it looks like a huge-sized version of the energy-collection grid that the Caretaker used to transmit energy to us, before he--died."

 

 

"I suppose it is theoretically possible," said Jane way "but why would anybody want to?" Why not just power the planet with clean fusion or dilithium crystals? Why not As if reading Jane way's mind, Tuvok answered through the comm link.

 

 

"We have found water to be comparatively scarce in the Delta Quadrant; perhaps the planet's supply was too precious to use for hydrogen fusion, and perhaps they never discovered dilithium."

 

 

"But are they still here?" asked the captain.

 

 

"If so, why haven't they detected us and made contact?"

 

 

Nobody had a good answer to her question, so she asked an easier one.

 

 

"B'Elanna, have you found any ion trails yet?"

 

 

"Yes, Captain," answered the engineer.

 

 

"I tracked one recent trail, and Tuvok's laid it into the navigational computer."

 

 

"Engage, Mr. Paris. Full impulse. Let's find the ship and survivor quickly and get a safe distance." Maybe we can continue our investigation after we talk to the pilot, she decided.

 

 

The trail followed a hyperbolic arc, indicating that the shuttle craft had very little power and was not fighting the natural orbit much. Every so often, the trail bent sharply where the pilot suddenly burned the engines at 105-percent rated power to lurch into a graceless turn.

 

 

"This guy was either drunk or half-asleep when he plotted this course," griped Paris.

 

 

"Or unconscious," added Kim.

 

 

The ion trail led away from the single, large planet toward a moon locked into perpetual, stationary orbit: at the L-4 position, sixty degrees ahead of the planet in the same orbit, the three bodies--moon, planet, sun--formed a stable triangle, never varying with respect to each other. From any one body, the other two were always at the same position in the sky.

 

 

The moon was small and not very massive; gravity at the surface was about one-eighth that of Earth. Jane way stared suspiciously at it on the viewer; the entire surface appeared to be sheathed in metal of some sort, as if the aliens had armored the moon, for some bizarre reason.

 

 

"I don't like this," said Jane way.

 

 

"Somebody built a chicken coop around the sun and armor plating around the moon, so where are they? Why haven't we already been met by a whole fleet of ships?" I would almost prefer being shot at to being ignored, she thought. Well, almost.

 

 

"I don't like this one bit, Captain," said Neelix.

 

 

"There's something creepy about this system. And I don't like the fact that I've never even heard of this huge cage."

 

 

"Should you have?"

 

 

Neelix looked pained.

 

 

"Captain, it's the sort of thing that people talk about from one end of the quadrant to the other... the entire sun as an energy generator! Certainly a seasoned traveler such as myself should know of it. It's fantastic, astonishing--but completely unknown."

 

 

"Either nobody's found it before," concluded Chakotay, "or else nobody who ever found it returned to tell the tale."

 

 

"Now, that's a gruesome thought," said Neelix. Jane way noticed that the Talaxian moved closer toKes probably unconsciously.

 

 

Paris followed the ion trail more closely than he seemed to be following the conversation.

 

 

"Captain, I think I figured out what he's steering toward: a moon or tiny planet orbiting about the same distance as the planet, at the L-four stable-body point."

 

 

Captain Jane way hesitated, then made a decision.

 

 

"Ensign Kim, go ahead and scan the moon--active scanning, I mean. I think we're safer figuring out who all is here than remaining rigidly silent. Shields up."

 

 

Kim smiled.

 

 

"Aye, aye, Captain!" He quickly passed the scan nm across the planetoid that the ion trail pointed at when that provoked no apparent response, he scanned them more thoroughly.

 

 

"Captain! It's artificial."

 

 

"The moon? The entire moon?"

 

 

Kim nodded.

 

 

"Well, it's small; but it's constructed out of an alloy of titanium, nickel, copper, and some ceramic I can't analyze through the scanners."

 

 

"Do you see a shuttle craft or wreckage?" Captain Jane way was starting to worry that they might have bitten off more than they could chew.

 

 

"Not from this angle. It might be on the other side of the planetoid; we'd have to get closer."

 

 

"Captain," said Tuvok's voice,

 

 

"I conducted my own scan after Mr. Kim's. You may be interested in the results."

 

 

"Enlighten me."

 

 

"I have scanned the debris of between fifteen and seventeen other planets besides the large, intact one we see; one of the destroyed planets was a gas giant, the others were small rocky, and very far from the sun."

 

 

"Were they destroyed by some natural phenomenon? Or were they mined to death?"

 

 

"All precious minerals have been removed from the debris, leaving only carboniferous husks. Since there is no known natural force that could do that, I suggest the most likely scenario is that the single, large planet is or was inhabited, and they mined their other planets to produce the satellite and the energy-collection grid."

 

 

Jane way picked at the most important hole in their analysis. "That's the big question, Tuvok: is... or was.?"

 

 

"They have not hailed us, sir, and we are rather obviously in their space."

 

 

"Mr. Paris; take us to the moon. I want to find that shuttle craft, rescue the pilot, and get out of here."

 

 

Paris turned half around in his chair.

 

 

"We're not going to investigate? A grid built entirely around a sun, and we're just going to walk away?"

 

 

Good question, Jane way asked herself; are we just going to walk away? This is still a mission of exploration!

 

 

She stepped close behind Paris, aware that others--Chakotay, Kim, even Neelix--were waiting to hear her response--a certain, very specific tone of response.

 

 

"ARer we get the pilot," declared Jane way, "we will debrief him if possible... then we definitely will send an away team to investigate. This is certainly a strange, new world to explore."

 

 

Paris turned back, satisfied.

 

 

"Aye, Captain."

 

 

They approached the moon at half-impulse; but as soon as the Voyager closed to 363,000 kilometers from the artificial planetoid, the entire solar system exploded into a frenzy of activity.

 

 

"Captain," said Ensign Kim, "the moon just changed its alebedo significantly; I think protective shuKers opened along the entire surface. Captain, we're being scanned!"

 

 

"From the moon?"

 

 

"No, Captain, the planet is scanning us."

 

 

"And hailing us," said Cadet Chell; the chubby, blue Bolian was manning communications while Tuvok was in engineering. Chell was progressing nicely under the Vulcan's merciless tutelage.

 

 

"Are we in a position to scan the rest of the moon?" demanded Jane way.

 

 

"Just barely," said Kim, checking his instrument graphic.

 

 

"Then all stop, Mr. Paris. I guess we just rang their doorbell... let's see who answers. Yellow alert. Ensign Kim, continue the scan."

 

 

"I already have, Captain. There is no shuttle craft or wreckage that I can find. It might be under the surface."

 

 

"Captain," said Chell, "the planet is still hailing us... should we answer?"

 

 

Chakotay put his hand on Jane way's arm and spoke quietly, for her ears alone.

 

 

"They might already have destroyed one Federation ship. Perhaps it would be beKer...?" He nodded his head toward Neelix.

 

 

Jane way gave the cook a come-hither gesture.

 

 

"What, me? You want me to answer?" Neelix was astonished.

 

 

"Unless you don't want to get involved."

 

 

"No, no! I was just flabbergasted. Of course I should be the one to answer, you need somebody who's able to negotiate with these unknown aliens. After all, I've made first contact at least a hundred times!"

 

 

Eager for the chance, the crested Talaxian hurried to the command chair. Kes started to say something, then clamped her mouth shut.

 

 

Jane way smiled; she had noticed that Neelix didn't say how many were successful contacts.

 

 

"Computer, tight visual on Mr.

 

 

Neelix; do not show the rest of the bridge. Mr. Chell, open a channel at the same frequency they hailed us."

 

 

Jane way waited until the Bolian said "channel open"; then she silently pointed at Neelix, like a holoplay director saying You're on.

 

 

Neelix straightened his tunic in the Snappy Standard Star fleet Stretch, just as it was taught in the Academy course on Uniform Wear and Maintenance. Jane way was impressed; Neelix must have been watching her closely.

 

 

"This is, ah, Captain Neelix of the... the Maufansian ship Songbird. Um... good morning?."

 

 

"Why have you entered our territory?." politely demanded a voice that identified neither itself nor the planetary system. No visual appeared on the viewer, audio only.

 

 

"The, ah, Songbird is a merchant vessel bound for ah...

 

 

Talaxia. We..."

 

 

"Distress call," whispered Jane way, almost too faintly for Neelix to hear; the computer would automatically scrub any noise softer than a certain threshold, screening out background noise from transmission.

 

 

"We heard a distress call and came to investigate." Neelix smoothly incorporated the suggestion into his spiel; Jane way was impressed with how effortlessly and believably the cook spun his tale.

 

 

"There is no distress call," said the voice.

 

 

"Well, there was a distress call," insisted Neelix.

 

 

"It was an inconsequential matter, already handled. You may leave."

 

 

Jane way bristled; she hated being patted on the head and told to go home.

 

 

Neelix considered for a long moment before answering--possibly getting his temper under control. Again, Jane way couldn't help but admire her negotiatois sang fro id.

 

 

"Um... if you don't mind my asking, what was the problem and how did you handle it? Just as a lesson for my own insignificant self, of course."

 

 

"The call was made in error. You may leave. Unless"--the voice got noticibly perkier--"you're curious to learn about the true faith."

 

 

Chakotay and Jane way looked at each other. Jane way shrugged and nodded to Neelix, who caught the gesture out of the corner of his eye.

 

 

"We, ah, we're just a trading vessel; but we always appreciate an opportunity to learn about new cultures we've not met before." Suddenly Neelix smiled.

 

 

"My trade ambassador, Cap--ah, Vice-President Jane way--and I would be delighted to learn all about your culture and the true faith."

 

 

The voice over the audio comm link sounded downright triumphant.

 

 

"Please pilot your ship to the following coordinates," it said. The aliens transmitted the necessary data. "Do you understand the coordinate system?"

 

 

"We'll manage," said Neelix, a bit stiffly.

 

 

"Captain Neelix out."

 

 

"We're off," confirmed Chell.

 

 

Jane way glared at Neelix as she returned to her command chair.

 

 

"Vice-president? Trade ambassador?"

 

 

"It was the best I could come up with at the moment! Could you do better?"

 

 

She shook her head. Neelix had neatly trapped her now she had to allow him onto the away team; anything less might be seen by the aliens as an insult!

 

 

The little Talaxian gets his chance to buckle yet another swash.

 

 

Tuvok spoke up through the comm link from the engineering deck.

 

 

"Captain, I suggest I go with the two of you. It may be beneficial to minimize the number of humans on the mission. The injured pilot is a human."

 

 

"The away team will consist of Mr. Tuvok, Neelix, and

 

 

myself. Let's rendezvous in the hangar bay in twenty minutes."

 

 

"And may I suggest," continued the Vulcan, "that we not use a shuttle craft?"

 

 

"Mr. Tuvok, if the aliens don't know about transporter technology, why should we alert them?"

 

 

"Captain, they may not know about transporters; but they definitely know what a Federation shuttle craft looks like. They may not appreciate a visit from the owners of the ship they may just have destroyed."

 

 

"Point taken, Mr. Tuvok. We'll meet you in transporter room two. Mr. Kim, beam us down about a half-kilometer away from the coordinates they gave us; we'll walk into the area." And give us a chance to acclimate, she thought.

 

 

"We'll maintain a transporter lock," suggested Chakotay.

 

 

"Well, you're going to have a lot of company," said Ensign Kim.

 

 

"I've just completed a full scan of the planet. There are twenty-seven billion dominant life-forms on the planet--of hundreds of different species."

 

 

"Twenty-seven billion?"

 

 

"Yes, sir. Billion, with a b."

 

 

"Ready to transport as soon as you get down to the transporter room, Madam Vice-President," said Paris.

 

 

Ignoring the gibe, Jane way rose to her feet.

 

 

"Departing in twenty minutes. Ensign Kim... I'd still like to get a look at that artificial moon. Maybe we can find out what happened to the wreckage and the pilot."

 

 

"Yes, Captain."

 

 

"You and Paris take a shuttle craft across as soon as we leave and scan the entire surface. Report whatever you find back to Commander Chakotay and Lieutenant Torres."

 

 

"Aye, Captain."

 

 

"Captain Neelix, you're with me."

 

 

Kes sucked in a breath and caught Neelix by the arm as he headed for the turbo lift. He gallantly detached her hand and chivalrously raised it to his lips.

 

 

"Have no fear," he said; "nothing will happen to the captain and Tuvok, not with me there to protect them!"

 

 

Jane way rolled her eyes as the turbo lift doors slammed shut on his reassurances... probably not quite what Kes wanted to hear.

 

 

Jane way raised her eyebrows.

 

 

"Twenty-seven billion. Either these people live like ants, or they've got one hell of a tourist season."

 

 

CHAPTER

 

 

Tourist season indeed, thought Captain Jane way, standing in the transporter room with Neelix; Tuvok entered, carrying a tri corder and three phasers.

 

 

"The inhabitants have thoroughly utilized their remaining planet," observed the Vulcan in a voice approaching awe--as closely as it was possible for a Vulcan voice to approach anything.

 

 

"Their life-form readings are evenly dispersed from the surface to a depth of twenty kilometers. There are no uninhabited patches... no deserts, no oceans."

 

 

"Hear that, Neelix?" said Jane way.

 

 

"No deserts." She was thinking of the Kazon-infested surface of Kes's planet, where they first had met Neelix, Scourge of the Delta Quadrant.

 

 

"No dessert," said the cook. He stood frozen, staring at the transporter pads and looking puzzled, as if not quite sure why he had so neatly maneuvered into coming.

 

 

"Neelix," said the captain, "why do you let your mouth run away with your common sense? This is a dangerous mission; why did you force us to bring you along?"

 

 

All doubt vanished in an instant from his face.

 

 

"Captain--I predict that before we're ready to return, you and Tuvok both will thank me for coming along!"

 

 

Jane way sighed. Talking sense to a swashbuckling Talaxian was tougher than frightening a Vulcan.

 

 

With a gigantic smile, Neelix pushed past Jane way and Tuvok, leading them onto the pad.

 

 

As the transporter chief began the de materialization, Jane way could only ask herself, How did I manage to end up on my way to meet twenty-seven billion potentially hostile aliens?

 

 

Correction, she thought; we're the aliens. And we know what most races think about alien invaders.

 

 

The Voyager faded around them while Jane way held her breath.

 

 

"Chakotay to Paris," said the commander.

 

 

"Launch now." From the bridge, Commander Chakotay watched the shuttle craft swiftly depart. Tom Paris and Harry Kim were on their way toward the artificial moon to try to solve the mystery.

 

 

"Blow lots of impulse power," ordered Commander Chakotay to the sometimes edgy Ensign Mari ah Henley, who had the helm.

 

 

"Spray a contrail all over the system. There is a good chance the aliens will miss the shuttle craft in the fireworks."

 

 

Henley smiled. It was an old Maquis trick; Chakotay had done it many times, but this was the first time Henley had gotten to be the

 

 

"Roman candle."

 

 

***

 

 

Jane way, Tuvok, and Neelix materialized in a dark but crowded plaza on the planet... or more precisely, in it.

 

 

Planetary air suddenly surrounded them, causing Jane way's ears to stuff up momentarily. She pinched her nose and blew, and her ears popped. High pressure, she thought.

 

 

She noticed an overwhelming, extraordinary odor of rot, ten times worse than a Florida swamp in August. For a moment, Jane way's eyes widened; then she gritted her teeth and forced herself to breathe through her nose, trying desperately to get used to the stench.

 

 

A second later and they felt the heat wave. The temperature was a balmy forty-six degrees at 105-percent humidity... possibly higher, since the "air" was not quite the same oxygen-nitrogen mixture she was used to; fortunately, the oxygen content was somewhat higher than Earth-normal.

 

 

Twenty-seven billion bodies all crammed together, she thought miserably. Join Star fleet; see the universe! Tuvok, standing next to the captain, was unaffected, of course; he probably appreciated the warmth, much closer to the temperature on Vulcan.

 

 

They had materialized inside a building so huge that at first Jane way thought they were outside on the night side. Staring up, however, she could just barely see a dark metal ceiling--iron, perhaps--arching overhead. Smaller buildings sat within the larger building, much like ordinary buildings on a city street. But the winding paths between the buildings, unlike streets, avoided any possibility of a right angle.

 

 

Everywhere she looked, she saw metal... rusty metal, dark and dank, looking almost as if every surface were coated with dried blood. Jane way shuddered in spite of herself; the alien planet was like every human nightmare stitched together in a surreal quilt. The effect was not comic, despite the cartoonish overkill.

 

 

They were surrounded by an extraordinary horde of beings hustling along a complex traffic pattern. They were various shapes and sizes, and many were not even bipedal; but all wore loose clothing that hid their limbs and mummy like facial wraps that covered their features. Looking up, the captain saw a roof that looked like hot iron, very uninviting.

 

 

"I suggest we find a lane and begin moving with the traffic flow," said Tuvok; "we are attracting some attention."

 

 

Jane way slid immediately into a queue that was going approximately the right direction. She noticed that the people kept their heads down; if two happened to meet by chance, they both made a big ritual of looking down and away to the left. She whispered her observation to Tuvok and Neelix.

 

 

"Possibly a series of rituals to symbolize some element of privacy," said the Vulcan, clearly fascinated by the culture.

 

 

"I

 

 

do not know yet whether it is religious or merely traditional."

 

 

Jane way wished she had something to wrap around her face; it would be very convenient, spoiling any chance that the alien interlocutor would spot her for a human. Nobody noticed their strange clothing and unwrapped faces; or at least, no one was rude enough to point it out.

 

 

The plaza's darkness was no aberration. Following as straight a line as they could toward the rendezvous coordinates, the away team cut from one queue to another, flowing down long, dank corridors of blackness like the dead lining up for helL Everything was gloomy. The only windows were slits high in the walls, letting in some dim light that gave just enough illumination for them to avoid actually tripping over the monk like figures in front of them.

 

 

An occasional glow tube supplemented the window slits. If these guys were transported to Jorba during the Dead of Night celebration. thought Jane way, they'd feel right at home.

 

 

The air was hot and very wet; Jane way's throat began to ache as the caustic moisture scored her throat.

 

 

"The whole planet is an oven," muttered Neelix behind her.

 

 

"I could bake pies in here!"

 

 

"That is an exaggeration, Mr. Neelix; the temperature is only forty-six point one degrees, quite a comfortable temperature on my planet."

 

 

"I'm not from your planet, Tuvok! And I think it's absurdly hot."

 

 

Jane way tried to follow a basic direction, working from her tri corder, but the disorienting, twisting streets made it difficult to keep on course. She saw more of the alien planet than she really wanted to; the captain felt sudden claustrophobia, as if the iron buildings were falling over on her, the mobs pushing around her too tightly for her to breathe.

 

 

Jane way glanced at the tri corder. The coordinates were only fifty meters distant; looking in the proper direction, she saw a figure lurking in the darkness of a monstrous doorway, too far away for her to make out any more details about the figure other than "tall and heavy." The doorway was the "mouth" of a huge, skull-like design. Jane way felt a premonitory shiver, strange in such heat.

 

 

"I think we're about to meet our missionary," she announced. "Neelix, you should be first to speak."

 

 

"Thank you, Captain; I accept the honor."

 

 

"For reasons of protocol only," she explained, smiling. "After all, you're the captain; they'll expect to meet you first."

 

 

Jane way stood behind Neelix, out of direct line of sight.

 

 

She preferred to wait until

 

 

"Captain" Neelix summoned her and Tuvok before stepping out, so as not to startle the aliens into attacking in an excess of xenophobic self defense. There was the distinct possibility, she told herself, that they already had attacked the previous representative of the Federation.

 

 

"Greetings on all five points of the pentagram," said a strange voice; the Universal Translator gave their host's voice an odd, rumbling twang, like a moose from Texas.

 

 

"Greetings, magnificent being. I am Captain Neelix, master of the Songbird trading vessel. I come to discuss trade possibilities and, uh, learn about the true faith."

 

 

"Abandon false hope, all ye who enter here, and find strength in the Returning."

 

 

"Oh--thanks awfully."

 

 

Jane way softly cleared her throat, quickly regretting her action; not only did it hurt, somehow it made the odor stronger.

 

 

"May I introduce my trade negotia tory' asked Neelix smoothly.

 

 

"This is Kathryn Jane way, a--a Veermaan from the planet Verminius; and this is Tuvok, a Vulcan from the planet, ah, Vulcan."

 

 

"Greetings on all five points of the pentagram," boomed the host. On cue, Jane way stepped close--and halted in horrified amazement.

 

 

She stared straight into the face of Satan.

 

 

Easy, girl--he's just... he's just a... Jane way recoiled in horror, actually falling back a couple of steps before she got hold of her emotions and forced her feet to stop moving.

 

 

What is it--what is it? She forced herself to stare the

 

 

creature in the face. The face wasn't a devil's mask. It didn't have the normal, physical characteristics she associated with the devil; and if it had, so what? Did not Vulcans and Rom ulans have just such features, except for the missing horns?

 

 

But the alien's face, while angular and roughly triangular, held something altogether sinister, something wild and bestial.

 

 

It was sculpted from every imaginable sign of evil, every conceivable sin, every foulness or violation ever practiced by Man upon Man stitched together.

 

 

The mouth was too small, just the wrong size; the eyes were narrow, the cheekbones high, but cruelly high. The thin lips held such promise of torture and murder that Jane way's heart suddenly shifted into warp speed.

 

 

Its lips parted to suck in a breath, and the inside of its mouth was covered with writhing worms. Ripples flickered across its skin, vermin infesting its flesh! They crawled across the hideous face, and the captain felt her knees weaken.

 

 

She had never experienced such a reaction. Every specific or particular about the alien's face could be rationalized and accepted--in theory.

 

 

But the universe contains not theories but concrete actualities: and the actuality of the alien face was a nightmare of half-buried, demented, squirming little childhood fears night terrors, seizures and suffering, flickering malevolence, befouled, spoiled beauty.

 

 

It--the thing could not possibly be dignified with a sex--it bore the Mark of the Beast.

 

 

When Kathryn Jane way was a little girl, her mother had read her that Kipling story. Rationally, even at so young an age, Kathryn had thought it absurd that the horses would detect some horrific evil lurking beneath what should have been a normal man's skin; nevertheless, it had terrified her.

 

 

Now she understood why. But she did not understand her sudden feeling of uneasy familiarity; she had seen these monsters before, somewhere... pictures, at least. But where, where?

 

 

A minute had passed while Neelix casually chatted of nothing with the alien, and Jane way finally got her respirations and heart rate barely under control. She turned to look at Tuvok instead and saw a sight she had never imagined to see in a hundred years: Tuvok the Vulcan was absolutely frozen with fear.

 

 

All the fears of a moment before, the fears Jane way thought she had overcome, jolted through her body like a monstrous static discharge. Tuvok was frightened? Tuvok was terrified!

 

 

The captain had never even imagined a Vulcan could feel such powerful emotions. She knew they "felt" the same emotions as everyone else but simply suppressed and ignored them... a talent they had to learn as children, for they were of course not born that way. But the thought had never crossed her mind that some emotions were simply too powerful to suppress, even for a Vulcan.

 

 

But how could a mere alien cause such a savage disruption in Vulcan neuro physiology? Unless Tuvok remembers them too, thought the captain, and remembers not just the image, but whatever horror they brought with them. Jane way shook suddenly with vague loathing; why had she thought that, the "horror" they brought?

 

 

Jane way was pulled back against her. will to stare at the alien, which she dimly heard introduce itself as Navdaq, apd she understood how.

 

 

She heard little but the slush of blood in her own ears and felt faint from an explosively high blood pressure. But her reaction was nothing compared to Tuvok's, for the Vulcan left finger-sized indentations in the rusted, iron doorframe.

 

 

Navdaq, to be polite, turned its gaze to include her every now and again. Jane way died a little with every glance, the look of the basilisk turning her to stone.

 

 

Neelix turned to the captain, his mouth moving animatedly.

 

 

He stopped. He moved his mouth again, but Jane way could hear nothing but her own pulse. He scowled, confused by her incomprehension.

 

 

Words filtered through, though she still saw Neelix only in peripheral vision, staring pop-eyed at the demon.

 

 

"Assistant... long journey... exhausted." He was making excuses for her, thank God, saving her from having to

 

 

talk to Navdaq and allow it to steal her soul in addition to flattening it where it sat.

 

 

Demon? Oh my Lord, where did I get THAT from? She felt herself shrink second by second, cringing in embarrassment that she could not stop herself from staring in horror at the--the demon. Trapped in a nightmare where her will was not her own, Jane way knew her torment was nothing compared to Tuvok's hell of humiliation. A Vulcan who couldn't control his own emotional response!

 

 

Then at last, the thing turned its face away and stalked into the black horror of a corridor, followed by Neelix. Jane way felt her mortification finally relent to nothing more than a deep, red flush spreading across her body, mercifully hidden by perpetual, artificial night and a uniform. She could follow, albeit numbly, like a robot, she followed. She could walk; she hurried after the pair.

 

 

Tuvok forced his legs into a staggering step. He could think of nothing but the black terrors from a Vulcan night so long before bright logic touched his life that he could not even rationalize his fear. His hands shook with emotion so great, only a Vulcan could experience it: this Navdaq creature, this--this Fury!--had thrown Tuvok back to the age of the First Ones, a Vulcan from the time before the immortal Surak brought order, logic, order, reason, and order to his disorderly race.

 

 

Tuvok's hands shook with palsy, and he fought a wild urge to cover his eyes and run into the blackness, left or right, anywhere to escape it.

 

 

There is no fear! he desperately told himself. There is no fear, no monster, no demon, no god, no devil, no angel, no past, no future; now is always now; a race is just a race; a Vulcan is logic and order; emotion is the enemy! Eliminate the enemy!

 

 

Tuvok nearly sprinted after his captain, and a tiny moan forced its way past the paper doors of his useless, laughable self-control. A Vulcanl He should be banished to Romulus with the rest of the blood tasters.

 

 

Choking down a sudden spurt of vomit, almost as terrified of permanently disgracing himself--pride, another

 

 

emotion--as he was of it. Tuvok squinted his eyes and listened only, un focusing his gaze and allowing himself to see only enough of the passageway to avoid actually bumping into walls.

 

 

Neelix spoke to the thing. The Talaxian cook and guide seemed utterly unaffected. oblivious of its hideous presence.

 

 

"I

 

 

am very pleased to meet your Autocrat, great Navdaq. What? No, a preliminary survey. Yes, to find out what you need that I might be able to supply. Well, no, heh, I haven't heard of the true faith; but I'm sure I will find it fascinating and enlightening."

 

 

"We missed your ship," said the interlocutor.

 

 

"How did you slip through our orbital sensors?"

 

 

"We, ah, parked it a ways away," extemporized Neelix, squirming nervously.

 

 

"Um, we didn't want to interfere with your port traffic."

 

 

The interlocutor did not respond, but Tuvok got the distinct impression he was not persuaded.

 

 

***

 

 

Jane way stumbled as she walked on wobbly knees behind her supposed "captain," and she realized she was trying to follow with her eyes firmly shut; anything to avoid having to see even the back of Navdaq. This is insane, she argued; it--he is just an alien life-form. nothing more! I've seen dozens, races whose facial appearances should turn my stomach....

 

 

The Viidians, sick with the phage. their faces literally falling apart in clumps; the worm like Knipa of Barnard 11, whose flesh cracks and splits before your eyes, oozing rivulets of black oil that they suck up through vacuum appendages.

 

 

Let's be objective about this, Jane way told herself sternly; Navdaq has nothing in its face or flesh to even begin to compare to these horrors, and I face them without a twinge! Yet she still sweated, perspiration dripping down her forehead and into her eyes.

 

 

Slowly, the fear began to ebb. Perhaps her adrenal glands were running out of juice, she reasoned; her panic faded, and even though her heart still pounded when she looked directly at Navdaq, she could look without gagging.

 

 

***

 

 

The Vulcan Tuvok felt his captain start to relax slightly; her quotient of fear and revulsion appeared to ebb.

 

 

But Tuvok found no such comfort. An invisible fist continued to punch him in the stomach every time he caught sight of it, and nothing he did or told himself to do made the slightest difference. Tuvok knew deep in his core, so deep it never could be rooted out, that this was a monster that had come to pass horrible judgment upon the Vulcan race. Tuvok knew the Fury would tear into his fleshy meat and strip him to the bone, soon, very soon. His mind couldn't say no to his endocrine system.

 

 

Then without warning, Navdaq stopped and whirled to face them. Tuvok barely kept his feet; Jane way sagged against a bulkhead, face whitening again.

 

 

Captain Jane way could neither close her eyes nor turn away as the alien seemed to grow; it leaned forward, suddenly inspired by the breath of Mars, Bringer of War and Destruction. Its face exploded into a prismatic display of emotions bottled for more years than the alien had lived.

 

 

"You are about to embark upon a spiritual journey," prophesied Navdaq; "thousands of years of devotion, preparation, and countless sacrifices, culminating in the final crusade against the most diabolical beings in the galaxy. And the righteous shall win; and you shall join us, an armored fist from behind the back. You shall come; you shall come!"

 

 

Jane way turned her face to the bulkhead, feeling a tear upon her cheek. She had been chosen by the Fallen One, and her soul was damned to hell!

 

 

CHAPTER

 

 

Time, and rationalization, finally drove Captain Jane way's entirely unreasonable fear. She still felt a weird irrational revulsion for Navdaq whenever she looked at it, and she began to wonder whether somehow, there had been ancient contact between its people and early proto humans, contact that was decidedly horrific for the humans. Psychologically--perhaps genetically--all the features of Navdaq's race were implanted into the human neuro physiology as the synecdoche of hatred and loathing.

 

 

As crazy as the theory sounded, it resonated so right that she couldn't shake it.

 

 

Just as a baby that has never fallen will still scream hysterically when placed upon a tall glass table, Jane way reacted to the screams of her ancestors--even though she, personally, had nothing against Navdaq.

 

 

The strangest corollary was that Tuvok reacted even more strongly than she did; evidently some Vulcans had some sort of genetic memory of Navdaq's people, a memory that dated to a time before the great philosopher Surak taught them the path of pure logic.

 

 

Still, however, Jane way could not shake the feeling that she had seen these aliens somewhere before... not just in her

 

 

"DNA

 

 

memory," but in the real world--in the past, long ago, back in No, that's ridiculous. She had been about to think she had seen them when she was a cadet at the Academy. But that was....

 

 

Jane way pursed her lips, pondering; bits and pieces, they started to return. She decided not to force the memory; it would come--she was sure it would eventually come back to her.

 

 

Tuvok seemed to have gotten his emotions nearly under control; only Jane way or some other close friend, perhaps Chakotay, could have seen the Titanic struggle that still roiled just below his skin.

 

 

Neelix was unaffected; to him, Navdaq must be a member of just one more alien race, interesting and unique, as were they all. Jane way felt a surge of utterly irrational hatred of the Talaxian. That's insane! she railed at herself. Thank goodness at least one of us three is still rational. But the bile would not dissipate, a remnant of her barely controlled fear.

 

 

Navdaq led them through long, dank, creepy halls, "caverns measureless to man," as Coleridge might describe it. Or in the words of Radolph Na, a twenty-second-century poet that Jane way was just beginning to read,

 

 

Cold cupped hands Squeeze Squirt like Paq seeds into deep night....

 

 

Everything she saw, wherever it led them, was a living nightmare; Jane way reacted so strongly to it all that she started to berate herself for being so easily manipulated. If Navdaq were to move to the Alpha Quadrant, it could make a fortune designing a haunted-house holodeck pro~ am!

 

 

It talked incessantly, and after a time, Jane way was actually able to listen without flinching or cringing at the voice.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Neelix followed Navdaq smartly, trying to pick out the one or two useful spices of information from the rambling, bland pudding of religious catechism.

 

 

"Captain" Neelix noticed that Jane way and Tuvok appeared to have contracted some extraordinary phobia; they were struck dumb!

 

 

The Talaxian felt anxious about them, wishing Kes had come along; she had the most remarkable talent for getting right inside a person and soothing the real cause of his distress, whether he knew what it was or not.

 

 

"What was that distress call about?" asked Neelix, rising to the necessity. If the captain and the Vulcan were so oddly incapacitated, it was Neelix's clear duty to find out where the missing human was.

 

 

Navdaq twitched in some satisfaction.

 

 

"One of the Unclean invaded our temporary home, doubtless a scout for the filth who are its masters, they who envy and fear the Holy even in exile and rightly so! For when the righteous finally move, the hosts shall rout the Unclean and destroy the last representative of the vermin that infest our true home!"

 

 

"Ah, well thank goodness for that! But tell me... what was that distress call about? An ion trail led through your system and to that artificial moon of yours... I, um, happened to notice when I was waiting for a representative of the Autocrat to contact me."

 

 

"Think nothing of it. The Unclean launched a treacherous attack and destroyed a very important tool; but they are mindless beasts, for the crusade shall proceed unimpeded. We have captured the Unclean alive and hold it for interrogation."

 

 

Neelix forcibly suppressed a triumphant whoop; the Star fleet pilot was alive! Alive, and held. Neelix smiled in relief. His boast back on the transporter pad had surely come true... in triplicate!

 

 

***

 

 

Tuvok was a hollow shell of a Vulcan... but he had finally managed to lock outside, for the moment, all the distasteful, dangerous emotions he had felt. He forced

 

 

himself to Observe and Report; his captain would eventually need any intelligence he could gather.

 

 

Navdaq has never once mentioned beam ing, noted Tuvok; he wondered where our ship was docked. It was a simplistic observation: no race they had yet encountered in the Delta Quadrant, except for the Caretaker, had transporter technology.

 

 

But it was cold, rational, logical. It was Tuvok's first logical act since seeing Navdaq.

 

 

Everywhere Tuvok looked, he saw mechanical locks on doors either external padlock-type devices, or integral card-key slots built into doors. They have no shields, he thought--without emotion.

 

 

The heat revived the Vulcan; it reminded him of home. He could not see very well in the darkness that Navdaq and those of his race evidently preferred; possibly the aliens saw by means of infrared? But Tuvok's ears were much sharper than a human's, and he had followed the conversation ever since he began to regain control of his long-suppressed emotions.

 

 

With control came a shred of memory: true, rational memory from his own experience. It was during his first assignment under Captain Sulu; something happened... a war, a fight with another ship. Tuvok read about it in the message traffic but paid it little mind until he saw the single image included in the subspace broadcast; the image evoked such revulsion in the young Vulcan that he quickly minimized the icon and stored it in the archives, never opening the file again.

 

 

Could these creatures be the same aliens who fought against Captain James Kirk and the U.S.S. Enterprise? Tuvok firmly pushed the thought from his mind; it held no practical value, just a distraction from the very real and immediate problems faced by his current assignment, Voyager and its crew.

 

 

Though they encountered no one along the route they followed, a very circuitous route, perhaps deliberately avoiding contact, Tuvok could hear movement and breathing behind virtually every door they passed. The planet was immeasurably crowded, many times the population of Vulcan or even Earth in significantly less space: the planet had a diameter only sixty percent that of Earth, which meant it had a surface area only thirty-six percent of Earth's.

 

 

The aliens accomplished the improbable by stacking their population some twenty kilometers deep, and Tuvok heard large crowds of people noisily walking across metallic catwalks beneath the floor and above his head.

 

 

The time has come, thought the Vulcan, to drive the last traces of emotion from my mind. I must confront my fear and destroy it. Calming himself by meditating upon the IDIC, the symbolic heart of Surak's philosophy, Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, Tuvok lengthened his stride and approached Navdaq's back.

 

 

"Sir," said the Vulcan--his voice sounded like metal grating on stone--"you have alluded to an ancient history when the Unclean drove you away from your home."

 

 

Navdaq stopped and slowly began to turn. Tuvok caught himself starting to rush the question to spit it out before seeing the Face again; he deliberately slowed and waited until he could look directly at it.

 

 

"Will you elaborate?"

 

 

The Vulcan actually felt physically ill, as if he had eaten a spoiled Tolik fruit. He had to force his breathing and forcibly stop his hands from lurching forward of their own will to gouge thumbs into Navdaq's eyes and tear the alien's throat out.

 

 

I am not a strand of imprinted DNA, Tuvok told himself; I am a Vulcan. I am in control.

 

 

Navdaq considered him; it did not recognize Tuvok, either by memory or genetically. Of course not; we were the victims. They must have enslaved and terrorized us; it is no mystery that Vulcans and humans imprinted the aliens 'faces with terror and utter despair, and the aliens did not imprint us at all.

 

 

"You shall hear the truth," said Navdaq, "and you shall understand."

 

 

It shifted its gaze upward and pressed its hands together like claws with long, sharp nails that slid out of its fingers. Tuvok was on the verge of yanking the captain away, lest the

 

 

alien forget himself in hypnogogic reverie; but Captain Jane way herself backed hastily away from the suddenly lethal claws.

 

 

"A hundred thousand years or more ago, we ruled heaven. It was given unto us, and we took what was offered. Some speculate we may have come from another corner of the galaxy and only settled heaven when the Dark Ones invited us in. I offer no opinion; be it known we had been allowed inside, and we jealously guarded our blessing.

 

 

"We treated the subject races with compassion; we forbade the wanton killing of slaves and allowed them to grow and prosper within the limits ordained by their condition."

 

 

Tuvok glanced at the captain; she was not visibly reacting to the tale. She can be as unemotional as I have ever seen a human, he noted with some satisfaction.

 

 

***

 

 

Jane way presented an unemotional front, but it was only because her body seemed finally to have run out of adrenaline.

 

 

The capacity for fear burned itself out. She felt sick revulsion, but that was easier to contain.

 

 

Navdaq was casually talking about its race having enslaved other beings for tens of thousands of years before somebody or something drove them away. She felt an irrational impulse to strangle Navdaq, as if she were somehow the substitute for the enslaved races and it symbolized the conquerers.

 

 

"Then came the Unclean to disrupt the natural, ordained order," said Navdaq, a dark tone of disharmony creeping into its voice.

 

 

"They did covet heaven and came from a far place to cast out the Holy unlawfully. We are told the tragic battle lasted thousands of years; in the end, we were driven through the great gate, the longest wormhole that has existed in this galaxy, and brought to this place."

 

 

Navdaq's face lowered.

 

 

"Then came our shame, for the elder son of D'Mass, D'Vass, rebelled against the holy quest: his brother Bin Mass fought without surcease eleven days and eleven nights, then he lay down next to his brother, and they slept hand in hand--only to arise and fight for eleven more days and nights.

 

 

D'Vass was exiled with some of his rebels, and the rest of us are descended from the loyal hosts of Bin Mass."

 

 

"If you were in heaven," asked Jane way, surprising herself with her own unemotional voice, "how could the Unclean cast you out? Weren't you--protected?"

 

 

"The Unclean made alliance with the subject races, who envied the Holy their place in the order. And the subject races laid down their tools and their yokes, and laid themselves down, and refused to fight.

 

 

"We sent the Terrors, and still they refused. We sent the Terrors louder and louder, brighter than ever we had before, letting them see the true horror that disorder brings; but still they refused, and they fell into madness and tore each other apart in their fright. They fought and killed... but not for us; they killed for fear, and for the madness."

 

 

We SENT the terrors... Beneath her own disgust, Jane way felt a small lump of worry begin to grow.

 

 

Shortly before the Caretaker yanked Voyager millions of light-years across the galaxy to strand her in the Delta Quadrant, Captain Jane way, sporting a brand-new fourth pip on her collar, heard about a discovery in the Alpha Quadrant: a helmet that could project telepathic images over long distances.

 

 

Suppose Navdaq's people had similar toys... but instead of projecting communication, what if they had relentlessly projected mind-numbing fear and terror to sap the will of their subject races, their slaves?

 

 

It was a chilling thought. The fear I felt upon first seeing Navdaq could only have been a dim, distant echo of the terror they could "send" if they used their projection device.

 

 

If the aliens chose to send their terrors, they could probably enslave Jane way herself and her entire crew.

 

 

There was only one ray of hope. If Navdaq was telling the truth--assuming he knew the truth--then at least once before, the subject races had managed to pull off a strike at a critical moment... and maintain it despite the fear projector.

 

 

It worked; the aliens were defeated. But the effects of the projector on maximum drove many of them violently insane with fear.

 

 

Was it a fair trade-off? she wondered.

 

 

"For centuries," continued Navdaq, "we have planned our counterattack."

 

 

"You still intend to return to heaven?." asked Tuvok.

 

 

Jane way jumped; they were the first words her Vulcan friend had spoken for many long minutes, ever since he first forced out the question about the early history of heaven. Tuvok's voice was clipped and strained; probably nobody but Jane way or another Vulcan would have noticed. Maybe he's going to be all right after all....

 

 

"We were punished for our laxity, our complacency in power.

 

 

We were meant to learn vigilance and focus; we were meant to learn that the Unclean cannot be allowed to remain in the Holy, not as conquerers, not even as slaves. And we have learned well our lessons. Yes, we shall return to heaven... and you come at a great moment, for the hour is at hand. We shall return to heaven, whence we were cast out, and cleanse it of all Unclean!

 

 

"Heaven was meant for the Holy--and heaven shall be cleansed of all but the Holy... this we say, and this we say! Now come, my guests; you have come on the eve of the momentous war of righteousness, and I cannot think that is mere accident. Let us go unto the Autocrat, and he shall listen to your tale and scry why you truly are here."

 

 

Navdaq turned about and strode into the creeping darkness, and Jane way and Tuvok had no option but to run to catch up.

 

 

***

 

 

Lieutenant Tom Paris and Ensign Harry Kim cautiously approached the artificial moon in the shuttle craft, alert for any more robotic alarm systems--or defense systems. Kim licked his lips nervously, his engineer's mind conjured up all sorts of nasty possibilities for technoalarms, land mines, and booby traps.

 

 

Ever since the Voyager approached close enough to ring bells, the moon had sent a continuous data stream to the small planet; Kim monitored the data, looking for anomalies and discontinuities. "It's repeating the same packets over and over," he announced; "it hasn't changed since we've gotten closer."

 

 

"Has the modulation changed? The frequency, anything that could convey more information?"

 

 

"No, Tom. It's absolutely identical to what it was just after we first triggered it."

 

 

Paris considered for a moment, then shrugged.

 

 

"Harry, I think we've just got a beeping rack-alarm here. The only thing we have to worry about is the owner eventually coming back to shut it off."

 

 

"A beeping what?"

 

 

"Oh, that's right... where you come from, there is no crime. But at the Federation Penal Settlement in New Zealand, where I was hanging out with my buddies before Jane way hired me, we quickly learned that the most common method of intimidation was to burglarize someone's room while he was on work detail or at chow."

 

 

"Burglarize? People actually broke into your own, private room? You mean"--he glanced pointedly at Paris--"the way you broke into mine?"

 

 

Paris laughed, a short, ugly sound.

 

 

"You did lead a sheltered life, didn't you? Yeah, Harry, they actually broke into my space. They went through my things. They left them just slightly moved... enough so I'd wonder if anyone had been there, not quite enough to know for sure."

 

 

Harry shook his head, savagely poking a button to change the scan range. He had read about burglary in history classes; but he could not imagine what it must feel like to have a stranger, a criminal, rummage through his most personal possessions. Maybe they would even steal my clarinet, he thought; the image made the hair on the back of his neck stand straight up.

 

 

"So one guy, Hasty Kent, made rack-alarms," Paris continued, "and the rest of us bought them. We paid him in synthehol, or homemade alcohol, if someone smuggled some in. We didn't have any latinum, usually. Huh, now that I think about it, maybe Kent was the one burglarizing the spaces, just so he could sell more alarms."

 

 

"What's that got to do with the data stream, Tom?"

 

 

"Hasty Kent didn't want to bother making the alarms

 

 

very sophisticated; so he just made them start ringing when

 

 

the space was violated and keep ringing until someone came and shut them off.

 

 

"So naturally, the burglars quickly figured out that if they set off lots and lots of alarms all the time, people would get tired of coming back to check... and they could burglarize a space while the alarm was going, and no one would ever know."

 

 

Harry thought for a minute.

 

 

"Let's poke our nose in, shall we, Tom?"

 

 

"I thought you'd never ask."

 

 

Paris took manual control of the shuttle and dove toward the moon, while Kim scanned for weapons power-ups or any changes in the data stream. They looped around the back side, and Harry whistled.

 

 

"Here we go! Take a look at this, Tom." He put the scan on the forward viewer.

 

 

They saw the remains of an extraordinarily huge dish antenna, easily a hundred kilometers high and seventy kilometers in radius. It had been destroyed by a fist from heaven, an object punching out of the stars at a velocity somewhere between 0.1 and 0.7 light speed--something very like a starship shuttle craft.

 

 

"The ion trail leads right into the impact crater," said Paris.

 

 

"Harry, I think we've found where the distress signal emanated from. The only question is..."

 

 

"Where the heck is it?" Harry Kim completed.

 

 

There was no wreckage from a Star fleet shuttle craft, not a scrap. And there was no life-form reading

 

 

"Somebody's already done some tidying up," deduced Ensign Kim.

 

 

"They've been here, seen the damage, swept up the wreckage, and removed the pilot to a hospital."

 

 

"Or more likely a prison cell."

 

 

Kim looked at his shipmate.

 

 

"You think they would put someone in prison for this? It was an accident."

 

 

"Oh yes," said Paris; "I think people would put other people in prison for just about anything. If they were angry enough."

 

 

My friend, thought Kim, you're a hell of a nice guy and a

 

 

great pilot... but you have a dark cynical side that scares the hell out of me sometimes.

 

 

As they continued their orbit around the moon, Paris had to adjust the impulse engines to keep them on course; the moon's gravity was so low that true orbital velocity would be an interminable crawl.

 

 

"Hey, Kim, here's another antenna. This one's an innie, not an outie."

 

 

They passed over a huge, perfectly circular indentation with a dish at the bottom five times the size of the one that had been destroyed. On impulse, Kim turned his sensors around and scanned in the direction the antenna pointed.

 

 

"This is interesting," he said.

 

 

"The moon's rotational orientation is set so that this antenna always faces the sun."

 

 

"The grid--Harry, Kes was right... that must be an energy-collection grid around the sun, and this is where the energy beams to. Holy--!"

 

 

Tom Paris yanked the controls up and to the left, at exactly the same instant, the red-alert klaxon automatically sounded.

 

 

The shuttle veered violently to the side; Harry Kim grabbed his console to avoid being flung out of his chair. He stared wildly at all of his instruments, trying to figure out what Paris saw that made him swerve so suddenly.

 

 

"That would have been a hell of a spectacular death, Kim," said the pilot in question with a grin.

 

 

"I suddenly realized that if the grid was beam ing that much energy to the moon, we'd better not get between it and the collection dish with our shields down!"

 

 

Shaking, Kim adjusted his scanner.

 

 

"There's energy all around this thing. I didn't think to look for microwaves; it seems so... primitive. Sorry, Tom; I should have been paying more attention. I almost got us killed."

 

 

Paris nodded, which Kim took as acceptance of his apology. "Now," said the lieutenant, "what's on the inside of this puppy?"

 

 

Kim shook his head.

 

 

"I can't scan through the hull, Tom."

 

 

"Shields?"

 

 

"No. There are no shields anywhere I've detected in this

 

 

system. But the hull of the moon is made of some super dense material that our scans can't penetrate."

 

 

"Don't tell me that we can't beam through it either."

 

 

Kim considered a moment.

 

 

"All right, Tom; I won't tell you." "But we can't?"

 

 

"I wasn't the one who told you that. But you're right."

 

 

"Figures. So how do we get in? We can't go down the energy-collection shaft; too much microwave radiation."

 

 

"Well..." Kim ran over shield-configuration equations in his head while he fiddled aimlessly with the controls. He suddenly realized he was "keying" the console as if it were a clarinet, playing

 

 

"The Slionimski Variations."

 

 

Paris waited, then said,

 

 

"Yes?"

 

 

"Maybe we can go down that shaft," said Kim, "and right through the collection antenna. I think I can adjust our own shields to give us a couple of minutes of protection."

 

 

"Think?"

 

 

"Hey, this is Star fleet, Tom: risk is our business!"

 

 

Paris gave him a look; pretending not to notice, Kim continued.

 

 

"It won't be good for us; we'll probably get some pretty serious sunburns."

 

 

"The doctor can fix us up later. Let's do it!"

 

 

"And if you mess up the piloting, there won't be anything leR to cure."

 

 

Paris raised his brows.

 

 

"Moi? Look, you got a needle? I can take this baby right through the eye while hanging an elbow out the window." He winked.

 

 

"All right then, modifying shields now--just a minute--all right, Tom, we're ready."

 

 

Lieutenant Paris nosed the shuttle craft over into a dive toward the gaping hole. Kim gritted his teeth, seeing his life flash before his eyes; it didn't hold his interest.

 

 

"Tom," he said, just before they passed the lip of the hole, "you know if we make a smoking crater, I will never speak to you again."

 

 

Paris snorted.

 

 

"Don't tempt me!"

 

 

,

 

 

CHAPTER

 

 

The shaft was straight, driving directly toward the

 

 

center of the moon for more than a hundred kilometers. Paris kept the shuttle steady in the center, trying not to think about the walls closing in around him, about the radiation--about how they were going to get back out again without taking a lethal cumulative dose.

 

 

The first eight kilometers were nothing but shielding, the unreasonably dense material that Paris dubbed "baloneyum" when Kim informed him that chemically, it could not exist.

 

 

"If you say it can't exist," said Paris, "maybe I should test your theory by ramming the wall." Kim didn't respond, not surprisingly. Tom Paris reacted to tension by incessant joking; Kim tended to clam up.

 

 

The shaft started to narrow, and even Paris ceased harassing his crew mate, concentrating on the piloting job.

 

 

"Paris," said Kim, interrupting a long silence, "you've got to pick up the pace; we're starting to get some serious leakage through the shields. If we're not out of direct view of the microwave beam in the next four minutes..."

 

 

"Yeah, yeah; got it. Hang on, here we go." Paris tapped the throttle, pushing to twenty-five kilometers per minute; it would have been a snail's pace in free space, where sub light velocities were measured in kilometers per second.

 

 

But the space was decidedly un free; they drove through a narrow shaft, dodging spars and pieces of equipment, guy lines, and the walls of the tunnel itself, being buffet ted by the micro bursts of energy "wake turbulence" that their own ship stirred up and threw ahead of them at half light speed. Ensign Kim gripped the sides of his seat, and even Paris felt his stomach clench as they careered wildly from one side of the shaft to the other.

 

 

Easy, easy! he warned himself; fried or shredded wasn't much of a career choice.

 

 

"My mother makes the greatest kimchee," Kim said; the non sequitur helped break the tension... slightly.

 

 

"Does she? So when are you going to invite me over for a Korean feast?"

 

 

"Soon as we get back. Um, glass noodles--chap che, bibimba, maybe some barbecue... she makes wonderful, traditional side dishes."

 

 

"Gosh. All my mom ever made was meat loaf."

 

 

"Really? I love meat loaf."

 

 

A spar suddenly loomed in front of them. Reacting at warp speed, Paris swerved to avoid it; suddenly the shuttle slid out of control!

 

 

The ship rolled, inertial stabilizers straining to keep up; for an instant, Paris actually felt zero-g, and his stomach lurched.

 

 

"Yak!" he shouted, yanking the shuttle craft back in the other direction.

 

 

Tom Paris fought the irrational but almost irresistible impulse to squeeze his eyes shut.

 

 

"Watch it!" bellowed Kim. Ahead of them bulked a dense web of gold-colored wires strung across the outer perimeter of the shaft.

 

 

Grimly, Paris bent the shuttle craft back into the center in a move that the manual insisted could not be done with the ship in question. He rotated the shuttle impossibly fast, and the ship just barely slipped through the small resonance gap in the center of the array, neatly clipping off a dozen strands of wire on both left and right.

 

 

"So," Kim said weakly, "when are you going to invite me over for a meat-loaf feast?"

 

 

"I'll cook it for you myself back on the ship, if we can tie up Neelix and use his kitchen."

 

 

"Cook it? You?"

 

 

"Man learns many things in the Maquis, especially when replicators are hit-or-miss. Hang on, Kim, here comes the antenna"

 

 

"Getting hot in here, isn't it?"

 

 

Paris wiped the sweat out of his eyes. He glanced at the temperature gauge: 52.2 degrees. They were roasting alive! "Actually, I feel kind of a chill. Did we bring my jacket along?"

 

 

Paris tapped the throttle high, then higher yet. He had adjusted the throttle scale way, way downward; at the normal range, a small tap like the one he had just given would have accelerated them to a quarter light speed. The shuttle would have drilled a neat, shuttle craft-sized hole all the way through the moon, coming out the other end a shuttle craft-sized ball of ionized plasma

 

 

As they closed, Paris saw to his dismay that the antenna was not just a simple dish he could edge around. Instead, they would first encounter an inner ring, the energy-focusing mechanism, that was only thirty meters in diameter--followed in mere seconds by an outer dish

 

 

Millions of threads of strong filament connected the inner ring to the shaft wall, keeping it in place like the muscles of the human eye keep the corona facing the right way. The shuttle could not simply bypass the inner ring; they would have to thread it, diving straight into microwave hell.

 

 

Paris did not need Harry Kim to tell him that in between the inner ring and the dish itself, the electromagnetic radiation would rip through the shuttle craft's shields like a hot knife through butter, cooking the two of them in moments. Their only hope was to maintain thirty kilometers per minute all the way through.

 

 

That meant that the only way to thread the inner ring and then clear the outside rim of the dish was to perform a patented maneuver that Paris had invented flying Gawk hoppers as a kid: the Swoop of Death.

 

 

He clenched his teeth, but smiled coolly for Kim's benefit.

 

 

The kid was all right, but he really was not prepared to die, not yet; best not tell him the maneuver they were about to perform had only a thirty-three-percent chance of success.

 

 

Hell, I'M not prepared to die just yet! Alas, Paris could not lie to himself; he had attempted the Swoop of Death only six times in his life--and successfully completed it twice.

 

 

Of course, never before had the name been quite so literal.

 

 

As a kid, he dove around purely holographic barriers; and if he missed and blew through one--well hell, then his buddy won that day's bet.

 

 

The inner ring loomed. Through it, Paris could actually see the energy, as the intensity of the microwaves produced so much heat, such intensity of infrared echos, that they actually registered on the human eye.

 

 

The Swoop of Death required exceeding the design limitations of the inertial dampers by a huge margin. Twice.

 

 

"Hold on, Harry," said Paris softly.

 

 

"You like zero-g inversions?"

 

 

"No, I hate--"

 

 

The shuttle shot through the inner ring, into the electromagnetic maelstrom. Now or never! flickered across Paris's cerebrum.

 

 

He grabbed the attitude slide switch and pulled it all the way back, pitching the nose up toward a ninety-degree angle from their direction of motion.

 

 

For a fraction of a second, the inertial dampers held out manfully, throwing off the force-load as free heat; then, with a loud click, they gave up the ghost.

 

 

A fist weighing 9,600 newtons crushed down on Paris... twelve times the normal force of gravity; he gasped under the strain--Can't black out--can't lose consciousness!

 

 

Tom Paris's world turned dull gray as he closed in on unconsciowness; under heavy g, with blood pouring out of the brain and down toward the buttocks and abdomen, the retinal cones are the first to go, and the subject loses color vision.

 

 

Then Paris's world turned into a weird tunnel as he lost peripheral vision as well.

 

 

He strained and grunted, drastically raising his blood pressure to force the heavy, sluggish blood higher, if the brain blood pressure sank too low, he would pass out and be unable to execute Phase II of the Swoop of Death... and they would pound into the shaft wall at nearly half a kilometer per second.

 

 

There might be some debris left for the Voyager to find.

 

 

Three, two, one, NOW! Just as they attained level flight, the g-forces dropped off, and the beleaguered dampers finally kicked on-line again, Paris viciowly spun the shuttle craft right ward, rolling it 180 degrees, exactly upside down from its previow orientation.

 

 

It was a necessary part of the Swoop of Death; no human could survive twelve g's straight up without losing consciousness; Paris had to switch "down" and "up" to avoid making a smoking hole in the shaft hull.

 

 

Then he again yanked back, pitching the nose "up" toward ninety degrees. If he pulled it off, they would be headed in the same direction they had started--but jogged a kilometer sideways.

 

 

And with a reverse up-down orientation.

 

 

They would clear the antenna... if Paris pulled it off.

 

 

As soon as he began Phase II, Paris realized instinctively that he had blown the timing. He had pulled too late. They were not going to clear the shaft wall.

 

 

Color, which had just begun to Bicker back, disappeared again; Lieutenant Paris's vision tunneled down, and he once again strained against the horrific acceleration that crwhed him into his seat.

 

 

Wow. We're going to die. Sorry, Kim, been a slice.

 

 

Ok what the hell... If they were going to go out, decided Paris, they might as well go out spectacularly.

 

 

He jammed the attitude control all the way back, pulling the shuttle craft so hard that not only were the inertial dampers exceeded, so were the structural design limitations of the shuttle craft hull itself.

 

 

The g-meter climbed; Paris's tunnel vision narrowed and narrowed until he skated on the merest, monomolecular thread of consciousness.

 

 

From somewhere he heard a distant thud. He blinked. Without knowing quite why, or whether he had actually cleared the rim of the dish or simply hallucinated seeing it fly past, he willed his lead-filled arm to creep forward, pushing the attitude control and killing the acceleration.

 

 

Slowly, the g-meter dropped; the crushing gravity lessened.

 

 

Then the inertial dampers finally caught up with the maneuvering, kicking on-line again with an annoyed whine.

 

 

The computer spoke, but it sounded like a dream, far away; it warned him that he was making maneuvers that exceeded his shuttle's tolerances.

 

 

"Thanks," he gasped through a throat parched and burned; he realized he had jumped from one hell to another the interior temperature was sixty degrees.

 

 

Another instant in between the two antennas and their lungs would have been cooked beyond the ability of the EMH program to fix.

 

 

Maybe Neelix had a recipe for parboiled pilot and Korean barbecue.

 

 

Kim! Paris quickly killed the shuttle craft's forward velocity--they were past the antenna, and the shields could block the small bit of microwave leakage indefinitely; no more rush. He turned to his friend and crew mate.

 

 

Kim was unconscious. Paris put his ear to the ensign's mouth; to his great relief, he heard the faint stirring of breath. Placing his hand on Kim's chest, Paris felt it rise and fall at the limits of perception.

 

 

Then Ensign Kim suddenly wheezed and groaned, rolling his head gently from side to side.

 

 

Paris fell back into his command chair, feeling his own blood pressure drop slowly, slowly back to normal He was so exhausted, fighting both the acceleration and the unbearable heat, that he could not move.

 

 

He forced his eyes open after a few seconds; the temperature had dropped to normal. He glanced at the g-meter.

 

 

They had pegged it at fourteen g's... a new record for Tom Paris, and without a combat suit!

 

 

He lay back in the chair, waiting patiently for Harry Kim to wake up.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Ensign Kim blinked back to some semblance of consciousness in a white room filled with white noise. He was surrounded by some sort of instrument panel.

 

 

He decided he really should know what the instruments were for, for that matter, he really should know who he was.

 

 

He remembered nothing--not even his name. Easy... steady--I'm thinking, so I'm alive. Something happened to me... if I can justfzgure out...

 

 

A name floated back-Kim; Harry Kim, that was who he was!

 

 

Ensign Harry Kim, of the U.S.S. Voyager. But he was not on the Voyager, was he?

 

 

No. He was on a shuttle craft, the shuttle with--Tom Paris!

 

 

Kim started to turn to Tom, to ask him the stupid question "Did we make it," when the pain struck.

 

 

Kim's eyes flew wide open as a white-hot needle slid through his skull, an astounding shear of agony that lasted--a second, perhaps two. Then it was gone, leaving only a dull ache, and he blinked back to full consciousness.

 

 

He stopped himself before asking the obvious.

 

 

"Uh... scanning... Tom, the hull here is much thinner."

 

 

"Thin enough to beam through?"

 

 

"Yes. Yes, I think it is; and there's a livable en viro inside the hull. No life-forms."

 

 

"What are we waiting for, Harry?"

 

 

Kim set the computer to monitor and warn them of any approaching ship or anybody beam ing across, as unlikely as the latter was; then he and Paris equipped themselves with phasers, tri corders, and exploration packs and beamed inside the artificial moon.

 

 

They materialized in a long corridor that stretched forward and back as far as they could see before dropping out of sight owing to the moon's curvature.

 

 

The corridor's "walls" were actually massed pipes and cables, bundles of fiber optics and power conduits. There was no catwalk; they had to stand directly on the bottom fiber bundle.

 

 

There was also no artificial gravity, and they were nearer the moon's core than not. Kim jumped at the sudden feeling of near-weightlessness... a serious mistake, as he bounded

 

 

into the air, squawking and flapping his arms. He banged his head on a conduit, rebounding back toward the bottom; Paris caught Kim's trouser leg and reeled him in.

 

 

Rubbing his head, Kim worked his tri coder and announced, "From fifteen g's to less than a twentieth g. My bones are going to ache worse than my sunburn when we get back."

 

 

Paris gave an experimental hop forward, traveling a long distance but having to ward off the overhead with his hand. The pair required several minutes of practice before they caught the pattern of long, shallow jumps; thereafter, they moved far more quickly than they ever could have on a planet.

 

 

Kim kept up a long-range scan, finally finding a cross corridor, they turned and followed it for a few kilometers before running across a deep, wide chasm... a circuhr pit in the deck.

 

 

"You want to go for it, Tom?" Kim indicated the hole.

 

 

Paris leaned over to stare, holding his light as far down as he could and stepping up the brightness to maximum.

 

 

"I can't see a bottom, and the sides are smooth as glass. No kidder. You know, if a thirty-meter fall can kill you in normal gravity, then a six-hundred-meter fall can kill you here. Maybe we should think about this."

 

 

Kim monkeyed with his tri corder.

 

 

"Huh. You know, I've always wanted to do this, ever since I saw those animated holophys as a kid."

 

 

"Do what?"

 

 

Kim pulled a thermal blanket from his pack.

 

 

"Tom, in this low gravity, I think we really can do it!" "Do what, dammit?"

 

 

Kim grinned.

 

 

"Use a blanket as a parachute."

 

 

"Cute. So how do we get back up?"

 

 

Kim rummaged in his kit. The packs were generally stowed in shuttle craft storage bins for use by away teams exploring new planets; they contained everything an explorer could possibly need, including plenty of provisions, water bhstules, binoculars, tri corder, blankets and tents, inflatable rafts--and mountaineering equipment; lots of it.

 

 

The ensign removed a coil of incredibly thin rope; an attached tag read

 

 

1000 M.

 

 

They tied off the rope to a very solid-looking, shielded bundle of fiber optics, then tied the other end to one another, leaving ten meters of separation between the two of them. Then they stepped to the rim of the pit.

 

 

"Harry, I take back everything I ever said about you in the mess hall. Are you sure this is going to work? I'm a little nervous about just jumping off a cliff."

 

 

"Don't you trust me?"

 

 

"No."

 

 

"Well, how about my calculations?"

 

 

Tom Paris considered.

 

 

"All right, them I trust. Geronimo!"

 

 

"Who?"

 

 

"Ask Chakotay," said Paris mysteriously. They each took hold of two corners of the gigantic blanket and stepped over the edge.

 

 

The two Star fleet officers wafted gently down the air shaft like oak leaves lazily dropping from the tree in October. Kim discovered that he could steer after a fashion by tugging on the corner in the direction he wanted to go; he kept them in the center of the shaft, away from the sides.

 

 

They dropped for a long, long time. Kim estimated their rate of descent holding steady at somewhere between 1.5 and 2.0 meters per second... which meant it would take anywhere from eight to eleven minutes to reach full extension.

 

 

It took just about nine by the chronometer in the pack; he was pleased at his close estimate.

 

 

The shaft suddenly opened up into a vast, gaping room, easily two kilometers in diameter, at the same moment, the rope above Kim suddenly became taut, jerking them to an ignominious halt a kilometer down from the top, yet still half a kilometer at least above the deck. They dangled like fish on a fishing line, high above the most complex, gigantic machine Kim had ever seen.

 

 

With no idea what he was looking at, Kim aimed his tri corder and began to scan the room.

 

 

CHAPTER

 

 

"All right. We've seen it. Now what is it?"

 

 

Kim did not answer right away; he continued imaging as much of the machine as he could. Whatever it is, he thought, it's the biggest whatever I've ever seen!

 

 

"It's something to do with a huge amount of energy," he replied at last.

 

 

"Those power conduits are more than a hundred times as large as the conduits on the Voyager, and there are hundreds of them. The grid is obviously throwing some significant fraction of the sun's radiant energy at this moon, maybe five or ten percent... but what the hell are they doing with it, Tom?"

 

 

"Wish I knew. But we'd better find out; it could be a weapon, and if we're going to try to extract that pilot--"

 

 

"Shh!" Kim waved his hand at Paris, indicating Shut up, the walls might have ears.

 

 

"AW, hell, nobody's listening; if they were, we'd be in custody already."

 

 

"We can't take that chance!"

 

 

"I think I'd know if we were about to be captured."

 

 

"Why? You missed it when you were a Maquis."

 

 

Paris closed his mouth and frowned at Harry Kim. On

 

 

Tom Paris's first mission as a Maquis, he had been captured by Star fleet, ending up in a penal facility in New Zealand... whence Captain Jane way had recruited him.

 

 

"Well," said Paris stiffly, "unless we're going to unhook and drop down to the deck, possibly never to get back out again, we'd better climb back up."

 

 

"We, ah, could break out another rope and tie it off. But I guess there's no point; if we can't figure this thing out from up here, I don't think we'll understand it by getting up close and personal." He did not add that at the moment, he hadn't a clue.

 

 

"I think we have enough to take back to the ship. We'd better start putting some pieces together, or when the captain gets back, she'll be mighty pissed."

 

 

Climbing up one kilometer was almost as easy as dropping had been. A typical, adult, human male weighs anywhere from 730 to 950 Newtons; but on the alien moon, Kim and Paris each weighed no more than thirty-five Newtons.

 

 

Kim gave the rope a vigorous tug, easily giving himself a velocity of three meters per second. This lasted six seconds, during which he covered nine meters.

 

 

They rested after every eleven tugs... about every hundred meters. Kim coiled up the rope during the rest stops.

 

 

Counting resting time, they made it to the lip of the pit again in just under forty-five minutes. Ensign Kim was surprised at how tired his arms were, considering he had never lifted more than the weight of a Starr leet field pack in the entire journey.

 

 

Of course, he had lifted that pack more than a hundred times.

 

 

Paris took it in stride; if his arms ached, he did not let on.

 

 

They backtracked their trail, Kim following the heat trail with his tri corder--directly into a solid bulkhead. He pulled up short, staring at the obstacle.

 

 

"Tom, correct me if I'm wrong, but..."

 

 

"You're not wrong, Harry. That wasn't there an hour ago."

 

 

"Didn't we come right through here?."

 

 

"You've got the bloodhound. But I sure think we did."

 

 

Harry Kim rotated in place and scanned 360 degrees

 

 

around.

 

 

"There's a parallel bulkhead about a meter to the left that goes past this block. If we can somehow get to it, maybe we can get close enough for beam-out."

 

 

They returned toward the pit, but it had disappeared.

 

 

Instead, the corridor they walked along veered abruptly right, then right again, debouching into the parallel corridor they sought.

 

 

"The walls are moving!"

 

 

"No, really? Maybe we're hallucinating."

 

 

"Cute, Paris; I just think it's..."

 

 

"Weird?"

 

 

"Unnecessarily complex."

 

 

Kim stared at the solid-looking walls. Far in the distance, they heard a scrape as other bulkheads presumably went wandering. "It's almost like..."

 

 

"Like?"

 

 

"Nah, it's silly."

 

 

"Come on, Harry, what were you going to say?"

 

 

"Like the entire moon is a gigantic logic board, with synapses opening and closing."

 

 

Kim adjusted the tri corder and re scanned.

 

 

"The electrical impulses are following patterns remarkably like, you know, neurons. Some sort of planet wide neural net--or series of nets, actually; I think the walls are connecting and severing the connections between networks.

 

 

"The next evolutionary phase," he continued, "is a neural net assembled from millions of smaller neural nets. Like a fractal: each small part is a fuzzy model of the whole thing."

 

 

"Harry? Let's get the hell out of here."

 

 

They dodged through the maze; once, Lieutenant Paris almost got caught when a bulkhead suddenly came marching toward him. Kim yanked him out of the way at the last moment, and the wall brushed past, implacable, while Kim's heart raced at his friend's close call.

 

 

At last, they got close enough to contact the onboard shuttle craft computer and request beam-out. Kim sighed with relief as he felt in his gut the familiar tingling of the transporter beam.

 

 

Back on the shuttle, they paused to figure a strategy. Paris

 

 

was worried.

 

 

"Look, Kim, I don't want to go through the Swoop of Death again. We made it once; let's not push our luck. I need more time to do a smooth, sideways transition."

 

 

"Tom, it's microwave soup in between those lenses! There's no way we can hang around for more than three or four seconds without our shields being ripped to shreds."

 

 

"So?"

 

 

"So we wouldn't have anything left for the rest of the shaft out of here."

 

 

"So?"

 

 

"So--" Kim scowled; he tapped gently on the computer console.

 

 

"Well, maybe we wouldn't be too badly burned if we turned around and backed out of the shaft. There's more physical plating on the aft end of the shuttle craft."

 

 

"Just give me twenty seconds between the lenses, and I'll back us out of here so fast you'll leave your eyeballs on the forward viewer."

 

 

Kim tore open a panel and set to work, desperately wishing he had gone for the doctorate in engineering instead of opting for command school. I could have been a brilliant starship designer, he swore to himself.

 

 

Twenty minutes later, he cleared his throat.

 

 

"I can give you eighteen seconds."

 

 

"You're on. Strap up and let's get the hell out of here."

 

 

Paris slapped Kim's seat, and the ensign hustled to his spot.

 

 

Paris turned the ship around before creeping around the dish antenna, not wanting to waste time turning around under radiation bombardment. He skillfully backed up and over the dish, through the central focus like a thread through a needle's eye, then backward along the long, deep shaft toward the surface.

 

 

Kim felt sicker and sicker as they progressed, his temperature climbing way past body-normal. His skin turned so irritated and tender, he could hardly keep his mind on his task: watching the ultraviolet count to make sure they did not blind themselves. That, even the grumpy, holographic doctor might not be able to fix.

 

 

"Better hurry, Paris," he said almost inaudibly when they were three-quarters of the way out. Paris did not waste attention responding

 

 

Kim found himself blinking rapidly, watching sweat pour down the face of Tom Paris. Paris's skin was so fair, his face turned command-red and began to peel. Kim turned away; he did not want to see it.

 

 

Just as the ensign was starting to see small, dancing bugs all over the ship, electromagnetic stimulation of the retina--a bad sign--they burst out of the shaft into the cool blackness of space. Kim was giddy, swaying in his seat; he grimly clung to consciousness as if it were a clarinet that someone was trying to yank from his hand. The universe swam; he dimly wondered how Paris could point the shuttle at the Voyager when Kim couldn't even point at the moon they had just left.

 

 

But Tom Paris pointed the shuttle craft, activated the distress beacon on a tight beam to the ship, and engaged... all before slumping over in his seat.

 

 

"Emer--emergency--medical--beam-out," gasped Kim to the comm link.

 

 

"Tractor-shuttle craft...." The young ensign lost the battle as last, loyally following his friend into the Land of Nod.

 

 

***

 

 

Paris woke on the doctor's operating table. For a moment, he panicked; he had dreamed that all his skin charred off, and he was dancing in agony, his muscles and organs simply exposed to the knifey open air.

 

 

But the illusory doctor was playing a simple skin stimulator back and forth across his face and hands.

 

 

"Oh. You're awake. I suppose it was inevitable."

 

 

"Hello to you too, Dr. Schweitzer."

 

 

The doctor raised his eyebrows.

 

 

"I ceased using that name a long time ago, Mr. Paris. I hope you were just being sarcastic, and you haven't suffered a loss of memory."

 

 

"Pure, unadulterated sarcasm."

 

 

"It figures. I'm programmed to ignore such maldirected attacks."

 

 

"Oh, don't be so humorless, Doctor, I can see right through you."

 

 

"Is my imaging system malfunctioning again? Oh... another joke. Har de her har. I don't suppose it would do any good to tell you to stay off your feet for a couple of days?"

 

 

"Not a chance, Doc."

 

 

"I didn't think so. You and Mr. Kim deserve each other." The hologram snorted.

 

 

"Kes, give these two the usual advice, which they will ignore, and a temperature monitor."

 

 

Kim sat up on the next table, blinking groggily. "Gentlemen," said the doctor, "you will call me if your temperature sensors register a fever?"

 

 

"You bet," said Paris. Ensign Kim nodded; probably doesn't even know what the hologram just said, thought Paris.

 

 

"Good. Sickbay to Chakotay Commander, Paris and Kim are ready for the debriefing."

 

 

"Understood, Doctor," came Chakotay's calm tones.

 

 

"If they will join me in the ready room? And doctor--I'd like Kes to be present, as well"

 

 

"Why not? After all, certainly I can't have any need for her I'm just a hologram, after all. Holograms don't have needs."

 

 

Paris rolled his eyes. Just what he wanted to hear a grand holo-opera with the woman he--but the woman he could never Kes sighed, putting her hand on the doctor's arm.

 

 

"It's all right; I'll come right back. I do want to finish the test... it was really challenging this time."

 

 

"It was? I mean, you really were challenged?"

 

 

"Oh, it was brutal! I'll be right back, Doctor."

 

 

"Yes... yes, of course you will."

 

 

***

 

 

There is no fear. There is no pain. There is no emotion... let it fade and disappear. Pure logic; logic fills your brain.

 

 

Thought is symbol, and logic gives you complete power over all symbols.

 

 

The meditation helped, but Lieutenant Tuvok still found himself caught in the grip of illogical emotion, the DNA memory of a hundred thousand years ago perturbing his endocrine system, triggering the release of Vulcan

 

 

vidrenalase, which affects Vulcans as adrenaline affects humans.

 

 

Tuvok trembled; he could not control the fine motor skills. It was the best he could do to maintain a veneer of logic and rationality across a sea of barbaric feelings and impulses.

 

 

He stumbled along behind the Fury, behind the captain and Neelix, through the warm, moist tunnel. Even in his nightmare state, he could not help but notice that it was like a return up the birth canal; but rather than fascinating him, as it should have, the image filled Tuvok with the unaccustomed emotions of loathing and disgust.

 

 

Like the impulse to kill the interlocutor, Navdaq, and every other demon on the planet, all twenty-seven billion of them. It was worse than the pon farr--at least the mating madness was carefully channeled by ritual. Tuvok had no ritual to deal with the primitive emotions that these creatures stirred in him. Only his meditation.

 

 

Tuvok was not bothered by the darkness of the corridor, nor by what the captain considered disturbing architecture: angles that did not quite meet at ninety degrees but looked as thought they ought to, tricks of perspective that made walls or ceilings seem closer or farther than they were, or strange tilts that threw off a human's sense of balance, which was tied so completely into visual cuing.

 

 

But he was far more disturbed by the sudden intrusion of a long-forgotten cavern in the Vulcan mind, the genetic memory of defeat and slavery so complete and remote it left no trace in the historical record, which was thought to have stretched back farther in time than the conquest.

 

 

Evidently not, thought Tuvok, clutching at the logical train of thought; apparently, there are sign if cant gaps in the historical record. I must write a report for the Vulcan Journal of Archeology and Prehistory. Then he shuddered.

 

 

In our innermost beings, we are not very different from Rom ulans aJter all, he thought. With bitterness--another emotion; they came thick and fast now.

 

 

In fact, Tuvok realized they would never stop... not until he forced himself to confront the Fury. Gritting his teeth against the terrors, Tuvok increased his stride until he stood but an arm's length behind Navdaq; then with a quick

 

 

move, before he could disgrace his race further by losing his nerve, Tuvok reached out and caught Navdaq by the shoulder, spinning the creature around to face him.

 

 

Tuvok looked directly into Navdaq's face--and felt an abyss open inside him deep enough to swallow both hearts.

 

 

I know you! he thought, unable to keep excitement and emotion out of even his thoughts. You are Ok' San, the Overlord!

 

 

Ok' San was the most despised of all Vulcan demons, for she was the mother of all the rest. The mythology was so ancient that it was consciously known only to a few scholars; even Tuvok knew only dimly of the stories, and only because of his interest in Vulcan history.

 

 

But all Vulcans knew Ok' San, but preferred not to think about her, for she represented loss of control and loss of reason. There was little else that a sane Vulcan dared not consider apart from the loss of everything it meant to be a Vulcan: logic, control, order, and reason.

 

 

In demonic mythology, Ok' San crept through the windows at night, the hot, dry Vulcan night, and crouched on the chests of her "chosen" dreamers: poets, composers, authors, philosophers, scientists, political analysts... the very people whose creativity was slowly knitting together the barbaric strands of early Vulcan society into a vision of a logical tomorrow, who groped for shreds of civilization in the horror of Vulcan's yesterday.

 

 

She crouched on a dreamer's chest, leaned over his writhing body, and pressed her lips against his. She spat into his mouth, and the spittle rolled down his throat and filled his hearts with the Fury of Vulcan.

 

 

The Fury of Vulcan manifested as a berserker rage that flooded the victim and drove him to paroxysms of horrific violence that defied the descriptive power of logic.

 

 

Tuvok had tried to contemplate what must pass through a Vulcan's mind to drive him to kill his own family with a blunt stick, striking their heads hard enough to crush bone and muscle and still have force enough to destroy the brain. In one of the few instances of the Fury of Vulcan to be well recorded by the testimony of many witnesses, a Vulcan hunter-warrior named Torkas of the Vehm, perhaps eighty

 

 

thousand years, ago, grabbed up a leaf-bladed Vulcan Toth spear and set out after the entire population of his village. He managed to kill ninety-seven and wound an additional fourteen, six critically, before he was killed.

 

 

Tuvok had always believed Ok' San was the personification of the violent, nearly sadistic rage that filled the hearts of Vulcans before Surak. The Fury of Vulcan always seemed like a disease of the nervous system, yet it was curious that there were no recorded instances of the Fury within historical times... not a one.

 

 

Diseases do not die out; and it was unlikely in the extreme that primitive Vulcans, who had neither logic nor medical science, could have destroyed the virus that caused the Fury.

 

 

It was an enigma, until now.

 

 

CHAPTER

 

 

This is the Fury, though Tuvok, staring into the face of Ok' San albeit a male aspect of Ok' San. l am the Fury--and everyone within my grasp is in grave danger.

 

 

The rage was so barely under his control that Tuvok did not even hear Navdaq ask a question, presumably a variation on

 

 

"What do you want?"

 

 

Trembling still, Tuvok forced himself to speak

 

 

"Sir--your features--they are--fascinating--yet others do not all--all share. Are--are--are you all one?"

 

 

Navdaq smiled, ratcheting up the emotional response another notch inside the Vulcan the interlocutor's smile began to trigger even more genetic memories of the horrors of the occupation.

 

 

"The Holy are many, but they are one. They have come from many planets, but so many years back it disappears into the haze of memory, even for them; they joined in heaven as the only rightful heirs of the divine."

 

 

"But you still--maintain the separateness...."

 

 

"The divinity of the Holy manifests as many points of a many-pointed star, but the pentagram describes the five

 

 

great classes of being. I myself am of the family Sanoktisandaruval, of the second great class. My divine ancestors ruled as kings under the Autocrat. The Holy, though one, are yet separate species and cannot mix together, cannot dilute the separateness of the points."

 

 

Ruled as kings...

 

 

There was not a shadow of a doubt in Tuvok's ravaged mind, the Sanoktisandaruval were the Ok' San, and they had ruled over Vulcan.

 

 

Perhaps they were benevolent kings under their own, internal standard. But tiny crumbs of ancient memory broke loose from the abyss and floated to the surface, where Tuvok could stare at them.

 

 

A smoldering furnace--perhaps a fusion power plant remembered by ancients who had no reference beyond a wood cook fire... a lake of fire, or radioactivity, or even liquid helium; slaves writhing in agony, suffering the torments of the damned--or perhaps struck repeatedly by the terror-projection machines... mountain-sized demons filling the field of view--holographic projections to convey orders quickly to a large group of slaves?

 

 

I am a slave of the household of Javastaras. I rise from a fitful three hours of dreamless sleep in which waking dreams torment me. I am compelled forward to crawl on my stomach alongside six other slaves before the hell-princess Meliflones, whom Javastaras wishes to conjoin. She is pleased, laughing and clapping her hands in childish joy.

 

 

But we are forgotten as Javastaras and Meliflones court, and I crouch on my knees, afraid to move lest I call attention to myself.

 

 

It was Tuvok's first conscious genetic memory.

 

 

More frozen images: trapped and bound in a tiny room while demons ripped and tore at the flesh. Doctors, surely, giving inoculations or engaging in medical procedures, perhaps without anesthetic. Many-tentacled monsters screaming and thrashing their limbs... pumps, hydraulics, electrical cables? A threshing machine?

 

 

But the genetic memories that were not simply misconstructions were the pain, the terror, the physical abuse and overwork to the point of death, and most especially the

 

 

invasion of the most private corners of a Vulcan mind, for there dwelt the Terror and the Fury--and there the Furies touched most deeply.

 

 

I am a young girl now, performing in the drama. And they make me stand frozen while a young boy approaches jerkily, anguish on his face but blood on his hands....

 

 

For Tuvok suddenly remembered the slave torcs, metallic collars worn around the throat that melded into the mind, controlling the slave's every action, every word, every thought.

 

 

They became no longer Vulcans but animals, beasts of the field, bowing and capering and doing their masters' will instead of their own. Tuvok "remembered" the shows, the degrading fantasies in which Vulcan slaves played the role of mythological beings, talking animals, children, even rocks and other scenery. Dramas of torment and humiliation in which one captive was forced to murder another, the limbs of each controlled by his slave tore.

 

 

I am an old man. I am tired. I hurt, but I cannot stop. I work incessantly; I am possessed. The demons wish me dead If eel a pain in my lower heart, and perhaps they will get their wish after all. I haven't the strength to fight anymore, so I am useless. They discard the useless.

 

 

To genetically "remember" such specific incidents in such detail must mean, Tuvok reasoned, that they had occurred again and again, over a period of tens of thousands of years. And the worst memory of all was the utter helplessness... they could never even free themselves; they had to wait for the Unclean, whoever they were, to arrive and drive out the Furies for their own reasons.

 

 

It was a bitter truth to vomit up; but now that he had dragged it from the black abyss of the Vulcan unconscious into the light, where reason and logic could analyze it, the emotional charge of the memories began to fade.

 

 

It happened in the blink of an eye, though it felt like a hundred years to Tuvok. But Navdaq turned away, the conversation over, and resumed its trek to the Autocrat, leading Jane way, Neelix, and Tuvok himself while the Vulcan began finally to come to peace inside himself, suppressing the powerful emotions behind the mask of logic and restoring his natural equilibrium.

 

 

The gods had arrived, to drive away the Furies and demons.

 

 

The "gods" were hideous! Enormous, bloated, black wasps, horrors of fiber woven with metal--Tuvok caught only glimpses of writing mouths sucking the life-energy out of entire ships, in deep space. The gods did not need boats to sail the celestial waters; they crawled the vasty deep naked and horrible, bodies puffing out with internal pressures, mandibles and hundred of multifaceted eyes causing Vulcan slaves to fall face to the ground and sometimes even die of terror.

 

 

The Ok' San turned their terrors on the wasp-gods; the weapon had no effect on insectoid, soul-feeding horrors. In fear and fury, the Ok' San turned on their own slaves, throwing them into combat against the gods; the slaves died by the tens of thousands, split and eaten live before their paralyzed fellow slaves.

 

 

The Ok' San fell back, beaten for the first time, frightened and astonished at these beings over whom they had no power! And the Furies fled, enraged but impotent, helpless--but vowing to return and reclaim what was owed. But as Tuvok watched them leave, logic help him, he cowered... he was afraid that the Furies were leaving; he wanted them back!

 

 

Shame burned in his face at the racial memory, another powerful, unaccustomed emotion. Tuvok bowed his head in retroactive shame and humiliation.

 

 

Thenceforth, history fell back into the rhythm that Tuvok had studied. The wasp-gods, the Unclean, were un interested in the Vulcan ex-slaves. There was no economically viable reason to maintain slavery in any space faring culture; the only reason was arrogance, the sheer joy of oppression itself. The Unclean had no motivation or interest; they saw the Furies as a threat... they removed the threat.

 

 

And the Vulcans, suddenly granted freedom, their fondest wish, fell to warring among themselves, for they could no longer contemplate life without the overseer's whip. They mistook custom for natural law and sought to perpetuate the vile institution of slavery.

 

 

Savage wars erupted, acts of bloodthirsty vengeance and preemptive barbarity became commonplace. And from the chaos of "the war of all against all," as the human philosopher Hobbes had described, rose the cleansing logic and system of Surak, resurrecting Vulcan high culture on the operating table of reason.

 

 

Slowly, Tuvok began to remember who he was and, more important, where he was. He blinked back to the present in a dank, dungeon like hole--the antechamber of the Autocrat. Navdaq was gone; they awaited its return.