They may represent the biggest threat the Federation has ever faced... perhaps even greater than the Borg.

 

 

"When they invaded the Alpha Quadrant one hundred years ago, a single ship fought the Constitution-class starship Enterprise and a Klingon fleet to the death. If today, they chose to send a dozen ships, or a few hundred or thousand, how could we possibly respond?

 

 

"My words might be inadequate to convey the dire situation we face, but if you had been there with us, if you had seen them and felt the mindless, paralyzing terror they induce, even without their terror-projection weapon, I wouldn't need to explain anything."

 

 

Tuvok spoke into the well of alarmed silence.

 

 

"The captain has been deliberately vague about my own reaction to the Furies.

 

 

She wishes to spare my feelings, for my emotional reaction disgraced my logical heritage. But I have no feelings to be hurt; and if it will help make the rest of you understand the gravity of the threat, I will accept whatever opprobrium my reaction deserves."

 

 

Pausing a moment, Tuvok told Chakotay, Kim, Paris, and Torres exactly what he had felt, sparing no raging emotion, no disgraceful, illogical reaction.

 

 

When he finished, the commander was stunned. Without even having seen the Furies, he began to understand.

 

 

"There are twenty-seven billion--well, demons on that planet," said Jane way.

 

 

"If we allow them to invade our quadrant with even a significant fraction of that figure, we will face an enemy greater in sheer numbers than any we have ever faced since before the Federation was the Federation, and before the human race was really human. And then there are the projected terrors; thank heaven we didn't have to face those. But if they do invade, we will."

 

 

"We failed to effectively resist conquest the last time,"

 

 

added Tuvok; "although we are closer to them technologically, the Furies could overwhelm us with sheer numbers."

 

 

Chakotay frowned. Fatalism did not sit well in his craw. "It's not just our technology that has changed. We're older now, as a people; we're more sophisticated. We are civilized, and we have met many new and some would even say horrific life-forms.

 

 

Wilson's Worms on Dalmat Seven; the Viidians, even the Vulcans look a little like human demons."

 

 

Jane way shook her head.

 

 

"When a human encounters a Fury, he is no longer older, more sophisticated, civilized, or even human anymore. He is once more what he was in the past: a terrified slave driven to obedience by irresistible fear."

 

 

The ready-room door slid open, and a picture of walking death loomed in the doorway. Chakotay almost winced at the vision: flesh sunk to the bone so it appeared a living skull, skin pallid as death, clammy and dry, sliding across the joints and muscles like a poorly upholstered chair trod upon to reach a high place... the man in the doorway did not so much fill his Star fleet lieutenant's uniform as offer h a wire frame on which to hang. Red bay--who else would it be?--listed to the side, like an ocean ship taking on water just before sinking beneath the waves.

 

 

He lurched into the room, arms outstretched, and Chakotay impulsively jerked to his feet though the lieutenant had only grabbed for the table to steady himself on legs too weak to support even his emaciated weight. He had crashed only a few weeks earlier, judging from the distress beacon; but it might as well have been years in a prison camp undergoing the punishments of the damned.

 

 

Kes accompanied the young ancient into the ready room. She caught him by the arm, levering him gently into a chair, then she sat beside him and put his hand in hers but did not attempt any more emotional greeting. They are very private souls, thought the commander.

 

 

"I have seen hell," croaked Red bay, and no one in the room dared contradict the audacious statement. Even Tuvok simply folded his hands and let the words hover overhead.

 

 

"You're still alive," said Kes, reassuring the young man.

 

 

"No one should see hell," insisted Red bay, "and survive."

 

 

"But you have survived," said the captain; "and you must help the rest of us survive. You know what the Furies intend? I see you do. Then you'll help us now."

 

 

Red bay closed his eyes--then quickly opened them again, evidently seeing more to fear in the blackness than in the light.

 

 

He turned expectantly to Jane way, who began the inquiry.

 

 

"Yes. Welt we know the what. What do we know about the how?

 

 

B'Elanna?"

 

 

B'Elanna Torres cleared her throat. Lieutenant Carey and I have continued to analyze the tri corder recordings that Ensign Kim made of the machinery inside the moon, and there is no question what it is: the moon is set up to receive a single burst of energy so catastrophic that it will destroy the moon microseconds after it begins to be absorbed."

 

 

She tapped on the console, causing a three-dimensional, holoprojected schematic of the machinery to materialize above the conference table and rotate slowly. Chakotay stared curiously, but it meant little to him; it was a big, bulky machine.

 

 

"The system Kim and Paris saw was built to channel a massive amount of energy.... The moon will be bombarded by a burst of energy, it has to be a burst--the circuits wouldn't last longer than fifteen milliseconds. But that hardly matters, because within a hundred milliseconds, the moon's surface will first liquefy, then a quarter of a second later boil away into ionized gas."

 

 

Paris shook his head, confused.

 

 

"If the whole system breaks down in a quarter of a second--"

 

 

"Nowhere near that long," corrected Lieutenant Torres; "only one-point-five hundredths of a second, really, before the circuits fry."

 

 

"All right, one-point-five hundredths of a second--what could it possibly do in that length of time?"

 

 

"It projects energy, Paris. Enough to cause a subspace rift and probably enough to puncture through many folds of the

 

 

fabric, whatever you want to call it, of the universe. It creates something very much like an artificial wormhole."

 

 

B'Elanna Torres paused. Chakotay silently pondered the hard-to-miss implication: The Furies planned to send an awful lot of them somewhere, and mighty fast, too.

 

 

CHAPTER

 

 

"I don't really understand it," continued B'Elanna; she felt annoyed at not understanding. But worse, she had to wonder it she would understand, if she had stuck it out at the Academy.

 

 

"You really need a subspace physicist here. But while the heavy-particle radiation, the actual guts of the exploding star, crawls toward the moon at only about a twentieth of light speed, say thirteen thousand kilometers per second, the first burst of massless, energetic neutrinos crosses the gap at light speed itself. They strike the neutrino collectors, here." Torres caused a series of thirty-eight gigantic coils of some thin wire, like metallic spiderwebs, to glow blue on the red, floating schematic.

 

 

"In the first three hundred nanoseconds, the neutrinos are converted to Bela-Smith-Ng subspace pumped-wave energy, the same stuff we use to send a subspace message--except every particle raised fifteen or sixteen 'orbits," or levels of energy.

 

 

Theoretically impossible, of course... according to Federation science." She smiled, pure Maquis satisfaction.

 

 

"In the next fourteen hundred nanoseconds, this Bela

 

 

energy is run a few million times around a circular coil, here." She illuminated a different section of the diagram; but she could see Kim and Paris staring blankly, trying to absorb the gist, at least.

 

 

"What does that do?" asked the ensign, more to himself than Torres. B'Elanna almost put her hand on Kim's arm; he had always said he would have gone to EDO School to become an engineer if he hadn't gotten the Voyager billet. He's upset that he doesn't see it immediately, she realized; for a moment, B'Elanna felt very close to Kim, sharing the bond of imagined inadequacy.

 

 

B'Elanna Torres answered quickly.

 

 

"Edward Bela, who lived on a colony now at the core of Maquis resistance to the Cardassian-inspired treaty, thought that if Bela-energy were forced into a circular path--and I've never seen anyone even attempt it before, but chat's what the Furies are doing-it would created a subspace tunnel of such intensity that it would explode along its only available expansion points... forward and back."

 

 

Jane way gasped.

 

 

"They really are building a wormhole!" she exclaimed.

 

 

"You're way ahead of me; but yes, that's the conclusion Carey and I came to."

 

 

The captain continued so quickly, even B'Elanna had a hard time following.

 

 

"They've built a device to focus some monstrous burst of energy into the creation of an artificial wormhole, which they're going to project. Calculations probably would show its other end pointing to the Alpha Quadrant... then they'll send their ships through. Have to be fast, enough; they've already burned up, what, two milliseconds? And they only have fifeeen, say ten for safety's sake? Eight milliseconds... they're not going to send their ships through the wormhole.

 

 

They're going to create the wormhole around the ships! So the first warning sign would be when they mass their fleee in one spot. B'Elanna, what's the beam spread? What kind of radius would we have to look for? And where in the universe do they expece to get a burst like that? To vaporize that whole moon, you must have calculated them using an astronomical amount of energy. There's no way they can..."

 

 

She paused, scowling. Lieutenant Torres opened her mouth; but before she could speak, Tuvok drew the obvious conclusion: "There is only one source for an energy burst that large," he said.

 

 

"The Furies are planning to trigger their own sun to go supernova"

 

 

In the stunned silence around the conference table, B'Elanna Torres could have dropped a molecule and made everyone jump at the crash.

 

 

Red bay smiled, but the gesture turned into a grimace of loathing. B'Elanna tried not to look at him; he frightened her.

 

 

"Yes," admitted the chief engineer.

 

 

"They're going to blow up their sun. We--passed through the sun a while ago." Torres glanced at Commander Chakotay, who had said not a word. As Torres expected, Jane way stared at her executive officer in astonishmed.

 

 

"You took my ship into the sun?"

 

 

Chakotay inclined his head for a moment, and the captain sat back, frowning but saying nothing more.

 

 

Torres continued, feeling embarrassed, as if she had betrayed a confidence.

 

 

"And Paris thought to conduct a full scan of the immediate environment... passive only, so we wouldn't alert the Fury pursuers that we were still alive. I've been going over the data since, and I discovered that the core is already in an advanced state of collapse: there are hardly any bosons to speak of and nowhere near enough heat to sustain the fusion reaction... but the neutrino count is through the roof. And yes, I know the sun isn't anywhere near big enough to collapse on its own--or anywhere near as hot as a supernova, which can generate core temperatures of six hundred million degrees."

 

 

"A Bela-Neutron device," declared Tuvok.

 

 

"Of course. Another conceptual breakthrough by Professor Bela... the devices, millions of them, absorb heavy particles like hydrogen and helium nuclei and re emit neutrinos plus electrons and positrons. Neutrinos don't interact with anything except neutrino collectors, so most of the sun's energy is pumped away uselessly..."

 

 

"Leaving not enough energy to hold the sun's diameter apart against the crushing pull of gravity," completed

 

 

Jane way, "and the star collapses like a popped soap bubble."

 

 

"An overly poetic metaphor," said Tuvok, "but essentially accurate."

 

 

"And when it collapses," concluded B'Elanna, "boom."

 

 

Paris's mouth had opened wider and wider during the explanation. He might have barely passed the minimum physics credits at the Academy, but he could add two and three.

 

 

"Damn, talk about burning your bridges behind you!"

 

 

Tuvok raised his eyebrows.

 

 

"Mr. Paris brings up an interesting question: Once the Furies create the wormhole to transport their fleet, collapsing their own star into a supernova, what is their plan for the rest of their population?

 

 

By my rough estimate, this star is large enough that a supernova would extend its radius far past the inhabited planet. Every life-form on the surface of the planet would be incinerated.

 

 

There would be no survivors."

 

 

B'Elanna nodded grimly.

 

 

"We wondered about that, too. The sun goes supernova, and seven and a half minutes later, the neutrinos and photons strike the moon. In a total of four milliseconds, the wormhole is projected to a target point. Eleven milliseconds after that, the circuits fry, and the wormhole begins wobbling, collapsing in maybe seven or eight seconds.

 

 

"But the moon is the same distance from the sun as the phnet, in the L-four position. The moon can't eclipse the sun. No matter what, their planet will be vaporized, or at least biologically cleansed, by the same blast."

 

 

"Of course, the Furies live deep underground," mused Tuvok. "They might survive."

 

 

"But they'd have essentially no sun! Captain, I never answered your other question about the radius of the wormhole.

 

 

That's because we can't. Nobody has any experience with this sort of pumped-wave subspace energy--it doesn't exist as far as Federation science is concerned! So it could be anything from a few meters to a few thousand kilometers... neither Carey nor I can narrow it any further than that."

 

 

Jane way sat at the head of the table, cupping her chin in her hand.

 

 

"We didn't see any evidence of a huge fleet of ships while we were on the planet. Of course, we were pretty confined, to say the least."

 

 

Ensign Kim spoke up.

 

 

"Sir, we saw nothing from orbit. I can have the computer review the records, looking for areas of the phnet we never got to see; we weren't in orbit long before we were attacked."

 

 

"Do that, Mr. Kim."

 

 

Chakotay's turn.

 

 

"Captain, I don't think you'll find any battle fleet, or escape fleet, for that matter."

 

 

B'Elanna listened intently, she knew that tone... Chakotay had just had, or was on the verge of having, an insight, a satori.

 

 

"Why do you say that?"

 

 

"I don't know. But I have a feeling that we're shooting into an empty tree. Call it a hint from my spirit guide; but there is an aspect of this we're all missing... including myself."

 

 

"What do you mean?" asked the captain.

 

 

"I don't know yet, Captain." Chakotay considered a moment, then shook his head.

 

 

"We're missing something. But I don't think we'll find any battle fleets, and I don't think they have any intention of letting any of their people die in the supernova."

 

 

"Commander Chakotay," asked Tuvok,

 

 

"I did not detect any noticible compassion or concern in either Navdaq or the Autocrat for the Fury population."

 

 

"I don't mean they're too nice to let them die, Mr. Tuvok; I don't believe they're willing to sacrifice even a single soldier who might aid their cause. It would be wasteful and inefficient and I think that's how they would look at it."

 

 

Red bay giggled slightly. Disconcerted, B'Elanna turned to him; but the lieutenant had nothing to say. "Well, the commander was right about one thing," said Kim, looking up from the screen.

 

 

"The computer has just reviewed the entire planetary scan and found nothing that could possibly be a fleet of ships."

 

 

Paris added his own two strips of latinum.

 

 

"There wasn't

 

 

anything on the moon that looked like a launch bay or docking port. I don't think they even think about fleets of ships."

 

 

Kim continued.

 

 

"There's no ship activity around the planet, no traffic between the planet and the moon, and nothing else in the solar system."

 

 

"Lieutenant Torres," said Chakotay, "are there any nearby stars with habitable planets we passed on the way here?"

 

 

"Yes sir. Two stars, one with two habitable planets, the other with four."

 

 

"Any life-form readings?"

 

 

"None that we detected, Commander."

 

 

Chakotay looked at Jane way. The captain smiled.

 

 

"So we've determined the Furies aren't very sociable and aren't interested in colonization, trade, or contact with other beings. This doesn't explain why they don't have a battle fleet on the eve of an invasion."

 

 

"Captain," said Torres, "those ships that tried to corner us they were sluggish and completely inexperienced at space combat. But why didn't they shoot their terror projection beam at us? That's the question that worries me.

 

 

Lieutenant Red bay's giggles had become more and more frequent and distracting;, now he broke into loud, stentorian laughter. B'Elanna slid away from him, as did everybody at the table except Chakotay and Tuvok.

 

 

It was the crazy-man laugh of a person who no longer cared what anybody thinks of him or his sanity. Red bay lurched to his feet, yanking his arm away from Kes's restraining grip.

 

 

"A fleet? You wanted a fleet? Oh, they gave us a fleet, all right a nice, big, fat, rosy fleet, fit for any invasion!

 

 

"And you want the terror lights? Oh, yes, indeed, they did have those, indeed indeed... just tell me more about the Furies and the fleets they don't have and the terror beams they can't project! I'm all ears!" Red bay danced around a bit, pacing left and right, only a step or two. Kes rose to pull him down again, but Neelix snatched her back out of reach. Good man, thought B'Elanna no telling what Red bay might do next

 

 

Red bay remained nonviolent, however, he started walking energetically around the table, hugging himself, glazed eyes overlooking a star scape both alien and terrifying that only he could see.

 

 

"They came out of the black; we didn't see them, but at first we thought only that they were another race, and we were explorers! But no, they came--they didn't come to explore but to conquer... us! Conquer us. Conquer us."

 

 

"Go on," said Jane way, Tuvok glanced at her with a questioning raise of his brow, but she shook her head.

 

 

Red bay told his tale. He told of the meeting with the Furies, the negotiation, Captain Jean Luc Picard's futile attempt to find a settlement.

 

 

Jane way's mouth twitched; it had all happened shortly after the Voyager was grabbed by the Caretaker and propelled through an artificial wormhole into the Delta Quadrant. Had she known of the encounter by the newest Enterprise, she would have put two and two together and realized the Furies were ready to go Viking again at the drop of a proverbial terror-beam.

 

 

B'Elanna squirmed, unsettled indeed to learn how intransigent and monomaniacal their enemy really was, how bloody-minded, and how he would fight to the last soldier, the final ship--to the end without a thought for treaty or compromise!

 

 

Red bay sank at last into his seat, but he was not finished.

 

 

Holding his face in his hands, his voice quiet and shaking, Red bay whispered of the terror projector and how it tore at the mind, leaving it bleeding and raw and wide open to virtually any command or demand that would make the horror stop.

 

 

"You don't fight. You don't fight. You fall down and do what they say and anything they say is your heart's desire, anything to stop the fear that sucks you out of yourself, and you'd cut your own throat or sell your captain as a slave if they would just turn it off? Turn it off, turn it off, turn it OFF!"

 

 

Kes touched Red bay's arm; the lieutenant began to cry

 

 

softly. He did not care who watched. B'Elanna sat very still, uncomfortably wondering what tearing of the mind would

 

 

be necessary to make B'Elanna Torres fall to broken pieces of madness like this man. She did not like the answer.

 

 

No one else vented his fear, no one but Red bay had the guts--and he had nothing left to lose.

 

 

We're Star fleet, all of us, she thought, noticing all of their responses to a sobbing lieutenant, some uncomfortable some sympathetic. She smiled behind steepled hands, knowing she was no different: like the rest of the crew, if the Furies projected their terrors at Lieutenant Torres, she would fall obediently to the ground and give them anything, even her Klingon honor, to make them stop. It was purely biological.

 

 

"Lieutenant Red bay," said the captain, her voice firm and in control, but gentle, "we have to know how they will come. If you destroyed their fleet--if destroying the antenna destroyed their power source--then where is the new fleet? Where will the attack come from? We can't find any other fleet of ships."

 

 

Red bay did not move. He spoke to the table.

 

 

"Don't you know yet? Don't you know, know how they're coming yet? They're coming, and fear rides alongside."

 

 

"But how are they coming Lieutenant? Do they have another fleet around another star system? Is the fleet already in the Alpha Quadrant still operable? Mr. Red bay, we have to know."

 

 

Red bay remained silent, face still in his hands. But Jane way decided the time had come for the man to begin returning to himself, to his duty.

 

 

"Look at me," she said. When he did not move, she repeated herself: "Look at me, Mr. Red bay, when I'm talking to you."

 

 

Her command tone shook him enough that he sat back slowly and stared wonderingly at her, like a spoiled child slapped for the first time in his life. B'Elanna was impressed.

 

 

"Talk to me," Jane way continued.

 

 

"In words. Tell me how the Furies are going to invade the Alpha Quadrant. Tell me now, I have to know."

 

 

"They're--they're invading."

 

 

"How are they invading, Lieutenant Red bay?"

 

 

"Invading..."

 

 

"How are they invading?"

 

 

"They--create a wormhole--artificial wormhole, and..."

 

 

"We already know they create an artificial wormhole, Lieutenant. Report: Where is the Fury fleet?"

 

 

Red bay had held himself rigidly erect, staring at the captain. Now he deflated, slumping forward, more relaxed in defeat than he had been since his rescue.

 

 

"There is no fleet," he softly said.

 

 

"The wormhole is... is for them."

 

 

"For them how? How will they invade?"

 

 

"For them. For the planet."

 

 

B'Elanna froze momentarily; then she heard her own pulse beating in her temples. For the planet?

 

 

"The wormhole--is for the planet."

 

 

"Captain," said Torres, "that's it! That's the missing piece Commander Chakotay was talking about--they're going to send their entire planet through the artificial wormhole!"

 

 

"With all twenty-seven billion aboard?" demanded Tom Paris.

 

 

"Yes!"

 

 

"But..." Neelix looked confused; he was having a hard time with the concept.

 

 

"But even if they did, how would they move?

 

 

They don't have enough ships!"

 

 

Red bay stroked the table, the smooth texture of replicated oak.

 

 

"The... planet."

 

 

Chakotay leaned forward.

 

 

"Red bay, the entire planet is a shipT'

 

 

Red bay reluctantly nodded; he gripped his hands together, fighting the residual compulsion to serve his masters in any way they desired--and not to reveal their secrets to the Unclean.

 

 

Jane way stood, towering over the table by command presence alone.

 

 

"I knew we had a problem. But I was not aware of the full extent of the danger.

 

 

"With this new intelligence, I now realize we have no idea at all how to stop the invasion of an entire armed planet of twenty-seven billion soldiers. We haven't a clue how to stop

 

 

their jumping to Federation space and launching the most terrible war we have ever faced.

 

 

"The war will be a holy crusade, and it can end one of only two ways: either the Federation, the Klingon and Cardassian Empires, and all the nonaligned races will end up enslaved to these demons... or else we will have to kill them, every last one of them, down to the last Fury. Twenty-seven billion self-defense homicides on our consciences.

 

 

"Both these alternatives are unacceptable. You will come up with another option, fast. There is nothing more to say here; dismissed."

 

 

Grimly, the entire staff except Tuvok rose to return to their duty stations; B'Elanna wondered how they could possibly obey their captain's last command. Lieutenant Tuvok stayed behind in the ready room.

 

 

Lieutenant Red bay stayed as well. Jane way understood. They have a bond, she thought.

 

 

She followed the rest of the crew out of the ready room, leaving the Vulcan and the dead man alone.

 

 

CHAPTER

 

 

They must have planned this invasion for centuries,"

 

 

muttered B'Elanna Torres. She sat backward in a chair in engineering, resting her chin on the back and staring at part of the schematics of the moon. Centuries! The thought frightened her human half--and awed her Klingon side.

 

 

"You think sot' asked Captain Jane way from behind

 

 

Torres. The chief engineer jumped; she had thought she was alone on the deck.

 

 

"Captain! I didn't hear you come in."

 

 

"You said they've been planning this for centuries. How do you know?"

 

 

B'Elanna said nothing for a moment; then the Klingon forced out the information deduced by the human.

 

 

"Because of the mathematics of it," she said; "twenty-seven billion Furies, figure a thousand--no, ten thousand in a ship, they would need a fleet of two-point-seven million ships."

 

 

"That's a hell of a fleet."

 

 

"That's a ridiculous fleet! Compared to that, the entire Federation has only a handful of starships, and none of

 

 

them can carry anywhere near ten thousand people. The

 

 

Federation, Klingon and Cardassian Empires, and everybody else in the quadrant have combined fewer than fifty thousand ships of any type, maybe a total carrying capacity of twelve-point-five million people if we pack them like Klingon fish."

 

 

"So you figure the Furies were planning on sending their entire planet all along."

 

 

Was Jane way making fun? No, she's not the type.

 

 

"Right. I mean, yes, Captain. This isn't a desperation maneuver, it's what they always intended to do. The other invasions were just attempts to establish a beachhead."

 

 

"And it would have taken more than a century to build all this technology?"

 

 

"Captain, they had to develop it from scratch. If they'd had the ability to send their planet through a hundred years ago, they would have. They were planning this decades years ago, when they met the first Enterprise, and they must have planned it for decades before that." B'Elanna stared at the warp core, watching it pulse red, fade, pulse. The regularity comforted her in the face of timeless, implacable enmity--"vast, cool, and unsympathetic" stuck in her mind from somewhere.

 

 

"I wish we could plan that far ahead," said Jane way.

 

 

"So what do we do about it? What's my third option, Torres?"

 

 

B'Elanna ground her teeth. She had thought for a couple of hours; at least, still stumped, she had finally hooked up with Lieutenant Carey, Maquis cleverness combined with Star fleet thoroughness.

 

 

Together, they had come up with one possibility--but it was impossible. Carey was back in his quarters racking out; Torres could not sleep herself, so she was left to bear the torch herself.

 

 

"Well, Carey and I have only a vague thought. Frankly, I can't see how we would implement it." Pulse, fade. Bright red, and the control console behind her was cold, hard.

 

 

"It is?"

 

 

"Destroy the moon. Blow it up somehow. No power--no wormhole."

 

 

Jane way absently toyed with her hair, distracted. The captain's eyes flicked across the instrument readouts behind B'Elanna; she never stops, not even for a second, thought the engineer.

 

 

B'Elanna felt the rough fabric of the chair against her chin; she felt an old dream stir, the dream of command and four pips on her collar. If only "All right, that sounds promising," said the captain; "how do we do it? Can we penetrate the hull with our phasers7."

 

 

"Nope."

 

 

"Photon torpedoes? How about if we rammed it, even if that meant taking out the Voyager itself?"

 

 

Ouch.

 

 

"No, and no. We could try taking the shuttle craft in again, but all the important guts of the system are deep inside, where we can't go."

 

 

Jane way closed her eyes; when she opened them, she stared right through B'Elanna's Klingon skull and bored into her brain. "There's another point here you haven't mentioned."

 

 

"Um... well, yeah." Torres started to squirm but caught herself.

 

 

"If we blow up the moon... well the sun still goes nova. And the planetary surface will be fried."

 

 

"I told you that wasn't necessarily acceptable."

 

 

Necessarily? "Captain, you said it wasn't acceptable at all to kill the Furies. Now you're saying maybe?"

 

 

Jane way pursed her lips. She frowned.

 

 

"Actually, Lieutenant, I'm not saying. Not yet."

 

 

B'Elanna was careful not to exult; Jane way, like most humans, suffered from too much sympathy for her enemies. Best not to play with the inertial dampers when the ship was finally headed the right direction. The captain continued her rapid-fire questions: "How about driving a shuttle craft up inside and transporting an armed photon torpedo onto the moon?"

 

 

B'Elanna raised her brows.

 

 

"You know the shuttle craft wouldn't be able to make it out."

 

 

"Of course not."

 

 

"No good. Transport the torpedo where? What are the vital links? It does no good at all to take out this circuit or that circuit; this thing has so much redundancy built into it,

 

 

because it's absorbing the energy from a supernova, that you could take out half the circuits and it would still probably work!" Was that really admiration in my voice?

 

 

"So what do we do?"

 

 

Torres closed her eyes and shook her head, scraping her chin against the chair.

 

 

"I don't know. And neither does Carey." She kept her eyes shut for a long moment; when she opened them, Jane way was gone without even a goodbye. For a moment, B'Elanna stared, startled. Then she shrugged and got back to work.

 

 

***

 

 

In her ready room, Captain Jane way repeated engineering's half-plan to Chakotay. The commander frowned.

 

 

"Have you considered the moral implication.?"

 

 

She waited patiently; he didn't like to be interrupted. She stood facing Chakotay.

 

 

"If we blow up the moon, Captain, then there will be no wormhole. But that will not stop the sun from going supernova."

 

 

Jane way looked her commander in the eye.

 

 

"Yes, Chakotay, I thought about that."

 

 

"Kathryn, that means that... twenty-seven billion people will die as a direct result of our actions."

 

 

"It's a sobering thought, Commander."

 

 

Chakotay turned away, not meeting her eyes.

 

 

"I don't believe I could kill even that many Cardassians, let alone these people with whom I have no history."

 

 

Jane way wondered, for a moment, whether she could even contemplate such a savage ace. So far, she had kept the moral part of her brain sealed off in order to work on the engineering side; but she couldn't do that forever.

 

 

"You do have a history with them, Chakotay; you just don't remember."

 

 

"That's the whole point, Captain; I don't remember. Maybe if we all were to meet them."

 

 

"No time; according to Torres, the sun will go supernova very soon, a day or two. Besides, I can't run the risk of the Furies' using their terror device on my crew and maybe forcing them to mutiny." She crossed and sat--the symbolic finality of command.

 

 

Chakotay turned to her.

 

 

"You are the captain, Kathryn. You have to make a decision, and quickly."

 

 

She nodded, now staring at unmoving sears' the brightest pinprick shortly to go nova.

 

 

"This changes everything... I never imagined myself killing people beyond my ability to count. I don't know if I can do it either, even if I decide I have to.

 

 

"All right, you have the conn again, Commander, I'm going down to work with B'Elanna on just what we could do to destroy the moon... just in case. Give us three hours, then convene the senior officers. I will decide then. Definitely then."

 

 

***

 

 

Jane way walked morosely toward engineering, hands clasped behind her back. Sometimes, she thoughe, command is the cruelest mistress of all.

 

 

Kathryn Jane way showed up late to a bridge-crew meeting for the very first time in her life. She entered bruskly with B'Elanna Torres twenty-two minutes afeer the scheduled start. The cast was a virtual rerun of the meeting nearly a day earlier, except for the absence of Lieutenant Red bay. Kes looked distracted, as if she'd rather be down in sickbay with her patient. Or anywhere but here, thought the captain.

 

 

"We still don't know whether we can destroy the moon," she said abruptly while sitting. B'Elanna sat beside Kim, as usual. "First, we must decide whether we should destroy the moon. You all know what that means."

 

 

B'Elanna Torres sounded fruserated.

 

 

"Whether we should? How can we not? The fate of the Federation and the Empire are both at stake!"

 

 

Jane way looked across the table at Kes, who opened and closed her mouth. The Ocampan said noehing, and Neelix moved his arm to cross hers familiarly.

 

 

Chakotay spoke into the sound vacuum.

 

 

"It's not as easy a decision as you make it out to be, Torres; no human--indeed, no single life-form--has ever killed on the scale we're so casually discussing. Never on any planet in the quadrant."

 

 

"We've never faced conquest and enslavement on such a huge scale, either!"

 

 

"But do we have the right to kill twenty-seven billion... even to save ourselves from being enslaved?"

 

 

Jane way frowned. The ready room seemed unnaturally dark, as if she were back on the Fury planet. Dammit, I have to make this decision rationally--not on the basis of my own genetic horror! "People, people!" interjected Neelix. At the urgency in his voice, the half-heard, whispered conversations ceased.

 

 

"I believe Kes has a point to offer."

 

 

"Have you considered," she said in a small voice, "that many billions of the dead will be innocent children who have nothing whatsoever to do with the feud?"

 

 

Captain Jane way began to fret; she had her own opinion on the subject--a critic might say her own agenda--but she was not a Cardassian captain and could not simply impose her will on such a terrible issue. Definitely not if she were a "majority of one."

 

 

But Chakotay and especially Kes were beginning to have an impact on everyone's mood. Jane way turned to Tuvok, but the Vulcan maintained an enigmatic silence, arms folded.

 

 

Neelix lovingly put his arm around his beloved's shoulders. "I agree with Kes. How can you even contemplate killing twenty-seven billion people? I can't even imagine such murder on my conscience, no matter what the provocation!"

 

 

Tom Paris offered his thoughts, sounding far more sympathetic and reasonable than the captain would have expected of him.

 

 

"I understand what Kes and Commander Chakotay are saying.

 

 

It's a horrific thing to think about, killing more people than have ever lived on Earth. But..."

 

 

He paused; real pain flickered across his face, memories of Maquis friends he had seen killed in his first and only raid. A friend he might have helped kill--somewhere else. Bad decisions, an overactive conscience, thought the captain.

 

 

Paris continued.

 

 

"But as huge as the number of Fury dead would be, it's still smaller than the number they would enslave and eventually murder--if not their physical bodies, at least their spirits. The sympathy shouldn't be all so one-sided, that's all I'm saying."

 

 

Good words; Jane way nodded and turned to Ensign Kim, one member of the discussion who hadn't yet discussed anything. "We're contemplating a deed, Mr. Kim, that will either save the soul of every person of every race in the Alpha Quadrant, or will be the most staggering act of genocide ever committed in the galaxy, at least that we know of. You must have an opinion, Ensign."

 

 

Kim took a deep breath.

 

 

"My people have a, uh, long history dealing with this sort of thing, on both sides. I've always wondered whether I would risk my life to escape from slavery. I think I would. I'd be scared, but I could overcome that fear, because I'm an intelligent being."

 

 

He paused. Jane way nodded again, encouraging him to continue.

 

 

"But what if my fear was artificially magnified so enormously that I biologically could not overcome it? That's so much more horrible than--I know this sounds weird--mere slavery or mere murder that I think... I think anything we do to stop it is right."

 

 

"Lieutenant Torres," said the captain.

 

 

"I want to hear from you, too."

 

 

"Kim spoke for me," she snarled.

 

 

She's in full Klingon mode, thought Jane way. Now the tone was making her uncomfortable in the other direction--all thought of the innocent victims they might be about to kill vanished in the passion of resisting the oppressor.

 

 

"I want you to speak for yourself."

 

 

"Fine. Captain, I am so terrified of these Furies, I can hardly think straight, like an engineer... I saw that moon, saw the power they're so casually tossing around. Sir, they may not have transporters and shields, but they're centuries ahead of us in power manipulation."

 

 

Jane way sat back, surprised; B'Elanna's anger came from her human engineer side, not her Klingon warrior side!

 

 

She continued.

 

 

"Not to mention creating and exploiting artificial worm holes, which we don't have even the faintest idea how to do! Captain, what the hell makes us think we even can beat these guys and destroy their moon? I think it's more likely to be another Narendra Three. We'll die valiantly; big deal. They'll still jump through and enslave us all."

 

 

"Activate EMH program," said Jane way.

 

 

"Please state the nature of the emergency," said the doctor, appearing on the screen in the middle of the table. He looked around in surprise.

 

 

"Again? Are these conferences to become a regular feature?"

 

 

Paris could not contain himself.

 

 

"You're kidding! The fate of the human race depends on the opinion of a hologram?

 

 

Jane way was angry, and she let Paris have it with all phaser banks.

 

 

"You've had your say, Mr. Paris. Now be quiet, unless you wish to be stripped of your rank and confined in the brig for the next six months."

 

 

"Captain, I apologize. Why bother asking? The hologram is programmed to be a doctor; we already know which way it will vote."

 

 

"This is not a vote, Mr. Paris; I will make the final decision."

 

 

She returned attention to the screen.

 

 

"There is an emergency, Doctor, and I need your advice." Crisply, she outlined the two possibilities.

 

 

"I must have the input of every senior staff member, and that includes my chief medical officer--even a holographic one."

 

 

The doctor's face softened; he actually looked touched. Not for the first time, Jane way wondered whether a hologram generated by biologically based circuitry might not very well qualify for consciousness, an actual life-form.

 

 

"I'm grateful you asked me. Surprised, but grateful. My position is clear: Destroy the moon."

 

 

"What?" demanded Kes. The rest of the crew except Tuvok registered astonishment; even the normally implacable Chakotay's mouth parted in surprise.

 

 

"I take it you disagree with me, Kes," said the doctor.

 

 

"I

 

 

know why... your people live only nine years, and forgive me for being somewhat brusque--it's my programming--but you were virtual pets of the Caretaker. You don't have a realistic idea of what it means to be a free person... and responsible for yourself."

 

 

Chakotay spoke sardonically.

 

 

"And you do understand being a free person?"

 

 

"Yes. I think I do. I know what I want, and I understand that gap between my want and the physical reality. I don't know if I'm a person... I feel like one, but maybe that's just more programming.

 

 

"But I know what just such a small change as--as giving me the power to turn myself on and off has done for me. I know how I would feel if you took that away from me tomorrow."

 

 

Jane way followed the exchange avidly. Certainly, no one would ever say all sides hadn't been considered.

 

 

"But you're a doctor!" cried Kes.

 

 

"How can you say... whatever happened to the Hippocratic oath you taught me? Above all else, first do no harm. You're talking about murder!"

 

 

"No, Kes. I'm talking about triage."

 

 

"Triage?" She fell silent, stumped.

 

 

Jane way smiled; she understood at last... and understood how to articulate and justify her decision. Triage was a concept as well known to commanders as to doctors.

 

 

"Sometimes," the doctor explained, "sometimes we have to let one person die so that others can live. Like in ancient human wars, where there weren't enough doctors or operating tables to save all the soldiers... so the ones whose medical care would take hours were allowed to die so that instead, the doctors could save three or four other people with different injuries."

 

 

"You're not letting them die. You're killing them!"

 

 

"No!" insisted Kim, evidently finding the elusive point he had sought many minutes before.

 

 

"We didn't start the sun going supernova; that was the Furies themselves. They wanted the energy--they set the collapse in motion. All we're doing is stopping them from using that collapse to invade the Alpha Quadrant!"

 

 

"It's the same thing. You're not just stopping the invasion.

 

 

You're stopping them from escaping their sun going supernova... and they'll all die, each one of them."

 

 

"First, do no harm," said the doctor quietly.

 

 

"Can we

 

 

even measure how much harm is done by slavery and the living hell of the terror projector?"

 

 

Jane way turned to Tuvok; still, the lieutenant and her closest confidant said nothing. She shook her head, angry and confused.

 

 

"I said this wasn't a vote. Too bad: for the action, we have Paris, Kim, Torres, and the doctor, against, we have Neelix, Kes, and Chakotay... we would have a majority and a decision." She glanced at Tuvok.

 

 

"With one abstention.

 

 

"But the decision is ultimately my responsibility, and I will be the one to make it. Alone. I wanted your input; but I'm not simply going to count noses. I'm going back to my quarters and make my decision."

 

 

"We don't have much time," said B'Elanna quietly.

 

 

"I know how much time we have," said the captain, a bit too harshly.

 

 

"Thank you for reminding me; I'll make my decision quickly."

 

 

Jane way turned and exited. She passed through the bridge to her quarters, sat behind her desk, behind the un reviewed stack of reports, duty rosters, petty complaints, projections, and performance evaluations, and rubbed her throbbing temples.

 

 

They'll call me Bloody Kate the Executioner, she thought. She was under no delusion that they could ever fully explain the tale of what happened here, not once they finally made it back to the Federation. And she had no doubt they would find a way back before seventy years had passed.

 

 

Or perhaps this is it, she suddenly realized. She opened her eyes, astonished no one had even mentioned it.

 

 

They were looking at a system to project an entire planet all the way to the Alpha Quadrant in one jump!

 

 

Maybe the Voyager could just... piggyback?

 

 

And then what? This small ship's crew were not going to be able to stop twenty-seven billion! They would be killed, and the invasion would proceed apace.

 

 

Unless... was there a way to stop the Furies from passing through the wormhole, yet slip through themselves?

 

 

It was a thought. It wanted exploring... soon. But not immediately: her immediate concern, as Torres had pointed out, was to decide within just a few minutes whether they

 

 

were going to destroy the moon, dooming the Furies, including the children, to fiery cremation, or maybe try to send a subspace message of warning through the same wormhole, letting the Federation know--that it was about to be overwhelmed and destroyed, and all its citizens, and the Klingons, Rom ulans, and Cardassians, would henceforth be slaves to demons from hell.

 

 

Her door chimed. She felt suddenly nervous without any good reason to be. If there were an emergency, Chakotay would have called her on the comm link. But who else would disturb her at this moment, and why?

 

 

The door chimed again.

 

 

"Enter," snapped Captain Kathryn Jane way, in command of herself again after a momentary self-mutiny.

 

 

CHAPTER

 

 

Tuvok entered, hands behind his back. He waited politely; Jane way waited impatiently; both waited for somebody to say something.

 

 

Vulcans have the greaser patience, he thought serenely.

 

 

The captain cracked first. Of course.

 

 

"All right, spill it."

 

 

"You are using the idiom meaning to reveal one's information."

 

 

"When a Vulcan gets pedantic about human expressions, it means he has something to say, and he's uncertain how to say it."

 

 

Tuvok stalled, trying mentally to articulate what he had to say in a way that a human could understand it.

 

 

"An astute observation about my race. What I have to say may seem peculiar, coming from a Vulcan. But there are some things worse than dying, and the Furies promise just such things."

 

 

"Living in slavery?"

 

 

"No, Captain, that is not worse than dying. A normal slave may dream about being free someday, and may even plot an escape.

 

 

Ensign Kim has a cogent point here. He drew a distinction between merely being held against one's

 

 

will by threat of death, and having one's mind biologically altered to make one less than a person, an animal."

 

 

"Go on."

 

 

Did she not yet understand the special threat the Furies represented to a Vulcan?

 

 

"For the Furies to return to Vulcan and make my people again what they once were, before Surak, would be far worse than merely destroying us en masse. We would be alive; but we would no longer be Vulcan. And worse--we would have the memory of what once was and never could be again."

 

 

"All right. Point taken. It doesn't make the decision any easier."

 

 

"I did not expect it would. I did not come here to explain Ensign Kim."

 

 

"You came to...?"

 

 

"To remind you of your duty. Captain, you took an oath when you joined Star fleet, as did we all. You swore to uphold, among other things, the ideals of the United Federation of Planets; to defend it against all enemies, external and internal; to guard the freedom of its citizens."

 

 

"The people who wrote that oath never contemplated killing twenty-seven billion life-forms, including billions of innocent children, to carry out that oath."

 

 

Tuvok nodded; he turned to contemplate a new sculpture from Aton-77 the captain had replicated; it must have cost her many days of replicator credits.

 

 

"Nevertheless, the oath was written, and you freely offered, in the words of another great document, your life, your fortune, and your sacred honor. You cannot turn your back on that oath now. Not even in the face of killing billions of innocent children."

 

 

Jane way abruptly slammed her hands down on the desk, angry and frustrated... more human emotions getting in the way of rationality. Tuvok did not turn around; he did not want to see her like that.

 

 

"Mr. Tuvok! Do you imagine I don't remember that oath?"

 

 

"No. I know that you do. I do not believe you are taking it seriously enough."

 

 

"An oath! What's more important, the words, or the ideals the words were intended to protect?"

 

 

Tuvok said nothing, but he turned around. He had never seen Captain Jane way so racked by self-doubt, so tortured by indecision. He wished he had a magic answer that would make her see what she had to do; but that was irrational

 

 

"The reason we don't go around wiping out races we think are evil, Mr. Tuvok, is not because we're such goody goodies that we can't imagine fighting and killing. We've fought almost everyone in the damned Alpha Quadrant, at one time or another. It's because we're not gods. We don't know what would happen if we started on some great jihad to destroy evil... we could end up destroying ourselves!"

 

 

"That is a risk we sometimes must be prepared to assume."

 

 

Jane way sat slowly, leaning back in her chair and staring up at the overhead.

 

 

"And if we have to destroy the village in order to save it, was it really worth saving in the first placer'

 

 

"If it was worth creating, it is worth preserving. Even at the cost of billions of innocent lives--if that is the only way."

 

 

"Tuvok, do you hear what you're saying?"

 

 

"I am in full possession of my faculties. You do not wish to do this because you do not want the guilt. But your clear duty requires you to take this guilt upon your head. That is the price you must pay--we all must pay--for the freedom we have enjoyed."

 

 

"Tuvok, you remember, via your DNA, horrors so traumatic you cannot even contemplate them. I reacted with terror as well... but I didn't remember anything in particular about that time.

 

 

Maybe only the Ok' San were as bad as you recall; maybe only Vulcan suffered like that." "Perhaps. The suggestion is illogical and unsupported but possible." He leaned close to the sculpture. Water, it was called: a straight column of thin graphite with a hairline blue crack.

 

 

"And in any case," continued the captain, "it was thousands of years ago! Who's to say the Furies haven't changed some?

 

 

Navdaq didn't seem to represent ultimate evil, even if he did throw us in jail. He might just be a petty tyrant. The galaxy is full of them."

 

 

Oddly, the sculpture, Water, soothed his eyes.

 

 

"He might.

 

 

But the evidence we do have indicates that the Furies conquered the Alpha Quadrant once before, were driven off by aliens who no longer exist, and are now planning to return."

 

 

"But we don't know that they're really going to attack us I agree, it's likely, but not certain."

 

 

"If we cannot state for certain they will rule as demons, so to speak, we also cannot say they will not... and the odds favor repetition." Tuvok turned his full Vulcan attention to Captain Jane way.

 

 

"Duty dictates that we cannot take that chance."

 

 

Jane way said nothing; Tuvok forbore pressing his case--he saw that she was deep in thought, and she might well be arguing the case better than he could.

 

 

She leaned back in her chair, massaging her temples. "Perhaps the doctor could alleviate that pain," suggested Tuvok, more to remind her that he was still there than to tell her anything she did not already know.

 

 

"I don't want him to. It's my pain, and I'm going to keep it."

 

 

What a peculiar thing to say... but so stubbornly human. "If the Furies conquer our quadrant, you will not have even that freedom."

 

 

She opened her eyes.

 

 

"I've decided we're going to destroy the moon. But it's not because of any of your arguments."

 

 

"Indeed?"

 

 

"It's the argument you didn't make that decided me... this vessel, the Voyager, is the first and last defense on this side of the wormhole. We're alone--and we're either a projection of Star fleet into the Delta Quadrant, or else we're nothing but just one more ship caught far, far from home.

 

 

"And sometimes, my friend...." Jane way paused; she stared to the side, as if her mind had wandered from the point. Tuvok refrained from interrupting; she is listening to a voice humans have, a voice beyond reason, that nevertheless speaks truly to them. It was that voice the Vulcan hoped someday to understand, to explain, to map.

 

 

"Sometimes, my friend, survival takes precedence over everything," she concluded.

 

 

"I hate it like hell--but sometimes, you just have to shoot the SOB and rationalize it all later." She looked directly at Tuvok with a penetrating stare.

 

 

"Tuvok, I asked myself, if not us, who? If not now, when? It sounds terribly trite, I know. But that's how trite things get that way... by being true." She touched her commbadge.

 

 

"Jane way to Commander Chakotay."

 

 

"Chakotay," responded the commander's voice from everywhere and nowhere.

 

 

"Tell the senior crew we're doing it."

 

 

"I am not surprised. Have you figured out how?"

 

 

She rose and stared at Wafer, frowning. She turned the blue crack toward the wall, ruining the composition, for the sculpture had a jagged red line along the backside.

 

 

"No; I'll get back to you. Have Torres and Carey meet me in engineering in five minutes. Jane way out."

 

 

"Thank you, Captain," said Tuvok.

 

 

"I didn't do it for you, Tuvok."

 

 

"Thank you for that, too."

 

 

The Vulcan waited until Jane way realized he was done. Then she dismissed him, contemplatively. He ghosted out in silence, thankful he never had to stoop to the argument by which she finally persuaded herself.

 

 

Captain Jane way rose and headed for the engineering deck.

 

 

They had a scant few minutes to design a bomb powerful enough to destroy an entire artificial moon, and she had no idea at all how to proceed.

 

 

But Carey and Torres were not in engineering. Jane way waited for a moment, then asked the computer to locate the errant pair. "Lieutenant Torres and Lieutenant Carey are in holodeck two," said the impersonal voice.

 

 

Jane way's curiosity--what could they be doing on the holodeck?--was satisfied the moment she entered. Carey had set up a scale model of the moon, using all the data they had gathered.

 

 

Far away, barely visible on the scale, was a representation of the Fury planet.

 

 

The sun was represented by a sharp, bright star far in the

 

 

distance. The two engineers eerily floated in the empty reaches, like gods.

 

 

"Captain!" cried Torres, sounding ecstatic and worried at the same time.

 

 

"Commander Chakotay just told us of your decision."

 

 

"The decision is made. Now tell me how we're going to do it."

 

 

Carey frowned; this was one of his fortes.

 

 

"We're here, behind the sun," he announced. A tiny dot flickered red and green, so far away it was hard to see.

 

 

"Here's the first scenario we considered."

 

 

The dot broke orbit, swooped around the sun, and dove toward the moon. As it approached, the moon began to flash red, like an angry red-alert indicator.

 

 

"We checked the records and figured out the distance at which the moon alerts the Furies," said Carey in a quick aside.

 

 

The Voyager continued to close as an intercept fleet launched from the planet. Voyager barely had time to launch a single spread of photon torpedoes and fire phasers at the moon on the first pass before it was engaged by six Fury ships. The captain frowned.

 

 

The Voyager ignored the gnat like ships, firing another spread... but then Voyager turned bright white, hurting Jane way's dark-adapted eyes. What the hell--?

 

 

"Terror projector," said Carey.

 

 

"The end."

 

 

"That reminds me--I never did hear Chakotay's theory why they didn't shoot the Voyager with the unholy terrors when you fought them. He seemed about to tell us when Red bay interrupted."

 

 

"In my opinion, Captain, they had no idea at first where we were from... and the ships they sent up simply didn't have terror projectors installed."

 

 

Torres spoke up.

 

 

"We had to make an educated guess when they would fire their projectors. Now that they know where we're from, we figure they'll equip their ships with the devices."

 

 

"The range, spread, and speed of transmission are unknown," added Carey.

 

 

"When the ship flares," concluded B'Elanna, "it means we've been hit by the projector and we're--slaves of hell."

 

 

"But what about the moon?" asked the captain. She stared at the holographic projection; it looked remarkably intact.

 

 

"Well," said Carey, "that's what we found. According to the computer, even hitting the external hull with thirteen photon torpedoes and several direct phaser blasts would not penetrate the armor plating, which ranges between three-point-two and four kilometers thick."

 

 

"Between three and four kilometers?" Jane way was daunted; for a moment, she stepped back, despairing of being able to do a thing against the Furies.

 

 

"It was built to withstand the energy of a supernova for several seconds, for heaven's sake."

 

 

Jane way sighed.

 

 

"All right, let's see some other scenarios.

 

 

Voyager loped closer to the moon, and the alarm bell went off. Ships uplifted from the planet surface, while Voyager expelled an experimental photon torpedo, flying as a "remotely piloted vehicle."

 

 

The ship was quickly sprayed with the terror-projection weapon, driving the crew to a madness of fear... but the photon torpedo escaped, racing into the long shaft that Kim and Paris had found!

 

 

Closer and closer it drove to the antenna... a Fury ship gave chase, flying down the same shaft; it fired round after round, using a special, wide-spread, disruptor-like weapon that would not significantly damage the antenna if it missed the torpedo.

 

 

The torpedo was never meant to sustain repeated damage. It was not a ship. It exploded harmlessly, the contained antimatter expanding outward to explosively interact with the shaft walls, "scraping" off a few centimeters of ablative material that would have burned away in milliseconds anyway when the sun went supernova.

 

 

The mission failed--and the Furies completed their jump.

 

 

Voyager loped toward the moon. Again, as the swarm of Fury ships leapt upward, Jane way launched a photon

 

 

torpedo RPV; but this time, the torpedo had been fitted with a single-use shield system.

 

 

It dropped down the shaft, heading toward rendezvous with the radiation-collection antenna... the Fury ship followed, frantically firing at the torpedo--but this time, the shots were absorbed by the shield.

 

 

The probe closed on the antenna as Voyager flared white and vanished in an explosion of mind-shredding horror. Closer, the Fury ship accelerated to ramming speed and--Voyager loped toward the moon.

 

 

The RPV was faster this time and equipped with auto. tracking phasers pointing backward.

 

 

The Fury ship accelerated to ramming speed... but as it closed, the torpedo itself opened fire!

 

 

The power phaser beam held the Fury ship at bay as the photon torpedo crossed the last gap. It struck the antenna at 17,500 kilometers per second, simultaneously detonating its matter-antimatter compression bomb.

 

 

The explosion was terrible to behold. The Fury ship only added to it when it ploughed into the expanding sphere of electromagnetic radiation and blew apart itself.

 

 

The detonation was so intense, it blew a Voyager-sized hole in the-thirty-square-kilometer surface area of the antenna... destroying slightly more than 0.003 percent of its collection surface.

 

 

The mission failed.

 

 

"This isn't getting us anywhere," said Jane way, testily. "Wait--how about sending a shuttle up the shaft and transporting a photon torpedo inside the hull?"

 

 

Carey pondered for a moment, then programmed the computer.

 

 

Voyager loped toward the moon, setting off the alarm when it got close enough. Just before the Fury ships arrived, the launch bay doors opened and a shuttle squirted out, accelerating to maximum impulse while still in the hangar.

 

 

It bolted toward the shaft, two Fury ships in hot pursuit, and sallied down the rabbit hole, aft shields guarding it from the Furies' disruptors. As the shuttle craft neared the antenna, successfully deflecting the energy weapons, the Furies began to bathe it with the terror-projector beam.

 

 

The shuttle craft glowed white-hot, and The unmanned shuttle craft bolted toward the shaft, two Fury ships in hot pursuit, and sallied down the rabbit hole. As it neared the antenna, the Furies, in a last, desperate gamble, accelerated their ships to ramming speed.

 

 

But just before contact, a phaser beam lanced out of the rear of the shuttle craft, sending one ship careering into the other. The blinding explosion would have obliterated the shuttle craft as well, were it not for the shields already up, protecting the aft quarter.

 

 

Limping, the shuttle craft approached and veered around the antenna, finding the "soft spot" that Paris and Kim had identified earlier, where the hull was thin enough to permit beaming

 

 

The ship reversed thrust, braking to a quick halt. The torpedo, already strapped down on the transporter pad, was beamed aboard the moon directly to the huge room that Ensign Kim had recorded.

 

 

Within seconds, the torpedo detonated, and The holodeck simulation froze. Ghostly letters hung in the air, flashing over and over EFFECT

 

 

UNKNOWN, EFFECT UNKNOWN.

 

 

Captain Jane way stared at the letters floating like the voice of Fate, mocking them. For two minutes, she pondered.

 

 

"Carey, Torres," she said at last, "that's just not good enough. 'Effect unknown' is simply too vague to pin the life or death of freedom in the Alpha Quadrant on."

 

 

"We have one more scenario," said Torres.

 

 

"She has one more scenario," corrected Lieutenant Carey, glaring at the deck.

 

 

B'Elanna gave him a hard look.

 

 

"Computer, activate simulation z-nine." She turned to Jane way.

 

 

"I haven't run this one yet. Don't know what will happen."

 

 

Voyager loped toward the moon... but as the swarm of Fury ships tore away from their home planet on an interdiction course, the Federation starship aligned itself with the shaft--and accelerated to warp 9.9, the theoretical maximum that Voyager was capable of attaining. At that speed, the engines would automatically shut down in ten minutes.

 

 

It did not matter, a single minute was eternity cubed, for the ship would impact with the moon in four hundred nanoseconds.

 

 

Instantly, the simulation froze, ticking forward at a rate of ten nanoseconds per second. Jane way saw her ship jump forward jerkily as it accelerated. The initial impact with the shaft was uneventful: the ship was too wide for the shaft, but at fuss, it was the shaft that gave way; Voyager carved a pair of furrows down the rabbit hole where the saucer section impacted, like hot skates across an ice rink.

 

 

Then, over the space of a couple of frames, the edges of the ship vaporized. The energy released imploded laterally toward the oenter of the ship, causing the hull to buckle, then shred.

 

 

Jane way felt no emotion, though she watched a simulation of the death of everybody aboard her ship; as visceral as the thought was, it was still too surreal for her to feel it.

 

 

The ship might have shredded, but the shards were still moving in a warp field some three thousand times the speed of light. They continued forward, of course; where else could they go? Certainly nothing known in the universe could deflect shrapnel moving at such a speed, impossible under normal physics.

 

 

But that very point worked against them--for if nothing could deflect such hyper velocity shrapnel, neither could anything absorb such energy... and if what you want to do is create the biggest bomb ever seen, the target must absorb the energy.

 

 

Otherwise, it just...

 

 

Voyager punched a Voyager-sized hole through the antenna, continued along the moon's axis--creating its own Voyager-sized and -shaped shaft--and out the other side. In one second, Jane way knew, the remains of the ship and crew would be a billion kilometers away, no further threat to the Furies or anyone else.

 

 

When Voyager passed through the antenna, it destroyed slightly more than 0.003 percent of the collection surface... about as much as had the single photon torpedo.

 

 

"I told you," said Lieutenant Carey pettishly.

 

 

"I'm not afraid to die; I just knew it would be a useless, futile gesture

 

 

The captain silently pounded her thigh in frustration.

 

 

"What if we go slower? Will the antenna absorb more of the impact energy?"

 

 

B'Elanna glared at the holodeck simulation.

 

 

"To force the antenna to absorb sufficient energy to blow it up," she growled at last, "we would have to approach no faster than zero-point-six times light speed... which is impossible: it's three times faster than full impulse, but much less than warp one."

 

 

"And warp one...?"

 

 

"Is too fast. At maximum impulse, we might destroy a significant fraction of the antenna's surface--maybe thirty percent."

 

 

"That could be enough," mused Jane way; "it's certainly the best option I've seen so far."

 

 

"You're forgetting one little factor," said Carey from his corner.

 

 

"At impulse power, we won't be able to get all the way along the shaft before the Furies come in after us... and as soon as we're in line of sight..."

 

 

"They fire the terror projector at us," finished Jane way.

 

 

"And then command us to stop, turn around, and exit the shaft. Checkmate."

 

 

"Dammit!" shouted the captain, startling everyone, most especially including herself.

 

 

"You two--I want options! I want them now, or... or I'll transfer you both to maintenance detail.

 

 

As a team!"

 

 

Furious most especially at the lack of a target for her fury, Kathryn Jane way stormed out of the holodeck toward nowhere in particular.

 

 

CHAPTER

 

 

As she stalked angrily, blindly downa passageway,

 

 

Jane way's arm was suddenly yanked, whirling her around. She snapped into a defensive posture, hands raised, ready to put the assailant on the deck with a heel-hand or a snap-kick to the kneecap.

 

 

Commander Chakotay retreated gracefully out of range.

 

 

"Are you back from the land of spirits?" he asked.

 

 

"What the hell are you talking about? What do you mean by jerking my arm like that?"

 

 

"I had to get your attention somehow."

 

 

"Why didn't you just try saying, 'Excuse me, Captain.?"

 

 

"Excuse me, Captain..."

 

 

Jane way felt her face flush.

 

 

"Oh. Sorry; I was... thinking."

 

 

"That much was obvious."

 

 

"Chakotay, we're absolutely stuck here! We--Torres and Carey and I--just cannot come up with a way to destroy that moon; either we can't generate enough energy, or if we can, we can't get the machinery to absorb enough of it to fry itself."

 

 

Chakotay shrugged.

 

 

"Too bad we can't unleash you on it hand-to-hand. That's an interesting style of fighting; I don't recall that from the Academy."

 

 

"Stop trying to distract me. I like brooding." Jane way leaned against a bulkhead, at ease in the presence of the man who once was her prey and was now her executive officer.

 

 

The commander smiled.

 

 

"I like new styles of self-defense.

 

 

Got a name?"

 

 

"Just something based on ancient Japanese judo; my father taught me years ago. You turn the enemy's own power against himself. Well, that's the idea, in any case; usually, I just get him off balance and rabbit-punch him." Despite Jane way's determination not to be distracted from her brooding distraction, she began to thaw.

 

 

"We should spar sometime. I would like to see what it feels like to have my own power turned against me. Say," he continuedL struck by a thought, "too bad you can't use that judo stuff on the moon--turn its own power against it. Can you?"

 

 

Jane way raised her eyebrows.

 

 

"You know, that's not a bad suggestion, especially coming from the engineering impaired."

 

 

"Captain!"

 

 

"Oh, you know what I mean. I can't see exactly how we can do it, but dammit, it's something to try, at least."

 

 

She turned to the bulkhead and pushed against it, almost like isometrics: she closed her eyes, letting the thoughts form their own images. She wanted the image of a great force, a tremendous force--the Fury supernova--being turned against itself to trip and fall. She felt the weight of the Voyager pressing all around her, but that wasn't enough of a force.

 

 

"Well," Chakotay said, "this engineering-impaired commander came up with another idea. I've been talking to Lieutenant Red bay about the terror-projector weapon."

 

 

"Does he remember anything?"

 

 

"Enough to convince me that if we could jigger the shields somehow to make them kind of wedge-shaped, like this..." Chakotay pressed his fingertips together and held his stiff arms and hands forward like the prow of an old fashioned water ship.

 

 

"We might be able to detect the beam just long enough to dodge to the left or right and avoid it."

 

 

Jane way smiled.

 

 

"More martial arts?"

 

 

"It's something to try, at least. Unfortunately, I haven't the faintest idea how to make the shields buckle like that." She visualized the shields, not as physical objects in Einsteinian space, which they technically weren't, but as vectors in phase space--the way they were meant to be visualized.

 

 

"They're designed to do just the opposite; a direct hit by a phaser or disruptor right on the seam would probably blow the shields away, and even a glancing blow would leak through and damage the ship if you monkeyed with the shield geometry."

 

 

Chakotay rubbed his chin.

 

 

"Captain, the Fury disruptors were powerful, but we could probably survive a couple of direct hits.

 

 

Certainly a lot better than we could survive a single hit by the terror weapon."

 

 

"I know," said Jane way, dropping her gaze.

 

 

"I don't think it will matter, Chakotay, whether Voyager takes a few hits or a dozen. Commander, nobody gets out of here alive."

 

 

"We just need to survive long enough to destroy the moon," said Chakotay, completing Jane way's thought.

 

 

She opened her eyes and looked up at him.

 

 

"Take Carey, I can't spare Torres. Besides, Carey has studied our biotech shield systems more than Torres has... possibly because Klingons think shields are for cowards." She smiled; Chakotay kept his face impassive.

 

 

"And take Tuvok, too. He knows the basic science better Carey might tell you it's impossible, and it will be critical to have Tuvok backing us up."

 

 

"Thank you, Captain; and good luck."

 

 

The two parted in three different directions: Chakotay to engineering by way of Tuvok's quarters; Jane way to the bridge; and the captain's dark storm clouds back over the horizon. Having a clear goal for a change performed a miracle on her disposition.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Commander Chakotay discovered that his first obstacle was to convince Tuvok that the shield-wedge idea was possible; far from backing up Chakotay, the lieutenant insisted that the shields could not possibly be bent into such a strange geometry.

 

 

He stood in the Vulcan's quarters, quietly admiring the simplicity of decoration: no flashy, splashy prints on the walls or nonfunctional knickknacks cluttering up the work surfaces.

 

 

Vulcans were Spartan in taste compared to most humans.

 

 

Chakotay listened patiently into the third minute of a basic science lecture before finally interrupting.

 

 

"I don't want to speak before my turn," he said, "but we don't have much time, Lieutenant. I understand you believe the shield wedge is impossible. But I don't want you to say that to Lieutenant Carey."

 

 

Tuvok frowned; he, too, stood, out of polite respect for Chakotay's rank.

 

 

"Vulcans are not prone to lying."

 

 

"Then creatively avoid the truth."

 

 

"We do not dissemble."

 

 

Huh, you did a great dissembling job to me when I was a Maquis and you were a Federation spy!

 

 

"Then don't, Mr. Tuvok; bore him to death with such a detailed analysis that he tunes out before you get to the part where you say it can't be done."

 

 

They stood staring at each other, dueling with utmost politeness; the commander wished Tuvok would sit, so they could converse without such stiff formality.

 

 

"You want me to be overly detailed and pedantic?"

 

 

"Yes."

 

 

"That, Commander, I can do with no trouble."

 

 

Chakotay bit off the smart remark that formed in his throat.

 

 

He and the Vulcan left Tuvok's quarters and wandered down to the engineering deck, where they found Carey sitting slumped before the huge, curved console, B'Elanna Torres having already been summoned to the bridge. The lieutenant was tapping so diligently at a keypad he didn't even notice their arrival until Chakotay cleared his throat, causing Carey to jump guiltily.

 

 

"No," said Chakotay patiently several minutes later, still

 

 

trying to explain to Carey, "a wedge: two flat planes meeting at about a forty-five-degree angle."

 

 

Carey shook his head, befuddled.

 

 

"But... that's impossible, sir! Didn't you ask Tuvok? I'm sure he told you it can't be done." Carey gestured emphatically at the Vulcan, who did not react in any way. After a moment, Carey nervously dropped his hand.

 

 

"Tuvok?" asked Chakotay, turning to the lieutenant; Chakotay invoked his spirit guide to lead the stuWorn Vulcan to back his commander. Show time!

 

 

Tuvok looked down at Carey as if noticing him for the first time.

 

 

"Actually, Mr. Carey, the problem is not so glib or obvious as you might at first suppose."

 

 

"Isn't it? You can't make the shields bend in the middle!"

 

 

"Have you researched Admiral Anton Wilson's seminal work, "Shield Geometry as a Function of Differentiable Manifold Dynamics'?" The Vulcan raised one eyebrow. Beautiful! thought Chakotay.

 

 

"Not exactly," hedged Carey; "I read the abstract. It said you can't have a shield with a discontinuous derivative... Iike a bend. Didn't it?"

 

 

"Reading the abstract is not exactly the same as reading the article itself. You depend upon the person who wrote the abstract understanding nuances and finding them important enough to discuss. I strongly advise you to read the article itself; I think you will find it illuminating--and very apropos our present difficulty." Commander Chakotay barely suppressed a smile; Tuvok was a natural at saying everything by saying nothing.

 

 

Carey nodded, his lips moving silently.

 

 

"Oh, thanks, Lieutenant. I'll start reading it immediately. You really think there's something in there telling how to put a bend in the shields?"

 

 

"If it is not found there," declared Tuvok with finality, "it is not found anywhere."

 

 

Leaving Carey to his task, Chakotay grabbed Tuvok's arm and beetled rapidly away before the Vulcan could slip up and answer directly--and truthfully.

 

 

They paused in the passageway beyond earshot.

 

 

"There, that wasn't so hard, was it?"

 

 

Tuvok frowned.

 

 

"I cannot help but think I have conveyed an untruth somewhere in the exchange, though I confess I cannot find a single statement of mine that is technically false."

 

 

"Yes... but suppose Carey actually figures it out? Then that makes your whole part in the conversation retroactively truthful."

 

 

Tuvok raised the other eyebrow, the intragalactic Vulcan facial gesture.

 

 

"I do not anticipate that the laws of physics will change to suit my present needs."

 

 

"You're too cynical," said Chakotay.

 

 

"I always try to believe six impossible things before breakfast, as the Red Queen said to Alice."

 

 

"Is that reference part of the ancient lore of your people?"

 

 

"In a manner of speaking." Yes, if "my people" includes Lewis Carroll, thought Chakotay, amused but impassive.

 

 

"Perhaps I should return and help Lieutenant Carey," suggested the Vulcan, glancing back toward the engineering deck door.

 

 

"Perhaps you'd better not," said Chakotay, thinking of Tuvok and his guilty conscience, which as a Vulcan he would never admit to having, but which might drive him nonetheless to confess his deception.

 

 

"As you wish, sir."

 

 

"You're more urgently needed helping B'Elanna and the captain figure out how to make the radiation collector blow itself up. I think they're on the holodeck." Tuvok left in search of his commanding officer, and Chakotay breathed a sigh of relief but kept his fingers crossed. Ancient lore of his people.

 

 

Captain Jane way and Lieutenant Torres were engaged iD a staring contest with a holodeck mockup of the cabling Kim and Paris had seen inside the moon; Tuvok joined them, opening a door in thin air and walking across the invisible platform on which they all stood. The mockup mocked them from half a kilometer below their feet--the distance at which Kim had recorded the scene in the first place.

 

 

Jane way was trying to get B'Elanna to hazard an estimate of what they could destroy to wreck the mechanism.

 

 

"Be the ghost in the machine," urged the captain, hoping Torres could see something that so far eluded Jane way herself.

 

 

"It's just... this is ridiculous! Captain, we don't know what these cables do. We're just guessing!"

 

 

"Torres, guesses are all we have now." Jane way looked up to see the Vulcan impassively observing the inactivity.

 

 

"Oh. Hello, Tuvok. Torres, all we need is a reasonably clear picture in our heads of the sort of connections to look for, we'll have to figure out the exact match on the moon itself." "No. No way. I can't--it's impossible!"

 

 

"Commander Chakotay," announced Tuvok, "was taught to believe six impossible things before breakfast."

 

 

Jane way turned, nonplussed by the unexpected reference. "Yes," she said, "as the Red Queen said."

 

 

"But I'm not Alice, and this isn't the looking-glass!" snapped B'Elanna.

 

 

Tuvok looked perplexed.

 

 

"I must make a mental note to research the original source legends; it is a powerful mythos that holds sway alike over Native American tribes, human Anglo-Saxons, and Klingons."

 

 

Jane way turned back to B'Elanna Torres, exasperated--at herself more than the engineer.

 

 

"Just try! Try anything, Lieutenant."

 

 

"No, there's nothing I can..." B'Elanna's voice trailed off as she stared downward.

 

 

"This is really weird."

 

 

"What? What's weird?"

 

 

"Captain--suddenly, it all makes sense! I can feel how the power flow goes... I can feel it! Look, that--that cable bundle is the feedback control... it's got to be! That tells the rest of the circuitry when a particular socket is stuffed and the energy needs to redirect itself. And...!"

 

 

B'Elanna fell silent, moving her hands in a complex, magical ritual that mapped the energy flow in her head.

 

 

"Kahless the Unforgettable!" muttered B'Elanna Torres.

 

 

Jane way was surprised--she almost never uses Klingon expressions.

 

 

"What? What did you find?"

 

 

"Captain..." B'Elanna stared up at Jane way, mouth

 

 

open, eyes wide.

 

 

"Captain, we can do it... we can reroute the energy flow and blow up the whole moon!"

 

 

"Are you sure?" Jane way held her breath-, she had been disappointed once too often on this mission to leap for joy.

 

 

"Logically? No." Torres licked her lips like a starving wolf eyeing a roast.

 

 

"But I can feel it this time. This time, I think we've got a winner."

 

 

"What is it? Tell me the plan; we'd better both know, in case something happens."

 

 

But Torres shook her head, frustrated.

 

 

"That's just it, Captain. I can't tell you; it's somewhere inside here--" She indicated her skull. "--but I can't pull it out and put it into words. Yet. I'll... just have to do it myself."

 

 

Jane way nodded.

 

 

"You lead the away team," she said.

 

 

"You'll find I can take excellent direction." She started to rise to prepare for the trip; but Tuvok gently put his hand on her shoulder and quietly cleared his throat.

 

 

"Captain, I do not think your participation is a good idea."

 

 

"Why? What do you mean?"

 

 

"You are more urgently needed on the ship. Commander Chakotay is an excellent executive officer. But he simply does not know starships, and in particular this starship, as well as you."

 

 

"So? He also isn't a trained engineer, and I am."

 

 

"I would not suggest Commander Chakotay accompany Lieutenant Torres. She needs a first-rate pilot, a person who can fly a ship as big as the shuttle craft through that narrow shaft with the expectation that it will arrive in one piece."

 

 

Jane way glanced at B'Elanna, the engineer turned her face back down to the holoprojection. Pulsing lights from the monstrous en Bine five hundred meters "below" them colored her face blue, red, then yellow, but it remained shadowed in mystery.

 

 

Jane way could not tell what B'Elanna was thinking.

 

 

"I see what you're driving at, Mr. Tuvok; but I can't spare Tom Paris, not even for this mission. I need him flying this ship."

 

 

"I did not have Mr. Paris in mind, said Tuvok.

 

 

"In fact, I was thinking of our recent guest."

 

 

"Red bay?" Both engineers turned, stunned.

 

 

"I have examined that part of his record which was transmitted to Voyager via routine message traffic before the Caretaker transported us to this quadrant. I am convinced that Mr. Red bay can almost certainly pilot the vessel better than any other member of this crew, including Mr. Paris."

 

 

"Don't tell Paris."

 

 

"Yes, emotional beings do not like to be reminded that there are others better than they at their chosen professions." B'Elanna opened and shut her mouth like a fish. She muttered something unintelligible--Jane way caught only the words "basket case" and wisely chose not to hear the rest.

 

 

"Find Lieutenant Red bay," she ordered, cutting off any protest from B'Elanna.

 

 

"Torres, gather what you need and return to the shuttle bay by 0430."

 

 

When they had left, Jane way stared down between her feet at the holodeck simulation of what little they knew of the moon's circuitry. Something was there... she could feel it, taste it--but she could not quite put it into words. Kathryn Jane way would not be satisfied until she could write an instruction set, at least in her head, for creating a feedback loop.

 

 

***

 

 

Neelix hovered outside the infirmary, rocking from one foot to the other, wondering how he was going to say toKes what he needed to say without mortally offending her... or worse, making her reevaluate their relationship.

 

 

He straightened his waistcoat, smoothed his hair back, took a deep breath--repeated twice--and strode purposefully toward the door.

 

 

As the door slid open and Neelix charged through, full of the words that refused to fall into place, he crashed directly into the holographic doctor, knocking both to the ground.

 

 

"For a hologram," snapped the cook, "you sure are solidl"

 

 

The doctor made himself insubstantial and disentangled, then stood up, more crotchety than usual.

 

 

"I maintain solidity when I interact with patients and equipment, of

 

 

course! What did you expect, a ghost? Now what's wrong with you, aside from myopia?"

 

 

'~Your what?"

 

 

"Where does it hurt!"

 

 

"Oh. Nowhere... I just wanted to talk toKes." Neelix stood up; his face paled toward green, and he collapsed back down to the deck, gripping his knee and biting back a scream.

 

 

"Well," said the doctor, eyeing Neelix's agony,

 

 

"I'm certainly glad you're not in any pain."

 

 

"I am now, you ninny!" Rolling his eyes and grumping, the doctor squatted and moved his medical scanner up and down Neelix's kneecap, which the cook had cracked on the deck when he went down and the doctor landed on him. Neelix felt the tingly feeling of the bone knitting. The pain ebbed over several minutes, leaving only some residual stiffness.

 

 

Just as they finished their unexpected appointment, Kes entered and dashed across the room.

 

 

"Neelix! What did you do? Are you all right? Is he all right?"

 

 

"Aside from some difficulty seeing large objects directly in his path, your friend is fine. Kes, did you finish abstracting those articles from the Journal of the Federation Medical Association? How did they compare with the archived abstracts?"

 

 

"Yes. They were the same. Neelix, come over here; lie down--you shouldn't be on your injured leg like that! How do you feel?"

 

 

She made such a fuss that Neelix flushed again; how could he find the words now, after all this, to tell his beloved that her deepest, most sympathetic urges were inn appropriate?

 

 

How could Neelix look into his love's eyes and tell her that it was Jane way, and not Kes, who was right... that they simply must destroy the moon, even though it meant the deaths of twenty-seven billion souls?

 

 

And would Kes ever speak to him again when he did?

 

 

CHAPTER

 

 

Commander Chakotay and Lieutanant Carey stood in a cramped, experimental laboratory just off the bionet salt transfer monitoring equipment on the lower engineering deck. The room was Lieutenant Carey's private space, no one else allowed except by special dispensation.

 

 

"My..." marveled the lieutenant.

 

 

"I can't believe it! It can't be done... but I can do it!"

 

 

Chakotay smiled, invisible behind Lieutenant Carey's back. "Can you?"

 

 

"No. But yes. But this is ridiculous... what idiot abstracted that article? Look--look at the wave function for the shield soli ton."

 

 

Carey vigorously rubbed his thinning hair as he popped an incomprehensible equation onto the viewer. Chakotay stared. He could make out some of the terms: variables for the shields and tractor beams he studied when he took Space-time Engineering at the Academy; but there were six other terms in the equation he had never seen before in his life.

 

 

They probably drop out under normal shield geometry, he thought, so they don't even teach them to us. The only

 

 

problem with Academy classes is they were ruthlessly practical: if Star fleet did not think a command-track officer cadet needed to know a large section of the engineering details of a particular system, they not only did not teach it, they did not even bother telling the cadets they were not teaching it! This left functional, efficient officers who nevertheless had gaping lacunae in their understanding of possibly critical systems... evidently including the standard "shield solution" of the impulse-soli ton wave function.

 

 

"Here is the term," whispered Carey, pointing in excitement to one of the missing sections of the equation; his tone of voice indicated veneration, perhaps outright worship.

 

 

"In the standard model, we always assume gamma of s and t must be a continuous function. But look! Professor Wilson flatly states that that assumption is not proven, either theoretically or by experiment!"

 

 

"And if you make gamma discontinuous...?" Chakotay pointed at the appropriate term and tapped the viewer significantly. He actually had no idea what he was asking, but it worked to prod Carey into further thought. The engineer began writing invisible equations with his index finger, as if writing on a class stylus-screen.

 

 

"I'll be... scuppered. Either the shields will actually bend..."

 

 

"Or?"

 

 

"Or the ship rips apart like an egg in a wind tunnel."

 

 

"Really." Suddenly, Chakotay wondered whether unleashing an engineer and Coyote-tricking him into thinking an impossible problem was possible was the best idea after all. But desperate times called for desperate deeds.

 

 

"I don't think the ship will be destroyed, it seems more likely that the shields will bend... that's the least-energy solution if we allow gamma to have a line-discontinuity right at the front of the ship."

 

 

"Thank the spirits for least-energy solutions." Chakotay still understood only every third or fourth word Carey said; but he was not about to let the engineer know that.

 

 

Carey looked back at the commander with near awe.

 

 

"If this is the Maquis way, it's a wonder you guys haven't taken over the Federation already. Be sure to tell Tuvok that I was

 

 

wrong and he was right all along... it definitely is possible, once we suppress our 'continuity prejudice.'"

 

 

"Oh, I definitely shall tell Tuvok," said Chakotay with a mystery smile.

 

 

"How long will it take to have a working shield-wedge?"

 

 

"You want me to go ahead with it?"

 

 

The commander thought for only a moment; they had no options, and he knew Jane way would agree. He rubbed his forehead, where a killer headache was forming. There was no time to go see the doctor.

 

 

He nodded.

 

 

"Yes, Mr. Carey. Go ahead and do it. Can you give me a time estimate?"

 

 

"Sure, just a minute." Carey punched a few keys on his console; Chakotay had noticed that many engineers preferred to use a keyboard rather than the voice interface, for some reason. "Okay, got it."

 

 

"How long will it take?"

 

 

"What?"

 

 

"The shield conversion," snapped Chakotay.

 

 

"Huh? I just did it."

 

 

Chakotay felt a chill; he did not let it show.

 

 

"You mean, the ship could have blown up just now, and we never would have known it?"

 

 

Carey looked puzzled.

 

 

"But it didn't."

 

 

A ghostly finger touched the commander's heart, the pain in his head suddenly vanished in the adrenal rush. He nodded brusquely.

 

 

"Good work, Lieutenant."

 

 

"Thank you, sir, it's on-line now. I'll rig a special controller for the captain's console."

 

 

"Make it for mine; she'll be rather busy when the fertilizer starts to fly." Chakotay exited the engineering lab and got all the way back to his own quarters before the shakes started.

 

 

Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres strapped a utility belt around her hips, checking the sixteen pouches to make sure she had every tool she might conceivably need to attack the moon's circuitry; and at that, she knew she would not be at her job for ten minutes before she would be wanting something she had left behind on the ship.

 

 

She mustered what little grace Klingon genetics and Maquis society had left her to utter a stiff

 

 

"Good morning, Mr. Red bay" when her pilot slunk aboard, carrying nothing but a hand phaser.

 

 

Why a phaser? she wondered with distaste. Red bay's only answer was a shrug. Torres decided that Red bay did not trust her, so he carried a weapon good only for antipersonnel warfare.

 

 

Torres had brought coils of fiberoptic cable, nylon climbing line, pliers, an assortment of spanners and may-drivers three specially programmed tri corders, each to record different types of electronic impulses... and no weapons.

 

 

She sat at the copilot's console of the shuttle craft without another word, ostentatiously strapping herself into the seat. She meant it to sting, but Red bay only strapped himself in as well.

 

 

Captain Jane way stood at the hatchway of the shuttle craft but said nothing as the door slid shut. Red bay fired up the engines, commenting only that one of the engines was running hot, and B'Elanna should keep an eye on it. Jane way stepped back out of harm's way, Red bay powered up and quickly ran through the engine-start and launch checklists. Then he picked up the ship and rotated through the bay door. As soon as they cleared Voyager's shields Red bay announced

 

 

"Shields up" and flicked the switch.

 

 

Torres sat quietly, admiring his piloting skill in spite of her resolve to hate everything about him. Red bay drove directly toward the sun, veering at a comfortable distance and skimming the corona, keeping the hull temperature below ten thousand degrees but remaining in the plasma field as much as he could.

 

 

They had no communications but neither could the Furies easily see them. B'Elanna was impressed.

 

 

Then at the perfect moment, almost without thought, Red bay yanked the ship up and out of the sun's corona, aimed it toward the planet-moon system, and kicked in the warp engines. Diving straight out of the sun as they were, the odds were excellent that nobody would spot them until they approached the moon itself.

 

 

B'Elanna looked in the rear viewer, Voyager followed the

 

 

shuttle's trail exactly, giving the Furies but a single cross section to spot.

 

 

At warp four, the shuttle craft crossed the gap between sun and moon in five seconds; then Red bay cut off the warp engines, letting them drift behind the moon before shifting to impulse.

 

 

B'Elanna turned on every passive sensor there was. Approximately two hundred thousand kilometers from the moon, two klaxons and a buzzer erupted with noise as the moon signaled it was being attacked and screamed for help.

 

 

No fewer than twelve Fury ships lifted off to intercept, and that was when Voyager sprang into action. The big ship pretended that it, not the shuttle craft, had set off the alarms.

 

 

Getting interesting now, thought B'Elanna, keyed to the excitement.

 

 

Red bay began a long, slow turn to the right and pulled tighter and tighter, as the inertial dampers struggled against the high-g turn. B'Elanna Torres felt her entire body and a river of blood compressing downward as the g-meter climbed. She began to strain, forcing the blood back up her abdomen to her brain--whatever happened, she could not allow herself to fade to black.

 

 

Two Fury ships stayed with the shuttle craft; the rest followed Voyager the opposite direction. The bogies started trying to lock weapons on the shuttle, and B'Elanna was kept busy operating the subspace countermeasures, trying to slip disruptor locks.

 

 

Jane way sat silent in her command chair. There was nothing to say. Tom Paris could pilot better without someone shouting in his ear, and Tuvok and Kim were perfectly capable of handling shields and weapons respectively by themselves. The captain followed the entire battle, keeping tabs not only on the Fury ships, the weapons and shields, and the piloting, but on crew performance, Maquis and Federation; on Commander Chakotay, who ran back and forth between the normal crew and crewmen Dalby, larron, Chell, and Henley, who stayed in the dead spots that were called "bullpen." Each crewman watched his normal duty

 

 

station, ready to leap into the gap if someone was incapacitated.

 

 

The ship pulled hard in every direction. Paris preternaturally sensed where the Furies would head next, and he pulled exactly the right heading to keep them shooting at each other instead of Voyager.

 

 

Jane way's emergency inertial dampers held, but barely, responding sluggishly; the crew were yanked hard to left and right, driven forward, and pressed back into their seats at a very high g-force for fractions of a second until the jury-rigged dampers caught up. Too bad B'Elanna's not here to see this, thought the captain; maybe she wouldn't feel so bad.

 

 

Jane way began to get dingy, and the old feeling of nausea returned with a vengeance. Paris fought it off, dodging left and right to slip the Fury weaponry. The aliens had not yet fired their terror projector... or had they?

 

 

"Ensign Kim- can you identify every weapon fired so far?"

 

 

Kim, who looked distinctly pallid and sweaty, clutching his console, shook his head.

 

 

"Negative--Captain; they've got--disruptors and old-fashioned fusion bombs, but--still some kind of beam--I'm not sure what it is, but it's causing interspace flux-ulp."

 

 

"Has it struck us?"

 

 

"One shot--brushed the neural switches--on deck thirteen--don't know if the shields-stopped it."

 

 

"Reports of damage?"

 

 

"No. No reports at all."

 

 

"They're dead silent down there?"

 

 

Kim nodded.

 

 

"Dammit... I think somebody down there just got a taste of Fury terrors." She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting back a tidal wave of guilt.

 

 

"Activate EMH program."

 

 

"Please state the nature--"

 

 

"Deck thirteen, neural switchboard; send orderlies and security... tell them to be prepared to deal with probably the most horrific panic attack you've ever seen, Doctor."

 

 

"I understand, Gap tain," said the doctor--sadly? Can a hologram feel sadness? she wondered.

 

 

"Team is on its way," said the doctor.

 

 

"Chakotay, how is your shield-wedge holding out.?"

 

 

The commander looked down at a readout on the special screen at his side, then back up at Jane way; he crossed his fingers and held them up.

 

 

"Did the shuttle craft escape undetected?" Jane way asked.

 

 

"Negative, Captain," said Tuvok, looking none the worse for the shaking.

 

 

"Two Furies followed them toward the moon. They are evading but not returning fire."

 

 

"Don't want to attract any more attention," muttered Paris, barely audible.

 

 

"Crewman... Dalby? Dalby. Get us some anti-nauseoid

 

 

from the replicator."

 

 

"Aye, sir!" Dalby shouted, sliding along the wall toward the machine and trying to avoid being sent flying across the room.

 

 

"Are you sure, sir?" asked Chell.

 

 

"It didn't do much last time." He looked a much greener shade of blue; Jane way presumed that indicated the same with Bolians as did pallor with humans.

 

 

"If it helps at all, it is worth it, Mr. Chell," answered Tuvok without taking his nose from the sensor-array console.

 

 

The captain took a deep breath. The time had come.

 

 

"Commence firing, Ensign Kim; let's give the--ow--the Puries something else to concentrate on for a while."

 

 

The battle was joined; Voyager fired her first shots in anger in yet another Delta Quadrant star system. Cross another one off; thought Jane way gloomily, at this rate, the Federation will be about as welcome in this quadrant as the Borg were in ours.

 

 

CHAPTER

 

 

Once more into the breach, thought Captain Jane way--she made a point not to say it, Cliche Day was tomorrow.

 

 

She dropped the Voyager straight "down" relative to its orientation, the maneuver often took by surprise the younger spacefarmg races--or in this case, races that had had virtually no contact or conflict in space for centuries or even millennia

 

 

The Furies had no quarrel with anyone from the Delta Quadrant, those of no consequence who shared their realm of exile. They wanted only heaven. All war and conflict of the past century had taken place there, according to Lieutenant Red bay--and no one had come back alive.

 

 

Their best fighters had been lost in the Alpha Quadrant. The remaining forces of the Furies left behind had little experience fighting in three dimensions with a gravitational field to contend with--obviously, for Paris evaded attack after attack, and the Furies often as not moved only in a planar direction... and often fired when their own ships were in the way. Jane way gave orders only when absolutely necessary; mostly she just let her crew crew the ship.

 

 

But the Furies learned quickly; and after a few minutes,

 

 

they grouped into a coordinated unit and began to take direction from their command ship.

 

 

"Now, Mr. Paris," ordered Jane way, "turn tail... let's see if they'll play follow-the-leader."

 

 

Voyager fired a last salvo from the forward phaser batteries; the beams lanced out, striking the unshielded ships but the super dense material, a meter thick, absorbed and dissipated the blast, abating slightly.

 

 

As Paris reluctantly turned the ship around and took off at full impulse, Tuvok reported: "Captain, the Fury ships can take a lot more damage before their hulls will be dangerously abraded."

 

 

"I've got interspace fluctuations all over the board," Ensign Kim shouted. They're powering up the terror projector again!" He was frightened enough that his tone cut through his space sickness.

 

 

"Rotating the wedge backward," announced Chakotay calmly; the announcement was hardly necessary, since the move was obvious but his calm, measured voice reassured Kim and the cadets.

 

 

Jane way's eyes flicked from one to the other.

 

 

"Kim," said Lieutenant Paris,

 

 

"I've given you copilot status; keep your sensors sharp, prepare for evasive maneuvers.

 

 

"But--"

 

 

"I'll pick up on it, don't worry; I won't fight your course changes."

 

 

"The Furies are powering up warp engines," announced Tuvok.

 

 

Here we go...!

 

 

"Jump to warp six," said Captain Jane way. "Don't let's lose them in front of us.... Paris, stay just ahead of them; match their velocity and add a shade."

 

 

"Aye, aye, Captain."

 

 

"Warp six--correction, warp eight," said Paris.

 

 

"Nine one, nine-three... damn, these guys are quick!"

 

 

"Are they--"

 

 

"Catching up still! Blast it, I can't get to nine-nine; something's wrong, we're dragging somewhere!"

 

 

The captain slapped her commbadge.

 

 

"Jane way to

 

 

engines.... Carey, what's going on? We need full power!"

 

 

The voice crackled over the comm link, full of static. "Captain, it's not the engines--it's the shield-wedge... it's acting just like an air brake in an atmospheric aeroplane."

 

 

"Can you fix it?"

 

 

"I can revert to normal geometry... you've got your choice: a shield-wedge or warp nine point nine. Not both!" Carey sounded desperate. The captain watched the rear viewer, mouthing silent imprecations.

 

 

"We're holding at warp nine point six-six-six," shouted Paris, not turning around.

 

 

"The Furies are making maybe nine point six-six-six-three; they're catching us, but very slowly, Captain."

 

 

"Ensign Kim," said Jane way, cutting through the chatter, "drop some torpedoes out the rear, one at a time. No juice, proximity fuses."

 

 

"Floating mines," muttered Chakotay next to her.

 

 

"Maybe it'll slow them down a bit," she explained.

 

 

Kim nodded wearily, still sick despite the anti nausea drug he had taken.

 

 

"Fire one... two... three."

 

 

"Yes!" exclaimed Tom Paris.

 

 

"They're pulling back."

 

 

"They've figured out we can't outrun them," said the captain.

 

 

"Now they're content to run us out of town." She smiled; this was exactly what she had hoped for.

 

 

"We still have the whole pack, except for the two who went after Torres and Red bay?"

 

 

"Yes, Captain," said Kim. Then--"Wait... correction! I only count nine Fury ships!"

 

 

"Did we destroy one?" asked Commander Chakotay.

 

 

"Negative," said Tuvok; "there is no debris anywhere back along our path." He looked up from his console, impassive face unable to completely conceal the faint overtones of concern. "Captain, I'm afraid one of the pursuers has broken off and returned to the system. If he scans for ion wake, it will lead him straight to the moon."

 

 

"And he can communicate with his buddies. Paris, we're going to have to turn and fight. It's the only way to keep their minds off the moon."

 

 

"Aye, Captain!" exulted the lieutenant. The secret Sea Wolf within Tom Paris burst its chains, thought Jane way grimly. She knew the feeling: she, too, wanted the fight so intensely she could taste it.

 

 

The Furies were simply too dangerous to be left alone.

 

 

"Ready, Mr. Paris--Mr. Kim, ready to slip the terror projections--cut the warp, accelerate impulse to combat velocity, now."

 

 

Voyager virtually halted as Chakotay shifted the shield wedge back to the front. The Furies flashed past at warp speed, then backtracked and dropped out of warp near the Voyager.

 

 

"All right, people," said Jane way, "let's show them what a Federation starship can really do."

 

 

The ship suddenly lurched left, leaving them all disoriented and dizzy. Only grim-faced Kim was prepared, hunched over his console, desperately scanning for more terror projections. It was he who swerved.

 

 

"Incoming," he explained, voice shaky.

 

 

***

 

 

Lieutenant Red bay flew the shuttle craft tight to the moon, skimming the edges of structure. Uneasily, Lieutenant B'lllanna Torres cleared her throat: "Lieutenant, the shaft mapped by Kim and Paris is bearing--"

 

 

"I know where it is," he said softly. But he continued in the wrong direction.

 

 

It took B'Elanna another minute before she realized he had no intention of heading anywhere near the shaft while the Furies remained in hot pursuit. A second later, she was mentally kicking herself for not realizing sooner that they could not allow themselves to be trapped flying up a long, straight shaft with two enemies behind them.

 

 

I guess that's why I'm in engineering, not security, she thought.

 

 

The Furies pulled within phaser range, and Torres was oocupied for some minutes trying to pop off a shot or two while Red bay did his tilted best to spin the universe out from under her feet. She thought she scored a pair of direct

 

 

hits on the lead ship; but despite its lack of shields, it did not blow up or crash. I must have missed, she decided. Great. Now I can't even shoot straight.

 

 

She hunched over the phaser array and focused every erg of conscious will on aiming her shots by a combination of spatial visualization and Klingon

 

 

"Zen." At last, she definitively saw one shot take the tail Fury directly amidships... but astonishingly, it kept on moving!

 

 

For a primitive people, without transporters or shields, they sure built tough hulls. Until that moment, B'Elanna had not really credited Tuvok's report of a material so strong and dense that phasers could not penetrate it.

 

 

But it did not matter, for if the Furies could invent such an unreasonably strong material--they still could not alter the basic laws of physics! If the substance were super dense, then that meant it was supermassive for its volume.

 

 

And that meant less-maneuverable ships, for mass becomes inertia when you get it moving.

 

 

"Red bay," she said tersely, "keep pulling tight turns, the tighter the better; I'm sure they out mass us."

 

 

Red bay obliged, pegging the g-meter max indicator three times, the last at a bone-crushing twelve times the acceleration of gravity. If Torres were not half Klingon, she realized she would be a smear of guava jelly after some of Red bay's maneuvers.

 

 

She could not quite figure out how he himself had survived.

 

 

But he seemed unaffected; bones that looked brittle and skin so blue-white it was virtually transparent came through every turn intact and unbroken.

 

 

Red bay yanked and banked the shuttle craft, threading the tall towers that were probably comm links from one part of the moon to another, diving under a series of gantries in a move that almost caused B'Elanna to lose her lunch, then heading directly toward a huge block of that super dense material and rolling out left at the last moment. B'Elanna found herself clutching the sides of the seat and wishing for a combat harness, despite the inertial dampers.

 

 

The Furies struggled to follow... but B'Elanna was right at last: their ships were simply too massive, unwieldy, un maneuverable; the first moment of pure joy occurred when one of the ships, trying to follow them under the gantries, simply could not pull out of its dive in time. It struck the surface ploughing a six-kilometer-long furrow in the protective rock and vaporizing itself in the process.

 

 

But the second ship clung grimly to its task. Its pilot had to be half dead, thought Lieutenant Torres; he was pulling fifteen g's to the shuttle craft's twelve! The Fury planet was of normal-range gravitation, slightly less than Earth, in fact; so the alien pilot must have suffered the tortures of the damned with every dive and turn.

 

 

But he stuck. Like a magnet, he stuck.

 

 

Then he began to fire a weapon that was neither disruptor nor torpedo. B'Elanna watched, mesmerized, as the pilot struggled to play the beam across their ship. She fired back automatically, without awareness--for her only conscious thought was to ponder what it would feel like to be flooded with abject, utter, belly-crawling terror.

 

 

Ahead, Red bay must have spotted a new needle eye to thread.

 

 

B'Elanna saw a building and tower approaching. At first, they appeared to connect; then she saw a tiny sliver of a gap. This was the gap at which Lieutenant Red bay pointed the nose of the shuttle.

 

 

B'Elanna leaned back in her seat, baring her teeth and gripping the console, as if that would have any effect if Red bay misjudged the gap... and indeed, it certainly looked as though he had. The crack was never wide enough to fit the shuttle craft!

 

 

"Lieutenant--watch out!" she hollered.

 

 

But Red bay neither stopped nor veered aside. He continued barreling toward the sliver at 105-percent impulse.

 

 

Torres forced her eyes to remain open: whatever happened, she swore she would stand before the great judge proudly, like a Klingon warrior, and never cringe.

 

 

The moment came.

 

 

The moment went. The shuttle craft squirted through the eye after rolling sideways, a clean half-meter of space on either side.

 

 

And--B'Elanna realized with an exultant surge that the Fury ship was not going to make it! It was too wide; it could not clear the tower.

 

 

And it was too late for the pilot to veer around it. But not too late to open fire for one parting shot.

 

 

The terror projection sheered between the two buildings and struck them in the aft part of the shuttle craft. The shields were never intended to stop such exquisite forms of energy.

 

 

For an instant, Red bay and B'Elanna Torres were caught in the full force of the terror-projection beam. Then the luckless Fury turned one whole side of the large building into a smoking hole.

 

 

But an instant can be an eternity.

 

 

CHAPTER

 

 

The first inkling B'Elanna Torres had that anything was amiss was the overpowering and rather horrifying certainty that she was about to start crying.

 

 

The last time the Klingon had wept was when she was three years old. Her mother's explosive reaction convinced her that it was not the Klingon way.

 

 

The knowledge of what was coming, then the feel of salt water on her cheeks, gripped her heart like two giant, icy hands squeezing the life from her body. A Klingon crying! Like a baby!

 

 

But a moment later, whimpering, she realized the true danger it was the console! It was about to short, sending hundreds of thousands of amperes through her body, frying her instantly.

 

 

With a gasp of horror, she jerked away from the death trap, then clawed frantically with violently shaking hands at her harness, un strapping it with terrible difficulty. She fell backward out of the chair, rolling onto her belly.

 

 

There she stuck, afraid to move forward or back, her mind virtually shut down by the paralyzing realization that the hull integrity of the shuttle had been breached, and the

 

 

precious, life-giving oxygen was all squirting into dead space.

 

 

Crawling forward, whimpering like a slave, B'Elanna the Klingon felt the sharp, torn-up deck plates cutting her palms and knees, felt the diseased germs infesting her body working their way up her veins to her heart and brain. The worms grew inside her, expelling larvae throughout her body that would grow and grow, finally eating their way out.

 

 

Terrified suddenly by the certainty that Red bay was as stricken by the weapon as was she--all her fault, for she didn't dodge that last bolt!--she tried to turn and look. But the fear was too great; she was frightened into rigid immobility, unable to see what was happening.

 

 

She could not help hearing Red bay's cries of despair, however. She did not need to turn and look; she knew they were both doomed. And the mission would fail. And all for the want of a tenpenny engineer!

 

 

The wave of horror terror subsided. Is that it? Is that all?

 

 

It's over. That's all the stupid useless terror weapon does.

 

 

Over? The surge of B'Elanna's adrenaline awoke a deeper fear that had only been slumbering beneath the surface, allowing the petty phobias of first contact to run dry.

 

 

The real fun had barely begun.

 

 

B'Elanna folded into a fetal position, locked her arms around her head, and screamed and screamed until she lost her wind and her voice failed. She barely saw, without comprehending, Red bay slap a button in panic before he too, collapsed. Then a dark curtain of mindless despair shrouded her brain. And she knew nothing more.

 

 

Slowly, Lieutenant Torres came back into herself, reaiizing she was a lieutenant, even if brevetted. She had disgraced her new Star fleet, her old Maquis, herself, and her race. She still did; she lay in the dark half pressed inside a cabinet as if trying to escape the star fear by climbing back inside the womb.

 

 

She still gibbered; she still sobbed, tear ducts now dry. But she had long passed the moment when mere humiliation meant anything anymore She was alive they had stopped the punishment. She would do what they ordered... whatever they ordered.

 

 

Unfortunately--fortunately--there was no one around to order her to do anything. She dropped her face into her arms and cried relentlessly, piteously, begging for someone to come along and give her an order she could follow to atone for her apostasy.

 

 

After five minutes of such self-abasement, B'Elanna realized how remarkably stupid her whole reaction was. Her face flushed.

 

 

With still an occasional whimper, she crawled backward out of the hole. She clawed up a bulkhead to her feet, then crept along the wall to her chair.

 

 

Red bay already waited for her. He seemed hollower, colder, but no worse otherwise... not like big, bold B'Elanna the Klingon Warrior.

 

 

"I will re-resign my coin-commission as soon as we return," she said, feeling the blood drain from her face.

 

 

"Don't be so dramatic," said the skeletal visitor.

 

 

"I disgraced myself. I am not fit to wear my uniform."

 

 

"It was an energy weapon. So now you know what I knew."

 

 

At once, Klingon pride and Maquis stubbornness stiffened B'Elanna's posture, and human rationality asserted control.

 

 

She swallowed, controlled herself. She suppressed her raging Klingon side--raging at herself, her own inadequacies--and accepted what she could not change.

 

 

"Very well. Where...? Oh." Torres stared at the inside of a tunnel--presumably the tunnel.

 

 

"How the hell did we--?"

 

 

"Autopilot," said Red bay, shrugging.

 

 

"I programmed it with Paris, is it? With Paris's route before we left."

 

 

"Lucky thing."

 

 

Red bay turned and stared at Lieutenant Torres.

 

 

"Planning. I knew this was a possibility. I knew the devastation that terror projector caused. I maintained just long enough to engage the preset course before succumbing."

 

 

After a moment's pause, B'Elanna Torres said, almost too softly to hear,

 

 

"You seem to have recovered pretty quickly."

 

 

"You were out for an additional eight minutes. I'm more

 

 

used to it. I haven't as many phobic pressure-points; you've really never been frightened before--I have."

 

 

The engineer said nothing. Evidently, she was not allowed the luxury of sulking, either. So much for the simple pleasures of Star fleet life. May as well go back to the Maquis, she thought, not meaning it as an insult; they were more tolerant of childish behavior.

 

 

"We're here," responded Red bay to her unasked question, What now?

 

 

"I missed Paris's Swoop of Death. I was kind of looking forward to it."

 

 

"Maybe we'll survive and do it on the way out."

 

 

B'Elanna laughed, an ugly sound... recovery proceeded apace. Survive? What a joke. She knew as well as Red bay that their mission was pretty likely to be a one-way ticket: with the power capacity of the moon, built to receive and channel the electromagnetic energy of an exploding star, the odds were they would electro-fry themselves trying to short circuit the works.

 

 

And if they didn't, how long before the Furies sent out a massive counter force, as soon as they realized someone was monkeying with their precious machine?

 

 

"Got your..." She hesitated, staring dubiously at Red bay's phaser.

 

 

"Got your equipment? Ready to beam over?"

 

 

"I brought a phaser."

 

 

"Good. Maybe you can shoot us a moon rat for lunch. Let's do it."

 

 

They beamed across to the same point from which Paris and Kim had begun their expedition, what seemed like three or four centuries ago. B'Elanna activated the "walkabout" program in her tri corder. She held it up in front of her right eye, looking past the tri corder and down the corridor with the other eye. The screen projected a realtime, three-dimensional model of the corridor ahead, with ghostly, glowing arrows floating spectrally ahead, pointing the path.

 

 

"Follow," she said curtly, walking forward and doing her best to follow the path--though often it pointed them directly through gray bulkhead walls... logic gates that were open to Kim and Paris but had closed in the intervening time.

 

 

An hour's walk convinced her that their task was not going to be easy... perhaps not even possible. No matter how hard she tried to stick to the path, she simply couldn't! When gates shuffled open or closed, they reconfigured the entire geometry of the warren, so much that they were led farther and farther astray.

 

 

Finally, even the tri corder couldn't lead them back.

 

 

"All right," she-muttered, "we'll have to carve our own path."

 

 

"What are we looking for?"

 

 

"The, ah, primary power switches."

 

 

"And we'll know we've found them when...?"

 

 

B'Elanna Torres shrugged.

 

 

"When we stop and sabotage them."

 

 

"Thank you."

 

 

"Always happy to oblige." What a stupid question! Torres had no more idea what they would look like than did Red bay, and he should have known that.

 

 

B'Elanna shifted away from the sarcastic.

 

 

"My guess would be that they're roughly in the center of the moon. Eight hundred kilometers that away." She pointed straight down.

 

 

"Got any suggestions? How we can travel eight hundred kilometers in the few hours we have?"

 

 

Torres slowly shook her head.

 

 

"Only speculation. There must be some way for repair crews to get down there, isn't there? It must have broken sometime in the last few thousand years."

 

 

"Well, maybe they just transport to the proper coordinates."

 

 

She shook her head, emphatically this time.

 

 

"You don't know, do you? This quadrant never discovered transporter technology, or at least no race we've encountered out here has it. Nope... if these Furies want to get to the center of this asteroid, they have to do it the old-fashioned way... a mag-lev railway or something equally primitive."

 

 

"Look for a shaft," suggested Red bay, though B'Elanna was already doing so, scanning the tri corder in a slow circle.

 

 

"This way," she said; "call it north, because it's toward one rotational pole."

 

 

Red bay nodded without expression. They set out northward, tacking left and right as the movable walls required. Lieutenant Torres swore she caught movement out of the corner of her eye many a time on the ghost moon. It always scuttled out of sight just before she turned and stared.

 

 

Red bay, as always, seemed utterly unaffected by the hallucinations.

 

 

CHAPTER

 

 

A bear turns, confronts the pack of howling wolves that

 

 

have pursued it--drawn after by the bear's cunning Momentarily, Captain Jane way pressed back her head, eyes squeezed tightly shut, wondering if the forced metaphor was wishful thinking.

 

 

Wondering why it so often came down to this, to a brutal fight in the cold deep. Wondering whether the bear would be pulled down this time--they don't live forever, bears.

 

 

Dangerous job. Somebody's got to do it. Be the bear.

 

 

The Furies drew back, paused before the final assault. They learned; they were people, not wolves, and they knew enough to beware the loping bear claw swipes. Now they coordinated, and Tom Paris lost the banter that was normally so much a part of...

 

 

The Voyager rocked behind the pounding blow of a disruptor-type weapon. Jane way jerked back to present-time, leaned forward, and began conducting the battle. Her crew was good; she was good. The Furies were better than they had been. It was a hell of a fight.

 

 

Four small ships wheeled and attacked flank left, high and

 

 

low. Voyager had no option but to cut in the opposite direction, and this time the jaws of the trap got clever and made no effort to aim: the Fury ships to Hank right simply fired spreads into the blocks along the obvious flight path.

 

 

There was no place to evade, and the Federation ship flew directly into several fusion missiles.

 

 

They rolled like an ancient cutter on the high seas, staggered and rocked by blow after blow against the shields. The shields were meant to take the force of phasers and photon torpedoes; they would not be breached by ion powered nuclear missiles. But if the disruptors should happen to open a hole, and if a missile snuck past, detonating against the hull itself--then Voyager would vanish inside a spreading, white glow, "brighter than a thousand suns," hotter than the stellar core they had just passed through.

 

 

Each hammer blow shook the ship and rattled their brains, until Jane way heard a sound like ivory dice shaken inside a hollow skull... her own. She shouted orders that she could not hear herself--she could hear everyone else, but her internal voice was drowned out by the rattle.

 

 

Abruptly, Ensign Kim jumped up, threw himself across Paris, and in a frenzy, jabbed his thumb into the helm console. The ship lurched straight down so quickly that Jane way and doubtless the entire bridge crew (except for Tuvok) left their stomachs up on the ninety-ninth floor.

 

 

Jane way stared at the ensign, who hung his head sheepishly.

 

 

"Terror beam," he said. He sank back in his seat, watching his sensor array... but keeping one hand close to Paris's station.

 

 

Lieutenant Paris went back to his task of bobbing and weaving, dodging disruptors, terror beams, and big, dumb rockets.

 

 

For a moment, Jane way worried that Paris might feel some resentment. With a shake of her head, she dismissed the thought.

 

 

No time, no time! She fell into the rhythm: duck and bob, bob and weave.

 

 

The shield-wedge served well to ward off the most fearsome of the Furies' weapons, the terror projector, but it

 

 

weakened the structure and could not repel ordinary weapons as well. Life was a trade-off.

 

 

"Shields at seventy-four percent," announced Lieutenant Tuvok, unflappable... but his words sent Captain Jane way into an internal frenzy she could barely conceal.

 

 

She deliberately leaned back in the command chair, conscious of many eyes and many more hidden fears turning her way.

 

 

Whenever the shields began to fail, the captain's heart leaped up her throat. It was a synergetic engineering effect: the more their effectiveness sank, the more they were damaged by incoming missiles and disruptors.

 

 

Then the ship itself began to take blows, as the shields ~started developing "holes"--weak spots where the laminar flow was disrupted, leaving a singularity that was weaker than the surrounding shield-stuff. A shot to one of those holes shivered the timbers and rattled Voyager's bones, lurching Jane way half out of her seat.

 

 

The Furies took to crossing in pairs or triplets across octants of heading. After a few minutes, Chakotay warned, "They're herding us back toward the planet!"

 

 

Captain Jane way saw it in the same moment: "Mr. Paris! Duck the assault and return to the previous heading... don't let them drive us back." While Paris complied, Jane way added more softly, "We can't let them return while B'Elanna is still back there--we must give her the time." But the ship was being pounded into flotsam and wouldn't last the time that she needed. Not unless Jane way spied a gap where the confusion of battle had driven the Furies too far apart. She seized the moment: "Paris, bearing zero-seven-zero, mark thirty, full impulse... punch it, mister!"

 

 

The helmsman obeyed, yanking the Voyager clear of the wolves. For a moment, they headed directly back toward the system. Then Paris cut obliquely and accelerated to their maximum impulse, whipping around the star. The Furies followed, but lost the order of their battle.

 

 

At last, free for the moment--a brief moment!--from the urgent necessity to dodge and cross their own trail, Jane way leapt out of her chair and attacked Kim's weapons board. It was marginally quicker to do it herself than tell him what to

 

 

do, and mere seconds were all they had. She savagely programmed the board to fire shots in rapid succession, much faster than a human could aim.

 

 

When the Furies rounded the sun, the computer laid multiple spreads of photon torpedoes and spewed a lattice of maximal-strength phaser blasts... and two Fury ships were broken, shattering like anvils under a hero's sword.

 

 

"Got 'em!" shouted Kim with little dignity.

 

 

Immediately, the board flickered and died.

 

 

It started up a fraction of a second later, but a chilly fist lodged in Jane way's stomach.

 

 

"What the hell was that?" "Captain," said Tuvok, looking up from his science console, "stellar activity increased significantly, evidently some time ago; we are nine light-minutes from the sun, and electromagnetic radiation interference has just reached this part of the sector."

 

 

"Can we still see?" asked Jane way

 

 

"With increasing difficulty, Captain."

 

 

"Mr. Kim?"

 

 

Kim opened and closed his mouth like a fish.

 

 

"Losing...

 

 

Io sing sensor contact, Captain. No, wait; it's back again!"

 

 

Jane way nodded.

 

 

"Expect to see waves of interference with increasing frequency as the stellar core collapses by steps."

 

 

"With every collapse," continued Tuvok, "core temperatures increase until they ignite fusion of atoms at higher atomic numbers--helium, lithium, beryllium, and on up the periodic table of elements." It was unclear to whom he lectured; presumably, everyone present had taken first-year nuclear physics.

 

 

Jane way leaned forward, speaking urgently.