VOY - String Theory 2 - Fusion (c) Read online

  The harans might yet survive to return to Monorha. They probably wouldn’t. The preservation pods were only equipped with rations capable of sustaining life for six rotations at the most, and it had taken twice that time to travel the distance from the homeworld. But even this no longer troubled her. The legacy of the Fourteenth Tribe as keepers of the flame of Dagan’s truth would die here, or a few light-years away, but from its ashes a new purpose would rise. The hostile life-forms that had decimated her people would never again wreak pain and destruction upon sentient beings. If she could survive within the Betasis, she could warn away any future trespassers, Monorhan or otherwise, from this slow-spinning circle of death. And if the data-interface cables that tethered the Betasis to the station could be traversed by thoughts powerful enough, she would find a way to destroy the station from within.

  Naviim stumbled, involuntarily grasping the entrance alcove’s railing with a free hand as the Betasis shook beneath him.

  Structural integrity has been compromised, she thought painlessly.

  As Naviim regained his balance, she saw the simple devotion of the man who had been her shi-harat her entire life, and wished she could reward him with something other than certain death.

  “Go,” she commanded.

  Naviim bowed his head, but remained rooted to the floor.

  He will not desert me, even now. Her final comfort would not be a view of the stars of her home, but instead, the sight of the love and loyalty of her most faithful servant.

  Accepting this, she turned to the few remaining strands of thought that connected her mind to her body.

  With her two powerful arms designed but rarely used for manual labor, she took hold of the command console before her and ripped it in one piece from its casing. Naviim averted his eyes, in deference to the sight of her two delicate interior arms as they emerged from the pouch sewn into the back of her ceremonial robe. Extending the long tapered fingers that were meant to embrace her mate, she thrust them into the sparking wires that still pulsed with life within the console.

  “Be at peace, Naviim,” she whispered. “The transference has begun.”

  These were the last words that Assylia, rih-hara-tan of the Fourteenth Tribe of Monorha, and commander of their finest achievement, the Betasis, ever spoke in the flesh.

  Chapter 1

  Tuvok was conscious of the song from the first fraction of a second that he began to emerge from his meditative state. He gradually roused himself through the stages of alertness; awareness of the weight of his limbs, his slow, rhythmic breathing, the hum of the shuttle’s engines, the soft caress of the environmental controls setting the cabin temperature much warmer than most humans would be comfortable with. Finally, as he recalled where he was, and how he had come to be here, the intensity of the music threatened to plunge his Vulcan restraint into chaos.

  With the precision only years of rigorous training in the Temple of Amonak had given him discipline to master, he forced the passion, the longing, and the unutterable pain into the recesses of his mind, and only when he was certain that he, and not the music, was in control did he open his eyes.

  “Computer…”

  The computer replied with a chirp, awaiting his command.

  “What is our current heading?”

  The cool voice devoid of all emotion answered as expected. “Current heading remains unchanged: one six seven mark one four.”

  “Estimate arrival at the singularity.”

  “One hour, twenty-seven minutes, eleven seconds.”

  Exactly as he had anticipated.

  With great care, Tuvok rose from his knees next to the shuttle bunk, and sat on its edge. He shifted his focus inward, until he had counted exactly one hundred times the quarter of a second between each beat of his heart, and satisfied himself that no matter what, it would continue to beat at precisely the same rate, substantially slower than the normal Vulcan resting heart rate, until he allowed it to do otherwise.

  He then turned his attention to the corner of his mind where he had placed the music. It had been a desperate struggle over the last nine hours to maintain his ability to perform even the most rudimentary exercises of piloting the shuttle, but finally he had forced the living presence that now shared his mind into a section of his consciousness that he could examine at will.

  He was certain he was experiencing a telepathic communication, source unknown. He had considered the possibility that he might be suffering from an as of yet indefinable side effect of the strange properties of Monorhan space and subspace to which he and all of Voyager’s crew had recently been exposed. And after careful consideration, he had dismissed that theory.

  The presence that called to him was alive. Its life, though painful and somehow disconnected…no…stuck in between…whatever that meant…was more than life, at least life as he had known it during his hundred-plus years of existence. And somehow, it knew him.

  Tuvok.

  Vulcan.

  Head of security.

  Husband.

  Father.

  Friend.

  Traveler far from home.

  It saw beneath the disciplined walls of self-control that fortified him against passions and emotional extremes that most humanoid species could only imagine, but all Vulcans knew intuitively as the enemy of stability, logic, and reason. It lived in these extremes and somehow managed to survive them without fear. It contained…no…experienced all that was possible, and merged that reality into harmony that his mind could almost, but not quite, hold. But it was somehow incomplete. The deepest notes, which pounded discordantly against the simplicity and beauty of the rest of the song, were sounds that spoke of yearning…need…desperate painful desire…for home.

  But what would an entity of such vast and incomprehensible variety call home?

  It was pointless, for now, to even attempt to imagine. It was enough for Tuvok that this presence had effortlessly compromised the deep and secure defenses of pure logic and reason that guided every moment of his life, and forced him to face the desires that he had never allowed himself to feel. They met upon this common ground. They both wanted…needed…desired home.

  He was absolutely confident that when he found the source of the song, he would be able to somehow translate the nature of the communication and enter into dialogue with it.

  That or it would drive him mad.

  Either way, it was a journey best undertaken alone. Whether he succeeded or failed, he felt obligated to fully understand the nature of the presence and any threat it might pose to Voyager. Though to be absolutely accurate, part of him knew already that Voyager was not of intrinsic interest to it, because Voyager was an object with which it could not communicate. It needed someone to know…to help. It needed Tuvok.

  The possibility that he would not survive this mission was very real. But, he reasoned, he had already been given up for dead on more than one occasion by his family, both genetic on Vulcan, and adopted in Starfleet. While he was certain they would mourn his loss, in time they would come to terms with their grief and integrate it into themselves in a way that brought meaning to both his life and theirs. That was the worst-case scenario. Much more likely, he would return from an unauthorized absence of a few days, give a full report of his findings to the captain, accept an official reprimand on his record, and return to his duties.

  Had he been capable of feeling irony, he would have found it appropriate to describe the reality that the four years he had spent facing violent death at almost every turn while serving as Captain Kathryn Janeway’s chief of security on Voyager had bought him, and all of the colleagues who had made that journey with him, a certain amount of latitude. It was not as if any deviation from standard protocol would be looked on lightly, but experience had shown that their odds of survival would have been seriously reduced were it not for the creative thinking and occasional renegade impulses that seemed required of most of the senior officers from time to time. Such ingenuity had saved their lives on more occ
asions than Tuvok cared to count, seventy-nine, all told.

  Such simple evaluations of actions and consequences were one of the many tools, which had allowed his highest logical functions to assert themselves over the cacophony of sounds that threatened unrestrained abandon at every microsecond.

  Point-two-five seconds. Beat. Point-two-five seconds. Beat.

  Choosing an ancient visualization technique, a simple, non-automated door became the focus of his thoughts.

  His hand was on the doorknob.

  Point-two-five seconds. Beat.

  Clockwise turn, seventeen degrees.

  Point-two-five seconds. Beat.

  Regulated intake of breath, diaphragm release, lungs filled to capacity.

  Beat.

  Biceps contract, pulling door forward five degrees.

  Sound rushing like wind through his physical being, resonating not in his mind, but in his katra. Temptation, almost unbearable temptation to throw the door open and allow the symphony to swallow him whole. It would be so easy. Just like falling off a cliff.

  Exhale.

  Point-two-five seconds.

  Beat.

  His course heading had been accurate. He was almost there.

  Kathryn Janeway strode purposefully into her ready room off the bridge of the Starship Voyager and found not one but two unanticipated visitors waiting within.

  Her first officer, Commander Chakotay, sat comfortably on the long bench that lined the far wall beneath a large window, engrossed in a sheet of drawing paper. Next to him, occasionally indicating some point of interest on the drawing with the fingers of her right hand, stood Naomi Wildman, the half-human, half-Ktarian daughter of Ensign Samantha Wildman, and the first child ever born aboard Voyager. Though Naomi was little more than two years old, the combination of her human and Ktarian DNA resulted in a child who looked more like five or six and had already demonstrated the cognitive skills of a child nearly twice that age.

  As Naomi struggled to answer a question posed to her by Chakotay, scrunching her forehead lined with small pointed horns running vertically from her hairline to the bridge of her nose, and absentmindedly pulling the end of her long strawberry blond braid to her mouth, Janeway noticed that in her left hand, Naomi held a large mug of a steaming beverage that looked, and dare she hope, smelled gloriously like coffee.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting something important,” Janeway offered casually.

  She noted with an inward smile that as Chakotay rose automatically to his feet, handing the paper back to Naomi and greeting her with a warm “Not at all, Captain,” Naomi’s eyes grew involuntarily wide. The child stood at a miniature version of attention, managing to maintain both the drawing and the mug, though her hair remained fixed in her mouth as she waited, appropriately, for the captain to address her personally before she spoke.

  “Good morning, Miss Wildman,” Janeway began, not wishing to put Naomi through one more moment of discomfort.

  “Captain,” Naomi replied seriously, extending her left hand and offering the mug to Janeway as her braid mercifully dropped from her mouth and returned to its proper alignment running straight down her back.

  “Thank you very much,” Janeway smiled, as she took the mug, her senses calming instinctively as she took in the aroma of the steam rising from the dark liquid.

  Definitely coffee.

  “Neelix…” Naomi began, but then paused as if unsure as to whether or not she should continue.

  “You have just made my morning, Miss Wildman,” Janeway offered graciously, placing a gentle hand on the child’s shoulder. “Please speak freely.”

  Naomi relaxed a little as she drew a deep breath and continued. “Neelix was helping me finish this star chart over breakfast when he saw that you had left your quarters and were going straight to the bridge…” She paused before adding, “…without stopping to eat.”

  Janeway threw a playful glance at Chakotay, who was obviously enjoying this exchange tremendously.

  “Am I to understand that Neelix monitors my every move?” Janeway asked with mock seriousness.

  Naomi appeared to realize her error immediately.

  “No!” she blurted out before she noticed that the captain was still smiling. “It’s just…he’s programmed the computer to tell him when you get up in the morning…so that he can make sure your coffee is hot.”

  Janeway stood upright and took a sip, thankful that the morning’s brew was replicated and not one of Neelix’s usually interesting and completely undrinkable variations on the coffee theme.

  “You may tell Mr. Neelix that I am very pleased with his work,” Janeway said, as Naomi’s smile grew bright enough to light the entire room. “And thank you for delivering this to me.”

  “Will there be anything else, ma’am?” Naomi asked, apparently oblivious of Janeway’s unwritten rule that she be addressed as “ma’am” only in a crunch.

  “May I see your drawing?” Janeway asked.

  “Sure! I mean, yes, ma’am,” Naomi answered, pleased.

  Examining the broad strokes of deep purple and blue that filled the page, Janeway was impressed to see that Naomi had actually created a very fair approximation of the stars of the Monorhan system.

  “What do you think, Chakotay?” Janeway turned to the commander.

  “I think Seven of Nine might want to add this to our astrometric database,” Chakotay replied.

  “High praise, indeed,” Janeway acknowledged, “although, I wonder…” she mused, taking the drawing and placing it on the wall next to the door in a position where she could have an unobstructed view of it from her desk.

  “What do you think?” she asked Naomi. “Would you mind very much if I were to hang this here, for the time being?”

  The child’s sweet, prideful smile was all the gratitude Janeway needed.

  “I wouldn’t mind at all, ma’am.”

  “Thank you for this lovely addition to my ready room, Naomi.”

  “You’re welcome, Captain,” Naomi grinned.

  “You are dismissed, Miss Wildman.”

  With a curt nod, and a bounce in her step, Naomi took three long strides toward the exit before breaking into a full skip as the door opened to the corridor that would lead her back to Neelix and her day of study and play.

  As Chakotay watched Naomi’s braid dance in rhythm behind her, Janeway noted the deep lines of worry etched in his tattooed brow. He was still smiling faintly, but the smile no longer touched his eyes.

  Nothing about humans irked Seven of Nine quite as intensely as their frequent inability to retain even the simplest series of instructions and perform them to her specifications without demanding infinitely more in the way of explanation and justification than she was ever of a mind to give. In a colleague who had earned her respect, B’Elanna Torres, for example, she had learned to restrain her irritation because she finally understood, largely owing to their recent away mission on Monorha, where they had been forced to function in a “mini-collective” state, that B’Elanna’s questions were not meant to irritate, or to imply any ignorance on Seven’s part, but instead were part of a process of intelligent debate that often resulted in a better solution than Seven might have arrived at on her own. Naturally, she was confident that she would have eventually seen the same issues B’Elanna would raise, but that was because B’Elanna had a natural gift for thinking ten or eleven steps ahead of any problem. This had earned her the right, in Seven’s opinion, to interrupt her course of action, and consider at least a few other possibilities before fully committing herself.

  The same could not be said for Ensign Brooks. He was one of a team of engineers who had been assigned to assist her in evaluating the viability of adding quantum slipstream technology to Voyager’s arsenal of not-quite-by-the-book modifications. Though to Seven’s mind, there were infinitely more pressing matters before Voyager’s crew at the moment, Commander Chakotay had insisted that all senior staff were to provide him with regularly scheduled updates of a
ll current projects now that things had returned to something vaguely resembling “normal.” She had every intention of obeying Chakotay’s request, despite the unpleasant fact that it would throw her into Brooks’s path first thing after completing her regeneration cycle.

  Brooks was obviously highly regarded by Commander Chakotay. Seven was certain, however, that should he everbe asked to engage in activities that went beyond the theoretical and more toward the practical applications, he would have made Harry Kim’s frequent tendency to come within an inch of his life look like textbook procedure rather than innocent excess.

  Ensign Brooks was speaking. Reluctantly she forced herself to focus on his question.

  “But if the housing of the coil is reinforced with a static forcefield, won’t that limit the distribution of the reaction and reduce capacity?” he asked.

  Resisting the urge to extend her assimilation tubules and simply spoon-feed him the data he required, she began again, in the most patient voice she could muster.

  “The forcefield is a necessary defensive measure. The limited vulnerability is weighted higher than the .0075 capacity reduction that you refer to, and would result in an insignificant reaction increase.”

  “In your opinion,” he continued.

  Seven paused.

  “In the opinion of a collective of millions of beings who assimilated and then perfected quantum slipstream technology before finding transwarp travel more efficient.” She made a mental note to review Starfleet Academy entrance requirements, and determine, if possible, who had felt it was prudent to make Ensign Brooks an engineer.

  “Right. The Borg are obsessed with efficiency. But no matter how you look at it, the static field is not the most efficient option,” Brooks observed.

  “Ensign, if you were to engage the slipstream coil and begin flying at that speed, should the coil be transported from its station by a hostile party, it would result in the immediate disintegration of your vessel. Insignificantly decreased reaction potential is a small price to pay for the safety the static field provides. I can assure you that in the unlikely event you should ever fly that fast, finding a way to move at a higher velocity will not be a primary or even secondary concern.”