by Star Trek
“This is Neelix. Something has happened to Naomi. Request emergency site-to-site transport. Get us to sickbay…NOW!”
Seconds later, Neelix and Naomi materialized in sickbay. The Doctor immediately lifted the child from the floor and placed her on a biobed.
Neelix was at the Doctor’s side instantly. He was shaking with fear, but the Doctor moved quickly and efficiently around him to render the necessary aid. He didn’t take time to calm the terrified Talaxian, or to force him out of the way.
“She isn’t breathing. Her airway is probably obstructed,” the Doctor diagnosed immediately. “Naomi is an otherwise healthy child. Since she was found near the mess hall, the most likely scenario is that she ate something and began to choke.”
But as he passed his medical tricorder over her upper torso and neck, Neelix noted the flat series of beeps emanating from the device, which indicated a negative result.
His alarm was heightened when the Doctor tossed the tricorder aside, a decidedly disgruntled scowl on his face, raised the biobed’s medical arch over Naomi’s upper body, and initiated an immediate infusion of oxygen into her system.
“What…what…what’s wrong with her?” Neelix stammered.
“As I said before,” the Doctor replied evenly, “she isn’t breathing.”
“Why not?”
The Doctor turned his attention to the scans of the child’s central nervous system as he said, “I don’t know.”
“Is something wrong with her lungs?” Neelix asked, “Because she can have my lung if she needs it.”
“No, she can’t, Mr. Neelix. You only have one lung left and that is a transplanted Ocampan lung. Her body would reject such a transplant, even if my ethical subroutines did not preclude the possibility of taking your life to save hers.”
“But the Vidiians did it!” Neelix shouted.
“Do you see any Vidiians in sickbay at the moment?” the Doctor asked sarcastically. “Though I am well versed in the procedure you are describing, I do not possess the resources they had at their disposal to perform the transplant.”
“But…there has to be something…” Neelix offered, at a loss. The prospect of his own death was not nearly as terrifying as the idea of standing by, helpless, watching Naomi die.
“If there is, I will find it, Mr. Neelix.”
“Can I help?”
“Yes,” the Doctor said calmly. “You can move out of my way.”
Neelix quickly repositioned himself on the other side of the biobed, noting with faint relief that Naomi’s small face was returning to a more normal color thanks to the oxygen infusion she was receiving.
“Aha!” the Doctor said as the final results of the neural scan appeared on the monitor before him. Without another word he moved quickly to a storage cabinet and removed a small neural stimulator.
“It’s a good thing I equipped sickbay with emergency medical equipment specific to the needs of a human and Ktarian child shortly after Naomi was born,” he said as he returned to the child’s side.
He then placed the neural stimulator on the left side of Naomi’s forehead and began carefully resetting the small components that controlled the stimulator’s programming.
“What are you doing to her?” Neelix asked quietly.
“I am repairing the damage to her brain.”
“Her brain?” Neelix asked, as if this was the last thing he had expected to hear.
“Yes, Mr. Neelix. Naomi has suffered a series of collapses in her neural pathways. I am attempting to stimulate new pathways that will restore the normal functioning of her respiratory system.”
“But why?”
“Because it is the only way to save her life.”
“Of course,” Neelix said, “but what could have caused such a thing?”
“At the moment, I have no idea,” the Doctor replied, “although as soon as Naomi’s condition is stabilized, I do not intend to deactivate myself until I find out.”
“Is there anything I can do?” Neelix asked.
“Yes,” the Doctor answered. “Please contact Naomi’s mother.”
Neelix nodded and made his way on shaking legs toward the door. News such as this had to be delivered in person.
Chakotay was faced with a complicated task. According to the schematics provided by Seven of Nine, the array they were approaching contained hundreds of kilometers of corridors and other spaces to be searched on foot. Had all of Voyager’s roughly 150 crewmen been at his disposal, a thorough search of the array would take weeks. Given the fact that at least one-third of those crew members would be required to maintain Voyager’s systems, rotating duty shifts with the other two-thirds to allow minimal time for them to eat and sleep, apart from the senior officers that left less than forty people at his disposal at any given time to form his search teams. This meant that they might easily spend at least three months aboard the array and still not see everything there was to see.
He was every bit as intrigued by the possibilities of the array as the captain and Seven of Nine were. The power reserves alone were worth a thorough examination. At no time since Voyager had left the Alpha Quadrant had all of their reserve systems been completely replenished. A few months of less restrictive replicator rationing would go a long way toward boosting crew morale. He even let himself hope that some of the technology they were sure to find could be adapted to Voyager’s. Obviously they would not have access to the primary source of power, the elements found in the singularity at the center of the array. But most of those elements had existed in normal space before they had been sucked in by the immense gravity of the black hole. The array’s most valuable asset would be the converters used to transform simple elements into complex fuel sources. With that at their disposal, Voyager’s return to the Alpha Quadrant might still take decades, but they would be comfortable decades.
The difficulty in assigning and scheduling the away teams lay not in prioritizing their goals. First they would find Tuvok, and then they would begin a thorough exploration of the array’s power systems.
The problem would be Kathryn.
They had been faced in the past with opportunities to settle on hospitable and welcoming Class-M planets. Invariably the consensus was that returning home outweighed the comfort and ease of the life they could easily have built for themselves anywhere in the Delta Quadrant. Time and again the crew had pushed themselves to the brink of oblivion rather than avert their gaze from the shining beacon of the Alpha Quadrant.
But the array offered them something that no Class-M planet ever had. The possibilities for advancing their scientific knowledge well beyond current Federation standards might just be the siren call that Janeway would find most difficult to resist. Colonizing a safe planet in an uninhabited region would have been challenging, but at the end of the day would also have been settling for less than they were capable of as individuals and a Starfleet crew. But the challenges and promise of the array were more difficult to weigh on an objective scale. Chakotay intuitively sensed that until Kathryn had pried every last secret from the array’s grasp, she would find it a moral imperative to continue their research. And he firmly believed such a task would take decades.
He saw the good in both sides. He was, for the most part, content with the life he had found on Voyager. Spending the rest of his life working by Kathryn’s side, whether traveling through space or plumbing a mystery as vast as the array, was all he really wanted anymore. But the same could not be said for the rest of the crew. Many of them had left family and friends behind. Though they would certainly be intrigued by the mysteries of the array, their enthusiasm was sure to wane as the weeks wore on.
Rumbling beneath the surface of these contemplations was another disturbing thought. Though they had located Tuvok’s life signs, the readings clearly showed that he was seriously injured. He was not altogether certain that boarding the array would be a simple matter. Though the bulk of the shuttle Tuvok had taken was now on board the array, fragments of debris had
been detected within a hundred kilometers of it, and Chakotay wondered what price Tuvok had paid to gain entrance. Further, there was the reality that Tuvok had not been drawn here of his own free will. Chakotay agreed with Kathryn that the Doctor’s findings, coupled with Tuvok’s uncharacteristic behavior, pointed to an external force exerting itself on Tuvok’s better judgment. If that force and the mysterious hands that had built the array were one and the same, there was no way to know whether or not it would look favorably on their arrival. If Tuvok had been “invited” and barely survived, he shuddered to think how such a force might react to unwelcome trespassers.
For the moment, these musing had to be set aside. Once he had entered his initial search-team assignments into the interface console that was embedded in the arm of his chair on the bridge, he turned to Ensign Kim at ops. Kim and Paris had reported directly to the bridge from their truncated briefing in astrometrics and had quietly and efficiently begun to plot the safest course for entering the array. Seven assisted them from the bridge’s tactical station.
“Ensign Kim,” Chakotay asked, “do we have a heading yet?”
“I suggest we alter course to two five seven mark four, Commander,” Harry replied.
“Is that were the shuttle’s impulse trail leads?”
“It is. It appears Tuvok followed the trajectory of the graviton flow to maximize his distance from the theoretical event horizon,” Harry replied.
“Theoretical event horizon?” Chakotay asked.
Seven interjected before Harry could continue, “Because the array is drawing power from the singularity, it is difficult to precisely calculate the absolute edge of the singularity. Based on the singularity’s size, it should extend far beyond the space occupied by the structure.”
“But if that were the case, the structure would be crushed in the gravity well,” Chakotay finished for her.
“Precisely,” Seven affirmed. “Therefore we must assume that the actual event horizon begins somewhere near the inner side of the rings. As our sensors cannot pinpoint that exact location, our calculations must include the ‘theoretical’ variable which we refer to as the theoretical event horizon.”
“We’ve picked up signs of debris,” Chakotay said, “which suggests that Tuvok’s shuttle took a beating along that course. Are we making the same mistake he did?”
“Our shields and the size of our ship will make it much easier for us to compensate for the gravitational density than Tuvok’s shuttle,” Harry advised. “It might be a rough ride, but we should be fine.”
Chakotay stared for a moment into the tumultuous swirling mass of matter and energy that was the singularity. Somehow, “should be fine” wasn’t as comforting as he would have liked when he considered the sheer and overwhelming force they were approaching.
Harry adjusted the display on the main viewscreen so that a small section of the upper ring was visible in greater detail. “These are the docking bays, Commander.”
“Will our present course take us into one of those bays?” Chakotay asked.
“Yes, sir,” Harry answered.
“Are we within transporter range yet?” Chakotay asked hopefully.
“Yes, sir,” Harry replied, “but…”
“I would not advise using the transporters, Commander,” Seven interrupted him evenly.
“Why not?”
“At this distance, the gravimetric interference could easily destabilize the annular confinement beams. We could compensate by moving into position closer to the structure, but at that distance it would no longer be advisable to drop our shields.”
Chakotay was accustomed to making quick decisions. His consideration of the available options was brief. “Mr. Paris, adjust course to two five seven mark four, and take us in.”
Paris’s hands flew gracefully over his controls as he made the course adjustment. “Course laid in,” he said.
“Nice and easy, Mr. Paris,” Chakotay added.
Paris nodded in acknowledgment, falling into seamless, almost symbiotic harmony with the helm. Chakotay was comforted in the knowledge that their odds of safely reaching their destination were increased exponentially with Paris at the helm. Chakotay had piloted his fair share of vessels. Technique could be mastered. Skills could be practiced. But the delicate touch, the subtle, sometimes prescient adjustments that could mean the difference between successfully navigating such a precarious patch of space and oblivion, were beyond the ken of any manual or simulation. The minuscule movements Paris made as Voyager approached the structure came from a subconscious place inside him, a place where he and his ship became one. Chakotay knew that the helm of a ship was the one place where Tom Paris knew certainty. And no pilot had ever known a ship as well as Tom knew Voyager.
“Commander,” Harry called from ops, “incoming transmission, audio only.”
“Incoming from where?” Chakotay asked.
“It’s coming from the array.”
“I guess somebody’s home after all. Let’s hear it, Mr. Kim,” Chakotay ordered.
Harry muted the initial burst of static that spiked his readings into the red and compensated for all interference until his display showed the clean, narrow band of a clear comm signal.
“…Assylia, rih-hara-tan…Monorhan…Betasis.”
“Is that all of it?” Chakotay demanded.
“The signal has degraded, Commander. I’ll see if I can reconstruct any more of it,” Harry replied.
In the tense seconds that followed, Chakotay noted with approval that though Seven seemed inclined to assist Ensign Kim, she remained rooted to her station, allowing him to complete the task rather than doing a quicker and more efficient job of it herself. Chakotay couldn’t help but marvel at the vast positive changes he had observed in the newest addition to their crew over the past eleven months. In the early days, Seven wouldn’t have thought twice about bucking Kim out of the way and finishing the job herself.
“There isn’t much more, Commander,” Harry finally sighed, resigned. “The signal has been transmitting continuously for fifty years, and its proximity to the singularity…”
“Just give me what you have, Ensign,” Chakotay interrupted.
“I am Assylia, rih-hara-tan of the…Monorhan…vessel…Betasis…array…in search of Gremadia…turn back.”
Chakotay leaned back in his chair, gently massaging his tattooed brow. The fragmentary transmission could easily be read in two ways: either as a routine message to other Monorhan vessels who might pass this way or as a warning.
Chakotay knew that a Monorhan vessel had been located aboard the array. The age of the transmission tracked with what little he knew of Monorhan history and the mission of their Fourteenth Tribe. But without more information, it was difficult to say with any degree of certainty how to best construe the garbled transmission. The words lost between “Gremadia” and “turn back” were all important. He said a silent prayer that the rest of the message was a benign recounting of their course and journey, despite the lingering foreboding that it probably wasn’t.
“Chakotay to Captain Janeway,” he called over the comm system.
“Go ahead, Commander.” Her voice resonated through the bridge.
“We’ve laid in our course for our approach to the array, and we’ve discovered a transmission, possibly from the Monorhan ship,” he informed her.
“I’ll be right there,” she replied briskly, ending the communication.
As Janeway closed the comm channel she cursed silently at the war raging within her between family and duty. She was needed on the bridge, but Phoebe was missing. For the moment, her sister took priority. She was momentarily shocked at the computer’s announcement indicating that Phoebe was not on board, but she refused to allow herself the luxury of panic. She couldn’t count the number of times in the past four years she had imagined returning to Earth, only to have her most joyful reunion, the one she anticipated with her mother, tainted by the news that while Voyager had been lost, she had failed to
protect the life of her sister.
Wait a minute.
Her sister was supposed to be on Earth.
No, Phoebe had been on Earth, but at the last moment asked to join Janeway on what was supposed to be a brief rescue mission in the Badlands. She had been commissioned to do a painting of the unusual and beautiful plasma eruptions in the Badlands and had begged her sister to give her the opportunity to see them firsthand.
Setting the disquieting thoughts aside for the moment, she was about to dispatch a security team on a deck-by-deck search for Phoebe when her mingled fear and anger were dissipated by the relief of seeing Phoebe walking calmly toward her.
“Where have you been?” Janeway demanded savagely.
“What do you mean?” Phoebe replied, obviously slightly annoyed by Janeway’s tone.
“I asked the ship’s computer to locate you a few moments ago and you weren’t on board.”
“Yes I was.”
“Phoebe…” Janeway began fiercely.
“Where would I go, Kath? I’ve been in my quarters since the last time I saw you. The computer made a mistake.”
Janeway considered this. Her sister was aggravating, self-centered, and occasionally irresponsible, but she wasn’t a liar. On the other hand, the ship’s computer was incapable of lying.
It doesn’t matter.
The thought, like the vibrant memory of Phoebe’s face the day she pleaded with her sister to take her on Voyager’s maiden trek, didn’t feel organic. Of course it mattered.
As she wrestled with herself, wondering at her reticence to call Phoebe to task for her improbable explanation, she saw that Phoebe’s gaze was fixed on the Key.
“Kath, what have you done to the Key?” Phoebe demanded.
“That isn’t your concern,” Janeway snapped. A slight wave of nausea rose abruptly from her stomach. Grasping the edge of the diagnostic display table, she willed the nausea to pass, along with the dizzying sensation that now accompanied it.
Yes it is.
She heard the words clearly in her mind, but could not imagine where they were coming from. The next wave of nausea that assaulted her almost brought her to her knees.