by Star Trek
“I’m sorry, Phoebe,” Janeway murmured softly.
“It’s all right,” Phoebe soothed. “Tell me what you have done to the Key.”
“Nothing, for the moment. We’re keeping it behind a forcefield to contain the subspace dissonance waves emanating from it. It appears to be alive.”
Janeway was suddenly conscious of a firm hand grasping her arm. It was B’Elanna.
“Captain, are you all right?”
Get rid of her.
Janeway didn’t know how she knew, but nonetheless she was certain that as long as she obeyed that strange voice, the crippling sensations coursing through her would cease.
“I’m fine, Lieutenant,” she said. “Continue your work.”
B’Elanna uttered a faint, “Aye, Captain,” and moved away, leaving Janeway and Phoebe somewhat alone.
“If the Key poses a danger, give it to me, and I’ll remove it from the ship,” Phoebe offered.
“I can’t do that,” Janeway replied, still hazy, “and neither can you. I need to know…”
“What?” Phoebe asked.
“When you were in my cabin earlier…did you see anything unusual?”
“Of course not,” Phoebe lied.
“Phoebe, this is important…” Janeway persisted.
No…the voice insisted…it isn’t.
It was obvious that Kathryn was strong. Her resistance, even now, was impressive. But that resistance was inflicting subtle and potentially serious damage to the tissue of her brain. Phoebe knew that she could force the captain’s mind to accept her words. But the more she shrouded the captain’s actual thoughts and inserted those required to meet her ends, the greater the risk she ran of damaging Janeway beyond repair. Though saving Janeway’s life was not of any ultimate importance, she had to keep the captain alive and functioning for the time being.
For the moment, however, the priority was to divert Kathryn’s attention from the Key. They had detected the disruption. This was frustrating, but not completely unexpected. It was unacceptable, however, that they had also learned that the Key was, as they crudely understood it, “alive.”
In the interest of getting Janeway as far from the Key as possible, Phoebe suggested, “Kathryn, you don’t look well. Perhaps you should see your doctor.”
“There isn’t time…” Janeway said with forced deliberateness. “Have to get to the bridge.”
“Kathryn,” Phoebe said softly, “you are under a tremendous amount of pressure. You haven’t had a good meal or a good night’s sleep in days. Let me take you to the Doctor, on your way to the bridge. It won’t take any time at all.”
Of course the moment they arrived in sickbay Phoebe fully intended to incapacitate the captain in such a way that she would remain confined in the ship’s medical bay for at least the next forty-eight hours. That should be just enough time.
“Will you come with me?” Phoebe asked, demanding internally that Kathryn comply.
“Of course,” the captain nodded.
As Phoebe helped Janeway to sickbay, a firm arm circling her waist, she gently began to remove some of the manipulative threads she had been using to exert her will over the captain.
She was at first shocked, then enraged when they arrived and found Naomi Wildman sleeping quietly on a biobed, her mother and Neelix standing tensely on either side of her, each holding one of her hands and taking turns patting her head lovingly.
She seethed within as all thoughts of further incapacitating the captain fled from her consciousness.
This was impossible. The hybrid girl had obviously survived. Though Phoebe’s powers were vast, there were only so many battles she could fight at once. Releasing Janeway’s mind completely, she moved closer to Naomi. Though the child posed no immediate danger while she was unconscious, Phoebe would have to find an appropriate time to finish what she had started. For the moment, however, she would have to bide her precious time.
Once Janeway’s mind was again her own, the captain stood for a startled moment wondering how she had ended up in sickbay. It was as if a thick mist had lifted before her eyes, and to her vast relief, her stomach too seemed much calmer. She wanted very much to know what had just happened and how she had gotten here, but at the first sight of Naomi’s frail figure resting on the biobed before her, all concerns for her own well-being evaporated. She approached Naomi and asked of no one in particular, “What happened?”
Ensign Samantha Wildman’s face turned to hers, her milky skin awash with bright red blotches, her eyes rimmed with tears. “We don’t know.”
“Where’s the Doctor?”
Neelix gestured with a nod to indicate that the Doctor was in his office. As Janeway turned toward the partition that divided sickbay from his workspace, she saw through the window the Doctor bent over his workstation studying a display.
She barely heard Phoebe’s faint murmurs of concern directed toward Neelix and Samantha as she turned briskly and went to confront the EMH, who did her the courtesy of rising when she entered his office.
“What happened, Doctor?” Janeway asked with palpable concern.
“I believe Naomi was attacked,” the Doctor replied.
Though Janeway’s brow shot up in disbelief, he continued, “Someone, or something, intentionally disrupted the neural pathways in her brain that coordinate her respiratory system. In the hands of a lesser hologram, she would certainly have died.”
The captain reached for the Doctor’s desk, perching on its edge. Raising a hand to her head, she gently massaged her temples to relieve the dull throbbing that usually indicated the onset of a major tension headache.
“Are you certain she didn’t fall, or hit her head on something?” Janeway asked, adding, “She’s a very active little girl.”
“Her skull was not fractured. There was no edema or localized damage to a distinct area of her brain, as would be typical in a traumatic percussive head injury. There are no pathogens present in her system. There are no genetic causes, nor are there any known disease processes that could produce the effects I’ve seen. Specific neural pathways were targeted and disrupted. It’s as if something reached into her mind and forced her to stop breathing.”
“Could this have anything to do with whatever drove Tuvok to leave the ship?” Janeway wondered aloud.
“There are certainly telepaths who would be capable of damaging the minds of others. But Tuvok’s brain wasn’t injured, despite the neurochemical imbalances. I won’t be able to make a more definitive analysis until I am able to examine him again.”
“I understand, Doctor,” the captain replied. “Is Naomi going to be all right?”
“After a few days of bed rest, she should be fine. I’ll keep her here under observation for the next few hours at least.”
The captain nodded, thoughtful. “It’s possible we’ve had an intruder on board,” she said. “B’Elanna discovered that the artifact given to me by the Monorhans when we left their planet, the Key to Gremadia, is actually made up of living sporocystian remnants. They are currently resonating, similar to the way the Caretaker’s remains did when we encountered Suspiria. We haven’t ruled out the possibility that another Nacene might be nearby.”
“That adds a decidedly unsavory piece to the puzzle,” the Doctor observed.
“Exactly. You should replicate supplies of the toxin we developed to counter a Nacene attack and keep some on hand, just in case.”
“I agree,” he said, moving toward the door.
“Keep me informed. I’ll be on the bridge,” she said, following him out of his office.
The Doctor halted in their approach to Naomi’s biobed. Turning to Janeway, he asked, “Captain, who is this woman?”
“Is that supposed to be a joke, Doctor? You knew my sister,” Janeway replied, gesturing toward Phoebe.
“Captain…I…” the Doctor stammered, and blinked out of existence.
Phoebe heard the soft footfalls of Janeway’s approach, but did not face her directly until she
and the photonic being were almost standing beside her. She had spent the last several moments studying the atomic structure of the hybrid girl, all the while whispering soft comforting words and thoughts to the two humanoids who obviously felt the greatest attachment to her. She had discovered the difference that made the girl immune to the memories she had implanted in the minds of the rest of Voyager’s crew and to her alarm found herself powerless to correct the slight phase variation in the girl’s molecular structure. She was considering more invasive options when she heard the Doctor’s unnerving question directed toward Kathryn.
Alerted immediately to the possibility that there might be more like the hybrid girl, it took her less than a second to completely analyze the atomic structure of the being known as “the Doctor” and conclude that here, too, was an unforeseen threat.
In the analysis of Voyager’s systems and crew that preceded her choice to assume the role of “Phoebe” she had, of course, discovered the holographic generators. They were regulated discreetly from the primary ship’s systems and computer memory, and since she had no intention of interacting with any recreational holograms during what she hoped would be her brief stay aboard the vessel—she found particularly distasteful the loud and garish simulation of some kind of outdoor, tropical club—she had elected not to adjust those systems to accept her presence. It would have been simple enough, now, to add to the Doctor’s program a subroutine similar to one that she had already inserted in the main computer to acknowledge her existence and fabricated history. But a closer look at this “Doctor” told her that in this case, nothing simple was going to be effective.
Though he was composed of photonic particles, generated by the primitive holographic imagers, there was also something more to him, something almost ineffable. It was small, just burgeoning into existence, but it was unmistakably there. Phoebe had never encountered such a thing, even in the most complex artificially created life-forms, and she realized in an instant that she could not manipulate this “Doctor” as easily as she manipulated the minds of the rest of the crew.
Searching the holographic database for an alternative, she quickly stumbled upon a few other versions of the Doctor’s program. Most of them had been created fairly recently, automatic backup systems, she speculated. There was only one that might suit her purposes. So it was with a thought that, as the Doctor and Janeway approached the biobed where Naomi lay, Phoebe chose the path of least resistance and simply overloaded sickbay’s holomatrix long enough to destabilize the Doctor’s program and activate an earlier version of the Emergency Medical Hologram, the only one she could find that was not yet tainted by the intrusive ineffable quality.
As the Doctor dissolved out of existence, and was replaced by this earlier version, Phoebe added several comforting thoughts to the minds of those present so as not to alarm them in any way. She was relieved when no one reacted to the momentary destabilization of the Doctor.
“Please state the nature of the medical emergency,” the Doctor intoned when he rematerialized.
She was further relieved when as the Doctor reappeared only Neelix was troubled by the fact that the Doctor rarely, if ever, used this particular greeting anymore. Forcing that thought out of the Talaxian’s mind, she had all but begun congratulating herself on her work when she was thrown to the floor as the ship turned abruptly at a sharp angle and sickbay was plunged into darkness.
Chapter 6
Janeway made her way to the bridge with difficulty. The red alert ordered the moment the gravimetric interference generated by the singularity began to buffet Voyager about like a sailboat caught in a typhoon left the corridors bathed in a deep crimson glow.
When she finally arrived at deck one and immediately called “Report!” she noted with small satisfaction that at least the ship’s fire-suppression systems were operating at peak efficiency. With a firm hand placed first on the rail that separated tactical and ops from the step that led down to her chair, she gingerly took her seat amid the waning vapors of smoke most likely triggered by the explosion of the tactical panel to her right, which now gurgled and sputtered…a tangled mass of plasma relays and conduit.
“Shields are holding, Captain,” Chakotay said tensely. “Inertial dampers are at maximum. It’s going to be a little rough until we reach the docking bay.”
Turning her attention to the main viewscreen, she could see their destination. One-third of the array’s upper ring now occupied the full screen, and several active force fields along the exterior gleamed like tiny blue beacons. Anxious as she was to enter the array and explore the promise of its unique technology, she silently wondered whether or not this was the most appropriate course of action. At the end of every day, Voyager’s safety had to come first.
Turning to Chakotay who sat at her left hand, she saw the firm set of his jaw and knew he shared her concerns.
“Commander,” she asked, “is it possible to retrieve Tuvok without boarding the array?”
“Seven of Nine assures me it is not,” he replied evenly. “But don’t worry. Harry thinks we should be fine.”
Janeway caught the faint flicker of a smile. She trusted Chakotay as she had never trusted another first officer, and she had served with her fair share of fine and eminently capable ones. She did not doubt for a moment that in her absence, he had evaluated every possible course of action at their disposal. If he had chosen this path for them, odds were it was the safest and quickest way to accomplish their goal.
“That’s good enough for me,” she replied with a wry smile as the ship continued to rock and buck.
Scanning her readouts of the array, she asked, “No shields…no weapons?”
“Apparently not,” Chakotay replied. “There are a number of unusual alloys present in the hull and interior of the array. It’s possible that they provide sufficient defense against conventional weapon attack.”
“But anyone who wished to destroy the array wouldn’t have to target the construct itself. A properly targeted photon torpedo would destabilize the singularity and their structural containment systems,” Janeway theorized. “You would think at the least they would have created a countermeasure for that.”
“Self preservation, perhaps,” Chakotay suggested.
“What do you mean?”
“If you were willing to destroy the array by targeting the singularity, you would also have to be willing to die in the attempt,” he said.
“No you wouldn’t,” she argued. “You’d just launch the torpedo and go to warp…oh,” she said, as the simple brilliance dawned. “You can’t go to warp within the system.”
They both paused as Janeway added new information to the fragmented picture she had created in her head of the alien or aliens capable of creating the array and, for all she knew, the entire Monorhan system.
“That’s one anomaly of the system we’ve yet to explain,” Chakotay said finally. “If we’re right…if the entire system was created by some alien design, and if part of the purpose was to protect the array…”
Janeway picked up the thread. “The evolution of life on Monorha was unexpected. Since it shouldn’t have happened, we’ve been operating on the premise that it was a flaw in the design. But if the designers knew that life would evolve…if, in fact, they intended it…then the placement of the white dwarf which kept the Monorhans from detecting the array might only have been the first level of defense. Making warp travel within the system impossible could be the second.”
“We picked up a transmission from the array sent by the rih-hara-tan of a Monorhan tribe. Her name was Assylia,” Chakotay informed her.
“Do we know anything else about her?” Janeway asked.
“No.”
“But the ship carrying the Fourteenth Tribe only left Monorha fifty years ago, right?”
“Yes, and the message has been transmitting for almost that long.”
“So it’s possible they’re still there,” Janeway hoped. Whatever else they were about to find on the array, Ja
neway’s limited experience of the Monorhans told her that they could be rational, when they wanted to be. At this point, they could use all the allies they could get.
Finally she asked, “What was the message?”
“It’s hard to say definitively, but the suggestion is that they believed the array to be Gremadia,” he continued.
“Their mythological holy land,” Janeway added pensively.
“The rest of the message was a little disturbing,” Chakotay finally said.
“Go on.”
“The last words were ‘turn back.’ ”
Janeway watched as the view of the array’s docking bays engulfed the entire viewscreen. Within moments, they would be on board.
“It’s a little late for that now, don’t you think?” she offered.
“I do,” he agreed.
“B’Elanna found the cause for the explosion in sickbay. The Key to Gremadia, the gift Kaytok gave me before we left, is made up of sporocystian remnants,” Janeway told him. “It’s literally the remnants of thousands of Nacene, and we have reason to believe they may still be alive.”
Chakotay shook his head. “We don’t know much about the Nacene. We do know that their technology was far beyond ours. And both the Caretaker and Suspiria built arrays from which they carried out their experiments.”
“But those arrays were nothing like this. The only thing we’ve found in the Delta Quadrant that even resembles this technology were the communications arrays that the Hirogen were using powered by microsingularities.”
“The Caretaker called Suspiria his mate,” Chakotay said, “but neither of them ever said they were the only Nacene to enter our galaxy. They were explorers. Maybe they weren’t alone.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Janeway said finally.
“May I make a suggestion, Captain?” Chakotay asked.
Janeway replied with a sharp nod.
“I know this technology is fascinating. We could spend weeks studying it and barely scratch the surface. But given the fact that Assylia’s message could be construed as a warning, that it’s possible that the Nacene have had either a hand or an interest in creating this system and the array, I think it would be wise to simply find Tuvok and get out of here as soon as possible.”