VOY - String Theory 2 - Fusion (c)

by Star Trek

  “May I ask where we’re headed, Captain?”

  “I think its time you met my sister” was her cryptic reply.

  Chapter 9

  Chakotay’s relief upon finding Tom was mitigated only by the disconcerting discoveries he had made while they were separated. Tom immediately examined Chakotay’s hand and injected Chakotay with a hypospray from his med kit, which dulled the residual pain.

  “How did you get here so fast?” Chakotay asked once the kit was stowed and Tom began to lead him back down the corridor that wound away from the room of specimens and the strange sphere.

  “I think I’ve discovered something about the array’s transporters,” Tom said, obviously pleased with himself.

  Taking another quick turn, Chakotay saw that they were headed for a row of alcoves, similar to those they had first encountered.

  “What’s that?” he asked warily.

  “What were you thinking when you first stepped into the transport beam?” Tom asked.

  “I don’t know,” Chakotay replied. “I guess I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular. I was worried about you. But I was also wondering what the purpose of this place was.”

  “And you ended up where?” Tom continued.

  “I came out near a corridor with dozens of doors which lead to artificial environments…most of them unlike anything I’ve seen before.”

  “When I first entered the transport, I was thinking about Tuvok…and how much I wanted to find him. I can’t say for sure, but my guess is that when Harry entered, he was thinking the same thing, find Tuvok or find me.”

  “What’s your theory, Lieutenant?” Chakotay asked.

  “On my way to you, I found another transport station, and I took a chance. I was thinking about finding you, and when I entered, I came out only a dozen meters from your location.”

  Chakotay paused to consider this. “You’re telling me you honestly believe that these systems determine our destination based on what we’re thinking?”

  “I do,” Tom replied, grinning. “Want to prove me wrong?”

  “Did you bring the pattern enhancers with you?” Chakotay asked.

  “I did, but I’m telling you, Commander, I know this is how it works.”

  “Even if you’re right, that might only apply to areas within the array,” Chakotay suggested.

  “Voyager is on board the array,” Tom said. “I wouldn’t try this otherwise. But if I’m right, we might be able to make use of it, or adapt our systems in a similar way.”

  Chakotay considered Tom with a level gaze.

  “Make use of it how exactly?” he asked.

  Tom sighed. “We already know that coherent tetryon technology is capable of transporting huge objects great distances…far beyond the range of our transporters, or any other technology we’ve found, including the space-folding fields the Sikarians could generate.”

  “You think we could adapt this technology to ours in order to get home?” Chakotay asked.

  “I think we should find out. I’m willing to chance it. Keep the pattern enhancers with you,” Tom said, laying his rucksack on the ground beside the alcove controls. “Use them to return to the ship if I don’t make it.”

  “Then how will you get back?”

  “At the very least, I know how to get from one ring to the other. If I have to walk a little farther to get back to the ship, that’s my own fault.”

  Chakotay was reluctant. True, what Tom was proposing could mean the difference in the next several years of Voyager’s entire crew. But the potential benefits did not outweigh the risks.

  “I don’t think so, Tom. We’ll transport back to Voyager using our technology, and if we have a chance, we’ll return later to test your theory.”

  Tom was obviously disappointed, but unwilling to push the matter further.

  “Yes, sir,” he said as he began to unpack the enhancers.

  “I’m not saying it’s not an interesting idea, Tom,” Chakotay said, trying to soften the blow.

  “I understand,” Tom replied.

  Chakotay picked up the tricorder while Tom worked scanning the area for any new or interesting readings. The data they had already collected would keep them busy for days, but that didn’t mean he should waste the opportunity to collect more as long as they were there. A sudden change in the life-form display caught his attention as it spiked and then stabilized.

  Tom had paused in his assembly of the second enhancer. He sat frozen, like a spooked animal, as the color drained from his typically ruddy face.

  “Tom?” Chakotay asked, turning to follow the direction of his terrified gaze.

  Floating down the corridor toward them was a nightmarish translucent creature. The structure of the face was vaguely familiar. Two pain-filled eyes set above an extended jaw which opened to reveal rows of long pointed teeth. The grisly visage sat atop three circular sections of torso that tapered to a point at the bottom. There were no arms or legs. The creature glided on several pairs of tattered wings, which gave no grace to its movement. As it approached, long pincerlike appendages emerged from behind its belly, reaching toward Tom and Chakotay. A bloodcurdling screech flew forth from its mouth, and years of first-contact scenarios with strange alien races always given the benefit of the doubt were tossed aside as Tom rose from a crouch and reached for Chakotay’s compression rifle.

  Tom thumbed the setting to maximum and fired.

  The creature was momentarily engulfed in the phaser blast, but kept coming. If anything, it seemed to Chakotay that the energy discharge might have made it angrier.

  There wasn’t time for anything else. Tom grabbed Chakotay and, pulling him toward the nearest pair of alcoves, screamed, “Think about Voyager!”

  Closing his eyes and concentrating as hard as the panic inside him would allow, Chakotay entered the transport and willed himself to return to their ship.

  The last thing he heard was the creature’s infuriated shriek accompanying the bright flash of light signaling their transport.

  Though Harry was easily several centimeters taller than the captain, he had to move quickly to keep pace with her as she made her way from sickbay to the nearest weapons locker located outside cargo bay one. He knew her well enough by now to know that she was furious, and he was grateful that her wrath was not, for the moment, directed toward him. In fact, he hoped fervently that he would never be on the receiving end of such intense displeasure from his captain.

  He hesitated to intrude upon her thoughts, but memories of the Monorhan dead were still fresh in his mind. He addressed her as tactfully as he could.

  “Captain, there’s something you should know.”

  Janeway’s pace did not waver, but she replied, “Go ahead, Ensign.”

  “When we found Tuvok he was in a storage room of some kind. The room was filled with thousands of bodies.”

  “Monorhans?” Janeway asked.

  Harry swallowed and nodded.

  “B’Elanna recovered the rest of the transmission we intercepted. The Monorhans who boarded the array were wiped out by an alien parasite.”

  Janeway paused long enough to throw open the weapons locker and began searching its inventory of modifiable compression rifles.

  “Were your life-form readings while you were aboard the array any more definitive than those we already have?” she asked, reaching for two of the rifles she was seeking. In a matter of moments she equipped them with the vials she had removed from sickbay. Each small vial of concentrated toxin attached to the firing chamber, and Harry could only assume they were designed to incapacitate a specific enemy.

  As Janeway passed one of the rifles to Harry and slung her own over her shoulder Harry replied, “No, ma’am. We did, however, find evidence of more coherent tetryon technology. It appears to play a significant role in their transport system.”

  Janeway nodded, as if this only further strengthened her resolve and certainty about the course of action she was pursuing.

  Once they
had secured the locker, Janeway used the nearest computer interface to request the current location of Phoebe Janeway. Harry was shocked to see her name appear on the computer’s crew manifest.

  The computer indicated that Phoebe was in “her quarters,” deck eleven, section C-7.

  “Captain, those quarters should be vacant,” Harry informed her as she closed the interface and headed toward the nearest turbolift.

  “I’m not surprised,” she replied. “I no longer believe that the woman I have supposedly been interacting with for the past several years is my sister.”

  “Years?” Harry asked.

  “The Doctor found evidence that my memory has been altered. If I’m right, so have the rest of the crew’s, as well as the ship’s computer. So far, the only person on board who can see Phoebe in her true form is Naomi Wildman. She was attacked several hours ago and up until now, I had no idea why.”

  “But why don’t I have any memory of her?” Harry asked.

  “What is the one thing you and Naomi Wildman have in common, Ensign?”

  It had been a long time since Harry had thought of this ship as anything other than his ship. It had been disorienting for the first few days after the encounter with the subspace scission, and difficult to shake the thought that somehow he didn’t quite belong here. But time had passed, and the disquieting sense of unbelonging had faded. Nonetheless, he realized immediately what the captain was referring to, and chided himself for not seeing it for himself.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “I don’t know why the subtle shift in your molecular phase variance made you immune to Phoebe’s tampering, but obviously it did. I’ll be relying on your eyes, Ensign. When we find her, I need you to tell me what you see.”

  Harry nodded, said, “Yes, ma’am,” then asked, “Have you been able to determine how long she’s been with us?”

  “No. As far as I remember, she’s been on board from the day I recruited Tom on Earth. I remember vividly her request to join us on our journey to the Badlands. She had been commissioned to do a painting and wanted to see the plasma fields firsthand. I’m realizing only now how absurd it would be for me to have granted any civilian such a request. I remember dinners, games on the holodeck, I even remember saving her life when…”

  A mixture of sadness and anger surged within her and Janeway did not immediately continue. Finally she said, “What I don’t understand is how she could have been so thorough. I don’t see how anyone or anything could possibly re-create another human being, someone I know so very well, using only my memories of them.”

  “If she can implant memories in the minds of a hundred and fifty people at the same time, that doesn’t sound like a huge leap,” Harry suggested. “My question is, why? Who is she really, and what does she want?”

  “I believe she may be Nacene,” Janeway said.

  Harry glanced at his phaser rifle. Suddenly he remembered the neural toxin Tuvok had developed a few years earlier when Voyager had encountered the Caretaker’s mate.

  They turned the corridor that led to “Phoebe” ’s quarters and approached without another word. When they reached the door, Janeway took a deep breath and overrode the lock.

  The door slid open.

  Phoebe had been considering her options. She was tired of the charade. More important, she could not envision any circumstances wherein Janeway could be innocently induced to do her bidding. Phoebe needed help. But she had come to that conclusion much too late. Janeway’s resistance to the implanted memories had been remarkable. Phoebe had sensed the splintering of the barrier she had erected in Janeway’s mind and finally accepted that there was only one clear path before them both.

  When the door opened, Phoebe was seated with her feet curled under her on a low bench running under the room’s only window. Only the faint blue glow emanating from the docking bay outside illuminated her features.

  In a low voice she said, “Kathryn, I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Harry heard the words, but did not see a human woman saying them. Instead he saw a mass of undulating translucent tentacles rising from the floor of the cabin and extending outward and upward for several meters. They writhed and danced in the eerie blue light, and for a split second he hesitated to fire into the terrifying spectacle.

  “Harry?” the captain said softly.

  “That’s not your sister,” he replied simply.

  As Phoebe moved toward them, calling Kathryn’s name, Janeway and Harry leveled their modified rifles and opened fire.

  B’Elanna felt certain that this day was never going to end. It had started well enough. Though their entry into the array had damaged several crucial systems, she checked regularly with her engineering staff and was satisfied with their work. The energy reserve transfer they had received had buoyed her spirits as well. The sight of those green bars at maximum was one she had never dared allow herself to hope to see as long as Voyager remained in the Delta Quadrant. So much of her time in the past four years had been devoted to squeezing every last ounce of energy from their systems, finding creative ways to bypass Starfleet regulations, and just making the best of what they had. A complete restock felt like an embarrassment of riches.

  Of course, since returning from the Betasis she’d had less time than she would have liked to let her mind roam freely through the myriad problems that had just been solved for her, and the new possibilities that were now spread before her. She had never been a patient person, but even she had to acknowledge that at the moment her efforts were best directed at more important and less pleasurable tasks.

  “Excuse me, Lieutenant,” the Doctor asked in a patronizing tone she had thought forever banished to the realm of bad memories.

  “Yes,” she replied, without bothering to hide her annoyance.

  Just a few more subroutines to locate and integrate…

  “Are you one of Voyager’s senior officers?” he asked.

  “I am.”

  “Then would you mind using your security authorization codes to erect a level-ten containment field around this biobed?” he asked.

  This caught her attention.

  “Your program should allow you to do that,” she replied.

  “In a perfect world, I suppose it would, but as I am only a supplement to your medical staff and your chief medical officer in name only for the moment…”

  B’Elanna quickly pulled up a diagnostic display of the backup module that was running and realized that because this particular backup predated the Doctor’s initial activation, the upgrades that allowed for such decisions were absent. She dutifully added the appropriate subroutine and said, “Try it now.”

  “Computer, erect a level-ten forcefield around biobed one,” he said, and the field automatically flashed into existence.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” the Doctor said, passing through the field and returning to Tuvok’s side.

  As she was about to reintegrate the remaining subroutines that should restore the real Doctor, B’Elanna realized that there were few conceivable reasons why the EMH would require such a containment field. Given what she had learned on the Betasis, she asked, “Doctor, why is the containment field necessary?”

  “Because this man has ingested an alien parasite,” he replied as if he were commenting on nothing more serious than the weather.

  An icy chill shot down B’Elanna’s spine.

  “Can…can you remove it?” she stammered.

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” he replied.

  B’Elanna had often wondered whether or not her mercurial temperament was a Klingon or human trait. Both species, she knew, could flame with rage in an instant, though Klingon anger was typically more aggressive, an act-first, think-later kind of anger. Her human father and cousins tended to simmer quietly, though repressed anger could often be more damaging than that which was immediately expressed. In any case, the Doctor’s attitude was definitely bringing out the Klingon in her.

  “What do you mean you ‘don’t think s
o,’ ” she bellowed. “You are talking about someone who is vital to this crew…someone who we care about.”

  “Then it is unfortunate I was not programmed to care in the same way that you do,” the Doctor replied. “I have done what I can to repair the injuries he sustained before he was infected. I am actually of the opinion that were it not for the parasite, Lieutenant Tuvok would probably had died several hours ago.”

  “What!?!” B’Elanna demanded.

  “I believe the parasite which entered the lieutenant’s body is actually the first stage in the development of a new life-form. The organism which is now merging with his central nervous system was able to sustain critical neural pathways which, given his injuries and blood loss, were in the process of shutting down. Although I was able to stabilize those systems which were damaged, it is almost impossible and certainly unadvisable to separate the lieutenant’s neurological tissue from that of the organism, which is also utilizing it to grow. Even if there were a way to remove the parasite from his body now, he would most likely awake from the procedure in a persistent vegetative state. As I have never seen an organism like this one, nor is there any record of one in our medical database, I am hesitant to speculate as to the kind of creature that will emerge from Lieutenant Tuvok’s body once the gestation of the first-stage life-form is complete, nor can I estimate how long the generative process will take. Given all this, I believe the containment field offers the greatest protection for the rest of the crew.”

  B’Elanna’s head was spinning. Tuvok had been infected by a parasite. The parasite was feeding off of his body and slowly killing him in the process. The part she was having a hard time with was the kind of creature that would emerge from Tuvok’s body when the gestation was complete.

  She needed more information. “Doctor, I thought most parasites lived within a host, feeding off of them perhaps, even to the point of death, but I’ve never heard of a parasite that ended up using a host to create an entirely new life-form.”

  “Then it was, perhaps, an excellent choice for you to become an engineer, rather than a physician,” he replied without a trace of sarcasm. “The fact is that from what I can tell, the parasite is merging with Lieutenant Tuvok in a way that suggests at least some part of him will survive along with the new organism. His body will die, that much is clear, but the level of neurological tissue and biochemical signal transfer leads me to believe that rather than his body simply being used and then discarded, in some way Tuvok will be an integral part of the new organism.”