by Star Trek
The course that lay before Janeway and Phoebe now, as the unknowing one surged forward, deviated somewhat from the master plan, but was, Phoebe had to acknowledge, a better means to the same end. Janeway would not die, at least not right away, but she would no longer be the Key’s owner. This would briefly forestall the further destabilization of the gateway Phoebe had worked so hard to avoid if Janeway died without opening the conduit. This would also buy Phoebe the time she needed to gather at least a few of those who had been waiting at Gremadia to take them to join the exiles in preparation for the battle that was surely to come.
In the meantime, the abominations would die, with all the others Kathryn held dear when the array was destroyed.
All in all, an acceptable compromise.
Too late Janeway realized that though her phaser rifle was still slung over her shoulder, she could not use it and hold on to the Key at the same time. She made the attempt anyway, but found that her hands were firmly glued in place around the Key. Casting a quick glance behind her, she saw the massive tattered sphere floating there. She took an instinctive step back, but almost tripped when her heel met the solid base that circled the floor beneath the sphere.
She didn’t know what the creature was, or why, unlike the others, it seemed to show no deference to her position as they Key’s owner. Its rage and hostility were palpable, and it took only a few brief seconds for her to resign herself to the inevitable.
Twenty meters.
Ten.
Oh, hell.
A brisk blast of noxious air assaulted her nostrils, but at the last possible moment, the creature was pulled from its intercept course.
Janeway lifted her eyes in awe as one of the Monorhans, one with a curiously familiar face, grasped the unknowing one it its arms and carried it safely away from the captain.
Assylia, she realized, her heart catching in her throat.
Then what became of Tuvok?
Janeway watched as dozens of others, seemingly on Assylia’s command, joined the fight, tearing at the creature’s wings and literally ripping it apart in a frenzied dance of survival. She was reminded of a holovid she’d once seen which showed in graphic detail the fury with which a pack of hyenas would descend upon a wounded lion.
Within moments, the horrific spectacle ended as the creature emitted a final weakened shriek and fell lifeless to the chamber’s floor.
It landed mangled, facedown. One of the small wormlike spores that Janeway had seen piled below Phoebe emerged from its remains and in a flash joined its companions.
Throughout this the Nacene who had emerged from their stasis chambers had begun to assemble themselves in a large group surrounding the pile. The Monorhans collected themselves in their own formation along the other side of the chamber.
Janeway repositioned herself beneath the sphere. In the apparatus at its base she could clearly see a half-circle indentation. She did not know exactly how she knew, but nonetheless she was absolutely certain that this had to be the lock that the Key was meant for, and that once the Key was placed there by her, the conduit would open.
“Kathryn,” Phoebe called.
“These life-forms,” Janeway asked, referring to the Monorhans, “how were they created?”
The death of the unknowing one had frustrated Phoebe’s plan yet again. She was forced again to face the lesser of the evils before her.
Just keep her talking until the array explodes. As long as it takes so that she doesn’t use the Key and open the conduit….
“The Monorhans who discovered the station were taken by the spores intended for my people,” Phoebe said.
“Taken?”
“We can only enter Exosia in a purified state,” Phoebe said. “To do otherwise would further unbalance our two realities. The spores were created to facilitate our final transformation. But as the Monorhans were created through us, the spores mistook them for us. They are not sentient. They were drawn to the Monorhans instinctively.”
“Another unforeseen effect?” Janeway asked.
“They are of no consequence,” Phoebe thundered.
“How can you say that?” Janeway replied in disbelief. “Just because they weren’t a part of your highly flawed plan, that doesn’t change the fact that they exist in their present form because of choices you and your people made. Like it or not, they are now of you, and they belong in Exosia. Not to mention the fact that unlike you, they are clearly mortal and will be destroyed when the array explodes. Any that might escape would at best be damned to eternal purgatory within this system, wouldn’t they?” she demanded.
“Each of them has the power to generate another spore,” Phoebe replied. “That which lives within them is necessary for us to reenter Exosia. I will lead them from this place and harvest the spores they possess.”
“Will they survive that process, and will you allow them to follow you into Exosia when you do return?” Janeway asked.
“Of course,” Phoebe said.
Janeway wasn’t fooled. She studied the chamber. Its floor was littered with dead Monorhans, and she didn’t imagine for one moment that the pile of spores wriggling at the feet of the Nacene had materialized out of thin air.
“I’m sorry, Phoebe,” she said finally. “I wanted to help you. I truly did. But you and I both know that in order for you to get what you need, one way or another these beings will die.”
“Why do you care?” Phoebe demanded.
“Because I’m not in the habit of placing my own needs above those of innocent life-forms. I would think you’d know that by now. Their rights are no less important to me than yours. And I share a sympathy with them that I cannot find for you or your people. They are not responsible for what has happened here, and they do not deserve to die now because of your ignorance or arrogance. I’m sorry, Phoebe,” she said again. “Our reality is bound by time, and yours has now run out.”
Raising her voice to address the Nacene assembled behind her, Janeway called out, “Those of you who wish to return home should make use of the spores that remain. Those who do not will have to find another way.”
“Kathryn…you can’t…” Phoebe said.
“Oh, but I can,” Janeway replied.
Janeway fell to her knees at the base of the sphere and moved to put the Key in its place.
But Phoebe had one final card left to play. “You will not survive this,” she warned. “The conduit can only be opened by its owner because the life force of the owner is required to sustain it.”
Janeway paused for a fraction of a second.
She’d known this too. Not the mechanism of her death, but the probability of it. Her gut impulse to make sure Chakotay and the others were returned safely to Voyager had risen from the belief that whatever course she chose, she was probably not going to leave this chamber alive.
She thought of the Caretaker.
He’d had another choice. He could have left the Ocampa to the Kazon and saved himself by returning to Gremadia. But his sense of duty and responsibility, values that he could have learned only from his interaction with the lesser beings of this dimension, values that Janeway was certain Phoebe had failed to truly absorb despite the depth and breadth of her experiences, had led him to sacrifice himself to ensure the survival of those whose planet he had all but destroyed.
“We are more alike than you think, Phoebe,” Janeway replied. “I have seen the compassion other Nacene have been capable of. I suggest, when this is done, you look harder at yourself and the options before you. Find a way to solve the problem that does not include the wanton destruction of those you think of as lesser beings. We may not be immortal, but there’s a lesson in our mortality that you still need to learn.”
“What is that, Kathryn?” Phoebe asked.
“There are some things worth dying for.”
Phoebe was, as Janeway had said, out of time. But in the split second it took her to martial her energy to stop Janeway’s heart in her chest and prevent her from this final fatal st
ep, every single Monorhan still alive came together and formed a protective barrier between Phoebe and the captain.
Janeway sensed their motion and intent, took what she believed would be her final breath, and placed the Key into the lock.
Chapter 17
There was a faint click as the Key snapped into its place. The moment it did, the pink light was transmuted to orange, then yellow, finally resolving into blinding whiteness.
Janeway’s hands fell to her sides. The first thing she felt was an inexplicable sense of relief. It was as if the weight of a thousand worlds had been lifted from her shoulders.
She thought for a brief moment of Tuvok, and the peace and clarity of his final moments. She could not feel anything so absolute, but in the few seconds that were still hers and hers alone, she did feel something similar as a kind and loving face filled her mind’s eye. It was not the face of her former fiancé, Mark, or her father, who had died so many years ago and whom she’d missed terribly since. It was not the face of her sister, stolen by the Nacene she could only think of as “Phoebe,” or the face of her beloved mother, Gretchen.
For reasons only the deepest recesses of her heart knew, the face that rose to her consciousness as she released herself to whatever must come of this choice was the face of her first officer, Chakotay. Perhaps this was her mind’s way of assuring her that she had left her crew in the best possible hands. Or perhaps he was the last person she thought of because his was the heart and spirit that had become the most important if unacknowledged part of her own in the joys and sorrows of the past four years.
And now he will never know, she realized with an overwhelming sense of regret.
But as the light emanating from the Key enveloped her, all thoughts of herself were wiped from her mind. She was lifted from the floor where she had knelt, her arms stretching out at her sides as her legs unfolded. The whiteness surged around her. She felt certain that it was pulling her apart. The tattered remains of the fragile spherical casing that had housed the spores disintegrated around her in a cascade of fiery sparks as she was drawn to the center of the ring and held aloft by the force of the Key.
And then, they were moving through her. One after another, the transformed Monorhans forced themselves into the center of her body. They sought out the impossibly small space between the subatomic particles of her being and passed through like tiny threads through the eye of a needle.
She did not know what awaited them on the other side. But in their passage she knew utter and complete joy. Somehow, they understood the sacrifice that she was making on their behalf, and in the fraction of a second that the essence of each was mingled with her own, she felt their gratitude.
It entered her mind and soul as the most beautiful of songs. Surging to a perfectly resolved crescendo within her, the fragmented and dissonant music that had first called to Tuvok now took its rightful place among the larger symphonic tapestry of the ever-resonating universe.
Phoebe watched this spectacle with rage. Janeway had betrayed her, just as she had attempted to betray the Others. The few spores that remained were drawn in their present form not to the Nacene who stood by, helplessly witnessing the end of their hopes, but to the conduit. Given the choice between the dimension where they had been trapped and that to which their true nature belonged, they sought Exosia, burrowing through Janeway’s chest, unaware that when they arrived, they would immediately meet their destruction.
The exiles who had been left behind were crowding around one another, a mass of confusion. They had chosen to return to the array and enter stasis because they had grown weary of their struggle. None of them would dared have disrupted the spores, but were content to wait patiently for the number to be complete before they attempted to reenter Exosia. Though they were, for the moment, trapped in whatever alien form they had last embodied before entering stasis, Phoebe sensed that they could nonetheless share in her rage, and suffer some in the knowledge that the existence now granted to the Monorhans was probably lost to them now for all eternity.
There were too many to contain, but Phoebe gathered those she still had strength to sustain within her, granting them a small fraction of her power and will, and left the array in search of a place to safely collect her thoughts and plan for the coming eventuality.
She could not know for certain exactly what the Others would make of this intrusion into Exosia. She was absolutely certain, however, that this would speed Vivia’s return and that the next time they met there would be no hiding the truth from her. The Others would have their revenge, and Phoebe knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it would be both swift and final.
The only comfort she found as she traversed the frigid barrenness of space-time was in the thought that whatever she and her people were about to suffer, it would be nothing compared to the fate that would certainly befall those that Kathryn cared for.
The passage of the Monorhans through the conduit seemed to stretch itself over countless lifetimes. In reality, it took less than two minutes.
The last creature to move through her made more than her gratitude known to Janeway in the fraction of a second that they shared as one. Fully aware of the lengths to which Janeway and her people had gone on behalf of not only the Fourteenth Tribe but all Monorhans, the rih-hara-tan Assylia paused for an infinitesimal moment within Janeway’s expanded consciousness to give the only gift she could. It was less than Janeway deserved, but all that Assylia had left to offer.
Certain that her children were finally safe, having tasted all too briefly the song of her people as they found the home they had longed for, Assylia transferred the entire life force within her to the failing systems of Janeway’s body, which had been completely drained, as Phoebe had rightly predicted, in the process of becoming the conduit for the Monorhans.
For a brief moment, Assylia stood on the precipice of eternity and glimpsed the bright and peaceful fulfillment of her people. Then, with a prayer of gratitude to the Blessed All-Knowing Light, she asked that if her life could be taken that Janeway might survive, He, in his infinite wisdom, let it be so.
Assylia never entered Exosia.
Much to the amazement of the Nacene who were too weak to follow Phoebe, when the conduit was closed and Janeway’s body fell in a heap upon the floor of the chamber now filled with an inky blackness, the captain was still breathing.
The few seconds it took for the ship’s emergency lighting system to compensate for the shipwide blackout were interminable to Chakotay. When the bridge was once again awash in the rhythmic pulse of red light he called, “Report!”
“Commander,” Seven’s measured voice called from ops, “the Betasis is reaching critical mass. It will explode, setting off a chain reaction which will destabilize the array in less than one minute.”
“What happened to the lights? Are we losing power?” he asked.
“No, sir. The subspace dissonance field coming from the array expanded to a large enough area to disrupt Voyager’s power grid, but it has now collapsed and I have rerouted nonessential systems to compensate for the temporary drain.”
“Chakotay to transporter room three, have you recovered the captain’s signal?”
“Aye, sir,” Clayton replied.
“Thirty seconds remaining,” the computer reported.
“Chakotay to Janeway,” he called over the comm.
A sharp burst of static was the unwelcome but nonetheless fully anticipated response.
Forgive me, Chakotay thought, unsure whether he was addressing the spirits who watched over his people, or Kathryn.
“Tuvok, drop our shields…Clayton, initiate transport!”
Five quick heartbeats later Clayton called, “I have her, Commander.”
“Raise shields. B’Elanna, get us out of here.”
Under B’Elanna’s calm hands, Voyager glided steadily forward, passing through the docking bay’s entrance, headed straight for the swirling destructive mass of the singularity. Just as the aft section was clearin
g the bay, the familiar deep green tractor net flickered to life and surrounded the ship in its stabilizing energy web.
At the same time, the central core of the Betasis reached critical mass, and the finest technological achievement of Monorha’s Fourteenth Tribe exploded, taking with it the docking bay where it had rested for fifty years, and vaporizing the upper ring’s stabilization field controls.
Voyager careened to starboard.
“Can we go to impulse?” Chakotay barked.
“Not yet, sir,” B’Elanna replied. “We haven’t cleared the…”
But the end of her statement was lost as the ship jutted abruptly to port, and the tractor net blinked out of existence.
Suddenly, the intertial dampers were pushed to the brink of their capacity as the ship skidded along the edge of the event horizon. The ops and engineering consoles erupted in a shower of sparks, and those who were able to keep their seats or their footing did so only by holding on for dear life to whatever was nearest.
“Shields at sixty percent,” Tuvok called from tactical.
The chain reaction that Seven had predicted was swift. Like falling dominoes, each bay to the right and left of that which had housed the Betasis crumpled in upon itself. Huge shards of metal were pulled free and plunged into the inexorable gravity of the singularity. Within seconds, the lower ring was also affected. The perfect circles were ripped from their orbit as the first sections to collapse were pulled first toward the center, then caught in the singularity’s gravity and plucked like petals from a flower and sucked into oblivion.