Seven said perhaps, but a chronodynamic flux might indicate two different times occupying parallel temporal simultaneities and, therefore … Chakotay stopped listening. All that mattered was that he heard her, and so Voyager couldn’t be far, and they would come for him before his air ran out and …
He cut her off. “Seven, if you know what happened, you can duplicate the conditions.”
He remembered to turn it into a question. “Can’t you?”
Seven paused—too long. Then, “Captain Janeway says to tell you: We’re working on it.”
Janeway was grim. “How much does he know?”
The senior staff ranged in a semicircle before the screen in Astrometrics: Tuvok, Kim, and Paris were to Janeway’s right and Seven, Torres, and the Doctor stood to her left.
It was two days after the alien had appeared, a day after Chakotay went with it, and six hours before Seven killed herself.
Seven said, “The commander’s knowledge is limited. The Doctor and I felt that he would find the constant interplay, typical of drones, too disorienting. We made modifications to the interlink that allow me to sequester information.”
“All right, then. Let’s get on with it. Doctor?”
“I’ve analyzed Seven’s data. Thank heaven for that neural link, or we’d be completely in the dark.” The Doctor didn’t add that they would have assumed that Chakotay had died when the ship vanished.
Janeway flicked a forefinger: an order to proceed. He did. “The abdominal injuries are not immediately life-threatening, but the ribs worry me. If what Seven says is accurate, his body is already compensating for the fractures with involuntary muscle spasms that act as a splint. Still, a sudden movement might send bone ripping into his lung. In that case, the resulting tension pneumothorax will collapse the lung, while air leaking into the chest compresses the heart and remaining lung, making it impossible for him to breathe—or, eventually, pump blood. Cocooned in an environmental suit, he’ll be unable to insert a large-bore needle, a barbaric but useful practice, through the skin and into the chest cavity to alleviate …”
“We get the picture,” Janeway interrupted. “Anything else?”
“Yes, and far more serious. It’s his heart. Those fractures … Commander Chakotay was hit squarely along the left side of his chest. Either something heavy hit him or, more likely, he crashed into the bulkhead, hard.”
“Same trouble people used to have with cars, Captain,” said Paris.
The Doctor nodded. “Precisely. Following Mr. Paris’s analogy, if such a vehicle slams into a brick wall, the driver’s body continues forward at the same relative speed, even though the vehicle stops. If the driver is unrestrained, he hurtles forward, strikes the steering column, and … well, it’s like having a pile of bricks dropped onto your chest from a great height. Either the organs beneath are crushed, or they rupture outright. In the latter instance, death follows, very quickly.”
“And Chakotay?”
“Commander Chakotay’s suffered a severe blow to the heart. Not immediately fatal, but it will be. Blood is seeping into the sac around his heart, and the damage to the heart muscle that’s already been done will spread. He’s got all the symptoms: a progressive sensation of heaviness in his chest, more difficulty catching his breath. He’s coughing up blood. The synaptic-actuated nodes in his suit indicate fleeting cardiac arrhythmias. Soon his heart will beat more erratically. This, in turn, will render it unable to fill with blood, because the blood collecting in the pericardial sac will squeeze the heart …”
“Like a vise,” said Janeway.
“Precisely. Or the electrical wave controlling the heart will be interrupted, making it impossible for the heart to pump blood. In either scenario, the outcome is the same. Commander Chakotay will die.”
Janeway’s lips thinned. “How long?”
“Nine, ten hours. Twelve, if he’s lucky.”
The room had gone so still that the Doctor’s words dissipated, like an echo. Janeway broke the silence with a bitter laugh. “And enough air for no more than fifteen. So if his heart doesn’t give out, he’ll suffocate.”
It was a statement that didn’t require a reply, so no one offered one. She stared at them in turn. “Have we figured out where he is?”
Torres reached across Seven and punched up a schematic. An elliptical grid map of the sector flickered to life on the screen; a tiny green blip pulsed at the far left of a series of red crosshatchings. “This is where they were, about thirty light-years distant from our current position. We’re holding here,” Torres said, as she rotated the view forty degrees from center and ten degrees vertically, bringing the map’s underbelly into view. Voyager glowed orange. “We don’t want to disrupt anything, and we still don’t know where those mines are.”
Standing to Tuvok’s immediate right, Kim added, “Or those ships that attacked Commander Chakotay.”
“Any sign of them?” Janeway asked.
“Negative,” said Tuvok. “Long-range sensor sweeps show no plasma signatures of any kind consistent with a vessel.”
“Maybe they were destroyed.”
“There’s no debris.”
“But there are traces of a significant disruption in the region where the alien’s ship disappeared,” said Torres.
“Traces?”
“More like shadows or afterimages, like something was there but isn’t now. Seven thinks the ship underwent a quantum chronodynamic shift, a phase transition in time and space, in the same way that ice changes to liquid water, and water evanesces into vapor. It’s still water, just in different forms.”
“So Chakotay’s in shadow, and this shadow is a different phase state?”
“Right. The alien’s”—Torres called it “the alien” because its name was so convoluted even the computer made hash of it—“weapons systems were based on chronotonic-flux technology, as were those of the ships that attacked it and Chakotay.”
“Disrupting time and matter.”
“Exactly. The disruption is rife with baryonic particles—dark matter—so we think that weapons fire touched off a mine. The two events—a chroniton pulse and a high-energy, baryonic surge—created the rift.”
Janeway brooded. Two days ago, they’d spotted the alien’s disabled ship, adrift. It was leaking theta radiation; sensors indicated one life-form aboard, barely alive. The radiation made mincemeat out of the transporter, so Chakotay volunteered to go in a shuttle. He found the alien, trapped belowdecks, unconscious, near the engine core. The deck was awash with radiation, so Chakotay scooped the alien up and dashed back to the shuttle, and that’s when it happened, right in his arms. Chakotay never could describe precisely what the alien had been, though he retained a fleeting impression of something multipedal and bicephalic. He felt it shift beneath his fingers, like wax warmed by a candle. When he stared through its faceplate, he saw that it had become a she. In turn, she was tall and willowy, with a fall of hair the color of a raven’s wing and eyes as dark as a starless night. The Doctor decided that it/she was an empathic metamorphogenic entity and, at Chakotay’s touch, had responded to his fantasies. Think of it, the Doctor told Janeway, as the alien’s way of showing gratitude. Privately, Janeway didn’t really care what the theory was. For an entire day, she watched the alien drifting beside Chakotay, like a shadow: how it looked at Chakotay, and how Chakotay stared back in a way he didn’t at anyone else.
Janeway eyed the green and orange blips on the screen. Well, the issue was moot. Whatever the alien was, it was dead now, its ship blown out of known space. And they still weren’t any closer to figuring out where the baryonic mines were, or if the alien had managed to get through a dispatch to her people and let them know that Voyager’s intentions were peaceful, or if they’d deactivated those mines to allow Voyager safe passage.
Sighing, Janeway closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. What a mess. A war going on, between two species they didn’t know beans about, and Chakotay out th
ere, hurt, low on air, about to die if they couldn’t …
She became aware of an expectant pause, as if someone waited upon her reply. Janeway blinked, saw Seven’s eyes on her, and made a dismissive gesture with her hand, as if dispelling a cloud of gnats. “Sorry. Preoccupied. You were saying?”
“I said that collation of encounters with similar phenomena has yielded a referent in the mission logs of the NCC-1701.”
Janeway’s eyebrows arched toward her hairline. “James Kirk’s ship.”
“Correct. In 2268, while en route to the Medusan homeworld, the Enterprise entered a region of space then assumed to be beyond the galactic rim. In hindsight, we know that’s not true; the Enterprise crossed the barrier in 2265 and earlier the same year as the Medusan encounter. In neither instance was the space impossible to navigate. In 2268, however, a Federation engineer named Laurence Marvick reconfigured the ship’s engines to achieve warp nine-point-five. Granted, by today’s standards, the warp is relatively modest. Upon reanalysis, however, I believe that Marvick’s modifications broke our present-day warp ten. The resulting warp field disrupted that region of space, propelling the Enterprise into a subspace rift.”
“There are precedents, Captain,” Torres said. “Tyken’s Rifts, for one; the Hekaras Corridor rift in 2370, for another. Until our variable-geometry warp drive nacelles came along, no one went faster than warp five.”
Seven continued. “The space the Enterprise encountered has many similarities to the space in which Commander Chakotay is trapped.”
“So, he’s in a subspace continuum.”
“Yes.”
“All right.” It wasn’t. “This Marvick got in, and the Enterprise got herself out. How?”
“Dr. Marvick was insane,” Seven said, blandly. “A result of viewing the Medusan. A Vulcan first officer, Spock, mind-melded with the same Medusan and navigated the ship clear of the rift.”
“Do we understand Medusan navigational techniques?”
“No.”
“Do the Borg?”
“No.”
Janeway laughed, more air than sound: an exhalation of futility. “Then, forgive me, Seven, but just what are you proposing? That we should all go crazy?”
The Doctor’s eyes flicked to Seven, but Seven’s gaze remained on Janeway. “Not all. Just one.”
Janeway sobered. They listened as Seven explained who and how.
When she finished, the lab was so quiet Janeway heard herself swallow. “You’re serious.”
“Perfectly.”
Janeway looked toward the Doctor. “Do you agree?”
He shifted from one foot to the other, nervously. “I can’t see an alternative, Captain. We’ll monitor it every step of the way, of course.”
“What about you, Tuvok?”
The Vulcan was impassive. “Possible, in theory. In practice, it is another matter.”
“It will work,” said Seven. “There is no other way.”
Torres shook her head. “I don’t like it.”
“B’Elanna’s right,” said Janeway. “It’s too risky—for you, for us.”
Seven was implacable. “Then Commander Chakotay will die.”
Seven couldn’t have hurt Janeway more had she slapped her. “There has to be another way,” Janeway said, knowing that Seven would have offered one, if there were.
“There isn’t.”
“We need more analysis.”
“For which we don’t have the time.”
“Well, I don’t like it,” Torres repeated, generally.
“Yeah, but you never like anything,” said Paris.
Torres’s jaw set. “Maybe. But I really don’t like this.”
Janeway had to agree. But they did it anyway.
Two hours left.
Seven said they were coming. Chakotay didn’t ask how or when. It was all very simple, really. Either Voyager was there in time, or it wasn’t.
Chakotay rested, his back propped against the exterior of the ship. An arc welder lay across his knees. Seven told him not to move much, but he didn’t need reminding. Cutting himself free without puncturing his suit or slicing off his legs had worn him out. The process had taken hours, mainly because he’d passed out a few times. It was getting harder to breathe, and he was starting to pant. The sensation was terrible, as if a steel band were being notched tighter and tighter about his ribs.
The hairs on the back of his neck prickled with alarm. Relax. He tried reasoning with himself. Just the carbon dioxide building up in his blood, making him panicky, that was all.
Or maybe, Chakotay considered, it was Seven. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going on with her, the ship. Her thoughts came in pieces, like—he groped for an analogy—like shards of glass: jagged, broken. Sharp.
Keeping secrets, he thought. They don’t think I’m going to make it.
Stop. Chakotay closed his eyes, willed the panic to recede. For want of anything better to do, he tipped his head back and studied the sky. His eyes drifted over brightly colored tendrils of red and yellow as they turned and curled, and he thought, absurdly, of a jellyfish. Not that Chakotay could breathe whatever this stuff was: His suit’s sensors detected no oxygen but reported puridium, noble gases, and an organic polymer of some sort. Voyager’s computer couldn’t make heads or tails of it, and Seven thought it was quite strange for a planet so small to have enough gravitational pull to hold an atmosphere, of any description.
Chakotay stared for a long time, trying to ignore that he wasn’t feeling right. It wasn’t just his breathing. He was feeling … confined. Claustrophobic. Once, he’d caught his fingers straying for the release on his suit. For one insane moment, he’d wanted to crack the seal.
And he had the strangest feeling he was being watched. Stupid, he knew. Probably just low on oxygen, and yet … Without moving his head, he slid his eyes right, then left. The planet was scored with impact craters. Tumbles of gray rock were everywhere, like regolith on Earth’s moon.
No one here but us chickens. He felt a little foolish. Scooping up a handful of fine gray dust, he let it trickle, like the sands of an hourglass, between his gloved fingers. It silted to the surface with the same lazy, undulating quality as the sky. As the woman’s hair.
Thinking about the alien made him sad. So beautiful, and she’d needed him, but he’d failed. He was no warrior, not the way he’d told Janeway when they were marooned on New Earth. Oh, he wanted to be one and yesterday, saving the alien from certain death, that’s how he’d felt. Strong. Capable. A warrior. But it was all just a silly fantasy.
He watched the dust settle in torpid swirls. No courageous warrior triumphing against the odds, not he.
He was still thinking that when the first salvo hit.
An hour.
They were through, and Janeway was congratulating herself. Snagging those baryonic mines with a gravitonic tractor beam and then detonating one to create the rift had been risky. They still carried one mine, in a gravimagnetic containment field, for the return trip. She scanned the damage reports: environmental systems on auxiliary power, minor damage to the port nacelle, and two hull breaches from the concussive backwash, one on deck two. Neelix’s mess was, literally, a mess. Neelix had been in sickbay, though—to “support” Tuvok. Despite everything, Janeway’s lips tugged into a grin. It would probably be one of the only times in his life Tuvok would welcome unconsciousness. Likely the Doctor was wishing he could do likewise.
Speaking of which … Janeway looked up from her reports, toward the helm. Her eyes came to rest on Seven. Paris was standing alongside Seven, hands on hips, watchful. Oblivious of them all, Seven was intent over the controls. Paris must have felt Janeway staring, because he looked up suddenly. Janeway tried a wobbly smile of reassurance and knew from the look on Paris’s face that she failed, miserably.
She abandoned the effort as futile. She had too much to worry about: Chakotay stranded, enemy ships somewhere, and Seven, part of her mind gone, navigating this mu
ck that passed for space. Her eyes strayed to the viewscreen and that roiling mass of what the ship’s computer said was a soup of bioelectrical energies, elemental particles, organic polymers. The stuff wasn’t truly solid or gaseous, chaotic or fluidic. It fluxed—between times, dimensions, phase states.
Voyager flew on a wing and a prayer. Janeway gnawed her lower lip. They had no referents, no coordinates, nothing to guide them but Seven, who had them on a heading for a planet only she saw. And Seven hadn’t said much for the last few hours, ever since the Doctor pumped her full of cordrazine. Janeway grimaced. Part of Seven’s plan, gleaned from those old databases again: Inject enough cordrazine to induce psychosis, but not so much that her mind shattered completely. Oh, the Doctor had given assurances that he’d notify her if Seven’s neural patterns so much as hiccupped. But he probably had his hands full down there, what with monitoring Seven and Tuvok.
God, I don’t like this. Janeway’s hand found its way to her throat. Seven, psychotic, and Tuvok, in a coma, mind-melded to Seven to stabilize her from sinking further into madness.
Janeway’s pulse fluttered against her fingertips. How had she let herself get talked into this?
Then she felt the emptiness to her left, and her resolve hardened. Not going to lose you, she thought fiercely, not without a fight.
Still, she felt shaky, on edge. She scrubbed her moist palms along her thighs. Nerves: She was as jumpy as a cadet on her first deep-space assignment. Or the time that horde of battleships hurtled out of fluidic space, or when the Borg …
She gave herself a mental shake. Focus. Janeway frowned, glanced at the padd on her lap. Everything was there, except—Janeway’s eyes slitted—those ships, the ones that attacked Chakotay. Where were they? They hadn’t been in normal space, and they weren’t in the rift. So where …?
“Captain.” It was Paris, a note of alarm in his voice. “Ma’am!”
Startled, Janeway looked up and saw that Seven had risen from her seat, her back ramrod straight. Janeway leapt to her feet, ignoring the padd as it clattered to the deck. She took the five strides to Seven in two. “What is it?”
Strange New Worlds IV Page 28