by Mosaic
"Go to minimum energy signature. Shipwide. Set shields to scatter active scans." As soon as she'd spoken, lights began to blink out and there was a decline in the ambient hum that always accompanied life on Voyager. Consoles flickered to darkness; only a few dim emergency lights near the deck provided illumination. It was a ghostly atmosphere. But with all systems off-line except lifesupport and passive sensors, they would be almost impossible to detect. Now, they simply had to wait and hope the Kazon would tire of the hunt and go away.
Jal Sittik stood in the midst of an overgrown copse, trying not to let his men know how perplexed he was. The Federations were proving remarkably elusive. First they had vanished into the depths of a thick grove of trees and brush that Sittik, following, had found impenetrable; then they reappeared on the other side of the copse, almost within view, registering clearly on his sensing indicator.
His squad should have overtaken them easily. But they were nowhere to be seen, and had all but disappeared from the indicators. Sittik put his hands on his hips again, a pose of confidence that he felt would satisfy his men while he tried to decide what to do now. But to his irritation Jal Miskk approached.
Miskk's headdress was only slightly less elaborate than his own, another fact that irritated Sittik. He believed Miskk cheated with his markers, claiming kills that were not personally his, but those of the entire ship. Sittik would personally never stoop to such deception, and it annoyed him that others might think that Miskk could claim anywhere near the number of kills that he had.
Miskk now looked at him with a gaze that was unmistakably insolent. "Well," he sneered, "where are they?"
Sittik glared at him, swelling his chest as much as possible in order to intimidate Miskk. "Are you saying you don't know?" he sneered right back. Miskk's eyes narrowed and the two men stared at each other, the challenge charging the air between them. Sittik enjoyed these moments, for he had a stare that could wither even the most arrogant of his comrades. And, after a moment, Miskk looked away. Sittik crowed inwardly, a silent cry of victory. He loved conquest. The moment caused him to envision briefly the barely clad bodies of the women who would be awaiting his triumphant return to their colony.
He swept his sensing indicator along the horizon, arm extended fully-a gesture of power. His men would see his strength, his confidence, and realize this momentary setback was just that, a minor obstacle to their eventual victory.
He pointed toward the thick grove of fruit trees that lay less than half a kilometer away. "They've taken cover again," he announced. "Your group will flush them out."
"If they're so close, why are there no readings on our sensing indicators?"
"I see life signs in the grove," retorted Sittik. "Do as I say."
"I don't believe the life signs are those of the Federations-was "Miskk, I am in charge of this mission. Obey my command or it is you who will spend two weeks in chains."
Sittik was gratified to see Miskk flush with color, start to speak, and then swallow his reply. With a curt nod, he gestured to his men and they moved toward the dense grove of trees.
Then Sittik resumed his scanning, desperately trying to figure out where the Federations really were.
Harry Kim was getting frustrated. But it was better than sitting around, wondering if the Kazon would find them.
He and Kes had begun to explore the underground structure as soon as Tuvok had organized the group into teams. It was proving to be vast, and so far was producing more mystery than enlightenment. There were kilometers of mazelike corridors that would have taken days, if not weeks, to chart. But that was all. Corridors, all constructed of that strange material which possessed organic qualities. No chambers that he could detect, in spite of the most sensitive of tricorder readings. No bodies, no skeletons, no drawings, no artifacts. Nothing that might be expected in a tomb of what had seemed to be such a ritualized society. After he and Kes had been searching for half an hour, he turned to her in frustration. "I don't understand it. They went to great lengths to hide this structure; it must have been of value to thembut there's nothing here."
"There must be something here. We just haven't found it yet.
"Tricorders aren't showing anything that would give us a clue." He turned in a circle, tricorder extended. "Just stone... stone... and more stone. Or whatever one calls this stuff. It looks like an inert mineral, but it definitely has an organometallic component."
Then suddenly his eyes widened as he spotted something besides stone on his readout. "Kes-are you getting a reading? Up above ground?" Kes lifted her arm to point in the same direction he was, and he saw her brow furrow slightly. She looked over at him. "Kazoo," she said grimly. Unmistakable Kazon life signs flickered on their tricorders. The Kazon were above them, tramping through the sod that served as the ceiling for the underground tunnels. They couldn't hear anything-the ceiling piece was half a meter thick and well insulated with sod-and they assumed the Kazon couldn't hear them. Yet they found themselves whispering. "Kim to Tuvok."
"I'm here, Ensign."
"I'm picking up Kazon life signs above us."
"Acknowledged. We have the same readings. All teams should be at the ready. But stay where you are. I'd rather have us spread out in order to make it more difficult for them to detect us."
"Yes, sir." He turned to Kes, who continued to study her tricorder intently.
"If we read their life signs, you'd think they could read ours."
"Maybe they can. But figuring how to get down here is a different story. I found the mechanism because I realized what the pattern on the ground represented. But I'm betting the Kazon were just tracking us. They haven't gone through the thought processes I did. As far as they're concerned, we were on the surface, and now we're not. I don't think they'll figure out how we got here."
"I hope you're right."
"Let's keep going. I'd like to find out what this underground maze is all about."
She nodded and they moved off down the corridor, scanning continuously, wrist beacons bravely knifing through a darkness that seemed to have been undisturbed for-how long? There were nothing but questions here. For another fifteen minutes they wound their way through corridors, carefully charting their course on the tricorders; without that map, they'd never find their way back to the others.
They searched the walls, the ceilings, the floorseverything, for a sign, no matter how tiny, of something besides the strange building material. And came up empty.
"I'm stumped," Harry admitted. "There just doesn't seem to be any reason for all these passageways. Can you imagine how long it must have taken to build them?"
"Whoever did had a lot of patience. Maybe that's something you could use a little more of."
He looked sidelong at her and grinned. Kes was softspoken and unassuming, but underneath her dainty exterior was a will of iron and an insight into others that was extraordinary. Of course, she had unique mental abili- ties-even she wasn't quite sure what they entailedbut even so, she had a way of getting right to the point of things.
"Noted. But the unbelievable amount of time they spent on this layout only supports my argument: it was extremely important to them. Something's here, something they wanted protected above all else."
"A leader's body? Treasure? A map?"
"Any of the above. Or none of them."
"Whatever it is, I can't imagine that it could be of much use to us. Maybe we should think about getting back to the others."
Kim had already begun thinking the same thing, but he didn't want to admit it. "I'm not curious because we might find something useful. I'm curious because it's so mysterious. All those skeletons, and now this underground maze-I just want answers."
Suddenly he heard her emit a little gasp, and he stopped immediately, shining his wrist beacon toward her. In the glare of the light, her eyes looked like those of a cat's in the moonlight, wide and wary. "What is it?"
"I don't know. Something..."
Harry studied her carefully. She was parti
ally telepathic. Was she sensing something there in the soundless, lightless corridors? Slowly, she turned in place, eyes closed now, as though trying to locate the source of some vague, faint melody. Her mouth was slightly parted, and he could hear the delicate sound of her breathing. Then she shuddered slightly. He waited, not wanting to interrupt whatever it was she was experiencing.
Finally, she turned back to him, eyes open once more. "I seemed to hear something... something far away... and then it faded."
"What did it sound like?"
"It's hard to describe. Maybe-like water, dripping onto wood."
"Could you tell where it was coming from?"
She shook her head. Clearly the moment had passed. "Didn't you hear it at all?"
"Nope. Not a thing."
She took a breath, then looked at him a bit sheepishly. "It's gone. I can't get it back."
"Then let's keep walking."
They proceeded down the corridor, scanning carefully, until they reached a bend that forced them to turn right.
When they did, they saw three armed Kazon warriors straight ahead of them.
The first strike of the Kazon ship arrived with only seconds of warning, snapped by Tom Paris from the conn position. "Kazon weapons powering, Captain."
A scant heartbeat later Voyager was rocked with the unmistakable thooop of percussive plasma flares.
"They're trawling," said Chakotay softly. "Just sending out flares and hoping they hit something."
Even so, it was unnerving. Janeway hated the feeling of powerlessness, just sitting, waiting, hoping, depending on luck that the plasma flares wouldn't hit them, or if they did, that the damage would be minimal. She preferred to be on the move, active, taking charge and doing things her way. But sometimes that wasn't an option. She'd learned that over the years, the way she'd learned most of the lessons of her life: painfully. So she hunkered down in her chair, trying to quiet her mind, listening to the muffled explosions of the Kazon flares, and trying not to think about those she'd left behind.
CHAPTER 10
CHEB PACKER PUT HIS HAND ON HER ARM TO HELP GUIDE HER through the darkness, and Kathryn felt a thrill ripple through her, ending in her fingertips, which tingled intensely. She still felt that sensation every time he touched her, every time he looked at her, every time he smiled his funny crooked smile at her.
She loved everything about him. She loved his dark hair with the one funny lock that kept falling over his forehead. She loved his eyes, which were the deepest shade of blue she'd ever seen. She loved his broad shoulders and strong arms. She loved his intellect, which was as formidable as any she'd ever encountered in someone her age.
She still couldn't believe that of all the young women at the Academy Institute-all of them the best of the be/cheb was attracted to her. She was not the most beautiful; she frankly thought she looked like a tomboy with her angular features and her whippet-thin body. She was not the most brilliant; though she always ranked near the top in her classes there were always those who surpassed her. She was not the most talented or the most athletic. And yet, in this, their senior year, Cheb had pursued her.
Until she'd begun dating Cheb, she never thought of herself in comparison to other girls. But now she found herself thinking of them in a competitive way: Bess Terman had a much better figure; Allie Keagle had better skin; Nath Malone had a better sense of humor. Everybody had better hair. What did he see in her?
Ahead, in the cold dark woods of southern Ohio, Anna Mears giggled, and immediately Cheb hissed a "Shhhhhh" at her. Why he felt the need to be quiet, she wasn't sure. The chance of anyone's being out in these particular woods at this time of year was remote. It was frigid, and the ground was covered with icy snow that crunched under the footsteps of the four young people who walked, single-file, along a barely visible path among the trees. Only the moon, radiant in a starry sky, illuminated their way.
They had made the transport-completely unauthorized, of course-from school. Cheb claimed to know how to cover evidence of their maneuver so no one would realize they had commandeered a transporter for a purely personal, nonschool function. He had set it to bring them back in two hours from their beam-in site.
That had been less than a kilometer from their ultimate destination: the Magruder Mansion, an abandoned structure deep in the woods of a southern Ohio farm. Cheb had told them about it, how he had once gone with his older brother and his pals to see it, how intriguing and spooky it was, and how easy it would be for them to use the school's transporter to get there. He had made all the arrangements for this clandestine visit. It seemed as if they'd been walking forever; the air was cold enough to burn her nostrils, and her feet were numb.
But Kathryn felt warmed by the touch of Cheb's hand on her arm. She gazed upward, looking for familiar stars, and saw leafless branches arching upward toward the sky, stark and desolate. Orion dominated the sky, and Sirius shone brilliantly above the southern horizon. Castor and Pollux, the Gemini twins, hung close to the zenith.
"There it is," she heard Cheb whisper, and the group drew up behind him, peering through the darkness toward the huge dark shadow that loomed ahead of them.
"It was built in the twenty-first century," breathed Cheb. "But it was modeled after castles in Ireland and England over a hundred years before that."
Kathryn had seen pictures of such castles, but seeing one in person was a different matter. It was set on a knoll, and loomed above them, four stories towering into the night sky. Crenellated gables, turrets, and pinnacles jutted from different levels, gradually building up to a massive central tower. She was awed by its power and majesty. "Let's go." Cheb started toward the mansion.
"How do we get in?" asked Blake Thomas, a thin, serious boy who was Captain of the Parrises Squares team, and one of the academic standouts of the senior class. His acceptance into Starfleet Academy was a foregone conclu- sion.
"Through the basement," said Cheb, leading the small band of adventurers through drifts of crackling snow to the back of the house, where he disabled motion sensors and opened a ground-level window, then helped them climb down into the basement.
Now, they could use their lights. Cheb and Blake turned on palm beacons and played them around a cavernous room that was elegantly appointed, with wood paneling and vaulted ceilings. Running the length of the room were two wooden alleys, separated by deep grooves.
"What are they?" she asked Cheb, and he smiled at her. "Bowling alleys," he answered, but that told her nothing.
"It's a game that was. popular until about a hundred years ago. You rolled a heavy ball down this wooden alley and tried to knock over an arrangement of ten pins."
Kathryn shook her head. It sounded ludicrous. But people had played some very strange games in the past.
"Whose mansion was this, Cheb? And why was it abandoned? Does anyone own it now?"
"It was built early in the twenty-first century by a wealthy man who was an amateur historian. He wanted an authentic Irish castle for the woman he loved, who came from Ireland. So he spent a fortune having it built here, in Ohio. But she was never happy here-too isolated, too far from home. She wanted to leave him, but he begged her, pleaded with her, even threatened her. One day, she vanished, leaving a note that she was going home. He was so distraught he packed up, moved out, closed the house, and never came back. The castle has been empty for three hundred years. It's kept up through a provision in his will, but it's never to be occupied again." They all reflected silently on the strangeness of this tale. It was grand and romantic, and perfectly suited the ambience of the imposing structure. It seemed neither improbable nor far-fetched. "Of course," continued Cheb, "there were rumors that he killed her. Buried her somewhere here, in the house. Maybe in this basement."
Kathryn shot him a glance. "Are you trying to scare us with ghost stories, Cheb?"
He shrugged. "Just telling you what I know."
"Let's see the rest." Anna had found the stairway up and was heading toward it; the others follow
ed, climbing upward in the darkness. Cheb and Kathryn were last, and she felt him pull her back, holding her behind for a moment. Then he moved close and kissed her.
Kathryn was amazed that her knees suddenly felt wobbly and jelly-like. You really could get weak in the knees! That was the effect Cheb Packer had on her, and she liked the sensation, enjoyed the stirring of such powerful feelings. Her fingertips were an explosion of sensation; tiny, intense firecrackers danced within them.
They followed the others upstairs, and discovered them in a huge, paneled dining room, whose table and chairs were covered with sheets, lending a ghostly presence to the room. It was a once-elegant room, boasting of a huge marble fireplace at one end and a ceiling that was stenciled in a faded design of shamrocks and thistle.
The young people removed the sheets from the furniture, opened the duffels they'd been carrying, and began to set up the picnic dinner they'd brought. That had been their plan-to hold a feast in an Irish castle. They'd brought soup and sandwiches and Kathryn's mother's caramel brownies. Blake lit candles and they sat in the flickering light around a carved wooden table with bear claw legs.