Caretaker (20 page)

Chakotay followed Janeway’s gaze upward, big fists clenched. “If the Array is the Ocampa’s sole source of energy, why would the Caretaker seal the conduits?”

Janeway shook her head slowly. Somewhere impossibly distant overhead, another thunderbolt was on its way down from space.

She felt herself stiffen in anticipation of its landing.

Beside her, Tuvok lowered his tricorder and frowned thoughtfully into the middle distance. “He would seal them if he no longer intended to use them.” He looked over in response to Chakotay’s grunt of disagreement. “To protect the Ocampa from their enemies.” Folding the tricorder shut, he faced Janeway squarely and announced, “Captain, there is now enough evidence to form a reasonable hypothesis. I believe that the Caretaker is dying.”

She pulled her eyes away from the ceiling to return the Vulcan’s frown.

“Explain.”

“First, he increases the energy supply to provide the city with a surplus to last at least five years. Then, he seals the conduits. The logical conclusion is that he does not intend to continue his role as Caretaker.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s dying,” Chakotay pointed out. But he sounded uncomfortable with the suggestion. “He may be leaving.”

Tuvok seemed to consider it, but quickly shook his head.

“Doubtful. Not after a millennium of providing for these people.

I believe he owes something to the Ocampa. I believe the `debt that can never be repaid’ is very likely a debt to them.” He gestured toward the few delicate aliens still left in sight. The rest had vanished into whatever passageways and buildings formed their shelters.

“In addition, there were his frequent references to `running out of time.” I think he knew his death was imminent.”

Janeway stared at her security chief. “If he dies, how the hell are we supposed to get home?”

Tuvok looked away without offering an answer.

The first monstrous explosion had actually startled a scream from Kim—it had been so close, pitching the upright tunnel into a tumult that clanged and banged the metal stairs into the stone walls until powdered rock rained like snow all around them.

Clinging to the rail with both hands, he didn’t even realize he’d dropped his flashlight until Torres barked a Klingon oath and made an abortive grab for it as it tumbled past. Kim had to close his eyes against the spinning slash of its light through the dust-choked air.

“Come on …!”

Kim opened his eyes with care; they felt like their lashes had been glued together. Torres hovered over him like some sort of hellish Klingon angel, her big knuckles white where she clutched the stair runner under her knees. He wondered if she’d fallen trying to catch his forever-gone flashlight, but couldn’t remember. Her eyes burned into him with a desperation that made him want to cry.

Another boom seemed to shatter the world around them.

“Should we go back?” Kim asked. He hurt, worse than these peals could possibly hurt him, worse than he ever had in his life. The thought of going any farther at all—in any direction—was almost more painful than his broken heart could bear.

Scowling with a bitterness only Klingon faces seemed destined to express, Torres spat over the rail and let her hatred fall away into the darkness. “There’s nothing down there for us, Starfleet.”

And nothing above, either, from the sound of things. This isn’t how I wanted things to end. Slowly, they began to climb again.

The damned tunnels seemed to go on forever. Paris did his best to climb ladders, run passages, and scale newly dislodged debris without ever lifting his eyes from the tricorder in his hand.

The instrument itself remained stubbornly resistant to throwing off a definitive reading. It kept threatening to spike around every turn, past every tunnel entrance, and Paris’s heart leapt right along with it until he realized that it was responding to power leakage from the containment field still waiting some undetermined distance up every one of these tunnels. The thought of still having to deal with that once they located the Maquis and Harry made him grit his teeth in silent frustration. He kept wishing he were the one with some idea where they were going, so that he could lead and let his own long legs set the pace. Just like the old banjo man had bemoaned, there didn’t seem to be enough time anymore, and Paris was afraid to find out who would pay that cost.

Kes and Neelix hurried past another open shaft, one of hundreds leading almost straight upward from where it formed a smooth oval near the floor. As had become his habit, Paris slowed long enough to thrust the tricorder through the opening, note its dispassionate blip in response to the containment field, then hurry to catch up with the other two before they’d gone very far down the main passageway.

He only made two steps before something in him registered, It made a different sound that time. He bolted back for the tunnel entrance with a little cry.

Upon passing under the cool, damp shaft, the whole face of the tricorder screen switched to a biological configuration, with a steadily pulsing light spelling out someone’s heartbeat in the upper right corner. Below that, in block letters, it stated simply: HUMAN.

“They’re in this one!” Dropping to his knees, Paris pulled himself uncomfortably inside the narrow chamber and craned his neck to try and see something—anything—in the dark. “Harry!”

His voice clapped in lifeless echo against the walls for what seemed a long time before finally tattering itself into silence.

He heard Kes and Neelix come running to rejoin him, but didn’t try to back out of the tunnel to greet them as he activated his comm badge.

“Paris to Janeway!”

She came back almost instantly. “Go ahead.”

“They’re in one of the shafts, Captain. I can’t see them …”

He looked at the tricorder again to verify the welcome bouquet of readings. “But they’re up there. We’re going after them.”

“Call for transport when you have them, Paris,” Janeway told him. She sounded as relieved and excited as he ever expected to hear her.

“We’ll meet you on the ship.”

He was already too busy clambering on hands and knees up the lightless etal stairs to acknowledge her sign-off.

“Janeway to Voyager. Three to beam up.”

They were wonderful words to be speaking. As unbalanced and stress-filled as things had been ever since being dragged to this quarter of the galaxy, it was queerly comforting to know she would soon have what was left of her crew back together and they could get back to the business of sending themselves home. She exchanged a confident thumbs-up with Chakotay—who raised his eyebrows in surprise, but returned the gesture—and set herself for the transporter’s embrace, already leaping ahead to what she’d need to set in motion as soon they were back on their respective crafts.

Then Rollins said tensely, “Stand by …” and Janeway cursed herself for having expected anything with this mission to be so easy.

“Captain,” the conn officer said after a moment, “I can’t get a lock on you. The weapon fire from the Array has irradiated the planet’s crust—the transport sensors can’t find the breaches in the security barrier.”

Damn. She turned a sigh on Tuvok and Chakotay. “Come on—there’s only one other way out of here.” Both men nodded, and Janeway let Tuvok choose their direction with his tricorder as she clapped at her comm badge. “Janeway to Paris.”

“Go ahead.” He sounded breathless, his voice ringing more than once over the channel as though a dozen of him surrounded a single comm badge. Echoes, Janeway realized belatedly. From the access shaft.

“The transporters aren’t working,” she told him, hurrying after Tuvok when the Vulcan picked a route and started off at a jog.

“You’re going to have to find a breach in the security barrier when you get to the top.”

It was hard to be sure, but it sounded like he snorted with amusement.

“Understood.”

She’d have to ask him later what that was all about. “We’re a few minutes behind you. Janeway out.”

But the last thing she heard before reaching up to tap off her comm badge was Paris’s shout of breathless relief. “I see them!”

Paris hadn’t expected them to look so awful. Tumorous growths peppered their arms and necks, and Kim’s normally golden skin had faded to the color of dried paper. Paris touched the back of his hand to the young ensign’s face, and forced a wan smile when Kim’s eyes fluttered open to find him in the darkness.

“It took you long enough …” Kim whispered hoarsely.

Paris flicked an embarrassed glance at the glowering female who crouched on the stairs above Kim. “How could I let down the only friend I’ve got?” Much as he squirmed at having Kes and Neelix nearby to overhear, he somehow resented this woman’s jealous attention even more. Noting her fiery eyes and heavy brow ridge, he recognized the strong influence of a Klingon heritage in her features, and realized that she must be Chakotay’s missing Maquis crew member.

“Friend?” Unaware of Paris’s silent exchange with the darkly hostile woman, Kim struggled to sit up, and grabbed at Paris’s arm for support as he swayed. “What makes you think I’m your friend?”

Because I’m here, aren’t I? He directed the thought at Kim’s skeptical companion as much as at the ensign. Clapping his comm badge, he reported, “Paris to Janeway. We found them, Captain.”

“Good work.” She sounded closer, but Paris thought that might be his imagination. “Don’t wait for us. Get them to safety.”

It was always easy to obey commands that asked you to do what you already wanted to. Stooping to fit Kim’s arm around his shoulders, Paris straightened carefully and nodded Neelix and Kes to help Kim’s friend as they passed her. “Come on,” he grunted, ignoring the pain of half-crouching to accommodate Kim’s smaller height. “We’ve gotta get out of here.”

Kim nodded and clenched his teeth and fists as he struggled to climb the stairs alongside Paris. “Hey, Maquis …” He grinned down at the woman as they stepped beyond her, and Paris thought he detected a certain wary affection in Kim’s dark eyes. “My side’s here. Now you’re in big trouble.”

She grunted—an almost-smile—and Paris wondered if she knew she was pretty, or if she even cared.

“This way.” Kes trotted up the stairs on Paris’s heels, leaving Neelix with the Maquis so she could point out a side passage before they’d climbed too far beyond it. “I know where we can get through the barrier.”

Paris pressed back against the shaft wall to let Kes squeeze past. She ducked around him like a wraith, then disappeared from sight into the mouth of a tunnel both taller and wider than the narrow shaft they now climbed. Paris realized that she carried the only flashlight—taken from Kim’s Maquis, no doubt—when the light flicked down to nearly nothing upon her departure. Hefting Kim more securely across his shoulder, he followed her into the rough side corridor.

The barrier filled the end of the passage like a spider’s web spun from light. Paris squinted against the brightness of its coruscating play, and wished there were something he could do to muffle his hearing. It had been a long time since such a tooth-splitting whine had assaulted him at such a volume. He eased Kim to the ground near a spot in the web that had unraveled away from the floor, leaving a disconcerting rend in the barrier that looked more like a black hole than an escape route.

“Whatever you do,” Kes warned him, going down to her own knees beside the breach, “don’t touch it! We’ve been told it’ll burn your skin off.”

Judging from the security barriers he had seen in New Zealand—which didn’t crackle with a tenth the energy this one did—Paris could well believe it.

“You crawled through a hole that small?” Neelix stumbled in with the Maquis woman clinging to his arm. Paris couldn’t tell what bothered the little alien more—the thought of his dearest endangering herself so, or the thought of having to follow her example.

“It was the only way out.” And, as if to demonstrate, Kes slipped her legs into the clot of darkness and slithered nimbly under.

Neelix almost melted with appreciation. “Isn’t she remarkable?” he asked the Maquis. She was too distracted with the ominous forcefield net to answer him.

On her belly on the other side of the barrier, Kes already had Kim by the hands to guide him through. He could barely crawl, Paris noted with a twist of his stomach. If the tricorder hadn’t blipped at just this tunnel—if Paris hadn’t thought to come back and checkSo little time, the Array’s Caretaker had said. So very little time.

Guiding the Maquis woman through behind Kim, Paris stepped aside to motion Neelix forward. The “women-and-children” complex, he told himself. Get everybody out who can’t necessarily take care of themselves. He’d worry afterward what to do about himself if for some reason he couldn’t immediately follow. For right now, he had to be sure his charges were safe or he wouldn’t even be able to think.

Neelix scrambled under the damaged barrier without having to be encouraged. For one horrible instant, Paris didn’t think he could make it—his rounded belly brushed the faintest thread of energy, and a stink like burning dung feathered upward from his singed clothes.

Then, his eyes white with panic, Neelix sucked himself a bare micrometer flatter, and pushed himself beyond the barrier, leaving nothing but his dignity behind.

Paris released his anxiously held breath in a rush and went to his knees outside the breach. Sliding his phaser under the net so that it bumped on Neelix’s foot, he motioned to the bare rock wall still standing between them and freedom. “I’ve got it set,” he said as he started to crawl under. “Just point and fire.”

Neelix obeyed without question. The phaser sang in waspish counterpoint to the failing forcefield, and hot stone splattered the floor all around Paris as he pulled himself through the hole.

It still smelled like burnt chalk and smelted iron when he scrambled to his feet and swept Kim up from the floor to lead the way outside.

The wall Neelix burned through was barely three meters thick.

Outside, smoke rose in columns all the way to the distant horizon, flagging other tunnels already sealed shut by the Array.