Mosaic (39 page)

Janeway had now of providing enough protection to take her

ship closer to the fiery star.

"Mr. Paris, move us closer. Thrusters only."

"Aye," said Paris, and they watched as the solar disc grew

larger still. "I can't guarantee how long we'll be able to

keep the metaphasic program stable," Chakotay warned. "It's

draining our power reserves pretty rapidly."

"The Tokath can't survive this much longer,"

replied Janeway. "They'll have to let go and get away from

the star, or be incinerated."

"Hull temperature at fourteen thousand degrees. Radiation

levels at seventy rads per minute."

"Distance from the star, twelve hundred kilometers."

And still the creatures clung to the shields.

Janeway stared at the viewscreen, amazed at their tenacity,

and willing them to admit defeat and let go.

Minutes passed, silence broken only by Rollins's sonorous

announcements: 293

"Hull temperature fifteen thousand degrees.

Radiation at seventy-five rads per minute."

Now, even with the metaphasic program in place, the

temperature again began to rise inside the ship. Janeway

felt herself growing light-headed. She knew that the stress

of the last eight hours was taking its toll, and she took

several deep breaths to get oxygen to her brain. In her

mind's eye, the image of the closed door suddenly appeared,

and she shook her head to clear it.

Why was that bothersome illusion cropping up now? A wave of

anxiety flooded her, and she felt a moment's panic that she

was losing control. But gradually the apprehension faded,

and she refocused her attention to the viewscreen.

"Captain, the metaphasic shielding is losing integrity,"

Chakotay reported. Janeway turned to him. Without that

added buffer, they couldn't survive this close to the star.

"Can you stabilize it?" "I'm trying-but without power

reserves it's not going to be easy." "Hull temperature

seventeen thousand degrees. Radiation levels at ninety

rads. Cabin temperature sixty-two degrees."

Janeway wiped perspiration from her forehead. A decision

was being forced on her: they had to move away from the

star. A wave of frustration swept over her as she looked

back at the viewscreen. The Tokath were beginning to drop

off.

They all noticed it simultaneously. "It's working!" crowed

Paris. Rollins chimed in with his sensor readings: "Life

signs are disappearing from the shields, Captain."

One by one, the brown and green bodies fell away from

their field of vision, revealing the flaming disk of the

star more fully. The temperature on the bridge was now

almost unbearable.

"Metaphasic shielding is failing, Captain," said Chakotay

tersely. "We have to move away from that star."

"Just a minute more-Rollins, tell me when the shields are

clear of the Tokath."

"We're there, Captain. No life signs showing on the

shields." "The metaphasic program is collapsing-was

"Lieutenant, get us out of here."

Paris worked, and Voyager veered away from the star.

Janeway moved to her chair and sank gratefully into it,

listening to damage reports as they filtered in.

"Shield integrity barely holding at thirteen percent-was

"Damage to the aft port ventral-was "Hull buckling on deck

fourteen-was "Initiating repairs to propulsion systems-was

"Sickbay reports twelve crewmen suffering from radiation

sickness-was The well-trained crew was already springing

into action, doing whatever was necessary to restore

Voyager to operating condition. Soon repairs would be

completed and they could—

comwhat? Be on their way? Abandon their comrades on the

planet and hope they'd find a way to survive? Continue the

journey home without the great and good friend Tuvok?

Tuvok, whom she'd initially disliked so fiercely but had

grown to love as a brother . . .

. . . and sweet Kes . . . and dear Neelix . . . Greta Kale

. . . Nate LeFevre . . . over twenty people in all that

they'd never see again . . . She realized Chakotay was

seated next to her, addressing her. She turned to him.

"dis . . though the Kazon don't appear to be a danger

anymore, we can't risk another attack by the Tokath. We

wouldn't survive another trip into the star."

"What are you suggesting, Commander?"

Chakotay hesitated, knowing the seriousness of his

recommendation. "I don't see any way we can return to the

planet, Captain."

She looked away from him, instinctively wanting to deny

his statement. Quickly she reviewed the options as she

understood them, and quickly she realized there weren't any

more. She might have found a way to defeat the Kazon, but

that other, unexpected nemesis-an ancient, brilliantly

evolved life-form-was apparently invincible.

She looked back at Chakotay, whose wise, patient eyes held

hers, reflecting concern and empathy, and nodded once. It

was over. She'd fought with every bit of her skill and

ingenuity, and she'd lost.

The defeat was palpable. A chill passed through her and she

became light-headed again. Images of her crew, trapped on

the planet-perhaps under attack from the Tokath?-swirled in

her mind. She began to feel disconnected from the present,

from what was happening directly in front of her. The

bridge began to spin.

She felt as though she were encased in her own warp

bubble; time seemed to freeze, the voices of the crew

faded, and the bridge washed out into a pastiche of pale

color-an abstract impression of sound and motion.

She was moving toward the closed door, hand outstretched,

determined to open it this time. No impediments, no

obstacles-nothing would keep her from finding out what was

behind that barrier. It must be cleaned out. Her heart

pounded as she reached out, and an overwhelming sense of

urgency cascaded through her.

The door opened at her touch. surprisingly easily, after

all. She took a breath and stepped through, ready to greet

the clutter and mess she was sure lay there.

She was freezing. All around her was a white wilderness,

bleak and unremitting, a milky landscape of snow and ice.

She'd been here before, of course. She had crashed here

with her father and Justin, who'd lost their lives beneath

a cold, dark sea. She'd almost died, as well, her body

temperature dangerously low before a rescue ship had picked

up the automatic distress signal and beamed her aboard.

Why was she back here? Why did the closed door lead here?

It was not a place she wanted to revisit. She tried to

bring her focus back to the bridge, back to the here and

now, but something refused to let her go. Images of the

death planet lasered her mind with cruel clarity. She'd

been buried in a snowbank . . . and then she looked up . .

.

stood, painfully . . . and saw an iceberg.

The iceberg. She'd stared at it for the longest time,

confused, trying to decide if it were an iceberg. Why had

that seemed so crucial? Why had there been doubt?

Now, in her memory, she was facing away from the iceberg,

and she began to doubt that it was actually there.

She had to turn and make sure it was-but she was

frightened. Terrified, in fact. She was equally compelled

to turn, and not to turn.

A dreadful minute passed as she was pulled on this rack,

agonizing, paralyzed. On the one hand, what did it matter

if she turned and looked at the iceberg? It would be there-and if it weren't, what did it matter? This was a memory,

nothing more.

But it was a memory she'd kept behind a closed door for a

long, long time. What did that mean? Why was the iceberg so

potent an image? What gave it that power?

The only way to incapacitate it was to turn and look at

it. Demystify it. Turn, Kathryn, turn . . .

Slowly, slowly, a millimeter at a time, she forced

herself, in her mind's eye, to turn and look at the

iceberg. The turn seemed to take forever, during which time

she began to realize something would be vastly different

when she completed the turn.

And so it was no great surprise when she looked into the

middle of the dark sea-the frozen sea which had been

cruelly penetrated by a flaming object from the heavensand

saw no iceberg.

She saw the shape of an iceberg. An object jutting from

the sea which might have resembled an iceberg if it were

made of ice, if it had in fact broken from a glacier and

floated, shards sticking out, through the alien sea. But of

course no icebergs floated in the alien sea because it was

frozen over, except for the dark gash which had been rent

in it by the plummeting spaceship.

It was that ship whose fuselage now projected from the

watery bed, nose up, violated and broken, looming out of

the water like a huge and formidable iceberg. It was that

ship in whose cabin she could clearly see her father and

Justin, dazed and bloody, but alive.

She had immediately gone into action. Of course, she

would-she was accustomed to pressure, to emergencies, to

disasters. They were simply challenges, and Kathryn Janeway

had always risen to the challenge. She had figured out how

to multiply elevens and derive the distance formula, she

had become a good tennis player and she'd saved Hobbes

Johnson from drowning, she'd convinced Admiral Paris to

mentor her and she'd saved Justin from death once before,

at the hands of the Cardassians. She would not fail to save

the two people she loved most in life. A console was

flickering in the section of the cabin in which she'd

ridden to the surface. There was still power, something was

working. She flew to the controls and began entering

commands; to her relief, they responded. She might be able

to transport her father and Justin from the shell of the

ship's cabin.

She focused intently on the console, quickly realizing

she'd have to cobble together several circuits in order to

have enough power for a site-to-site transport.

To transport two people she'd need eight hundred megawatts.

Their patterns would already be encoded within the ship's

systems, of course, standard practice for the crew of any

vessel.

She glanced over her shoulder to take a visual sighting of

their positions, and made a mind-numbing discovery: the

ship's fuselage was sinking. It was almost a meter lower in

the sea than when she'd begun working, though the two men

in the cockpit were still safely above the yawning pit of

black water.

She turned back, working quickly. Two emergency

microfusion generators were still on-line.

They could be routed to the primary energizing coils.

She brought the targeting scanners on-line and initiated a

coordinates lock. This process would verify that the

transporter system was functioning within operational

standards, something she couldn't be sure of because of all

the damage.

The scanners refused to lock on to the two figures in the

ship's cockpit. Quickly checking the system, Kathryn

understood why: the annular confinement beam was too

unstable to hold two bodies in the spatial matrix within

which the dematerialization process occurred. She had

enough power to transport only one person. Not two. One.

Fear clutched at her. Though the air was bone-chilling,

she didn't notice the cold.

Adrenaline coursed through her body, her heart hammered,

and her head pounded with every heartbeat. She looked back

at the sinking ship, its two occupants slumped over their

seats, but moving slightly, still alive. Justin, her

fiancd, whom she loved and adored, and with whom she would

spend the rest of her life. And her father, beloved Daddy,

who had challenged and inspired her and made her what she

was. How could she choose that one would live and the other

die? Flash visions of life with Justin-knowing she had

sacrificed her father to allow him to live-flooded her 299

mind. How could she be happy with Justin after paying that

price? Life without Justin, knowing she had sacrificed him

to save her father, was equally intolerable. How could fate

have presented her with this bitter dilemma?

She took a deep breath of the frigid air, trying to clear

her mind and rise to this challenge. She would thumb her

nose at fate. She wouldn't yield to this situation, but

create the situation she wanted.

She would transport both of them, somehow. There had to be

a way. She turned to the console, mind racing with every

fact and figure she could remember about this experimental

ship. The phaser banks were recharged through a neodyne

capacitor circuit. If the capacitors retained enough

residual charge, she might be able to bring the annular

confinement beam up to eight hundred megawatts-the minimum

she'd need to transport both men. But the only way to find

out was to tap into the capacitors. She'd have to try to

engage the beam and see if it gained enough power.