Mosaic (40 page)

Rerouting through the phaser couplings, she drew a deep

breath and activated the transporter circuit. She needed

that eight hundred megawatts only long enough to make one

transport.

Just five seconds, to dematerialize her father and Justin,

transfer their molecular patterns to the storage buffer,

and rematerialize them. It had to be possible. Little by

little, the beam gained power. It was working! Just seconds

more, and she'd have them both safely on land, next to her.

The emergency medical kit was in her section of the cabin;

she could stabilize their injuries and keep them warm until

a rescue ship found them. They were being tracked on

Starfleet scanners and it shouldn't be too long before help

arrived. The annular confinement beam power inched upward

in maddening slow increments . . . five hundred eighty

megawatts . . . six hundred ninety . . . seven hundred 300

forty . . . Valuable seconds ticked by as Kathryn

concentrated with all her intensity on the readings,

willing them to reach the needed number. Seven hundred

seventy-five . . . seven hundred ninety . . . and then

finally, the beam power registered eight hundred megawatts.

She could transport them both. Quickly, she initiated

automatic pattern lock, bypassing the diagnostic process in

order to save precious milliseconds, manually activated the

annular confinement beam, and whirled to meet them. The

ship's fuselage had disappeared, sunk beneath the inky

waters of the alien sea. And her father and Justin were not

materializing next to her. She turned and reentered the

commands; surely she could pull them from beneath the

water's surface. But though she went through the process

time after time, endlessly, with every combination and

permutation of commands, there was no response.

She had lost them both.

She stood, numbed, staring at the black pool of water,

churning from the upheaval it had endured. It was a long

time before she became aware of the pain in her broken leg,

and when she did, she began to stamp that tortured leg

repeatedly on the ground, trying to create an agony that

would surmount the one she wasn't sure she could live with.

When that proved impossible, she'd simply found a way to

bury that pain so deeply that she could go on.

For over a decade, as she rose through the ranks of

Starfleet, as her love for Mark deepened, as she became a

captain and her friendship with the remarkable Tuvok

flourished, as she took command of Voyager and was swept

into their phenomenal adventure in the Delta Quadrant-for

all that time, the bitter truth of her failure had lain

enclosed in her memory, sealed like a plague bacillus

which, if it were unleashed, might destroy her.

.how then, to save herself now? The vile truth, bubbling

up like acid, could never be banished again; it would eat

at her every minute of every day, fouling her mind and

corroding her spirit. No. No, that simply couldn't happen.

Too many people depended on her, too many needed her

strength, her indomitability. She mustn't fail them. The

memory must be neutralized. This wasn't a conscious thought

so much as a fully formed intuition that sprang from her

mind like Athena from Zeus. There was only one way to strip

it of its awful dominion: use it. After all, the locked

door was open now, and the room could be swept clean.

Bright light and fresh air could blow through it, chasing

darkness and cobwebs. The dream, she was sure, would never

come again. And so there must be a way to turn its pain to

power.

She was on her feet without realizing it, moving toward

the conn, where Paris was still working to move them away

from the star-how long had it been? It seemed a lifetime

had passed since she'd moved into the mists of memory, but

she became aware that only seconds had gone by; the crew

was still engaged in assessing damage and assigning repair

crews.

"All stop, Mr. Paris," she said, and Tom's tousled head

swung around to her in surprise.

"Captain?"

"We're not leaving the away team. We're going to go back

and get them." Now Chakotay was approaching, brow furrowed

in puzzlement and concern.

"Do you have a plan, Captain?" he queried.

Janeway stared at him. No, no plan, just flinty

determination. But sheer grit wouldn't solve their problem,

wouldn't get them past the fiercely protective Tokath. How

was that possible?

She felt every eye on her as the crew waited, trustingly,

sure their captain had come up with an idea. Her mind

seemed to flutter, agitated, starting to panic. She'd made

an announcement that was foolhardy, made it with sheer

bravado. Now she must back it up-but how? Suddenly she was

four years old again, sitting in her father's study, trying

to figure out the elevens. She had closed her eyes then and

focused, visualizing the situation, and the answer had

presented itself to her. The answer was always there, it

just had to be accessed. She closed her eyes now and

visualized the Tokath, reviewing what she knew about them.

She imagined them as they must have been long ago, fierce

protectors of a gentle people, sealing the planet from

intruders and allowing them all to live in peace.

Until the dreadful accident. She saw in her mind's eye the

sun's unexpected eruption-undoubtedly a continuation of the

shedding of matter from its atmosphere, the very process

which created the nebula in which they had taken refuge-and

the havoc it created in the planet's atmosphere.

She envisioned the consternation in the population and

their desperate plan to save the Tokath, the fierce

creatures which had kept them safe from harm for so long

....

Her eyes opened and she saw the bridge crew watching her,

patiently, trustingly. And as though their confidence were

a vast wellspring of positive energy, feeding and nurturing

her, the plan came to her.

"Dr. Trakis, the environmental disaster that drove the

Tokath into hibernation-it happened as this star was

shedding its outer atmosphere?" The Trabe looked at her

curiously. "That's my understanding. A massive eruption

near the star's equator sent a dense cloud of plasma

directly at the planet, ionizing its atmosphere."

Janeway turned to Chakotay. "We can cause an eruption like

that. Re-create the event that sent the Tokath into

hibernation."

She could see Chakotay take the idea and work it over in

his mind. "Our energy systems are pretty much depleted. I'm

not sure how we'd be able to create such a massive

eruption."

"A narrow nadion beam, focused on an instability in the

star's photosphere, might initiate a chain reaction."

"I wouldn't want to be anywhere in the neighborhood of an

explosion like that."

"We won't be. We'll go to warp as soon as the instability

goes critical." "What about the away team? Will they be in

any danger?" "If we time the eruption with the rotation

rate of the star, we should be able to create a plasma

ejection that grazes the planet's outer atmosphere, but

doesn't ionize it. That should be enough to scare the

Tokath back into hibernation."

He grinned at her. It was a desperate, seat-of-the-pants

plan, full of jeopardy with no guarantee of success, and

she knew Chakotay was aware of that. And loved it anyway.

"What are we waiting for?" he quipped. And so they set to

the task, making the critical calculations necessary to

time this bold maneuver. Chakotay scanned his console

intently, then reported, "I'm noting a gravitational

instability in the photosphere."

"Rollins, target the nadion beam to those coordinates."

"Targeting." And the deep blue nadion beam sprang from the

ship and knifed into the burning gases of the yellow star.

Janeway imagined the process, as the nadions collided with

the particles of the sun: hydrogen, helium, lithium,

beryllium. Each tiny collision would produce more

collisions, which would in turn create still more, fusing

atoms and generating heat energy-a quickly spreading chain

reaction that would gather immense power in a matter of

seconds, further disturbing the gravitational instability

until it must release the massive energy buildup.

"Three hundred megajoules per cubic meter and rising,

Captain," said Rollins tersely.

"Four hundred ten . . . four ninety . . .

five hundred thirty . . . six hundred-it's going critical."

"Go to warp, Mr. Paris."

Tom worked the controls swiftly and the ship leapt into

warp just ahead of the monumental nuclear explosion. When

they were at a safe distance, they put the distant star on

screen at highest magnification.

It was an awesome sight. The force of the chain reaction

exceeded by many times the energy of a warp-core explosion.

Arcs of plasma hundreds of thousands of kilometers long

projected from the corona in a promethean display of power,

as though a giant were flinging huge fireballs through the

heavens.

Not one word was spoken on the bridge as the eruptions

continued. When, finally, they began to subside, Janeway

turned to Rollins. "Do sensors detect any life signs around

the planet?"

"Going to extreme long-range sensors . . .

I'm reading life signs . . . and Captain-it looks like

they're in retreat."

"What are the atmospheric conditions on the planet?"

"There's a lot of high-altitude turbulence. Radiation

levels are rising."

"Chakotay, will our shields protect us if we move in to

investigate?" "We won't be able to call on the metaphasic

program, but I think we can channel enough energy to the

main shields to be safe."

"Then let's do it. Mr. Paris, move us in, slowly, toward

the planet. Be ready to get out fast."

"Yes, ma'am."

And the sleek ship turned to and headed back toward the

system, Janeway keeping careful watch over radiation

levels, until they could put the planet on high

magnification and get an image on the viewscreen. What they

saw brought the first hope, the first semblance of joy

they'd had in hours. A stream of brown, shelled bodies was

flowing toward the surface of the planet. The Tokath were

going home.

As Voyager-moved closer, the crew saw the Kazon ship,

listing oddly, its hull riddled with cavities where the

creatures had eaten through and descended into the ship.

What happened then was best left to the imagination, but

the pocked ship was undoubtedly now an orbiting graveyard.

The Tokath were flooding toward the surface, the dark

miasma retracing its path of the last hour.

Janeway's gamble that they retained a memory of the

disastrous conditions that had prevailed so long ago-but

would seem like a recent event to them because they'd been

in stasis-had apparently been validated.

Their retreat, however, was just a first step in the

ultimate goal: rescuing the away team. And as yet, Janeway

had no clue as to their whereabouts or their condition. The

nagging thought that they could have suffered the same fate

as the Kazon was one she kept to one side of her mind.

She'd come this far and she wasn't about to let quibbling

doubts stop her now.

Many of Tuvok's team had fallen into an exhausted slumber,

the events of the last nine hours having taken a heavy

toll. Tuvok and Kim, however, were determined to analyze

and master the technology that was operative in this

strange chamber, and to gain control over the entrance.

They couldn't simply stay cooped up in this room forever;

somehow, they had to find a way out of the underground

labyrinth and make contact with Voyager.

But so far, their efforts had been futile. Harry had tried

every approach to alien technology he'd ever studied and

quite a few that he invented there on the spot. And

finally, he decided to try the one thing his scientific

mind had rejected. "Sir," he said to Tuvok, "it's possible

the technology is telepathically controlled. Maybe you

could try accessing the program that's controlling this

chamber."

Tuvok's eyebrow lifted slightly, but he immediately put

his fingers on the panel they believed to contain the

controls, and brought his formidable Vulcan telepathic

powers to bear on them. But after several minutes, he

removed his hands and turned to Harry. "I am unable to make

a telepathic connection," he stated.

Harry moved immediately toward Kes, nestled in Neelix's

arms, and roused her from a drowsy slumber. "What is it,

Harry?" He repeated what he'd said to Tuvok, and Kes

listened intently. "I'm not sure how to do that," she

replied.

"Neither am I. But you seemed to have some kind of

intuitive connection to whatever was happening hereyou were

drawn toward this room for no clear reason, you heard