Equinox

by Diane Carey

  What...

  In his mind he worked to focus the vision of the beach. On a distant dune, frilled with rushes and patterned with the tracks of sand crabs, stood a human figure, a woman. Willowy and windblown, she gazed at him with the sun streaking her long blond hair. She stood in a haze of warm air. He couldn't see her face, but she was looking at him. Haunting him, watching him-

  Even through the blur of distance and haze, her eyes asked questions of him that burrowed to the depths of his soul. She stood on the dune, her legs braced, as sea water lapped at the crabs walking below on the white sand. Watching, watching.

  He pulled the synaptic stimulator from behind his ear. Her eyes were still on him in his mind.

  Around him now, his dismal ready room was a sudden comfort, a place he understood, with the right kinds of surprises. The mind, that was something else.

  Curiously looking at his synaptic stimulator, he summoned his sense of immediacy and went out onto the bridge, where he held the device before Maria Gilmore at the engineering auxiliary station.

  "How was the beach?" Gilmore asked.

  "Do these programs have people in them?"

  She looked up. "No. Just landscapes. Why?"

  He paused, thinking of describing what he had seen. "Forget it," was his decision. "How's the away team doing?"

  Hills and wilderness. A scent of pine, and something else that couldn't be likened to anything on Earth. He'd smelled something like that on Omicron-Indii once, though. Nutty, but perfumed.

  "Stay down."

  "Aye, aye."

  Chakotay motioned to the security team behind him and Tom Paris to keep back a few steps. His tricorder was reading life forms-human. His victory was soured by the fact that his relationship with his captain was strained right now and his heart wasn't in this capture.

  There were trees here, plenty of them, billions of them, trillions. Every one had a fern growing out of its lower trunk, so the land was unaccountably lush

  and spongy with fungus and moss. The planet was an utter wilderness, no settlements or advanced life forms at all, give or take the occasional large arthropod. As far as Chakotay could tell, the largest land animals on this continent were a kind of feral pig-type semi-predator that could be easily scared off with a sharp shout. Unless they wanted to have a luau for Neelix to cook, they didn't need to stick around here very long.

  "Shh," he warned, and motioned Paris to duck. Paris nodded, and crouched to wait, as ordered.

  Chakotay shifted forward, following the signal on his tricorder, and now voices could be heard in the gully below.

  Carefully, he reached out one hand and parted the chartreuse fronds before him.

  There, below, were Noah Lessing and another Equinox crewman whom Chakotay did not know.

  Lessing was saying, "I'm reading a vein of ore. Azimuth one seventeen, thirty meters. It could run pretty deep. We might need to use phasers to excavate it." Lessing paused then, and smiled as he surveyed the velvety moss at the gully floor. "McKinley Park... I used to take my sister there when we were kids. This looks just like it."

  Glancing as Paris, moving very carefully, came to his side, Chakotay strained to listen.

  "Let's see," Lessing went on, "as I recall there was a family of ground squirrels who lived over there... and there was a patch of poison ivy right next to it. When I was ten, I walked right through it. Swelled up like a

  Rigelian bloodworm. When we get back to Earth, the first thing I'm going to do is see if that-"

  Chakotay came to his feet as Lessing and the crewman climbed the embankment to within twenty paces of him and Paris. Paris also stood up, and both of them aimed their phaser rifles at the two grimy-looking so-journers.

  It turned out to be a mistake to expect them to come quietly. For an instant even Chakotay forgot that these men, all of Equinox's crew, lived a life of sudden necessary action and had learned a long time ago not to hesitate.

  The crewman instantly grabbed for his holstered phaser. Only the swung butt of Paris' rifle aborted the deadly move. The crewman smashed into the ferns, his jaw badly bruised.

  This gave Lessing an instant to dive for cover, firing as he went. A phaser bolt scored the bushes next to Chakotay, forcing him to crank sideways into a palmetto, lacerating his left hand. Angry now, he brought his rifle around and fired wide, winging Lessing in the shoulder as the other man tried to dodge behind a tree. Lessing slumped to the ferns.

  When Chakotay got to him, Lessing was already coming around. Dazed and defeated, Lessing blinked up at Chakotay and everything the Starship Voyager meant to his kind of pioneer.

  Gripped by empathy and admiration for the level of survivalism these crew members demonstrated, Chakotay glanced at Paris, who was just taking the other crewman into custody.

  Now this part was over. The hard part was just starting. He tapped his badge. "Four to beam up."

  Ransom paced his bridge. In his mind were lush forests with his crew exploring. Space, thousands of light-years long between here and home. Green tails and claws, fissure globes, and the woman on the dune still watching him from the ivory sand in the back of his mind. He knew who she was. She was the souls of those animals come to challenge him. She was Kathryn Janeway in a dream package, leering at him from behind a book. He'd beaten everything else. He'd beat her eventually. He'd return to the beach and drown her.

  "Captain," Gilmore said, as if she knew she was interrupting. "We're receiving a subspace transmission."

  Whipping around, Ransom felt all his internal alerts snap on. "From who?"

  "I can't tell."

  His console showed nothing. "I don't see a ship out there. Open a channel."

  Gilmore worked her controls, but nothing came over subspace. Wait-there was something-wrong channel, though...

  "Doctor to Equinox! Respond!"

  "We can hear you," Ransom answered.

  "Voyager's found you! They've -tered orbit!"

  For a moment Ransom didn't comprehend how he could know, then remembered that the Voyager's doctor was trapped on his ship and the Equinox doctor was on the starship. On the starship! Extreme close range!

  "They polarized their hull to mask their approach! I believe they've... -mbush... team .. .the -net!"

  "Get him back!"

  "I can't"

  "Ransom to away team! Prepare to beam back to the ship!"

  "They're not down there." Gilmore's voice cracked.

  Ransom dropped into his chair, his face stiff with grim determination, and struck the alert controls. "All hands to battle stations!"

  "I've got them, Rudy," Gilmore said. "Thirty thousand kilometers-closing fast. They're firing!"

  The ship rocked hard. Ransom rushed to the helm himself to steady the course. For a moment he couldn't make himself key-in a new vector, sensing that he was leaving crewmen down on that planet. She had said they weren't there anymore, hadn't she?

  "Direct hit," Gilmore reported. "Minor damage."

  "Return fire."

  "They targeted our power core."

  "Maria, come down here! Take the controls. Get some crew up here."

  She fired the ship's phasers from up there, then stumble d down toward the helm, but Max Burke erupted from the lift, shot to the upper deck, and took over the tactical and science stations for her. Gilmore dropped into the helm and keyed the weapons consoles from there.

  "They can't find the shield grid generator, I'll bet," Burke said with great satisfaction. "They're trying to divert more power to their sensors." He glanced with a

  tricky glinting smile at Ransom. "She won't be able to do it. We've damaged their deflectors. If they go down, the aliens can break through. That'll distract her."

  Ransom nodded, but couldn't muster a smile. Which "she" was he talking about?

  "They're targeting our weapons arrays," Gilmore reported.

  "Hello again," Burke muttered to his console. "It's B'Elanna. She's trying to bypass our security protocols."

  "Sto
p her," Ransom authorized.

  "Max!" Torres' voice came directly through the workstation where Burke was standing. "Listen to me!"

  "Back for round two, BLT?"

  Ransom almost interfered, but decided to let Burke handle that woman. The captain had his own woman problems. One at a time.

  "I wish you didn't have to be one of them," Burke told the engineer over there.

  "Max! Please!"

  His shoulders set tightly, Burke cut her off just as a buffeting jolt slammed the ship three degrees to starboard.

  "Weapons are down!" Gilmore cried.

  "Janeway to Ransom. Surrender your vessel"

  Ignoring the call, Ransom scanned Gilmore's helm. "We still have thrusters, don't we?"

  "Aye, sir!"

  "Lay in a course through the planet's atmosphere. Sixty degrees vector!"

  "That's close ..."

  "We're a science ship. We can go closer than she can."

  "Crossing into the ionosphere ... vector ninety... eighty... seventy ... vector sixty degrees-"

  "Hold that vector. I want to scratch Voyager's belly with those trees."

  "She's following us," Burke reported. "They're starting to tremble. I can actually see it. Rudy, they're firing!"

  "Shields are heating up, sir," Gilmore warned. "Friction reaching tolerance levels."

  "What about Voyager?" Ransom pulled out of his chair and used the navigation monitor to access what Burke was seeing. "Her shields are weakening. Thirty-one percent... twenty-nine ... hold course, Maria. We can take it. She can't. That starship was never built to get this close."

  Burke yelped with victory. "Their inertial dampers just fell! She'll have to bear off now. Why isn't she bearing off? Is she crazy?"

  "She hates me," Ransom commented. "That does terrible things to a person. Look at her... She thinks she's angry because I've broken the rules of behavior, but it's really her own fear she's fighting. But look at her. In her panic to remain civilized, she's becoming uncivilized herself." His face began to glaze with sweat as the temperature in the ship rose. He gazed into the monitor, at the sight of Voyager shuddering as the two ships streaked through the dangerous thermospheric breath of the planet. "It's like a policeman in a fervor to

  catch a criminal... he starts breaking the law himself, beating people to get answers, trampling the rights of others, shooting into the dark... She's torn up inside. She's terrified of not holding on. Just look at her... risking her ship and all her crew's lives, just to have the last word."

  As he watched, his ship firing regularly now, throwing spears of phaser power back at the raiding starship, which, by the way, had stopped firing and was now concentrating on not turning into a giant rotisserie, the starship suddenly heaved upward and veered off the pursuit track.

  "They're retreating," Gilmore shuddered. She made no effort to hide her relief.

  'Take us up," Ransom ordered.

  Burke kept his eyes on his controls. "They took heavy damage. Shields, propulsion ..."

  "Get us out of here, Maria."

  As the ship whined out of the atmosphere, fighting the planet's gravity every inch of the way, Ransom found a moment to climb to the upper deck and clap Burke on the arm. "Good work. It's a good thing you knew that woman well enough to predict what she would do."

  "Just battle tactics," Burke said with a shrug. "The battlefield of the heart."

  "I'm sorry, Max."

  "No, it's okay. A ten-year-old scar is pretty thick."

  "What's our condition?"

  "Most systems show green."

  "Maria, go to warp speed." Ransom moved on a sore

  knee-when had he hurt his knee? -back to the lower deck as the ship cleared the solar system and blasted into hyperlight. He gazed at the aft monitors, showing open space and the sun and its planets they had just left.

  "Sorry, Captain," he uttered, "and welcome to the Coast."

  CHAPTER 13

  "THEY'VE GONE TO WARP."

  The defeat in Tom Paris' words, his posture, his expression, brought everyone to a sullen point.

  Janeway quickly acted to give them something to do besides repair damage. "Match their course and speed."

  "We can't," Harry Kim told her unceremoniously. "Not until we restore primary systems."

  'Time?"

  "We'll need a few hours."

  A few ... several... some ... damn.

  "At least we didn't come away empty handed. I'll be in the cargo bay. Tuvok, you have the conn."

  "Aye, Captain."

  His tone had returned to normal. So much better than the strained urging he had been giving her while they

  pursued the Equinox through the deadly atmosphere. She still heard his voice as the ship shook and the dampers fell off-line and she continued to pursue the demon before her-Captain... Captain!

  Before she even realized where she was, the big cargo-bay loading doors brushed open before her. She turned to the side deck, where crewman Lessing sat with his hands bound in Starfleet security manacles. His friendly face was scratched, and he was tensely defiant

  Chakotay stood off to one side, dirty and also scratched. Must be some rough foliage down there.

  "I want Ransom's tactical status," Janeway demanded, squaring away over Lessing. "I want it now, Mr. Lessing."

  She hoped her tone communicated the facts-that Ransom had been officially relieved of duty, that Lessing no longer took orders from him legally, and that Janeway was the law enforcement here. The wrong answer would transfer Lessing from a straying but loyal crewman to a criminal conspirator himself.

  "Or what?" he responded. "You'll hit me?"

  Eyes burning, Janeway leaned in close. "No, crewman. I'll drop the shields around this room, and let your little friends pay you a visit."

  "That would be murder." He didn't think she'd do it.

  "You could also call it poetic justice," Janeway said. If Ransom could call his actions survival, then she could call hers anything she wanted.

  Lessing eyed Chakotay, standing a few feet away. "I

  suppose the plan is that you're going to come to my rescue right now?"

  Chakotay shifted uneasily, and resentfully. "There's no plan as far as I know. The captain's on her own."

  Hard-cut, Janeway demanded again, "Ransom's status. Now."

  "No way in hell," Lessing said.

  Janeway straightened. "We all make our own hell, Mr. Lessing. I hope you enjoy yours. The comm is active. We'll be outside if you have a change of heart."

  As Lessing's expression moved through several incarnations, Janeway stalked out of the cargo bay with Chakotay following her. She was glad he followed. Could be trouble if he didn't.

  In the corridor, the nearest wall panel was ten feet from the bay door. She went straight to it, activated it, and started pushing buttons.

  Chakotay came to her side. He said nothing at first, probably expecting her to be activating the gravity control or changing the pressure in there to make Lessing believe something was going on.

  What he didn't know and now realized, something was going on.

  "What are you doing?" he challenged, noticing the sequence she was activating.

  "Weren't you listening?" she shot back. On the small monitor, she called up a picture of Lessing sitting in the cargo bay, shackled, shuddering in his chair. Inside, the alien tone began to wail.

  "Bridge to captain," Tuvok called through the

  comm, "we've lost shields in section twenty-nine alpha."

  "I know. Stand by."

  Beside her, Chakotay shifted, tense and disbelieving. "Don't do this."

  "He'll break."

  The alien tone now screamed through the cargo bay, growing louder and louder by the second.

  "Captain, a fissure is opening in that section!"

  "Understood."

  "He's a loyal officer!" Chakotay protested. "He's not going to betray his captain. Put up the shields!"

  "He'll break."

  "Captain!
"

  "As you were!"

  In sheer defiance, Chakotay put his hands to the panel and punched a code.

  "LEVEL NINE AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED," the computer responded, on critical mode.

  Failed, Chakotay slammed his fist into the wall. "Damn it, Kathryn!"

  "You're panicking," she insisted. "He's going to talk!"

  His forehead beaded, Chakotay drew his phaser, threw her one last furious glare, and plunged through the bay doors with his weapon high.

  In the cargo bay, Noah Lessing sat crushed into his chair with terror, helplessly shackled as an electric globe opened over his head.

  Chakotay fired, collapsing the fissure as it opened. The tone continued to whine as other fissures tried to

  open around them. As Janeway watched, deliberately not interfering, Chakotay dragged Lessing out of the bay and into the corridor. As the doors swept shut, he pressed Lessing up against the bulkhead, crushing one fist and his phaser to the shaken crewman's bare neck.

  "Okay," Chakotay broiled, "you've demonstrated your loyalty to your captain. Fine. Now let's talk about theAnkari!"

  Having proven she was probably crazy, Kathryn Janeway watched the ghastly scene with cold appraisal. Was Chakotay just doing his job? Or had he reached his own equinox?

  By separate paths, they had both reached the line.

  The briefing room. Normally a place of calm discussion, reports, facts, and options. Today, something else.

  Everyone knew, by now, about the break in allegiance between the captain and the first officer. Janeway sat at the head of the glossy table, ceding the moment to Chakotay, who seemed to want it. She sat in silent awareness that the final decision, no matter how the day wrangled itself out, would be hers. They all knew that. She owed it to them to let all the arguments vent themselves, to allow every possibility to be explored. Then, she would decide and they would follow her orders. They were all uneasy. The only change in that course was an unthinkable and irrevocable course for them to take-mutiny.

  Despite her conviction, she was ice-blooded and embarrassed. Chakotay had held himself back from the