Hold on, Kes. Hold on.
“Harry,” Janeway called. “Whatever Kes is doing to hold back the field, it seems to be weakening. We’re reading expansion again.”
“Almost there, Captain! Just another minute.”
Another burst of Voth weapons fire struck the ship, making sparks fly and lights flicker. “Warp engines are down!” Surt cried. Janeway caught herself looking up warily at the ceiling beam above her. I won’t let this happen. I won’t lose more of my crew!
“Kilana!” she called. “You’ve done what you came to do, now stand down! Return to normal space! Let us study the drive on that ship. We can figure out how to build a bigger one, one that will get you all the way home!”
There was no reply. “Please, Kilana, listen to me. I know what you’re going through. I know how it feels to believe that getting home is worth any price. But if you let yourself become obsessed with that goal, you can miss the fact that the path you’re taking is the wrong one. You can lose yourself in a way far worse than just being far from home.
“Kilana…there are more important things than going back to where you’ve been.”
The only answer was another explosion, knocking Janeway to the deck. “Shields down to fifteen percent,” Ayala said.
“Captain, we’ve got it!” Harry called.
“Activate now!” She gave the command without hesitation, but with sincere regret. When she looked at Kilana, she saw herself—the Janeway she had been two years ago, the Janeway she still was in another reality, still so fixated on getting back to a place that she’d lost all other purpose. There but for the grace of time go I.
Engineering reported the activation of the counterfield, which expanded through fluidic space to interact with the collapser field, the two field frequencies interacting and altering each other like two colors of light blending into a third. Except that this should be a permanent change, self-sustaining like the collapser effect itself would have been. “The cosmological constant is returning to normal!” Moskelarnan’s first officer reported. “And the quantum field density is increasing.” There was a pause. “Captain, Kes has…She’s no longer…The field is expanding again. We have to stay ahead of it or we’ll never get home.”
Is Kes all right? Is she still even there? Janeway wanted to ask. But there was no time. “Our engines are down! You’ll have to tow us.”
A pause. “Our tractors are destroyed.”
That simple phrase damned them. With no warp drive, they could never outrun the field fast enough, and it would take too long to create a rift. And Moskelarnan was too small to beam Voyager’s entire crew aboard. They would be trapped in this universe forever when it overtook them. It was a choice Janeway had made before, stranding her crew for the survival of another species. But this stranding would be irreversible, perhaps not even survivable.
“Go on without us,” she told Moskelarnan, her voice heavy. There was no sense in them all being stranded here.
But then Surt called, “Incoming hail! It’s Ryemaren! They must have opened a new rift!”
A russet-furred Vostigye face appeared on the viewer. “Mister Kim,” said Morikei Voenis. “See where your ambition has gotten you?”
“Good to see you too, Captain,” Harry replied. “We could use a tow, if you don’t mind.”
She sighed. “You refugees. Always asking for handouts.” She smiled. “But this time, I’d say you’ve earned it. Thank you—all of you. Now let’s go home.”
“Follow them!” Kilana cried as Voyager and the Vostigye ships retreated into warp to escape the expanding field. “We must capture that device so we can undo what they did!”
But the Jem’Hadar pilot looked futilely to his First. “I cannot engage warp. The local subspace field is in too much flux.”
“Is there any way to use the collapser to reverse the effect?”
“As far as I can tell,” the Second said, “it is creating the effect. Something has…changed.”
“Well, shut it down! Now!” Unsure how to deactivate the device, and under orders to act with haste, the Second fired his weapon and destroyed the field collapser.
“No effect,” the Third reported. “The field continues to expand.”
Kilana quashed her panic, knowing what would happen if she appeared weak to the Jem’Hadar. “Open a rift. Take us back to normal space.” Maybe there was a way to increase the range of this ship and get back to the Dominion on her own.
But the Jem’Hadar’s efforts proved futile. “The rift…it will not form! The singularity is being created,” the Second said, “but it is closed. There is no passage.”
“Well, fix it!”
They jumped to comply. But they were fighters, not scientists. Nothing they did could make a difference. And the field was expanding too fast for them to escape at impulse.
Kilana was trapped. Not just in a different quadrant from her gods…but in a different universe. She was more alone than she had ever been.
Then a proximity alert sounded. “We are not alone,” the pilot reported.
Kilana looked at the viewscreen and whimpered as the bioships closed in.
16
Chakotay watched from the city ship’s pilot house as a singularity opened and Moskelarnan, Ryemaren, and finally Voyager came through. “It’s good to see you back,” he told Janeway once she checked in. “But what about Kes?” he added, since the science ship’s first officer had been the one to speak. “Did she…change?”
“Well…yes and no. I’ll explain later. Right now, I need to speak to Boothby.”
“I’m here, Captain,” the Groundskeeper said. “And itching to know what state you left my universe in.”
“Intact, but changing. Our plan worked—the subspace field is expanding, but it will only block passage between our universes. Your people should be in no further danger.”
Boothby let out a heavy breath and blinked several times. “I don’t know how to thank you,” he said. “Spoken language has its charms, but it can be pretty limited.”
“It was our pleasure. I’m just sorry we couldn’t reach a real peace—or help your people with their other problems.”
“I understand.” He cleared his throat and turned to Chakotay. “Listen, son. I appreciate all you said about making a place for me in the Coalition. But I’m still a Groundskeeper. And outcast or no, my place is on the other side of that hole in space out there. Nothing personal, but there are a lot of other Groundskeepers over there in the same fix as me. Maybe I can…bring back some of the lessons I learned here, help them figure out a new role they can play in the order of things. A lot of people have been lost in the war, after all; maybe we can adapt to their roles, maybe even create some new ones. Find new homes, like you all have done. Though it won’t be easy to get them to listen to me.”
Chakotay smiled. “I believe you can do it. You haven’t let your universe down yet.”
Boothby looked back at the viewscreen. “Umm, Captain, any chance I could take your field-fiddling contraption back with me? Seems to me I can use it as a bargaining chip. Maybe they won’t kill me or ignore me if I can offer them control of their own borders.”
“Sounds like an excellent idea,” Janeway replied. “With the…the Torres Generator,” she said with a smile, “you should be able to adjust the boundary conditions of fluidic space however you like. Maybe you won’t have to stay cut off from us forever. But you’ll have control of whether and how you interact with us. No more fear of invasion or temporal doubling.”
“Good fences make good neighbors,” Boothby acknowledged—but then he gave an impish smirk. “As long as they have gates in them.”
Chakotay shook his hand. “I’m glad that other Chakotay wasn’t the only one who got to know you. I think the real Boothby would be proud to have you as his double.”
“Well, that may be—but I can’t wait to get out of this skinny body and put on my swim fins again. This walking business is hard on the knees.”
Jane
way looked around Voyager’s sickbay, amazed at the faces who looked back at her. Chakotay, Harry, Annika, the Doctor, B’Elanna, Neelix, and Kes, all together with her once again. She’d never expected it to happen again. Indeed, she was still rather surprised that Kes was there at all. “So you’re not going to turn into a ball of light any time soon?” Harry was asking the Ocampa.
Kes smiled, and that alone brought more light to the room. She did seem bigger somehow, more luminous, though physically she was the same as ever. “I think I could if I wanted to,” she said. “But I’m not ready to try that just yet.”
“So what was different here than in the other timeline?” Janeway asked.
“Time, basically,” the Doctor said. “Our Kes has had over a year and a half to adjust to her first dose of power enhancement before getting her second, whereas the other got the full dose all at once and was apparently overwhelmed by it. It’s analogous to the way a muscle that’s been exercised and conditioned can more easily lift a weight that would cause a less conditioned muscle to give way from fatigue.”
“So you have as much power as that other you,” Annika said, “but more control over it?” She looked envious and curious, as if hoping that Kes could help her gain more control over the Borg presence that still haunted her.
Kes tilted her golden-tressed head. “Not more control, so much as different,” she said, and to Janeway it seemed she was speaking from certainty, as though she were in communication with her other self. “I came at it by a different route. I could leave this body if I wanted, but only when I wanted—and I’m confident I could re-create it again.”
“If you can re-create it,” Neelix asked, his voice hushed, “does that mean you could also…”
“Halt its aging? Or reverse it?” She beamed, and for a moment she was a younger Kes again, a slender waif with close-shorn hair baring her elegantly scalloped ears. Then she changed back to her familiar tumble of curls and the subtly more rounded face and figure of the woman she was today. “Don’t worry, Neelix. I won’t ever leave you again. Not permanently, anyway.” She grinned. “There’s so much more I can explore now than I ever could before. I only wish I knew how to communicate most of it to you all.”
“Just don’t let it go to your head,” B’Elanna said. “Power has a way of corrupting, you know.”
Neelix glared at her. “I don’t think you remember who you’re talking about.”
“No, Neelix, she has a point. It’s easy to lose your way with power like this. That’s why I’m so glad I’m still with you—all of you,” Kes said, taking in B’Elanna. “You’re my family. You remind me of who I am.”
Janeway took her hand, as proud of Kes as she would be of a daughter. “I think if anyone can be trusted with this kind of power, it’s you, Kes.”
The Ocampa—if that was still what she was—studied Janeway. “I could probably find a way to take you all back to the Alpha Quadrant, if you’d like. Not right away, but I’m sure I could figure something out. After all, the Coalition is safe now.”
Janeway looked around at her current and former crew, and saw a similar sentiment in all their eyes. “I still miss my family back on Earth,” she said. “I miss the old familiar Starfleet, the old familiar stars. I wouldn’t mind seeing them again someday. But if I did…it would only be for a visit.
“I thought I’d lost something I’d never have again—all of you, working together as a team, as a family. But it was all of us, playing our own separate roles in pursuit of a common goal, who made this victory possible. We didn’t lose our family—it just evolved.
“And now that I see that…I’m finally able to admit something I never could before.
“That what we’ve built here in the Delta Quadrant is too precious to abandon. That we’ve all come farther by staying in one place than we could have by chasing a distant star. That where we are now—and who we’re with—matters more than where we came from.”
She took Chakotay’s hand in one of hers, Kes’s in the other, and took in the rest with her gaze. “That I am home.”
Epilogue
February 2376
Starfleet Headquarters, San Francisco
Earth
“Admiral Paris.” Janeway beamed as she shook her old mentor’s hand. “It’s a privilege to be here.”
Owen Paris returned the handshake and the smile, though the latter was subdued. He’d had a few months to adjust to the news of his son’s death, sad news that Kes had brought on her first journey to the Federation along with the happy news of Voyager’s survival and its crew’s accomplishments and discoveries. But the loss had still diminished him, as it had Tuvok’s family, Carey’s wife and son, and all the others who had had to face the loss of their loved ones a second time. Janeway hoped they could take comfort in the knowledge that those loved ones still lived and thrived in other realities—or at least had done so as of the last contact with the Groundskeepers. There had been no word from them since Boothby’s return to fluidic space. Apparently they were still busy cleaning up their affairs, and might be for a long time to come.
“It’s a privilege to greet you,” Paris told her. “Except, of course, that you’re not really here.”
“Transgalactic holoconferencing,” Janeway replied. “The next best thing to being there.” Recently, Voyager had succeeded in tracking down a relay station in the galaxy-spanning communications network that the Hirogen used to stay in contact with one another. Mister Malken had managed to persuade his fellow Hirogen to permit the use of their network, and from there it was simply a matter of adapting the holographic telepresence system the Doctor had rigged for B’Elanna. Now, it was possible to travel any place that was in range of the network and that had holotechnology available, all without leaving the Coalition. And now that Starfleet had built a relay station to bridge the Hirogen network and the UFP communications grid, it meant the entire Federation was just a holosuite away.
Which was good, because Janeway wasn’t in any condition for a long journey right now—at least, not until five months from now, when her and Chakotay’s daughter would be born. She looked down at the holographic representation of her swelling abdomen, looking forward to the moment when the diplomatic obligations were over and her mother and sister could come in to meet her, and to feel the kicking—by proxy—of the newest member of their family (and hopefully the first of many to be born in the Delta Quadrant), little Shannon Sekaya Janeway.
She looked forward to introducing them to the baby’s father as well, but Chakotay was busy with affairs of state. The Voth had been satisfied with a formal statement of apology for his act of dissidence rather than a resignation, perhaps because knowledge of the Voth’s origins on Earth had spread too widely through their populace for the regime to keep denying the reality. Especially since it would now be easy for any Voth scholar or student to pay holographic visits to the old neighborhood.
The admiral followed her gaze and smiled. “You’ve achieved some remarkable things on your end of the galaxy. On both the personal and the interstellar scale. I only wish the news we had for you was happier.”
It had been a shock to learn, upon Kes’s return, that the Federation had been immersed in a years-long war with the Dominion. “The important thing is that you won the war,” she said. “My only regret about being where I am now, though, is that we couldn’t be there to help.”
“Your friend Kes helped us a great deal,” Paris reminded her. “Who knows how much damage the Breen would have done if she hadn’t been here to repel their attack? And who knows how the war might have gone if her display of power hadn’t scared the Breen into abandoning their alliance?”
After saving San Francisco, Kes had been tempted to intervene further, but she was still feeling out the extent of her powers and hadn’t wanted to risk draining herself and becoming stranded, leaving little Thomas, Tuvok, and Alixia without their mother. At four months old, the half-Ocampa, half-Talaxian triplets were nearly half-grown, but still not ready t
o function without her guidance, especially as their telepathic powers began to manifest. Kes had also made the painful choice to apply her own Prime Directive to the situation, recognizing that she did not have the right to make the Federation’s and the Dominion’s decisions for them. Though Janeway keenly felt her sense of guilt, she now had more faith than ever that Kes could be trusted with the remarkable powers she had gained.
Still, Kes had made a difference. The Breen’s withdrawal had deprived the Dominion of a powerful ally and embarrassed them before their Cardassian subjects, giving a much-needed boost to a fledgling rebellion within Cardassia. The Dominion had been forced to retreat and retrench in the face of a combined assault from the Federation, Klingons, and Romulans—an alliance that astonished Janeway, who’d thought it had been difficult enough to get Vostigye, Nyrians, and Tarkan working together. A Starfleet doctor had soon discovered that the Founders of the Dominion were suffering from a deadly disease, no doubt a factor in their desperation to win the war at any cost. The Federation, negotiating from a position of strength, had offered them a cure in exchange for their retreat from the Alpha Quadrant. And so the war had ended, probably sooner and less bloodily than it would have if Kes had not acted when she had. Though of course every war had its aftermath: Cardassia was now in the throes of civil war, while Klingon chancellor Gowron’s absorption with the military occupation of Cardassia had left him vulnerable to a coup by a rebel named Morjod, leaving the Klingon Empire in similar chaos. And there was no guarantee the Dominion would stay on their side of the wormhole; indeed, many in Starfleet feared their resentment at being indebted to “solids” for their survival (and their suspicions, no doubt unfounded, that the Federation had infected them in the first place) might compel them to attempt a later conquest in order to save face. Janeway hoped the Coalition’s experience in negotiating with the Voth could help avert a second Dominion War.
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