Architects of Infinity
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For Margaret
HISTORIAN’S NOTE
Admiral Kathryn Janeway leads the Full Circle Fleet—Voyager, Vesta, Galen, and Demeter—on a mission of exploration in the Delta Quadrant. Many things have changed since a lone, lost Starship Voyager was trying to find her way home. The fleet is charged with discovering what has changed since Voyager was last here and the ultimate power in the quadrant, the Borg, departed.
This story takes place in August 2382 CE.
“All things done before the naked stars are remembered.”
—John M. Ford
Prologue
* * *
U.S.S. VESTA
Well?” Admiral Kathryn Janeway asked as she stared into the placid, orange-and-golden eyes of the Department of Temporal Investigations’ current director, Laarin Andos. Despite the disconcerting report Janeway had just given the director regarding her fleet’s recent encounter with the Krenim, the Rilnar, and the Zahl, and the multiple violations of the Temporal Prime Directive that had occurred during their mission to retrieve a temporally displaced version of Kathryn Janeway, Andos remained completely composed. She was a Rhaandarite and, rumor had it, over two hundred years old. Janeway was well aware that during her service to the Federation, Andos had seen or studied a number of incredibly complicated temporal disturbances. If the equanimity with which she seemed to accept the admiral’s report was any indication, there must be little by now that could faze the woman.
“Are you still in possession of the temporal synchronization disruptors this Agent Dayne distributed among your crew members during the first temporal incursion in which you knowingly participated?” Andos asked evenly.
“We are,” Janeway replied. “They don’t work anymore.”
“You attempted to use them again?” Andos asked, her voice rising a fraction of a hair.
“Of course not, Director. By the time we returned to Vesta and removed them, they were dead. Our scanners won’t detect their presence, and we didn’t think it was a good idea to take one apart and go digging around for its power source. We simply catalogued them and stored them in our new temporally shielded hold.”
“I thought you said you had integrated temporal shielding into all of your fleet vessels once you realized the threat posed by the Krenim and their ability to manipulate the timeline.”
“We did. The temporal shields draw a great deal of power from our other systems. It’s not practical to operate them around the clock. No pun intended.”
“I see.”
“We have isolated a few crucial artifacts as well as copies of all of our logs. Those are always shielded. We are looking for ways to expand this defensive capability without disrupting other vital operations. It’s likely that within the next few months we will have found another solution. My hope is that you will be able to assess the ongoing nature of the Krenim threat better than I can.”
“That shouldn’t be a challenge,” Andos said lightly. “But to be clear, you have no idea what became of the other Kathryn Janeway?”
“No,” Janeway replied. “Based on the image of the child we believe to be hers left behind by Agent Dayne and our personal contact with the woman called Mollah we encountered in the future version of Batibeh—”
“The alternate timeline, Admiral,” Andos corrected her gently.
“Director?”
“It will be incredibly important as we proceed to call things by their proper names, Admiral Janeway. I realized you are not, nor should you be, as well versed in temporal mechanics as I, but if we are to have any hope of minimizing the potential for future temporal violations, it will be necessary for you to reacquaint yourself with the proper terms.”
An unpleasant and entirely predictable band of tension tightened itself across the admiral’s forehead. She had prided herself, for most of her career, on her ability to avoid the sorts of temporal shenanigans in which many other Starfleet officers seemed to constantly embroil themselves. She understood the dangers inherent in the manipulation of time, but more than that, she despised with the heat of a supernova reporting the incidents. Temporal mechanics, like all areas of scientific inquiry, was a constantly evolving field. Those immersed in it, like the director of the DTI and the field agents that served under her, added daily to their knowledge of the many ways in which space-time’s dimensional boundaries could be altered. They lived on the cutting edge of temporal anomalies. Janeway had been happy to survive the course work on the topic at the Academy. That in the last several years she had so frequently found herself in a position where violating the Temporal Prime Directive was the best of many bad options was more than annoying to Janeway. It felt like a deeply personal failure.
Choosing her words with great care, the admiral said, “We cannot state to any degree of certainty that the alternate Kathryn Janeway who was created when the Krenim targeted Voyager with a chroniton torpedo in 2377 is still alive and occupying our current timeline. We believe Agent Dayne may have taken her with the intention of reuniting her with their daughter, Mollah. The existence of the elderly Mollah we encountered in the alternate timeline we visited, using the Zahl’s temporal portal, suggests the possibility that the child had been raised in that alternate timeline. The statues present in the grove there of the two brothers tie Dayne directly to that timeline and if his words to me can be believed—a dubious proposition at best, I know—the Krenim were responsible for its creation.”
“But this Mollah did not recognize you or the alternate Kathryn Janeway when she met you, did she?” Andos asked.
“She did not appear to,” Janeway admitted. “And any connection between her and the child in the portrait might be nothing more than wishful thinking. But if she spent any amount of time with her father prior to our arrival, she would no doubt have been informed of the necessity of not indicating that she knew us to avoid creating a temporal paradox.”
“It was much too late by then to avoid any such thing,” Andos cautioned her.
“Be that as it may, I like to believe she was Kathryn’s daughter and somehow Dayne managed to return her to her mother.”
Andos shook her head slightly. “I understand that desire, Admiral. But in the absence of concrete evidence, I am afraid we must consider the fate of the alternate Kathryn Janeway an issue as yet unresolved.”
“I understand, Director.”
“And one you will under no circumstances attempt to investigate further.”
“If it’s something you feel strongly about.”
“It is. The artifacts you mentioned that remain shielded—do they include the logs from Voyager’s contact with the Krenim in the alternate
timeline in which you encountered this Annorax?” Andos asked.
“Yes. The temporal buoys that housed them disintegrated after only a few hours once they were removed from subspace but we had copied all of the logs by then.”
“I am impressed with the resourcefulness of whichever version of you it was that decided to create those temporally shielded records. We utilize a similar protocol here, and my first order of business will be to have the agent I intend to assign to your case forward you the latest technological specifications for replicating the least invasive sustainable temporal shielding currently used by the DTI. I congratulate your mission specialist, Seven, on her industriousness, but I would prefer that Starfleet refrain from dabbling with Borg-inspired technology, especially when it comes to temporal disturbances.”
Janeway’s spine stiffened involuntarily. Seven was the only reason any trace of Voyager’s previous encounter with the Krenim existed. “Out here, in the wilds of unexplored space, I am not inclined to dismiss a good idea, no matter where it comes from, Director.”
“That’s because you cannot properly contextualize, as I can, the manner in which certain ideas have the potential to do much more harm than good. In every instance of which we are aware that the words ‘Borg’ and ‘temporal manipulation’ were used in proximity to one another, a cataclysmic end result was narrowly avoided. I must insist that you adhere to our regulations going forward, Admiral. Therein lies our best hope of untangling any future temporal disturbances you may unintentionally cause.”
Thus far, the director hadn’t hinted at disciplinary action as a result of the many violations of the Temporal Prime Directive this latest incident might have indicated, but the warning was clear and Janeway hastened to defend herself and her crew.
“Director, we didn’t go looking for this fight. We learned of the existence of the alternate Kathryn Janeway while attempting to open diplomatic relations with an unrelated species. This is the definition of my fleet’s mission out here. Would the Department of Temporal Investigations have preferred that we not have investigated this anomaly? By doing so, haven’t we revealed a potential threat to the Federation and made it more difficult for the Krenim, should they so desire, to act against us unawares?”
“A threat you caused, Admiral.”
Check and mate. Janeway could not argue with the fact that it was Voyager’s first encounter with the Krenim several years prior that had begun the series of tragic events that followed, nor could she shift responsibility for the Krenim’s current interest in her and other “chaotic variables” elsewhere. Her review of the shielded logs detailing that initial encounter had revealed in nauseating detail the depths to which her desire to end Annorax’s reign of temporal terror had led her: the loss of much of her crew and the destruction of Voyager. It had been a harsh realization, one for which she was now grateful. Until she had heard her own voice detailing the devastation in bleak detail, she would never have believed it possible for her to miscalculate a situation so thoroughly. But she also knew that for the fleet to move forward, she had to face her fears about the Krenim’s capabilities head-on. She needed to know how bad the current situation could get and begin to prepare appropriate countermeasures.
She wanted to believe that the détente she had apparently reached with Agent Dayne would remain in effect indefinitely. But every other word Dayne had spoken had been a lie, so it was hard to take comfort in the substance of their final conversation.
“Is there any way for you to calculate the odds that any future incursions the Krenim might make could adversely impact the Federation?” the admiral asked.
“The Federation or your fleet?”
“Wouldn’t one affect the other?”
“Yes, but depending upon the penetration of the technology used, the greater impacts of an initial attack on your fleet in the Delta Quadrant might not register in Federation space for quite some time.”
“Doesn’t your department possess technology that alerts you to instances of temporal tampering?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Andos replied. “We have temporally shielded records that can alert us to alterations of the timeline. But as you yourself have recently discovered, the Krenim have been making adjustments, small and large, to their corner of the Delta Quadrant for some time. We have no way to monitor that history. The Krenim are therefore free to continue to make alterations we would have no way to know occurred.”
“This conversation was supposed to make me feel better,” Janeway mused.
“I apologize for my inability to oblige you, Admiral. The only comfort I can offer you going forward will be the constant vigilance of one of my most experienced agents. By monitoring all of your activities and adding the records to our temporally shielded logs, any temporal anomaly should be captured almost as soon as it occurs. We will then seek out the quickest and most efficient way to deal with any such eventuality.”
“Have you already selected the agent you intend to assign to our case?”
“I have. His name is Gariff Lucsly.”
Janeway tried and failed to hide her dismay.
“Are you certain he is the best choice for this assignment?”
“As far as I am concerned, Admiral, Lucsly is the only agent currently in our ranks equipped to handle a case of this magnitude.”
The admiral couldn’t argue with the director’s right to assign her staff as she saw fit. She also couldn’t take any solace in Andos’s choice. The most thorough debriefing she had endured when Voyager had first returned to the Alpha Quadrant had been at Lucsly’s hands, and she had left their session certain of two things: Lucsly held her in the lowest possible esteem and intended to bring charges against her that would end her career. The fact that no such thing had occurred led her to believe that at least one of his superiors disagreed with his assessment. His inability to act on his convictions had likely only deepened his disdain for her. Briefly Janeway wondered if allowing the Krenim to continue altering the timeline to suit their whims was a better fate than submitting herself to the will of the officious temporal bureaucrat.
As was so often the case, none of the options before the admiral were good. Her only choice was among variations on a bad theme.
“I will transmit your report and logs to Lucsly now, Admiral. You will hear from him shortly.”
“I look forward to it, Director,” Janeway lied.
1
* * *
SHUTTLECRAFT VAN CISE
You don’t believe in lying?”
“Waste of time.”
“Even to spare someone’s feelings?”
Ensign Aytar Gwyn shrugged. “How is that helpful? If you don’t respect someone enough to be honest with them, why say anything?”
Lieutenant Devi Patel paused momentarily over the samples she was analyzing at the shuttle’s small science station. “Last week you told Gaines Aubrey to his face that you were celibate. That was a lie.”
“Not right then, it wasn’t.”
“You’ve bunked it with half the fleet in the last year. What was so objectionable about poor Gaines?”
“If you don’t know, then you should give it a go, Devi. Clearly he’s lonely.”
“Awa—tea- to Va— -ise.”
Gwyn, who had brought the shuttle into orbit around this uninhabited rock on Lieutenant Harry Kim’s orders was now maintaining orbit, while monitoring his and Seven’s life signs. She tweaked the automated gain control in the comm system’s signal quantizer to clear up Kim’s transmission. “What can we do for you, Lieutenant Kim?”
“You can start by observing proper comm protocol, Ensign,” Kim replied abruptly.
Gwyn turned to Patel, hoping to find a kindred spirit in her annoyance. The science officer’s tight lips and wide eyes implored Gwyn to take Kim’s admonishment seriously and adjust her attitude accordingly. Gwyn rolled her eyes before responding. “Of course, sir. I apologize. Lieutenant Patel has almost completed her analysis of samples . . .”
“And?” Kim demanded.
“All five samples confirm prior readings and Seven’s hypothesis, Lieutenant,” Patel continued. “There are two distinct isotopes present, but the atomic weight indicates a previously undetected, super-heavy—”
“I’ll be damned,” Kim cut her off, clearly pleased.
“We’ve also noted the unexpected molecular structure and the presence of several other more common elements and isotopes.”
“Any idea if they are simply the product of decay?”
“Not yet, sir. We’re going to have to analyze them further when we get back to Voyager.” After a moment Patel asked, “Do you know what you’re going to call it?”
“We should give that some serious thought,” Kim replied. “It’s a brand-new element, after all.”
Gwyn tapped the comm channel to momentarily silence the shuttle’s transmitter and said to Patel, “A week of holodeck privileges says it ends up being named Sevenofninonium.”
Patel stifled a laugh. Gwyn was moving to restore the open comm channel when Seven’s voice echoed throughout the shuttle. “Unlikely, Ensign Gwyn, but we will pass your recommendation along to the Federation Division of Applied Chemistry.”
Panic struck the pilot’s gut. Double-checking the controls, she realized that she hadn’t actually closed the channel from her end. She had unintentionally increased the signal strength. So Seven had heard the joke.
Gwyn shook her head in frustration at her mistake. She’d felt a little off her game for days now; ever since the fleet had departed the system containing the planet Sormana. Apparently this afternoon was not going to be a significant improvement in that department.
To Gwyn’s surprise, Kim refrained from chastising her further. “We’ll be ready to transport back shortly. Away team out.”