At the same time, Sharak poked his head out of his private office. “What’s going on out here?” he asked.
“Doctor Sharak,” Gwyn said, moving toward him and throwing her arms around him. “Please help me. I am for you.”
Sharak looked to Sal in alarm as he tried to gently disentangle himself from Gwyn’s embrace.
As he did so, both the Doctor and Cambridge stepped outside the office on Sharak’s heels.
“Ensign Gwyn,” the Doctor said, slightly appalled at the spectacle, “what are you doing? You need to get back in bed.”
“I need Sharak,” Gwyn insisted with feral intensity.
Cambridge looked to Sal. “Unintended consequences?” he asked.
“Later,” Sal insisted, crossing to Gwyn and taking her by both arms as she pulled her away from Sharak. She spoke softly in Gwyn’s ear. “Look at them. Look at each of them. Tell me what you feel.”
Gwyn tried to shake herself free, but Sal held her tightly. With serious effort, she pulled her eyes from the wide, mottled face of Sharak and looked at the Doctor. After a moment, she recoiled.
“What was that?” Sal asked.
“He’s not there,” she said.
“Very good. And the counselor?”
Gwyn focused her attention on him briefly. After a few moments, a new lightness came into her eyes. “A challenge.”
“Could you also be for him?” Sal asked.
“What is the meaning of this?” the Doctor demanded.
“A moment, please,” Sal requested. “Ensign?”
After a moment, Gwyn nodded. “Absolutely.”
Cambridge seemed intrigued by the implied compliment but remained silent.
“That’s good news,” Sal said, gently leading Gwyn back toward the biobed.
As she approached the biobed again, Gwyn placed both her hands on its side, rejecting the attempt to be forced back into it.
Icheb suddenly emerged from the office. He took the scene in briefly before heading toward the main doors, which did not open for him.
As he moved across the room, Gwyn’s eyes followed him curiously. For a moment, they lost their heat.
“Icheb,” she croaked. Reaching out a hand to him, she beckoned him closer.
“It’s all right, Ensign,” Sal said. “Computer, unlock the main door.”
Icheb stared at Gwyn. Despite his clear desire not to intrude upon whatever was happening, he seemed to sense the raw need in Gwyn’s voice.
“You can go, Ensign Icheb,” Sal said.
“No, please,” Gwyn said. “Icheb.”
He stepped closer to her.
Freeing herself from Sal’s grasp, she moved toward him, stared at him intently for a few moments, and relaxed almost imperceptibly.
“I remember the asteroid,” she said quite calmly. “I remember the black substance and the pain. I remember,” she said, staring quizzically at Sal. “When I focus on the others, all I can sense is them. What they need from me. What I must do and be. But with Icheb . . .” She shook her head, searching for words.
“Go on,” Sal suggested gently.
“I feel more like myself,” she said softly.
Sal looked at Icheb with new eyes. She had no idea why this young man was different from any other when it came to Gwyn’s unnatural instincts, but at this moment, she was simply grateful.
“We need to talk,” Sal said to the other physicians.
“You think?” Cambridge asked.
“In the meantime, Ensign Icheb, would you please remain here with Gwyn? Just for a few minutes?”
Icheb nodded. “Of course,” he said. Addressing Gwyn, he continued, “I believe the doctors would like you to rest.”
Gwyn nodded mutely as Icheb moved closer to her and helped her back onto the biobed.
“Just keep her company,” Sal said. “If she tries to leave the room again . . .”
“I won’t,” Gwyn said, tears beginning to glisten in her eyes.
Sal knew Gwyn was beginning to understand her predicament. What Sal did not know was if she was going to be able to fix it.
• • •
Admiral Janeway entered Voyager’s conference room to find Lieutenant Kim, Commanders Paris and Torres, Captain Farkas, and Seven waiting. Captain Chakotay and Commanders Glenn and O’Donnell, all of whom had just returned from the surface with Janeway, entered the room behind her and the group quickly seated themselves at the table.
“You have a report for us, Mister Kim,” the admiral said with a tight smile.
“I do,” Kim replied. “And I’m sorry to pull all of you away from your various research efforts.”
“No apology is necessary,” Chakotay said. “We trust your judgment.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Kim said. “There have been a number of developments related to our investigations here that have occurred in the last few hours. The most significant is the loss of contact with one of our away teams.”
“Which one?” Janeway asked.
“Lieutenants Lasren and Patel with Ensigns Vincent and Jepel.”
“How long have they been out of contact?” Chakotay demanded.
“A little over three hours,” Kim replied. “Comms aren’t functioning, so we have already dispatched a rescue team to their last-known transport coordinates. They report finding a sealed door that our tricorders and ship’s sensors are having trouble penetrating. We believe Patel’s team might have found a way to open it and became trapped on the other side.”
“So cut the damn thing open,” Farkas suggested.
Kim sighed. The look on his face clearly said, Can she possibly think we haven’t tried that already?
“We have made several attempts. Our phasers are unable to damage it, even on their highest settings. To be more precise, any damage we are able to inflict repairs itself almost immediately. Although the door is a metal alloy, it has previously undiscovered regenerative properties.”
“That sounds familiar,” O’Donnell noted ominously.
“What about the walls surrounding the door?” Chakotay asked. “If you can’t get through it, how about removing it from its housing?”
“Apparently the walls of the cavern are densely striated with a plaited metallic substance that is equally resistant to our weapons. At this point, the only solution left might be to detonate a small amount of explosives.”
“In an underground cavern?” Janeway asked dubiously.
“I know,” Kim said. “We could bring the whole thing down on top of them if we aren’t very careful.”
“Am I to understand that this is one of several problems we are now facing?” Janeway asked.
“Yes, Admiral,” Seven chimed in. “There are traces within the plaiting that are similar to an unusual substance I discovered with Ensign Gwyn while attempting to take samples of some of these unusual metals from one of the asteroids within the inner belt of the system. That substance essentially attacked Gwyn and ate through her EV suit before I was able to stun it with my phaser.”
Janeway simply shook her head in disbelief.
“I cannot tell you if any of that substance might be released should we try to breach the walls around the door, but should that happen, the dangers posed would be immense,” Seven added.
“It ate through her suit?” O’Donnell asked.
“Seven stunned it and by doing so was able to bring Ensign Gwyn back aboard her shuttle,” Kim reported. “But once they transported to Voyager the substance seemed to recover. It continued to expand, transforming the shuttle into some sort of new biological entity that I destroyed two and a half hours ago. It was approaching the ship and I felt the risks posed by its presence far outweighed the possibilities for scientific discovery.”
Janeway started to speak, but held her peace. It was Kim’s call to make and that had to be the end of it. Second-guessing anyone now wasn’t going to help.
“I think you should be aware, Admiral, that I have also completed a simulation of the formation of the binary system th
at suggests that the B star was pulled into orbit of the A star by a terrestrial body. Its remains, along with those of the planets that once made up this star system, formed the B star’s asteroid belt,” Seven said.
“By what possible mechanism does a planet pull a star into this system?” Janeway asked.
“Unknown,” Seven replied.
“But you’re sure that’s how this system was formed?” Chakotay asked.
“As certain as I can be without going back in time to witness the event myself,” Seven assured him. “The planet we have named DK-1116 was also formed by unknown means after the binaries settled into their orbit.”
Janeway nodded as she began to prioritize the issues before her. “Anything else?”
Torres took the floor. “The biodome we had reserved for recreational purposes is showing a significant change. The water source our people were swimming in yesterday was apparently once pure. That is no longer the case, and as a result, there are a number of newly scanned metallic formations growing beneath the water.”
“Let me guess,” O’Donnell posited. “They are densely plaited, similar to the formations located in the walls of the cavern where we lost our away team.”
Torres nodded. “They are the same.”
“Why does it matter that the water used to be pure?” Farkas asked. “How pure could it have been?”
“We only knew to go looking for the formations because of the presence of charged particles interacting with the gasses in the atmosphere. It was gorgeous to witness, but as Lieutenant Bryce pointed out to me, given the purity of the water, that reaction shouldn’t have been possible,” Torres said. Turning to Farkas, she continued, “Pure water isn’t conductive. It is possible that the purity was the only thing preventing those metallic formations from encroaching into the water. By disrupting that, we may have thrown the entire ecosystem out of balance.”
“Where is our most recent geological survey of the planet?” Janeway asked.
Seven handed Janeway a padd and rose to the room’s small display located on a wall behind the table. Everyone turned to give her their full attention.
“As you will note, the metallic substance in question forms a little more than fifty percent of the planet. It runs beneath the surface in an intricate pattern, seemingly disrupted within the various biodomes by the water sources. In two places, the biodome where Commander Torres discovered the growths, and in the stepwell where we lost our away team, new growths are prominently visible.”
“Does it pose any danger to us?” Chakotay asked.
“Impossible to know at this point,” Seven said. “But if the water sources were strategically placed on the surface to disrupt further growth, we might theorize that those who created the planet had good reason for designing it the way they did.”
“There’s one more thing, Admiral,” Kim said.
Janeway turned to face him.
“We’ve been running continuous scans of all electromagnetic wave patterns within the system since we arrived. In the last several hours, a new concentration has been detected, emanating from the system’s outer asteroid belt focused on the planet.”
“Suggesting what?” Janeway asked.
“That we got someone or something’s attention,” Kim said.
Janeway sighed.
“First things first,” Farkas said. “Shore leave is over, right?”
Janeway considered the question briefly, noting the disappointment on Chakotay’s face, before she said, “It is.”
14
* * *
VOYAGER
Doctor Sal paced the small office fitfully as Sharak, Cambridge, and the EMH seated themselves, Sharak at his desk and the other two on opposite outer edges of it.
“Well, El’nor?” Cambridge encouraged her. Alone, he suspected, among his companions, he believed he already knew some of the relevant facts Sal was about to deliver. As her story began, however, he quickly realized he had seriously underestimated the dimensions of the catastrophe she had created.
“Roughly thirty years ago, Regina and I—”
“Captain Farkas?” Sharak asked.
“Yes. Captain Farkas, who was then commanding the Thetis, and I found ourselves facing a nightmare. While attending a diplomatic reception on Krios, several of our officers were bitten by an insect that on that planet is considered little more than a nuisance. That insect carried a virus, Vega Nine, to which the Kriosians are naturally immune. Our people, however, were not, and within days they began to fall victim to the ravages of a DNA damage repair syndrome much more aggressive than the one currently plaguing Lieutenant Conlon.
“As soon as the infection was detected, we returned to Krios to ask the local medical authorities for any assistance they could provide. They were unusually reticent to help us, citing the passages in their Federation admittance charter permitting them to hide much of their medical science behind culturally specific observances.”
“They had religious objections to offering medical assistance?” the Doctor asked, aghast.
“They had religious objections to allowing anyone to study their genome, wherein the key to their immunity to Vega Nine would have been easily detected and which ultimately might have saved twenty-three of our officers,” Sal replied. “All they were willing to do was confirm that the insect population carrying the virus had been completely eliminated.”
Her eyes grew cold and distant as she continued. Cambridge immediately recognized the signs of long-buried trauma.
“I was watching our people deteriorate at a rapid pace, with only the resources of a small Miranda-class sickbay at my disposal.”
“Sounds like hell,” Cambridge noted.
“It was,” she assured him. “A diplomatic aide, a young Kriosian woman named Kataly Norol, took pity on us. She began her career as a historian and had been privately attempting to reconstruct the century surrounding the Kriosian Dawn, their first contact with the Vulcans, as it happens, which ultimately led them to a wider understanding of their place in the universe. She had become aware of certain facts about her people that every administration since the Dawn had worked diligently to erase from the historical record.
“No doubt you are all aware of the Kriosian empathic metamorphs,” she continued.
“I am not,” Sharak interrupted her gently.
The Doctor obliged him with a quick response. “Into each generation of Kriosians, a small number of individuals are born that possess a unique genetic anomaly. All Kriosians are empathic to some degree, but these metamorphs possess the ability to bond with others, including aliens, in an unusual way. During a period of heightened hormonal activity known as the finiis’ral, these individuals are introduced to their mates and, through a process we do not entirely understand, take on the characteristics those mates will find most pleasing. They literally become another’s perfect mate, while simultaneously sacrificing their own identity to the bonding process.”
“That sounds horrifying,” Sharak said. “What of the rights of these individuals? Are they not protected from this loss of personal freedom and identity? Have the Kriosians not found a cure for this condition?”
“You would have thought, wouldn’t you?” Cambridge agreed.
“The empathic metamorphs are highly prized among the Kriosians. They are identified as infants and kept secluded from the rest of the population. Most often their mates are chosen for political or personal gain for their families. Many of them have been used to seal diplomatic relations with other cultures. They are considered priceless gifts,” Sal said.
“And the Federation allows them to be members while continuing this practice?” Sharak asked, bemused.
“The issue was debated hotly when they were considered for membership. They are a rich and enlightened culture, for the most part, ideal candidates for an organization like the Federation,” Cambridge said. “Given that there are so few of these empaths born, and the Kriosians’ genetic analysis suggested that over time this varia
tion will likely become extinct, it was decided to make an exception, on the understanding that all metamorphs entering into bonded relationships sign official waivers indicating that they are doing so of their own free will.”
“They raise the metamorphs to believe that they are special and are under obligation to their society. When the time comes, none of them would dare refuse the honor,” Sal said. “But believe it or not, that isn’t the worst part of all of this.”
All three men facing Sal grew silent as she continued.
“Kataly was able to provide me with limited genetic data going back centuries. That data showed that almost all Kriosian females are born with the metamorphic variation. A smaller population of the men are also affected, but Kriosian society prior to the Dawn took very different views of their male and female metamorphs. Essentially the women were born into biological servitude. All were meant to become the perfect mates of their eventual male counterparts. It wasn’t a problem until they began to encounter other species who didn’t share their particular patriarchal fetish.”
“After the Dawn, Kriosian women, en masse, began to revolt against their society’s customs. It was a time of great civil unrest. Many of them found a way around their genetic destiny,” Sal continued.
“How?” Cambridge demanded.
“If I knew, I’d tell the Federation to go to hell and make sure the entire universe was told,” Sal replied. “But I don’t. No one does. This was hundreds of years, forty generations ago. What we do know is that over that period, the rate of metamorph births declined sharply, dwindling to something resembling its present reported numbers. Kataly allowed me to sample her genome, against her people’s cultural taboos, and to my surprise, she possessed the variation. Her body had the ability to make metamorphic cells, but it only occurred during specific times of her monthly cycle.
“Those metamorphic cells are extraordinary, especially when it comes to battling genetic illnesses. She agreed to allow me to use her cells to attempt to cure Vega Nine.”
At this Sal trailed off, momentarily overwhelmed by the memory. “Before I could extract the cells, her so-called treason was discovered. She was forbidden further contact with us. Regina petitioned anyone she could get to listen, but the Kriosians formed an impenetrable bureaucratic circle around her and the Federation Council was unwilling to press them further.
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