Looking at her now, her head bent over, sweat dripping from her forehead, he wondered if she was ever going to see herself the way others saw her. She was an excellent officer among a team of outstanding ones, and a Starfleet career could last decades. She had plenty of time to make her mark, she just didn’t realize it.
“Torres to away team, do you copy?”
“We’re here and standing by to transport,” Lasren said.
“I’m going to kill the comm line in a second. Each of you needs to position yourself as close as you can to where Lasren is standing right now. Without the channel, I won’t be able to confirm each transport. Just hang in there. It will be a few minutes between each one. But we’ll get you all out of there.”
“We’ll be ready, Commander,” Lasren said.
“Commander Torres,” Patel interjected at the last second, “my team goes first.”
“Understood. See you soon. Torres out.”
Lasren exchanged a glance between Vincent and Jepel. Both of them rose to their feet. He knew that both of them wanted to ask why Patel had insisted that they be rescued first, but neither of them argued. He didn’t want to tell them the answer, if they hadn’t guessed it already. This was an untested transporter protocol. It was less than one hundred percent guaranteed to succeed. The first would be the riskiest because it had never been done before. By the time they got to Patel, they’d either have the process down to a science or have abandoned it as impossible. It looked like a small act of bravado on Patel’s part. In truth, it might have been the most selfish thing she had done since this mission began.
He was not a pessimist by nature. He decided that, right now, that was a good thing. Handing his tricorder to Devi, he stood still and closed his eyes. If these were the last few moments of his life, he preferred to spend them in silent contemplation of all the things that had brought him joy. He focused inward and thought of home, his family, and his dearest friends.
The next thing he knew, the tingle of the transporter beam took him.
VOYAGER
“What do you mean Ensign Gwyn is on a runabout headed for the surface?!” Harry Kim demanded.
Lieutenant Waters shrugged her shoulders. “You think I would make that up at a time like this?”
Kim looked to Chakotay, who remained, as ever, the calm at the center of the storm. Admiral Janeway stood beside him, but moved closer to operations at Waters’s response.
“We’ll recover Ensign Gwyn and the runabout,” Chakotay said more evenly than Kim could have managed.
“Do we know what precipitated this?” Janeway asked.
Doctor Sal’s voice sounded throughout the bridge. “She was in brief contact with Lieutenant Patel. Ensign Icheb believes that she is concerned about Patel’s safety.”
“Is she physically able to fly?” Chakotay asked. “Her last medical report indicated she was off duty until further notice.”
“Her physical health seems fine. I can’t say the same for her mental health,” Commander Cambridge reported.
Chakotay turned to Janeway, who said, “Demeter has already left the system. Galen is to do so at once, as is Vesta. Don’t worry about transporting back to your respective ships now. We’ll deal with that once the fleet is safe.”
Affirmative responses came quickly from each of the two remaining ships. Chakotay then ordered a channel open to Gwyn’s stolen ship.
RUNABOUT OKINAWA
“Ensign Gwyn, this is Captain Chakotay, please respond.”
Gwyn considered maintaining comm silence, but thought better of it. She didn’t think they would shoot her down, but she had technically stolen a ship, so the option was on the table.
“Gwyn here, Captain.”
“Alter your course and make for Voyager immediately. We have officers on the surface in the process of rescuing Lieutenant Patel and her team. They do not require your assistance. The moment the rescue is complete, Voyager will be setting course out of the system at maximum speed. The longer you delay our departure, the greater the risk that no one on the ship will survive. Do you understand?”
Gwyn did, all too well. Even the runabout’s scanners were humming and nearly overloading with the amount of data the planet was kicking off. A massive build-up of energy was occurring. As best Gwyn could tell, it wasn’t localized to any particular area. It was coming from the entire planet. Shifts in gravity and the planet’s rotation were playing hell with her navigational controls. She hadn’t even reached the atmosphere yet, and already the ship was roughly buffeted by gravimetric distortions. At best, this was going to be one of the roughest rides of her life.
She maintained course anyway as she responded. “I’m sorry, Captain. But I can’t alter course just yet. I am moving into position to rescue Lieutenant Patel.”
“I gave you an order, Ensign,” Chakotay barked. “Refuse and you subject yourself to disciplinary action and a possible court-martial.”
“I understand, Captain, and am more than willing to face the consequences of my actions, just as soon as this mission is complete.”
“This mission is unnecessary, Ensign. Lieutenant Patel will be back on board Voyager in the next few minutes. The best way to preserve her life and yours is to be back here when she arrives.”
Gwyn thought before she spoke again. There was always a chance she was wrong and if so, Devi shouldn’t suffer for Gwyn’s misguided hubris, but neither should Voyager’s entire crew. “Captain, it is not my intention to risk anyone’s life but mine. Should Patel return in the next few minutes as you have indicated she will, set course out of the system and I will do my best to rendezvous with you. Don’t wait on me.”
The next voice to sound through the comm wasn’t Chakotay’s. It was the admiral’s.
“Ensign Gwyn, why are you refusing a direct order from your commanding officer?”
Because I know when my friends are lying to me didn’t feel like an appropriate response, or one that would move Admiral Janeway.
“I’m sorry, Admiral. I have reason to believe that Lieutenant Patel will require means of rescue beyond those you have put in motion.”
An alert blared from her console. Voyager had just activated her tractor beam and was attempting to lock on to the runabout. Evading the beam required altering to a more treacherous angle of atmospheric entry, but she executed the maneuver with relative ease.
Damn it, Devi, she thought furiously. The conversation they were going to have when this was over was going to be incredibly unpleasant. Gwyn looked forward to it.
DK-1116
Commander Torres’s heart pounded but her hands remained steady as the first transport cycle of her hastily rigged mechanism was completed. Lieutenant Lasren stood within the force field smiling with obvious relief.
Before he had a chance to offer his thanks, Torres signaled Voyager and he disappeared again in a cascade of light.
One down. Three to go.
She had barely begun resetting the system when the ground beneath her feet began to shake.
VOYAGER
“What’s happening?” Admiral Janeway asked.
Seven stood at the bridge’s rear science station and was the first to respond. “Several of the growths we detected on the surface have completed new circuits with existing deposits of ore. Their presence has increased the speed of the build-up of energy exponentially. Our initial estimate of five additional hours of stability is no longer accurate. Two of the existing biodome fields have fallen, and the others will follow within the next half hour.
“Transporter room to the bridge. Lieutenant Lasren has arrived safely.”
“Acknowledged,” Chakotay responded.
“Large areas of the surface, including the location of our away team, are experiencing tremors,” Seven added.
“Chakotay to Torres. B’Elanna, you’re going to need to hurry.”
DK-1116
Commander Paris fell to his knees as the ground beneath his feet shifted. The pattern enhancers had been p
lanted several feet into the surface as a precaution using the same excavation tech they had brought to expose the hard line. For the moment, they held position, but Paris didn’t think that was going to be the case in another few minutes.
“Honey?”
“Relax,” Torres advised him. “The signal has a wider capacity than I thought. I’m going to bring Vincent and Jepel up together.”
“That sounds like a great idea.”
Tom waited, the seconds stretching out into lifetimes as he monitored the force field’s stability around the enhancers. Twenty meters beyond his wife, their shuttle sat on a desolate plain. Behind it, the sky, which was already a dusty brown, was darkening.
Paris wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but he aimed his tricorder at the horizon anyway. It confirmed that a large, electrically charged dust storm had formed a few dozen kilometers from their position and was heading their way. It shouldn’t interfere with their return to Voyager, but it would hamper any effort to leave the surface via their shuttle, should that prove necessary.
He didn’t want to scare B’Elanna. She needed to focus on what she was doing. He was scared enough for both of them anyway.
• • •
Lieutenant Patel watched as Vincent and Jepel vanished in a flutter of transporter energy simultaneously. If Torres was risking a double transport, that meant conditions on the surface were likely getting worse.
As much as she had anticipated this moment over the last hour, now that it had come, she faltered momentarily. She didn’t want to die, especially alone on an alien planet. And maybe there would be another way to retrieve the data she had collected.
As she began to shake, Gwyn’s voice rose in her mind. “You know if you get your ass out there and discover a brand-new element yourself, maybe that’ll change.”
Patel’s response now was the same as it had been only a few days earlier.
“No, it won’t,” she said aloud.
There were likely only seconds left to her. She detached her combadge and placed it on the tricorder, activating the final program she would ever create as a Starfleet officer, a quick bit of code that made the device transmit her life signs, and placed the linked tricorders on the ground Torres would target with her transporter beam. Patel then turned and moved quickly back down the catwalk, away from rescue, away from life, and toward her final few hours of existence.
As she did, she felt certainty mingled with remorse. She didn’t allow herself to turn back, even as she heard the sound of the transporter beam activate and take what had become her life’s work back to the surface of the planet.
• • •
Commander Paris stared inside the force field dumbstruck. It had grown darker in the last few minutes, but all he could focus on were the three small tricorders B’Elanna had just transported up.
“What the hell?” Tom asked.
Tom dropped the field and collected the tricorders. Shaking his head, he held up a combadge.
“I don’t think she’s coming back, B’Elanna.”
Torres shook her head as Paris dropped the tricorders into one of his suit’s outer pockets.
“Reactivate the force field. I’m going to try one more time.”
Paris did as he had been instructed.
“Chakotay to away team. What’s the hold-up? Where is Lieutenant Patel?”
“Patel sent up her data, sir,” Paris replied. “We’re attempting to establish another lock on her.”
“It’s not working,” B’Elanna cried. “I’ve got nothing.”
As Paris struggled to accept this unacceptable proposition, the ground shuddered again as a wide crack opened, tipping the shuttle forward into it. Seconds later, the gray sky turned black.
Tom stumbled to B’Elanna and grabbed both her wrists.
“It’s over,” he said. “We’re done here.”
“I have enough power for one more transport. I’m not leaving her behind.”
“B’Elanna, she wanted you to leave her behind.”
“Chakotay . . . away . . . can’t acquire transporter lock. Stand . . .”
Paris was pretty sure the end of that message was “by.” Their odds of success when they had accepted this mission had been long, and were moving rapidly into impossible territory.
“If they can’t transport us up, we have to get back to the shuttle, now.”
He could barely see his wife’s face through their helmets, but he could easily imagine her stricken expression. B’Elanna sucked at failing. She took every loss personally. But that didn’t change reality.
“Give me one second.”
Tom watched as B’Elanna initiated the final transport. Seconds later, the area inside the force field was still empty and the power cells for the portable transporter faded to blackness.
“Damn it!” Torres said.
“It’s now or never, B’Elanna,” Tom reminded her.
Side by side, linked at the elbows, Tom Paris and B’Elanna Torres struggled for every step as they made their way back to the shuttle. Tom wasn’t sure how its systems had been affected by that last quake or how he was going to get it fired up. He just knew if he didn’t, he and his wife were going to die on this planet.
VOYAGER
“Gwyn was right,” Admiral Janeway said softly. “Patel intentionally sabotaged her own rescue.”
“Where is Ensign Gwyn’s runabout now?” Chakotay asked.
Kim had resumed his position at the tactical station and replied, “She is headed for the coordinates where Patel’s team first transported down. That biodome field fell a few minutes ago and all of the water has evaporated from the surface. She won’t be able to land safely, much less mount a rescue on foot now.”
“We don’t need her to land,” Chakotay said. “Open a channel.”
OKINAWA
Gwyn was having trouble making sense of the new surface readings that were populating her display screens. The surface of DK-1116 looked nothing like it had the first time she’d seen it and barely resembled the landscape recorded in the fleet’s database on the biodome Patel’s team had been assigned to study. All she could see below was a massive hole at the bottom of what looked like a giant staircase.
She was in the process of focusing her transporter’s scanners on any detectable human life signs when Chakotay’s voice came over the comm.
“Okinawa, this is Chakotay. You have to alter course.”
“Not yet, Captain,” Gwyn replied, marveling at her reckless bravado. She had always nurtured a rebellious streak, but her actions now were so far beyond any acceptable boundaries, she almost didn’t recognize herself.
It had something to do with the bonding. Terrifying as the prospect had been, the absolute contentment and resolve that had washed over her when she had opened herself up to the tiny life that would someday become Nancy Conlon and Harry Kim’s daughter had altered her forever.
Until that moment, nothing in Gwyn’s world had been as important to her as her own life. Her determination to rescue Patel had been an instinct driven as much by avoiding loss for herself as ensuring Devi’s survival.
The few times her mother and her leedi had spoken to her about the empathic metamorphs, they had told her that the process, while difficult to contemplate and horrific in its way, was said to be a positive one for those who accepted it. The stability of their lives post bonding was well documented, as was their productivity and general well-being. They spoke of living for their mates and usually their lives ended not long after those they bonded with. It was impossible to imagine for those who never experienced it, and most agreed that the sacrifice of one’s identity was much too high a price to pay, but now Gwyn could acknowledge from personal experience that what might have been lost paled in comparison in some ways to what had been gained.
Gwyn’s life had a new purpose. Her love and devotion to a being not yet fully formed was absolute. It went so far beyond anything she had ever wanted for herself, including her career, that she wondered
how she had ever found the will to live until she had known what it was to live for another.
That broadened perspective made her commitment to Patel’s rescue equally intense. She knew what she had to do. She understood what it truly was to be of service to another. Her priorities were in perfect synch with her deepest self and the sense of empowerment that calm, still certainty at the center of her being brought dimmed any fears she might have for the consequences of her current course.
“Ensign Gwyn, listen to me very carefully,” Chakotay continued. “Commanders Torres and Paris are still on the surface not far from your position and in need of emergency transport. We can’t get a lock from orbit. The interference is scrambling our transporter signals.”
“What about Devi?” Gwyn asked.
“Lieutenant Patel sabotaged her own rescue. If you can retrieve her, do so, but Tom and B’Elanna are also in danger. I am sending you their last coordinates now. We will await your return as long as possible.”
That her mission had just become harder did not alter Gwyn’s certainty. As the new coordinates appeared on her navigation panel, she replied, “Understood, Captain. I’m on my way.”
DK-1116
Devi Patel stumbled and pitched forward onto the catwalk as a deafening crack sounded from somewhere overhead.
“What the hell was that?”
Her words echoed around her as the cavern grew brighter and dust descended from above like gentle rain. She grabbed the nearest railing and felt it vibrating in concert with the movement within the planet.
Looking down, she watched as the bright conduits of dancing ore began to move less randomly. The slack that had been present and created the illusion of undulating snakes decreased as the heavy lines seemed to tense and shorten.
Architects of Infinity Page 30
