Star Trek: The Original Series: No Time Like the Past

by Greg Cox

  A voice that grew ever louder and more insistent within Seven’s own mind.

  Feed me. I hunger.

  Vaal’s emerald eyes lit up from within. His voice could no longer be ignored.

  Feed me.

  Seven flinched. Her hand went instinctively to her temple in a futile attempt to block out the relentless commands. Vaal’s “voice” was sterner and more mechanical than the Borg queen’s, but almost as hard to resist.

  “Quiet,” she murmured. “Leave me alone.”

  Realization dawned in Akuta’s eyes. He gaped at her in amazement.

  “You too can hear the voice?”

  Seven grimaced in discomfort. “Apparently.”

  “But how is this possible?” He seemed astounded, and perhaps a little alarmed as well. He backed away from her. “I do not understand.”

  Seven understood too well.

  “I am of Vaal,” she said. “Our thoughts are one.”

  The answer was intended to appease Akuta, but it was true to a worrying degree. As Vaal’s voice echoed inside her brain, Seven saw both danger and opportunity in her unexpected connection to the machine. Was it possible that she could take advantage of the link to get past Vaal’s defense force field, or was the risk of adapting fully to the Vaal’s frequency too great? Memories of the Borg queen gave her pause. Seven had no desire to become a drone once more.

  Feed me! I hunger!

  Seven cautiously tried the force field again, only to find it still barring her way. Storm clouds began to form ominously overhead, blocking out the sun. A sudden wind whipped up the dirt and gravel around her feet. The Vaalians trembled and murmured fearfully among themselves.

  “Vaal is angered!” Akuta pointed an accusing finger at Seven. “He does not know you! You are not one!”

  Not yet, Seven admitted. Not fully. She glanced about, searching for shelter from Vaal’s thunderbolts, but saw nothing that might protect her. She needed to stop resisting Vaal’s voice, she realized, and allow her own transceiver to adapt fully to the link, no matter the risk to her hard-won individuality. It was the only way she was going to convince Vaal to accept her—and allow her access to the temple.

  “I am of Vaal,” she repeated. “We are as one.”

  She opened herself completely to the voice, which was no longer a faint whisper but louder than thunder. As she stopped trying to block the signal, her interplexing beacon finished adapting to Vaal’s translink frequency. His voice rang out as clearly as the Collective’s once had.

  Feed me! I hunger!

  “Yes.” She marched over to the Vaalians and claimed a basket of fresh fruit from a trembling native, who nervously surrendered it. She turned about sharply and headed back toward the towering stone snakehead, carrying her offering. “Vaal hungers. He must be fed.”

  She was not dissembling. She felt a need to be of use to Vaal, as well as a sense of union, of completeness, that she had not experienced since Captain Janeway had severed her from the Collective. At the time, she had found the sudden silence in her head alarming, accustomed as she’d been to constantly communing with the rest of the Collective. She had forgotten how much she had missed that. . . .

  The force field parted before her. She climbed the stone steps leading to his crimson maw. Vaal’s voice filled her mind and being, making it difficult to remember her original objective . . . which was what again?

  Feed me!

  A blazing pit awaited her offering. She could feel the heat of the furnace against her face as she dumped the basket of food down Vaal’s adamantine gullet, where the organic matter was instantly converted to red-hot plasma. Seven experienced a sudden sense of gratification, although she was uncertain if it belonged to her or Vaal or if that distinction was even relevant anymore. Her offering fed Vaal’s appetite.

  I hunger!

  She turned to seek out more food for Vaal, only to hesitate atop the steps. Despite Vaal’s thunderous commands, she forced herself to focus on her actual objective, which was . . . ?

  The fragment, she recalled. I must find the fragment.

  Her eyes searched the interior of Vaal’s mouth, which consisted of little more than a platform overlooking the superheated pit. Her gaze fell upon the seams of what might be a forgotten doorway located off to one side of the furnace. Squinting, she examined the possible service entrance. Her ocular implant registered a chroniton marker embedded in the stonework, in the shape of a familiar arrowhead insignia.

  “Promising,” she said.

  Encouraged by the sign, she started toward it, but she was staggered by a forceful command from Vaal:

  That is forbidden. Go no further!

  Seven froze, caught between her own intentions and the dictates from her cranial implants. She tried to block Vaal’s commands, but she had already allowed him total access to her transceiver and, by extension, her cortical functions. His voice threatened to drown out her own thoughts and will. Resistance was futile . . .

  You are of Vaal. Our thoughts are one.

  She was on the verge of succumbing. It would be easy, too easy, to assimilate into this new Collective. There would be no more individual fears or guilt, no more tortuous moral dilemmas. Only the comforting certainty of a single shared purpose, a single voice. She started to turn away from the marker.

  You are of Vaal. My voice, my eyes. Join my people.

  Akuta and the other feeders remained gathered in the clearing, awaiting their turn to bestow their offerings upon Vaal, to serve only his will.

  Like drones.

  “No!” Seven blurted, overcome with revulsion. “I am not a drone. I will not comply!”

  Another drone might have surrendered to the voice, as she might have only a few years ago, but she had grown and evolved since then. She was no longer merely Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01, and she had fought too long and too hard for her individuality to lose it to some imperfect substitute for the Collective. She rushed toward the concealed doorway, even as Vaal thundered in her brain.

  Halt! Vaal commands you! Heed my voice!

  “Your voice is irrelevant. Resistance is not futile.”

  Actual thunder shook the heavens. Lightning flashed outside the structure, but only as a warning. Seven doubted that Vaal would actually unleash his destructive thunderbolts on the temple itself. She was probably safe as long as she stayed within his mouth.

  So Vaal resorted to a more desperate tactic.

  “Stop her!” Akuta shouted frantically. “Vaal commands us!”

  Faithful Vaalians stormed the steps of the temple. A muscular youth reached for Seven, but she impatiently elbowed him in the gut, sending him tumbling back into the charging tribe. The defensive strike momentarily halted the attackers, who were uncertain how to respond.

  “She . . . struck him?” a female gasped in disbelief. “With her arm?”

  “Do not be frightened!” Akuta exhorted his people. “Vaal will protect you. Feed her to Vaal!”

  Seven evaluated her opponents. The Vaalians lacked combat skills and training, but their numbers and unquestioning loyalty to Vaal posed a significant threat. She could well imagine herself fed to the furnace as an offering to Vaal, bringing her mission through time to a singularly unproductive conclusion, unless she took immediate action.

  She set her phaser on stun. “My apologies.”

  An azure blast, set for wide dispersal, dropped the Vaalians onto the grassy sward with welcome efficiency. Thunder boomed impotently overhead as Seven turned her back on the fallen natives and gave the concealed doorway her full attention. The proper Starfleet response code remained stored in her memory. The tricorder transmitted the code at the locking mechanism.

  “Open Sesame.”

  As on the distant planetoid, a slab of stone descended into the foundations, exposing a long-abandoned access tunnel. A steep flight of stairs led deep beneath the planet’s surface, where massive machinery labored to maintain Gamma Trianguli VI’s idyllic environment. Under other c
ircumstances, Seven might have taken the time to thoroughly study the ancient equipment, with an eye to assimilating any exotic alien technology, but she was eager to complete her quest and locate another fragment of the time-travel device. Vaal’s voice continued to bellow inside her brain, giving her a serious headache.

  Turn back! You do not belong here!

  “On that we agree,” she said tartly. His imperious voice grated on her nerves, which were already frayed from lack of regeneration. She was sorely tempted to deactivate Vaal ahead of schedule, sparing his feeders from wasting untold millennia as drones, but no, that was Kirk’s job, sometime in the future.

  Vaal was doomed. He just didn’t know it yet.

  The tantalizing signal led her to an innocuous service panel deep in the bowels of the planet’s environmental maintenance system. She pried open the panel to reveal another translucent crystal wedge, this one red in hue. By all indications, the signal was coming from the fragment itself, all but masked by the powerful subspace vibrations being generated by Vaal.

  Seven removed the fragment from its hiding place and produced the original component from her backpack. The objects began to glow and hum in proximity to each other, as though eager to be reunited. Holding one in each hand, she hesitated briefly before connecting them, uncertain what the results would be.

  Go, Vaal commanded. Leave my world.

  Seven complied. “Our thoughts are one.”

  The interlocking fragments fit together perfectly. A sudden flux disrupted her chronometric node. Dark turned light and vice versa.

  And then she was gone.

  Nine

  “Seven!” McCoy exclaimed. “She’s gone!”

  The landing party materialized on the planet’s surface, minus their enigmatic guest of honor. McCoy saw only Kirk and Lieutenant Jadello standing beside him atop a wooded ridge thick with large tropical trees buttressed by spreading roots. The men looked about in confusion. Kirk flipped open his communicator.

  “Kirk to Enterprise,” he barked into the device. “We’re missing Doctor Seven. Is she still with you?”

  “Nae, Captain,” Scotty’s voice reported from the transporter room. “I energized all four of ye . . . although my equipment registered an odd fluctuation in her pattern signal, like nothin’ I’ve ever seen before.”

  “Understood,” Kirk said grimly. “Send a copy of those readings to Mister Spock. Maybe he can make sense of them. Kirk out.”

  He tried to locate her via her own communicator next, with an equally frustrating lack of results. Lowering the communicator, he clipped it back onto his belt. “Scotty says she beamed down with us,” he said, just in case the others hadn’t heard. Frustration edged his voice as he glanced around, looking in vain for the absent woman. “So where the devil is she?”

  McCoy didn’t have a clue. “Or when?”

  For all they knew, she had jumped through time again, perhaps all the way back to whatever mysterious future she hailed from. Part of McCoy couldn’t help thinking that maybe it was better that way. At least she wouldn’t be contaminating their present anymore.

  “Should we conduct a search, Captain?” Jadello asked.

  The beefy security officer was a head taller than McCoy and the others. Waxy orange skin betrayed his Qubbezu roots and was more muted in tone than his cherry-red tunic. His deep voice held a lilting accent.

  “Not a bad idea, Lieutenant,” Kirk agreed, “but where to begin?”

  Where indeed, McCoy thought.

  The men occupied the crest of a forested hilltop overlooking fields of cultivated corn and wheat. The planet’s soil was unusually rich, he recalled, and the Vaalians had obviously taken great strides in agriculture since the Enterprise’s last visit. Lush tropical foliage bordered the fields, although the climate was a bit hotter and more humid than McCoy remembered; he guessed that regional weather patterns, and the changing of the seasons, had asserted themselves now that Vaal was no longer controlling the environment. A wide river meandered sluggishly on the western side of the fields. Leafy trees provided shade from a hot yellow sun. Somewhere in the distance, a large animal honked for a mate. McCoy swatted away an annoying bug.

  “You know, I don’t recall any wildlife from before.”

  Kirk shrugged. “Well, we didn’t have much of chance to check out the local fauna last time. We were too busy trying to save ourselves and the Enterprise.” He craned his neck to get a better view. “Plus, I suppose it’s possible that migratory patterns have changed since Vaal lost his grip on the planet’s ecology.”

  “Since we deactivated him, you mean, and let nature run amok.”

  “Something like that,” Kirk conceded. “The planet seems to be thriving, though.”

  McCoy couldn’t disagree. They watched from the hill as, in the distance, a herd of agile ruminants grazed in a grassy meadow and watered along the riverbank. The shaggy beasts resembled a cross between a moose and a rhino, with a single large horn protruding from the forehead in lieu of antlers. Rhinooses? Matted white fur hung down their sides. Cloven hooves the size of snowshoes pawed the ground. Bovine eyes were supplemented by smaller orbs underneath. The beasts wallowed in the thick mud, blithely unaware of the alien visitors spying on them from the hills. A low wooden fence, guarded by a row of crude scarecrows, protected the Vaalians’ crops from the beasts of the field. A flock of winged mammals flapped toward the jungle to the east. A fish splashed upstream. Pollen in the air aggravated McCoy’s sinuses. He tried not to sneeze.

  “Seems more like a real ecosystem,” he observed, “and less like the Garden of Eden. That’s progress, I guess.”

  “I like to think so,” Kirk said. “Since we gave the Vaalians the apple.”

  McCoy turned away from the fields. On the other side of the ridge, smoke rose from the fires of the neighboring village. He glimpsed a rustic array of dirt roads and grass huts. Small red figures, including several children, could be seen going about their daily chores. A stray breeze brought the mouthwatering aroma of cooking fires. McCoy recalled that he hadn’t had lunch yet.

  “So where do you want to start looking for Seven?” he asked. “The village?”

  They had deliberately beamed down a few klicks away from the village to avoid materializing directly into the Vaalians’ midst. As curious as Kirk or McCoy might have been about the progress the natives had made in the last three years, there was also a desire to leave the Vaalians alone if possible. Why disrupt their lives unless they absolutely had to?

  “Probably a good place to start,” Kirk said. “If Seven did end up somewhere else on this planet and has just lost her communicator somehow, maybe Akuta and his people will have seen her. Or perhaps she’ll seek out the closest thing to civilization in these parts.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” McCoy said dryly. He contemplated the distant village. He wasn’t looking forward to hiking all the way there. Maybe they could have the Enterprise beam them a little bit closer to their final destination?

  He was about to suggest as much when, without warning, there was a blinding flash of light—and Seven stumbled out of empty air onto the ridge. She tottered uncertainly upon her feet, appearing disoriented and on the verge of collapsing. A glowing semicircle, composed of two linked wedges, was clutched against her chest.

  The other fragment, McCoy realized. She found it.

  But when?

  “Seven!” Kirk rushed forward to catch her before she fell. He placed his arm around her shoulder to hold her up. His concerned eyes widened at the sight of the joined artifacts in her hands. “Where have you—? How—?”

  She struggled to get her bearings. “Captain? I am back . . . in Twenty-two Seventy?”

  “Looks like it,” McCoy said. He scanned her with his medical tricorder, which detected high amounts of adrenaline and exhaustion, as much as he could tell from her . . . unusual . . . physiognomy. He scowled at the indications of widespread cybernetic implants throughout her body. Somebody had put a lot of time and effort in
to “improving” her biology.

  If that was the future of humanity, McCoy wasn’t sure he approved.

  “How long was I gone?” she asked.

  “Only a few minutes,” Kirk said, “but you had us worried.”

  “Interesting,” she mused. “There appears to have been a modest time lag in returning to these coordinates. Unsurprising given the intervals involved. A margin of error of only ‘a few minutes’ is essentially irrelevant at that scale . . . and quite impressive.”

  McCoy took her detached scientific tone as a good sign, medically speaking. She was sounding like herself again, for better or for worse.

  “But where were you?” Kirk asked urgently. “What happened to you?”

  “And where the heck did you find another piece of the puzzle?” McCoy added, nodding at the object in her grasp, whose eldritch glow was already dimming. “While we were just standing around here?”

  “Rather more time passed for me,” she divulged, “but perhaps a fuller explanation can wait until we are safely back aboard the Enterprise?” She gracefully extricated herself from Kirk’s arm, clearly preferring to stand on her own two feet, but still appeared a bit unsteady. Her eyelids drooped as though she was having trouble keeping them open. “I confess to feeling somewhat . . . fatigued.”

  “That’s not good enough,” Kirk said, impatient for answers. “I need to know what just happened!”

  “Jim.” McCoy stepped forward and laid a restraining hand on his friend’s shoulder. Compassion colored his voice. “Look at her, she’s practically dead on her feet. Maybe it would be better to do this back on the ship, after she’s had a chance to recuperate?”

  Kirk frowned, unhappy with the situation, but willing to listen to reason and his chief medical officer.

  “All right,” he said grudgingly. “But you owe me answers, ‘Doctor Seven.’ ” He plucked his communicator from his belt. “Kirk to Enterprise. Four to beam—”

  “Captain,” Seven interrupted, before he could complete the order. “Given what just transpired, I am reluctant to attempt another transport while in possession of these artifacts. It might be more prudent to return to the ship via a shuttle instead . . . in order to avoid another unexpected detour.”