“What is it?” Farkas asked.
“Its size and configuration suggest a standard Starfleet message buoy,” Jepel replied. “We will be ready to transport it aboard within the next three minutes.”
“The moment transport is complete, set course to rendezvous with Voyager and engage at maximum warp,” Farkas ordered.
Janeway resumed her seat and gestured for Farkas to lean closer. “I wouldn’t mind saying hello to the Krenim.”
“Really?” Farkas asked, surprised. “I would have thought it better to avoid them until we know more about what we’re dealing with.”
“They know we’re here. We’ve violated their territory. Better not to add insult to injury by trying to outrun them.”
“New friends.” Farkas sighed.
Janeway nodded. “Let’s hope so.”
“Admiral, we have retrieved the buoy,” Jepel reported. “It has been transported to our main science lab on deck six.”
“Order all officers to refrain from initiating analysis until I arrive,” Janeway said. “And ask Lieutenant Bryce and Ensign Icheb to join me there.”
“Will do,” Farkas said as Janeway rose and hurried toward the bridge’s turbolift. “Are you sure you don’t want to speak personally to our new acquaintances?” Farkas asked.
“Keep it short,” Janeway suggested. “And if diplomacy fails . . .”
“It won’t,” Farkas assured her.
And it didn’t. The Krenim scout ship that intercepted Vesta inquired perfunctorily about their presence in Krenim space. When Farkas identified herself as the captain of a Federation vessel her counterpart didn’t even blink. He simply ordered one of his officers to make note of it in their logs and advised Farkas as to the quickest route out of Krenim territory, accepting at face value her protestations that she had no idea her ship had wandered into their space.
Later, in her personal logs, Farkas would note that her brief first contact with the Krenim had left her with the impression that they were one of the more civilized Delta Quadrant species she had yet encountered.
• • •
Admiral Janeway wondered if she had entered the wrong science lab when she arrived to find only an empty analysis table.
The admiral stepped out and asked the security officer standing guard, “Where is the buoy?”
“It’s right there, Admiral.”
Janeway stepped back in and double-checked the table’s display panel. The sensor readings clearly indicated the presence of the buoy, as well as more antichroniton residue.
The first order of business was to disable the buoy’s temporal shielding without triggering its self-destruct mechanism. If the buoy’s internal workings had degraded at a similar rate as its shielding, that might prove challenging.
The lab’s door slid open and a breathless Lieutenant Bryce entered, Icheb trailing a few steps behind. “Got here as quick as we could, Admiral,” Bryce said.
“Clearly,” Janeway observed.
Icheb took over the main data station and began a series of new scans. He worked with silent intensity as Bryce peered over his shoulder.
“Do you have any idea how to disable the temporal shielding?” she asked.
“I’m not sure that will be necessary, Admiral. I just have to find . . .” Icheb began, but before he could finish, Bryce added, “There it is.”
“What?” Janeway asked.
“The buoy’s specs,” Bryce replied.
“The temporal field surrounding it has been masking its exact dimensions,” Icheb added.
“This thing has to be five generations behind our current standard,” Bryce noted. “I’m pretty sure I trained on one of these at the Academy.”
“Lucky for us,” Janeway said, realizing for the first time that Bryce hadn’t even entered the Academy when Voyager was first lost in the Delta Quadrant. “But what exactly . . . ?”
“The basics of the temporal shields aren’t that different from a Scheinen phase displacement field, but you have to augment for the temporal variable. This particular field has already been modified to interface with our systems,” Icheb explained.
He fell silent for a few moments as Bryce whistled softly. “Holy cow, that’s brilliant.”
It was rare that Janeway could stand in the presence of a scientific problem and feel lost. “Icheb?” she demanded.
“Sorry, Admiral. It’s just that when you dropped this, you really didn’t want anyone else to find it,” the ensign replied.
“How could you possibly know that?” Janeway asked, somewhat taken aback at Icheb’s certainty that she was personally responsible for the buoy’s presence here. Of course, there weren’t that many other possibilities.
“The decay of the temporal shielding was triggered by our scans. This device was designed to probe the space-time continuum for our specific scanning frequencies, by which I mean frequencies that correspond not just to Starfleet technology, but technology that shares our quantum resonance. When that is detected, the temporal shields fall away slowly to make sure that the device is fully integrated into our time period prior to dispersing. Do you see the rate of decay increasing?”
Janeway checked the readings and immediately understood. “But why would anyone limit the buoy’s potential discovery to a single timeline?”
Bryce scratched his head vigorously. “The temporal shields would have been activated prior to launch, right?” Following Icheb’s nod he continued, “At that moment it essentially became the property of all timelines. If the data contains information that could corrupt multiple timelines by its discovery, you might have been trying to prevent more damage.”
We did this, Janeway thought in wonder as the invisible device on the table before her began to appear in a distorted haze. While it was true that Starfleet believed that only Voyager and Equinox had been lost in the Delta Quadrant, it was always possible that another vessel had found its way here in another timeline and they might be responsible for the temporal mess this mission was becoming. But a Starfleet message buoy standard to roughly eight years earlier that had been enhanced by Borg temporal shields? The odds against it having originated anywhere but on her Voyager were staggering.
The buoy emerged into the present moment in fits and starts, eventually materializing in the center of the diagnostic station.
“Scan for quantum resonance,” Janeway ordered as soon as the buoy had stabilized.
Icheb did. When his scan was complete, he shook his head. “As expected, according to this scan, the buoy originated in this exact timeline.”
This time Janeway was ahead of him. “If it originated in this timeline and its shields prevented it from being affected by any alterations to the timeline, that means that this device couldn’t have come from anywhere but my Voyager. Whatever happened was somehow erased from our memories without creating an alternate timeline.”
“Maybe,” Icheb said. “It is also possible that we are now occupying a timeline that was reintegrated with a temporary alternate line where this buoy was launched and its quantum signature is now identical to ours.”
“The buoy is requesting an access code. Do you remember your codes from that period of time?” Bryce asked Janeway.
The admiral shook her head. “We don’t even know exactly when this happened.”
“Does knowing that Seven had to have been aboard to help you create the temporal shields narrow it down? Or the stardate of Voyager’s single contact with the Krenim?” Icheb asked.
Janeway thought back as best she could. Assuming she had launched this buoy, she wouldn’t have used a command authorization that would have been hard to remember. Codes changed regularly for different security functions, but she would have made sure this one was familiar.
Her hands were shaking slightly as she placed them on the data interface and entered her initial clearance code, the first she had created when she became Voyager’s captain: Janeway pi alpha four seven.
The buoy’s data interface screen da
rkened. Then a series of log entries appeared.
Janeway selected the first log for playback and her voice, distant and unspeakably cold, echoed through the lab.
“Asking you to stay would be asking you to die.”
She abruptly halted the playback and turned to Bryce. “Thank you both. I’ll take it from here.”
“If you run into any problems, Admiral, just contact us,” Bryce said.
Janeway nodded, then pulled up a stool and perched on it before continuing. She quickly realized that the logs were out of order. They had all been downloaded within seconds of one another, a data dump prior to the buoy’s launch, and had never been refiled by the stardate on which they had been originally recorded. She took a few moments to correct this and began the log’s playback at the beginning.
The story recounted for her in her voice and her words was the most chilling, disheartening, and terrifying thing she had ever heard.
VOYAGER
Lieutenants Harry Kim and Gaines Aubrey had been studying various sections of the minefield on the astrometrics lab’s screen forever. At least it felt that way to Kim. No algorithm they had yet devised had revealed the subspace frequency or band that indicated the location of the mines. The best they could do at this point was attempt to extrapolate the mine’s locations based on their logs of other ships’ journeys from the checkpoint to Sormana’s orbit, but even that task was proving frustrating. The fact that Seven hadn’t made any progress beyond this point either soothed Kim’s ego more than he liked to admit.
It didn’t help that Kim found it unusually difficult to focus. Normally a problem like this would have consumed him until he found the answers he sought. Now his attention was divided between studying the minefield and figuring out how to undo the damage he’d unintentionally done to his relationship with Nancy. Of the two issues, only one felt truly pressing, and it wasn’t the one that duty forced him to address.
“Tell me you have something, gentlemen,” Commander Tom Paris said as he entered the lab.
Kim sighed deeply. “We do. You’re not going to like it.”
“Come on, it can’t be that bad,” Paris said.
“We have analyzed the routes of fifty-eight vessels that have traversed the minefield since we first detected the checkpoint,” Aubrey began. “None of them took the same course from the checkpoint to the planet’s orbit.”
“In some cases this makes sense because they were clearly headed for different areas.” Kim picked up the report. “Others seemed to indicate that the configuration of the minefield is constantly shifting.”
“A design flaw?” Paris asked.
Kim pulled up four separate scans so that Paris could study them simultaneously. “I don’t think so. Watch this.”
Each ship began at the checkpoint and made at least a dozen course corrections before arriving at the same orbital entry point. “This is the same ship seen moving in and out of the field on four consecutive days,” Aubrey reported. “Each time it took a completely different course.”
“Okay, but maybe the courses are randomized to prevent anyone from reverse-engineering the coordinates of the mines,” Paris suggested. “I mean, we can’t be the first to try and figure this out.”
Kim maximized the display of a single vessel. “This ship entered the field the day before you took the Tuccia in.” Kim then added the doomed journey of Paris’s shuttle to the screen for comparison.
“I’ll be damned,” Paris said. The ship in question had moved well within proximity of the mine his shuttle had triggered without suffering the Tuccia’s fate. “But if they are moving the mines, couldn’t we detect that?”
“I don’t think it’s that complicated,” Aubrey noted.
“No?” Paris asked.
“I think the field is probably a lot denser than we suspect and that on any given day, the only people who know which mines are actually live are the ones controlling the field,” Aubrey continued.
“Which means one of the ships out here is constantly activating and deactivating the mines,” Paris said. “Have you searched for that signal?”
“Nothing yet,” Aubrey reported.
“Damn,” Paris said, impressed in spite of himself.
“Yep,” Kim agreed.
SORMANA
“What was it like?” Denzit Janeway asked, leaning toward Tuvok while taking a generous drink from the fluted metallic cup she’d been nursing over the last few hours. It contained a local wine. Tuvok found its fragrance repellant and he had no intention of dulling his senses as he gently probed the denzit’s emotional defenses.
“Assimilation?” Tuvok asked.
The denzit nodded somberly in response.
“It is difficult to describe, as I was only briefly aware of the sensation of absolute submission to the Collective. The anticipation of the loss of self is definitely more frightening to contemplate than the reality. As the neural suppressant that the Doctor had given all of us began to fail, I recall the absence of fear. To submit seemed not only inevitable, but preferable to any other state of being. I am not certain how Borg nanoprobes accomplished this feat, but I do believe that the overwhelming certainty that accompanies assimilation was a significant factor in the Borg’s ability to function so cohesively.”
“That and the power of the Queen,” the denzit noted.
Tuvok nodded. “Yes.”
“Still, your captain’s choice to risk your life and hers to save these mutated drones seems incredibly reckless.”
“Perhaps. But you must understand that by the time we learned of the existence of Unimatrix Zero, we had already faced and defeated the Borg on several occasions.”
“Defeated?”
“Survived the encounters without suffering the destruction of our ship or the assimilation of our crew.”
“An important distinction, don’t you think?” the denzit said.
“I do,” Tuvok allowed.
“Were you still aboard Voyager when this Borg Invasion began?”
“No. By then, I had accepted a position with Captain Riker aboard the Titan.”
The denzit smiled. “Will Riker. I can’t believe it’s taken him this long to get a command of his own. Tell me honestly, do you prefer serving under him, or your Captain Janeway?”
“Both present their fair share of challenges,” Tuvok replied diplomatically. “Both share the same devotion to Starfleet’s principles and ideals. Both are incredibly demanding. But I do not share a similar or even comparable personal relationship with Captain Riker. He seems to prefer the company of those with whom he has a greater shared history and while his trust is not difficult to gain, I have always found you to be more accepting.”
The denzit smiled again, accepting the compliment. She sat back in her chair across the small table they shared in her private dining room. Draining the last of her wine, she said, “Part of me misses Starfleet. I’d be lying if I said otherwise.”
Tuvok remained silent. To push her would be pointless. Kathryn Janeway could be mercurial in her passions, but her defenses were formidable in the presence of any genuine threat.
“Why are you still out there, Tuvok? Seven years of a deep-space mission wasn’t enough for you?”
“It seemed logical to transition to the Academy when Voyager first returned home,” Tuvok admitted. “It was a refreshing change. But when I was asked to join Starfleet Intelligence, I could not deny that I still harbored a strong desire to seek out new challenges. Voyager’s journey home was difficult, but it never failed to provide fascinating insights into our universe and those with whom we share it. I remain content with Starship duty because I have not yet had my fill of exploration and discovery. I don’t know that I ever will.”
“You don’t miss your family?”
“My wife is with me on Titan. Our surviving children have their own lives and we remain in constant contact.”
“Your surviving children?”
“My son Elieth and his wife, Ione Kitain, were
killed when the Borg attacked Deneva. Nothing I have ever . . .” he began, but trailed off.
The denzit’s eyes were suddenly filled with tears. She reached forward and took one of Tuvok’s hands, squeezing it firmly. “I am so very sorry,” she said.
They remained like that for several moments as tears began to flow freely down her face. Tuvok could not conscience a similar display, nor could he deny that her raw compassion touched him deeply. Her response could not help but remind him of the earliest years of their relationship and the competent but vulnerable woman she had always been.
The admiral was very different. They had only spoken briefly, but Tuvok had clearly felt the walls that now fortified her emotions, allowing her a new dispassionate perspective from which to examine the tragedies of the past. Tuvok could not say exactly why the denzit’s simpler, overwhelming suffering was more satisfying to witness. It did, however, mirror his emotional state more closely than the admiral’s had.
This Kathryn understood. She had already shared some of what she had suffered at the hands of the Zahl. She had clearly compartmentalized the trauma. She spoke of it almost as if it had happened to someone else. But she had not lost her empathy. The violence she had endured had not severed her heart from her mind. She seemed driven by her pain to destroy those who had inflicted it upon her. She refused to release the anger that fueled her, unwilling to sacrifice the power it kindled within her.
What Tuvok had learned since his descent into near madness following Elieth’s death was that rage provided a double-edged sword. It cut decisively into oneself as easily as those one sought to destroy. He understood well how necessary pain could become.
“I appreciate your sympathy,” Tuvok finally said. “Thank you.”
The denzit released his hand and wiped her ruddy cheeks dry. She looked past him for a long time, then returned her eyes to his. In the distance she had seemed to glimpse briefly some unspoken horror. It was quickly buried.
“How long can you stay?” she finally asked.
Tuvok considered the question before replying, “As long as it takes.”
The denzit nodded, understanding. “I can’t go back.”
Star Trek: Voyager: A Pocket Full of Lies Page 16
