They stared at the green warp core. It appeared to be no different to the naked eye, but Torres was looking at her console. They waited. Seventeen point four seconds was the longest the warp core had lasted, even in the best simulation they’d run on the holodeck. Telek was aware that he was trembling, but felt no shame at the thought.
“Eighteen seconds,” said Khala. “Twenty. Twenty-five. Thirty.” A pause. “One minute.”
One by one they relaxed. Telek closed his eyes briefly.
“It could still destabilize at any second,” Seven warned them darkly.
“But it’s lasted longer than any simulation. We could all die at any second. That’s what life is all about, Seven,” said Torres, her voice cheerful despite the dolorous words she uttered. “I say we get on with the next step.”
“We’ve beaten all the simulations,” said Telek. “I suppose it is due to the fact that the holodeck can only operate or extrapolate from something it knows. And none of us knows the full extent of Shepherd technology.”
“That little sphere is amazing,” Torres admitted, gazing with a new respect at the small, hovering ball. Telek suspected she wasn’t going to be calling it That Damned Ball again any time soon. She tapped her combadge. “Engineering to bridge. We’ve got a warp-core universe full of dark matter, and we’re all still in one piece.”
“Qapla’, B’Elanna,” came Janeway’s warm, pleased voice.
* * *
They did it again. And again, and again, each time increasing the amount of dark matter they beamed in from the transporter to the sphere to the warp-core shell. There was no sign of strain.
The next step was to attempt to dematerialize the dark matter from inside something—a cup, the ship, a body. But by this time, simple biological need was beginning to take precedence over the thrill of success. They broke for lunch and went to the mess hall. When the door hissed open, a huge cry of “Congratulations!” greeted them.
“We thought you could use a break,” said Janeway, smiling as they entered. The place was festooned with banners and balloons. Tables had been decorated, and on every one there was some kind of confection with the words “Dark matter” written on a card beside it: Dark matter cake, dark matter cookies, dark matter pudding.
“All made with the utmost care to suit the palates of Voyager’s daring engineering team,” said Neelix with pride as he hastened up to them, shaking their hands vigorously. To Khala he said very gently, “There was, of course, no time to bake anything, so I had to replicate everything. Please enjoy without worrying.”
She blushed blue. “Neelix, how thoughtful of you. Thank you.”
Janeway paused before Telek, turning her piercing blue gaze on him. “As a scientist, you must be finding all this very exciting.” She smiled. “I know that, as a scientist, I’m excited by what we’re doing. As a captain, of course, I’m even more excited that we’ve survived it all thus far.”
Telek smiled a little himself. He arched an eyebrow and said, “Why, Captain, did you have any doubt?”
She searched his expression for a moment, then the smile broadened. She reached to squeeze his arm.
The food, replicated or not, was delicious and filling. At Torres’s insistence, Telek had his first sip of raktajino. He found it powerful but delicious, and he had a second cup. Some items called “tomato soup” and “cheese sandwiches” were also unusually tasty. Perhaps it was merely that he knew—he knew—they had cheated death today, and everything about being alive, including food, had a keener edge of pleasure about it.
He was well into an enormous slice of something rich that Neelix called Dark Matter Double Chocolate Chip Fudge Cream Cake when Janeway, who was sitting beside him sipping a cup of black coffee, got the news from the bridge.
“Tuvok to Janeway.”
“Janeway here. What’s going on, Tuvok?”
“Sensors indicate a large fleet of ships approaching in our direction. They are heavily armed and shielded. And they are also riddled with dark matter.”
Telek set down his fork. Suddenly the deliciously sweet treats and the two cups of potent raktajino sat like rocks in his stomach. He wished he had not attacked the food so eagerly. If there was a fleet of heavily armed ships permeated with dark matter on an intercept course, their intentions could only be hostile.
Perhaps death had decided it did not like to be cheated after all.
* * *
“Yellow Alert,” said Janeway, sliding into her command chair. “Shields up. Battle stations.” Though I hope it doesn’t come to that, she thought. Wiping out those thirteen Romulan warbirds, watching them explode to bits because of the dark matter they carried—that was hard enough. “On screen.”
It was every bit as bad as she had feared. Several ships were headed right for them. They were large, cumbersome-looking things. If Janeway had to guess, she surmised they were heavier with weapons than with engines. These things were built for battle, not speed. If the need arose, Voyager could probably outrun them.
But that’s not what we’re here to do, she thought with a sudden surge of fierce passion. We’re here to help them, to free them from the dark matter if they’re infected with it.
“Harry,” she ordered, “scan for dark matter.”
“Scanning,” Kim replied. “They’re crammed full of the stuff, Captain. People and vessels.”
Janeway thought a deep, profound curse. “B’Elanna, what’s the status on getting the dark matter out of objects rather than just from space?”
“Not good, Captain. We didn’t have a chance to run any tests.”
“Is Dr. R’Mor with you?” Janeway inquired.
“I am here, Captain.”
“Of all of us, you’re the most familiar with the dark matter. What’s your opinion?”
A long pause. The ships were moving ever closer. “It has shown no signs of distress or instability thus far,” he said, and she could hear the caution in his voice. “One would hope that this would continue, but there is, of course, no guarantee.”
Janeway had been all for her hardworking team in engineering to take a well-deserved break at the time. Now, she wished they’d at least tried to extract dark matter from a coffee cup, or a plant, or anything at all. But they hadn’t. One always made the right decisions in hindsight, didn’t one?
“Mr. Kim says the approaching ships are filled with dark matter,” Janeway informed the Romulan. “How would you propose removing it?”
“The separation point would probably occur within the transporter mechanism itself,” came a clear female voice. For a moment Janeway couldn’t place it, then she thought: Khala. “It could be risky trying to locate the dark matter within the individual molecules at the point of origin, especially when dealing with an unknown, unfamiliar cellular structure. I would recommend total dematerialization and the separation of the dark matter particles at that moment.”
“I see,” said Janeway, her blue eyes on the approaching vessels of war. From what she understood about the process, she felt Khala was right.
But what did that mean for them? How in the world were they going to conduct a first contact with a hostile species and then ask for the kind of trust that was going to be required? Hello, you’re a totally new species and you’re filled with a maddening hatred that’s actually not what you’re feeling at all. Let us dematerialize you, remove the bad thing and then put you together again. And let us do that to your ship and crew as well.
Oh, how she wished Chakotay were here. She’d love to hear his take on the situation. But she was now, as she always had been from day one of this strange voyage, the captain, and every decision ultimately rested with her.
“Mr. Kim,” she said, her voice betraying none of her growing sense of hopelessness, “do we recognize this species at all?”
“Negative,” said Kim.
“Bridge to Seven. Take a look at our new friends. Do you know them?”
“Negative,” came Seven’s crisp, cool voice. Same word,
same distressing information.
“Open a channel,” said Janeway, squaring her shoulders. “This is Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation Starship Voyager. We are on a peaceful mission in your sector of space and would like to open communications. Particularly, we wish to warn you about a danger to your crew and vessel of which you are more than likely unaware. Please respond. Let us open a dialogue.”
Nothing. The ships just kept coming closer.
And then they powered their weapons.
CHAPTER
8
THE DESERT SUN WAS BRIGHT AND HOT, AND BURNED him. The sand was bright and hot, and burned him. Chakotay was bright and hot, and burned inside and outside, and even his eyeballs seemed to sizzle in their sockets as he tried to look around.
He wore no uniform. In fact, he wore nothing. The hot sun beating down on his exposed flesh would, he somehow knew, crisp it in moments. His first thought was of Tom, and that pale, Anglo-Saxon white skin that went with blond hair and blue eyes, and what the bright, hot, burning sun would do to it.
“Don’t worry about Tommy,” said the voice. Q’s voice. The voice of a Trickster par excellence. “You should be worried about yourself.”
“Coyote,” said Chakotay. He recalled being aboard Voyager when the dark matter had not yet been purged. He had utilized the akoonah and gone deep within his subconscious in a quest for guidance. His usual animal guide had not appeared. Instead, he had faced off with Coyote, an incarnation—perhaps the ultimate incarnation, he mused—of the classic Trickster deity. It had spoken with the voice of the omnipotent alien Q, and it was using that same taunting voice now.
“The one and only,” said Coyote, trotting over a sand dune, rising on his hind legs, and executing a bow. “Or should I say, one of many?”
“The last thing I remember was trying to climb a ladder out of the pit.” It had been like exiting a kiva, he had thought at the time. Except kivas weren’t places of torture. He recalled putting his left foot on a rung, then the right—then nothing at all.
“Out of the frying pan, into the fire,” quipped Coyote, citing a proverb that was nearly as old as the stars. He trotted down the dune, miraculously not disturbing a grain of the bright, hot, burning sand.
“What do you mean?” asked Chakotay, a desperate tinge to his voice, even though he knew that getting anything resembling a straight answer out of the infuriating creature was well-nigh impossible.
“Do I say what I mean, or mean what I say?”
“Alice in Wonderland,” said Chakotay at once, though it had been decades since he’d read the children’s book.
“Welcome to the rabbit hole,” said Coyote, and he vanished.
When Chakotay opened his eyes a few seconds later, it was not at all bright, or hot, or burning, though his body still was fighting a fever. He lay on his back in a small thatched hut. He was covered with a blanket of some soft, woven material. The pile of—hay? ferns?—beneath him was soft and comfortable. It emitted a cool, soothing scent as he stirred. Over his head herbs hung drying from every inch of the roof. He tried to move his head and look around, but the gesture brought sudden pain and he hissed.
“You mustn’t move, Chakotay,” said a soft female voice. A hand moved into his vision, a hand holding a cloth that dripped cool water onto his face. Chakotay closed his eyes and enjoyed the unbearably sweet sensation of a moist cloth wiping his fevered face. A drop trickled to his lips. Automatically, he licked it and savored the taste of cool water and herbs.
“You stood for hours with your face turned up to the sky,” the feminine voice continued. “Your neck is still stiff and sore.”
“Where am I?” he asked, his voice a rasp. “Who are you? Is Tom—”
“Tom is recovering, as are you,” came the answer. He couldn’t stand it; he turned his head and beheld she who tended him. The pain he suffered with the action was worth it. She was lovely, a vision come to life. Her full lips curled in a smile.
“I see your curiosity outweighs the pain,” she said. “I am Yurula. I am mate to Soliss. He is presently out gathering more herbs for a soup for you. He predicted you would awaken soon.”
“I thank you for your care of us,” he said. The pain in his head was agonizing. It was hot, so hot.
“Rest again,” Yurula urged him. He watched, his vision blurring slightly, as her blue-tinged hands dipped into the wooden bowl of water, wrung out the cloth, then again placed its welcome coolness on his brow.
He obeyed her gentle command, and when he woke again, the light in the cottage was different: softer, dimmer. He could still smell the sweet scent of the bedding, but there was another smell that he couldn’t quite place. He felt cool, and much stronger. His body was damp.
“Your fever finally broke,” said Soliss, moving into the chair beside Chakotay’s bed. “Would that I could say the same for your companion. Are you in any pain?”
Chakotay considered. His hand went to his abdomen, touched the bandages there. “It still hurts a little,” he said, reluctant to complain after he had so clearly been well taken care of, but realizing the importance of telling his doctor—his healer, at any rate—everything. “It’s sharp and localized, though.”
“Good. I can’t take away all the pain all at once, though it is my understanding that some of the doctors among the Alilann can.”
Chakotay thought of the Doctor, and said nothing.
“But at least we stopped the rotting before it went any further. Just a nice, clean wound now. You’re strong and healthy, you should be fine. Are you hungry?”
The word seemed to trigger something inside Chakotay. It was as if it had flipped a switch. He had been so sick that his body was concentrating on healing itself, not on acquiring nourishment, but once Soliss had suggested the idea of eating, it seemed like the finest thought in the world.
“Starving,” he confessed.
Soliss smiled. “I thought you might be.”
As he rose and went to the cook fire in the center of the single-room cottage, Chakotay realized what the other smell was. It was food, though of what type he was not sure, and his hunger flared again. He propped himself up on an elbow, realizing that he was naked beneath the blankets. He hoped that Soliss had been the one to tend him and that the radiant Yurula had been called in only after the wounds had been cleaned. Chakotay chuckled to himself. If he was able to worry about who had seen him nude, then he was definitely feeling better.
His mirth faded as he gazed across the room at the occupant of the other pallet. Tom still looked bad. He moved restlessly in his sleep, and his face was flushed. Now and then he muttered something.
“You said Tom wasn’t healing as well as I,” said Chakotay.
Soliss was ladling soup from a hanging pot into a bowl. “No, he isn’t. I’ve done everything I can, but his injuries were far worse than yours.” Suddenly Soliss frowned. “That cursed Ordeal. I hate it, I hate it.”
The crude wooden door opened and Yurula entered. “Shame on you, Soliss!” she cried. “I could hear you from several steps away. Would you have us banished?”
“Apologies, beloved,” said Soliss, though he didn’t look particularly apologetic. “It is only—You know that if I had been permitted to attend to them once they were brought here, they would be well on their way to health now, both of them. The Ordeal—”
“Is part of what makes us who we are, as surely as turning our faces up to the sky and eating the fruit of the good soil,” said Yurula. Her face softened. “I love you for your heart, Soliss. But perhaps it is just a little too soft.”
She turned and smiled at Chakotay. “You look much better than the last time I tended you. How do you feel?”
“As much improved as I look, I imagine,” Chakotay replied. “Ready to eat some of that delicious-smelling soup.” She went to him, checking his pulse and feeling his forehead. At one point, to better gauge the temperature, she pressed her cheek to his forehead. Chakotay breathed in the scent of herbs and her own sweet
, musky fragrance. Yes, he was definitely feeling better.
A thought occurred to him. He looked around for his clothing and saw no trace of it, nor of their instruments.
“We can understand each other,” he said suddenly. “My communicator—”
“There is no need for such things,” said Yurula, a touch forcefully. “My mate has spoken with you over the last few days and it is easy enough to learn your language.”
She was right. She had been speaking Federation Standard the whole time. He’d been too out of it to notice. “That’s incredible,” he said. “Your people must have a gift for languages.”
“The Crafters gave it to us,” said Yulura. “It is so that we do not need to resort to the artificial contrivances of the Alilann. They would be able to learn as swiftly as we, as we are the same species. But they do not have the desire. They prefer everything to be immediate. They do not wish to take the time to learn a skill.”
Chakotay thought back to what life must have been like without the universal translator, what an accomplishment simply learning another language used to be.
“We are both—” He had started to say “humanoid,” but realized how Earth-centric the term was. “We are both bipedal and shaped much the same. Our mouths and throat structure are probably very similar. Can you learn the language of races more unlike yourself?”
“They take a little longer, but we can do it if we need to,” said Soliss. He rose, carrying a bowl of steaming soup. Chakotay’s mouth watered. Yurula helped prop him up with the pillows while Soliss handed him the bowl.
Yurula made as if to take the bowl and feed him, but he smiled and shook his head. “I can do it myself, thank you.”
She nodded her blue-haired head in acknowledgment and rose gracefully. Chakotay guessed her age at about thirty or forty in human years. Yurula was not possessed of the youthful freshness of the girl who had found him and Tom, but she had a quiet beauty all her own.
Chakotay spooned up some soup, sipped cautiously, then began to eat with gusto. It was delicious. Plenty of fresh vegetables, rich broth, bits of meat of some sort. Normally he’d use his tricorder to make certain the food wasn’t toxic to his system, but right now there was no choice: eat, or die. And if he died, at least his taste buds would have been placated.
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