Strange New Worlds IV

by Dean Wesley Smith

  Seven’s face shone with sweat. “I … he …”

  “Captain!” It was the Doctor, in sickbay. “There’s been a jump in Seven’s neural …”

  “Oh, Captain,” Seven whispered. Her left hand groped blindly for Janeway’s arm and clamped down.

  Alarmed, Janeway tried easing Seven away from the helm. “Tom.” She jerked her head at the controls. “Take …”

  “No!” Seven cried suddenly, surging against Janeway. Janeway staggered back and would have fallen if Paris’s hand hadn’t flashed out to grab her elbow.

  Seven’s eyes bulged; her fists bunched. A flurry of emotions chased across her face: horror, dread, fear. “You don’t understand, you don’t understand. It’s Commander Chakotay, it’s there, it’s with him, it’s …”

  The Doctor was still trying to say something, but Janeway didn’t hear because at the same moment Kim sang, “Captain! Ships, off the port bow!”

  Janeway’s head snapped forward. “What? On screen!”

  Then she saw them. Out of the tangled skeins of this strange space, wavering into focus as if emerging from the depths of a dark sea, Janeway counted one, two, ten, thirteen …

  Janeway watched in mounting horror. Oh, dear God.

  Then, shrieking, Seven dove for the helm, and all hell broke loose.

  In sickbay, deep in the meld, Tuvok struggled up from his coma. “Seven, no …”

  Chakotay crouched behind a tumble of boulders, perhaps twenty meters to the left of the ship. Another salvo rained down, and the ship vaporized. The ground twitched with the aftershock. In the space between one breath and the next, another flurry of weapons fire thudded to the surface, now to the right. He ducked as pulverized bits of rock pinged off his neck and shoulders. He started to count and made it to eight before the next salvo hit, this time about fifteen meters due north.

  A search pattern. His brain tried ticking through his options even as the pain in his chest increased. Moving had cost him, dearly, but he had to think.

  They didn’t have a fix on him, yet. He had to hide, but where? Frantically, Chakotay scanned the vicinity for a ridge of rocks, a depression, anything. It had to be close. He’d barely escaped in time, and each step had been a fresh agony. Besides, running used air, and air was something he couldn’t spare.

  His eyes clicked right, left … and then he saw it, about forty meters distant: a wedge-shaped formation, splayed into an overwide L.

  There. Chakotay still cradled the welder, and now he slung the strap over his neck and shoulders, leaving his arms free. The sudden movement brought a crushing leaden weight to the center of his chest, and pain lanced down his left arm. His jaw tingled; his knees bit into the broken earth.

  No. He gulped air, fought to keep his body erect. Rivulets of sweat coursed down his back, pooling at his waist. He clutched at his chest, trying to squeeze out the pain. He couldn’t black out, not now.

  The earth shuddered with the next salvo. Then, silence.

  One. He struggled to his feet. Two.

  Go. Chakotay tucked his elbows in against his sides. Go, go, go!

  He made it to the fourth step. Then the pain took him: a simple, white, hot agony. Chakotay couldn’t help it; he screamed. Something broke inside his chest, and he pitched forward, his arms opening wide, as if he’d been shot in the back.

  He was on his knees. Then he was staring at the sky. His lungs gurgled with blood.

  “Seven,” he gasped, “Seven …”

  “Harry, bring it down!” Janeway shouted.

  Behind the sizzle of a level-ten forcefield, Seven hunched over the helm, fingers flying. The ship lurched, swerved, then canted between two Borg cubes, angling in a ninety-degree escape vector. Five ships belonging to Species 8472 peeled off in pursuit. In response, Seven sent Voyager into the equivalent of a steep dive and punched the ship to warp eight.

  Janeway didn’t have time to wonder why the Borg and Species 8472 had suddenly become allies. Or why there were Hirogen and Kazon. In response to the ship’s wild gyrations, she flailed for a handhold, missed, and went careening to the deck.

  “For God’s sake, Harry!” She pushed up on hands and knees. “Reroute power through tactical! Take that damn forcefield off-line!”

  Torres’s voice blared from the comm. “Captain, I’m showing loss of structural integrity in the matter-antimatter reaction assembly! The dilithium matrix is destabilizing, and there’s a fifteen percent coolant leak around the EPS conduits. She’s pushing the ship too hard! You’ve got to get her to power down, or I’ll have to eject the core!”

  Janeway clawed her way to her feet. “Understood! Harry!”

  Kim punched ineffectually at his console. “I can’t! Seven’s set up a subroutine to reroute through random access pathways. There’s no way of telling where …”

  “Captain, she’s firing phasers again!” Paris pointed at the viewscreen. Janeway saw flares blossom along the side of one cube. In response, the green ribbon of the cube’s tractor beam streamed out, like a snake springing at its prey.

  “She’s modulating shield harmonics,” Kim said. “They can’t get a lock.”

  “How many ships, Harry?”

  “Twenty Borg. Thirteen ships belonging to 8472. Five Kazon, four Hirogen.”

  “How are our shields?”

  Looking up from his data, Kim opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and said, finally, “Fine.”

  “What?”

  “The shields are fine, Captain, and the damage to the Borg …”

  Kim’s voice trailed away. Seven banked Voyager left, then into a rolling, spiral turn. Janeway clung to the railing behind her command chair, and something somewhere shorted. A console blew. Sparks arced, sputtered. “Mr. Kim, report!”

  Kim blinked. “Captain, I read no damage at all. No debris, no residua, no plasma … nothing. Just a … a bioelectrical signature. Like a sensor shadow, like something was there but isn’t now.”

  Janeway stared. “A shadow? But I saw it: just like the time that cube was damaged by …”

  Then, it hit her.

  Shadows, Torres said. We see shadows around the disruption. In space. In time.

  Janeway whirled on her heel. “Seven!”

  Paris’s arm shot out. “Look!”

  Janeway looked. It was a planet.

  Then, she looked harder. “Who are they?”

  Tuvok struggled to sit up. “Doctor.”

  The Doctor scooped up a hypospray. “Your vital signs are too erratic, and I can’t control Seven. Neither can you. I’m bringing you out of this.”

  “No!” Tuvok grappled for the Doctor’s wrist. “You don’t understand. You must tell them. They are shadows. They must control their minds, they must …”

  “What?”

  “Shadows,” Tuvok whispered hoarsely, “in the dark … the dark matter … shadows …”

  Then Tuvok stopped speaking, because it took all his strength to stay with Seven. Seven, listen to me, listen only to me …

  * * *

  Blood foamed upon his lips, and his air was almost gone. But it didn’t matter; he would drown long before he suffocated.

  There was a sense of movement, a slant of shadow, and Chakotay forced his lids open to see who or what it was.

  His breath hissed in surprise.

  And then there was Seven, in his mind, frantic: “Commander, no! It’s the planet! Get up, get up, get up!”

  “Organic polymers in a chroniton flux, bound together by a bioelectrical field,” said Kim. “It’s Seven’s planet all right. But those ships … I can’t get a reading.”

  Janeway ground her fists together in frustration. A quartet of ships ranged above the planet, firing directly at it. They ignored hails, so Janeway couldn’t do a damn thing about them, unless she got through to Seven. “What about Chakotay? Is he there? Are they firing at him?”

  “Can’t tell. Too much interference, and … wait a minute. I think I’ve got a piece of him, but there’s som
ething else. I’m reading an energy surge deep within the planet’s core. Looks like it’s concentrating, cohering into something, and it’s, it’s …”

  Janeway swung her head toward Kim. “What?”

  Kim looked up, mystified. “Captain, it’s reading trianic.”

  Trianic. It clicked in Janeway’s mind, like the final piece of a puzzle snapped into place: trianic, like the Komar. Dark-energy beings living in shadow. Beings who were shadow. And those mines on one side of a rift, leading to a space responsive to thought.

  Not a rift. Janeway’s eyes widened. It was a door, to a cage, and those ships, the ones firing on the planet, those ships …

  Then Seven said, “No!” And she said, “Die.”

  They were the first words Seven had spoken in what seemed an eternity, and the last Janeway heard.

  Seven brought down the forcefield.

  Janeway turned just in time to see Seven crumple to the deck.

  Chakotay couldn’t move. The alien bent over him, and Seven screamed in his mind but faintly now, like an echo dying in a well.

  Seven felt him slipping.

  The alien touched him. The sensors in Chakotay’s suit whirred; the synaptic-actuated nodes connected to his brain tingled as the alien passed into him.

  And touched … Seven.

  Then Seven knew exactly what to do. She gathered herself and sprang.

  One second. Two.

  At first, Chakotay thought that this was what it was to die. There was a sensation of something liquid flowing from his mind, like a presence taking flight, and he imagined, for one bizarre second, that his soul had gone.

  And then, suddenly, he knew, because his mind was silent.

  Six seconds.

  The alien screamed.

  Chakotay reached for it. “Seven, no!”

  Tuvok felt it next: a sudden push, as if Seven had straight-armed him in the chest. Pain exploded in his skull, and there was the sense of a door slamming shut, but not before he’d caught a fleeting glimpse of what she was doing, where she was going.

  “Doctor, she is breaking free of the meld.” His fingertips found his temples. “She is going to, to …”

  Seven! Tuvok collapsed his consciousness into a fine needle of thought he sent darting into the growing void. In one corner of his awareness, he heard Janeway’s hail and then the Doctor shouting something about Seven’s vital signs, but Tuvok didn’t care, because there wasn’t time to explain.

  Seven. Stop.

  Seven didn’t stop. Instead, she flowed: through the synaptic nodes of Chakotay’s suit, into the alien, at the speed of thought. And then she was in, because she was the alien.

  Die.

  The alien bucked. It fought.

  Seven. It was Tuvok, in the barest sliver of a thought. Seven, an illusion.

  “No,” she said aloud. “Die.”

  Die, she thought at the alien. Seven damped its bioelectrical energies; she dispelled its trianic cohesion.

  Die—Seven willed the rush of her blood to cease and her lungs to fail—die.

  She had crashed to the deck.

  Janeway was by her side.

  Chakotay had pulled himself to her body.

  The planet was screaming. They were all screaming.

  The air broke. The air shimmered.

  “I must,” she said.

  And then she died.

  Janeway thought Seven said something, but then her body dissolved and Seven was gone.

  The planet howled.

  “Got her!” said Kim. “Transporting to sickbay!”

  “Belay that! Keep her in the pattern buffer!” Janeway barked. “What about Chakotay?”

  “Scanning now … there!”

  Dear God, please be alive, please … “Beam him to sickbay!”

  Paris cried, “Hirogen ships, on attack vector! Shall I take evasive measures?”

  Janeway’s mind raced. “Negative!”

  “But, Captain!”

  “Forget them! Harry, piggyback one of those mines onto a photon torpedo! Get ready to fire!”

  “Where?”

  Janeway indicated the quartet of alien ships. “There. Follow their trajectory. Get me a target, Mr. Kim.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain!”

  “Mr. Paris, on my mark, warp nine!”

  “Heading?”

  Janeway planted her hands on her hips. “Dead ahead.”

  Paris gaped. “Into the planet? But …”

  “Do it!”

  “Target plotted. Torpedo armed,” said Kim. “Magnetic containment holding.”

  “Shields up! And … now, Mr. Kim! Fire!”

  “Torpedo away!”

  “Warp nine, Mr. Paris! Go!”

  It was night of the day Seven died.

  The Doctor said no more visitors, but Captain Janeway lingered, telling him how that last mine tore open subspace. And how, once they were out, those four ships had taken up positions. Like guards, she said: sentries, with mines to keep whatever it was in. But they didn’t know for sure and wouldn’t know, ever, because the ships never did return a hail. And as for the alien, how it had gotten out, if it was real, or an extension of the planet … Janeway shrugged. Chakotay’s guess was as good as hers. Maybe, later, when he felt up to talking about it, her …

  Janeway faltered, shrugged again. Then the Doctor shooed her away—again—so she left.

  Sickbay was dark, save for the glow of scanners above his biobed. He adjusted his body and heard the momentary quickening of the bleep-bleep-bleep that was the signal from his heart. His fingers crept gingerly down the length of his sternum, the edges of his ribs. He was sore, his muscles feeling a little pulpy, bruised. Slowly, cautiously, he filled his lungs, held air, let it out. Did it again, because it felt so good.

  There was a sharp rustle, to his left. He turned his head. From the glow of the monitors, he made out Seven’s eyes. They were open.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Where is Tuvok?”

  He grinned. Typical Seven. “Gone. He had a headache. You’re lucky he still had a piece of you.”

  “Indeed.”

  “I think it surprised him, hanging on to your … ah … katra.” Chakotay didn’t want to say “soul,” unsure if Seven thought she had one. “He didn’t believe in it before, you know, that time we ran into the Drayans.”

  “I suspect he will reevaluate his skepticism regarding extreme instances of synaptic pattern displacement.” She didn’t mention that she hadn’t known she could focus her neural patterns into a data stream and travel along synaptic-actuated nodes. Nor that cortical stimulation enhanced synaptic pattern retrieval through a Vulcan mind-meld.

  “How did you know? That the ships weren’t real, but she was?”

  “I didn’t. Part of my mind knew where to find you, but separating illusion from reality—the Borg, the Hirogen—was … difficult. The crew’s fears were realized, and I reacted accordingly.”

  “You mean, since you didn’t know which ships, if any, were real, better safe than sorry.”

  “An apt expression.”

  “It’s hard to know what was real, even now.”

  There was a sound of cloth moving against cloth as Seven shifted. “The mines. The rift. What happened to you. The planet.”

  “Her.”

  Seven was silent.

  He said, “I wonder why it chose me?”

  Then he answered his own question. “I guess we’ll never know.”

  “Perhaps,” Seven said, very gently, which was unusual for her, “it is no more complicated than what you wished she provided.”

  “Yes. Like”—and it was out of his mouth before he knew it—“when people fall in love.”

  He winced, waiting for her to say something withering, because Seven did that extremely well, too.

  But she said, after a pause, “Or when dreams come true, Commander.”

  It was so un-Seven Chakotay didn’t know what to say. A half hour later, when he finally did, Sev
en had fallen asleep. So Chakotay just watched her for a long time, thinking of dreams and shadows, in dark places.

  Strange New Worlds V

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