Rerouting through the phaser couplings, she drew a deep
breath and activated the transporter circuit. She needed
that eight hundred megawatts only long enough to make one
transport.
Just five seconds, to dematerialize her father and Justin,
transfer their molecular patterns to the storage buffer,
and rematerialize them. It had to be possible. Little by
little, the beam gained power. It was working! Just seconds
more, and she'd have them both safely on land, next to her.
The emergency medical kit was in her section of the cabin;
she could stabilize their injuries and keep them warm until
a rescue ship found them. They were being tracked on
Starfleet scanners and it shouldn't be too long before help
arrived. The annular confinement beam power inched upward
in maddening slow increments . . . five hundred eighty
megawatts . . . six hundred ninety . . . seven hundred 300
forty . . . Valuable seconds ticked by as Kathryn
concentrated with all her intensity on the readings,
willing them to reach the needed number. Seven hundred
seventy-five . . . seven hundred ninety . . . and then
finally, the beam power registered eight hundred megawatts.
She could transport them both. Quickly, she initiated
automatic pattern lock, bypassing the diagnostic process in
order to save precious milliseconds, manually activated the
annular confinement beam, and whirled to meet them. The
ship's fuselage had disappeared, sunk beneath the inky
waters of the alien sea. And her father and Justin were not
materializing next to her. She turned and reentered the
commands; surely she could pull them from beneath the
water's surface. But though she went through the process
time after time, endlessly, with every combination and
permutation of commands, there was no response.
She had lost them both.
She stood, numbed, staring at the black pool of water,
churning from the upheaval it had endured. It was a long
time before she became aware of the pain in her broken leg,
and when she did, she began to stamp that tortured leg
repeatedly on the ground, trying to create an agony that
would surmount the one she wasn't sure she could live with.
When that proved impossible, she'd simply found a way to
bury that pain so deeply that she could go on.
For over a decade, as she rose through the ranks of
Starfleet, as her love for Mark deepened, as she became a
captain and her friendship with the remarkable Tuvok
flourished, as she took command of Voyager and was swept
into their phenomenal adventure in the Delta Quadrant-for
all that time, the bitter truth of her failure had lain
enclosed in her memory, sealed like a plague bacillus
which, if it were unleashed, might destroy her.
.how then, to save herself now? The vile truth, bubbling
up like acid, could never be banished again; it would eat
at her every minute of every day, fouling her mind and
corroding her spirit. No. No, that simply couldn't happen.
Too many people depended on her, too many needed her
strength, her indomitability. She mustn't fail them. The
memory must be neutralized. This wasn't a conscious thought
so much as a fully formed intuition that sprang from her
mind like Athena from Zeus. There was only one way to strip
it of its awful dominion: use it. After all, the locked
door was open now, and the room could be swept clean.
Bright light and fresh air could blow through it, chasing
darkness and cobwebs. The dream, she was sure, would never
come again. And so there must be a way to turn its pain to
power.
She was on her feet without realizing it, moving toward
the conn, where Paris was still working to move them away
from the star-how long had it been? It seemed a lifetime
had passed since she'd moved into the mists of memory, but
she became aware that only seconds had gone by; the crew
was still engaged in assessing damage and assigning repair
crews.
"All stop, Mr. Paris," she said, and Tom's tousled head
swung around to her in surprise.
"Captain?"
"We're not leaving the away team. We're going to go back
and get them." Now Chakotay was approaching, brow furrowed
in puzzlement and concern.
"Do you have a plan, Captain?" he queried.
Janeway stared at him. No, no plan, just flinty
determination. But sheer grit wouldn't solve their problem,
wouldn't get them past the fiercely protective Tokath. How
was that possible?
She felt every eye on her as the crew waited, trustingly,
sure their captain had come up with an idea. Her mind
seemed to flutter, agitated, starting to panic. She'd made
an announcement that was foolhardy, made it with sheer
bravado. Now she must back it up-but how? Suddenly she was
four years old again, sitting in her father's study, trying
to figure out the elevens. She had closed her eyes then and
focused, visualizing the situation, and the answer had
presented itself to her. The answer was always there, it
just had to be accessed. She closed her eyes now and
visualized the Tokath, reviewing what she knew about them.
She imagined them as they must have been long ago, fierce
protectors of a gentle people, sealing the planet from
intruders and allowing them all to live in peace.
Until the dreadful accident. She saw in her mind's eye the
sun's unexpected eruption-undoubtedly a continuation of the
shedding of matter from its atmosphere, the very process
which created the nebula in which they had taken refuge-and
the havoc it created in the planet's atmosphere.
She envisioned the consternation in the population and
their desperate plan to save the Tokath, the fierce
creatures which had kept them safe from harm for so long
....
Her eyes opened and she saw the bridge crew watching her,
patiently, trustingly. And as though their confidence were
a vast wellspring of positive energy, feeding and nurturing
her, the plan came to her.
"Dr. Trakis, the environmental disaster that drove the
Tokath into hibernation-it happened as this star was
shedding its outer atmosphere?" The Trabe looked at her
curiously. "That's my understanding. A massive eruption
near the star's equator sent a dense cloud of plasma
directly at the planet, ionizing its atmosphere."
Janeway turned to Chakotay. "We can cause an eruption like
that. Re-create the event that sent the Tokath into
hibernation."
She could see Chakotay take the idea and work it over in
his mind. "Our energy systems are pretty much depleted. I'm
not sure how we'd be able to create such a massive
eruption."
"A narrow nadion beam, focused on an instability in the
star's photosphere, might initiate a chain reaction."
"I wouldn't want to be anywhere in the neighborhood of an
explosion like that."
"We won't be. We'll go to warp as soon as the instability
goes critical." "What about the away team? Will they be in
any danger?" "If we time the eruption with the rotation
rate of the star, we should be able to create a plasma
ejection that grazes the planet's outer atmosphere, but
doesn't ionize it. That should be enough to scare the
Tokath back into hibernation."
He grinned at her. It was a desperate, seat-of-the-pants
plan, full of jeopardy with no guarantee of success, and
she knew Chakotay was aware of that. And loved it anyway.
"What are we waiting for?" he quipped. And so they set to
the task, making the critical calculations necessary to
time this bold maneuver. Chakotay scanned his console
intently, then reported, "I'm noting a gravitational
instability in the photosphere."
"Rollins, target the nadion beam to those coordinates."
"Targeting." And the deep blue nadion beam sprang from the
ship and knifed into the burning gases of the yellow star.
Janeway imagined the process, as the nadions collided with
the particles of the sun: hydrogen, helium, lithium,
beryllium. Each tiny collision would produce more
collisions, which would in turn create still more, fusing
atoms and generating heat energy-a quickly spreading chain
reaction that would gather immense power in a matter of
seconds, further disturbing the gravitational instability
until it must release the massive energy buildup.
"Three hundred megajoules per cubic meter and rising,
Captain," said Rollins tersely.
"Four hundred ten . . . four ninety . . .
five hundred thirty . . . six hundred-it's going critical."
"Go to warp, Mr. Paris."
Tom worked the controls swiftly and the ship leapt into
warp just ahead of the monumental nuclear explosion. When
they were at a safe distance, they put the distant star on
screen at highest magnification.
It was an awesome sight. The force of the chain reaction
exceeded by many times the energy of a warp-core explosion.
Arcs of plasma hundreds of thousands of kilometers long
projected from the corona in a promethean display of power,
as though a giant were flinging huge fireballs through the
heavens.
Not one word was spoken on the bridge as the eruptions
continued. When, finally, they began to subside, Janeway
turned to Rollins. "Do sensors detect any life signs around
the planet?"
"Going to extreme long-range sensors . . .
I'm reading life signs . . . and Captain-it looks like
they're in retreat."
"What are the atmospheric conditions on the planet?"
"There's a lot of high-altitude turbulence. Radiation
levels are rising."
"Chakotay, will our shields protect us if we move in to
investigate?" "We won't be able to call on the metaphasic
program, but I think we can channel enough energy to the
main shields to be safe."
"Then let's do it. Mr. Paris, move us in, slowly, toward
the planet. Be ready to get out fast."
"Yes, ma'am."
And the sleek ship turned to and headed back toward the
system, Janeway keeping careful watch over radiation
levels, until they could put the planet on high
magnification and get an image on the viewscreen. What they
saw brought the first hope, the first semblance of joy
they'd had in hours. A stream of brown, shelled bodies was
flowing toward the surface of the planet. The Tokath were
going home.
As Voyager-moved closer, the crew saw the Kazon ship,
listing oddly, its hull riddled with cavities where the
creatures had eaten through and descended into the ship.
What happened then was best left to the imagination, but
the pocked ship was undoubtedly now an orbiting graveyard.
The Tokath were flooding toward the surface, the dark
miasma retracing its path of the last hour.
Janeway's gamble that they retained a memory of the
disastrous conditions that had prevailed so long ago-but
would seem like a recent event to them because they'd been
in stasis-had apparently been validated.
Their retreat, however, was just a first step in the
ultimate goal: rescuing the away team. And as yet, Janeway
had no clue as to their whereabouts or their condition. The
nagging thought that they could have suffered the same fate
as the Kazon was one she kept to one side of her mind.
She'd come this far and she wasn't about to let quibbling
doubts stop her now.
Many of Tuvok's team had fallen into an exhausted slumber,
the events of the last nine hours having taken a heavy
toll. Tuvok and Kim, however, were determined to analyze
and master the technology that was operative in this
strange chamber, and to gain control over the entrance.
They couldn't simply stay cooped up in this room forever;
somehow, they had to find a way out of the underground
labyrinth and make contact with Voyager.
But so far, their efforts had been futile. Harry had tried
every approach to alien technology he'd ever studied and
quite a few that he invented there on the spot. And
finally, he decided to try the one thing his scientific
mind had rejected. "Sir," he said to Tuvok, "it's possible
the technology is telepathically controlled. Maybe you
could try accessing the program that's controlling this
chamber."
Tuvok's eyebrow lifted slightly, but he immediately put
his fingers on the panel they believed to contain the
controls, and brought his formidable Vulcan telepathic
powers to bear on them. But after several minutes, he
removed his hands and turned to Harry. "I am unable to make
a telepathic connection," he stated.
Harry moved immediately toward Kes, nestled in Neelix's
arms, and roused her from a drowsy slumber. "What is it,
Harry?" He repeated what he'd said to Tuvok, and Kes
listened intently. "I'm not sure how to do that," she
replied.
"Neither am I. But you seemed to have some kind of
intuitive connection to whatever was happening hereyou were
drawn toward this room for no clear reason, you heard