Myriad Universes - Infinity's Prism Part 27

Kilana quashed her panic, knowing what would happen if she appeared weak to the Jem'Hadar. "Open a rift. Take us back to normal s.p.a.ce." Maybe there was a way to increase the range of this s.h.i.+p and get back to the Dominion on her own.

But the Jem'Hadar's efforts proved futile. "The rift...it will not form! The singularity is being created," the Second said, "but it is closed. There is no pa.s.sage."

"Well, fix it!"

They jumped to comply. But they were fighters, not scientists. Nothing they did could make a difference. And the field was expanding too fast for them to escape at impulse.

Kilana was trapped. Not just in a different quadrant from her G.o.ds...but in a different universe. She was more alone than she had ever been.

Then a proximity alert sounded. "We are not alone," the pilot reported.

Kilana looked at the viewscreen and whimpered as the bios.h.i.+ps closed in.

16.

Chakotay watched from the city s.h.i.+p's pilot house as a singularity opened and Moskelarnan, Ryemaren, and finally Voyager came through. "It's good to see you back," he told Janeway once she checked in. "But what about Kes?" he added, since the science s.h.i.+p's first officer had been the one to speak. "Did she...change?"

"Well...yes and no. I'll explain later. Right now, I need to speak to Boothby."

"I'm here, Captain," the Groundskeeper said. "And itching to know what state you left my universe in."

"Intact, but changing. Our plan worked-the subs.p.a.ce field is expanding, but it will only block pa.s.sage between our universes. Your people should be in no further danger."

Boothby let out a heavy breath and blinked several times. "I don't know how to thank you," he said. "Spoken language has its charms, but it can be pretty limited."

"It was our pleasure. I'm just sorry we couldn't reach a real peace-or help your people with their other problems."

"I understand." He cleared his throat and turned to Chakotay. "Listen, son. I appreciate all you said about making a place for me in the Coalition. But I'm still a Groundskeeper. And outcast or no, my place is on the other side of that hole in s.p.a.ce out there. Nothing personal, but there are a lot of other Groundskeepers over there in the same fix as me. Maybe I can...bring back some of the lessons I learned here, help them figure out a new role they can play in the order of things. A lot of people have been lost in the war, after all; maybe we can adapt to their roles, maybe even create some new ones. Find new homes, like you all have done. Though it won't be easy to get them to listen to me."

Chakotay smiled. "I believe you can do it. You haven't let your universe down yet."

Boothby looked back at the viewscreen. "Umm, Captain, any chance I could take your field-fiddling contraption back with me? Seems to me I can use it as a bargaining chip. Maybe they won't kill me or ignore me if I can offer them control of their own borders."

"Sounds like an excellent idea," Janeway replied. "With the...the Torres Generator," she said with a smile, "you should be able to adjust the boundary conditions of fluidic s.p.a.ce however you like. Maybe you won't have to stay cut off from us forever. But you'll have control of whether and how you interact with us. No more fear of invasion or temporal doubling."

"Good fences make good neighbors," Boothby acknowledged-but then he gave an impish smirk. "As long as they have gates in them."

Chakotay shook his hand. "I'm glad that other Chakotay wasn't the only one who got to know you. I think the real Boothby would be proud to have you as his double."

"Well, that may be-but I can't wait to get out of this skinny body and put on my swim fins again. This walking business is hard on the knees."

Janeway looked around Voyager's sickbay, amazed at the faces who looked back at her. Chakotay, Harry, Annika, the Doctor, B'Elanna, Neelix, and Kes, all together with her once again. She'd never expected it to happen again. Indeed, she was still rather surprised that Kes was there at all. "So you're not going to turn into a ball of light any time soon?" Harry was asking the Ocampa.

Kes smiled, and that alone brought more light to the room. She did seem bigger somehow, more luminous, though physically she was the same as ever. "I think I could if I wanted to," she said. "But I'm not ready to try that just yet."

"So what was different here than in the other timeline?" Janeway asked.

"Time, basically," the Doctor said. "Our Kes has had over a year and a half to adjust to her first dose of power enhancement before getting her second, whereas the other got the full dose all at once and was apparently overwhelmed by it. It's a.n.a.logous to the way a muscle that's been exercised and conditioned can more easily lift a weight that would cause a less conditioned muscle to give way from fatigue."

"So you have as much power as that other you," Annika said, "but more control over it?" She looked envious and curious, as if hoping that Kes could help her gain more control over the Borg presence that still haunted her.

Kes tilted her golden-tressed head. "Not more control, so much as different," she said, and to Janeway it seemed she was speaking from certainty, as though she were in communication with her other self. "I came at it by a different route. I could leave this body if I wanted, but only when I wanted-and I'm confident I could re-create it again."

"If you can re-create it," Neelix asked, his voice hushed, "does that mean you could also..."

"Halt its aging? Or reverse it?" She beamed, and for a moment she was a younger Kes again, a slender waif with close-shorn hair baring her elegantly scalloped ears. Then she changed back to her familiar tumble of curls and the subtly more rounded face and figure of the woman she was today. "Don't worry, Neelix. I won't ever leave you again. Not permanently, anyway." She grinned. "There's so much more I can explore now than I ever could before. I only wish I knew how to communicate most of it to you all."

"Just don't let it go to your head," B'Elanna said. "Power has a way of corrupting, you know."

Neelix glared at her. "I don't think you remember who you're talking about."

"No, Neelix, she has a point. It's easy to lose your way with power like this. That's why I'm so glad I'm still with you-all of you," Kes said, taking in B'Elanna. "You're my family. You remind me of who I am."

Janeway took her hand, as proud of Kes as she would be of a daughter. "I think if anyone can be trusted with this kind of power, it's you, Kes."

The Ocampa-if that was still what she was-studied Janeway. "I could probably find a way to take you all back to the Alpha Quadrant, if you'd like. Not right away, but I'm sure I could figure something out. After all, the Coalition is safe now."

Janeway looked around at her current and former crew, and saw a similar sentiment in all their eyes. "I still miss my family back on Earth," she said. "I miss the old familiar Starfleet, the old familiar stars. I wouldn't mind seeing them again someday. But if I did...it would only be for a visit.

"I thought I'd lost something I'd never have again-all of you, working together as a team, as a family. But it was all of us, playing our own separate roles in pursuit of a common goal, who made this victory possible. We didn't lose our family-it just evolved.

"And now that I see that...I'm finally able to admit something I never could before.

"That what we've built here in the Delta Quadrant is too precious to abandon. That we've all come farther by staying in one place than we could have by chasing a distant star. That where we are now-and who we're with-matters more than where we came from."

She took Chakotay's hand in one of hers, Kes's in the other, and took in the rest with her gaze. "That I am home."

Epilogue.

February 2376 Starfleet Headquarters, San Francisco Earth "Admiral Paris." Janeway beamed as she shook her old mentor's hand. "It's a privilege to be here."

Owen Paris returned the handshake and the smile, though the latter was subdued. He'd had a few months to adjust to the news of his son's death, sad news that Kes had brought on her first journey to the Federation along with the happy news of Voyager's survival and its crew's accomplishments and discoveries. But the loss had still diminished him, as it had Tuvok's family, Carey's wife and son, and all the others who had had to face the loss of their loved ones a second time. Janeway hoped they could take comfort in the knowledge that those loved ones still lived and thrived in other realities-or at least had done so as of the last contact with the Groundskeepers. There had been no word from them since Boothby's return to fluidic s.p.a.ce. Apparently they were still busy cleaning up their affairs, and might be for a long time to come.

"It's a privilege to greet you," Paris told her. "Except, of course, that you're not really here."

"Transgalactic holoconferencing," Janeway replied. "The next best thing to being there." Recently, Voyager had succeeded in tracking down a relay station in the galaxy-spanning communications network that the Hirogen used to stay in contact with one another. Mister Malken had managed to persuade his fellow Hirogen to permit the use of their network, and from there it was simply a matter of adapting the holographic telepresence system the Doctor had rigged for B'Elanna. Now, it was possible to travel any place that was in range of the network and that had holotechnology available, all without leaving the Coalition. And now that Starfleet had built a relay station to bridge the Hirogen network and the UFP communications grid, it meant the entire Federation was just a holosuite away.

Which was good, because Janeway wasn't in any condition for a long journey right now-at least, not until five months from now, when her and Chakotay's daughter would be born. She looked down at the holographic representation of her swelling abdomen, looking forward to the moment when the diplomatic obligations were over and her mother and sister could come in to meet her, and to feel the kicking-by proxy-of the newest member of their family (and hopefully the first of many to be born in the Delta Quadrant), little Shannon Sekaya Janeway.

She looked forward to introducing them to the baby's father as well, but Chakotay was busy with affairs of state. The Voth had been satisfied with a formal statement of apology for his act of dissidence rather than a resignation, perhaps because knowledge of the Voth's origins on Earth had spread too widely through their populace for the regime to keep denying the reality. Especially since it would now be easy for any Voth scholar or student to pay holographic visits to the old neighborhood.

The admiral followed her gaze and smiled. "You've achieved some remarkable things on your end of the galaxy. On both the personal and the interstellar scale. I only wish the news we had for you was happier."

It had been a shock to learn, upon Kes's return, that the Federation had been immersed in a years-long war with the Dominion. "The important thing is that you won the war," she said. "My only regret about being where I am now, though, is that we couldn't be there to help."

"Your friend Kes helped us a great deal," Paris reminded her. "Who knows how much damage the Breen would have done if she hadn't been here to repel their attack? And who knows how the war might have gone if her display of power hadn't scared the Breen into abandoning their alliance?"

After saving San Francisco, Kes had been tempted to intervene further, but she was still feeling out the extent of her powers and hadn't wanted to risk draining herself and becoming stranded, leaving little Thomas, Tuvok, and Alixia without their mother. At four months old, the half-Ocampa, half-Talaxian triplets were nearly half-grown, but still not ready to function without her guidance, especially as their telepathic powers began to manifest. Kes had also made the painful choice to apply her own Prime Directive to the situation, recognizing that she did not have the right to make the Federation's and the Dominion's decisions for them. Though Janeway keenly felt her sense of guilt, she now had more faith than ever that Kes could be trusted with the remarkable powers she had gained.

Still, Kes had made a difference. The Breen's withdrawal had deprived the Dominion of a powerful ally and embarra.s.sed them before their Carda.s.sian subjects, giving a much-needed boost to a fledgling rebellion within Carda.s.sia. The Dominion had been forced to retreat and retrench in the face of a combined a.s.sault from the Federation, Klingons, and Romulans-an alliance that astonished Janeway, who'd thought it had been difficult enough to get Vostigye, Nyrians, and Tarkan working together. A Starfleet doctor had soon discovered that the Founders of the Dominion were suffering from a deadly disease, no doubt a factor in their desperation to win the war at any cost. The Federation, negotiating from a position of strength, had offered them a cure in exchange for their retreat from the Alpha Quadrant. And so the war had ended, probably sooner and less bloodily than it would have if Kes had not acted when she had. Though of course every war had its aftermath: Carda.s.sia was now in the throes of civil war, while Klingon chancellor Gowron's absorption with the military occupation of Carda.s.sia had left him vulnerable to a coup by a rebel named Morjod, leaving the Klingon Empire in similar chaos. And there was no guarantee the Dominion would stay on their side of the wormhole; indeed, many in Starfleet feared their resentment at being indebted to "solids" for their survival (and their suspicions, no doubt unfounded, that the Federation had infected them in the first place) might compel them to attempt a later conquest in order to save face. Janeway hoped the Coalition's experience in negotiating with the Voth could help avert a second Dominion War.

"And the rest of you made a big difference yourselves," Paris went on. "If your Groundskeepers had invaded us, there's no way we could've survived a war on two fronts. The whole galaxy owes you a debt.

"And more importantly," he went on, "you supported and advanced the Federation's ideals at a time when we in the Alpha Quadrant had to concentrate on survival alone. In so doing, you've built something very special and given us all renewed hope for the future of the Federation."

"Well, I think that's my cue," Neelix (or his hologram) said, stepping forward. Next to Paris, the Federation's amba.s.sador stepped forward as well, ready to accept transmission of the doc.u.ment his counterpart held. Amba.s.sador Neelix cleared his throat and began to speak.

"On behalf of the member worlds and habitats of the Delta Coalition, and in the spirit of galaxywide cooperation and friends.h.i.+p...I hereby present our pet.i.tion for members.h.i.+p in the United Federation of Planets."

Blinking away tears at his words, Janeway looked down and laid a hand on her belly. Welcome home, she told her daughter. Welcome home.

Seeds of Dissent James Swallow For Pete and Nicola, who both understand that the best reality is the one you make for yourself.

1.

Defiance moved through the darkness, a predator on the hunt, visible light bending and reshaping around her hull. The s.h.i.+p was a wraith, a ghostly knife slipping unseen toward its target, ready for the kill.

The command deck was running with battle lighting, a deep red that gave every console a patina of crimson, like spilled blood. From his control bench on the command dais, the wars.h.i.+p's captain glanced down at his tanned, strong hands and studied them. Clean, he mused, hardworked and resilient, but clean. There was no trace of the blood he had shed with those hands, no scarring, no disfigurement; but then, it was the nature of his kind. He, and all his kindred, were embodiments of the quest to become perfect. Flaws, even of the smallest sort, were things to be overcome, not to be dwelt upon.

He looked away, peering briefly into a viewing pod on an armature. The display showed a map of the Bajor Sector, the lines of demarcation and jurisdiction for the territories of each of the local commanders, and the minefields that ringed the Carda.s.sian Control Zone. A glowing glyph signifying Defiance's position placed them at the umbra of the Ajir system. The device sensed his scrutiny, and without waiting for his orders, it presented him with a data-digest on Ajir; it was an unremarkable, uninhabited collection of rocks around a nondescript sun. At first glance, there seemed to be little of interest there to a s.h.i.+p of the line.

The rest of the tactical map remained static. Their target did not present itself, even though he knew for certain that it was out there. He threw a look across the chamber. "We will not return to home base without a victory," he said, addressing his crew. The commander's words were level and they were not spoken in censure; but anyone who had served aboard the Defiance for more than a few weeks knew that he seldom raised his voice, seldom railed at his crew or denigrated their rare failures. He had no need to. His cool disappointment, and the inevitable punishment details that would follow, were enough to keep them focused on their duties. "If that means we stay out here until we are on quarter-rations, then so be it," he went on. "We will not give them up."

In the red shadows, a woman cleared her throat with studied care. "Princeps, if I may have permission to speak?" He gave her a curt nod and she continued, absently tracing the line of a copper torc around her throat. She was shorter than the rest of the command crew, but her height was not all that differentiated the woman from them; whereas the others wore uniforms of ornate cut, her clothing was simplistic, just an oversuit with a nondescript tunic. She seemed awkward and out of place. "The data-sets we received before we set sail were several days old. It is quite possible that the rebels have already left this region, or perhaps gone to ground. I would respectfully suggest that-"

The tactical officer, a stocky man with a severe military haircut, turned in his chair to glare at her. "What gives you the right to question my work?" he demanded. "You should remember your place!" The officer looked up at his commander. "Lord, with all due respect, perhaps you might keep your helot silent unless she has something of use to add to the day."

"Optio," said the commander, putting a hard emphasis on the other man's rank, "she is here because she has a duty to perform, just like you. Do not sully yourself by turning your anger on her. Just find me my target." When the tactician didn't reply straightaway, the commander's lips thinned and he leaned forward. "Optio!"

The officer held up a hand. "A moment, sir." Something s.h.i.+mmered on the officer's console and he turned his head, the flicker of a cold smile there and then gone on the other man's lips. "My apologies. It looks like we have no issue after all, Princeps." He tapped a key and the command deck's primary screen altered to show a three-dimensional strategic plot. "We have them."

There, visible through a slight haze of stretched starlight, was a spindly s.h.i.+p with downswept wings, resembling a bird as it took to the air. It moved cautiously at a low warp velocity, clearly attempting to avoid detection.

The commander saw the woman shrink a little, chagrined. He ignored her reaction and brought his palms together beneath his chin. "Good. We will close to engagement range. What is the status of our cloak?"

At the console to his right, the commander's adjutant broke his silence. "Unchanged, Princeps," said the ebon-skinned youth. "The rebels have no idea we are here."

"We are certain it is them?" murmured the woman, but no one answered her.

"Tactician," the commander said, drawing himself up. "Bring the nadion pulse antenna to bear on their drive chamber. I want them disabled on the first pa.s.s."

"At your command, aye."

He gestured with a wave of his hand. "Commit."

The blast seemed to come from nowhere. There was barely a motion of perturbed radiation from the concealing sphere generated by the Defiance's cloaking device before an emerald rod of light connected the unseen wars.h.i.+p with the rebel transport. The nadion pulse, tuned to filter through conventional deflector s.h.i.+elds, bathed the other vessel's aft quarter in a wash of hard energy.

Organic forms inside the strike zone perished instantly, bodies overloaded in a concentrated blast that destroyed neurons and electrochemical impulses. The same field effect blew out dozens of duotronic conduits and smothered the churning matter/antimatter reaction in the s.h.i.+p's warp core like a hand snuffing out a candle.

Automatic safety protocols snapped into place, and with a sudden, punis.h.i.+ng deceleration, the rebel vessel crashed out of warp and into the unforgiving reality of normal s.p.a.ce. Listing, spilling streams of crystallized breathing gas from vents in the hull, the smaller s.h.i.+p was immediately caught by Ajir's gravity and began a slow drift into the system.

Defiance, her first strike a complete success, followed suit and dropped below lightspeed. The cloak disengaged, allowing the lethal shape of the wars.h.i.+p to be revealed. She came in on a fast, showy arc, her hull shedding energy in a glowing halo, her gun ports open and phaser maws drawn; it was a calculated display designed to unman any surviving rebels still reeling from the surprise attack.

There were codes of engagement that demanded protocol be followed, that the wars.h.i.+p's ident.i.ty be declared and the usual offer made, even though the likelihood of acceptance was near to nil. Still, rules were rules. Across a subs.p.a.ce waveband, the commander's voice issued out to the rebels.

"Attention. I am Princeps Julian Bas.h.i.+r, of the Earthfleet Stars.h.i.+p Defiance, a duly appointed naval officer and empowered agent of Quadrant Command. You will immediately disarm yourselves and surrender your vessel without resistance. All citizen and bondsman privileges have been revoked. As of this moment, you have no rights."

Julian chose the short sword and clipped the scabbard to the molecular adhesion pads on the back of his torso armor, securing his a.s.sault phaser in a holster at his right hip. He went without a helmet, instead fixing a communicator monocle-headset over his eye; it was not good battle practice, as...o...b..ien often reminded him, but the tactician was inclined to be rule-bound, and Bas.h.i.+r knew that there was something to be said about letting an enemy see your face. A man of the rank of princeps should not go about concealed behind the blank mask of blast armor; his face should be known-known and respected.

He joined O'Brien and the rest of the boarding party at the teleport pad. The other officer gave him a curt nod and signaled the controller. A silent blaze of seething red enveloped them; Defiance's interior reformed into the dank, smoke-choked corridor of the rebel transport, and they were aboard.

Julian turned to give O'Brien his orders, and something moved at the corner of his eye. With a guttural cry, a figure threw itself off an overhead gantry and fell at him. Bas.h.i.+r registered the keen silver shape of a naked dagger in his attacker's hand, the accelerated neural pathways of his mind processing the threat in a fraction of a second, reflex turning him to defend against it. He pivoted on his heel and his hands shot out to block the attack; one snared the forearm that held the knife, the other clamped about a throat of soft flesh, cutting off his a.s.sailant's war cry in mid-voice. Julian let the man's momentum do the work for him, distantly registering the nasal ridges that identified his target as a Bajoran, spinning him about. He felt bones in the attacker's wrist snap like twigs under his viselike grip, and heard the man gasp for air through a strangled throat. Bas.h.i.+r let go, and the Bajoran tumbled headlong into a stanchion, striking his head with a dull cracking noise. Julian turned away, his enemy dismissed, knowing that the man would never rise again.

O'Brien and the rest of the men in the optio's cohort were quickly dispatching other rebels foolish enough to try and engage them in hand-to-hand combat. Bas.h.i.+r watched the tactician slay a Carda.s.sian with a single downward slash of his bat'leth. The gray-faced alien wailed and dropped to the deck, slumping into a pool of himself. Bas.h.i.+r's second-in-command had taken the curved weapon from the body of a Klingon he had killed in single combat many years ago, in a duel on the surface of Ixion. Julian considered the weapon to be crude and inelegant, but it was certainly quite lethal and it had its uses-rather like the Klingons themselves.

The kills were fast and efficient, just as the princeps expected. He gave a grim nod of approval. "Any sign of Kira?"

"Negative," said the optio, and his face soured. "It is possible she may not be on board."

"We shall see," he began. "Leave it with me. Take men and move to the engine core. You will not allow them to scuttle the s.h.i.+p."

"Aye, lord." The tactical officer barked out orders in the clipped snarls of battle language and ran aft, with black-armored troopers at his heels.

Bas.h.i.+r paused, surveying the chamber. The craft seemed old but well-maintained, and he frowned at the thought. The rebels were supposed to be poorly equipped, lacking in support and materiel; but even a cursory look at this s.h.i.+p revealed otherwise. For all the a.s.surances that the Bajoran government was giving Quadrant Command, someone among them was still helping the rebels prosecute their guerrilla war. Sisko will not be pleased, he mused, filing away his impressions for later dictation into the mission report his commander would demand.

"Lord?" Tiber, the squad leader, beckoned him over to where an olive-skinned Bajoran male lay panting on the deck. The man's face was darkening with a bruise where a blow to the head had put him down. "This one is still alive."

Bas.h.i.+r bent at the knee and put his face close to the rebel's, examining the contusion. "That is unsightly. You may have a concussion. You should probably have a doctor look at it." He reached out and took the front of the Bajoran's tunic in his fist, and without any effort, he lifted him off the deck until his boots dangled in the air. The princeps studied him coldly. "Understand me," he began, "you are going to die here unless you answer my questions."

The Bajoran made a gasping noise.