Myriad Universes - Infinity's Prism Part 17

"Oh?"

"Being here reminds me that the Vostigye are a whole civilization of refugees. So I wonder sometimes why many of you have so much trouble accepting other refugees."

"We worked hard to create the civilization we have," the minister said. "We're deeply invested in it, and justifiably proud. Many fear letting it become diluted or changed." He heard a hint of defensiveness, hastily quashed, in his friend's voice. Dobrye had grown up in a staunchly Preservationist family, her love of exploration and novelty overcoming their insularity and leading her to a prominent post in the Progressive government. Though she disagreed with their politics, she still cared for them and strove to understand them. Chakotay wished there were more like her in the Vostigye government, people who could serve as bridges between the ideological factions.

"But isn't that why so many refugees come here?" he asked her. "Because they admire what you've created? Doesn't it stand to reason that they'd want to help preserve it too?"

Dobrye chuckled. "I'm not the one you have to convince, my friend. But your little speech would play very well on the net. All the more reason why you should accept my offer to run."

He smirked and shook his head. "Sorry, Dobrye. I already have a const.i.tuency to look out for."

"Your crewmates have adapted very well. They can take care of themselves-especially with a tireless advocate like Neelix. And they've proven themselves capable, intelligent, responsible individuals, everything the Preservationists say refugees can't be. But there are still laws in place that hold them back. You could help to change that."

"And if a Voyager crewman joins the establishment, it's a great public-relations win for the Progressives."

"True," Dobrye conceded. "It proves that outsiders can a.s.similate and contribute meaningfully. And that can only help in your quest to build a regional alliance."

Chakotay pondered. "You have a point. But I'd prefer you didn't use the word 'a.s.similate.'"

"Apologies. It was impolitic."

"No, that's all right." The problem was his, not hers. He still lay awake at nights, imagining the faces of Riley and the others in the Cooperative. They were so proud of what they had done, breaking free of the Borg, forming their own new society that allowed both individuality and collective thought, convinced it would bring them the best of both. Chakotay had doubted their good intentions after they had imposed their control on his mind and forced him to help create that new interlink. But he had hoped their innate humanity would let them grow beyond that mistake and build something of value, perhaps something that could keep the Borg in check.

But now they would never have the chance. Six months ago, they had been attacked by Species 8472 as part of the extracosmic invaders' genocidal war against all Borg. They had applied the creativity the Collective was incapable of, devising a nanoprobe defense not unlike the one the Doctor had developed to cure Harry, though less effective as an offensive weapon. They had succeeded in driving off the 8472. Unfortunately, that had brought the attention of the Collective, which had come in force and rea.s.similated them, wiping out a whole nascent civilization to protect its own hide. The nanoprobe defense had let the Borg rally and prolong the war past its expected duration. That was a mixed blessing, for it provided more time to build an alliance, and might leave the victor even weaker. On the other hand, the prolonged fighting might force the victor to become tougher and more creative, harder to defeat.

But what kept Chakotay up at night was the question: what if he'd gone along with Kathryn's original plan? Species 8472 might have been defeated, and Riley and the Cooperative might have been spared. Of course, he couldn't know that; it was possible that the Borg would have remained a stronger threat and a.s.similated the Cooperative anyway, along with the Vostigye and everyone else in the region. But he couldn't help wondering all the same.

Dobrye stroked his shoulder; through the fabric, he could feel the odd texture of her grooming pads. "Very well-enough talk of politics. We came here to do some archaeology. To help you learn about the history of your new home."

Chakotay nodded and joined her in heading down toward the city again. It was some time before he realized that the phrase "your new home" hadn't felt wrong to him at all.

Kathryn Janeway stood on a catwalk in Kosnelye's s.p.a.ceport hub, staring up at the sight of Voyager suspended in the drydock cradle that had been its home for the past eight months. "Stood" was an imprecise term, though, for only the gentlest rotational gravity held her against the catwalk's surface. The Vostigye had grown accustomed to varying gravity conditions, and thus did not employ gravity plating as ubiquitously as Starfleet did, although there was a force field around the catwalk to contain a shirtsleeve atmosphere. She caught a stray strand of hair that waved before her face and tucked it back into her bun.

Her regular inspections of her ship's exterior drove home how much had changed in its rebuilding. The warp nacelles were still startling to see. Although one original nacelle had remained, a ship could not work with mismatched nacelles, so it had been dismantled, its components recycled where possible. The new nacelles were comparable in performance to the old, but had a different, more Vostigye aesthetic. They were also permanently mounted on right-angled pylons not unlike those of an Excelsior-or Amba.s.sador-cla.s.s ship, since the Vostigye and Voyager's surviving engineers had devised a solution to the subs.p.a.ce erosion problem that was simpler than the original variable-geometry nacelles.

Her eyes moved to the underside of the forward hull, which looked oddly vacant without the contours of the aeroshuttle at its center. Of course, there had only been a nonfunctional mock-up there originally, installed as ballast when Voyager had been rushed into action for that three-week mission to the Badlands. Tom Paris had always wanted to build a real aeroshuttle, insisting that the ship's industrial replicators could fabricate the necessary parts. But power reserves had been insufficient for some time, and then the damage inflicted in various battles had required using the mock-up as a sort of splint for the hull, until it became too integrated into the ship's structure to be safely removed without drydock facilities. Tom had begun reworking his plans with a whole new shuttle in mind, but he had died before they had progressed beyond the most embryonic stage. And now, when Voyager was finally being rebuilt in drydock, the aeroshuttle had needed to be scuttled altogether due to insufficient funds. Janeway regretted that deeply. It would've been a lovely tribute to Tom's memory.

"She's shaping up nicely." It was Chakotay. He must have arrived alongside her while she was engrossed in her ship.

"She's still not what she was," Janeway said. "We've had to make so many compromises."

"I prefer to think of them as adaptations. Even improvements. The Vostigye's automatic repair systems are impressive."

She studied him. "I hear that you might be running for the Vostigye Legislature."

He chuckled. "Gossip travels fast-and grows along the way. I just told Dobrye Gavanri that she made a couple of good points when she tried to recruit me."

"Still...you didn't say no to her."

"She did make good points. We and the other refugees could always use another advocate in the government."

"So you're considering it?"

He seemed surprised by the disbelief in her tone. "I'm keeping an open mind."

"Don't you think you should've consulted me before you gave a high-ranking member of the government the impression that you might run?"

"I didn't mean to give any such impression. And I'm happy to discuss the issue with you now, if it's that important to you."

"What's important to me is that you don't begin to lose track of our mission."

Chakotay frowned. "I haven't lost track, Kathryn. Our mission has just changed."

"Our mission is still to get our crew home."

"In the long term, yes. But it's not like we were planning to take off and abandon these people the moment Voyager was s.p.a.ceworthy again. We've committed to helping them defend themselves against whoever wins the war. We never would've gotten even partial government funding to rebuild Voyager otherwise. And we can't exactly resume course for the Alpha Quadrant when one implacable enemy or the other is still in the way."

She held up her hands, conceding the point. "I know that. It's just..." She shook her head. "I look around, and it seems that more and more of us are drifting away. I could understand when Telfer and Tal Celes resigned-they weren't Starfleet material to begin with; they never would've lasted on Voyager if there'd been an alternative. Gerron, too, though it looked like he was coping so well. But Freddy Bristow running off to marry that Mikhal woman...Megan Delaney joining a convent? I couldn't believe that."

"She was devastated by the loss of her sister. The Vostigye religious orders formed during the Catastrophe; they have centuries of experience at counseling the bereaved. Honestly, sometimes I wish B'Elanna had hooked up with them instead of the Casciron militants."

Janeway winced. That had been the hardest blow. B'Elanna Torres had come so far in her three years on Voyager-Janeway never could have believed she would revert to her old ways. But then, B'Elanna had perhaps lost more than anyone else.

"And if some of us discover that their definition of home has changed over the past few months," Chakotay went on, "isn't that their choice to make?"

It was a moment before Janeway responded. "I've resigned myself to the fact that not everyone will join us when it's time to resume course for the Alpha Quadrant. But I always a.s.sumed that when that time came, you would still be by my side. Lately, it seems you're drifting away. Can I still rely on you?"

His gaze hardened. "I'm still doing my duty. As first officer, my job is to take care of the crew. But most of the crew isn't on Voyager-they're out there, living in the Union." He paused. "If anyone's drifting away, Kathryn, it's you. Our crew is out there, but you're always here, cooped up aboard Voyager. You haven't made any real effort to connect with the Vostigye."

"I've done my part to promote the alliance."

"In diplomatic meetings, yes. But you haven't tried to get to know them as people. To experience their culture, as our crew is experiencing it. To show the skeptics among them that you're willing to relate to them as a friend and offer them something meaningful in return for their sanctuary."

"You mean offer my allegiance? I'm still a Starfleet captain, Chakotay. The Federation is still my home."

"But we won't see it for decades, Kathryn. A wise man once said that life is what's happening while you're making other plans. I still want to get back home someday, but this is the life we have now, and we shouldn't be afraid to live it. It's not a bad life. We have friends, allies, a support structure we didn't have when we were just one ship against a quadrant. We have the opportunity to be part of a larger community again, maybe not the Federation, but not a bad subst.i.tute. Why not enjoy it while we have it?"

"And what if we enjoy it so much that we lose sight of our ident.i.ty? Of the ties we still have in the Alpha Quadrant? There are many of us who haven't forgotten those for a moment. Mister Ayala has his boys back home-boys who need a father. Rollins has a wife, Gennaro a husband. I still have my mother and my sister. We can't forget them, Chakotay."

"I have a sister too. And I've never forgotten her, not for a moment. But she wouldn't want me to waste away my life because I was so busy preparing for tomorrow that I never seized the day."

"Is that what you think? That repairing Voyager, trying to get home, is a waste?"

"Of course not. I'm just saying that we shouldn't use it as an excuse to let life pa.s.s us by. And frankly, Kathryn, I'm beginning to worry about you. There's a part of you that can get too attached to your goals, too blind to alternatives. You're becoming more single-minded, and I don't like what that's doing to you. That's not the Kathryn Janeway I've grown to know and admire.

"I think...you could do with a break. Dobrye has been offering to take me to Loresch-it's the most popular resort planet in the sector. Why don't you come with us? Voyager will still be here when you get back."

"I'm sorry-no." The casual way he spoke of Voyager was painful to her. He really didn't see how much his priorities were changing.

Or were they? Was he right? Did serving the best interests of the crew mean helping them adapt to a new life in the Delta Quadrant?

Oh, Tuvok...I wish you could be here to advise me. I feel so adrift without your counsel.

No, she told herself. I'm still the captain. The decision is mine. She had to remain focused on the goal. If she let herself drift even a little, then the whole crew would lose its way, even worse than it already had.

And if Chakotay couldn't understand that, then she'd simply have to follow that path by herself. Such was the burden of command.

6.

"The life signs-they read as Borg, sir!"

"Shields up full!" Captain Nagorim ordered.

Voenis opened the comm to the weapons bay. "Arm torpedoes. Stand by to fire."

Harry Kim frowned. "But, Captain, why would the Borg send out a distress signal?"

"The war has forced them to adapt, Lieutenant. Maybe they've learned guile."

"Or maybe these Borg have broken free of the Collective somehow. It's happened before. Last year on Voyager-"

"Yes, I've read the reports on the Cooperative."

"Captain," Voenis said, "we can't take the chance."

"At least we can hear what they have to say, sir." Harry tried to keep his voice level, to avoid a pleading tone. He'd worked hard to prove himself again after B'Elanna's defection, but he wasn't sure how far the captain would trust him now.

And Voenis was a lost cause. "That would risk exposing us to a viral attack like the one that got the Nelcharis a.s.similated," she said.

"Captain, there are anomalies in these biosigns, but I can't resolve them well enough yet. I just need a little more time."

Nagorim pondered. "Voenis, how soon to weapons range?"

"Thirteen lants."

"Mister Kim, you have that long to refine sensor resolution."

Harry had spent months getting Ryemaren's sensors as close to Starfleet specs as possible. What could he do in twenty-odd seconds? He'd need a whole different set of sensors to- That was it. "I can launch a probe, sir. The interferometry should give me a better reading."

Nagorim nodded. "Do it."

Eleven lants later, the results came in, the two sensor grids working together to produce more detailed results. "They're not drones, sir. Not anymore. They have Borg implants, but their biosigns and neural activity readings are individualized."

The captain relaxed. "Accept their hail."

"-stigye vessel, repeat, we are not hostile! We need urgent medical a.s.sistance. Requesting asylum. Please respond!"

"Wonderful," Voenis grumbled. "More refugees." But Harry could tell she was relieved that she hadn't given the order to fire on innocent beings.

The eight former drones were beamed directly to sickbay, and the captain brought Harry along to meet them. "It's thanks to you they're still alive," Nagorim said, "so I'm a.s.signing you responsibility for them." Harry thanked the captain, recognizing it as an expression of trust rather than a punitive burden.

The refugees still looked like drones, mostly; they had made a few token attempts to remove their implants, but with limited success. Their medical distress, according to the Doctor, resulted as much from their self-surgery as from their resurgent immune systems' rejection of their implants.

Their leader introduced himself as Malken, saying he was a member of a species called the Hirogen, a name as unfamiliar to the captain as to Harry. He told a remarkable story of a realm called Unimatrix Zero, a kind of virtual reality within the Borg collective consciousness. Apparently a tiny percentage of a.s.similated drones had a mutation that let their subconscious minds remain active after a.s.similation. When they were in their dormant cycle (Malken called it "regenerating"), they shared a sort of collective dream. "No, not a dream," Malken corrected when Harry described it that way. "For it is only in Unimatrix Zero that we are awake, able to remember who we are and think for ourselves."

Unfortunately, they had never found a way to carry this awareness into their active phase, so Unimatrix Zero remained an entirely pa.s.sive form of resistance. "Fascinating," the Doctor observed through his AMP body. "What you're describing is a form of dissociative ident.i.ty disorder-two separate states of consciousness with no awareness of one another. Unsurprising, under the circ.u.mstances. Such a dissociation would allow the mind to retreat from the trauma of being a.s.similated and suborned to the collective will."

"Maybe that is so," Malken said, "for I have no memory of how we came to be liberated. We were in Unimatrix Zero when suddenly we awakened, in these Borg bodies, surrounded by destruction." From his description, it sounded as though their cube had been crippled in a Species 8472 attack. The attack had apparently burned out the minds of all the drones, except those few who had been in Unimatrix Zero at the time, five out of a cube of thousands. They had made their escape and spent weeks trying to get out of Borg s.p.a.ce, picking up three others like them along the way.

"And you made it here just in time," the Doctor said. "Luckily, you're in the finest medical hands in the quadrant."

Harry noticed one of the drones looking nervous, her wide gray eye-the one not covered by an ocular implant-darting about the medical bay. Though half her face was obscured, there was something striking about her features. She could almost have been human, but it was more than that. There was an innocence about her, a vulnerability that made him feel protective. He sidled over to her. "He's right, you know. The Doctor really is the best there is."

She seemed uncertain, warily eyeing the Doctor's robotic form. "Is he...a person?"

"Well, you could say he's a lot of people."

"Like the Borg?" She pulled her limbs in on herself, like a timid child.

"Oh! No, not like that. Really, he's fine. It's...well, it's a long story. All you need to know is, there's nothing to be afraid of. My name's Harry, and I'm going to make sure that nothing bad happens to you. To any of you."

The woman gathered herself, straightening out and trying to a.s.sert some dignity. But her voice was still gentle and girlish as she said, "I'm sorry. This is all so new to me. I...I've never known anything but Unimatrix Zero."

"Never? Were you born in the Collective?"

"No, but...I was taken when I was very young. I guess I remember a few things...but I try not to think about it much."

No wonder she seemed so youthful. If her entire life since early childhood had been lived in fragments during regeneration cycles, then her total life experience might be a fraction of her physical age (and it was clear, even through the Borg exoskeleton, that she was a fully developed woman, to say the least). Awakening to find herself in a Borg body, surrounded by corpses and a disintegrating ship, must have been a shock for her.

He put a hand on her shoulder, hoping she could feel it through the exoskeleton. "Don't worry," he told her. "You don't have to think about it now if you don't want to. Although...I've told you my name. Do you remember yours?"

She smiled, a bright, open smile that made her face beautiful despite everything the Borg had done to it. "Annika. My name's Annika."

"The Voth?" Neelix asked. "The government wants me to meet with the Voth?"

"That's right," Chakotay said. "Overminister Rosh is concerned about some reports he's getting. In the past, the Voth have mostly kept to themselves, not taking much interest in what goes on outside their city ships. But apparently, in recent months, they've begun looking outward again."

"Well, maybe that's a good sign." Neelix vividly remembered Voyager's encounter with the Voth, a civilization descended from an ancient Earth species called hadrosaurs, which had somehow survived a ma.s.s extinction in Earth's distant past and migrated across the galaxy. "Maybe it means they're starting to open up a little."

"I doubt it. They've been showing up at various worlds in the territory they consider theirs and demanding tribute and formal declarations of allegiance."

"Oh, dear. As if we don't have enough powerful enemies in the other direction." Neelix had always found Voyager's technology miraculous, but the Voth had completely neutralized it without working up a sweat-or whatever it was that reptiles did.