Myriad Universes - Infinity's Prism Part 40

"Drives are still offline," Jacob offered. "But we have weapons and targeting systems, Princeps. I was in the process of calculating a firing solution when we located you." He walked to the firing command panel. "With your permission?"

"They will be out of range in a few moments," insisted Tiber. "Sir, we must act now!"

Bashir wasn't looking at the screens anymore. He was staring down at his gloved hands. "No," he said distantly. "Hold fire."

Jacob blinked in surprise. "Lord? But-"

"You will do as I command," he added. "Let them go. The damage...has already been done."

The tactical glyph flickered and faded. From the engineering console, the Tellarite helot made a hissing sound. "Target has cloaked. Firing solution has been lost."

"Why?" demanded Tiber. "My lord, why did you allow them to escape? We had them in our sights, we could have obliterated that Khan-forsaken hulk and every one of those throwbacks in a single shot!" He grabbed Bashir's shoulder roughly and yanked him around, all thought of protocol cast aside. "Why? Now you have doomed us all to fall to the Khan's displeasure!"

The princeps shrugged him off and walked away, toward the hatchway. "There is no escape from the truth," he said.

Jacob dared to shout after him as Bashir left the command tier. "Princeps!" he called. "What happened over there? What did you see?"

A shimmering blue glow hazed briefly through the decks of the sleeper ship, and the energy traces on the console screen settled into a slow, resonant wave.

"Is...that it?" Hachirota asked, his fingers knitting together.

A crooked smile crossed Kira's lips. "That's it. The cloaking device is at full power. We're ghosts." She shook her head. "How about that? I thought this wreck would have come apart first."

"There's still time," Laker bleated. All around them, the Botany Bay's hull had settled into a rhythm of creaking and shuddering as the warp-sled propelled them toward the light barrier.

"She'll hold," said Christopher, placing a hand on the wall. "She got us this far. She'll take us all the way."

"Your confidence has little bearing on reality," Dax told him. "Would you like to know the probability of our successfully making a warp transition?"

"No," said the captain. "We've beaten the odds at every turn. If I were that kind of man, I might wonder if fate's keeping an eye on us." He looked across at his crew, his gaze settling on Robinson.

"Maybe so," offered Rain. "I've had enough of running for one lifetime." She threw a nod to Shannon and Kira, who returned it. "This is where it ends."

Dax's attention turned to the display as the figures approached warp insertion velocity. "No," she told her, "this is where it begins."

A phantom bathed in starlight, Botany Bay surged beyond lightspeed, a loosed arrow shot into the night sky.

"My lord." Jacob's voice had an edge of panic in it. "The Ill.u.s.trious is closing to boarding range. Princeps Picard is demanding you acknowledge his signal! Sir? Sir-"

Bashir silenced the intercom and let the counsel chamber's hatch seal shut behind him. He stepped up and placed his hand on the lectern, and the walls shimmered, becoming the palace grounds once more. Julian paid them no mind. In his right hand he held an isolinear chip; with his left he worked a panel on the lectern and flipped it open, revealing a snarl of data circuits inside.

"Julian?" said a voice. He didn't look up as the figure in crimson approached. "Kinsman, speak to me. What troubles you?"

"More...more than you could ever know," he replied.

Khan Noonien Singh stopped in front of him and folded his arms, his eyes narrowing. "You will look at me when you address your Khan," said the hologram. "And you will moderate your tone!"

Bashir glared at the simulation. "You are a ghost," he said coldly. "A phantom parody of a man."

"How dare you speak to me with disrespect! I am your counsel! I am the essence of Khan Noonien Singh, master of mankind!"

Julian shook his head and reached into the guts of the console. "You are a lie." Before the hologram could respond, he pulled a handful of optical cables from their sockets, and the image of Khan shimmered and vanished. Blue-white light bled from the severed wires, flashing in a staccato pattern across Bashir's hands.

"My hands..." He turned the isolinear chip over in his fingers. "How much blood is upon them?"

The princeps inserted the chip into a socket, and the white vista of the palace melted away. Around him grew walls made of images, towering planes of sight and sound from decades dead and gone. The riot of noise and color a.s.saulted his senses, and he opened himself to it, unflinching, never turning away, accepting every moment of a b.l.o.o.d.y past denied too long.

In the isolation of his private sanctum, he drowned himself in the black and terrible truth.

Acknowledgments/Authors' Notes A LESS PERFECT UNION.

Thanks first to Marco Palmieri, for giving me the opportunity to take part in this project and for letting me get away with a lot more than I expected to.

Thanks also to the many Star Trek scriptwriters over the decades, whose works I took as inspiration and/or shamelessly pilfered and twisted for this story. Though there are too many to list in this s.p.a.ce, special mention is due Manny Coto, Andre Bormanis, Garfield Reeves-Stevens and Judith Reeves-Stevens, who were responsible for the penultimate, two-part episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, as well as Gene Roddenberry, who wrote the original pilot episode, "The Cage" (not to mention creating the whole shebang in the first place).

Sandra McDonald and John G. Hemry, both SF authors and former U.S. Navy officers, were kind enough to answer my questions about shipboard disciplinary procedures. Credit to them for what rings true; blame to me for what rings false. Many other questions were answered thanks to the efforts of the folks behind Memory Alpha (www.memory-alpha.org), Memory Beta (www.startrek.wikia.com), and Paramount Home Video. (Is TV on DVD not the greatest thing ever?) And finally, thanks to my parents. If not for them...well, that would be another "what if" story, wouldn't it?

PLACES OF EXILE.

This tale is built largely on concepts established in the third season and early fourth season of Star Trek: Voyager. Portions of Chapter 1 are adapted from "Scorpion" by Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky, which introduced Species 8472. Braga and Menosky also created the Voth, including Odala (Concetta Tomei) and Haluk (Marshall Teague), in "Distant Origin," as well as Zahir (David Lee Smith), the Mikhal, and the Tarkan in "Darkling," and Unimatrix Zero in the two-part episode of the same name (from a story by Mike Sussman). By himself, Joe Menosky depicted Kes's transformation in "The Gift" and introduced the Potato People, er, Hierarchy, in "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy." Kenneth Biller depicted Kes's original future and its version of the Year of h.e.l.l in "Before and After," and introduced Danara Pel (Susan Diol) in "Lifesigns" and the Borg Collective in "Unity."

The Vostigye were briefly mentioned but never seen in "Real Life" by Jeri Taylor. The Ocampa reproductive cycle was established in "Elogium" by Biller and Taylor. "Boothby" (Ray Walston) and the 8472 infiltration plot are from "In the Flesh" by Nick Sagan. The Nezu and Etanians are from "Rise" by Braga, and the Nyrians and various minor species are from "Displaced" by Lisa Klink, who also introduced the Hirogen in "Message in a Bottle." The Swarm and the Doctor's memory loss are from "The Swarm" by Sussman.

Lyndsay Ballard (Kim Rhodes) is from "Ashes to Ashes" by Robert Doherty and Ronald Wilkerson. Ensign Jenkins (Mackenzie Westmore) is from "Warhead" by Michael Taylor and Biller. Mister Ayala (Tarik Ergin) was a bit player seen throughout the series. The Kilana seen here is the predecessor to the Kilana (Kaitlin Hopkins) seen in Deep s.p.a.ce Nine: "The Ship" by Hans Beimler.

Thanks to Marco Palmieri for his determination to get this alternate-timelines project published, and for giving me the chance to partic.i.p.ate in it. Thanks to Bernd Schneider's Ex Astris Scientia website for pointing out the need for frequent twin or triplet births in the Ocampa reproductive cycle. And thanks to the cast and writers of Voyager for showing us so many possibilities that fired our imaginations but never got followed up on.

SEEDS OF DISSENT.

Arguably one of the most famous archetypes of alternate history stories is the "Hitler Wins" scenario, and with Seeds of Dissent, I approached that concept through the lens of Star Trek, casting the most famous Trek dictator in the key role-and so, my thanks to Gene L. c.o.o.n, Cary Wilber, Jack B. Sowards, Harve Bennett, and Greg c.o.x for their stories of Khan, from which this tale grows. Respect is also due to Robert Silverberg, Larry Niven, Michael Moorc.o.c.k, Fritz Lieber, Philip K. d.i.c.k, and many more writers for the inspiration that came from all the alt-history fiction I've enjoyed over the years; and a special bow goes to Marco Palmieri, for letting me go the distance.

About the Authors WILLIAM LEISNER's first professionally published story was an alternate Star Trek universe tale, "G.o.ds, Fate, and Fractals," which appeared in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds II. He placed two more stories in that annual contest, followed by a Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers novella, Out of the Coc.o.o.n. He also contributed the short story "Ambition" to Constellations, the Star Trek 40th Anniversary anthology, and the novella The Insolence of Office to Slings and Arrows, the Star Trek: The Next Generation 20th Anniversary eBook miniseries. In another timeline, he's an Academy Award-winning writer/director, residing in Los Angeles with his supermodel wife; in this timeline, he works an office job in Minneapolis and enjoys looking at supermodel websites.

CHRISTOPHER L. BENNETT is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Star Trek: Ex Machina, Star Trek t.i.tan: Orion's Hounds, and Star Trek: The Next Generation-The Buried Age, as well as the eBooks Star Trek: S. C. E. #29-Aftermath (now available in a trade paperback of the same name) and Star Trek: Mere Anarchy, Book Four: The Darkness Drops Again. His Next Generation novel Greater Than the Sum debuts in August 2008. He is the only author to have stories in all four Star Trek anniversary anthologies: "...Loved I Not Honor More" in Star Trek: Deep s.p.a.ce Nine-Prophecy and Change; "Brief Candle" in Star Trek: Voyager-Distant Sh.o.r.es; "As Others See Us" in Star Trek: Constellations; and "Friends with the Sparrows" in Star Trek: The Next Generation-The Sky's the Limit. In addition to Places of Exile, he has also contributed an alternate-reality tale to the upcoming Star Trek Mirror Universe: Shards and Shadows anthology. He has branched out beyond Star Trek with X-Men: Watchers on the Walls and Spider-Man: Drowned in Thunder. He has recently learned to drive, and extends his heartfelt apologies to the Earth's atmosphere. More information, original fiction, and cat pictures can be found at http://home.fuse.net/ChristopherLBennett/ JAMES SWALLOW is proud to be the only British writer to have worked on a Star Trek television series, creating the original story concepts for the Star Trek: Voyager episodes "One" and "Memorial"; his other a.s.sociations with the Star Trek saga include Day of the Vipers, the first volume in the Terok Nor trilogy, the short stories "Closure," "Ordinary Days," and "The Black Flag" for the anthologies Distant Sh.o.r.es, The Sky's the Limit, and Shards and Shadows, scripting the video game Star Trek: Invasion, and writing over 400 articles in thirteen different Star Trek magazines around the world.

Beyond the final frontier, as well as a non-fiction book (Dark Eye: The Films of David Fincher), James also wrote the Sundowners series of original steampunk westerns, Jade Dragon, The b.u.t.terfly Effect, and fiction in the worlds of Doctor Who (Peacemaker, Dalek Empire, Destination Prague, Snapshots, The Quality of Leadership), Warhammer 40,000 (Red Fury, The Flight of the Eisenstein, Faith & Fire, Deus Encarmine, and Deus Sanguinius), Stargate (Halcyon and Relativity), and 2000AD (Eclipse, Whiteout, and Blood Relative). His other credits include scripts for video games and audio dramas, including Battlestar Galactica, Blake's 7, and s.p.a.ce 1889.

James Swallow lives in London, and is currently at work on his next book.