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  For Catherine “Cady” Coleman

  “From books and words come fantasy, and sometimes, from fantasy comes union.”

  —Rumi

  HISTORIAN’S NOTE

  The Borg Invasion has left billions dead, worlds shattered, and Starfleet in tatters (Star Trek: Destiny).

  Now, Starfleet Medical believes a catomic plague is spreading on the worlds that managed to survive the Invasion. Doctor Sharak and Lieutenant Samantha Wildman have learned that a rogue Starfleet commander has artificially magnified the plague. Meanwhile, Seven—who is just beginning to understand the true nature of her catoms—has become a captive of the Commander. Axum, a former drone, may be working in concert with the Commander, while seeking to forward his own agenda: forcing a new Collective on all who possess the advanced Caeliar technology.

  Admiral Kathryn Janeway has risked the Full Circle Fleet’s safety, and ultimately, her life, in an attempt to help the Confederacy of the Worlds of the First Quadrant make peace (Star Trek Voyager: Acts of Contrition).

  This narrative begins in early March and continues through May 2382.

  Prologue

  SCION

  Form was insignificant. It was a shell, a garment, a means to an end. But it was real. Flesh, muscles, organs, bones were composed of cells built from molecules containing atoms expressing subatomic interactions.

  The dun scutes that covered the surface of this form looked and felt solid. Large obsidian pupils tinged with golden irises stared coldly beneath impressive cranial ridges. Claws filed to fine points extended from the three digits of each hand and were quite lethal, as the original inhabitant of this form, Voth Minister Odala, had felt keenly in the last few moments of her life.

  But were they real?

  A thought, faint as a whisper, and the image reflected in the smoky glass surface before her shifted.

  A human woman.

  Barely.

  Little more than a girl stared at her now. The black uniform with blue trim made this form look even smaller than it was. The face was pale, dominated by large, pleading eyes. Weak hands were meant to comfort, to administer care. Her only power lay in a small piece of technology that both created and was suspended within her photonic matrix.

  What consciousness had once belonged to this “Meegan” had dissipated like the morning mist as soon as she had chosen the hologram for her vessel. The device meant to hold Meegan’s program was now hers to command. Over the last several months, necessity had required her to assume dozens of new forms, each essential to gathering allies. She tried to think of her new existence as a gift.

  But it did not feel real. She missed the beating of a heart. Inhalation. Exhalation. Hunger pangs. Pain that burned, ached, stabbed. The pleasure of a cool breeze or the gentle graze of fingertips. She would never have come so far so quickly had it not been for this hologram’s manipulative properties. But the thought of spending eternity encased in a shell of light, incapable of experiencing all that made eternity worth attaining, was unimaginable.

  “Soon,” she said softly to her reflection.

  Soon, she could shed this form. Soon, subterfuge would no longer be required. Soon, she and the others who had been forced into agonizing solitude would be reunited. Soon, the short-lived species infecting this quadrant would rise as one under the patient tutelage and loving care of their betters to a new understanding of the true nature of existence and all of its wondrous possibilities.

  Soon, she and her companions would finish the work that had begun so many millennia ago.

  Soon.

  A series of short tones sounded, alerting her to an incoming communication.

  “It is time.”

  Emem.

  Devore Inspector Kashyk, she reminded herself.

  The form she had chosen for him resembled the ancient Seriareen more closely than any of the others. His smooth flesh was paler than the last he’d worn, but his features were strong and pleasantly arranged apart from slight cranial crests above each eye. Emem had chosen to keep Kashyk’s thick, dark hair cut short in the Seriareen fashion for males, out of vanity as much as utility.

  Kashyk was too short, of course. No matter how he struggled to maximize the potentials of a Devore body, Emem would never attain the physical strength, agility, or heightened senses of the Seriareen. But the Devore had been easy to rally to her cause because of these limitations. Their fear of the mental acuity of others had led them to dull their own, rather than develop them.

  Still, their technology was formidable and their aggressive natures well suited to her purposes. At least Emem could eat again. At least his flesh could rise in anticipation of her touch. At least he could feel satisfaction in all they had achieved. At least he could love her again.

  She could not do the same.

  Much as she wished to give herself again to him mind, body, and soul, without said body, it was impossible. The fierceness of his passion for her had not been dimmed by the millennia they had spent confined. But there were other changes that troubled her. Not that it mattered. Her new form was capable of wonders, all of which satisfied Emem’s needs while leaving her unable to achieve any sense of real connection.

  Dispirited, she broke a promise she had made to herself when she had first learned of her ability to assume any form she wished.

  Another fleeting thought, and the last Seriareen body she had known prior to her confinement appeared before her.

  She stood half a meter taller than Meegan, with skin the color of burnt umber, merciless moss-colored eyes, and a mane of pitch-black hair that tumbled in loose waves down her back. Wide strips of soft, well-worn rouge hide rode the curves of her body like a second skin. A delicately carved tusk circle cinched the black belt around her slim waist, the garment’s only ornament.

  The memories of that life caused significant mental distress, but without the accompanying churning of the stomach, pounding of a pulse, or tensing of muscles, the distress was a distant echo.

  “Release me.”

  The sound of Obih’s voice returned unbidden. It had been her constant companion during the centuries of insensate darkness. It could not keep her warm, but it had breathed continuous life into the faint sparks of defiance that had remained when this body had been lost.

  She no longer stood in the dimly lit quarters of the Voth minister’s personal ship, the Scion. Instead, the deck plates of the Solitas shook beneath her feet.

  A series of loud concussive blasts pummeled what remained of the ship’s shields, and acrid smoke burned her lungs with every breath. Emem worked furiously at the weapons terminal, determined to send as many of their enemies as possible into oblivion. Xolani was attempting to seal multiple hull breaches, shouting status updates over the chaos that engulfed the ship’s central control station. She worked desperately to keep their course steady as the next swarm of aggressors assumed attack formation.

  Only Obih seemed calm.

  “Seriareen vessel, stand down,” a harsh voice demanded.

  “Release me,” Obih said again, turning to her, the ornate hilt of his ceremonial dagger mere inches from the hands she pretended were preoccupied with flight control.

  “Our reinforcements are on their way, Obih,” Emem assured their leader.

  “They are already too late,” Obih reminded them. “The hax must survive.”

  “The other ships,” she began.

  “They are all Nayseriare
en now,” Obih reminded her. “Release me,” he said again.

  To what? she wondered. To release him now was to all but admit defeat, and that was impossible.

  Xolani had seen the truth before she grasped Obih’s intention. To release Obih was to ensure ultimate victory. Xolani’s was the hand that accepted the hilt she had refused. His was the arm that reared back and struck with all its might, burying the dagger in Obih’s heart.

  The cry that escaped Obih’s lips in response reverberated through the Solitas; absolute refusal to yield.

  Obih fell to the deck just as another ear-splitting roar obliterated all other ambient sounds, including further calls for their surrender. She had no choice but to begin searching the heavens for a new body.

  “Lsia?”

  Emem had entered her quarters soundlessly and stared at her now in suspicious pity.

  “Did you not hear my summons?”

  “Since when do you summon me anywhere?” she asked.

  “It is time,” he said again. “The others are already aboard the Manticle.”

  “They can wait.”

  “We have all waited much too long,” he reminded her.

  “This is a mistake,” Lsia said for the tenth time since Emem had hastily assembled the officers selected to determine the fate of their prisoner, Admiral Kathryn Janeway.

  Lsia had argued from the first that a formal trial be convened, an advocate assigned to the prisoner, and testimony be elicited through open questioning of the available witnesses by expert counsel. While more time consuming, the process would have demonstrated to the Confederacy that the Kinara were a fair and civilized alliance, intent on the pursuit of justice rather than revenge.

  Emem had favored making a decisive example of the admiral through a military tribunal, and Janeway had obliged him by insisting that she would represent herself during the proceedings.

  The first consul of the Confederacy, Lant Dreeg, had initiated contact with the Kinara several days prior to their armed confrontation and agreed that Admiral Janeway should be turned over to their custody prior to continuing negotiations. A swift resolution to the “Janeway issue” would please him and push the Confederacy and the Federation further apart.

  To Lsia’s consternation, Emem had easily swayed Tirrit and Adaeze. Rigger Meeml, the sole representative of the Skeen, Karlon, Muk, and Emleath forces and the only Kinara leader present not currently hosting one of her Seriareen companions, had seemed inclined to agree with Lsia, but ultimately they had been voted down. Emem had called this “democracy at its finest” despite the fact that he had nothing but contempt for representative forms of government.

  Emem shook his head in warning. “It has been agreed.”

  “She could still be of use to us.”

  “The Confederacy must not be permitted to embrace the Federation as allies. Revealing her treachery will end any doubts Dreeg’s superiors may still nurture. If we allow her to live, she will counter us at every turn. And with each moment that passes, those she commands repair the damage we inflicted and plan her rescue. That cannot be allowed. The Federation must see our determination. They must know our power. They must fear us.”

  “You sound more like Kashyk every day,” she chided him. “This will not make them fear us. It will make them hate us more.”

  “Are there degrees of hate? Surely they hate us already.”

  Lsia did not agree. But she had already lost this argument.

  Reluctantly, she returned to the form of the saurian female, Odala.

  Soon, she thought again as she followed Emem from her quarters.

  1

  STARSHIP VOYAGER

  Captain Chakotay had asked Captain Regina Farkas, of the Vesta, and Commander Glenn, of the Galen, to join him as he brought his acting first officer, Lieutenant Harry Kim, and Commander B’Elanna Torres into the small circle he intended to utilize in managing the current crisis. Lieutenant Kenth Lasren, his Betazoid ops officer, Counselor Hugh Cambridge, and Admiral Janeway’s personal aide, Decan, were also present. Both were already well aware of how complicated their mission had become in the last few hours.

  Torres and Kim appeared stunned and sickened by their captain’s revelations. The shock had already passed for everyone else and been replaced by mingled trepidation and determination.

  Commander Torres was the first to speak. “I just want to make sure I’ve got this straight.”

  “Please,” Chakotay said.

  “The Kinara are about to put Admiral Janeway on trial for crimes she supposedly committed during Voyager’s maiden trek in the Delta Quadrant. Once that trial ends—”

  “Presumably with the admiral’s execution,” Counselor Cambridge interjected.

  “Almost certainly,” Captain Farkas corrected him.

  “Once that trial ends,” Torres repeated, refusing to acknowledge or accept their pessimism, “the Kinara intend to open negotiations with the Confederacy for passage through their local network of subspace corridors for the purpose of acquiring some unknown resources that lie beyond Confederacy space but can only be readily accessed by utilizing their corridors.”

  “Which we cannot allow to happen,” Captain Farkas noted.

  “Because we now know that whatever the Kinara’s objectives might once have been, in the last few months they have come under the influence of at least four of the original eight Neyser essences,” Torres continued.

  “Individuals believed to be so dangerous that their own people intentionally disembodied them and kept them incarcerated for thousands of years,” Cambridge reminded her.

  “And who have used their first taste of freedom to convince or coerce some of the most powerful Delta Quadrant species already predisposed to mistrust the Federation, including the Turei, the Vaadwaur, the Devore, and the Voth, to ally themselves against us,” Kim added.

  “Is our potential alliance with the Confederacy off the table?” Torres asked.

  “Admiral Janeway indicated prior to her departure that she did not believe the Federation and the Confederacy could ever form an alliance,” Farkas replied.

  “And that was without hearing my report on Voyager’s joint mission with the Twelfth Lamont, the results of which, in my opinion, would make any such alliance unconscionable,” Chakotay noted.

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” Torres argued.

  “Excuse me?” Chakotay said.

  “Vesta isn’t in bad shape, but Voyager lost her main deflector in the last battle and is, conservatively, days away from being completely repaired. Galen is no match for the Kinara’s firepower. That gives us one starship against the Kinara’s ten, including that Voth monstrosity that almost destroyed us. We’re going to need help rescuing Admiral Janeway and the Confederacy is our only option right now.”

  “After what Inspector Kashyk—or whoever he really is—said, I’m not sure how inclined the Confederacy will be to offer assistance,” Farkas suggested.

  “There is no question that the first consul, Lant Dreeg, arranged for the admiral’s capture in order to force us to offer the Market Consortium the technology they requested—technology with which we cannot responsibly part at the moment—in return for aiding us in recovering our admiral,” Cambridge asserted.

  “Be that as it may,” Chakotay said, “General Mattings has indicated that he intends to assist us, and nothing I’ve heard has convinced me that Presider Cin entirely approved of her first consul’s actions.”

  “We need to find out where the Confederacy stands right now,” Farkas said.

  “Among other things,” Chakotay agreed.

  “Meanwhile, the Doctor has suffered some catastrophic damage?” Torres asked.

  “Barclay has transferred his program back to the Galen and is working on it as we speak,” Chakotay reported. “The Doctor made some alarming discoveries about the catomic plague before I had to deactivate him. He asked that we try to get that data back to Seven as soon as possible.”

  “If not sooner,”
Cambridge insisted.

  “Demeter has yet to report in?” Farkas asked.

  “Demeter should have returned to Confederacy space more than twelve hours ago. If she’s not back soon, someone is going to have to go after her,” Chakotay replied.

  Farkas nodded. After a few moments of tense silence she said, “This is a mess, but our first priority is rescuing the admiral.”

  “She has no desire to be rescued, and indeed left explicit orders that we should do nothing to risk the current cease-fire,” Decan said, speaking for the first time since the briefing had begun.

  “That’s absurd,” Torres said. “They’re going to kill her. We can’t just sit here and let them do it.”

  “We must not allow our fear for her safety to force us to act precipitously,” Decan insisted. “There is no question that Admiral Janeway intends for us to keep the lines of communication open between ourselves and Presider Cin. She sacrificed herself, in part, to ensure that the Kinara did not succeed in allying themselves with the Confederacy and turning them against us. But she also intends to discover ‘Meegan’s’ true intentions toward this region of space.”

  “That’s going to be a little hard to do while she’s fighting for her life,” Cambridge said.

  “Not necessarily,” Decan said.

  “I realize that Admiral Janeway is accustomed to multitasking, Lieutenant, but that’s a tall order,” Cambridge observed.

  “In addition to requesting a personal security detachment, the admiral’s only other nonnegotiable demand prior to her surrender was that the Kinara transmit her trial in real time to the fleet and the Confederacy,” Decan said placidly. “I suggest that our first duty is ensuring that all parties assembled here enjoy unrestricted access to the upcoming trial.”

  “How are we supposed to do that?” Lieutenant Lasren asked. “The trial is set to take place aboard the Manticle. They are the ones who will control any transmissions. They can shut it down whenever they like.”