Star Trek: Voyager - 041 - The Eternal Tide Read online

  “And she isn’t?”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “You made her my godmother. You acknowledged then how unique she was. But once she’d served that purpose, you just, what, changed your mind?”

  “I’m not happy about this either!”

  “You aren’t.”

  “You thought I was?”

  “I thought you might be, or didn’t really care, or had just moved on to other things. But you do care.”

  “Of course I do. Kathryn Janeway was exceptional. She will be missed.”

  “She doesn’t have to be.”

  “She does. You have to see the big picture here.”

  U.S.S. ENTERPRISE

  Q found himself standing on the bridge of a Federation starship. Just before the command chairs, a scene of some emotional distress was occurring. A man, Captain Picard, he suddenly realized, was on his knees, holding his head in his hands and rocking back and forth as if trying to contain the great heaves and sobs spilling from his lips. Three other officers, Captain Riker, Captain Dax, and Commander Worf, surrounded him, seemingly intent on shielding this spectacle from the eyes of the rest of the bridge crew.

  Of course, few had eyes for their captain at the moment. None seemed able to look anywhere but at the ship’s main viewscreen, where a dazzling sight was unfolding. Multiple cube-shaped ships glowed with brilliant light and gradually, as the light became almost blinding, began to alter their configurations. Vast spikes shot forth from every flat surface of the cubes, transforming them into glorious white stars.

  Q turned his attention to what was unheard by the others. Picard’s wails had been an echo of the pain, confusion, and horror of billions of minds joined in agony. With the ships’ rebirths, conjoined voices were released into individual cries of ecstasy. Theirs was a joy so pure, Q almost wanted to join Picard on the deck.

  “You see what I mean?”

  Q turned to see his father standing beside him. He knew that even had the others been subconsciously aware of their presence there, none could have seen them, nor would they have bothered to look. The two Q were by far the least interesting thing in the room right now.

  “This is the Caeliar transformation of the Borg?” Q asked, though he doubted it could be anything else.

  “Magnificent, isn’t it?”

  “That’s not a word you just throw around, Father.”

  “Why cheapen its meaning? Reserve it for moments like this, the ones that truly deserve it. You feel it, don’t you?”

  “The single-celled organisms in the room feel it,” Q tossed back.

  “Is there a level on which you could possibly argue that this is not an incredibly positive experience?” his father asked gently.

  Q considered the question seriously before replying, “No.”

  “This is part of Kathryn’s sacrifice, son. Even to have her live for all eternity, you cannot wish to see this undone.”

  “No, but why would that be necessary?” Q demanded.

  “Allow me to connect the dots,” his father replied. “When Kathy chose to alter time—a choice which she did not have to make, and a choice that many might argue was the height of selfishness, which is something I had never before seen in her—she set a very particular chain of events in motion. There was no turning back once she destroyed the Borg’s transwarp hub in the Delta Quadrant. That choice brought the Borg to the Alpha Quadrant hundreds of years before they would have otherwise ventured so far. That was the price for her choice, and as even you well understand by now, when anyone, Q or otherwise, disrupts the larger forces of time, life, and death, there is always a price. She wanted to spare her crew sixteen extra years in the Delta Quadrant. She put the needs of a few of those closest to her ahead of the many. In doing so, she brought the Alpha Quadrant to the brink of annihilation.

  “However, by doing what she did, Kathy unknowingly insured that the only species capable of ending the Borg’s reign of terror would be present at this moment. Only this precise confluence of events, including the Borg’s actions here, the unending and truly perturbing luck of William Riker and his band of merry misfits—sorry, multispecies crew—in locating the Caeliar, and the tenacity of another exceptional, once human female, Captain Erika Hernandez, could have resulted in what you have just witnessed. Pull even a single string from this incredibly dense tapestry, including Kathryn’s death aboard that cursed evolved cube, and the sheer volume of chaos injected into the multiverse becomes unmanageable. More importantly, this moment never happens.

  “The multiverse is an extraordinary place, son. Though at times it seems perverse in its machinations, it bends toward moments such as this, moments when numerous species take great leaps forward in their evolution and are forever altered. The price paid for this, not only by Kathryn but by sixty-three billion other sentient life-forms, was staggering. But it has resulted in a renewed equilibrium throughout the multiverse. It has self-corrected a wanton and egregious lapse made by a handful of humans thousands of years ago. In other words, it was worth it.”

  Q bowed his head, acknowledging his father’s point, then raised it again in defiance. “Fine. Given what the Borg were and would ultimately become without the Caeliar’s intervention, you are right. On balance, Kathryn Janeway’s death seems a small enough price to pay.”

  “Why do I sense a ‘but’ coming on?”

  “Let Aunt Kathy die. Allow all of this to come to pass. Don’t change anything until once this magnificence is well behind us.”

  “And?”

  “And bring her back now,” Q suggested.

  “Dear . . . merciful . . . Hrimshee.”

  Q CONTINUUM

  “What?”

  “Did I waste all of the resources I expended on your education?”

  “Don’t bother with the guilt, Father. As you’ve taught me well, it’s a useless means of passing the time.”

  “So that’s what you’ve learned? But the much more significant lesson, the one that would have been drilled into you in every course you took, still eludes you?”

  “It’s a stupid rule.”

  “Never reversing the death of a mortal is a stupid rule?”

  “We’re not talking about any random mortal. We’re talking about my godmother.”

  “Stop it.”

  “But—”

  “No. Stop it. If I have managed to convince you that preventing her death would have been a mistake, how can you possibly fail to understand the ramifications of bringing the dead back to life?”

  “I do.”

  “You don’t, or you wouldn’t suggest it. Like everything else you are no doubt contemplating here, it has been done. And in every case, it ended badly, not just for the individual, but for the rest of the multiverse as well. We’re omnipotent, Junior, not omniscient. That’s why, over time, we’ve established a handful of limits to our actions that the entire Continuum agrees are absolutely necessary. Rule six is we don’t bring the dead back to life. Just because we can do a thing doesn’t mean we should. There are certain things we must abide by.”

  “But—”

  “No. No buts. Not this time. Let’s look at this from another angle. A little further into the future . . .”

  . . .

  “. . . and so, obviously, you see what I mean.”

  “What?”

  “Son?”

  “Sorry, I do. Of course, I do. I see it all, now. I’m so sorry.”

  “I’ll admit watching poor President Bacco wrestle with the latest moves the Typhon Pact is making, including the loss of Andor, may cast a pall on the near past, but this sort of instability is common following events of the magnitude of the transformation of the Borg.”

  “Andor left the Federation?”

  “Were you listening to anything the president of the Federation said in that meeting? I, too, find the obvious aging she has undergone in the last few years distracting, but I assure you, she will rally. The woman has spunk. You have to give her that.”r />
  “I do. It wasn’t a question. Andor left the Federation. It’s just shocking, is all. Didn’t they start the Federation?”

  “They were a founding member, yes. It will all work itself out. Never fear. And it is an unquestionably better fate than they would have suffered had the Borg not been eliminated.”

  “Of course.”

  “So, we’re done here?”

  “Yes. Thank you, Father.”

  “Kathryn Janeway was extraordinary, son. I knew her better than you did, and believe me when I tell you that if any of us could have spared her the grisly fate she met, we would have done so.”

  “I believe you. It’s just difficult. I think she’s the first mortal I ever really cared about whose death I’ve lived to witness.”

  “It does get easier with time, son.”

  “I’ll try and remember that.”

  • • •

  When was that? Andor leaving the Federation? Months, maybe a few years from now? President Bacco is still in office so it can’t be too far in the future. That means there’s even less time than I thought.

  But it doesn’t make any sense. Why can’t I see it? And how much time, exactly, do I have left? Is it me? Am I the emptiness? Or is the emptiness surrounding me?

  What is it? Was it something I did? Something I’m going to do?

  I can’t think like that. I’m a Q. I don’t fear the darkness.

  Except this one.

  What am I supposed to do?

  Chapter Four

  VOYAGER

  “Good morning,” Captain Chakotay greeted his senior officers. “Did we enjoy ourselves yesterday?”

  “And well into the evening, sir,” Lieutenant Harry Kim noted, as amiable nods from Lieutenant Commander Tom Paris and Lieutenants Nancy Conlon, Devi Patel, and Kenth Lasren matched his own.

  Chakotay offered his own smile of approval as he noticed the curious gaze Seven shot toward Counselor Cambridge, who kept his eyes firmly glued to the captain’s.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Chakotay said, “because now it’s time to get to work. We have some busy weeks ahead of us.” He turned his attention to Seven, who activated the conference room’s three-dimensional holographic display at the table’s center as he began the briefing.

  “This is our next destination. We have a few hours left before all supply and personnel transfers will be complete, and then we’ll be departing to what I have entered into the logs as ‘Riley’s Planet.’ ”

  Though recognition immediately flashed across Paris’s and Kim’s faces, it was clear that those in the room who had not served during Voyager’s first journey through the Delta Quadrant were curious. Although Seven had not yet been aboard, she had been briefed in order to collect the relevant astrometrics data, most of which had been pulled from Voyager’s original logs.

  “This wasn’t Borg space, was it?” Conlon asked.

  “No,” Chakotay confirmed. “This unnamed world was discovered several months before Voyager entered Borg territory.”

  “Isn’t the rest of the fleet exploring known Borg space?” Patel asked, seeming almost offended that the ship was abandoning one of their mission priorities.

  “They are,” Chakotay replied. “This world was colonized by eighty thousand Borg drones who had been severed from the Collective when their vessel was damaged during an electrokinetic storm. They lived for some time as individuals, before their inability to form a cohesive society led to brutal warfare between a number of factions, some driven by the race of the drones prior to their assimilation.”

  The captain glanced briefly at his officers to gauge their response and found Seven was watching Cambridge, who had begun gently tapping his fingers together.

  “A small group decided that the only way they could end the violence was to restore their ‘collective’ nature.”

  “What?” Lasren asked in disbelief.

  “They did not intend to rejoin the Borg Collective, Lieutenant,” Chakotay assured him. “But they wished to reestablish a neural connection among themselves in hopes that they might restore order.”

  “But how could they do that?” Conlon inquired.

  “They were Borg,” Seven offered, as if that was answer enough.

  “I don’t mean how was it possible anyone would want to return to a collective state, Seven,” Conlon replied. “I mean, without their ship, how . . . ?”

  “They needed a little help,” Paris jumped in, knowing that this part of the briefing would be difficult for Chakotay.

  Unwilling to shrink from his duty, the captain went on, “I was in a shuttle that diverted to the planet when we received a distress call. The shuttle was damaged when Ensign Kaplan and I landed and we came under attack immediately. I was saved by a woman I initially thought was human, Riley Frazier. Kaplan was killed.” Chakotay paused briefly, struck again by how every death of those under his command still weighed heavily. “It took several days for Riley to admit to me who her people really were and still longer for her to tell me what they intended to do. I was severely injured, and to help me heal, I was briefly linked to a small number of Riley’s people. As a result, I recovered from my injuries. I was also able, during the link, to know Riley and the others of the collective as individuals. I saw that their intentions were good, even if I profoundly disagreed with their course of action.”

  “Did you help them?” Cambridge asked, apparently finally curious about the subject under discussion.

  “Not intentionally,” Chakotay replied. “Voyager found me, and I brought Riley aboard to plead her case to Captain Janeway. Although sympathetic, the captain was unwilling to provide the assistance Riley was requesting.”

  “In order to restore their collective nature,” Seven told Conlon, “they would have had to restore power to a neuroelectric generator, and the only one large enough was located on their original vessel.”

  “Which was still intact, though dormant,” Chakotay added. “It also contained a number of drones thought to be dead, but after closer evaluation were determined to be in a state of hibernation that could be reversed if that generator were again activated.”

  “Too dangerous to attempt,” Conlon realized.

  “That was Captain Janeway’s assessment.” Chakotay nodded. “However, the brief link I shared with them had unforeseeable residual effects. Once we refused their request, they reestablished the link with me and forced me to carry out their wishes.”

  Cambridge’s eyes widened. “That must have been unpleasant.”

  “Yes,” Chakotay replied as his jaw tightened. “Riley’s people reestablished their link with the others on the planet and, immediately after, initiated the cube’s self-destruct mechanism to prevent its posing any threat to Voyager or the rest of the colonists. They also offered me their gratitude and assurances that this would be a positive new beginning for them.”

  “Damn, that was big of them,” Cambridge observed.

  “It was inappropriate for them to restore that link without the agreement of everyone who would have been affected by it,” Seven shot back.

  “That was the heart of the captain’s objection,” Chakotay revealed.

  “They should never have done it,” Seven stated unequivocally.

  The room grew silent, uncomfortable with the former Borg’s uncharacteristic outburst.

  “Did the rest of the Borg ever come back for them?” Patel asked, clearly hoping to move past this difficult subject.

  “It’s possible.” Chakotay nodded. “It’s also possible they met with some other fate before that could have happened.”

  “Either way, they still retained sufficient Borg technology to reestablish their link, which means they would have been absorbed by the Caeliar like the rest of the Borg,” Seven stated with great certainty.

  “Also possible,” Chakotay concurred.

  “They might have succeeded in creating a new, somewhat autonomous society,” Cambridge interjected, “and been disinclined to abandon it when
the Caeliar came calling.”

  “Doubtful,” Seven replied.

  “We need to know,” Chakotay said definitively. “This was a unique situation, analogous to, though not exactly the same as, Seven’s. The Caeliar transformed all of the Borg and former Borg—except Seven, who remained free of the gestalt by choice. We need to know if that choice was offered to Riley’s people, and if so, what their answer was.”

  “Well, I for one am curious,” Kim offered.

  “So am I,” Chakotay replied. “Now, if there aren’t any further questions, let’s get to work.”

  • • •

  Tom Paris was due on the bridge, but found himself forced to make an unwelcome detour. He and B’Elanna had spent much of the previous evening in a heated discussion of the unwarranted risks she felt he’d taken during the TS Flyers’ demonstration. He couldn’t blame her, and understood her need to release her tension. Pity was, after the flight he’d returned to Voyager with a different means of tension release on his mind and had been shot down.

  Tom entered their quarters to find B’Elanna recycling the breakfast dishes as Miral played on the floor with a small set of blocks. His arrival clearly took his wife by surprise.

  “What’s wrong?” B’Elanna immediately asked.

  “Change of plan,” he replied, taking her by the hand and pulling her toward their bedroom.

  “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the sentiment,” B’Elanna said, “and I’ve almost completely forgiven you, but I was due in engineering five minutes ago and the Doctor hasn’t gotten back to me yet about—”

  Tom took her hands in his, shaking his head as he lowered his voice. “We can’t leave Miral with the Doctor for this trip.”

  “Why not?” B’Elanna demanded, her whisper harsh with disappointment.

  “He’s not going to be aboard Galen for the duration. He’s got another mission. Chakotay just informed me. Captain Eden, Cambridge, and the Doctor are headed off with Achilles somewhere.”

  B’Elanna stifled a curse as she glanced toward their living area to assure herself that Miral was still busy with her blocks. When she again raised her eyes to Tom’s, they held a fair amount of fear.