Chapter Twenty-One
She had escaped their stares and returned to the open gravesite. She looked across the field in the setting sun. Light sparkled dimly on the grains of asphalt and in the graves, on rusting fragments of Borg technology. The wind drew Kathryn's hair back from her face.
The sunset, by itself, would have been beautiful. She could almost imagine this sky, sheathed in blood-red light overlooking some peaceful scene, the shores of one of Earth's oceans or the river on New Earth. She could see the water, blue and red, warm just under the surface. But this small planet, as far as she could tell, was a barren wasteland. Somewhere there must have been a clearing that did not extend on this wreckage. But her eye was drawn only to the neighboring field and a collapsed piece of machinery, half a mile from the gravesite.
She followed, and recognized the debris as a guyed communication tower. The anchor system had given way but even though the tower rested entirely on one side, a rusted Starfleet insignia remained visible.
She had searched for this for so long, but it was unbelievable. Without her crew, without her ship, she was nothing. The Starfleet combadge still hung on her uniform, and the collar brass indicating her rank still adorned it. Who had the right to tell her that it all was meaningless now? Who had the right to take it away from her – her life's work, her unerring principles, her collective? She had said she didn't care, she had acted recklessly, but nothing; not the thrill of Apocrypha, not the freedom of solitude and rebellion, could have ever replaced Voyager. She imagined that she owed it to herself to break away. If the foundation upon which she had based all of her previous endeavors were to fall, what recourse was there but to begin anew? But then there was the matter of the individual's responsibility to society as a whole. Kathryn saw the Caretaker before her once again, asking her to sacrifice for the common good. Her hand traced the insignia on the collapsed tower, burned black from the sun.
"Avec la garde montante, nous arrivons, nous voila!"
She spoke these words aloud, tears streaming down her face. She had the sense of being unable to return anywhere. How could she have known of the blood on her hands? How could she have known that she was always a toy soldier, marching to a drum? And to have been so proud of it! There were some sins beyond reason, beyond forgiveness.
The girl from the cave had emerged, red light falling on her hair. Kathryn crossed the field to meet her.
She said, "You don't want to believe it. You don't want to think that your government could be capable of such atrocities. But you must face the truth."
Kathryn said nothing.
"What are you going to do?"
She turned and looked at the girl, struck by the calmness in her tone and on her fine features. "I believe that your distress call was intercepted and re-routed to my vessel. Someone wanted me to receive it."
"Or, someone wanted to make sure no one would ever receive it. That map was meant for Voyager, for a woman called Seven of Nine. How did you even come to acquire your vessel?"
"Apocrypha…"
"What?"
"I'm sorry," said Kathryn. "I'm trying to piece it together, but not having much luck."
The girl smiled slightly. "Perhaps you have a gift of divination. Were you assigned this vessel? I see that you are a Starfleet officer. Are you on a mission now?"
She chose to ignore the question. "Seven of Nine," she said, "is supposed to be a new prototype. But to what end? What are they hoping to achieve?"
The girl gave her a warning look. "There are some questions it may be best not to ask."
"Will this happen whether Seven consents or not?"
"I don't imagine she will be able to resist," said the girl. "The Cassandras had one another; they could put up a fight. But Seven of Nine is alone."
She saw Kathryn's face turn pale. "The Cassandras?"
"The previous prototype. Of course, that isn't what they were named originally. But every last one of them introduced herself as Cassandra, I can't think why- perhaps because of the myth of Cassandra the fortune-teller. They all looked human except for their hands, which they used to cover up with gloves. Once they escaped they were able to get away with almost anything. Starfleet couldn't control them. That is how we came to be."
The girl looked off vaguely in the distance. "There must be at least twenty of them left, maybe more. All alike, down to the color of their eyes and the implants in their hands. Blond, if I remember correctly. Tall. Gray eyes, very large." She turned her own bright blue eyes toward Kathryn. "Not a beautiful species, but tremendously functional. The Cassandras aren't afraid of anything. It takes an army to kill one of them, and I imagine that there would be many more left if they weren't all driven to their own destruction. They are, unfortunately, both murderous and suicidal. Perhaps this was simply one of your government's design flaws."
Kathryn stared ahead, far across the landfill, towards Iberia.
"I see," she said.
The girl peered at her. "You recognize what I've told you," she said after a moment, looking closer still. "You know about the Cassandras."
Kathryn sighed. "It seems I may have. The woman I was working with, on the Alpha Walker space station. She killed herself less than a week after I met her, on an expedition to a neutron star called Aurelius Prime. She was the pilot of my vessel."
The girl's face remained mostly expressionless. "Who are you?"
Slowly, Kathryn dropped her gaze from Iberia's slim frame.
"Why won't you tell me who you are? Are you trying to make me think that you are working with them? Are you trying to make me suspect you?"
"What does it matter?" snapped Kathryn. "If I were one of them, I couldn't destroy you now, not with one ship and no weapons. No communication. I'm a prisoner, just like you."
"We have hidden nothing from you. Why keep secrets? I don't believe you are working with them, but I also don't believe you were approached by a Cassandra for no reason. Why did she want to send you here? What could she have known about you?"
Kathryn threw her head back and laughed. "That I'm the Captain of Voyager," she said, her voice breaking. "And that I rescued Seven of Nine from the collective. That's what she could have known about me!"
The girl's eyes, which had before struck Kathryn as terribly cold, betrayed suddenly a hint of kindness. "Oh, I understand. She wanted to kill you."
"No doubt!" Kathryn laughed still through her tears. "If she's as evil as you say. But I believed that I was following a vision. I believed there was a greater purpose."
"Here," said the girl, quite seriously, "we follow our own visions. Do you want to see?"
She removed a small vial from one of the implants in her arm. In it was a small amount of a blue liquid.
"As I've told you," she said, "we are a flawed prototype. Our flaw is that unlike the Borg, we cannot adapt to new and challenging situations. We assimilate information, but do not transform it. That is why we have been so easily weakened. Still we have the power of foresight. We cannot change the future, but we can see it. We can watch it before it plays out. And we can see into the minds of others, hear the innermost thoughts and feel the innermost desires even of our enemies."
She lifted the vial and drank, then drew in her breath sharply.
"Oh! I'm sorry." Her red lips twisted into a smile. "Did you want to try it?"
Kathryn stared, transfixed. "No."
"There isn't any more. But I suppose that if you let me kiss you, you can at least taste it. Don't you want to know what it's like, Captain?"
She felt her senses blurring, dizziness overtaking her. "What is it?"
"Your government has nicknamed it Psychic Sisters. It has enabled us to communicate with one another as the Borg do."
The girl moved closer, timidly. "Oh, you are curious," she said softly, "I can see that, but I could see so much more if you would only let me show you."
Kathryn found herself unable to move away. "You are trying to assimilate me. You said that you were incapable of destroying me, but that isn't true, is it?"
"It will be less painful that way," whispered the girl, laying her white hands on Kathryn's shoulders. "Tomorrow, we will all be destroyed. Trust me when I say you will not die in fear. Let your consciousness be added to our own."
In spite of herself, Kathryn allowed the girl's hands to travel to her throat, to tangle in her hair. The cold metal stung the nape of her neck. The girl's eyes were blue fire. She was half woman, half monster, and she was beautiful.
Chakotay, look at me, she thought. Look at me for the last time.
Or was it even her own thoughts that she heard? They could have belonged to the girl, or even to Cassandra, still flying through the jaws of Aurelius Prime. They could have belonged to Chakotay himself, or to the Admirals in San Francisco, secretly engineering the future. So many thoughts. So many voices.