EIDOLON
by Avalon (avalon99@telusplanet.net)
http://members.dencity.com/avalon_online
J/C, PG-13, 3/7
EIDOLON III
Janeway slowly lifted her head from the shattered viewscreen, wondering if she were still alive. She twisted slightly in her seat and abruptly decided she was. The afterlife wouldn't hurt so much. Ignoring the throbbing in her forehead from where it had connected with the broken plasteel, she turned slightly to look at the man beside her.
Chakotay's body was slumped over the console, blood trickling from a shallow cut on his forehead. Her heart gave a painful lurch and she reached out one hand to his throat. His pulse throbbed beneath it reassuringly and after a moment she pulled away. 'Hurr,' she told herself. 'The phaser...' Stiffly she sat back, looking for the weapon and trying to ignore the damage to both herself and the shuttle.
There -- Lodged halfway under her seat. Wincing a little, she stretched a hand, retrieved it, and instantly felt much better. She was in control again. Things were looking brighter already.
With a muffled groan, the Captain pulled herself to her feet and limped toward the rear of the cabin, keeping a careful eye on the unconscious man in the co-pilot's seat. The shuttle had come to rest at a steep angle, one side half-buried in the sand, the other leaning against a rock tower. Janeway braced herself against the unnatural tilt of the floor.
Chakotay stirred and moaned. No. Not Chakotay. Eidolon. 'Hurry!' Leaning against a bulkhead, Janeway tried to pull open a metal hatch. It refused to move. She scowled at it, then hit it with one fist. It sprang open. With a hasty glance over her shoulder, she reached in, pulled out a handful of fibre cables, and cut them with the phaser. Then she turned back to Eidolon.
She paused a moment. It felt...wrong...to bind his hands like this. Janeway gave herself a mental kick. If she wanted to stay alive, she had to stop thinking of him as Chakotay, had to suppress the instinctive urge to trust him... With a curse, she dragged his hands behind his back and secured them tightly with the cables. Then she stepped back and surveyed her handiwork. He did not move.
Janeway took a deep breath, wincing as her ribs complained, and realized she was trembling. Shock, setting in, she decided. 'Perfectly understandable,' she decided, as she painfully began to check the few instruments not destroyed in the crash. 'It's not every day that one is kidnapped by one's First Officer and crashlands on an uncharted planet...'
Five minutes later, Janeway tossed back her hair, which had loosened from its tight knot and was now hanging annoyingly in her eyes, and scowled at the console. The shuttle was dead. There wasn't enough power left to fry an egg, let alone get off the surface of the planet. Even sending a distress signal was out of the question.
Janeway stood back and checked her supplies. There weren't many. The shuttle had been almost empty when they had launched it, with only the standard emergency and medical kits on board. Unfortunately, both had perished when the inertial dampeners had exploded. The automatic fire suppression gear hadn't helped either. The one tricorder left whined alarmingly when she turned it on, and its displays flickered off and on...but it was better than nothing. So...she silently added up her assets -- one phaser, one semi-functioning tricorder, her wits, and a First Officer currently inhabited by an alien parasite. Damn.
The alien parasite stirred again, his eyes flickering open. He blinked several times then focused on her. Janeway stared impassively back.
"You're insane," he whispered.
"Probably," she agreed again. "But it worked." She lifted the phaser so that he could see it.
He tensed, then frowned as he realized his hands were bound. An expression of rage crossed his face. "Damn you..."
"You can swear at me all you want later," Janeway said coolly, "but now that our situations are reversed, I think it's time for some answers." She leaned against the doorway, keeping the phaser aimed on him.
Eidolon slowly sat up, blinking as blood oozed slowly from the cut over his eye. "Or what?" He asked, the mocking tone back in his voice. "Will you shoot me, Kathryn? If you're so sure Chakotay is still in here somewhere, will you risk hurting this body?"
Janeway did not pause. "I don't have to. All I have to do is wait for Voyager. Then my Science and Medical teams can have you. And I can assure you that they will find a way to..." Her voice broke off as Eidolon's eyes went dark. Suddenly something was clawing at her mind, looking for a way in.
Janeway's eyes widened as she realized what he was doing. He was trying to take her body, as he had taken her First Officer's. She gasped as the sensation increased, hot brands raking across her mind, seeking a threshold. 'Over my dead body,' was her last coherent thought as she crashed to her knees. She never felt the impact. Eidolon hovered just outside whatever it was that made her Kathryn Janeway, and she was damned if she was going to let him in. She threw herself wholeheartedly into the battle...
* * *
When his eyes had opened, Chakotay's first reaction had been astonishment that they were still alive. After the Captain's flying demonstration he had fully expected to awaken in the next world. Instead, he found himself firmly lodged in this one. His respect for her went up another notch. He hadn't known she could fly like that...
When he had realized that his hands were tied and that she held the phaser, he had been relieved. Immensely relieved. A distant part of him smiled at the thought that, for probably the only time in his life, he was pleased to wake up bound...but the amusement quickly faded as he felt the iron fetters around his mind weaken.
Instantly he threw himself at them, struggling to hurl the invader from his mind. And he was winning...the chains were melting away like snow in the spring. He could almost reach out and take control of his body again... And then he saw the Captain... She was on her knees, pain on her face...Eidolon was trying to take her. No! At the speed of thought he reversed his efforts, now trying desperately to hold on to the struggling alien.
It was like wrestling an eel. Eidolon twisted and arced, each time almost breaking the Commander's mental grip, but Chakotay hung on grimly, long past the moment when he thought he must surely let go. Finally, after a lifetime or two, he could feel the parasite begin to weaken. With one last effort he dragged Eidolon backward through his mind and abruptly found himself once more in his now-familiar prison. Ignoring this, his thoughts turned instantly to the Captain. Kathryn?
* * *
It hurt. Hurt as if the memory of every pain she had ever experienced had been ripped from her mind, then been doubled, tripled, and doubled again. There was no defence, no way to retreat...Janeway had felt her mental shields beginning to crumble. And then...something...had happened. It was as if Eidolon had been pulled backward at the very moment of triumph... 'Chakotay,' she wondered raggedly. 'Was that you?' Whatever it was, she had no illusions that she had managed to fend off the alien by the sheer force of her mind alone. He was too powerful...much too powerful.
She blinked tiredly, realizing that she was on her knees, swaying slightly...and that Chakotay's body was gathering itself to rise. Fog swirled through the corners of her mind but one thought rose to the surface like an arrow. The phaser. With leaden arms she managed to raise the weapon in both hands, noting idly that they were shaking badly, then spoke.
"Stop right there." Her voice sounded odd to her ears. Eidolon stopped. Janeway was distantly surprised that he obeyed her. Well, that was good, because she still wasn't certain she could shoot him. Not in that body, at any rate. With an effort she dragged her mind back to the present. 'Get up,' she thought to herself. 'You look ridiculous on your knees.' The sheer idiocy of this remark helped clear some of the cobwebs from her mind and, using the bulkhead, she climbed slowly to her feet, keeping the phaser carefully aimed on her companion.
* * *
Chakotay watched her rise and felt relief sweep over him, followed closely by concern. She looked as if a strong wind would blow her over. But some inner core of resiliency kept her going. His admiration increased.
* * *
Janeway felt a little of her strength begin to return and she straightened her shoulders, ignoring the headache that was threatening to blind her. 'OK, Captain,' she told herself, 'First things first...' Her hands had stopped shaking and she now held the phaser with some degree of certainty. "Back off and sit down." She said out loud, indicating the co-pilot's seat.
Eidolon obeyed and stared at her tiredly. "Now what?" he echoed her earlier words back to her.
"Now we wait for Voyager while you give me some answers."
Eidolon shook his head. "It won't do any good. It'll take a week to repair the ship. You're on your own, Kathryn." He paused, but she remained silent. "How long do you think you can fight me off? I'll just keep trying to take your mind until you grow too weak to fight me. And then I'll be free. And you'll be dead."
Janeway lowered herself into the passenger seat, carefully keeping her distance from the alien. He was right. She couldn't stay alert for an entire week... Still... "If you try that again, I'll shoot you."
Eidolon gave her a weary smile. (That's Chakotay's smile, damn it. Stop that.) "I thought we'd already covered this," he said easily. "You can't kill this body in case Chakotay is still alive. So any threats you make aren't terribly effective. Why don't you just let me go?"
Janeway sent him a measuring look. "I don't have to kill you..."
He gave a short bark of laughter. "So, you'll...what? Shoot me in the leg, maybe? I don't think so. You don't have the nerve, Kathryn."
That did it. In an instant, adrenaline was sweeping over her, banishing the fatigue and pain and, for one glorious moment, she gave her temper free rein. With one hand she hauled him to his feet, shoving him back against the bulkhead. "Let's get something straight, shall we?" she spoke in a quietly chilling voice. "I will do whatever it takes to get my First Officer back, and if that involves shooting him in the leg in order to make you obey me, then that's what I will do. Furthermore, if you try that little mind trick again, I will shoot you. Guaranteed. And one more thing...stop calling me Kathryn." She punctuated this with a final shove, released him, then stepped back and watched him through narrowed eyes. "Now...do we understand each other?"
Eidolon met her gaze for a long moment, hesitated, then glanced away uneasily. "Yes. Captain."
"Good." Janeway picked up the tricorder, moving the phaser to her left hand. She shook it and the readings stabilized. "This indicates that there's a power source about a day's travel away," she said, calmly now. "What is it?"
Eidolon hesitated, then replied. "I don't know."
"Wrong answer. Try again."
"I don't know. Really. This planet has...changed."
"In what way?"
Eidolon shifted his weight. "It used to be greener. Less... deserted. I...think I've been away longer than I thought."
The shuttle's sensors didn't pick up any signs of higher lifeforms."
"My people don't always show up on sensors."
"Your people?"
He looked away and did not answer. Janeway gave him a minute, then levelled the phaser at him. "Right leg or left?"
He returned his gaze. "What?"
"Which leg?" The phaser was aimed unwaveringly at his right kneecap.
Eidolon swallowed. Their gazes clashed for a long moment, then his eyelids flickered. "Neither," he said.
Janeway allowed herself a cold smile. "Good. Let's start again, shall we?" She leaned one hip against the chair. "Why exactly did you bring us here? Be precise."
Eidolon sank back into the co-pilot's chair and sighed. "I was looking for some trace of my people."
She cast him a dangerous look as he stopped, and he continued hastily. "We are...I suppose you would call us 'wraiths'. We live by entering another body...a corporeal form...and sharing our existence with that person."
"Sharing...?"
Eidolon's poise was slowly returning. "Don't sound so hopeful, Kath...Captain. I do not subscribe to my people's beliefs of peaceful coexistence. I do not 'share'. Ever. This body is mine."
"Wrong. It doesn't belong to you. And the rightful owner is going to get it back."
"And how do you propose to do that?" he asked. The assurance was back in his voice.
Janeway didn't answer. She glanced again at the wavering tricorder display. There was definitely some sort of power source out there but she couldn't get a good enough reading for any detail. Still, it was beginning to look like her only option. She couldn't stay here in the shuttle with him, and she couldn't risk waiting for Voyager to arrive. With a snap she put the tricorder away and stood, balancing herself against the tilt of the deck.
He cocked his head to one side. "Well, Captain? You didn't answer my question. How do you plan to return this body to the dear, departed Commander Chakotay?"
"By any means necessary. Now get up."
He did not move. "Why?"
She gave him a cold smile. "Because we're going to do what you came here for. We're going to go find your people."
END OF PART 3