FULL CIRCLE
by Avalon (avalon99@telusplanet.net)
http://members.dencity.com/avalon_online
J/C, PG-13, 7/9
FULL CIRCLE VII
"I don't believe it." Chakotay's voice was flat and unyielding. "I refuse to believe that Eidolon had anything beside his own interests at heart.
"I'm not going to defend his methods...but he did try to prevent what's happening now." Janeway shifted a little on the bed.
"How? How could what he did affect anything?"
The Captain's eyes closed briefly. "The Guardian is linked to the wormhole. And I think Eidolon planned to use it to...change the wormhole. Somehow. To stop the energy waves from destroying the planet..."
"Destroying the planet?" The Doctor repeated.
Janeway nodded then glanced up at Chakotay. "They're getting stronger, aren't they?"
He nodded silently.
"If we don't stop them, they'll destroy not only this ship, but probably the entire quadrant."
"How do you know?"
"I'm...not sure. I just do."
Chakotay sighed. "All right," he said. "Assuming that what you say is true -- the Guardian was completely destroyed in that last cave-in. How do we stop the energy waves?"
Janeway rubbed the bridge of her nose. "I don't know." She stared past him into the distance, a frown of concentration on her face. "I remember trying to reprogram the Guardian to do...something. To stop the energy waves somehow. And it would have worked if you hadn't tackled me..." There was a faint note of accusation in her voice.
"'If I hadn't...?" His voice trailed off incredulously. "You pulled a phaser on me. What was I supposed to do -- let you shoot me?"
"I wouldn't have shot you," she snapped at him.
"Excuse me..." The Doctor's voice interrupted the escalating argument. "I'm sure this is all very fascinating but do you think we could concentrate on saving the ship? I only ask because in our current situation it just might be of interest to the rest of the crew."
He was right. Janeway looked away, taking a deep breath, shaking slightly.
A pang went through Chakotay. He couldn't seem to cope with the situation, no matter how hard he tried. One moment he was holding onto her for dear life; the next he was quarrelling with her. And, no matter what she said, he just couldn't accept that he might have misjudged the Wraith. Perhaps she was right -- perhaps he was being blinded by what had happened. Eidolon had stolen his body. And hurt her. Chakotay found that he could forgive the Wraith for the first much easier than he could the second. The Commander took a deep, shuddering breath, not sure how much more of this he could take.
"Fine," he said at last to Janeway, "What do you suggest?"
She answered immediately. "I need to go back down..."
"No."
"Absolutely not." Two voices spoke as one. The Doctor put one hand on her shoulder. "No, Captain. You're not going anywhere until I've found a way to decrease your isotronic neutrinos and stabilize your brain chemistry."
She shot him a look, resisting the urge to try to pull away. "I feel fine, Doctor. Really." The note of command was back in her voice. "And I need to find the rest of the answers...before it's too late."
The hologram ignored her. "If memory serves," he said, "you were
relieved of command. And, even if you weren't, as Chief Medical Officer,
I would order you to remain here. I don't know what's keeping you
alive, but it could stop at any minute. And you won't be much use
to us if you dropped dead in the middle of a crisis, will you?"
Janeway scowled then turned to her First Officer. "Chakotay..."
she began.
He looked away. "He's right. We need you alive."
"None of us will be alive if I don't figure out what's going on!"
He narrowed his eyes. She was wearing the same stubborn expression he had seen so many times before; she wasn't going to give up so easily this time. He frowned, trying to think of a way to keep her here that didn't involve tying her to the bed or rendering her unconscious. And then the answer came to him. "Fine," he said evenly. "If you can walk from one end of sickbay to the other, I'll beam you and an away team down to the cave. Otherwise..." His voice trailed off ominously.
Her chin came up at the challenge. Without speaking, she shrugged off the Doctor's hand and climbed to her feet. All the blood abruptly left her face and she swayed slightly. Chakotay had to throttle the impulse to put a hand out to steady her. He was trying to prove a point after all. Besides, he didn't think she would appreciate it, given the annoyed glint in her eyes.
Janeway took a cautious step forward...then another. In the end, she managed four strides altogether before her strength gave out. Chakotay was already there, catching her before she could fall and carrying her wordlessly back to the bed. He laid her on it gently and brushed a quick hand over her forehead. She opened her eyes. "Damn you," she whispered softly but whole-heartedly.
He gave her a small smile, resisting the urge to bend down and kiss her. "You can swear at me all you like later," he promised. "Right now I'm needed on the Bridge." He looked up, meeting the Doctor's eyes across the bed. "Will she be all right?" Worry coloured his voice.
"If I can stabilize her neutrino levels..." There was an element of doubt in his voice; Chakotay's face must have changed for the Doctor took another look at him then said reassuringly in his best bedside manner: "She'll be fine, Commander."
Chakotay nodded, despite his uncertainty, and looked down at Janeway, who was staring at him balefully. "I'll see that you're kept informed," he told her. She didn't reply. He paused, started to say something else, then thought better of it and turned to go.
"Chakotay." He halted.
Janeway spoke softly. "I really wouldn't have shot you, you know."
He gave her a quick, relieved grin. "I know," he replied, turning away and limping toward the door. "At least, not twice in the same month, right?" He said over his shoulder.
She stared after him in consternation.
* * *
Janeway lay on her side, trying to ignore the waves of nausea that were crashing over her at regular intervals. The formula the Doctor had injected her with had left her feeling more than a little queasy, but he assured her that it was restoring her brain's chemical balance -- albeit slowly. He had practically been chortling with glee when he had finally found the mixture that counteracted... whatever it was that was happening to her.
Unfortunately though, his cure required rest and time. Lots of it. He wouldn't even allow her to access the computer in sickbay, threatening to put her in restraints if necessary to keep her in bed. He didn't seem to notice that the enforced inactivity was slowly driving her insane.
Two more series of waves had hit the ship in the last hour and a half. Fortunately B'Elanna and her team had restored the shields enough for Voyager to ride out the storm but, from what Janeway could gather from the infrequent communications she had with the Bridge, shields were down to less than twenty percent. And Engineering wasn't sure how much more they could do...
Part of her itched to leap out of bed and sprint down to Engineering -- to rip the shields apart by hand and rebuild them herself if required, but she forced herself to remain still. Her crew knew what they were doing...and she had other things to consider.
Such as -- while she seemed to have most of the pieces of the puzzle now, the picture was still incomplete. The wormhole, for example remained tantalizingly enigmatic. She knew that Eidolon had tried to destroy it, was filled with the same driving force to complete his task, but she didn't know why. She sighed with frustration. The wormhole was the key to unlocking this whole mystery...if she only knew how.
The cave. That was the answer. When she had entered the cave, the memories locked inside her had surfaced --violently -- fading only when she had been knocked unconscious. But they were still inside her...somewhere. A faint ray of hope swept over her. Maybe she didn't need to return to the surface after all...
Then she shuddered. The thought of consciously reaching for the visions that had been haunting her, of purposely becoming Eidolon, even for a short time, filled her with a sense of dread. Despite what she knew about the Wraith, she did not want to do this. All those years trapped alone in space with nothing but memories and grief for company, insanity clawing at his mind... No. She couldn't do this.
But then again, what choice did she have? Her ship was in danger. Her crew needed her. Despite her misgivings, she had to try...
Janeway took a deep breath, banishing the fear and pain, and focused her mind, allowing it to drift toward the part of her that was Eidolon. One last image -- Chakotay's -- flashed across her mind and then...
...It was easier this time. Whatever had happened to her in the cave had weakened the barriers between the Wraith's memories and the pieces of her that were still Kathryn Janeway. Fog swirled around the edges of her vision...
...And she was there. But it was...different. There was no flash of light this time, no moment of disorientation. Instead it was as if she had walked calmly out of her own life and into his, reality changing around her between one heartbeat and the next...
The world changed as time swept abruptly backwards. Hundreds...thousands...of years passed by in the blink of an eye...and the distant past rose up before her.
She was on a...well, ship wasn't the right term. A... conveyance, was the best her beleaguered mind could come up with on short notice. Shay'anari surrounded her. But they were not Wraiths. They were corporeal. She could see and touch them, could hear their voices as they spoke...
They were...travelling. In the wormhole. Somehow, the Shay'anari were manipulating and controlling it, forcing it to take them where they wanted to go. In the middle of the...conveyance...a Guardian, smaller in scale than the one she had seen, pulsed and hummed, streams of light radiating from its core. Janeway gasped in wonder. These aliens had had the ability to call up and command a wormhole as easily as she could transport down to a planet. If she could only discover how they did it, how to duplicate it...Voyager could return to the Alpha Quadrant. They could go home...
The narrative continuing to unfold around her despite her mounting excitement, then recognition jolted suddenly through her. The Shay'anari were going home too, she realized with a start -- returning to Anari after a long voyage. But their Anari was not the small brownish-grey planet she had seen. Home was somewhere...something... else. Something indefinable. She took a step forward, trying to see more clearly...
...And there was an accident. Something went wrong. The hum of the Guardian changed; the wormhole twisting around them like a cobra, trying to break free from their control. There were voices, hurried movements, fear...
...And they were trapped on the small planet with two moons. Trapped in this reality where they were only wraiths, ghosts who could touch nothing, change nothing... Anguish, loss, and a surge of homesickness so strong she thought she would die from it, swept over her...
Time passed. The Shay'anari discovered how to enter the bodies of the primitive humanoids on this planet they had named Anari after their lost homeland; discovered how to manipulate them as they had manipulated the wormhole; how to advance their technology; to inject the beings with a sense of purpose and drive...to build another Guardian to replace the one that had been damaged...
Years, centuries passed. Slowly, the Guardian took shape. And one Wraith, as they called themselves now, realized what would happen when it was used; calculated how the backlash of energy from the Guardian as it seized the now dormant wormhole and bent it to their will, would sweep across the planet, destroying the hosts -- and perhaps all corporeal life... One Wraith tried to prevent it...
...And failed. Eidolon was tried and convicted, not for slaying a host, although that was the "official" reason, but for trying to stop them. They didn't kill him. Perhaps they couldn't. In the end, they sentenced him to something much worse -- they left him behind, exiled in space to years of unending solitude and misery -- while they triggered the newly-built Guardian and went home...
...And destroyed the planet. No life remained, save a few stunted plants and animals. The green world of Anari became a dry, arid wasteland -- and every man, woman, and child died.
Eidolon hadn't known this, of course, until he had seized control of a passing lifeform and returned to the planet, seeking his people. And, even though the countless years of emptiness and grief had destroyed his sanity and filled him with bitterness, he had still tried to complete his self-appointed task -- to destroy the wormhole and the Guardian so it could never be used again...
And failed. Again. Despair overwhelmed her...
...and she was in sickbay once more. It was over. She was trembling, Janeway realized distantly, her limbs shaking so much she probably would have fallen over if she weren't already laying down. She took a deep steadying breath, fighting the twin sensations of anguish and loss that were sweeping over her, and trying to ignore the weakness of her limbs.
The Wraiths had sacrificed an entire race. Millions, perhaps billions, had died. Eidolon's memories poured over her. The field of flowers, the crowded shimmering city, Yvara...all gone. Completely destroyed. A slow anger, more potent than anything she had ever experienced before, began to burn within her.
Janeway opened her eyes and the memories vanished like mist in the sunlight. The anger, however, did not. She frowned. "I will destroy the Guardian and the wormhole, no matter what it takes," she swore silently to herself, "I'll finish what Eidolon started..."
And, with a start, she realized she knew how to do both.
* * *
Chakotay was exhausted. The stresses of the last few days had taken their toll on him and he had to concentrate to keep his attention on the task at hand. That, plus his injury which had gone beyond pain and was fast approaching torment, coupled with his almost constant underlying anxiety about the Captain...and his reserves were almost gone.
The rest of the crew wasn't in much better shape. For the last two hours, they had worked like demons, fighting the now regular energy waves that battered their ship. As soon as they managed to repair one system, another series of waves would crash over the starship, destroying the repairs and causing even more damage. The ship couldn't take much more. Actually, Chakotay was mildly astonished that the remaining shields hadn't buckled long ago. It seemed Voyager was as stubborn as her crew.
The Commander crawled out from under the console and brushed the back of his hand over his forehead, which was damp with sweat. Environmental controls had gone down an hour ago and the temperature on the Bridge had risen steadily, to the point where they could hardly breathe, let alone work. Paradoxically, Engineering was icy cold, causing even more problems for the beleaguered crew down there.
He took a quick glance around the Bridge. People were working frantically, replacing burnt out parts and trying to repair multiple systems at once. Stray wreaths of smoke curled around them as the emergency lighting flickered unsteadily. Debris littered the Bridge. It was like a scene out a nightmare. Or someone's version of Hell.
"What the...?" Paris' voice held a note of surprise and everyone looked up in alarm. Chakotay took a hasty step forward, wincing at the pain the movement caused.
"What?"
Paris was on his knees before the navigation console, holding several wires together with his right hand, a nasty burn across the back of his left. But it wasn't the injury he was staring at -- it was the red warning light on the right side of the panel, blinking quietly.
"The shuttle bay doors just opened. I think." He added, reaching across to bang one fist against the panel. The light remained on. Chakotay frowned, moving toward him, more carefully this time.
"It's got to be a faulty signal. Why would the..."
Paris interrupted him. "The Ticonderoga! Someone's piloting it out of the shuttle bay..."
The Bridge stilled as everyone turned to the static-filled viewscreen and watched as the shuttle swung around Voyager's bow then set a course for the wormhole.
"What the hell...? Who...?" Chakotay stopped, stiffening as realization flooded through him. Kathryn. It had to be. What the hell did she think she was doing?
"Hail the shuttle." His words were clipped and terse. Beside him, Paris hastened to comply.
"Voyager to Ticonderoga." There was a long silence.
'Answer, damn it,' Chakotay thought savagely, dismay going through him. An eternity passed.
Finally, a voice replied. It was distorted and filled with static as the ship's communications systems struggled to filter out the interference, but it was recognizable just the same. Captain Janeway. Multiple pairs of eyes turned and met each other silently.
"This is the Ticonderoga."
Relief swept over Chakotay but he managed to keep his tone even. "Captain...what are you doing?"
"I'm going to destroy the wormhole."
He froze. The moment stretched into infinity. Finally he repeated: "Destroy the wormhole. Why?"
"Because it's the only way to stop the energy waves. And now that the Guardian's destroyed, this is the only way to do it."
"What is?" 'Please -- don't let her do what I think she's going to do,' he prayed silently. His stomach muscles tightened.
"I..." There was a pause. "This wormhole isn't like anything we've seen before. But it will collapse...if there's a big enough explosion."
A wave of unreality assailed Chakotay. Around him, the Bridge crew stood frozen in place, tension radiating from them. He swallowed once, twice, then said: "You're going to fly into it and detonate your engines." It wasn't a question.
A pause. Then: "Yes."
TO BE CONTINUED