FULL CIRCLE
by Avalon (avalon99@telusplanet.net)
http://members.dencity.com/avalon_online
J/C, PG-13, 8/9
FULL CIRCLE VIII
"Kathryn. Don't!"
Janeway winced at the note of ragged fear in Chakotay's voice and a shaft of pain went through her. She didn't want to do this. Didn't want to have this conversation. It would have been easier not to reply to Voyager's hail. She almost hadn't. But then something inside her had reached out and flicked on the communicator, and now it was too late. She sighed and answered him. "I'm sorry, Chakotay. But it's the only way."
"There are always alternatives."
She shook her head, even though no one could see it. "Not this time."
It was true. She had known she was out of options the moment she awoke from the last vision in sickbay; knew that, with the Guardian's destruction, this was the only way. But it didn't mean she had to like it...
Part of her was still surprised that she had even gotten this far. She had managed to slip out of sickbay when the Doctor wasn't watching, but it had taken all of her strength and stamina to make it to the shuttle bay unobserved. Even now she was holding onto consciousness by a tenuous thread, waves of pain and dizziness coursing over her at regular intervals.
Of course, she only had to put up with them for the next...four minutes and twenty seconds...
"Kathryn...talk to me. Tell me why you're doing this." Chakotay's voice came over the communicator again, sounding slightly blurred from the static. She bit her lip, concentrating as she threaded the shuttle through the increasing turbulence.
"Tell me why you have to destroy the wormhole." Chakotay insisted desperately.
She sighed, unable to ignore the entreaty beneath his words...and responded. "The Guardian has been containing the energy waves within the wormhole for centuries," she said, her hands moving carefully over the instrument panel. "But it was critically damaged during the first cave-in three weeks ago. There was enough residual power left in the system to keep the wormhole safe for a while, but it's gone now. And the energy waves are escaping into space."
"How do you know?"
"Eidolon's memories. I...know what really happened."
"Tell me."
He was trying to delay her, she realized, to keep her talking until they could come up with a way to stop her... But it didn't matter. They wouldn't succeed. And, Janeway discovered, she wanted to cling to this last vestige of human contact, for just a little longer...
So she told him. Hastily, concisely -- everything she had seen, everything she had learned. When she finished, a brief silence fell. Then:
"All right," Chakotay's voice was as reasonable as he could make it, "I agree that we need to collapse the wormhole, but you don't have to do this. Come back to the ship and we'll explore our options..."
"No. We're out of time. The next wave could destroy Voyager. I won't let that happen."
"The photon torpedoes..."
"Weapons systems are still down, remember? And anyway, I don't think they would be powerful enough. Only a warp core breach..."
"Damn it, Kathryn, don't do this! Give us a chance to find another way!"
Weariness was clawing at her and her eyes flickered shut briefly. "I don't have a choice," she whispered as she pointed the nose of the shuttle toward the centre of the wormhole. Ten more seconds... "I'm sorry."
The wormhole opened to meet her, a maelstrom of energy and light. She squinted a little, angling the shuttle's shields with one hand...
"Kathryn!" Raw agony in his voice.
"I love you," she only had time to say before the wormhole engulfed her.
* * *
Chakotay stood frozen for less than a heartbeat as the shuttle vanished...and then he was shouting into the communicators. "B'Elanna -- I don't care what it takes -- I need engines now!"
In Engineering, Torres launched into a stream of blistering Klingon curses as she and her crew struggled to comply. A frantic few seconds went by...then she hit her combadge. "We've got thrusters."
"Not good enough. I need Impulse. Do it now, damn it!"
She swore at him again then plunged back into her engines. Another pause, and... "Fine. You've got twenty seconds worth. But that's it!"
On the Bridge, Chakotay turned to Paris. "Take us in..."
"Course already plotted." Paris' hands fairly danced over the controls as he turned the ship without benefit of navigation systems or computers...and sent it plunging toward the wormhole.
It was like flying an elephant, Paris decided as he struggled to maintain an even course. He was trying to navigate by line of sight alone, relying only on the blurred viewscreen before him as sweat trickling from his brow. Behind him, Kim began to read out verbal course changes while Chakotay and Tuvok tried to help compensate for the increased turbulence...
...And then they were in. Light flared around them and the ship shuddered. If the energy pulses had been powerful before, they were overwhelming now. Voyager rolled savagely, the ominous sounds of grinding metal rising to an unbearable level as the engines died with a last tortured scream.
Chakotay grabbed hold of a chair close by where he had fallen, pulling himself to his knees as the ship continued to shake around him. "Where's the shuttle?" He shouted over the rising din.
Ensign Kim was clinging doggedly to his station. "I don't know!" Impatiently he kicked the console and the sensor readings stabilized for just an instant. "It's ahead of us. And it's still intact!"
"Get a tractor beam on it."
Paris relinquished the now useless navigation panel and, reached across, trying the controls. "It's not working."
"Make it work."
Paris gave the Commander a wordless look then dove under the console.
"Chakotay to Engineering."
"What?" Torres snapped.
"We need transporters. Now."
She let out another string of Klingon curses then started on Talaxian, Bajoran, and Human oaths as she and the others fought to get the damaged systems back online.
She was calling Chakotay a flea-ridden son of a Denebian slime-snake when one of her Engineers came up with the solution...short term though it was. Working frantically, they rerouted components and crossed systems that were never meant to be crossed, and in the end, they had transporters...sort of.
"Torres to Bridge."
"Bridge here."
"Try it."
Chakotay's hands were already flying across the Bridge's transporters. He got a lock on the Captain...he hoped... and, with an inward prayer, engaged the device.
The emergency lighting dimmed as the whine of the transporters mingled with the howl of the ship. An electronic fog began to form...
...and outside, the Ticonderoga detonated. Radiation and plasma rained over Voyager as a chain of smaller explosions swept through the Bridge. Chakotay staggered and gritted his teeth, ignoring the destruction around him. The glow of the transporters thinned and almost vanished...and then a shape appeared. It continued to solidify...and then the transporters exploded.
Chakotay was thrown backward, colliding with the command chairs behind him. His knee, skull, and ribs screamed a warning at him but he ignored them, pulling himself back up painfully. His gaze went automatically to the spot where...
Janeway. She was stretched full length on the floor nearby. Unconscious...or dead. But here. They had done it.
Hastily Chakotay tore his gaze away and glanced around the Bridge. Voyager was falling apart around him. The scent of burning filled the air and several bodies lay crumpled close by -- whose, he couldn't tell.
"Tom -- Get us out of here!" The shout held more than a little urgency.
The Lieutenant was clawing his way up from the floor, clutching his right arm with his left. He staggered back to his station...and stopped, one look enough to tell him that Chakotay was asking the impossible. The helm was a scorched mass of components and loose wires. They weren't going anywhere.
Paris' eyes met Chakotay's then the Commander looked away. The viewscreen, oddly enough, was still functioning. Outside, the wormhole was unchanged, pulses of light and colour reflecting off the hull. Janeway's plan had failed. The Ticonderoga's destruction hadn't been enough...
Chakotay stiffened as memory came flooding abruptly back. Eidolon, seizing his body, brutally imprisoning him in some dark corner of his own mind. Eidolon, kidnapping the Captain, dragging them both on his mindless quest to find and awake the Guardian... And Janeway standing in the cave, reprogramming the alien computer. For the first time since the Wraith had stolen his body, Chakotay allowed himself to remember...truly remember...what had happened. And the answer came flowing fast on the memory's heels.
"Chakotay to Engineering."
Torres' voice when she responded was full of pain. He forced himself to ignore that too. "B'Elanna -- Can you reconfigure the engines to emit the same type of energy beam as the Guardian?"
"We don't have any Engines," she growled.
"Can you?" His voice was calmer now. Live or die...it would all be decided in the next few seconds.
She sighed. "I'll get back to you..." The link went dead.
Seconds ticked by. Time slowed down to a crawl, until Chakotay thought he would surely go mad. Part of him wanted to go to Kathryn's side -- she still wasn't moving; he couldn't even tell if she was breathing -- but there was no time. They had only seconds...
...And, just when he was certain that Voyager would tear herself apart, a new note replaced the rending sound going through the ship...and a beam of pure energy shot out from the sensor array.
Voyager convulsed...
...and the wormhole collapsed.
* * *
The first thing Chakotay was aware of was warm water, running down his face. He reached up a hand, only half-conscious; it came away sticky. Blood.
Then remembrance blazed through him and he was fully awake. He opened his eyes, blinking as the blood trickled into them...and looked on Hell. The Bridge was a shambles. There was nothing that wasn't broken, burned, or splintered. Smoke continued to weave through the air and the lighting had faded almost completely. Bodies littered the deck.
Chakotay reached out a hand to the nearby chair and numbly pulled himself upright. For a moment his vision greyed and blurred, and the ship spun crazily. Then it passed and he could see again.
No more than seconds could have elapsed. Others around the Bridge were also beginning to stir, while outside...
Outside, the writhing lights of the wormhole no longer danced outside the ship. Instead, cold, clear stars glittered against a dark backdrop. They were back in normal space. They had done it.
It took several seconds for Chakotay to realize that more than stars were streaming by. In the viewscreen, the first moon of Anari shot by them, then the second. And ahead, the planet itself was growing larger with every passing moment.
Adrenaline flooded through him, going a long way toward eliminating the lingering disorientation and weakness. They were out of control and, unless they did something -- soon -- on the verge of crashing. Once more, the ship began to shudder violently as it met the atmosphere of Anari.
Chakotay took two weaving strides forward, unceremoniously picked up a dazed Tom Paris with one hand, and deposited him in the pilot's chair. "Can you fly?" he shouted over the rising tumult.
Paris blinked twice then turned to the controls. "Uh. Sure." He reached out with his right arm, winced, then switched to his left. "Sure," he said, his voice a little stronger now.
Around them, the rest of the crew, or at least those still conscious, were realizing the danger and moving to what remained of their stations, doing what they could to stabilize the ship. It wasn't much.
Chakotay took a quick glance at Paris as the brown planet continued to grow larger. The Lieutenant was trying desperately to fly a dead ship with no engines, no navigation systems, no computers...and only one functioning arm. Chakotay grimaced. Well, he couldn't do much about the rest, but he could help him with that. Staggering slightly, he took the adjoining seat, reaching for the instruments Paris couldn't. Together they fought to gain control of the ship.
The next few minutes would be forever engraved in Chakotay's memory. The ship plummeted toward the planet as if drawn by a magnet and the atmosphere buffeted them, wreaking further havoc on the already damaged systems. They compensated with thrusters...and the hull's temperature began to rise. And then someone in Engineering must have achieved a miracle for the ship's engines began to respond sluggishly, enough for Paris and Chakotay to alter their trajectory slightly...Enough so that, instead of plowing helplessly into the planet's surface, Voyager touched down in at least the semblance of a normal landing. Heavily, with far too much force and velocity, the ship came to land like an immense, wounded bird and, with a final groan and a creak of anguished metal, she settled onto the rust-coloured ground.
It was probably the worst landing in the history of Starfleet, Chakotay decided as he slowly uncurled his fingers from the edge of the console. Still, it was a landing. They were alive.
And then the one thought that had been tearing at him suddenly became overwhelming. Chakotay stood carefully, not heeding the rubble around him and moved across the crazily tilting Bridge to where Janeway lay motionless next to the turbolift doors. Slowly he bent down, convinced that the top of his skull was going to fall off any minute, and took her hand. His fingers curled unsteadily around her wrist, searching for a pulse with both hands. A lifetime passed. And then he felt it... slow but steady. She was alive.
Chakotay bowed his head for a moment, too tired to feel much of anything. let alone relief. Then, after a lifetime or two, he re-opened his eyes. Janeway was staring back up at him. She blinked hazily a couple of times and then her gaze sharpened.
"Chakotay..." she whispered weakly, her fingers tightening around his. A pause, then: "What have you done to my ship?"
Absurdly, he had to fight down the urge to laugh. His lips curled into a wide smile and, as delayed reaction swept over him, he pulled her up into a close embrace. She stiffened briefly, whether from pain or...something else...and then her arms came up, tightening around his neck. For just a moment, the two most Senior officers on Voyager held each other as the rest of the crew began to stir around them.
TO BE CONCLUDED