“What about search parties for other injured crew?” the Doctor asked.
Kim shook his head. “That’s our second priority. I know that sounds heartless, but…”
“I understand,” the Doctor said, then asked, “What happened?”
“I have no idea. It sounds like we came under attack from some sort of shape-shifting ship. I don’t know.” He sighed heavily. “If we all survive the next thirty hours, maybe we’ll be able to figure it out.”
“What about the rest of the fleet? Surely they will come to our aid,” the Doctor insisted.
Kim shook his head. “Ensign Unhai confirmed that when she woke up in the mess hall after we were attacked, none of our sister ships were visible through the ports. The rest of the fleet is gone.”
“Without help…” the Doctor began.
“I know,” Kim said. “No one is coming to save us. If we’re going to live, we’re going to have to save ourselves.”
2
U.S.S. VOYAGER
The first time Harry Kim died had been shocking. Not presumed dead. Not transported-to-a-distant-planet-inhabited-by-aliens-that-were-awfully-quick-to-send-their-elderly-population-to-the-next-emanation-through-a-subspace-vacuole dead.
The first time Harry Kim had died he’d been ejected into open space while trying to repair a hull breach.
Commander B’Elanna Torres had been there. Hers had been the voice that announced to Kathryn Janeway that Ensign Kim was dead. Then, as now, Chakotay had been standing beside Janeway on Voyager’s bridge. Then, as now, Janeway had felt the news first as a lurch in the pit of her stomach, a faint buzzing in her head, and a sensation of sudden, extreme warmth on the back of her neck.
And then, as now, Janeway found it nearly impossible to believe. Not long after learning of Kim’s death, Janeway had found herself leaving sickbay with a copy of him from an alternate universe that was indistinguishable from the original. He had been created by a freak warp core accident that duplicated Voyager and her entire crew.
She had no cause to hope for something like that to repeat itself. Still, hope refused to relent.
The words “What was he doing on the Galen?” almost escaped her lips, but they died there as a tiny memory pushed its way to the front of her mind.
Nancy Conlon was stationed indefinitely on the Galen.
Harry Kim.
Nancy Conlon.
The Doctor.
Reg Barclay.
Clarissa Glenn.
Ranson Velth.
Cress Benoit.
Had it been a year since Janeway had asked to read the names of the fleet’s deceased during the memorial service honoring the hundreds who had died in their encounter with the Omega Continuum?
Was it possible that another of her fleet’s ships and her entire crew had just been lost?
Janeway turned to Chakotay. She could see that the same names now running through her mind were also on his. Without thinking she placed a hand on his arm—not seeking comfort; offering it.
The entire bridge crew sat in stunned silence. A miasma of chirps and beeps, sounds so familiar on any starship bridge they were usually ignored, stood out in stark relief against the deafening silence of this moment.
“Send the logs from the attack to astrometrics,” Janeway ordered Lieutenant Lasren at ops. “Captain,” she said sharply, pulling Chakotay from his internal recitation of the dead, “with me.”
Five minutes later, she, Chakotay, and Seven stood before the lab’s massive display screen as events none of them remembered played out before them in all their fascinating horror.
Only a few days prior, the Full Circle Fleet had made orbit over an extraordinary planet, christened by the most unimaginative of stellar cartographers as DK-1116.
The name didn’t begin to do its extravagant mysteries justice.
At some point in the Delta Quadrant’s distant past, several alien races had used DK-1116 as a sort of scientific research station. Their purpose had been to conduct experiments on a unique substance that had either been left there by or was part of a species known as the Edrehmaia.
The planet had once orbited a pair of binary stars. Before dozens of away teams had barely begun to scratch the surface of the planet’s strangeness, the environmental protections created by the ancient alien species to preserve the Edrehmaia’s planet in its inert configuration had been unintentionally disrupted. An unimaginable buildup of stored energy deep below the surface had been released and its entire force aimed at the smaller of the two stars in the pair.
What had happened next was a spectacle both unfathomable and awe inspiring. The planet had successfully forced the smaller B star from its orbit around its mate and sent it careening off into space, destination unknown.
The fleet’s efforts to analyze this unexpected development had been cut short by the arrival of an alien vessel. Its black surface and sphere shape had evoked memories of the Borg, a race of cybernetic beings that had once been the bane of the existence of every sentient race they encountered. But the Borg were no more, and the first thing the log they were reviewing indicated was that initial scans of the sphere showed traces of several unusual alloys, including the substance associated with the Edrehmaia that the fleet’s crew had taken to calling Sevenofninonium.
“What the hell is that?” Chakotay’s voice could be heard asking over the display screen.
“Unknown, sir,” Lieutenant Gaines Aubrey reported from tactical. “Sensors didn’t pick it up incoming. We started reading some sort of displacement field, and then it was just suddenly there.”
A few minutes of speculation by the bridge crew followed along with Chakotay’s order to take the ship to yellow alert.
“You think it’s the Edrehmaia?” Chakotay finally asked.
“I think it could be,” Admiral Kathryn Janeway replied.
Janeway watched as the part of this experience no one remembered began. They had all been rendered unconscious from this point forward.
Massive waves of energy began to ripple outward from the surface of the sphere. The admiral was unsure if they were intended to disable the ships in its vicinity, but regardless, that had been their effect. As the
