“No, but it’s still the key,” Torres said.
“How so?” Janeway asked.
“The Edrehmaia base, wherever it is located, has the ability to act as a point of quantum entanglement. When the base within the asteroids was activated to create the field that adjusted the star’s course, a quantum connection was established between here and wherever the Edrehmaia are located.”
“We don’t need to bring the Edrehmaia here,” Janeway realized. “We need to create quantum sensors that can visualize both points of entanglement. Then, we simply calculate the coordinates that correspond to the Edrehmaia’s location.”
“The Borg applied principles of quantum entanglement in the maintenance of their transwarp network,” Seven said. “The various apertures were too distant and the power requirements too vast to allow for constant activation. Ingress and egress points were brought into quantum synchronization once an aperture was activated. While the specifics of the Edrehmaia’s systems will, of course, differ, the foundation should be the same, unless the Edrehmaia operate in domains or realities we have yet to discover.”
“Let’s hope they don’t,” Janeway said.
“How come this is the first I’m hearing of this?” Torres asked.
“It has only now become relevant,” Seven replied.
“But we still need to activate the energy field generated by the asteroids,” Patel said. “How do we do that?”
A faint smile flickered across Torres’s lips. “The same way it was activated the first time. We move a star.”
It was an absurd notion, but in her gut, Janeway also knew it was true.
“It took that planet thousands of years to store enough energy to affect the star’s motion,” Patel said. “Where are we going to get that kind of power?”
“We don’t need anywhere near that much,” Torres corrected her. “DK-1116 had to pull a star out of orbit. We just need to nudge it off course a little.”
“How?” Patel asked.
“How much is the real issue,” Seven noted.
“Deflectors can’t do it,” Janeway said. “Any beam powerful enough to impact the star would easily overload our arrays.”
“Not to mention the extra energy required for shields, given how close we’d have to get to the star,” Patel added.
“We don’t touch the star,” Torres said. “We alter the space around it.”
“You are suggesting destabilizing the area of space along the star’s current course?” Janeway asked.
“I am.”
“How?”
“A stable quantum slipstream corridor alters the geometry of normal space as soon as it is formed,” Torres said.
“But those alterations are projected forward along our intended course,” Seven reminded her.
“And the wake dissipates within seconds. What we want to do is elongate the wake enough to intersect with the star’s course,” Torres continued.
“Without pulling the star into the slipstream itself,” Janeway warned.
“So we would need two ships, Vesta and Voyager, to plot synchronous slipstream jumps. The first, most likely the Vesta, would bring the corridor within a few thousand kilometers of the star’s course, and then Voyager would have to exit the slipstream seconds after the point of intersection,” Torres finished.
Janeway began to visualize the plan along with the many, many ways it could go wrong. It definitely qualified as misuse of a Starfleet resource, but it was this kind of radical thinking that had brought Voyager across seventy thousand light-years in only seven years.
“Okay. Assuming we can make the math work, and assuming that altering the star’s course reactivates the energy field within the asteroid belt, the quantum sensors would need to be in place prior to our synchronous jump,” the admiral said.
“I’d like Seven to work with Bryce and Icheb on those sensors,” Torres said.
“Of course,” Seven agreed.
“Which still leaves us with one big problem left to solve,” Janeway said.
“Once we locate the Edrehmaia, how do we communicate with them,” Patel rightly surmised.
“How is Lasren coming along with his new language?” Torres inquired.
“Slowly. He has a number of interesting theories about terms we might use to establish and build a shared language. But until we can actually test them, it is impossible to know whether or not they will succeed,” Janeway replied.
“Last he and I spoke, he was still trying to figure out the mathematical equivalent of the word please,” Patel noted.
“I wonder if we should hedge that bet,” Janeway said.
“How?” Torres asked.
“The interlocutors seem to be the functional transitional state between organic matter and the Edrehmaia base. That they recognized the creation of Devi’s and its potential as a means of communication in their first transmissions to us leads me to believe that if we could re-create our own, it might make our conversations a great deal easier,” Janeway mused.
“We do have scans of the technology that was present in the cavern,” Patel said. “I admit, I haven’t reviewed them yet with the intention of reverse engineering it.”
“You have been otherwise occupied,” Janeway said kindly.
“I can take a look at those systems and see about replicating them on one of our shuttles,” Torres offered.
“It would require access to a significant quantity of the base, as well as a secure environment in which to test it,” Patel said.
“That thought had occurred to me as well,” Janeway noted. “The first problem is finding a source for the Edrehmaia base that we can safely extract and contain. The asteroids are still the most likely candidate.”
“Not necessarily,” Patel said. “Station One remains largely intact. Its architecture suggests that there were veins of the substance within some proximity, given the placement of the circuit-breaking pool. We should scan for deposits of silicon, similar to those in the asteroids, and consider excavating one. It’s an environment that will be easier to control than the surface of an asteroid.”
“It always comes back to—what did O’Donnell call it? SWOW?” Janeway asked.
“I implore you not to encourage Commander O’Donnell’s flagrant whimsy,” Seven pleaded, at which point Janeway, Torres, and Patel erupted in a fit of spontaneous laughter. All three were having difficulty breathing and wiping tears from their eyes before it
