Kim stared at her, aghast.
“Unless there is anything else, you are dismissed.”
Harry Kim harbored no illusions about getting any sleep over the next few hours. An hour in his quarters alone had confirmed that. Taking his clarinet, he ventured to sickbay, intending to spend a few more minutes talking to his daughter. But when he arrived, the first thing he noted was that Nancy’s body was no longer in the main bay.
“Doc?”
The Doctor materialized beside him immediately.
“Yes, Harry?”
“Where’s Nancy?”
“I assume she has returned to main engineering to stall Velth.”
“Not her.”
“Oh, I moved Lieutenant Conlon’s body to a private room. Four doors down on the right.”
Kim entered the room where Conlon lay beneath a surgical arch. All of the diagnostic bars glowed a reassuring green. Beside her, the gestational incubator rested, his daughter floating peacefully, continuing to grow, utterly insensate of the universe into which she would someday awake.
He had allowed himself to dream that one day this would be his family. Their lives, like Tom’s, B’Elanna’s, Miral’s, and Michael’s, would go on, much like they always had before. There would be adventures, discoveries, and new challenges, to be sure. But there would also be lengthy stretches in between filled with conversations and holodeck stories and dinners and duty shifts, the boring things he had always taken for granted.
Standing here now, he finally understood that no matter what Glenn decided, that would not be his future. Whatever he was to become, he faced a new kind of darkness ahead. Only now was he forced to accept that no amount of wanting, working, problem solving, hoping, or striving would restore what had been lost. And no matter how far he stretched his imagination, he could not force into being, even in his mind, a picture of what would take its place.
In a few hours, Glenn would make her choice and the path before him would become clearer. This was his last chance to live with a dying dream, his last chance to share a moment with the woman he loved and the child they had created while he was still the Harry Kim who had begun this journey so full of hope and determination.
Kim moved back to the room’s holographic control panel and initiated the program he and Nancy had shared what felt like a lifetime ago. The room fell away and was replaced by a starfield. Lifting his clarinet to his lips, he began to play the only song that had made sense to him all this time, the only song this instrument had ever known.
Tears fell from his eyes as the song of the moon filled the heavens.
Lieutenant Ranson Velth awoke standing beside the slipstream assembly in main engineering. Nancy Conlon was speaking.
“… the variances are calculated automatically, but the range will have to be extended beyond…” she was saying.
“What?” Velth asked.
Conlon’s brow furrowed. She lifted a tricorder and scanned him quickly.
“Oh, you’re back,” she said. “I haven’t seen you in days.”
“Where have I been? What the hell is going on here?”
“I don’t understand why you’ve transitioned,” Conlon said as if it should have made sense to him.
“Do you hear that?” he asked. In the distance, haunting, beautiful music could be heard.
“The music?” she asked. “Someone must have the volume control for their environmental entertainment set too high.”
Velth shook his head. “No.”
“Velth, listen to me. You’ve been shifting between versions of yourself. There are two of you. There’s you, as you are now, and there’s one that is somehow part of the Edrehmaia. They’ve been using you to communicate with us.”
A sick pit opened in Velth’s stomach. “That’s impossible.”
“I promise you it isn’t. The other you has been showing me how to modify our slipstream drive so the Edrehmaia can use it to leave the galaxy.”
“What happens to us when they do that?” Velth demanded.
“The captain hasn’t decided yet. We’ll know soon.”
Velth needed to sit. He needed to think. He needed to remember something that was terribly important.
“Where the hell is that music coming from?”
Conlon looked up and thought for a minute. “Sickbay, maybe? One of the Doctor’s operas, perhaps?”
“We all live in a yellow submarine,” he said softly.
“What?”
“Come with me,” Velth ordered.
Commander Glenn’s quarters felt suffocating. She imagined spending the rest of her life here and instinctively rebelled at the thought. Rather than fight it, she decided to take a walk. Strolling through the corridors of each deck, she tried to resign herself to the possibility of allowing the Edrehmaia to use her ship as they intended. This, too, felt like a violation. Even if she ultimately came to accept it as the best choice for herself and her crew, this ship, which had once felt like a boundless place, a catalyst for discovery and a safe haven in an endless darkness, would inevitably become a prison, then a graveyard.
It was unfair. It was infuriating. It offended her to the core of her being.
And it was still better than any alternative that included the senseless death of any more of her crew.
Where there is life, there is hope.
She wanted to believe that. Perhaps, in time, she would.
Turning a corner, she realized she was heading toward sickbay. Lieutenant Conlon and Velth were approaching from the opposite end of the corridor. The sight of him wandering freely, this monster who had taken the form of her friend and most trusted companion, only served to intensify the sensation of injury with which she struggled. She considered turning back and retracing her steps when Velth called to her.
“Clarissa?”
“Ranson?”
She hurried toward him as he rushed to close the distance between them and take her in his arms. She accepted the hug but demanded an explanation from Conlon with her eyes.
“He’s back,” Conlon said simply. “I don’t know for how long.”
“Come with
