Title: Colony Author: Jemima Contact: jemimap@crosswinds.net Series: VOY Part: 13/20 Rating: PG Codes: crew, J/C Date: November 2000 Disclaimer: Copyright has expired on the works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson quoted herein. Certain of the names below have been trademarked by Paramount; be assured I am not conducting trade with them. ***** Part 13 ***** Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore, And the individual withers, and the world is more and more. "Let's concentrate on getting to Earth for the moment," the Captain said. Standing back from the console, she added, "Commander, I believe it's your turn." He placed his hand over the helix and watched the screens flicker once more. The display he'd come to think of as the main one changed from Leigus Prime's flaming sun to an image of themselves, standing on this very platform. The detailed display below showed humanoid figures, a man and two women. Beside each was a couple of anatomical renditions, a long double helix flowing across the screen, and a symbol - the spiral by the man, the star beside one woman, and the wheel alongside the somewhat different biological readings of the other woman. "It sampled our DNA," B'Elanna protested. "It needed to in order to make these marks," Chakotay said, taking his palm off the console and showing the golden brand to no one in particular. Tom reported from another screen that Seven's implants had also been scanned and displayed. Seven was more interested in the picture of Leigus Fifteenth before her. Now, rather than seas and craters, the screen showed population centers. B'Elanna stared in fascination at a blueprint of the inner surface of the moon - there were no life signs, but there was enough housing for hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of people. Chakotay beckoned to the Captain. "Another experiment, Kathryn?" he suggested. In her fascination with Toleighanomir, she seemed not to notice his lapse of protocol. Tom did, though, and he wondered where Chakotay was going with it. Tom had put his pips back on when Janeway had shown up, but Chakotay still held himself like the Maquis captain who had just saved the population of Leigus Prime. Now that the pilot thought about it, he realized that the change in Chakotay went back further than this mission, back to that fateful day on Voyager's bridge when everything was exploding around them. Of course Tom himself had missed a bit while he was unconscious, but Mitchell, Jones and a few other crewmen had told intriguing tales of Chakotay's desperate search for the Captain. Afterwards Janeway had sequestered herself in Engineering, leaving the Commander to look out the viewscreen on the shattered remains of Leigus Fifteenth and to deal with the Leigan government. Now the Commander's stance seemed to say that this was his ship, and that she was his...science officer, Tom concluded. The Captain - of Voyager, Tom now felt it necessary to qualify his thoughts - had already walked up to the main viewscreen and was now reaching out to the small image of Chakotay. The screen to her right became a star field, the disk of the galaxy divided into its familiar quadrants with a hastily-drawn blue X. Certain stars were marked in gold. Janeway turned towards her first officer as she observed, "These are the places you told the hologram you'd visited - Dorvan, Bajor, Ferenginar, the Dosi homeworld, half the Delta Quadrant. B'Elanna, try it." Torres tore herself away from her study of the moon's innards. "What should I do?" "Touch Chakotay." "On the screen, B'Elanna," he clarified. When she did, the screen to her left displayed a larger image of Voyager's first officer, with his recently-branded palm held up, flanked by the symbols of the galaxy and the helix. A medical diagram seemed to show details of this new addition to his hand. A short movie played in the corner of the screen - apparently the moon's final approach to Leigus Prime, 50,000 years before. Most mystifying was an image of the moon's hollow interior, this time centered around a platform overlooking the inner surface from a mountaintop. On the platform was a triangular console like the one here in Engineering. Seven seemed to understand. "If that is the bridge, where is Astrometrics?" she asked. Leave it to a Borg to identify herself with the third vital function of the ship, Tom reflected. No one answered her question. ***** Or to burst all links of habit--there to wander far away, On from island unto island at the gateways of the day. The Captain broke the silence. "Seven, see if you can find us a table and chairs on that map of Engineering. We need to talk." Seven's adaptable fingers flew across the viewscreen. Soon she announced, "I've found something, Captain. Follow me." The Borg strode purposefully down another catwalk, opposite the one which had led them to the platform. Three and a half levels down and 400 meters further into the cavern that was Engineering, Seven halted at another platform. This one was shaped like the bottom half of a sphere, with a circular bench running along its concave walls. There was a small, triangular console in the bottom center of this odd conference room - they ignored it for the time being. Most of them were still in awe of the moon, but not Voyager's intrepid Captain. She began the conference thus: "We've found the warp drive and the controls. I suspect we can move this ship. The only question is how." "And whither," Chakotay added. "It's not actually our moon. Maybe we should leave it where it is," Tom suggested. He didn't expect any takers, though. Ovin responded, "We will honor the choice of our ancestors." Chakotay acknowledged the Leigan's generosity with a respectful nod. "But moving the moon," Ovin continued, as though petitioning a new and unknown monarch, "would enrage our enemies into attacking it, or at least the planet beneath it." "We have not yet found the weapons systems," Seven observed. "We would be unable to counterattack." "I don't think we will find any weapons aboard," Chakotay replied. "The crust is probably defense enough, considering it's strong enough to withstand the stresses of moving a planet at warp speed." "Speaking of which, we also haven't found the faster-than-warp drive," Torres mentioned. "The warp drive will be enough to reach Leigus Fifteenth," Chakotay answered. "That planet needs to be evacuated, and this moon is the ship for the job." "One problem at a time, people," Janeway reined them in. "If the Periti find us absconding with the moon, they will attack, or worse yet, follow us to Leigus Fifteenth. Ideas?" "A ruse," Tom suggested. "I'm listening, Mr. Paris." "We go to warp under cover of an ... illusion that convinces the Periti that the moon has been destroyed." "It's not easy to destroy a moon," Torres protested. "The Klingons did it once," Tom replied. "There was a huge mining facility on Praxis," B'Elanna countered. "There's nothing here to blow up." "There are the Periti surveillance installations," Chakotay reminded her. Torres rephrased her objection: "There's nothing on the surface that could cause so large an explosion. It would have to be a terrorist act, and a rather excessive one at that." "A very excessive one. The Leigi wouldn't blow up their own moon," the Captain added. "How about if we just derail it? Nudge it out of orbit and into the sun?" Tom suggested, wondering if he was signing up to die a novel, gruesome death in *this* galaxy after all. "If we go to warp in the sun's corona, it will mask our warp signature," B'Elanna reflected. "And cause a convincing solar storm," the Captain added. "The shuttles can't survive a trip through the sun's corona, though. Someone will have to fly them back." Tom volunteered. "I can set the charges and make a break for it in Shuttle Third." "Once the installations were destroyed," Chakotay added, "Shuttle Second could run the blockade and land on Leigus Prime. We should send someone to reassure them that the moon won't really be harmed." Seven, who had been making rapid stabs at her tricorder, now looked up and said, "It would require a one and a half billion megaton explosion to break the moon out of its orbit. Although we will only be simulating the explosion, the charges must be placed and timed precisely." She prodded the tricorder a few more times, then concluded, "The moon will be in an optimal position in 3.7 days." "I suggest we take a look around the inner surface and find a place to rest," Chakotay said. The Captain nodded and said, "Back to the turbolift, then." *****