The present novel is merely Fan Fiction.
No commercial interest is pursued.
© Aliki Archimedes, 2019
The story of this book is based on science fiction concepts created by Gene Roddenberry, Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jery Tailor, Bryan Fuller, Brannon Braga, Nick Sagan, Ken Biller, Michael Okuda, Rick Sternberg and many others.
Copyright for all humanoid characters and Star Trek technology is owned by Paramount Pictures / CBS.
Multiplication and distribution for commercial purpose are not allowed.
6. Final Salvages from a Ghost Wreck
With a lamp in her left hand and a tricorder in her right, Kathryn Janeway roams the dark corridors of the Hirogen wreck. Her gaze is tense, and she moves with a caution, as if she were always ready to jump back and flee. She follows the track of deep scratches covering the walls. They resemble furrows scratched into the steel plates by claws, as if it were soft plaster. Torn supply hoses and cables hang from the ceiling.
The damages lead Janeway to a part of the corridor where a violent break through the wall was created. The shape of the edges of the irregular fracture looks like a broken eggshell, but the material is thick steel. Janeway lifts her legs to climb over the sharp metal scraps that protrude from the lower edge into the opening. She crosses a ravaged room and suddenly stands in front of a hole in the floor. She shines her light into the deck below her. Nearby, she discovers a vertical connecting shaft. She fastens the lamp with a strap to her forehead, the tricorder to her uniform, and climbs down the shaft ladder. Thereby the headlamp shines on a reflecting metal sheet that throws the light back into the room which Janeway is about to leave. In the distorted mirror image of the plate several short and curved, tube-like stumps seem to flit sideways. In a reflex action Janeway turns around once more and shines the light searchingly through the room. Crates and barrels, bars and rods that have been knocked over and dented are spread all over the place; they cast winding shadows as the beam of light glances over them. Janeway`s worried gaze calms down and she descends further to the deck below. On the last step downward, her foot touches a raised object and jerks back. Janeway lowers her head. The upper body of a Hirogen lies below her. She discovers the rest of the corpse several meters away on a wall, where more body parts lie. With an expression of horror, she stretches her leg from the lowest ladder rung over the Hirogen to reach the ground. She opens the tricorder and removes the lamp from her forehead.
A hall opens in front of her. In one part of it a high ring-shaped table is erected; it resembles a medieval round table. At one point it has an opening as a passageway to the interior. High chairs are lined up along the outside of the table. The whole arrangement gives the impression as if it were carved out of stone. A particularly high and wide chair stands opposite the opening of the table arch. Weapons for cutting and stab-bing hang on the wall behind the table, together with mummified extremities and skeletons. Some of them have horn-like spinous processes that testify to their former defensiveness.
On the other side of the hall, opposite of the round table, there are several cylindrical containers with transparent walls. They are about three meters high and filled with a cloudy liquid in which gas bubbles are rising. As Janeway approaches, her facial expression turns into disgust and horror. Driven by forming and detaching decomposition bubbles, cadaver parts drift slowly inside the containers. One of the corpses is reminiscent of the asymmetric being the doctor is treating, another, of which only the dentition can be seen in the turbid fluid, was a Pandar. From the background the headless skeleton of a humanoid drifts forward.
Step by step, Janeway moves around these fermentation cauldrons and suddenly stands paralyzed. Only the thumb of her hand still moves to close the tricorder`s lid. Its lights go out. Spellbound are her eyes directed forward, with the gaze of a Human at a sudden encounter with a demon.
In front of Kathryn Janeway lies a black sphere of about one and a half meters in size. Its entire surface is segmented into elongated and angled fields.
———————————-
The starship Voyager floats in the midst of a crowd of asteroids with vari-ous sizes and shapes. On the surface of the starship spider robots are closing the last gaps of the new, additional hull with monotanium plates.
The rail system of a large freight elevator runs along the entire starboard side of Voyager`s engineering module, from its top down to the keel. At its lower end, this vertical lift leads into a wide horizontal bridge, which stretches away from Voyager to the Hirogen wreck on the opposite side. A light blue shimmering tractor beam emanating from Voyager`s keel keeps the wreck at a constant distance.
At the upper end of the rail system, a humanoid person enters the large cabin of the freight elevator through a sluice in the ship`s hull. The eleva-tor`s side walls and ceiling are glazed.
The sluice closes behind Joseph Carey and the elevator cabin begins its downward journey. Carey looks outside, where the lift passes the wide starboard nacelle of the warp drive system, covering the height of three decks; it withdraws upward. The wreck appears across below Carey. Half of its hull plates have been removed; rooms and installations below are exposed. The lift continues to descend until it dives into the horizontal bridge that connects the two ships.
Carey activates his atmosphere emitter strapped around his chest. Its force field flickers up as it envelops him. Carey leaves the lift and crosses the bridge with fast steps. He avoids spider robots carrying monotanium plates on their backs. The plates have integrated openings for portholes and feedthroughs with flanged connectors attached. Carey enters the wreck and arrives in a brightly lit hall filled with dismantled technical equipment.
With the help of two crewmen, Torres dismantles a system of transversely connected pipes ten meters in length. Carey hands over a small flat display to her.
“I got you the PADD with the list of the areas left that are still unoccu-pied.”
Torres takes a look at the display and frowns.
“Is that all? Where are we going to put all this stuff?”
Carey grins. “The boat is filled up! But maybe the captain would be willing to take some of this salvage in her quarters, … as a trophy collection?”
“Better do not ask her. She might get the idea to store something in everyone`s quarters.”
Carey points to the pipes. “Are those the resonators?”
Torres nods. “With these tools the Hirogen are paralyzing the onboard systems of other ships. First, they transmit a broadband pulse and deter-mine the resonance absorptions. Then they amplify the intensities of the absorbed bands until the attacked systems are overloaded. Even if the defense of its prey does not collapse completely, it will be weakened.” Torres`s head jerkily moves sideways. Carey follows her gaze.
“What`s the matter?”
“I thought something had moved at the opening of that tube.”
She bends down and looks into the darkness of the long hollow cylinder. Carey shakes his head.
“Believe me, B`Elanna, there`s nothing alive on this wreck anymore. It may at most be haunted by a ghost!”
Baxter enters sickbay. The doctor pushes trays with pots into the com-partments of a rolling cupboard. He looks up briefly.
“Well, Mr. Baxter, a rare guest! Are you actually ill?”
Baxter gives a sign of refusal. “I`m all right. They say you`re doing your daily alien feeding at this hour.”
“I am not carrying out a feeding! I`m supplying alien beings with nutrient solutions that are essential for their survival.”
“See, I`m having a break right now and would like to watch.”
“Listen, Mr. Baxter: I`m a doctor – not a safari organizer! You may accom-pany me, but only if you assist.”
“What shall I do?”
“Follow me with this trolley!”
The doctor grabs his medicine case and a medical scanner and walks to-wards the exit. Panting, Baxter is bracing himself against the large, heavy trolley. After two meters he takes a break. He looks into the force field cell of the asymmetrical being.
“Boy — he looks strange. As if he`d lost his second half!”
The doctor turns to Baxter and raises his brow.
“His second half, you say?”
Naomi comes running through the entrance. The doctor lifts his index finger.
“Miss Wildman, does your mother know that you`re roaming through the ship on your own?”
“You won`t give me away, will you, Doctor? Can I help feeding again?”
“You may. But stay away from the cells!”
The doctor and Naomi step ahead. Behind them Baxter pantingly pushes the trolley, with his face getting darker.
On the transverse bridge between the two ships a caravan of spider ro-bots transports the systems to Voyager that have been taken apart in the dismantling hall. Carey and Torres accompany the trek, with control units in their hands. When they reach about the middle of the bridge, their eyes startle upwards. Above them they see the lightning burst from a Voyager phaser that violently hits the wreck. Parts of its surface are blown out. Due to the impulse the wreck starts to roll. The transverse bridge is bent heavily and twisted along its axis. As if an earthquake would pull the ground away from under their feet, the robots and the two humanoids lose their footing and are thrown from one side of the bridge to the other. Rolling on the ground Torres snatches at her communicator.
“Torres to Captain!”
“What is it, B`Elanna?”
“Voyager has fired at the wreck! The anchorage of the bridge will break at any moment!”
Sitting at the helm Ceph has opened the simulation of a game he is play-ing on the screen. With nudges of his tentacle tip on a touch display he tries to place small colored balls – by virtual throwing – as close as possible to a distant black ball.
From the door of her ready room Janeway hurries onto the bridge and forwards to the helm. She grabs at the console next to Ceph`s tentacle and switches a camera image on the screen. In a downward view it shows the violent torsion and the lateral swaying of the connecting bridge, where Torres, Carey and the robots tumble across like little dolls. Above the connecting bridge a large hole has formed in the wreck that leads diagonally downward into the wreck`s interior. Fractured parts swell out of it. Some of them collide with the swinging bridge.
The tip of a tentacle reaches into the console and pushes a knob to zero. On the monitor the fanned out bluish shimmer of the tractor beam, which connected the two ships below the bridge, disappears.
Alarmed, Janeway turns to the three eyes that are directed at her.
“Why did you detach the docking?”
Arms gush over the control elements of the helm. Janeway recognizes on the screen as Voyager performs turning and swiveling movements versus the background of the surrounding asteroid field. These maneuv-ers follow almost exactly the torsion and transversal swinging of the connecting bridge. After a few moments they have subsided. Voyager and the wreck are at rest to each other again and move in slow rotation around a virtual axis between the two ships. Ceph switches on the tractor beam again.
In the camera image on the screen, the people on the connecting bridge laboriously stand up.
“Captain to Torres – was anyone injured?”
“Only abrasions and bruises. Let us get those parts over, Captain. After that we`ll see the doctor.”
“All right, B`Elanna. Janeway out.”
Janeway glances over the crowd of eyes that have spread across the monitor and the console. She lays her hand on one of the arms and her head nods slowly as she speaks to one of the three eyeballs facing her.
“That was a masterpiece in vibration mechanics!”
Then Janeway turns aft, and her gaze darkens. In threatening slowness, she walks to the rear of the bridge and climbs up the step to the tactical console. A tube-eye follows her step in restless twitching. The other tube looks down, wandering helplessly over registers and command readings. A claw holding a rod-shaped stylus has withdrawn from those displays. Staying beside the console, Janeway taps her communicator.
“Captain to Seven! – Where are you?”
“In the interstice between the two hulls on Deck 11, Captain. We`re working on the feedthroughs for the sensors of the tactical resonance scanners.”
“Do you know that Mr. E-Bug is playing around with the weapons sys-tems? He fired a phaser!”
“I briefed Lieutenant Carey on the weapons phalanx this morning. Mr. E-Bug was watching. After the briefing I failed to deactivate the weapons – it was my mistake, Captain. I`ll take care of it immediately.”
“It`s all right, continue with your work! – Janeway out.”
She looks up. “Computer, lock weapons.”
“Weapons have been locked,” reports the computer voice.
Janeway`s gaze fixes on the tube-eye that keeps twitching in her direc-tion. Mutely her mouth opens and closes several times. A certain dissatisfaction mixes with the anger of Janeway`s expression, nourished by a helplessness that grows more and more. She looks forward at the viewscreen where the wreck is visible and the hole the phaser shot has created. Worriedly she reaches to the console and zooms in closer.
Without looking at E-Bug, she speaks: “I`m going to show you something that you don`t know yet. It`s a mobile sensor carrier. We call it probe.”
She transfers an image onto a display field that schematically depicts a cuboctahedral body. Janeway successively rotates it around different axes. In its triangular surfaces drive nozzles for navigation are recogniza-ble. The six square surfaces are equipped with different sensors, which appear as shiny lenses and dish-shaped or tubular collecting antennas.
Janeway closes the schematic drawing. She opens a menu. In a list she marks an element called probe 22 and touches a green but-ton. She points forward to the viewscreen. It shows a small body leaving the bow of the ship through an opening.
“These buttons are used to control the probe.”
E-Bug observes Janeway`s hand with one eye and the small flying object on the viewscreen with the other.
” We now switch to the probe`s cameras.”
The screen shows the perspective filmed by the probe flying away from Voyager while heading towards the wreck. Janeway navigates the probe into the wreck through the phaser-generated impact hole. The image becomes dark. Headlights are activated. The phaser hit has torn open the inner walls of the wreck and created an almost circular aisle. Deeper and deeper, the probe penetrates into the hole. Janeway fades in a transparent 3D drawing of the wreck next to the optical image provided by the probe. In the drawing, the changing position of the probe is shown as a flashing green dot. Finally, the probe reaches the end of the impact hole, from where the destruction quickly subsides. With an anxious look Janeway enters coordinates. A red shining dot appears in the drawing. It lies distinctly away, below the channel of the shot. Janeway`s chest lifts and lowers in a deep breath. Her eyelids relax. Finally, she steers the probe out of the wreck.
“With the command HOME the probe flies back by itself to its starting position.”
On the screen, the outboard camera shows the probe disappearing back into Voyager`s bow. Janeway looks E-Bug in the eye and waves with both hands at the console.
“Try it!”
She points to the start command. Immediately E-Bug`s swivels his touch stick to the button. A moment later the screen shows the probe in a bumpy spiral trajectory around Voyager. Then E-Bug navigates it towards the surrounding asteroids.
Janeway nods with an oblique side view. “If you scrap it, I`m going to cut your wages!” She turns to the lift. “Computer, locate Mr. Peri.”
“Mr. Peri is on the holodeck,” answers the computer`s voice.
“The bridge is yours, Ensign Lang.”
The turbolift closes behind Janeway.
Close to Voyager`s hull Torres is driving upward in the glazed cabin of the freight elevator. She is accompanied by two spider robots, each carrying a bundle of thick metal pipes on its back. The lift stops in front of one of the upper decks. Torres steps through a force field that serves as an airlock and enters a storage room. The robots follow. With her tricorder acting as a control unit Torres signals them to unload the cargo next to the wall. The two bend their front and rear legs and place the bundles of pipes with their middle arms – like crane grabs – sideways to the floor. Then they leave through the airlock to return to the elevator cabin. Torres follows them.
Suddenly she stops and jerkily turns her head sideways. A hose-like creature as thick as a forearm and about 80 centimeters long has slipped out of one of the unloaded pipes. After straightening up itself, it stands on its rear end. Turning its front end, it moves two button eyes, set above a circular mouth, to all directions. Then it bends to a tensed cat hump arch like a leaf caterpillar and jumpingly bounces forward as it rapidly stretches the arc. Torres follows the being, the phaser in her hand leveled at it. With two more jumps, the caterpillar-like creature reaches an open Jefferies tube where it disappears. Torres looks inside. In the dark supply shaft, the being is no longer visible. Suddenly a shrill whistle sounds out from the Jefferies tube. Torres listens. Nothing moves. As Torres turns around to leave, on both sides and between her legs a swarming crowd of bouncing creatures hurtles past her and disappears into the tube. Shortly thereafter, the tapping noise of their jumping movements fades away. Torres snatches at her communicator.
“Torres to Captain!”
“Go ahead, B`Elanna!”
“I stored emitter resonators on deck 7. Suddenly about fifteen or twenty tube-like things jumped out of the resonators and disappeared inside a Jefferies tube. I couldn`t hold them back.”
“Do you think they might be posing a threat?”
“They didn`t attack me, … they seemed afraid.”
“Then we`ll leave them where they are for now. We have more urgent tasks!”
“Aye, Captain.”
With noticeably less effort than before, Baxter pushes the almost empty trolley through a corridor. Behind him follow the doctor and Naomi. She looks up at him.
“Doctor, how long do these beings have to stay locked up?”
“That depends. The captain wants to take them back to their home pla-nets – in case we happen to pass them on our flight.”
“How long will that take?”
“That might take quite a while, I`m afraid. We don`t know where they`re from.”
“Can we give them bigger quarters? I think they are very unhappy in the small cells!”
“Your observation is certainly correct. You are welcome to discuss this with the captain. – Mr. Baxter, stop! We have to turn to the left!”
“But that`s not the way we came from.”
“We have to go to a certain Jefferies tube to put in some food.”
On the Voyager side of the bridge connecting the two ships, Torres is standing at the entrance.
“Torres to Captain.”
“B`Elanna?”
“We`ve got everything that was selected as salvage to Voyager. Shall we retract the bridge and the lift?”
“Do that! Then go to main engineering and prepare to get propulsion ready for launch; we`re going to leave tomorrow morning.”
Torres`s gaze brightens. “Aye – aye, Captain!”
From the connecting bridge she hurries through a sluice into Voyager and elatedly enters commands at a console on the wall.
Between the crowd of asteroids, the Hirogen wreck is floating next to Voyager. All of a sudden, the fixture of the transverse bridge snatches open from where it was locked on the wreck. The end of the bridge then withdraws from the wreck, while the bridge contracts like a telescope and folds to a compact mass. Finally, it disappears on the opposite side in Voyager`s hull. Also, the lift on Voyager`s starboard side folds into a com-pact structure that engages into an opening.
Deep inside the wreck, in a dark hall, gas bubbles are still detaching from body parts drifting in fermentation cauldrons. Some of the skeletons emit luminescence light during their decomposition process, which makes them shine pale yellow and also casts a dull shimmer over their surroundings.
Suddenly a bright glitter appears on the floor next to one of the caul-drons, and a bowl-shaped object materializes. Its concave inner rim is set with diodes. A small lamp flashes. The next moment a hologram measuring more than a meter across forms above the bowl. It shows an image of the wreck and the adjacent Voyager. The Starfleet ship launches and flies slowly away. As the perspective of the image zooms out, Voyager grows smaller and smaller, but remains visible as a bright-green dot, while the asteroid belt and planetary system shrink until they are no longer visible; their central star becomes paler. Other stars emerge and move away; spiral arms become recognizable and the central bulge of the Milky Way; finally, the entire galactic disk appears. The bright green dot moves forward incessantly meanwhile, across half the galaxy. The hologram becomes darker and disappears. Shortly thereafter it is reshaped, and the holographic film sequence repeats its message.
Rigidly and with no sign of life, the metallic shimmering black sphere rests in the background.
Through the door of the transporter room Janeway enters the corridor. At a crossing Naomi appears, alternatingly jumping on one leg. She notices Janeway, changes to normal walking and follows her in a hurry.
“Captain, I need to talk to you!”
Janeway stops and turns around. “What is it, Naomi?”
Naomi breathes violently as she speaks. “The strange creatures in the cargo bay … They need different quarters, … with more light and more space to move! They suffer terribly in the small cells!”
Janeway frowns. She squats to Naomi`s level.
“You`re probably right! I give you a task now, Naomi: draw an apartment for each of the beings, with everything they need to feel comfortable in it. As soon as you`ve finished, we`ll discuss how to build these apartments.”
“I`ll get started right away!” shouts Naomi and runs off.
Janeway rises again and walks on. Suddenly clicking noises sound from her communicator as if suction cups sticking together are separated from each other.
“Mr. Ceph? I`ll be on the bridge in a minute!”
With his stylus E-Bug works on the sensor displays at the tactical console. He updates sensor data and optical images that are displayed on the viewscreen. Three of Ceph`s eyes restlessly keep turning backwards. As Janeway steps out of the lift, the three of them stick to her. All the rest align at the displays on the screen. Janeway follows their viewing direc-tion.
“What is this? The image of a probe?”
She walks next to E-Bug; she reaches to the console surface and zooms in on a distant object.
“A tiny ship, … or a rescue capsule.”
She activates further sensor data.
“Type Hirogen. One life sign, weak. It`s –” Janeway`s eyes widen as they rise from the console and direct forward to the screen. “Talaxian!”
Janeway touches the communicator.
“Captain to all hands! – We`re leaving earlier than scheduled. Occupy your stations and stand by!”
Janeway follows the course of the small ship on the screen.
“It`s orbiting around the fifth planet, … now it`s disappearing behind it. We cannot follow it with that probe.”
She touches the HOME button. The perspective of the planet moves into the distance; the probe returns.
At a rear console Lang turns to Janeway. “Captain, I know all functions in my area of responsibility on the bridge; but I`ve never worked with such a range of activities during regular flight operations.”
Janeway nods. “Everyone left on Voyager has to take additional tasks as long as the crew is not complete again. Don`t worry, Ensign. Doing many things at the same time will be a routine for you soon.”
Seven and Carey step out of the lift. Seven goes to the OPS console, from where all internal systems are controlled.
“Lieutenant Carey, you will share the tactical console with Mr. E-Bug,” orders Janeway. “He will continue controlling the sensors, while you`re taking control of shields and weapons.”
“Aye, Captain – ma`am.”
Carey goes to E-Bug, who turns a tube-eye towards him. Carey scratches his belly. Then he demonstrates a distance of about 40 centimeters be-tween his palms. He makes movements signaling his colleague to move to the side by that length and to keep the space for a safety distance.
Kathryn Janeway settles down in the captain`s chair, deliberately and with an expression of inner satisfaction. An additional fourth eye turns from the helm in her direction. Janeway raises her head.
“Captain to main engineering – status!”
Torres`s voice reports: “Impulse and warp engines 100% available. Deuterium supply 360%. Antimatter supply 230%. We`re ready to launch, Captain!”
“Status deflectors and ship systems?”
A fifth eye pops to the rear.
Seven declares, “Deflectors in operation. Ship`s systems operating within normal parameters.”
“Shields and weapons?”
A sixth eye looks at Janeway.
Carey straightens up while he controls readings.
“Shield generators online. Photon torpedoes, old and new phaser banks at stand by and ready for being charged, Captain – ma`am.”
Janeway enters data into the display next to her armrest as she speaks, “Helmsman Ceph, fly us to the fifth planet. Accelerate to half impulse!”
The data is displayed on the navigation console. A tuft of eyes that had observed the screen, switches backwards. Janeway raises her head and looks at Ceph. Her finger touches a start command. The order lights up in green on Ceph`s workstation. Janeway nods to him. Except for the three eyeballs remaining aligned with Janeway, all of Ceph`s eyes fan out over the helm panels and the screen. Two tentacles move over the console.
Sideways near the smaller Voyager floats the large Hirogen wreck. The two ships are surrounded by asteroids of various sizes and shapes. Sud-denly Voyager begins to rise on the flank of the other vessel. When she has surmounted the wreck, Voyager turns to her new heading and sets in motion. Just as she flies over the wreck at a small distance, a bizarre shadow repels from the wreck`s surface. It bounces against a mono-tanium plate of Voyager`s outer hull and penetrates into the intermediate space between the two hulls of the starship.
Voyager accelerates, moves away with increasing speed and leaves the asteroid field.