Echoes by Dean Wesley Smith Kristine Kathryn Rusch & Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Author:Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch & Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books

CHAPTER 21

Time: The ninetieth shift

Location: 2,410 parallel universes to the right of ours

THE VISION OF ALL THE OTHER SHIPS, PLANETS, THE brief stretch of asteroid belts shimmered In the forward viewscreen for three seconds. Kim’s fingers worked furiously across his board, moving faster than Janeway thought humanly possible. He knew, they all knew, that the only answer to their problem—to the problem of billions—lay in getting the message to her counterparts in the visible universes.

Then the other ships vanished as Voyager rocked with the impact of the subspace wave.

“Mr. Kim?” she snapped.

“The message went through, Captain.”

She felt a brief sense of relief, then realized that sending the message was only the beginning. The others wouldn’t be able to respond until the next pulse.

She was on her own for this one.

Janeway stared at the ominous globe she knew was composed of billions of dead and dying people. Down inside, below the layers of successive imports of planetary populations, each of which spread outward under power of the momentum the people had had when they were still planetbound in their previous universe, somewhere inside that sphere another planetary population had arrived.

“Torres, what’s the status of the containment field?” she asked.

Torres looked up from the engineering station on the bridge. She had come up just before the pulse to help Kim.

“The field is holding,” Torres said, working over her console. “But, Captain . . .”

Janeway knew before her chief engineer spoke that her worst apprehensions had been justified. “The last group moved on, didn’t they?” she asked in a flat voice.

Kim stared at her from his operations console, eyes wide. Apparently this hadn’t occurred to everyone else. Janeway glanced at Tuvok. His grim face gave little away, but through their years of association she had learned to read him. He had considered this possibility, just as she had. Glancing at Chakotay’s face, Janeway saw how tight his jaw muscles were.

In a hoarse voice Torres said, “There are new arrivals, but the others are gone.”

To their deaths, in a universe without Voyager. She had saved them for a death two and a half hours later.

She took a deep breath.

“I was afraid of that,” Janeway said. “We must come to a decision on whether to maintain the containment field. What can we do for those people? We couldn’t fit any more of them on the ship, and this doesn’t seem to be the solution.”

“Whatever we do, Captain,” Tuvok said, “we must do it before the next pulse.”

“I thought of that as well, Mr. Tuvok.”

“We can’t let them die down there,” Paris said.

“What do you expect me to do about it, Tom?” Janeway snapped, even though she knew she should keep a lid on her temper. “Have you any other ideas?”

“No, Captain.”

She turned toward Torres. “Maintain the containment field for the time being. Maybe we’ll come up with something.”

But Torres didn’t appear to be listening to her. Her hands were working the console, and she had an expression on her face Janeway had never seen before. “Captain,” she said, her voice radiating both astonishment and panic.

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