Distant Shores - Marco Palmieri [4]
Could my life be passing before my eyes?
“I’m dying,” she whispered, feeling far, far from home. She sensed life draining from her body… and yet not this body. It was all so strange and frightening but she was helpless to stop it.
“Everyone dies eventually,” Seska said matter-of-factly.
Seska? But she died-The confusing thought ended abruptly when the stone doors slid closed above her, sealing tightly with a pop. Abandoned in blackness, Janeway refused to accept this fate. It felt… wrong… surreal. Yes, she was dragged slowly through time, deeper into the past-would her last recollection be the sun-crisped wheat fields of North America? Or the crisp tang of an autumn apple? She couldn’t shake the sense of wrongness she had. This didn’t feel the way death was supposed to feel. Yet a voice, deeply buried in her mind, kept intruding on her skeptical appraisal. You’re so tired, Kathryn. You’ve lived your life, now you have a chance to give your life for someone else, for Kes. Let go… rest…
Janeway shook off the surrender impulse and returned to logic. This is a holoprogram-that’s it. I’m stuck in a loop. I just need to end it…. She tried forming the words “Computer, end program” but no sound emerged. Drowsiness tingled in her fingers, softened her thinking. Why won’t that damnable Borg voice go away? The scent of ozone, of smoking circuits, wafted into her nose.
And then she knew.
A dream.
Her eyes opened and she sat up, her Starfleet standard-issue blankets falling away. She rubbed her eyes with her fists, shook her head, and looked down. Her uniform. She touched her collar. Four pips. She looked over her shoulder out her window at starscape. Without warning, the swirling blue throat of the Bajoran wormhole unfurled like a flower and swallowed what she recognized as a Ferengi merchant vessel before snapping closed. The majestic sight never ceased to astonish her. Stretching, she took a deep breath, inhaling the rich scent of percolating black coffee.
Her quarters on Voyager.
Home.
She swung her legs over the side of her bed and dangled her feet over the floor, wary about testing the boundaries of her surroundings. Gingerly, she dropped to the carpet, squeezed her toes into the fiber. At least I had the sense to take my boots off before I took a nap.
“Janeway to bridge.”
The comm system chirped. “Yes, Captain.”
Stadi. A flash of memory prompted involuntary tears as she remembered the grief that overcame her at Stadi’s death, when we were pulled through the Badlands to… the Delta Quadrant? She furrowed her brow.
Now, where would that idea have come from? She might have dreamed Stadi’s death. But the Delta Quadrant? What a random bit of flotsam to penetrate her subconscious! A prolonged lucid dream certainly would explain the disquieting sense of disconnection she felt from her surroundings. Must be anxiety about the upcoming mission to find Tuvok and the missing Maquis ship.
“Where are we, Stadi?”
“Docked at Deep Space 9, Captain. Your briefing with Commander Sisko begins in one hour. All rested and ready to go, ma’am?”
An unshakable nagging feeling pulled at her; no amount of logic or reason could shake her sense of wrongness. At last she said, “I hope so, Stadi, I genuinely hope so. I’ll be up to the bridge momentarily.”
“Alpha shift doesn’t begin for another few hours, Captain. Nothing requiring your attention is pending. Pardon my saying so, but you were so tired earlier. You should rest.”
Janeway clasped her hands together, steeled by a determination to find an explanation for her emotional turmoil-or at least a distraction from it. “No time like the present to begin. Janeway out.” She rose from her bed, fussed with her hair for a moment, twisting it up into a utilitarian chignon, smoothed her uniform, and ran through a mental checklist before leaving early for her duty shift.
After her cabin doors swished closed behind her, Janeway started down the corridor to the bridge, nodding politely to her crew members