Ghost of a Chance - Mark Garland [84]
She turned again toward the cavern wall behind them. "There," she told Chakotay. "That's what all the fuss is about."
"I've never seen anything quite like it," he said, steadying the antimatter container. "It looks so simple in a way." He squinted at the machine. "Was it in this condition in your vision?"
"No. It's been damaged, but that isn't all that's wrong with it.
That isn't why we've been reading such erratic and continuously fading power levels. At least I don't think so. There's another factor.
That way," she said, nodding in the other direction.
Chakotay stared at the wall of glowing tubes for a moment longer, then he turned and grasped his side of the antigravity unit.
They started slowly toward the edge of the plateau, keeping the container between them, careful of their footing. When they were less than fifty meters from the edge, Janeway paused and pointed.
"That's it," she said. "Down there."
She hadn't seen this in a vision, not exactly, but she had known, somehow, what she would find if she came here. The ghosts had wanted her to come here; it was something she knew she had to do.
This close, and with their eyes adjusting further to the dimming light beyond their position, more detail emerged.
The mighty ocean of glowing molten lava that had boiled for kilometers below the cliff had grown cool and dark. A lava dome had formed there, containing the fires of the planet's heart.
Fires that had burned here for ages.
Janeway let the antimatter container hover again, let Chakotay steady it, while she pulled her tricorder free and flipped it open. She scanned, rotating in a full circle, switching band widths. After a moment she looked up. "I had to be sure," she said.
"Of what?" Chakotay asked, the perfect audience.
"The defense system, the machine, it uses geothermal energy as a power source. It's virtually unlimited unless something cuts off the flow of lava."
"Like an earthquake?"
"Or several dozen of them. I suspected something like this when Nan Loteth told us that the volcanoes to the south were new."
"So you think that when the crust shifted, part of the lava flow was redirected away from here," Chakotay said.
"Exactly. Apparently this pool never completely drained, but it cooled enough to allow a dry dome to form over the top of it."
She examined the tricorder readings again, confirming her hunch as best she could. "Subsequent quakes have returned much of the flow to this area, as far as I can tell, but it's trapped under the lava dome. If we can open a big enough hole in the dome, let the lava underneath it come up, I think it might return..."
Janeway fell silent as a sudden wave of dizziness nearly toppled her.
She felt herself stumble forward, toward the edge. Then her eyes saw nothing, yet her head was filled with images. She faced the ghosts again, many of them this time. They seemed to be crowding all around her, pressing nearer, whispering all at once. Their messages were jumbled. But slowly, clearer impressions emerged. As before, no words were spoken, but Janeway understood. Her perspective had changed. She wasn't in the cavern anymore, but on the surface, in an area just outside the village, a place she somehow recognized, even though she was certain she had never been there before.
Anguish filled her heart as she went with the ghosts to this place.
They took her through the trees, past the bodies of numerous dead Drenarians. Abruptly they emerged into a clearing, the place where Nan Loteth had told her the second Televek cruiser had landed. But as they broke out of the woods the reason for the ghosts' great concern became apparent. Winds swept the grasses and nearby branches as the cruiser boosted itself off the ground, rising skyward, fully operational, as Janeway had expected. It rotated until it was nose up. Then it slipped away through the clouds and was gone.
A small band of Televek ran into the clearing