String Theory_ Fusion (Book 2) - Kirsten Beyer [20]
Crossing to the row of cabinets, he pinpointed the sound. It came from storage unit alpha one. The mediumsized drawer contained the first alien artifact he had ever catalogued and stored, the sporocystian remains of an entity known as the Caretaker.
Though most of the crew thought of the Caretaker as the less than caring alien being who had stranded them in the Delta Quadrant, this was not, strictly speaking, true. The Caretaker had used coherent tetryon technology to transport Voyager a distance of seventy thousand light-years from the Alpha Quadrant to the Delta Quadrant, but it was Captain Janeway who had made the decision that left them there. She had intentionally sacrificed Voyager’s way home to save the lives of an entire species. Knowing Janeway as well as he did now, the Doctor realized that faced with the alternatives, he could never have expected her to make another choice. The convenience of 146 Starfleet officers and Maquis crewmen did not tip the scales in their favor when weighed against tens of thousands of innocent Ocampa. Though the challenges posed in attempting to cross the seventy thousand light-years that separated them from their homes in the Alpha Quadrant had been arduous, it was to this exact set of circumstances that the Doctor owed what he considered “his life.” He, for one, didn’t blame the captain. Deep inside his matrix rested a simple subroutine he had labeled “gratitude,” which he recalled whenever he considered Voyager’s unique circumstances and the opportunities those circumstances had given him.
Nonetheless, he was more than a little disturbed by the vibrating sound that was growing louder every second in storage cabinet alpha one. The last time the Caretaker’s remains had done anything other than sit there like the inert, irregularly shaped formation of bioremnants that it was had been Stardate 49164.8. He recalled the day vividly.
Voyager had encountered the only other “Caretaker” they had known of, the original’s mate, who called herself Suspiria. She was tending to her own flock of Ocampa, on an array several thousand light-years from that of the original Caretaker. When the ship had come within a certain proximity to her presence, the Caretaker’s remains had begun to vibrate, much as they were doing now, and Lieutenant Torres had used readings of those vibrations to accurately pinpoint Suspiria’s location.
If the benign and somewhat befuddled creature described in Voyager’s logs as the Caretaker was one extreme of his race’s temperament, Suspiria was the other. Hostile and deranged, she had almost succeeded in destroying the ship in her rage to revenge herself on those she believed had killed her mate. Although the captain had managed to thwart Suspiria’s murderous rampage, Janeway was never certain whether or not she had convinced Suspiria that no one aboard Voyager could be held accountable for the Caretaker’s death. He had died of whatever passed for natural causes among his people, the Nacene.
Suspiria had ultimately left the ship and returned to the subspace layer she inhabited when she did not exist in normal space. When Kes had described the dark and bloody range of emotions she had experienced when in brief communication with Suspiria, the Doctor had silently recorded his hope that Voyager never cross her path again.
So it was with no small amount of trepidation that the Doctor slowly opened the cabinet labeled alpha one, and removed the spherical transparent container that now shook with the strange vibrations emanating from the Caretaker’s remains.
He was about to activate the shipwide Emergency Medical Hologram override channel to alert the captain to this frightening development when the irregularly shaped rock began to glow with a faint pinkish light. In the space of a few seconds, the light burned furiously bright. He didn’t even have a chance to set the container on his desk and activate an emergency forcefield before the Caretaker’s remains exploded violently, ripping through the storage container and covering the Doctor’s photonic