Chapter One Tuvok was conscious of the song from the first fraction of a second that he began to emerge from his meditative state. He gradually roused himself through the stages of alertness; awareness of the weight of his limbs, his slow, rhythmic breathing, the hum of the shuttle's engines, the soft caress of the environmental controls setting the cabin temperature much warmer than most humans would be comfortable with. Finally, as he recalled where he was, and how he had come to be here, the intensity of the music threatened to plunge his Vulcan restraint into chaos.
With the precision only years of rigorous training in the Temple of Amonak had given him discipline to master, he forced the passion, the longing, and the unutterable pain into the recesses of his mind, and only when he was certain that he, and not the music, was in control did he open his eyes.
"Computer..."
The computer replied with a chirp, awaiting his command.
"What is our current heading?"
The cool voice devoid of all emotion answered as expected. "Current heading remains unchanged: one six seven mark one four."
"Estimate arrival at the singularity."
"One hour, twenty-seven minutes, eleven seconds."
Exactly as he had anticipated.
With great care, Tuvok rose from his knees next to the shuttle bunk, and sat on its edge. He shifted his focus inward, until he had counted exactly one hundred times the quarter of a second between each beat of his heart, and satisfied himself that no matter what, it would continue to beat at precisely the same rate, substantially slower than the normal Vulcan resting heart rate, until he allowed it to do otherwise.
He then turned his attention to the corner of his mind where he had placed the music. It had been a desperate struggle over the last nine hours to maintain his ability to perform even the most rudimentary exercises of piloting the shuttle, but finally he had forced the living presence that now shared his mind into a section of his consciousness that he could examine at will.
He was certain he was experiencing a telepathic communication, source unknown. He had considered the possibility that he might be suffering from an as of yet indefinable side effect of the strange properties of Monorhan space and subspace to which he and all of Voyager's crew had recently been exposed. And after careful consideration, he had dismissed that theory.
The presence that called to him was alive. Its life, though painful and somehow disconnected...no...stuck in between...whatever that meant...was more than life, at least life as he had known it during his hundred-plus years of existence. And somehow, it knew him.
Tuvok.
Vulcan.
Head of security.
Husband.
Father.
Friend.
Traveler far from home.
It saw beneath the disciplined walls of self-control that fortified him against passions and emotional extremes that most humanoid species could only imagine, but all Vulcans knew intuitively as the enemy of stability, logic, and reason. It lived in these extremes and somehow managed to survive them without fear. It contained...no...experienced all that was possible, and merged that reality into harmony that his mind could almost, but not quite, hold. But it was somehow incomplete. The deepest notes, which pounded discordantly against the simplicity and beauty of the rest of the song, were sounds that spoke of yearning...need...desperate painful desire...for home.
But what would an entity of such vast and incomprehensible variety call home?
It was pointless, for now, to even attempt to imagine. It was enough for Tuvok that this presence had effortlessly compromised the deep and secure defenses of pure logic and reason that guided every moment of his life, and forced him to face the desires that he had never allowed himself to feel. They met upon this common ground. They both wanted...needed...desired home.
He was absolutely confident that when he found the source of the song, he would be able to somehow translate the nature of the communication and enter into dialogue with it.
That or it would drive him mad.
Either way, it was a journey best undertaken alone. Whether he succeeded or failed, he felt obligated to fully understand the nature of the presence and any threat it might pose to Voyager. Though to be absolutely accurate, part of him knew already that Voyager was not of intrinsic interest to it, because Voyager was an object with which it could not communicate. It needed someone to know...to help. It needed Tuvok.
The possibility that he would not survive this mission was very real. But, he reasoned, he had already been given up for dead on more than one occasion by his family, both genetic on Vulcan, and adopted in Starfleet. While he was certain they would mourn his loss, in time they would come to terms with their grief and integrate it into themselves in a way that brought meaning to both his life and theirs. That was the worst-case scenario. Much more likely, he would return from an unauthorized absence of a few days, give a full report of his findings to the captain, accept an official reprimand on his record, and return to his duties.
Had he been capable of feeling irony, he would have found it appropriate to describe the reality that the four years he had spent facing violent death at almost every turn while serving as Captain Kathryn Janeway's chief of security on Voyager had bought him, and all of the colleagues who had made that journey with him, a certain amount of latitude. It was not as if any deviation from standard protocol would be looked on lightly, but experience had shown that their odds of survival would have been seriously reduced were it not for the creative thinking and occasional renegade impulses that seemed required of most of the senior officers from time to time. Such ingenuity had saved their lives on more occasions than Tuvok cared to count, seventy-nine, all told.
Such simple evaluations of actions and consequences were one of the many tools, which had allowed his highest logical functions to assert themselves over the cacophony of sounds that threatened unrestrained abandon at every microsecond.
Point-two-five seconds. Beat. Point-two-five seconds. Beat.
Choosing an ancient visualization technique, a simple, non-automated door became the focus of his thoughts.
His hand was on the doorknob.
Point-two-five seconds. Beat.
Clockwise turn, seventeen degrees.
Point-two-five seconds. Beat.
Regulated intake of breath, diaphragm release, lungs filled to capacity.
Beat.
Biceps contract, pulling door forward five degrees.
Sound rushing like wind through his physical being, resonating not in his mind, but in his katra. Temptation, almost unbearable temptation to throw the door open and allow the symphony to swallow him whole. It would be so easy. Just like falling off a cliff.
Exhale.
Point-two-five seconds.
Beat.
His course heading had been accurate. He was almost there.
Kathryn Janeway strode purposefully into her ready room off the bridge of the Starship Voyager and found not one but two unanticipated visitors waiting within.
Her first officer, Commander Chakotay, sat comfortably on the long bench that lined the far wall beneath a large window, engrossed in a sheet of drawing paper. Next to him, occasionally indicating some point of interest on the drawing with the fingers of her right hand, stood Naomi Wildman, the half-human, half-Ktarian daughter of Ensign Samantha Wildman, and the first child ever born aboard Voyager. Though Naomi was little more than two years old, the combination of her human and Ktarian DNA resulted in a child who looked more like five or six and had already demonstrated the cognitive skills of a child nearly twice that age.
As Naomi struggled to answer a question posed to her by Chakotay, scrunching her forehead lined with small pointed horns running vertically from her hairline to the bridge of her nose, and absentmindedly pulling the end of her long strawberry blond braid to her mouth, Janeway noticed that in her left hand, Naomi held a large mug of a steaming beverage that looked, and dare she hope, smelled gloriously like coffee.
"I hope I'm not interrupting something important," Janeway offered casually.
She noted with an inward smile that as Chakotay rose automatically to his feet, handing the paper back to Naomi and greeting her with a warm "Not at all, Captain," Naomi's eyes grew involuntarily wide. The child stood at a miniature version of attention, managing to maintain both the drawing and the mug, though her hair remained fixed in her mouth as she waited, appropriately, for the captain to address her personally before she spoke.
"Good morning, Miss Wildman," Janeway began, not wishing to put Naomi through one more moment of discomfort.
"Captain," Naomi replied seriously, extending her left hand and offering the mug to Janeway as her braid mercifully dropped from her mouth and returned to its proper alignment running straight down her back.
"Thank you very much," Janeway smiled, as she took the mug, her senses calming instinctively as she took in the aroma of the steam rising from the dark liquid.
Definitely coffee.
"Neelix..." Naomi began, but then paused as if unsure as to whether or not she should continue.
"You have just made my morning, Miss Wildman," Janeway offered graciously, placing a gentle hand on the child's shoulder. "Please speak freely."
Naomi relaxed a little as she drew a deep breath and continued. "Neelix was helping me finish this star chart over breakfast when he saw that you had left your quarters and were going straight to the bridge..." She paused before adding, "...without stopping to eat."
Janeway threw a playful glance at Chakotay, who was obviously enjoying this exchange tremendously.
"Am I to understand that Neelix monitors m...
