Equinox

by Diane Carey

  edge-she hadn't. Like Ransom, she had convinced herself she was right. He did what he did for survival, she did what she did for civilization.

  Now her crew doubted her. None of them met her eyes. That was Chakotay's fault.

  Tuvok, Paris, Torres, and The Doctor sat at the table, all heads of critical shipboard functions during battle stations. Chakotay was leading the conversation under the pall of his captain's stony glare.

  "It's there," he was asking. "How do we find it?"

  B'Elanna Torres, still stinging from her failure to stop Max Burke from using her own tricks against her, asked, "If there's an Ankari vessel less than two light-years from here, why haven't we detected it?"

  "Apparently they use a unique form of propulsion that makes them hard to find."

  Paris leaned on an elbow. "You think they'll be willing to help us?"

  "It's worth a try," Chakotay hoped. "Mr. Lessing has kindly agreed to show us how to adjust the sensors. Once you find the Ankari ship, set a course."

  "Aye, sir," Paris said, dubious.

  The Doctor then asked, "Did our prisoner disclose any other information?"

  "I'm afraid not," Chakotay said, irritated. "The rest of you continue repairs. Dismissed."

  They all stood up. All, including Chakotay.

  Janeway let them all get to the door, except Chakotay.

  "Commander," she called, low-toned.

  He stopped as if he'd expected that, and turned. They were alone now.

  "All right," Janeway told him, "we're going to try it your way. But I want to make one thing clear-"

  "Our priority is to get Ransom," he said. "If there's one thing you've made clear, it's that."

  This was bad, very bad. Janeway didn't like it. She thought she might, the sense of power, the ultimate decision, the fact that by law they all had to do as she decided. Such things worked well enough with a crew, but for her and Chakotay, the arm's-length friction hurt more and more with every passing hour.

  She softened, hoping her eyes communicated that "We've had our disagreements, Chakotay," she said, using his name as a branch between them. "But you've never openly opposed me."

  His lips pressed flat. "You almost killed that man today."

  "It was a calculated risk. I took it."

  "It was a bad call."

  "I'll note your objection in my log." She tried to make it sound like a joke, but when it clunked to the deck she knew she'd made a mistake.

  Anger rose in Chakotay's distinctive eyes. His jaw suddenly set. "I don't give a damn about your log! This isn't about rules and regulations! It's about right and wrong, and I'm warning you ... I won't let you cross the line again!"

  In that electrical moment Janeway came to her feet to meet his glare at the same level. By standing she made them equals, not a captain and an officer, but two com-

  manders with different methods of handling the same situation.

  Different methods ...

  "Then you leave me no choice," she said. "You're hereby relieved of duty until further notice."

  That shocked him.

  In fact, it shocked her too. What had she just said? What was she protecting? Her right to use her judgment while pursuing another captain for using his? This was getting out of hand.

  "What's happened to you, Kathryn?"

  His voice was quilted with disappointment, worry, even fear. How could she explain anything more than already had been said between them? How could she make him understand that she had to hold the barrier high if they were to remain civilized?

  She gazed at him. "I was about to ask you the same question."

  "Captain, we have a contact," Tom Paris called from the bridge, saving them from yet another chance at maybe working this out. That was fast-of course, two light-years was practically in their weapons locker.

  They left the ready room, but not exactly together.

  The ship was tracking another vessel, an oddly shaped nugget running at high impulse, trying to avoid the starship-and there wasn't a chance of that anymore. So they'd been shadowed all this time by the perpetrators of this whole situation.

  "They're not responding," Tuvok said immediately as Janeway came into her command chair.

  'Tractor beam," Janeway ordered.

  Tuvok looked up. "Captain, the Ankari ship has done nothing to warrant-"

  "Do it!"

  She was getting sick of this! Questions!

  "We're being hailed," Kim said.

  "On screen."

  On the main viewer, a swollen-up excuse for a humanoid with a head like a pus-filled boil eyed-Were those eyes?-the Voyager bridge.

  "Starfleet?"

  "Yes," Janeway said instantly.

  "Leave us alone. There's nothing of value on our ship."

  "We need your guidance. Your 'spirits of good fortune' are attacking us."

  "Of course they are! You've been killing them!"

  Janeway sat up a little at the glimmer that she might have been right all along. "We're not the ones responsible."

  "Equinox."

  "That's right. Can you communicate with the aliens?"

  Probably a bad choice of words. To them, she was an alien.

  "Release my ship."

  "I can't do that Not until you agree to talk to them."

  The Ankari paused. He might've been consulting someone else. Janeway couldn't tell.

  "/ will summon them. But you must talk to them. You must convince them."

  The challenge-yes, that's what it was-left Janeway numb and uncertain. Did she have the right words?

  These aliens lived on a completely different astral plane, developed under the most foreign of circumstances. Would they have a culture? A civilization? Would they look at her as an individual? She hadn't yet looked at them that way.

  The cargo bay again. Now this was a place of conflict for Kathryn Janeway, a place forever stained with her encounter with Chakotay. As she came in, with Tuvok at her side, to meet the two Ankari representatives and their funny summoning device, the absence of Chakotay at her other side was a burning wound. She wanted him back. How would it look if she disobeyed her own order?

  "I'm Captain Janeway," she introduced without asking their names. "This is Commander Tuvok. I'm sorry we don't have time to get to know each other. Summon the spirits, please."

  Luckily, she'd remembered to throw in the "please" at the last minute. After all, despite the fact that she had an iron grip on their vessel, they were basically doing her a favor.

  She glanced at Tuvok, who nodded once. The cargo bay was completely sealed off from the rest of the ship. If they died here, they would be the only ones.

  "Bay shields down," Janeway ordered.

  She didn't grasp her weapon, but kept her wrist pressed against it just in case. Her heart thudded in her chest. Her legs felt prickly, as if they were going numb. She recognized the feeling.

  Tuvok worked a remote control for the outer shields. Almost immediately, the alien warning tone began to

  whine in the air. Fissures opened above. Two... three ... some of them closed, but others opened, as if the spirits couldn't quite make up their minds whether they were attacking or not.

  Get it over with. Kill us or talk. I've got fences to mend down here in humanland.

  There was one-an alien, whipping about with its greenish tail curling and swashing. But it didn't attack. Janeway couldn't imagine what was different, unless the Ankari had primed the situation by explaining to them that this was a confab.

  "They say," the Ankari captain began, "they want the humans to die."

  Conveniently not human himself, Tuvok seemed to take this almost as a joke. "A difficult place to start a negotiation."

  Janeway turned to the Ankari. "Will they understand me?"

  The big swollen head bobbed. Probably a nod.

  Stepping out into the middle of the cargo bay, where there was no chance of cover whatsoever, Janeway raised her voice. "We didn't do this to you. We're trying to
stop the humans who did."

  Three spirits now flashed in and out of the fissures, agitated. Funny how body language could be the same between astral planes of existence.

  "They don't believe you would harm your own kind," the Ankari translated.

  "We have rules of behavior," Janeway called. "The Equinox has broken those rules by killing your species. It's our duty to stop them."

  The Ankari waited, listening to the enhanced shrieks and howls from the stirred-up spirits.

  " 'Give us the Equinox' ... 'Give us the Equinox,' " he chanted. "They insist on destroying the ones who are responsible."

  Tuvok, perhaps sensing Janeway's own level of agitation, was driven to speak up. "We will punish them according to our own rules. They will be imprisoned. They will lose their freedom."

  Shrieks bellowing now at a perfect level of rage, the spirits lashed about, unsatisfied. This was only serving to make them angrier. Now what? If they were mad before, they were completely insane now. Could she coax them back from that before they stepped up their level of attacks?

  "All right!" she acceded. "If you stop your attacks, I'll deliver the Equinox to you!"

  Tuvok swung into her periphery. "Captain, you would be violating countless protocols," he warned.

  'To hell with protocols!" she roared. There had been enough loss already, professionally, personally, culturally. There wouldn't be any more, not another inch.

  "Starfleet Command will hold you accountable," he told her sternly, ridiculous as that was.

  "We're a long way from Starfleet Command," she bit off.

  That sounded familiar...

  Tuvok stopped short of grasping her arm as Chakotay might, but he did it with his voice. "Captain-"

  She turned to him abruptly. "I've already confined my first officer to quarters. Would you like to join

  him?" When he didn 't answer, she turned back to the Ankari. "Well?"

  The Ankari eyed the spirits for several more seconds, listening to the whine and wail.

  Finally the sound dropped away to a high-pitched buzz.

  "They agree," he said.

  CHAPTER 14

  "WE'RE GOING TO NEED MORE FUEL. WE'VE ONLY got enough left to jump another five hundred light-years."

  "Fuel... is that a euphemism for what we're using now? You mean we need to kill more life forms."

  "Several more."

  Sitting in his command chair, eaten up by the words he had just slapped Max's face with, Rudy Ransom was as hollowed out as he had ever been. This was like that first day after the first week, his mind crackling with grief and responsibility for the lost thirty-nine. The dead. His dead.

  The count was starting to weigh on him again. He'd beaten it off until now. Janeway had brought it back.

  She'd really pursued him, really fired on him. He hadn't thought she would.

  Could she believe so much that he had committed crimes? Was he a mass murderer? She had no more reason to be sure of that than he did to be sure he wasn't. No one had communicated with those green whiplashes yet. He'd tried. He'd definitely tried.

  Fired upon, by another Starfleet captain. The searing aftermath was hard to take, harder than the fight itself. He felt glued to his seat.

  Burke hovered over him, waiting for orders. Poor Max expected him to give the order to summon more "fuel." The first officer's expression was less than helpful, carrying no sympathy at all, and in fact he seemed irritated that Ransom was lapsing into these inner questions.

  Yes, of course. Max could see that something was happening to him. They'd always thought alike.

  "Rudy, are you okay?" Burke ultimately urged.

  Ransom blinked. "It's getting to me, Max."

  Burke's eyes crimped. "Aw ... don't do this. Not now. Not when we've come so far."

  Pushing out of his chair, Ransom killed the conversation, just as he had killed everything else around him, including his own conscience. Burke's cold-hearted anguish drilled horridly into Ransom's soul. Look what he'd turned his innocent crew into. Innocent Max, who'd started out so charmed and idealistic about their new mission to deep space. Innocent Maria-who wouldn't hurt an alligator if it were chewing her leg off-up there with her weapons trained behind them in the direction of a fellow Starfleet captain and her ship and the laws they all stood for.

  The woman on the dune... she was still watching him from the far side of his mind.

  "I'll be in the lab," he said. He gave no order for more fuel.

  When he walked into the lab four minutes later, the first thing he heard was the damned distorted Voyager doctor singing some asinine tune while hunched over the table.

  On the table lay the limp body of the beautiful woman. Ransom's skin crawled as he came around, saw closely the exposed Borg circuitry, the brain cavity, and The Doctor's probe. As The Doctor cheerily dug into the depths of the skull, Seven's groggy voice joined him in the last line of the song, something about darlings and loss and romance and forlorn hope.

  The mockery of life and music gutted Ransom as he watched the grim scene.

  "How much longer?" he demanded.

  Aberrantly happy with himself, The Doctor kept working. "Another hour. Maybe less."

  He kept humming the ridiculous tune. On the table, Seven kept responding in a distorted mechanical harmony.

  "Her auditory processor," The Doctor said proudly. "We used to practice duets together. In fact, I taught her this song."

  He kept singing, and Seven kept responding every time the probe touched her circuitry.

  Ransom didn't even register the words they were singing. The sound, the sight, were too horrible to di-

  gest. She wasn't singing. She was reacting to a probe. Mechanical, cold, dead. She was making the words, the notes, but there was no life in them. They had taken it from her, what little she had managed to keep for herself. They had taken even more from her than the Borg had. At least they had left her alive. The lives of the aliens, the life of this girl... after that, who else's life? Captain Janeway? Her crew?

  "Enough!" he roared.

  The singing stopped.

  The Doctor looked up. "Why the long face, Captain? You're about to get your crew home." He noticed then that Ransom was gazing sorrowfully down at Seven, and added, "She tried to stand in your way. You had no choice."

  "No choice ..." Ransom stepped back. "Thank you, Doctor."

  The two words hammered the inside of his skull.

  "When all this is over," The Doctor said, "perhaps you'll allow me to teach you my repertoire. I'm going to need a new partner."

  The twisting of hopes almost choked Ransom. Had he poisoned everyone on board? Even the hologram?

  His quarters were cool, even a little chilly. He barely remembered walking here. He saw no corridors before him, but only the dissected skull of the beautiful girl, the latest head on his belt.

  The synaptic stimulator to waited in mechanical patience on his bedstand. He picked it up.

  Moments later, he stood again upon the shoreline

  vista, watching the shore birds float and the reeds wave. Down and down the shoreline, ice-white sand glittered. The wet sand, the dry sand, the dune... There she was.

  He moved toward her.

  Closer... closer. She was coming to him now, her face obscured by blowing blond hair, like some advertisement for a travel agency.

  This was no incorporated automaton, no decisionless android programmed or brainwashed.

  Ransom moved to her. She pulled her hair from her face.

  Beautiful... beautiful... alive.

  "You," he said. "What are you doing here?"

  His voice echoed strangely, again and again, over the water.

  You you you you you doing here here here here

  "Hiding," Seven of Nine told him, her voice no longer gravelly. "Like you."

  "I'm not hiding," he protested.

  A wave lashed the shoreline. Seven glanced at it, appreciating the lovely peace. "It's beautiful. I can see why this
brings you comfort."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," he told her.

  "But it isn't real," she said, as if he hadn't spoken at all.

  Ransom smirked, then got angry. "You're not real. Leave me alone."

  "It's not too late to stop," she told him passively.

  "I don't have a choice!"

  "Find another way."

  "There is no other way!"

  "Stop trying to hide!"

  "I told you!" Ransom backed off two paces. "I'm not hiding! Get away from me!"

  But he couldn't move, couldn't leave, even though this was his mind, his dream.

  She stood before him, her face losing its sculpted appeal. "End this!"

  "No!" Ransom screamed.

  Was he screaming in protest? Or because her face had changed now to the skull-split head of one of the spirit aliens-

  He put both hands to his head, driven to madness by the corruption of the girl.

  The image winked out.

  Sweating, panting, rattled, he was sitting in his quarters holding the synaptic stimulator in one clammy hand. Yes, of course he was still here ... it was only a dream. It was fake. His innards were eating themselves out.

  The line was outside of his grasp. He couldn't reach it, pull back to it... upon his shoulders, the Starfleet uniform began to grow heavy.

  "Bridge to Ransom. Rudy?"

  Max's voice, calling to the captain, his leader.

  Ransom sat, shaking.

  "Bridge to Ransom."

  He knocked his combadge, almost scraping it off his chest. "Go ahead..."

  "You 'd better get up here."

  His chest heaved, even hurt. "On my way."

  When he got to the bridge, his uniform was now cloying with sweat, cold sweat. Burke, Gilmore, and Thompson manned the bridge by themselves. Ransom noticed instantly that Burke was worried.

  "Voyager's approaching at high warp," Burke said while he worked his station, hunched in his chair over a lower monitor. "There's a class-two nebula less than a light-year from here. Janeway's sensors won't be able to track us once we're inside. I think we should-"

  "No." Ransom moved stiffly to his command center. "Full stop. Open a channel."

  Burke straightened. "Change of tactics?"

  As first officer, he had a right to know.

  Unfortunately, there would be nothing invigorating in this set of orders.