Chakotay paused. It bothered him to think that this might be true. But he couldn’t deny it either.
“Had I been born here and inherited your cultural legacy, I might have found myself on a path similar to yours. Early in my career, I left Starfleet. In exchange for cessation of hostilities, the Federation abandoned my people to an alien species, the Cardassians. I killed a lot of them and never lost a moment’s sleep over it. Today, the Cardassians are on better terms with the Federation. I wouldn’t be surprised if one day, I found myself serving beside them. It’s easy to decide that everyone out there whose interests come into conflict with yours deserves death. It’s far too easy to achieve this with the tools at our disposal. But no one will ever be able to kill their way to peace. Even the Borg couldn’t do that.”
“Why didn’t you kill Emem the moment you had the chance?”
“There were other options. His death didn’t make Lieutenant Kim’s life easier. All you did was give Emem exactly what he wanted.”
“He was a threat.”
“We don’t act in the heat of the moment except in times of war or self-defense. We allow those trained to uphold our laws to mete out justice, and we accept their choices, even when they wound us deeply. It’s not a perfect system. It’s just the best one we’ve come up with so far.”
“We were in a state of war against the Seriareen the moment they took over Voyager.”
“Even then, General, the use of force must be a last resort.”
“You prefer to talk a man to death.”
“Never underestimate the power of words. Look what yours did when you spoke honestly to the Obihhax.”
“The Source.”
Chakotay smiled, shaking his head. “Your Source. My subspace-born hybrid life-form.”
Mattings chuckled and extended his hand to Chakotay. “Safe travels, Captain. I do hope our paths cross again one day.”
Chakotay accepted the general’s hand, touched that Mattings had chosen to bid him farewell with a human gesture rather than a formal Leodt bow. “As do I.”
GALEN
Lieutenant Nancy Conlon remained in a coma five days after her resuscitation. She had been transferred to the Galen, where there were private rooms for long-term patients.
Lieutenant Kim had spent much of his off-duty hours by her bedside. Until she awoke, there was no way to determine the extent of the damage Xolani had done to her mind. That she was alive and stable was a good sign.
Each evening when he entered, Kim brought a bouquet of flowers. The first four days he had settled for replicated roses. Once Demeter had rejoined the fleet, Kim had asked Lieutenant Url if there were any fresh flowers on board and he had sent over a huge bunch of white, pink, lavender, and yellow blooms that resembled wildflowers.
Kim began his vigil by changing the water in the vase that sat by Conlon’s bed and arranging his new botanical offering. The Doctor had suggested that as long as Kim was content to keep Conlon company he should speak or read aloud to her. The sound of his voice would stimulate neural activity and could help with her recovery. Kim had brought an assortment of novels on a padd, but tonight, as it had every night, it lay untouched on the table by her bed.
“So where were we?” Kim asked as he settled himself into a chair. When Kim had tried to select a book Conlon might want to hear, he’d been confronted by the reality that as deeply as he cared for Nancy, he didn’t know what she’d enjoy. Kim had decided to tell her his story instead: Harry Kim, the Early Years.
“I think I’d just applied to the Academy,” Kim began, but trailed off as the pallor of Nancy’s face struck his heart anew. “If I’d actually passed the entrance exam the first time, we would have been in the same class. I wonder if we would have become friends.”
He felt his throat tightening at the thought of roads not traveled and opted to change the subject.
“We’ll be departing for New Talax first thing in the morning. I won’t be able to see you tomorrow night because we’ll be in transit. But as soon as we arrive and get settled, I’ll come over and check in. I hope Tom and Seven have sent word. The custody hearing must have ended by now. I can’t imagine what’s been keeping them.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to have Tom back on duty. I’m kind of surprised Chakotay let me resume my post after I attacked . . . I mean . . . the captain said he understood, that I was in shock. I wasn’t myself.
“I didn’t know how to tell him that I was. I knew exactly what I was doing, and if they hadn’t pulled me off Emem, I would have killed him with my bare hands.”
Kim’s voice was cold, calm, and flat. “The Seriareen didn’t have to do this to get what they wanted. Even if they’d told us about the hax, we would have taken them there. Admiral Janeway would have helped them. We were stupid to trust them. We should have just shoved them all back into containment the minute Admiral Janeway was rescued. I’m starting to think that not every question needs an answer.
“And maybe if we had, Xolani wouldn’t have . . . you wouldn’t have . . . I’m sorry, Nancy. This is all my fault.”
“No, it isn’t,” a soft voice came over Kim’s shoulder.
Kim turned, startled, and found Commander Torres standing in the doorway.
“Hi, B’Elanna.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt. I promised Miral I’d bring this over tonight.”
Kim watched as Torres added a new drawing to those that lined the wall at eye level. The newest was an abstraction: large beige and brown spheres interspersed with small, bright red ones.
“Every morning she asks me if she can see Nancy, and when I tell her no, she makes another ‘well’ drawing,” Torres said.
Kim smiled faintly as he saw the large capital letters running along the bottom of the drawing: HOT FUDGE SINDAY. “Her printing is coming along,” Kim noted, “but her spelling needs some work.”
Torres smiled bleakly as she turned to face Kim over Conlon’s still body.
“This isn’t your fault,” she said again, crossing her arms over her chest.
Kim sighed. “If I’d never suggested to Chakotay that we try and answer that old distress call, we’d never have found the protectors or the Confederacy. Lsia might have found the hax on her own and we’d never—”
“It’s mine,” Torres interrupted.
“Huh?”
“I’ve spent the last few days scrutinizing our reports and logs.”
“Why?”
“I was looking for the first indication we missed that Xolani had entered Voyager’s systems.”
“We’ve already been over this, B’Elanna. The first power surges that indicated the transfer of Xolani from the shuttle were all within tolerable limits. There were too many systems damaged on that shuttle to pinpoint anything in our diagnostics, and the surges were too random to set off any red flags.”
“You’re right. We couldn’t have reasonably been expected to find him then.”
“And the same is true about his movements. Until he attacked the Doctor’s program and the other holograms, there was no reason to suspect anything. Granted, we might have dug a little deeper into the holographic malfunctions when we found them, but there was the admiral’s capture and the destruction of our deflector dish. It was only after we backtracked the progression of the surges that we discovered Xolani.”
“I’ve been distracted a lot longer than that,” Torres admitted.
“Come on, B’Elanna. You didn’t miss anything.”
“Yes, I did.”
“What?”
“Stardate 58672.2.”
“That was months ago,” Kim said, “right around the time of the memorial service at New Talax.”
“The last few weeks of my first trimester I came down with the worst morning sickness. I lived in my ’fresher. About the same time, I started to obsess about our quarters. I couldn’t figure out how we would find room for the new baby.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I didn’t
want anyone to know I wasn’t at my best. I didn’t want anyone to think I was somehow less capable because I was having a rough pregnancy. I drove Tom crazy, but he kept it quiet.”
“That’s understandable.”
“It’s unforgivable,” Torres said. “I’m the chief engineer of this fleet. It’s my responsibility to catch the problems less experienced officers miss, to make sure everyone is doing their job properly. I wasn’t capable of that at the time but my pride and my fears about the new baby prevented me from telling anyone.”
“So what happened on Stardate 586 . . . what was it?
“58672.2. You logged an error in your personal archive. The system was retrieving data randomly rather than in order by stardate. It was a minor corruption. You fixed it yourself, but you still reported it.”
Kim thought back. “I remember that. Tom came to me early that morning and told me Chakotay wanted to find a mission for us with the potential for significant discovery. I pulled up my logs and saw the anomaly. The logs were out of order. I figured it was just a glitch.”
“It wasn’t.”
“When I began my search, my personal log about Kes’s birthday was displayed at the top of the list, which was weird. I got a little nostalgic. After I reread the entry, I remembered the wave form communication. I hadn’t thought of it in ages. Almost every search I did after that included references to our first contact with that wave form. That’s what prompted me to pull the original data file out of my archive.”
“And to suggest to Chakotay that we investigate the wave form’s distress call.”
“After the captain approved the mission, I thought maybe it was a sign,” Kim said.
“Xolani spent an inordinate amount of time in your personal database. He had accessed several others by then, but yours was the only one he corrupted because it was the only one he came across that referenced our contact with the first wave form. He reordered the display. He reminded you of that contact. He wanted us out here and did everything short of taking possession of your body to get us here,” Torres said.
Kim’s stomach lurched and his mouth was suddenly filled with a sour, metallic taste.
“I saw your error report later that day. Protocol demanded that I follow up on it, even though you had already made the appropriate repair. I didn’t because I was too tired to think straight. It was all I could do to keep my head up and what little I could eat down. If I had done my job properly, I would have found the power surge that accompanied the corruption Xolani created when he reordered your logs. Force of habit would have sent me searching for other similar corruptions, and I would have tracked it back to the shuttle. I’m not saying I would have connected all of the dots, but I would have known what to look for going forward. I would have found him long before he attacked the Doctor and Nancy.”
“If he had realized you were tracking him, he might have taken you instead of Nancy,” Kim realized.
“Maybe,” Torres agreed. “But he would have risked exposing himself long before we discovered the rest of the Seriareen. It only took us a couple of days to realize what he’d done to Nancy. Crazy as I was at the time, he could never have hidden in my body or anyone else’s long enough for us to reach the Confederacy. We would have known what Lsia was up to before the Kinara ever showed up.”
“B’Elanna,” Kim said, “it was a minor error. Anybody would have chalked it up to a random system anomaly. They happen all the time.”
“When you were having a tough time balancing duty and your personal life, you erred on the side of duty. I didn’t.”
“The mistake you made wasn’t overlooking the error,” Kim insisted. “The mistake was not asking for help when you knew you needed it.”
“Could you two keep it down, please?” a soft voice requested.
Both turned in surprise to see Nancy looking groggily back and forth between them.
“Nancy?” Kim said immediately, taking her hand in his.
“Hi, Harry,” she murmured.
VOYAGER
Admiral Kathryn Janeway stood in cargo bay one, where the bodies she had just ordered released to the Third Calvert were stored in stasis. The Doctor had chosen to preserve them in the event an autopsy might aid him with Lieutenant Conlon. Her progress had made that unnecessary. Janeway had agreed with Chakotay that General Mattings’s gesture of returning the bodies would aid him with diplomatic overtures on behalf of the Confederacy.
She hadn’t given much thought to Kashyk’s ultimate dispensation until Chakotay had presented her with the general’s request. Janeway hadn’t had time for personal concerns since Voyager had set course through the wastes.
Something undone had brought her to the cargo bay. When she had first seen Kashyk’s face on the Vesta’s viewscreen, she had been too shocked to untangle the complicated emotions that arose. As soon as she’d realized that he was under the influence of an alien consciousness, Janeway had made an internal vow to free him.
That he would probably never have done the same for her didn’t matter. They had parted enemies, and any accord between them would likely have been too much to hope for, even had she been able to separate Emem from Kashyk’s body.
But the torment he had endured prior to his death, so similar to what she had experienced at the hands of the Borg, troubled her deeply. She knew better than to torture herself with “what-ifs.” Some things were beyond her power to command.
But not to wish . . .
Placing a hand over the transparent aluminum that showed Kashyk’s face at rest, she forced herself to bring to mind the man she had known before Emem had taken him. Most of the memories were unpleasant. His condescending manner was grating, as was his delight in finding small ways to irritate her. His ultimate betrayal still stung.
But for the few days they had worked together toward a single goal, she had seen more than the Devore Inspector. She had seen the man. She knew he had been lying to her. On some level, she had always known it. But there had been brief moments, including their parting kiss, when she knew that in another lifetime, when their respective duties had not dictated their choices, they might have been kindred spirits.
She hated knowing this, especially now. Had both of them been free when they met to follow their hearts rather than their orders, might they have been able to find enough in common to make the rest irrelevant? Could differences that ran as deep as theirs ever truly be bridged? She had spent her entire career working to build such bridges. In Kashyk’s case, and the Confederacy’s, the beliefs that divided them had proven impossible to overcome. That failure of imagination, on both their parts, left them weak and vulnerable to forces like the Borg and the Seriareen.
Like it or not, as sentient beings concurrently inhabiting the same space/time continuum, they were one. Only together could they stand against the forces of nature that always seemed ready to toss them on the rocks. Was it their need to be right that made them retreat to the safety of their beliefs? Or was this how it was meant to be? Was this constant struggle the crucible that led to individual enlightenment, and was that, ultimately, the most one could ask of this existence?
“I wish you . . .” she whispered, but could not find a word that encompassed all she truly wished for Kashyk and for herself. She settled for, “. . . peace.”
26
MONTECITO, NORTH AMERICA
On the night before Commander Paris, Doctor Sharak, and Seven were scheduled to return to the Delta Quadrant aboard the Home Free, Julia Paris outdid herself.
The guest list consisted of her son, his fellow officers, and friends. This included the newly minted Lieutenant Commander Wildman, her husband and daughter, who had just returned to Earth, Doctor Riley Frazier and forty-six troubled souls, the Tamarian woman, Ratham, Gretchen and Phoebe Janeway, John Torres, and Tom’s sisters, Kathleen and Moira. The Paris family home was the setting for a lavish dinner, live music, and dancing. Axum was the only invited guest who had chosen not to attend.
The house Julia Pari
s had built was finally filled with the sounds of love and laughter she had always envisioned. She had hoped gatherings such as this would include her husband and grandchildren.
But Julia would take what she could get.
• • • • •
Commander Tom Paris moved through the night as if in a dream he wished might never end. His sisters were incredibly relieved that, despite the custody hearing, he and Julia had made their peace. Moira apologized privately for her testimony. Given the few facts Julia had shared with her prior to the hearing, she had believed it to be the right choice. All she had learned since then had caused her to reconsider. Kathleen was considerably more reserved and watched both Tom and Julia throughout the night searching for some sign of a crack in their jovial façades. Paris and his mother had already spoken at length several times since their successful joint mission to assault the First Contact Day reception. Julia had found new purpose in her work with Riley’s people. She would continue to act as an unofficial envoy between them and the civilian services established to aid Federation refugees. Julia now intended to expand that work and had already volunteered to assist other displaced families still struggling in the aftermath of the Invasion. Paris shuddered to think of the force of nature he had just unleashed on the Federation Refugee Division. They had no idea what was about to hit them.
He knew it would take time for B’Elanna to come to grips with all that had transpired, but Paris pledged that when the Full Circle Fleet’s mission was done, their first priority on returning to Earth would be introducing Julia Paris to her new grandson.
Paris enjoyed a lengthy discussion that night with John Torres. He thanked him again for his appearance at the hearing and shared the happy news of his son’s imminent arrival. Torres was deeply moved, but did not make any demands. Paris assured him that he’d pass along John’s words to his wife. Ultimately B’Elanna would have to decide how much time and attention she wished to give her father. But it was not lost on Tom that John was his children’s only living grandfather, and that was a relationship he did not intend to see squandered.
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