“Obviously, you must take any precautions you feel are warranted, but take care not to act precipitously. I will be in constant contact and will advise you at any sign that the situation is deteriorating.”
“Do you have any suggestions before you go as to how we might safely navigate several million kilometers of space filled with undetectable subspace mines?” Paris asked of Voyager’s former chief of security and tactics.
“If you are unable to acquire an accurate map of their locations either from the Rilnar or by sensor enhancements, you might consider utilizing a dampening field,” Tuvok advised.
“The mines appear to have hair triggers,” Paris said, shaking his head.
“I am certain you will rise to the occasion, Commander,” Tuvok said. “On the off chance my survival depends upon it, I would appreciate your best efforts.”
“You’ll have them, Tuvok,” Paris confirmed.
“Let’s not keep the denzit waiting any longer,” Chakotay said. “Bring her home.”
“Should my analysis determine that to be the best course of action, I will not hesitate to do so, Captain.”
As he turned to go, Chakotay caught the look of consternation on Paris’s face that Tuvok’s remark had provoked.
“Tuvok,” Chakotay added, “whether or not you believe her choice to be valid, your duty is to bring her back to Starfleet.”
“I understand my duty, Captain. I also understand that this Kathryn Janeway has suffered over the last several years and that we are obligated not to add to that suffering. I have no intention of betraying Starfleet or the denzit. You brought me here to use our friendship to strengthen your argument. But that friendship also makes it impossible for me to ignore her needs, whatever they may be. I will listen to her and I will act according to the dictates of my conscience, bearing in mind that those actions may affect my standing with Starfleet as well as hers.”
Tuvok departed the ready room without another word. When he had gone, Paris asked, “What the hell is the matter with him?”
“I don’t know,” Chakotay replied.
• • •
Icheb’s automated reports on Lieutenant Conlon had been innocuous during Voyager’s trip to the Beta Quadrant to retrieve Tuvok. Commander Torres had hoped this might signal that Conlon had reconsidered her proposed modifications or that she had encountered enough stumbling blocks to deter her from the project altogether.
Torres had hesitated to confront Conlon without further evidence that she was disregarding orders until she could speak with Counselor Cambridge. Demeter was not expected to return for several more days, and Torres had begun to wonder if that conversation would even be necessary until her morning report highlighted a request Conlon had made at the start of alpha shift. Apparently she had requested the transfer of six gel packs stored aboard the Vesta and Lieutenant Neol had signed off on receipt of them.
Torres couldn’t wait for Cambridge’s return. Instead she activated Kula to watch over Miral and Michael and hurried to main engineering.
• • •
The moment Nancy Conlon caught sight of Commander Torres’s face as the fleet chief entered main engineering she knew there was a problem. When Torres ordered her briskly to her small private office, the list of possibilities shortened.
“Lieutenant,” Torres began as soon as they were alone, “I ordered you not to begin working on the security modifications you proposed until I had reviewed them thoroughly.”
“I know,” Conlon said.
“You have not followed that order.”
“Yes, I have.”
Torres’s eyes narrowed. “You assigned Ensign Mirk to begin testing augmented samples of bioneural fluid several days ago. Today you pulled six new gel packs from storage aboard the Vesta.”
“Yes. Our last diagnostic showed that the gel packs in section nineteen-alpha-c are showing wear. I was going to replace them this morning.”
Torres was puzzled.
“I asked Mirk to conduct a random series of tests of our existing functional gel packs to make sure there were no unforeseen complications as a result of Xolani’s presence in them.”
“Oh,” Torres said.
“On my own time, I have continued to review the main computer’s security protocols and have written some sample code to enhance the computer’s reasoning capabilities, but I haven’t begun testing it. I understand you don’t want me working on this while I’m on duty. You do not have the right to order me not to think about it during my off hours.”
“Why didn’t you record your orders to Mirk in your main duty log?” Torres asked.
“I did.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Then I meant to, but forgot. We’ve been a little busy around here undoing the damage your new assistant did while I was recuperating.”
Torres’s face flushed.
“Should I assume that your knowledge of Mirk’s orders came from Icheb as well? What’s he doing, going through all of my staff’s logs every day to make sure I’m not stepping out of line?”
“It’s not like that, Nancy.”
“Now it’s Nancy? Two minutes ago it was Lieutenant and you came in here looking for blood, Chief Torres.”
“I’m sorry, all right? Harry said you were having problems. I’ve been worried about you.”
“Harry said?” Conlon demanded, her voice rising. “I’m sorry, Commander. I know we’re all good friends and this is a small ship, but if you have questions or concerns about my work I’d appreciate it if you would take it up with me and not my former boyfriend.”
“Former?”
Conlon felt her cheeks beginning to burn. “We’re . . . I’m taking a little break. Things got intense pretty fast and I needed to step back.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Nancy, I really am sorry. I’m still trying to get my bearings too. What happened to you and to this ship when Xolani attacked us was my responsibility. I failed us.”
“No, you didn’t. We all failed. And we all need to figure out how to make sure it can’t happen again. Both you and Harry think this is some personal vendetta. It’s not. I’m just trying to do my damn job and what I need is your support, not your suspicion.”
“You have it,” Torres tried to assure her.
“It doesn’t feel that way right now.”
“I know. I misjudged this. I should have just asked you directly the moment I had any questions. I’ve had some issues in the past, trying to handle stuff that was too big for me to work through alone. I guess I was just projecting that onto you.”
“I’m still seeing Counselor Cambridge whenever I can. He’s been pretty busy lately, but I’m doing all right.”
“Good. Great. I’ll let you get back to work.”
“Thank you.”
Torres nodded and departed, clearly still troubled. Conlon felt for her. But as with Harry, she could not prioritize B’Elanna’s feelings over her own. There was too much to be done and far too little time in which to do it.
As soon as the doors to main engineering had closed behind Torres, Conlon called Ensign Mirk to her office and ordered him to cease his tests of the bioneural fluid. She doubted B’Elanna would continue to scrutinize her staff’s logs, but on the off chance she did, Conlon couldn’t afford any more questions.
11
SORMANA
Upon his arrival, Tuvok was greeted by a young woman in uniform who advised him that the denzit was waiting for him in the “Center.” After following the young officer through a warren of dimly lit, windowless hallways and down several flights of stairs—suggesting that this part of the Rilnar base was located underground—the room into which he was ushered reminded him unexpectedly of the bridge of an advanced space vessel.
The Center was arranged in a dodecagon formation. Each of its twelve sides was structured in similar fashion with a wide viewscreen running from the ceiling to the wall’s midline. Below t
hat, several operational panels and smaller data screens were grouped. All were wide enough to allow four officers to work comfortably at each of the stations. A waist-high railing circled the room dividing the stations from an open space that contained two rectangular tables, each covered with large maps that appeared to represent the land masses in each of the planet’s hemispheres. Small markers on each map likely denoted Rilnar and Zahl troop placements. Several officers stood at each of these tables altering the markers as intelligence was fed to them from the twelve larger stations.
A single chair sat on a slightly raised platform in the room’s center. In that chair sat Kathryn Janeway.
Denzit Janeway, Tuvok reminded himself. The mere sight of her should not have evoked surprise. The physical resemblance was to be expected. As she swiveled in her chair to face him, he was immediately struck by the scarring on her neck and wondered how she had sustained that particular injury.
He read determination in eyes that too rarely had held anything else. The force of will emanating from them turned the deep blue pools to steel. She was already on the defensive, but given the level of activity in the room, that might not have anything to do with Tuvok’s arrival. The images on the viewscreens were constantly shifting. Two of them featured what appeared to be real-time ground engagements.
The denzit rose from her seat and moved toward Tuvok. “Welcome to my command center, Commander Tuvok. As you can see, it’s a busy day, or I’d offer you a tour.”
“Please do not allow my presence to distract you from your duties, Denzit,” Tuvok said.
She inclined her head and motioned for him to join her at one of the map tables. A set of markers was moved off the board as she approached. Turning, she checked one of the two battles and noted that the display had stabilized to exterior scenes of a city’s perimeter, distorted by the haze of an energy field.
“Jaxom’s energy field repelled the latest attack, Denzit,” an older male advised her.
“Excellent,” the denzit said. “The power grid has stabilized?”
“The attack on the lines running from the Analepsis Dam resulted in Zahl losses of one hundred fifty-nine,” the officer reported. “The tunnels had to be collapsed.”
“Have Renada dispatch a team to start digging them out immediately.”
“Yes, Denzit.”
Turning to Tuvok, she said, “Jaxom, like all twelve of our city-states, is protected by an advanced defense shield. The technology was still in development when I first came here and I made the installation of those shields my first priority. Since they came online, our casualty rate among the civilian population has dropped by more than seventy percent.”
Tuvok listened attentively, but said nothing.
“The problem at Jaxom and three of our other smaller cities is that the infrastructure does not exist to provide all of the energy the shields require. Auxiliary sources such as Analepsis have been secured and power lines run underground to provide additional resources, but those lines remain vulnerable to constant attacks.”
“How frequent are these attacks?” Tuvok asked.
“Weekly,” the denzit replied. “You could set your chronometer by them.”
“How many Rilnar currently inhabit this planet?” Tuvok asked.
“The largest city has almost two hundred thousand. Most are between seventy and eighty thousand.”
“And how many Zahl?”
“They have been reduced to nine settlements from fifteen in the last few years,” she replied, clearly proud of this achievement. “Four were completely destroyed; the other two were rendered uninhabitable by unfortunate infestations.”
As biological warfare had never been approved by Starfleet, Tuvok was surprised to hear Janeway suggesting their casual use on Sormana. “Infestations you caused?” Tuvok asked.
“No,” she clarified. “Ones we chose not to prevent. The Zahl’s remaining nine settlements are larger than ours. The total Zahl population at this time is still a little over a million.”
“How can the Zahl, even with a population that size, absorb weekly casualty rates like they just suffered at Jaxom?”
“They seem to have an unending supply of new recruits and to be honest I still don’t know how they’re bringing them here. At first I thought they must breed like voles, but my medical staff assures me that’s not the case. There was a noticeable drop a few decades ago when the proximity mines went online, but that didn’t slow them down for long. We’ve managed to secure our off-world supply lines to provide for necessary reinforcements from sympathizers within the colonies, but the Zahl have found another solution, one that eludes me at present.”
“Fascinating,” Tuvok noted.
The denzit’s face broke into a wide grin, characteristic of Kathryn, but not the battle-hardened leader she had clearly become. She stared up at him for a moment as a sudden light in her eyes warred with regret. Stepping closer to him, she said softly, “Are you well, my old friend?”
“During the years that have separated us I have endured a number of difficult losses accompanied by developments of great personal fulfillment. I am as I have ever been.”
Her smile faded. Placing a hand on his arm and giving it a gentle squeeze she said, “You have no idea how much I have missed you.”
“I believe I can imagine,” Tuvok replied.
HAVERBERN, RILNADAAR VI
Under any other circumstances, Counselor Cambridge would have thrown himself into the harvest revelries of Haverbern’s small farming community body and soul. The colony’s inhabitants were a technologically advanced community. They specialized in tiered hydroponic farms that left a great deal of arable land untouched. The rustic annual ritual they were in the process of enacting was a rarity among most species as technologically advanced as the Rilnar. It was beautiful, noble, and completely without artifice. Each piece was performed as it must have been on Sormana by these people’s ancestors.
Several large fires had been lit around which men and women of all ages danced with abandon. They were clad in ceremonial cloaks, colorful vests, tunics, and broad skirts accented with images of ripe grains and vegetables. Children ran wild chasing packs of domesticated animals from group to group, their hands dripping with the juice of fresh fruits that were piled on tables surrounding the fires.
At the far end of the grounds, a platform had been erected from which occasional announcements were made in between the exotic sounds—Cambridge hesitated to call it music—being coaxed from a variety of percussive and small wind instruments.
Had he not known better, the counselor could have imagined that he had been transported back in time to the earliest years of Rilnar civilization. It was a vivid reminder of the magnificent, simple power of life’s most primal cycles and the way they continued to inform and ignite the imagination.
Several of the local participants had invited him to join their dance—as soon as they had advised the local alderman that they were friends of Commander O’Donnell and Lieutenant Elkins, who had been left at this settlement four days prior. The alderman was an ancient Rilnar man whose entire body was covered with faded green tattoos. He embraced Cambridge and Lieutenant Url, Demeter’s tactical officer, like long-lost kin. Clearly Commander O’Donnell had managed to completely ingratiate himself among these people.
Cambridge and Fife had also enjoyed a series of successful and enlightening discussions among the Rilnar diplomats at Rilquitain. Their story had been unsurprising.
The Rilnar and Zahl were one species. They had evolved on Sormana tens of thousands of years earlier and from the moment two disparate tribes had made contact, there had been conflict. The Rilnar already had written communications and rudimentary mathematical skills when their territorial expansion brought them into contact with the somewhat less-advanced Zahl. They had enslaved the Zahl. The Zahl had rebelled. For a student of comparative anthropology, such as Cambridge, it was an old story he felt he had heard one too many times.
Centuries passed
. Both cultures evolved. Lines were drawn on maps. Weapons became more deadly, tactics more complex. Vast resources on both sides were expended. Occasionally the lines on the maps were redrawn. Brief periods of peace were followed by outbreaks of new hostilities with relatively little provocation.
Rilnar scientists had first unlocked the potentials of the atom. Spaceflight followed and on its heels, the development of rudimentary warp capabilities. Those that had emigrated from Sormana were content to leave the conflict behind. They were the first among their people to grasp how insignificant their petty differences and tortured history was when measured against the vastness of the rest of the universe.
Those who now led the Rilnar colonial worlds were a proud people. Their artists, philosophers, and scientists could stand easily beside their counterparts among other warp-capable species. Their military showed surprising restraint. It seemed there was one lesson Sormana’s past had taught them well: development was the child of peace.
Defensive capabilities were prioritized as the Rilnar set their sights farther and farther from their homeworld, and from similar colonies constructed by the Zahl. There was, after all, plenty of space for both.
The leader of the Rilnar diplomatic delegation, a slight woman named Halaah, spoke frankly of her and her predecessor’s attempts over the years to establish a true and lasting peace on Sormana. For her people and their Zahl counterparts, Sormana had become a cultural blight. Those who remained on the planet, relatively few by the colony’s standards, could not under any circumstances be convinced to part with their ancient hatred. When decades of negotiations failed, the Rilnar and Zahl had come to an uneasy and dispiriting truce of their own. Those who lived on Sormana were free to continue to do as they wished. The rest of their people would move on without them. The minefield had been established along with the blockade, staffed equally on both sides. Each tended to their own humanitarian needs. Each had a fair number of sympathizers among the diaspora, but never enough to tip the balance toward one side or the other.
Star Trek: Voyager: A Pocket Full of Lies Page 14
