Star Trek: Voyager: A Pocket Full of Lies

by Kirsten Beyer

  “You told me you needed a break. What changed your mind?”

  Conlon shrugged. “I had a bad day.”

  Torres struggled to remember the day’s reports she had hastily reviewed prior to turning in for the evening. Nothing that could account for Conlon’s behavior jumped out at her.

  “In engineering?” Torres asked.

  “No.”

  Torres rose from the bed and stood above Nancy, absent mindedly shifting her weight from one foot to the other. It was her default when standing these days. The motion calmed her newborn son.

  “Nancy,” she began, “we can play twenty questions all night, or you can tell me what is going on. Is this about those modifications you wanted to make? Are you still afraid we’re all too vulnerable?”

  Conlon exhaled quickly through her nose in a huff that never made it to her throat. “I think you’d call that a symptom,” she finally admitted.

  Torres knelt so that they were eye-to-eye. “A symptom of what?”

  Conlon lifted her eyes to look past Torres’s. “I’m not sorry I survived Xolani’s attack. I’m not sorry I survived the Omega Continuum. I’m not sorry I survived the Borg Invasion. I’m not sorry I survived Galvan VI. I don’t feel guilty that I’m still alive when so many I have cared about are dead.

  “My problem is the opposite.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “My problem is that I’m about to join them.”

  Torres felt as if she had been slapped. “What the hell does that mean?” she demanded.

  Conlon dropped her feet to the floor and rose, moving past Torres into the darkest corner of her cabin. Torres could see her shadow pacing the small area between her replicator and the door to her quarters.

  “I told you and everyone else that I didn’t remember what happened when Xolani attacked me.”

  Torres quickly reclaimed the edge of the bed and sat absolutely still, fearful of doing anything to break Nancy’s train of thought.

  “That was a lie.”

  Torres’s heart began to burn. It wasn’t disappointment so much as shared devastation. She had blamed herself for Xolani’s attack and had taken a small measure of comfort in the thought that Conlon had no memory of what had to be a harrowing experience. She would resume beating herself up about it later. This was not the time.

  “Not the only one I’ve told lately, by the way. You were right. I have been ordering my staff to begin testing our gel packs and some synthetic amebocytes.”

  “I don’t care,” Torres said honestly. “Tell me about Xolani.”

  “At first, it was like a pressure at the base of my neck. My head started to pound. I got a little dizzy. My skin started to feel like it was too tight, like I was a balloon filled with too much air. I started to tingle all over.

  “The next thing I knew I was floating in darkness. The first thing the asshole said to me was, ‘That’s right. You’re free now. Don’t be afraid.’ But I was afraid. I was terrified. I started pulling at the nothingness with my arms and kicking my legs, like I could swim to some surface and breathe again. He kept trying to convince me to calm down and I kept fighting him with every ounce of strength I had.

  “Suddenly, I was sitting up in my bed. Oh, God, it was just a dream, I remember thinking. I was so relieved. But then he was there, sitting beside me. He reached out and touched my face. ‘You’re so beautiful, and so strong,’ he said. ‘You will make a fine host.’

  “I told him to drop the schoolboy flattery. Somewhere along the line, I had put it all together. I knew who he was. I knew he was inside me. And I also knew that unless I gave him permission, he could never take all of me. The longer we sat in that imaginary room, the stronger I grew. No matter what he said, no matter what he offered, I refused. He said the pain would go away. He said I would always be part of him, but that no suffering would ever touch me again. He would protect me. I just kept screaming at him over and over to get out.

  “There’s a story I heard as a child about a girl who grows larger when she eats a certain cookie or piece of cake. I was like that. I was growing and he was shrinking. I was winning.

  “So he came clean. He admitted that to submit to him was to die. By then, my head was brushing the ceiling of this room. All I could think was that I’d won. I was kicking his ass and there was nothing he could do about it. He had chosen poorly when he attacked me.

  “But then he asked why I was so afraid of death when I was already dying.”

  “What?” escaped Torres’s lips before she could help herself.

  Conlon stepped out of the shadows. She had relayed this much of the story in a cold, detached voice. Only now could Torres see the tears streaming down her face.

  “There was a moment of blinding pain, like every muscle in my body had just exploded. Suddenly I was small again. And then I was smaller. I was moving through my own body, through my bloodstream, until I reached a white mass. I got even smaller as I entered it. So small I was finally able to see the cells of that mass and the molecules that make up those cells. It was obvious to me that something was wrong. These large, sick black patches were growing, absences where there shouldn’t be any. I think I was looking at my own DNA.

  “He told me that the cells of my body had already turned against me. A foreign substance had been introduced years earlier and mutated my DNA. It was a slow process, but it was accelerating.”

  “Nancy, he had to have been lying,” Torres said.

  “He wasn’t. I knew exactly what he was talking about. Several years ago, while I was on the da Vinci, we’d encountered this alien pathogen. It only affected a few of us, but two died before a treatment could be developed. I survived, but this was one of those cases where the cure was almost as bad as the disease. The mutated strain they created to attack the virus is still inside me. It’s had years to move slowly through my body, making small enough changes to my DNA to remain undetected. It’s killing me.”

  “Then we’ll find a treatment,” Torres insisted.

  Conlon shook her head. “Once I knew, I realized something. If I kept fighting him, he was just going to find another host, someone who wasn’t already dying. I couldn’t let that happen. It wasn’t fair. I decided then and there that if I was going to die, it would be my choice. And I could accept it as long as it meant no one else would have to face him.”

  Conlon paused to wipe her face clean with her bare forearms. When she was again composed, she continued, “After that, I really don’t remember anything. I was gone. No one was more surprised than I was when I woke up on board the Galen. It didn’t all come back to me at first. But over the next few days, I started to remember. I assumed the Doctor would find evidence of the illness and I kept waiting for the bad news. But it never came.

  “I know it’s still in there. Nothing has changed. But it’s still undetectable. So I thought about it. Why tell anyone now? If I do, I’ll spend what little time is left to me in some hospital back home. I don’t want that. I love my life. I love my life here. I love Harry Kim, at least, I think I do. Tomorrow doesn’t matter. Today is what I have. And I’m going to make the most of every single moment I have left.

  “I pushed Harry into a closer relationship than I think he was ready for. I tried to push you into making those system modifications and I’m going to keep pushing you on them because if it’s the last thing I have a chance to do, I’m going to make damn sure that no one on board this ship gets hurt by something we could have prevented. I’m going to live for as long as I can.

  “Does that make sense?”

  It did. It was a variation on a theme Torres knew well.

  It was also a temporary fix at best, not a solution.

  Torres rose from the side of the bed and approached Conlon as carefully as she would a wounded animal. “It makes perfect sense, Nancy,” she said. “I’m so sorry you thought you had to carry this alone for so long. But that ends now. We’re serving with an incredible team of doctors. They will find a cure. I’m r
elieving you of duty, and I’m ordering you to sickbay. I’ll go with you. We’ll tell Doctor Sharak everything you just told me and we’ll let him start doing what he has to do. We’re going to get through this together, do you understand me?”

  Conlon nodded.

  Torres felt more relief than fear. She knew what the Doctor was capable of and that Sharak would likely consult with him on this. For weeks now she’d struggled with this amorphous problem. Now it had a name and a precise shape. Now it could be attacked. Now it could be solved. She smiled reassuringly at Nancy.

  Conlon did not smile back. She seemed resigned, defeated.

  The look on Conlon’s face did not change when they entered sickbay and called for an emergency consult with Doctor Sharak. It didn’t change when Conlon told Sharak the same story she’d told Torres. It didn’t change when Sharak thanked her for her honesty and assured her that all would be well.

  Torres departed as Sharak began a new physical work-up on Conlon. She couldn’t stop thinking about Nancy’s haunted face or the hopelessness that now permeated her eyes.

  17

  VESTA

  Chief Medical Officer’s log. Stardate 51558.6. As of nineteen hundred hours, thirty-nine minutes, I have, in my capacity of Chief Medical Officer and in accordance with Starfleet Medical Regulation 121, Section A, officially relieved Captain Kathryn Janeway of her active command of the Federation Starship Voyager.”

  Admiral Janeway immediately paused the log playback on the second message buoy and looked to Counselor Hugh Cambridge. Given the fact that she wanted his perspective to be as well informed as her own when they eventually made contact with the Krenim, Janeway had decided to brief him fully on the contents of the first message buoy and to allow him to listen to the recordings on the second with her. He sat beside her in the science lab, his long legs stretched out before him and crossed at the ankle. His hands were clasped behind his head but he had sat up the moment he heard the Doctor’s voice. This was the only log either of them had heard from any officer aboard Voyager other than her captain.

  “Problem, Admiral?” Cambridge asked.

  Janeway took a deep breath and gave him a knowing look.

  “I see,” Cambridge said. “You’ve nurtured your own misgivings about the choices you made during this trip down forgotten lane, but hearing those of a fellow officer takes this to a whole different level, does it?”

  The admiral shook her head, not in denial of this statement, but to forcibly remove the thought from her head. “On the one hand, everything I did was in the interest of preserving my ship and her crew.”

  “And on the other?”

  “It’s hard to believe I allowed the situation to degenerate to this point.”

  “Just as it’s hard to believe that Denzit Janeway could continue to apply her considerable skills to fighting the Zahl on Sormana?”

  Janeway paused. “Looking back, it seems like there were so many better choices I might have made. But in the heat of the moment, apparently none of them occurred to me.”

  “She said from the comfort of a perfectly climate-controlled science lab aboard one of the Federation’s most advanced starships. It can be constructive to second-guess command decisions. But it’s difficult for me to take you to task when I have never spent more than a hundred days aboard a barely functioning vessel, struggling merely to survive while facing an enemy with the ability and the determination to eradicate me from history. Don’t judge yourself too harshly.”

  “But I’m so very good at it,” she said semiseriously before resuming the playback of the Doctor’s log.

  “For all the good it did me. I explained to the captain my suspicion that she has been suffering from traumatic stress syndrome for several weeks now. The symptoms include irritability, sleeplessness, obsessive thoughts, and reckless behavior. She attempted to rationalize her behavior. I asked her to remain in my temporary sickbay for a few days of observations. She refused. When I reminded her that I had the authority to relieve her of duty she said that if I did so, she would deactivate my program. I should note that she apologized immediately, but the fact that she would even temporarily entertain the notion in the interest of maintaining her position is further evidence of her obvious mental strain. Ultimately, she acknowledged my order, then refused to obey it. While it pains me to besmirch the record of one of the strongest, bravest, and most dedicated officers I have known, duty obliges me to enter this incident in my formal log. Should charges result from this event, it will be for others to determine which of us acted appropriately or whether the captain’s actions in this case rise to the level of severance from Starfleet.”

  Janeway paused the playback again. “It’s interesting, isn’t it? In theory, I would have been the one to review all of the logs contained in this buoy before it was dropped.”

  “You’re wondering why you would have included the Doctor’s log?”

  “Yes. It doesn’t reflect terribly well on me, does it?”

  “Your choice to include it certainly does. You and the Doctor were both right,” Cambridge noted. “I can’t tell you how pleased I am that the Temporal Prime Directive prohibits either of us from ever telling him that I said that,” he added.

  The logs ended on stardate 51682.2. By that time, Captain Janeway had managed to collect a small allied fleet, including the Nihydron and the Mawasi. She had received an encrypted communication from Lieutenant Paris, who was still captive aboard Annorax’s weapon ship. It was her intention to lead this small force into a direct attack on the Krenim vessel. Voyager’s continued existence and the absence of any of these events from the memories of those that had endured them were the only indications available that Janeway’s attack had somehow succeeded in restoring a timeline where the Krenim had posed no threat to Voyager or the Delta Quadrant.

  SORMANA

  “Unacceptable,” Denzit Janeway insisted.

  Tuvok understood her reaction but was unwilling to allow it to affect his decision. The fact that Lieutenant Kim and Seven were seated beside him in the denzit’s office had nothing to do with his determination. Captain Chakotay and, by extension, Admiral Janeway were correct that the mission Tuvok and his team were about to undertake could directly affect the conflict between the Rilnar and the Zahl. That the denzit had agreed to bring them safely to the planet to perform it did not earn her the right to track the movements of Tuvok’s team on the surface. Even knowing where they intended to go could affect her tactical calculations. It was a difficult line to navigate but Tuvok had no question about which side of it the Prime Directive demanded he walk.

  “Then may I suggest again that you allow Voyager to assume orbit so that we may utilize her transporter system in traveling to and from our intended destination,” Tuvok said.

  “I can’t allow that,” the denzit replied. “The Zahl might take it as evidence that the Federation is about to take a side in this struggle and my own people would question my motives.”

  “Then what is your suggestion?” Seven asked placidly.

  The denzit stared at her with bemused curiosity. Glancing at Tuvok she asked, “Are you absolutely certain this woman can be trusted? She’s not even in uniform.” Turning back to Seven, she demanded, “You were liberated from the Collective how many years ago, have served Starfleet constantly since then, but never accepted a commission?”

  “Yes,” Seven replied.

  “The fact that she was selected for this mission should be all the confirmation you need of my assurance of her loyalty and abilities,” Tuvok added.

  “My suggestion,” the denzit said, “is that you tell me where you intend to go, allow me to provide you with intelligence on the safest point of ingress, and to track your progress once you have transported there using my secured planetary network.”

  “Unacceptable,” Lieutenant Kim chimed in.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant Kim,” Tuvok said tonelessly while still communicating his clear desire that Kim remain silent while he continued thi
s difficult discussion.

  “I know you’re not going to tell me what you find there,” the denzit said. “I understand the limitations of the Prime Directive.”

  “Then you also understand how knowing our target might compromise that directive,” Tuvok continued.

  “You could provide us with one of your shuttles,” Seven suggested, “assuming they possess limited transport capabilities.”

  “I could,” the denzit agreed.

  “That shuttle will have logs,” Kim noted. “She may not be able to track us, but she will still be able to figure out where we went after the fact.”

  “Unless I wipe the logs in question,” Seven said.

  “Someone thinks awfully highly of their technical capabilities, considering you’ve never seen one of my tactical shuttles,” the denzit observed.

  “Yes, someone does,” Seven agreed.

  The denzit cracked a smile. “I like you,” she said simply.

  “Then we have an agreement?” Tuvok asked.

  “We do,” the denzit replied. “Is there anything else?”

  “Do you have any spare Zahl uniforms in storage?” Tuvok asked.

  “Yes, but you three aren’t going to fool anyone in them. You’ll need to be surgically altered.”

  “They will suffice from a distance,” Tuvok corrected her. “Should we get close enough to any Zahl officer for them to see our faces, the likelihood of the success of our mission will have dropped to below ten percent.”

  “Still, I could have my medical staff provide you with cosmetics that might buy you a little time.”

  “That would be appreciated,” Tuvok said.

  “And you understand that under no circumstances will I be able to assist you once you’ve left the Center?” the denzit asked.

  “We do.”

  “Very well.”

  • • •

  The shuttle the denzit provided Tuvok’s team was cramped by Starfleet standards, but sufficient to the task at hand. Its scanners were similar enough to those Starfleet utilized that Lieutenant Kim had mastered them within a few moments of activation.