The computer did so, and he beheld the matching injuries to vital organs. Again, he asked the computer to extrapolate what had caused them; again, it insisted that Ellis was slain by someone—or something—wielding an A-49-type scalpel.
“Apply epidermal layers,” he rasped. A third time the computer asserted that the injuries were caused by a scalpel.
There was a lot more he was supposed to do in order to fulfill the requirements of a Federation standard autopsy, but Kaz had had enough. The damn procedure had raised more questions than it had answered—questions that seemed illogical and bizarre. He terminated the holographic program of the body and instructed the computer to reinstate the stasis field around Ellis and return the corpse to the cadaver drawer.
Making his way to the replicator and requesting another cup of coffee, Kaz went over what he knew—or, at least, what he thought he knew.
One: The body showed signs of being in stasis for at least six years, but Ellis had been aboard Voyager yesterday.
Two: Chakotay claimed that he saw Ellis attacked right before his eyes, attacked by one of the creatures that Devi Patel had had the wherewithal to take scans of. The creatures existed, Kaz had no doubt about that. But there was no speck of dirt, no shred of DNA, anywhere on Ellis’s body.
Three: The computer insisted—and, he thought, rubbing his eyes tiredly, he would have agreed had he not been told differently—that the clean slices in the body that had gone deep enough to nick the bone had been caused by a scalpel, not animal claws.
It all added up to a mystery, one he was determined to solve. But again, he needed more information; more than just examining the body could provide.
Chakotay would still be asleep, and Kaz was glad of that. He didn’t want to have to bring any of this to his captain’s attention until he had more evidence and a theory that stretched wide enough to accommodate all the evidence. Commander Data had told him that he and Geordi La Forge had enjoyed playing the roles of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson on the holodeck. Kaz felt like that fictional detective right now, although he doubted that Holmes ever felt as befuddled as he.
“The phasers,” he said aloud. He’d check the phasers that Chakotay said he and Ellis had fired in self-defense. Quickly he went to the computer, gave it the proper access codes, and it told him which phasers had been assigned to Chakotay and Ellis yesterday.
Unfortunately, he didn’t have the security clearance to examine the phasers physically. But he knew someone who did, someone who, like him, was expressing some worry about Chakotay.
It was time to bring in an accomplice.
Chapter 13
HARRY KIM WAS AWAKE the instant he heard the door to his quarters hiss open.
He lay, unmoving, keeping his breathing regular, and not for the first time wished he could permanently kick his habit of sleeping with an eye mask on.
He heard the sound of the door closing. The footsteps, soft and careful, came closer to his bed. Still Kim feigned sleep, his eyes wide open beneath the mask, his body ready to jump.
A hand touched his shoulder. In one smooth motion Kim erupted from the bed, grabbed his attacker around the neck with one hand, ripped off the mask with the other, and cried, “Lights!”
A nanosecond later he realized that his intruder was none other than the ship’s doctor, who gazed up at him with startled blue eyes. At once Kim loosed his grip.
“Sorry,” he said.
Kaz sat up, rubbing his throat gingerly. “Good thing I have spots here or else I’d be wearing your fingerprints,” he muttered. “Mr. Paris indicated that you weren’t a light sleeper.”
Harry’s mind went back to the time, so long ago, when Paris had done almost the exact same thing—walked in on him in the middle of the night to drag him off to a make-believe French bistro. He was hit with a sudden longing for those times, difficult as they had been, and a keen sense of missing his old friend.
“I was an ensign then,” Kim said. “Now I’m a lieutenant and chief of security. Speaking of which,” he added archly, “how did you get in here, and oh, by the way, do you know what time it is?”
Kaz shrugged. “Gave my clearance code and told the computer to override the lock as it was a medical emergency,” he replied. “And I know what time it is. Harry, I need your help.”
Kim was alert at once. Tom might have busted in on him for a lark, but Kaz wouldn’t. He wouldn’t be here if there weren’t a problem. A big problem.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“I’ll explain while you get dressed,” Kaz said. “We don’t have a lot of time.” He hesitated. “Now that it’s come to it, it’s hard to know what to say.”
“Let me see if I can help you,” said Kim, reaching for his uniform. “You’re worried about Chakotay. You think he’s acting strangely.”
“Yes, I do. And I suspect you share that opinion.”
Kim ran a comb through his hair. “I do. I’ve known Chakotay for seven years, Doctor. I would never have expected him to behave the way he is. This reluctance to return to Loran II, his refusal to contact Starfleet Command or even Admiral Janeway—hell, you know what good friends they are. Chakotay should have told her about the situation immediately.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what’s going on with him.”
“Neither do I, for certain,” Kaz said. “But I’m here because I need you to check on a couple of phasers for me.”
“What?”
Kaz sighed. “This all sounds preposterous, but…I couldn’t sleep tonight, so I began the SOP autopsy on Commander Ellis.”
Kim frowned. “I thought the captain ordered you not to do it.”
“Well, he actually said for me not to spend time on it, since it was such an open-and-shut case. But he didn’t exactly forbid me to do it. So I started, and Harry, what I found…I can hardly believe it. The body shows every indication of having been in stasis for six years.”
“What?”
“I know, I know, I thought there had to be a computer error, too. But my tricorder confirmed it. Also, there were no traces of the creature that killed him. And I mean none—not a hair, no skin cells, nothing.”
Kim, who a moment ago had been the model of Starfleet efficiency, now stared at Kaz with his mouth slightly open. Slowly he sank down on the bed.
“Isn’t that impossible?” he asked weakly.
“It ought to be,” Kaz replied. “Then, as I examined the rips made in Ellis’s clothing and the corresponding injuries on his body, I realized they were too clean to have been made by animal claws. The computer said they were made by a scalpel. Even gave me the type. And I have to agree.”
Kim ran a hand through his just-combed hair, rumpling it. “So what you’re saying,” he said, groping his way to a conclusion, “is that the body has actually been in stasis for several years and was fatally injured by someone wielding a scalpel who managed to leave no DNA behind?”
“That pretty much sums it up.”
Kim gave him a faint smile. “Either you’re insane or I am,” he said.
“I wish it were that simple,” said Kaz. “I’m trying to get more evidence, to figure out just what the hell is going on. This seems ludicrous to me, fantastical, impossible, but the facts are there. That’s why I need you to get me into the weapons locker. Chakotay said that both he and Ellis fired their weapons at the creatures who attacked them. I want to make sure…”
His voice trailed off and he looked slightly sick. Harry could empathize.
“You want to make sure that this man, our captain and our friend, isn’t lying to us,” he finished.
Kaz nodded. “I can’t believe it’s come down to this, but there it is. Yes, I want to make sure he was telling the truth. I want very much to believe that he’s acting so erratically for one of the most basic of human reasons—simple, honest grief at losing a loved one, nothing more.”
“You realize that I could put you under arrest for proposing this to me,” Kim said, testing the waters.
&nb
sp; “Of course I do,” Kaz replied, “and frankly, that would be a relief. There’s nothing I could do in the brig to keep investigating. And, of course, if you do what I ask of you, you’ll be involved, too.”
Kim sat for a moment, gathering his thoughts, although he knew in his heart his mind was made up.
“Let’s go,” he said.
The lights were dim and the corridors were quiet as the two conspirators approached the weapons locker. Kim entered the clearance code, and the door slid open.
“Lights,” Kim called. The air was cool and slightly more stagnant than elsewhere on the ship, and Kaz looked at the rows of weapons neatly lined up on the wall. He’d told Kim which two phasers to look for, and Kim located them quickly.
Kim examined the first one. “This one’s been fired within the last twenty-four hours,” he confirmed. Kaz was disproportionately pleased; it meant Chakotay hadn’t lied about that. Feeling more hopeful and confident, Kaz watched as Kim examined the phaser that Ellis had carried with him on his final mission.
Kim’s face revealed the answer.
“That one hasn’t been fired?” Kaz asked.
Kim shook his head. “Negative. This is about as unused as a phaser can be, fresh from the armories. You’re certain it was this number phaser?”
“Ask the computer yourself; I could have been mistaken.” But he wasn’t, and Kim knew it, and even as Kim went through the motions of reconfirming the phaser’s number and who had last been assigned it, they both knew what he’d learn.
Kaz felt cold. Chakotay had told him a bald-faced falsehood. But why? Why would he lie? None of this made any sense! It was like being in a bad dream.
Things are not what they seem.
He shivered.
“What would you like to do now?” he asked Voyager’s chief of security.
Kim’s full lips tightened, and Kaz saw a flash of anger mixed with a sense of betrayal in his dark eyes.
“I’d like to go wake up the captain and get him to explain all this, but my gut is telling me that that would be the absolute worst thing I could do.”
Kaz nodded; he shared the sentiment. Something was very wrong here, and until they figured it out, they couldn’t trust their own captain.
“We can’t trust him,” Kaz said, finally speaking the words, his voice sounding hollow in his own ears. Looking miserable, Kim shook his head. It was probably worse for him than for Kaz, as he’d been so close to Chakotay for so long.
“Well, then,” Kaz continued, “I do know someone we can trust.”
Kim knew exactly who he meant.
“That’s a huge breach of protocol,” Kim said, needed to say it even as Kaz knew he was more than willing to go along with it.
“I don’t give a damn about protocol right now,” Kaz said recklessly, hearing Gradak’s words in his voice. “I think there are more important things at stake. Are you game, Harry?”
Kim nodded.
“Then let’s do it.”
The Changeling dreaded sleep, but in his completely human form, he required it. He lay on Chakotay’s bed, staring out the window at the stars streaking past, wishing he were heading to Earth instead of back to Loran II, to Earth, where he could disappear without a trace. His eyes closed and the dream, as it always did, broke upon his sleeping mind like a wave crashing on the shoreline.
It had all gone so well, better than he had dared hope. The massacre on Tevlik’s moon base was not part of the original deal struck between Dukat and the Dominion, of course, but the Changeling who now wore the face of Ensign Andrew Ellis felt certain that was a minor technicality. Gul Dukat had made it clear what he wanted by allying with the Dominion. He hated the Maquis with an obsession, and he wanted them eradicated. Over the last three days the Jem’Hadar and the Cardassians had done almost precisely that.
Over the last year the Changeling had managed to kidnap and place in stasis not only Ellis—a rising young star not long out of the Academy; the wife and infant Ellis had were trivial obstacles as far as the Changeling was concerned—but others as well. No one too noticeable, no one too important, just people in certain handy positions he could become for longer periods of time. He kept them in stasis, realizing that when the time came for him to stop impersonating any one of them, he could arrange a tragic “accident” and produce a fresh body.
Ellis was a transitory body. It was good to have a Federation alias, and as things were about to heat up here in the Alpha Quadrant, it would be easy enough for “poor Ellis” to have a hero’s death in some battle somewhere.
The Changeling was the proudest, though, of Arak Katal, who was completely fictitious. He had created the face and body from his own imagination, making a “character” as real as any of the actual people he could impersonate. It had been good enough to fool all those trusting Maquis. He’d picked out the moon base, he’d led them all there, he’d convinced them it was safe enough to bring their children.
And now he’d shown the Cardassians right where they were. A few had survived, but only a handful. The Changeling was proud of his handiwork.
He’d watched the destruction from the safety of a cloaked ship. Even if anyone had been able to detect him, it was unlikely anyone would care, considering what was happening on the moon and in the space around it. Now that it was all over but the body count, he was happily heading back to Earth, where “Ellis” would rendezvous with his starship.
He was startled when he heard the hail, but relaxed slightly when he realized who it must be. And sure enough, there was the pale, dark-haired image of a Vorta on the viewscreen.
It was one of the Elani clones. She was young, younger than most, and quite attractive. Her eyes were large now with reverence and wonder, and her voice betrayed her nervousness as she spoke.
“Great One, it is an honor to behold you.”
He was feeling good, so he inclined his head graciously. “What is it you seek from me?”
Elani licked full lips. “I come from the Founders on an important mission, to guarantee safety.”
His eyes narrowed. “Safety? From what?”
“Please, Great One, may I board your ship? I will explain all.”
So he let her aboard, and she was as obsequious in person as she was on-screen, perhaps even more so. She was dressed in long, flowing robes and carried a bulky piece of equipment.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“A weapon,” she said. Strangely, her voice cracked with grief. “To ensure the safety of the Founders.”
There was a brief moment when he could have stopped it. A second, a fraction of a second, when he realized what it was and could have shot out a tentacle to dash it out of her hand as she stood on the transporter pad, could have snapped her elegant neck. Could have saved himself.
But in that moment of hesitation, of disbelief that a Vorta, a Vorta, was planning on doing this to him, she lifted the weapon (clumsily, it was heavy and awkward, and she had tears in her lovely eyes) and fired.
The sheer agony was unexpected.
He dropped to the floor and writhed, too much in pain to even scream. He felt as if he were being turned inside out. It burned through him, twisted him…
…Solidified him…
And then she was bending over him, sobbing aloud, touching his Solid face and apologizing.
“They told me to do this to you,” she cried, “they told me! They said, one of the Founders has fallen from grace, and he must be punished or he will bring destruction upon all, he will obliterate the Great Link….Oh, please tell me you forgive me…I must obey them!”
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The other Founders had sent her to do this thing? To distort him, cell by cell, molecule by molecule, to turn him into a Solid? He’d recognized the technology, but the last he knew of it, it could only generate a forcefield that would hold him in Solid form as long as the field was active. But this Elani had brought hell upon him. They had somehow managed to change the Changeling, to distort him from a
fluid entity into a Solid one.
“Never!” he cried. “I will never forgive you! I will hunt you down and…” The words dissolved into gibberish as the pain increased.
She froze, her hand on his forehead, and her eyes widened in pain. “You will not forgive me? Even though I have no choice but to obey the Founders?”
Even in the depths of his torment, the Changeling remembered a human insult. He summoned saliva and spat in her pretty Vorta face.
Slowly Elani sank back on her heels. She looked stunned, stricken. “I cannot live with this,” she said. “I have destroyed one of my gods. You are right, Great One. There can be no forgiveness for me.” And as he watched, she placed a long, lovely index finger behind her ear and pressed her thumb under her chin—activating her termination implant.
When she collapsed upon him, lifeless, his satisfaction slightly eased the pain.
Chapter 14
“I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M DOING THIS,” muttered Kim as he and Kaz entered sickbay and he sat down at the computer. “It goes against everything I believe.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more,” said Kaz, “but that fellow in the cadaver drawer and poor Sekaya deserve the truth. What that will end up being, I haven’t the slightest idea.”
“I should warn you, Campbell’s pretty damn good at her job,” Kim said as his fingers flew over the controls. “She’s going to spot this when she comes on duty.”
“You had her job for seven years, Harry,” Kaz reminded him. “You know the communication system of this vessel better than anybody. All you need to do is be better than she is. Besides, didn’t you say she was having some problems earlier?”
“Yeah, we call those ghosts,” said Kim, brightening a little at the reminder. “I’ll do what I can to make this look like one.” He shook his dark head. “Damn it, Kaz, I hope we’re doing the right thing.”
“So do I, Harry,” said Kaz, “so do I.”
They were silent for a few moments, then Kim stiffened. “What time is it on Vaan?”
Spirit Walk, Book Two Page 11
