Star Trek: Voyager - 043 - Acts of Contrition

by Kirsten Beyer

  “So this is a common occurrence for you?” Chakotay asked.

  “They have never attacked a planet as sensitive or well fortified as Lecahn. They must know their mission has no possible chance of success. Stand by, Voyager. We will make contact again when the threat is eliminated.”

  “Voyager out,” Chakotay said.

  “A hostile faction made up of unhappy citizens of the Confederacy?” Torres asked.

  Chakotay nodded. “I wonder what their grievances are.”

  “Want to open a channel and ask?” Torres suggested mischievously.

  “Yes, but it’s not our fight,” Chakotay said softly.

  TWELFTH LAMONT

  Lieutenant Harry Kim stood along the wall behind the general’s control panel along with six other security officers. From this vantage point he had the best possible view of the actions of every bridge officer, as well as the main viewscreen where the incoming vessels were represented in bright gold symbols.

  “Two are breaking formation on course for the orbital array,” Eleoate reported from his tactical station.

  There must be planetary defenses on that array, Kim thought.

  Within moments, the two ships had come under fire from several phase cannons mounted on the platform. Their evasive maneuvers were impressive, as were the sizes of the explosions that resulted from the impact of the torpedoes they released on their initial run.

  “Orbital array six-beta disabled,” Creak reported.

  “Target the lead vessel and fire at will,” Mattings ordered. “We’ll deal with the others momentarily.”

  Kim watched as Eleoate unleashed the Lamont’s weapons in a steady stream. The helm matched the evasive maneuvers of the target and, within seconds, made contact.

  “Direct hit to their shield generators. They’re down,” Creak confirmed.

  “Finish them,” Mattings ordered. The bridge rumbled under fire from the other two ships that had approached on the same course as the leader but were quickly moving beyond the Lamont’s range after firing a volley.

  Eleoate launched a torpedo, and the lead ship vanished in a shock of white fire.

  As Mattings selected the next target and Creak noted the destruction of another orbital array, Kim turned to the security officer standing to his right. “Why didn’t the general make contact with the ships before opening fire?” he asked.

  “The general knows why they’re here. They lost their right to air their concerns the moment they entered this system with their weapons armed. The CIF does not negotiate with hostiles. We merely end any threat they pose.”

  “What if the threat could be ended without destroying them?” Kim asked.

  “To discuss their demands would encourage others to launch similar attacks. We are following standard protocols.”

  Kim returned his attention to the main viewscreen. Another ship had been destroyed, and the Lamont was altering course to tend to one of the two vessels attacking the orbital arrays. He understood in theory that negotiating with terrorists came with inherent risks. But this wasn’t much of a battle. It was slaughter. The Lamont hadn’t so much as hailed them before opening fire.

  Then again, the Unmarked ships hadn’t requested a conversation either.

  Kim shook his head. Talking to each other might not get them anywhere, but wasn’t it at least worth the effort?

  VOYAGER

  “Captain Chakotay,” Waters said, “one of the Unmarked vessels has altered course and is now in pursuit.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Torres said. “They’ll never catch us before the Lamont catches them.”

  “Onscreen,” Chakotay ordered.

  As the viewscreen shifted from the focus on the Lamont’s battle to the single ship now approaching Voyager, the image of that ship distorted.

  “Waters, realign your optical resolution,” Torres ordered. “You’re getting some sort of weird . . .” she began, but she trailed off as the ship almost vanished in a blur of speed no ship that size should have been able to achieve.

  “Red alert,” Chakotay called. “What just happened?” he demanded of Torres.

  Torres was already on her feet and moving to the operations panel. Over Waters’s shoulder she studied the display for a moment, then said, “This doesn’t make sense. There’s a subspace corridor there but they didn’t enter it. They sort of skidded across the top of one section of it.”

  “Add that to the list of things I’d like to learn more about later,” Chakotay said. “Helm, evasive maneuvers,” he ordered, as the Unmarked ship reversed its course and orientation and began what was likely an attack run.

  Likely turned to certain when the ship let loose a spray of fire from two small cannons mounted just above its thrusters. The shields rumbled, and Aubrey at tactical barely had time to say, “Shields holding,” when a torpedo was released from the ship’s belly as it passed directly overhead.

  The ship rocked, and the sound of a thunderstorm breaking on the bridge rattled the deck.

  “What was that?” the captain demanded.

  “Ten isotons enhanced by a gravimetric warhead,” Aubrey replied. “Forward shields took the brunt and are down to sixty-eight percent.”

  “Reinforce forward shield array,” Torres ordered. “Gwyn, don’t let another one of those things hit us,” she added to the flight controller.

  “I’m doing my best, Commander,” she replied.

  “How many life signs on that ship?” Chakotay asked.

  “Four,” Waters replied. “All humanoid.”

  Another round of fire struck the ship, but the effect was minimal.

  “Return fire, sir?” Aubrey asked.

  “Not yet,” Chakotay said. The situation wasn’t desperate. The Lamont had destroyed all but one of the ships they had engaged and would likely be available to do the same to this one momentarily. The Unmarked was clearly trying to draw Voyager into the battle. Chakotay could not allow that to happen, unless he was given no other choice.

  “He’s got one more torpedo loaded, Captain,” Aubrey reported.

  “Why hasn’t he fired it?” Torres asked.

  The ship had maneuvered itself around Voyager again, and Chakotay’s gut turned as the vessel did, picking up speed on what looked like a suicide run. Depending on when that warhead exploded, and how much damage the impact did to the weakened forward shields, Voyager could be destroyed.

  Options? Chakotay thought.

  There weren’t any good ones.

  Chapter Eighteen

  STARFLEET MEDICAL

  Doctor Riley Frazier, former Starfleet officer, former Borg drone, former instigator of a Borg Cooperative, and current “leader” of all that remained of that cooperative when most were taken by the Caeliar gestalt, wanted answers.

  But first she wanted to fulfill a dream she’d been tending with great care for the last several weeks.

  The first face she saw when she entered what looked like a large, comfortable living room was Seven’s. The perfectly proportioned, graceful figure turned to face her, half lit and half shrouded in darkness.

  “Doctor Frazier?” Seven said, clearly shocked. She remained still as Frazier closed the distance between them in long, purposeful strides.

  Frazier had never faced such a compliant target. Focusing her rage into her right fist, she raised it with her last step and flung it forward, impacting painfully with Seven’s jaw.

  Completely unprepared for the assault, Seven’s entire body turned to the right with the force of the blow. She was struggling to regain her balance when Frazier shook the numbness in her right hand out, then grabbed Seven with both hands and forced her down onto the floor.

  At least Seven was now defending herself. She was much stronger than her lean frame suggested. She caught Frazier’s next punch while reaching for her other hand and grasping it with inhuman strength. But on her back, she was working against gravity. Frazier reached for Seven’s throat. Seven responded by bringing her left arm straight up to force
Frazier’s tentative grip to release. Seven then proceeded to try and wriggle free from her attacker, reaching for Frazier’s throat with one hand and clawing at the left side of her face with the other.

  “Riley!” Axum’s voice seemed to come from some distant planet. In the next instant, a strong arm had wrapped around her waist and she was lifted from Seven, struggling in Axum’s grasp but with little hope of doing anything more until he released her.

  He carried her to the far side of the room. Her breath came in short gasps, but as soon as her feet hit the floor she was moving forward again. Seven had risen to a half-sitting position on the floor and was coming to her knees when Axum body-blocked Frazier and, taking her by both shoulders, pinned her against the wall.

  “Seven did not know anything about this!” Axum shouted in her face. “I told you that! She had no idea your people had been targeted.”

  “She had to know,” Frazier shouted. “Even if none of her people told her, she’s one of us. She knows.”

  Seven was now on her feet. Her breath was ragged and she held her jaw, already beginning to swell, in her hand.

  Ignoring Axum, Frazier turned her fury on Seven. “You betrayed us. Why? We’re no threat to you. All we wanted was to live in peace. Why pretend to give us that? Why take us to Arehaz if you had no intention of letting us stay?”

  “Doctor Frazier,” Seven said between gasps. “Riley. I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  The mingled shock and pain on Seven’s face were too real for Frazier to doubt them.

  “See?” Axum demanded. “I told you.”

  “When?” Seven asked of Axum.

  “If I let you go, are you going to listen?” Axum asked of Frazier.

  Her frustration spent and her curiosity aroused, Frazier nodded mutely. Axum released her shoulders a fraction, then more fully when he sensed no further forward momentum from her.

  “When did you tell Riley whatever you told her?” Seven asked of Axum again. She had not moved toward the pair. Instead, she instinctively took cover behind the sofa that now stood between them.

  “Doctor Frazier contacted me just before you arrived, Annika,” Axum said.

  “How?”

  “How do you think?” Frazier asked. “It’s not like I had time to enhance our communications array in the first few weeks we spent on Arehaz. We could barely contact Voyager again. Not that I’d ever want to.”

  Voyager had been responsible for saving Riley and her people on two separate desperate occasions. The most recent was only months earlier. The planet she and forty-six others had inhabited was taken by a hostile alien force, the Tarkons, and turned into a “relocation” settlement for travelers whose ships they had confiscated. Riley had hidden herself, thirteen children, their parents, and a few others beneath the planet’s surface until she had been able to make contact with Seven through their catoms and begged for help. Voyager had executed a daring and costly rescue, at least for the Tarkons, and at Riley’s request had resettled their group on a small but viable strip of land on what had been the planet of the Borg’s birth, Arehaz.

  “Voyager’s crew has never done anything but assist you when you called for help,” Seven said, stung. “Whatever happened to you, they had no part in.”

  “Well, someone told them where we were,” Frazier countered.

  “Starfleet Command was notified, as is procedure,” Seven said. “You were once an officer. You understand regulations.”

  “Was once, and am again,” Frazier said bitterly.

  “I don’t understand,” Seven said, shaking her head in disbelief.

  “A Starfleet vessel arrived in orbit over Arehaz a few weeks ago,” Frazier said. “The Viminal. I was informed by their commanding officer that I have officially been reinstated by Starfleet. I was ordered to collect my people and bring them aboard for immediate transfer back to Earth. You can imagine, I’m sure, how I greeted that news.”

  Seven’s face fell as the truth dawned on her. “They wanted samples of your catoms,” she said softly.

  “They did. And apparently, I was not going to be allowed to refuse that request. By agreeing to give them whatever they needed from me, and small samples from the other former Borg among us, I was able to secure their promise that once we arrived, I alone would be taken in for further study, while the rest were given temporary quarters. Once this plague is cured, we’ll all be settled together on a permanent home, either here or on another Federation colony in the Alpha Quadrant. Apparently we’re much too valuable to be allowed to simply live our lives in peace where we wished.”

  Seven stepped around the side of the couch and approached her. “I swear to you, Riley, I didn’t know. Starfleet found Axum and, shortly thereafter, requested that I return here for study. I had no idea they would disturb you.”

  “Disturb me?” Frazier said, incredulous. “I’m fine. The children, on the other hand, have just suffered yet another massive trauma, and this time I can’t tell them with a straight face that everything is going to be all right.”

  Seven turned to Axum. “Riley contacted you through your catoms?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you contact me?” Seven asked of Frazier.

  “I tried,” Frazier said. “I couldn’t find you. I could sense you, but there was something in the way.”

  “The neural inhibitor,” Seven said softly.

  “Instead, I found Axum. He told me you were coming here.”

  Seven was obviously angry now, but not with her.

  “All those times I heard you whispering in your room? That wasn’t a . . . what did you call it? A lonely habit.”

  “I was afraid if I told you what had happened to Doctor Frazier and the others that you would try to intervene on their behalf. But there is nothing you could have done, and the time you would have spent we needed for our work here, Annika.”

  “Our work?” Seven asked.

  “Understanding our catomic natures.”

  Seven stared at Axum, then at Frazier, then back at Axum.

  “Please, Annika,” he begged. “You know me, better than anyone ever has. You know that you can trust me. I told Riley the truth, and I am telling you the truth now.”

  “Right now, I have no idea who to trust,” Seven said.

  GOLDENBIRD

  The cold pack helped, but by the time Lieutenant Samantha Wildman seated Sharak at the navigational station and began the playback of the scene that had caused her to wake him, a dull throbbing was pounding through her skull; this was going to be one hell of a headache.

  Sharak dutifully reviewed the short scene beginning with the arrival of Doctor Horse and concluding after the confrontation between Pinky and Ethel. He sighed when it was done and turned to Wildman, saying, “Forgive me, Lieutenant. Perhaps I was not clear when I asked that you review these visual logs.”

  “Look at that woman,” Wildman instructed, pointing to Pinky. “Do you recognize her species?”

  Sharak studied the image in silence for a moment, then shook his head. “No, but I am by no means an expert on all Federation species.”

  “Her name is Ria. She has been a volunteer at this hospital since shortly after the Borg Invasion. I’m a xenobiologist and I am an expert on all Federation species as well as many others, and before that nurse confronted her, I couldn’t tell you where she came from either.”

  Sharak pulled up the record of Ria that Wildman had discovered among the volunteer database. “She is Kyppr,” Sharak said.

  “No, she isn’t,” Wildman insisted. “Kyppran skin varies from light to rich lavender, but it doesn’t change. They’ve been members of the Federation for over a century. Their homeworld is in the Beta Quadrant. Apart from their Federation representatives, very few of them travel far from home. I’m not even sure if any are serving in Starfleet.”

  “I’m sorry, Lieutenant,” Sharak said. “My mind is weary. I am not following.”

  “It would be almost unthinkable to find a
Kyppran on Coridan for any reason, let alone volunteering at a hospital. They are unusually susceptible to alien infections. Starfleet Medical has worked for a long time to fix this, but it’s a genetic issue.”

  “It is wrong for her to be there?”

  “She’s lying about her species,” Wildman said, her voice rising. “I’ve watched her interact with I don’t know how many patients, and every time I’ve been struck by the strange pink color of her skin. I just couldn’t place it. Then Ethel upset her.”

  “Ethel?”

  “The other nurse. Watch again what happened to Ria’s skin.”

  Wildman reversed the scan and initiated playback at a dramatically reduced speed. Together they watched as Ria’s flesh obviously shifted colors, from pink to deep purple. Wildman stopped the playback as soon as the dark black line was visible.

  “See? See that?” she asked.

  “What is that?” Sharak asked.

  “A unique version of cellular degradation,” Wildman replied. “The increased blood flow to her face brought on by emotional distress is causing toxic chemicals to be released. Those epidermal cells are dying.”

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Sharak admitted.

  “It’s a one-of-a-kind variation, unique to Planarians, but it is essential to their physiology. Planarians had amazing regenerative abilities, but in order for that regeneration to occur, their bodies had to be able to quickly destroy damaged cells. That dark line indicates necrotizing flesh. It will be replaced by new, healthy cells in a matter of minutes. She leaves the room before we get to see that happen.”

  “Planarians?” Sharak asked softly.

  “Yes,” Wildman said.

  “I’ve heard that species referenced before, quite recently,” Sharak said.