Atonement (18 page)

“Without my help, you will never achieve that goal,”
Seven had assured him.

How he longed to prove her wrong.

GOLDENBIRD

Doctor Sharak stared in horror at the statistics on the data panel before him. Unwilling to risk discovery by contacting the capital city's
central hospital on Ardana directly, he could only rely upon the same information that was available to the general public to confirm his hypothesis and extrapolate the most likely consequence of his actions on Coridan.

Sadly, the outbreak of a deadly strain of the “Rurokimbran virus” on Ardana less than a day after the devastation by the “Jendarian flu” on Aldebaran III could not be considered coincidental, nor could its cause be doubted. Both outbreaks were flimsy covers for the truth that devices—similar to that Ria had attempted to use on Coridan to disseminate the catomic plague—had been planted on Ardana and Aldebaran, and had released their deadly contents without discovery.

Sharak did not know why he had assumed that the threat of potential exposure would have stayed Briggs's hand. The series of events that had unfolded on Aldebaran and Ardana so soon after Coridan had to arouse suspicion in even the dullest of statisticians.

Clearly, Briggs did not care. Agents like Ria had obviously been inflating the infection rates on Aldebaran and Ardana just as Ria had on Coridan. They had also likely terminated themselves shortly after Sharak had made his report to Starfleet Medical. And Doctor Frist had clearly not seen fit to warn the hospital administrators on Ardana or Aldebaran to search for devices similar to those found on Coridan.

Tens of thousands of people had already died in the new outbreaks. The models of infection rates Sharak had constructed posited as many as fifty thousand on each world would die before the quarantines would slow the rates of infection.

Any medical professional would have cringed at the possibility of causing such losses.
Had Briggs lost control of Ria's counterparts? Were they acting alone now? Had they always been?

These were questions only they could answer. Proof of their existence and their species was the evidence Sharak required to bring this devastation to a halt. Clearly nothing less would move Doctor Frist to take appropriate action.

It seemed all too likely now that he would never find that proof. Nor could he contact those affected directly to tell them
what to look for or where to look. He was no longer authorized by Starfleet Medical to work on this classified project in an official capacity. Should he make direct contact with the hospital administrators, they might do more than refuse to meet with him or transfer data about their staff and patients to him. They might order him and Lieutenant Wildman detained.

Until this moment Sharak had believed his cause to be right and his efforts essential. These results forced him to question that belief.

To his left, Lieutenant Wildman dozed fitfully in her chair. She had spent the last day programming their ship's sensors to search for Planarian life signs in New Kerinna. Had a baseline existed in her anthropological databases for Planarians, this would have been simple. Instead, Wildman had been forced to extrapolate from their computer's analysis of the Planarian genome the most likely markers that would distinguish a Planarian from the millions of other life-forms in the city. Her first several attempts had failed.

Should the sensors succeed, there was only one road open to them: a road that could easily lead to arrest, conviction, and loss of their Starfleet commissions.

Lemross. At Illashanta.
Would the story of Lemross's catastrophic hubris one day be more rightly cited by the Children of Tama as,
“Sharak. At Aldebaran”
?

A series of trills roused Lieutenant Wildman. Her eyes jerked open, but she lifted her head slowly, massaging the back of her neck prior to focusing on her display.

“How long was I out?” she asked groggily.

“Almost an hour,” Sharak replied.

“That explains it,” Wildman said, groaning slightly as she tried to work the cramps from her neck.

She stared silently at the display for a few moments, then turned to face him.

“Are you ready to go?”

Sharak's stomach fell. But he could not deny the small sense of relief that accompanied her words. Both had already agreed
that should the sensors fail to provide meaningful data this time, their only recourse was to return to Earth, turn all of their current data over to Doctor Frist's superiors, and hope for the best.

“I am,” Sharak said, nodding.

“I'll get the bio-suits,” Wildman said, rising from her seat.

Sharak stood, his thoughts suddenly running in unruly circles. He peered at her display screen.

There, a single green blip rested over what appeared to be an apartment complex on the outskirts of the evacuated sector of New Kerinna.

“Does this mean another Ria is still alive?” Sharak asked as he moved quickly to join Wildman at the storage pods in the rear bay of the ship.

“It means that organic material consistent with the Planarian genetic markers has been detected,” Wildman replied. “Who or what that might be, we won't know until we get down there.”

Sharak nodded. His doubts subsided in a new rush of adrenaline.

Uzani. With fists closed.

VOYAGER

A
s acting first officer, Lieutenant Harry Kim had more than enough to worry about. With the ship in crisis, the problems of one hundred forty-six people were now his. And nobody's problems right now were trivial. Every choice might be the difference between life and death. Kim had once believed he would thrive in this crucible. As it was, he was barely keeping his head above water.

The sheer tonnage of work might have been more manageable had his mind not insisted on betraying him every time he sat down for more than a minute.

Captain Chakotay had left the bridge half an hour earlier. During that time Kim had fielded six personnel requests, revised the next day's duty roster to accommodate four injured crewmen who had just been released from the
Galen
, scanned the most recent engineering and tactical reports, and was ready to move on to the nineteen new items that had appeared in his queue in the meantime.

His unruly subconscious chose that moment to revisit a point it had been trying to make for the past three days.

You should be dead right now.

Kim was not being maudlin, nor was he depressed. He might be suffering some version of post-traumatic stress, but it was not intense enough for him to seek treatment.

This certainty stemmed from a split second Kim had experienced on the bridge just before the battle at the Gateway had ended.

The bridge crew had been jolted in their seats when the main deflector was hit. It was one of those bone-rattling impacts that results in a few seconds of shock before you realize that you are still breathing and must refocus your attention should you wish to stay that way.

The last three years spent at tactical had given Kim a new internal chronometer. Its tempo was based upon the relationship between damage to the ship, current vulnerability, and the demonstrated strength of hostile weapons. Kim had not been standing at tactical when the
Scion
fired the shot that took out the deflector dish. But his internal clock had immediately begun to count the fractions of seconds remaining in Kim's life as soon as he had recovered from the moment of impact. No matter how he had tried to fudge the numbers, his clock would not be swayed.

We're going to die
, it reported. There was nothing to be done about it. Had he been standing a post on the
Scion
, he might have taken one inhalation between the shot that disabled the dish and the killing blow. Given the ferocity of the battle at that moment, there wouldn't even have been time to think. Twenty-five CIF
vessels had already been destroyed by the
Kinara
at that point.
Voyager
had entered the battle late, but on the wrong side if survival was the goal. Once their shields were down, they were defenseless. Half a second had determined their fate.

The final shot had never come. Kim had later learned about the
Shudka
's call for a cease-fire and Admiral Janeway's choice to accept the
Kinara
's terms of surrender.

But that shouldn't have mattered.
The presider would have had to make the call
before Voyager
suffered that blow, and although the CIF's potential for victory had been negligible at that point, as long as the Federation's ships could still engage, it remained a possibility.
After Voyager
had been hit, that changed. But had she waited that long . . .

No matter how he looked at it,
Voyager
's survival simply made no sense to him.

Kim knew what he had to do in order to quiet this disturbing thought. He needed to spend about eight hours studying every moment of the engagement at the Gateway and running numerous simulations projecting possible outcomes. Had he not been acting first officer, he would already have done this. Because he did not have that time to spend, his mind pestered him without cease, and his only choice was to force this thought down every time it rose unbidden.

Six new people required immediate responses from Kim in the time he had just wasted deciding that he didn't have time to wonder why he was still alive. As soon as he had focused his mind firmly on the padd in his hand, a call came from
Galen
, advising him that Lieutenant Barclay wanted a word.

Kim didn't want to distract the rest of the bridge crew, and he assumed Barclay's request might be related to the Doctor's current issues, which were not for public consumption. Captain Chakotay was in his quarters, so Kim ordered Lieutenant Devi Patel to take the bridge and retreated to Chakotay's ready room.

“Go ahead, Reg,” Kim ordered as soon as the door shut behind him.

And please make it quick
, he thought.

“I've been reviewing
Voyager
's power distribution patterns for the last two weeks, and I've discovered something I hope you can explain,”
Barclay began.

This was not Barclay's job, but also not beyond his expertise. Curious, Kim asked, “Why?”

“There are several corruptions to the Doctor's program I couldn't account for until I discovered some odd power surges in the main holographic matrix that date back more than a month.”

“Did the Doctor cause them? I know he wasn't happy with sickbay's data storage capabilities and power regulation. Did he accidentally break something?”

“I don't think so,”
Barclay replied.
“I designed the programming upgrades the Doctor required and installed them myself. They weren't the issue. On at least nine separate occasions, I've discovered large, unintended power transfers, most of which targeted holographic systems. I know they have a discrete power source, but these surges seemed to originate from other systems and were rerouted by the central computer to the holographic mainframe.”

Kim pondered this in silence for a moment. He was as well versed as Barclay in
Voyager
's holomatrix interfaces. He had rebuilt dozens of them by hand during the dark days of the Hirogen's occupation of his ship. The entire system had been upgraded when
Voyager
was refitted for her return to the Delta Quadrant, but the basics had remained the same.

“Could our interactions with the protectors have affected the system?” Kim asked.

“Possibly, but they seem to be occurring
too
randomly for one system or interaction to be the sole cause. I'm going to send you my reports. You should review them with Nancy and B'Elanna. It may be nothing, but I'm pretty sure now that one of those surges caused the Doctor's near cascade failure.”

“How is he?”

“Much better,”
Barclay assured him.
“His program has been restored. There are just a few issues left to resolve.”

“Glad to hear it,” Kim said. “I'll take a look at those reports.”

When,
he did not know, but like everything else, it was added to the list that never seemed to get any shorter.

“Thanks, Harry.”

“Anytime,” Kim said, signing off.

You really should be dead right now.

Kim suddenly wondered if this was simple curiosity about a tactical probability, or a wish.

TWENTY THOUSAND KILOMETERS

FROM THE GATEWAY

When General Mattings had advised Admiral Janeway that he could create a holding facility for the prisoners in neutral territory, she had assumed he was referring to a civilian ship that he could temporarily press into service.

The possibility that she would find herself facing Lsia while floating in empty space had never crossed her mind.

The general's solution had been to program protectors to create static cells for each of the four Seriareen. They were spaced too far apart for any to be visible to the others.

A separate protector had been created in which Admiral Janeway, Captain Chakotay, and Presider Cin now sat on invisible, yet surprisingly comfortable, indentations within the wave form. General Mattings stood at attention behind them. Their protector had merged with Lsia's to facilitate this conversation, although a barrier remained between them that Lsia could not breach.

Lsia stood facing them, still in the form of the tall humanoid woman Janeway had seen aboard the
Manticle.
Apparently prisoners didn't get invisible chairs. It was impossible to look down without becoming disoriented. But Janeway had focused her attention on the Seriareen and by doing so, she could keep her stomach calm. Janeway also appreciated the fact that Lsia appeared every bit as disconcerted by her surroundings, or lack thereof, as she was.