Atonement (5 page)

“Thomas Eugene Paris,” she cut him off. The vehemence of her tone forced him to snap to attention.

“What?”

“You need not trouble yourself on my behalf. Now, just go. Please.”

Paris turned back to the door. As he lifted both hands to touch it, to come as close as he could to touching her, the door rushed forward and clicked shut in his face.

Paris shook his head. Several times as a teenager he'd managed to climb to the roof via one of the large mesquite trees that edged the north side of the house. He could break his old bedroom window if he pocketed a large enough rock before he ascended. He had stepped off the porch and was searching the base of the low hedge that bordered the porch when his combadge chirped.

“Starfleet Transporter Control to Commander Paris.”

“Go ahead,” Paris acknowledged.

“We have received a request to transport you to San Francisco, grid four-nine-seven, immediately.”

Where is that?
Paris thought. “From whom?” he asked.

“Constance Goodheart.”

“I'm sorry, can you repeat that?”

“Constance Goodheart,”
the officer replied.

Paris knew the name well enough. Constance Goodheart was the long-suffering assistant to Captain Proton. But both she and the captain were fictional characters, part of one of Tom's favorite holodeck programs. During the years he'd served on
Voyager,
wasting countless hours with Harry Kim running that program,
a number of women had played Constance. But none of them would be contacting him now.

Unless . . .

“I'm ready for transport,” Paris said quickly. “Go ahead.”

He and his mother weren't done, but there was one other person on Earth who might need him more than Julia.

Once the transporter had released him, he found himself in a vast park. He knew it instantly. He'd spent more time there in the years between
Voyager
's trips to the Delta Quadrant than he liked to think about.
But where would she be?

As he searched among the monuments of Federation Park, a large luminescent sphere caught his eye. It was the memorial that had been erected to ships of the Full Circle Fleet lost to the Omega Continuum. Even in the fading light of day, it burned bright as a baby star.

He found her seated at its base, wrapped in a large, deep-plum wool shawl that looked hand-knit. She came to her feet unsteadily as he said, “Seven?”

Despite the heavy wrap, she trembled. Seven was a dear friend and one of the strongest people he had ever known. It was chilly, barely spring on the western coast of North America, but he didn't think that was the cause of her shaking.

“What happened?” he asked. “Where have you been?”

The last he'd heard, Seven had been exposed to a deadly virus while working inside a classified lab at Starfleet Medical and placed in stasis. He'd hoped to soon hear that she had been released. Nothing about meeting her here like this made any sense.

“I apologize, Commander. The last several days have been somewhat disorienting.”

“It's okay,” he assured her. “Sit down,” he suggested, motioning toward the stone base that held the fleet's monument.

She did as he had bidden, and he joined her there. “Your hands are like ice,” he noted, taking them between his and doing his best to share some of his warmth with her. When she didn't begin immediately, he said, “Where'd you get the shawl?”

“It
was my aunt's,” Seven replied. “It always travels with me now, but I never think to wear it. After the last several weeks, I needed something that was real, that was mine. I needed . . .” She trailed off as her eyes began to glisten.

“Is your work done? Is the plague cured?”

Seven shook her head.

“Seven, talk to me.”

She took a deep breath to calm herself. “Where is Doctor Sharak?”

“He took a shuttle with Sam Wildman to Coridan more than a week ago. They should have been back by now. I haven't heard from either of them since they left.”

Seven blinked rapidly as this new information was added to whatever mental puzzle she was now trying to solve. “Then he cannot assist us.”

“Us?” Paris asked. “What are we, I mean, why do we need help?”

Slowly, she began to explain. As the story fell from her lips, Paris moved through disbelief and shock before settling on mind-numbing fury.

“You never even met Commander Briggs until this morning?” he finally asked.

“He had no intention of seeking my assistance. He only wanted my catoms,
our
catoms.”

“He kept you in stasis for weeks?”

“Yes.”

“And these experiments, you're sure they aren't intended to cure the plague?”

“That might be part of his agenda, but what I saw suggested his intentions go well beyond that mandate.”

Paris nodded. “So, our first meeting is with the chief of Starfleet Medical.”

“No,” Seven insisted.

“Briggs is making a mockery of both his Starfleet and Hippocratic oaths. He has to be shut down. Today.”

“What makes you think Starfleet Medical is not already
aware of his actions? There are dozens of officers working with him and their experiments must be reviewed and approved by their superior officers.”

“Starfleet would never condone experiments like the ones you've described.”

Seven looked away, searching the horizon. The sun had dipped beneath it, bathing the sky in scarlet, blue, and orange ribbons. “Starfleet is a powerful force for good. I know this to be true. But the Federation has stared annihilation in the face too often. In the last days of the Borg Invasion, mine was not the only voice that pleaded with President Bacco to deploy every weapon in our arsenal to defeat the Borg, even those classified as genocidal. Neither you nor I are in any position to assume that those in the upper echelons of Starfleet would not authorize any research necessary to ensure their survival.”

“The Borg are gone, Seven. Who's coming after us now?”

“The Caeliar.”

“Nothing our fleet has discovered since we returned to the Delta Quadrant has even hinted at the possibility that the Caeliar did not do exactly what they said they were going to do after they transformed the Borg. If they'd wanted to destroy us, they could have done it then. They didn't. The Caeliar are gone.”

“People don't trust what they don't understand,” Seven said. “The sleep of those leading Starfleet now is broken by nightmarish visions of staggering death tolls. Their waking hours are devoted to ensuring that those nightmares can never be made real.” Turning back to Paris she said, “Until we know exactly what Briggs is doing and who above him condones his work, we cannot risk trying to expose him. We need more information. But first, we have to find a place to secure Riley's people.”

Paris sighed. “Okay. Any ideas?”

“Nowhere on Earth is safe. Nowhere in the Federation is safe.”

“No unaligned world would be terribly safe either,” Paris noted. “There are millions of refugees out there and even our allies aren't rushing to help us relocate them. Everybody's got
their own problems, not the least of which is the Typhon Pact. We're talking about families with young children and infants. We can't send them out there and hope for the best, and we can't go with them to protect them.”

“We can't protect them as long as they are on Federation soil,” Seven insisted.

Paris paused. “Federation soil,” he said softly.

“Tom?”

A smile cracked his face. “That would work.”

“What?”

“Do you have any idea how much land on Earth does not actually belong to the Federation?”

“No.”

“I do. Come on, Constance.”

GOLDENBIRD

Lieutenant Samantha Wildman made a slight course adjustment before activating the automatic navigational controls. Turning to her companion of the last several days,
Voyager
's CMO, Doctor Sharak, she found him studying a map of the capital city on Aldebaran, their intended destination.

When this mission had begun, a brief trip to Coridan to facilitate the gathering of data regarding a classified medical project, Wildman's involvement had been limited. She was simply taking a few days off at the request of an old friend, Tom Paris, to ferry a fellow officer to a distant world.

As soon as they had left orbit of Coridan, Doctor Sharak had briefed her thoroughly on the nature of the classified project. The many odd things they had discovered together on Coridan finally made sense. They also painted a damning picture of several officers at Starfleet Medical, and for all she knew, Starfleet Command.

The first thing Sharak requested was that she file an official flight plan indicating their destination as Ardana, one of three Federation worlds currently suffering massive casualties from
some sort of new catomic plague that had arisen in the last year. His second request was that she set course for Aldebaran. After hearing his full report, she concurred wholeheartedly with his plan.

“If you are right that Ria was an agent of Commander Briggs, and he ordered her to terminate her work on Coridan, it is highly likely that he would have made similar requests of any other agents he had on Ardana and Aldebaran,” Wildman suggested.

“That is my fear as well,” Sharak acknowledged. “At the very least we can assume that he will have terminated operations on Ardana, as he believes that to be our next destination.”

“If Doctor Frist told him,” Wildman said.

“She did,” Sharak said, turning to face her. “When I made my report to her, I intentionally included our supposition that Ria was, in fact, a Planarian, which everyone, including Doctor Frist, knows to be impossible. Planarians have been extinct for thousands of years.”

“Until Commander Briggs reconstituted their genome,” Wildman interjected.

“A theory I indicated that we intended to explore on Ardana,” Sharak continued. “Doctor Frist holds Commander Briggs in the highest possible regard. He is the savior upon whom Frist and her fellow officers have pinned every hope of eradicating this plague. Until now, his results might have convinced her to turn a blind eye to his methods. Few dare question living geniuses. But she knows her ethical duty. She would have briefed Briggs on my report, and he would have taken any actions necessary to cover his tracks, should they exist.”

“We're two days out from Aldebaran at high warp,” Wildman noted. “Are we going to start at the central hospital? Doctor Frist ordered you to cease your investigations. She might have contacted them and ordered them not to even talk with you.”

“We should begin our investigation in an unofficial capacity,” Sharak suggested. “Our status as medical officers will permit us to bypass some quarantine restrictions. But we will not assault the hospital directly.”

Wildman smiled. She'd learned more in the last few days about the Children of Tama, Sharak's people, than any report she'd ever read. The Tamarians were not members of the Federation. Their language was one of the few that universal translators could not accurately parse. The words were clear enough, but their meanings had been a complete mystery, as had the fact that their communication was based upon metaphors unique to their civilization, until an amazing contact had been made years earlier by the Federation flagship, the
U.S.S. Enterprise.

Formal diplomatic relations now existed and a handful of Tamarians had begun to work directly with Starfleet. Sharak was the first to sufficiently master Federation Standard to earn a post aboard an exploratory vessel. But he still struggled at times with simple words.

“You and I will not be ‘assaulting' anything,” she teased.

“Do not underestimate us,” Sharak advised, smiling.
“Samantha and Sharak. Seeking the truth.”

“Samantha and Sharak. At Aldebaran.”

“I will see to it that our story is remembered by the Children of Tama,” Sharak said.

This brought a smile to her lips as well. Sharak's missteps with Standard were nothing compared to her butchery of Tamarian, but he was a patient teacher, and she had become an avid pupil.

A shrill tone from the
Goldenbird
's computer indicated an incoming transmission. “It's Gres,” she said simply.

Sharak nodded and rose from his seat beside her. “I will replicate a light dinner for us. You should speak privately to your husband.”

“Thank you.”

Once Sharak had made his way to the rear of the ship, she opened the channel and was warmed, as ever, by the sight of Gres's face staring back at her.

“Hi, honey,” she greeted him.

“Sam.”

The Ktarian face held a certain savage beauty Wildman had always found appealing. But Greskrendtregk's normally soft eyes held hers now with abnormal intensity.

“Naomi?”
she asked immediately.

“Is fine,”
he hurried to assure her.
“She is not happy and still trying to hide it from me. But, otherwise, she is well enough.”

“What's wrong?”

“I have received another request from Commander Paris.”

Wildman's heart stilled in her chest. “The hearing?”

“Concluded in his favor.”

As her heart resumed a normal rhythm, she sighed. “Then what?”

“He wishes me to pilot a runabout for the next few weeks. I am free to do so and happy to be of assistance to him, but I worry about both of us being too far from home given Naomi's current state.”

Wildman shook her head. “I have no idea how soon I can get back. Can it wait?”

“Apparently not.”

Wildman knew her husband and Tom Paris well enough to understand that a great deal was going unspoken right now and most of her questions should
not
be asked. If Tom had become involved in any way with Sharak or Seven's current project, that could easily account for Gres's circumspection. But she and her husband had carefully planned their lives after
Voyager
returned home from the Delta Quadrant in order to prioritize accessibility to their daughter, Naomi, who was struggling in her first year at Starfleet Academy.