“Very good.”
“Shall I open a hailing frequency?” Ensign Kim asked.
“No, let’s not scare this one off.”
Kim subsided, frowning. When Janeway checked the Ops readout on her monitor, she saw that he had suspended all ongoing science projects in order to have maximum power ready to be routed to engines and weapons systems. A little extreme, under the circumstances. Janeway tried to suppress a surge of sympathy for the young ensign—this was hard enough on everyone, but it had been Kim’s first posting, his first mission, that tore him away from everything he ever knew. No wonder he was nervous. But he was also a Starfleet officer, and as Mark would have pointed out, with that infuriating grin of his, “Don’t you think your concern is edging slightly into the maternal, my dear Kate?”
Janeway banished the thought of her distant lover, sternly bringing her thoughts back to the present. “Is something wrong, Mr. Kim?”
“Not exactly…” The young man sneaked a quick look, making sure she was open to hearing more. “It’s just that I don’t understand why so many ships act like they’re approaching, then suddenly veer off. Even some of the ones that do finally hail us.”
“They’re testing us,” Chakotay said, philosophically enough.
“And word’s getting around,” Paris added. “Most people are smart enough to keep away if they don’t have what we want. I mean, who needs to go looking for trouble? And we look like trouble—we could smash most of these vessels with hardly a ripple in our power grid.”
Janeway didn’t mind letting Paris reassure the ensign, while she was busy examining the welding seams that puckered the side of the freighter. It was barely as large as one of Voyager’s warp nacelles.
“Report, Tuvok.”
“The freighter is heavily shielded, as is usual among the Tutopan craft. However, their weapons systems are minimal.”
Janeway considered the freighter. “That may be true, but I think it’s capable of making some speed. Their ramscoop looks as if it has a double compression chamber.”
“I’ve seen one like that before,” Chakotay agreed. “On an Orion courier—all legs with minimum cargo space. For fast delivery…”
“At least it isn’t trying to scan us,” Paris put in.
The freighter came to a stop and held position at thirty thousand kilometers.
“Hail them,” Janeway ordered. Impatiently, she waited as Tuvok made the necessary adjustments in their communication frequencies.
Apparently, no two Tutopan vessels used the same bandwidth.
“We have an audio channel only,” Tuvok informed her. Janeway couldn’t tell—despite their years of working together—whether the security chief was as irritated as she was by their paranoid refusal to return a visual transmission.
“This is Captain Janeway of the Starship Voyager,” she identified herself, leaving out her usual references to Starfleet and the Federation.
“Voyager, this is the Kapon.” The voice from the freighter echoed flatly through their speakers. “We understand you are looking for a particular piece of information.”
“Yes, I’m attempting to locate coordinates for wormholes.”
Janeway stood up, tilting her head in order to catch every nuance. The other Tutopans had also spoken with the same droning inflection, in the same middle register—practically indecipherable as far as emotional content was concerned. “Do you know of any wormholes in the area?”
“What is your credit?” was the reply.
Janeway stopped short—usually she was quizzed on exactly why she was looking for wormholes, not asked how much she could pay.
“We would give you, in exchange,” she offered, “verified, accurate star charts of the other side of the galaxy, areas you call the Simari Cluster and the Trian Nebula.”
“Star charts. Scientific curiosities,” the voice said dispassionately.
“Valueless.”
“Not necessarily,” Janeway quickly countered. “Plotting system motion and radiation disbursion rates is easier with verified points of reference. With these charts, and yours from your own sector, one can triangulate any system in the galaxy—an invaluable tool for navigation. It’s also one that nobody else has….”
There was a long pause, as Janeway hardly moved. The senior officers had agreed that star charts were simply an aid to technology already in use, and that to share such information would not violate the Prime Directive.
“This is confidential information?” the voice from the Kapon finally asked.
“Absolutely.” Maybe she was getting better at their sort of negotiating. “Other than ourselves, only you would possess these charts.”
“Then this would be information of acceptable value,” the voice from the Kapon agreed.
“Good,” Janeway said briskly, ignoring her rising excitement in order to close the deal. “We can transmit the cartography—” “You would transmit sensitive information over an open channel?” the voice interrupted. “The value would be lost if it is intercepted.”
“We have methods by which we can secure a channel. It will insure that no one can tap the transmission.”
“I do not believe your methods could be superior to our own.”
Janeway crossed her arms, nodding to Tuvok. The Vulcan thought about it briefly, then condensed the information into basic principles that didn’t violate security procedures. “Our encryption protocols are handled by our main computer.
Faster-than-light processors, augmented by bioneural circuitry, rotate and update the encryption algorithms randomly. In addition, we are capable of emitting a rapid transmission burst.”
The Kapon didn’t answer right away, as if they were considering the offer. Janeway held her breath, until the voice finally said, “Unacceptable. No channel of communication can be completely secured.”
Tuvok tilted his head as if he was inclined to agree with that, but Janeway didn’t want to hear about it. She wondered if Tutopans enjoyed making things difficult.
“What do you suggest?” Janeway asked, hoping she sounded patient.
“A message capsule?”
“We prefer a direct exchange.”
“You mean in person? You don’t expect us to go to the Hub?” she asked.
“That will not be necessary. I see your ship maintains shuttlebays.”
“You want me to shuttle the information to your ship?” Janeway wasn’t sure she liked that.
“No, we could not take that risk. It is possible this is a ruse by the Cartel.”
Janeway took a calming breath, trying to be reasonable. “Well, if we are the Cartel, aren’t you already in a lot of trouble?”
“You will not be allowed to board our ship,” the voice repeated.
“We will come to you.”
Janeway stopped pacing. “What makes you think we’ll agree to that?”
“You require wormhole locations. We are the only ones who can supply this information.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“That is unimportant. If you wish to purchase the wormhole information, you must cooperate with us.”
Janeway clasped her hands behind her back, making them wait for her answer as she made a slow circuit around the bridge. Without a word being said, Tuvok’s stiff stance indicated that he objected. Chakotay didn’t seem pleased with the proposal, either. Janeway tended to agree with both of them—allowing unknown entities on board her ship was not something she preferred to do, and yet… there had been no signs of threat from any of the Tutopans thus far. Even Neelix said they weren’t known for being aggressive people.
“You drive a hard bargain,” she finally agreed.
“We can’t afford to make a mistake.” The voice from the Kapon could have been interpreted as sad. “Especially when it comes to the Cartel.”
Tuvok had insisted that Janeway wait in the observation lounge, so she watched from the window overlooking the shuttlebay as the security team performed a sensor sweep of the yacht from the Kapon.
Both the yacht and the four crew members had been thoroughly scanned by their ship’s sensors before being allowed into the shuttlebay, but Tuvok apparently wasn’t taking any chances.
The Tutopans didn’t take offense at Tuvok’s caution, but they did seem edgy, with their tall, slender bodies in constant motion as they fidgeted and nervously glanced around. It wasn’t the sort of behavior Janeway had expected from their toneless voices. She was less surprised by their flattened faces and delicate features, which gave them a remarkable physical similarity.
Their most distinguishing attribute was the hair clasps of various, shiny colors that gathered their receding, colorless hair into a fluffy bundle at the neck. From the brief orders, Janeway decided the Tutopan with the sunburst clasp was the leader.
“Nice ship,” Janeway commented, knowing that Chakotay was watching from the bridge.
“Wouldn’t Torres love to get her hands on that little number?”
Chakotay answered.
Janeway nodded, pursing her lips. “Perhaps there’s good reason these people are wary. Still, you have to wonder, what is a yacht like that doing in the hold of a run-down freighter?”
Down on the shuttlebay floor, Tuvok and his security team moved away from the yacht. Turning to the observation window, he tapped his comm badge. “Captain, all is secure.”
“Very good, Mr. Tuvok. Please escort our guests to the lounge.”
Janeway raised her hand to her chin, watching Tuvok and the Tutopans cross the shuttlebay. As the doors slid open, she took one breath and knew something was wrong.
“Chak—” she started to say, but her throat choked closed on her warning as her muscles seized in a wrenching spasm.
On the bridge, Chakotay had been growing more uncomfortable as he observed Tuvok’s examination of the Tutopans. Something told him that these people were not to be trusted. Since there was nothing he could specifically point to, he wondered if he was merely feeling an instinctual distrust of the unknown. Still, his hand was moving to the comm panel to signal the captain, when suddenly Tuvok and the security team started jerking and falling like stiffened dolls.
Chakotay hit the emergency override. “Red alert! Close down—” was all he managed to get out. His eyes widened, filled with the sight of the Kapon crew members leaving the shuttlebay, as he pitched forward, his body wrested from his control.
In sickbay, Kes stood straight up, her blue eyes staring straight ahead.
“Kes?” the doctor asked. “Is something wrong?”
With a choking sound, Kes jerked back, her body convulsing.
The doctor’s decision tracks were already working on the problem, and he had a medical tricorder in his hand before the patient was unconscious. Dilation of the arteries, accelerated heartbeat, and relaxation of the bronchioles. As the readings flowed by on the screen, correlating with his symptoms-decryption program, one of his subroutines noted the distressingly loud sound such a small humanoid could make when it hit the floor.
A compilation of the data indicated that the convulsions were not systemic but induced by an outside agent, triggering Decision Track 10.
“Medical alert!” he announced.
Even as he scanned the ship’s internal environmental readouts, he reached for a hypospray of condrazine for Kes. It wasn’t that she was more important than any other patient, but he flagged a reminder to create a Priority Subroutine that would insure Kes was tended immediately whenever she was injured. After all, she was the only mobile medical technician the ship had.
“Captain Janeway, this is Dr. Zimmerman,” said calmly. “I have detected a large quantity isoprenaline in the ship’s atmosphere.”
The hypo injected the neural-stimulator into Kes’s neck. There was no response from the captain.
Decision Track 2112, a recent innovation, performed an emergency medical override, directly accessing the main computer and ordering atmospheric isolation of the areas infested with the isoprenaline. The subprocessors accepted the emergency medical override and directed all power toward cleansing the ship’s atmosphere.
The doctor initiated an analysis of the toxin in Kes’s system in the medical database, and requested an antidote to be processed immediately. He was returning to Kes, noting her flushed skin and rapid pulse, when his awareness was abruptly terminated.
Red Alert klaxons seemed to draw Janeway back to consciousness, giving her a path to follow out of the confused tangle of dreamlike images.
When her eyes finally opened, she still wasn’t sure she was awake.
Aside from the red flashing, the lights were dimmed, as if the ship was running on emergency power. Janeway numbly tried to move, scraping her cheek against the rough carpet. Something was terribly wrong with her ship—she could feel it. A subtle vibration was missing, a comforting power that thrummed through the bulkheads.
A sudden surge of panic went a long way toward reviving her.
“Bridge, this is the captain.” Her words were slurred and heavy, like her thoughts, seeming to fall apart before they could fully form in her mind.
“The Tutopans!” she groaned, pulling herself up to the observation window. The shuttlebay was shadowed with dramatic spotlight cast by the emergency system. One glance told her it was empty. The Kapon yacht was gone.
“Tuvok…” Janeway knelt down next to her security chief. She was relieved to find Tuvok and the rest of his team lying in the corridor, as if the Tutopans had dragged them out of the shuttlebay before they’d left. When she didn’t see them from the window, the alternative had been unthinkable, but it made her stumble into a run to get downstairs to find out what had happened to the security team.
“Captain,” Tuvok said, sounding remarkably coherent for a man lying flat on his back, blinking up as if he couldn’t quite focus. “We are in red alert.”
“We certainly are.” Janeway helped him sit up. “The optical data network is off-line, as are our comm badges. I can’t tell how long we’ve been unconscious, so we’ve got anywhere from an hour to two seconds left in Emergency Environmental Support.”
Tuvok stiffly got to his feet, surveying his groaning team, then the empty shuttlebay. “My security measures failed.”
“They certainly did.” The captain managed a grimace in place of a smile. They’d have to deal with that issue later—now, there was no time. She needed to know the status of her ship.