Beth6787

18 February y

Collateral Damage

Set just after the episode "Renaissance Man". Whilst de-compiling and rebuilding the Doctor's holomatrix B'Elanna uncovers a dark secret. Should she tell Chakotay?...

B'Elanna sat at her desk in Engineering and opened the encrypted file for the fourth night in a row. Though she knew it would make no difference. There was no mistake, however much she wished there to be. The data had been deliberately altered and, although the modifications had been skilfully masked, there were imperfections. Nothing that would be apparent on a standard service upgrade or routine maintenance check and the falsely overlaid data was embedded five and a half years ago. It was a sophisticated job and she had initially assumed in was the work of Seska. But that made no sense. Seska had been trying to convince them all - convince HIM - of what had appeared to be the perfect lie. The only one that would override his primary loyalty to Voyager and Seska's only true rival for his affections. And it had worked. Chakotay had left Voyager on a solo mission to save his newborn son. The one he had not willingly created but felt honour bound to defend. Blood being thicker than water and all that...

She felt the tears welling and fought to suppress them. As if sensing the reason for her distress, Miral gave a couple of strong kicks that forced her to concede she needed the cushions after all. Tom had insisted she take them with her to pad the utilitarian office furniture that Starfleet provided. She had thought them an unnecessary indulgence but had agreed in order to placate her husband. She had had enough trouble getting out of their quarters to finish 'some important projects' before the baby arrived. As she couldn't sleep well this late in her pregnancy she may as well work during the night shift when she would have peace and quiet in Engineering and she stood a chance of getting everything completed in time. He had eventually relented - no doubt glad of the chance for a few hours shut eye himself - on condition she take the cushion, a Tupperware full of nutritious snacks and wore a medical monitor to alert him if she went into labour. So any signs of distress, such as crying and elevating her blood pressure and cortisol levels, would no doubt, attract both Tom and the Doctor's unwanted attention. Unwanted : at least for now. Until she had had time to make up her mind what to do.

If she told him then he would insist on knowing how she had come by this information. He would want to verify it and that would lead to him finding out who had made the modifications in the first place. Then...then everything would fall apart...not just for him but the repercussions would change the community they had built on this ship for ever.

—

Four days earlier...

The Doctor was mortified. He almost wished that his program HAD been irrevocably lost for all time. Anything was better than this...this utter humiliation! It was bad enough that he had made a laughing stock of himself in front of his friends and that he had insulted most of them in the process. But he could live with that. Eventually it would be yesterday's news. But Seven. She was a different matter. He had blurted out that he was in love with her in front of half the senior staff. No wonder she had been shocked and embarrassed. She had rejected him : naturally. Such a clumsy declaration deserved no less but now that the cat was out of the bag... he could not take it back and he could not face her. Any of them. So here he was. Holed up in sickbay for the duration. He doubted that he would want to use his mobile emitter ever again. Even if the Captain would allow it.

Now, to add to his misery, Lieutenant Torres was standing in front of him telling him that she needed to go through every one of his data files with a fine tooth comb. She had purged and re-set the operating systems and buffers but a lot of the data files were potentially corrupted with fragments of the alien code script that she would need to remove and then repair the files. It was not just a matter to reload the cleansed data per se. The precise sequence of events and the nuances in the visual and auditory memory circuits were what created his recollection of events. His personality. Those were deeply personal and also technically challenging to re-create accurately. Far beyond the abilities of most engineering technicians. But B'Elanna Torres was no ordinary engineer. If anyone could give him his...his life back...it was her.

So here they were. It would take several days but she would focus on files relating to key events in their journey. Each time she worked on a section of files she transferred his program to the mobile emitter then removed a block of his memories between the stardate marking the beginning and end of the events she was analysing. Once that section was out he was returned to the sickbay holomatrix with a chunk of his memories temporarily erased. It was most disconcerting but they had all been returned. Barring the time when he was alone on Voyager with Mr. Lon Suder and the Kazon Nistrim.

He was confused as to why. After all, during that period he had had relatively few interactions with anyone and hardly any patients, so the memory files should be relatively small. B'Elanna had told him that she had to be extra thorough as none of Voyager's crew had been aboard at the time so his was the only accurate record of events. That the Captain would need to be sure the data was watertight. In case they ever made it home for Starfleet de-briefings. And of course, Lon Suder had been the only member of their crew who was a convicted mass murderer. So the security files were highly pertinent to Commander Tuvok also. It made sense, but he hated having a great big gap in his life story for so long. It was very disconcerting.

—-

Twenty four hours later...

She had gone over everything at least ten times. The Doctor's medical scans of Seska's baby and the results. Both sets of files had been overwritten. Twice. It had taken her a great deal of time and effort to re-compile the original files. They had been deliberately split into several short fragments and embedded in other patient records. The cover up had been both elaborate and time consuming. And would explain some of the other anomalies with the Doctor's ethical subroutines. No wonder they had been so easy to deactivate by various unsavoury species they had encountered. Miral kicked her again and she felt herself blush. Her poor baby girl. Even B'Elanna had succumbed to the temptation. In the mistaken belief that she was doing her best for her unborn child. But in this case the deception had been in what the perpetrator had believed to be in the best interest of Voyager and maybe that person had believed it was in Chakotay's best interests too. Certainly not those of the baby. She had a very bad feeling about who that person was. There were very few on board who could have gotten away with it. Been skilled enough to alter the files without the Doctor realising that his memories felt wrong. Contradictory even. And she had been right. She had diligently traced the command files back through almost a hundred re-routes. Terminals having been activated all over the ship and then the records erased. The gaps allowing the Hierarchy alien script to insert small fragments. Like a trial of breadcrumbs. A very convoluted trail but it had originated in her quarters. Captain Kathryn Janeway.

So now she knew that Seska's baby had indeed been Chakotay's too and that Kathryn had altered the files: so that he would allow Cullah to take the child away after Seska's death. Voyager could draw a line under the whole incident and Kathryn? B'Elanna strongly suspected that Kathryn was very well aware that Chakotay would have insisted on raising the child himself. Kept Seska's son on Voyager. Forever splitting Chakotay's loyalties and...giving him someone to love more than her. His own child. The one thing Kathryn Janeway could not give him due to the command strictures she placed on herself.

Oh: she understood. She even sympathisized with the Captain. And she knew that she would have been tempted to do just the same had it been Tom's DNA that Seska had forcibly extracted and then impregnated herself with. She had no love for the Cardassian traitor who had pretended to be her friend and crew mate. But...to Chakotay, family was everything. He had lost virtually all his tribe after the Cardassian attacks on his home world. And when Seska had told him the child was his, he had chosen to leave Voyager, knowing he was probably going to his death. He had, ultimately, chosen his son. Kathryn Janeway did not have to wonder, hypothetically, what he would do. She already knew: from past experience!

So what now? Replace the falsified files and let the Doctor continue to believe the baby boy was Maj Cullah's son? A Cardassian / Kazon hybrid. She had to hand it to the Captain. The baby's genetic file was quite a work of art and very convincing at a cursory glance but surely Starfleet Medical would discover the subterfuge once they set to work on analysing the EMH if they ever made it home. Perhaps she was just hoping that with the passage of time and the sheer volume of tantalising Delta Quadrant data that Voyager contained this would somehow be lost in all the 'noise'. Perhaps it would. Although that didn't make it right.

But if she told the Captain what she had uncovered, would she be ordered to stay silent? Become an enforced collaborator? She despised collaborators, ultimately they inevitably facilitated atrocities to take place. You only had to look at what the collaborators had done to Bajor and the surrounding systems. Facilitated the occupation and exacerbated the suffering of all involved. What if she did stay quiet and then it all came to light down the road? Chakotay would be hurt enough that Kathryn Janeway had betrayed him in the worst way possible. He would need his best friend more than ever. So how could she betray him too?

But if she told Chakotay she would open up a hornets' nest. The damage could never be undone. The Command Team would be no more. The fallout may well make it impossible to continue their journey home as one crew with one objective. She would be condemning the entire crew to living out their lives in the Delta Quadrant. And what of Chakotay? Would he travel back for decades, trying to reach Nistrim space to find his son? Who could be long since dead and has in any case, been raised as a Kazon Warrior? B'Elanna was at a loss what to do. And she would have to decide soon. Her baby girl could arrive any day now and then she would be out of time. And she had to complete the return of the Doctor's memories to him. But which memory to return? The real events or Kathryn Janeway's version?

She was tired and her back ached, not to mention her ankles had turned into cankles. She re-encrypted both sets of files and closed the terminal down. Time to head back to their quarters. To her home and family to be. She would sleep on it and decide in the morning, with a clearer head. No doubt, it would become obvious to her which course of action to take in the metaphorical light of a new day.

—

Present time...

Only it hadn't. She had spent the last couple of nights here. First re- installing the original files then changing her mind and re-installing the Captain's modified ones. Only better disguised. If she did allow Kathryn Janeway to maintain her deception she would probably now get away with it in perpetuity. And she would owe B'Elanna a debt that she could never repay.

Either way, she had two hours left before the start of the day shift and the EMH needed to be intact by then. Otherwise the Captain would become suspicious about the delay and realise the cause once she discovered which segment of the Doctor's memories were still missing from his program. Then the decision would be taken out of her hands. She would be ordered by the Captain to maintain the subterfuge and she would have to live with the consequences. No, if she was going to live with anything it would be the consequences of her own decision. And, in good conscience, there was only one she could make. He would have to decide for himself what action - if any- to take with the information. She owed him that much. Ultimately, Chakotay was her best friend and she knew what decision he would have made if their situations were reversed.

She looked at the monitor's chronometer. It was 0615 hours. Punching the controls to re-integrate the original data into the EMH's memory circuits she re-initialised his program. It would take about thirty minutes before he would come back on-line. Just time enough to set the record straight.

She ordered the computer to patch through a secure channel to Chakotay's quarters. Priority one. "Chakotay. I'm sorry to disturb you so early but I need to speak to you urgently."

She could see his face crumpling with concern over the vid link. "No. No. It's not my baby. I'm not in labour yet and the Doctor should be back online in about thirty minutes. I've just re-integrated the last of his uncorrupted memory files and re-initialised his program. When he re-activates he may wish to speak to you about...let's just say it would be better to hear it from me first..."

Chakotay knew that look. He had not seen it in her eyes for many years but whatever this was could not wait. And it would have a profound impact on him. Of that he felt sure. "Then you had better come straight over to my office. And B'Elanna, thanks for coming to me first."

With that he cut the connection and she struggled out of her seat. As she made her way along the corridor she could not help thinking that the last feeling he would have was gratitude. Sadly she doubted that even his steadfast love for Kathryn Janeway would withstand this.

She patted her bump and felt profoundly grateful for how the cosmic dice had fallen for her.

THE END

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