Chapter 7
He tried, really, he did. But sometimes the organics (like that faulty hologram had once referred to the various carbon-based humanoids throughout the galaxy) could drive him to program failure.
The Doctor rolled his eyes. He told them there were some discrepancies in the system, but they were not satisfied until they had seen it for themselves. He knew it wasn't because they didn't trust him: it was more along the lines of not being able to believe the tale at all. But he had told them!
The Doctor, Janeway, Torres and Libby Kim were down in the engine room, going through the logs. Personally, the Doctor wasn't that fond of the engine room. It was always bustling with people running about and doing things that he just knew was going to get them hurt sooner or later. One was not supposed to crawl into the nacelles the way these people often did!
"There," Torres said and froze the display. On the screen the Doctor could clearly see the gap in the communications log he had identified earlier. Janeway and Libby leaned over Torres' shoulder, pushing the Doctor to the back. Now unable to see on the screen, he threw his arms in the air, sighed to the heavens and decided to go look for something to do. Except of course this was the engine room: the one room in all the ship where he had no business being.
Idly he wandered about for another few minutes, listening to the women's conversation in snatches. For now they were still on the same path he had been earlier. He would head back to them the moment they learned something new.
'Something new' turned out to be indications that the logs had been altered during those three hours of silence. Torres was explaining it to the others when the Doctor joined them.
"As far as I can see, someone went over the logs of those hours and meticulously deleted everything they could find. Everything, that is, except," and the woman called up a graph on the screen, "the transporter logs. Whoever deleted these logs, somehow missed the transporter logs."
"So the transporters were used during that time?" Janeway asked. She had been looking at another display while Torres had started her explanation. Now she leaned over the other woman's shoulder. The Doctor rolled his eyes once more and took a step back. He might as well; they were probably just going to shove him out anyway. Not that they considered him any less human than they; he had seen them do the same thing to Neelix as well. It was just that they were aware of the fact that it wasn't his field of expertise – not that anyone could compare to him in his field of expertise – so they ignored him.
"Oh, very much so," Torres answered the Admiral. "It seems as if just about everyone on the ship had been beamed off at one stage. Look here, at sixteen twenty-two the number of people on Voyager was only one."
"That would have been Reg Barclay," the Doctor intervened. "He never left my sight that day. They probably left him because the disease he had was thought to be fatal."
Janeway frowned. "So these abductors left him because they assumed he was dying?"
The Doctor shrugged. "Probably. But don't take my word for it. I'm a doctor, not a psychologist, after all."
Janeway glared at him for a moment, but then returned her attention to the screen. "How many were beamed out?" she asked.
Torres adjusted the settings and the screen filled with dates and numbers. She explained the data:
"How many beamed out is just part of the answer, Admiral. See, according to the manifest we ought to have one hundred and fifty-two crew members, as well as eleven guests." Torres nodded at Libby. "Libby would be one of them, Miral another."
"I suppose I am one of the 'two' in 'one hundred and fifty-two,'" Janeway grimaced. Torres did not even notice.
"Yes, with Reg Barclay," she innocently confirmed Janeway. "But one hundred and ninety-three beamed off the ship, leaving two behind."
Libby – perhaps not as well versed in starship technology as the rest – was the first to draw the obvious conclusion. "That means there were thirty intruders?"
Suddenly the Doctor felt confuse. "Wait, earlier you said the intruders left only one person behind."
Libby grinned at him. "B'Elanna had said the number of people left behind had been one. But two crewmembers had stayed behind."
For a moment the Doctor frowned. Then comprehension dawned. "Oh, me. So now I am not a person, am I?"
"Not now," Janeway said, holding up a hand. As he was standing right behind her, she nearly smacked him on the chin with the hand – she really was very short.
"How many returned after the abduction," Janeway asked.
"Believe it or not," Torres continued, "we are a very balanced crew where gender is concerned. If the crew of one-five-two includes the Doctor as male, then we split nearly down the middle with seventy-seven men and seventy-five women. And there were seven female guests and four male. So a grand total of eighty-two were beamed back."
"Bringing the numbers to eighty-four," Janeway mused. "Leaving us under-staffed and nearly all-female. A ship of the Valkyries."
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There were eight of them around the table: Janeway, Torres, Libby and the Doctor, along with Captain Ellrose, Admiral Crewaw and two other women from the Daedalus. So far the Voyager crew had been met with the same resistance and anger they themselves had displayed when the Doctor had tried to explain the absence of crew to them earlier. The crew of the Daedalus were also less affected by the disappearance than Voyager as their crew had been mostly female. The doctor wondered how that had happened: as a rule Starfleet tried to balance the genders. A balance caused less problems later on.
"I will not sit here and listen to these preposterous claims!" Ellrose exploded. Her face was red with anger; something which worried the Doctor.
"Please calm down," he told the woman. "Somehow this anger was programmed into you while you were off the ship. But it will not help your health if you cannot control it."
Ellrose glared at him, but she was a Starfleet officer, after all. She might not be much of one, but she immediately knew she had to do as he said to save what dignity she had left.
"Fine," she said, taking a deep breath. "So where did we lose this 'male crew' of yours?"
On queue Torres went to the screen and called up the starmap they had drawn up earlier. On it the ships' path was superimposed upon a view of the stars. At one end the path simply disappeared for a while.
"As you can see," B'Elanna explained, "we have no information about our path for nearly two parsecs." She pointed at the screen. "In the area there is only one M-class planet. Our guess is that we lost the men on that planet."
"So?" Admiral Crewaw wanted to know. "Do you suggest we go back there for a crew we can't even remember?" The Doctor sighed. This anger really clouded their vision while it lasted.
"Admiral," Janeway said as she leaned forward, "we never leave a man behind. So yes, strap yourself in for the ride."
Ellrose nodded. The Doctor was glad to see the Captain agree with Janeway without further argument.
