"Most landing parties are back on board, Captain," Harry informed her, glancing over his monitors. "Twenty crew still on the planet."
"Thank you, Ensign," Kathryn said, sipping her coffee. She glanced at Chakotay. "I have to say, I'll be quite glad to leave the Boraan behind."
"I am intrigued, Captain," Tuvok asked. "Why are you eager to leave? The Boraan have been most hospitable."
"There's an old Earth expression, Mr. Tuvok," Kathryn replied, glancing over her shoulder. "And it's 'heebie-jeebies'. And they give me a hell of a lot of them."
"I know what you mean," Chakotay said. "They're a bit too cold for my liking. And they were very tight-lipped on what that civil war of theirs was about, or what happened to the losers."
"Exactly," Kathryn said, leaning back in her chair as she watched the view of the Boraan homeworld from orbit. "I can't quite put my finger on it, but I don't like them. They were a bit too insistent that we give them weapons technology, even though they claim the war is over. I'm just glad they were happy to settle for medical assistance in the end."
"Did you see some of those injuries?" Harry asked, shaking his head. "I helped The Doctor with some of the equipment he set up down on the planet. I don't know what kind of weapons they could have used to do damage like that."
"Fortunately, we can just put this all behind us and get the hell out of this region of space," Kathryn said. "This has been a year I'd like to forget."
Chakotay winked at her. "The whole year?"
She turned her head, and lowered her voice. "Well, not all of it."
His returning smile was enough to make her heart flutter. Over the past year, Kathryn had come to feel that their old intimacy had returned in full force, and then some. They met regularly, had meals together, even went on outings on the holodeck with Amelia. They spent so much time together it was almost like they were a couple.
Almost, she thought regretfully. Since the time he'd comforted her after the initial Keoni attack, he'd avoided all forms of physical intimacy, excepting the occasional hand on the shoulder or arm. She knew why he did it, and she accepted it, if somewhat grudgingly. But as the year had gone on, she'd wondered more and more whether or not she should just bite the bullet had take that final step.
Something always held her back though. As open as he was with her, and as wonderful as he was with Amelia, there was a lingering sadness in his eyes when he looked at her sometimes, and again when he turned to Kathryn. He never spoke about it, but she sensed there was something that still bothered him.
"Final landing parties starting to transport aboard, Captain," Harry said. "Hang on, there's been an emergency transport to sickbay."
Just as Kathryn was about to open her mouth to ask more, Tom's frantic voice sounded over the comm.
"Paris to Janeway!"
Kathryn's heart grew cold. "Go ahead, Tom."
"You need to get down to sickbay, now. There's something wrong with Amelia."
Time seemed to stop, and Kathryn froze in her chair. No, he had to be wrong. Amelia was fine.
"She's on her way," Chakotay answered him and ended the link. He reached out to touch Kathryn on the shoulder. "Go, Kathryn."
Kathryn rose to her feet slowly. She should be running, she knew she should. But she could barely force herself to move.
Somehow, somehow, she forced herself to walk to the turbolift and stepped inside.
"Sickbay," she said softly, voice barely more than a whisper. The turbolift jerked to life and began rushing her down into the depths of the ship, fast, but not fast enough.
The doors opened and Kathryn finally seemed to break through her fog. She all but ran the final few metres to sickbay, and when the doors slid open she launched herself inside. Guts clenching uncontrollably, she approached Tom and B'Elanna, whom she saw standing a little way inside.
Tom turned when he heard her enter. His face was paler than she had ever seen it.
"Captain!" He came towards her, eyes wide. "I— I don't know what happened. She was fine one minute and the next …"
Kathryn looked past him and saw The Doctor standing over the main biobed, a tiny form lying beneath him, writhing in pain. Amelia's eyes were closed, but tears were leaking from them.
Amelia never cried.
"We were on a picnic," Tom was still trying to explain, his voice shaking. "She was running around chasing bugs—she seemed fine! She wasn't … this all came on so fast! I don't—"
Kathryn held up one hand, tearing her eyes away from her daughter. "Tom, calm down. Tell me the facts."
He was a mess. B'Elanna stood silently behind him, hands over her mouth as she looked towards Amelia.
"Nothing happened to her from what we could see," Tom said after a moment. "But my scans showed she was being attacked by a virus of some kind. I got her up here as quick as I could. I don't know how she contracted it. I swear I did all the scans before I took her down there."
"I know you did," Kathryn said, before turning away from him to look back at The Doctor. Tom wasn't a careless parent. Whatever was happening to her now was something serious. Far more serious than he could have picked up on his own.
The three of them waited as The Doctor tended to Amelia, none of them able to do more than watch as he bustled around, filling hyposprays and scanning her again and again. His brow furrowed more than once, and Kathryn remembered unpleasantly just how many times she'd seen that same expression.
Amelia seemed to improve after a while; at least, she stopped thrashing around and seemed to sleep. The Doctor finally put away his tricorder and came towards the waiting parents. The expression on his face did not look good.
"Mr. Paris was correct in his original assertions," he began softly. "An alien virus has indeed taken hold of her body, attacking it at the molecular level."
"But what sort of virus?" Kathryn asked. "We scanned the planet multiple times for any indications of harmful microbes or other dangers before we granted shore leave."
That's what she had ordered. But had she missed something? Had she been too premature in authorising the landing parties?
"I've examined some of those scans," The Doctor said heavily. He moved to a monitor and brought up one of them. "It shows a substantial level of harmful compounds in the planet's atmosphere. Initial analysis showed that the level of harmful substances was tolerable to most humanoid lifeforms. But with Amelia's history of difficulties with her immune system …"
Kathryn could remember easily. She caught every virus going on the ship, most only confining her to bed for a day or two. It'd never been truly harmful before now.
"But Doc, you said it was a virus," B'Elanna said. "How can these compounds cause a virus?"
The Doctor's expression darkened. "From what I can see, it looks comparable to the destruction wrought by the Rakarians in the twenty-third century when they tested a mutagenic retrovirus on one of their disputed planets."
"You mean the Boraans have been using biogenic weapons?" Kathryn thought back to the standoffish Boraanian she'd spoken to on the bridge; the one who'd refused to give them more details on their war. She could never have expected something like this.
"Unfortunately, yes," The Doctor replied. "Most of the weapon has now dispersed in the atmosphere making it safe for most people—"
"—but Amelia was vulnerable to it," Tom said, taking shallow breaths. "My God, what did I do?"
Kathryn wanted to tell him that it wasn't his fault, but her words stuck in her throat. Speaking was difficult now.
"I have stabilised her for now," The Doctor said, glancing back at the still form on the biobed. "But I'm afraid I cannot say how long it'll last. I've isolated her in a forcefield, but we need to find a treatment for her as soon as we can. I'm afraid I don't know enough to create a treatment myself. By the time I figure one out, she …"
His words hung in the air.
Kathryn moved forwards to look at Amelia through the forcefield. She was sleeping uneasily, her mouth hanging open, a small crease on her forehead. The monitors beeped around her like a cold heartbeat. Her little body didn't even take up half of the biobed.
"The Boraanians are responsible for this," Kathryn said, a new rage filling her. "They must have a cure." She turned to look at the others in the room. "And I'm sure as hell not going to leave orbit until they hand it over."
None of them argued with her. Kathryn marched right past them on the way to the bridge.
The Boraarnians would answer for this. She'd make sure of it.