Incorporeal Nightmare (Part 3)
A Voyager fanfic written by a Lt Taya 17 Janeway
A Voyager fanfic brought to you by TaTTooGaL aka fROzen Lt. 17 of 26 (MERSTS)
Janeway was surveying the preparations for the Delta Flyer's flight later that day the next morning when Chakotay came over to her. "Captain, may I speak to you for a minute?"
Janeway nodded wordlessly and followed him, her mind still focused on the issue of the Marlok and the Vorlok. When they were alone in the corridor, Chakotay turned to her and said seriously, "The doctor has completed his report on the last few deaths."
Janeway's interest instantly snapped back to the moment. "Go on."
Chakotay's expression sobered. "He was unable to find any trace of foreign DNA on the bodies of the latter two," he said. "Which either means two things- the victim did not put up a struggle, or the murderer was wearing some sort of protective clothes."
"Surgical gloves…" muttered Janeway softly, more a rhetorical question as she tried dredging through her memory for where she'd that reference.
However, Chakotay seemed to have missed her tone. "That's entirely possible," he conceded. "I've assigned Tuvok to run through the replicator logs to check who ordered gloves, bodysuits or anything of the sort during the past four days." He looked at Janeway, silently asking for her approval. To that, she acknowledged by placing her hand on his arm.
"We've also narrowed down the list of suspects to fifty crewmembers," he said, this time with more hesitation. He handed her a padd and she immediately saw why. The entire bridge crew- themselves included- were on the list.
Janeway blinked, and ran through the list. Ayala… Attman…. Chakotay ….. "This list is based on those who had close contact with the three victims over the past week?"
"Aye," replied Chakotay.
She scrolled further down the list. Hoffman… Janeway… Kim… "We'll have to interrogate them, one by one, she said. Neelix… Nostradamus…. Paris….
Paris.
"Captain?" called Paris, from further down the corridor. Her heart skipped a beat. Talk about speaking of the devil! "We've finished the modifications on the Delta Flyer."
"Good work, Ensign," replied Janeway, hoping her voice didn't sound too shaky. Maybe she had been too absorbed in thinking about the list and Paris had called her, focusing her consciousness on her name. Maybe she was just being a little too paranoid. Whatever it was, it didn't stop the feeling of something being very, very wrong from creeping up her spine. She shuddered without letting it show.
As Paris turned to leave, Chakotay turned to look at her. "Is there something bothering you, Captain?"
Janeway shook her head. "Only the lack of sleep, and not enough coffee," she replied half-jokingly, hoping to lighten the mood. It didn't work.
"I know how you feel about all this," he said soothingly. "Some meditation would help you calm your nerves."
She smiled at him, and placed her hand on his shoulder. "Thank you, but I'm afraid not. The Delta Flyer lifts off in three hours, and I've got a lot of work to do before that. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll be in my ready room."
Seven of Nine was doing the last systems checks on the Delta Flyer when Janeway entered. "Greetings, Captain," she said perfunctorily, not looking up from the console she was working on. She completed the systems check.
Janeway nodded to acknowledge her. "How's the Delta Flyer?" she queried.
"All systems go," replied Seven, settling into the pilot's seat. Janeway took the seat beside her. "We should be ready for launch in a couple of minutes."
"Janeway to bridge. What's our readings on the nebula?" asked the captain.
Chakotay's voice replied. "The readings have not altered."
"Excellent," replied Janeway, feeling a sense of satisfaction as the shuttlebay was cleared and the airlock's warning signals began to flash. The Delta Flyer's ion engines ignited and they lifted smoothly off the deck and sailed towards the opening airlock under Seven's expert guidance.
Suddenly there was a bright flash of light, and Janeway felt disorientated. She blinked. "What the heck was that?"
On the bridge, Chakotay felt a tight fist of nervousness clench and unclench in his stomach as he listened to Janeway and Seven's report from the Delta Flyer as they headed away from their ship.
"There was no change in any of our readings," said Seven. "Everything is proceeding as normal."
"Still, I'd like to know what the heck that was. Any ideas, Voyager?" asked Janeway.
"Our sensors similarly report no change of energy readings onboard the ship or on the Delta Flyer," reported Ensign Kim from behind.
Chakotay nodded. "Captain, I think that it would be fairly safe to continue with the mission," he said.
"I agree," replied Janeway. "However I would like to keep the communications channel open between us if possible."
Chakotay glanced at Paris who was taking charge of Ops for the moment. The ensign looked tired, as if he hadn't slept well the night before. Well, they all hadn't. Paris seemed to realize the First Officer's eyes on him and nodded in silent reply. His eyes looked haggard.
"Acknowledged," replied Chakotay stiffly, feeling his adrenaline levels surge upwards just a little.
The Delta Flyer navigated slowly through the nebula, relying solely on visual only. Gases ranging in color from deep maroon to the gray-green spectrum swirled past the viewscreen, sometimes coalescing to form strangely human-like figures, reminding Janeway of a story her mother had told her when she was little, a Betazoid tale about the angels who lived in the heart of the sky. She smiled at the memory, banishing thoughts of murder and sticky negotiations from her mind.
A bone-jarring thump brought her instantly back to the moment. "The Delta Flyer's been hit!" exclaimed Seven, wresting with controls. The injured ship lurched and rolled in the gases which had suddenly turned angry and turbulent. Fuses blew, blowing a console beside Janeway outwards, lacerating her eyebrow with a sharp shard.
The shuttle took another hard blow- by what? wondered Janeway momentarily- and plunged downwards abruptly, too quickly for the inertia dampers to compensate. Janeway was thrown out of her seat as she rose to put out a conflagration behind her. Without support, the impact threw her clean across the room, injuring her head on the deck.
"Captain!" exclaimed Seven, and she moved over to help.
"I'm alright," replied Janeway hastily, pushing herself off the floor. "Get the situation under control!"
"What the hell's going on down there?" demanded Chakotay angrily, listening to the shouts over the commlink.
"The Delta Flyer has lost shields and navigational control," replied Paris tightly, referring to the screen which was rigged to display the Delta Flyer's status. "They won't survive much longer in that ion storm!"
"Cause?" he demanded.
"I don't know!" exclaimed Ensign Kim, smashing his fist down on his console in frustration. "All our readings on the nebula are nil."
"A possibility," said Tuvok, "is that the Delta Flyer's shields have been tampered with, causing the shuttle to act like a conductor in the strong magnetic field, which generated a current on the shuttle's surface and overloaded it."
"Whatever it is, they're losing structural integrity real fast!" exclaimed Paris. "If we don't get them out of there-"
"Activate tractor beam!" ordered Chakotay, cutting him off mid-sentence.
A bluish beam shot out and snagged the Delta Flyer, dragging it out of the treacherous nebula.
The Delta Flyer was in a world of hurt. Gases issued from ruptured pipes, mixing with thick black smoke from the fires which kept appearing one after another. Combined with the trickles of her blood which kept dripping into Janeway's eyes, they rendered her nearly blind.
"Attempting to regulate power surges to navigational consoles," announced Seven from goodness-knows-where. "Primary systems bypassed. Now attempting to reroute circuits through auxiliary shunts.."
In the middle of the cacophony on the shuttle's bridge, Janeway heard a familiar sound, usually welcoming, but absolutely wrong in this situation- the craft's airlock opening. "Seven!" she shouted as a word of warning before an inexorable force grabbed her and pulled her backwards, towards the yawning vacuum. Groping frantically, she snagged on an outcrop- or something, she couldn't tell- and clung on tightly. She heard Seven's frantic cry of help-
And then nothing. She was gone.
Janeway gritted her teeth as the air was sucked out of her lungs, hoping to catch one last breath before the vacuum consumed it all. No, not quite a vacuum- the gaseous material they wanted to collect began to fill the shuttle's interior. Her vision darkened as the oxygen content diminished.
The last thing she saw before everything went black was paradoxically, a flash of light.
Chakotay paced Sickbay impatiently, still waiting, after three hours, for the patient to wake. Every ten minutes he would walk to the doctor's office and bug him for a status report, only to be rebuffed by an inevitable, "I'm a Doctor, not a fill-in-the-blank."
Now he stood nervously at the head of Janeway's bed. Reaching out, he clasped her hand. 'Captain… we need your help."
Suddenly the sensors above the bio-bed buzzed with heightened activity. Janeway's eyes fluttered opened slowly. She focused on her surroundings, then on Chakotay. "Seven ?" she muttered groggily.
Chakotay tightened his grip on her hand in sympathy. "Gone."
Janeway's eyes opened wider and looked at Chakotay in confusion. "Gone? How?" I don't remember…" She paused, then the memories flooded back. "Oh, my goodness…" she whispered. She tried to sit bolt upright, but Chakotay restrained her. "You must rest," admonished gently. "You nearly didn't make it."
Janeway's blood pounded in her ears. "Seven's been murdered!" she hissed angrily at Chakotay. "They've killed her!" She felt a hollow numbness within her, except where she was filled with consuming anger. "I must speak to Ha'agden-"
"Ha'agden has been on the planet for the past forty hours, ever since our conference that day." He said, gently helping her lie down. "We are trying to ascertain whether it is an accident, or whether it was a murder." He knelt down and looked into her eyes. "Captain, we need to know what happened on the shuttle exactly."
Janeway closed her eyes, her lip trembling. "I don't know. There was too much smoke, too much blood-" The horror of it washed over her, and she gripped Chakotay's hand tight enough to squeeze the blood out of it. "She was attempting to regain navigational control when the airlock opened. I tried to call to her, but-" her voice trembled, and broke- "but it was too late.."
Chakotay reached out and drew her tightly in his arms. She sagged weakly against him, feeling that she had endured too much physical and emotional torment in the past few days, and felt the tears coming on. "It wasn't an accident," she said softly. "I might have fallen prey to an accident, but Seven- Seven's not the kind."
The doors to Sickbay slid open and Lieutenant Ayala stepped in nervously. "Commander…sir?" He flushed red at the sight of the two. "May I speak to the captain for a moment?"
Chakotay, convinced that Ayala really didn't want to see his Captain in this wrecked state, shook his head. "No. You'll speak to me instead." With a parting pat on Janeway's shoulder, he exited Sickbay and confronted Ayala. "More bad news?"
"Depending on how you look at it, sir," replied Ayala, handing him a padd. "A security team has gone over the ship's logs, and this is what we found."
Chakotay took the padd and scanned it. "The airlock door was manually opened…" he scanned down some more and frowned. "Paris…"
Janeway, now freshly out of the shower and sipping a cup of coffee, scanned through the report Chakotay had just given her. "Paris' authorization overrode the transporter twice while the Delta Flyer was in transit?"
Chakotay nodded.
Janeway frowned. "Can we get a reading on the destinations and the origins of the two transporter usage's?"
Chakotay shook his head. "Negative. Tuvok postulates that Paris used the transporter to beam someone- or something on board the Delta Flyer, which somehow managed to sabotage the systems, causing Seven's death."
At the mention of Seven's death, Janeway felt a hard ball of pain rising in her chest. "But we don't know who, or what, it was."
"No," replied Chakotay morosely.
Janeway balled her hand into a tight fist of fury. "Then we have to find out… the hard way."
Chakotay shifted nervously, as if he had something to say, but could not find the words to say it. He closed his eyes and meditated for a moment, the said, "Permission to speak frankly, sir."
"Permission granted," replied Janeway, frowning in puzzlement.
"With all due respect, we have another theory as to how this could have happened," he said. "There is a possibility…. that one of the passengers on the shuttle manually opened the airlock."
Janeway her glare full upon him. "Are you saying that I caused Seven's death?" she growled.
"It's just a possibility that Tuvok and I had listed out-" began Chakotay.
"But you did think that I could do it," she pointed out softly, a trace of sadness in her voice. Chakotay halted his explanation mid-sentence, paused to think for a moment, then opened his mouth to speak again. Janeway put up her hand to stop the barrage, feeling that she'd heard more than enough for today. "Dismissed," she said downheartedly. Chakotay shut up, abashed, and left the ready room silently. As Janeway watched him go, she felt a new kind of fear welling up within her. The whole crew is falling prey to paranoia, she thought. Even my first officer doesn't trust me anymore. She bowed her head in torment. What should I do?
The atmosphere in the chapel was melancholy and somber, as the crew of the Voyager came forth to say their final farewell to their late crewmembers. Three coffins and a silver plaque were lined up at the head of the chapel. A simple ceremony to commemorate those who had touched their lives so deeply in the past few years, but whose lives had ended so pointlessly and brutally.
Janeway was too strung-up to deliver the eulogy speech for Seven, leaving the Holodoc to do the honors. She listened as the Doctor retold the story of her life after she had joined the Voyager, crossing and uncrossing her fingers absent-mindedly. The ice in her heart had now been replaced by a solid, resolute rock of steel, devoted to the cause of uncovering the murderer.
For three hours, Janeway sat silently in the chapel, along with a hundred other crewmembers or so, listening with her heart and formulating a plan in her mind. When the last speech had been delivered, she stood up, stiff in leg and sore in heart, and walked over to the EMH. "Doctor, may I speak to you for a moment?"
"Captain! You can't really expect me to do this! I'm a doctor, not man from the Scotland Yard!" spluttered the EMH in protest as he listened to Janeway's plan.
"On the contrary, I do," replied Janeway smoothly. "I believe the happenings on this ship have caused the crew, myself included, to be more paranoid than usual, which may affect their judgement. Thus I deem you the most suitable person for this job."
"But the Head of Investigations? Who do you think I am, Sherlock Holmes?" The doctor crossed his arms and frowned at Janeway.
Janeway rolled her eyes and sighed silently. She had known it would be hard talking the doctor into accepting his role, and it was turning out to be every bit as tough as she had imagined it to be. "Please, Doctor," she said. "I could have made this an order, but I'm not. I ask you to help me. No," she said, speaking slowly and painfully, "I beg you to help me."
The doctor stared at her with his eyes wide open.
"I know it may seem ridiculous to you," she added, "but I need your help."
The doctor stared at her some more, then agreed. "Alright, alright, I'll try to help you the best I can."
Janeway stood up and grasped his hand gratefully. "Thank you, doctor. I'm sure you'll do your best."