Incorporeal Nightmare (Part 5)
A Voyager fanfic written by Lt Taya 17 Janeway
All throughout their journey in the turbolift, Paris had been unusually silent, noted Janeway, giving occasional distracted looks to the air. Torres had been right; there was something on Paris' mind, something he was trying to conceal from them. But what?
As they made his way to his quarters, accompanied by the security guards, Paris' behavior became increasingly erratic. He slowed his gait down from a brisk trot to a more hesitant pace, and tried creating distractions to slow them down. It appeared to Janeway that he was trying to stall for time. This confirmed the idea that he had something to hide.
Finally they were in front of his quarters. "Open the door, Ensign," commanded Janeway.
"No," said Paris firmly, stepping in front of her. "Not until you tell me what this is all about."
Janeway leveled her gaze at him and bored right through him. "You know what this is about, Ensign. Now stop stalling and open the door, or I will be forced to fire upon it."
"You think I committed those murders." he said accusingly.
"Step aside, Ensign."
"Is that it? You think I'm guilty? Don't you trust me?' he insisted, never budging an inch. "After all these years serving under you, and you still think I am capable of such a deed." His tone grew dangerously angry.
"Step aside, Ensign!" repeated Janeway with great emphasis. "Don't force my hand."
Tuvok, sensing the situation spinning out of control, quickly stepped in with his Vulcan cool and informed Paris, "We cannot be convinced of your innocence unless we have finished searching you room. Logic then dictates that you step aside to allow the operation to proceed and to claim your innocence."
Paris seemed ready to argue with the Security Chief when an odd light came into his eyes, and he nodded, turned and keyed in his security codes to his quarters. Janeway had no time to contemplate his sudden change of attitude before the doors opened and the Security team prepared to begin searching.
Just before they stepped into the nothingness they were about to find, Janeway couldn't help noticing that Paris had grown his hair longer that regulations allowed, with the fringe of the back extending to just below the bottom of his collar.
It had been a fruitless search, thought Janeway, juggling between two monitor screens and her now-cold cup of coffee in her ready room. One displayed the information given by Salissaj, while the other contained the results of a thorough sweep of Paris' room and his personal logs. She sipped the coffee contemplatively. The search of Paris' room had yielded nothing and had only further confounded the current evidence: not only had Paris not ordered any equipment which could have assisted with the murders, he also did not have extensive interaction with the Marlok people as previously reported, and in fact was amongst those on board the ship who had made the most limited contact.
Janeway shook her head, feeling her vision blurring, with an odd tingling sensation at the base of her neck. She hadn't slept well in the past few days, and it was beginning to affect her. She mused about the other pieces of evidence: the transporter logs, the fact that he was in charge of modification of the Delta Flyer…
And the history of the Marlok people! Janeway found herself shaking her head again, at the alacrity of the two cultures as well as the rising headache. She promised herself that she would get some sleep right after this cup of coffee.
She turned to scrutinize the screen again, more and more aware of the numb tingling spreading up her limbs. Both races they had interacted with seemed equally unscrupulous and backstabbing, making Janeway wonder dimly why she had even bothered to make contact with either in the first place. She lifted her hand to take another sip of coffee to counteract the terrible pain that had begun to surge through her weary temples, but her hand was shaking so much the coffee split all over her table.
The world was a blurry miasma of pain and confusion now. The words on her terminal swirled before her like some lupine spirit from an incorporeal nightmare that she couldn't quite remember, formless, twisting, unreal. Her mug slipped from her numb fingers and smashed on her desk, and some distant part of her detected pricks of pain as the glass shards flew and hit her. Before she slipped into a black world of unconsciousness, a dim thought from somewhere which used to be part of her screamed insanely, I've been drugged!
An insistent chirping forced its way into a world without boundaries or limits, where reality merged with unreality to form a spectral world of hellish chaos. She futilely pushed the chirping away from the corners of her mind momentarily, hoping to snatch another moment of unsettled sleep.
The chirping continued unabated, and it now merged with other sounds of soft chirruping and human voices.
Voices….
A strong sense of déjà vu swept over Janeway as she struggled to force her consciousness out of the deep warm dark it had been immersed in.
"Captain," said a distinctly familiar voice beside her ear. "Captain, can you hear me?"
Finally she was able to muster the strength to wrench open her eyelids, which seemed so heavy as if they were made of duranium. "What happened?" she asked hoarsely, as the rest of Sickbay swam into focus around her.
"Someone put a heavy overdose of diaphine in your cup of coffee," said the doctor disapprovingly, shaking his head. "He or she apparently broke into Sickbay, overrode computer functions and managed to get away with such a large dose," he commented, clicking his tongue. "If Commander Chakotay had not been trying to contact you at that time, it would have been likely that you would have died," he said, a touch of unease in his voice.
Janeway's heart rate quickened as she recalled that this was the second attempt on her life. "Any ideas who could be responsible for this?"
"Probably not Paris," said the Holodoc, "since he was with you around the time the drink was contaminated. But," he added ominously, "it could be the interloper that Paris is keeping on board."
"Interloper?" asked Janeway in surprise.
"Yes," said the doctor, pulling up a schematic of Paris' quarters. "A second sweep of his quarters showed that the grate over the ventilation duct, here-" he pointed to show her "- had been forced open and closed recently." He turned to face her seriously. "It seems that there was someone in his room who was trying to make a hasty exit."
Janeway mused thoughtfully. 'Which might explain why he was trying to stall for time…" She broke off. "Could it be Ha'agden?"
"No, not Ha'agden," said the doctor. 'He is definitely on the planet. However," he said, calling up another list of names, "it might be one of the few Marlok people Paris had contact with. One, in particular." He zoomed the list in on one name. "This man made the most contact with Paris amongst all the Marlok people," he said. "And even more interesting, his name does not show up in any of the Marlok databases I managed to access," he added significantly, looking as smug as the cat which ate the sausage for doing such a good job.
"Not on the Marlok databases, but looks like one of them…." She mused, feeling her heart quicken as things begin falling into place. "What else is there?" she asked impatiently. "Other news?"
'The ship is being combed through to flush out this intruder," said the doctor. "And the three suspects have put themselves under house arrest, leaving Lieutenant Torres and myself in charge of the ship."
Janeway took in the information quickly and stood up, all traces of fatigue gone from her limbs, banished by the sudden new excitement which had seized her. "I need to speak to them," she said. "I'm going to the brig."
Suddenly the comm unit in Sickbay beeped. "Ayala here, sir," came a flushed, disembodied voice. "With information from Salissaj, we have managed to take Ha'agden into custody!"
Janeway gave a quizzical glance to the doctor. "It was Lieutenant Tuvok's and Commander Chakotay's suggestion before they put themselves in the brig, sir," he explained. "And Salissaj was very helpful in the proceedings."
Salissaj… The name did not trigger pleasant memories. "Shall I bring him onboard to the brig?" asked Ayala over the comm.
'No," instructed Janeway firmly, causing the doctor to raise his eyebrows quizzically, "belay that order. Keep the Ambassador in custody, but remain on the planet." She looked at the doctor, fire flashing in her eyes. "I think I'm on to something," she said.
"Be careful, captain," cautioned the doctor as she stepped out of Sickbay.
"Don't worry, I will," she comforted him, as the doors to Sickbay closed.
Janeway hurried towards the brig, moving as fast as her legs could take her. She felt a certain sense of compulsive urgency, something within her telling her that she was deep into the heart of the mystery, very close to unraveling the truth.
Her commbadge beeped, and she answered it with a slight touch of irritation combined with the unpleasant taste of fear that some bad news was about to be revealed, all this while keeping up her frantic pace. "Janeway here," she replied, hoping that her voice sounded as cool and controlled as possible.
"Captain, there's been a security breach in the brig, sir! Someone deactivated the forcefield remotely from the cargo bays and allowed the prisoner to-"
The voice was suddenly cut off as the lights overhead flickered and died, leaving only the pale, eerie glow of auxiliary lighting. "Computer, report!" demanded Janeway.
Silence.
"Damn!" she snapped, in a rare loss of control. She knew what had happened- somehow, their intruder had managed to override their security systems, shutting off power to the ship, cutting off communications.
Leaving her alone, with a killer possibly trailing her.
Surprisingly the thought didn't chill her. All it did was to harden the resolve that she had to resolve this matter. "Nobody messes with my ship and gets away with it," she muttered silently to herself as she pulled herself into a Jeffries tube and started heading for the nearest weapons locker.
I wonder who could have done all this, thought Janeway, crawling down yet another cramped and dim Jeffries tube, but this time armed with a type-1 phaser rifle. Approximately three minutes had passed since the shutdown, and already Janeway could hear sounds of crewmembers beginning to try to restore the systems even though they had no way of contact with anyone except those around them. A most efficient and intuitive crew, she thought. She popped open a hatch and crawled out into a cargo bay, where Ensign Kim was feverishly working on a console, guarded by a security team led by Ayala.
"Captain," acknowledged Kim as she walked up to him. "The encryption codes installed into the computer are apparently impenetrable. I've tried running every single known decoding algorithm known, to no success," he commented. "But it does look rather familiar…" he mused a while. "Give me a moment. I think I may have something here."
"Keep working on it, Ensign," instructed Janeway. She headed over to Ayala. "Status report."
"We were on the bridge when the systems started giving out, one by one. We managed to trace the encryption programs here and are attempting to bring the systems back online." He gestured to his partner. "Carton here has assigned four security teams to search through the ship for signs of this intruder, keeping in communication with the handheld comm units we designed for cases like this." He frowned. "Unfortunately we only have five of those."
"Excellent work, Lieutenant," said Janeway encouragingly. "I'll be on the bridge, to see if I can figure what went wrong."
Torres was working frantically in the bowels of engineering, trying to bring the inertia dampers back up by trying to siphon some energy from the holographic controls, which were irritatingly still up and doing nothing. It was a fruitless effort, she knew, but if she managed to even get a short burst of energy, anything more than a nanosecond, she'd be able to trap that energy and use it to reboot the damper relays. Fortunately for them, the knockout had encompassed all the propulsion systems on board, but if anything decided to hit the ship right now, they'd all end up as organic paste on the bulkheads.
She was still tweaking with the holographic controls when she heard some ominously familiar footsteps behind her. She spun quickly to confront her would-be assassin, and her eyes opened wide in shock a she registered who it was.
She was still reeling in surprise when a quick, brutal blow to her neck put her worries out of her mind permanently.
Janeway strode quickly, purposefully, towards the bridge, the command center of the ship, knowing she had not a moment to lose. She submerged whatever fears or emotions she might have, knowing that she was relying on a clear mind to survive this ordeal intact.
Through all that suppression, however, one sensation stills remained- that she was being followed by someone, someone with an evil intent.
Her breathing quickened, and she began breaking into a jog, knowing that the faster she reached the bridge, the faster she would be out of danger. She tried chanting something silently to calm herself-
Suddenly, without warning, a figure intercepted her in front at the next intersection. In the poor lighting, she couldn't see who it was, but the silhouette told her who it was. An unbidden reflex gripped her and she blindly fired her phaser at the figure without even checking its settings. The figure crumpled after two shots.
Janeway stepped forward, and her suspicions were confirmed: it was Tom Paris armed with a small hand-held phaser. A strong surge of something- anger? Betrayal? She couldn't tell- flooded through her. Luckily –or unluckily, depending on how one looked at it- for him, the phaser had been set to low stun.
Something clicked in Janeway's head. "The interloper," she thought, and now she was convinced that either Ha'agden or Salissaj, or both, were somehow responsible for this shutdown. She continued her way to the bridge.
Then she heard footsteps behind her. The same ones she had imagined hearing before. She continued jogging, trying to keep a distance, while trying to assess the sound of those feet- not regulation boots, for one thing. Not a crewmember. Meanwhile another part of her was wondering about Paris. Was he trying to protect her? Guilt threatened to overwhelm her.
The footfalls continued.
Breathing evenly and deeply, Janeway tried speeding up her pace. Only one more intersection to go… She looked down, counting the steps to the Jeffries tube, as the footsteps seemed to grow nearer.
"I'd advise you to drop that, captain." The voice came from in front of her, a barely veiled threat, but the shock came from the recognition of the voice. She looked up in disbelief to face…
The Holodoc?
"Yes, it was me," he sneered, his voice dripping with twisted pride, caressing a phaser rifle of his own. "I would have thought that you would have figured it out by now, but obviously you are not as bright as you seem."
Janeway gritted her teeth and raised her rifle. "I could still take out your program with one shot of this rifle," she snarled.
The doctor laughed an uncannily evil sound. "I wouldn't advise you to try, Captain. Except for this one-" he patted the rifle in his arms –"all the phaser rifles on board have been programmed to detonate after the first, oh, let's say, two shots." An evil glint entered his eye. "And I have to thank our poor Ensign Paris for taking those two shots for me."
Anger rushed through Janeway. This wasn't the doctor they knew; it was some twisted, bastardized version. Somebody must have altered his program, turning Dr Jekyll into Mr Hyde. In the background, Janeway imagined that she heard someone approaching… 'Why are you doing this?" she demanded.
"We'll take you out, one by one," he intoned slowly. "Then we'll have this ship, all to ourselves…"
"Who's 'we'?" demanded Janeway.
The doctor's only answer was to raise the rifle and train it on her. "This would be a good time to begin saying your prayers, captain," he said, a feral grin spreading across his face, "because it will be the last."
Janeway closed her eyes, frantically searching for a way out of this. There seemed to be none. I will not go down without a fight! She vowed. There must be a way… She mentally reviewed the area she was in… there was an access area leading to a set of Jeffries tubes behind her. If she could duck fast enough…
She heard the whine of the rifle powering up, and tensed her muscles, ready for action.
Then a more high-pitched whine from behind her.
Something -or somethings, rather- clattered to the floor.
Janeway opened her eyes. The doctor wasn't there anymore. Had he been transported away? Or had she been hallucinating? No, his holographic emitter was lying on the deck, beside the rifle. Someone had deactivated him, then. But who?
Janeway slowly turned around, and her eyes widened at the sight of somebody she thought she'd never see again, somebody whom she thought was dead-
"Seven?"
The ex-Borg nodded stiffly in acknowledgement. Janeway noted that she possessed a hand-held device that, from the look of it, had been cobbled together in the last minute. "Computer, deactivate encryption program seven-alpha-one-three." She instructed. The overhead lights flickered on and the deep thrumming of the ships' engines began. "I believe I have some explaining to do."