Author's note:
Glad you all liked the DS9 characters – tossing them into the mix made for a nice story. But this is first off a Voyager fic. The evil EMH seems to be more populat than I expected. Let's see how manages to mangle this (some typos were my fault, but there's stuff that shows up fine on my filesat home that gets garbled in transmission.)
Escapefreak: glad you like the tactics. As for Section 31 – they're not nice, but life is more fun with them around.
Worker72: Section 31 probably wouldn't bother explaining anything to Marla; they removed Noah's memories earlier and they'd do the same thing to her.
JadziaKathryn: Glad you like the DS9 characters along for the ride.
Webster82:Glad you like the fic, and the evil EMH is fun. (I wonder what you would think of a similar piece I was working on with an evil and somewhat loony Q....)
Kilbourne was surprised. He hadn't expected Voyager to show up. How the hell had they done it? Bashir would pay. The man had done too much damage to Section 31. After this, he would not be allowed to live.
Neither would Voyager, he decided. Operational security had been far too compromised. Getting rid of a Federation hero like Janeway would be problematic, but there was no other way around it.
"Lock torpedoes. Full spread," he said.
His weapons agent was good at his job. Almost immediately, four quantum torpedoes launched. He could see them. He could see Voyager. Fortunately, Voyager couldn't see him, and by the time they would be able to see the torpedoes, his helmsman would have already moved the ship. Voyager would only be able to fire at the empty space his ship had occupied a moment ago.
"Electronic warfare agent. Status?"
His electronic warfare agent was already bent over his console. Starfleet didn't use electronic warfare officers – at least not officially. Section 31 had no such compunction. The EWA's job was to attempt to covertly access Voyager's computer systems. If he was able to get in, he could do all kinds of things. He could fudge weapon locks, lower shields – depending on how quick a captain and security officer were, he might even be able to remotely trigger the self-destruct sequence.
"Working on it. Voyager doesn't seem to be responding to the usual access codes."
Damn. Perhaps that Vulcan security officer had done his job. From the Voyager logs that had been turned over to Section 31, there had been some embarrassing breaches in the Delta Quadrant. It didn't matter. He watched his torpedoes flare against the starship's shields.
He expected Voyager to fire back blindly, trying to find him. It wouldn't work. Section 31 agents on a spyship were trained to fight just about anyone, including Federation starships. They knew standard Starfleet procedures for attempting to locate a cloaked vessel. They had countermeasures.
In a fair fight, an Intrepid-class cruiser would've made mincemeat out of his ship very quickly. He had no intention of giving them a fair fight. Behind his cloak, he could pummel them as he wished until their shields failed. Once that happened, it would be quick, at least.
Voyager surprised him by firing on Grambyo. Phasers. He tilted his head. That was interesting. Was Janeway going to try to disable Grambyo? What was she going to do with it? It wouldn't be too hard for the cruiser to cripple the planetary surveyor. Didn't she realize that sending security squads to that ship was only going to sign their death warrants? If Grambyo was lost, he could fire on that ship as easily as she could, and when you came down to it, he could send his agents to board her as easily as Janeway could send her security. It would be a pitched battle, but he had the upper hand.
From an eyeball of it, it didn't look like Voyager had done much other than scratch up the shields. Instruments confirmed it. What were they doing? Probing, probably. Foolish, he thought. When you went to war, the smartest thing to do was hit the other guy hard. Or was Janeway concerned for Gilmore's safety? That was possible, too. Psyops had identified that as a possible reaction. He understood the concept; he didn't want to lose his agents on the Grambyo if he could avoid it. As for Marla Gilmore, she wasn't Janeway's crewman anymore. She was his property, and he wasn't going to give her back.
His communications agent announced that Janeway was ordering another surrender from Grambyo. She addressed it as Equinox. Nothing aimed at him. That was fine. He ordered another round of torpedoes. How much longer until their shields failed?
He didn't know. But he meant to find out.
Ransom flinched as the first phaser blast jolted the ship. Lessing had been slow in moving it around, and Burke was trying to get weapons online. None of them had ever been Starfleet officers. It wasn't easy to go into battle against the real thing. The holograms who had been playing the ship's crew hadn't been terribly bright to begin with. They didn't have to be; they were just bit players. And once Kilbourne decided he wanted to use his ship's computers to pound on Voyager instead of feed data to the hologramshis holographic crew were about to get a lot dumber.
I'm not a starship captain. I just play one in this deception operation, he thought.
"Lock phasers and torpedoes," he ordered. "Fire."
Burke obeyed. The Grambyo's twin phasers lanced out. Four torpedoes followed suit. They exploded against Voyager's shields. Ransom stared at them nervously. How much punishment could those shields take, anyway? He didn't know. His skill lay in manipulating the minds of others.
Kilbourne was out there, and the X5573 was there to even the odds against Voyager. Even so, being the bait was not a hell of a lot of fun. He backed other people into corners for a living; he didn't like it much himself.
"Kilbourne to Ransom." That was welcome.
"Go ahead," he said, trying to keep the panic out of his voice.
"Don't worry about a thing. I have a weapons lock on Voyager. I also have my electronic warfare agent trying to get into their computer systems. They won't be able to beam you onto their ship. It'll work out fine." He could hear Kilbourne focus his attention on someone else. "Fire quantum torpedoes. Full spread."
"Ransom, all you have to do is keep track of Gilmore. I'll handle Voyager."
"Okay," Ransom said, and swallowed. He'd studied the real Rudy Ransom for this operation.
He tapped his combadge. "Ransom to Doctor."
"Please state the nature of the interrogation emergency," the doctor replied cheerily. It was almost as if he didn't care that the ship was getting pummeled.
"What did you do with Marla?" he asked.
"Oh, ho ho ho. Don't worry about a thing, Captain. Marla Gilmore is incapacitated, just like you asked." The EMH chuckled. "A little hallucinogen of my own concoction. There's art in these things, you know."
Ransom blinked. The use of psychoactive drugs in interrogation was something he did know.
"Did you say hallucinogen?"
"Indeed," the doctor said merrily.
"You idiot. I said to knock her out! Is she conscious?"
"She'll begin hallucinating, if she hasn't already. All the worst fears of her mind dredged up right before her very eyes. Or so she'll think." The doctor sounded pleased with himself.
Great. Just when I need an engineer with combat experience the doctor has her tripping her face off. The EMH wasn't just sadistic; he was unreliable. He didn't have command of the other holograms; they were under the control of the spyship and he didn't trust them anyway. He nodded at Lessing.
"Go down to Engineering. Get a hypospray from sickbay and just knock her out. Goddam hologram. Then drag her up here."
Lessing nodded and headed for the turbolift.
"Great," Burke said, echoing his thought. "How are we supposed to interrogate her if the EMH is letting his inner Dr. Mengele out?"
"Memories can be removed," Ransom said, eying the viewscreen tightly. "Once we're out of here, the right drugs and neural stimulation and she won't remember anything. But we have to get out of here first."
He turned back to the viewscreen and gripped the arms of his chair grimly.
"Fire another spread," he said.
Marla cowered, her back against the wall, scrunched under the Engineering console. The doctor's invidious drug worked its way into her mind. Her pupils were dilated. Her face flushed. Her hands shook. And as the doctor had promised, her inner demons came out to taunt her.
A figure appeared in the doorway; a tall, imperious blonde. She stalked into the room and observed the woman before her with disdain. Faint light gleamed off the metal implant over her eyebrow. Her lips twisted in distaste.
"Marla Gilmore," Seven said tonelessly. "Chief Engineer of USS Equinox. You only got that title by default. You are weak." She made a dismissive, pushing gesture. "I resisted even in the face of death. You could not. Why was it so important that you survive? Morals mean nothing to you. That is what you taught me."
"No," Marla whispered powerlessly.
Another figure entered Engineering. A tall man, with hair blonde like her own, wearing the older uniforms that Starfleet had issued before the current open-collared version. Lieutenant Keith Gilmore of the USS Lexington; her father. He stared at his sobbing offspring with no sympathy.
"Look at you," he said. "Did I die at Wolf 359 for this? Do you know how many Gilmores have served in Starfleet before you? Think of the shame you've brought on their names." He shook his head coldy. "I'm ashamed to call you my daughter."
After him, B'Elanna Torres walked forward, her arms folded, her lip curled in distaste.
"Do you know how many of my engineers you killed? You and your Equinox crew? Did you ever think you could be forgiven? That you had a place on Voyager?" She spat on the deck. "I never wanted you on my ship, you petaQ. Then as soon as you get back here, you recreate your work? You have no honor.
Marla flinched away and bit her lip until the coppery taste of blood filled her mouth.
"No, please...I tried...I tried to convince them...you don't understand...it's just...,"
Chakotay entered Engineering then, standing by the warp core to examine her work and then her with the same evident disgust as the others. The tattoo stood out starkly on his forehead. Below it, his eyes glowed in malevolent judgment.
"Excuses, excuses," he said. "And you couldn't even be loyal to your captain? You coughed up those codes so you could save yourself, didn't you? Did you think you were going to ingratiate yourself with me?" He shook his head. "And before, when you tried to transfer to Voyager yourself. Always looking out for yourself. No wonder you got kicked out of Starfleet."
Boots rang on the deck. Marla clamped her hands over her head and whimpered because she knew who was coming. She glanced up to see Kathryn Janeway enter and stand by her crew.
"We trusted you, and you betrayed us," she said harshly. There was no compassion in her face; her voice was as cold as a knife blade. "I was foolish enough to take you on my ship. You got better than you deserved. There's no way...no way at all...you could ever earn my trust. People like you don't get second chances." She curled her lip in scorn. "I should have beamed you back to the Equinox. It would've been better that way. Leaving you on this ship would be the appropriate punishment."
"No," Marla whimpered. "Please, that's not me, I had orders, we were desperate...," she trailed off.
Then they all began to scream at her at once, calling her horrible names and epithets. Marla shrieked to make them stop. She lunged across Engineering to a storage rack and fumbled it open. A phaser clattered out of it, landed on the floor, and bounced. She crawled after it, feeling her pulse pound painfully in her ears.
No place among us. Coward. Unworthy. Dishonorable. Weak. Couldn't they see what she had gone through? Couldn't they show her a tiny scrap of compassion? Hadn't she tried to show them she could be worthy? But they told her what she had always been afraid to think:: that she wasn't worthy, that she had no place among them, and that she could never be forgiven.
She hunched low over the deck and held the phaser in both hands. Yes, she had broken. She would destroy what she had made. With shaking, sweaty hands she adjusted the phaser to maximum and pointed it at the device.
"Please," she said to the shadowy figures taunting her, and pressed the button. It occurred to her that firing a phaser near the warp core wasn't a bright move, but it was a fraction too late. Bright yellow light flared in the dark engine room for a moment. The enhanced warp device shimmered, turned red as it molecules were ripped asunder, and vanished.
Janeway chuckled. "Not enough," she said inexorably. "Not even remotely enough."
"It's gone," Marla pleaded. "It's gone, nobody used it, I hadn't even finished it, I stopped. I destroyed it."
"There's no point in trying," B'Elanna smirked. "Not even your miserable little life would be enough to make up for what you've already done."
When she heard bootsteps running towards her again, she didn't bother to see who had come to join her inquisition. A figure stood silhouetted in the doorway. Marla fired without thinking. The figure fell as if poleaxed. Slowly, eyes bulging, she crawled forward to see who this one was.
The faint light overhead fell on the figure on Noah Lessing, eyes wide with shock. His eyes met hers for a moment, and his hand reached up to touch the phaser burn on his chest. She could see awareness sliding away from them, and they turned glassy and unseeing in death.
"Just look," B'Elanna said contemptuously. "Her best friend in the entire universe, and she kills him."
Panic grabbed her throat hard. She tried to shake him, knowing already it was too late. He was more real than the others; they faded into the shadows and looked almost incorporeal. She could feel the rough material of his uniform and the fading heat of his body.
"Murderer." Chakotay's voice was cold as vacuum.
"Her own crewmate," Janeway added scornfully.
"NO!" Marla screamed, hunching over and clamping her arms around herself. , emergency beam-out to sickbay...I didn't know it was you...please...I didn't...,"
His combadge crackled. The ship shook under the blast of another torpedo. "Bridge to Noah," the combadge said in a tinny voice.
What could she do? There was only one thing she could do. Once, in another life, Rudy had sacrificed himself aboard Equinox as penance for his crimes. For that, he had been forgiven. Cleansed.
She had to do the same thing.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, her throat constricted.
"Bridge to Marla. We're reading phaser fire down there; what the hell is going on?"
"Tell him, Marla – or are you afraid to?" Seven smirked.
She grabbed the combadge and threw it away. It landed in a dark corner with a small tink. She wasn't supposed to wear it. She wasn't worthy. She wouldn't be until she cleansed herself and did penance.
"There is no penance for the likes of you," Chakotay said scornfully.
"Go away!" Marla screamed at him. But they didn't go away; they stood in her engine room and stared at her with naked, burning contempt on their faces. Marla hunched over again and began to sob.
Only one way to make them go away. Only one thing to do. She pulled herself up on her knees. One black-clad arm clamped onto the edge of the console. The other reached for the controls. Her wide, staring eyes scanned them, taking far too long to figure out what she needed to do.
"You won't do it," Janeway told her scornfully. "You killed dozens of aliens to protect yourself. Your first priority has always been your own tender little butt, hasn't it?"
Marla accepted the taunt silently. The controls for the warp core came to life on the screen. It was currently at sixty percent. A voice from her Academy days skipped through her tortured mind. Starfleet builds warp cores conservatively. Most can be brought to one hundred ten percent in an emergency. Some have been able to hold at one hundred twenty. That's only in a life or death situation, my dear cadets. Too long or too high, and you'll blow the warp core and destroy the ship.
Cleansing. Penance.
She brought the warp core up to two hundred percent. The computer advised her against this in a cool, calm voice. It didn't understand. No one did.
"Override," she croaked. "Authorization Gilmore, Chief Engineer...one...oh, shit...one beta six."
"Warp core will breach," the computer advised her.
"Let it," she said. "Engage security code lockout."
"Please input code," the computer asked in its icily calm manner.
The ship shook again. Marla told it the code she wanted.
"Code accepted. Warp core to two hundred percent. Warp core at sixty-five percent and rising. Warp core will breach in four minutes, twenty-six seconds. Security code lockout engaged."
She let herself collapse back to the deck. A great weight seemed to lift from her. They wouldn't be able to yell at her any more. No more judging words and cruel voices. No more reminders of her own inadequacies and shortcomings. She would be at peace.
The Jeffries tube seemed to beckon to her, as a safe place to hide. Why not? The deckplates hurt her knees as she crawled over to it, but she went on nonetheless. She couldn't walk even if she'd wanted to; her head was spinning and the ship rocked under Voyager's blasts.
She crawled into the tube. She'd hated tubes ever since the aliens attacked. It would be a final act of penance. But the metal was cool to her fevered cheek, and there was some comfort in that. There was more in knowing it would all be over very soon.
Cleansing. Penance.
"These quantum torpedoes pack a punch," Janeway said. Her own ship had them now, but the ones incoming from Equinox definitely hit harder than photon torpedoes. There were others coming in from an unknown source. It was maddening. Firing at where the torpedoes had come from had gotten them nowhere.
"Forward shields holding at sixty-two percent," Kim reported.
"Evasive action," Janeway ordered.
"Aye, captain," Paris said, trying his level best to dodge the incoming torpedoes. Voyager ducked and weaved nimbly under his control. Sometimes, it was enough and they could catch a torpedo with phasers before it hit them. Sometimes it wasn't, and the ship would shake under the impact.
"Captain, I'm reading a massive power surge on Equinox," Kim said suddenly. "Their warp core just jumped...it's going to go critical."
"Open a channel," Janeway snapped. Kim obeyed, a tone sounding.
"Stop what you're doing," Janeway ordered. "We're reading a massive power surge on your vessel. I say again: drop your shields and surrender."
"They're hailing us," Kim said suddenly. "Attacks from the cloaked vessel have ceased."
"On screen."
The face that appeared on her monitor was a craggy, not-unattractive blonde man. One she knew. One that had betrayed her. Kathryn Janeway blinked and stared at a dead man.
"We're experiencing problems with our warp core," Rudy Ransom said. "It...it's not us. We can't shut it down. It's locked out -- encoded."
For a moment – but only a moment – she could only stare in shock. They had just the place for Marla Gilmore; a recreated Equinox. No one deserved that sort of punishment. And what else might they have in their manufactured darkness?
But Kathryn Janeway was a starship captain, and she swallowed her shock to take action. She stared at Ransom on the screen. He looked frightened. The situation was beyond his control. Even so, the real Ransom had done more with less. If he hadn't done it, who had? It had to be Gilmore. Privately, the thought of that pleased her.
He has no idea how to handle the situation. He's not a starship captain, whoever he really is. Whoever's in the cloaked vessel knows something about commanding a starship, but not this fellow.
"Lower your shields and prepare to be boarded," Janeway said sternly. "We'll take care of your warp core. We'll be taking you into custody, and Marla Gilmore will be taken aboard my ship."
Nervously, Ransom agreed. Chakotay looked at her with concern etched on his face.
"It might be a trap," he said. "That cloaked vessel might still be around."
"It might be," she agreed. "It might have gone for reinforcements. It might not be able to fire while cloaked. We don't know. What we do know is that we have a crewman prisoner on that ship, and I am going to get her off it."
"You're going?" Chakotay asked.
"Yes. You have the conn." She turned her head and felt every inch a starship captain. "Bridge to Engineering."
"Engineering here," B'Elanna responded.
"B'Elanna, I want you and Seven to report to the transporter room with the security detail. Their warp core seems to be sabotaged. Your assignment is to get their warp core shut down and locate Marla Gilmore. Security can secure the ship."
"Regulations say you shouldn't leave the bridge in a combat situation," Chakotay reminded her, softly enough that the other bridge crew wouldn't hear.
She simply turned and looked at him for a moment. They'd always made a good command team. He could be frustrating sometimes, like now, when he was technically correct. This did seem awfully easy. The cloaked ship wasn't attacking, and she wanted to see that ship. She wanted to take what they had done, hold it as evidence, and bring these men to justice.
"You know what these men are planning," she said softly, but her tone was underlined with steel. "You see what they've done. I'm not going to stand for it. I'm going to see this through. I have to." She paused, wondering if there was anything else she could say. Or should say.
"Mr. Chakotay, I have faith in you. You have the conn." That was all she wanted to say in front of the others. It would have to do for now.
She headed for the transporter room, where Tuvok had a security team already assembled.
"Phaser rifles," she directed. "We don't know exactly what we'll find there." B'Elanna and Seven arrived a moment later. The boarding party stepped onto the transporter pad. She felt her stomach lurch. Whatever happened next, she would see this through.
"Energize," she said.
Kilbourne sat in his command chair, listening to the conversation between Grambyo and Voyager. He'd broken off his attack as soon as Grambyo's warp core had begun to show signs of going critical.
This wasn't going well. Ransom and Burke were good Psyops men, but they had no idea of how to run a battle situation. He didn't totally blame them; they weren't trained for it.
Now Voyager was sending boarding parties. Not good. Still, he had the edge. The situation was far from irretrievable.
"Sir," his electronic warfare agent said, "I'm in. I can get you their shield frequencies."
Kilbourne nodded, gazing off into space while he thought. "Feed them to the weapons console," he directed. "And shut down the holographic crew on Grambyo."
"I can get to their transporters," the agent offered. "I could scatter their boarding party."
He thought about that for a moment. Kathryn Janeway's molecules would hover forever scattered around a big chunk of space around here. Little parts of her might get into Deep Space 9. It would be satisfying, but not effective. They'd realize it.
"No," he said reflectively. "Voyager can do the grunt work of shutting down Grambyo's warp core. We'll let them do that, and then they''ll try to beam everyone back to Voyager."
He smiled coolly. "Helm, take us in. As close to Voyager as we can get. I want that cloak up. Impulse only, then dead stop once we're close enough."
"Aye," his agents said.
"Electronic warfare, I want you to track them on Grambyo. When they beam out, I want you to redirect Ransom, Burke, and Gilmore here. Once we have them, I want a full spread of weapons and phasers. At this range, and with their shield frequencies, we'll crack that ship like an egg."
"Targeting torpedoes and phasers....what about after the first volley?" his weapons agent asked.
Kilbourne sighed. "We do what we have to do," he said. "We're going to kill them all."