Author's note:
Happy Thanksgiving!
MistiWhitesun: We'll see if they get her or not.
JimHawkingJr: Yep, things are winding up...but not quite yet.
Bren: While I may not write a series, I did elect to use one of your ideas. And no, it's not B'Elanna and Seven doing the nasty. :)
The ship was dark and still. Its primary systems were powered down, and only an umbilical from the station supplied it with power. The air was dank and musty. Debris littered the floor. The bridge was silent. All the stations were dark; only a few lights flashed.
Sparkles of light invaded the bridge along with the sound of transport, and the salvage team materialized on the bridge. They took a few moments to survey their surroundings and get their bearings. Seven, efficient as always, reported back to Voyager that they were on the ship.
Marla Gilmore looked around and the bridge and felt a lump grow in her throat. She'd been on this ship before, but now it was different. They'd told her she'd been drugged, but she hadn't felt it at the time. Now, she had her own mind, her own eyes.
She crossed over to the engineering station, metal fragments clashing under her boots. They'd gotten everything right. Every station that should work worked; every station that didn't work didn't. They'd even gotten the dents in her engineering station right and the little starred crack in the corner of the screen. For a moment she wanted to tap her combadge and ask for an immediate beam-out.
No, she couldn't do that. This was her trial; she would prove herself worthy of this second chance. B'Elanna and the captain were counting on her.
She tapped out the necessary commands to bring the turbolifts online. Funny, that. They'd become terrified to use the turbolifts on the real Equinox. Quit letting your mind wander. Concentrate on the job. She was aware that everyone else was looking at her.
"Okay," she said. "The computer core is on decks two through four. Takes up a good chunk of ship."
B'Elanna nodded. "All right, people," she said. "Move out."
For everybody else, it was just a ship. They wouldn't understand how eerie it was. They'd gotten everything. Every bit of battle damage; every scratch and dent – everything. She expected to see Rudy heading out of the shambles of his readyroom, or Max or Thompson running down to Engineering. Part of her wanted to bring the main computer up and issue a self-destruct order.
"You all right?" B'Elanna asked.
Marla nodded. "This...it's just...weird," she said. "They got everything right."
"Not everything, I hope."
This is not Equinox. This is not Equinox. There was something rhythmic in the thought, like a mantra. It helped her focus. This is not Equinox. It's another ship they beat the tar out of to make it look like Equinox. She tried to concentrate on the clumping of magnetic boots on the deck, on the mutterings and questions of the salvage team – on anything but what this ship was mocked up to look like.
The access door to the main computer core opened at their approach. Had Equinox's door worked? She thought so. It was hard to remember. Her memories of Equinox were jumbled with the illusion this ship had presented.
"Okay, Gilmore," B'Elanna said. "Let's hear it."
She stared at the ship's massive computer. This was only part of it, actually; it took two whole decks and stretched throughout the ship. One thing these ships could do was crunch data. It hadn't done them a lot of good in the Delta Quadrant.
Her tongue was dry and she worked her jaw. "All right," she said, and put down her tool bag. "We need to shut down the main computer first, then the auxiliaries. We have to actually pull the plug, so this is going to take a while."
Having something to concentrate on helped. She was used to grabbing tools and wading into the thick of it. The others worked around her, occasionally asking questions. They knew engineering, but her knowledge of these vessels was better. The fact that people were actually asking her questions and looking to her for guidance was weird; she'd never expected it. It took perhaps two hours to disassemble enough to where they could fight their way through to the power couplings. But finally, the task was done.
"Everyone, make sure you have your magnetic boots powered on," B'Elanna warned. "I'm not pulling anyone down from the ceiling."
"Parkas, too," Marla said. "It's gonna get cold real quick." She shrugged into her own, remembering the day this had happened for real on the Equinox. Then, there had been neither parkas nor magnetic boots; she and Noah had been trying to hold onto something with one hand and fix the thing with the other and ignore how goddam cold it was.
The computer squealed a few last garbled messages, and then the ship fell silent. Life support was gone. Weapons, sensors, everything. This was just a hunk of dead metal floating in space. The atmosphere wouldn't leave the ship; there were no hull breaches. But outside, the clutch of absolute zero soon decimated the comfortable temperature that starships maintained. The others clutched themselves and tried to stay warm. Their exhalation turned to steam. Cold nipped at their noses. It wouldn't be too long before the loss of heat because less a discomfort and more a threat to life.
"All right," Marla said. "We need to keep the computers offline for five minutes. When they're completely powered down and we restart them, the diagnostics will come up. We can pull up the original name and hull registry from the diagnostics. They'd have had to do what we just did to hide it. Hopefully they wouldn't have had time."
"Where?" Seven asked.
"On the bridge."
"Anywhere else?" B'Elanna asked. "Otherwise we'll have to go through the tubes, and with the gravity off that'll be fun."
Marla stopped. Yes, B'Elanna was right; if they went into a Jefferies tube now, it would be tricky. If someone's boots lost their grip they'd float up to the top of the ship. There was another place that would show what they wanted. Someplace she hadn't been yet on this ship and would prefer not to go.
"Yes," Marla said. "The...science lab. It's closer."
The science lab. She wasn't sure she wanted to see that. The real Equinox's science lab had been a revolting charnel house. Everything else was perfectly duplicated; she did not want to see if Section 31 had duplicated that with the same precision and care.
"You want to go there? I can send someone else."
An icy ball took up residence in her stomach. She felt her hands shake and crammed them into the pockets of the parka. A long, slow breath plumed the air.
"I'll go," Marla offered.
Seven tilted her head. "I shall accompany you," she demanded. "I wish to see this procedure."
Marla swallowed nervously. Great. If there was one person on the ship who she could never measure up to, it was Seven. Seven had been threatened with having her brains scooped out and had held firm. What was the ex-Borg thinking? Probably something along the lines of I want to see what happens when someone is dumb enough to shut down all the computers on the ship.
"Okay," she muttered.
It was easier than she'd thought to deal in the Jefferies tubes; the boots clamped readily onto the ladder rungs. They weren't hard to move off of them, either. It was klutzier than it would have been in normal shoes, but not too bad. Her gloved hands didn't stick to the rungs, but she was confident enough that they wouldn't end up bobbing like a couple of balloons at the top of Deck One.
The hatch's manual override worked well enough, and then it was onto the deck and on her way. Her heart was larruping along and her palms sweating long before their lights fell upon the door marked SCIENCE LAB. Behind her, Seven was maddeningly silent.
Marla closed her eyes for a moment and exhaled. They didn't have a lot of time. If they didn't get something on-line, the temperature would keep dropping. On the real Equinox, that would have meant a slow death, their bodies perfectly preserved for generations. Here it would just mean beam-out to Voyager. But she had taken this assignment, and she didn't want to fail.
But there was more than an assignment, even though that was important. She couldn't exactly put her finger on it – she, an engineer, who had always been scientific and pragmatic in her work. There was the feeling that if she could do this, she would...be better. Somehow. It was vague and indistinct, like a mountain shrouded in fog. But it was just as undeniably there. Somehow, this was something she had to do.
Why did you have to do this? What next? You gonna slam your fingers in the door a few times after this? Maybe stick your hand in an ODN conduit while it's live? Lieutenant Torres could have sent somebody else. How much is enough?
"You are nervous," Seven said flatly behind her.
The sudden voice made her jump. "Yeah," she said flatly.
She expected Seven to say something like There is no reason to be frightened or Scans reveal no other persons on the ship or even Nervousness causes inefficiency. That was the sort of thing that the ex-Borg usually said.
Instead, Seven merely raised an eyebrow and said, "I would feel the same in your position."
Marla tensed. "I'm not sure anyone can really understand," she said, and screwed up her courage. Okay. Last time pays for all. The door to the science lab yielded easily to the manual override.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the lack of light in the lab. There was a tube in the center of the room that she flinched at, recognizing its purpose. It seemed malevolent, even just sitting there with its door open, like a predator lying in wait for a hungry morsel.
There were whitish lumps, and she frowned at them for just a moment. Then what they were hit her and hit her hard. Her stomach roiled. Only the lack of gravity kept her from falling to the floor.
They were bodies.
Someone had laid the bodies out on the floor and respectfully shrouded them in white sheets. With no gravity, they hovered in mid-air. Some described lazy orbits. Some bumped against the ceiling. Good God, there were so many of them. Alien corpses, the bodies of the Spirits of Good Fortune.
A small green hand reached out to her from a shroud as if imploring for help. There was a tag on its wrist, attached by careful Starfleet investigators. Remains of Unknown Alien, and a stardate. So many of them, so many dead. How much fuel could they have needed? Her mind shrieked in horror at the sight; the science lab of this ship was worse than Equinox. The most they had ever done at one clip was five, and that had been a rarity. There had to be at least fifty, dear God, fifty corpses that had been piled up here to be made into fuel.
Nausea grabbed her stomach hard and she crouched. In some corner of her mind, an instructor from Starfleet Academy spoke up: Cadets, you really, really don't want to throw up in zero-g if you can help it. She wasn't sure she could help it. Saliva tasted sour in her mouth and she spat, unmindful of the glob of spittle that rose off the deck.
All this was because of her. If she had stood up the first time, none of this would have happened. Section 31 had only done this because the crew of the Equinox had.
She was dimly aware of Seven standing over her, frowning. Wearing the parka with her Starfleet combadge, she looked much more human than she had before. But most of Marla's mind could only gibber at the sight before her.
"Do you wish to be alone?" Seven asked.
Marla shook her head.
"No...I...just...look at this...they killed...so many, so many dead all because of us." She bit the inside of her cheek hard, The coppery taste of blood filled her mouth, making her queasy but helping her focus at the same time. She took a deep breath.
"I'm all right," she said.
Seven studied her for a moment. "This is not your fault, Ensign. You were not responsible for these deaths. Section 31 killed these aliens."
Marla sighed and hitched. "Only because they wanted me to build them an enhanced warp device."
Seven crouched and put a hand on her shoulder. "You were kidnapped and subjected to sophisticated interrogation techniques. Your sense of responsibility is misplaced."
Marla let out a low sob. "You can't understand," she said. "When Rudy was going to do brain surgery on you, you held firm. It's not the same. I am not the same as you."
Seven shook her head. "I can understand," she said. "You think I am beyond reproach. I am not. In the Collective, I was part of assimilating other beings. Even entire races. I must live with that. It consumes emotional resources." She crouched and put a hand on Marla's shoulder, and seemed to be thinking about what she was going to say, groping for words that would never come to a Borg drone. "If I were held on a Borg cube, I am not sure I would have been able to hold out." She looked around the lab and strove for words. "The Voyager crew is not perfect. Captain Janeway has elected to give you a second chance. You should give yourself the same."
It was nice to hear, but hard to accept. What if she had done something, anything differently? Could this organized slaughter have been avoided? Why the hell had Section 31 killed enough aliens to get them halfway back to the Caretaker? The senselessness and horror of the lab was something that would remain in her mind for a long, long time.
Her combadge beeped. "Torres to Gilmore." She tapped it.
"Go ahead," she said shakily.
"We're freezing our butts off here. Are we ready?"
Ready? How could she be ready in an industrialized slaughterhouse? "Yes, Lieutenant," she said, and forced herself to stand. "Bring main computer on-line."
There was a hum throughout the ship they could feel as well as hear. A bank of screens came to life a few feet away. Marla stared at the screen, refusing to look at what lay to either side of it. It took a conscious act of will to lift her feet and walk over to the console.
A few nonsense letters spilled over the screen. She ignored those. A startup screen then displayed, and Marla keyed in a few sequences. Her brain barely recognized the patterns her fingers flew in; it just happened. She stared straight at the screen, irretrievably convinced that she would go insane if she looked away and saw the bodies.
"The computer is coming online," Seven reported.
"One sec," Marla said, and keyed in another command.
REACTIVATING – PLEASE WAIT
LOADING VMLINUZ – PLEASE WAIT
STARDATE 43923.2 - IS THIS CORRECT?
Marla keyed Yes, even though she didn't know if it was or not.
BRINGING UP PRIMARY LIFE SUPPORT...OK
BRINGING UP BACKUP LIFE SUPPORT...OK
BRINGING UP SENSOR ARRAYS...OK
BRINGING UP HELM CONTROL...OK
BRINGING UP NAVIGATIONAL ARRAY...OK
BRINGING UP THRUSTER CONTROL...OK
CHECKING CRITICAL SYSTEMS...OK OK OK OK OK
USS GRAMBYO NCC-72387
A small smile crept over her face even as she thought she still might puke, zero-G or no zero-G. She tapped her combadge. "Gilmore to Torres."
"Go ahead. I hope you have good news."
"I do," she said. "This is the USS Grambyo, hull registry NCC-72387."
"Good work, Gilmore," Torres said. "Wait...you're in the science lab?"
"Yes," Marla answered.
A moment's pause. "Captain Janeway just told me what was in there. If I'd known, I never would have sent you there. I'm sorry."
Marla closed her eyes and left the lab, standing in the hallway. The ship began to hum as it came back to life, and the climate would return to the norm soon. She closed her eyes and wondered how long the sight of those corpses would remain with her.
"As are we all," she murmured.
The weight on his mind was intense. He knew better.
Captain Janeway's words had weighed on him. He'd been a judge for many years. He'd developed a reputation for fairness and justice. The law had been his life, and he had prospered by it.
But he was also a Starfleet officer. The Dominion War had not affected him, personally. He had borne the shame of being safe on Earth while other men went to war and died. So many Starfleet officers and crew had died. The casualty lists had affected him as much as any other person who ever wore the uniform. Those lists of white names on black screens, marching along, a soundless parade of lives cut short. He didn't think those lists would ever totally leave his mind.
Janeway might have thought the case against the Equinox crew was cut and dry. He knew better. Starship captains tended to always think they were right, but in the courtroom, defendants had rights. Janeway had sent a crew member aboard Equinox without notifying its captain. She had apparently forgotten that the Federation forbade superior Starfleet officers from ordering junior officers to incriminate themselves. None of the Equinox crew had gotten so much as a chance to defend themselves in a fair hearing.
All of that had spelled one thing: a big, ugly court battle that the Federation – and Starfleet – did not need right now. Desperate Starfleet officers committing mass murder after years of suffering.
Other Starfleet officers offering the victims of that mass murder the lives of the guilty parties. It would have been a black eye that an already bloodied Federation did not need, and it would've played in the holovids for months.
There were Starfleet officers who would have been sympathetic to the Equinox crew. Captain Ransom was not available to stand trial; only four crewman and one former ensign. The defense of 'just obeying orders' wasn't supposed to hold up in a case like that, but war-hardened officers who had learned that the book didn't cover every situation might be sympathetic to officers who had been acting under orders from a superior in a desperate situation.
There were other officers, like Janeway herself, who would not have. He had to give her credit; she'd gotten most of her crew home from the Delta Quadrant. Couldn't she understand that all he was trying to do was keep other Starfleet officers from dying?
It had seemed so easy at the time. A man named Kilbourne had come to see him. At one fell swoop, the entire mess could be averted. It had been simple enough to offer Lessing and Tassoni a dishonorable discharge. Then he'd sweetened Gilmore's offer just enough to make sure she wouldn't fight it and would quietly leave. Just a few criminals getting their richly deserved fate.
Yet he knew what he'd done, even though he tried to ignore it. He'd subverted the law. He had delivered a woman into Section 31's hands, where she would suffer psychological torture, interrogation, and almost certain execution when she was no longer useful.
Commodore Andrew Bass sank into his chair and glanced around. The guest quarters on DS9 were pretty good. It suited his rank. The chair was soft and padded and comfortable. Everything should have been just fine. But it wasn't. He knew better, and that was his curse.
He cleared his throat. "Computer," he said in the same mellifluous tones that had rolled across courtrooms all across the Federation. "Locate Mr. Kilbourne."
Blooop-palurp. "There is no such person on the station."
He sighed. He'd known better. "Locate Mr. Benning."
The response was the same.
The bastards. He'd put them on house arrest on DS9. He'd offered them temporary freedom if they stayed on the station and they'd immediately left.
But he'd known better, hadn't he?
He drummed his fingers against the arm of his chair and thought. Were they going to clean things up? Probably. Would they succeed? They might, but they'd promised him nothing would happen, and Janeway had already shown that up for what it was worth.
His fingers floated over to the console before he realized it, as if they had their own volition. What the hell was he doing? Yet there was something that felt right in it. Idly, as if he was a spectator in his own mind, he watched the console open a channel.
The stealth transporter materialized Kilbourne and his party in Engineering. He unshouldered his phaser rifle and glanced around. No Gilmore. It had been his first guess; where would an engineer be if not Engineering? Most of the good ones were only happy when they were up to their elbows in circuitry, and from what he'd seen, Gilmore was a good one. Too bad she had to be so damned moral.
He hadn't taken his entire crew with him; most of them were back on the X5573. Only a security team of his own. Benning was his second-in-command. He'd brought along Ransom and Burke; they weren't trained for combat, but they could be useful. If they managed to get Gilmore back in custody, then perhaps the situation was salvageable. He didn't know exactly how they would manage to get her to forget what had happened, but he knew that Section 31 Psyops knew how to fold, spindle, and mutilate the human mind better than anyone else in the quadrant.
"All right, gentlemen," he said. "This ship is in enemy hands. We need to take control of this ship, and we need to do so now. I also want to bring our package back into our custody."
His agents might be a little surprised at being ordered to shoot Starfleet officers, but they didn't protest. He expected no less.
"It's damn cold," Benning said. "They seem to have shut down the computers."
Kilbourne thought for a moment. "Then the secondaries should take over," he said.
"They shut those down too."
For another few moments he was lost. No main computer, no secondaries...what the hell were they going to run life-support from?
The answer hit him a moment later. Only one engineer aboard Voyager was likely to have experience with losing both. And if both of them were lost, and then brought back up in a controlled manner...
"Shit," he muttered. "All right, gentlemen, we have more problems. They're going to identify the ship." He shook his head. Goddam snoopy Starfleet officers. It was a clever plan, though.
"Move out," he commanded. "If you see Gilmore, stun her if you can. If it's anyone else, shoot to kill. We need to get control of this situation."
The whine of phaser rifles arming was his answer. Kilbourne checked his own and set it to disintegrate. Better safe than sorry.
Section 31 agents moved out from engineering, preparing to take the ship.
Janeway was feeling mixed pride and concern.
She knew she was regarded as overly compassionate by other Fleet officers. One prior captain had told her that she didn't seem to understand that actions had consequences. Seven years ago, she had given out second chances. She had given Tom Paris a field commission; she had taken the Maquis into her crew. There had been those who told her she was foolish then. Later, she had given Seven of Nine a second chance to rejoin humanity.
Time had proved her right. Her crew hadn't followed her orders to the letter all the time. There had been days she'd wanted to wring Tom Paris's neck, or Seven's. All the same, the good outweighed the bad. Some people needed to be punished; some people needed to be forgiven.
She'd given Marla Gilmore a second chance, and that would cause some controversy, both throughout the fleet and on her own ship. Yet her first reward for taking that chance had already come: she had the name and hull registry of the fake Equinox.
Grambyo. Captain Jim Wright's ship. She'd pegged it, too; it was on her list. There was satisfaction in that.
She was concerned, too. She didn't know who she could trust, but she did trust Deep Space Nine's command crew. Their security, as well as her own, had boarded the ship and cataloged its contents, including the grisly piles of corpses in the science lab. She'd been listening in on the salvage team's comm channel, and she had not been expecting Marla Gilmore to go in the science lab. There were steps she expected the ensign to take, but she didn't expect her to throw herself in the fire. There was such a thing as taking it in steps. Dealing with Seven had taught her that if nothing else.
The sound of an automated hail attracted her attention. A moment later, Harry Kim spoke from where he stolidly manned Ops.
"Captain, Commodore Bass is hailing us. He's asking to speak to you privately."
She rose, surprised. What did he want this time? Was it another attempt at a bribe? What bauble did he have to dangle in front of her now? The flagship of the fleet? Promotion to the Admiralty? It didn't matter. She would sooner finish out her career a starship captain who kept her principles than an admiral who had sold out.
"I'll take it in my readyroom," she said, and strode towards the door. For a moment she thought of having Chakotay take the call with her, but it was too late. He would be good on the conn anyway. She sat down behind her desk and summoned the small image of Commodore Bass on her desk.
"Commodore," she said frostily.
"Captain." The commodore looked troubled, as if much was weighing on his mind. That would be only the right thing; there was much that should weigh on his mind.
"Commodore, I think you should know something," she said briskly. "I have the name and registry of that ship. It isn't USS Equinox, it's USS Grambyo. I will be transmitting that information to you and to Starfleet Command. I expect that it will be used at the trial of Mr. Kilbourne."
He swallowed. "Captain...Mr. Kilbourne has escaped."
Her face twisted, even as a more pessimistic voice within told her she should not be surprised.
"I allowed them house arrest on the station," he said. "They seem to have ignored their restrictions."
"You did what?" she said, staring at him as if he were a roach.
"I allowed them house arrest," he said. "You know, the same way I allowed your Maquis house arrest on Voyager."
"You called to tell me that?" Janeway asked, aware that her tone if not her words would constitute insubordination.
"Not really...more...to warn you." He looked at the viewscreen imploringly. His hands jittered and then stopped.
"Captain, I've been trying to keep Starfleet officers from dying unnecessarily. In the Delta Quadrant, you didn't see it the way we did. It...it was rough. A lot of good people came home in body bags."
"I'm not interested in your rationalizations, Commodore," she said.
He paused. "It's not rationalization, Captain," he said. "It's...the truth." He eyed her for a moment, trying to take her measure. "Mr. Kilbourne doesn't like to leave much in the way of unfinished business, Captain. Be careful."
"Why are you telling me this?" she asked.
The commodore sighed. "I can't do this anymore," he said. "I suspect Kilbourne and his friends may pay you a visit. Or pay a visit to the Grambyo. In either case...be careful. They're not the sort of people you want as enemies."
Janeway smiled and nodded, suddenly realizing what he meant. "Neither am I."
"I've signed warrants for the arrests of all of the crew you brought aboard," he said. "I'm transmitting a copy of them to you now. That would give you authority to arrest any of them, and return them for trial."
She stopped and nodded, softening a bit. "I appreciate that."
He shrugged. "Better late than never," he said.
She smiled. "It's never too late to do the right thing, Commodore," she said. "If you'll excuse me...,"
"Of course," the commodore said, and cut the connection.
Captain Janeway rose from her readyroom and stormed onto the bridge. Chakotay looked concerned; when the captain came bursting out of the room for her chair, it usually didn't portend well.
"Problem?" he asked.
"Perhaps. Go to Yellow Alert. Harry, open a channel to Grambyo."
Harry complied, looking somewhat concerned himself. "Channel open," he said.
"Janeway to away team. You may have company. I want everyone on full security precautions. I want everyone to assemble on the bridge." She turned her head to Tuvok, not missing a beat. "Mr. Tuvok, I want another security team on that ship. As much backup as you can get them. After that, take the conn. Chakotay, you're with me. Grab a phaser rifle."
"Captain," Tuvok said diplomatically, "Scans do not indicate any other presence on the ship other than our away team."
"That doesn't mean they're not there," she said, already heading to the turbolift. Chakotay fell into step behind her.
"Captain, if your theory is correct, you are entering a combat situation."
Janeway sighed. "You heard the order, Mr. Tuvok."
"Yes, captain," Tuvok said, and reluctantly moved to the captain's chair.
In the turbolift, Chakotay gave her a measured look. "This could be dangerous," he observed. "Maybe you should stay on the bridge."
She shook her head. "They're not taking that ship, and they're not taking any of my crew," she said. "This ends here."