Chapter 3
2376 - Voyager - Deck 5 - Corridor
Charlie giggled. She loved quoting from episodes.
"I'm only the chief medical officer! What do I know!" she said, making her friends laugh even more.
"Oh!" Taylor suddenly said, "speaking of the doctor, let's go visit him!"
"Okay!" Charlie said readily. But she noticed the other girls didn't look so happy with the suggestion.
"Um. . .," Rhanda said hesitantly, "We met him yesterday on the tour of the ship. Isn't that enough?"
"No," Charlie and Taylor said in unison.
"Let's go!" Taylor started down the corridor. Rhanda, Rachel, and Meredith didn't move.
"What's wrong?" Charlie asked.
Rhanda sighed. "The truth is. . .the doctor is kind of annoying," she said, looking up carefully for Charlie's reaction.
"Very annoying," Meredith said, helpfully.
"And his ego is as big as life," Rachel agreed, looking warily at Taylor, as if she might decide to attack them for saying that, "Don't take it personally."
Taylor glared at her.
"Okay, okay," Rachel said, "Taylor and Charlie will go to sickbay. Rhanda, Meredith and me. . ."
"And I," Rhanda reprimanded automatically.
"Whatever," said Rachel, waving it away. Anyway, we can go to the holodeck. We'll all meet in two hours in the mess hall for lunch."
"That sounds good," Charlie agreed, "Naomi will be done studying about Earth with Seven of Nine by then. She can come, too."
Rachel smiled at the mention of Naomi, "Good idea. I'm really glad we told her about everything."
"You mean how Voyager is a television show?" Rhanda asked, "Yeah, me too. She took it really well. For a five-year-old that is."
"OK," Meredith cut it, grinning, "Enough dawdling. Let's go!"
The girls smiled at each other before saying their usual farewell (Live long and prosper), and going their separate ways.
"They just know too much about us for comfort!"
Chell, a former Maquis member, was talking to Commander Chakotay over a few drinks in his office.
"Chell," Chakotay said, "I can't do anything about it! They may look suspicious, but they haven't shown any hostility or given us any reason to make us think that they aren't what they say they are."
"Well, besides the fact that they know a lot about us," he added as an afterthought.
"Exactly! They know a lot about us. Too much in fact! None of the crew feels safe with them around!" Chell said, clearly distressed.
Chakotay took a sip of his drink, pondering his answer. "Chell, they're okay, I've met them. Give them a chance."
Chell put on a pouting face. "They aren't calling you Flotter! Just because I'm blue. . .," he grumbled under his breath.
"It's called a nickname Chell. They're just having some fun with you. They like you!"
Chell put his head in his arms.
"Great, just great," he said dejectedly.
"Get to know them," Chakotay prodded, "They'd be happy to go for a few rounds of Parrises Squares in the holodeck. Naomi's really taken to them."
"Her and the doctor and no one else!" Chell groaned, "Everyone either is too creeped out by the knowledge they have about us, or they're scared about what B'Elanna is going to do to them if they get to close. She's been giving scorching looks to anyone who even talks to them. She's really offended by them for some reason, and no one who knows what she's capable of wants to get in her way."
"Speaking of B'Elanna, I'm going to have to have a talk about this with her, too."
Chakotay said, thoughtfully.
Chell's eyes grew wide.
"Don't mention my name! Whatever you do DON'T MENTION ME! I had nothing to do with it! I was never here!" said Chell, jumping out of his chair and shouting almost hysterically.
"Okay, Chell, okay! Calm down!"
"I'm calm," he said, breathing heavily, "Caaaalm. Very calm. Perfectly all right. Not worried in the slightest."
Chakotay crossed his arms across his chest and looked at him.
"And afraid for my life!" Chell finished, his voice becoming a high squeak.
Chakotay stared at him.
"Ah. . . just joking?" Chell said, nervously avoiding his angry looks.
Chakotay glared at him.
"Go get B'Elanna."
Chell gulped.
"BEEP-boop."
The door to Captain Janeway's ready room beeped.
"Come in," she called.
The door swooshed open and Lieutenant-Commander Tuvok stepped into the room. Captain Janeway looked up from the padd in her hands.
"Yes, Tuvok?" she said, placing it on the desk.
"Captain, normally I would not be discussing such a thing with you, but some of the crew are concerned about the five girls that appeared on our ship."
Captain Janeway frowned, "What about them?"
"The crew is. . .disturbed. . .by the amount of knowledge that they possess about us. They have asked me to speak to you about them. I am also worried about the security risks that they pose to the ship."
"Security risks?" Captain Janeway repeated incredulously, "They're adolescent human beings! And there are only five of them."
"Whether there are five or twenty-five of them, it matters not," Tuvok said logically, "They still pose a security risk. Added to that, ship morale is going down. The crew is becoming suspicious and on-edge."
Janeway sighed, "Fine Tuvok. Keep a closer watch on them."
"Aye, Captain."
Tom Paris pressed the control panel on the wall, and the holodeck doors opened.
Why had B'Elanna wanted to meet him here, and what was so urgent?
He stepped into the holodeck, and the doors closed behind him. A program was running. He was standing in the countryside, at dusk, clearly after a long rain.
"What's going on?," he thought, "Where is she?"
"B'Elanna?" he said out loud, hoping for an answer.
The air was almost loud with silence. Then, Tom heard muffled footsteps behind him. He spun around.
A large piece of metal swinging towards his head was the last thing he saw before darkness descended.
Captain Janeway put down the last padd in the stack of paperwork and groaned, rubbing the back of her neck with her hand.
"Beep-boop."
She groaned again as the door beeped.
"Come in."
Tuvok walked casually through the doorway for the second time in one hour. She stared at him.
"Tuvok," she said surprised, "Two visits in one day? That's a little much even for you."
"I apologize for disturbing you, Captain, but it was necessary. I must inform you that Tom Paris has been found unconscious in holodeck two."
"What?!"
"The doctor has diagnosed that he was hit over the head with a blunt object of some sort, and then drugged with an unidentified substance," Tuvok informed her.
"How is he?"
"I do not posses that knowledge," Tuvok said, "however, I do know that the doctor has been unsuccessful in his attempts to revive him."
"Did you say he was attacked?" Janeway said disbelievingly.
"That is correct. The doctor informs me that it would, logically, be someone currently on the ship."
"The girls?" Janeway asked quickly.
"Three of them are in holodeck one, while the other two are in sickbay. Security is awaiting your orders."
Captain Janeway came out from behind her desk and began pacing the room. Suddenly, Q's words came back to her.
Oh! This is a toughie. But then again, that's why they made you captain isn't it? To handle the real tough ones.
Yes, this definitely was a "tough one" , as Q had put it. A member of the crew had been attacked. The attacker was either a member of the crew. . . or one or more of the five mysterious teenage girls that had appeared out of nowhere on her ship. Furthermore, the girls knew things about them, about their lives, personal and impersonal, that no one else knew. It wasn't only suspicious, it was unnerving. Then there was the fact that she trusted every member of this crew. How long had they been out here? Six years? If one of them was going to defect, they would have done it much earlier. She made her decision.
"No, don't let the girls know anything yet. But I want someone watching them at all times."
"Yes, Captain," Tuvok said, accepting her decision. Then he added, "What should I inform the crew?"
"Tell them. . .that their suspicions may be correct."
B'Elanna's focused on repairs, trying think about how Tom was lying unconscious in sickbay. How he was alone. How he possibly was never going to wake up again.
Stop it, B'Elanna! Thinking like that won't get him better, and it certainly won't help you any.
Sighing, she packed up her equipment and replaced the piece of the bulkhead she had removed to get to the ship's circuitry. The gel pack she had been looking at hadn't really needed fixing. She had created the minor problem to keep her mind occupied. It hadn't worked.
She picked up the toolkit and crawled through the Jeffries tube, going back the same way she had come. As she crossed an intersection, she noticed movement out of the corner of her eye and frowned disapprovingly. Who was in a Jeffries tube at this time of night? She had told everyone that she would be able to handle it! Granted, she had been there for about an hour, but they shouldn't be expecting her for another fifteen minutes. She shook her head and kept crawling, still thinking about the strange being that had disappeared so quickly.
She rounded the corner, still lost in thought. It was due to this fact that she was taken by complete surprise when she ran into someone. She looked up.
"Oh! Hi, what are you doing here?" she asked the person in front of her.
Her companion didn't answer. B'Elanna yelped as she heard a hiss and felt the sting of a hypospray on her neck, informing her that something had just been injected into her body. She clapped a hand to her neck.
"What was that?" she said, glaring up at the familiar face.
No answer.
She sighed, "The least you can do is . . ." B'Elanna stopped talking as the face of the person in front of her started fading in and out of focus.
"Okay. What's going on?" B'Elanna said thickly. Or she tried to say. Her tongue didn't seem to be working. Her arms felt like they were made of cargo containers, and her head was suddenly packed full of cotton.
Then, like a burst of flame, the pieces clicked together, and she figured out something she didn't really want to know.
"It was you!" she whispered, the words slurring together, her vision becoming blurrier every second, "You're the one who knocked out Tom."
Her assailant nodded, "Very good, Torres."
"No," she whispered, looking up into the cold eyes of the person above her as she sank slowly to the ground, "You're supposed to be my friend!"
B'Elanna knew she'd been drugged, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She felt a rush of anger toward the person towering over her, but the drug was working too quickly for her taste. She only managed six words.
"I thought you were my friend."
B'Elanna's resistance to the inevitable broke finally broke, and her head hit the ground with a thud as merciful darkness consumed her. But not before she heard the response her last statement had brought out of her attacker. The words chilled her heart.
"You thought wrong."