Chapter 11
The planetoid in the Betreka Nebula housed far more members of the Terran Rebellion than Harry had expected, given the paltry turnout for the Aldebaran liberation campaign. There was a veritable complex of hastily constructed shelters serving as housing units and work spaces. In the center of the complex was a grassy field that the rebels used as an informal gathering place, when it wasn't being used for a kind of sport Harry couldn't quite identify. It seemed to involve teams of five or six using large poles with curved baskets at the end to pass a ball back and forth. The strange sport aside, the rebel base wasn't a bad place at all – especially compared to his last two residences in this universe. In fact, the members of the Terran Rebellion, while zealous, were rather easy to get along with.
Excepting Kathryn and her unending quest to recruit him into her band of merry engineers. Presently he was in one of the structures that served as the computer lab for the development of the holographic army. Yesterday they'd enjoyed a minor success: with some pains Reg and Zimm had created several different options for physical parameters, which the program for each soldier would randomly select. The holographic soldiers no longer looked like Zimm and instead were a wide range of humans, with varying heights, weights, and eye, hair, and skin color. That had pleased Kathryn greatly, and as Harry had quickly learned, when Kathryn was happy, everyone was happy.
Today, however, they weren't having much luck with the creation of the portable projectors, and Kathryn's mood was at the other end of the spectrum. She was short and caustic in her remarks to Reg and Zimm. Toward Harry, who was still refusing to participate but wasn't allowed to leave the lab, she was utterly malicious. He no longer thought her earlier threat of sending him out an airlock was an empty one.
He watched with some interest as Reg and Zimm sifted through the problem with a third human, a female with shoulder-length auburn hair whose name he hadn't been told. They faced a considerable challenge. The holoemitters with which he was familiar always operated synchronously; if a hologram moved across a space and out of range of one emitter, it would remain solid because another emitter would take over. Creating a unidirectional portable version was difficult, and ensuring that it would operate under unknown conditions was even more of a challenge.
And, Harry realized, they were approaching the situation backward. They were trying to create emitters the Terrans could carry, which would project a hologram somewhere near them. What they needed, and what would solve the unidirectional problem, was something like the Doctor's mobile emitter, connected to the holograms themselves.
The woman suggested that they increase the strength of the optronic circuitry, and Harry shook his head. The three were competent enough – clever, really, to have created the holographic army with so little access to technology – but they were clearly out of their element. Once again he felt pulled between conscience of duty and conscience of morality.
Reg made a few adjustments to the prototype emitter, and then reinitialized the projection. A short blonde woman with blue eyes appeared, shimmered a few times, and then disappeared as the prototype made a hiss and pop, and Reg dropped it.
"You overloaded the circuitry," Harry said.
The three engineers looked at him.
Harry rose from his stool with a sigh, knowing which side had finally won the tug of war. Avoiding Kathryn's stare, he picked up the damaged prototype. "It's going to need a power flow regulator so that it doesn't overload. That's going to make it about a kilo heavier, but if you adjust it to be carried as a backpack, rather than worn as a wristband, it should still be manageable. But it means the holograms will be projected behind the real soldiers, not in front. Of course, we could transport a few of these ahead of the army and bring them online remotely, so that it appears we've transported soldiers down when all we've really done is activated the holograms. That way, when the real soldiers arrive with the backpacks, they won't be on the front lines."
When he was finished, he dared to look at Kathryn. She now reminded him of the captain, smiling at him with a look of pride in her eyes. He had made her happy.
Unfortunately, that was as much as he was able to contribute to their plans. Before he could suggest how they proceed, the complex sounded with an alert, and the five of them ran out of the lab toward the central field. "Incoming Alliance ship!" someone warned.
"Reg, Zimm, hide the computer equipment!" Kathryn barked.
People began scrambling from one structure to another, and Harry saw several older people hurried away from the complex all together, presumably to some hidden location where they would be safe. Suddenly several figures, the unmistakable outlines of Klingons and Cardassians, materialized in the field, and then chaos erupted.
Before Harry could find cover, he felt the familiar tingle of a transporter taking his body apart molecule by molecule.
The Klingons and the Cardassians were right behind him. Once relative calm was reestablished throughout the camp, the rebels took stock of the damage that had been done in the swift raid on their base: virtually none.
"They found us, took Harry, and left," Reg summed up. He slowly turned toward Kathryn, the only conclusion dawning on them at the same moment.
"They came for him," Kathryn said grimly.
Reg nodded with displeasure. "Harry Kim is a collaborator."
"Harry!" There was sheer delight in B'Elanna's voice as she watched him materialize on the transporter pad. She hugged him fiercely before she realized that the sub-regent should probably not be seen embracing a lowly Terran.
"A cousin from her father's side of the family," Gowron explained to the Andorian, who was looking on scornfully.
"How nice."
"Now that you've had your reunion," Gowron said authoritatively to Harry, "get to the Terran quarters. And don't forget that your place is to serve the sub-regent."
Harry looked at B'Elanna, but she just nodded as if to tell him she'd explain later. With some confusion he allowed the Andorian with one antenna to lead him down the corridor, away from B'Elanna, and into a small room with a bed and a chair and not much else. Before the door closed, he called out, "What's going on?"
The Andorian paused in the doorway, considering for a moment. "You were working against the Alliance," he declared venomously. "You turned your back on your own cousin. And now we're going to make all your friends pay."
Then he stepped into the corridor, and the doors closed behind Harry, followed by the sound of a lock being engaged.
"He is a known enemy of the Alliance!" the Andorian grumbled. He looked at B'Elanna beseechingly. "How am I supposed to keep you safe if we surround ourselves with untrustworthy Terrans? I'm only trying to protect you, Sub-regent." His blue hand tentatively fingered the stump of his lobbed-off antenna, perhaps to remind B'Elanna of the extent of his loyalty.
"By turning the rebels, we'll be ensuring our own position," she reminded him.
"Why did we attack that base, only to get him?" one of the Klingons asked. "We should have captured them all!"
"That man is a dishonorable traitor!"
"No, he's not," Damar swiftly intervened. "The sub-regent sent him to infiltrate the Terran Rebellion in order to feed us information."
"Why didn't you tell us this in the first place?" one of the Cardassians asked skeptically.
"The sub-regent doesn't have to explain herself to you!" Gowron bellowed.
"When we dismantle the Rebellion," Damar continued, "Martok will have no choice but to surrender to us. The Regent will declare us heroes."
B'Elanna's head was spinning faster than Damar could weave tales. Cardassians are awfully good at telling lies, she observed – something to file away in her memory.
As Damar and Gowron continued with what could only loosely be termed a staff briefing, B'Elanna stopped listening. She concentrated instead on what she remembered from the Sacajawea's sensor readings six days earlier and tried to hypothesize what kind of technology Damar could possess that would get her and Harry home. Maybe they found a Borg transwarp conduit? That doesn't explaining how we entered a parallel universe, though. The last time she'd examined Damar's personal database in the ship's computer, she had found several security trips that would alert him if anyone was trying to decrypt his access code, much less actually succeeding at doing so. A few more days, she reminded herself. We launch the assault on Martok, and then I'm done here. Or sooner if Harry can help me get around the encryption protocols.
Something Damar said caught her attention, and she tuned into what he was explaining to the crew. "Why do you think we didn't kill everyone at the base or take them prisoner? Because we're going to use them to gather information, and then we're going to take down the entire Terran Rebellion. No more skirmishes. This time we will eradicate the infestation. We will restore power and glory to the Alliance."
This last line evinced a few cheers from the Klingons and the more effusive Cardassians.
B'Elanna was fuming. Surely he's lying. He can't really mean we're going to attack the rebel base. That wouldn't serve his mission.
She would have to wait until they were alone to talk to him about it. For now she excused herself from the group to tell Harry as much about their upside-down mission as she understood.