Chapter 9 – Doctor, Spy
The Doctor froze when he heard the words, spoken in an accent that reminded him of Lemarr, even though the tone was unlike anything he had heard coming from the Orion fugitive.
Who's afraid?
Not a question – more a taunt, a threat, like the hiss of a cobra rising to strike.
He peeked through the opening of the tube. What he saw made his eyes go wide. The silhouette of a woman in a flowing dress, her hand raised at the Commander's chest. The fact that he had been correct about the likely owner of the hair brush gave him no satisfaction, at the sight of her hand which, although he could not see it behind Tervellyan's body, very clearly held a phaser. Tervellyan's arms were raised, fingers slightly splayed, in the universal gesture of surrender.
The Doctor's emergency subroutines kicked in with a vengeance, and he suppressed the shiver that might have paralyzed him further. He had no clear shot with his own phaser, and he knew he could not make a sound or the Commander would likely be dead.
His instincts shouted at him to assist, defend, protect. What was the unwritten Voyager rule, never broken - except when a superior officer gave an express order?
Nobody gets left behind.
Tervellyan's own orders had been clear: Head back to where you won't arouse suspicions. Preserve the data, above all.
The Doc shook his head and crawled further up the tube, around the nearest corner, where he could not be seen from the quarters they had just broken into. The panel was still open, and the cabin's occupants would know how Tervellyan had gotten in. But if they scanned the tube, they would find no other bio signs. In the meantime, the EMH could remain unseen, listen, and perhaps even have a few moments to think about what to do next.
He heard another voice, male this time, followed by a slight buzz that his acute hearing identified as a tricorder. "Nothing there. I can't feel another presence. He was alone, like he says," the voice confirmed.
There were advantages to sending a hologram on a spying mission, he had to admit. Score one for Project Trojan Horse, the Doc admitted, and allowed himself a brief pang of regret at the untimely passing – at his own holographic hand - of Roy the Housefly.
"Let's keep him alive, for now," the Orion voice said. "I have some questions for our … friend."
The Doc let out a holographic breath. There was a bit of time; he could go for reinforcement rather than attempt to mount a rescue mission on his own. Then again, if this was the Syndicate, just what methods might they employ to ask their questions …? He shook his head, to try and remove such thoughts from his subroutines for the time being. He needed to focus on going somewhere where it would be safe to comm Voyager, and to request immediate beam-out for them both.
The Doctor headed up the tube, thanking his programming that he had perfect recall of the direction from which they had come. After he had put what he thought was a safe auditory distance between his own location and the ill-fated quarters, he tapped his comm badge.
"EMH to Voyager."
And met with silence.
"EMH to Captain Paris. Come in, please. Request immediate transport for myself and Commander Tervellyan. You will need to lock onto his biosigns as his communicator is likely compromised. Hello? Hello?"
He clenched his jaw in frustration when it became obvious that he would not get a response. Was it the Jeffries tubes that caused the disruption? Unlikely; he had always been able to use communications inside them on Voyager. Maybe the station's owners had set up a dampening field? That was more likely – and who knew what the other away team had been doing; maybe both of them had been discovered, and this was part of a hostile response …
But surely the situation was not dire enough for Tom Paris' so-called Plan B?
If they wanted him to be a Trojan Horse, like that pesky house fly of Zimmermann's, he might as well act like one and see if he could circumvent whatever barriers the Syndicate might throw up.
…..
"Captain, both the Commander's and the Doctor's communicators have gone off-line."
Tom spat out a curse. He asked the word he did not want to. "Destroyed?"
Asil shook her head. "Unconfirmed; I believe someone on the station has initiated a complete communications black-out. All signals are being reflected, including a hail to central station command I just attempted. It would be logical to assume that the blackout may be a reaction to the away team's attempts to, as you put it, hack into the station's database. It does not mean that the team itself has been discovered, or seized."
Like hell it didn't. Any number of scenarios raced through Tom's head, each worse than the one before. And each the direct consequence of his decision to send them into danger…
"Can you still read biosigns? A holographic signature?"
Asil punched in a few commands, while Baytart and Schmidt, who was manning Tactical in Ayala's absence, exchanged concerned glances.
"I may have located what could be the Commander's bio signs, Captain, and a holographic pattern that could be the EMH. The former is stationary, while the latter is moving away."
"Do you have enough to get a transporter lock?"
"Negative, sir. The blackout will not permit it. We have some limited eyes in, as far as tracking the Commander's bio signs and the EMH's signature are concerned, but we cannot contact them or pull them out. The required signal strength is too great, and is getting caught up in the station's defensive grid. It is amazingly well-equipped for a commercial station, sir."
Tom filed that last remark, and started to chew his lower lip. If the team had been forced to split up, something had to have gone seriously wrong.
"I assume there's been no data transmission into our computer?"
He did not wait for the expected headshake before muttering a curse. He turned to Baytart and Schmidt. "Have Coulthard and Nicoletti meet me in Shuttle Bay Two. Arno, you're with me. We're taking the Flyer; extraction protocol."
Tom turned to Asil. "You have the bridge, Lieutenant. Make sure your team continues with the analysis of the data Icheb and Ayala managed to bring back."
He took a deep breath and was halfway to the turbolift before his comm badge, chirped, on a closed line.
"Bring them back, Tom. And don't be too much of a hero. Torres out."
…..
The Doctor tried his communicator after every turn in the Jeffries tube, to no avail. Finally, he arrived at the panel where he and Tervellyan had entered. As he had seen the Commander do, he scanned for bio signs through the closed panel.
"No organics. Thanks for small mercies," he muttered to himself as he operated the lever. He stuck his head out and, seeing no one, climbed out, mentally cursing the unfamiliar bend of the Narovian knee. It took him longer than expected, and focused as he was on the operation of his extremities, he was not prepared for the voice that accosted him.
"Hey you," came the sharp challenge, causing him to bang his head on the metal frame. The EMH yelped a little – in surprise rather than pain, since he felt the former, but not the latter – and found himself confronted by a large 'fellow' Narovian. Not the brightest light, the Doctor determined instantly, if one could judge by the open-mouthed manner in which the man chewed some vile local botanical, displaying blue-stained, decaying teeth.
"Whatcher you doin' in the tube, buster? No maintenance call scheduled, far'n I know?"
The Doc gathered his wits. "It's the unscheduled maintenance calls that cause all the trouble, as I'm sure you know," he retorted. "There was a report of the sonic shower malfunctioning in one of the quarters."
"Sonic showers? Again? Whoever built this sucker of a station sure'n hell skimped on the connectors. And anything else. Never seen such shitty workmanship in me life. Only place they spent real money on is shields and scrambling devices - it's a wonder the place don't come apart at the rivets." He stopped for a moment, and scratched his sizeable gut.
"Well, at least it'll keep the likes of me'n'you in Kala leaves, eh." He lumbered down the hall without further questions – including the one the Doctor had been dreading as soon as his convenient excuse had left his lips, namely just where the supposed maintenance was hiding his toolkit. The EMH emitted a holographic sigh of relief.
A quick look at the wall schematic showed him that he was but one floor up from the infamous bar; figuring that he should be able to find a public comms facility on that level, the Doctor pulled his shoulders a little straighter and headed for a turbolift.
The promenade was busy, but not excessively so. He walked slowly, looking around as if he had just newly arrived and was taking the lay of the land, all the while searching for a comm station.
As he came closer to the bar and foot traffic picked up, the Doctor was able to snatches of conversation that not only provided rather unwelcome news, but convinced him of the futility of his current endeavour:
"… tried to comm my wife on Arren. She's having a baby and I promised to comm her every day, but …"
"Sodding incompetence. Can't even get the ship, and it's bloody docked here. Only thing that works on this puke hole of a station is the women."
Communications apparently were off line throughout Kalpak. A reaction to Tervellyan's attempt to transmit the station's database to Voyager? Or had the owners detected the fact that a transfer of the data had already taken place? Did it matter which? Either way, Voyager's crew would have noticed that the away team had been cut off, and drawn certain conclusions.
But in the meantime, the XO was in the hands of a hostile alien who, more likely than not, belonged to a notorious criminal gang and he himself was the only person who knew where he was being kept. Luckily, no one seemed to be suspecting that Tervellyan had had company, or would know whom to look for; the Doctor barely remembered his current physical parameters himself.
That said, being a stranger alone on a space station full of potential criminals – or traders, which based on the EMH's experiences in the Delta Quadrant, was almost the same thing – was not ideal. What he needed was allies.
The only person who came to mind was Tervellyan's acquaintance. He was stuck on the station thanks to the quarantine, the XO had said; it stood to reason that he was still here. Duranium trader, apparently. The barkeeper might know him, remember the apparently rather long discussion between this civilian and a Starfleet officer that had taken place right under his eye, before the dramatic disappearance of the night's main entertainment.
The Doctor came to a halt in front of an unsubtle, garishly coloured and well-lit sign. Saleena and her Sisters, the advertisement blared. Now better than ever! They had replaced Lemarr already, it would seem, probably assuming that the customers would neither notice nor care.
He stopped briefly when he noticed the cover charge. Since the bar had not been on the away team's itinerary this time, he had not brought any latinum with him, and the enormous Nausicaan by the entrance seemed to be there to discourage entry without payment. What was a hologram to do?
And just why was it his former assistant whom he now heard in the back of his head, whispering unsolicited advice with that unmistakable, insouciant grin audible in his voice: When in doubt, dance!
Resigning himself to the inevitable, the Doctor turned to the Nausicaan bouncer, schooling his features into his best tool-less maintenance guymode and channeling Tom Paris as best he could. "You, doorman. I've been told that there are problems with the lighting system."
The big brute stared at him, and moved to block the door. "No one told me," he growled, obviously accustomed to people trying to talk their way into the performance without shelling out the exorbitant fees charged by the owners. "And the lights are working just fine."
Inside the bar, the music picked up a beat and the lights began to flash, throwing flickering shadows against the wall of the corridor in time with the throbbing rhythm.
"The problems are intermittent," the Doctor said, his tone as drippingly patronizing as he could manage in light of years of practice. "Like that. You know – lights going on and then off, on and off, on and off?"
"Oh," the Nausicaan said, frowning. He had obviously been hired for his intimidating size rather than his towering intellect, and the EMH slipped past him in triumph before he had a chance to work things out.
Ignoring the spectacle of the three gyrating Orion women on the stage, and trying hard to shut his ears against what to his musically discriminating ear was a cacophony of discordant sounds, the EMH headed straight for the bar. The lounge was full, with customers standing between the occupied tables, swinging to the beat of the music and inhaling deeply something the Doctor's data banks readily identified as an airborne aphrodisiac, laced liberally with Orion pheromones.
But above all the jarring sensory inputs that assaulted his receptors, he detected a certain … edginess in the atmosphere. Perhaps it was a blend of the unexplained communications failure and last night's excitement? Whatever it was, it meant that his inquiries had to be at least a little bit circumspect. For a split second he was almost glad of his Narovian disguise.
"Good evening," he said, mustering his most jovial tone. "I wonder if you could help me locate someone who seems to have gotten lost. No doubt he fell for one of those women – he hasn't been seen since last night."
The barkeep snorted, and continued mixing a whole battery of sweet-smelling drinks. "And that is a problem why? Wouldn't be the first time. Those girls know their business."
"The problem," the Doctor said, sharpening his tone to a somewhat finer point, "is that the man is Starfleet. And you know what that means. One of them gets lost, pretty soon all hell breaks loose when they come looking. So the Stationmaster has asked me to act as a sort of go-between."
The man looked at him sharply, then nodded.
"Yeah, sure, I remember this one guy who was here yesterday," the barkeep said, in response to the Doctor's inquiry about Tervellyan. "Don't get too many Fleeters here. Probably a good thing, too. Actually, I think there were two, but this one, he was talking to Darmoth Krall for a long time; they seemed to know each other. Fleeter seemed a bit troubled about something. You know, frowned a lot. Don't think he was very happy. Not too interested in the girls, actually, now that I think about it."
"Yes, I'm told this Commander Tervellyan is not the most … sunshiny officer you are ever likely to meet," the Doctor confirmed. "In fact, apparently he can be quite prickly. But if he wasn't interested in the girls, I should probably see if I can find this Darmoth Krall. Is he still on the station? Perhaps he can help me locate the Commander."
The barkeep gave a snort. "'Course he is," he said. "He's usually in his office at this time."
His office? The Commander had not mentioned that this duranium trader acquaintance of his had a permanent office on the station.
"Remind me where I would find that?"
"Promenade, beside the commissary," the barkeep shrugged, and turned to a paying customer. "You'll know him to see him. Aren't that many human-Rigellian hybrids around, even in these parts."
"Thank you," the EMH mouthed at the man's back. He wasn't at all bad at this detective thing, he decided, preening a little. Perhaps he should ask Tom Paris for some of those holovids Jean-Luc Picard had given him and see how quickly he could resolve those co-called mysteries of the Admiral's? He left the bar with a bounce in his step, having momentarily forgotten about the life-threatening situation in which he had left Commander Tervellyan.
"You see," he tossed over his shoulder at the Nausicaan bouncer as he breezed past him on his way out, "Lights are all fixed. Now they're back in rhythm with the music."
The Doctor headed down the promenade, in what he hoped was the right direction. A couple of hundred metres down the curving corridor, an unruly crowd clamouring for entrance into an over-filled facility suggested that he had arrived at the commissary; he glanced in briefly. He recognized the barrels of antigen stacked in the back, but noticed that the Starfleet markings Lieutenant Ayala had reported had apparently been removed – rather crudely, as if melted off with a phaser or a laser torch. The Doc resisted the temptation to run his tricorder over the stack to confirm the nanoprobe signature.
The entrance beside the commissary was unremarkable, and there was nothing on the door denoting a trade representation. Instead, the small metal label read "Administration". The Doctor hesitated, his hand on the door chime. Maybe seeking the assistance of a man about whom he knew nothing, and who was apparently not exactly what Commander Tervellyan had thought he was, was not such a good idea after all?
But before he could give the matter any more thought the door opened, and a man strode out. Judging by his looks – more than half human, but with the very distinctive Rigellian cheekbones that gave him, in the Doctor's views, a vaguely sinister look – it had to be Darmoth Krall.
Right behind Krall was a short and stocky man, of a species the Doctor did not recall seeing before. He started accessing his memory banks for the alien's physical parameters, but was distracted when both men stopped right in front of him. Why was he suddenly unable to multi-task?
"What do you want?" the part-Rigellian demanded, in a none-too-friendly tone, of the supposed Narovian who was practically blocking his exit. This was clearly not a man to be messed with, the Doctor surmised quickly, even before he recognized the voice.
The male voice, who had scanned for other intruders, in the quarters where Trevellyan had been taken.
"Ah, uh, I was looking for …" Clearly, seeking this man's assistance in locating Tervellyan would not only be ineffective, but potentially fatal. The sudden need for a change in approach left the EMH at a momentary – and rather unprecedented - loss for words, but he recovered his wits quickly.
"A doctor. I was looking for a doctor. Since the pharmacy is next door, I thought, perhaps …"
"I'm not a doctor, and that," Krall pointed at the commissary, "is not a pharmacy. Now get out of the way and piss off, Narovian. I have business to attend to."
He practically shouldered the EMH aside and started to head down the corridor, followed by his sidekick. The stocky alien beside him turned briefly to give the Doctor a penetrating stare. A frown flitted across his face and he stopped suddenly, grabbing his principal by the arm.
"I get nothing from that guy," he hissed. "And I mean, nothing. Never felt anything like it. In fact, it's almost like … he isn't there. He's a total blank. Must have telepathic shielding of some kind. Bears watching."
The Doctor nearly froze again as something in his memory routines suddenly became unblocked, and the name of the species the man belonged to floated to the surface. Kintzi. The short man was a member of an ancient, telepathic race rarely seen now this close to Federation space. They had been greatly diminished after unsuccessfully waging war against the Federation in the past; some occasionally hired themselves out to people who bore it ill will.
The very reason Tom Paris had sent him, a hologram, to the station; something suddenly clicked in his mind, triggering a host of associations, none welcome. The idea behind sending a hologram to the station had, of course, been to enable him to move around undetected where others were present; it was a different matter altogether to be confronted by a trained Kintzi one-on-one, and in an already suspicious situation at that.
Putting some distance between him and the telepath seemed like an excellent solution. The EMH turned and started down the corridor, away from the two men. He tried to shift his focus to keeping his pace steady and slow - concentrating on more than one action at a time was becoming increasingly difficult, and made him feel as if he was floating under several tons of medical gel. A thought struck him: the excess data in his memory banks seemed to be affecting his ability to process internal taskings and decision trees.
As he retreated, he heard Krall bark an order into a wrist communicator. Clearly, whatever was jamming up signals coming in and out of the station was not affecting its internal frequencies. The Doctor broke into a run; the termination of the internal command to act inconspicuously freed up at least one channel to curse Tom Paris and his bright ideas, followed by imprecations against Jarod Tervellyan and his deplorable taste in acquaintances.
But what was it he was supposed to remember?
I am a doctor, not a spy, he repeated to himself like a mantra, until he came to an intersection corner. The corridor forked off in another direction here – one of the spokes of the space station. Straight or right? Straight or right?
He searched his internal data bases for applicable information. Something surfaced: Plan B. Outer rim, stay in the outer rim …
He shook his head and resisted the temptation to turn the corner, instead continuing to run down the slightly curving, wider corridor of the main station ring. As he did so, the instructions embedded in his matrix began to crystallize further. Plan B.
The Doctor took off the leather jacket while he ran; he kept running even when one the PADDs fell out of the pocket and clattered onto the floor. Had he possessed the necessary processing space, he might have felt grateful that while Zimmermann's programming may have included breathing routines, it would not actually leave him winded - Narovian nostrils or not. But whatever memory space he still had access to now urged him towards the completion of one task, and one task alone: Plan B.
"There he is!" The shout came from the spoke he had just past. The Doctor became dimly aware of a new threat to his tasking. He turned around and saw two large individuals coming after him, phasers drawn – they were possibly Nausicaan, but there was no time to check the silhouettes against his species inventory.
He slung the jacket over his left arm and started taking off his emitter as he ran. One small, unobstructed set of his perception subroutines observed with fascination as one of the sleeves started to smoke a little – a phaser burn, that had gone clear through his holographic body but had found an actual target in Tom Paris' favourite piece of clothing. He gave a mental shrug; his former assistant would probably consider this newest damage to be cool, when he got to see it, seeing as it matched the damage he had inflicted himself. He dismissed the extraneous thought and clipped the mobile emitter to the jacket.
There it was – the universal sign for recycling chutes: an arrow chasing its tail.
Plan B.
He had earlier dismissed it as one of Tom Paris' more hare-brained schemes, but in the absence of other options the execution of the plan had become paramount. Spurred on by rapidly approaching footsteps, the Doctor shoved the jacket into the opening.
"Emitter, transfer EMH," he shouted after the still-smoldering garment and its precious accessory of twenty-ninth century technology, as they disappeared down the chute. He turned towards his pursuers, staring in wide-eyed wonder at the reddish blooms of repeated phaser blasts as he faded out of existence.