Chapter Twenty-Four

Chakotay stepped out of his shuttlecraft and into the artificially bright environment of Alpha Walker. He went North, as he had been instructed, until he came across an assembly line of work benches, and a thin woman with her hair tied up in pins, putting military gear into canisters. Cassandras came and went, packing up loads of gear and transferring them onto ships for transport back to Earth.

"Margaret Thorpe?"

The woman turned abruptly, and seeing a Starfleet uniform, reached for her weapon. He raised his hands, in a gesture that was becoming maddeningly familiar.

"Oh," she said, examining his face more carefully. "Cassandra said you would be coming. What can I do for you, Commander?" she asked, returning to her work.

"That's heavy artillery you've got there," Chakotay observed.

"Believe me, it didn't come cheap," she replied. "War is a business, Commander, make no mistake about it."

Chakotay laughed. "I agree with you. Speaking of war, I'm hoping you might be able to help me find someone instrumental in fighting this one. Can you tell me where I could find Peg O'Shaughnessy?"

The woman didn't flinch. "I'm afraid I have no idea. No one by that name works here."

"Are you sure? I think I saw her name on the Apocrypha crew manifest."

She continued furiously packing canisters. "Well then, she may be dead. The crew manifest can't seem to keep up with the number of casualties we suffer."

"No, I don't think she's dead." Chakotay advanced further.

"Perhaps she suffered the unfortunate fate of becoming a Cassandra. I hear they're recruiting these days."

"No, I don't think so. In fact, I'm absolutely sure she is not a Cassandra. I happen to have a photograph of her right here."

Margaret did not look up, but her hands stopped moving.

"You are Peg O'Shaughnessy, Ms. Thorpe."

Her dark eyes fell to the photograph in Chakotay's hands. It was an unmistakable likeness.

She stood deadly still for a moment. And then she turned to him with a snarl on her face that made him entirely sure she was capable of murder.

"What the hell do you want from me?"

Chakotay felt his heart quicken. "I want to help you," he said. "I want to know what happened to you."

She fixed her intense, curious stare upon him once again. "Why?"

"Because I think you may know more than you think you do about this war. I think you may be able to solve some crucial problems."

She snapped one of the canisters around her shoulder. "Is that so? What happened to me, as you put it, is that my parents died when I was eight, and left me in the care of my brother. That is what happened to me, Commander. Is this little chat over now?"

"I've met your brother," said Chakotay. "Fleet Admiral Derek O'Shaughnessy."

"Well then you know he has some rather interesting ideas."

"To say the least."

She continued to stare into his eyes, and he could not tell if she was about to cry, or scream, or do something else entirely.

"He experimented on me. He forced me to take drugs, he beat me senseless. He injected Borg DNA into my body. He did this to me."

She lifted her Apocrypha uniform shift, and revealed a long, rectangular metal plate where her chest should have been. The scars and dried blood were still visible.

She pulled the shirt back down violently. "All in the name of science. To create the perfect officer."

"I'm so sorry," said Chakotay.

She turned her gaze to the shipyard, steadying her breathing. The artificial light hit the fine lines on her face, making her look old and drawn. "He tried to force me to join Starfleet when I came of age, so he could continue his experiments on me. But I wasn't about to be his perfect officer anymore. I deliberately failed the Starfleet entrance exam, and I ran away to join Apocrypha, where I disappeared. Not the ideal life, perhaps, but I've built a home here. I've been safe here."

Chakotay put a hand on her shoulder. "I'm afraid you might be wrong about that, Margaret."

"What do you mean?"

"A few months ago, I met an informant, who told me that I could find the source of the Psychic Sisters drug from this document. Do you know what this map represents?"

He pulled up the schematic that he had been carrying since his encounter with Balthasar.

"Of course I do," she said impatiently. "This is the structural cell underneath Alpha Walker's engine room. I was here when it was built. What are you saying, Commander?"

"Is there any way to get down there?"

Chakotay had never been inside the bowels of Alpha Walker before; it was a minefield of unfinished interior design, unheated rooms with exposed beams, ship components and racing equipment.

"This way."

Margaret ushered him into the engine room.

"Help me get all this out of the way."

He helped her move the detached bulkheads, which much have been part of the design for some other area of the station. Once the material had been moved, he noticed that there was a wide hatch on the floor.

"There's a tool kit on that shelf, will you hand it to me?"

Chakotay obliged.

After a few minutes of wrestling, Margaret's deft hand pried open the hatch.

Cassandra had been correct. This was the infrastructure of Alpha Walker. A network of pin-jointed beams, each of them connected to tiny vials of blue fluid.

"What is this?"

Chakotay shook his head in disbelief. "Psychic Sisters," he said. "It's being generated here, on Alpha Walker. Starfleet must have had people undercover while Apocrypha was in its beginning stages. Margaret –"

She had risen, and began pacing slowly, without closing the hatch. Her hands were folded across her chest, and her eyes darted everywhere.

"He found me," she said. "He's been here, all along, watching me. He tricked me into thinking I was safe here, but he's always had his Starfleet spies hanging around. This place - this place was my escape. Apocrypha was exactly the group of misfits I was starving for. They took me in, they trained me, and they made me their managing director because of my passion and my resolve to expose Starfleet for what it really is. I have spent my entire career trying to fight my brother. And this – this has been going on right in front of my face, for years!"

She knelt beside the hatch and cradled her head in her hands.

"It wasn't enough to torture me, was it?" she moaned. "You had to laugh at me too, you bastard."