The Ring

Chapter 4

B'Elanna's door opened almost before the chime finished ringing. "Shhh!" she hissed, reaching out to grab Janeway by one arm and pull her inside. "If anything wakes Miral at this point, I think I might get violent."

Janeway took in Tom and B'Elanna's quarters, even smaller than hers and Chakotay's. Married ensigns' quarters, at best. An insult to her best officers. She gritted her teeth. "Where's Tom?" she whispered.

"In Harry's quarters, playing some sort of card game. He's taking the graveyard shift with Vesuvius over there." B'Elanna gestured with her head toward Miral's quiet bassinet. "He deserves a break. What's going on? Where'd you take off to so fast? Chakotay was looking for you earlier."

"He found me," Janeway answered. "Wait." She opened her tricorder and scanned the room, adding four new recording devices to the collection in Chakotay's wet sock, still clutched in her hand, now dripping on the utilitarian gray carpet.

B'Elanna watched open-mouthed as Janeway made her raid, dropped unidentifiable tiny devices into a wet sock, then dumped the sock in the bathroom sink and blasted the cold water. "What the hell is that?" B'Elanna demanded.

Janeway explained in quick, angry words. "I need you to take one apart and figure out what you can about it. There's not much point in trying to maintain secrecy – whoever is recording has seen us remove them. But I'd like to know if it's Starfleet technology or something else."

B'Elanna reached under the surface of the water to pull out and finger one of the devices, then shoved it back in the sock. "Sure. Anything that doesn't make noise, you can count on me."

"Thank you," Janeway said, then paused with a sad, pensive look that her chief engineer knew well.

B'Elanna touched her arm. "We've beaten worse enemies than this, Captain," she said. "What happened today was – well, unbelievable, but we'll get through it. And whoever's behind this covert surveillance, we'll catch them."

Janeway nodded without enthusiasm. "I know. And Kathryn will do. I don't command anything anymore. It's just that … finally, when I thought Chakotay and I could be together…." She let her words trail off.

B'Elanna needed only a moment to follow Janeway's train of thought. "You thought you could be together? You mean – you won't – you can't now?" she asked, having difficulty framing such an absurd question. "But you're married."

Janeway gently shut the bathroom door so that they could speak above the sound of rushing water without waking Miral. She rubbed her neck and rolled her head a little. "Maybe it was a mistake."

B'Elanna staggered backward a small step. "A mistake?" She gripped the bathroom counter. This couldn't be happening. It would – "You haven't said this to him, have you?" It would destroy Chakotay. Not another loss. Not her.

"No, of course not. I just told him that we need to keep separate quarters until all this" – she waved toward the sock in the sink – "is resolved. We have to stop providing the conspirators with ammunition against us."

B'Elanna pressed a hand to her forehead ridges, trying to reassure herself that she was awake and not in some sleep deprivation-induced nightmare. "What did he say?"

"Well, he objected, of course, but in the end he saw that it's the prudent thing to do," Janeway answered. "But that's not the point. I think we were both imagining a future that can't come to be. I'm afraid I'll drag him down, and with him the rest of the Maquis. I should have had the strength to wait." She slumped against the door and eyed her former officer, obviously anticipating some strong reaction.

B'Elanna leaned on the counter, looking similarly drained. She looked around the white, tiled room. It was so reassuringly home-like, so plainly not a starship. Terra firma, what they'd fought for all these years. "Are you happy together?" she asked. Except for a few public events, like the reception aboard the Dauntless, and their business-as-usual briefings, she'd been distracted by Miral and had hardly seen them together since the wedding. In the one conversation she'd had with Chakotay, she'd asked him how in the world all this had come about. His smile had rivaled the arc of the galaxy visible through the mess hall portals.

"I just asked her, B'Elanna," he told her, attacking Chell's latest mystery specialty as if it were crème brulée. "I never thought she'd say yes, but I had to ask. What would I be if I didn't ask?"

B'Elanna smiled and shook her head with satisfaction at her old friend's radiant happiness. "And the instant wedding? How did you get her to agree to that? I would've thought this would be the over-the-top Starfleet wedding to end all Starfleet weddings."

He waved his fork in disagreement. "Not me. She wanted that. I thought she'd want at least her family there, but she's had bad luck with engagements. How could I say no to her? So here I am: signed, sealed, delivered," he joked, spreading his arms a little.

"And how is married life?" B'Elanna asked. "I can't say I've seen much of either of you off duty lately, but then I've mostly been in a newborn coma."

He grinned again and ducked his head as if embarrassed, then grew serious. "After so much loss, B'Elanna – I know you understand what I mean – I feel superstitious about this much happiness. I can't accept that it's real. I lie awake at night watching her breathe, because what if this is all we'll ever have? What if that memory is the most I'll" – he broke off and set down his fork. For a second, there was an old melancholy in his eyes, something she hadn't seen since their Maquis days, and then briefly when he received Sveta's letter, telling him of the massacre of the Maquis on Tevlik's moon. "I'm sorry. Kathryn doesn't like me to get morbid like this, but I know she feels the same way. We just need some long, quiet days of peace to get used to the idea. I hope we get them."

That day, B'Elanna had reached across the table to grasp his hand. "Everything will be fine," she assured him. "Back on Earth, you'll have all the sunny days a brooding former Maquis can handle. You'll have laughter, and family, and new projects, and you'll walk through fields of gold hand in hand with your hard-won captain. It will all be worth it."

Chakotay squeezed her hand and blinked away the moisture in his eyes. "That wasn't very Klingon poetry, but it was good," he said.

She had believed her own words, mostly, and done her best to make him believe too. Now she had to find a way to handle this devastating scene in a closet-like bathroom, before Miral started screaming again. She wasn't prepared. She needed the fields of gold as much as Chakotay did. "Are you happy together?" she asked again, when Janeway didn't answer.

Janeway brushed her eyes with the back of her hand. "Until today, I would have said I've never been happier. It's such a relief just to turn to him and step into his arms, instead of holding everything in. And in bed" – she stopped but smiled in spite of herself.

"I'd heard rumors, back in the day," B'Elanna admitted. "Very athletic, was his reputation." She wasn't going to be the one to bring up how Seska had bragged about marathon sex with Chakotay, but she hadn't forgotten.

Janeway met her eyes and actually blushed, something B'Elanna had never seen until the day of the briefing room wedding. Apparently, it was a permanent new characteristic of a woman certain members of the crew had called the Ice Queen, early on. "I'd never been with someone so … adventurous," she answered, a little abashed but as straightforward in her manner as she would be discussing plasma manifolds. "It's not that I'm inexperienced, but I've spent so much of my life working long hours on a starship that – well, let's say he's teaching me a few things."

"And you're enjoying it?" B'Elanna wanted Janeway to keep talking, to admit how good things were before she reflexively tried to scuttle her own happiness for the sake of the crew.

Janeway showed a sly little smile. "At first I was a little worried that he'd be disappointed in me. I know that nobody thinks the captain hears ship's gossip, but especially early on, I got ridiculously detailed reports from Tuvok on every word a former Maquis crew member uttered. They thought I was – well, repressed is a polite word for it, and – I mean, imagine the irony of trying to measure up to Seska in the sack!" Janeway began to laugh for real, a belly laugh, as much out of exhaustion and nerves as anything, and B'Elanna, a little stunned at what she'd just heard, was unable to resist laughing too.

"Shh!" B'Elanna urged between muffled giggles. "Miral!"

"Right, right!" Janeway responded, clapping a hand over her mouth.

B'Elanna filled two water glasses from the gushing faucet. When they'd both had a few sips, she posed the most important question. "But then, why would you say the marriage was a mistake?"

The lightness brought by laughter disappeared from Janeway's face. "When I spoke to Admiral Paris, while we were still aboard Voyager, he assured me that everything would be fine. He said he would see to it that my crew were treated fairly, and I trusted him. I thought I could let down my guard where the Maquis and Equinox crew members were concerned, although until Chakotay proposed, it didn't seem as if there was much to let down my guard about. I was too hasty, B'Elanna. I've put all of you at risk."

B'Elanna stepped up to look her former captain straight in the eye. "Listen to me. Not one of us would want for a minute for you to martyr yourself for us. We're willing to stand on our records," she declared. "We've served honorably, and if there's some penalty we need to pay from our Maquis days, then we'll pay it. Not you. You are not our sacrificial lamb."

"And Chakotay" – Janeway continued, as if B'Elanna hadn't spoken, "he fell in love with the captain of Voyager. This larger than life figure I made myself. But the things they were saying about me today, it's a whole different person, someone he doesn't know, someone he wouldn't want anything to do with. That's what they're going to turn me into, and they'll tear him down because of me. I don't want to put him through that."

B'Elanna slammed down her glass, then looked anxiously toward the door, but there was no responding cry from the bedroom. "They were talking about a whole different person who isn't you! That's why it sounds unfamiliar. Do you really think any of that matters to him? Cap - Kathryn, with all due respect, he's seen you at your absolute worst, and the first thing he did when we made it back to the Alpha quadrant was ask you to marry him. That says it all."

Janeway nodded, but her eyes were melancholy. "It's not that we don't love each other, B'Elanna. I just hope that love is strong enough to overcome everything the Alpha quadrant is going to do to it."

B'Elanna grasped Janeway by her upper arms. "Just trust him, Captain. Promise me you'll trust him."

Janeway stared at B'Elanna's earnest face, overwhelmed by her own roiling emotions. "I let down a wall, B'Elanna," she said in a low voice, almost drowned out by the faucet. "I held it up for years, at enormous personal cost, and nothing good seems to be coming of the change."

"Nothing except being with the man you love," B'Elanna replied, speaking urgently, holding Janeway's reluctant eyes. "That has to be worth something – doesn't it?" Finally, Janeway nodded and embraced B'Elanna.

#

True to form, Owen Paris was behind his desk reviewing the next day's debriefing schedule when Janeway, uniform straightened and every hair smooth, buzzed for admission to his office a little after 2200 hours. She marched in and stood at attention before his desk.

"At ease, Katie," he told her, leaning back in his chair. "Before you strain something, as they say. What brings you here at this hour?"

"I think you know, Owen," she said, not relaxing at all as she passed him a note written in very small handwriting. I have reason to believe there may be recording devices in the room. Please stay silent while I scan. Her careful tricorder scan netted a handful of the tiny electronic eyeballs she and Chakotay had collected from their quarters. She walked into the adjoining restroom, wrapped her prize in a hand towel, and submerged it in a full sink of running water. By now, Paris was behind her, staring at the little bundle underwater. Janeway nodded. "It's okay to talk now. Quietly."

"What the hell were those?" he demanded.

"Video and audio recording devices. Our quarters were crawling with them. Have you watched the news vids lately?"

"No, I've been up to my neck in paperwork. I'm sorry I had to miss the first day of debriefings. I assumed they would be mostly pro forma."

Janeway huffed. "They were anything but that." She walked back to Paris's desk and pulled up a news site on the console. In only a few minutes, the suggestive newsvid from her quarters played. Paris's eyebrows shot toward his hairline. "What is the meaning of this? Where did that come from?"

"It was filmed tonight, in our quarters, after we left debriefings. We took a … nap," Janeway looked away from Paris long enough to stop the vid before any clothes came off, "and when we woke up, this was already on screen. We scanned the room and found the devices. They're high quality spyware, Owen, and no civilian put that kind of technology into a high security Starfleet facility without at least the assistance of someone well-placed in Starfleet. We found a similar number in Tom and B'Elanna's quarters. I believe that our crew is being cyber-stalked, by someone very resourceful within Starfleet."

Paris sat down heavily behind his desk. "I should have been prepared for something like this. I had no idea how far it had gotten."

"Why? Why would you think this was even a risk? I've never heard of a breach like this. And why would Starfleet take any of this gutter media seriously? Are you aware of the questions we were asked today?" Janeway came around to face him on the far side of the desk, still tense and formal.

He leaned forward in his big chair to rest his arms on the desk. "The review panel? What did they say to you?"

Janeway's jaw worked for a moment before she answered. "They accused us … me … of terrible things. Humiliating things." She swallowed hard but held his eyes. "Things we did not do."

Paris sighed and rubbed his eyes. "I should have been more vigilant. I just never thought" – he pushed out of his chair and began to pace behind it. "This has been going on far longer than you think, Katie. The Voyager crew has been targeted since you first made contact through the alien communications network."

She leaned on the edge of the desk and studied him. "Targeted? How?"

"Scurrilous rumors. Odd little gossip items about the Voyager crew that seemed to be coming from outside Starfleet, but – for those of us with actual knowledge of your transmissions – reflected genuine knowledge of conditions aboard the ship while it was still in the Delta quadrant. Early on, it seemed like pure invention, but then when we established regular communication, the rumors became more specific. We speculated that someone on board might have established illicit contact with someone in the Alpha quadrant outside Starfleet."

"Owen." Janeway put her weight on the desk. "It gets much worse than this, you know. They recreated scenes from Equinox on Voyager. These vids have our crew committing murder, theft… genocide. It all began to come out in today's briefings. Some of the admiralty take this seriously. They believe our logs were falsified to cover up crimes and that there may have been a whistleblower downloading information about the ship. I believe there is a Starfleet leak who is deliberately trying to smear and discredit our crew. I just wish I knew what they're trying to accomplish with this."

"We will get to the bottom of it," Paris promised. "Your names will be cleared fully."

"I know," she nodded. "Thank you. I keep trying to figure it out, and nothing makes sense. This whole whispering campaign, the rumors, the falsified vids – it's as much about discrediting us before the public as proving wrongdoing. Eventually, we'll be able to establish the truth, but in the meantime, we're dragged through the mud. Who benefits from that? Who is afraid of this crew receiving the hero's welcome they expected?"

Paris sat back down in his chair and folded his hands over his rounded belly. "I've been thinking about this for months. I should have brought it to you earlier, but I thought perhaps I was just being paranoid. At first, I agree, nothing made sense. You weren't even back yet. There was no serious expectation that we'd see you for decades. But before you re-emerged in the Alpha quadrant, the chatter was much more casual. It was easy to believe that it was nothing but lowlifes trying to enrich themselves with fake celebrity gossip and a few stolen images. We were concerned about the security breach, but it seemed fairly low level."

"And when we got back?" Janeway prompted.

"The scale expanded exponentially. Suddenly the vids were everywhere, and half the admiralty was requesting access to your logs to look for evidence."

"Today's debriefings were fairly … accusatory," Janeway said. "They seem to think we have something to hide."

Paris's hands clenched on the arms of his chair. "I'm afraid there will be more process than I'd hoped before we can wrap this up, but I've read all the logs myself. There is no evidence of any serious violations of Starfleet standards. Of course you bent the rules along the way, but Voyager is not Equinox. I will not rest until your entire crew is commended and promoted. But that still leaves us the question of who might want to damage you." He rose and walked toward the floor to ceiling windows overlooking the city, in a meditative posture.

"You have some idea?" Janeway asked. She moved around the corner of the desk to approach him in a tentative stance.

He glanced at her. Everything about her posture was edgy, as if she wasn't sure she could trust even her oldest friends. He turned toward her with more open body language, showing her his open hands. "I have suspicions. Since the resumption of hostilities with the Cardassians, your little band of surviving Maquis has taken on the force of legend. When we first got word from you, the existence of a united Starfleet-Maquis crew was like a shockwave across the Federation. The people who championed the Cardassian alliance were already embarrassed by the collapse of the peace treaty – Cardassian intelligence has used every means to get inside Starfleet, gain a tactical advantage over supposed allies – and then of course there was the slaughter of the Maquis. Voyager's appearance was a powerful reminder of how badly we'd misjudged the situation. Some people greatly resent that reminder, and Voyager's very existence."

"I can understand that," Janeway said, coming to stand beside Paris. They both turned back to the view, so peaceful below them. "So you're saying that this attempt to discredit us is part of an effort to restore the credibility of those who supported the alliance?"

He clapped a hand on her shoulder. "You should have been greeted as heroes, Katie. You're right about that. This is a very deliberate effort to prevent that. They understood that any direct attack against you would only gain you sympathy, so they took a more devious approach."

She took a long breath. "Disgracing us," she said in a low voice and brushed one hand against her left eye.

Paris sighed. "Yes. And there's something else you ought to know. Those microcameras, that's not Starfleet technology. It's something so new that our scheduled building-wide scans were unable to detect it. Only a tricorder scan in close proximity would pick them up."

"Cardassian technology?" she asked.

Paris looked at her and raised a knowing eyebrow.

Janeway clasped her hands behind her back as she had often done at the viewport of her ready room aboard Voyager. "If there's new Cardassian technology at play, this isn't just about restoring the reputations of discredited Starfleet leadership. It's about shifting public support for a new alliance."

"My thoughts exactly," Paris affirmed.

"So the big question is, who is behind this?"

Before Paris could answer, the office door slid open and a beam crossed the room, striking him. He crumpled almost silently. Janeway sprinted toward a tall, broad assailant covered entirely in black, who pulled a second phaser from a hip holster and brought her down just as quickly.

When she awoke, the room was filled with Starfleet medical and security enforcement personnel. "She's coming around," said a uniformed woman kneeling beside Janeway's head.

"Owen! Is he okay?" she asked immediately, struggling to roll toward where she'd last seen him.

A firm hand pushed her back down. "He's dead," said an unfamiliar security officer. "You killed him."