Face of the Enemy

Source Episode: VOY 2x26 Basics, part 1

"You know," Tom observed, nodding towards the opposite end of the mess hall where Captain Janeway and Commander Chakotay stood suspiciously close together, "they've been looking more and more friendly ever since they got back from that planet."

"I hear they've gone on at least six dates in the last month," Harry said.

"Six?" B'Elanna asked, her eyebrows raised. "I heard it was more like three."

"Either way," Tom sighed, "at least they have someone to kiss at zero-hour. They have each other, the Delaneys both have parters now, Swinn has Hogan, Neelix has Kes, and—" He gestured to me and Harry— "you two have each other." He turned to B'Elanna. "What do you say, B'Elanna? It isn't New Year's without someone to kiss."

"Try it, and I'll break your nose."

Harry and I snorted with laughter.

"Talia," Neelix greeted as he approached me, pulling me aside. "Tell me, how do Bajorans say, 'Happy New Year?'"

"Actually, we don't," I replied. "The Bajoran new year coincides with the Gratitude Festival, and we say, 'peldar Joi,' or 'happy Gratitude.' But it won't come up for several more months."

"Ah," he said, slightly disappointed. "I suppose I'll just stick with the Terran greeting then."

"What's wrong, Neelix? You look bothered about something."

His eyes moved over to where Kes was talking with Lon. "I don't like how Crewman Suder is looking at her."

"Neelix," I said, drawing his attention back to me. "Lon gets both his visual and empathetic sensory input by looking at people, which can make his gaze seem more intense than most. There's nothing to worry about. Kes' friendship has actually helped him grow a lot as a person. You should be proud of her."

"Friendship. I think he's got more than friendship on his mind."

"Your jealousy is misplaced, my friend."

His bushy eyebrows cinched together. "What do you mean?"

I suppressed a laugh at Neelix's confusion. "Lon is gay."

His mouth dropped open slightly as he processed this new revelation. "Really? You mean he's not... he's not interested in women?"

"No."

"I... I didn't know."

"Well he hasn't dated anyone since we got here, so nothing for anyone to gossip about there. But it isn't exactly a secret, either—at least, not among the Maquis. Kes isn't his type at all. They're just friends."

He nodded, relaxing somewhat. "Just… friends."

I placed a hand on his arm. "Neelix, is this the first time you've been jealous for Kes' affection ever since you worked things out with Tom, or have you been hiding things from me?"

"Well, I-I suppose sometimes… once or twice, maybe… I've felt some… concern… for Kes. I mean, she's just such a trusting person, you know, she never sees the bad in anyone. But jealous? Now that's, that's a strong word."

I lifted an eyebrow.

"Okay, fine. Maybe I've been a little jealous. But I've kept it to myself! I haven't said or done anything about it, not even once! I've kept my anxiety under control, just like you taught me, and I've never missed a treatment."

"Hey," I said, squeezing his arm gently. "I know that; you've been doing such a good job managing yourself over the past year. But, Neelix, can I make a suggestion?"

"Of course."

"In counseling, we have a specific branch of therapy devoted to helping couples talk through and strengthen their relationships. The key to a healthy long-term relationship is communication, but it's not always easy to do without a mediator. Why don't you talk to Kes, and see if she'd be interested in scheduling some sessions with me so I can work with you two as a couple."

He stroked his whiskers as he considered my suggestion, then nodded. "You know, now that I think about it, that may be not be a bad idea. Couples… counseling. Yes. Very good."

"But don't be pushy about it when you bring it up with Kes, okay? She has the right to say no, and you cannot take it personally if she doesn't want to go. Do you understand?"

He nodded earnestly. "Yes, of course, of course. No, her decision. Right. Very good." He smiled. "Thank you, Talia."

I patted his arm proudly before dropping my hand to my side. "Any time, Neelix."

A few days later, Voyager received a distress call.

"Chakotay," Seska pleaded, green eyes full of desperation and fear, "they're going to take your son. When Culluh saw the baby—" She glanced at the door behind her. "I hear them coming. I don't have much time. When he saw the baby wasn't his... Please Chakotay, help us. Not for me. For your son."

"It makes sense," Captain Janeway said to Chakotay as he paced across her ready room. She watched him with concern from the raised deck where her couch and coffee table were situated. "It might all be true."

"What?" I didn't bother to hide my surprise. "No, I don't buy that. This is obviously a trap."

She gripped the guardrail sectioning off the lounge area from the rest of her office. "We don't know that for certain."

I straightened from where I had been resting my hip against the captain's desk. "Of course we do! She's followed us for nearly two years, trying again and again to take the ship. All she does is lie. We don't even know who she really is!"

Janeway crossed her arms. "Right now, Commander, all we know is that she is the mother of a newborn Federation citizen who may be in grave danger."

Chakotay stopped beside me, gripping the back of a chair for support. "Still, the safest thing would be to ignore this message and resume our course."

I looked into his eyes. "You owe that child nothing, Chakotay."

"I'm not going to resume our course just yet," Janeway said. "I want you to think about it, Chakotay. This has to be your decision. If you choose to go after him—" she cast a pointed glance at me— "this crew will stand behind you."

In spite of my counsel, Chakotay decided to go after his son. After some discussions with Neelix and the senior staff, Janeway had Tom set a course to follow the warp trail that Cullah's ship had left behind. It wasn't long before the trail diverged, with a smaller warp trail splitting off from Cullah's and moving out of Kazon space. We decided to follow the new trail, and eventually caught up to a Kazon shuttle with one very weak Cardassian lifesign.

It was Seska. Her baby was not on board.

Janeway had Seska beamed directly to sickbay, sending me with Chakotay to see her. When we arrived, Kes and Dr. Schmullis were rapidly working to stabilize her condition. She was covered in blood, soaking through her clothes and filling the room with with the sour smell of copper and infection.

I slipped my hand into Chakotay's and gave it a squeeze. He didn't pull away, but neither did he return the gesture. He was frozen, jaw clenched and eyes hard as he watched Seska fight to cling to life.

Once Dr. Schmullis had stabilized Seska's condition, he sent Kes to run blood samples in the medlab. Then, he came to brief us. "She'll be fine. Kazon medical science is quite rudimentary, but even they should have done a better job on her postnatal care. She delivered no more than seventy-two hours ago. They used a laser regenerator to repair tears to her perineum, but whoever did it clearly didn't know what they were doing. The wounds reopened and became infected. A few more hours without medical care, and she would have been dead."

"When can we talk with her?" Chakotay asked.

"It'll take a few hours for her fever to come down. I'll let you know when I think she's ready."

"Doctor," Kes called from the lab. When we rushed into the other room to join her, she looked up from the microviewer. "I have confirmed four separate DNA samples on Seska's skin and clothes."

"Four?" Chakotay asked, horrified.

"Yes. The first is her own, the second and third belong to two different Kazon males, and the fourth—" She hesitated, fixing Chakotay with a deeply pained look. "The fourth is another male, with genetic markers matching both human and Cardassian DNA. I ran a comparative analysis against your DNA record, Commander. The fourth blood sample is definitely from your son. I'm sorry."

Seska's weak voice called out from the surgical bay. "Yad'o."

The universal translator had, of course, conveyed her words in Federation Standard. She was calling for her father.

Chakotay and I were the first to return to sickbay, but we both stopped short of Seska's periphery. Neither of us was ready to face her.

Kes breezed past us and went to Seska's bedside. "It's alright, you're safe now."

Seska's eyes moved about the room, but seemed unable to focus on anything. When she spoke, she spoke only in Kardasi. "Am I at home? Am I on Cardassia?"

Dr. Schmullis began scanning her with a medical tricorder. "She's still feverish. I doubt she has any idea what's going on right now."

Seska grabbed Schmullis by the collar and yanked him off-balance. "Do you know who I am, you alien?" she spat in her native tongue. "I want to see my father, Tekeny Ghemor. I order you to get him, now!"

My eyes widened. Schmullis, having little patience for the situation, asked Kes for a sedative. My courage returning, I stepped in between Schmullis and Seska. When I spoke, I spoke in Kardasi. "Is this Legate Tekeny Ghemor? You are Iliana Ghemor?"

"How in the hell do you know about a missing deep-cover agent of the Obsidian Order?" Captain Janeway demanded, rounding her desk towards me.

I shrugged. "Before I transferred to Chakotay's cell, I may-or-may-not have been involved in a major raid on the Chin'toka System… where I may-or-may-not have translated a few Cardassian intelligence files for the Maquis."

Janeway pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. "You can read Cardassian?"

"Well enough," I said. "I studied it for my xenolinguistics courses. It's not all that different from Bajoran, actually. The tricky part is translating it into Federation Standard."

"Impressive," Tuvok noted.

"The thing is, Captain," I continued, "I saw a picture of Iliana. Seska looks nothing like her."

"Given the extensive alterations she underwent in order to appear convincingly Bajoran," Tuvok pointed out, "it is possible that some of the alterations were more permanent than others, whether by consequence of the procedures, or by intention."

"Intention?" Chakotay asked. "You mean, you think they may have wanted her to look like a different person, even after reversing the procedure?"

"It would be in the best interests of the Obsidian Order to protect their assets from all possible methods of discovery. Do you not find it suspicious that they would keep a file with a photo of a deep-cover agent in their database?"

"The Chin'toka system isn't exactly a minor outpost," Chakotay argued. "Fayeni got a lot of good intel from that raid. Besides, Ghemor's daughter had been missing for years. Everything the Maquis found about her implicated that she had been killed in action while she was infiltrating the resistance on Bajor."

"Yeah, but what a way to throw us off her trail, right?" I mused, considering Tuvok's position. "Putting all of that info there, completely changing herself into someone else, probably more than once. Dr. Schmullis said she wasn't just altered cosmetically, but they went so far as to resequence her genome. It's why she can't fully recover her Cardassian features now."

"Not to mention that she was in a fever-induced delusion when she asked to see her father," Janeway pointed out. "I don't see much reason to doubt it."

"In that case, Captain," Tuvok said, "I will need to brief my security teams on the matter. A highly trained agent of the Cardassian Obsidian Order, no matter how injured, is not a threat to be taken lightly."

Janeway nodded. "Agreed."

Tuvok promptly left the room.

The com chirped, then projected Harry's voice at us. "Bridge to Captain Janeway."

"Go ahead, Harry."

"Captain, I've retrieved an audio log from Seska's shuttle, and I think you and Commander Chakotay will want to hear it."

"Thank you, Lieutenant. We'll take it in here." She swiveled her computer around and played the message.

"He killed our son, Chakotay," came Seska's labored voice. "Cullah murdered our son. But, I killed him. I slit his throat with the same blade he used on my child." Her voice dropped into a low growl. "I'll kill them. I'll kill them all for what they've done." She let out a yelp of pain, and the recording promptly ended.

The silence in the room was palpable. Chakotay stood on the upper deck of Janeway's ready room, arms crossed tight against his chest as he stared silently out of the viewport.

In twenty-four hours, he'd gone from unwilling genetic donor to the child of a traitor, to accepting he had a son, to finding out that his son had been brutally murdered within hours of birth. His pain threatened to choke us all out, but we had to keep moving forward. There was no telling if the Nistrim might come after Seska, and nobody knew what to expect from her when she woke up.

After a long, tense moment, Chakotay found his voice. "Any chance this could still be a trick?"

I honestly couldn't tell if he was trying to make a joke, or if he was desperately grasping for any kind of hope that his son might still be alive. I exchanged a glance with Janeway. "It's possible, I suppose. Part of me still thinks so. But, Cardassians value family more than they value their own lives. As much as I want to believe the worst of her—"

He sighed and hung his head. "Yeah, I know."

Janeway moved towards the upper deck, drawn to comfort him. I put a hand on her arm, stopping her. "Captain, maybe I should go start on my report." I gave her a knowing look. I was giving her a chance to hold onto professionalism and steal a moment alone with the man she had come to care so deeply about.

She nodded, seeming to catch onto my true intent. "Very good, Commander. Keep me informed."

A couple hours later, Dr. Schmullis called me into sickbay. Seska's fever had broken, and she was awake. I honestly had no idea what to expect when I walked into that room, but nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.

She didn't taunt me the way she used to. She didn't speak at all. Her body was curled in on itself, just as tightly as she could handle with her injuries. It was clear that she was still in a great deal of pain. Her green eyes were lifeless as she stared blankly at the wall by the biobed.

The woman looked like an emotional wasteland.

"She made her bed," I had told Chakotay the day before. "It's time we let her lie in it. I won't die for that Cardie bitch."

I took a breath and swallowed hard, willing my feet forward yet entirely twisted up inside. I reminded myself that she was a mother who has witnessed the brutal murder of her own child, and did my very best to show her some compassion when I spoke.

Seska just stared right past me.

I worked late that evening, only taking a quick break for dinner before going back to sickbay. When I finally got to my quarters that night, I sighed long and deep as I dropped a stack of PADDs on the accent table by my door.

"Computer, lights." I pinched my nose ridges between thumb and forefinger. I could have sworn that I felt a headache coming on, except it wasn't really there. The stress was deeper inside of me than that.

Dropping my hand, I unzipped my jacket as I walked towards the bedroom. The door slid open, light spilling in behind me and illuminating the bare skin of a man in my bed.

I jumped, hand reaching for my knife, only to realize that it was Harry wearing nothing but grey boxers and a matching undershirt. He laid on top of the bed, propped on his side and holding a red rose in his mouth.

Letting out my breath, I noticed that his uniform was neatly folded on my dresser. Overachiever. I tossed my jacket on top. "What is this?"

He took the rose from his lips and offered it to me. "I heard you had a bad day."

"I did." I accepted the rose and laid beside him. "But, at the moment, I can't even remember why." He smiled just before I slanted my mouth over his.

Later, I laid awake listening to Harry's breathing grow deeper with sleep while the darkness crept its way inside of me once again. The longer I laid there, staring up at the ceiling, the more restless I became. Finally, I got up and walked into the main room, hugging my arms around my waist as I came to a stop in front of the viewport. Starlight silently streaked around our warp field. We had decided to leave Seska's stolen shuttle behind and resume our course towards the Alpha Quadrant.

For better or worse, we were stuck with her. At the same time, she was stuck with a counselor who would rather see her dead than help her recover from the unspeakable trauma that shattered her. I had no idea what to do next.

I was so lost inside my own thoughts that I didn't hear Harry get out of bed and walk up behind me. Without a word, he wrapped his arms around me, tucking me into his chest and pressing a kiss to my hair. I closed my eyes and sighed at the feel of his skin against mine, and I wondered if it was possible to absorb his innate goodness into myself through the touch.

Or, a darker voice said, will I corrupt his soul with the same disease that's consuming mine?

I recoiled at the thought. How many ways would I imagine myself hurting him?

He felt my muscles tense and squeezed me tighter. "What's going on? Please talk to me."

I took a deep breath, and plunged into the dreaded waters of self-revelation. "I hate her, Harry. I hate her all the way into my pagh. How can I rehabilitate her when I'm so consumed by this?"

"I don't know. But, you can't blame yourself for it, after everything she's done. No one could expect you to feel anything else."

"Starfleet trains its counselors to handle dual relationships. We do our best, but it isn't always something we can avoid—especially on deep space missions. I've always been able to set aside personal feelings for therapy. I've learned to compartmentalize, look past emotional ties, and analyze from a distance. I know how to disconnect and shut myself down when I have to. But, I can't this time, and I don't know what's wrong with me."

"You can't expect yourself to be everything to everyone, my love. It was obvious that you two didn't get along before, and after what she's done... nobody expects you to be neutral on this."

"I do," I whispered. "I'm the only counselor here. I can't send her to someone else, so I have to distance myself somehow." I shook my head. "I have to."

"It sounds to me like your problem isn't with Seska," Chakotay observed as we sat in his office the next morning. "It's with Cardassians."

I blinked. "What? You mean, as a whole?"

He shrugged. "Maybe."

"No! Of course not! How could you say that?"

"Talia, they committed genocide against your people, slaughtered your mother's family. Surely, Fayeni's anger wasn't entirely veiled throughout your childhood. Then, you spent a year and a half fighting them alongside the Maquis, watching them oppress and slaughter Federation and Bajoran citizens alike. Why are you so surprised at this?"

"Well, sure, I dislike their government and military, but I know better than to hold that against the entire species."

He leaned forward and tapped a finger on my forehead. "You know that here." He moved his finger down to my chest. "But do you know that here?"

I opened my mouth to argue, but nothing came out. Was he right? "Do you? Hate Cardassians, I mean."

"They murdered my family. Slaughtered my tribe. What do you think?"

Just then, the com chirped. "Dr. Schmullis to Commanders Chakotay and Eelo."

Chakotay tapped his combadge. "Go ahead, Doctor."

"If you could, please, I would like you to report to sickbay immediately. I have some test results on our patient that I think you both need to see."

"At Lieutenant Commander Eelo's recommendation, I performed a full neuro-imaging scan of our patient's brain."

Captain Janeway, Chakotay, and I stood in front of Dr. Schmullis' desk, listening with wrapt attention as he briefed us on his findings. He turned to the console on the back wall and pulled up the resultant scan. "Take a look."

The image of Seska's brain rotated on the display, pausing every so often to zoom in on one region after another.

"Un'Bentel," I breathed in shock, the irony of invoking the Prophets for a Cardassian traitor lost within the unspeakable emotions that knifed through me. I leaned forward as I watched the image continue to move, highlighting some of the most dysfunctional neurochemical activity I'd ever seen.

Schmullis continued. "Neurotransmitter and hormonal levels are indicative of depression and anxiety. She has some HPA axis irregularities that are consistent with a trauma or stress-related disorder. Her neural patterns are consistent with antisocial and narcissistic personality patterns, particularly with regard to the severely inhibited activity in the orbital and ventromedial cortex."

"You'd think the Obsidian Order would want their agents to have a clean bill of psychological health before going undercover," Janeway said.

"She has the genetic markers that can predispose a person to these tendencies, but that alone wouldn't lead to the development of any disorders," Schmullis explained. "If anything, it would make her more efficient at her job, though I believe most of these irregularities were actually the result of neurological damage she sustained later due to the procedures she underwent for her undercover work."

He tapped one of the notes on the side of the brain image, calling forward a specific analysis. "Her memory engrams appear to have been repeatedly tampered with. My guess is that they suppressed her own natural memories and implanted foreign ones extracted from a Bajoran brain. Later, they reversed the procedure. It appears that they did this more than once. But the last time they restructured her engrams, the procedure wasn't medically reversed."

Chakotay frowned. "Then how does she know she's a Cardassian agent?"

"Her suppressed memories were forced back into her conscious mind when she came in contact with the high-energy coherent tetryon beam used by the Caretaker entity. Whatever medications, procedures, and therapy they have on Cardassia Prime to perform the reversal successfully has not been available to her, meaning she has been under significant psychological distress ever since the memories resurfaced. This stress has radically altered her synaptic patterns."

Captain Janeway and Commander Chakotay were, naturally, full of questions.

"Does this mean that she was entirely unaware that she was a Cardassian agent until after the Caretaker pulled the Valjean into the Delta Quadrant?"

"How much of her memory has she retained from both the Iliana and the Seska identities?"

"Can the neurological damage be treated?"

"Is she still refusing to speak to anyone?"

As for me, my heartbeat suddenly seemed so much louder in my head. Slowly, I stepped away from Schmullis' desk and stood by the window dividing his office from sickbay, staring out at at the motionless woman who still held herself in the fetal position on a biobed.

Seska. Iliana. I couldn't even begin to imagine the weight of two identities in the same head at the same time. She really had cared about Chakotay and B'Elanna. She really had resented me for taking Chakotay from her. She had meant it all. How awful it all must have felt when Iliana was awakened too soon, forcing Seska to realize that we could never be her family, driving her away from us and into the abuse of the man who would murder her own son right before her eyes.

So, she did to Cullah exactly what my mother had done to the Cardassians who slaughtered her family—she cut that man's throat and ran for her life.

I pressed my right hand against the glass as I watched her, and all the hatred in my pagh shattered under the weight of the pain this woman carried. It wasn't her fault.

It wasn't her fault.