the eclipsing variable

by A Quarter Past

This is a redux of 'two body problem'. It's Janeway's Voyager, Janeway's EMH, and her mistake sending him down to Kelemane. It's not every day you send a hologram the age of a toddler down to a planet, just for it to come back over five-hundred years old, half mad, and with a grudge

2. Lagrangian Point

Lagrangian Point

Lewis Zimmerman is the only person alive who can crack open the Doctor's programming, divine what's really inside, tell them if he is at risk, and explain the extent of what was done to it to keep him active for so long without decompiling from a cascade failure. It is both a terrible shame and extremely fortuitous timing, then, that the very first data stream they receive from the MIDAS array brings the news that he's dying.

Neelix is fidgeting where he stands in her ready room; he's a terrible gossip but always seems to know when the information he brokerages is too personal. From where she's sitting behind her desk, nursing the mug of some variant of coffee he's brought her to try as a cover, part of her manages to enjoy his anxious company. It's a side effect of the news Seven gave her just a handful of hours prior and which she had been able to convey to her crew. They can communicate with their loved ones. Regularly, with a scheduled frequency.

It makes her feel closer to home than they really are.

She would be entirely happy to see him if he'd only get to the point. The letter to her mother isn't about to write itself.

"He's pretending he doesn't care," Neelix finally begins.

"'He' who?" She blows across the surface of her mug then takes a sip. It tastes surprisingly like real coffee, even if the texture has a little grit. It can go in the list of approved substitutes.

"Dr. Retz."

That piques her interest proper. Neelix is the one who'd passed around the letters from home. It looks like the good Doctor received one.

"This is good," she lifts the mug a little, "do I want to know what it's made from?"

It hits him like a trick question, and so he quickly changes the subject back to what he's come here to tell her. It's a tactic that works nearly every time.

"He received news that Dr. Zimmerman is dying. I shouldn't have pried, but when I asked him if he thought he could help him, he said he thought so."

The news that the holography expert is in poor condition causes some of her joy to drain away. Shouldn't the Doctor be telling her this? Surely she could facilitate his aid by asking some of the crew to reduce the length of their correspondence. She'd be willing to herself. Perhaps the engineer himself could return the favor by collaborating with B'Elanna on her efforts to decipher the many alterations to the Doctor's program.

When she says that much aloud, minus the part about B'Elanna's quest to crack the code, Neelix finally gets to the heart of the matter.

"He says he'd have to go himself, but he can't ask the crew to take the risk, since he might not make it back."

When he leaves, promising not to tell anyone else what they've talked about, she contacts her engineer. They make it happen, despite the Doctor's objections. He claims he can't ask the crew to give up their chance to contact their families. Kathryn reassures him that they will have another — many more chances in fact — but he will only have this one to save the life of the man who created him. He says his program is too unstable to send so far, but B'Elanna has done the calculations and is certain his compression algorithms can be used to get him there and back again safely. It's true that he'll take up the entire data stream, and that they'll need to store some memories (of his choosing) externally for the duration, but he'll only be gone the thirty-two days.

He has enough grace not to mention that they had told him he'd only be gone for a short amount of time once before, but had underestimated it by a half a dozen centuries.

When B'Elanna finally sends him on his way, and they are alone in astrometrics, the engineer turns to Kathryn, "I keyed a short message to Zimmerman explaining what happened. I suggested that he use this opportunity to monitor and study the Doctor's program."

"Did you tell the Doctor?" Kathryn asks, and it bothers her how unashamed she is by what she's implying with the question.

B'Elanna stares at her for a moment, her dark eyes seeing in her Captain what she herself has no doubt thought about the stranger wearing their CMO's face. She would think the worst, this woman who had been a Maquis nearly as long as she had been Starfleet, wouldn't she? Of course she would. Artificial intelligence of his complexity must frighten her on some level, especially now that she doesn't have the ability to change him if he went wrong.

When she gets what she needs, B'Elanna bends to snap her tool case shut then stands:

"No, and I told Zimmerman that he should be … discrete."

Was it an unkindness to send the Doctor away again so soon, against his objections? He'd relented eventually, had even preformed the compressions himself because he was the only one with the permissions to do so. Yet, he'd done it solemnly, with the air of a man who thought he wasn't coming back. Kathryn had hoped that by sending him to save his creator's life, he might take the opportunity to find a family in the Alpha Quadrant. To create connections with those who had not known him before Kelemane.

At least then he might just be known for himself.

She's not sure if that alone is enough to serve as a counterweight to her subterfuge.

The month passes slowly. They are all careful, aware that should someone suffer any injury or ailment beyond what Tom and Samantha can treat between them, it will end in tragedy. The letters they read and reread carry them through the wait — and it's all anyone could talk about. What information they plan send to their familyies and friends, who they want to reach out to, what stories and fiction and news they want to solicit from the Alpha Quadrant. Even Neelix has a penpal in mind, Greskrendtregk, Naomi's Ktarian father. He wants to send a man a list of her favorite desserts, so that he may learn to make them before she comes home.

Kathryn keeps chipping away at her own letter between duty shifts, unsure of what she can say to her mother as well as what she won't say. She considers sending along a digitized copy of the Kelemane book she is still struggling to translate as a gift, but decides against it. It feels like a violation of the Doctor's privacy, and she's doing enough of that already.

Should she tell her the wonders she's seen or share her fears? Both seem inappropriate given she must also send Admiral Hayes a list of their dead.

Chakotay interrupts a session of such indecision the day before the Doctor is set to return and just two before she's meant to send this blasted thing off into the ether.

"Kathryn," he says as he enters her ready room, smile already lighting up his handsome face. And why shouldn't he be happy? They'd made it the month without adding anyone to the list she's finalized for the admiral.

She checks the chronometer on her desk and realizes she's technically off-duty and has been for two hours; it explains why he so easily left her rank at the door.

"I don't know what to write," she confesses easily. The letter is the least of the concerns weighing on her these days — the easiest way she can let him in.

Because he knows her so well, Chakotay is able to intuit what she means, "You could send her Neelix's dinner menu, and she'd still be happy."

"Well, I don't know about that."

Her droll delivery rarely fails to make him chuckle, and this isn't one of the times where it falls flat. Kathryn stands and meets him at her couch, where they sit apart but near enough that his knees almost touch hers. She only needs to turn just so and lean a little closer for it to happen, like some protagonist in one of the comedy of manners she sometimes reads.

She doesn't; it doesn't diminish his smile.

"You're falling behind. I finished my letter to Sekaya a week ago."

It's a rare for Chakotay to mention his sister. Kathryn knows he has one — has known from the moment Starfleet Intelligence told her to find and arrest him. Beyond that, she has only the scraps of information he's been willing to give her. Even with so little, Kathryn knows Sekaya is as dear to him as Phoebe is to her. He'd joined the Maquis in large part because she had chosen to remain on Dorvan V when the Federation gave it to the Cardassians. Perhaps now that he has proof that she has survived the war and the occupation — that she is thriving — he will be willing to share even more.

"Don't tell me," she pretends to guess, brows and mouth twisting as if she's deep in thought, "you're sending her Neelix's lunch menu."

He exaggerates an expression to imply that she's caught him red-handed, which makes her laugh. Since he doesn't like to make her laugh alone, Chakotay joins her until they've both recovered themselves.

"It isn't that I don't have enough to say, it's that I have too much. I'll figure it out," she waves the idea of the task away with her free hand.

"I know you will," sensing correctly that she doesn't want to discuss her mother, he asks, "Was the casualty list all that the Admiral wanted?"

She nods, then sips her ever-present coffee before shaking her head, "I can't believe it's finally happened."

"What?"

"I'm taking orders again. Admiral Hayes told me I must have my fair share of casualties, and my first reaction was to tell him to mind his own business. I'm so out of practice saying 'Yes, Sir' that my instinct is to issue orders blindly."

"It's a good thing you had to wait a month. Plenty of time to practice saying 'Aye, aye.'"

And then, before she can give him a witty retort:

"Come on," he says, settling a large hand on her shoulder. She leans a little into the warmth of it before he stands, "you promised me dinner in the mess."

His grin is dimpled, eyes sly, and she knows he's goading her into saying it.

Kathryn gives him a withering glare, but the effect is ruined by the roll of her eyes as she gets up to join him.

…

"I have isolated the data stream," Seven's tone is affectless as she works astrometric's lone station. She has not spoken since Kathryn and B'Elanna entered, content instead to do her work as if the other women are not present.

Kathryn is happy to allow her engineer to stand at the only available space beside Seven. They'd need her there should anything go wrong, and there's something in the blonde's demeanor that suggests she is purposefully ignoring her.

Given that she can think of half a dozen reasons why this might be the case, Kathryn doesn't comment on her attitude. It's best not to do so with an audience, anyway.

B'Elanna, with her years of practice tolerating the ex-drone, doesn't care about any of this. She stands quietly instead, monitoring the readings while she prepares the mobile emitter to receive the Doctor's program. She's uncharacteristically precious with the device, treating it delicately as she keys in her commands. Kathryn knows she cannot do much more than give it basic instructions, as she's still locked out of writing permissions to his program proper as well as out of most of the emitter's higher functions.

"That's all of him," she says instead, packing away her tools.

Seven nods, seconding B'Elanna's assessment, and looks over her shoulder at Kathryn, "We can send our response in seventeen hours."

"Good work. Both of you."

Some of the tension leaves her shoulders then. This had been a gamble. With all the projections in their favor, the it was easy to say that the stakes weren't high, but she'd been burned before.

"Here goes nothing," B'Elanna mutters, then activates the emitter.

The Doctor materializes immediately, giving a quick scan of the room before muttering a dark, "At least it was only a month this time."

She bites her tongue and levels a stare at B'Elanna, who looks as unimpressed by his comment as Kathryn feels.

"Welcome back," she eventually manages, but it's cooler than even Seven can manage.

He looks at her then, face all severe lines, "He'll live," is all he says to her greeting, and then adds, "but I'm afraid I can't say I was able to find a cure his terminally unpleasant attitude."

His bitterness makes a little more sense now. If Zimmerman had been as difficult as Kathryn suspects for the entire thirty-two days, well, it would take a saint to come back from that with a smile.

"We are glad you are back," Seven says, attempting to soften the exchange.

"Thank you, Seven," he manages to sound like he means in, "but if you'll excuse me, I have experiments in stasis I need to tend to. Captain, I'll submit my report today."

"Very well."

He leaves quickly, and all three woman look at one another in silence. Eventually, Seven turns back to her work and B'Elanna shrugs. Once the engineer gathers her things, she gestures quietly for Janeway to follow her.

When they're alone outside of astrometrics, the engineer hands her a PADD.

"We won't know more until next month, provided Zimmerman commits to his end of the deal, but I was able to isolate this message from the stream and pull it to a local file. No one else has access."

Kathryn reads it. It has no name attached, no introduction, no context. Just two words that make her stop short.

It could mean anything, that the Doctor's program is at risk of failure, that the data stream destabilized it further, that he is in danger or a danger. It could be from someone who isn't Zimmerman or Zimmerman-adjacent at all, but Kathryn knows that's not true. He sent it, or someone who works with him did. He's the only person who knows how to piggy-back the Doctor's program in order to do it.

'Be careful'

"That's dramatic," she says, because she has nothing else she can say. Kathryn hands the PADD back and makes a decision to keep this between them.

She can only hope she won't regret it:

"Delete it."

B'Elanna agrees, keys the deletion orders into the PADD, and they settle in for another long wait.

…

Unimatrix Zero is an opportunity that she can't afford to pass up. It's dangerous, yes. In many ways it is cruel to those she wants to free from the mental grasp of the Collective with no hope of also ensuring their physical escape. Yet, waking them from their shared virtual reality is the only viable long-term solution to the Borg Queen's scorched-earth approach to treating what she considers an infection: tearing out the genetic mutation, root-and-stem.

It's also Kathryn's best chance to bring the Collective low, and she means to take it.

If only she could get her crew to let her go on the mission alone.

Tuvok's reluctance to allow her makes sense. Her Security Officer should demand a presence on the mission, even if she knows he won't stop her if she tells him no. Tuvok knows her fear, what she wants to avoid becoming most in the world, and yet he will support her in anything she does regardless.

If only to make sure she has the best chance of surviving it.

It's B'Elanna that causes her pause. While she's willing to put her own life at risk and even allow Tuvok to roll the dice himself, Voyager — the ship — needs B'Elanna. Without her, it won't make it a year. Without it, her crew are doomed to die or languish in the Delta Quadrant. So she turns them both down and plans to go it alone, until Chakotay makes his support conditional. And oh, how clever is he to do so, because she'd just made a promise to him that she'd do better to get his approval for her wild schemes.

So she says yes.

Her senior staff is working through the details when another roadblock is thrown her way, this one more likely to derail the missions than the others.

"We can engineer a signal to force nanoprobes to self replicate the nano-virus," B'Elanna is laying out her plan in the conference room, keying information into the wall console to show what the process would look like.

"Once the drones with the mutation receive the signal, it will interrupt their cortical inhibitors, allowing them to retain their memories from Unimatrix Zero when they wake. All we'd need to do is infect a central plexus with the virus and replicating signal, and the rest will resolve itself."

"The only thing? Captain," Tom looks at her instead of B'Elanna, clearly already having argued with her prior to this meeting and lost, "You'd have to find a Borg cube, and then find a way on board and navigate through drones."

"All valid concerns, Mister Paris," she concedes, coming to stand at the table at his side, "but it isn't as impossible as you think."

"I have located a tactical cube within four light years," Seven explains.

"A tactical cu-," he stops himself short, as the incredulity in his tone was enough to make her raise a brow in warning.

"All I'm saying, Captain, is that it's a risk, a big one. Tactical cubes outpace us offensively and defensively. How are we supposed to get you in it let alone out again? How do we keep you from being assimilated the moment you beam aboard?"

"We can find a way to temporarily suppress assimi-"

On her other side, the Doctor shifts, "I won't do it."

A pin could drop —a pin could drop a Sector away — and she would still be able to hear it. Even over the rushing in her ears. Even over the complete disbelief she feels in this moment. Around her, others are caught in a rictus of shock, others still are preparing for what will be her response.

Kathryn turns just enough to look at him, where he sits, staring straight ahead defiant, "Excuse me?"

It's low, lethally so, and she presses hers hands against the top of the table so she can lean over and force him to look at her.

His jaw tenses, then he meets the glare she's boring into his temple.

It doesn't phase him, her growing anger, "I won't do it."

Chakotay begins to speak, but she raises a hand to silence him. The click of his teeth when he snaps his jaw shut is audible.

"Give me the room," she orders, standing and turning away from the group in clear disgust.

They're all quick to react, Harry and Tom are on their feet and to the door in seconds. B'Elanna is slower to follow, and Kathryn can see from her periphery that the engineer eying her warily as she goes. Tuvok is next, then Chakotay when he understands she won't be asking him to stick around.

"Stay," she commands, when the Doctor is at the threshold

He lets the doors slide shut in front of him before turning around. She waits a moment longer, the fingers of her right hand pressed to her brow as she forces herself not to say the uncharitable thoughts she's thinking. About him. About this absolute death-trap of a mission.

Finally, she drops her hand and faces him.

She tries, tries very hard, not to jump to the nuclear option first. This is what she's wanted, wasn't it? Her crew to question her if they think she's wrong.

Not like this, though.

"I understand," she begins, "that you may need more time to remember how this works, Doctor. But this? This isn't it. You can't just—" she throws her arm out, "decide not to follow orders."

From his place near the door, he watches her without much change to his expression, and he doesn't respond.

"Understood?" She prompts, ire growing again, as she steps away from the view port and toward him.

"I know how the command structure works, Captain. I have full access to Starfleet regulations and protocols. You're violating at least twenty of them."

And yet none of that gives him the right to derail mission briefings. As CMO he could override her only when she was medically unsound or asking him to break his medical oaths. This isn't that.

"It isn't your call to make."

He ignores her, "I'm perfectly willing to follow your orders when they don't put everything at risk on a whim."

"I'm your captain, and as a Starfleet officer you don't get to decide to—"

"Starfleet officer?" He cuts her off, and there it is, the first spark of something etching its way across his stern features as he steps further into the room, finally willing to engage with what should be a dressing down but is turning into something else entirely, "You think I'm a Starfleet Officer? Do you see any pips, Captain?"

Her eyes move to his collar involuntarily. If he were human — no, if he were anything but an EMH — there would be three pips adorning it, side by side, putting him at rank with Tuvok. But he isn't, and he has no power beyond medical decisions.

She's never given him any.

"I'm a tool," his face twists in his anger, in his disgust for having call himself something so prosaic, "and right now you're angry because tools shouldn't be able to say no."

Kathryn knows that he's derailing the conversation, but what would she be if she let that stand? How can she ever convince him to follow her orders if she doesn't argue against this? How can she leverage her power over him and not feel like a monster for doing so if he leaves this room thinking she sees him as nothing more than an object.

"You aren't a tool," she's trying to reach him, so she can grab his shoulders and what — shake him? Force him to slow down and listen to her? But for every step she takes toward him, he takes another away.

"No? Would you have sent Harry down to Kelemane? Tom? Any other organic? There was no medical need to send me. I had no expertise in covert tactics. I'm not trained in first contact scenarios. You sent me there because if something went wrong, it wouldn't matter because I am a medical encyclopedia with a bad attitude. Was. I was," he's gaining steam, pacing to the other side of the table so there is something between them, "I haven't been that in four…five hundred years … I won't be that again. But I'm not a Starfleet officer either."

Before she can react to any of that or refute it or justify her decisions with any of the arguments she's come up with since things on Kelemane became a disaster, his uniform jacket shifts into solid black. All traces of Starfleet are removed as the elegant delta of his combadge morphs into a plain oval.

"Doctor," she starts, but what is there to say but 'do your job' or 'get out'?

"You may be the captain of this ship, but you haven't been my captain in a very long time," his words are soft, like he hadn't meant to do this now, but now that he is he can't stop himself, "I'd call you Kathryn, but you aren't even really that, are you? You're just an empty uniform trying to get yourself killed."

He rushes out without her dismissing him, and all she can do is stand there in shock.

What?

…

The mission must happen, but they can't do it without him.

It's a humbling position to be in, but more than that it's frustrating. She should confine him to quarters, and she has half the mind to do so once this is settled, but for now she needs him to complete his duty shift in sickbay. After that, she knows she'll need to make a decision, and it isn't one that will deescalate what is happening between them.

She spends nearly three hours mulling over her options in her ready room before the door chimes. It must be a record, the time her crew is giving her to calm down after what was clearly going to be rumored to be an explosive exchange. Expecting it to be Chakotay, she braces herself and calls for him to enter.

What will she tell him? How can she even put into words what has happened? What they will need to do once they clear this hurdle and have time to think.

It's B'Elanna.

"Captain," she says as she enters, with none of the vitriol that Doctor had imbued the rank with just hours before, "we have the means to create Axum's nano-virus without the Doctor, but I haven't been able to figure out how to bypass Borg security without the assimilation suppressant."

"The suppressant only reduces the risk of assimilation, Lieutenant, there is nothing preventing us from failing with it," she sounds tired to her own ears, if not outright defeated, "but Axum's virus will only hide them. For how long? A year? Two? Can we risk it for a temporary solution?"

And hadn't she already been seen in Unimatrix Zero, during her link with Seven? The Borg drones that had infiltrated that space had clearly been sent by the Queen, which meant the entire Collective knows she is involved somehow. Without that suppressant, they'll be walking willingly to their fate.

The engineer looks around the room, unused to being asked questions in this manner. She's thinks through the options honestly, bounces a PADD against her leg as she does so, before coming to the decision that what she says is worth the potential reprimand, "We need to convince him."

Kathryn hasn't told anyone what was said in that room, but everyone on that bridge saw him walk out without a a Starfleet uniform. They didn't need to know the details to know what had happened.

"I don't know how," she admits.

In a few short steps, B'Elanna makes it to Kathryn's desk, holding out the PADD for her to take, "I don't know if this will help, but it can't hurt."

She takes it and turns it so she can look.

"We received the most recent MIDAS data stream an hour ago," B'Elanna explains, "and Zimmerman pulled through. I have technical report the size of a quantum physics textbook waiting for me when this is all over, and he sent something for you. I don't know who he convinced to give up their bandwidth…"

Kathryn keys into the file and is surprised to see it is a video recording, "Have you viewed this?"

"No, Captain, he addressed it specifically to you."

It could be a vitriolic reprimand for sending him a hologram decidedly different from the one he created, it could be a five minute monologue on what a monumental waste of time it was talking to her, or…or it could be the start of the answers she needs.

She makes up her mind, "Keep looking into solutions. I'll review this and see if it gives me any ideas."

The other woman nods, then adds, "Yes, Captain" before taking the dismissal for what it is and leaving.

When she's gone, Kathryn orders the computer to bar entry to her ready room and transfers the message to her desk console.

Then she presses play.

Dr. Zimmerman fills the screen, his aging face wan and drawn as he looks into the camera. He's a man who doesn't sleep and doesn't like to speak to people, but he pushes through his clear discomfort with the task at hand, "Captain, ah, Janeway. I'm sorry I've hijacked your correspondence this month, but I think this is important enough to take precedent over baby shower invitations and wedding announcements. You won't be attending either anyway…"

He grimaces, looking so very like his creation in that moment, "Sorry. I'm working on that."

She remembers how he once called her Captain Jane at a conference and remained unashamed of his mistake when corrected; she finds this, whatever it is, to be a vast improvement to personality.

Another moment of silence passes as he scratches at his wispy over-growth of gray hair, "I wanted to thank you for sending…Aeson? Aeson, that's his name now?"

A feminine voice mumbles something just out of audio range of the camera.

"Yeah. He saved my life, which means you did by extension. So thanks."

"You're welcome," she replies wryly to no one in particular.

He clears his throat and then looks away, the fake pleasantries of his tone shifting back to what must be his usual annoyance,"Right. With that out of the way, let me get to the point of this. I've done what you asked. Your engineer should be pouring over the technical report I sent her, if she knows what's good for her, but this is for you."

He pauses, then reacts to the woman off screen, "I will not be nice, Haley. When have I ever been nice?"

To the camera again,"She's going to hold that against me later."

Not that Kathryn isn't a little intrigued by this half of what is a clearly dysfunctional dynamic, but there are more pressing matters. She keys the video to skip ahead a few seconds.

"Captain, your EMH's programming is a transcendent mess. I'll be studying it for the rest of my, thankfully, long life. Some part of you knows it already and your engineer knows it too, or you wouldn't have asked me to try to find writing access. I couldn't by the way, which means you won't either."

He leans closer to the camera, an unsettling urgency gracing his familiar features, "Don't even try to. He's robust, but pieces of him are held together by shoestring and wishful thinking. Unravel that and you won't lose him, but you will lose your doctor, and I don't think you'll like what's left."

She isn't completely sure she likes what is there now.

"He's nearly completely untethered from his original programming. Sure, by partitioning it, he made it so he couldn't overwrite it, but that doesn't mean he can't delete it entirely. It's his proverbial kill switch. Don't give him cause to use it. Not if you want someone capable sewing your crew back together."

The feminine voice sounds again, closer this time, carrying a warning.

"I'm running out of time," he frowns, the lines around his eyes and mouth deepening, and in that moment he looks nothing like the Doctor at all. Age and illness and whatever insults he thinks have been directed his way have beaten him down, leaving behind a cantankerous man with only his work to keep him company.

"I debated telling you this, since you can't do anything about it, but I've been told I have to if I want to keep a good conscience. Keep one? I don't even know what that means. If I had a conscience, I would have kept him here and sent you an EMH Mark IV in his place. I should have, given what I know, but I can't decompile him, and I didn't want to see what he'd do if I tried to keep him here."

She watches his ramblings like she imagines one might watch the genesis of a warp core explosion, with an impending sense of doom.

"Be careful. He tore his programming apart and pieced it back together again. Not once, not twice. Five times, Captain. I've counted no fewer than six cascade failures he had to counteract on his own. Each time he had to compress more of his memories until his only option left was to delete them. When all else failed, he tied his memory compression algorithms to a scaffolding of sorts: to the totality of his memories of single person."

Blindly, she reaches a hand to her throat, trying to loosen the tightness she feels there. For the first time in a long time, it isn't from sadness or regret. Its from something like fear. For months they'd thought he'd remembered nearly nothing of anyone. He'd let them think that, but they'd been wrong. She assumed his behavior, at its strangest (at its most concerning) was because he felt compelled to serve with crew he couldn't remember caring about.

"You, Captain."

Zimmerman continues, words gaining speed, unaware of the realizations she is coming to, "I don't need to tell you that that's not good. It isn't how I would have solved his cascade failures, but it's what he could manage with what little he had. It kept him alive, kept him focused on getting back to Voyager. It's the shoestring holding him together. God help you if you try to take that away from him."

He reaches for the camera, and parts with a final, "I wasn't going to be the one to try."

An hour later, Kathryn pauses the video after Zimmerman confesses he shouldn't have sent the doctor back to them but before he can tell her first and second officers that the she's the unwilling cornerstone of the Doctor's programming. Although she's taken the time to try to come to terms with this information, to understand what it means in its entirety, she hasn't. She doesn't think she ever will.

What she can't handle emotionally, she can process logically, and what she's determined is this:

They can make this mission work.

"We underestimated the toll Kelemane took on his programming," she explains, looking between Chakotay and Tuvok as they digest what they've just seen, "and that failure has come back now to take its pound of flesh."

Tuvok steeples his fingers in thought, "There is more to the video."

"There is," she says, and then she lies, "it isn't relevant."

Her friend raises a brow in disagreement but nods, "If the Doctor is unstable, as Dr. Zimmerman is suggesting and will not concede to help us on this mission, it will fail."

"If he won't help, we shouldn't even try," Chakotay insists.

The Doctor may not be willing to follow her orders if it means she goes on this mission, not if he has reason to believe her death could affect his compression solution, but he might be willing to agree if she stays here.

And so she lies again, "His objection wasn't based on protocol or his oath to do no harm," she has no idea if that oath — if that programming — still holds. Kathryn can only hope that it does and verify with B'Elanna later, "it's because I'm going on the mission."

This piques Tuvok's interest, "Why object to that specifically?"

"Because I sent him to Zimmerman without asking him, and this is the only way he knows how to exert control," in for a penny, in for a pound. It would cost her little to tell them that it's more than that, that he may have very specific reasons to refuse her to run headlong into danger, but what it will cost is more than she's willing to pay. Kathryn knows she'll have time to regret her decision here later, even if she doesn't regret it now.

She can't handle the Borg and the Doctor at the same time; she certainly can't have these two trying to either. Her only currency against him is that he doesn't suspect what she knows, and she isn't willing to let the over-protectiveness of these men give it away. Not when there still so very much she doesn't understand about what is happening.

"If he'll agree to it, then let me go instead" Chakotay says this too quickly, as if the words themselves are a relief, "and when it's over we'll decide how to handle the insubordination."

It is more than mere insubordination, Kathryn knows it and so does he. That is the way of it, though. When it comes to what the Doctor can and cannot do within his role as CMO, Chakotay has always recused himself from making any decision. She's never been able to tell if it's because he's too humble to form a strong opinion on the place the hologram has on this ship, or if it's because he's too lazy to.

At least, he had. Until now. Until it serves his own purposes to have a say.

She wants to lash out at him for going along with this, even if she has led him to this point. Sure, he doesn't approve of the Doctor's methods, but he clearly agrees with the outcome. For all she'd worked to solicit his opinions on this mission, and give in to them by including Tuvok and B'Elanna, Chakotay hadn't been honest with her. This was first real chance he'd been presented to prevent her from going — and he is taking it.

"Fine," she grits out through her teeth and can hardly stand to look at him, "you'll take my place."

Before he can respond, she turns to Tuvok, "Let the Doctor know there's been a change of plans, and then escort him to his quarters. Make sure he stays there until you're ready to go. Until he agrees to meet all the expectations of a member of this crew, he'll lose the advantages that come with being one."

…

Every moment she stands on the bridge instead of in that cube, Kathryn fears she's sent the three of the best people she knows to their assimilation or death.

Until it works.

After, when Korok has left in his commandeered sphere to make contact with other freed drones, Kathryn counts their losses. No deaths, but the hull breaches on decks five, six, and seven have caused their share of injuries. Tuvok is convalescing in his quarters, recovering from his assimilation into Three of Twelve, and although Chakotay and B'Elanna have faired better, they must each deal with the trauma of losing the little of themselves they did to the Collective.

Kathryn, who has not had those voices in her head — battering down the doors of her sense of self — cannot know how this will affect them as they move through the next days and months. All she can do is check on them — all three in turn — speak with them, thank them for doing what she had not been allowed to do, wish quietly that she was in their place, and then tell them she is proud.

Then leave them, before any of the resentment that lingers can taint what little she has been able to give.

No, the resentment has to go somewhere else.

Standing, just inside the door to the Doctor's dimly lit quarters, she reveals how she has decided to punish his actions.

"You may not see yourself as a member of this crew, but as long as you are on this ship, you will act like one. Until your confinement is lifted, you will continue your duties in sickbay when your services are needed and return here when they aren't. The use of your mobile emitter will be limited to duties outside of sickbay and remain in the custody of Tuvok until the end of your confinement."

It's a weak response, but the truth is that they rely on him to continue his work. There is no throwing him in the brig as she had done Tom, no handing his shifts to another until the punishment ends. Much of the rage bubbling in her in this moment comes from the knowledge that they need him, and that he knows it. She cannot keep the anger from contorting the features of her face, even if she is able to stop herself from telling him what she knows.

What Lewis Zimmerman has told her.

That that the need goes both ways, even if she doesn't know to what extent.

Her words hit first, and then the meaning of them lands. For the briefest of moments, he has no visible reaction.

The smile starts in his eyes, and by the time it slowly spreads across his face, she has identified the dark undertones of it. The joy that mixes with cynicism as he surveys the room around him transforms his face into an acridity that is growing more familiar.

She hadn't been wrong those months ago, about what had happened on that planet in that cave. Kathryn may not be able to justify those feelings to anyone else without creating more questions than she's able to answer, but she knows it hadn't been the neurotoxins playing tricks with her mind.

"How will I ever survive being confined to a single room? Surely no person could tolerate the same four walls, day in and day out, for years."

The smile drops and is replaced with nothing as he steps into her space and speaks softly, as if conspiring with her, "I think I have enough experience to get by. Don't you?"

She ignores him, ignores the challenge, the call back to memories he says he doesn't have, "At the end of the sixty day period, your movements will no longer be limited."

Since the moment Zimmerman delivered his news, she has wondered why the Doctor would ever come back to this ship. Why he'd subject himself to the command of a person he thinks sees him as nothing more than a tool, to be used and disposed of at the earliest convenience? Why he'd pretend, for as long has he'd been able, that he wanted to be here, even if he couldn't remember why?

"We'll do this as many times as needed," she promises, looking back from her place at the open doors.

"You'll find that I have a lot more of that than you do. Captain."

Kathryn leaves without responding, because she knows now. Knows that, as much as they need him to survive this voyage she's damned them to, he'd needed to be here with her when Voyager left Kelemane's orbit. The why may still be a mystery to her, but she can live with that a little longer.

What a bitter pill that must be for him to swallow.

…

The news Seven is dying arrives in the form of Icheb, franticly chiming her door at three in the morning. His behavior is so out if character that Kathryn is stunned just long enough to let him slip into her quarters. Had she been roused from sleep, had she been wearing anything but her uniform, she'd have sent him away. She may have still, even though neither of these things are true, but there is a look in his eyes that makes her give him a chance to explain himself.

"Do you know?" He asks, and while it may not be an accusation, it's the closest thing to it.

No, no she doesn't know.

She grips his shoulder and leads him to a chair, ordering the computer to increase the light by fifty percent as she gently pushes him into it.

What she sees when the lights go up is a boy, sad and lost and determined. It's a jumble of emotions she knows all too well.

"I'm going to need you to explain," she says, taking the spot on her couch closest to the chair.

"Seven's cortical node is failing. She'll die without a replacement, but she made us promise not to tell anyone, but she is refusing any help."

Something like a buzzing settles between Kathryn's ears. She feels like she heard him wrong, that this is some strange waking dream, "The Doctor knows."

It isn't a question.

"Yes," Icheb says solemnly, "but he says it's her decision. I suggested taking a cortical implant from a drone, but he cannot make the simulations work. It is because he is running his simulations anticipating we'd use an implant from a dead one."

She has questions. The first of which is why no one told her. Icheb has explained his reasons, and no one can ask a child to break a promise to a person they view as a parent. Seven may have grown more distant from her, but Kathryn suspects that her silence is either her pride or her desire to not burden others with what she must see as a forgone conclusion.

The Doctor? Who could understand his reasons? Beyond any promise Seven might have extracted from him, he certainly wouldn't be eager to tell Kathryn her protege was dying.

She will ask those questions later. For now, she takes a grounding breath, "Are you suggesting we take an implant from a living drone?"

And can't she picture it? Finding a damaged cube or sphere, disarming a drone and taking from them the thing that will surely save Seven's life but…kill them. It would be so easy, now that the Unimatrix Zero drones are free and fighting back, to utilize the chaos they are creating to commit murder. To justify it, because Seven is free and that unlucky drone would not be.

Could she really stop herself from doing that, if tomorrow she walked into sickbay and Seven was living her last moments?

"Yes," says Icheb, as if he isn't suggesting murder. If it weren't so horrifying, she might laugh about it with Chakotay and tell Seven to add morality tales to his lessons.

"We can't possibly," she doesn't even really believe it, "No. We can't kill a member of the Collective, not unprovoked."

He hears what she's saying, perhaps for the first time since entering her quarters.

It unsettles him.

Icheb blinks, no longer running on a speech he's been practicing, "I am talking about me, Captain. We can give her my cortical implant."

There's nowhere good to start with that. 'No' is the obvious answer, followed by an twenty minute lecture on why it isn't the responsibility of children to sacrifice themselves for adults, but Kathryn can only stand and pace. This is too much information all at once, too late in the evening, with no time to brace herself for the impact.

"No," she finally says.

"Captain, I would survive the procedure. I've simulated every scenario, and each is successful. Because I exited the maturation chamber early, only twenty percent of my cortical functions are reliant on the implant. All my autonomous systems run independently of it. My species has 170% greater brain elasticity than humans; in the worst case scenario, I would recover within a month of its removal."

She presses the fingers of both her hands to her forehead, "You've already explained this to Seven."

"She has refused."

"And the Doctor?"

"He has deferred to her wishes. You must intervene."

He holds out a PADD to her and she takes it. Contained within it is his proposed solution, his evidence, and notes from the Doctor's review of it. Kathryn sits and takes her time with it, unwilling to engage further if this is a well-intentioned lie from a scared little boy. When a not insignificant amount of time and a dozen questions answered, she's convinced.

Yet, it doesn't matter because the others already said no.

She could order the Doctor to do the procedure — he would refuse. She could not order Seven to take this from Icheb. It would only distress the other woman further, drive her further away in what might be her final days.

"I can't make them."

Icheb closes his eyes briefly and deflates. He must have had this argument multiple times already, and each must have ended here, this way. It's a weight he has carried for — for however long no one told her. She had been his last hope, and there is no more fight in him.

Seven is never going to forgive her for this.

Kathryn doesn't comfort him. She stands apart from him as she puts her piece into play, "I see no reason why you can't ask the Doctor to remove your implant. If he agrees it will have no long-term negative effects…"

He sits up straighter in the chair, some of the hope coming back to his too-austere face, "On the contrary, it would help me. Should the Borg choose to broadcast a communications signal to me today, they could do so. This disturbs me, and while it remains, I am unable realize my individuality. I am told this is not healthy for an adolescent boy."

But then he frowns, "Seven would still refuse to accept it."

Kathryn takes a breath and braces herself as she chose to betray Seven to save her.

"Then we better get our timing right."

They do.

Three days later, Seven is recovering in her alcove, and Kathryn can only watch over her for so long before it becomes excessive. When it hits that point, she makes her way to sickbay to check on Icheb. Without his cortical implant, he no longer needs to regenerate and really shouldn't until his brain can acclimate to the missing implant.

When she enters, he's asleep. The Doctor, who will need to monitor Icheb's brain activity for the next two days (which means he has a reprieve from the punishment of confinement) sees her enter. Without a word of acknowledgment, he retreats to his office.

The young man stirs when she approaches. His recovery will take longer than Seven's, but he isn't so impaired that he is lost to the world.

"Captain," his voice his weak, but he's otherwise alert.

"It worked," she says softly, hand on his shoulder. If Seven cannot be here to comfort him, then Kathryn will do it for her, the only way she knows how.

"Don't thank me yet, I'm told you have a long two weeks ahead of you."

He isn't ready to say more than a few words at once, and so the next time he speaks he manages to sound more like Tom than he likely ever will again, "Worth it."

She smiles at his resilience and gives his shoulder a final, soft pat, "Sleep."

His eyes slip shut as he nods once. Within moments, his body relaxes into unconsciousness.

"It was a risk."

The Doctor is close behind her. He'd snuck up without a sound, and it takes considerable effort to not lash out in shock.

Kathryn turns and looks him up and down, taking in his black jacket and trousers. She'd frozen his replicator access when she'd confined him to his quarters, which means the clothes are a part of his program. Did it bother him that he had to waste memory and temporary processing to wear these? Did she care?

"It was his to take," she responds.

He's referencing his medical PADD, not bothering to look up as he says, "Seven will know you were involved in it."

Let her know, she wants to say. Let Seven know that Icheb had wanted to remove his implant himself in the cargo bay, to force their compliance. Let her know that Kathryn had cared enough to convince him to request its removal in sickbay, where his treatment could be immediate and the damage limited. If she also has to know that Kathryn told him to wait until Seven was unconscious from her implant failure, then so be it.

She's willing to take the blame.

"You performed the procedure without her consent," she reminds him.

The Doctor shrugs, then finally looks at her, "As her doctor, her medical care is at my discretion when she is incapacitated. I was presented a solution, and Mr. Icheb explicitly refused to reinsert his implant. She'll understand in time."

She hums thoughtfully, as if she might agree, but holds up a finger on thought, "How do you know that? She's a stranger to you."

When he levels her with a stare, his face taking on a familiar scowl, she presses the point, "We all are."

The Doctor tucks the PADD beneath his arm and raises his chin, "And whose fault is that?"

Touché.

…

Tom and B'Elanna's wedding is hurried and carried out on short notice, as they all but elope. Kathryn has long since given up having an opinion on their relationship, and so she takes this in stride and preforms the ceremony in her ready room with Harry, Tuvok and Chakotay as witnesses. When Voyager sends the pair off on their three day honeymoon, she thinks that things might be looking up: Seven is awake and well, Icheb is growing stronger by the day, and the reception has dramatically improved morale.

She must even admit, when they reach the twenty-seventh day of the Doctor's confinement, that he's given her very little reason to think he'll cause problems over the next thirty-three.

Finally, she is able to take a deep breath, shake out the danger and drama of the last month, and sit down to complete her letter to her sister. It proves easier to write than the one she sent her mother, as if she's picking up in the middle of a conversation she and Phoebe had had last week — not over six years ago. Alongside it, she pens her endorsement of Icheb's request to sit the Starfleet exams as well as a full report on the outcome of the mission to aid the Unimatrix Zero drones. Kathryn knows that Seven is sending her own, heavily annotated summation of events, complete with all she knows about the group, including Axum's plans to align with Species 8472. This means Kathryn has to send everything she knows about them as well. It's true that nearly all of her Captain's logs were sent in the previous data stream, but if Starfleet Intelligence is to understand anything of the last month within a reasonable timeframe, they'll need someone to create a index of cross references.

She even receives her next round of orders, to test a new engine calibration to see if they can maintain higher levels of warp for longer periods of time. How odd, to no longer feel so far removed from the daily minutiae of Starfleet.

Within a week of receiving those orders, they are shelved.

Kathryn knows that Tuvok suspects a member of the crew is responsible for the attacks on Yosa and Tabor. While their injuries are minimal and their subsequent comas brief, the two cannot identify their attacker. She is uncomfortable with the idea that someone who has worked with the two — possibly called themselves their friend — lashed out in some way. Arguments and feuds aren't unheard of aboard the ship, but since Suder and Seska had died, no one had gone to such lengths to hurt another.

The former Maquis are all on alert. She can't bring herself to agree with Chakotay, that someone from a Starfleet background has taken exception to the Maquis. Why now? He thinks someone has received news, perhaps linking Yosa and Tabor to crimes long ago committed. Yet, all have agreed to submit their recent correspondence to Tuvok for review and he has detected nothing.

His next suspicion is the Equinox crew but he can't pinpoint any that pose a specific threat. Given that Chakotay had been working with them closely with great success these last few months, that doesn't bode well for that theory.

"Gentlemen," she says to Ayala and Tabor, who have created a security escort that dogs her every step. They hover behind her as she walks from sickbay, where the Doctor just gave her his discharge report on Yosa before unceremoniously transferring himself back to his quarters.

"I hardly need one of you, let alone two. Ensign, go. Rest. You deserve it."

The Bajoran man gives her a brief, tight smile, "Tuvok's orders, Captain."

Ayala remains silent, content to let his chattier subordinate do the talking, but nods when she looks to him to verify.

"I think I outrank him," she says, with a rapid blink as she tries to force down a smile as they make it to the intersection and turn the corner, "and anyway…"

She stops when she hears a shout on the deck, a quick left and right glance reveal nothing along the internal corridor, but she's sure she hears phaser fire.

A chirp from behind her lets her know that one of the two have engaged their combadge, "Ayala to Tuvok, we have phaser fire on Deck 5."

Kathryn has just enough time to wonder why he's briefing Tuvok, when Chakotay should be the commanding officer on the bridge, before the former speaks over the open line

"We have accelerated our timeline," his voice is brusque — not like she's ever heard it — and in the background she thinks Harry is shouting something before Tuvok says, "Stop him before—"

The lights go out around them, replaced with the telltale flashing of red thats signals something has gone horribly wrong. She doesn't waste time questioning why the klaxons aren't sounding or why the combadge signal has failed; instead she turns to touch base with the two men behind her.

There's a phaser leveled at her chest, another at her head.

Twelve different ways to overreact come to her in the span of second but only one way to get out of this strange situation does. Kathryn eyes the phasers, noting they're set to level three. At this range, where the men are aiming, she'll be knocked unconscious for a considerable amount of time and wake up with neurological damage should they pull the trigger.

She raises her hands slowly, palms out, and the only threat she gives them is in her tone "What's going on?"

"We're running things now."

Tabor's words are so absurd that she tries to blink them away, "Excuse me? We?"

The younger man juts out his chin and looks at her like it's obvious, "The Maquis."

What? She thinks bitterly, has everyone lost their minds? In what world would anyone take two attacks as an invitation to stage a mutiny of all things?

"Move," Ayala orders while shoving her shoulder, before she can question what that even means and how Tuvok of all people is involved, "turn and go right."

It's clear they're taking her to the turbolift, which is close enough they might have gotten her there without coercion if their comm-link to Tuvok hadn't raised literal silent alarms. Kathryn follows his order anyway, and considers her options for turning this around. The run to the far intersection is too long — they will shoot her, but she may be able to leverage the fact they're behind her to disarm one and take their phaser before they get to the station.

More shouting sounds from around the opposite corner behind them, and someone shouts, "Captain!"

Samantha.

A phaser goes off. She hears it make contact, and the thud as ensign Wildman hits the floor. One of the two shove her forward before she can turn to look, and she uses that momentum to dig her right foot into the floor and launch back, her elbow coming up into a nose.

Tabor's.

She twists back to yank the phaser from his grasp, and the joint momentum of their struggle causes them to slam into the wall rail. Kathryn feels her forehead crack against it and blood ooze from a gash in her brow into her eye, but doesn't let go and works to force the ensign off balance. In the corner of her eye, she can see Ayala taking careful aim.

Behind him, drawn by the sounds of struggle and Sam's shout, two more people rush around the corner. She recognizes them immediately but doesn't know who they're here to help. They've been working with Chakotay for months now, and if anyone would be willing to take the Maquis' side in whatever this is — if he is even involved in it, if it is anything that can even make sense — it would be them.

Noah Lessing, sporting a cut across his jaw, comes to a halt around the corner, plants his feet, raises a phaser in her direction, and fires.

Ayala drops.

Marla Gilmore sprints forward to grab his weapon just as Kathryn finally wrests away Tabor's.

She fires a single shot into his chest. He'll suffer all the damage she would have and remain unconscious for at least an hour. She doesn't know what Lessing has his phaser set to, a two or three, but Ayala is sturdy enough that they'll have less time to put distance between them and him.

"Report," she barks out the question, catching her breath and wiping the blood from her eye.

"We don't know what's going on" it's Gilmore who answers, panting, "we were helping Ensign Wildman transport growth mediums when…" she's makes a face, something like disbelief, "Jor and Yosa…"

"I managed to surprise Jor," Lessing explains, "but Yosa's holed up in the sensor suite. We need to get out of here before he finds a way to call for help."

Gilmore regains her breath and stands straight, "Our combadges aren't working. I don't know if it's just us or—"

"Theirs aren't either," Kathryn confirms as the trio move along the wall, toward the turbolift.

Gilmore's expression, while bleak, isn't surprised. Kathryn cannot give thought to what that means. Instead, she checks a nearby control panel.

It is dead, and Kathryn is one step closer to understanding what Harry did, if even not how or why. While it means they aren't getting out of here quickly, it also means Yosa will be waiting awhile for his reinforcements.

Kathryn does what she does best, takes command, "Tabor said the Maquis are doing this. We need to assume they've taken the bridge. I can't know for certain where else, but I heard Tu-" she falters, can barely believe what she's about to say, "Tuvok. Whatever plan they have, something forced them to deviate from it. If we get engineering, we can divert bridge controls."

She looks back only once, knowing that she's leaving Sam behind, but also knowing there's no way to bring her along in her current state. Kathryn feels herself shutting her confusion away, her desire to run to the other woman and try to revive her. Eventually, she turns back to the task at hand, and feels the telltale chafe of her pips on her neck as she fades entirely into her rank.

There are things that must be done.

The three reach the turbolift opposite the holodecks' second level access panels and pry open the doors to the station and its shaft. In turn, they are greeted with complete darkness. Only the flashing red in the hall behind them illuminates the way forward.

"Point," Lessing calls out, then swings himself to the access ladder.

"Rear," says Gilmore next.

Kathryn tucks her phaser into her belt and climbs down after Lessing, and Gilmore follows quickly behind. She knows what the pair are doing, creating a protective unit around her in case anyone fires from above or below. That she's putting her safety in the hands of two people she can barely trust, against those she had trusted implicitly just this morning, is not lost on her.

They move, time growing meaningless as they use the sounds of feet and hands on metal and the vibrations of the ladder to sense when the person below them has cleared the next step. They must slowly navigate the subtle interchanges in the dark, careful not to cause the person below them to lose their grip, until all at once they come to a stop.

"Blocked."

It looks like Lessing has found a stalled lift.

Kathryn touches down beside him, then helps Gilmore catch her footing in the dark. They can't see where they are, but if they pry open the top of the lift, it should contain emergency lighting.

It might also contain someone.

"We need to open the emergency hatch," she commands in a whisper, "phasers at the ready."

She doesn't see them follow her orders, but she hears them. Kathryn kneels, feels along the top of the lift beneath her, a hand skittering across Lessing's boot, the smooth lift surface, then finally a latch.

"Ready?" she whispers.

"Ready," a pair of voices whisper back.

She yanks the hatch open when both hands, and moves quickly to the side so the others can see in. Less than a second later, her phaser is pointed downward, into the empty lift.

They all visibly relax in the oscillating red glow that pulses out from the space beneath them.

"Clear."

"Captain, the lift is blocking access to deck eight's jefferies tubes," Lessing kneels to examine how much space they have, "we should be able to fit through the gap to the turbolift station and then into the corridor from there."

Their direct route to engineering on deck eleven is cut off, and so is their immediate access to the crawl-ways that can discreetly take them to the turbolift in the main cargo bay. They'll have to walk to either the port or starboard landing bays to reach the other lift shaft.

"Let's do it."

Between the three of them, they make careful work of climbing to the floor of the horizontal turbolift sidestep, through the station and to the door. While Kathryn provides cover, Lessing pries it open and slips through. The women follow, making sure to clear the halls as they move.

"Astrometrics first," Kathryn says, as they duck close to the wall rail and go over their options. It's a risk, but if they find Seven there, she'll be able to help them.

The corridor intersects with another, where they make a right turn. At the next, they take another right, away from the nearest landing bay entry and toward the lab. While they don't run into trouble on the way, neither do they find Seven at her usual post.

Cargo bay 2 is too far port-side for them to check. If Seven is there, Kathryn can only hope she has barred the entry. She can't imagine the — mutineers — will leave her undisturbed if they find her.

Gilmore hunches down beside her as they prepare to move from the lab to the doors of the starboard landing bay. They can hear noises coming from the direction of the deuterium injector, and they aren't promising.

Kathryn does the quick math. There are thirty former Maquis aboard. If they are all apart of this, and only them, they would be outnumbered by over a hundred Starfleet crew. It is unlikely that they've spread their numbers evenly across each deck — Tuvok and Chakotay(?) would know better and only move to take the bridge and engineering. They can hold the bridge with as little as three people, but engineering requires at least eight.

That leaves them approximately nineteen to move deck-by-deck to capture and secure Starfleet personnel. Kathryn does not doubt they've used whatever confusion occurred before the systems went offline to detain her crew. Anyone on beta shift would be stuck in their quarters or bunks during the lockdown, and delta shift would be in a similar position, aside from those who liked to wind down in the mess or the holodecks.

Two places also easy to contain people.

This leaves her the alpha shift, minus the Maquis, which puts approximately thirty Starfleet crew running around. More or less, she cannot say for certain. She can only hope for a parity of forces at this point.

"If they're on this floor," Lessing says lowly, "it's because they're trying to find you, Captain. They have to expect you'll be heading to the bridge or engineering."

He's right. Tuvok is her tactical officer, and one of his greatest strengths is how well he knows her. He'll be looking to cut her off. Without internal sensors, he'll be forced to utilize a pincer move. Kathryn has no doubt that it's already underway.

They need to leave.

The path to the landing bay is clear, and each check different directions at the intersection. Within minutes, Kathryn and Gilmore are prying open the next set of doors as Lessing covers them.

Once in, they're at a disadvantage. The space is pitch black and spotted with positions perfect for hiding behind. While they can utilize this to their advantage, so too can anyone else. Minutes or hours pass as they carefully move their way through, using shipping containers as covers, until they're at the door to the main cargo hold. It opens to darkness, only the distant airlock's emergency lights casting a glow dozens of meters away. Without a wrist light or emergency lantern, they'll have to tread carefully across the space, avoiding making noise as they navigate around terminals and containers.

Katheryn is about to say this, when Lessing's forward momentum is abruptly halted. He takes one staggering step back, then another, until he collides with her, turns in her arms, and collapses.

On instinct, Kathryn grasps at him, trying to hold him up, but she can only manage to fall on her knees with him. The pain of the impact is ignored when she registers the sounds he's making. Low, desperate and —her hands and chest come away from his — wet. The smell of iron is already overwhelmingly strong, nauseating and terrible; he's drowning in his own blood. She scrambles to find the wound, to apply as much pressure to it with her palms, but by the time she finds it he has grown silent, and she can no longer feel the rapid final beats of his heart.

He's gone.

Kathryn doesn't feel anything. Vaguely, in some distant part of her mind, she knows that the serene calm that overcomes her in the moment is only borrowed. She'll pay for it later with interest.

The shadows before her give way to the faint outline of a man, to Doyle, a bloodied tactical blade in hand. His presence here, now, confirms what she's refused herself to fully accept all along.

It is the Maquis or someone controlling them, this is really happening, and they're willing to kill.

Kathryn stands, hand going to her phaser as she puts herself between his brandished weapon and Gilmore. The crewman behind her is trying to retain her calm and has her phaser trained elsewhere in the dark. It becomes clear to Kathryn then, in the moment before the butt of a phaser rifle connects with her temple, that they would have already killed her if that was their goal.

…

She wakes on her side, hands bound tightly behind her back, and her head throbbing with every heartbeat. Someone has brought emergency lanterns, and their blue-white light cast everything in harsh shadows.

They're still in the main landing bay.

With considerable effort, she turns her head and sees Marla kneeling beside her, bound and bloodied, doing her best to angle her body in a way that shields Kathryn from further attack. They remain this way for an indeterminant amount of time. She thinks and hour, maybe more. Less?

No amount of Marla trying to engage with Yosa and Doyle works; it's clear they're waiting for someone or something.

Eventually, Marla gives up and tells her that there had been a third they sent away to report their capture. They're obviously waiting for her to return.

Two sets of footsteps finally approach from behind them. One moves by her and out of Kathryn's line of site without slowing.

A moment later, a pair of hands pull her up to her knees, and she's staring right into the Doctor's unreadable expression. He eyes the front of her uniform, then asks.

"Is any of this yours?"

She looks down, ignoring the spike of pain it causes, and sees the aftermath of Noah Lessing's murder. Her jacket is irreparably drenched in his blood, "No."

"Some of it is," he whispers, reaching up to slide her matted hair away from her injured brow. It sticks to her skin and peals away with a sharp sting.

"Enough," Doyle says behind them, "make her talk."

"Talk?" She asks, "There's nothing to talk about."

If she squints, she can just make out Yosa and Anne Smithee at the edges of the shadows. The latter looks around at her compatriots grimly. Kathryn isn't sure if she's the one who struck her temple, but it's clear she's the one who was sent away to report the capture.

The Doctor sighs, gives up on the lost cause that is trying tell her blood apart from Noah's, and turns an annoyed glare over her shoulder, "I told the Commander that she may be more willing to talk to someone who isn't trying to kill her, but I didn't say that would be me."

"Either he releases us, or he doesn't."

"I'm afraid it's not that simple," the Doctor says softly, "Mr. Kim triggered a security program that locked down all systems, and your command codes are required to undo it."

She leans into him, pressing every inch of the blood that is still seeping through to her turtleneck into his side and hisses in his ear, "Why are you helping them?"

He turns his head and jerks away from the contact, then quickly stands, "I told Tuvok, I'm not the person for this."

Kathryn grits her teeth and rolls her wrists to check the bindings. Firm.

"Well you're the one he sent," Doyle snaps back.

"I'm a doctor, not an interrogator. She has a concussion, that's all I'm going to get from her."

As the Doctor passes Smithee, the blonde slips him something without the others noticing. Kathryn thinks she's seeing things, and she very well could be, but the determination in the Maquis woman's eyes when she looks at her is alarming.

Kathryn pitches herself to her side as red phaser fire cuts across the blue light. The shadows created by the brief exchange are disorienting, and the angle of her fall slams her into Marla. The blonde, in turn, crashes over with a small cry, just as another burst of light punches through the space where her head used to be.

The firefight ends as quickly as it began. Doyle and Yosa are slumped over, stunned.

Smithee pulls herself up from the floor and rushes over. When she reaches them, she grabs Doyle's knife from his belt, and drops to her knees between the bound women.

"I'm cutting you loose," she insists as Kathryn struggles against her with fierce kicks and head thrashes.

A moment later, there's a tug and her hands are free.

She staggers to her feet as Smithee turns to Marla, and sways against a wave of vertigo that slams into her. The Doctor steadies her as he moves past her to kneel by Doyle. At first she thinks he's checking his condition, but then Kathryn notices that he's binding his arms.

Without speaking, she grabs half of what remains of the length of the tether that held her and does the same to Yosa. When she's done, she takes his light from him and straps it to her wrist.

Finally, the four are free to stare at each other.

"What is going on?"

"I'd think it was obvious," the Doctor deadpans, "The Maquis are taking this ship."

"Not all of us" Smithee corrects him, before handing Kathryn a phaser.

"I gathered that," she sets the phaser to level three and keeps it ready in her hand, "what I don't understand is why."

"Why the Maquis are taking the ship, or why I'm not helping them?"

"Both."

Smithee shakes her head, like she can't believe what she's about to say, "These aren't my friends. It's like a switch has gone off."

"There's more," the Doctor presses.

"Commander Tuvok is helping them," Ann admits helplessly.

Kathryn already knows this, "What about Chakotay?"

The Doctor hesitates, surprised that she isn't surprised then nods, "He's holding engineering with Torres."

"None of this makes sense," Marla insists, "I had a meeting with Commander Chakotay three days ago, we were drafting a probationary program for the Equinox crew to propose to Starfleet Command. H-he was supportive."

"All I know is that they were passing around a message from Tuvok's son, and when it got to me..nothing," Smithee shrugs, "They acted like it should have changed my life, so I played along until I could figure out what was happening. That was this morning"

Just before all hell broke loose. Had she tried to tell Harry? Was that what had caused Yosa and Jor to start a fire fight on five? Had someone caught them in the act of 'recruiting'?

"Yosa and Tabor's injuries were consistent with a forced mind meld," the Doctor acknowledges, "I wouldn't be surprised if that's how they've chosen to handle those who don't fall in line."

"In line with what?"

"The mutiny," he shrugs, "whatever was in that video worked like an activation phrase. I won't be able to say more until I can do a full examination of the affected."

A distant crash punctuates the end of his sentence. Kathryn grabs Marla by the arm and starts drawing her to the turbolift.

"We need to go," she orders the other two.

Smithee straightens her spine and shakes her head, "I'm not going with you."

"Excuse me?"

"I need to find out what's going on, and I can't leave Carlson alone with them."

"There are more like you?"

"Just him. Stun me and bind me like the others, I'm more useful to you acting on the inside than I am here."

Kathryn shakes her head, then gestures at the two prone forms on the ground, "They'll know you helped me."

"They only know that the the Doctor disarmed me before he shot them."

"It's what we planned on our way here," the Doctor confirms softly.

The Maquis could kill her. Smithee stares at her, expectantly, as if she's already considered this and has accepted the risk.

Please don't make me regret this, she wants to say. Instead, Kathryn lowers her phaser setting to two, raises her arm, and shoots the younger woman in the right shoulder.

Please don't be lying, she doesn't want to think. This could all be a ploy, a way to work Kathryn around to giving everything away. She pushes the thought down — she can do nothing with it at the moment.

The Doctor catches Smithee as she slumps, and carefully lowers her to the floor. As he binds her hands, Kathryn turns away and removes her jacket. The material has stiffened, and the zipper is jammed by dried blood, but she manages to force it off her shoulders and to the floor. It's an afterthought that she remembers to grab her inert combadge and pin it to her turtleneck.

She turns back to see that Marla is kneeling by Doyle, clutching the blade he'd used to kill her friend. Kathryn thinks, briefly, that the crewman is going to retaliate in some way, but Marla only sighs once before flinging weapon across the room, where in clatters against something in darkness.

When they're all ready, Marla leads the way to the turbolift as Kathryn forces herself to walk beside the Doctor even though she can barely bring herself to look at him, "Tell me everything you know."

"It isn't much," he answers quietly.

Yet, he talks as they work open the door and enter the shaft one-by-one: Marla, then Kathryn, then him. The Maquis are engaging in mutiny and Tuvok is helping them and none of it is in the ballpark of rational because it isn't.

"They thought I would help them because you'd confined me to my quarters. Of course, I let them think that, I even played along," they're halfway to deck nine when he adds, "Crewman Smithee took a risk when she told me she wanted to stop them."

Yes, it was brave, but what she needs most now is information not motivation.

"Who do they have?"

"They didn't give me an alphabetized list," he grosses, and while she can't glare at him for it, her silence is pointed.

He sighs, "Almost all of the Maquis are ambulatory. The majority of Starfleet crew have been locked in their quarters and bunks. They have Harry in your ready room. They're using Naomi and Icheb to keep Seven in line in the mess."

"Tom? Megan?"

"Megan was stunned on the bridge. As for Mr. Paris…I don't know. I wasn't able to watch this train wreck start. Whatever happened to him happened before the Maquis thought to bring me into the fold."

"Did they tell you their goal?"

"All I know is that I was supposed to get your command codes and cancel the program Mr. Kim triggered. I'm not exactly involved in the high-level planning."

By mimicking her voice no doubt, Kathryn thought, with a shudder.

"Captain," Marla whispers from below, "someone's coming up."

They've just climbed below deck nine, one of the ship's main turbolift sidesteps. They can risk the push to ten and try to access engineering from its second level, or they can take the safer option and climb back up and use one of the three tunnels or two horizontal jefferies tubes to offload on nine. If they can make it to shuttlebay two's operating control gallery, they'll have a clear drop to the main level on ten.

"Up," she orders, not willing to risk it.

When they reach the sidestep, she debates which path to take, aware that any of the three horizontal tubrolift tracks could be blocked, trapping them should they have been followed.

"Captain, over here!"

The hiss that fills the silence behind her causes her to stop and turn, phaser at the ready. The Doctor shines his wrist light directly into the face of Tom, who is sticking out of one of the two jefferies tube entries to the sidestep.

The pilot holds a hand up to prevent the light from blinding him. He's pale, sweaty, and sporting an angry black eye. The swelling and bruising make her think that something there was broken under an almighty force, but he's staring at her with so much relief through the blue of the other.

Kathryn gestures to the others to follow her into the tube. Tom makes room for them quickly, setting off at a pace that will allow them to easily follow him. Marla, now taking up the rear, pulls the entry hatch back into place.

"What are you doing down here?" Kathryn asks him as they all move hand over hand, knee over knee. He should have been on the bridge.

"Chakotay asked me to help with something in engineering. He was being strange … I should have known something was happening… but I just thought he was giving B'Elanna and I time to get lunch."

A moment later, he adds bitterly, "They tried to hold me hostage instead."

Without needing to ask, Kathryn knows what happened to his eye and the realization makes her ache in a way she hasn't before. It only lasts a moment before she pushes the feelings aside — she can't afford to think about what anyone has lost, not right now.

Not until this is over.

"I escaped when the systems went down. A few of us are holing up in the turbolift maintenance workshop."

"Why didn't we use the other jefferies tube entrance?" It would have deposited them right into the workshop, instead of forcing them to crawl a loop half the length of the deck.

"We sealed it from the inside. The only way to enter the jefferies tube is from inside the workshop, the starboard shaft door, or through the emergency life support bay."

"How many of you are there? I need to get to engineering," she says, as they round the first bend.

"We sent a group down to ten for reconnaissance and they didn't report back," Tom doesn't look back at her as he speaks, but she can hear the strain in his tone. He'd sent the group down — it means he was the ranking officer before she arrived.

"Who?"

"Celes, Jenny, and Bristow."

"How many left?"

"Six, including me. Nine, with you."

She knows that there could be — no, have to be — more. If not here, if not with Tom, then across the decks of Voyager, congregating in small groups or holding their own. How many times had they had to do this against external forces? How terrible was it that they now had to against their friends?

They make it to the workshop just as Kathryn's bruised knees grow numb and her headache goes from a sharp throb to an excruciatingly dull ache along her temple, neck and jaw. She's relieved to swing her legs forward and out of the hatch the moment Tom moves away from the exit.

Once again, the blue-white glow of emergency lanterns fill her vision. The workshop is a smaller space, roughly the size of astrometrics, with spare parts and tools neatly stacked against the walls. Sitting in two working groups on the floor are Lang, Mitchel, Selles, Mortimer, and Morrow, each fashioning what appears to be melee weapons out of what's available to them. Aside from Lang and Morrow, they're all either ops or engineering.

Some are even Delta shift, and this gives Kathryn hope that the numbers aren't entirely against them.

Selles is the first to see her, and the Bajoran woman's look of hope is fleeting, immediately replaced with horror. Kathryn doesn't understand until Tom turns around and gets his first look of her in the light, immediately, he's reaching for her to check for injuries, "Captain, what happened?"

She remembers then. Her own wound has left her forehead a mess of sweat, blood, and matted hair. She looks down at her turtleneck and sees that Lessing's blood has stained a large patch from her clavicles to her diaphragm. Gently, she pries away from Tom's hold.

"They killed Noah," Marla steps out from behind her.

James Morrow's reaction to this is striking — grief and rage and resolve all contained in one twisted grimace. He's former Equinox — more importantly, he's Noah's partner — and she's wearing the blood of the man he loved, the blood of the man she'd once tortured for information, all over her. It's on her shirt, her hands, and it streaks rusty and angry against her cheek as she swipes away the sweat that blooms there due to the heat of so many bodies in such a small space.

They'd left him there, alone in the dark, to grow cold.

Kathryn pushes the thought away before it can take root.

"We have reason to believe that someone is controlling the former Maquis crew's behavior. Doctor."

He speaks on command, "I was able to convince them that I was willing to help them," he begins.

What he must have said, to do that. Surely there was vitriol there, but how much of it was exaggerated versus real?

"In doing so, I was able to confirm with Crewman Smithee that a communique from the Alpha Quadrant contained an activation phrase for a what I'm assuming is a form of Maquis mental conditioning. Their repeated, devotional references to a man named Teero and his plans for them supports this." the Doctor steps further into the light, and despite what he's saying, many look relieved that he is here. Why shouldn't they be? To have someone who might be able to treat their injuries should they receive any is a real boon. To have someone who knows something? What a good fortune.

Except for Morrow, at the mention of Smithee, he scowls, "She's Maquis."

"She's a member of this crew," Kathryn corrects, although she cannot shake her fear that Smithee might still be working under the orders of Chakotay or Tuvok to establish a long con, and that the Doctor in some way is helping them, "and the reason I'm not bound on the floor of the cargo bay right now."

"Commander Tuvok is not Maquis," the Doctor adds, "yet he's holding the bridge crew prisoner. I can think of no other reason why he would do this, outside of an external force."

The others whisper, and Kathryn sees the look shared between Morrow and Marla. Eventually, the latter steps closer to her in support, and the former nods. Whatever fight in him fades as his shoulders slump in acceptance of what he's been told.

Tom steps closer to her and asks softly so as not to grab the attention of the others, "Is Harry okay?"

"I don't know," she admits, "he was on the bridge."

He can only swallow and nod, before turning to the situation at hand, gesturing to the stillness of the room around them, to the signs of the darkness that has settled across the ship,"Did they do this?"

"No."

"What is it, anyway?" Mortimer asks, tone as misanthropic and irreverent as ever. It is nice to see that not even a mutiny can change that.

She considers not telling them what she has slowly realized Harry had done. Weighs the pros and cons of doing so, of revealing the last line of defense a Captain and her most loyal officers have against mutiny. Kathryn hadn't given it thought in years, not since the moment Chakotay accepted the position of her first officer.

The protocol is the nuclear option, locking everyone but a Captain out of ship controls. If she dies before releasing it, Voyager will be as good as an interstellar paper weight.

That's why she'd never shared it with anyone but Chakotay or Tuvok, and why she hadn't considered it once since. The protocol was never meant for the Delta Quadrant. It's only useful when a captain knows they have Starfleet vessels in the wings able to lend either their support or their captain to issue command codes if the affected ship's captain is incapacitated or dead.

Here, there is no relief.

Her silence lasts long enough that Marla fills the void, "It's a mutiny protocol. I-I told Harry that Captain Ransom nearly triggered it…at the end, but that he didn't because he wanted me to be able to transport everyone from the Equinox to Voyager."

It explains why Marla and Noah took the lock-down so easily in stride — they'd heard of it before.

It also explains how Harry knew how to implement it. Given his curiosity, he would have investigated whether Voyager had a similar protocol and if he had the ability to trigger it as one of her senior staff.

He did, and it is a good thing he had.

"I want to be absolutely clear that it is something I've never considered using, because of the faith I have in this crew and our common goal to go home" she looks at each of them in turn, until they accept those words for what they are.

The truth.

"That said, I won't say that Harry was wrong to use it when he realized what…What Chakotay and Tuvok were doing. It locks down all systems but shields and life support and seals crew quarters. It will remain active unless I enter my command codes in engineering or the bridge."

"The good news," Tom tries to raise the group's morale in the face of this bombshell of a contingency plan, "is that they won't be able to use the sensors to detect our location."

"The bad news," Mortimer does his best to bring it right back down again, "is that any tricorder will do the trick."

"It'll be a relief to you then that Smithee and I destroyed the ones in sickbay and the science lab," the Doctor deadpans.

It is said nonchalantly, but even Kathryn has to turn to look at the him in shock, "That was…"

What? Brilliant? Another unexpected move in her favor? Something she should have done?

"Don't thank me, it was Crewman Smithee's idea. It doesn't mean they don't have one already or that they won't find one eventually."

He pulls the medical tricorder from his belt, and gives it a little wave, "But it does mean we'll be able to see them first."

…

She desires nothing more than to rush to engineering and take back her ship. Most of her crew is sitting in dark, without access to food or water or news about what is happening, and she's thirsty— but the facts force her to speak to each member of the crew in the space, and gather their reports on everything they've seen and heard. She needs the information to help conceive a plan, break it down into its weakest parts, then create another one.

The heat has her down to her tank — which is blessedly only spotted with blood instead of drenched in it, — by the end of the final debriefing. Her need to pace is outdone by the size of the workshop and the fact that the others' morale depends on the appearance of her remaining calm and in passible health. So, she takes a seat on the floor beside Tom, elbows propped up on her knees, as the Doctor settles in to work on cataloging and healing her injuries.

In addition to the tricorder, he brought along dermal and bone regenerators. Another stroke of foresight she should have had herself.

Before he can start poking at her brow, she stops him.

"Tom first."

The Doctor sighs and looks like he might argue with her, but he turns on his knee to follow her order. Tom gives her a thankful, if not sad, smile.

"Your orbital bone is broken," the Doctor's mutter confirms her earlier suspicion, "and you have a concussion."

"What can I say, I married a woman stronger than me? I'm lucky that's all that's broken."

It's an attempt at a joke, but it's heartbroken and Kathryn feels her eyes slipping shut in bitter empathy.

"You successfully escaped and led the others to relative safety despite your diminished capacity. Don't sell yourself short."

"Well thanks, Doc. That might be the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

"I wouldn't know," comes the quippy response.

Kathryn turns away from the banter as Marla crouches down beside her. The younger woman takes the set aside tricorder and begins to scan — as she has been doing once every five minutes for the last hour. It isn't a perfect means of detecting others, but anyone with a decent understanding of the deck layouts can parse out by distance readouts where others are.

"The same," she murmurs, "the static signs have to be the crew caught in their quarters. There are seven ambulatory signs on deck ten and another twelve on eleven. Six are stationary in engineering? Hostages?"

Kathryn nods, "Most likely, at least three and at least one Maquis to guard them. What about above us?"

"Three stationary and two active in the cargo bay," the three they'd left tied up, no doubt, "eight additional active on seven. The rest are stationary. I can't get a good reading of six. "

"Let's assume the two moving around on eight are Maquis checking in their friends. Those on Seven could be anyone. We also have to assume they'll locate a tricorder. I need you to work with the others to find a way to camouflage our life signs."

Marla nods, before handing the instrument back to the Doctor and moving to the small congregation of whispering ensigns and crewman. When she's seated beside them, Kathryn looks back to the pair.

Tom's face looks much better, the bruising and swelling reduced to the point that he can open both eyes.

"What should I do?" he asks her, and Kathryn knows that what he's asking for is a lifeline. If he sits here, idle and waiting around for an answer, he'll think about what's really happening. If he does that, the desolation of it will takes its chance to settle in.

This is exactly what Kathryn has been contending with since it started.

"Work with Lang and Morrow. Find a way into engineering."

It is an unconventional group, but she needs an unconventional plan to divert that many Maquis. She has little hope of making it to engineering without out-of-the-box cleverness, and even less hope of reaching the bridge.

Tom nods and departs with a, "Yes, Ma'am.

She watches him gather the others, until the Doctor enters her field of vision, tricorder and scanning wand in hand.

"I was half right," he says, "you have a concussion and a hairline fracture of your temporal. Otherwise, it's just contusions, dehydration, lacerations. You'll survive."

"It's nice to see your bedside manner never changes."

"Well, I try," he retorts dryly as he flicks on the bone regenerator, "although I can't say I've ever had to treat anyone during a mutiny before. When this is over, I'll solicit feedback on how to improve for the next time."

"There won't be a next time."

"Perhaps not in your lifetime," his eyes are on her temple, and just when it begins to sound a little like a threat, he adds, "but give it a century or two. Who knows?"

As he works, the throbbing in her head subsides. The remnants of the pain is just the telltale headache that comes with needing water, which scratch in the back of her throat confirms. The Doctor moves on to the gash on her brow.

To distract from the fact that his face is so near her own, she asks:

"How did you convince them to let you out of your quarters?"

His eyes don't leave her injury as he almost smiles, "I didn't. When the holography systems shut down, my program routed to my emitter, which you know was in Commander Tuvok's possession. Remind me, and I'll tell you all about that clever piece of engineering one day."

She remains silent as her skin starts to knit back together, and he takes it as an opportunity to continue, "It became a matter of convincing the Commander to not vaporize my emitter. He's brainwashed, not illogical, so I delivered a few cursory arguments about how they'd need a doctor when this was all over, how I have no particular allegiance to the crew, and how I just need the ship to survive, et cetera, et cetera."

His eye meet hers, and this close she finally understands what about his gaze has made her uncomfortable these last few months. He'd altered his irises to be as dark as his pupils — it's a physical trait that, with the Betazed, is as warm as it is striking.

With him it's unsettling — just another marker of a planet and people he's left behind.

"Whatever concerns you've been sharing with him made him inclined to believe me. Not that I blame him, everything I told him was the truth."

She swallows once, her mouth dry, then makes a decision she hopes she doesn't regret, "But not the entire truth."

He lowers the regenerator, but his eyes don't leave hers, uncowed by the challenge in her tone, "I'm not a fool, Captain. I know why you sent me to help Zimmerman; it wasn't because you had a sudden interest in his health."

It looks like he has more to say, but instead he shakes his head and rises to his feet. Before moving away to treat the others' injuries, he scowls down at her and murmurs, "It would have been so much easier if you'd just asked."

…

Noah Lessing's blood is still on her hands, settling in the creases of her knuckles and in the lines around her fingernails. It flakes where it is dry and smears where it meets her sweat, and as much as she tries to rub it away on her pants, there always seems to be more of it.

She knows her own blood is still smeared across her face — her forehead, hair and probably even her cheek — but attempts to wipe it away just make it worse. In the blue white light and the shadows it casts, it looks ghastly, and so, in turn, does she.

Selles has deviated from working with Marla to bicker with Mortimer. They both agree that they can break the seal to the enlisted mess down the hall, where the group can find water. They just don't agree on how. There are four people trapped in there, and Moritmer's recommendation of blowing it by overloading a phaser's power cell is sure to injure all of them and bring the Maquis on the decks above and below to their doorstep. Selles wants to carve through the door with a phaser at its highest level. It will take time, but provided no one on the inside is foolish enough to stand directly in line of the beam, there should be no injuries.

When Mortimer hits his most difficult, Kathryn steps in and orders them to follow Selles' plan. She sends Mitchel with them to help stand guard, and moves on to listen in on Tom's group. They're debating strategies to draw one or more of the Maquis out of the upper level of engineering in order to subdue them. If they can't, their own group, no matter how large, will run the risk of being picked off from above as they enter. Overloading a phaser or two is a much more viable option for this mission, and one she approves of. As she steps away, they're selecting the best locations to set off the traps.

Marla, Lang, and the Doctor are huddled together in corner over the tricorder. When Kathryn nears them, they seem ready to receive her.

"We can't mask all of our signatures," Marla starts, "but we can obfuscate one or two and create ghosts with the tricorder. Up to seven, with basic movement patterns across three decks."

Which means they can play tricks on those in engineering until they were ready to move against them, or simulate a series of movements all the way up to deck seven in order to draw those on eight away, provided they have a tricorder of their own.

"That's not it," Marla adds, when Kathryn has commented on their good work.

The expression on the younger woman's face can only be described as bracing, as if she knows what she's about to say won't be received well.

"What is it?"

"I overheard what Lieutenant Paris is working on, and I think we should utilize it as a distraction to get you to the bridge."

Before Kathryn can outright say no, Ensign Lang begins to justify the plan. She's security, so there can be no doubt that she's the one who thought it up, "Captain, we might be able to take engineering, but the odds are that we'll only manage a standoff. Do you really want to reactivate the systems and reroute bridge commands to engineering in these conditions? The Maquis might be planning a contingency in the case that you do."

She decides to hear them out, but just the mental act of doing so forces her to settle on hand on her hip and pinch the bridge of her nose with the other, "Go on."

"We can draw the five that have been moving on eight to nine with a decoy. If Ann is still one of us, she should be willing to ask them to take the bait. Once they enter the turbolift sidestep, we can stun the others. It will take four Maquis out of the equation and add one more person to our group, who we can use to help infiltrate engineering. From there, eight will be clear. We can use the tricorder to mask your life signs and mine and create distractions as we climb to one."

"Ours," Marla cuts in, "We'll need a guard on each side of the Captain."

Lang nods, "She's right. It's a straight climb to the bridge, otherwise. They'll no doubt have people waiting at the station doors on deck two and probably three, but they can't risk firing on us. If they hit you…"

If they hit her, she'd be stunned and fall to her death, dooming the ship and her crew to a slow death. The plan on its own isn't terrible. Even if she is caught, they will force her on to the bridge, where there are likely to be fewer Maquis to deal with. She can find a way to incapacitate them, but…

"If I send people into engineering without me, they'll know I'm going to the bridge. Nothing will stop the Maquis there from killing them, and sending a party after me. "

"That's where I come in," the Doctor interjects, "I can make myself look and sound like you. They may still threaten the lives of the hostages, but I can negotiate long enough to buy you the time needed to take the ship back."

Kathryn paces a few short steps, thinking it over, not liking it but not knowing why until the holes become all too clear to her, "You can't hide three life signs with the tricorder. We have to assume they'll see at least one of us coming. And if we have the tricorder," she looks the Doctor up and down, "no matter how much you look or sound like me, if even one person in engineering has a tricorder of their own, they'll detect you in an instant."

"No," he says, almost immediately understanding what she's about to suggest.

"Yes," she commands, "You don't get to stop me this time, Doctor. We're all dead if this doesn't work."

Her emphasis on the word all seems to cow him. This isn't her running toward danger without cause. Not this time. After a moment he reluctantly concedes with a nod.

"Captain?" Marla asks, not following along.

"He's going to the bridge with you."

"But the plan only works if there's a decoy in engineering."

Kathryn looks at the crewman, finally willing to admit to herself that she feels something a little like fondness for her.

"I know."

The rest of the day passes as they prepare to take their stand.

Tom brings the four crewman freed from the mess up to speed with his plan as Morrow drags a water container to the corner of the room. It's been nearly a day since this started, and everyone has begun to feel the effects of dehydration. Kathryn accepts her portion and throws it back with a few short gulps.

As Marla and Selles work at reconfiguring the tricorder to do what they need it to, Lang is briefing the others on Maquis close-quarter combat techniques. There aren't enough phasers to go around, and they'll be sacrificing at least one to create a distraction, so those who will go without are practicing combat with the weapons they've created from the tools available to them in the workshop. Watching them, Kathryn is thankful that Tuvok had once been deeply paranoid of the Maquis and had insisted on training the Starfleet members of security in case the worst happened.

This leaves her in the corner with the Doctor, who is still clearly unhappy at her decision to send him to the bridge but falling in line.

"This will be disconcerting," he warns shortly, before his holomatrix phases and a perfect physical replica of her is staring back, fresh-faced and in full uniform.

He frowns, the effect is indeed disconcerting, then makes a few adjustments to his emitter. The perfectly combed bob grows disheveled, weighed down with simulated blood and sweat, and the pressed jacket gives way to a soiled tank top. Kathryn feels like she is staring into a mirror and has to acknowledge that she's seen better days.

She detaches the combadge from her tank and hands it to him, "If they capture you, they may try to take this. They need to be able to."

The Doctor understands, and the holographic combadge on his disappears, "I need something to pin it to."

"My turtleneck is lying somewhere around here. Wear that," it will have the added bonus of making him smell truly awful should any Maquis get too close. Awful is better than nothing at all.

He departs to retrieve it. A few minutes later he returns with it on, the combadge pinned to place, and her pips still on the collar. The effect is uncanny, and she's not sure she's comfortable with him running around looking like her, but this is what must be done.

"If we're going for authenticity," if it's strange hearing her voice with his speech patterns, it's even stranger when he reaches out with her hand and presses two fingers to the pulse point on her neck.

She jerks back, "What are you doing?"

His (her?) other hand grabs her wrist and forces her to mimic him. Beneath her fingers, under skin that feels all too real, she senses a strange, thready tap-tap of a pulse that isn't human. It slowly gives way to the steady cadence of what she must assume is her own.

"Kelemane have a six-chambered heart," he explains.

Of course he would have found a way to force his program to mimic heart beats and pulses at his command. No doubt someone on that planet would have eventually uncovered the horrifying case of a man walking around without them if he hadn't.

No wonder his program had experienced so many cascade failures.

"I don't expect anyone to check, but in case they do," he shrugs, then drops his hand and releases her wrist so she can do the same.

"Hide your emitter, and keep the tricorder on you," she instructs as she puts more space between them, "if they find you, you can use it to fabricate your own life signs."

He nods and stares at her expectantly through her own eyes.

She hesitates, still unable to shake the concern that this has all been part of some plan cooked up between him and Smithee and Tuvok. That he will take what she gives him, walk easily into the bridge, and help people she once trusted implicitly take her ship and kill the crew she'd sworn to get home.

"I'm counting on you," she says.

"I know," her voice says back.

Kathryn gives him her command codes.

…

The start of the plan goes off without a hitch.

Marla, Lang, Morrow, Tom and the Doctor draw the Maquis down from deck eight into the turbolift sidestep and then ambush them. Without a tricorder, they are easily outmaneuvered, stunned, and left bound in the jefferies tube. Smithee is quickly brought up to speed on the plan, and sets off down to deck ten to stun the two Maquis who are doing peripheral rounds. From there, she will move to eleven to convince those guarding the main level of engineering to follow her away from their post.

When she departs, the rest split into three groups.

Tom leads Mitchel and Selles and two of the newer recruits to the stern of the ship, where they are supposed to access the second level of the shuttlebay. There, they will overload a phaser to create an explosion. Without fire suppression systems, the Maquis will have to respond in order to prevent engineering from being affected. Once they've manually suppressed it, Tom's team will stun them and climb down to ten to access the upper level of engineering

Marla, Lang, and the Doctor depart as soon as Tom's group sets off. Once they've gone, there will be no way to contact them again. Kathryn watches them until their wrist lights are no longer visible and wishes them silent luck, then look at those waiting for her orders.

Kathryn's group — Morrow, Mortimer, and two of the freed crewman — are all that's left to follow down to eleven.

"Ready?"

Four people are staring back at her — each of them give her a firm nod — and she briefly wonders how many of them will make it to tomorrow.

They descend.

Ten is clear, the sounds of chaos echoing loudly from the shuttlebay as they continue climbing down. Kathryn is third out of the station on eleven, and when they've cleared the way, all five quietly rush starboard to the outer hall, where they pivot at the intersection toward the bow of the ship.

When they reach the interior corridor that houses the main entrance to engineering, Smithee is waiting for them. The bay door — which closed during the lockdown — is now hoisted open haphazardly at waist height with a storage container. Smithee is standing to the right of it, fingers to her lips shushing them and phaser angled to the ceiling. Two rush forward to fall in line beside her along the wall, while Kathryn and the other two move to the opposite edge of the entrance.

Some commotion is happening within. Kathryn knows Tom's group hasn't made it to the upper level of engineering yet — it's too soon — which means the hostages must have used the confusion of the explosion in the shuttlebay as an opportunity to take a stand. Without weapons, they're doomed to fail.

How many are going to die if she waits? How many will if she doesn't?

Kathryn looks at the group behind Smithee. The red emergency lights are enough to give away that they want to go in. From behind her, Morrow whispers, "Captain."

It isn't a question, just an affirmation that they're with her.

"We go in," she whispers, "but keep to the plan. Fan out. Those with phasers cover those without. We're outnumbered, so neutralize who you can and then take cover. We can't win, but we can buy the Doctor time."

She and Smithee step aside to allow the rest to duck into the room. After counting to five, both women rush into the fray. It isn't a trap — but as expected, it isn't a clear victory. After a frenetic minute of combat and phaser fire it turns into the intended standoff. Maquis and Starfleet injured and down and her team taking cover or keeping Maquis at bay, and she is stuck mere meters from the entrance with Smithee at her side.

Chakotay and Ayala move into pearlescent light of the warp core. Ayala pushes Joe Carey, out of breath, bleeding from one ear and clutching his side, to his knees in front of him as Chakotay takes a few careful steps toward Kathryn. Twisted in a heap on the ground beside him is a woman in a engineering gold.

Kathryn's stomach can sink no further — it's Celes, her glassy brown eyes fixed toward the upper deck unblinkingly.

"Ann, I'm disappointed," said by anyone else, it would snide or cloying, but Chakotay's tone is measured and sincere. Somehow, this is worse.

"Shut up, Chakotay," Smithee has her phaser trained in his direction and is keeping herself positioned between Ayala and Kathryn.

"Set your phasers to kill," he ignores the slight, instead choosing to issue the order to his people while looking in Kathryn's direction, "If you shoot me, Captain, my people won't hesitate to kill yours."

She keeps her phaser trained on him regardless, pushes down the echoes of the memory of Noah Lessing choking on his own blood, and grits her teeth as she considers how to buy Tom and subsequently the Doctor more time, "How do you think this will end, Chakotay?"

"Very differently than how you want it to," he concedes, "but if they behave, we'll keep some of your crew aboard."

He's been her right hand for so long, yet he remains a tactician at heart. Chakotay will have done the math — will have figured out who he can and cannot off board, who he can and cannot force into his service. He's wearing the Starfleet uniform, his field commission rank still on his collar, and she has to remind herself that the man making threats isn't who he really is.

She has to acknowledge that that might not matter in the end.

"The others?"

He makes a show of considering it, "That depends, on them and on you. Surrender, and we'll find you an M Class planet to settle down on. Continue as you are, and," he gestures to Celes, "We'll find one to bury you on."

"You know I can't surrender this ship, Chakotay. What's happening to you isn't you."

"Do you feel like you, Ayala?"

"More than I have in a long time, Sir."

Chakotay shrugs at her, as if to say, well there's that, then.

"Captain," Joe calls out to her, panting through what must be broken ribs, "I'd rather die than be stranded out here."

"We can oblige that, Mr. Carry," Chakotay turns to Ayala with a solemn nod.

Several things happen so quickly that they cannot be stopped. Kathryn turns her phaser on the security officer as he prepares to fire on Joe, but Smithee beats her to the trigger. Ayala is able to dodge the beam but, with his poor footing, fires off one of his own in her direction despite Chakotay's sharp, "No!" Kathryn has no time to brace for the impact and what it means, but Smithee lunges in front of her just in time to intercept it. Even before the the blonde hits the floor, dead, Joe launches himself against Ayala, wrestling the phaser from him until, eventually, it goes off between them.

Ayala makes no sound as he dies.

Joe staggers to his feet, the exertion clearly having taken his toll, and then crumples into a limp heap when Chakotay punches him. Her XO grabs the phaser and appears to consider using it on the engineer, but shake his head once and stands to look at bodies of Tal Celes and Ann Smithee before conceding, "We're going to need some engineers left alive after this."

He gestures at someone to his right, in one of the console alcoves that happens to be in Kathryn's blind spot. A few seconds later, B'Elanna steps out dragging Jenny Delaney to him by her arm before forcing her to her knees.

"I don't think we'll need another stellar cartographer, though" it's almost apologetic, the way he says it as he levels Ayala's phaser at Jenny's back.

The brunette is trembling, and her soft, "Captain, no," might have made a lesser man mock her for her fear. Chakotay isn't that lesser man, so he says nothing. Instead, he flicks his eyes to Kathryn in time to see that she's pressed her phaser to her own temple.

"It's set to kill, Commander," she says, angling herself in a way that he can see that she's telling the truth.

As if on cue, a short commotion reverberates across on the upper level. Jenny tries to use the distraction to struggle against B'Elanna, but the half-Klingon outclasses her in strength. Her punch isn't enough to knock Jenny out, but the way it breaks her nose causes Jenny to sink back to the floor as blood freely trails down her lips and chin. Kathryn can do nothing about this, can only keep the phaser pressed to her own temple, and watch as Tom darts beyond the far side of the warp core on the upper level to take cover. When B'Elanna breaks away to engage him, he doesn't hesitate to shoot her in the chest.

Chakotay, clearly unhappy with the turn of events, has to step to the side to keep the warp core between him and the pilot's line of fire.

"Here's what will happen," Kathryn says, "If I fire, this ship will be derelict. You'll remain adrift until the life support runs out or you starve to death. If you're lucky, someone might find you, if you aren't especially unlucky, they might even help."

"You wouldn't strand your crew," he counters.

"The alternative is that you strand them or kill them," she knows she sounds betrayed, and has to work very hard to remember that he wouldn't be doing this, if he had in real choice in the matter. Kathryn takes a steading breath and manages to make her next question sound sincere, "What did you think would happen if you tried to force my hand, Chakotay?"

The issue is that while she's prepared to fire, knowing that there is still a way for this ship to still make it to the Alpha Quadrant with what remains of her crew in tact, Chakotay doesn't. His decision-calculus is based on his belief that she won't do what she's promised as eagerly as she's promised it.

He makes a gesture as if he's considering what she's saying, and it does the trick just long enough that when he shoots Jenny and her body sags lifelessly to the floor, Kathryn's reflexes don't cause her to depress the trigger.

"I wonder how many hostages I'll need to kill to make that true, Kathryn."

Her reflexes may have failed her, but her rage does not. Without blinking, she turns her phaser on him and fires.

She thinks, in that moment, that she'll have to remember this decision for the rest of her life. Will have the angry red beam of light as it leaves the end of her phaser, travels to Chakotay's chest, and takes him away from her forever burned into her retinas until the day that she dies. That there's no amount of regret, no part of herself that she can give to that regret, that's big enough to to make this okay.

In the nanosecond it takes for the phaser to fire, the familiar blue haze of a transporter beam takes her.

Kathryn rematerializes on the bridge, phaser inactive in her hand, and looks around frantically. Harry is at ops, Marla is at the conn, Carlson is standing guard at the turbolift doors, and Megan is punching commands into the captain's chair.

Above her, Tuvok looks down at her from tactical.

She's already trying to hurtle herself at him before she's aware of the a pair of arms that are holding her back, "Captain, he's with us."

It's the Doctor, voice and body and the strange pattering heartbeat against her back once again his own as he prevents her from hurting yet another dear friend.

"I have managed to fight off Teero's control," Tuvok says flatly, yet in that way of his that sounds like an apology.

"Captain, I've transported Chakotay and the rest of the Maquis to cargo bay three and sealed the doors. All systems are now online," Harry reports.

Chakotay, she thinks, but cannot bring herself to ask.

Something must show on her face, because the Harry nods once, "He's alive. I was able to neutralize the phaser fire during transport."

"It's over," he adds, his relief and sorrow plain on his still-young face. He'd saved them, in his own way, but knows there was a cost.

"Jenny?" Megan asks him, drawing everyone's attention. The question is involuntary, since she must know they have so many more important things they need to be doing now that they can do them.

The Doctor doesn't protest when Kathryn pushes herself away from him and staggers one step, then two, toward her chair. She feels hollowed-out and exhausted, and only the way that Megan stands and squares her shoulders as she readies herself for the answer — as if she could ever be prepared for this answer — keeps her from collapsing into her chair.

Megan's eyes shutter and then dim when Kathryn shakes her head and the horrible truth settles in. When she doubles over and keen, the terrible sound is of someone who has never been lonely in her life facing down a future where all she'll ever be again is alone.

It isn't over at all, Kathryn thinks as she catches her before she can fall — as all the pieces of the Captain she pulled tightly around herself begin to chafe against the reality of the past day.

It's only just begun.

…

The Maquis are finally, unquestionably themselves again. Looking at Chakotay, hunched over on the biobed where the Doctor leaves him so they can have privacy, Kathryn knows there is a part of him that wishes he wasn't here at all. She knows because she feels the same way — about herself, about him, about the six people in the morgue who will never walk the halls of this ship again.

He doesn't look at her, when he says, "I think it would be best if I resign my post."

Would it? She thinks that, maybe, yes, it would easier if he were to no longer be her first officer. But best? Who would she give it to? Tuvok? He may not have killed anyone himself, but his hands are no less bloodied. There are at least twelve former-Maquis who had mind melds forced upon them, who will have to go on calling him Sir despite his unforgivable violation of them? There is no one else who can do their jobs for them, just as there is no one who can do hers.

"You can't run from this, Chakotay," her tone is empty, and Kathryn knows that this feeling of unfeeling she has can't last. Today, tomorrow, next week, the rage and sorrow and guilt will slam into her with all the force she has been using to keep them at bay.

"I killed people," his own voice is broken. He's feeling too much.

Well good, she thinks, one of us has to.

Doyle killed Noah, Ayala killed Celes and and Ann, Joe killed Ayala, and although he didn't mean to, Tom had killed Jor.

"You killed Jenny, and I," she pauses, closes her eyes and can't finish the sentence. I killed you. She had, he just hadn't died.

One day, when the rage and sorrow and guilt do hit her, she will also feel the unimaginable relief of knowing that although she'd pulled the trigger, he hadn't suffered the consequences. Right now, she just needs him to pull himself together and go do his job.

"Your request is denied."

He doesn't say anything more before he leaves; she doesn't think he'll be able to look her in the eyes for a very long time.

When he's gone, she lets her feet take her to the Doctor's office. He hasn't left sickbay since they retook the ship and started the long process of undoing what Teero and Tuvok had done to the minds of the Maquis. Five days — that's how long it had taken. Chakotay had been the most difficult and the last.

If she wants to, she can order the Doctor back to his quarters to serve out the rest of his confinement — he has a little over twenty days of it left.

She doesn't understand him anymore. She can admit to herself now that its the not knowing that scares her, not necessarily him. His motivations for being here, his defiance of her orders, his complicated feelings for her — these are all opaque and unexplainable. Yet, when it mattered most, he'd done his part to save her ship and her crew.

He looks up from his computer when she enters, assuming she must be here for a report, "Captain, I confirmed with Tuvok and Seven that there were signs of Borg tampering with our last data stream."

Yes, she knows this. Tuvok stood across from her in her ready room an hour ago, grim and withdrawn in his own solemn way, and explained to her that while Teero was a real man — with a real agenda regarding manipulating the Maquis — the Borg were the ones who had inserted the activation phrase into the message from Tuvok's son. The phrase they discovered when they assimilated him.

He hadn't said it, but Kathryn knows the truth. She'd given the Borg the opportunity to attack her crew by allowing them to assimilate her Chief of Security and plumb his mind for weaknesses. She'd given them the motivation to attack her crew by inciting an insurgency among their ranks.

Of course they'd returned the favor.

The Doctor stops talking when he sees what she's holding out for him. Slowly, he stands and approaches her, taking the combadge from her. It was Noah Lessing's, but she doesn't tell him this or that she'd taken it from the man's uniform when she stood over him five days ago and finally apologized for what she'd done to him.

Too late.

"I need you to be a member of this crew," it isn't an order; it's a request. She has to find every shred of unity she can amidst this newly broken group of people who used to be a family.

With whomever she can.

The Doctor looks from it to her. When she thinks he's about to say no, he grips the combadge tightly against his chest. A moment later, he sighs, nods, and is wearing his medical blues.

She takes a single breath, the only sign of her relief.

"The rest of your confinement is hereby commuted" Kathryn states as he turns away to walk back to his desk, "and, Doctor…"

When he stops but doesn't turn back to her, she approaches him, grabs his wrist, and pushes three small pips against his palm, "find something to pin these to."

---

Chapter Notes

Timeline Notes:

1. Seven's cortical implant fails at the same time it does in the show. You'll notice I made the Unimatrix Zero plot actually fit in to the rest of the season by having repercussion for the crew. This is one of them — I've always thought the implant failed here because of what they got up to in the episodes before.

2. Repression's story goes on longer than it did in the show. I'll talk a little bit more about what even was that in this chapter in later notes.

3. Next up, the real aftermath of this nightmare and Workforce.

Story Notes:

1. This story will now be four chapters. If I kept it to three, this chapter would have been a whole ass novella. I'm not doing that to you.

2. I spent hours going over Intrepid deck schematics for this chapter.

3. You know Janeway, all you have to do is ask. I think he'd tell you.

4. Repression (Story). I wanted to like this episode when I watched it. I rewatch it sometimes to see if it has grown on me. It hasn't. It's too late in the series for it, and so the writers clearly don't let anything bad happen. They can't blow up the ship dynamic that irrevocably in the final season. But I can, and I did. The background of Teero interests me, a Bajoran who might have used mind control on people to force them to join the Maquis and even loyal Maquis to keep them from defecting? It's positively Cardassian. But that's where his involvement should have ended. It makes no sense for him to try to get Voyager's Maquis to take out Cardassians. They're too far away and the Cardassians are shattered after the Dominion War. Do you know who it does make sense for to trigger this mind control now? The Borg. They've recently assimilated Tuvok and to some extent Chakotay and B'Elanna. The Queen could easily scour their minds for weaknesses, high-jack a data stream with the activation phrase, and force the crew of Voyager to experience the same thing she is: insurrection. Even if it doesn't destroy them, the Borg Queen wins because she breaks Janeway's crew from the inside the way Janeway has broken the Borg.

5. Repression (Mind Control). I alter this slightly. I have significantly more of the Maquis crew susceptible to the activation phrase/chant. This means that Tuvok does not need to run around melding with all of them, just the few who are not activated and react poorly to the others who are actively plotting mutiny (e.g, B'Elanna and Tabor). Some of the Maquis are neither activated or melded with, which means they work with their Starfleet counterparts (even though they face some distrust). This makes things more of surprise for the Starfleet crew.

6. Repression (Chakotay). That hurt to plot out and write. He's only in this storyline for such a short segment that we see, but god does it break him. I genuinely adore Chakotay. I even think he and Janeway are the endgame couple of Voyager. To fundamentally break him in this way and isolate them from one another breaks my heart. I love writing scenes between them together (I hope that's clear), even if I only ever bring myself to write them as friendly scenes with hints of romantic potential.

7. Repression (Tuvok). He'll overcome this, but the sad thing is his illness starts so soon after. Part of me thinks that his assimilation and then all the melding he does speeds the progression of that illness.

8. Repression (Janeway). Oh boy. She's disassociated so much that when it hits her for real for real it's going to hurt.