Equinox Read online

  "One moment, please," The Doctor interrupted. They had to wait while he sprayed a lubricating compound on Chakotay's wounds. Chakotay gritted his teeth and grimaced, but managed to keep from flinching. Immediately The Doctor applied a synthetic poultice of gel and grown skin. "Allow me a moment to fuse this, Commander."

  "I can't see now ..."

  "Is that supposed to happen?" Paris asked.

  "Your eyes will be fine in a few minutes. I've just anesthetized them until the tissues and blood vessels fuse."

  As his wounds quickly healed, Chakotay attempted to sit up, failing until Paris stepped in to hoist him to a sitting position. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat, breathing deeply, while the synthetic poultice worked to regenerate the cells of his face and skull.

  "Don't stand up yet," The Doctor ordered. "The regeneration will disorient you for a few seconds."

  Janeway looked at The Doctor. He seemed uninterested. He didn't call any of them by name or rank, as he usually did. The captain decided this was probably just her own injuries working on her. All her senses

  were heightened, her emotions hot-wired. She was expecting him to be that way, too, and he never would be.

  "Let the Equinox go for now," Chakotay advised, looking at her with his one restored eye. "We can track them later, if you want. We're all heading in the same dir-"

  "If they keep killing nucleogenics," Janeway snapped, "they'll pull ahead and we'll never catch up. He'll be loose in the Delta Quadrant. He's a serial killer and I'm not letting him get away with this," she vowed.

  Chakotay hung his injured head briefly, pressing both hands to the edge of the mattress. "He's not a serial killer, Captain. That's an unfair characterization."

  Bristling, she lowered her chin and glared. "It's my job to hold all Federation citizens to a standard of behavior and that's what I mean to do."

  "Only Federation citizens?" he prodded. "Is right only right for us?"

  As Paris and The Doctor both backed off a step, noticing the gravity of this conversation, Janeway hardened inwardly and leered at Chakotay's healing face. "Don't push me," she warned sternly.

  "Let me help Harry," he compromised. "You and I can concentrate on different work for a while."

  She hated that he was being wiser than she was. Still, sense was sense. "All right. I'll go that far. Report to the bridge as soon as you're finished cooking. Then we'll see what we each have to do to quiet our demons."

  Miles of sand, rocks ... waves gently rolled and broke on a crystal white shoreline. The water was not

  exactly blue, the clouds not exactly silver, and still the similarity to Earth was enough to set a heart stirring.

  A seabird, something like a pelican without the bucket, flew across the vista, crying its airy song, proving that a high sound could summon wind, sun, and spray and not only the whine of demolition.

  As the breeze rose from the sea's arms and rushed across the ivory sand, causing pebbles to whistle and reeds to sing, a faint metallic chime invaded the pax botanica.

  "Who is it?"

  "Max. I've brought you a visitor."

  "Hold on."

  The wide-winged bird swept low into a wave trough, skimming the surface with easy precision even as the wave rolled along. Crash-it stabbed its beak into the water. Without even a flap of its huge wings, it speared an eel and soared on with its prize.

  Survival. What a beau tiful thing.

  BBBzzzap.

  The vista disappeared. Once again Rudy Ransom was sitting in his quarters, a destroyed place but somehow comforting after the episode on board Voyager. He took the virtual reality device from behind his ear and reluctantly turned it over and over in his hand. He would go back later and watch the bird swallow the eel.

  "Come in," he invited.

  Max Burke came in first, leading a somewhat mussed-up guest with a laceration on her forehead.

  "Glad you're okay," Ransom offered.

  Devoid of any need to be sociable or even civil, Seven of Nine looked at the device in his hand.

  "Synaptic stimulator," Ransom explained. "I was just taking a stroll along the Tenkaran Coast. You're welcome to try it."

  "State your intentions," the girl told him bluntly.

  "Once we get our enhanced warp drive back online, we'll be on our way home. But it'll still take us a few months. You can spend that time in the brig or you can become part of this crew. I'd prefer the latter."

  "I'd prefer the brig."

  Ransom shrugged a little. "You know, Janeway's not the only captain who can help you explore your humanity."

  She raised her chin. "You would be an inferior role model."

  So Janeway had convinced this breathing machine that all situations were cast in stone. Too bad.

  "One day," he told her, "you'll realize that not every situation is black or white. Janeway clung to her morality at the expense of her crew. Maybe you should try to learn from her mistake."

  "Her only mistake was trusting you."

  With disappointment, Ransom forced down another shrug. He'd come to peace with himself and wasn't about to let a Borg, of all life forms, stir up any regrets about moral absolutes. How many people had she killed during her time plugged into a cube?

  To Burke he simply said, 'Take care of her wound."

  If only things could be different. But nothing was.

  "First-degree phaser burns ... minor lacerations ... looks like we'll have to amputate."

  In the sickbay, Max Burke ran the med-scanner over Seven's scalp wound. She didn't respond to his attempt to at least humanize the situation a little.

  "That was a joke," he encouraged. "You're supposed to smile, make a witty retort-"

  "I'm familiar with human banter. Yours is crude and predictable."

  "An insult! Better than nothing. You know, Seven- can I call you Seven? There aren't a lot of luxuries around here. All we've really got is each other. You might try letting your shields down or else it's going to be a lonely trip ... well, I'll be damned! We've got a stowaway!"

  As Seven frowned in confusion, Burke tapped the controls for the EMH.

  The Doctor appeared, but he looked perplexed and out of place, almost dizzy. Burke knew instantly what had happened.

  "Seven?" The Doctor began.

  "We are captives," the Borg girl explained immediately.

  "I was attacked by their EMH."

  Burke scanned the controls. "Looks like he downloaded you into our database. Good. Go treat your friend." He handed The Doctor a tricorder and gestured toward Seven.

  When the hologram hesitated, Burke encouraged, "Are you refusing to treat one of your own shipmates?"

  Eying him bitterly, The Doctor relented. "No. I will treat any of you, assuming you live long enough to come down to sickbay. Captain Janeway will be firing on you soon, and you won't have a chance."

  "She won't kill us," Burke said. "Rudy's right. She's not to that point yet. Arresting us is one thing. Executing us without trial is something else."

  "Ransom to Burke. We're ready to try the warp drive. Let's have Red Alert, Max."

  "Acknowledged. I'm on my way. Or, shall I say, 'we're' on our way. See you later, Doc. Unless you decide to misbehave, that is. Seven, come with me or I'll stun you. Doctor, you're authorized to use the research lab, aren't you?"

  "Well... yes."

  "Meet us there and you can keep treating her. If you don't, I'll shut you down and she can get infected or whatever happens. Right now we don't much care about you. Seven, this way."

  "Maria to Ransom."

  Ransom glanced up as Burke appeared at the door of the research lab, with Seven of Nine behind him. As soon as they appeared, The Doctor frazzled into solidity nearby. No-this couldn't be their doctor. This one looked angry, even put off. Maybe his program had been compromised somehow.

  "I thought you were on the bridge," Burke told him as he came to Ransom's side.

  "Lessing's manning it. I wanted to be here for the powe
r shift, in case you need an extra hand."

  "Thanks."

  "Maria, go ahead," Ransom said into the comm.

  "We're ready."

  "Acknowledged. Infuse the enhanced warp drive with twenty isograms of the compound."

  "Aye, sir."

  "Ransom to bridge. Lessing ... engage."

  They held their breaths-certainly he held his. Beside him, Burke was poised, silent.

  The ship hummed, gathered strength, began to tremble and whine in a mechanical way. That sounded right, most of it... there was still damage, yet the ship struggled valiantly to reach warp. Almost there... almost...

  KRRRRCHUNKCHHHH-

  "What happened!" he gasped. Loss of power!

  From the engine room, Gilmore called, "The power relays are off-line! They've been encoded!"

  Both Ransom and Burke turned to Seven of Nine. Ransom warned, "Give us the codes."

  "No."

  Coldly Burke shook his head. "I scanned her before. There's Borg technology throughout her cranium. If she won't give us the codes, maybe we could extract them ourselves."

  The Doctor said, "Seven's cranial infrastructure is highly complex. You'd need months just to figure out what she had for breakfast."

  Well, that was unexpected-defiance? Ransom

  watched Burke, who seemed to know what was going on.

  "That's why you're going to help us," the first officer told the hologram.

  The Doctor came to something like attention. "I refuse."

  Since Burke seemed to know what was happening, Ransom stood by and let him handle it.

  "Do it," Burke said, "or I'll erase your program."

  "Be my guest."

  "Doctor," Seven protested.

  "Don't worry," The Doctor said. "They need me. They'll be cutting off their holographic nose to spite their face. Now, I suggest you-"

  Without waiting, Ransom reached over to the sickbay auxiliary connection and hit a final control, setting into motion a series of bleeps. The Doctor's demeanor suddenly changed. He was no longer defiant, but rather cold and remote.

  "Get to work," Ransom ordered him. "You know what we're looking for."

  "Very well." The Doctor turned to Seven. "Have a seat."

  "Doctor?"

  "I deleted his ethical subroutines," Ransom explained. She might as well know she had no more comrade here. "He'll be a little more cooperative now. Doctor, keep me posted. Max, let's go help Maria. If we don't have warp speed soon, Voyager will catch up to us and we'll be singing to her tune again."

  CHAPTER 11

  MUSSED CLOTHING, TORN HAIR, SMEARED WITH LUBRICANT

  and leakage, smelling and scratched, Kathryn Janeway sat on her darkened bridge in a shadow cast by a particularly ill-placed work light that was trying to illuminate an area on the lower deck where two crewmen were lying in a trunk up to their armpits. Tuvok, Paris, Kim, none of them looked any better. The haunting image was remarkably reminiscent of her first glimpse of the Equinox's bridge-how welcome and how pathetic it had seemed to her. A Starfleet ship, in the grip of turmoil, its crew struggling valiantly to keep going one more minute at a time, the bulkheads and ceilings in midcollapse, scored by phaser etchings, cables hanging like veins from gaping wounds ... Too familiar now. Too close. No more nice clean ship

  with tidy corridors and a healthy crew. No more safe haven.

  Her face and neck were back to normal at least, though still stinging from the reintegration treatment She was too aware of Chakotay and kept glancing at him as he worked up there on the circle deck.

  Had Rudy Ransom's crystal ball just been clearer than her own? Sharpened to a focus by the crushing loss of thirty-nine shipmates who had entrusted their lives to him? Had he seen the ugliness of reality because he had been forced to stand toe to toe with it, whereas Janeway had been buffered by a clean ship and a full belly?

  No. I won't cross. I don't care how close I get to the line. No matter how easy it is to understand you, I won't let you drag me over it.

  When Chakotay approached her, somewhat fishily, and handed her a PADD without a word, she took it with more willingness than she might've an hour ago. Alternatives were turning thin and going extinct. Any glimmer would do.

  "It's not exactly Shakespeare," she commented, scanning the fractal patterns that apparently translated into something the aliens might comprehend. So that's what their language was based upon. Repetitions and sequences and mathematical exponents. No wonder Ransom had never found it.

  "A small olive branch," Chakotay quietly offered, "is still an olive branch."

  Janeway handed the PADD to Kim. "Run this through your translation matrix."

  "Set your weapons down," Chakotay suggested.

  When Janeway didn't countermand, Paris looked up in question. "Commander?"

  Chakotay held out a passive hand. "Somebody's got to start trusting somebody around here."

  "Belay that order," Janeway roughly said. When he turned to her, she added, "I appreciate your optimism, but in this case ... weapons."

  She'd cut him down again, this time in front of everyone. Trust? Not this time. Would she ever trust again? Even the two of them weren't sure they trusted each other completely right now. The line was drawing itself right between them.

  Around her, everyone drew a weapon, even Chakotay, and charged their phasers with wailing power.

  "Ready to transmit," Kim said.

  Janeway glanced at Tuvok. "Drop shields. Bridge only."

  As if that would make any difference for the lower decks.

  Tuvok worked with one hand, his phaser ready in the other.

  The alien tone began almost instantly as the shields went down. Janeway braced to fire at anyone who was threatening. If the aliens didn' t like the sound the ship was now sending, then it was all over. They'd be like Ransom, fighting day in and day out, for years. This would be Voyager's equinox.

  No one spoke, no one shouted. No one warned, "Here they come" or "There they are." Glowing with angry incandescence, the first alien globe appeared on

  the upper port side. Agitated, an alien broke through, its cranial membrane parted and bladed, its teeth bared, claws grasping. Racing from its scalpel cut in the spatial plane, it veered toward Harry Kim, the nearest crewman to the globe portal.

  Somehow, whether by self-control or sheer shock, Kim managed to hold himself back from firing right away. The clicking and spinning of the universal translator matched all their heartbeats.

  Just before Janeway would've fired to defend Kim, the alien stopped in midair. Its head changed, turning bulbous and softer. It seemed confused, opening and closing its knuckly fingers, kneading its palms with two-inch claws. Obviously a predator, she noted in a silly instant of detachment.

  As if they didn't know that.

  But it had stopped. It was hovering.

  She began to reach out her hand in what she hoped was a universal gesture, but suddenly the creature reversed itself, flashing its tail, and disappeared back inside the globe, which collapsed almost immediately, taking the warning tone with it.

  Well, there's hospitality.

  At least it was quiet now.

  "Raise shields," Janeway remembered to order.

  Everyone turned to Kim and waited as he fidgeted at his controls. "If they understood our message," he said, "they haven't responded."

  The ship shook briefly, a shudder like a sailboat taking a blunt wave. Another attack.

  "There's your response," Janeway told them, letting

  herself sound as harsh as she felt. "Activate your deflector pulse."

  "Shields are holding at sixty-two percent," Tuvok said.

  "That should buy us another few minutes of peace and quiet. I suggest we make the most of it. Focus your efforts on repairing the warp drive. We've got to find the Equinox."

  Shoulder slumped, Chakotay picked up the PADD with the apparently useless fractals. "If it's all the same to you, I'd like to take another stab at this message. If we re
word-"

  "They're not listening, Chakotay. We should be tracking Ransom, not tinkering with adverbs."

  Get out-off the bridge, before this all starts again. She pushed away from the command center and headed for her ready room, feeling a few gashes in her spirit that needed licking.

  When she got in there, the door didn't close behind her right away.

  He had followed her in.

  "Want your first officer's advice?" he asked. Somehow he managed to keep from putting emphasis on any of those key words.

  "Allow me." Janeway turned to face him. " 'Our deflector is losing power, and when it fails we'll be defenseless. It's Voyager we should be worrying about, not the Equinox.' "

  "You'd make a great first officer," he said. "It's advice worth taking."

  "Maybe so. But we have a crew member trapped on that ship."

  "Is this really about Seven?" Chakotay asked, risking opening the can of worms. "Or is it about him? Ransom?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about," Janeway said, and she knew-they both knew-she was lying.

  "You've been known to hold a grudge," he said. 'This man betrayed Starfleet. He broke the Prime Directive, dishonored everything you believe in, and threw Voyager to the wolves."

  She could've gotten a great I-told-you-so. He seemed to have changed his tune, or at least a few notes of it. Or perhaps he was baiting her again to see what the past hours' events had done to her.

  "Borg, Hirogen, Malon," she ticked off. "We've run into our share of bad guys. Ransom's no different."

  "Yes, he is. You said it yourself. He's human. I don't blame you for being angry, but you can't compromise the safety of this ship to satisfy some personal vendetta."

  "I appreciate your candor," she said in a warning tone. "Now let me be as blunt. You're right, I am angry. I'm damned angry. He's a Starfleet captain and he's decided to abandon everything this uniform stands for. He's out there right now, torturing and murdering innocent life forms just to get home a little quicker. I'm not going to stand for it. I'm going to hunt him down no matter how long it takes, no matter what the cost. If you want to call that a vendetta, then go right ahead."

  On the saw-toothed challenge, Chakotay began to turn and leave, then changed his mind. Perhaps the cloying understanding of near-death held him here, and