STAR TREK: VOY - Homecoming, Book Two - The Farther Shore Page 5

  He looked puzzled, then his face brightened. “Ah. Rake one over the coals. To take to task, or to interrogate vigorously. Another slang term is, to grill. It is curious that there are so many cooking metaphors involved in—”

  “Data,” said Janeway, “time really is of the essence.”

  “Of course. Please proceed.”

  It was nearly 2200 when Janeway put through a final message to Kenneth Montgomery. He seemed in unusually good spirits when he answered. She wondered what had happened to put him in such a cheerful mood. [50] She thought about asking, but was worried that it would turn into a sarcastic remark, and that wasn’t what she wanted right now.

  “Good evening, Admiral,” he said. “Who will it be this time, Seven, Icheb, or the Doctor?”

  Janeway forced herself to smile pleasantly. “Why, all three. Let me get right to the point. You’ve held Seven and Icheb for almost two weeks now without allowing them to regenerate. Dr. Kaz tells me that he can minimize the risk of any Borg contact while in their regenerative state.”

  Montgomery sighed. “The key word in that statement is ‘minimize.’ We can’t be certain. There’s a Borg virus running around striking apparently at random. Surely you can see what a security risk they are.”

  “If they don’t regenerate, they’ll die,” she said quietly. “Are you willing to have the deaths of innocent people on your hands?”

  Montgomery made a dismissive gesture. “That’s an overstatement,” he said.

  “Your head doctor doesn’t think so.”

  “Kaz is an alarmist. Probably that poet/Maquis combination in his symbiont. The other doctor on my team assures me that it’s nowhere near that dire. And even so, the answer to your question is yes. To prevent every person on the planet from turning into a Borg, I’d sacrifice two innocent people. From what I know of your encounters with the Borg, you’d do the same.”

  For just a moment, Janeway pondered the statement. Would she? The answer grieved her but did not surprise her. Yes, she would sacrifice Seven and Icheb ... if she [51] knew, without a doubt, that it would halt such a terrible thing.

  “But you don’t know that their deaths will stop the virus. In fact, utilizing their knowledge would be more helpful than letting them go insane and die in a Starfleet prison.”

  “I don’t agree,” said Montgomery. “Let’s go to the next battle so we can both get to bed at a decent time, shall we?”

  “Fine with me,” said Janeway. “Even if I agreed that the Doctor was involved in the HoloRevolution—hell, let’s go for it, let’s say he was the ringleader. Even so, he knows more about the Borg than anyone else except for the other two people you’re keeping locked in prison. Why not let him help you find a cure for the virus? Why reprogram such a vital resource into a mindless automaton shoveling dilithium?”

  “Janeway, you’re like a damaged data loop, endlessly repeating yourself,” snapped Montgomery. “I have reasons and orders for doing what I’m doing, and while your compassion for your crew does you credit, I think you’re just a little bit biased in this particular situation. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

  “I’m getting mighty tired of that phrase being thrown up as an excuse,” said Janeway. “So you’re going to keep two people imprisoned who could very well be innocent, knowing that they face the possibility of insanity and death?” she pressed, wanting him to say it himself.

  “Yes, damn it, yes, for the good of the Earth!”

  “And you’re going to lobotomize a being that could [52] very well help you stop the virus simply because you think he might be involved in an uprising?”

  “We need to make an example. You’ve seen what a simple strike can do. Eight people are now dead. We’ve got to stop this thing before Baines can get any deeper into our systems.”

  “Thank you, Admiral. That’s what I wanted to hear. Janeway out.”

  She took a perverse delight in the shocked, insulted look on Montgomery’s face as she touched the control panel. Janeway looked over at Data, standing to her left, out of Montgomery’s view.

  “Well, Mr. Data? Will you join our merry little band of traitors and radicals?”

  It was a long moment as she watched the android consider. “It is a difficult decision,” he said. “But ... I have learned the right ones often are.”

  Like all of Baines’s modified holograms, the one wearing the face and body of Lieutenant Vassily Andropov had been designed to be confident, but not reckless. So when he walked into the correctional facility at 2100 hours, he moved with the same ease in his body as the real Andropov moved in his. He had thoroughly studied the man he was to impersonate, and had all his mannerisms, ticks, expressions, and even his slight Russian accent down perfectly. No one would know the difference.

  Barbara Robinson, the other lieutenant who manned the first security entrance into the building, was already there, “a cup of coffee in her hand. She smiled at him.

  [53] “Evening, Vassily,” she said.

  “Evening, Barbara,” he replied. “How’s the coffee tonight?”

  “Slightly more viscous than usual, but with that same bitterness we’ve grown to know and love,” she quipped, taking a sip.

  The hologram chuckled. “Sounds about right,” he said. He stepped through the checkpoint as if he had done it a thousand times before, as if it was all routine, as if he was going to put his briefcase down and go for some coffee himself.

  When the alarm sounded, he looked as startled as Robinson did.

  “That’s weird,” said Robinson. “Try it again.”

  Shrugging, the Vassily hologram stepped out, then stepped in again. A second time, alarms shrilled. Robinson shook her head and touched a few buttons, silencing the sound.

  “Security here. What is your condition?”

  “Code green,” she said. “False alarm. Lieutenant Andropov tripped the alarm.” Deftly she pressed control pads on her console. “There’s got to be a misalignment in one of the bioscanners—no, wait, both of them are malfunctioning. Damn it.”

  The hologram groaned. “So I get to stand here for a few hours, is that it?”

  Robinson grimaced sympathetically. “Sir, request permission to check him in manually.”

  “Granted. Let him in and get him to work fixing the problem. We’re trying to sleep up here.” The hologram heard laughter in the background, met Robinson’s eyes, and grinned.

  [54] “Will do, sir. I’ll let you know when we’ve corrected the problem. Robinson out.”

  Still grinning, she reached for her tricorder. “Silly stuff, but hey, regs are regs.”

  “I know. I could be an alien in disguise,” he said, as he permitted her to scan him. He was completely at ease.

  She found what she expected to—that the figure before her was a flesh and blood human, particularly, one Vassily Andropov. “Nice briefcase,” she said, taking it from him.

  “Thanks. Just got it.” Again, the hologram was not worried. When Robinson flipped it open to scan it, she saw only a few scattered padds, a small tool kit, and a private communicator. She did not see the complex array of equipment, blinking on and off as it went about its job of projecting not only the hologram of Andropov, but a smaller hologram of normalcy about itself. Unaware of what she beheld, Robinson snapped the case closed and handed it back to him.

  “Come on in,” she invited, teasingly.

  “Why, thank you,” he said, and stepped forward. As long as the “briefcase” was within two meters of his projection, he would not dematerialize. It was he who had suggested putting Vassily’s very real tool kit into the briefcase, along with the holographic projection of ordinary items. It gave him the perfect excuse to carry the case with him at all times as he went about his “job.” He recalled the pleasure he had felt when Baines’s eyes had lit up with approval at his shrewd thinking.

  It would have taken the real Vassily a couple of hours to “repair” the problem of misaligned [55] bioscanners. The hologram would
have to work for the same length of time to do what he had come here to do—adjust every bioscanner in the building to analyze a holographic signature as if it were a biological one. He was the vanguard of Baines’s troops. Once he had rendered it as easy for them to enter as if they were human, the floodgates would open.

  As he passed Robinson, sitting at her desk with a padd and her sludgy coffee, he thought to himself: We’ll get you next.

  Chapter 5

  LIBBY ALLOWED HERSELF a few hours of sleep. Her mind chafed at the forced inactivity but her body, screaming for rest, fell asleep almost immediately. She awoke still groggy but slightly more refreshed.

  She had an odd ache in her chest and it took her a while to figure out what it was. At last, she realized it was a sense of betrayal. She had liked and respected Covington. To think the woman was somehow involved ...

  No, that was jumping to conclusions. Covington was clearly trying to redirect her efforts away from Blake and his Borg expertise and onto Montgomery, that much was certain. The question was—why? Libby had high levels of clearance, but not the highest. Perhaps it was just routine. Covington was, after all, the Director of Covert Ops. There were some things Libby wasn’t [57] supposed to know, and that didn’t mean they were sinister things.

  Libby could understand it if Covington were simply doing her job and protecting classified information. But why put her on the trail of an innocent man? Nothing Covington had given Libby had lent credence to her hints that Montgomery was a dangerous mole.

  Libby brushed her teeth, thinking hard. If Montgomery was being set up, someone out there had a reason for doing so. Who would benefit if Montgomery’s hands were suddenly shackled, if he were put in jail for being a traitor? It hadn’t taken a genius to observe that Covington and Montgomery knew and disliked each other a great deal. Could Covington be that shallow, that she would go to such efforts simply to one-up a personal enemy? Libby couldn’t imagine anyone who would waste resources on such frivolous goals getting far in SI, and Covington had gotten far indeed. No, if Covington had her reasons for getting Montgomery out of the way, they were big ones, bigger than any personal vendetta.

  Which led, inevitably and chillingly, back to what Libby had been able to learn. She had only been able to decode the barest fraction of the Royal Protocol document, but that was enough to scare her to death. She needed to know more, but frankly, was afraid of what she would find.

  Slightly refreshed from her nap, Libby sat back down at the computer and suppressed a groan. She hated this stuff. The hours wore on. Libby decoded a few more key words, and they did nothing to assuage her distress.

  Finally, rubbing her grit-filled eyes, she decided to try to take stock of what she’d been able to uncover.

  [58] One: It was clear that the Federation had been aware of a potential virus for at least the last five years. Long after Voyager had been pulled into the Delta Quadrant, and certainly long before its return just a few weeks ago. The not-so-subtle efforts to somehow shift the blame onto the ship, its crew, or both were obviously in the wrong.

  Poor Harry, she thought.

  Two: As anyone would logically expect, ever since the disaster at Wolf 359, Starfleet Intelligence had been furiously studying everything they could about the Borg. To know one’s enemy was to be able to prepare to fight it. It made sense that they would collect every bit of debris from the destroyed Borg ships—past and present—and study it thoroughly.

  “Past” referred to the Borg vessel which had almost caused Zefram Cochrane to miss his date with destiny in 2063. The Enterprise’s role in what amounted to saving humanity and probably the universe into the bargain had been well documented. Debris from the Borg sphere destroyed by the Enterprise had been scattered into space. Some of it had been caught in Earth’s orbit, and, as was virtually inevitable, much had eventually found its way planetside. Where it was found, it was gathered up for investigation.

  So far, so good, Libby thought. No indication of anything other than expected procedure to safeguard the Federation from one of its most deadly threats.

  Here things began to get spotty and Libby was forced into conjecture. She got a few words here and there that gave her some idea as to what SI was looking for as it analyzed this debris: “syntax,” “structure,” “computer.” Borg were part machine, part person. What [59] made them so was the computer protocol, which somehow produced the nanoprobes, controlled the collective, and linked the queen so expertly to her hive.

  What wasn’t immediately clear was where the virus had come from. Something in what SI had been studying contained the virus—she’d been able to get the word “dormant.” She could make a good guess that the Borg vessels had been booby-trapped in some way, that even in destruction, they could somehow plant this virus and make more Borg. But why hadn’t that happened? What flipped the switch, to use an old metaphor, from dormant to active?

  Libby realized that she had done all her limited decryption skills would permit her to do. She’d have to bring someone else in, someone who could decrypt the whole damned document. This was the Rosetta stone to the entire present Borg threat, she knew it in her bones. There were answers in here, but for the moment, they were tantalizingly out of reach.

  She gnawed her lip. Who to trust? There was one person she could think of, but she cringed from the task. Then she thought of what the world would be like if the virus went unchecked, and began sending a message.

  After everyone else had left, Chakotay lingered behind. Janeway set a fresh pot of coffee to brewing—“Decaf,” she said, “none of us has been getting enough sleep”—and almost collapsed on the couch beside her former first officer. With the ease of old friends, he draped his arm over her shoulder, and she leaned against his chest.

  “You look exhausted,” he said.

  [60] “Flattery will get you nowhere,” she replied. He chuckled and his warm breath stirred her hair. “Do you know,” she continued, “for the first time since this whole thing began, I really think we might succeed.”

  “That depends on what we want to succeed at,” Chakotay responded. “I think we’ll succeed admirably in getting everyone thrown in the brig for the rest of their lives, which would be something of a record.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Only a little bit.”

  She punched him playfully and rose, getting out two mugs. “You may be right at that,” she said, “but I’d be willing to trade that for Seven and Icheb’s lives, the Doctor’s mind, and the continuation of the human race.”

  “Everyone who was here tonight is,” said Chakotay, taking the mug of steaming brown liquid she handed him. “Even Data.”

  “That’s part of why I feel we’ll be able to pull this off,” Janeway said. She took a sip. Even decaffeinated, the elixir was heavenly.

  Her computer chimed softly. She groaned. “Who is it this time?” she asked rhetorically, rising and going over to the computer. Harry Kim’s face appeared on the screen.

  “Got another one,” he said.

  She knew at once what he meant. “Put it through.”

  For the second time in as many days, Janeway found herself looking at old-fashioned white lettering on a dark screen. Odd, how the highest level of computer sophistication manifested itself in such a comparatively unsophisticated fashion.

  * * *

  [61] Hello again, Lieutenant Kim. I have some more information for you. Starfleet has known about a potential Borg virus for over five years. Voyager is not in any way responsible for it and I will be able to help you prove it shortly. The key to this puzzle lies in what Starfleet has been researching—the Borg computer protocol. Starfleet has been examining Borg debris, and this debris is what carried the virus. I will have more for you soon. Your friend, Peregrine.

  “My God,” breathed Janeway. “I wish there were some way to verify that this person is genuine.”

  Chakotay, who had come to stand beside her and who had also read the missive, said, “I think he or s
he is genuine. You can’t send that kind of heavily blocked message without having a certain level of clearance. The real question is, are we being fed disinformation?”

  “You think someone is trying to set us up? Make us act precipitously?”

  “Entirely possible,” said Chakotay.

  Janeway turned back to the message and read it again. “But it all sounds so credible. It’s exactly what we would do—analyze the debris, try to figure out how their computer systems worked. And from what we know of the Borg, I wouldn’t put this virus idea past them.”

  She touched a control pad and Kim’s face again appeared on the screen. “Thanks, Harry. Any time you get a message, day or night, I want to hear about it.”

  “Aye, ma’am.”

  “Harry, does the name Peregrine mean anything to [62] you? It’s not a typical type of code name for Intelligence agents.”

  Harry shook his head. “I know it’s a type of hawk, but no, it has no special meaning.”

  “You’ve done good work tonight, Lieutenant. Get some sleep.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. Goodnight, Admiral.”

  Chakotay took her half-empty cup. “Let me get you a warm-up,” he said, heading into the small kitchen. Janeway had turned to follow him when her computer chimed yet again.

  “Good heavens, Starfleet Command isn’t this busy,” she grumbled, and touched the pad.

  She froze. She recognized the face on the screen. She’d seen it last in Kaz’s sickbay, on a small screen, admitting to the deaths of eight innocent people. She’d seen it on a large scale, telling people in a South Carolina restaurant that a strike was in progress.

  “Oliver Baines,” she said, keeping her voice cool and professional. “What a surprise.”

  He smiled. “But not a pleasant one, I gather. Ah well. But I think you’ll be glad that I contacted you once you hear what I have to say.”

  Her voice was steely. “Go on.” Subtly, so he wouldn’t notice, she pressed a keypad and started a trace.