Caretaker (11 page)

Janeway didn’t even let the silence stretch for as long as a minute before waving at the knot of engineers still gathered near the foot of the long porch. “Come on!”

Rounding the corner of the house, she heard the dog first—its basso roars cascaded out the open barn doors like the voice of a demon accidentally loosed from Hell. It reminded her absurdly of Bear’s pointless fits whenever a delivery man passed too close to the house, and she was stung with an odd mixture of regret and fear. Then Kim’s voice joined the dog’s, sharp with alarm, and Janeway signaled the engineers to fan out as they burst through the doors and into the barn’s dank interior.

For a moment, her eyes refused to adjust to the new dark. Snarls and banging rolled over her, directionless, and then the world seemed to snap into focus. She glimpsed Kim backed against an empty animal stall with the dog’s teeth latched in his sleeve.

And Paris, crumpled at the farm girl’s feet and just starting to fight his way up to his knees. Janeway reached across her own front to brandish her phaser—then swallowed bitter frustration when she remembered that they were all weaponless, powerless, captured. The boom! of the barn door slamming behind them only solidified the helplessness of their position.

“Very well. Since no one seems to care for any corn …”

The voice belonged to the aging banjo man, but it was the grandmotherly woman from the house who flashed into existence barely inches from Janeway’s face. Behind her, around her, everywhere, the rest of the scenario’s farm folk appeared in the same eye blink, and the barn was suddenly crowded with them.

Taking in their pitchforks and angry faces, Janeway suffered a sudden urge to laugh at the tired cliche. Except these angry peasants had already proven themselves too dangerous to take so lightly.

“We’ll have to proceed ahead of schedule,” the old woman announced in the old man’s voice.

Janeway opened her mouth to protest, to question, and found her voice frozen in her throat. Behind the ring of farmers, a low, pulsing hum built like a wave, dissolving the barn’s rear wall as though it were the butter on the old woman’s corn. Kim gasped and looked away, but Janeway made herself stare at the horror without blinking as she fought to memorize every detail, just in case any of them lived long enough to find the information useful.

A room longer than Voyager’s longest corridor extended past the back of the barn and into an unseen distance. Slabs hovered in neat, even rows along either wall, like examining tables in a monstrous mortuary, each holding a naked humanoid body. Tubes and wires and probes depended from the metallic ceiling to pierce the bodies below in more places than Janeway could count—like a life-support system, but with no life remaining in the subjects.

Janeway tried to see what kind of fluids or gases passed through the tubes, but could only focus on the smooth, dark face of the Vulcan three beds away from her.

Light, as white and hurtful as a sun, blasted outward from the holographic farm folk. They shattered into silence and nothing, engulfing all sight and sound, eradicating the barn and everything in it until Janeway felt herself suspended, frozen, fallingAnd then jerking back to awareness on her back. In the chamber.

Staring upward at an array of probes and needles. Janeway tried to struggle, tried to twist aside as the first of the long implements slithered down toward her naked body with a deliberateness that seemed somehow both alive and frighteningly mechanical. Somewhere to her left, Kim screamed. No! her mind railed. I won’t allow this! They can’t do this to my crew!

Then the probe made its inexorable contact, cold metal against warm flesh, and pushed its way inside her chest despite all her pain and fear and anger. She didn’t want to die for it—didn’t want to give whoever controlled this awful funhouse the satisfaction of seeing her give up just because it could hurt her. But when the second probe burrowed in past bone and muscle to join its companion, she found that her body gave her no choice. Her mind crashed down into silence even as her soul still cursed their tormentor in every way it knew how.

She came awake neatly—without fanfare, without trauma. As if someone had flipped a switch in her brain. One moment she was aware of nothing, and the next her eyes were open and the lights were on and there was no jolt or fear or anguish between the two.

Pushing up to her knees, Janeway lifted her head and looked around.

She was in Engineering. Carey and the rest of his team lay scattered around the bay in roughly the same positions they’d occupied before being snatched, some of them sitting and waiting as though unsure what to do, others crawling stiffly upright as if just waking from some uncomfortable sleep. Beside Janeway, the core seal enveloping the warp drive hummed and glowed in placid oblivion. Just as if they hadn’t left.

But Janeway knew that couldn’t be true.

Climbing to her feet, she slapped at her comm badge as she moved to help Carey stand. “Janeway to bridge. Anybody there?”

“Yes, Captain.” Rollins’s voice sounded shaky, distracted.

“We’re here.”

“How long were we over there?”

There was a delay during which Janeway assumed he checked his station’s readout. She used the time to count the engineers in her sight and compare that number with her memory. “Almost three days,” Rollins said just as she decided that everyone with her had apparently made it back in one piece. “Captain, the Maquis ship is powering up its engines.”

“Tractor them!” Janeway returned Carey’s questioning stare with a shake of her head, then headed for the turbolift as she signaled to every comm badge throughout the ship, “All senior officers, report to the bridge immediately!”

Paris recognized the sickbay the moment he opened his eyes. Crew members staggered to their feet from beside workstations, under examining beds. The medical drapes that had covered Fitzgerald and the dead nurse were neatly folded on a counter, but the bodies themselves were gone. The holographic doctor, he realized. The only one left behind when the alien Array evacuated Voyager. Turning, Paris scanned the crowded room for Kim as the doctor shifted its attention from a patient to materialize in front of Paris. “Could you explain what has transpired?”

No Kim. Not anywhere. Paris turned to answer the doctor as quickly as possible, then remembered he wasn’t dealing with a real being when the hologram flickered aside in response to a patient’s summons from across the room. He’d had enough of holograms to last anyone a dozen lifetimes. Turning his back when the doctor returned, Paris addressed the computer port at the nearest workstation. “Computer, locate Ensign Kim.”

“Ensign Kim is not on board.”

It hadn’t even had to hesitate and search before giving its answer.

Paris tapped his comm badge with a growing sense of panic. “Paris to Captain Janeway.”

She responded almost as quickly as the computer. “Go ahead.”

“Kim didn’t come back with us. He must still be over there.”

“Acknowledged.” Something hissed softly beneath her stern voice, and Paris belatedly recognized it as the sound of a turbolift’s doors when the busy cleanup noises of the bridge intruded on her next command.

“Computer, how many crewmen are unaccounted for?”

“One,” the cold machine voice answered. Paris had already darted out the sickbay doors on his way to the bridge when it elaborated, “Ensign Harry Kim.”

“Hail the Maquis.”

Janeway tried not to fidget as Rollins fought with Voyager’s damaged systems to bring the comm unit on-line. Even so, she had to pace down to the main command level and position herself in front of the command chair just to wean enough frustration out of her system to keep from snapping at the big Native American who appeared on the screen.

“Commander Chakotay, I’m Captain Kathryn Janeway.”

His eyes narrowed. “How do you know my name?” Behind him, his own bridge was in shambles, one wall of consoles dead and burned as black as space. A dark-skinned officer, bent over one of the still-lit panels, glanced up at the sound of Janeway’s voice, and she recognized the gentle wisdom of his eyes even before he stepped into the light to reveal his Vulcan features.

“We were on a mission to find you when we were brought here by the Array,” Janeway told Chakotay, pretending not to notice the Vulcan behind him. “One of our crewmen is missing.” She was pleased at how even and nonjudgmental her tone sounded. He isn’t the enemy, she reminded herself about Chakotay. Not anymore, not here. It was easier to accept now that she knew Tuvok was alive and undamaged among the Maquis crew. “Was he transported back to your ship by accident?”

Chakotay shook his head slowly. “No.” Something very much like suspicion warred with uncertainty on his face; then the Maquis commander admitted with stiff unhappiness, “A member of our crew is missing, too. B’Elanna Torres, my engineer.”

Janeway tried to imagine what a green Starfleet ensign and a Maquis engineer could have in common that an alien might want, but couldn’t think of anything. “Commander,” she said at last, “you and I have the same problem. I think it makes sense to try and solve it together, don’t you?”

Chakotay snorted. “How can we …” He shook his head, not even trying to finish the thought.

“I’m fully aware that your crew is wanted for crimes committed in the Demilitarized Zone,” Janeway told him, her frustration getting the upper hand. “But Chakotay, the Demilitarized Zone is thousands of light-years away. I don’t think that means much right now, do you?”

He stared at her for a long moment, then glanced aside at Tuvok as though checking with the Vulcan before speaking out loud.

Tuvok only lifted one eyebrow at his Maquis commander, and Janeway almost smiled at the familiarity of that gesture. When Chakotay turned back to her, he only nodded shortly. “Three of us will transport to your ship.” Then he cut the transmission before she could object.

Just as well, Janeway thought. This keeps everything under my control.

She moved away from the center of the bridge, sparing only a quick nod toward Paris as he hurried out of the turbolift to join her beside the operations console. He looked downright subdued, she noted with some surprise. Maybe all the turmoil would prove to be good for him after all.

“They’re powering down their engines,” Rollins reported.

“Dropping their shields.”

Janeway stopped herself just short of ordering Rollins to do the same—it wasn’t like Voyager had any shields to drop. A problem that would have bothered her a great deal more if Chakotay’s ship were in much better condition. Turning to face the center of the bridge, Janeway moved to rest her hands on the railing and wait.

The itching tingle of a transporter beam diffused silently through the bridge, then pulled together into a hair-raising whine. As the first light of materialization swarmed the air in front of the shattered helm, Janeway stepped down beside her command chair to wait for the Maquis’s atoms to stabilize before formally addressing them.

They solidified into three separate figures, Chakotay in the middle, each facing outward with his phaser drawn. Tuvok lowered his weapon the instant the transporter beam released him, but Janeway still heard Paris swear quietly as a half-dozen members of Voyager’s crew pushed away from their stations to bring their own phasers to bear.

She spun to Rollins as the lieutenant started down toward her level.

“Put down your weapons!” He hesitated, then flushed as though realizing he’d disobeyed a direct order, and slipped his phaser back onto his belt. Behind her, Janeway could hear Paris instructing the rest of the crew to do as they were told.

“You won’t need those here.” She waved at Chakotay’s phaser, then waited.

It occurred to Janeway that the capacity for trust must be severely damaged in anyone truly dedicated to being Maquis. To be what you perceived as abandoned by the Federation, then hunted by Starfleet, and finally lied to and turned upon by the very people who fought beside you whenever a judicial plea bargain was made available. It raised her opinion of Chakotay even more, then, when after a moment of studying her and the crew surrounding her, he slowly holstered his phaser and motioned to his companions to do the same.

And it made it even harder to smile a welcome to the Vulcan without feeling that she was ruining what little ground she’d gained with the Maquis leader. “It’s good to have you back, Tuvok.”

Chakotay jerked as though stabbed, staring at the Vulcan. Lacing his hands behind his back, Tuvok turned to his Maquis captain and stated politely, “I must inform you that I was assigned to infiltrate your crew, sir. I am Captain Janeway’s chief of security.”

Chakotay looked as though he couldn’t decide whether to be angry at the Vulcan or at himself. “Were you going to deliver us into their waiting hands, Vulcan?”

“My mission was to accumulate information on Maquis activities.”

But Tuvok inclined his head slightly in acknowledgment of the Maquis’s statement. “And then deliver you into their `waiting hands.” That is correct.”

Chakotay clenched his jaw and his fists, and Janeway couldn’t help wondering what he prevented himself from saying when he turned away from Tuvok with an angry growl. His dark eyes settled on someone behind Janeway’s shoulder, and the angry color in his face gave way to cold hatred. “I see you had help.”

“It’s good to see you, too, Chakotay.” Paris sounded glib and smug enough to slap.

“At least the Vulcan was doing his duty as a Starfleet officer,” the Maquis spat. “But you …!” He gestured at Paris with undisguised loathing. “You betrayed us for what? Freedom from prison? Latinum?

What was your price this time, Poocuh?”

Janeway didn’t wait to see what effect Chakotay’s words had on Paris’s newfound self-respect. Stepping purposefully in front of the other commander, she planted a hand on his chest to warn him against moving any farther. “You’re speaking to a member of my crew,” she told him softly, evenly. “I expect you to treat him with the same respect you would have me treat a member of yours.”

When Chakotay took a grudging step backward, she lowered her arm and let him have the distance. He didn’t seem quite able to take his gaze off Paris, though, and the pure hatred Janeway saw in his eyes disturbed her for all that it didn’t much surprise her.