Caretaker (22 page)

A free-ranging communications signal intruded on the medical unit’s sensor space, and an organically originated voice said, “Bridge to Janeway.”

Nonpatient #1—VRM 547, “Janeway, Captain Kathryn M.”—responded by opening a corresponding channel via the personal communications device mounted on her uniform. “Go ahead.”

“Captain, two Kazon ships are approaching the Array.”

Janeway, Captain Kathryn M. began moving for the primary exit, followed by Nonpatient #2—VRM 870, “Paris, Thomas E.”—Nonpatient #3, and Nonpatient #4, formerly Patient #1, Temporary VRM #1, “Ocampa Female: Kes.” “Set a course,” she vocalized toward an unspecific receiver.

“I’m on my way.”

Nonpatients #1 through #4 then passed through the sickbay doors and exited from immediate sensor range. The Temporary Life-Form Identification Subroutine deleted the corresponding labels from its directory.

Patient #3 abruptly flexed and extended his right leg, and produced a nonverbal vocalization apparently indicative of satisfaction rather than pain. However, diagnostic databases indicated that vigorous activity was not advised so shortly after successful long-bone regenesis. Before an appropriate Decision Track could be engaged, Patient #3 rose from the examination table and snapped his fingers in the direction of Patient #4.

“We have to get to our ship.”

A level-three alarm triggered in the Patient InterFace Subroutine as Patient #4 rose from her bed and placed both feet on the deck. As Patient #4’s Physical Condition Rating was six points higher on the Optimum Humanoid Functionality Scale than Patient #3’s, the vocalization subroutine directed its statement for Patient #4’s hearing. “I strongly advise you to rest.”

Patient #4 exited the sickbay in the company of Patient #3. The Temporary Life-Form Identification Subroutine flagged their records for deletion pending diagnostic review of their conditions at the time of voluntary self-release. The system had not been advised as to any specific permanent labeling for either patient, so could not immediately cross-reference their temporary files with Voyager’s larger personnel database.

While secondary systems still compiled preliminary data, Patient #1 rose from the examination table and proceeded in the same direction as Patients #3 and #4.

Advisory Number Eight vocalized at fifteen decibels, “I will not be held responsible for the consequences—” The vocalization subroutine automatically aborted upon Patient #1’s exit from the vicinity.

Patient #2—VRM 566, “Kim, Ensign Harry”—was the only high-level life-form remaining in the sickbay. The holographic patient interface relocated to a position twenty-seven centimeters from the foot of Patient #2’s bed. “Is the crew always this difficult?” the Patient Interview Subroutine queried on behalf of the Data Management System.

Patient #2 lifted his shoulders in a humanoid gesture of uncertainty.

“I don’t know, Doc. It’s my first mission.”

Patient #2 then exited behind Patients #1, #3, and #4 without further interaction.

The holographic interface became motionless upon the removal of all external stimuli. The vocalization subroutine adjusted its default volume by + 118 decibels, and queried, “Doesn’t anyone know how to turn off the program when they leave?”

None of the absent Patient Labels returned to initiate a reply.

Janeway waved Paris to move alongside her as the sickbay doors hissed shut behind them. Already the bridge felt irritatingly distant, and she resented the time it would take her to move from here to there.

Sometimes she wished intraship beaming weren’t so risky and inconvenient.

“It’s too dangerous to send you back to the planet right now,” she told Neelix and Kes over one shoulder. They had to run to keep up with her quick jog, but Janeway didn’t feel inclined to check her stride, even when Tuvok and Kim hurried up from behind to join them. “I suggest you get to quarters.”

Neelix won himself some points by stopping immediately and pulling Kes’s arm to keep her with him. If nothing else, at least he knew hew to stay out of the way. “Wait till you see how they live!” Janeway heard him whisper to his paramour as she and the crew piled into the waiting turbolift.

You assume I can keep us all alive long enough for her to enjoy, she thought back at him with a sigh. It wasn’t the kind of thought worth dwelling on. Forcing herself not to fidget, she endured the ages-long turbolift ride to the bridge in silence, too keyed up to think of anything but orders worth saying.

She wasted no time once the lift released into the bridge’s busy clamor. “Bring weapon systems on-line,” she told Tuvok as he headed for his station. “Red alert.”

Chakotay and the Maquis were ahead of them, already cutting under the belly of the first Kazon ship as the Array loomed large and dark ahead of them. Don’t get too close! she warned the Maquis commander. Bad enough that the Caretaker still spat fat gobs of white light toward the planet’s surface at irregular intervals—they still didn’t know enough about Kazon artillery to count on their shields as a defense. Besides, Janeway had a feeling Chakotay’s ship wasn’t in much better condition than hers after their passage through the Array’s displacement wave.

She slipped into her command chair with Paris still hovering at her left shoulder, unwilling to take her eyes off the sleek alien ships now veering outward to start their first orbit of the Array.

Tuvok glanced up from his panel. “The lead Kazon ship is hailing us, Captain.”

Janeway nodded, but didn’t look at him. “Onscreen.”

For some reason, even giving the command didn’t entirely prepare her for the sudden disappearance of her window on the doings outside. When Jabin’s cracked, dust-stained face rippled into being on the viewscreen, she was irritated just to be seeing him there, even before he opened his mouth in a broken-toothed smile.

“Have you come to investigate the entity’s strange behavior, too, Captain?” he asked with false good humor.

Janeway wasn’t interested in engaging in any sort of masculine charade.

“All we care about is getting home, Jabin. We’re about to transport over to the Array to see if we can arrange it.”

The Kazon leader cracked a harsh laugh. “I’m afraid I can’t permit you to do that.”

“We have no dispute with you.”

“We have a dispute with anyone who would challenge us,” Jabin countered. And this time, Janeway noticed, he didn’t even make the effort to smile.

She chewed back an impulse to shout at him, saying simply, “This is ridiculous. We have no intention of challenging you.” We have no intention of being here long enough to even care what happens to you!

But Jabin was already signaling angrily at someone not directly in line with the screen. “And I have no intention of letting anyone with your technological knowledge board the Array.”

“Jabin, we can discuss this like two civilized—!”

He cut off communications with a snarl, and Janeway saw the flash of the Kazon ship’s weapons fire before she even finished her plea. “I guess we can’t.”

The thunder of the energy packets detonating against their screens seemed to cause more sound and fury than actual damage, but Janeway couldn’t discount the intent behind the unprovoked attack.

“Shields are holding,” Tuvok reported.

She nodded acknowledgment, gripping the arms of her chair. “Fire phasers. Evasive pattern delta four.”

They made a clean hit, raking the Kazon ship from stem to stern and rolling neatly starboard to avoid the inevitable return fire.

She wished they knew enough about the little Kazon ships—and their crews—to tell if Jabin’s pitching withdrawal was a sign of injury, or just a lead-up to another more angry approach. As the Maquis ship’s single phaser bank slashed at the second Kazon’s exposed underside, Janeway slapped open a channel without bothering Kim at Operations to do so. “Janeway to Chakotay.”

She had to smile grimly as the second Kazon made the mistake of trying to turn and engage, only to wind up with Chakotay hugging its tail and hammering it with repeat phaser blasts. “Tuvok and I are beaming to the Array,” she said, making no effort to hide the admiration in her voice. “Can you hold off the Kazon?”

Chakotay didn’t sound as confident as she felt when he replied, “I think so, Captain.”

“Good.” She left him to his fight, motioning Rollins away from the conn and into Tuvok’s position. “Mr. Paris, you have the conn.”

He hesitated a mere second, as though not certain she’d actually spoken to him. Then he darted for the helm before she could either order him again or change her mind. “Yes, ma’am!”

It wasn’t precisely a crunch, but Janeway forgave him.

She joined Tuvok at the turbolift, holding the door for him as she leaned back into the bridge. “Maintain transporter locks, Ensign,” she called to Rollins, and waited until he nodded his understanding.

“Emergency beam-out status.” Because if we have to get out of there fast, we’re not going to get a second chance.

None of them was. And if she and Tuvok failed, then none of them would be going home very soon.

Stepping back into the turbolift, she tried very hard not to hold her breath as it whisked them to the transporter room.

The holographic barn on the Array seemed darker somehow, less real, less distinct. Shadows as blurred and liquid as fading ink leaked across the artificial image despite the antique lanterns hanging from the square pillar at the center of the building. In fact, now that Janeway really looked at the dim smear surrounding the pillar, she realized that the presence of lanterns was only suggested by the shape of the light—there were no actual objects, not even a semblance of hooks.

From somewhere nearby in the darkness, a lonely banjo played one-note remarks into the air.

Tuvok’s tricorder made a poor counterpoint to the already disintegrating melody. “The data-processing system is behind this wall, Captain.” He gestured farther back into the barn without looking up from his sensors.

“You know what to do.”

He looked up with eyebrows lifted in a questioning glance that would have been surprise on any other humanoid, then nodded slowly as the banjo music seemed to reach him for the first time.

Janeway tipped her head in the direction of the stumbling chords, and was glad when Tuvok accepted her decision without comment and resumed his explorations without her. The Vulcan didn’t need her to locate the Array’s displacement system, Janeway knew. He certainly didn’t need her to decipher the system’s workings. But the Caretaker … The Caretaker obviously needed somebody, or something, and Janeway had never possessed the ability to walk away with only half her questions answered. Wishing she’d thought to keep one of those flashlights they’d used in the Ocampa tunnels, she stepped gingerly into the deeper darkness.

She didn’t see the old man so much as sense him, huddled in a corner amid a half-sketched image of saddles and baled hay. The banjo on his lap drifted mistily between his hands, as uncertain and ephemeral as its music. He looked up at Janeway with a melancholy smile. “You’re nothing if not persistent.”

She paused to kneel a half-meter from the apparent end of his hay bale, not wanting to intrude on his projection. “We need you to send us back where we came from,” she told him, and it surprised her when her voice sounded like the firmly gentle tones doctors used with terminal patients.

The hologram sighed. “That isn’t possible.” It faded back into the shadows, then swelled toward solidity again, this time without the banjo. “I have barely enough strength to complete my work.”

Janeway knew the work had nothing to do with manifesting for her here.

“You’re sealing the conduits before you die.”

“If I don’t, the Kazon will steal the water. But in a few years, when the Ocampa’s energy runs out …” Another sigh seemed to ripple through its diaphanous body, and Janeway realized that what she saw was really only the entity’s failing control over its own systems. “It won’t matter. They’ll be forced to come to the surface, and they won’t be able to survive. Without me, they’re helpless. I’ve failed them.”

He turned to her with eyes so dark, she thought perhaps she was seeing the barn walls through the back of the projection’s head. “You once spoke to me of your responsibility for your crew. The Ocampa were my responsibility.”

It all made sense, in a sad, lonely sort of way. “Something you did turned their planet into a desert,” Janeway hazarded gently.

“Didn’t it?”

The projection blinked almost into brightness as it focused a little more of its attention upon her. Janeway thought she saw very human surprise flutter somewhere distant on its features.

“We know there was an environmental disaster about the same time you arrived,” she explained. Then, guessing again, “That was the debt that could never be repaid, wasn’t it?”

“We’re explorers from another galaxy.” Its voice rang more strangely now—more like its own thinking, Janeway suspected.

“We had no idea our technology would be so destructive to their atmosphere. Two of us were chosen to stay behind to care for them.”

She thought of Tuvok exploring the Array all alone, and her heart stuttered in alarm. “There’s another like you here?”

But the entity shook its head, raising one dim, elongated hand to wave the suggestion away. “Not anymore. She went off to look for more interesting places. She never understood why the Ocampa needed so much care …” It directed deep eyes outward, no doubt in the direction of the beleaguered planet. “… didn’t realize how vulnerable they were …”

“Why were you bringing ships here?” Janeway asked. “Infecting people with a fatal illness?”

Its face folded into an expression of dismay and distress. “I never meant any harm. They didn’t die from illness—they died because they were incompatible.”

She frowned. “Incompatible?”

“Don’t you understand?” It didn’t wait for her to answer, but shifted blurrily onto its knees and leaned forward on the edge of its now near-invisible hay bale. “I’ve been searching the galaxy for a compatible biomolecular pattern. In some individuals, I found cellular structures that were similar, but …”