Strange New Worlds 2016 (32 page)

“You have to understand that even back then I had a great deal of respect for all
of you.”
His eyes looked off to some imaginary space to his right as he thought.
“The way Captain Janeway had managed to get former enemies to work together almost
from the moment we met. How Chakotay tried to nurture me from the time I joined the
Maquis. Your logic and determination even back from before I knew you were Starfleet.
I had a deep respect for each one of you.”

Tuvok had his qualms about the message he was receiving, but he wasn’t planning to
be the only one to see it. He adjusted his tricorder to record the message lest Suder
had programmed it to delete itself.

He weighed the risk of Lon Suder having set another trap as part of this “good-bye.”
It seemed unlikely based on their work for the last several months.

“Tuvok to Captain Janeway,” he half whispered as the message continued playing. “You
may wish to come to Mister Suder’s quarters.”

“What is it, Tuvok?”
the captain asked, not matching Tuvok’s volume.

“He has left a message you may wish to see. Also, please bring a pair of personal
force field generators as a precaution.” Even though a booby trap seemed unlikely,
he didn’t wish to be unprepared for the possibility.

“Understood.”

In the meantime, Suder’s confession continued in the background.

“Tuvok, I’ve always been a violent man. I knew I needed help. When I read about the
Tantalus colony, I nearly checked myself in, but I was afraid they’d just have me
committed permanently. I wasn’t going to risk being locked up forever in some place
like Elba II. I knew I could be useful.

“As loathe as they are to admit it, Starfleet has a use for violent people. Violence
is a tool. It can be, anyway. It can serve a purpose.”
While Tuvok found Suder’s assessment distasteful, as a security officer it was impossible
to disregard it entirely.

“But I wasn’t going to pass the psych screenings
. I’d have to find my purpose elsewhere. That’s why I joined the Maquis. They needed
someone who was willing to kill. Someone who didn’t have anything holding them back.
I could help save people.

“But my purpose didn’t end when I reached
Voyager
. Not in my eyes anyway. I knew that I needed an outlet, and
Voyager . . .
Voyager
needed a trial by fire.”

Commander Chakotay stood outside of the captain’s ready room. A chime alerted her
to his presence.

“Come in.”

Chakotay entered to see Captain Janeway standing near her desk as a team of security
officers surveyed the damage, running tricorders over purplish residue and scattered
coffee creamer. He joined the captain at the other end of the room. “The Doctor just
provided me an update on Tuvok. He’s confirmed that there’s no permanent damage, but
he’s not allowing him to leave sickbay for at least three days.”

“I’ll stand by that.” The captain looked Chakotay in the eye. “Tuvok’s going to want
to push himself. Don’t let him. Captain’s orders.”

“Understood. But this is a bad time to be without our best investigator.” He winced
at his own faux pas. “No offense to the rest of our security staff.”

Lieutenant Andrews made a curt nod and turned his attention to the command officers
from where he knelt on the floor with a tricorder. “None taken, Commander. Lieutenant
Tuvok has more experience in forensics than the rest of us combined.” With a few gestures
he signaled to the other security officers that they were dismissed. “We have detailed
scans of the room. We’re going to run an analysis, but I don’t know that there’s much
to find. The device you described doesn’t match anything we’d normally have on
Voyager
, but I can’t imagine it was transported to the ship while we were at warp.”

“Neither can I,” the captain agreed. “And it was definitely a Starfleet transporter.
No, this was targeted. This was personal.” She leaned against the desk. “Using coffee
creamer to augment an explosive device is adding insult to injury.”

Andrews seemed confused. Chakotay clarified, “If there’s one thing you need to know
about your captain, Lieutenant, it’s that she always takes her coffee black.”

“Trying to kill me is one thing. Filling my ready room with creamer . . . that’s personal.”

Chakotay raised an eyebrow at the dark humor of the comment. Andrews shifted uncomfortably,
apparently uncertain as to how to respond to the grim thought. “How would you like
us to proceed, Captain?”

“Continue with your analysis. Work with Lieutenant Torres to see if you can track
down whoever reprogrammed the replicator and trace that transporter. And figure out
what that thing was.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

“Keep this as quiet as you can. No sense panicking the crew. I’ll work with Commander
Chakotay to analyze the psych profiles we have on file so we can discreetly begin
arranging interviews. Dismissed.” She inclined her head curtly.

Chakotay was surprised that Janeway was taking such direct charge of the investigation.
Was the personal nature of the attack influencing her behavior?

Andrews strode out the door to the bridge, leaving Chakotay and Janeway alone. Janeway
slumped into her chair and massaged her temple. Chakotay sat by the viewport and squeezed
his hands as he waited for her to say the first word.

“This is just unbelievable.”

Chakotay nodded in assent. “This is hardly the first time someone’s tried to take
our lives, but I’m used to it coming from an external enemy.” He heaved a sigh as
he considered how to best follow through on the plan the captain had suggested. “We’re
going to be limited in what psych profiles we have available, and it’ll be difficult
to run new profiles without spreading rumors.”

“You’re right.” She sighed. “To make it worse, we don’t even have the profiles we’re
going to really need.”

Chakotay had a bad feeling he knew what she meant. He elected to play dumb and give
her the benefit of the doubt. “I’m sorry? I don’t follow.”

“Come now, Chakotay. I’m sure you’ve come to the same conclusion I have.” She leaned
forward. “I can’t see Neelix or Kes being behind this. That really only leaves the
Maquis. Probably one of the members that came from the colonies rather than Starfleet.”

Chakotay’s head tilted. He gnawed his lower lip as he tried to find a diplomatic response,
but his protectiveness of his people was starting to win out. “I fail to see how you
came to that conclusion.”

“You remember how rigorously the Academy screens applicants. We’ve both been through
the barrage of psych tests that filters out people with troubling tendencies. The
odds of such a violent unprovoked attack from one of our crew is minimal.”

“You’re talking about the same Academy that produced Garth of Izar, right?”

Janeway’s expression hardened. “Which resulted in tighter application screening.”

“As I recall, the conspirators that assassinated Chancellor Gorkon made it through
those changes. And I’m sure you’ve met a few individuals out of the Academy who seemed
a bit tightly wound. I remember Boothby telling me about a Klingon and a Brikar who
were literally at each other’s throats.”

“Okay, Starfleet personnel aren’t infallible. But I can’t imagine a Starfleet crew
turning against its captain.”

“Tell that to Admiral Pressman. The way he tells it, he got into a firefight and barely
escaped when his crew mutinied.”

“You may have missed some details that have recently come out about that incident,
Commander. Suffice it to say that there were . . . unusual circumstances.”

Chakotay saw that his captain was losing her patience, but it was impossible for him
to rebottle the frustration that was finally spilling out. “And this isn’t unusual?
We’re stranded seventy thousand light-years away because we decided that helping the
Ocampa was the right thing to do. I was right with you, but let’s not pretend everyone
felt the same way.”

Janeway stood, her hands subtly shaking as her nails dug into her palms. “True. But
my people are Starfleet officers who know how to take orders. I will grant you that
it is not absolutely impossible that they could have done this, but it’s unlikely
enough that we can’t waste limited resources pursuing what is almost certainly a dead
end.” She halted and turned to her first officer. “This was an act of terror. We have
known terrorists on the crew. Let’s focus there.”

Chakotay was taken aback. He slowly stood to face his captain eye-to-eye. “Is that
what you think of the Maquis?”

“It’s not about what I think. It’s not a matter of debate.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No.”

Chakotay turned to face the viewport as he strained to maintain his composure. “Do
you really want to go down this road, Captain?”

“Oh, I don’t think there’s any avoiding it. We had to talk about it sometime.”

“The Maquis are not terrorists.”

Janeway was incredulous. “You could have fooled me. What do you call the attacks on
the
Bok’nor
, the
Vetar
, and any number of other Cardassian vessels?”

“Self-defense. The
Bok’nor
was running weapons—”

“
Possibly
running weapons.”

“The
Vetar
was retaliation. Gul Evek was taking the lead in attacking Federation colonists.”

“
Former
Federation colonists.”

“And whose decision was that?”

“It was their decision. They decided to stay in a probable war zone.”

“They decided to stay in
their homes
. The Cardassians attacked first.”

Chakotay was struggling to avoid this debate turning into a shouting match. He took
a deep breath and seated himself by the viewport once more. “Just how much time have
you spent talking to your Maquis crew? How much do you really know about them?”

“Enough.”

“Are you so sure?” Chakotay collected his thoughts. “We were talking about Crewman
Dalby. Do you know why he joined the Maquis?”

“I can’t say I know him very well.”

“The woman he loved was assaulted by the Cardassians.” He waited a moment for this
to sink in. “It was completely unprovoked. They raped her. Smashed her skull and left
her for dead.”

It was Janeway’s turn to catch her breath. “I . . . I didn’t know.”

“Or Tabor. He doesn’t talk much about why he joined, but apparently his family was
taken by the Cardassians and killed in some sort of barbaric medical experiments.”

Chakotay felt a sad relief as he watched Janeway’s discomfort as she tried to digest
what she was hearing. Chakotay had been a captain leading a crew who had faced difficulties
that the carefully screened crew of
Voyager
might never have imagined. She took a moment before her deliberate response. “I’m
not saying I’m completely unsympathetic to the plight of the Maquis. I can’t blame
you for having felt the same way.”

“It’s much more than sympathy, Captain.” He drew a deep breath. “Did you know my father
was killed by the Cardassians?”

Janeway’s mouth gaped open. She had glanced over Chakotay’s file long ago when she
had first prepared to pursue his Maquis cell, but it had been surprisingly short on
details as to why he had defected. “I’m sorry, Chakotay. I never knew.”

“There’s much about us you don’t know. Most of us don’t take violence lightly. No
more than a Starfleet security officer is quick to fire a phaser because he can.”

Janeway processed this. “I see what you’re saying, but what you’re describing, as
tragic as it is, is a crew motivated by personal vendettas to take up violence.”

“Captain, being in the Maquis wasn’t ever about revenge. Not for most of us, anyway.
It’s about making sure that this doesn’t happen to anyone else.” Chakotay shook his
head. “I won’t claim there aren’t members or even cells in the Maquis that are quick
to adopt terrorist tactics, but that doesn’t describe most of us. We weren’t terrorists
any more than the French Maquis during World War II.” He looked her in the eye. “History
hasn’t called them terrorists, and I don’t think it will view us that way either.”

Janeway nodded, evaluating what she was hearing. “Okay, but you’re asking me to trust
that people with a history of violence and rebellion against Starfleet aren’t the
people we’re looking for. I wish I could, but when we’re short on options that’s a
dangerous thing to do.”

“All I’m asking for is equal treatment.” Chakotay spoke carefully and calmly. “I know
it’s a leap of faith to even do that much, but we can’t afford to lose trust right
now.” He glanced around the damaged room. “You’re right about this much: What we just
lived through was an act of terror. Whoever did this wasn’t just targeting you. They
were targeting the unity of this crew.” He looked his captain directly in the eye.
“My people are trustworthy, Captain. My cell couldn’t have operated without that trust.
They followed me because I earned their trust, and they’ve earned mine.”