Atonement (38 page)

“N-n-no,” Lieutenant Barclay stammered. “This is a precaution, nothing more.”

“Calm yourself, Emem,” Lsia ordered. “We all have them. You'll find it gives you something quite stimulating to contemplate beyond the bare walls and energy field.”

“Don't be a fool,” Emem shouted. “They have lulled you into complacency with false promises.”

“We are closer than we have ever been to Seriar,” Lsia insisted.

“You have forgotten, haven't you?” Emem said. “
They are all Nayseriareen now.
”

“You have always been such a coward,” the Doctor said as Emem's visage morphed before his eyes into that of a man with bronze skin, long, fine black hair, and chiseled, hard features, not unlike Lsia's.

The Doctor stepped back as all around him, warning alarms rang out. The deck rocked beneath his feet and shouted reports confirmed his imminent destruction. A control panel was beneath his hands. Bright red lights assaulted him, indicating multiple hull breaches and power drains.

“Release me.”

The alien from his memory, Obih, stood before him, dagger in hand.
“The hax must survive.”

“Doctor, are you all right?” Barclay asked, placing a hand behind the Doctor's back to steady him.

The Doctor turned to Reg in confusion. He did not recognize the ship on which he stood. But it felt familiar. It was
his.
Emem was beside him and Lsia sat at a forward panel. And he was . . . he was . . .

“Doctor,” Barclay said more urgently.

The Doctor closed his eyes, willing the sensation to pass. He tried to force his mind back to the tranquil lake Commander
Glenn had helped him visualize. By focusing on the small details, the feel of the earth beneath his body, the sound of lapping water, the heat of the sun, he slowly blocked out the unwanted memories. When he opened his eyes again, he saw Reg standing in the brig and Emem, once again, wearing Inspector Kashyk's face.

He turned to face Lsia. She considered him with clinical eyes, the same eyes that often evaluated his patients.

“Who is Xolani?” the Doctor asked softly.

Lsia smiled.

“Doctor?” Barclay asked again.

“Reg,” he replied, “take me to sickbay and ask Counselor Cambridge to join us.”

•   •   •   •   •

General Mattings was torn. He wished to personally guarantee the safety of his crew. But his direct EC, an experienced leader named Ralle, was capable of overseeing
Calvert
's repairs and guiding her slowly out of the wastes, and as a ranking general, his responsibilities to his ship had to be balanced with those he owed the Confederacy Interstellar Fleet. Had Chakotay not offered, the general might have found himself begging for permission to join the Starfleet crew. His ego was grateful it had not come to that. It was absolutely necessary that at least one representative of the Confederacy participate in this expedition. He'd hoped to do it while aboard the
Calvert.
Now Mattings would be doing so as an observer, with almost no ability to act in the best interests of his people should theirs and the Federation's diverge. This was hardly optimal, but better than nothing.

These concerns were relegated to the rear of his mind the moment he was ushered into what Lieutenant Kim called the “astrometrics lab.” The screen that dominated the room, and its vivid rendering of a vast quantity of local space, was stunning. The general had never considered his own tools crude or wanting. The more he learned of Starfleet's capabilities, the more he mourned the fact that a genuine alliance was now politically impossible.

There is so much we could learn from these people.

Admiral Janeway and Captain Chakotay welcomed him as he entered the lab. The fleet's chief engineer, a female called Torres who was clearly with child, was ordered to brief them. Mattings had become accustomed to the sight of Starfleet's female officers. The CIF did not have nearly as many, and none so young as most of those he'd met from the Federation. This was the only cultural idiosyncrasy of the Federation that the general found difficult to wrap his brain around, but he knew better than to suggest that any of the female Starfleet officers he'd met were less than capable of fulfilling their duties or might be better employed in other capacities until they were no longer fertile. Obviously the people of the Federation did not consider potential extinction a serious threat, even after the Borg had wiped out tens of billions of them. The Confederacy knew better, to their credit. Mattings genuinely hoped the Federation did not eventually learn how wrong they were the hard way.

“The first thing I'd like to bring to your attention,” Commander Torres began, “is the composition of the debris we've detected. Most of the pieces we scanned were ancient—thousands of years old. These are not.”

“Where did they come from?” Chakotay asked.

“At least one Devore cruiser and as many as three small Turei vessels,” Torres replied.

“Lsia has already sent ships out here,” Janeway realized.

As difficult as Mattings found this to believe, the evidence was impossible to refute. It was projected on that massive screen, larger than life.

Chakotay looked at Mattings. “How?”

Mattings sighed. “As you know, there are several streams that access our space other than the Gateway. We protect all of them, but the Gateway takes priority because it leads directly to the First World. If Lsia was telling the truth and her knowledge of the streams predates our own, it's possible she found some we haven't detected or was able to slip a few of her ships past our sentries.”

“But
if she could do that, why waste so much time and resources attacking the Gateway?” Chakotay mused.

“These ships couldn't handle the stresses of the wastes,” Torres suggested. “They weren't destroyed in combat. They met their match when they tried to breach that energy field we're about to enter. Maybe one of the reasons Lsia decided not to destroy
Voyager
when she had the chance is because she already knew that the other ships in her alliance were incapable of helping her find Seriar.”

“Then
Voyager
can't enter that field,” the general said. “We need to take more time to study it. I won't have you people running the risk of destroying yourselves for us or the Seriareen.”

“It's a little late now, General,” Chakotay said wryly. Mattings welcomed the captain's return to form. He doubted after what had transpired at Lecahn that the two would ever again enjoy the easy familiarity that had marked their initial meetings. But, finally, Chakotay no longer seemed to see him as the enemy, and that was a step in the right direction.

“I don't think we're going to have the same problems the Devore and Turei did,” Lieutenant Kim noted.

“Why not?” Janeway asked.

“The energy field is buffered by thousands of protectors,” Kim said. “That's why the dispersal pattern at the edges is so unusual.”

“Where did they come from?” Chakotay wondered aloud.

“The wastes are filled with subspace instabilities—places where normal space and subspace have been permanently inverted—which means any protector in existence has access to it,” Kim replied.

“The composition of the field is similar to, though not an exact match for, the internal dynamics of a subspace corridor,” Torres added. “We know that protectors in their natural state are drawn toward this energy. The Confederacy has been churning them out for hundreds of years; those who first discovered them and the means to create them, longer still. The protectors live in subspace, when they aren't being utilized in normal space. They
could be attracted to this area, and nothing here would have to call them forth to allow them to enter it. The wastes contain thousands of open portals. All the protectors have to do is move through them at will.”

“And given the way we saw the ancient ones develop, it's not a huge leap to suggest that they would act under their own initiative and come here if they detected it,” Kim agreed.

“Can we communicate with these protectors?” Chakotay asked.

“We can try,” Kim said. “But it probably won't be necessary. Should they misunderstand our intentions and attack, we know how to disperse them. All we really need to do is find an area of the field where they aren't present and slip past them.”

“I've already found several good possibilities for that,” Torres noted.

“And you're sure we can survive crossing that field?” Janeway confirmed.

“As long as our shields hold,” Torres replied. “The Doctor should replicate hyronalin, and I wouldn't want to be out there in a shuttle or an escape pod. But
Voyager
should be fine.”

•   •   •   •   •

Counselor Hugh Cambridge had been expecting the Doctor's call, though not so soon. The hologram's comments about Seven had been a calculated deflection. The Doctor was worried about something and must finally be ready to share it.

Whether the Doctor had been right about Seven was a matter the counselor was not inclined to explore. To hope was to become vulnerable and Cambridge's continued existence had long been predicated upon limiting his exposure to that condition.

He
was
surprised, however, when he entered sickbay and found the Doctor standing near a biobed at the rear of the suite behind a crackling energy force field. Lieutenant Barclay stood outside the field at the main data control panel.

“What do we have here?” Cambridge asked immediately.

The Doctor seemed to steel himself before he said, “I have a confession to make.”

Cambridge stepped closer to the field. “Did you raise this force field for your protection or mine?”

“When you asked me to explore ways to ‘rest' my program, I thought it was absurd. However, I did my best.”

“You said your first attempt at meditation went well,” Cambridge encouraged him.

“It did. What I experienced with Commander Glenn's assistance was unexpected. It is also not the point.
After
my meditation had concluded, I experienced two very vivid memories. I don't know if they were triggered by the meditation or not.”

“What did you remember?”

“The first thing I saw was me, only moments before the energy surge that destabilized my program. I was suffering intense emotional distress at the thought of Seven's death, quite beside myself with grief.”

“Literally?”

“Actually, yes. I saw myself from outside, almost as if it was through someone else's eyes. The second memory was not my own. In it, I saw an alien standing before me. He demanded that I ‘release him' and at his request, I took the dagger he held in his hand and attacked him, slicing his chest open.”

“And to what did you credit this extraordinary memory?” Cambridge asked.

“I didn't know,” the Doctor replied, almost pleading. “Given the damage to my program, I had no idea what to think. It could have been an old holographic program, maybe a corrupted artifact from the ship's database.”

“You didn't entertain the notion that it might have been a genuine memory?”

“
Not mine
,” the Doctor insisted.

“And given all you've seen on the front lines of insanity we call the Delta Quadrant, it didn't occur to you that experiencing
someone else's memories
might be something you'd want to report?”

“I'm reporting it now.”

“Because it's gotten worse, hasn't it?” Cambridge guessed.

The Doctor bowed his head. “A few minutes ago, I went to
the brig to examine Emem. It happened again. This time, I saw myself on an alien vessel that was under attack. I saw Lsia and the rest of them. The alien I ‘killed' was called Obih. He was Seriareen. The memory was not mine. It was Xolani's.”

“Xolani was one of The Eight,” Barclay interjected. “Lsia told us he was dead, that his consciousness did not survive the transfer out of containment.”

Cambridge crossed his arms at his chest. “So you have concluded that the energy surge Commander Torres described—her
virus—
was another Seriareen essence that was planted in the shuttle Lsia stole. He moved into
Voyager
's systems when the shuttle was returned and eventually attacked your program.”

“And took it over.” The Doctor nodded. “I am Xolani,” he said gravely.

Cambridge shook his head. Turning to Lieutenant Barclay, he said, “Drop the force field.”

“No!” the Doctor shouted.

“Calm down, Spartacus,” Cambridge insisted. “Lieutenant?”

“Do you really think that's wise?” Barclay asked.

“The Doctor isn't Xolani,” Cambridge said.

“How can you know that?” the Doctor demanded.

“Because unlike you, I was actually listening to our last briefing.
After
Xolani attacked your program—and you are likely right about that—he moved on and attacked several other holograms. If you had become his host, that would not have been necessary. Some of his memories were clearly stored by your program during your brief contact with him. Lucky for us, we are forewarned that Lsia's agenda is even more complicated than we suspected. But you need to stop flagellating yourself so you can help us determine whether, as Commander Torres believes, this Xolani destroyed himself, or found another, more suitable host somewhere on this ship.”

The Doctor considered this. Finally he said, “I would be more comfortable agreeing to this request if we could confirm that Xolani is not, in fact, sharing my program right now.”

“Oh, for the love of . . .” Cambridge began, tapping his
combadge. “Counselor Cambridge to Lieutenant Decan. Please report to sickbay immediately and bring a security team with you.”