Atonement (42 page)

“I'm willing to wait,” Chakotay said.

“I am not,” Lsia said. “Stations, gentlemen,” she ordered. Emem moved to the tactical panel above the bridge's chairs. Tirrit moved to operations. Adaeze hurried to Patel's science station as Lsia stepped down into the command well and approached the conn. As they did so, they relieved all of the bridge officers of their weapons.

“Everybody step aside,” Chakotay ordered.

Confused faces met his as Lsia said, “A wise choice, Captain.”

“I don't know about that,” Mattings observed. “I realize your weapons are useless, Captain, but we do have them outnumbered.”

“We do. We might even successfully subdue most of them. Of course we can't risk killing them. That would just add to the body count when they choose their new hosts from among my bridge crew. And Lsia is a hologram. She can assume any form she wishes and would be pretty hard to beat in a stand-up fight.”

“You're just going to allow her to take your ship from you?”

“I didn't say that. Admiral Janeway and at least two of the best engineers in Starfleet are working right now to reverse whatever Lsia did to seize control of the ship. I don't think we should make their job any harder by forcing Lsia's hand. In my experience, raw power grabs of Starfleet vessels rarely end well for the grabbers. This ship has thousands of moving parts. It takes a minimum of forty-seven people to run all critical stations. She's got five at the most.”

Mattings smiled uncertainly. “You're taking an awful lot on faith here.”

“That's because I've invested it in extraordinary people.”

“Captain?” Ensign Gwyn called from the conn. She stood over Lsia, studying the readings on the navigation panel.

“Report,” Chakotay ordered.

“You might want to sit down. Everybody else should hang on to something,” Gwyn advised.

Chakotay sensed forward motion beneath his feet as the image on the main viewscreen began to rotate.

“She's taking us toward the energy field, isn't she?” Chakotay asked.

“Aye, sir,” Gwyn replied.

Chakotay sat. Mattings did not.

“General.”

“I'm accustomed to standing at times like this,” he said.

Chakotay shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“Corridor six-nine-one-seven-two-eight is showing sixty-two percent viability,” Tirrit reported from ops.

“The containment-field diameter is eight times greater than anticipated,” Adaeze added.

“Eight?” Lsia asked, alarmed.

“He must be hungry,” Emem noted.

He?
Chakotay thought.
Hungry?

“Executing corridor transversion in five, four, three,” Lsia counted down.

Chakotay grabbed his armrests as the ship began to buck under the strain of the wastes' instabilities. As before, he experienced a brief sensation of freefall before the corridor Lsia had targeted—for what he assumed was a maneuver similar to Gwyn's bounce—pulled
Voyager
forward.

The sudden acceleration that followed pressed him firmly back into his seat.

“You might want to adjust the inertial dampeners,” Waters advised Tirrit. “It's that one, there,” she added, pointing to her control panel.

“Do as she says,” Lsia ordered.

Chakotay expected Lsia to slow the ship when they reached the end of the corridor seam's stability. Instead, she only made a light course correction as they returned to normal space.

She then repeated the same maneuver flawlessly two more times, using the next two nearest corridors.

In less than four minutes, a journey that should have taken them more than a day was over, and
Voyager
slowed as it approached the massive energy field that supposedly surrounded Seriar.

Without turning, Lsia said, “You have a fine ship, Captain. She has performed exceptionally well.”

“I expect you to return her to us in the same shape you found her,” Chakotay noted.

“Why would I do otherwise?” Lsia asked. “We have a great deal of work ahead of us.”

“
You
do,” Chakotay corrected her. “Apart from saving us from your inexperience with our systems, my people will not lift a hand to assist you.”

Lsia shook her head sadly. “We shall see,” she replied. “Tirrit?”

“Requesting ingress,” he replied.

Chakotay watched in amazement as the visible energies of the field, a small fraction of the entirety of exotic radiant particles that created it, began to swirl and move before him.

“How in the world?” Lieutenant Kim marveled beside him.

“What is it?” Chakotay asked.

“They're using the protectors to carve out a clear space through the energy field,” Kim reported.

“We should probably do the same on our way out,” Chakotay whispered.

“You really think we'll be able to retake the ship by then?” Kim asked.

“Absolutely.”

“How?”

Chakotay did not answer.
Voyager
was moving again, slipping
inside a tunnel of empty space while around them raged an energy field unlike anything he'd ever seen before.

Their motion was steady at full impulse. They were moving through normal space. Soon enough, the terminus came within visual range. A distant bright-white mass lay several thousand kilometers beyond the energy field.

It wasn't a planet.

Voyager
cleared the energy field, and Lsia slowed the ship.

As every individual on the bridge struggled to make sense of what they were seeing, General Mattings fell to his knees.

•   •   •   •   •

Commander Torres and Admiral Janeway stood beside Lieutenant Barclay, who had joined them as soon as Conlon had been removed from engineering. Several of the junior engineering officers had abandoned their inoperative posts and collected themselves behind the admiral and fleet chief engineer, observing their efforts to regain control of the ship.

Neither Janeway nor B'Elanna seemed to mind that this had become a teachable moment.

Lieutenant Neol had taken it upon himself to monitor the feed from the bridge's main viewscreen. From time to time he reported on
Voyager
's progress under Lsia's command. It was clear to Barclay that whatever Lsia was doing, she had planned it for months and was now executing it as quickly as possible. It obviously included taking
Voyager
within range of the presumed coordinates of Seriar.

Torres had begun her work exactly as Barclay would have. Rather than immediately attempt to break into the new control sequence, which could theoretically damage many systems simultaneously, she was searching for a way to view the program Lsia had initiated. Analysis would hopefully show a weakness.

The first problem was accessing it, and that was proving incredibly difficult. Conlon,
Xolani
, Barclay reminded himself, had constructed his own command pathways separate from Conlon's command codes. Everyone's codes were now useless, and Xolani had locked the system down before he had
confronted Torres and Janeway. Nothing Torres attempted could convince the main computer to display anything beyond current status reports, all of which were nominal.

Slight stresses on hull integrity and inertial dampeners were detected as
Voyager
began to utilize several subspace corridors to cut the distance between the ship and the energy field surrounding Seriar. Even Torres was surprised at how quickly the new control program responded to these potential threats, rerouting power in the same way she would have done had she had access right now.

When Torres stood back from the control panel and crossed her arms at her chest, Barclay's anxiety intensified.

“We don't have a lot of good choices here,” Torres advised Janeway.

“Couldn't we manually override propulsion?” an eager ensign asked from the back of the assembled pack.

“How so?” Torres asked.

“The first time Admiral Batiste took control of the deflector array, we intentionally broke the dish,” the ensign replied.

“We were in open space, Quinn,” Torres reminded him. “These wastes are treacherous. We need all systems operating at peak efficiency to survive.”

“So we don't destroy anything. A few magnetic constrictors out of alignment and a dozen well-placed conduit leaks could slow her down and buy us some time.”

“We'll consider that plan S,” Torres replied.

“S?” Janeway asked.

“We're going to try everything else within our power first, and if that fails and we're totally
screwed
 . . .”

Janeway chuckled grimly.

“But I like the way you're thinking, Quinn,” Janeway noted. “We're open to any reasonable suggestion at this point.”

“How about an unreasonable one?” Torres asked.

“Go ahead,” Janeway urged.

“After Admiral Batiste pulled that stunt, I decided this was a vulnerability Starfleet had never adequately addressed,” Torres began.

“Alien possession of a senior officer?” Janeway guessed.

Torres nodded. “It
occurred to me that our basic command code structure could be slightly modified, but it was risky if, for instance,
I
was the officer compromised.”

“What did you do?” Janeway asked, equal parts alarmed and intrigued.

“I created my own access key,” Torres said. “It is designed to override all security protocols and allow me to directly access our central processors, even if my command codes have been disabled. It targets our root files, bypasses the fail-safes, and allows me to alter our most basic programming.”

“What are you waiting for?” Janeway asked.

“I've never tested it,” Torres admitted. “After I'd finished it, I decided it was a bad idea. Even now, I don't know if it will work. If it does, it shouldn't take me long to override whatever Lsia has done and restore our proper command paths. If it doesn't . . .”

“. . . we're screwed?” Janeway finished.

Torres nodded again.

Janeway sighed. “When all of this is over, you, Lieutenant Kim, and I are going to have a lengthy discussion about Starfleet protocols. The days of any officer—”

“Wait a minute,” Torres interjected. “We didn't survive for seven years out here by blindly adhering to the rules. We did it by following the spirit of them and making accommodations as the need arose, some of which have now become standard aboard Starfleet vessels.”

“Improvisation in an emergency is one thing.
Planning
to break the rules is a little different,” Janeway countered.

“If I'd actually followed through and tested that program, we might already have control of the ship,” Torres argued.

Janeway shook her head, frustrated. “Where is it?”

“In my quarters.”

“Ensign Quinn, take three security officers to the commander's quarters and retrieve the program file,” Janeway ordered.

Torres provided Quinn with the location of the file at her workstation, and the ensign quickly departed.

The ship's
motion seemed to cease abruptly. Lieutenant Neol said, “Admiral,
Voyager
has reached the edge of the energy field we detected.”

“So soon?” Janeway asked.

“Yes, Admiral.”

“I wonder if there's another option,” Barclay said suddenly as inspiration, or desperation, struck.

“I hope so,” Torres said.

Stepping up, Barclay moved to the interface and called up the holodeck control systems. To his surprise, and everyone else's, he was granted access.

“That's interesting,” Torres noted. “She's taken control of every primary system, and auxiliary one,
except
the holodecks.”

“It's a discrete entity,” Barclay reminded Torres. “It has its own power systems and controls. It interfaces with the main computer for data retrieval but is otherwise autonomous. It's also the one system Xolani was never able to compromise.”

“But that doesn't help us,” Torres said. “All you can do from here is run any holodeck program you'd like.”

“
All I can do
,” Barclay said with emphasis, “is
manage
any holographic program currently running on this ship.”

Torres considered this. Janeway seemed to understand the implication sooner. “Wasn't Meegan's program designed to integrate with the
Galen
's systems?”

Barclay shook his head. “As soon as the fleet's complement was finalized, I added integration protocols for her mobile emitter and the Doctor's to all nine of the original fleet ships, in the event they transported to one of them and their mobile emitters were damaged. That way, they could retain their functionality by routing their program automatically through the ship's own holographic systems.”

“How thoughtful of you, Reg,” Janeway said, beaming at him.

“Which reminds me,” Barclay added. “I need to add that protocol to the
Vesta.”

“We're moving again,” Neol reported.

“Where?” Janeway asked.

“Some
sort of tunnel has been created through the energy field. We're entering it now,” he replied.

“Is the only way to activate this protocol and slave Lsia's holographic matrix to
Voyager
's system by damaging her mobile emitter?” Janeway asked.

“Let's find out. May I?”

Torres nodded. “By all means.”

Janeway then turned to Decan, saying, “Get to the bridge. Make sure Chakotay knows we will have options for him shortly.”

“What are your orders for him in the meantime?” Decan asked.

Janeway shrugged. “Captain's discretion,” she replied.

Barclay set to work, modifying his program to detect “Meegan's” mobile emitter and override its autonomy. His focus became singular. All ambient sounds, including the murmured conversations of the rest of engineering, faded into so much white noise until Neol's voice sliced through.