Cybersong (18 page)

***

Captain Janeway had gathered her staff officers in her ready room to view the entirety of the log they had brought back from the alien ship.

Chakotay was glad that he was there, that he was awake, and that he had just slept for five hours. He would have preferred longer, but even his restless, dream-filled sleep had restored some of his natural balance.

Besides, though he could not remember the dream clearly, he knew that his animal guide had visited him again. Even here, so far from the ancestral lands, it was with him. The dream made him wake reassured, confident. And he vaguely suspected that he had been told exactly what needed to be done, only he couldn’t remember. Not now. When he needed the knowledge it would be there, planted in his mind. Part of the “instinct,” he was certain. Just that most people didn’t even have the shreds of memory about the dreams their power animals gave them. And he had an inspiration that he was certain came from that dream, one that he knew was important.

“I think Kes should be here, too,” Chakotay said. “She came with me to rescue you, and she seemed to know that there would be some danger. If there is some kind of empathic communication going on, Kes is in the loop. And I think that her input could be valuable.”

The captain nodded. “If she has had some sort of telepathic communication with these people, she might be able to recognize them.

Or their holograms. I don’t know enough about those talents to rule anything out. Call her in and we’ll get started.”

Chakotay did call her in, and then the captain asked, “Could you fill us in on why you believe she has this telepathic contact?”

Chakotay looked away from both the captain and Tuvok. He leaned forward and carefully recounted the story of his decision to launch an ad hoc rescue mission before the away team was due to check in. Then he sat back and braced himself for Janeway’s and Tuvok’s reactions.

There was a hush in the ready room. Finally the captain broke the silence. “You took the shuttlecraft over to the alien ship before the explosion?”

Chakotay looked at her steadily. “Yes. I did. I can’t explain it now, only then I was certain that you were in trouble. Though there was no reason to think that at the time. So I got there just in time for the explosion.”

The captain and Tom Paris studied him. Then the captain said very gently, “Have you thought that perhaps Kes is not the only one who might have had some kind of empathic contact?”

Chakotay breathed deeply. “I have wondered about that. But then, I have also been trained to be aware of my own hunches and to follow them. I haven’t felt anything that seemed—invasive.”

He had searched for the word. Thinking about those moments when he had been so lonely he thought he would die, he knew that the feeling had not come from within. “Although as we entered the tachyon field I did notice a certain feeling of loneliness that I don’t think came from me,” he said softly. “I was pretty unhappy for a while, but that was all. It isn’t important.”

“No, Commander, it may be very important,” the captain said.

“Loneliness. That makes some kind of sense. But the rest still doesn’t.”

“I felt that, too, Captain,” Kes said. They had all been so intent on Chakotay’s experience that they had not noticed her arrival.

“I had very disturbing dreams, all of them about loneliness, all in situations where I hadn’t remembered feeling so much lonely as angry or afraid,” Kes continued. “But the dreams felt very much as if they were mine, only the emotions were changed.”

“Kes, why did you meet me at the shuttlebay? How did you know I was going after the away team?” Chakotay asked.

“I didn’t know,” Kes said. “I just had a very strong need to try to go after them myself. I was certain that something had gone wrong, and The Doctor can’t go, so I was the only alternative.”

“You know, it seems like both of you are sensitive to whatever telepathic projection this thing has,” Tom Paris spoke up. “I wonder if it just projected something and then you both were compelled by the same thought to come after us. As if it was planning to create the explosion and wanted to evacuate us, or at least get us out of there.”

“That is the most logical explanation,” Tuvok agreed.

“But what is it trying to communicate?” Kes asked.

“That’s pretty self-evident,” Tom Paris said with disgust. “It is lonely. It wants us to stay. It’s like some spider thats trapped us in its web and now it wants us to feel sorry for it and be good buddies. Until we die, like the other ship.”

“I don’t think so,” Kes said softly. “It doesn’t feel that way at all to me. I don’t think that whatever I’ve been feeling means harm.”

“Yeah, well, the spider probably doesn’t mean harm either,” Paris retorted. “It probably is just sitting there thinking about dinner.

It has no desire to hurt anyone. Just to eat.”

“Why don’t we find out what’s in the log?” B’Elanna interrupted.

“I don’t know about you, but I’ve got work to get back to.”

“I don’t want to display the entire thing,” Janeway said.

“By now you should have been able to read the text version with the technically salient points. I want each of you to look at that data in terms of your own departments. Together with this new information, maybe we can piece out what’s going on. And how to stop it.”

Tuvok spoke first. “Captain, it appears that these aliens fell into precisely the same trap we did, which would logically rule out any Cardassian interference or sabotage. There is evidence in this log of similar food spoilage problems, computer breakdown, and the disconnect from navigation that we have experienced. And while it is not unreasonable to suspect sabotage, given the circumstances, with this document it seems highly unlikely. I do not see any way in which a Cardassian agent could have planted this log.”

“Or tampered with it?” Janeway asked.

Tuvok took a moment and looked thoughtful. “I think not, Captain. No one except the away team knew anything about the log until It. Torres took it from sickbay. It was in her possession the whole time until she had the computer do the translation.

And we have the traces on the translation. There was no outside interference. The computer alone had access to the documents.”

“But what about after, when the text was compiled and sent to us?”

Chakotay asked. “Documents could be changed then and we wouldn’t know.”

Tuvok nodded gravely. “That is true, Commander. And because both It.

Torres and I were aware that that was the weak link in the cycle, we took two precautions. First, we embedded a second code string in the document. If there were any tampering, it would show up in a very simple diagnostic that revealed the embedded sequence. So if everyone has access to their files open now, we can have the computer extract the sequence. B’Elanna?”

B’Elanna gave the computer a few quick instructions, and then Tom Paris began laughing.

“I do not see what is so funny, Mr. Paris,” Tuvok said.

“It says, `If you can read this message there is no spy tampering,’” B’Elanna Torres said simply. “I don’t see why that’s so hilarious.

It’s very straightforward. I wrote it myself.”

Tom Paris rolled his eyes. Chakotay smiled and shook his head.

The captain smiled just a little and waited until everyone had regained their composure before leading the meeting to the next point. “So we know that we don’t have a Cardassian saboteur aboard.”

“Not precisely, Captain,” Tuvok corrected her. “We know that this situation is not the result of sabotage. That does not mean that we do not have a spy aboard.”

“Agreed, Mr. Tuvok,” the captain said.

The captain continued. “The log discusses the same kind of computer breakdown we’ve experienced. And they were unable to fix the problem and take control of their engines. So, in essence, they were trapped.”

“Correct, Captain,” B’Elanna Torres agreed. “But I haven’t seen their computer configuration, so I don’t know how their systems interacted and how interdependent they were. With our own system, as soon as Ensign Mandel gets all the garbage code out of the operating system, we should have immediate access to the helm again.”

“And what if the alien transmits another set of instructions?”

Tuvok asked.

“Now that we know how it embeds code, we can protect against it.

Essentially, think of this as a computer virus. Once we have the idea of how the virus works, it isn’t hard to protect ourselves.

It’s just knowing what to protect against.”

Tuvok’s eyebrows went up. “Indeed. I wish I had access to similar security.”

B’Elanna blinked. “But you do. You’ve got the best virus protection that Starfleet wrote. And believe me, I know. You don’t know how many viruses I tried to write to worm into that system.”

“Indeed?”

“Let’s forget about this,” Chakotay interrupted. “Tuvok, you know who and what we were. None of us are going to be ashamed of being Maquis.”

B’Elanna Torres shrugged. “I am ashamed that I’m not a good enough programmer to have cracked any of the Starfleet protections anyway.

Though Daphne Mandel or Harry Kim might be able to, if you gave them enough time and didn’t change any of the parameters.”

“This is not helping us figure out the current problem,” the captain chided them. “Let’s stick to the topic. We know that this alien vessel suffered from the same sequence of symptoms that are affecting Voyager. We know that they tried to take manual control of engines and failed. We know that they were somehow enticed by images of beings that appeared to be their gods or `beautiful ones.”” “Like those angelic beings we saw.” Tom Paris said. “Whatever is creating the problem somehow adapts the creatures to whoever is looking.”

“And if this thing can take over a computer system, it would have no trouble reconfiguring the holodeck programs to project those beings,” Chakotay added.

“So we’re basically dealing with a lifeform that takes over computer systems and reads code into their operating systems.

With or without a universal translator. It doesn’t appear that the aliens had one,” the captain summed up. “But we don’t know where whatever it is that’s doing this is located. We have no lifeform readings at all from any of these dead ships.”

“If we can trust our readings,” Tuvok added. “Our computer security has been invaded. We don’t know what areas have been compromised. We must assume one being exists somewhere in this nexus and is evading detection.”

“So we have to find and identify whoever it is,” Kes said quietly.

“No,” Torres replied. “All we have to do is fix our own connections and get out of here.”

“And leave it to hunt down and trap someone else?” The medical assistant pursued her line of reasoning.

“We can’t get rid of every bad guy in the galaxy,” Paris said.

“But I wouldn’t mind trying with this one. It’s already collected quite a little graveyard around here. And I think starving people to death is the lowest form …”

“What if it isn’t some bad guy at all?” Kes asked. “What if it just has a different point of view? Maybe it thinks it is doing something beneficial.”

“Cleaning every living species out of the area?” Paris retorted.

“Sorry, by my definition, that’s a bad guy.”

“Wait a second, Paris, Kes has a point,” Chakotay interrupted.

“We thought of the Caretaker as harming us, while it was trying to fulfill what it perceived as its obligation to the Ocampa.

And if this is in any way related to the Caretaker’s companion, then it would be a very good idea to locate it.”

The captain let the thought settle before she spoke. “I have been considering that possibility,” she announced. “If this is the Caretaker’s companion, then we might just have found the way home. And even if it is not the companion, there are technologies here that are different from ours. Whatever is operating here is extremely sophisticated and might have the capability of helping us get back.

Even if it’s only half the way, that’s a big jump.”

“What about the shortages?” Chakotay asked.

The captain sighed. “We’re going to have to work quickly. I will not pass up the opportunity to access a technology that might get us home.

But I also refuse to endanger the lives of this crew through shortages.

Which means that I am sending another away team.” The captain rose.

“Chakotay, Paris, and B’Elanna, I want the three of you to be ready to leave within the hour. Your mission has two goals. Your first goal is to gather as much information as you can on the being that has trapped us, and how the trap is set. The second is to search for relevant transportation technology.”

“Captain, can we take Ensign Mandel along for computer analysis?”

B’Elanna requested. “Both goals would be served a lot faster with someone of her caliber of computer expertise around.”

The captain frowned. “She has quite a job cleaning out that program infestation.”

“Captain, Harry Kim is still not well enough to leave sickbay, but he is alert and he’s getting very bored. In fact, I don’t know if The Doctor can keep him under observation much longer.

But if you were to assign him that task, he could interface through the sickbay priority terminal, and we could keep him where we can take care of him if he has any trouble.”

Captain Janeway smiled. “So Harry’s well enough to be a bad patient?

That’s good news. Then, yes, by all means take Ensign Mandel.

Dismissed.”

“I can’t leave now, Ensign Mandel informed Chakotay. “I’m in the middle of getting rid of the junk that’s keeping us here. Which is much more important than whatever away mission you’ve got in mind.”

Daphne Mandel remained in her seat at the Engineering workstation. She didn’t even glance from the lines of code scrolling past at an impossible rate. She just outright ignored him. She was so completely wrapped up in her task that she didn’t seem to. notice that he hadn’t left.

Chakotay was so stunned that he nearly dropped the plate of cookies he’d brought as a peace offering. He had never imagined insubordination on this level. No wonder Tuvok had thought she was a spy. Except a spy would have covered up a bad attitude much better than Ensign Mandel.