“Fascinating,” Cambridge intoned, staring at the findings on the display.
“As you can see,” Seven continued, “the mutation is the result of an expression of this recessive base pair combination.”
“Starfleet’s classified database contains a significantly larger control group of Klingon genomes available for comparison than those at the disposal of the Institute, so we were able to compare our findings against a much larger population,” the Doctor added, not to be outdone.
“The bottom line is,” Kaz went on, “this isn’t a mutation at all.”
“It’s evolution,” Cambridge said softly.
“What does that mean?” Harry chimed in.
“It suggests that over time, significantly larger numbers of Klingons will be born expressing these characteristics,” Kaz said. “What we’re seeing might actually be the next step in the development of the Klingon species.”
“But don’t populations typically evolve traits that are beneficial to the species?” Kim asked. “This looks more like some kind of devolution.”
“While we have no idea how successful,” Kaz said, “or what the longevity of these Klingons would be, it is clear enough that they will possess strength and ferocity that far outstrip their present-day counterparts. All we can say for sure is that more Klingons like these will be born, and if their birth rate ever surpasses those of the Klingons living today…”
“The Curse of the Gods, indeed,” Cambridge finished.
“Is it some sort of programmed DNA molecule?” Harry asked.
“It’s possible,” Kaz replied. “Otherwise, it’s difficult to understand why it has remained dormant for so long.”
“It’s also possible, as the sequence is recessive, that random—” the Doctor began.
Their musings were interrupted, however, by B’Elanna and Paris, emerging from Kaz’s office.
“Kahless knows where the twelfth bat’leth is. He wants me to join him on Qo’noS. He can have a ship ready to depart within the hour,” B’Elanna reported.
Chakotay didn’t doubt for a moment that while B’Elanna might see this as the most useful course she could take right now, it wasn’t the smartest.
“I’ll go,” Tom said, as if reading Chakotay’s mind.
“Captain, with your permission, I’d like to join Commander Paris,” Harry added.
“A moment, please,” Janeway interrupted. “B’Elanna, where is the bat’leth?”
“Naliah IV,” she replied.
“In that case, I have an alternate suggestion,” Janeway said.
“Admiral?” Chakotay asked.
“Naliah IV is less than a day from Earth. And it’s at least two days by shuttle from here,” she said. “I’ll contact Tuvok. I’m sure he’d be willing to take a few days’ leave to retrieve it for us. He could rendezvous with Voyager more quickly than any of you could get there and back.”
No one seemed inclined to question her.
“You think he’d do it?” B’Elanna asked.
“Of course he would,” Janeway assured her.
“I agree,” Chakotay said, effectively ending further discussion.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Janeway said, hurrying from the room.
Tom gently guided B’Elanna toward Doctor Kaz. “Was there something else?” he asked pleasantly.
B’Elanna sighed, resigned. “I was actually hoping you might have something to help me sleep.”
Kaz nodded. “This way,” he said, and directed her toward a biobed.
“I’ll contact Kahless and inform him of the change in plans,” Tom said softly to B’Elanna, moving back to Kaz’s inner sanctum.
“Harry?” Chakotay asked.
“Yes, Captain.”
“Would you check with Lyssa and make sure she’s arranged for quarters for our guests. And check with Lieutenant Vorik to see how the temporary regeneration alcove I requested is coming along.”
“Right away, sir.”
These would normally have been duties for his first officer to perform, but Chakotay was determined to keep such things off Tom’s plate for the next few days. B’Elanna needed her husband more than Voyager did right now.
“Doctor Kaz, I’d be willing to stay and continue our research,” the Doctor said hopefully.
“Doctor Kaz was due to end his duty shift several hours ago,” Seven said pointedly.
“Oh, I don’t mind,” Kaz said, loading a hypospray for B’Elanna.
“Get some rest, Jarem,” Chakotay ordered Kaz. “You are, of course, welcome to continue working, Doctor,” he assured the EMH.
“Perhaps our time would be better spent preparing our report to the Klingon High Council,” Seven suggested to the Doctor.
“Why don’t we see how Vorik’s work is coming along first,” Harry offered diplomatically.
“Very well,” the Doctor sighed. “I should definitely take a look at any temporary regenerative device he constructs for Seven to make sure it is compatible with her needs.”
The captain had to suppress a grin at the look of disdain on Seven’s face.
How have these two managed to work together day in and day out? Chakotay wondered. They had been an incredibly efficient and helpful pair while serving on Voyager, and he knew that their mutual affection and regard for one another were well entrenched. But familiarity had a way of breeding discontent at times, and Chakotay secretly worried that both of them might need to broaden their social horizons to avoid putting too much strain on their friendship. He had noted in the few times they’d met over the last several months that the pair seemed to spar more forcefully than he could remember.
Seven and the Doctor dutifully followed Harry from sickbay, while Kaz conferred quietly with B’Elanna before administering a portion of the hypospray and providing her instructions for further use, should she require it.
Chakotay was about to depart when he noted Counselor Cambridge staring fixedly at Commander Logt, who was hovering as near to B’Elanna as decorum would allow while she spoke with Kaz.
What happened next took everyone left in the room, Chakotay most of all, by total surprise. With a grace and dexterity Chakotay would never have suspected, Cambridge passed by Commander Logt nonchalantly, as if he were merely heading for the exit, and as soon as he had passed her line of peripheral vision, turned quickly and kicked the woman’s legs out from under her.
“Counselor Cambridge!” Chakotay shouted as Logt attempted to recover, but before she could, Cambridge struck her repeatedly in the gut and face, momentarily subduing her. He then grabbed both of her arms and pinned them behind her back, locking her into a kneeling position.
“A moment, Captain,” Cambridge gasped as he tightened his grip to ensure that Logt was truly under his control.
“Explain yourself, Counselor,” Chakotay demanded, as B’Elanna and Kaz moved cautiously toward the pair.
“What the hell are you doing?” B’Elanna asked, already a little groggy.
“If you want to know where the qawHaq’hoch have taken your daughter, Commander,” Cambridge replied, “you can either wait for your friend to retrieve the final bat’leth, or you can simply ask this woman. I’m sure she can tell you. She’s one of them.”
B’Elanna seemed as stunned by this as Chakotay.
“Can you prove this, Counselor?” the captain asked sharply.
“Absolutely,” Cambridge insisted, “with a little help.”
Logt seethed and hissed as she struggled in his grasp.
Chakotay stepped forward. He didn’t trust Cambridge, but then, Logt wasn’t shouting out any denials either, which he certainly would have been doing in her position.
“This is absurd,” B’Elanna stammered. “Release her.”
“Gladly,” Cambridge replied cheerfully, “just as soon as someone pulls back her baldric and tunic so that her thoracic spine can be clearly seen. There you will find a brand, the mark of Hal’korin, which all members of the order sear into their flesh when th
ey are initiated.”
Chakotay threw a questioning glance at B’Elanna and could see that she was every bit as confused as he.
“That’s not possible,” B’Elanna said, doubt creeping into her voice.
“Bloody hell, just do it,” Cambridge retorted.
“I’ll do it,” Chakotay said, moving closer. As quickly as possible he pulled down the back of Logt’s tunic and there, just as Cambridge said, was a scarred mound of flesh in a shape too precise to have been a simple birthmark or battle wound.
“He’s right,” Chakotay said in disbelief.
“What’s going on?” Paris asked, emerging from the Doctor’s office.
Before anyone could reply, Chakotay heard a loud cartilaginous snap as Logt threw her body forward, lifting Cambridge from the ground and rolling him over the back of her head. Whatever damage she might have done to her shoulders in the process didn’t seem to be a problem as she quickly climbed over the counselor, thrusting a hard elbow into his upper back, rendering him unconscious.
Chakotay immediately dove for Logt but missed, landing instead atop the inert Cambridge while Kaz had the good sense to call for a security team.
Righting himself, Chakotay saw Paris moving to confront Logt, who quickly drew a small blade from her belt and sent it whirring into Tom’s leg.
Paris crumpled to the floor as B’Elanna cried out his name and Chakotay struggled to find a piece of floor to stand on.
Kaz was the next to take a run at Logt, but she dispatched him quickly, turning the only weapon at his disposal—the half-empty hypo of the sedative he’d given B’Elanna—against him, and he, too, stumbled back as soon as the medicine hit his system.
B’Elanna was struggling to remain alert as she threw herself at Logt. In her weakened state, Logt quickly subdued her and by the time Chakotay was on his feet Logt was standing with her back to the biobed, B’Elanna’s body held in front, a larger Klingon blade held precariously at B’Elanna’s throat.
“Let her go,” Chakotay said, hoping against hope that the woman could be reasoned with.
“I cannot,” Logt replied, as if this saddened her almost as much as Chakotay.
She then shouted a command to the computer, and she and B’Elanna disappeared in the glistening beam of a transporter.
The doors to sickbay slid open and a half-dozen security officers poured in.
Chakotay didn’t have to think too hard to imagine where Logt would have taken B’Elanna.
“Red Alert!” he called out. “Computer, lock down the shuttlebay immediately!”
Two of the officers were lifting Tom to the nearest biobed as another tried to revive Doctor Kaz, while the rest of the group hurried out of the room.
“Chakotay to the Doctor, medical emergency.”
Within seconds the Doctor materialized before him and after a quick, “What happened?” followed Chakotay’s abrupt gesture toward Tom. The Doctor cleared a path through the remaining security team and activated the biobed’s surgical arch.
The captain then rushed for the door but was halted as the deck jerked beneath him, almost sending him sprawling.
“Kim to Chakotay,” Harry’s voice called.
“Go ahead,” Chakotay replied, stumbling into the corridor.
“The Delta Flyer has just blown its way out of the shuttlebay,” Harry advised.
“Tractor them!” Chakotay ordered, “And transport me immediately to the bridge.”
Seconds later, Chakotay materialized next to the tactical station where Kim was struggling to get a lock on the hijacked shuttle.
Chakotay watched as Logt executed a dive roll to evade the blue beam meant to tether her irrevocably to Voyager. Soft bluish wisps began to stream from the shuttle nacelles and Chakotay smiled, sensing they’d just caught a break. From the look of it, the Delta Flyer’s warp engines might be malfunctioning.
“Stay with her,” Chakotay ordered Lieutenant Tare at the helm.
Tare did her best to turn the ship’s bulk even as Logt reversed the course of the Delta Flyer and flew straight toward Voyager. For a breathless moment, Chakotay feared collision, but as the Flyer filled the main viewscreen, Logt finally succeeded in bringing the shuttle’s warp engines online. In a blinding flash, the small craft disappeared.
“Follow them!” Chakotay ordered.
“Acquiring warp trail,” Campbell called from ops.
After a few frustrating seconds of silence, Chakotay barked, “Where are they headed, Lieutenant?”
“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know,” Campbell replied.
Kim crossed the few feet separating tactical controls from ops and studied her readouts.
“She ghosted the trail,” Harry finally announced, slamming his fist down hard on the console.
“She what?” Lieutenant Tare asked.
“Just before she went to warp she dumped enough warp plasma into the area to fool the ship’s sensors. We can’t acquire her heading, Captain. She’s gone,” Harry said, shaking his head in frustration.
The captain took a few deep breaths, until the adrenaline that had been coursing through him for the last several minutes dispelled and his heart slowed to match the pulse of the blinking red lights illuminating the otherwise darkened bridge.
“Stand down Red Alert,” he ordered. “Chakotay to sickbay.”
“I’m a little busy at the moment, Captain,” the Doctor’s voice replied.
“Is Counselor Cambridge recovered?” Chakotay asked.
After a short pause the Doctor said, “He’s conscious, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Have him report to my ready room,” Chakotay said menacingly. “Carry him if you have to.”
The events in sickbay were a blur to B’Elanna. One moment she’d felt the pleasant wash of relaxation as Doctor Kaz’s sedative entered her system, and in the next, all hell was breaking loose. Logt had been on her knees. Then she’d thrown a dagger at Tom. Someone had screamed.
Was that me?
The next thing B’Elanna remembered, she’d been dumped into a soft leather chair. As she struggled to remain conscious, she’d seen Logt, powering up a shuttle control panel.
What am I doing on the Delta Flyer?
Then an explosion, and B’Elanna had been forced to dig her hands into the seat to avoid being tossed out of it.
When the rocking and bucking had finally stopped, B’Elanna found herself wanting either to vomit or to sleep. A face appeared before her, much too close, and a cold, rough hand was probing her neck.
B’Elanna forced words through her parched throat, a side effect, no doubt, of the sedative. “Tom…”
“Will survive,” Logt assured her. “I intended only to disable him, and my aim was true.”
“You swore to protect me…” B’Elanna barely managed.
“That is exactly what I am trying to do,” Logt said calmly as B’Elanna fell into a chasm of darkness.
Janeway strode briskly into Chakotay’s ready room to find him pacing like a caged tiger before his desk.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Commander Logt is a member of the qawHaq’hoch. She’s taken B’Elanna and the Delta Flyer, and I haven’t a clue where they’ve gone. Oh, and she almost killed Paris in the process.”
“Almost?”
“The Doctor is performing surgery right now. The blade missed his femoral artery by a hair. The Doctor says he’ll make a complete recovery.”
“At least that’s good news,” Janeway said. “Isn’t it likely that wherever Logt’s gone, it’s probably the same place they took Miral?” she added.
Chakotay shook his head.
“Maybe. That’s assuming Miral is still alive.”
“She has to be,” Janeway said, as if willing it to be so.
“Kathryn, she’s been missing for over a week,” Chakotay replied. “And I don’t think anyone knows what the qawHaq’hoch’s agenda is, or the lengths to which they’ll go. We didn’t even know one of them was
among us. Logt knows what we’re planning, and who’s to say they won’t kill Miral just to keep her from us, especially if we’re on the right track.”
“So we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t?” Janeway asked. “Where’s your optimism, Captain?”
“I suppose it’s taken a beating over the last few days.”
“That’s understandable, but the law of large numbers says we have to catch a break soon, right?” Janeway moved to halt Chakotay in his steps and stared into his troubled eyes. “You’ve done everything possible to fix this, Chakotay. You’ve bucked Command, risked insulting the chancellor of the Klingon Empire, helped to uncover evidence of a more serious threat now facing the Klingon people.”
“Not bad for a week’s work,” he said wryly.
Janeway smiled. “Did I ever, in the seven years we served together, do anything that led you to believe that being captain was easy?”
He shook his head. “No. You just made it look that way…most days.”
Janeway nodded, acknowledging the compliment. “I spoke with Tuvok. He’ll be on his way to Naliah IV within the hour.”
“Then with any luck we’ll be on our way in a couple of days.” With a shake of his head Chakotay added, “Ken Montgomery will probably have me demoted to crewman and scrubbing plasma conduits by that time, right?”
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” she replied firmly.
They were interrupted by a chiming at the door.
“Come in,” Chakotay called.
Counselor Cambridge entered, looking more than a little the worse for wear.
“You wished to see me, Captain?” he asked.
Chakotay turned to face him, his weary misgivings replaced by righteous anger.
“What were you thinking?” he asked harshly.
Cambridge stood his ground.
“It occurred to me that the sooner Commander Logt was revealed for the traitor she is, the sooner we might find Miral Paris,” he said evenly.
“And it never crossed your mind that it wasn’t your call to make?”
Cambridge paused for a moment to consider this.
“You mean, why didn’t I come to you first to express my concern?” he asked.
Star Trek: Voyager®: Full Circle Page 15