“Where?” Wildman asked.
“I don’t recall,” Sharak said.
“So what you’re doing with Starfleet Medical has nothing to do with Planarians?” Wildman asked.
“It does not,” Sharak replied.
Wildman shook her head. “I don’t understand. I was so sure.”
“If what you have just shown me was relevant to my mission, I would tell you,” Sharak said.
“I just assumed,” Wildman said. “According to every record I’ve ever seen, the Planarians died out thousands of years ago. Starfleet discovered their planet and fairly detailed records of their people prior to the cataclysm that made Planaria uninhabitable. Before we had warp drive, they were doing things with genetics that are still outlawed by the Federation. It was necessary for them. Their regenerative abilities were such that almost fifty percent of an individual’s body mass could be lost and still recovered. There was a complicated system of designation built around determining when a Planarian could be considered a ‘new’ person, based on how much regeneration had occurred with that individual. I actually think,” Wildman went on as she rubbed her forehead aggressively, “that someone reconstructed their complete genome not that long ago.”
Sharak grew very still.
“Doctor?”
“You are right.”
Sharak turned back to the control panel and opened a channel to the hospital. As soon as an administrator greeted him, he asked if a volunteer named Ria was currently on-site. After a few moments the administrator replied that she was due to return at 0800 hours.
“What are you going to do?” Wildman asked when Sharak had closed the channel.
“I am going to speak to Ria first thing in the morning,” Sharak replied.
“I’m going with you,” Wildman said.
“That is not necessary,” Sharak said.
“Are you going to ask the hospital for security to accompany you when you speak with her?”
“Of course not.”
Wildman smiled faintly. “Listen to the wise old fox, Doctor,” she said. “This woman shouldn’t exist. You won’t know if she is lying to you. I will.”
Sharak nodded. “Kailash. The door opening.”
“Samantha and Sharak seeking the truth,” Wildman said.
Sharak laughed aloud.
Chapter Nineteen
VITRUM
Overseer Bralt had begged off accompanying Fife and Brill to what Cemt had called “Izly’s” place. Instead, the Jroone’s EC Hent and two of his security JPs had come along.
Hent had given Fife coordinates for his shuttle and Fife assumed he’d see a farmhouse or comparable structure when it came in range. Instead, he saw only several small fires, around which dozens of men, women, and children milled as the light of day began to fade. Crude tentlike structures and hovels made from packed mud dotted the area. Small animals milled restlessly about, along with a few large head of geer.
By the time Fife and Brill reached the outskirts of the encampment, Hent had located Izly, a wiry young humanoid with fair, freckled skin and long braids of reddish hair whose coat had seen better days and whose boots barely had a sole. A miser with his words, he had pointed Brill to a small field, and after half an hour, Brill confirmed what was obvious, even to Fife.
“I thought Cemt had been hard on his soil,” Brill explained. “Mister Izly has leached his to a point I’ve never seen. It didn’t help that he started using a particularly aggressive biocide a couple of years back that got into his groundwater. It’s going to take years for this dirt to grow anything again.”
“What about those?” Fife asked, gesturing to a few brown stems poking up.
“They’re a wild root, but they’re pretty much useless as a food source. I can’t imagine what they taste like, but there’s nothing nutritious in them,” Brill replied.
They walked in silence back to the encampment, which had grown in size over the last hour. The faces that glanced at them were hardened, the eyes wary. Over several of the fires, large pots were filled with a bubbling murky liquid.
Izly approached them. “Seen what you came to see?”
“Yes,” Fife replied. “Thank you for allowing us to visit your land.”
“Is what it is,” Izly murmured.
A Leodt boy whose shirt was thin and filthy approached them, carrying a small wooden bowl. He swallowed hard and lifted it to Fife. “For you, sir,” he said softly.
Fife took a knee to look directly in the boy’s eyes. “Is this your supper?” he asked.
The boy nodded.
“You should eat it,” Fife said.
“We don’t get guests much,” the boy said. “But my mother says you are guests, so you eat first.”
“My mother told me the same thing when I was your age,” Fife said, nodding seriously. “But I’ve already had my supper. Don’t let this go to waste.”
The boy nodded, his relief painful to see.
Fife rose and took another moment to look over the crude camp. A few months earlier, he had wondered at Commander O’Donnell’s insistence that the fleet do whatever they must to restore the Ark Planet. He had little doubt what his captain would say if he were here now.
“Mister Izly?” Fife said.
Izly’s black eyes met his.
“How many families are there on Vitrum like this?”
“Most.”
“How many of them will go to sleep hungry tonight?”
“All of ’em.”
Fife nodded grimly.
“Don’t,” Izly said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Don’t pity me,” Izly said. “I don’t need it. Me and mine, the Source blessed us. Made us strong. Only the strongest can live in times like this. Men like you and those officers are blessed too, but not like me. The Source knows and chooses the best of his people to face trials. Those who can’t aren’t expected to. They need their full bellies and their weapons.”
Izly’s sudden generosity with words stunned Fife. The commander understood this man’s need to make sense of his suffering.
“Who told you that?” Fife asked.
“Life,” Izly replied.
Fife nodded, then turned. He walked away from the fires, Brill and their CIF detachment following at a distance, tapped his combadge, and opened a channel to Demeter.
“On your way back so soon?” O’Donnell asked.
“With your permission, sir, I’d like to stay a little longer.”
“Why, Atlee?” There was unusual concern in O’Donnell’s voice.
“There’s a humanitarian crisis down here. If we ordered the crew to begin harvesting every consumable seed and foodstuff in our stocks, ran the replicators at maximum capacity, and tapped our emergency rations, I think we could make a difference down here. Brill will have more suggestions. The ground won’t grow much right now, but I’d bet my life you could fix that in a matter of days.”
Silence answered for what felt like a long time.
“Atlee,” O’Donnell finally said.
“Begging your pardon, sir,” EC Hent interrupted, stepping closer to Fife and speaking in a low voice.
“What is it?”
“Under the Confederacy charter Vitrum signed, accepting assistance from unaligned or non-Confederate worlds is not permitted. We don’t coddle our people. We encourage them to do better. Every resident on Vitrum has retained their citizenship during the last few years because every one of them continues to work daily to improve their lives. They’re strong, just like Izly said.”
“They’re starving,” Fife said.
“They are struggling to survive, just as our ancestors did when they fled their homeworlds. Their efforts resulted in the creation of the First World and the Confederacy. The people of Vitrum will overcome this just as they did. We do them no favors by demonstrating a lack of faith in their potential.”
Fife listened to this in disbelief. He was glad when O’Donnell spoke again, because it gave him tim
e to rethink the first words that came to mind at Hent’s speech.
“I understand your feelings, Atlee,” the commander said. “But you know our hands are tied. The Prime Directive applies.”
O’Donnell had stretched the Prime Directive to its theoretical limits at the Ark Planet. This response stunned Fife.
“The people of the Confederacy have a choice to make here. If they are willing to inflict . . . this on their own people in the name of personal growth, that’s their right.”
Fife bit out, “You knew what I would find down here, didn’t you, sir?”
“I had my suspicions.”
Not good enough. “You knew, sir. And you sent me down here. I thought I understood you. But this doesn’t make sense to me. How dare you put the face of a hungry child in front of me and order me not to feed him?”
“Return to Demeter, Lieutenant Commander Fife. That’s an order.”
“Understood, sir,” Fife said, slapping his combadge to close the connection.
Turning back to Brill, Hent, and his subordinates, Fife shook his head in disgust. Finally, one of the young JPs said softly, “EC Hent, I’d like to share my rations tonight with some of the people here.”
Hent stared at him in disbelief.
“I would too,” the second JP said.
Hent appeared shocked and uncertain. “That is not permitted.”
The first JP shrugged. “I’ve never seen anything like this. If it’s true that starvation will instill courage in these people to face their struggles, why does the Confederacy not ask the same of us?”
“Because starvation doesn’t instill anything but desperation in a person,” Brill said.
“Back to the transport,” Hent ordered his men gruffly.
“Yes, sir,” they replied in unison.
Fife and Brill exchanged a wide-eyed glance as Fife reminded himself again why he had first stopped doubting Liam O’Donnell’s instincts. None of them could order the Confederacy to do the right thing here. But that hadn’t stopped O’Donnell from trying to shame them into it. The reaction of Hent’s junior officers suggested he might have achieved that aim.
“I think we just got them in trouble,” Brill said softly as they turned toward their shuttle.
“They were already in trouble,” Fife said. “They just didn’t know it until now.”
VESTA
“Welcome back, Admiral,” Captain Farkas greeted Janeway as she entered her ready room.
“Report,” Admiral Janeway ordered briskly as she moved to the replicator and ordered a fresh cup of black coffee.
Farkas paused. She’d never been on the receiving end of the admiral’s ire, and she knew she’d done nothing to earn it. What happened while we were away? she wondered silently.
“When we first arrived at our recon point, nine ships were grouped at the Gateway,” Farkas said. “Six more joined them before we departed. Most of them were a little bigger than Voyager and could hold Galen and Demeter in their cargo holds. They’ve all got impressive weapons arrays, phase pulse cannons, which according to Deonil are quite devastating, and bellies filled with torpedoes. They’re ready for a fight, Admiral. I’d say another day or so at the most.”
“Any that we recognized?”
“Two Vaadwaur, two Turei, one Devore, three Karlon, and one Skeen. She’s a big ’un,” Farkas replied. “The other two never identified themselves, but life signs indicated the presence of Turei, Vaadwaur, and Devore on both of them, among many other unidentified alien species. Between all of them, they’re carrying crews totaling more than two thousand individuals.”
“Did you learn anything specific about their attack plans or what they think they are going to accomplish once they’ve breached the Gateway?”
Farkas shook her head. “They did a few drills, close-quarters maneuvers, and attack patterns. Those were in preparation to welcome anyone the Confederacy might send out to meet them. There was some discussion of additional precautions in the event Voyager or the rest of the fleet joined the fight.”
“You mean Demeter and the Galen?”
Farkas shook her head. “They had specifications on all nine of the original fleet vessels. They were particularly concerned that Quirinal, Esquiline, or Achilles might show up.”
“What about the Vesta?”
“They didn’t mention her,” Farkas said, smiling grimly. “They’ve got detailed intel on Voyager and Galen that would make your blood run cold. If I didn’t know better I’d think Eden had more than one spy aboard early on. They have accurate specs on all of our defensive systems and propulsion, including slipstream. I don’t think they could build one of their own, but they know what our ships can do.”
“But their intel is months out of date,” Janeway realized.
“Galen was mentioned several times as a target that should be destroyed quickly, not because it posed a threat but because of its value to the rest of the fleet as a medical resource. They seemed to think Hawking and Curie would be easy to eliminate early in any battle.”
“They don’t know us quite as well as they think they do,” Janeway said. “They must have learned about the fleet shortly after it first arrived in the Delta Quadrant. But they haven’t been able to track its progress.”
“That’s what it looks like,” Farkas agreed. “It also suggests that whatever the Voth were doing with our relays, their actions aren’t connected to what’s happening out here.”
“Hmmmm.”
“Admiral?”
“Our relays are forty thousand light-years away; that’s half a quadrant. But apart from the fleet’s missions to find the Children of the Storm and the Omega Continuum, most of the fleet has stayed well within range of those relays. I can’t imagine how the Voth could have learned of our arrival. Their territory is just too far away. The Turei and Vaadwaur are close, and we know they were accessing their own subspace corridors long before we met them. Could they have somehow used them to reach out to the Voth?”
“Even if they did, would the Voth have listened?”
“Not in my experience,” Janeway said, “but that experience was pretty limited.”
“What about the Devore?”
“Their territory is vast and well protected. But they weren’t conquerors. They were much more interested in keeping their space just the way they like it. I don’t think they would take any preemptive action against us, even if they knew we returned. If we entered their territory again, that would be another matter. They’d attack us on sight.” Janeway paused, placing one thumb at her temple and massaging her forehead. “The Voth are a separate issue. Somehow,” the admiral continued, “the Turei, Vaadwaur, and Devore learned about the fleet’s arrival months ago.”
“Deonil said those species only started attacking the Gateway two months ago. Maybe Voyager led them here when they came to research the wave forms.”
“Maybe,” Janeway agreed. “One thing is for sure: Somebody must have some serious diplomatic chops to have brought them together for any purpose, let alone to join a greater alliance out here.”
“So what are we missing?”
“I don’t know yet,” Janeway admitted.
“Is there any chance we’re going to aid the Confederacy in the coming days as a Federation ally?” Farkas asked.
“No,” Janeway replied coldly.
“Admiral?”
“The Market Consortium has given me a list of demands essential to any alliance, and it will not be possible for us to meet them.”
“Their greed got the better of them?”
“They’ve clearly been using a lot more than passive scans to determine our capabilities. They knew about sensitive technology we’ve never shown them.”
“That doesn’t really surprise me, Admiral,” Farkas noted.
“Me neither,” Janeway agreed. “But it is disappointing. They think we need this alliance more than we do. And I’m willing to bet that when we decline their offer, they might attempt to take what they wan
t from us by force.”
“They can try,” Farkas said gamely.
Janeway smiled mirthlessly. “Demeter is scheduled to return to the First World tomorrow morning. Voyager won’t be back until tomorrow evening at the earliest. Until we have regrouped, we will do nothing to suggest that we are not giving the Confederacy’s request due consideration.
“I want the Vesta to stand ready to engage our slipstream drive and make for our predetermined rendezvous coordinates in the event we come under attack and are unable to execute a synchronous departure.”
“We’re going to leave without saying good-bye?”
“I’m preparing a formal reply to the presider to be delivered after we have safely departed their territory.”
“We need the folks on the other side of the Gateway to keep their powder dry for at least two more days.”
Janeway shrugged. “Should they come under attack, I don’t think the Confederacy will ask for our assistance. They’ve never needed help before to deal with similar attempts to breach the Gateway. Any hostile action might actually provide a diversion we could use to cover our departure.”
“There is one more thing, Admiral,” Farkas said.
“What is it?”
Farkas took a deep breath. “This is just me talking.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I didn’t include it in my formal report, but it’s been bothering me for the last few days.”
“Go ahead.”
“Listening to their comm chatter, I felt like they were being a little too generous with data.”
Janeway’s brow furrowed. “If they had no idea they were being monitored, why would they hesitate to speak openly over their own secure channels?”
“If they didn’t know, this isn’t going to be much of a fight. The Hadden practically has their entire battle plan as a result of our efforts. They spoke more often about the Federation fleet than there was cause to do, unless they suspected we were listening and wanted to send us a message.”
“What message?”
“Stay out of this. We know you’re here and we know your specs, so do everyone a favor and don’t get involved.”
“Do you think everything you saw could have been staged for your edification?”
Star Trek: Voyager - 043 - Acts of Contrition Page 29