Distant Shores - Marco Palmieri [155]
“Oh, come on, Doc, you know it’s not the same- “
“From where I sit, it’s precisely the same, B’Elanna,” said the Doctor. “And yet I think, therefore I am. Don’t you agree?”
“Of course I do,” she said, looking to the others for support and finding only stone faces and silence.
“Yet I’m missing three of the four characteristics you deem necessary for life. I’m just a sophisticated collection of software, defined by my programming, right?” said the Doctor. Reluctantly, B’Elanna nodded. “So the question is, everything being equal, if stranding me on some asteroid would get the rest of you home tomorrow, would you do it or not?”
B’Elanna stared into the EMH’s simulated eyes and forced herself to say it. “Yes. “I’m sorry, Doc,” said B’Elanna after a moment’s thought. “Yes, I would.”
Janeway dismissed them all while she and Chakotay discussed what should be done in light of the new revelations. B’Elanna was told not to return to the Moyani ship or to proceed with her efforts to rescue Voyager pending a final decision.
As if there’s anything to decide, she fumed as she stalked back toward her cabin. She hated hurting Doc’s feelings that way, but facts were facts. Sometimes you had to chew off a leg to get out of the trap.
The Moyani had been dead for millennia. What were they thinking, taking Lessing’s word over hers? He and the others from the Equinox had been party to the torture and murder of hundreds of living beings just to squeeze out a plus-nine warp factor for minutes at a time. Now, all of a sudden, he’d grown a conscience?
Noah Lessing, the Doctor, and Tuvok stood in clustered discussion by the turbolift. She felt their eyes as she pushed past them, Lessing’s in particular. She glanced up, in spite of herself, and found herself looking right into his face.
The shape and depth of his eyes conveyed sadness so effortlessly it was a wonder anyone believed it. Nothing that perfect existed in nature, not even remorse.
He might have fooled Janeway and the others with his pose of repentance but B’Elanna knew better. She also knew Janeway’s decision would be the wrong one. There was only one thing to do and she was the only one with the strength to do it.
It was no easy trick activating all twenty of Voyager’s resonators, downloading Seven’s command codes into her tricorder, and beaming across to the Moyani ship without being spotted, but B’Elanna managed.
The place was colder and darker than she expected-an effect of the power loss her experiments had inspired. She barely noticed. The shadows somehow suited her purpose. All she had to do was take a short tube ride to the engine control core, upload Seven’s codes, and withdraw to Voyager before the Moyani drive fired up.
There’d be a short, bumpy ride, after which she’d probably get chewed out by Janeway-maybe even placed under arrest, tossed in the brig, and court-martialed- but ultimately any punishment the captain meted out would be offset by the fact of their sudden arrival in the Alpha Quadrant. There was no arguing with success, after all.
She was just entering the tube when she stopped, struck suddenly by a feeling that something wasn’t right. Some sound or smell came to her, perhaps something only her Klingon senses could detect, telling her that she was not alone.
She pressed her hand against the nearest access facet and asked if anyone else was aboard.
“B’Elanna and Noah are alike in proximity,” said the AI.
Lessing knew his time was limited. There was a real chance that the captain would buy Lieutenant Torres’s argument to burn out the Moyani drive to get Voyager home. He couldn’t let that happen. Not yet.
As he ran back and forth between access facets, activating the systems he’d uncovered in his own research, he began to allow himself a small sense of satisfaction.
It hurt him to realize the axiom he’d learned on the Equinox and tried so hard to put down was still true.
All ethics are situational.
He was so engrossed in his activities that he never heard the mild hum that accompanied the use of one of the ovule’s transport