Homecoming - Christie Golden [82]
Their eyes met, and Janeway liked what she saw in their blue depths. She returned his smile.
“I gather that all those you’ve previously examined have been permitted to be released? Or did you find a few Borg in my crew?”
“Besides Seven of Nine and Icheb, you mean?”
Janeway stiffened. “They have been liberated from the collective. I’d bet my life that they are not being manipulated by the Borg in any way.”
“And I agree with you a hundred percent,” said Kaz, surprising her. “I’ve said as much to Admiral Montgomery, but my opinion doesn’t seem to be enough to [244] bring about their release, or even get them a regeneration chamber.”
Janeway decided to take the risk. “You said you were a free thinker, Doctor. Are you enough of one to do what’s right?” she challenged.
“Admiral, you know I have my orders.”
“If they involve holding people you know to be innocent who could help you stop a Borg infestation, then they’re stupid orders,” she said, bluntly.
“I’m not privy to everything. There could be logical reasons why Starfleet is proceeding in this manner.”
“Do you really think so?”
His blue eyes told her all she needed to know. The seed of doubt had been planted.
Kaz sighed and stepped back. “Your blood pressure and your heart rate are slightly elevated—no surprise there, considering the circumstances. Your cholesterol has dropped slightly from its baseline. Apparently prison agrees with you.”
“I don’t agree with it,” said Janeway. “As a matter of fact I’m—”
The door hissed open. A guard rushed in. “You need to see this. Both of you.”
He touched the screen of Kaz’s computer, and an image of Oliver Baines appeared. He was in the middle of a speech.
“... I deeply regret,” he was saying. “But there are always victims in a war, even the most just war. Holograms are not like those who made them. We—they—obtain no pleasure in murder. All of the attacks last night were on buildings that we believed to be empty. If [245] the Federation had responded by calling a council to discuss holographic rights when the HoloStrike first began, as we requested a full three weeks ago, there would have been no need to escalate to violence. We grieve the loss of life, but it will not slow us down. A deleted hologram has the right to be mourned as much as a slain organic. Until we have equality, we will not rest.” He smiled, as if at a joke. “We don’t need to.”
His image disappeared. Janeway whirled on the guard. “He said something about loss of life. What’s happened?”
The guard didn’t reply at first, looking uncertainly at Kaz. Kaz uttered an expletive and said, “I’ve given her a clean bill of health, she’s about to walk out of here a free woman. Talk to us!”
“Yes, sir,” said the guard. “There was a coordinated attack on hundreds of buildings across the world last night. The HoloRevolutionaries under Oliver Baines have claimed full responsibility for it. Eight people were killed. They say that they assumed that the buildings were empty at the time. They were restaurants, theaters, sports arenas—places that used to have holograms but now have living people providing the entertainment. Apparently the attack was not supposed to have resulted in casualties.”
“Intention is all well and good, but when there are dead bodies it goes out the window,” Janeway said, pressing her lips together. “Dammit. Baines should have listened to the Doctor. He’s now a murderer, intentionally or not. Starfleet might have ignored a strike, but they’re not going to ignore corpses.”
Kaz looked troubled. “I agree with you, Admiral.” [246] He turned and regarded her intently. “And I fear for your Doctor.”
So did Janeway.
Libby was surviving on strong coffee and catnaps.
In the time since the conversation between Covington and Montgomery had taken place, she had downloaded every scrap of information she had access to. It was a lot. Grim determination buoyed her at first and kept sleep at bay, but as the hours stretched into days, she found herself surrendering to twenty-minute naps to keep from lapsing into deeper, more time-consuming