Unworthy - Kirsten Beyer [95]
CHAPTER NINETEEN
B’Elanna stumbled through the darkness of the cabin toward the door. Tom had barely opened his eyes when the door to their cabin had chimed. B’Elanna had told him to go back to sleep while she went to see who thought it was necessary to disturb them.
“Sorry to wake you,” Nancy offered.
“It’s okay,” B’Elanna mumbled, rubbing some of the grogginess from her eyes. “Come in.”
Once she had entered, Nancy moved immediately to the desk and computer panel stationed just to the right of the cabin door. She quickly uploaded the contents of a padd she had brought with her, and gestured for B’Elanna to take a look at it.
Turning her attention to the screen, B’Elanna discovered a long string of encrypted programming code. “Okay, I’ll bite,” she said. “What have we got, Conlon?”
“What you are looking at is the command code override that allowed our saboteur to insert the virus into the power distribution hub,” Nancy replied.
“You had to rebuild these logs by hand, didn’t you,” B’Elanna observed, her estimation of Conlon’s abilities rising accordingly.
“Yep,” Nancy said, stifling a yawn. “The code deleted itself as soon as the interface was terminated. I just had to look through about a billion places to find it.”
“And it was encrypted when you found it?” B’Elanna asked.
Nancy nodded. “That’s kind of what made it stand out. It also made it easier to find the other instance in which this override code was recently used.”
“Let me guess,” B’Elanna said. “The same code was used to restore those old deflector protocols, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” Nancy replied. “And to bring the slipstream drive online during the general system power failure.”
“Have you traced the user?” was B’Elanna’s next question.
“I have,” Nancy said, “which is why I’m here.”
“What do you mean?”
“The encryption … you don’t happen to recognize it, do you?”
B’Elanna felt a sudden chill. Dutifully she turned back to the screen and gave the code a closer look.
Kahless, no, she suddenly thought as her heart began to pound.
“It wasn’t even hard to break. It’s been stored in Federation databases for more than a decade,” Nancy mused.
“It probably hasn’t been used much in that time,” B’Elanna conceded.
“You’re right. The Maquis were pretty good at altering their encryptions as soon as they were intercepted.”
I remember, B’Elanna thought sadly. Soon enough, however, that sadness was transmuted to anger.
He wouldn’t, part of her heart insisted.
But her head and the evidence before her told her unequivocally that Chakotay obviously had, most likely with Seven’s help.
“I wanted to tell you before I told the captain,” Nancy said, her voice trembling with regret. “I know how much Chakotay means to you and Commander Paris.”
B’Elanna wasn’t sure she could find it in herself to be grateful for Nancy’s obvious attempt at kindness.
Barclay knew it was too soon to expect a response from Doctor Zimmerman. Four hours earlier, he had reactivated the Doctor, informing him that the diagnostic—that he had not run—had revealed no new information but that he would continue to study the problem. He then spent the intervening hours in the holographic research lab examining Meegan’s files in minute detail.
Everything he had found was in perfect order.
Which was troubling because that meant it should have been impossible for the Indign consciousness to assume control of her body.
Meegan didn’t have a body.
Meegan was a hologram—the most advanced hologram ever to spring from the minds of Lewis Zimmerman and Reginald Endicott Barclay. The lieutenant no longer remembered whose idea it had been to construct her. He only knew that he and Zimmerman had come to the conclusion that the Doctor needed a companion.
They knew neither of them would be able to provide long-term, emotional support for the Doctor. He needed a companion, one of his own kind. Zimmerman and Reg started designing one. Her personal holographic emitter— based on the Doctor’s—was embedded in the center of her matrix, not far from where her heart would have been. The