章節 30: Fate Cannot Be Escaped
Jonas denied having any involvement with Seska's escape, but while we were questioning him, B'Elanna gave us an update. L'Naan, Raven, and she had been able to dig up communication records between Michael Jonas and Seska. It seemed a little convenient at the time, but I found out later that Echo had gone to Engineering after she left Tuvok. With a name in mind, Echo and Raven had combined their abilities to track his cyber trail and found all of the evidence that we needed.
Chakotay was not able to hail the space station, and once we returned, we were able to see why. In the seven hours that we had been gone, it had been sabotaged and three fourths of the ships that had been docked were gone. It was no surprise that Seska was responsible which also meant that Janeway felt slightly responsible for it. With Echo's unique eye, I offered to take my ship out to track her down while a few engineering teams assisted with the repairs to the station. While it should have been an easy matter, a familiar face appeared on our Bridge once we were out of the Voyager's sensor range.
"In a russsh?" Sancu asked, flicking out his snake tongue.
Raven and Echo were startled by his sudden appearance, while Katye and I sighed, almost in unison. His appearance while we were hunting down a traitor with dangerous information could only mean one thing.
"Were you responsible for Seska's escape?" I asked.
"No, she managed that feat on her own. A very resourceful adversary you have created for yourselves," he replied.
"Is that Sancu?" Raven asked.
"Ah, that's right. I didn't introduce myself to your lovers last time. Yes, Raven, I am Sancu, God of Chance, Luck, and Fate. It is a pleasure to meet both you and Ash," Sancu introduced, taking off his hat and bowing his head to each of them.
"It's Echo," she retorted, crossing her arms.
"Forgive me; I had made the same mistake with Rebecca," he replied as he placed his hat back on his head.
"If you didn't help Seska escape, why are you here?" Katye asked.
"To give you a warning. While you can go and recapture her, Fate will not forget your actions. You prevented her from joining the Kazon, so Pedira was pulled into this journey to create the possibility of a strong opponent for you four. Stopping Seska from reaching the Vidiians will only cause the debt to Fate to increase; you've seen how things have changed before because of your actions."
"So, we should do nothing?" I asked with disbelief.
"That is not what I mean. The Kazon would not have provided much of a challenge for you if she had defected to them while the Vidiians do pose a true risk to you. Things can be changed, but trying to prevent any conflict will just strengthen Fate's next countermove and something will come that you cannot prevent. To tempt Fate is to balance on a knife's edge; eventually, you will be cut," he replied.
Katye and I shared a look then looked back at Raven and Echo. We had seen the effects of changing the story with Iseto and the overpowered Disciples, both battles had nearly killed us. Raven and Echo had their own powers now, but the destruction of our ship or the Voyager would likely end with at least one of our deaths. We were not invincible, no matter how much we wanted to believe it, so his warning was a sobering reminder.
"So, you are here to say that it would be smarter to let Seska go and handle whatever challenge that she brings to us," Katye remarked.
"The decision is yours, but your chances against the Vidiians are roughly fifty-fifty," he replied then tapped his cane on the floor and vanished.
I leaned back in my chair with a sigh and put my feet on the console while placing my hands behind my head. "So... what's y'all's opinion?"
"We can't just return empty handed," Echo said, but she was also a little bias since it was her ability to track that would be put into question.
"I get your point, but this isn't like fighting on land which makes things a lot trickier. A well placed shot could destroy the Voyager and possibly Fae," Katye replied.
"But what do we tell the Voyager crew? An overdressed snake-man came and warned us that if we stopped Seska things would get a lot more dangerous?" Raven mocked with a sigh.
While they discussed, part of my mind was going over what he had said, and how he had said it. Dealing with Eres, Loki, and Sun Wukong day after day had taught me that a lot of things could be hidden within a string of words. He may not have been a God of Chaos, but Luck certainly had some chaotic aspects to it, so I knew better than to take his words at face value.
"You're rather quiet, Becca," Katye remarked.
"I'm just going over what he said. 'We created an adversary', 'stopping Seska from reaching the Vidiians will increase our debt to Fate', 'trying to prevent any conflict will just strengthen Fate's next countermove', and 'our chances against the Vidiians are roughly fifty-fifty'... these were the key phrases. I don't think Seska suddenly gained powers like ours, but she is incredibly cunning and intelligent, so she doesn't really need them to be a danger to us. The meaning of 'reaching the Vidiians' could be debated, and since he specifically said 'our chances against the Vidiians are roughly fifty-fifty', I'm willing to argue that she just needs to contact them and give them the information about L'Naan and me. If she truly joins the Vidiians and advises them against the Voyager, our chances of handling this will go significantly down," I explained.
None of them replied, so I turned to look at them, and all three were staring at me in disbelief which made me chuckle. Although I was not stupid by any means, Katye was usually the intelligent one that figured out the problems while I would barrel through like a bull in a china shop.
"You know that I deal with three mischievous gods practically every day? I have been burned so many times by the tricks that they weave with their words that I have picked up a few things," I retorted to their stunned faces.
"So, we need to capture her after she contacts the Vidiians, but how will we know when she has?" Katye asked.
"Whatever arrangement she is going to argue for won't be settled with a single discussion, so we track her down while we're cloaked and monitor her communications. Eventually, we'll get something and we can find out just how excited the Vidiians are about the possibilities that L'Naan and I can give them," I replied.
"I'm a little scared that Becca is coming up with good ideas," Raven said with a teasing smile.
"Thanks, babe," I retorted sarcastically.
"So, once we confirm that the Vidiians are coming after us, what are we going to do about Seska herself? If she escaped once, she will do it again," Echo warned.
"Executions are not really a Starfleet thing, so Janeway would just lock her up again if we bring her back, but I agree with you. It would be stupid to imprison her on the Voyager, yet again," I replied.
"You're not worried that Janeway will be upset if we kill her?" Katye asked.
"Oh, I know that she will be, but I don't really care. I'd like for our reports to read that we engaged in a fire fight with her ship and accidentally destroyed it. Believable for the majority of the crew, but she'll question it silently, along with Tuvok and probably Chakotay, so it could damage our relationship with them. I doubt that Janeway will kick us out over this, but it will put us on thin ice with them for a while."
No one argued with my plan as we had all seen plenty of death in our past lives. Killing Seska may have gone against Starfleet ideals, but she had already betrayed the Voyager to the Kazon, nearly killed Raven with an explosion, and now she was endangering the ship, again. She had overstayed her welcome, and none of us were going to lose sleep over her death.
Echo was at the conn station, since she had the ability to track Seska. The rest of us were spread out among the other consoles, Tactical, Science, and Operation, but none of us were paying too much attention to the monitors since we only had a single goal. We found the ship that Seska had stolen since its max speed was only Warp Six, while ours could reach Warp Nine.
As I suggested, we approached her cloaked and monitored her communications. Raven was not happy with just that, so with a little help from Fae, she tapped into Seska's ship's systems. Seska had already sent the information to the Vidiians along with specs of the ship and an offer to help them capture the ship in return for being given control of the Voyager and the safety of a few specific people, yet she was still waiting for a reply. Six hours after we found her ship, the Vidiians contacted her, and we were able to listen in.
"I am Sulan, Chief Surgeon of the Vidiian Sodality. We are interested in the information that you transferred to us, especially about this Rebecca that Doctor Pel's research focuses on. We are willing to work with you to capture the Voyager and give you control of the ship, but we will require both Rebecca and the Klingon as well as a portion of the crew," the Vidiian said.
"Take them. I only need enough people to run the ship," she replied.
"Your message said that you had a plan to take down the Voyager and prevent the self-destruct command from being used. Can you elaborate?" he asked.
"The key to disabling their self-destruct command is by taking their secondary command processors," Seska said.
"And that is more than enough information for the Vidiians," I remarked with annoyance and typed in a few commands to shut down her ship's communication system, but that also shut down our connection to Seska's ship.
"What? Something familiar?" Raven asked.
"That's how she took down the Voyager with the Kazons' help in the season finale. They did it by repeatedly damaging the spot over the course of a week or two so that when they finally attacked with their full force, it still needed a day's worth of repairs. It was not until Janeway tried to activate the self-destruct sequence as the Kazon boarded that they finally understood why the spot had been targeted," I explained. "The Vidiians aren't going to have to rely on hit-and-run tactics like the Kazon did. They will come with full force and now know how to target it directly thanks to all of the information that she provided. She and Jonas have all but delivered the Voyager to them on a silver platter."
"Seska has gotten her communication system back online," Raven said as a console chimed.
"Good. Decloak us and hail her," I instructed with a dark smile.
"You," Seska growled when the main window changed to show an image of Seska.
"Hello again, Seska. It's been a few months since we last talked. Have you been doing well?" I asked in a mocking tone.
"You're a fool," she spat.
"I prefer 'Stubborn Fool', but I guess you also fall into that category since I did warn you that Janeway was the only reason why I didn't kill you before."
"Please, you Starfleet are all the same, weak. I'll just escape again," she retorted.
"Well, you're partially right. I'm sure you'd escape again if we were here to take you back into custody, but we are not Starfleet. Echo, lock phasers onto her warp core," I said.
"It's already too late. I've contacted the Vidiians and given them all of the information that I have on you and the Voyager."
"We're aware, and we will have to handle the Vidiians when they come, but you've done more than enough to warrant death by our laws. Try not to be such a traitorous bitch in your next life. Fire," I said.
"You can't kill me!" she spat as her ship rocked from the impact.
"But we can. Goodbye, Seska," I replied then hit a button, cutting off communications with her ship.
Seska tried to return fire as she stirred her ship away, but the plasma charges that the little ship had could barely scratch our shields. Another two blasts from our phaser banks and the small ship exploded. Raven scanned for life signs, and I even shifted into the Yin Realm to further confirm that there was no one left alive.
Just because I did not want to kill, or see people die, did not mean that I would hesitate to act. Janeway would argue that her crimes did not warrant death, but the sheer fact that she was willing to turn over a large portion of the crew to have their organs harvested, just so that she could get what she wanted, meant that she was irredeemable in my eyes. Not to mention that she had, yet again, put my loved ones in danger.
We rendezvoused with the Voyager back at the space station. Since we had been gone for nearly a full day, most of the repairs had been completed, and what was left could easily be handled by their own engineers. Raven and Fae had created some false sensor data and edited our conversation with Seska slightly, so it was not obvious that we killed her without giving her a chance to surrender. It would still be suspicious since she knew the strength of my ship, but the benefit of having a computer with a consciousness was that it was practically impossible to prove that anyone tampered with the data.
I delivered our reports and was debriefed by Tuvok and Chakotay while Janeway remained silent. I answered everything in line with the data that I presented, but it did little to alleviate their concerns and suspicions. Whether I killed Seska in cold blood or not, they now had to rely on the strength of my ship and crew if they wanted to survive the Vidiians that were hunting all of us. Eventually, the pair ran out of questions for me and Janeway excused them both.
"How much of this report is true?" Janeway asked after the others were gone.
I rubbed my chin as I thought about it and replied, "Ninety to ninety-five percent true, seventy to eighty percent factual."
"Rebecca," she sighed, the annoyance in her voice clear.
"Would you prefer that I lie to you?" I asked.
"And this report isn't a lie?!?"
"Oh, there are some lies in there, but they are for Starfleet, not you per se," I retorted.
"You're going to argue semantics with me?"
"Maybe I am spending too much time with my Council," I mumbled to myself then sighed and said aloud, "Kathryn, you are a wonderful Starfleet Captain, but Starfleet is based on an ideal that the universe is a peaceful place. Being out here, isolated and alone, the fact that you can hold so fast to your convictions is an impressive thing, but you will find that there will be times when those ideals fail you. The real world is not painted in black and white, only shades of gray."
"You killed Seska intentionally, didn't you?"
"We tried to disable her engines and a feedback loop ruptured her warp core. It was an unfortunate accident for someone who had proven that they would betray us, multiple times, and sell off over half the crew to the Vidiian butcher shop."
"I ordered you to capture her, not kill her," Janeway said.
"You did, and I failed in succeeding. The rest of the information in the reports is accurate. The Vidiians have the specifications of the Voyager and know that L'Naan and I are onboard. L'Naan has the potential to help them create a vaccine for the phage, Sulan already knows that, and Pedira documented every moment of my healing of Syrala with numerous sensors. I can take L'Naan and broadcast to every Vidiian ship that we've left the Voyager, but we both know what they will do if they find the Voyager. They may not have your access codes, but they do have an engineer's guide of the Voyager, so they can come up with counters for your weapons and shields."
She was quiet for a few moments while she weighed my words and remarked, "I thought you were tired of killing."
"I'm tired of Death when I could have preserved Life. One death can save hundreds," I replied.
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