“Really?” Counselor Cambridge, who had been silently observing the entire group, finally said. “Without even the most basic understanding of what they are and what drove them to us?”
“What they are, Counselor, are murderers,” Chakotay retorted.
“Are you sure?” Cambridge asked, clearly unafraid to test Chakotay’s nonexistent patience.
“Do you need to watch it again?” Chakotay asked.
“I think you might,” Cambridge said. “The energy waves that came off that ship just before it altered its configuration were powerful enough to disrupt our ship’s shields and power systems, however briefly. More to the point, they rendered everyone aboard each of our ships unconscious for eight to eleven minutes. They incapacitated us without breaking a sweat well before they fired upon the Galen. We’re no match for them and you know it.”
Chakotay accepted this silently, but not graciously, if Seven could judge by the expression of disgust on his face.
“That’s not all they did,” Janeway interjected quickly, clearly hoping to steer the conversation down more productive paths. “Those lights, all along the visible and invisible spectrum, what were they trying to communicate with them?”
“Data at the rate of exaquads per second were carried on those photonic waves,” Seven said. “Analysis has begun but it could be days before we can translate, let alone interpret it.”
“Even if opening communication was their goal, they didn’t give us a chance to respond before they attacked,” Paris noted.
“You’re assuming that was an attack,” Patel said.
“What else would you call it, Lieutenant?” Chakotay asked.
Patel, to her credit, refused to allow the bite behind those words to faze her.
“It might have been another method of data transmission,” she suggested. “They might not have intended to destroy our ship.”
“You’re saying something that advanced might not have known its own strength?” Janeway asked.
“I’m saying, Admiral, that there are far too many unknowns present for us to intuit, let alone assign motive to, the actions of those on board that ship.”
“How many were there?” Torres asked of Seven.
“Life signs?” Seven asked.
“Did our sensors pick up anything?”
“Just as with the scan taken on the planet’s surface of organisms we believe were created by or with the substance, life-sign readings were inconclusive,” Seven replied.
“It bears remembering that we chose to come to this world and to explore its mysteries,” Patel said. “As best we can tell, it had remained intact for over four thousand years, and in two days we disrupted safeguards put in place by species that clearly understood it better than we did and activated some dormant mechanism with unimaginable consequences. We did that. And we can’t blame them if it got their attention and they decided to investigate us and our handiwork.”
Chakotay was clearly ready to respond, but Janeway silenced him with a look.
“While I can’t take issue with the facts as you have stated them, Lieutenant,” Janeway began, “I wouldn’t go so far as to place all of the responsibility for what transpired at our feet. Any species advanced enough to construct this planet, and if Seven is right, to have created this entire star system long before that, must be aware that the majority of spacefaring races out here could not have anticipated the results of our exploration attempt. And yet, they chose to leave DK-1116 as they did, to abandon it.”
“That is pure speculation,” Seven said.
Before Patel could respond, a small voice spoke from the back of the room.
“They’re not dead.”
The entire assembly turned to face the voice’s owner, Voyager’s helmsman, Ensign Aytar Gwyn.
“At least one of them isn’t.”
Admiral Janeway stared in disbelief at Gwyn.
“I beg your pardon, Ensign?”
Gwyn’s eyes were red and glistening, and her cheeks were ruddy. In the brief time Seven had known her, Gwyn had never been one for emotional displays. She was young, but well trained, and performed her duties as Voyager’s alpha shift pilot better than anyone, short of Tom Paris. She also tended toward the forthright end of the spectrum, sometimes to the point of indecorousness. Seven found her refreshing. Standing at the door to the briefing room, fretting nervously, clasping and unclasping her hands before her, she was as far from composed as Seven had ever seen her.
Before Gwyn could answer the admiral, Counselor Cambridge rose from his seat. “Forgive me, Admiral, but as you are well aware, the last several days have been quite difficult for Ensign Gwyn. Permit me to speak with her privately?”
Janeway seemed inclined to refuse this request, one that was more than reasonable under the circumstances.
“I’m not crazy,” Gwyn insisted. “I know how it sounds, but…”
At this protestation, Janeway nodded to Cambridge. “Of course, Counselor.”
As Cambridge departed, ushering Gwyn from the briefing room before him, Seven wondered why the counselor had been so quick to silence Gwyn. While it was unlikely in the extreme that the ensign had any special knowledge of the fate of the Galen, there had been something in her insistence that gave Seven pause. Her assertion was hard to believe, but Seven was absolutely certain that true or not, Gwyn believed what she was saying.
Within a few minutes, Cambridge had settled Gwyn in his office. The petite ensign sat cross-legged on a small sofa. Her head down, she stared intently at her hands, folding them together and releasing them repeatedly. Cambridge moved to sit opposite her, perching on the edge of a deep leather chair in which he normally sat during counseling sessions.
“Ensign?”
Gwyn lifted her face to his. Her distress was obvious but whether she had lost touch with reality or simply feared that everyone around her believed that she had was difficult to tell. Her short, spiked hair was multitoned, sandy-brown roots giving way to a fading pink color. One of these days he was going to find out why she found it necessary to alter its color on a regular basis. He suspected boredom, but there might be more to it than that.
“I’m not crazy,” she asserted.
“No one said you were, Ensign,” Cambridge offered
