Mail Me ~ The Gateway ~ Story Index ~ JCUKjnr

***
"Okay, who nicked my hypospanner?" B'Elanna Torres, half-klingon chief Engineer on the Starship Voyager, demanded with a growl in her voice. Various denials came back from Engineering and B'Elanna growled again. "I don't believe this! Five tricorders, six hypospanners, two wave converters, two laser drills and a plasma flow regulator have all gone missing in the past month! I'm surprised the warp core's still here! If this doesn't stop soon, I'm going to call Tuvok in, is that understood?"
"Yes, ma'am," they murmured.
"Good. Now someone get me another hypospanner before this hatch falls on my head!"
Susan Nicoletti ran to get one, secretly hoping it would fall on Torres' head. The chief Engineer had been even more grouchy than usual lately, since the Engineering equipment had gone missing, and having to repair the damage to the ship after the Kazon had taken it had just made things worse. On top of all that, the Doctor's program had started to malfunction, using up more of the engineering department's precious time. Grumbling inwardly, she picked a hypospanner out of her own workbox and went back over to the Jeffries Tube that the B'Elanna was attempting to repair.
"Here you are, lieutenant," Susan said, handing Torres the hypospanner with a flourish.
"Thanks," B'Elanna mumbled, snatching it out of Susan's hands and setting to work. "Vorik! Get me an anodyne relay desensitiser, would you?"
***
"Tuvok, I'd like to talk to you."
"Take a seat, lieutenant," Tuvok offered, indicating the empty chair on the other side of the table. B'Elanna sat gratefully, dumping her bowl of soup on the table with a thud. "Was there something in particular that you wished to discuss?" he asked.
"Yeah," B'Elanna said, taking a spoonful of the soup. "Equipment's been going missing in engineering over the past month. When I looked back over the log, I found that it had been happening for months before the Kazon took over Voyager. And, in one of the sorry excuses for a log they made, they mentioned stuff going missing too."
"Which would logically rule out the possibility of the culprit being a member of the crew," Tuvok commented thoughtfully. "Do you have any other possible suspects?"
"No," B'Elanna said. "That's why I came to you. Who could it be, anyway?"
Tuvok shook his head. "I do not know," he confessed. "But I will find out."
"Thanks. This soup is disgusting," she added, changing the subject.
"I prefer not to eat Plomeek soup a la Neelix," Tuvok told her. "You may wish to do the same."
"Thanks," B'Elanna muttered again as he left. "Pity I used up all my replicator rations on a new hypospanner then, isn't it?"
***
"Hand me that wave converter, will you?" Nicoletti yelled.
"There is no need to raise your voice, Ensign," Vorik commented. "As a Vulcan, my hearing is superior to yours," he added as he opened the toolbox for the requested converter. "Hmm, this is most illogical."
"What is?" Nicoletti shouted from under the console.
Vorik flinched as the sound hit his sensitive ears. "I remember placing the converter in here nine point three minutes ago. It is no longer there."
"Well, get me a different one!"
"Converters do not just disappear," Vorik pointed out as he complied with her wishes. "It can not leave by itself."
"It's the ghost," Nicoletti shouted.
"I was unaware that there was a spectre aboard Voyager. It is not included in the crew manifest."
Nicoletti rolled her eyes and came out from under the console in time to receive the tool. "We reckon that a ghost has been taking everyone's tools. How else could they just disappear like this?"
"If they were beamed off, if someone was playing an elaborate prank, if a dislocated quantum singularity was roaming Voyager and drawing them in, if a static warp bubble-"
"Okay, okay! I get the idea!" she interrupted him, sliding back under her console. "Damn Vulcans. Waaay too literal."
***
B'Elanna jumped and hit her head on the railing around the warp core when a console in the far corner exploded violently, sending out flames and smoke. Luckily, Voyager's fire-suppression units were still working, and a forcefield sprung up around the console, slowly depriving the fire of its precious oxygen.
"What the-!" she exclaimed, rubbing the back of her head. "Who in Kahless' name did that?"
"No one was at the console at the time," Vorik stated.
"Golwat, try to find out what happened there. I don’t like randomly exploding consoles, okay?" B'Elanna said, and the Bolian hurried to follow the lieutenant's orders. "Nicoletti, star cleaning up this mess. Vorik, call the bridge and tell them-"
"Janeway to Engineering."
"Too late," B'Elanna muttered, then tapped her commbadge, trying to make her voice sound pleasant, "Yes, Captain?"
"What just happened down there, Torres?"
"Uh, we're not sure just yet, Captain," Torres apologised hastily. "A console exploded for no reason that we can discern yet."
"Make sure you find out what happened. I don't want may ship to spontaneously combust, is that understood?"
"Yes, ma-Captain," B'Elanna flustered. "We're on it right now. Torres out." She cut off the commline with a sigh of relief. Vorik, find me a phase converter."
"Lieutenant, don't you think you should report to sickbay so that the Doctor can check your head injury?" Vorik asked calmly, trying to find the requested tool.
"As soon as we've got this mess cleared up, I'll go to sickbay," B'Elanna assured him impatiently. "Does that meet your approval?"
"No, but my analysis of your behaviour suggests that I will be unable to change your mind. Further argument would therefore be illogical."
"Thanks… I think. Now where's that phase converter."
Vorik straightened up. "I am unable to find it, lieutenant. It would appear that the ghost has been once more."
"The ghost?" B'Elanna repeated incredulously.
"Ensign Nicoletti believes that a ghost is responsible for the missing tools," Vorik explained.
B'Elanna shook her head in disbelief. "If we have a ghost then I'm Kahless the Unforgettable," she muttered.
"Lieutenant, I do not believe that finding a ghost will alter your personality," the Vulcan observed with confusion. "It would not be logical."
B'Elanna lifted her head from the readout she had been perusing to say, "Vorik, it's a figure of speech."
"Sorry, lieutenant Torres. Perhaps I had better return to work."
"Now, that would be… logical."
"Lieutenant Torres!"
B'Elanna and Vorik looked up and over to where Ensign Golwat was standing by the recently damaged console. The forcefields had switched off now that the fire was out, and she had been attempting to discover the cause. But that was not what was worrying her. On every non-critical screen in Engineering, a message had flashed up. A short, one word message.
'Sorry' it said, in large blue letters. Golwat liked blue; it was her favourite colour.
"Kahless!" Torres exclaimed, biting back the stronger expletives that wanted to shout themselves out of her mouth. But she had promised the Captain to cut down now that they had a baby on board. Kahless wasn't too serious, compared with some of the stuff she knew. "How did that get up there?"
"It wasn't me," Golwat said, and the others also denied being the culprits.
"Messages don't just appear!" Torres pointed out.
"It could have been someone else on the ship," Gerron suggested timidly. "Maybe someone's playing a joke."
"Or maybe we really do have a ghost," Susan laughed, not believing it for one minute.
"Just find out where it came from," B'Elanna ordered, feeling control slipping through her fingers like grains of sand.
***
"It was put in the computer from one of the Engineering consoles, bypassing access codes. Whoever did this knew what they were doing," Torres reported, barely able to keep the admiration out of her voice. Even she would have been proud to have done this work, but it seemed like a bit of a pointless endeavour. What had he - or she, or it, or they, or whatever they were dealing with - been sorry for? The exploding console? Taking their tools? Something else?
Looking around the room, she tried to think if anyone on Voyager could have done it. In this room, only the Captain was a better engineer than she was. She would have been capable of doing it, and maybe Harry Kim. But the others, unless they were hiding something, couldn't. And neither Harry nor Janeway had any motive that she could think of, unless Gerron was right, and maybe Tom had convinced Harry to do it for him. But Harry and Tom seemed as surprised as everyone else did.
Maybe they were just very good actors.
"What worries me," the Captain said, "is how this input could have been made into one of the Engineering consoles with none of you seeing it, and without any evidence on the security log."
"Maybe someone's been laying a false trail," Chakotay suggested. "An obvious trail of breadcrumbs for us to follow and jump to a conclusion from." Although he didn't mention it, B'Elanna knew that he was referring to the incident with Seska and that other person… who had it been? She couldn't even remember any more.
"No, the trail was obvious when we applied a Starfleet algorithm. Which is another strange thing, that would seem to suggest someone on the crew."
"But very few of us have this ability," Janeway said, echoing Torres thoughts. "B'Elanna, me, Kim... I can't think of anyone else at the moment. Except maybe Tuvok."
"It was not me," Tuvok assured her.
"Nor me," Harry said, shrinking back into his chair as if he'd already been blamed.
"And as it wasn't myself nor Lieutenant Torres-" Janeway smiled at her Engineer "-I'd say we have a mystery on our hands. Tuvok, this is your department. Work with Torres, see if you can piece anything else together."
"Aye Captain," Tuvok responded, and B'Elanna nodded her agreement too.
"If there's nothing else..." Janeway began, but a message began flashing on the wall panel.
'There is something else' it said. Surreptitiously, B'Elanna began tracking the message through her PADD.
"Captain, the message is being entered from a PADD," she announced.
'That's right, although the PADD is of an alien design, I think you'll find.'
Everyone except B’Elanna stared at the message. Torres bent her head back over her PADD, rechecking her data. Finally she lifted her head and confirmed, "That's right, Captain."
"How is this happening?" Chakotay asked.
'I can see and hear you, but you can't see or hear me. I used to be an Engineer aboard Voyager.'
"Who are you?" Janeway asked.
'My name is Joe Carey. Lieutenant Joe Carey.'
"Does anyone remember a Joe Carey?" Janeway asked, looking around the briefing room at the assembled officers. No one did.
"As far as I am aware, there has never been a 'Joe Carey' aboard Voyager," Tuvok contributed with a raised eyebrow.
'I was an Engineer,' the message repeated. 'I was going to be Chief Engineer until Lieutenant Torres broke my nose in three places and you made her the Chief instead.'
"I did?" Janeway asked, frank disbelief in her face. She turned to Chakotay. "I was under the impression that Torres had always been our only choice." Chakotay nodded and another message appeared.
'Captain, you have to believe me. A few months ago, I was taken off Voyager. Your memories and the computer's memory were wiped. They left me here to spy - to be their eyes and ears, so to speak.'
"Captain, I don't think we can trust him," Tuvok said. "There is no corroboratory evidence."
"Mr Carey - if that is your real name - are you responsible for the exploding console earlier today?" the Captain asked, feeling odd talking to no one in particular.
'I was trying to make myself visible again. Something went wrong, I'm very sorry. But I can communicate now.'
"What exactly were you trying to do?"
'Create a magneton explosion.'
"That might work, Captain," B’Elanna said excitedly. "Magnetons have been known to disrupt personal forcefields, but a controlled magneton explosion would require a whole team. It's no surprise he failed."
"B’Elanna, could we do it?" the Captain asked, intrigued by the challenge.
"We could. It'll take us an hour to set up, but then it should be plain sailing."
"Then let's do it! Mr Carey, report to Engineering in one hour. You're dismissed." The staff began to leave but she called Tuvok back. "Tuvok, I want you to see if you can find any evidence of tampering the way Mr Carey suggested."
"Aye, Captain."
'Yes!'
***
"Well, Captain, we're all set," B’Elanna said with a proud grin. "Mr Carey is apparently standing in place, and we're all set. All we need is your go ahead."
"I just need to talk with Tuvok for a moment," the Captain informed her. "I think Mr Carey can wait a moment more." She walked out of Engineering and into the corridor, where Tuvok was waiting.
"Their memory-blocking method was crude, Captain, although it functioned well enough. The Doctor will be able to remove it. I have a hypospray here - one shot is enough to restore a person's memory completely. The computer is in the process of restoring its files as we speak."
Janeway smiled. "That's brilliant work, Tuvok. Well, let's have that hypospray, and co-ordinate with the Doctor to do the whole crew."
Gently, Tuvok applied the antidote and Janeway felt dizzy for a second. The feeling soon passed though, and she remembered everything. "Torres broke his nose," she said wonderingly to herself. "Fascinating." Taking the hypospray, she re-entered Engineering.
"Captain, is everything alright?" Torres asked. "Can we begin the procedure?"
"I just have to administer this antidote to everyone first," she said, injecting Vorik. "You'll feel dizzy for a moment, but it will pass in a second or two." She injected the rest of the department, and they were soon ready to begin.
***
Carey felt a tingling in his arms and legs, which spread to the rest of his body, reaching his head and making him involuntarily close his eyes. For a moment, he lost control of his arms and legs, but he managed to remain upright and he could finally reopen his eyes.
He found himself looking into the eyes of his once rival, Lieutenant Torres. Behind her were the Captain and Vorik, Ensign Vorik, who'd taken over much of his work since he'd disappeared.
"Lieutenant… am I glad to see you… and that you can see me!" he added with a grin, staggering backwards slightly and placing a hand on the nearby console to steady himself. "You'll find the missing tools in a box on the floor, run a magneton explosion near them too."
"You- Why did you take the tools?" Torres asked with barely controlled anger.
Carey continued grinning, unable to stop. "I needed to reconfigure the consoles," he explained. "I've been trying for months - we passed through their space in only a week, but they didn't change me back."
"Well, I think we're glad to have you back, Mr Carey," the Captain smiled, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Go and see the Doctor for a check-up, then resume duty as soon as you're able." With another dazzling smile, she congratulated Torres and her Engineering team on a job well done, then left for the bridge.
Carey turned back to Torres and made a face. "Great. The Doctor. Seeing him has been the one thing I haven't missed…!"
"Just get to sickbay, okay?" Torres laughed. He turned to leave, and she added softly, "Carey… it's good to have you back."
 
END