Chapter 7
Back on Voyager, Janeway and Naomi arrived to find Picard and Commander Musiker exactly where they had left them. Musiker’s eyes were red; she’d clearly been staring at the holo-screens for the entire time they’d been gone. She was keying at the screens like a concert pianist. Streams of data appeared and vanished, newspaper headlines, radio transcripts, love letters scanned at the post office. “Nothing so far,” she said, distractedly. “No space pirate sightings in the area, no unusual arrests. Nothing about any xBs either.”
“XBs?”
“Former Borg freed from the collective.”
Janeway froze. "Former Borg? Does that mean our vigilante is..."
“Did you learn anything on Betazed?” Picard interrupted, pulling his tunic straight and stepping away from the terminal.
"Um." Janeway hoped her unsettlement didn't show. If the vigilante's an ex-Borg, then she might be...but no, that would be impossible. There were thousands of emancipated former Borg in the Alpha Quadrant these days. “Mind games mostly. Seems we’re in for a lot of them, unless we can persuade the diplomatic contingent to wear ‘telepathy on’ or ‘telepathy off’ stickers. ”
Naomi slumped sideways onto the couch and yawned heavily before snapping up straight with a suddenness that nearly made Janeway jump. "I almost forgot to tell you, Cap! I found out who was murdered."
"Oh?"
Musiker paused mid-keystroke, her curiosity piqued. "What murder?"
"A psionic named Bjayzl." Naomi's eyes brightened as she as she warmed to her topic. "Someone red-misted her off-world.”
Bjayzl, Janeway thought, a distant memory poking at her from somewhere deep in her psyche. Where have I heard that name before?
Picard turned his eyes to Raffi, and for one discomfiting moment they seemed locked in mutual recognition of guilt. Picard’s glance fell away quickly, but Janeway still caught it.
“Well,” Janeway prompted. “What’s going on?”
Raffi’s hands started flying over the holo-terminal again. “Bjayzl, Bjayzl,” she muttered as she worked. She swiftly moved screens in and out of focus, whizzing them away and opening new ones. Moving in close to a particular screen, she paused and stood back. “Bjayzl was murdered on Freecloud. It’s her, JL.”
“You know the victim?”
“Victim,” Raffi spat out. “Why would the Betazoid government be so pressed about a Neutral Zone smuggler?”
“It’s a PR move,” Naomi said. “I got stuck drinking with a pro-Psionic blabbermouth who spun me a real sob story about tragic young Bjayzl - bright-eyed and busy tailed, rejected by her parents, exiled from her home planet for being too unique, etc."
“A nice parade of clichés,” Picard muttered.
“And they don’t stop there; our little lost lamb finds nothing but wolves out in deep space - a band of nomadic do-gooders called the Fenris Rangers take her in and then throw her out, so she has no choice but to take up a life of crime, leading to her inevitable death at the hands of a Federation agent."
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Raffi huffed, incredulous. “That woman was dealing in death and body parts, and they’re claiming she’s some kind of innocent gone astray?”
Naomi slumped back into the couch. “I guess they're not inclined to let the details get in the way of a good story."
Janeway raised an eyebrow. “I’m moved to tears, though I’m not inclined to hand out any awards.” As she peered out of the window, another spark of recognition stirred in her mind. Something connected Bjayzl, the Fenris Rangers and her - but what?
She narrowed her gaze as she turned to Picard, who restlessly shifted his eyes to Musiker and back. “Well, Jean-Luc? What aren't you telling me?”
“Kathryn I –”
Janeway held up a hand, silencing him. “The situation on Betazed is approaching red. If one of you doesn’t give me the full scoop, I’ll court-martial you myself.”
Picard walked to the replicator and gruffly ordered an Earl Grey and a black coffee. Handing Janeway her coffee, he said, “You’re not going to like this.”
“It hasn’t exactly been a laugh-a-minute so far,” Janeway said.
Picard sighed. “Then we’d better sit down.”
“Stop playing the coquette, Picard” said Janeway, low and almost murderous in intensity. She felt a pit forming in her stomach. Humanity, Fenris Rangers, Bjayzl. Oh god. She remembered where she heard Bjazyl’s name before. She closed her eyes, and tried to still her rising heartbeat, knowing exactly who Picard was about to name. “Tell me what happened.”
Picard squeezed his eyes shut and nodded, guilt shedding from every pore in his body. “Your old crewman. Seven of Nine. She killed Bjayzl. And I gave her the gun.”
---
Seven POV: Seven in prison
Over the years, Seven had become adept at naming her emotions. It’s how she learned to model them, to put on a human mask when she needed (which was nearly all the time). At that moment, she was bored. Unnaturally so. Since her capture, the Betazoid officers had pestered her with the same questions over and over again.
-Why’d you kill Bjayzl?
-How come you didn’t kill her sooner?
-What’s your real name? Seven of Nine.
-Come on, that’s a Borg designation, not a real name. What’s your REAL name?
-Who sent you?
-Who do you work for?
And so on. Great detectives, the lot of them - the brains and proactivity of potted plants encased in skin. Still, she was careful to plead the fifth. “Since we appear to be going nowhere with these inquiries, perhaps you can put me in house arrest on my ship so I can get some work done?”
They didn’t like that; it triggered another round of interrogations with the exact same questions. Pure torture. She sat on the bed in her small cell, suddenly exhausted.
She cycled through the data in her head, replaying the act of killing for what felt like the thousandth time. The traitor exploding into red mist that permeated the air, settling everywhere including Seven’s jacket. For a time, the mist was cleansing, washing away some of her pain. But over time, as she revisited the memory again and again, it just left her numb. It felt like…weakness.
At least the Betazoids couldn’t see into her memory. A rare upside of her Borg past; people don’t like to read your mind when you can blow their brains out with a thousand different consciousnesses. She looked at the titanium bars blocking the window. She could easily have pulled them off with her Borg arm, but she didn’t see the point, really.
She’d committed the crime of which they accused her. That was a fact. And maybe it was time for her to face up to it.
She wondered what Raffi thought of her. Whether she felt Seven had simply ghosted her, or if she was frantically looking for her. Or if she even knew the truth about what she did to Bjayzl. Seven sighed. She knew planning shore leave was a bad idea.