SYMBOLS

CHAPTER 56

The Delta Flyer's sensors spilled out a mass of data on the building plasma wave.

Chakotay felt an overwhelming sense of déjà vu, as he sat toward the front of the Flyer and gazed at the viewscreen.

"91 seconds," said Ensign Hamilton, as he steered them over an access pylon at the top of the space station.

"Commander, we're being scanned," Seven said.

Chakotay blocked the scan with as much interference as he could transfer. "Let's see you make some sense of that mess," he said.

Hamilton took the Delta Flyer into a roll, while Chakotay kept a close watch on the shuttle's trajectory.

"At first, we all thought the Anawins were a fairly technologically advanced race," Hamilton said. "With their transporters, deflective fields and communication implants. That was until Lieutenant Torres made an interesting discovery. It seems the Anawin people are a society built on the concept of technological bartering."

"And what you can't barter for, you steal instead," Chakotay said. He'd had more than enough experience in the Anawin City to provide Ensign Hamilton with several examples of the principle at work.

"Exactly! Anyway, it turns out, although they have a lot of gadgets, the Anawin culture has never developed a disposition for being free-thinkers or innovative, so they under-utilize the technology they have and only seem to work within the limits of their current knowledge. Without a working knowledge of transporter technology, they've only ever learnt how to transport one person at a time, through manually inputting the person's coordinates. Of course, that's still an effective system when you're standing still, but it's a lot harder to get a fix on a moving target, especially if you have to anticipate the future course of your target."

With no sign of transporter activity, Hamilton leveled the Delta Flyer.

"Five seconds remaining," Seven said.

On the count of zero, the station emitted another plasma pulse, but the Flyer was outside its range.

Chakotay studied the dispersal pattern of the pulse. It was an attempt at distraction, as again his mind drifted to an image of Zeron and the way Janeway had yielded to him to preserve their lives. Masson had said she was probably only stunned. 'Probably' held an element of doubt. The way she'd fallen to the ground, he couldn't tell if the shot had been lethal. Chakotay hoped Masson was right, although he knew Zeron was quite capable of murdering the captain.

His gut felt hollow and his thoughts blackened with vengeful images. It was the same intense feeling he'd felt long ago, when his people initially yielded to the Cardassian treaty before his homeworld was destroyed. He could feel his anger calcifying and he clenched his fists tight with the effort of forcing the experiences to the back of his mind. At that moment, he didn't have the time, or the inclination, to deal with the overpowering images from his past.

***

"Captain Janeway is missing. She was taken captive on the planet," Chakotay announced, as the Delta Flyer moved within communication range of Voyager, which had left the nebula and returned to the vicinity of the Anawin space station to offer back-up, if needed. "Tuvok, I want you to take Voyager as close to the planet as you can and try scanning around the co-ordinates of the underground holding cells, just in case she's been sent there."

Voyager moved within scanning distance of the planet's surface.

"Scanning for the captain's biosignature," Kim said from his station on the bridge. "Sorry, Commander, I can't find her anywhere near the crypts."