A Hot Cup of Coffee
Part 3 of 5
Synopsis: The saga about coffee... and having too much of it.
A Hot Cup of Coffee
Voyager sailed smoothly away from Mestrial, but Neelix's nerves were on edge. Ensign Berggren had been standing no more than three meters away from him when the packing crate fell, crushing the security officer. Now, as he stood absent-mindedly stirring a pot of stew, he wondered if, maybe, that crate hadn't been intended for him.
Mr. Vulcan, however, suspected no foul play. His investigation of the packing crate indicated that the weight inside had suddenly shifted (as D'rairan kelp pasta was known to do), over-balancing the crate and toppling it.
Neelix knew it had been the killer.
Or, at least, he thought the killer had caused it.
But he was just a cook, and didn't have Tuvok's years of experience in this sort of thing. He was a cook and a morale officer, and a few people, after Ensign Berggren's death, needed a little moral support.
He sniffed the stew. Ah! Delicious! His nose always told him best, despite the crew's good-natured complaints. What tender stomachs these humans had! And tender spirits, as well.
And his nose told him somebody out there needed moral support. Somebody out there needed Neelix, Chief Morale Officer. And a bowl of his new Kemr'n stew.
* * *
The second death aboard Voyager came a day later, though two days later to the players, due to varying shift schedules.
Lieutenant Chell had been minding his own business, repairing the hologrid when it suddenly blew. Tuvok made a thorough investigation of the scene, producing an explosive left over from Seska's rigged rendition of "Insurrection Alpha". He had the misfortune to trigger the explosive, Tuvok explained. Janeway and Kim did their own little investigation and produced the exact same results. The remaining explosives were carefully removed. Janeway then made a mental note to check the real ship again.
"I'm glad Tuvok isn't responsible," Janeway later admitted to the ensign.
"Yeah," he replied. "Ten crewmen down, a hundred thirty-eight more to go!"
The doctor, upon examination of Chell's body, determined the explosive was, indeed, the cause of death.
"I can't help but think these past two incidents are foul play!" he'd complained to Tuvok. The Vulcan, however, explained that both were clearly accidents, and not related in any way.
So, as Janeway paced her ready room, reading reports, she tried to determine a way to catch the killer or killers. There were, as Tuvok pointed out, no similarities between the two incidents.
The room faded around her to be replaced by the holodeck walls. "I didn't turn off the program!" she began to say.
But the computer interrupted her. "Neelix has lost the game."
Janeway gave the Talaxian a speculative stare. He sighed and threw his hands up in the air.
"I was merely trying some of that D'rairan seaweed pasta!" he cried.
Torres looked at Neelix for a minute before laughing. "Now that was funny, Tom!" The doctor, after frowning in thought for a few seconds, smiled. Kim, too, burst into laughter.
Oh. The captain barely refrained from joining her mirthful officers. Imagine that! Neelix killed by poisoning! In his own food!
"I don't see anything amusing," the cook muttered. "That could have been real."
"We know, Neelix, it's just, well, revenge," Kim snickered.
Neelix pouted for a minute before grinning. "Well," he called as he exited the holodeck. "Hope you catch the food critic!"
"Computer, resume program," Janeway called.
The walls of her ready room reappeared around her. She took a sip of her coffee before picking up the datapadd again. Her role required that she not know that something had transpired.
"Tuvok to Janeway."
"Go ahead," she replied, though she knew what his communication meant.
"I am in the mess hall, where Mr. Neelix appears to have been poisoned. The doctor has not yet determined whether the poisoning was natural or foul play."
"I'm betting on foul play," she replied, suppressing a grin. Finally, the game was getting interesting! "Too many 'accidents' have occurred lately to be merely spoiled food."
"Ahem," the doctor interrupted. "Mr. Neelix appears to have suffered, very briefly, from botulism."
"Botulism, Doctor?"
"Apparently Mr. Neelix is very allergic to the bacteria."
"Apparently so. Tuvok, I want a full investigation. I want to know exactly what the botulism was in and how it got there. Restrict crewmembers to the use of replicators. I don't want any of the crew eating of any of the foods we brought from Mestrial III."
"The investigation is already underway, Captain."
"Good. Janeway out."
She sighed and stretched. Things certainly were starting to get interesting.
* * *
Samantha Wildman left the Astrometrics Lab in a fairly good mood. Paris did not disappoint. So far, in the span of twenty-four holographic hours, five people were already dead. She worried that any minute the killer would go for her or Naomi. Neelix's death had caused the little girl to fall into a semi-depression. Wildman was unwilling to let her daughter, even the holographic re-creation of her daughter, stay by herself for any amount of time.
Fortunately, Tom Paris had nothing else he had to do, and volunteered to baby-sit. Now, as she rushed to her quarters, she wondered silently who, if anyone, would die next. Tuvok had finally surmised that the five deaths were foul play, rather than "accidents".
Brilliant deduction, Commander, but I knew that already.
A distant rumble and a short yell caught her attention. Racing down the corridor, she found her quarters and slapped the door open.
"Mom?" Three-and-a-half year-old Naomi flew into her arms immediately.
Paris stepped out of the main area of the room and leaned against the doorframe. "Good to see you, Sam. Naomi's been wild all day, asking for you. She refused to go to bed until you got back."
Clutching her daughter to her, she replied, "And I for her. Naomi, why don't you go to bed now? I need to talk to Tom for a minute."
"Okay. Don't forget to tuck me in, Mom!"
"I'll be right in," she promised. As Naomi disappeared into the adjoining room, the ensign turned to her friend. "Tom, I think there was just an explosion down the corridor!"
Paris nodded. "We heard it, too. That's why Naomi was so anxious for you to get home. I was, too, Sam."
"We're living a nightmare! I'm constantly afraid for my life and the lives of anyone, for that matter, with every button I push in Astrometrics or Engineering! I don't like this at all. Not at all."
Tom reached out and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. "All of us are scared, Sam. Besides—" he punched her lightly in the arm— "misery loves company."
Samantha sighed. Despite herself she grinned back. "I guess you're right. 'United we stand; divided we fall.' May we never be divided."
"Amen."
Walking into the living room, she kicked off her boots and sat heavily on the couch. She looked down at the living room floor and saw a messy pile of objects she hadn't seen since she was a little girl. Playing cards.
"Teaching Naomi how to gamble?" she joked.
The tall lieutenant grinned. "Never too young to learn poker." Samantha stared incredulously at him for a moment. "I'm kidding, Sam; I was teaching her Go Fish."
Wildman shook her head. "Well, I've got a promise to keep." She stood and headed for her daughter's bedroom.
"Wait!" He bent over and retrieved a shiny brown object from the floor. "Take this with you."
As Tom left her quarters, Samantha clutched Ashley, Naomi's Mestrialian doll, and left to keep her promise.
* * *
B'Elanna wanted to throw Tom Paris out an airlock.
She had to work double-duties since the death of Lieutenant Carey only one holographic day earlier. As the junior engineer opened the door to his quarters, he had been disintegrated by a fairly complex overload arrangement. Very little was found of him.
She and Harry Kim were currently being driven to distraction by the mystery. Nothing had yet turned up that could possibly link one or two people to the crime.
"B'Elanna, look at this!"
Lieutenant Torres looked up at Ensign Kim's exclamation. "What'd you find?"
Kim leaned away from the console his eyes were glued to and rubbed his eyes. "It's something," he sighed, "but you won't like it very much."
She snorted. "If it's a clue, I'll like it." She glanced at the schematics for a burnt component. "Is that the overloader?"
Kim nodded. "Now here's the part you won't like. Take a look at this." He called up another file.
Torres gasped. She herself had used a very similar device many times while in the Maquis. Cobbled together from pieces of salvage, she could see the resemblance between it and the charred overloader.
"Are you saying that whoever did this is a Maquis crewmember?"
"No, I'm not," the ensign sighed. "Any one of all of the crewmembers could have pieced one of these together with the right knowledge."
"So this leaves us back at ground zero," Torres growled, referring to one of her favorite pastimes. "We don't know anything more know than we did four hours ago except that Carey wasn't the killer."
"Not exactly. Only about half of the crew actually have access to the parts to make one of these."
Torres' head came up. "Harry, you are a genius. Take this to the captain and show her what you've found. She'll be happy to hear that someone is having a little luck."
Kim scooped up a datapadd and was halfway out of Engineering when he stopped. "Aren't you coming?" he asked.
"No! Without Lieutenant Carey, I've got all of Engineering to take care of. I can't get away for any reason." She swept her arm dramatically around the room.
"Sorry, B'Elanna," he sighed. "I'll ask all of the junior staff to put in two hundred percent for you, okay?"
"Get moving, ensign," she smiled, thankful for her friend, "before I make you take charge of Engineering for two straight shifts."
* * *
Janeway looked over the information on the padd again, then one more time. "All of these people have or have had access to the parts?"
"Yes, Captain," Kim replied. "It's still a lot of people, but it's about half of what we had before."
Setting the padd on the table in front of her, she stood. "I'm not ruling out the other people, Harry. Tom said there could be more than one killer."
"I know, and we took that into account. B'Elanna and I cross-referenced everything and the shortest combination we came up with was eight people."
The captain exhaled slowly. "That's a pretty big group."
"Yes, Captain."
Janeway paced around the ready room, deep in thought. "Eight people," she sighed, then sighed again. "Tom sure knows how to make things tough." When Kim said nothing, she looked up. "Harry, I want you and Tom—not B'Elanna: she's too busy—to constantly work on this. His—" she hesitated— "expertise on criminal behavior may prove helpful."
Kim nodded. "Will do. I don't think the doctor will need Tom right now, anyway."
"Good, then. Dismissed and good luck." She turned back to her quiet contemplation of the stars.
* * *
Kim stepped through the door of Sickbay and nearly ran into the doctor. "Ah, Mr. Kim, I was just on my way to the bridge. How fares the investigation?"
"Pretty good, Doc. B'Elanna and I have narrowed the list of suspects to fifty-four people."
"Wonderful!" the hologram smiled. "Now, is there something I can get for you, Ensign?"
Kim shook his head. "I was coming only to talk to Tom. The captain wants him to help me with the investigation."
The doctor sighed. "I suppose, then, that I'll have to remain here, if Mr. Paris is going to be leaving."
Harry grinned and slapped the doctor on the shoulder. "Sorry, but captain's orders apply here."
"No rest for the never weary, I suppose," he sighed, moving over to a console and transferring his matrix from the mobile emitter.
Ensign Kim strode over to the office and rapped his knuckles lightly on the doorframe. Paris looked up from the file he was reading and smiled. "Coming to relieve me from my boredom, Harry?"
"You won't be bored for long," his friend replied, craning his neck to look at the file. Paris was looking at the schematic for the overloader. "It doesn't look like you were bored, anyway."
Tom stretched and stood. "There's only so much of proteolytic and amylolitic enzymes I can take, so I decided to do a little sleuthing."
"Find anything?"
"Yeah. The overloader looks like a typical Maquis device," Paris replied.
"That's what I found, too. I also took the parts list to make one and determined only fifty-two people have access to all of them, though I'm ruling out the entire senior staff and Ensign Wildman. That leaves us with forty-three suspects."
The lieutenant whistled. "That's still a lot of people. Tell me, Harry, why did you come in here, besides the pleasant conversation?"
"Captain's orders, Tom. She wants you to help me with a little psychological profiling of the remaining crew."
Paris frowned. "Why me? The doctor and Tuvok both know more about psychology than I do. Even Neelix has more experience with psychology than I do!"
"Had, you mean. Well, the captain says you have more, well, ah—" Kim hesitated, beginning to blush.
"Oh, I get it," Tom said, face darkening a little. "I've had the most first-hand experience with the criminal mind. Right. So where do we start?" He turned off the monitor and crossed his arms.
Kim mentally kicked himself for having agitated his friend. "Well," he began timidly, "I got this great idea for a trap for—for whoever's been killing the crew."
"Really?" Paris grinned and relaxed. "Come on, Harry, I'm listening."
The ensign took a deep breath. "Tom, did you ever read about the Trojan Horse?"
"The tall lieutenant nodded. "Ancient Greek history right? Yeah, I heard about it when I was a kid."
"I was thinking of doing something a lot like that—"
"Without the wooden horse."
"—To catch our killer. What do you think?"
"I'm still listening."
"Okay, well what if we gathered all of us senior officers into the Mess Hall—"
"So he can blow up all of us? Sounds like a plan."
"Tom." Kim was becoming exasperated. "They won't really be us, they'll be holograms."
"Whoa, Harry," Tom began, "sounds like you've got this all—"
A sudden explosion tore through the office. Paris and Kim were both blown sideways into and through the clear walls of the office. Time seemed to slow. Kim watched in agonizing slowness as his friend, who had been closest to the explosion, bounced to the floor on his head once, twice, then lay still, deathly still.
The doctor saw and came running to the aid of the two. "Mr. Paris! Mr. Kim!" he called, standing over them. Then a second surge of explosions ripped through the room and everything went blindingly white.
Then it all faded, to be replaced by the cool walls of the holodeck. "The doctor and Ensign Kim have lost the game," intoned the computer.
Janeway walked over and helped the ensign to his feet. "What happened, Harry? Doctor?"
"Tom and I were discussing the case when Sickbay blew up," Kim complained. "We never even stood a chance."
"I can hear Paris saying from here, 'Three down, four to go,' " Torres remarked.