
To Tell the Truth, Part 4/8:SunfireBy melanie ( www.ocl.net/~melanie's\_mind )Code: VOY, P, P/T, J/C, ALLRating: PGDate: Story finished: October 1998. Revised (spelling mistakes/grammar corrected): December 1999
Comments, admiring and outraged, maybe sent to me at: melanie@skynet.ca
Note: Read Part One: "Spirit Guide," Part Two: "Parole," and Part Three: "Togetherness" first for some absolutely marvelous, Earth-shattering Notes from the author of this mess and the usual bended knee "thank you" to those who inspired these mental ramblings.
Another thank you (sorta) to Jeri Taylor, this time for "Pathways." While at the time of this writing -- August to September 98 -- I still haven't been able to force myself passed Neelix deciding tomorrow night he'll tell his story, I did include a little bit about what Tom did after his court-martial. Thank you.
As always, thank you to Briony for her great beta reading.
Disclaimer: The usual - theirs, not mine, wish they were, but they're not, etc., etc., don't sue.
Sunfire (post Hope and Fear)
"Tom? Hello?" Kathryn waved a hand in front of her pilot's face only to have it gently moved out of the way.
"I'm listening," he insisted, not looking at her.
"No, you're not. What are you watching?"
Kathryn looked across the Resort terrace as Tom was. She could not tell precisely which of the guests at Naomi's birthday party he was staring at so intently. Scratch that. She could. Off to one side, seated in a double chaise lounge, was B'Elanna, quietly sipping her drink, while the birthday girl more or less snuck up on her.
"Careful," Tom softly coached the little girl. "Don't rush her."
Naomi slowly climbed up on the cushions beside B'Elanna. The two looked at one another, not saying anything. At last, the woman offered the little girl something from her plate from the buffet. A little hand chose a small orange object.
"Good girl."
"Which one are you talking to? Naomi or B'Elanna?"
"Naomi."
As she nibbled the hors d'oeuvre, the child in question laid her cheek against B'Elanna's upper arm. The half-Klingon froze for a moment. She stared down at the top of the little head then her eyes began scanning the area for Tom. When she found him, she sent a pleading look his way. He merely waved and turned back to Kathryn.
"Keep watching them," he ordered. "Tell me how far Naomi gets."
"How far she gets?"
"Yes."
"They seem to be talking," she shrugged. "Actually Naomi's doing most of the talking. B'Elanna's looking sort of uncomfortable - no, that's not right. Sort of... I don't know how she's looking."
Tom's eyes narrowed at Kathryn's sudden, surprised smile and turned back to the scene below them. A very maternal looking B'Elanna was wiping Naomi's face with a napkin. As the woman set aside the cloth, the little girl climbed up into her lap and snuggled into her chest. There was a split second pause then B'Elanna's arms encircled the little girl and cuddled her close.
Kathryn took in the satisfied smile on Tom's face. "What's going on?"
Tom merely smiled and squeezed her shoulder before wandering off across the terrace to the pair he had been watching.
Shrugging, she went over to join the birthday girl's mother who was talking to a lieutenant and an ensign who recently had paired off.
"Captain," Sam welcomed, "I can't thank you enough for your gift. Naomi is so excited that you're going to show her the Bridge tomorrow. She won't sleep a wink, I know it."
"I couldn't think of anything to get her. And I know she's wanted to see it for some time."
"Well, I think it's her favorite of all her birthday gifts."
"She certainly seems to be loving every minute of this."
One of their companions, a large, male Terran ensign from stellar cartography, laughed in his booming voice. "That's because she's the centre of attention."
His girlfriend shushed him. "She'll hear you."
They all looked towards the chaise lounge where Tom now sat with B'Elanna and Naomi, the little girl still happily ensconced on the Chief Engineer's lap. The three were laughing at some comment of Tom's as he tickled the child under the chin.
"Well, I'll be...." Sam murmured.
Her companions turned their gaze from the trio to a softly smiling Ensign Wildman.
"They're parents," she explained once she realized they were looking at her. "They're natural born parents."
"Lieutenant Torres is scared of her," the ensign declared.
"Just uncomfortable I think. I doubt she's been around kids much."
"And Lieutenant Paris spoils Naomi mercilessly," the lieutenant reminded her. "Parents shouldn't do that."
"No, Neelix spoils her. He's her godfather. He's read somewhere that he's supposed to do that so he does. No, Tom only spoils her a little. He does discipline her too when needed. All instinctively I'd say."
Kathryn nodded at the verity of the statement. "I do doubt it's learned behavior, given what little he's said about the Admiral as a father."
"However his childhood may have been, Lieutenant Paris turned out well in the end. He's one of the few people on the ship I'd trust completely with Naomi."
Turning back, they saw Tom take Naomi from B'Elanna and set the little girl on her feet beside the chair. She was off and running towards some newcomers to the Resort before her feet even hit the terrace. Tom settled back down beside his mate, snitching some food from her plate. She glared at him. He merely grinned and gave her a quick kiss.
"What are we watching?" the First Officer wondered, stopping beside the Captain.
"Tom and B'Elanna," his superior answered.
"Oh, so you're practicing being peeping Toms?"
They laughed along with him and split up into smaller groups to go off and socialize with the others. Fifteen minutes later though, Kathryn and Chakotay found themselves walking into the midst of a mock-argument between Voyager's favorite couple.
"Huh," Tom huffed, swinging his head away from B'Elanna, nose in the air, "I'm going to go find someone who does love me."
"You're such a ham, Paris," B'Elanna called after him as he walked away.
Tom swung back to her, eyes grinning. "Gee, Torres, pig to ham, huh?" Tom laid a hand on Tuvok's shoulder as he came up to them. "I'd watch it, Tuvok. Torres is starting to get logical."
In a deadpan, the Vulcan looked at the human. "Then perhaps there is hope for you yet, Lieutenant."
The pilot pretended to consider it. "Mmm, wouldn't bet on it." he informed him sagely over his shoulder as he walked away.
Tuvok's "Unfortunate" was overridden by a high-pitched squeal. Seconds later Tom returned with a giggling birthday girl in his arms.
"Found someone," he told B'Elanna smugly.
B'Elanna raised an eyebrow. "And what makes you think she loves you either?"
"Yeah," the little girl giggled.
"Hey!" Tom gasped in mock-rage. "Always be on the side of the person holding you, Cucumber. The deck's a long way down." He pointedly stared at the terrace floor beneath his feet.
Naomi followed his gaze then turned to B'Elanna, clearly having switched sides. "Yeah, hey!"
Her former ally planted her fists into her hips. "Traitor."
Naomi grinned.
Tom jiggled the little girl. "Hey, you. I still haven't given you your present yet." He set her on her feet. "Go ask Neelix for the padd I gave him to put behind the bar. And bring him and your Mommy back with you, okay?"
"Okay."
As the little girl skipped off across the Resort terrace to find her godfather, Tom called to the computer. "Computer, run program Playmates with a three minute delay."
"Acknowledged," the feminine monotone responded.
"So what is this mysterious present?" Kathryn asked, surfacing from her conversation with Tuvok.
"You'll see," her helmsman said, smiling enigmatically.
B'Elanna shook her head. "You're wasting your breath asking, Captain. He won't even tell me."
"Even after she tortured me."
The sizzling look the pair exchanged left little doubt about the nature of the "torture."
"Uh-huh," Kathryn smiled prior to changing the subject. "Tuvok says there's an indication of the Gherop fleet having passed through here not too long ago. A few days at most."
Groaning, Tom closed his eyes.
B'Elanna sighed. "Engineering's barely finished fixing the damage after our last encounter with them."
"Nevertheless," the Captain replied, "we'll have to be ready. I doubt we've see the last of them."
"Why don't they just give up?" Tom asked no one in particular. "What did we ever do to them anyway?"
Shaking her head at him, his mate laughed. "You say that about every species in the Delta Quadrant."
"Not every one, just the ones that get it into their heads to start shooting at us for absolutely no reason. Which, admittedly, seems like practically everyone of them."
Naomi bounded back into their circle, arms up to Tom. He picked up the little girl and took the padd from her hands. After checking it, he handed it to Samantha Wildman.
"What's this?" Naomi's mother asked, Naomi's godfather peering at the padd from over her shoulder.
"That's her?" a strange, young male voice said from a couple of meters away.
Everyone turned to see a motley crew of ten children. They all appeared to be around Naomi's age, though some were slightly older and bigger than she was.
"Yes, Mor," Tom said to the young Klingon who stood at the front of the group, "this is Naomi Wildman. Naomi, I'd like you to meet some new additions to the Voyager." Tom performed the introductions and each "child" nodded in turn.
The twin male Bolians, Chyr and Chyn, were first and every bit as gregarious as Chell and Gowat who had inspired them. They immediately began chattering and only a gentle "hush, you can talk her leg off later, boys" from Tom halted their endless stream of words.
A human female, apparently Terran in origin was next. Allegia, a petite six-year-old girl with chestnut brown hair and flashing green eyes both smiled broadly at their new playmate.
T'Kosh, a female Vulcan who could have been Tuvok's daughter, gave a typically Vulcan nod. She may have been the picture of a restrained and disciplined Vulcan, but her eyes still held a hint of wildness her Vulcan training had yet to tame.
That wildness was equaled in the next children to be introduced. Two males, a Romulan named Sar and a Cardassian named Darkat, were a puzzle for the adults. There was no mistaking their heritage and everyone found them to be strange inclusions in this little group. Tom continued on without a break so they could not ask for an explanation.
Pia, an Orion female, surprised them only slightly less than Sar and Darkat. Unlike the stories one heard of Orion females being animalistic and lacking in intelligence, Pia had the air of a scholar. Everyone thought Tom had invoked artistic license to create her, though refrained from saying it.
Naxia made Neelix smile and his heartache a little. The little Talaxian female reminded him of his sister Alixia. He felt happy to see another of his kind, yet saddened at the same time.
Fala nearly was as friendly as the Bolians. The un-joined Trill predicted she and Naomi and the other children were going to have loads of fun together.
The apparent ringleader of the group, the young Klingon male Tom had addressed as Mor, did not seem as convinced of this as Fala was. He glared at the intimidated Naomi, who simply did not know what to make of this new development and hid her face in Tom's neck.
Mor snorted derisively. "She's going to be no fun. She's just a scared little baby."
That got Naomi. "Am not a baby!" she shot back, lifting her head to glare back at the scowling young Klingon.
"Yes, you are."
"Am not."
"Are too."
"Am not!"
"Mor," Allegia interrupted softly.
Surprisingly, Mor subsided and the adults began to wonder if their impression that he was the ringleader of this strange band of misfits was incorrect.
Pushing her thick brown hair out of her eyes, Allegia stepped forwards. "Do you want to come play with us?" she asked Naomi. "It could be fun."
Uncertainly, Naomi looked at Tom. She waited for his smile and nod before she assented. Gently, Tom set her on her feet and Allegia took Naomi's hand and all but Mor ran off towards the beach.
Tom squatted down next to the remaining child, placing a hand on his shoulder.
"Didn't quite work," Mor said quietly.
"No, but it was a good try," Tom assured the child. "Challenging her was a good move. But fear always is a wildcard. It makes it difficult to predict behavior sometimes."
"Fear must be conquered," Mor stated defiantly. "It is the one true enemy of a warrior."
"Yes, but remember what I told you. We're not trying to turn her into a warrior. Just let her play."
Mor nodded and hurried off to join his friends in their noisy game on the beach.
"You want me to go watch them, Tommy?" a new voice asked.
Tom rose as everyone looked at a pretty red-haired female. "If you wouldn't mind?"
"Nah, I've got my book in my beach bag." she assured him, gesturing to the straw bag over one arm. "I'll be fine." With a sparkling smile, she strode off, the multi-hued wrap over her blue one piece swimsuit swishing with every step.
"That's Siobahn," he told everyone once she was gone. "She was... a good friend of mine who always wanted kids but never had any. I figured she'd make a great teacher for Naomi and the other kids."
The Captain blinked. "Teacher?"
"Naomi's going to need educating, Captain, you know that. I've being trying to do what I can, but the way I've been doing it... I can't keep teaching her through play."
"Through play?"
"I've been setting up our play dates so she'll learn something as well as have fun."
"Learn what?" the child's mother asked suspiciously.
"What with the Gherop and all, it's been mostly survival skills lately." He laughed. "Since this ship does seem to get into trouble with alarming frequency, I figured she'd need to know how to look after herself. So, when we go to the beach and built sandcastles, she's learning how to set up a campsite. When we play hide and seek, she's learning how to evade capture. I've shown her some Starfleet procedures so she'll know how to manually unlock a jammed door or how to negotiate her way through the Jefferies tubes. That kind of thing."
"In case the ship ever is taken over."
"Exactly. But she's getting to the age that she needs to start learning more than how to play or how to protect herself. So I created Siobahn and the kids. I figured if you and the Captain approve, Naomi can start coming here every day for an hour or two at first and go to school with the others."
"This must have taken you weeks," Sam whispered.
Tom shrugged, eyes moving to the group playing tag on the beach under Siobahn's watchful eye from under a sun umbrella. "It was worth it. Neelix and I and some of the others are okay as playmates for her, but she needs kids her own age. We can do things with her, kid things, but we're adults...." He grinned. "Well, the others are adults anyway. Me...." He shrugged again and his grin faded. "If she keeps hanging out with us all of the time, she'll miss out on being a kid. I know what that's like. It's damned unfair."
"So you created some peers for her."
"Or tried my best to. When I was a kid, I didn't spend a lot of time with other kids or if I did they were 'Fleet brats like my sisters and me. I didn't have the type of childhood I think she deserves so I talked with practically everyone on this ship about their childhoods, found out what I'd missed out on, and tried to set things up so she won't miss out on them either. I'm sure everybody thinks I'm nuts or something after answering my rather weird questions. I took their answers and some of my own ideas and created the kids." He finally looked at her. "If there's anything you don't like about them, you can eliminate it from their programs. It's all in the padd there."
Ensign Wildman shot B'Elanna a glance. "Don't kill me," she said rather cryptically to the Engineer then her actions explained the comment. She laid a hand on Tom's shoulder and reached up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. "I think this is the sweetest thing anyone's ever done."
"Shh!" he hissed. "Don't tell anybody. Can't have them thinking I'm a marshmallow or something."
Sam laughed and stepped back as B'Elanna, at Tom's other side, threaded her arm through Tom's.
"I think it's already general knowledge," his mate told him then kissed his other cheek in a rare public display of affection from her.
Tom released a long-suffering sigh. "There goes my reputation completely. My ego's still trying to recover from Neelix telling me months ago that I used to be quite the ladies man. Now, you're telling everybody knows I'm a total softie. I think I want to cry," he sniffed.
"Total ham."
"Captain," Tom said pointing away from them.
Kathryn dutifully looked the other way while her Helmsman and Chief Engineer broke her no PDA's rule.
-------
Two hours later, the exhausted birthday girl was taken home and the party broke up so some of the celebrants could go on duty. Tom and B'Elanna refused an invitation to join some of the others in Sandrine's, instead leaving for Tom's quarters to spend some time alone.
"I think that went well," Tom sighed, kicking off his boots.
"Why didn't you come rescue me sooner?" B'Elanna questioned, at last having a chance to pose the question she had wanted to ask since it happened.
"Hmm?"
"When Naomi came over to me. Why didn't you come rescue me like I wanted? I know you saw me. You waved."
"Because I didn't think you needed rescuing," Tom explained. "You were doing just fine with her."
"Just fine?!"
"Yes. And quite frankly I wanted to see how you would handle her."
"Huh?"
Tom carefully chose his words. "I was curious about how you'd be with kids."
"Kids?" She knew she was not holding up her end of this scintillating conversation, but she could not do any better until Tom Paris started making sense.
"I... I was wondering how you would be with our kids."
B'Elanna's eyes widened.
"I'm not saying right this minute or anything," he hastened to add. "I mean we've never even talked about it. I don't even know if you want kids, but I was just wondering how you'd be with them if we ever had any." He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it in wild disarray. "And I'm babbling."
She said nothing for a long moment. That of course only provoked more babbling.
"I mean, I know... I doubted you'd be anything like Harry." He shook his head. "I figured if anyone would be good with kids, he would be. Never would I have imagined him not being comfortable with one, but-"
"Why?"
"Why what? Why did I think he'd be good with kids? Because he grew up in this great family. He had these terrific, nominate-them-for-the-Parent-Hall-of-Fame parents."
"And we didn't."
"Well, yeah."
"And yet next to her mother and Neelix, you're the best one on the ship with her."
"Yeah, I guess so."
Moving closer, she reached up and smoothed his wild hair. "That's always puzzled everyone, you know. How you two got so close. Most people wouldn't think you'd be that way with kids. Your ladies man reputation-" He snorted at that and she smiled. "-And being the youngest one in your family and never being allowed to be a kid, always having to be a "little man," not a little boy. If you've no previous experience with kids, how come you're so good with this one?"
"About a year or so ago," he began, "Naomi and her mother were going to the Mess Hall when Ensign Wildman stopped to talk to someone in the corridor. Naomi wandered off, ended up in a turbolift with a couple who didn't even realize she was there with them."
"How'd they miss seeing her? A turbolift's not that big."
"I asked them that later." He grimaced. "Well, demanded to know that actually."
She lifted an eyebrow at that admission.
"Well, I was mad. They should have noticed her, but didn't. Apparently they were talking when she slipped in behind them and they never noticed her. They took the turbolift down to Deck Five and went into one of the labs. Naomi followed them out and was looking around the corridor when they entered a lab and she didn't see where they went. When I came out of Sickbay, I found her curled up next to a bulkhead, crying."
Tom shook is head. "She barely knew me. Saw me a few times in the Mess Hall or the Resort, that was about it. But you would have thought I was her long lost friend when I squatted down next to her. She threw herself at me and wouldn't let go. The kid was like a little limpet. Even after I took her back to her mother, she wouldn't let go."
"Her hero," B'Elanna smiled.
"I guess. But things just kind of grew from there."
"Women do tend to throw themselves at you, don't they?"
"Not anymore they don't. Too scared you'll take after them."
"I have to protect what's mine."
Tom nuzzled her ear. "And what's yours."
B'Elanna grinned evilly and pulled his body flush with hers. "You, Thomas Eugene Paris, and don't you ever forget it."
"Yes, ma'am."
She snuggled her head into the crook of his neck. "Tom?"
"Hmm?"
"Were you really were serious about maybe us having children?" she asked.
"Yes, I was."
"I don't know, Tom. I know you'll do well, considering how quickly you took to Naomi-"
"Quickly? Hardly. For quite a while, I was petrified I'd do something wrong with her. I had no idea what I was doing. Here was this kid who kept popping up. Every time I turned around, there she was, wanting to do whatever I was doing, wanting me to pick her up for a cuddle, wanting me to talk to her. It was only after a couple of months that I suddenly realized I was comfortable with her."
She sensed him debating with himself about whether to tell her something so she remained quiet, waiting.
"I realized I enjoyed it, B'Elanna. The feel of that warm little body giving me a hug. Her big, sloppy kisses. The way she'd look up at me like I could do no wrong, like I had all of the answers. It was... I felt... I've never felt anything like that before, B'Elanna."
"And you think children of your own would make you feel like that?"
"I don't know. I'd hope so, but it just... it just got me thinking about us having kids of our own some day."
Unconsciously stroking his chest, B'Elanna quietly thought for a moment. "This is permanent, isn't it?"
"Hmm?"
"Us."
It was Tom's turn to think. "Yeah," he whispered, "I think it is."
She made no comment. That worried him.
"Are you... are you okay with that?"
In response, she lifted her head from his shoulder and curled a hand around his neck. As she drew his head down for a long kiss, the door inevitably chimed. For close to thirty seconds they ignored it. Then, after the fourth chime, they addressed the door.
"Come in, Harry," the couple chorused.
The EMH entered, eyebrow quirked. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, Lieutenants."
Tom and B'Elanna disengaged. "Sorry, Doc," Tom apologized. "We're so used to Harry being the one to suddenly appear every time we try to have a moment alone here." He grinned. "We're starting to wonder if he has the internal sensors rigged to alert him every time B'Elanna comes in here."
"Well, given some of the tricks you and the Ensign get up to, I wouldn't put it past you."
As Tom grinned, B'Elanna shook her head at him then looked enquiringly at the hologram. "So if Harry hasn't deputized you to stand in for him while he's on duty, what can we do for you?"
He handed Tom a padd. "I have found something I think might help my family's case."
"The case for your being alive?"
He nodded while Tom reviewed the information. "I believe it may just prove-" He broke off as Tom handed back the padd. The man who first had brought the holographic family's plight to the attention of the family patriarch shook his head. "What? It's perfect."
"I found that one already," Tom sighed. "It was over turned on appeal."
"That's not in the database."
"No, not as a direct citation for some reason, but it is mentioned in another case."
He went to the computer on his desk and called up the relevant file. The EMH scanned the record then scowled. Tom placed a hand on the hologram's shoulder.
"I'll keep looking, Doc. That's the best I can promise you."
The hologram squared his shoulders. "Well, I'll be returning to Sickbay then. If you'll stop by before your shift tomorrow, I should have that report for the Captain finished by then."
When they were alone, Tom sighed and lowered his head to B'Elanna's shoulder.
"You'll think of something," she assured him, stroking his hair. "You have plenty of time. Voyager's a long way from getting home."
He sighed and tightened his hold.
-------
She smiled at the sweet display and withdrew from Tom's quarters. In the brief time she had been observing this one and his crewmates, she had come to enjoy their closeness. It reminded her of those who had prompted her people's search.
'Soon,' she promised herself, 'soon my people will be ready for him and I can approach him.'
The smile that had increased with making this vow changed to a perplexed look. She turned away from the ship and stared straight at a little dark-haired boy.
Who are you?
He said nothing, only looked at her curiously.
You've been following me, haven't you?
Still nothing.
I've felt something or someone watching me, but I never could see it or them. It was you, wasn't it?
He came closer, tilting his head this way and that as his eyes stared into hers. When she reached out for him, he promptly vanished. She could sense his continued presence on the edge of her consciousness, but not see him.
'He'll reappear when he wants to,' she assured herself. 'It's doubtful he wants to stop you in any way. If he did, he would have done it long before now.'
Warily, she returned to watching the ship.
-------
Tom was dreaming. Since Voyager had encountered the aliens who had attacked them through their dreams, he had worked hard on perfecting the art of lucid dreaming. He wanted to be ready in case they encountered anyone else who could do the same thing. Now he was at the point he could tell the instant he began dreaming, even calling up favorite dreams with the ease another would request a file from the ship's computer. He found using this new skill to be an exhilarating experience. This dream, one of his favorites, was no exception.
He stood at the foot of a slight rise in a park. Looking up, he saw a deep blue sky dotted with wisps of white cloud. Beneath his feet was lush green grass begging for his bare feet. Immediately, he obliged, shedding his shoes and socks.
A squeal of delight from a short ways off met his ears. Instantly recognizing it, he ran off in the direction of the child. He found her on the other side of the rise. A little blonde head bobbed in and out of sight in a field of wildflowers twenty meters away as she chased a butterfly. The four-year old was under the watchful gaze of her very pregnant mother sitting on a blanket beneath an oak tree.
"Don't go too far, M'Nea Madeleine," B'Elanna called after her daughter.
"Yes, Mommy," the child sing-songed over her shoulder.
"She's going to get lost in there." B'Elanna smiled at Tom over her shoulder. "Guess who gets to rescue her?"
Moving to the edge of the blanket and dropping his shoes and socks, he pretended to think about it. "Mmm, you?"
She laughed. "Oh, you'd make a pregnant woman drag herself off after a rambunctious four-year old? Do you know how long it took me to get down here?"
Grinning broadly, he leaned down to kiss her. "About half as long as it's going to take you to get up, I'll bet."
"Unless my big, strong husband who is responsible for me being in this condition takes pity on me and helps me up."
"Well, when he gets here, tell me and I'll make myself scarce." He gave her another quick kiss and bounded off after his AWOL offspring.
"Daddy!" she yelled and abandoned the butterfly chase. She hurled herself into his waiting arms, laughing as he tossed her into the air.
"Having fun, Piglet?" he asked, carrying her back towards the blanket where her mother was setting out lunch.
As she told him everything he had missed so far, he lowered her to her feet then he folded his long frame into a comfortable position next to his mate on the blanket. B'Elanna snuggled back into his chest and placed her hands over his where they came to rest on her swollen abdomen. The pair sighed happily and listened to their daughter chatter.
-------
"Tom?"
"Hmm?"
"Come on, you've got to let go. We've got to be on duty in less than half an hour."
Reluctantly, Tom opened his eyes. He was staring at the ceiling of his sitting area.
"Tom?" The voice was becoming insistent.
His attempt to lift his head from the back of the couch was met with instant agony. Gentle hands helped him tilt his stiff head and neck into an upright position. Smiling through his pain as the hands massaged his neck, he saw what he considered the best sight in the entire Galaxy - a sleep tousled B'Elanna Torres sitting in his lap.
"We fell asleep sitting up on the couch again, didn't we?" he mumbled.
She nodded and flitted away as he started to tighten his hold on her again. "No time for that, Paris. And no time for breakfast either. I have to go to my quarters to shower and change into my uniform before heading up to the Bridge. And you have to go to Sickbay to pick up that report for the Captain from the Doctor, remember?"
Nodding, he sighed appreciatively as he watched her stretch the kinks out of her compact frame. "Gods, you're beautiful," he sighed.
The comment earned him a quick kiss and a bright smile. "I'll see you on the Bridge in a little while."
Painfully, he dragged his cramped frame off the couch and towards the shower as she hurried out. 'One of these days,' he promised himself, 'she won't have to go off to her quarters to change.'
He stopped in his tracks. Was he really thinking what he thought he was thinking?
Tom sat heavily on the side of his bed. Marriage. Despite his agreeing last night that their relationship was of the permanent sort, it still had not fully sunk in that he was thinking totally permanent. Sure, he had been enjoying the dreams about their life together with their children, but now he was beginning to realize it did not have to be a nocturnal fantasy. She had not run scared or knocked him senseless when they had spoken of children or permanency. In fact, she had been the one to use the word "permanent" first. Maybe, just maybe, he could propose and not be shoved out the nearest airlock.
'But if you're going to do it, Paris, you're going to do it right,' he ordered himself. 'No flippancy. No miscommunication. Nothing but honesty and sincerity.' He looked down at his hands and found them shaking... along with the rest of him. The trembling was not strictly because he was about to stick out his neck in the biggest way possible. It was because, if he was going to do this right, there was someone he had to talk to first.
Voices that had been silent for over two months assaulted him as his hand hovered over his combadge.
You really think that is wise? Camet sneered. Formally taking her as your mate?
'Shut up, Camet. You're not real. You're a manifestation of my subconscious.'
Perhaps, but if I am here, then maybe there is a reason. Maybe you should listen to me. Maybe I am right when I remind you that when this ship gets home or your people come to get you, anyone you are close to will be at risk. Especially your mate. Who would be a more obvious choice than your wife if they are trying to figure out to whom you may have told everything?
'Voyager may never make it home. And it's been months since the Doctor was in the Alpha Quadrant. If they haven't come by now, they aren't coming for me.'
Yes, keep telling yourself that pretty little lie. It does help you sleep better at night, doesn't it? That and the so-called plan you and the Vulcan concocted.
'You can shut up at any time, Camet. I may be lying to myself, but I'm tired of living my life in fear that one day The Protectors will send the AlphaOmegans to drag me back into the fold or kill me. I'm tired of hiding from the people I love and who love me.'
So what are you going to do? Tell them the truth about yourself? Oh, that will go over well. Once they know the whole sordid tale, they will be tripping over themselves, trying to get as far away from you as possible.
Tom paused. 'I may not be able to be completely honest with them, but I'm not going to let that stop me from having a life. I can't make up for what I've done or been made to do, but I'm certainly not going to spend the rest of my life the way I've spent the past few months.'
His hand hit his combadge. "Paris to Chakotay."
"Chakotay here."
Tom swallowed hard. "Commander, what shift are you on today?"
"Alpha. Why?"
"Could we meet after shift? I have something I need to discuss with you."
"Sure. Where?"
"Your quarters?"
"Fine. 1800 okay?"
"Yes, fine. Paris out."
And just what is talking to that soporific oaf going to accomplish? Camet wanted to know as Tom stripped and stepped into the shower.
'He's the closest thing to family B'Elanna's got on this ship. It's Klingon custom and Latin, if I remember correctly, to ask permission from the head of the family before proposing.'
You are going to ask him for permission to marry B'Elanna? Camet smirked. He will laugh in your face or punch you between those pretty blue eyes of yours. You are not good enough for her. I know it. You know it. He knows it.
Hurrying from the shower to his closet, Tom shook his head. 'I may not be good enough for her, but we love each other and I'm trying my best to be better. That's as much as any better man could say.'
You are so deluded, my young friend.
'You're not my friend, Camet.'
Perhaps not, but I am here, just the same. Remember that. I am here and I am never going to go away.
Tom finished fastening his uniform in silence. He knew Camet or his psyche at least was right about that.
-------
"This had better be important, I'Nu," the Gherop commander barked with his mouthful, "or you'll be-"
"A party of our ships have spotted Voyager. She's coming this way, E'Arte."
The big brute of a male performed his version of a smug grin and grabbed his now filled goblet from his serving slave. He was mindless of the alcohol that sloshed over the rim of the heavy clay vessel and over the hands and ragged dress of the girl and onto the once exquisite, now chipped and ruined mosaic floor beneath her bare feet.
"And you questioned my judgement in sending our ships out to force them in our direction."
"I was not questioning your judgement, E'Arte, more wondering if there would have been less chance of irreparably damaging Voyager were we to use subterfuge right from the outset. With each confrontation, we inflict more damage on them and lose more of our ships and crews."
"I need to know how Voyager handles herself in battle. If she gets damaged a little then all the better. Then they'll be sure to come here for supplies and we'll be waiting for them."
"But our ships and-"
"We can always take more from the neighboring systems when we need them. As for the crews to fly them, there always are more Rachar."
He looked at the top of his serving slave's downcast head. Grabbing the girl's small chin in his hand, he yanked her face up to his. Malnutrition made her pale blue skin nearly the same shade of grey as his own and her dark blue hair dull and hang limply around her delicate features.
"They breed so copiously. There's always more where the crews came from."
The adolescent in his grasp stopped breathing. Zji understood both the meaning in his words and in his dark grey eyes. Her master had yet to take her to his bedchamber, though she knew it was inevitable that one day, when she had matured enough to his liking, he would. Even if she managed to live long enough without incurring his wrath and thereby signaling her death, she knew she would not survive for long after being installed in his bed. E'Arte had eons worth of patience when it came to waiting for what he wanted, but once he had it, he had a very short attention span. When he finally tired of her, she would go the way of all things of which he tired -- straight to the refuse pile. Were it before or after he had her, he did not care. He only would find another to take her place. Either way, she was dead in the end unless the rebellion succeeded and forced the Gherop from Rachar before then.
"But the captains and first officers of the ships are our fellow Gherop. We aren't in the same seemingly never ending supply."
E'Arte released his slave and returned to his meal. "What are a few sacrificed Gherop if it means getting Voyager? If even a tenth of what we have heard of her is true, we will be able to crush the Verta once and for all."
"But the people on the Homeworld-"
"What the people on the Homeworld want is everything Rachar can produce. The minerals. The agricultural products. The fabrics." He held up his goblet. "The pottery. Don't care how we get what they want as long as we do get it. They don't want to hear or even think about the loss of any Gherop lives or the conditions we are forced to live in so long as they get everything we can take from this planet."
He set down his goblet and swiped his mouth with his sleeve. "You won't hear any outcry from them about what we have to do to get what they want. The only thing we'll hear is more communiqués from T'Do demanding to know if we are daring to hold back luxuries for ourselves and that is why exports to the Homeworld are down seventeen percent and why haven't the rebels been eliminated. I, for one, do not wish to have to explain to T'Do yet again why we are failing to destroy the Verta. Do you?"
"No, E'Arte."
"I thought not. I want to know the moment our ships report in again."
I'Nu bowed low and retreated as E'Arte thrust out his empty goblet for filling once more.
-------
"Welcome to the Bridge, Naomi."
After a quick smile for the Captain, the little girl let go of her mother's hand and moved farther out of the turbolift. "It looks just like Tommy's."
"Tommy's?" her mother asked squatting down next to her.
"Yeah. The one Tommy made for me on the holodeck. He said I was too little to see the real one, but it was okay if I looked at the one he made me."
"Tommy made you a Bridge?"
"Yeah. And an Engineering 'cause he said I'm too little to go there either."
She sent a pleading look towards the Chief Engineer, who immediately caved. "We'll see," was what B'Elanna said, though everyone knew Naomi in Engineering was a forgone conclusion.
Grinning, Naomi followed the Captain over to Tuvok's station. Though everyone continued to monitor their stations, they listened in on the Captain's tour. All were surprised by the extent of Naomi's knowledge about the Tactical station and other stations along the rear of the Bridge. She was asking a very intelligent question about the Ops console when the turbolift doors opened and the imparter of all her Bridge knowledge stepped out, padd in hand.
"Watch it, Harry, she's after your job."
Harry Kim scowled at his best friend who was walking towards him and the group around his console.
The moment the tall man was in range, Naomi raised her arms for him to pick her up. Once he had handed the Captain the padd from the Doctor, he obliged the little girl.
"No, want to fly," she declared.
Holding her away from him, Tom tilted her this way and that, pretending to study her. "Well, you're not all that aerodynamically sound, Cucumber, but maybe if we shot you out of a torpedo tube or something you might fly okay."
"Tommmmy."
"Naomiiii." He gave her a quick kiss. "So what haven't you seen yet?" She whispered in his ear. "Oh, the most important part." He thought for a moment. "No, that's probably the Captain's chair. Nice and comfy." He lowered his voice to a stage whisper. "I'm pretty sure the Captain's fallen asleep there. I've heard snoring from behind me a few times."
"That wasn't me," Kathryn objected. "That was Commander Chakotay."
In his seat, her First Officer whirled around. "Hey!"
As everyone laughed, Tom carried the visitor to his station. "Baytart, I've brought your replacement."
The young human looked up and affected an innocent look. "Frankly, I thought she was yours, sir."
Tom raised an eyebrow at Naomi. "Does that mean I get your job, Cucumber?" Wearing his most ingenuous look, Tom turned to Ensign Wildman. "Can I go play now, Mommy?"
Sam chuckled. "I am not claiming you as my offspring."
Tom pouted and sniffed. "Nobody wants me."
"Ham," a voice from the direction of the Engineering station declared.
"Apparently everyone missed us at breakfast, Torres," Tom shot back. "Bacon was on the menu. I missed out on feeling outraged at Neelix serving one of my fellow pigs." He met her grin for grin then turned back to his station's console to point out features he had not shown to Naomi in the past.
At seeing the read outs the Tactical station automatically sent to the Helm, Tom suddenly was in alert mode.
"Captain, Gherop ship approaching," Tuvok announced.
"Wildman, take her." Tom thrust the little girl at her mother who had followed them down to the Conn. She immediately raced up the stairs with her daughter and into the turbolift. "Baytart, up."
The well-trained ensign was up and out of the seat before his superior could finish his order. The Chief Helmsman's fingers were flying over the controls before his body ever touched the padding of the seat.
Baytart, too, retreated from the Bridge.
For nearly thirty minutes, the-best-damned-pilot-in-the-Delta-Quadrant tried everything to shake the ever-increasing number of the small and agile Gherop ships. Soon there were eleven of them in pursuit of their Federation prey. Tom put the ship through maneuvers her designers never would have contemplated performing, even in a much smaller craft. Somehow the Gherop stuck with them. He was about to try another prohibited move when there was a familiar reading on his sensors.
"Tom, what is it?" Kathryn asked, hearing unfamiliar words she guessed was profanity coming from the helm. Until now she had tried not to unnerve him by hovering. Now she leapt to her feet and approached his station.
He swore again and began punching out commands all the more furiously.
"Captain, I'm getting some strange readings," Harry called from behind them. "They're-Tom, what'd you do that for?"
"Mr. Paris," Tuvok intoned, "why have you assumed control of the Tactical station?"
The pilot said nothing to any of them. He kept up his frantic pace of flying fingers.
The Captain opened her mouth to demand an explanation when her eyes saw what everyone else on the Bridge had noticed by then. On the main viewer, a star in the distance seemed to be growing at an astounding rate. As it grew, an irregular, dark mass could be seen in the very centre.
Chakotay go to his feet and came to stand beside the Captain. "What is it?" he wondered.
"Some would call it the cavalry," came the muttered answer from the Helm.
"Huh?"
Had anyone been watching, they would have seen the eyebrow of a certain Vulcan give a nearly imperceptible twitch. If anyone had missed the action, they merely would have assumed the rapid commands he began to input into his console were a vain attempt to wrestle control of the Tactical station from the Helm. At least that is how it would have appeared.
When the object on screen finally fully emerged, they saw it was a ship, far bigger than Voyager and all of the Gherop ships put together. As the light faded, two of the Gherop ships foolishly broke off their pursuit to attack the newcomer.
This was Gherop tactical error number one.
Their weapons bounced harmlessly off of the shielding of the big ship as it relentlessly pushed forwards, never even bothering to fire back.
Soon all but one of the Gherop ships broke off to join their ineffective brothers in their attack.
This was Gherop tactical error number two.
The instant the ships were in range, the exterior of the big ship seemed to shatter, leaving only the core of ship and twenty-five pieces of "debris." Only it was not "debris." Without warning the pieces suddenly came "alive" and took after the Gherop ships. Like border collies herding sheep, they coaxed the attackers between themselves and the core of their ship. Within moments the Gherop were trapped between the little shards of ship and the core.
Permitting this to happen was the third, and, for these ships anyway, final, Gherop tactical error of the battle.
The crew of Voyager never knew exactly what happened after that, though the one remaining Gherop ship - the one that had stuck with them - could have told them. Those next few brief seconds were imprinted on their sensor banks and retinas until they died.
As Tom slipped Voyager behind a moon and effected an emergency-braking maneuver, the Gherop ship shot past them and back around the moon at the same instant its brothers discovered they had fallen into an impenetrable trap.
The twenty-six pieces that made up the large ship began to glow with an eerie blue-white light. Like tentacles, shafts of the light shot out from each of the evenly spaced ships. Each beam merged with another to form a geodesic framework. The second all of the beams touched, the light from the core ship at the sphere's epicenter pulsated into a blinding flash, eclipsing the nearby binary stars.
When it faded, only a single ship was left of the Gherop attack force - the one that had not been inside the framework. In the space of less than ten seconds, the ten trapped Gherop ships had been vaporized. The framework slowly dismantled itself and the ships' glow faded.
On Voyager, no one other than Tom knew of this development. All were still picking themselves up off of the deck after Tom's abrupt and unannounced stop. The pilot had cut all power to Voyager, except life support, and set all windows for maximum opacity so no one actually saw and the switched off sensors did not register the blinding flash of light flying past the edges of the moon. Naturally the first thing the Bridge crew did upon regaining their collective feet was to turn on Tom, not knowing he had just saved their sight and their systems from massive and irreparable damage.
Janeway automatically began demanding "one Hell of an explanation" from "Mr. Paris." Tom silently ignored her. He powered up the ship and slowly edged the ship out from behind the moon.
By the time they re-emerged, the shattered ship was reassembling itself. The awesome sight of the twenty-five pieces reassembling like some sort of giant, three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle caught everyone's attention. Except Tom's. He had seen the sight before, even been apart of the procedure, both as pilot of one of the "pieces" and as overseer of the maneuver from the core ship. His attention, instead, was on the remaining Gherop vessel, careening wildly out of control. It was on a collision course with one of the twin suns of the system.
Janeway finally noticed the out-of-control ship and her innate goodness demanded she do something to assist her impotent enemy. "Tuvok, tractor that ship back."
"I cannot, Captain," he told her. "Mr. Paris still retains control of that system."
"Lieutenant-"
"Let them die," Tom instructed quietly, holding Voyager in its position and his fingers away from the tractor beam controls. "Their lives are over. Once someone's seen a Destroyer class ship at work...." He shook his head sadly. "Unless you're properly shielded, it does things to a person. Physically, you're blinded, but psychologically.... I've heard it likened to looking into the face of Hell itself." His eyes turned inwards. "That I doubt. The ones who told me that hadn't ever seen true Hell." He came back to her and blue eyes met grey. "You have no choice in this, Captain. Death is the best thing for them."
There was a brief flash. All turned to the screen. While Tom had talked, the Gherop ship had entered the influence of the stars. The flash had been the ship's destruction.
"End of discussion."
Tom felt the tingle of a transporter beam and suddenly he was in a familiar room facing an even more familiar Vulcan visage.
'And the beginning of another,' Tom thought without missing a beat.
-------
Sunfire had known the moment he had been brought on board. Though none of the others knew it, she was tapped into The Diogenes' computer, her tracks carefully hidden.
'Should I risk doing it now,' she wondered, 'or bide my time?'
'Best bide your time,' she counseled herself. 'Certainly they'll bring you two together soon enough. They wouldn't have brought you and the rest of the team with them unless they had some plan up their sleeve. Best wait and collect as much Intell as you can so you'll be ready to when the time comes. Tipping your hand now would only endanger everything.'
Having decided upon a plan, she settled down to wait.
-------
"Well, I'Nu?"
The younger male Gherop tried not to cringe as he informed his superior of the message from the dying Gherop captain about the second, more powerful ship entering the field of battle. Needless to say, E'Arte was not pleased to hear of this development. When he had calmed slightly, he removed his boot from I'Nu's neck and stomped across his office to glare into the glass offered him by Zji. I'Nu picked himself up off of the floor, desperately trying to swallow to see if his throat still worked.
"How many intervals' travel are they from here?"
"Four point seven," I'Nu croaked.
"Get together our fastest and best armed ships and send them there. I want to know if this new ship is there to assist Voyager or to take her for themselves."
"What if they are not still there when our ships arrive?"
"Then they'll have to find them," E'Arte slowly enunciated. "I want Voyager."
"What about this new ship? If the message was correct, it's far more powerful than Voyager."
"Perhaps, but I know Voyager has what I want. This new one might not. I want Voyager."
"Yes, E'Arte."
I'Nu left, massaging his bruised throat and wishing he had become a tz'Mer wrestler like his grandmother had wanted. The tz'Mer might have seven sets of sixty-two teeth and the disposition of someone with a toothache in each tooth, but they still were sweeter than E'Arte in a foul mood. He only hoped Voyager fell quickly or he might not survive this plan of his superior's. Just in case, he would start writing down his filing system for the next unlucky soul who came to take his place after E'Arte killed him.
-------
If a hue and cry had arisen when Tom Paris had abruptly disappeared fifteen minutes earlier, it was nothing to the shocked gasps at the sudden appearance of a human male in a midnight blue uniform and matching gloves. Automatically, Tuvok, Harry, and Chakotay whipped out phasers and pointed them at the newcomer standing a meter away from the Captain who had been pacing behind Tom's -- now Baytart's once more -- chair.
The Captain was the first to find her tongue. "Who are you and what have you done with my Conn Officer?"
The man smiled disarmingly. He was as tall and equally handsome as the missing pilot was, but the similarity between Voyager's Conn Officer and this man ended there. This man was far more muscular and had hair so black it shone with blue highlights that rivaled his navy blue eyes "I'm Raven, Captain Janeway. Starfleet, Special Ops. Tom Paris is on our ship, The Diogenes. As for why we're here, we've been sent to help get you home."
There was a collective gasp from the Bridge crew, but the phasers did not lower.
Through narrowed gaze, the Captain regarded him. "And just what proof do you have you are who you say you are?"
Raven nodded. "Tom said you had been tricked recently by one of this quadrant's residents. But I can prove we really are from the Alpha Quadrant and are here to get Voyager home." Never breaking eye contact with her, he called out to Harry. "Ensign Kim, please verify there have been no unauthorized attempts to access Voyager's computer."
Harry waited for his captain to indicate he was to go ahead before he did as Raven asked. "There's no indications of anyone trying to enter our systems, Captain."
"Thank you, Ensign Kim," Raven smiled. "Computer, recognize Raven. Zeta Delta Six. Request verification of identity. Clearance, Special Operations, Gamma Kappa 6218157. Maroon through Ultra Maroon."
"Identity verified. Welcome to Voyager, Raven."
Withdrawing an isolinear chip from a pocket in his tunic, he held it out to her in one gloved hand. "A message from Starfleet Command and the Federation President, Captain. It will explain the plan for Voyager."
"Plan?" Chakotay asked suspiciously.
"Yes, Commander. On The Diogenes is an Assessment Team who will have to complete a survey of Voyager to ensure she is not bringing anything back with her that we don't want in the Alpha Quadrant. Little critters, et cetera. Anything the Alpha Quadrant doesn't need to be exposed to. And we need to check out any modifications you've made to Voyager so we don't have any nasty surprises when we begin the alterations to her so she can use the Gopher Hole to get home."
It was B'Elanna's turn to stiffen. "Define 'alterations.'"
Raven gave her a reassuring smile. "Nothing too horrible, Lieutenant. A Gopher Hole is our name for very long, very forgettable technical term for what amounts to an artificial worm hole."
The Captain's eyebrows rose. "Starfleet's finally managed to create a stable one?"
"We have, yes. The Gopher Hole, it exerts tremendous pressures on any ship venturing inside of it. Unless a ship is properly designed, she won't survive entering the Hole. The technicians aboard The Diogenes have studied Voyager's design for a long time and we think we can alter Voyager just enough to protect her during the trip without having to dismantle and rebuilt her properly."
Janeway looked at him for a long time without speaking then at the chip in her hand. "You will understand I want to review this before-"
"Of course, Captain. We would expect no less."
"And I want to know why my Conn Officer is on your ship."
"My commanding officer is one who prefers to hear things first hand, Captain, not read about them in reports. Since he wants to know what's happened to all of you here in the Delta Quadrant and he's known Mr. Paris since he was born, he beamed Mr. Paris over to our ship to speak with him."
"He couldn't wait to see him? He just beamed him off of our Bridge without a word."
"For some reason the Gopher Hole has scrambled our external communications systems, Captain. Internal's working, but the Hole really did a number on our external. Until we've isolated the problem and fixed it, we can't contact anyone outside of our own ship. Besides, it's been a long time since they've seen each other, Captain. Over five years. He was very anxious to see Mr. Paris. My apologies for the lack of patience on his part." He gestured to the chip in her hand. "Would you be more comfortable with me returning to The Diogenes while you review the message or would you like me to stay here to answer any questions the moment they arise?"
"If your external communications aren't working, how do you plan to signal for return to your ship?"
He gestured to the small device strapped to his wrist. "The external sensors are working. They can pick up my signal from this and tell the transporter chief to recall me. Say we give you an hour to review the message then I beam back over or contact you if we've got the communications problem sorted out?"
"Fine. And I want to talk to Mr. Paris."
Raven shrugged. "I can't promise anything, but I'll do my best."
The second he dematerialized, Kathryn looked down at the chips in her hand then at her First Officer.
"Too good to be true?" he asked her.
"We'll have to see. Tuvok, yellow alert. I don't know what good it'll do though, since they can beam through our shields," she sighed. "Keep a close watch on the internal sensors. I want to know the moment anyone beams onto this ship who shouldn't be here."
-------
"They want to talk to him," Raven informed his superior.
"As I expected," the middle aged Vulcan in the white uniform answered. He did not take his eyes from the figure on the examining table in the medlab beyond the transparent aluminum window. "You told them what you were instructed to say?"
"And I think they believed me, but the Captain still wishes to speak with Paris. What do we do now?"
"You leave it up to me."
-------
After twenty minutes of wondering whether this was to be the happiest day of their lives or one of the worst, the Senior Staff assembled in the Conference Room to hear the Captain's decision on the authenticity of the message. She did not tell them immediately. Instead she played for them the recording of the Federation President and various experts from Starfleet Command outlining their plan for refitting Voyager enough for her to survive her trip through the Gopher Hole. When it was finished, the Captain looked at all of them, pausing on the empty chair next to B'Elanna.
"Have you heard from Tom?" B'Elanna asked anxiously, seeing where the Captain's gaze paused.
"Audio only, but yes," she nodded. "It was very brief, but he confirmed what Raven said. They are Special Ops, he's known their commanding officer for years, and he's briefing them on the past five years. He says there's another project Special Ops is working on that they need his input on. Apparently someone he used to associate with after he left Starfleet is the subject of an investigation by Special Ops and he's the only one left alive who can give them any insight into this guy."
Tom's mate shook her head. "I don't like this."
"I don't like Tom being off the ship either, B'Elanna, but they authorized Tom to tell me enough about this person they're after and, frankly, if his being absent from Voyager for a while will help them capture him, it's worth it." She shook her head. "I find it hard to believe Tom would know someone like the man their after. He's murdered thousands of people."
Shaking her head, she came back to the topic at hand. "Now, does anyone have any comments on this plan to refit Voyager?"
"There are a lot of repairs that have to be done before any refit can start," B'Elanna reported in Chief Engineer mode.
"Captain," Tuvok began to caution, "I feel I must remind you that this still might be an elaborate ruse."
"Yes," Kathryn sighed, "I know, and I want everyone on this ship to be on their guards. The computer may have verified who Raven was, and the codes imbedded in the message from Command and the President checked out, and Tom confirmed who they were, but there may still be something afoot. If they are up to something, I want us to know about it before they can do whatever it is. Everyone should be vigilant, but not obvious about it. Harry, you haven't found any indications of tampering with our computer?"
The ensign shook his head. "No. I've checked and rechecked. If they've faked Raven's security clearance, I can't find any evidence of it. I've gone over the encoding for the message as you asked me to and as far as I can tell, it's real."
"If anyone from The Diogenes is to be permitted on Voyager, I suggest they be accompanied by Security personnel," Tuvok suggested.
The Captain nodded. "Agreed. Any suggestions on how best we should explain to the crew the somewhat unusual makeup of this Assessment Team?"
"You mean the fact there are a Cardassian and a Romulan amongst them." Chakotay clarified.
"Yes."
"I think your just telling the crew that they are on our side and working for Starfleet Command should be enough for the majority of the crew."
"You think the Maquis will have a problem with a Cardassian being on Voyager."
He stared at his hands where they were clasped on the table. "Honestly, I for one am going to find it hard as Hell and I know some others will too." He sighed heavily. "But I think if I warn them about him ahead of time and make them see he's not aligned with the Cardassian Empire, but came over to Starfleet a long time before the War began, they should tolerate him at least."
"Can you?"
Chakotay thought about that for a long time then nodded. "If Starfleet's Special Ops has cleared him and this Romulan to work for them, then I'd hope they were trustworthy."
"Provided Special Ops is trustworthy," B'Elanna interjected.
"Exactly."
Kathryn massaged her temples. "And we cannot be positive they are. Why does life have to be so complicated?"
No one had an answer to that.
She looked at the Doctor and Neelix who had been quiet so far. "How about you two? Neelix, you interact with the entire crew on a daily basis in the Mess Hall. How do you think these interviews they want to do with them will go over."
The Talaxian leaned forward in his chair. "I think their counselor talking with each member of the crew to see how they've fared here and how they feel about finally getting home is a good idea, Captain, and the majority of the crew will agree with me. Some may not like talking about their feelings with a stranger and some are a bit... less than forthcoming with their feelings on any subject...." He shrugged.
"I'm sure it's nothing an experienced counselor has not encountered before. Doctor? These physicals they want everyone to have?"
He was silent for a moment. Since he had heard the news of The Diogenes and that Voyager really might be going home this time, he had been deep in thought. He still had no solid defense for his and his family's continued existence. He needed more time to develop his legal argument, time that he clearly was not going to receive. Help was here and it seemed this ship was going home. 'And you still have a duty to perform,' he reminded himself.
"I see no reason for these tests, Captain," the EMH dismissed at last. "I can vouch for the health of every member of this crew. There is absolutely no need for anyone to verify that."
Forcing a smile from forming at the insulted EMH's expense, Chakotay addressed him. "I think Command just wants to be on the safe side, Doctor. Besides, they may have a point. No one on this ship has ever been through this Gopher Hole of theirs. Someone might just have a bad reaction to it."
"I still think it is a waste of time. I also wonder about this alleged Doctor of theirs, Yana. An Orion female with several advanced medical degrees?"
"I know the reputation of Orion females, Doctor," the Captain began, "but her credentials do check out."
Reluctantly, he conceded this point.
"And since we do have a little while until the repairs are completed and the refit is done. Might as well use it constructively and make Command happy by doing these physicals they want."
"But my time could be better spent working on my case, Captain."
She sighed. "Your case. Yes, I had forgotten about that."
He was more than a little ticked off to hear that. "Well, I can assure you I haven't."
"Have you found anything new?"
He grimaced. "No."
"Then I suggest you concentrate on the physicals for the time being. Once we get to the Alpha Quadrant, I'll speak to someone I know in the Judge Advocate General's Office. If she can't help you and your family find a legal position, no one can. Until then there's not much else we can do."
"Yes, Captain."
She surveyed the faces of the others. "Okay, so we're in agreement? We permit them aboard, under escort, and only after everyone has been informed of this Dumar and Pardan's presence?"
Everyone nodded.
"Well, then. It seems we're about to get company."
-------
In an anteroom to the medlab, the grey uniformed technician took a deep breath and attempted to explain his problem to the Vulcan who was staring disapprovingly at him after his last, somewhat incoherent attempt to answer his questions. "It isn't working. I mean, part of it is working and part of it isn't."
"Explain, Vassanji."
"I can't, not so far anyway. We're still going through his logs."
"He would not be stupid enough to record it in his log where anyone who was invading his privacy could read it."
"And we are checking all of the other logs we downloaded from Voyager," Vassanji hastened to add. "So far we have found no mention of finding the device. There is, however, something we think you will find important. A little over two months ago, their Security Chief was seriously injured. So seriously he did not expect to survive. Since the two of them were alone together, Paris volunteered to accept the katra."
"You are saying they shared a body? For how long?"
"A couple of days."
"In form the Team of this development and monitor Tuvok closely."
"Immediately, sir."
"Is the download function one of the ones that is working?"
"No."
"So he will have to tell us what we want to know and what he may have told the others. Is it still recording?"
"It's too damaged for us to tell."
"What will happen if it is and it does not download?"
"The Implant he received is designed for long-term use. No one has ever had the need to go longer than seventeen months before downloading the information from his or her Implant. Theoretically, though, maybe it has enough memory space for... six, maybe seven years' worth of storage."
"And after that?"
"If the memory becomes full, the Implant won't record anything further."
"Voyager left the Alpha Quadrant slightly over five years ago now."
"So if it is still recording, there isn't much space left."
"What if it isn't? Would the information it has recorded before it was damaged still be stored?"
"Provided the damage did not erase the memory, yes. But since it won't download as it is, you would have to remove the memory core from the Implant, repair it, and download it that way. In order to do that, you'd have to remove it from his brain."
"Your point?"
"You'd have to kill him to get the Implant out."
"Then he had better tell me what we need to know before that becomes necessary." Alpha Two started for the door only to turn back. "What about the self-destruct function?"
"If you are asking 'Can he trigger it himself now that it's damaged?' I don't know. If you're asking 'Can you order it to destroy itself?' I don't know that either."
"Then find out. I want to know if it can be used if it becomes necessary."
"Aye, sir."
-------
To say some of the more militant Maquis were less than thrilled to hear about a Cardassian about to be in their midst was like saying everyone on board was thrilled with the imminent presence of a Romulan. It took Chakotay and Janeway at their most logical and persuasive, plus a heavy dose of reminding everyone that they were going to get home before a grudging acceptance was made for the presence of the enemy. They were not welcoming -- Dumar and Pardan would not be invited to anyone's quarters for tea -- yet the crew were going to tolerate the pair while they kept their eyes open for signs they were up to something. Showing their loyalty to the Captain and First Officer, no one flatly refused their requests they work with them.
So, it was onto a justifiably tense Bridge that Raven and his six companions materialized. The Assessment Team also looked wary, not of the Bridge crew, but of the team of Tuvok's best who had them surrounded. Raven stepped forward, handing the kit bag from over his shoulder to the nearest Security officer. "I assume you will wish to inspect our equipment."
The officer took the bad and inspected the contents then handed it back. "Just padds and tricorders, Captain."
One by one, members of the Assessment Team submitted to the same search. In the meantime, Raven began explaining the purpose of the Team. "My colleagues here are to ready to begin assessing damage to Voyager and begin repairs whenever you are satisfied as to our good intentions, Captain."
B'Elanna already was a tad emotional. There was Tom's abrupt disappearance and his failure to send a message reassuring her, not only Janeway, of his safety. Then there was the long list of repairs ahead of her and her staff -- repairs they had performed only two days earlier and now had to be repeated thanks to the Gherop. Now she had a Cardassian and a Romulan standing only a two meters away and this stranger was suggesting someone other than her staff was going to touch her ship. Quite understandably, she became a touch bit ticked off. "You'll begin repairs?!" she demanded, storming towards them from the Engineering station. "We -"
A large male Klingon disengaged from the rest of the group and barred her from approaching the others. When she attempted to push past him, he asked her in Klingon to "calm down." She opened her mouth to tell him to get lost, only to be interrupted by his leader.
"Stand down, Lieutenant," Raven barked.
B'Elanna's head snapped around to growl at him, only to realize he was not speaking to her, but the male who was in her face.
Immediately, the warrior stepped back and stood at attention. Raven continued to stare at him for a moment then approached B'Elanna.
"I apologize, Lieutenant," he said, laying a hand on her shoulder. "I phrased that incorrectly. I meant to convey we were more than willing to assist with the repairs that have to be made. In fact, it would be easier for all of us if we did pitch in. It'll give everyone an opportunity to learn everyone else's working styles before the truly difficult work begins. Apology accepted?"
Only slightly mollified, B'Elanna nodded once.
"Thank you."
Uncomfortably with the near fight, Kathryn decided to change the subject. "Your story and the clearance codes in the message check out," she began, staring at their uniforms, "but I've never seen your uniforms before. Have the uniforms for Special Ops changed that much while we've been gone?"
"All of Starfleet's uniforms have changed, Captain. However, we can discuss that later when we have more time. Right now, the people who were attacking you when we arrived...?"
"The Gherop," she supplied for him.
"The Gherop. We detected a message being sent from the last of the Gherop ships, probably back to their base, just before the ship was destroyed."
Janeway nodded. Harry, once he had reassumed control of Ops from the Helm after Tom had disappeared, had detected it too. "Voyager picked it up too," she confirmed.
"While we haven't been able to decipher it yet, it is logical to assume there'll be reinforcements on the way. By our preliminary evaluation, Voyager won't survive another attack."
"Tom took a lot out of her trying to avoid the attack," B'Elanna begrudged.
"We thought as much. Our main weapon will need a couple more hours to recharge so hopefully their base is a ways away."
Chakotay's eyes narrowed. "Main weapon? Whatever destroyed the Gherop ships?"
"Yes, Commander Chakotay. It is classified or I would explain how it works. Let's just leave it at the fact that it does work, but it will be a while before it can work again." Navy eyes turned to grey. "You don't have any idea where their base is, Captain?"
She shook her head. "So far we've only encountered a few of their raiding parties. Far as we can tell, they have a base somewhere and they leave it to systematically loot neighboring systems whenever the fancy strikes them. We must be getting close though. From all the warp trails, it would seem this is their main route for traveling. Their base has to be around here somewhere."
"And you came this way knowing that?""We didn't know it until it was too late and we were here."
"Then we'd better get Voyager repaired and get out of here A.S.A.P. Even if we only finish the repairs here, we can find a quiet, out of the way place somewhere to do the alterations in peace." He gestured to the Romulan male nearby. "This is our First officer, Pardan. He will be coordinating the Assessment."
The Romulan nodded to Captain Janeway then addressed Chakotay. "You are my counterpart, Commander Chakotay. We will adjourn to your office to discuss matters." He did not wait for an agreement; he merely headed for the turbolift. The stunned Commander and the two Security officers assigned to watching Pardan had to hurry after him at their Captain's nod.
"And this is T'Kara, our Chief Pilot."
The elegantly beautiful Vulcan inclined her head to the Captain.
"Since Mr. Paris is on The Diogenes she will be working with his second?"
"Ensign Pablo Baytart," the man who had reassumed the Conn introduced himself.
He and T'Kara exchanged nods and began conferring on the damage to the Helm under the watchful gaze of her Security people.
"Bartoq is our Tactical Expert," Raven continued.
The Klingon who had had the run in with B'Elanna met Janeway's eyes. She tried not to cringe at the hardness she saw in them, though she was grateful when he broke the contact so he could head for Tuvok's station.
She turned back in time to see Raven gesturing to a breathtakingly beautiful Orion female. "Yana's our Medical officer."
Suddenly the little Orion female Tom had created as a playmate for Naomi did not seem to be such a fabrication. Clearly she was based on the scholarly woman before her.
"Captain Janeway," she said in well-measured tones, "if I may have an escort to your Sickbay? I would like to begin conferring with your EMH."
Two of the Security people stepped forwards as Janeway nodded. She had sensed it might not be the best of ideas to assign two heterosexual males, no matter how professional and serious about their task those males might be, to guard a female Orion of dubious intentions. As a hopefully unnecessary precaution to prevent the Orion from doing what Orion females allegedly did best -- use their sexuality to their advantage -- she had given Tuvok an unusual order. She had told him to pick from his best people either two heterosexual females or two homosexual males or -- as ended up being the case -- a combination there of. The last thing Janeway wanted was to find out these people actually were trying to trick them and Yana had seduced her lovesick guard or guards into being less than vigilant.
"This way please, Yana," the female half of the pair offered.
Following her female escort with the male bringing up the rear, Yana mounted the stairs to the turbolift.
"Dumar is Ops," Raven continued.
The Cardassian male who responded caused a few stiffened postures from the Maquis on the Bridge. If he noticed he ignored it as he mounted the stairs to Harry's position. "First, Ensign Kim, we will need to check the internal and external sensors for damage. Tom's actions should have protected them when we used or weapon, but we will have to see."
Harry frowned. "How'd you know my name?"
"We know all about your ship and crew," Raven reminded. "Souris here is our Counselor, Captain. She is the one who will be meeting with your crew, each individually, assessing their states of mind, and preparing them for their return home."
A petite human female with waist-length brown hair and huge green eyes nodded to the Captain then over Kathryn's shoulder, she locked eyes with Harry. Both she and the young ensign visibly stopped breathing until she looked away. Blinking, she refocused her attention on the woman in charge.
"I've assigned you quarters you may use as an office while you're here," Janeway informed her. "Your escorts will show them to you."
Smiling her thanks, Souris looked up at her guards expectantly. While the two men were not the largest members on Tuvok's staff, they dwarfed their little charge. As one of them led the way, the other met the suppressed smirk of one of his colleagues with a slight shrug and trailed along behind the other two in his party.
"And I'll be taking care of Engineering," Raven announced, removing one glove and sticking his bare hand out for B'Elanna to shake, which she begrudgingly did.
He held her hand and eyes for a moment longer than strictly necessary. Where ordinarily she would have tugged her hand away, she did not even seem to notice his over-familiarity. In fact, the only reason she took her hand back and shifted her eyes from his was because her Captain spoke and interrupted the moment.
"B'Elanna, before they start any alterations, I'm going to want you and Seven to check them over to make sure the Borg modifications we've made won't interfere with them."
"Yes, Captain," the Chief Engineer answered in a distracted voice.
"We'd better get started on the repairs then," Raven suggested. "Sooner we're done, the sooner we're home. Excuse us, Captain?"
"Of course."
"We were wondering at the changes we had seen to the ship," Raven remarked, a newly regloved hand cupping his counterpart's elbow to guide her up the stairs to the turbolift with their guards. "They're Borg, hmm?"
"Along with some other Engineering tricks we've picked up along the way," B'Elanna clarified, "yes."
"I can't wait to hear about them. All the new technologies your people must have encountered. It must have been fascinating."
As the turbolift doors closed, Kathryn sighed softly to herself. 'Home,' she thought. 'Finally we're going to get home. I hope.'
-------
Tom came to in a familiar room, in a familiar position. A Re-Education Room with him strapped in the chair. His Starfleet uniform was gone and he was wearing only the black briefs he favored.
'Relax,' he ordered himself, testing his restrains. 'You'll get out of this. Remember the plan. Tuvok will help you.'
"And here we are again."
Stilling, he barely suppressed an involuntary shiver as he recognized the voice.
Alpha Two.
Not betraying the fear he felt in the presence of the Vulcan, he turned his head to meet the black as deep space eyes.
"You have led us on quite the chase," Alpha Two remarked, hands folded primly behind his white uniformed body. "Across a galaxy." He leaned close to Tom's face. "Yet we still caught you."
Tom continued to show no emotion. He knew he had to control even the slightest of responses or his adversary would gain the upper hand. This one could take things others overlooked and use them to glean what his opponent was trying to hide. Even something as subtle as an eye movement could be used by such an astute observer as this one to learn what was not being said. And Tom had too much to protect to give anything away.
"It was obvious from your hiding Voyager behind that moon that you recognized this ship, or at least her design. How much else do you remember I wonder? Everything clearly, or bits and pieces that are all jumbled up in your mind?"
There was no answer.
"You may be stubborn all you want, but eventually you are going to tell me everything. If not now, then when we get back to the Alpha Quadrant. I would suggest now. The longer you remain silent, the more insistent I will have to become. You do remember what it is like when I become insistent, don't you?"
Tom did yet he continued staring unemotionally ahead. He was the best there was at keeping his emotions under wraps, as anyone from Voyager could attest.
"Vassanji says your Implant is badly damaged. We cannot download the information from it so unless you give me the answers I require, we will have to remove it and take the information that way. Either way, we will have what we need." He paused. "Of course there's always a mindmeld."
The young human maintained his silence. He knew what he had dreaded all along probably was true. The chances of his ever seeing the Alpha Quadrant were slim. Well, if he was going to die, he was going to do his best to make their lives as difficult as possible before then. Starting now.
-------
"Doctor?" Yana's female escort called from the main room of Sickbay.
In response to her call, they heard grumbling coming from the lab.
"So predictable. I'm right in the middle of an experiment and someone decides they have to break something or leak bodily fluids all over the place." Head down, examining a padd as he walked through to them, he did not immediately see the new face on board. "So, what have you managed to do to yourself, hmm?"
When he finally looked up, he nearly dropped the medical tricorder he was picking up. He had seen Yana's file, at least the credentials part of it, therefore had seen her picture yet seeing the beautiful Orion in the flesh had an incredible impact on him.
"I am Yana, Doctor," she smiled, holding out her hand. "It is a pleasure to meet you."
Stunned, he shook the offered hand. "Um, yes, a pleasure."
Yana's smile changed from friendly to knowing. "Doctor," she began, moving a step closer to the man whose hand she still held, "I see the reputation of my sex has proceeded me."
He tried to deny it but she waved off the denial. "It's all right, Doctor. My fellow students and later my colleagues all had the same reservations that you do. They came around once they worked with me for a while and saw I was more than qualified to hold up my end of things."
Knowing he had offended her, he tried to apologize only to have that waved off as well.
"No need to apologize, Doctor. And no time," she said, dropping his hand. "By the time this ship is repaired and refitted for the trip home, every crewmember has to have had a full physical."
"How long do we have?"
"That all depends on how long the repairs take and whether or not these Gherop stay out of our way."
"Then we had better get started. I'll call -" He groaned. "How typical. When I could use Mr. Paris, he's nowhere in sight." The EMH gave a long-suffering sigh then motioned Yana into his office. "I'll call Ensign Wildman to give us a hand."
-------
"You have quite a well run Engineering Section, Lieutenant," Raven approved.
B'Elanna smiled back at him. "Voyager's engineers are the best."
"And very innovative too."
"We've had to be."
He laid a bare hand on hers. "I can imagine. It must have been very difficult for you, trying to keep all this together without help from any Starbase."
"Yes, but we've managed," she answered in a soft voice.
His own voice lowered an octave. "Quite well too. Integrating the Borg technology into the ship's design was brilliant. When you get home, I'm certain Starfleet Command will be itching to get you onto their Engineering Staff."
"Well, I don't know -"
"Chief," Carey called from across the room.
With a show of reluctance, Raven removed his hand and stepped back a pace.
B'Elanna stared at him for another instant then hurried over to her second in command, Raven following along behind, regloving his hand.
-------
"Are you certain this is not an intrusion?"
Neelix, gazing adoringly at Souris across the Mess Hall table from him, shook his head. "No, my assistants can handle the dinner preparations. Take as long as you need."
So she did. Almost forty minutes later, he still was talking about himself and his species when the first of the dinnertime crowd began trickling in. None of them noticed the outgoing nature of their cook/morale officer had doubled as he tried to impress his companion. They all were too wrapped up in hurrying to scoop up the meal that was free of leola root and strong spices due to Neelix's preoccupation with the lovely Souris.
"Neelix, on a side note," she said hesitatingly, setting aside her padd, "may I ask you something about Tom?"
"Tom? You know him?"
"Yes. Is he...? How has he been here, on Voyager? Has he been happy?"
"Yes, I think for the most part he has."
"For the most part?"
"Well, everyone's gone through some rough parts. That's only natural."
"And Tom has too? Were they bad?"
"I... I think you should talk to Tom about this."
She smiled and nodded. "I plan to, but you know Tom. He internalizes things. I'm so worried he's still doing that, despite everything I've tried to do in the past to help him."
"You know him well?"
"Yes, for years." She laid a hand on his arm. "Anything you can tell me, Neelix, about anything he's going through here, would be a great help in my counseling sessions with him."
"He's agreed to let you counsel him?"
"We don't call it that, no, but yes, in the very near future he will be discussing his experiences here on Voyager. So anything you can tell me would be appreciated. Especially anything about this incident with Commander Chakotay's akoonah. That seems to be bothering him in particular. He mentioned it when he and I were talking about the crew then clammed up about it. I'm certain there was something disturbing that happened to him, yet he is not saying."
"I knew it," he muttered to himself. Neelix had harbored the impression more had happened than Tom had let on and now found himself vindicated in thinking so. "I don't know much," he said, leaning forwards conspiratorially. "No one does actually. Tom's said nothing about what happened other than he remembers nothing of what happened when he was unconscious, that it didn't matter anyway. I knew it really did. And since he's mentioned it to you...."
"How has he acted since then?"
Since she had told him she was counseling Tom, Neelix saw no problem with explaining Tom's later withdrawal from the others and the parole test fiasco. She listened and nodded and was about to ask him another question when Harry appeared at her side.
Neelix's heart plummeted to his boots when he witnessed the shy smile she offered the equally shyly grinning ensign. He knew that look. He should, he had seen it enough times in this room as this one or that one paired off with another.
"I thought maybe we could have our session over dinner," Harry awkwardly suggested.
"Raven to Souris," her combadge chirped. "Report to The Diogenes."
Rising, she collected her padd and eloquently shrugged then left.
Disappointed, Harry sighed.
Disappointed himself, though hiding it, Neelix hustled the young man off to the counter for his meal.
-------
Half dazed, Tom lay in his chair. Alpha Two had left for the moment though Tom knew he would be back eventually. His internal clock told him it was suppertime, yet he knew Alpha Two had not left to collect a tray from The Diogenes' mess for his prisoner.
'Supper,' Tom thought, 'was supposed to do something after supper tonight.'
His sluggish mind stumbled around his skull, finally coming up with the answer.
'Chakotay. I was supposed to see Chakotay. Why?'
Another trip around his mind.
'B'Elanna. I was going to ask him for permission to marry B'Elanna.'
Does not look like that is going to happen, Camet chimed in.
'Go away, Camet.'
But if you want to know how the conversation would have went, I am sure I can predict it for you.
'Shut up.'
Of course, if he were to find out what was going on here, I am sure it would be an even briefer conversation.
'They won't know what happened here. It is against AlphaOmegan rules to tell outsiders anything about us.'
They will have to come up with some explanation for your prolonged absence.
'I won't be here that long.'
Oh, you are going to escape, are you? Look at yourself. You cannot even stand. He has injected so much burayte into your system. And you are going to overpower him? A full grown, perfectly healthy Vulcan, and whoever else might be between you and the Transporter Room or the Shuttle Bays versus you, half doped out of your mind, have not eaten since yesterday, and mentally and physically exhausted? I do not think so. You are finished. If you surrender, maybe Alpha Two will be able to put you back to Sleep and let you go back to Voyager. Then you can make a fool of yourself and ask B'Elanna's "big brother" for her hand in marriage.
Tom was tempted, so tempted. All he wanted right now was to be away from here and in B'Elanna's arms. But he knew if he did surrender, the odds were against Alpha Two letting him return to his life on Voyager with the same intention to marry B'Elanna. A mate would tie him down, make it more difficult for The Protectors to call him into service when they needed him. His mind played out a scenario his heart did not wish to accept.
"Tom!"
At Chakotay's call, Tom slowed his step. The older man jogged down the corridor then fell in step with him.
"You're back from The Diogenes."
"Just beamed over."
"We were beginning to wonder if you'd died over there."
Tom chuckled. "Obviously not, Commander."
"Obviously. Look, you told me this morning that you wanted to talk to me about something?"
The pilot frowned, confused.
"You called me before shift and said you wanted to talk about something after shift? I have sometime now if you-"
"I can't even remember what it was, Commander, so it couldn't have been important."
"Oh, well, it sounded rather important at the time."
"Well, I guess it isn't anymore. If you'll excuse me, I have to check on the Assessment Team's progress with the refit."
Yes, Camet agreed whole-heatedly, that is how it would go.
'And I'm not going to let that happen,' Tom vowed, sitting up a little straighter in his chair. 'My plan will work.'
That so-called plan of yours will never work.
The door to the Room reopened and seconds later Tom's head roughly was shoved to one side as yet another dose of burayte was shot into his neck. Despite so many parts of his body crying out for him to scream, he did not made a sound. That show of strength angered Alpha Two.
"Let us start again," the Vulcan said dispassionately. "Six years ago, you took some classified information and escaped with it. Later, you were captured then you, the soldiers who had captured you, and Sunfire vanished for two days before showing up at Base 16. When you did, the others had no recollection of where all of you had been for that time. I want to know where you went, what you did, and who you told what you know."
The man in the chair said nothing.
"Do not think I am above using any of them to get you to talk. I brought along all of the soldiers who captured you. You have neatly erased their memories of what you did, but I know how attached to them you are. Surely one of them can get you to talk." He leaned towards Tom's ear. "Sunfire is here too."
It was all Tom could do not to flinch.
"If you do not want to talk to me, perhaps I can get what I want from her. Her memory may have been purged too, but given her special nature, I think she may still know the truth. With the proper persuasion, say being confronted with the possibility of your death if she does not speak, I think she will see reason."
'Don't bet on it,' Tom thought to himself as Alpha Two yanked him up out of his chair.
-------
Sunfire heard Alpha Two's prediction and hardened her resolve to say nothing. Alpha Two was correct, she did know more than their lengthy investigations and interrogations had revealed, yet she was not going to betray Tom.
While the Vulcan was not underestimating her love for the man who was his prisoner, he was underestimating her loyalty to Tom. He had told her precisely why she never was to reveal what she knew then had asked her to keep his secret until the appropriate time and she had given him her word that she would. At the time she had made the promise, she had only a vague idea of exactly how difficult it would be to resist The Protectors. Now she knew and hoped he was strong enough to withstand them too.
-------
"Yes, Commander, I know I've worked through dinner," Kathryn said without looking up from the piles of padds littering her Ready Room's desk. "It's just so hard condensing over five years into one concise report." Sighing, she slumped back into her chair, eyes closed. "I wish they'd not insisted I give them a report the instant we get home."
"Captain."
Her eyes popped open at the sound of her Chief Medical Officer's voice. "Oh, Doctor, sorry. It thought you were-"
"Captain, I need to speak with you."
She sat up straighter. "What's happened?"
"We are getting home."
"Yes."
"Well, what about my family?"
"What about them?"
Rolling his eyes in frustration, he hurried towards the desk. "We still don't have a solid defense for our case."
"Doctor-"
"I know things have been busy here, but -"
"Doctor, I promised you I'd talk to my friend in the JAG office and get her on your case. And everyone here will testify on your behalf if it becomes necessary. We will all do everything we can to help you. Right now, I'm writing my report for Command. I'll make sure that in it you and everything you've done will receive every bit of credit they deserve. If they don't appreciate your value after reading it, we'll continue the fight, I promise you. Okay?"
Only slightly soothed, he nodded.
"How are the physicals going?"
"Slowly. Command has demanded we be very thorough so we don't bring anything back to contaminate the Alpha Quadrant. What that might be, I don't know. The biofilters screen nearly everything out and our tricorder sweeps of each individual would pick up anything missed."
"I can understand their concern. We've run into some strange things in this quadrant. We managed to survive-" She lowered her eyes as she thought of all the crewmembers she had lost to the various malevolent forces in this quadrant. "Most of us. We'd hate to take some virus or something back with us only to have it kill others back home." She gestured to the room. "Even Voyager is getting a check up."
"Yes, on my way up here, I ran into one of the roving bands of technicians they sent over here. They even gave me and my emitter a once over."
"I'm not surprised. They certainly are leaving no stone unturned."
Tiredly, she rubbed the back of her neck and he shifted around behind her to massage it.
"Captain?"
"Hmm?"
"Is there any word on when Mr. Paris will be coming back? I could use him with these physicals."
"I don't know. I haven't talked to him since earlier today and all Pardan or Raven will say is he's talking with their commanding officer and he'll be back when he's back."
"You are tensing up again. That vagueness worries you."
"It doesn't you?"
"Well, yes."
She shifted away and looked up at him through narrowed eyes. "You miss him when he's not in Sickbay, despite your complaints about him and his attitude."
The EMH assumed feigned indifference. "He is an extra pair of hands."
Kathryn nodded, trying to restrain her smile. "I'm sure he'll be back soon, Doctor."
-------
"Progress report," Alpha Two commanded.
Handing a padd across the desk of The Diogenes' current ranking officer, Raven shook his head. "Not much yet, sir. What we do have is in there."
The male seated behind the desk quickly scanned the contents of the report. "There is very little here that we did not already know from their logs."
"No, sir."
He set the padd aside and regarded the human at attention before him. "I expected more from you, Raven."
"And you will receive more. I have established contact with Lieutenant Torres. It won't be long before she is ready to tell me anything I want. The others are beginning to respond as well."
"Good."
"Have you had any luck with him?"
"Not yet, but it is early. The last time we tried to break him it took days."
"Perhaps I could-"
"He is my concern. Voyager and the team we sent over are yours. How has the Team responded to the fact we have him in custody?"
"They seem to be taking it in stride. They have their orders and are following them as they should."
"If it became necessary, would they kill him?"
"He is in custody. Why would it be necessary?"
"Merely a question."
"If it became necessary, they would, of course. It is their duty."
"Will they really follow your orders on this?" He appraised the human across the desk from him. "They have not bonded with you as they did with -"
Raven's jaw clenched. "They are my team now. They will follow my orders. If I tell them to kill him, they will."
"Ah, but will they?"
"They are AlphaOmegans. I have seen no indication of any discontent. They are loyal to me now."
Not commenting, the Vulcan merely watched him.
-------
'Keep calm. Think of something else.'
For hours, Tom repeated his mantra over and over to himself as he lay on his back in the Box. Once Alpha Two had tossed his limp form inside the barely large enough space and thrown the lid closed, there had been nothing but darkness and silence. Being in there terrified him. He hated being confined, not being able to use the senses so many years of training had heightened for him. The only sense left for him, was the sense of touch. He could feel the sides of the Box pressed against him everywhere. With all the funerals Tom had attended over the years, he never had wondered, as others around him sometimes morbidly would, what it would feel like to be in the deceased's shoes. He knew first hand what it was like to be in a coffin. Except with him in this coffin, he knew that eventually he would be released.
'Only to move to the next part of the torture,' he reminded himself.
'Think of something else.'
But the only thing he could think of was the time Voyager traveled through the nebula and all but Seven and the Doctor were forced to take to stasis chambers to survive the trip. Tom's friends had kept to themselves their curiosity as to the reason for Tom's fear of the stasis chamber and his subsequent escapes from it. All except Harry, who still ribbed him about his claustrophobia from time to time, and never would know the time spent in this Box was the source of his very rational fear.
'Harry,' Tom mentally sighed sadly.
The grinning face of his "little brother" came to Tom's mind and his once saying he wished he were like Tom.
'Still want to be like me, Harry?' he mentally asked the illusion of Harry.
The Harry in his mind could not meet Tom's eyes.
'I thought not.'
Abruptly the lid of the box was wrenched open and he was dragged out for the second part of this torture to begin.
------
No one questioned Zji leaving the former Rachar Royal Palace with a market basket over her arm early the next morning. E'Arte often ordered her to go out before he awoke in order to fetch for his breakfast certain essential delicacies the farmers brought to the market. He could as easily have demanded them brought to his residence by the farmers themselves yet he did not. He took pleasure in the idea of Zji having to get out of bed to obey his commands only a couple short hours after he had permitted her to go there. He felt depriving her of sleep was a reminder to her of his power over her. Not that she ever seemed to require such reminders. Zji appeared resigned to her fate.
But appearances were deceiving. As she entered the market place, a young boy bumped into her, seemingly by accident. When they parted, he had secreted in his ragged clothes the datacrystal she had passed him. Both moved on as though nothing had happened.
-------
"But that'll throw the rest out of alignment," Harry argued.
Beside him at Ops, Dumar stubbornly glared at his counterpart. "You're still not seeing it, Ensign Kim. Watch again."
"I don't need to watch it again. I've seen the simulation nine times now. I could see it ninety times more and it still would not work. Like I said, the Borg modifications eliminated the need for that processor and reinstalling it would mean stripping all of the modifications in that section. We're talking days worth of work. Unnecessary work, if you'd just agree to modify your component. Engineering probably can-"
"It cannot be-" He broke off at the small hand Souris, appearing out of nowhere, placed on his forearm.
Both men had been so engrossed in their argument they had not heard her approach. For Harry that was disconcerting enough -- like anyone he did not like people sneaking up on him -- but after being so aware of her yesterday, not having immediately sensed her entrance surprised him. Now his hormones were making up for that oversight and all thoughts other than her vanished.
A gentle smile and a look from her was all it took for the Cardassian to calm down.
"We will investigate your option, Ensign Kim," Dumar gruffly agreed.
Souris nodded and moved down the Bridge to where Pardan and Chakotay tersely were discussing the timetable Pardan had created for the repairs and why they were behind already. Interrupting the pair, she spoke so softly to Voyager's First Officer that Harry could not hear her, but Chakotay checked the chronometer then nodded and she left the Bridge.
-------
The doors to The Diogenes' main shuttle bay opened and Alpha Two strode inside. He stopped half way between the doors and Sunfire and stared at her.
"I have Tom Paris," he told her. "He is in a Re-Education Room. Sooner or later, he will break."
"Then why are you here talking to me, instead of there with him?"
"Because I thought perhaps you might wish to save him further damage."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning, you tell me what I want to know or I move on to step two."
"Which is?"
"A not-so-nice surprise from Alpha Three."
He let that statement sink in. Long ago, Sunfire had had a few run-ins with the Klingon female who was known as Alpha Three so she knew any "surprise" from her could not mean anything pleasant.
"I'll give you until 1900 to decide whether you help him or I give him the surprise."
Turning on his heel, he exited.
If she could have, she would have thrown something at him. Preferably an asteroid.
-------
Harry's face lit up when he saw who was in the turbolift. Souris offered him a shy smile of her own.
"Please state destination," the computer requested.
"Oh," he blinked, "um, Deck Eleven." He frantically cast his mind around for a topic of conversation. "I have to thank you for calming Dumar down this morning. He's quite... forceful, isn't he?"
She nodded. Given the near thirty centimeter height difference between the two of them, her trying to meet his eyes would have put quite a crick in her neck. Not that she even seemed to try to look at him. Her eyes remained focused on the floor of the lift.
"I haven't met any other Cardassians. Well, that's not true. We had one on board masquerading as a Bajoran until she revealed herself. But are they all like Dumar? So... stubborn?"
Smiling, she shrugged.
'Well, this isn't getting you far,' Harry thought. "So, um, your ship's called The Diogenes? I think I've heard that name before. It's Terran, isn't it?"
Another nod.
"What's it signify?"
"Diogenes was a man who was said to have been on a quest for 'an honest man,'" she explained in a voice that did rather pleasant things to him.
"And-" He cleared his throat. "And did he find one?"
She shrugged. "Whether the story is true or not is open to debate, but those who named the ship find the name and what it symbolizes to be appropriate."
Unfortunately the doors opened at the Engineering Deck at that very moment and he had to go or find an excuse to stay. As much as he wanted to, he had things in Engineering that had to be done right away. As it was, he hesitated in the doorway to the lift.
"Would you have dinner with me?" he blurted out. They were not the words he actually wanted to say, but the little part of him that was not under the influence of his hormones thought asking her then and there to marry him seemed a trifle premature.
Big green eyes stared at him for a long moment then she nodded once.
"1800? I'm afraid it'll have to be in the Mess Hall because Tom fleeced me out of the last of my replicator rations two days ago at pool, but maybe tonight's meal will be edible."
Her assenting caused him to grin happily.
"Great. I'll, I'll see you then." He stepped out of the doorway and into the corridor, nearly flattening a crewman who was walking there.
As the doors closed, Souris found her smile fading.
-------
"Hi, B'Elanna. Raven."
The Chief Engineer broke eye contact with Raven at Harry's chipper greeting. "You're in a good mood," she observed, walking over to the station where he had planted himself. "Any particular reason?"
"Oh," he grinned, "let's see." He began ticking off points on his fingers. "Within a few days, Voyager finally will be home. I'll finally get to see my folks again. Eat real, non-replicated, leola root-free, Alpha Quadrant food. And I have a dinner date with the most beautiful woman on the ship."
B'Elanna was amazed. "Seven finally agreed to have dinner with you? I'm stunned."
"Seven? No, not Seven. Souris."
"Souris?" She held out her hand, palm down, at a height of about a meter off of the deck. "Souris? The one with the big green eyes and long hair?"
He gently raised her hand up so it was about 160 centimeters off of the deck. "That's the one."
Laughing, B'Elanna shook her head. "No offence, Harry, but talk about going from one extreme to the other."
"What do you mean?"
"Seven and Souris. They're polar opposites."
"So? I told you a long time ago, there's nothing between Seven and I. Were just friends."
-------
"How does it taste? Is it as bad as everyone complains Mr. Neelix's cooking is?"
The Doctor's lips scowled at his dinner companion's inattention. About to ask what had her so distracted, he followed the path of her eyes across the Mess Hall to a table on the other side of the room. Then he saw for himself the reason for her distraction. At a table sat Ensign Kim and Souris, the Ensign talking in very animated fashion to a softly smiling Souris.
"How does that make you feel, Seven?"
Big blue eyes snapped to him. "I... I find seeing them together... uncomfortable. I feel... Angry at their being together."
"I thought that would be the case."
"What do you mean?"
"Seeing Mr. Kim so obviously in the early stages of an involvement with someone else after he had been so interested in becoming involved with you. It is only natural you would feel a bit put out."
"Mr. Kim and I never were involved, Doctor."
"But he had expressed an interest."
"He did exhibit some indications of that, yes." She quirked an eyebrow. "Are you suggesting I am jealous?"
"Possibly."
She was silent as she stared at him for a moment then rose and swept out of the room. Hurriedly, he followed after her.
-------
"She is upset."
Harry's gaze reluctantly left Souris to see Seven and the Doctor quickly leaving Neelix's domain.
"Upset?"
"She was watching us and frowning."
Harry frowned himself and looked at his plate. "That's Seven of Nine. I... I had it in my head a while ago that there might be a future for her and I together."
"And there was not?"
"No. I finally realized everyone was right. Seven needs time to discover herself before she becomes involved with anyone. She's still very much a child in some ways. It wasn't right for me to be pursuing a relationship with her, not when she had no real idea of what that was or what it would entail."
"Yet you feel guilty about her seeing you here with me."
He shrugged.
Souris laid a hand over his on the table and he looked up at her. "If you wish to be with her, go."
Harry stared at her for a long moment then reached out with his free hand and tucked a wisp of hair behind one of her ears. "I am right where I want to be."
She shyly smiled and ducked her head.
-------
"Have you decided?" Alpha Two asked as he entered the shuttle bay.
"Yes."
"And?"
"And the answer's still 'I have nothing to tell you.'"
"And I do not believe you. Perhaps the surprise will convince him to talk." He began walking towards the door. "If not, there always is the option of the mindmeld again."
"Which you won't do."
He paused in the doorway and looked inquiringly at her. "Because you have changed your mind?"
"Because you won't risk it. You didn't succeed the last time and you hate failure, don't you?"
Alpha Two left without a word.
'And what Awoke him scrambled his brains enough that even you are too scared to enter his mind if you don't have to, you sadist,' she finished to herself.
-------
Tom's head rose as he heard the Re-Education Room door opened to admit Alpha Two.
"Good. You are awake."
'How could I be otherwise?' Tom asked himself. The night had been anything but conducive to sleep. Alpha Two was pulling out all the stops for him just as Tom would have expected. Once he had been removed from the Box and returned to the Re-Education Room, it had begun. If it were not the lights unexpectedly brightening or dimming or going out entirely, it was noise bombarding him then deafening silence. Of course Tom knew all these tricks, had used them in interrogations himself and been on the receiving end of them too. And he knew what would come when Alpha Two discovered Tom had yet to break -- the pain.
"Are you ready to tell me what you did with the information you took from us."
He remained silently staring ahead.
"I will not stop until I have it," he reminded, pressing a hypospray of buyrate to Tom's neck. "You know that. And the longer you wait, the more painful it will become for you."
Setting aside the hypo, the Vulcan went over to the computer panel in the wall and entered a command. A hologram of Alpha Three appeared. "She could not make the trip herself, too much to do back home, but she sent this along. Alpha Three was rather upset she was unable to break you last time. I think she has hopes that at least this facsimile of her will redeem her. Personally, I doubt it will."
He grabbed Tom's chin in his hand. "You remember the last time. When I had to step in and drag you back to us myself. If I had not, Alpha Three probably would have killed you trying to subdue you. And right now you probably wish she had. If not, you will by the time her hologram and I have finished with you." Leaning closer, he stared into Tom's eyes. "Do you remember how I brought you back to us?" he whispered. "How I forced my mind into yours?"
'I remember how much you enjoyed it,' Tom wanted to say. 'How you seemed to get off on mentally raping me. How I finally realized what a sadistic bastard you really are.'
Of course he did not say these things since he knew getting him talking was Alpha Two's goal. Both of them knew, once Tom gave in to his opponent's gibes the door would be open for him to say more. If he caved to pressure once, it was only a matter of time before he did it again.
"You are the only one I ever have melded with who was still able to hide things from me even when we were so connected," Alpha Two continued. "This time, though, there's no urgent need for you to appear elsewhere so we have plenty of time for me to discover all of your secrets. By the time I am done you will tell me where you went during those six weeks we could not find you, what you did with the information you copied from our databanks, and who you told about it."
He stepped back. "But I doubt that will be any time soon, will it? No matter. We will permit Alpha Three's hologram to have some fun in the meantime."
As he moved to the far side of the room, the hologram approached Tom with an evil grin.
-------
Fresh from her shower, B'Elanna sat on the side of her bed in her bathrobe, staring at an image of her and Tom at one of Neelix's luaus. Unbeknownst to the couple, Harry had taken the image then presented it a copy to each of them the next time the pair had had a fight. Exactly as Harry had hoped, Tom and B'Elanna each had taken a look at the moment he had captured forever -- the two of them in each other's arms, smiles on their lips, their love for each other shining in their eyes -- and hostilities between them had been halted.
Now she sat there, staring at the face of the man she loved, wondering why he had not contacted her. Usually not more than a few hours would go by without a message from him appearing on her terminal here or in her office or wherever she happened to be working at the time. Some sweet little line or two "to remind you I exist," he would write. Since he had been on The Diogenes there had been nothing. She still had trouble with the fact he had not sent any sort of word to her the he was okay after his abrupt disappearance. Were it she who had done the disappearing, she would have.
'Would you?' her conscience nagged her. 'Tom is so much like you sometimes. When work consumes him, he forgets everything else.'
'But he never forgets me,' she reminded stubbornly.
'But this is different. Tom is such a white knight. Here he has the opportunity to help Special Ops to capture a criminal they have been after for sometime. Naturally he's going to do everything he can to help them to the exclusion of all else. You know how focused he can be when he's involved with something like that.'
B'Elanna stroked her thumb over Tom's face. 'If there was some way he could help protect people, then he'd do it.'
'That is what you find so attractive about him so stop complaining that he's too absorbed in what he's doing with them. He'll be back as soon as he's done.'
"But I want him back now," she whispered sadly.
As if in response to her desire, the door made two chimes in quick succession, drawing her attention from her thoughts. Hope leapt within her. That was Tom's signal. He was back. Setting the silver-framed image behind her on the bed, she hurried to the centre of the living area, smoothing down her uncombed hair. She should have spent the time after her shower brushing her hair and putting on the negligée he had surprised her with only days earlier, instead of mooning over his picture like some lovesick school girl.
"Come," she invited, trying to restrain the urge to fly into Tom's the moment the door opened. 'Don't forgive him right away for forgetting you all day. Let him work for it a little,' she decided, clearing the grin from her face.
Only it was not Tom who entered her quarters.
B'Elanna tightened the sash on her robe. "Raven."
Displaying all the signs of discomfort, he stepped back a pace. "Oh, I'm sorry. I never thought... I should go."
"No, no it's okay." She nervously smoothed back a lock of hair. "Um, what can I do for you?"
"I wanted to discuss something with you, but you're not dressed to receive visitors. I'll-"
"It's fine. What did you want to discuss?"
"The modifications," he answered, stepping forward to pass her a padd. In doing so, his bare hand brushed hers.
Startled brown eyes leapt to navy ones. All thoughts of Tom or anything at all vanished from her head as she became lost in his eyes. Unconsciously, she swayed towards him. Seconds later the padd clattered to the floor as he pulled her to him, mouths crushing one another as she matched his desire. She moaned as his hands parted her robe to touch the naked flesh beneath.
Neither said any words as he pushed the robe from her shoulders then swept her up in his arms and carried her to her bed, mouth still fused to hers. As he lowered her to middle of the comforter, her hands searched for the hidden fastenings on his uniform, a growl of frustration coming from deep in her throat when she could not find them.
One hand stroking her face, he sat beside her on the bed and reached for the fastenings himself, eyes never leaving hers. She shifted slightly under his eyes then reached under her and withdrew what had been sticking into her back. B'Elanna would have tossed whatever it was away if his eyes had not darted to it and his hand had not lifted from her skin for only an instant. That moment was long enough for his spell over her to be broken and her head cleared. She scrambled off of the bed, image of her and Tom in hand, and scrambled for the throw lying across the foot of her bed.
"You should go," she said in a monotone, wrapping herself in the small blanket. As she hid herself, the image slipped from her hands and onto the comforter.
The eyes of the woman before him and those of Tom Paris seemed to mock Raven from the image. Angrily clenching his fists behind his back, Raven glared at the image of the man he so hated.
"Please go," she repeated, still refusing to look at him. "This isn't right."
"Of course," he assented and left the woman to wallow in self-recriminations.
In the corridor, he permitted the anger to seep back in. Tom Paris was not going to best him at this too, not after all the other indignities he had suffered at that man's hands.
He touched his combadge and called for beam back to The Diogenes.
-------
Sunfire had taken to watching what was happening on Voyager as well as on The Diogenes and she was not enjoying what she was seeing on either ship. It was plain the AlphaOmegans were attempting to gain the confidence of Tom's nearest and dearest and succeeding to an extent. The technicians on The Diogenes meanwhile were analyzing the Voyager crew's logs, personal and professional, every byte of data stored in the ship's memory core, all in an attempt to find a clue to anyone in whom Tom may have confided. Even Yana's search for someone who may have had their memory erased had yielded nothing so far.
The results of the latter were as expected. He was too smart to let slip some information and thereby endanger someone.
'But maybe he did,' the devil's advocate part of her pointed out. 'That's why they're watching Tuvok so closely. He may have given himself away when they were of one body.'
'No, not him,' she countered. 'He is too intelligent to have done something that stupid, even accidentally.'
-------
"So Tommy plays with you a lot, huh?"
Seated on the floor next to her new coloring partner, Naomi nodded and traded Souris crayons. "Some of the others play with me too, but I have a lot more fun with Tommy. We play here or in his quarters or the gym or something, but sometimes we play on the holodeck. I like that best."
"What kind of things do you play on the holodeck?"
"All kinds of fun games. And Tommy shows me different planets he's been to back home. And parts of the ship I'm not allowed to see because I'm too little. And for my birthday he made me some playmates and a teacher so I can go to school like the kids back home do." She got an excited expression on her face. "Do you want to meet them? They're really fun. Except Mor. He's Klingon. He's mean sometimes. Calls me a baby. But I'm not a baby."
"No, you're not."
"Right. Allegia says that's just the way Klingons are though."
"I think I very much would like to meet your new friends."
"Right now?"
"Naomi, we'll have to see if there's holodeck time available," her mother lounging in a nearby chair reminded.
"But everybody's fixing the ship. They won't be playing on the Holodecks."
"We'll see. Computer, is there any free holodeck time at the moment?"
"Holodeck One is free until 1315," the computer responded.
"Reserve time for Sam Wildman."
"Time reserved."
"Well, then young lady, if we are going out, you'd better clean up, hadn't you?"
As Naomi bustled about stowing away her crayons and other toys she and Souris had used, her mother smiled at their guest.
"I don't know quite what I was expecting when you asked to have a session with my daughter and I, but this was okay."
"You thought perhaps I would analyze your every word for hidden meanings?"
Sam laughed. "Maybe. But you were very good with my daughter. I never knew she was apprehensive about meeting her father for the first time or about having to leave Voyager to live somewhere else and possibly not see any of the crew ever again."
"This is why these sessions are important, to learn these things beforehand and reduce anxiety."
"I'm ready!" the little girl called as she rushed in from her bedroom.
As the two women stood, Naomi took her new friend's hand and led her out of her and her mother's quarters.
-------
B'Elanna Torres could not figure out what was going on with her. She loved Tom. That was the one thing in the Universe she had thought she knew for certain. Just a couple of short nights ago she had all but agreed to bear the man's children and spend the rest of her life with him. She had pictured that future with him and their offspring with a little fear and a lot of anticipation. So what had changed? Why was she suddenly thinking less and less about the man she considered her soulmate and more and more about Raven?
Shaking her head, she forced her concentration back to her work. This thing with Raven, whatever it was, was nothing. Mere interest in someone new who had entered Voyager's community.
Then why was she not as intrigued by the others who had come on board from The Diogenes? They were new faces too. Why was she not anticipating their arrival at the beginning of each shift? Why was she not finding their presence so comfortable that when it was absent it was missed? Why had she not nearly had sex with any of them?
"Busy, Lieutenant Torres?"
B'Elanna looked up from her desktop to see Raven in her office doorway. He frowned for a moment then smiled in a self-deprecating manner.
"Of course you're busy. Silly question. Will we start again?" He disappeared only to reappear a moment later, waggling the padd in his hand. "Hello, Lieutenant Torres. I've come to bother you with some terribly routine, I-can't-believe-they're-making-me-ask-these-stupid-questions questions. Knowing that, may I still come in?"
"Yes," she sighed, "we have to talk."
Smile fading, he nodded and entered. Coming to stand in front of the desk she stood behind, he shrugged. "About last night," he guessed.
Staring down at her desk, she nodded.
Raven cleared his throat. "I'm sorry," he apologized. "Last night... I know it was wrong, especially since people say you're with Tom, but that doesn't stop me from wanting you."
Her eyes widened as they shifted up to his.
"I know it shouldn't have happened and I should not feel this way since we barely know each other...."
"Let's forget it ever happened," she insisted. "It won't happen again."
"Won't it?" He reached out to touch her cheek. "It's happened twice now."
Unconsciously, she leaned into his touch.
"You're very beautiful, B'Elanna," he murmured.
Ordinarily, she would have denied such a comment or blushed and dropped her eyes. Now all she did was stare into his eyes as his thumb caressed her jaw seemingly of its own accord.
"You really are quite lovely," he whispered. "Quite lovely indeed."
Her lips had just melted into his when her combadge chirped. Reluctantly, he drew back and lowered his hand as he broke the eye contact. Like a hypnotist's subject being woken, B'Elanna blinked rapidly and shook her head to clear it. The chirp sounded once again before she answered it.
"Yes?" she answered somewhat breathlessly.
"B'Elanna?" Chakotay's voice called. "You okay?"
She snapped back to normal. "Yes, yes, of course. What can I do for you, Commander?"
"The Captain and I were wondering how things were going down there."
"Things?"
"You know, the repairs?"
"Oh, they're coming along."
There was a pause. "B'Elanna, when was the last time you took a break?"
"I..."
"Take one, Lieutenant. That's an order. Chakotay out."
Self-consciously, B'Elanna began shifting things around on her desktop.
Clearing his throat, Raven caught one of her hands and laid into its palm the padd he had brought with him. "Perhaps if you could complete this for me," he said, not relinquishing her hand, "I'll... I'll make myself scarce. In fact, I'll find one of our engineers to take my place here. It probably would be better that way."
"No!" He vehemence surprised both of them. "I mean, I-We need you here. Your expertise has been invaluable and you already know everything that's going on here. We'd be wasting time if we had to explain it all again to someone new. What just happened... It won't happen again."
"As you say," he said without certainty, dropping his hand and walking out.
Sitting heavily in her desk chair, B'Elanna reached up to touch her lips with trembling fingers.
Striding down the corridor outside of Engineering, Raven smiled to himself.
-------
Kneeling, Souris looked at the hologram named Allegia and some half-formed memory fluttered through her unconscious. Two little girls, both with her and Allegia's coloring, laughing and playing in a garden as she watched them through the kitchen window. 'Where was this coming from?' she asked herself. 'I have no children or nieces. No relations at all.'
"You look like me," Allegia marveled.
"You could be her mommy," Naomi giggled.
"Do you have children, Souris?" Sam asked in a friendly tone.
"Yes," the AlphaOmegan whispered, not realizing what she was saying. Allegia touching the wetness on Souris' cheek was the only way she knew she was crying.
"Souris?"
"Excuse me."
She scrambled to her feet and dashed out of the holodeck only to run straight into Harry Kim's chest. Automatically, his arms came up to catch her as she bounced off of him.
"Souris? What's wrong?"
Through watery eyes, she gazed up at him. "I don't know," she whispered.
"Come on."
Holding her close to his side, he helped her to his quarters, amazingly without meeting a soul. Once inside, he settled her in a chair and kneeled before her.
"Want to tell me what happened?" he asked again.
Shaking her head, she reached out to wrap her arms around his neck to pull him close. Rubbing circles on her back, he willingly held her close as she cried until there were no more tears.
"Let me stay," she softly begged the side of his collarbone.
It took a moment for Harry to understand what she meant, but when he did he nodded.
Lifting her head, she offered him her mouth and he took it.
-------
Gerron Tem stumbled into Megan Delaney's quarters in a daze.
"Tem? You okay?"
He blinked at her a few times. "I don't believe it," he whispered. "I just don't believe it."
She sat next to him on the couch. "Don't believe what? Tem, what's happened?"
"Torres and Raven...."
"What about them?"
"I was in Engineering. There was this report she'd been wanting and I said I'd drop it off."
"So?"
"So when I got there they said she was in her office. She wasn't alone. Raven was there."
"Hardly surprising. They're working closely together on the repairs."
"Oh, they were close all right. They had their lips plastered to one another, they were so close."
"What?!"
"I didn't believe the rumors when I heard them. Obviously they were true."
"What rumors?"
"About Raven flirting with her and her not smashing his face in for it. Engineering noticed it immediately. He's always finding some excuse to be there-"
"He is helping supervise the repairs. Of course he'd be there a lot."
"Always being somewhere near her. Always finding an excuse to touch her."
"Touch her?!"
"Apparently."
Megan angrily began pacing. "I can't believe this. Now she's cheating on Tom with Raven. Weeks ago it was Harry. What is she thinking? She's got this great guy who loves her completely and here she is throwing it all away again."
"I don't know if it is that, Megan," Tem interrupted her tirade. "I mean all they were doing was kissing."
"You said they had their lips 'plastered' to each other. First, she had them plastered to Harry. Now to Raven. What's wrong with her? Why can't see she what she's got in Tom?"
Gerron was jealous to hear his girlfriend going on and on about how wonderful her former boyfriend was and his words echoed his feeling. "You've never gotten over Paris, have you?"
"What?"
"Now that you've seen how he is finally matured a bit, you find him even more attractive. Every woman's fantasy. Sexy, handsome, heroic, faithful, loving-"
"Tem, you're being an idiot. I love you. You know that. Just like you know what happened between me and Tom wasn't really love. It was mutual comfort. Tom is my friend now. I don't want to see him hurt."
His jaw tightened and said nothing as he left.
Sighing, Megan dropped back onto the couch.
-------
"You wanted to see me?"
Alpha Two turned his computer around on the desk so Raven could see what he had been watching. After a quick glance at the codes appearing on the monitor, the human frowned at his superior.
"I don't understand? What is this?"
"This is what Tuvok is doing right now at his console in his office."
"Tuvok? How? This -"
"Exactly. Somehow he is alone. Bartoq was not to permit him to be alone unless Tuvok was going to bed or another of you was with him."
"Souris was supposed to be with him for their 'session.' I'll find out where she is immediately, sir."
"In the meantime, send Bartoq to him. I think it is time for the next act in this little drama to begin."
"None of them will believe it," Raven predicted, shaking his head. "They have bonded too closely with him."
"Then we will have to convince them they don't know him as well as they think they do."
-------
Tuvok's fingers flew over the touch pad of the terminal in his office. With each command it appeared more and more likely Lieutenant Paris had been correct and the AlphaOmegans had not found his secret, "Backdoor" program. He entered the third set of codes and was about to upload the file Tom had hidden away in one of Voyager's less trafficked systems when his office door opened and one of the people he finally had succeeded in evading after three days of trying entered. Tuvok nonchalantly switched off the display and turned to Bartoq.
The Klingon never said a word. He did not have to. The small phaser he slipped out of a pocket in his tunic and pointed at his counterpart said it all.
-------
'How could Tom have entrusted someone so inept as this Vulcan apparently was to help him?' Sunfire lamented to herself.
Then she stopped. In her experience, "inept" and "Vulcan" did not go together. And this guy Tuvok was a Security Chief and a Lieutenant Commander. How could he have achieved that position or rank if he were as inept as it seemed? Voyager would have been destroyed long ago.
She thought for a moment, thinking she certainly hoped Tom knew what he was doing.
-------
"Is it just me," Chakotay softly asked, leaning closer to Kathryn across the table from him, "or do they act different when Raven's not around?"
Following her First Officer's gesture of the head, she glanced towards the table a couple of meters away where Dumar, T'Kara, and Souris sat talking with B'Elanna, Harry, and Neelix. "What do you mean?"
"When Raven is around the Assessment Team acts differently. They're all stiff and proper. Yet look at them right now. Even T'Kara's loosened up a little, if that's possible for a Vulcan."
"He's their commanding officer. It'd only be natural that they would act more reserved when he is around. The majority of our own crew still treats me that way and we've been together five years now."
He shook his head. "No, it's not that. It's almost like... like they're afraid of him."
"Afraid of him?"
"Yes."
"I haven't noticed anything like that. Of course I haven't been around them all that much, unfortunately. It seems every time I turn around the Doctor's in my Ready Room, near frantic about his family's future. And a little while ago it was Seven worried about whether Tom was right when he once told her to wonder what her reception in the Alpha Quadrant was going to be like. I honestly don't know when the Doctor's found time to do these extensive physicals everyone on the crew is complaining about or Seven's found time to help with the repairs to the ship."
"Well, there is something strange going on with them, that much is for sure. Haven't you noticed all their strange questions."
"What strange questions?"
"Yesterday morning, in my session with Souris, she asked me about my akoonah. When I asked how she knew about it she said it was in my file and she was curious about it. I found myself telling her everything about it. Even all about my spirit guide."
"Those questions aren't strange, Commander. That's what she's supposed to be doing. These sessions are to see how sound we are mentally after so long so far away from home. Your akoonah is very much a part of what has kept you sane in such trying times. I'd have been surprised if she hadn't brought it up."
"What about the questions about Tom? She admitted her interest was personal, that she had known Tom a long time and was concerned about how he'd been faring while on board, but still."
"What kind of personal interest?"
"She intimated she'd informally been his therapist in the past and had concerns about him. Wanted to know about any odd behavior I'd noticed or about any situations that had not made it into the official logs. She even asked about the parole test and about the time with Tom and my akoonah. Actually talking about the akoonah is how we got talking about Tom."
"She touched on Tom in our session too. Again stating that she and the others knew him and were interested in hearing about his life here." Frown lines temporarily marred the skin of her brow. "Raven said as much to me, too." She sighed. "I'd really feel better if I knew why Tom was still over there and why he hasn't checked in with any of us since we talked that first day. It's been three days now. How much could he and The Diogenes' Captain have to say to one another? I know they were discussing everything that had happened here in the Delta Quadrant and he was helping them with their investigation, but for three days? How much could he possibly know about someone he only knew briefly over six years ago?"
"So you're starting to agree with me that something strange is going on?"
"Maybe going on, yes."
"You were the one who told everyone to be on guard where they were concerned, remember?"
"Yes."
"Well, my gut feeling tells me they're not telling us everything."
He could tell she wanted to agree with him yet part of her was holding out. He knew the fact they were so close to achieving her goal of getting this crew home was making her hesitant to agree with him. On the other hand, her own sense of self-preservation, a side of all of them that had heightened over the past five, danger-filled years, was warning her to be wary of gift horses, especially after their last disappointment at the hands of Arturis and his fake Starfleet vessel. This time, self-preservation narrowly was edged out by desperation.
"You don't think maybe you might be seeing something where there's nothing?" she asked him.
"Kathryn, I don't-"
"No, hear me out. You're uncertain about your future when we get back home. I'm wondering if you're not trying to find something wrong so you don't have to face reality."
"I am not avoiding reality, Kathryn, nor am I imagining this. Something is not quite right with all this and I'm not sure exactly what."
"Until you are sure, I want you to keep your eyes open and mouth closed. I don't want to do anything to seem ungrateful to these people. They came a long way to help us get home, risking their lives and-" She broke off, thinking. "Perhaps that is the source of the hostility you sense. From what Raven's said, this is the first time they've tried to travel this far. It's possible they didn't volunteer to come, but were ordered. Were Raven to be supporting whomever ordered them to come, that might explain what you're seeing."
After thinking about it for a moment, Chakotay nodded. "I guess that's plausible."
"Of course it is." She smiled, nudging his half-eaten meal towards him as encouragement to keep eating. "I mean, what could they be up to? They've been totally above board with us."
Even to her own ears she sounded less convinced of that than she had been prior to their conversation.
-------
Tuvok awoke with a fuzzy head. Slowly, his consciousness returned to him. The Backdoor codes. Bartoq. The phaser. As the room coalesced, he saw he was seated upright on a couch in an austere office. Cautiously, he shifted his head to scan the room and stopped. Seated behind the desk was someone he recognized from the memories Tom Paris inadvertently had shared with him during their sharing of Tom's body. Alpha Two.
"You're awake," the middle aged Vulcan observed. "And judging by the expression on your face, you know who I am."
"You are Alpha Two," Tuvok stated.
"Obviously we were correct in our concerns," he said more to himself than his guest. "Please tell me exactly what he has told you."
"That you made him an AlphaOmegan and he is your protégé. And that you wish to kill him and possibly me for what we may know of you."
"I thought that might be the case." He reached up and tapped his combadge. "Raven, please join us."
Raven entered almost immediately.
"It is as we suspected. Please recall the others."
"Yes, Alpha Two."
Once Raven had left the room, Alpha Two gestured for Tuvok to take the chair behind the desk. Warily, Tuvok did.
"I have something to show you, Lieutenant Commander. Perhaps after you have seen it you will change your opinion of us."
-------
"What is going on here?" Chakotay demanded as he rounded a corner to find Dumar and Pardan's four escorts attempting to protect them from three former Maquis and two Starfleet crewmembers.
None of the antagonists said a word. All eyes remained on the Cardassian and Romulan.
The Commander's eyes fell on the most senior member of the want-to-be brute squad. "I want an explanation, Neivers, and I want it now, Ensign."
The ensign begrudgingly answered his superior. "We're just having a word with our guests."
Not liking the way the man said the last word, the First Officer relaxed his muscles to be ready for the fight he knew could break out if he did not diffuse the situation immediately. "I see. And just how many of these words were of a nature that could not be used in the official report I am going to compose on this incident if you do not disperse immediately?"
The man stiffened.
"I see."
"No, you don't see, Chakotay," he growled, whirling on him. "They are the enemy. And we're blithely letting them oversee the repairs then begin refitting Voyager for the trip home? How do we even know they aren't just going to take all of us prisoner the second the ship is repaired and we're not of use to them anymore? We could all end up spaced or in some Cardassian or Romulan prison camp. Or worse we could all end up dead."
"Dumar and Pardan may be Cardassian and Romulan, but the Federation President and Starfleet Command have cleared them to be here."
"How do we know it is not all some trick?"
"The Captain has verified the codes as being legitimate. The message is real." Chakotay lowered his voice to a level certain to get their attention. "And as long as The Diogenes crew is here, if anything happens to them, those responsible will find themselves in the Brig until we get home then they'll face disciplinary action. And if Tuvok or I can't figure out who is responsible, all of you will end up in the Brig, whether you're responsible or not. Is that clear?"
"Yes, Commander." Neivers herded the grumbling others away.
It was not until they had disappeared around the far bend in the corridor that Pardan spoke. "Thank you, Commander Chakotay."
"I want to know the minute there are anymore such incidents," he said to the guards and the visitors.
"I will inform the others in our party."
"Good. You both okay?"
"Yes, fine."
"Most of the Maquis members of the crew can keep their tempers under control. Some however can't. Be on your guard." He included Pardan in the pointed look he gave Dumar. "Both of you. The anti-Romulan sentiment may not be as strong, but obviously it is there."
The Romulan nodded. "We understand, Commander."
As The Diogenes crewman spoke the last word, his and his colleague's combadges chirped three times.
"If you will excuse us, Commander. We are needed back on The Diogenes."
After a combadge was tapped, Chakotay and the guards were alone in the corridor.
-------
Alpha Two entered the Re-Education Room. Tom Paris was as the hologram of Alpha Three had left him -- bloodied, bruised and slumped forward against the restraints, head down. Carefully, the Vulcan tilted the battered head back against the chair back.
Pain-clouded blue eyes opened and closed again. A tight squeeze of Tom's jaw brought the eyes slowly open again.
"We caught Tuvok," Alpha Two informed him. "We have the program he was trying to upload. It is being analyzed as we speak. Soon we'll know exactly what you two were up to."
Tom made no sign of comprehension or disappointment.
"I have something I want you to see," the Vulcan continued and gestured to the monitor a panel in the wall was sliding back to reveal. "I think you will find it very interesting." He stood off to one side so Tom had an unobstructed view of the proceedings in Voyager's Senior Conference Room as reflected on screen.
-------
"What is this all about, Captain?" Harry wanted to know as he assumed his seat in the Conference Room with everyone else.
"I don't know, Harry," the Captain admitted from her seat at the head of the table. "All Raven said was he needed to see the Senior Staff."
As she finished the sentence, Raven entered with Tuvok. The Vulcan silently assumed his seat to the Captain's left and Raven took Tom's next to B'Elanna.
"It is time we reintroduced ourselves, Captain," Raven began. "We are not Starfleet or Special Operations."
Resisting the urge to turn to her First Officer and tell him she was sorry because he was correct about them hiding something from them, the Captain turned narrowed gaze on Raven. "Who are you really?"
"We are an organization operating outside of the Federation and the other governments in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. The name we go by is the AlphaOmegans and as it suggests, we are the first and last line of defense for maintaining the peace in our two home quadrants. Incidentally, that is the true reason why we have a Cardassian and a Romulan with us on the Assessment Team. We recruit from all over the two quadrants."
The Voyager Senior staff sat there stunned for a moment.
"Why have we never heard of you before?" the Captain finally asked.
"Out of necessity, we operate in secret. That is the best way we have of ensuring we are able to maintain the peace without undue influence from any one government or individual. If you had heard of us, it would have meant you'd done something that demanded our intervention in stopping your activities."
Chakotay cast narrowed eyes in Raven's direction. "Who do you answer to?"
"Our leaders."
"But who do they answer to?
"Themselves." He held up hands to calm them. "I know, not a good way of doing things, but they are very disciplined and their allegiance to our mandate keeps them on the straight and narrow."
There was not a person at that table who believed for a second anyone was disciplined enough to stop "absolute power from corrupting absolutely" as the saying went. However at that point they lacked proof that it had so they could not argue with Raven. That did not mean a look did not pass from the Captain to every person at that table, reminding them to keep on guard.
"If you operate 'outside' of any one government's influence," she said to Raven, "why are you working for the President and Command? Or was their message a fake?"
"Oh, the message was real enough," he lied. "They will ensure Special Ops receives the credit for your rescue. Our role however was to have been kept out of the official report on all this."
"Why?"
"Under normal circumstances, we have no contact with them. If word gets out to the other governments of our having initiated contact with them, it will compromise our neutrality. Others will see it as our siding with the Federation and Starfleet. Our objectivity would come into question."
"So why are you revealing your true identities to us now? Why risk appearing to have lost your neutrality?"
"It became necessary to prevent a catastrophe in the making."
"Catastrophe?"
"Mr. Paris," Tuvok said solemnly.
Confused, Kathryn stared at her Security Chief. "Tom?"
"I am explaining this badly, " Raven sighed. "We had an ulterior motive for bringing all of you home. The story we gave for Mr. Paris' absence from this ship..."
"That he was helping all of you with an investigation?"
"Yes. That was not exactly the truth. There is an investigation, except he is the focus of it, not assisting in it."
Everyone took a mental step back.
"You're saying he did all those horrible things?" the Captain asked. "But when he contacted me-"
Yet another lie came tripping off of his tongue with ease. "When he contacted you, Captain, he too thought we were Special Ops and he was helping us to bring down a former acquaintance of his. Unfortunately, not long after that he recognized one of our people, ruining the ruse we were using to get him to talk to us."
"This investigation is why you and your people were asking all of those questions about Tom?"
"In a way, yes, Captain. We had questions best asked before we properly identified ourselves and everyone became wary of us. If you thought we were Starfleet like you, then you might be more forthcoming with your answers. As unknown entities, you would have clammed up the moment we began asking about one of your own." He sighed. "We had hoped we would not have to explain any of this at all, except Mr. Tuvok here made it necessary."
"Tuvok?"
"His having been misled by Mr. Paris and his subsequent actions because of that brought all of this prematurely to a head."
Voyager's Captain stared at Tuvok once more. "What exactly did you do?"
The Vulcan calmly looked at his superior. "I have not been honest about the time Mr. Paris and I shared his body. In actuality, I remembered every moment of the experience."
"You lied?" Harry shook his head. "But you're Vulcan. Vulcan's can't lie."
"If they think that it is imperative to the safety of their fellow crew, then it is considered acceptable. And if you will remember, I have had to lie in the past, but in this case I did not actually lie. I never said I remembered nothing of my time inside Mr. Paris' body. I permitted everyone to have that impression, yes, but I never actually said it."
Chakotay leaned forwards, forearms on the table. "And you thought keeping it quiet was somehow protecting us from something?"
"While I was with Mr. Paris, he experienced the return of certain memories. He told me that the mishap with Commander Chakotay's akoonah triggered what he called an Awakening. He claimed he was an AlphaOmegan who had been trained since birth to be a cross between an assassin and an intelligence operative and that whenever an AlphaOmegan was not needed, an artificial amnesia was induced. However, it seemed the incident with the akoonah had overwhelmed the subatomic device used to cause this amnesia and he was remembering things."
"Why have I never detected this device in any scans of him?" the EMH asked suspiciously.
"He said it was and continues to be cloaked, though the function of preventing him from being aware of his being an AlphaOmegans no longer is operative. Because of this he was concerned The Protectors would be coming for him."
"The Protectors?" Harry questioned.
Raven nodded. "Our leadership goes by that name, Ensign Kim."
"Mr. Paris claimed he knew something that was a threat to them," Tuvok continued, "and that they would be trying to assassinate him and possibly me given the opportunity."
Chakotay frowned. "Why you?"
"Even though he did not tell me what the something he knew was, he said it would be assumed he had since we had shared a body for so long and they would think he could not have kept the truth about himself from me. They would think I knew everything and was as much a threat as he was. And at the time, I believed him. Given the memories I saw and the story he told me, I honestly believed his claims. Therefore, I agreed to help him protect both ourselves and Voyager?"
"Voyager?" Kathryn leaned forwards. "Why Voyager too?"
"He said the AlphaOmegans could not be certain exactly how many he may have told therefore the majority of the crew would be killed outright. Those few who were not would be taken for study. Namely Mr. Neelix, Seven of Nine, and the Doctor."
"They wouldn't!" Neelix spluttered. "Why?"
"You and Seven of Nine are unique. You would have to be studied to learn everything there was to know about you and your species to see if you posed a potential threat to the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. As for the Doctor, the fact he continues to exist and has evolved beyond his programming is of great interest to everyone, not merely the AlphaOmegans."
"This is unbelievable," the Captain muttered to herself.
"Because at the time I believed Mr. Paris, I agreed to help him with a plan to save everyone. If you remember when the AlphaOmegans arrived, Mr. Paris referred to them as 'the cavalry.' It was our signal for me to download a program he had hidden in a secondary system. Once I had it, I was to wait until I was alone to begin entering what Mr. Paris asserted were access codes to a 'Backdoor program' he had hidden in the AlphaOmegan files. He said every ship produced in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants contained certain files accessible only by AlphaOmegans. That every time a ship interacted with another ship or starbase these files transferred a copy of all the information entered into the ship's memory since the last transfer and added any new information that was available. He claimed he had inserted this 'Backdoor' program of his a few years earlier during a time when he had experienced some sort of a mental breakdown and gone rogue from the AlphaOmegans."
The Doctor jerked. "Mental breakdown? What kind of mental breakdown? It's not in his files."
"He said he accidentally saw an old AlphaOmegan file pertaining to an incident involving with his father. It told of his being captured by Cardassians along with an ensign of his and being tortured before being rescued."
Kathryn gasped and grew pale. Chakotay and the Doctor instantly were rising out of their seats. She waved them away, eyes riveted to Tuvok.
"He did not know that ensign was you, Captain," Tuvok told her.
"It wasn't in this file?"
"He referred to you as 'an ensign,' never by name, so I doubt he knew it was you. He said he went -- to use his own words -- 'a little berserk' and hunted down then tortured and murdered the Cardassian Gul responsible, a Gul Camet, and Camet's biological father, a Legate Meer. He also killed all of the Cardassians who were at the base with them."
"Camet's dead?" she whispered.
Raven outlined what Tom had done to Camet, Meer, and those at Camet's base. When he was finished, only he and Tuvok did not look like they were ready to dive for the nearest bathroom to be ill.
"He said after it was over, the AlphaOmegans found him and transported him to a base for Re-Education."
"Re-Education?" Chakotay inquired.
"Essentially it involved torturing him mentally, physically, and chemically until he broke then mentally conditioning the aberrant behaviors out of him. Once The Protectors had returned him to acting the way they wanted him to, they induced the artificial amnesia once more and returned him to his life as Tom Paris, not AlphaOmegan 41783. Later, they sent him here to Voyager on some Mission. He does not know what it was, but he was certain if the ship had not been brought to the Delta Quadrant he would have Awoken and fulfilled that Mission."
"Raven, is any of this-"
"True?" he finished. "Some is, some isn't. Mostly it is a twisted version of the truth." He leaned his forearms on the table and stared at his clasped hands. "Where to start?" he sighed. "First of all, he is not one of us. We go by codenames, not numbers. AlphaOmegan 41783 was his case number. At least that was what it ended up being when we realized all of the seemingly separate incidents we were investigating were connected."
He ran his gloved hands over his face. "That was an awful time, let me tell you. Starting a few months before Tom Paris was booted from Starfleet there were a series of inexplicable deaths in various parts of the Alpha Quadrant. As I said, at the time we didn't connect one with the other. Only much later did we finally connect the dots as it were."
Rising, he began pacing and talking with his hands. "There were assassinations all over the Alpha Quadrant. Some were what we call single target hits -- the target is a very specific individual and only that individual actually is killed. Others were multiple targets -- a less discriminating assassination in which anyone who happens to be in the general vicinity dies along with the actual target. As far as we have been able to tell, there are forty-seven single target hits and an estimated 5,900 victims who fall into the multiple target category attributable to Tom Paris."
Jaws dropped. Eyes widened.
"I know. It amazed even us. We were stunned to trace all of them back to one individual. We had figured it was the work of several separate individuals, not one man. Unfortunately there might even be more victims. Even now, all these years later, we're still investigating."
"And you'll have to continue investigating," B'Elanna growled, "because you've clearly got the wrong man if you think Tom Paris did any of them."
"I understand your reaction, B'Elanna, I really do, but when we captured him six years ago he confessed to it all."
"I don't believe it. Tom Paris has the biggest heart of anyone any of us know. There's no way he could kill all of those people. Hurt or even kill the Cardassian who hurt his father, possibly, but any others... No way.
You have the wrong-"
"There is a recording," Tuvok began. "It, plus the file I saw on him and my own lingering concerns regarding the logic of what Mr. Paris had claimed was happening to him and what was to happen to all of us if the AlphaOmegans came, convinced me he was confused and his story to be questioned."
"That's it? Files and recordings can be faked."
"But his story was full of holes, Lieutenant, that it is possible the AlphaOmegans are telling the truth. I am not saying I do not possess doubts, yet it is slightly more logical than Mr. Paris' version of events."
"I don't believe it. You've turned on Tom!"
Raven went to the wall console and ordered up a file. "I brought this over from our computer. What you are about to see is what Mr. Tuvok watched earlier on The Diogenes. The reason you see only Paris is because the recording was downloaded from the victim's memory not long after she died."
When he called for the file to play, they were shocked. Before their eyes was a visual of a younger Tom Paris, one whose hands and outfit were stained with blood. As they watched and listened, they met a Tom Paris they never had dreamed existed, a cruel and sadistic Tom Paris who clearly had no conscience or qualms about using torture to get the answers he wanted. And obviously he wanted them very badly from the woman he was physically abusing.
"The woman you hear pleading for her life is one of our own, Sunfire," Raven whispered as he fought back his emotions. "She went undercover to gather evidence against him. She got it, but lost her life in the process when he realized she was lying to him."
On the screen, the door a couple meters behind Tom disintegrated and a team of armed AlphaOmegan soldiers in full uniform including hoods and gloves burst in. Four soldiers tackled Tom to the floor and one of the soldiers hurried over to Sunfire to untie her. As the recording faded to black, the soldier at her side began to remove his hood.
"She fell unconscious at that point and died shortly after we got her to our ship," he choked out.
Each member of the Senior Staff had a similar response to Raven's. Even if they were not, as Tuvok appeared to be, convinced what they were hearing and seeing was true, it was disturbing.
Halfway through the recording, Harry had turned a lovely shade of green. Immediately he had swung his chair away from the screen, eyes on the tabletop now in front of him. Anyone who saw him could tell he desperately wanted to leave the room or at least cover his ears so he did not have to hear his best friend's harsh voice or the victim's screams. Now that it was over he still looked like he wanted to throw up.
The Captain and Neelix did not seem far behind the young ensign in this sentiment.
Chakotay had paled beneath his naturally tanned skin and joined the EMH in staring wide-eyed at the now black screen.
Tuvok, who already had seen everything was unmoved, or at least appeared that way.
B'Elanna refused to look at the display after the first minute. For the rest of the playback, she kept shaking her head and saying over and over that it was not Tom, that it was all a fake.
Raven shut off the playback and collapsed into a seat next to the still mumbling B'Elanna.
"He was diagnosed with some mental condition Souris would have to explain to you, I don't really understand it personally," he said, "but the gist of it is, he wasn't himself when he did these things. The pressure of trying to live up to the Paris image then failing so badly combined with the physical and mental trauma he endured during the accident at Caldik Prime and lying about it, all caused him to -- in layman's terms -- flip out. He was not legally responsible for what he did then."
"Not responsible?" Chakotay gasped. "Then who the heck was?"
"He was mentally impaired, Commander, therefore under the law not responsible. Unfortunately that still left us with the problem of what to do with him. He was too ill and obviously far too dangerous to be permitted to roam free."
"Obviously."
"But, he had learned things from Sunfire that would jeopardize our existence if they got out. We had our own psychologists and psychiatrists readying to treat him so no one outside would find out what he had about us, however at the same time, Starfleet was looking for him. Tom Paris needed to make a rapid reappearance or Admiral Paris might have kicked up a fuss about his missing son."
"Why would he have?" Harry asked, some of his color returning. "He had disowned him after his court-martial."
"Perhaps officially, but unofficially he still was the Admiral's only son. He kept an eye on him, a disapproving one, but an eye all the same. We didn't have much time before trouble arose when the Admiral's spies couldn't find his son. So, in light of that, we tried a radical procedure to cure him. In hindsight, it clearly was a bad idea."
"What did you try?" the EMH enquired suspiciously.
"At first, Souris attempted to treat him with therapy. When that did not work, we attempted to mentally condition the mental disease out of him."
Harry blinked. "Brainwashing?"
"Yes, Ensign. He was going to need years and years of therapy. But he had to make an appearance somewhere so his father would hear he was okay so we didn't have years. And even if we had, I doubt we could have hung on to him for that long. Tom Paris was and is too dangerous, too intelligent. He would have done his damnedest to find some way to escape. It was going to take up too much of our time and resources to guard him, let alone treat him. So we took the unorthodox step of factoring the mental disease out of his personality."
"How?" the Doctor questioned.
"By the use of anti-psychotic medications and certain other mind altering drugs in conjunction with extensive behavior modification sessions."
"Explain 'behavior modification.'"
"The Implant he told Mr. Tuvok of actually does exist and he does have one, as does every AlphaOmegan, including myself. The recording you just witnessed was made by Sunfire's Implant. That is how we got it. In Paris' case, we used it to modify his reactions to various stimuli. Mostly, it channels his adrenaline to keep him calm and in control, but it also was to blank all memories of the things he had done to Sunfire and to all the others, at least temporarily. It had been our intention to put him back on Earth, let on of his father's spies see Tom was okay, then he was to broadcast to the patrons in Sandrine's that he had had enough of Earth and was going to get lost for a while. After that, we'd have picked him up and taken him to one of our bases for proper therapy."
"Why didn't that happen?" Janeway wanted to know.
"Your Commander Chakotay happened."
Chakotay frowned. "Me?"
"You stumbled upon him when you were trying to recruit for your Maquis cell. He went with you and, in all honesty, when we started reading the reports on his behavior, we figured we might just as well leave him as he was. Obviously the Implant had eradicated all traces of the former behavior."
"Whoa, back up here. Reports on how he was?"
"Yes. He was a bit of a handful for you, Commander, but he was not violent like he had been."
"I know. I was there. How do you know?"
"We are charged with keeping the peace in the Alpha and Beta Quadrant, Commander. That is a huge amount of territory. It is very difficult a task to try to maintain the careful balance of things for as long as we have without any overt presence. So we have seeded our people all over the Quadrants."
"Seeded?" Kathryn asked.
"The majority of what we do is intelligence. We have to know what is going on at all times to head off any attempts to disrupt the peace. So we place our people in well-connected positions where they'll be our eyes and ears."
"So you can control what's going on."
"In a way. We prevent bad things from happening, yet we don't initiate policies, Captain. Our mandate is to maintain the status quo. Nothing more."
Not for a moment did anyone at the table unequivocally believe this denial yet he went on before they could attempt to refute it.
He ran a hand through his hair. "But we are getting off of topic here. Back to Paris. I'm not the expert on how and what they did to treat him."
"Or not treat him," the EMH interjected.
"Or not treat him, yes. I'm just the poor slob who gets to tell you all this. And all I can tell you is that it appeared to work. The man who was responsible for so many murders was gone, or so we thought. When you visited the Alpha Quadrant, Doctor, we read your report on what was happening here, especially about him and the akoonah and we realized we had trouble."
"Because of this reaction he had to it."
"Yes. As we feared, the device in his head is breaking down and the blocked out memories of what he did and our capturing him apparently are returning. Fortunately for all of you, when the memories did begin to surface, they were so jumbled up he thought he was one of us. He knew no one is supposed to know we exist so, thinking he was one of us, he tried to act appropriately by keeping everything he remembered a secret. Thinking he was an AlphaOmegan probably was only thing that kept him from returning to his former... occupation. Or maybe it was that he realized he needed to keep all of you alive so he can make it back to the Alpha Quadrant, I don't know. All we do know is he thinks he is one of us and that we are here to destroy him and he had Mr. Tuvok here convinced all of you were in mortal danger from us."
"Any idea why he killed these people?" Kathryn questioned.
"None. Other than why Camet, Meer, and the other Cardassians of course. Paris is very attached to his father. Because of what Camet did, what Paris did to them makes sense in a twisted and sadistic sort of way."
Chakotay cleared his throat. "So whether Tom really did these things or not, what happens to him now?"
"As you know, when we got here we immediately took him to The Diogenes. One of The Protectors, Alpha Two by name, is here with us and is working with him. He and Alpha Three and Four were the ones who attempted to help Paris before, but found they didn't have the time they needed. This time Alpha Two hopes to be able to do it right. He's already began therapy sessions with him."
B'Elanna thrust her chair back as she surged to her feet. "I don't believe any of this. This isn't Tom. I don't know why you're lying about this, but you are."
Raven leapt up himself and grabbed her arm before she could reach the door. "B'Elanna, I'm not lying about this."
"You admitted you lied to us about who you are and what Tom was doing over on The Diogenes, but we're just supposed to accept what you're saying about Tom now because you claim to be telling the truth?"
"I explained why we had to lie about the other things. For the safety of everyone in the Galaxy, you have to believe what I am telling you know."
"No, I know Tom Paris. He is a good, kind, loving person. He'd never do anything like this."
"I have to agree with B'Elanna," Kathryn added. "Tom is not the man you're looking for."
"I'm sorry, Captain," Raven sighed, nonchalantly removing his gloves as if it were just something for him to do while he talked. "I know all of you have known him for a long time now and you think you know him-"
"We do," Harry interjected.
"But you don't know the man we know."
"Because he doesn't exist!" B'Elanna objected.
The EMH entered the fray. "Even if he did -- and I certainly am not saying that he did -- now he is nothing like what you've described him to be in the past. I spend a lot of time with him. He is a fine officer and -"
"What he has been during the time that you've know him," the AlphaOmegan interrupted, "is because of the Implant. The same Implant that now is breaking down. When it is totally useless, he there is the danger he will revert to his previous behaviors. But if you do not wish to believe me, listen to your own Chief of Security."
"He did not say Tom admitted to all these other killings."
"Actually," Tuvok clarified, "I did witness his memories of committing two assassinations. As for the other approximate 5,898 deaths, I do not know."
"No." B'Elanna kept shaking her head. "No, I don't believe it."
Raven groaned impatiently. "B'Elanna, did he ever tell you about going on a spiritual quest after he left Starfleet? How he visited various historically and spiritually significant sites on Earth, trying to find meaning in his life and why fate had wished upon him what happened?"
"That is in his file."
"Did he ever tell you about what happen at Stonehenge? About the old druid he spoke to for over an hour, yet when he asked a tour guide about him, she said it wasn't a druid high holy day and that was the only day they wore the traditional garb. And besides, the sect of druids who wore that style of robe died out over a century earlier."
B'Elanna froze.
"He never told anyone else that, did he? He wouldn't even put it in his logs because people would think him crazy." Cupping her cheek, he leaned closer, an earnest look in his eyes. "I gave him that memory, B'Elanna. That and all the memories of his supposed trips to all of those places. That was my quest from two years earlier. I was the one who saw the druid who supposedly didn't exist. We were trying to furnish a plausible explanation for where he'd been when he'd disappeared."
"No," she whispered.
"Yes," he responded softly, pulling her slowly to his chest, hand on her nape. "I am so sorry to have had to tell you all this, B'Elanna. We had hoped we would not have to." He gently rubbed her back with his free hand as she began to cry.
Dumbly, everyone else merely sat in their chairs and stared. Each one of them had heard the rumors about Raven pursuing B'Elanna, but none of them had placed any credence in them. Now they were wondering what was going on with these two. B'Elanna Torres never cried in public, if she ever cried at all. And even Tom Paris was, for the most part, discouraged from holding her or showing any PDAs at all. Yet here she was, crying and in the arms of the man who was accusing the man she supposedly loved of crimes so heinous only the most diseased of minds would not be appalled at hearing their details.
"If it's any comfort," Raven was murmuring, "deceiving you like this wasn't his fault. He was ill. We tried to help him as best we could and it backfired on us." Turning his head, he spoke to the others. "If any of you can think of anything that can be of any help to us in treating him, then please, we need to know. Mr. Tuvok already has told us what little Mr. Paris revealed to him. If anyone else can come up with anything more, we'd be glad to hear it."
As Raven returned his attention to the woman dampening his chest, the Captain met the eyes of each of those at the table.
Voyager's Senior Staff consisted of well-trained, highly intelligent individuals who, even if they had not possessed experience before boarding the ship, they had earned plenty over their five-year voyage. Each one of them instinctively understood the message in Janeway's grey eyes, some even thinking the same words she was thinking: the old Terran adage "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Not one of them was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt of Raven's veracity.
"We still are not convinced," the Captain told him, "but we will consider it."
Her staff, except for B'Elanna, understood the tacit instruction to not be too forthcoming if they could help it. Until they were satisfied they had the whole story they were not going to make the AlphaOmegans' job of convicting Tom any easier.
-------
Once the meeting broke up and B'Elanna was left alone, sobbing in Raven's strong arms, Alpha Two turned to his "patient." "Raven should have been an actor. Of course you could have done it with more finesse."
Frustratingly, Tom's only response was angry eyes focused on his creator.
"Needless to say, my long hours faking all those recordings did help." He ticked them off on his fingers. "There was the message from Command. Your message to Janeway. Sunfire's death. It will be interesting to see how they react to my next one. Janeway in particular might not enjoy it." He grasped Tom's chin for emphasis. "Of course you always can spare her from finding out."
Stubbornly, Tom maintained his silence.
"Sooner or later I will break you and you will talk. Even you cannot hold out forever." He grabbed a hypospray and injected more buyrate into his subject. "And even if you do not, they will be even more motivated to help us now that they think they are trying to help a seriously mentally ill person recover. Especially since he was one of them for so long. All it will take is one more little thing to convince them the story is true."
With eleventh dose in three days of the drug used to chemically condition AlphaOmegans to obey coursing through his veins on its way to his brain, Tom had to fight hard to keep from screaming in pain and telling all. 'You have to stay sane!' he demanded of himself. 'You have to keep resisting. The longer you do, the greater the chances of the plan working and the others being saved.'
As if on cue, Camet and company appeared to assist Alpha Two in his interrogations.
Come on, Camet urged. Give in and this will all end.
'Never,' Tom growled back. 'If I surrender, they'll just destroy everyone on board Voyager and I won't sacrifice the others for my own comfort or safety.'
Camet and the others laughed.
\*Like they would be welcoming you back with open arms anyway if you escaped. Not likely after the line Raven just fed them. You know whatever Alpha Two has planned for Janeway will make them swallow every bit of it. Even your precious B'Elanna. The woman who right now, if this had not happened, might have been your fiancée or even wife if she had wanted to take the Blood Oath with you. So far she is holding out believing the fiction, but Raven will bring her around. Very persuasive that Raven. But then all of his species are. Wonder how long it will be before the bond he initiated with her the first time he touched her skin to skin will begin to overwhelm her hormones and she gives in to him sexually and then mentally? It will be worse than what you two went through with Vorik's pon farr. At least then she had enough free will left to pick you over Vorik. This time she will not even think of anyone but Raven. Taking him into her bed. Answering absolutely every question he asks her.\*
'She won't-'
Oh, yes. True love will triumph yet again. Camet laughed. Come to grips with your reality. You are here, doped up, beat up, tied up, and she is there, emotional, needy, and aroused. And there he is, the comforting, handsome reason for her being so turned on. Oh, it is no contest. You have seen him work. Given everything that has happened, I predict about twenty-four to thirty-six hours before her uniform and his are nothing but pools of cloth on the deck plates.
'In twenty-four to thirty-six hours I'll be out of here.'
The plan is ruined. Tuvok failed you. And now he is on their side believing that nice little faked recording from Sunfire's Implant. You know they did quite a good job of inserting your image over her real killer's. And ending the recording right as you were about to remove your hood and show your face. A very nice touch I think.
'Some one will see it's fake.'
No, they already half way believe it. In time, they will become convinced they have no reason not to doubt the story. So the only way you will be out of here in twenty-four to thirty-six hours is by giving in and telling Alpha Two everything about where you went and especially where you hid the copies of the information about them that you made. Only then are you going to be released from this chair.
Unfortunately Tom knew he was correct. But then Tom knew something Camet the AlphaOmegans had forgotten. One does not ever underestimate Tom Paris. It was the biggest mistake one could make.
-------
She could not permit this to continue, but how could she stop it? It was not yet time for her to cross over onto his plane.
Then she saw something that made her smile. She might not be able to directly help him, but there was someone who could.
-------
After watching what had transpired on Voyager, in the Re-Education Room, Sunfire would have clenched her fists, if she still had them.
It was bad enough that now all she had was a metal shell for a body, albeit a shell that was the fastest ship in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, but she hated being reminded of her organic body's demise and of her consciousness' being transferred to this ship. And to have her last memories of her organic life so bastardized to make that recording was even worse torture.
'Poor Tom,' she moaned to herself. 'To have seen himself as my murderer. He has to be hurting even more than he had when I "died" all those years ago and he transferred me into this computer.' She sighed softly. 'If only I had a real body. I could sneak in there and bust him out.'
Perhaps I can help you, a female voice offered.
Sunfire checked and confirmed she was alone.
'This has to be a trick they're playing to get me to betray him. Well, it won't work.'
It is no trick, Sunfire. I want to help him, too, but I cannot. Together though, we may be able to succeed.
Warily, Sunfire agreed to listen to the mysterious voice's plan.
-------
"I don't...." Harry broke off, the words no longer coming to his lips.
Without speaking, Souris, sitting in one corner of the couch, watched him pace back and forth in front of her. They had been here in his quarters for almost half of his lunch break, most of it spent exactly as they were spending it now and not eating the meal he had offered earlier, before the bombshell about Tom, to replicate for their lunch.
At last, he flopped down beside her and leaned back, hands covering his face. "Oh, why didn't you tell me?"
"How was I supposed to tell you what your best friend was?" Taking his hands in hers, she drew them from his face and held them in a tight grasp. "I am sorry, Harry," she whispered, "for everything that's happened here. I truly am."
The earnestness in her gaze made him wonder if there was more to all this than met the eye, but he mentally shrugged. Even though they had spent what he considered an incredible time together a couple of meters away in his bedroom only a few short hours ago, he still did not know her well enough to know for certain she meant more than she was saying.
"It's okay," he finally soothed. "I understand why you couldn't tell me."
"Harry, I have to know anything you think might be important. Anything about Tom that might help us help him. Or just anything at all about him. You never know what might be significant."
"I'll try." He paused for a moment, staring at their clasped hands. "Do you think I'll ever have Tom back?"
"I don't know, Harry, but I doubt it."
At her urging, he shifted positions to lay his head in her lap. Tenderly, she stroked his hair as she softly interrogated to Thomas Eugene Paris' best friend. Harry, for his part, only answered in the vaguest of terms, if at all.
-------
Pardan listened silently as his counterpart paced and debated Tom's innocence versus guilt with him. He saw Chakotay's thinking was conflicted. The emotional part of the man felt, if true, this new development exceeded all of the horrifying scenarios he had envisioned for ways Tom Paris could hurt B'Elanna. The logical part of him said there was no way the man he had come to respect ever could be guilty of such atrocities.
"So he never gave any indicators of this?" Pardan enquired when Chakotay paused for a breath.
Halting, the logical Chakotay thought for a moment. "There was his knowledge of weapons that always puzzled some people. We just figured he had done some smuggling or someone in one of the bars he'd hung out with was into smuggling. And there was that explosive compound in his parole test. He never did explain how he knew about that. And his computer skills. That would come in handy if you're trying to sneak in somewhere to assassinate someone, wouldn't it?"
"Yes, I suppose so."
"And then there's his temper."
"No one else has said he is violent, other than in his Klingon Martial Arts program."
"He's supposed to be deadly when he's fighting the holograms, but I mean he never really loses his temper. Even with me. I always could tell there's more anger in him than he's letting out."
"So you see his self-control as proof of his being dangerous?"
"Raven said he was hard for you to catch. He'd need to be able to fool people into thinking he was sane and normal so he could get close to them to kill them, right? What better way than to act sane and normal and not violent or temperamental?"
"I see your point."
The emotional Chakotay reasserted himself. "I just worry about how B'Elanna's taking this. Not that she could believe any of this anymore than the rest of us do, but still, she loves him. Raven's claims about Tom directly affect her. She is his mate."
"And when all of you concede to the truth?"
"If it is the truth." He sighed. "If it is the truth, I don't think I want to know what it will do to her. It was a big step for her, opening up to someone as much as she did with him. She may never recover from this."
-------
The crash of yet another holographic breakable hurled by B'Elanna against the wall of Holodeck Two overrode whatever she had snarled.
Raven stood behind her, far enough out of range of any projectiles. It was quite an effort for him to keep the grin off of his face at the various colorful phrases she was using to express her own conflicted feelings for her former lover and the story they had been told about him. Needless to say, none of what she was growling was the least bit complementary and a few of them were ones he himself had used in the past when speaking to himself of his rival.
'Things are progressing quite nicely,' he congratulated himself and ungloving his hands. 'A little more prodding and she'll be convinced. Then she's mine.'
-------
"It was not, Tom," Neelix insisted. "I am sorry. I mean no disrespect to your fallen colleague, but she was wrong. Tom Paris is not that kind of man. He just is not."
Dumar shook his head at the Talaxian as he bustled about his kitchen, preparing for the evening meal. "So tell me what kind of man he really is, Mr. Neelix. Tell me why it is so impossible."
"He is a good man, a kind man. He never would hurt anyone." He paused. "Well, not without a very good reason."
"I am certain he felt he had a good reason, Mr. Neelix. We merely have to uncover that reason."
Neelix thought for a moment then resolutely shook his head. "No. No, I still don't believe it."
-------
In Sickbay, Yana was having the same sort of luck with the Doctor and Seven, who was there for her physical and her weekly check up.
"What you describe is not consistent with my observations of Lieutenant Paris," Seven informed her.
"Or mine," the EMH chimed in, "or his psychological profile. I find it difficult to believe him capable of such actions. He has demonstrated numerous times that he values the lives of others far above his own." He stemmed off Yana's point before she could even make it. "Both before and after the incident with the akoonah."
Yana sighed and continued the tests.
-------
Seated behind her Ready Room desk, the Captain was staring sightlessly at her computer. Her mind refuse to process what was happening. The idea that Tom Paris of all people was some sort of mass murderer was absurd.
The door chime reminded her of the existence of life beyond her thoughts. Straightening a little, she called for the visitor to enter while her guards remained outside.
"Captain Janeway? Are you well?"
The Captain looked up to see T'Kara walking towards her. She did not have to answer. Her emotions were visible on her face.
"It is Paris. You were close to him, were you not."
"Yes, I thought I was. I thought we had a bond."
"I thought his mate was Lieutenant Torres."
"Not that kind of bond. I don't know how to describe it. It was like he was my son and my mischievous little brother and my friend and -" She half laughed. "And my personal reclamation project, as the Commander calls him. I honestly thought I knew what kind of man he was. Now, it seems I didn't know him at all. None of us did."
"There was no one in whom he confided? No one who may perhaps know him better than all the others?"
"Tom wasn't much of a one to do the confiding. Others could and did confide in him, especially if they were having romantic problems, but he didn't reciprocate. Not really. That drove B'Elanna crazy actually. Harry too. They'd open up to him, yet he wouldn't to them."
"So he kept things to himself."
"Pretty much."
"That is unfortunate."
"Yes, I always thought it was. Rather sad he always felt he could give to others and not to himself."
"No, I meant unfortunate because that means no one here actually has a true insight into his character therefore probably cannot be of much assistance in his recovery."
"I don't think that's true, exactly. We have observed how he has been. We've seen him interacting with everyone for five years. I think we know what he's been like. Granted, we have no idea what he was like before The Protectors put this thing in his head to control his behavior, but we can tell you about how he has been over the last five years."
T'Kara took a seat before her. "And how has he been?"
For close to ten minutes the Captain told the young Vulcan female about the AlphaOmegans' prisoner. Trying to prove her argument that the AlphaOmegans mistaken a good and decent man for an evil and disturbed one, she recounted all the good things he had done. Not swayed by the glowing report, T'Kara tucked every detail away for future reference.
"But you didn't come here to listen to me go on about him. Why did you come?"
"Alpha Two has invited you over to The Diogenes to see Mr. Paris."
She eagerly shifted in her chair. "When?"
"As soon as you could come."
"Fine."
T'Kara rose. "I'll inform Alpha Two then contact you."
She tapped her combadge and was gone.
-------
After hearing her news, Alpha Two dismissed T'Kara, ordering her back to Voyager.
'Janeway is coming,' he thought, rising. 'It is time for the next act.'
-------
"You're what?" Chakotay gasped. "No. No way. They've done nothing but lie to us. How do we know you'll be safe over there?"
Ignoring the presence of the crewwoman at the transporter controls, the only other person in the transporter room, the Captain laid a hand on her First Officer's arm to soothe him. "First of all, I'm taking Tuvok and the Doctor with me. And, yes, they did lie about their identities and about their interest in Tom, but right now he's over there being interrogated for things he probably did not do. Or if he did them, he isn't that same man anymore. Regardless, I want to see him, face to face to see he's okay. I know him. I know if I can talk to him, he'll tell me the truth, good or bad. And if it is good, maybe, just maybe I might be able to talk some sense into this Alpha Two's head. Tuvok says he's Vulcan. He will see the illogic in all this. I'm sure of it."
Chakotay stared into her eyes and recognized the look in them. Determination. Even if it was dangerous, she was determined to beard the lion in his own den. He looked over his shoulder to the crewwoman. She was pretending to be absorbed in checking her console, not watching her superiors. "You will keep a transporter lock on them."
She looked up and nodded. "Aye, sir."
The doors opened to admit the Doctor carrying a medkit and Security Chief with a phaser at his waist. The First Officer relaxed only slightly at seeing the phaser.
Kathryn gave his arm a reassuring squeeze then headed up to the platform to join the others.
-------
The party from Voyager beamed not into The Diogenes' Transporter Room, but into a corridor. According to T'Kara, given the sheer size of the AlphaOmegan ship, it was far easier for them to beam to this location only down the corridor and around a corner from the secured area where they held Tom than to walk all the way there. The Captain had sensed the tacit approval of Tuvok in Security Chief mode at hearing they had a dampening field around Tom's possibly temporary home prevented them from beaming any closer to the secured area. She even shared the sentiment about their caution, only to mentally stumble when she remembered the prisoner they were attempting to keep from beaming out of his cell was Tom.
The first face they saw when the beam released them was that of a tall Vulcan in a uniform like those of the AlphaOmegans except his was all in white. Instantly, Kathryn guessed this had to be the infamous Alpha Two.
"Captain Janeway, Doctor, Mr. Tuvok," he said slightly inclining his head to each as he spoke. "I am Alpha Two. If you will follow me this way?" As he led them down the corridor, he apologized to his counterpart. "Our meeting is long overdue, Captain. I should have been the one to meet you and explain our presence. However, I felt beginning Mr. Paris' treatment immediately was more urgent. Raven has been adequate in my stead?"
"Yes," she assured him from at his elbow as they strode down the corridor, "but you can understand our reluctance to believe his assertions regarding Tom."
"Yes, I do understand, Captain. He was with you for over five years. It is understandable you would have come to believe you know him."
"All due respect, Alpha Two, we do know him."
He shook his head. "I doubt that you do."
"How is Mr. Paris?" the Doctor asked.
"He is in excellent physical condition."
"And mentally?"
"Mentally, he is alternately confused, belligerent, and withdrawn. He has been experiencing flashbacks to his former behavioral patterns."
"We still don't believe you have the right man," Janeway informed him.
"Yes, Raven told me as much. I can assure you we do have the correct individual. If you wish, I can show you some of his file while we wait for the doctors to finish with him."
"Doctors?" the EMH and Captain gasped together.
"Nothing dire, I assure you. He has been on a hunger strike and has grown listless. Our doctors are in with him now to administer a vitamin shot and examine him."
Before they reached the junction of the two corridors, they heard a commotion in one of the rooms down the corridor followed by phaser fire. As they rounded the corner and Tuvok drew his weapon, a door five doors down slid open and a medical technician tumbled out clearly dead. Another one came flying out through the open door, impacting on the facing wall then slumping to the deck, also deceased.
Before Alpha Two's party could take cover in the nearest room, a disheveled Tom Paris appeared in the doorway and fired upon them. Janeway went down almost immediately with a severe chest wound. Under a barrage of blasts from the escapee, the others dragged the Captain off towards a nearby door. They were almost inside when there was a cry from Tom and the sounds of a scuffle. The four paused long enough to see Paris pinned to the deck by four technicians who had tackled had him.
Danger passed, the Doctor motioned for the others to lower the Captain to the deck where he whipped out a tricorder and began checking her injury. "I need to get her back to Voyager right away."
"No," the patient declined, grimacing in pain, "I want to see Tom."
"Captain, as Chief Medical Officer of Voyager I am ordering to Sickbay."
"I want to see-"
Alpha Two turned from watching what was happening down the corridor. The technicians on Tom had relinquished their writhing prisoner to three well-armed soldiers who had arrived to take charge of the situation. Immediately they had snatched him up, turning a deaf ear to the rotating volley threats he was delivering in the native tongues of his captors.
"Alpha Two to Security," he called, touching his combadge. "Drop dampening field around detention area and beam Voyager's party to their Sickbay."
The last thing the three from Voyager saw was the soldiers dodging the team of medical personnel who swarmed their fallen comrades and taking Tom into another room, across the corridor and three doors down from his previous accommodations.
-------
"What happened?" Chakotay demanded over the Comm from the Bridge.
While the Doctor worked on Janeway, Tuvok filled in the First Officer. In the background, there were gasps from the Bridge crew who were listening in.
"I find it difficult to believe he intended to shoot the Captain," the Security Chief announced.
"But he's one of the best shots on Voyager," Chakotay murmured. "It's hard to believe, even under such stressful conditions, he'd missed his logical target."
"The logical target being Alpha Two and he hit the Captain accidentally."
"Exactly."
"If you can take this discussion into Mr. Paris' bizarre behavior elsewhere?" the Doctor interrupted. "Ensign Wildman and I have work to do. Yana, we could use a hand."
"I will be on the Bridge momentarily, Commander. Tuvok out."
-------
Tom could not believe what he had seen on the monitor. His eyes leapt to Alpha Two's as he entered the Re-Education Room.
"I wonder if the designer of the first holodeck ever dreamed how it was going to be used in the future?" He shut off the display that now showed only the familiar gridlines of a holodeck. "What is it the Terrans say? 'Turn about is fair play'? They used their Holodeck to fool you with their parole test. I used ours to fool them into thinking you have lost complete control. Poetic justice perhaps?"
It took what little strength of will he had left not to shout 'But they didn't try to kill me!' He knew the charade he had witnessed was as much for the Voyager crew's benefit as it was for his. He only wondered if the hologram of himself who had shot Janeway with a very real phaser had killed her or not. At times like this, he wished he were religious so he could pray to some god or gods for intervention in saving her life. But he was not and fate of one of the two most important women in his life rested in the holographic hands of the Doctor.
"I told you it would be better for Janeway if you submitted to me. But you did not and I was forced to move on to this. Before, they were reluctant to believe our story about you, but now that you have shot the Captain, whom everyone knows you would die to protect, they will be closer to being convinced you are as mentally unbalanced as we say you are. I will permit them a few moments for what you've done to register then the play my final card as you would say."
He picked up a hypospray from the instrument tray near Tom's chair. "In the interim, will we see if you are ready to talk?"
-------
Crewman Ver Faran could not believe what he was hearing, so much so, he asked the gossiping ensign who had just come down from the Bridge to repeat what he had said.
"Paris faked being weak from hunger and when they dropped the forcefield so the doctors could come in to give him a shot he tried to escape, killed them, and shot the Captain in the process. She's down in Sickbay now. She must be bad. The Doctor, Wildman, and that Orion all are working on her."
"I can't picture Paris doing that," one of Ver's colleagues said, shaking her head. "I mean, everyone knows he's probably the most loyal person on board to her, next to Tuvok."
"Not anymore, obviously. Alpha Two -- the head AlphaOmegan guy -- he contacted us not long after Tuvok reached the Bridge and made his report. Apparently they've got Paris locked up in their Brig now."
"He wasn't in the Brig before?!"
"No. Some nonsense about keeping him in quarters, not a cell to attempt to put him at ease. 'We have found a Spartan cell is not conducive to engendering a sense of trust in the detainee therefore willingness to talk to the investigators,'" he quoted. "Garbage if you ask me. A cell clearly was the best choice for him." He shook his head, sadly. "He showed him to the Commander, some remote surveillance thing so he did not know anyone other than his guards were watching him. You should have seen him. He was in this cell, shouting how he knew Janeway and all of us were in on it all along. Then one of the guards asked him if he didn't have any remorse for the people he'd just killed or even Janeway and he told him to drop the forcefield and he'd show him how remorseful he was. It was scary really. Alpha Two's right. He has gone right over the edge now. You could tell just by watching him pacing back and forth like a caged animal."
"He is an animal," Ver declared, "so don't feel any sympathy for him. He's finally right where he belongs."
Without another word, he walked away.
-------
After leaving his office from where he had sent the "surveillance of Paris in his cell" to Voyager, Alpha Two returned to his subject in the Re-Education Room. He only had been there a few minutes before his combadge suddenly gave a chirp.
"What is it?" he demanded.
"Emergency in Computer Lab One," a female voice responded. "Two technicians down."
"On my way." He severed the connection. "I will be back later," he promised his semi-conscious prisoner. "Think about answering my questions. You know how much worse things can get for you."
-------
The EMH shook his head at the woman in the bed. "Captain, I must insist you stay here. You've had major surgery. You are in no condition to leave Sickbay."
"But-"
"I will order you relieved of command if necessary."
The mutinous glare she offered him only lasted until the strain of holding her head up off of the bed became too much.
"I can't believe Tom did this," she whispered.
"Neither can I," he sighed, "but it happened all the same."
Walking up to the bed, Yana smiled comfortingly down at the patient. "You need to rest, Captain. I am certain Mr. Chakotay can take care of everything until you are recovered."
Reluctantly, the exhausted Captain closed her eyes as a hypospray was pressed to her neck.
The Doctor headed for his office. "I'll contact the Bridge and tell him she is going to recover."
-------
"What happened?" Alpha Two demanded.
"I don't know yet," a harried Vassanji muttered. He remained hunched over a console in his lab next door to the site of the current chaos on The Diogenes. "I know they were going to open that program that Bartoq had brought from Voyager. The one he caught their Security Chief attempting to transfer to us. But I had to come here to check on some test results so I don't really know what they did. I'm calling up the surveillance log now."
As they watched the scene from only moments earlier, they saw The Diogenes' two head computer experts, a pair of Bynars, take the data chip containing Tom's program and insert it into the appropriate slot on their computer. They tapped out the commands to open the file and seconds later, they fell to the deck unconscious.
"Naturally, the moment their life signs deviated from the norm and the computer sent out the alert, I checked to see what was wrong, but the sensors already listed them as in a coma."
"Find out exactly what happened to them. I am going to talk to the undoubted architect of this little mess."
Vassanji was at work before Alpha Two even turned to leave the room.
-------
"We need to talk," Bartoq growled as he entered Tuvok's office without announcing himself.
In marked contrast to his counterpart's apparent anger, the Vulcan calmly abandoned his reports to focus on his visitor.
"We need to know everything you know about this program of Paris.'"
"I already told your Alpha Two everything I know of it. Mr. Paris said if the AlphaOmegans came for him, the program was our only hope for survival. I was to breech your computer and upload the program. I have no idea as to the contents of the program. Mr. Paris said it was best that I remained uninformed in case I was captured and interrogated."
Bartoq growled softly under his breath.
"Is there some problem?"
"Our experts who attempted to open the program and they now are in our Sickbay, seriously ill."
"I see. What happened?"
"We don't know for certain. All the logs show is they fell to the deck, in a coma, seconds after opening the program. The lab they were in automatically sealed itself the moment the sensors detected a change in their vitals. Since then, we've thoroughly checked out the lab they were in and everything is normal. No viruses or gases or equipment malfunctions or anything we can identify as being responsible for their condition."
"Perhaps it has nothing to do with the program at all. Perhaps the cause is something else entirely."
The Klingon mulled this over. "It is possible. They are Bynars after all."
"Ah. Yes. If something happens to one, it happens to both."
"But it seems entirely too coincidental," he insisted.
"Yet as my crewmates have told me repeatedly, 'coincidences do happen on occasion.' As maybe the case right now."
Reluctantly, he nodded at Voyager's Security Chief. "But if you do remember anything-"
"If I remember anything new, I will inform you."
"Good."
As the door closed behind the Klingon, Tuvok nearly smiled.
-------
"Voyager has been sighted," the young Rachar male announced to the lead Gherop ship's first officer.
The Gherop male turned his attention to him. "And the other ship? Is it still with them?"
"There is a ship matching the description with them."
"Communications!"
The female Rachar at the Communications station sat up a little straighter.
"Alert the rest of the fleet that the enemy has been sighted. They are not to deviate from E'Arte's orders. Voyager is not to be destroyed. As for the other ship, take her if possible. If not, destroy her."
As she did as ordered, the First Officer called his Captain to the Bridge.
-------
"Commander?" Harry called across the Bridge. "We have a fleet of ships incoming. Some of them are of Gherop design." His voice lowered. "And one of them is huge. Almost as large as The Diogenes."
Chakotay instantly shook off the remaining worry the Doctor's news about the Captain's expected recovery and began firing off orders. "Red alert," he ordered. "All hands to their stations."
-------
Tom's refusal to talk continued. After administering yet another dose of buryate, Alpha Two had permitted "Alpha Three" to enjoy another physical session with Tom, who currently was sprawled on the deck after a mean upper cut from the hologram. The Vulcan had decided to give the hologram this one last chance before admitting she had failed and forcing a mindmeld with his wayward protégé.
Tom was correct in his assumption Alpha Two secretly derived a lot of pleasure from imposing his will on others, especially if it meant he was justified in forcing a mindmeld with him, her, or it. Had he been on Vulcan or living amongst others of his kind, he would have been hospitalized for therapy to work this deviancy out of his personality. But his position as a Protector meant he felt his atypical Vulcan behavior was acceptable. If acting improperly for Vulcan was what it took to bring AlphaOmegan 41783 back in line and see if he was lying then he would do it. The thrill he derived from it was irrelevant.
At last he could not wait any longer and switched off the protesting hologram. Just as he bent over Tom to drag him off of the floor and place him back into his chair, The Diogenes shook with weapons fire impacting on the shields. With Alpha Two knocked off balance, Tom immediately seized the opportunity offered him. He grabbed the overturned instrument tray he had slammed into only seconds earlier and brought it crashing down over Alpha Two's skull as hard as he could.
Alpha Two did not move.
Automatically, Tom dropped his mangled weapon. Part of him wanted to jump for joy while another part merely wanted to join the tray on the deck plates. He finally had killed the reason for so much of the pain in his life. Or had he? He leaned down to check for a pulse when the ship was rocked again and he lost his footing. With a cry, he came crashing down to his hands and knees. Another blast impacted on the shields as he used the wall to drag himself to his feet.
'Forget about him,' part of him urged. 'He has to be dead after that blow. You have to think about yourself now and getting out of here.'
So instead of confirming the Vulcan's death, he forced himself to flee the hated room. He knew he had to run now or never have the chance again, especially not after having killed a Protector. Determinedly, he dragged himself out of the room and into the corridor.
-------
Now's the time, the voice told Sunfire. They're distracted by the attack.
After checking on Tom, the small ship known as Sunfire used her tap into The Diogenes' systems to open the shuttle bay doors and escape. With luck, the voice was right and no one would have the time to pay attention to her launching. If they did, they probably would think she was attempting to help them fend off the enemy. It would not be until too late before her true purpose was known.
-------
"Going somewhere?" a voice taunted Tom the moment he rounded a corner.
Slowly, Tom turned his head towards Raven who nonchalantly leaned against a bulkhead, smugly grinning. Both men had waited for this moment for a long time, nearly as long as Tom had waited for his freedom from Alpha Two.
In spite of Raven's nonchalance, Tom knew not to take him at face value. He knew this man, knew how ruthless and deadly The Protectors had made him. 'Almost as ruthless and deadly as AlphaOmegan 41783,' part of Tom thought. 'Almost, but not quite.' It was upon that slight difference between himself and Raven that Tom was betting. Hopefully it was going to be enough of an edge to defeat his adversary.
The uninjured man shook his head sadly. "Oh, my you really are in trouble now, Sunbird. I was watching you and saw you kill Alpha Two. Tsk-tsk. You've finally gone too far." He snorted. "And it was high time you were taken down a peg or two anyway. Alpha Two's favorite. A Chosen One. After this, you're nothing. Without Alpha Two around, no one's going to champion you now. You won't be able to get away with anything anymore, Mr. Perfect AlphaOmegan Soldier."
"It really got to you, didn't it, Raven?" Tom rasped, his voice rough from days of non-use. "The fact I always was better at everything than you. The fact they didn't sacrifice me after I went rogue. That they brought me back into the fold again."
"The only reason they brought you back was because they needed you for a Mission or you never would have been let live." He examined his fingernails in exaggerated calmness. "Speaking of your time as a rogue, you should thank me, you know."
"For what?"
"For letting you know about dear Daddy's capture and torture. Didn't you ever wonder how you just happened to see his file? It's thanks to me."
"How'd you get away with snooping through my file to find out who I really was?"
"I made a comment to Alpha Seven about the internal security and she gave me permission to attempt to breech it. It was a bit of a chore, but I made it into The Protectors' files. Once I was in, it was simple to find out who you were and about your father and your strong attachment to him."
"And I always thought the beefed up security measures were because of my little wanderings through the files."
"You are so self-centred!" he shouted furiously. "Everything's always been about you! We came here to get you. We played out this charade with the Voyager crew to find out about you. Alpha Two's spent days working to bring you back. This is where the you ends. Now, it's going to be about me."
He withdrew his phaser from its holster. "Now I'm going to have it all." He pointed the phaser at his intended target. "And I get to do what I've wanted to do to you for a long time."
"You think once I am dead you'll have my position, is that it, Raven?"
He grinned. "I have it. And your team. And your mate."
Tom's eyes focused on Raven's collar. "I see three rows of black braid, not four, Commander." The manner in which he stressed the last word caused the other man to grind his teeth. "And none of them are edged in white so they haven't made you a Chosen One like me."
"It is only a matter of time. I am the best they have."
"You'll always be a pale imitation of me, Raven. You know. The Protectors know it. And I'll wager my team knows it. Do they actually follow you because they trust you or do they do it out of fear?"
Raven's expression hardened.
"As for B'Elanna, doesn't it bother you in the least that the only way you could catch her interest was through what amounts to drugging her?"
Raven ignored Tom's taunt for another of his own. "Doesn't it bother you they all know what you are now?"
"They only know a skewed version of the truth."
"Like they would have believed the truth. That crew's Starfleet. Even those who were Maquis are Starfleet now. They couldn't comprehend the reality we know to be true, that The Protectors realized long ago, that everyone else in the Galaxy were a bunch of self-destructive morons who needed protecting from their own stupidity."
"The Protectors have gone far beyond merely protecting them, Raven. Because of their orders we've murdered thousands of people, all to maintain this artificial peace they've fostered."
"It has kept the Alpha and Beta Quadrants free from major conflicts for a long time."
"That's gone now, isn't it? They finally encountered someone they couldn't control."
"The Dominion's leaders are Changlings. Their fluidic nature makes it impossible to-"
"To mentally condition them the same way they did us. And they can't issue them Implants because once they revert to their natural state, the Implant would be expelled." Tom grimaced. "And thanks to The Protectors trying to force them into line by other means, the peace is shattered, possibly forever."
Raven frowned ever so slightly.
"You didn't know that The Protectors knew about the Dominion before everyone else did, did you? They knew not long after the wormhole at DS9 was opened that the Dominion existed and they told no one. If they had warned everyone about them, the moment they knew they existed, instead of keeping them a secret until they had control over them, the Alpha and Beta Quadrants would have been prepared for the war to come. But they didn't. How many civilians have died because of their silence, Raven? How many of our own people?"
"Like the Dominion wouldn't have attacked if everyone knew about them. There's no way they could have prepared for them."
"There always are options."
Raven slashed at the air with his phaser. "There is no sense in debating what might have happened," he barked. "What is done, is done. It is time for you to disappear from my life forever."
"How are you going to explain to The Protectors what happened to me? They want me back very badly. You can't claim you killed me having to defend yourself. The internal sensors will show you're lying."
"With Alpha Two dead, I am now in charge of this Mission. I can delete the sensor logs and say you did it."
"They won't believe that. Added to that, they still haven't got the information from me that they wanted."
"Oh, but the Vulcan might just have it. I'm sure that someone will be able to extract the knowledge from his mind. I never believed his story that you never revealed what you knew. I'll just take him, and the Borg and that hedgehog creature and the EMH and the ship's logs of course, and go back home."
"After doing what to the crew?"
"Oh, I'll take care of them. Or rather the surprise The Protectors hid on Voyager will." He smiled malevolently. "Tuvok says you couldn't remember the real reason you were on Voyager. Does Delcorus ring any bells?"
Hearing the name of the small planetoid deep within the Badlands did, ring some bells, but Tom did not permit his face to show the horrible thing he was remembering about Delcorus. He always had suspected the reason The Protectors had permitted him to be placed on Voyager was not something he wanted to remember. Now, with one little word, and the whole awful truth was coming back to him.
"Doesn't ring any bells? Pity. Will I enlighten you?" Raven seemed to mull the idea over. "I'll tell you this much: there's BoB hidden on Voyager and one signal from me and that's it for the intrepid crew of the U.S.S. Voyager," he smirked. "After I've removed those I want to save, of course. As for the ship, itself... I still haven't decided if it is worth the effort to bring her home with us. Rather a lot of work to refit her, especially since we already have downloaded all the information from her." He shrugged. "I'll have to think on that. There's plenty of time to-"
The Diogenes shook from yet another strong volley from the Gherop ships, knocking them both to the deck. Tom instantly made a move to grab Raven's weapon, only to feel the tingle of a transporter beam catch him.
"You are not going to win this time, Sunbird," Raven growled as he got to his feet. "Not this time.
Computer, locate AlphaOmegan 41783."
"He is no longer on The Diogenes," it responded.
"Where is he?"
"He was transported off the ship to Sunfire."
His full lips thinned and nearly disappeared. "Beam me to Voyager's Bridge."
-------
When the beam released him, Tom was on a familiar Bridge.
"Dammit, Sunfire," he moaned. "I could have finished him."
"But Sunbird-"
"I have to be in command of The Diogenes in order to get everyone home. That means Raven has to be dealt with."
"Soon there won't be anyone to get home." She showed him the Gherop fleet swarming Voyager and The Diogenes. "Can you fly?"
Squaring his bloodied shoulders, he nodded. "I'll have to," he answered, stepping up to the Conn. "You're patched into The Diogenes' computer."
"Of course."
"Then stop Raven from transporting anyone from Voyager."
"There's a transport in progress. He's going to Voyager."
Tom growled in a fashion of which B'Elanna would have approved. "Get those transporters off-line until I say otherwise."
"Aye, sir."
"I have to get to Voyager to stop whatever he's up to," he insisted, taking control of Sunfire's Helm. "There's a BoB somewhere on Voyager. Find it. I doubt he'll activate it with himself on board, but one never knows with him."
"How long do they have if he does activate it?"
"Not long."
"Then we'd better make short work of these idiots, huh?"
Though Tom's jaw hurt to do it, he smiled at the familiar refrain from his partner as he guided her into the fray.
-------
At the same moment Tom and Raven were sparring, Alpha Two was returning to consciousness. Groaning, he lay there for a moment then lifted his bleeding head. 'AlphaOmegan 41783 is loose,' he thought. 'He has to be brought back.'
"Computer, locate Raven."
"Raven is no longer on The Diogenes."
Wiping the blood away, he shakily stepped out into the corridor and touched his combadge.
-------
Padd of findings in hand, Vassanji ran down the corridors to the turbolift. He did not know why Alpha Two had not answered his combadge for the past few minutes, but he had to get to him to tell him what he had discovered about Paris' program before something happened. One ship-wide announcement and they all were in trouble.
As the lift doors opened, he started to step inside just as Alpha Two's voice did exactly what he had not wanted him to do and sounded over the ship-wide P.A. system.
"No!" he screamed, only to fall to the deck, unconscious.
-------
Around him, AlphaOmegans littered the deck plates. Alpha Two did not stop to check their vital signs. He had to reach the Bridge to see what was going on. Every once in a while, he could feel weapons fire shake the big ship as it impacted on the shields and he wanted to know why he had not been informed they were under attack and by whom. The chances of the enemy fire breaking through the shields was minimal, but still, he wanted to know who was daring to fire upon them.
As he came around a corner he saw a pair of grey-clad legs sticking out of a turbolift. There he found Vassanji, also unconscious, clutching a padd. Automatically, the Vulcan scooped it up as he shoved the body out of the lift doorway so the doors could close. On the trip up to the Bridge, he reviewed the padd's contents, hoping it contained the technician's findings about the program Tuvok had attempted to upload to them. He did not for an instant doubt Paris' role in what had happened to everyone on board The Diogenes. It was precisely the sort of thing he would do.
And his suspicions were well founded. In the padd's memory was the disturbing answer to everything.
"The contents of the program," it read, "is a refined version of the akoonah frequency that caused AlphaOmegan 41783 to Awaken. The refinements mean it no longer requires contact with an actual akoonah; instead, a ship's own internal communications can be used to transmit the frequency to everyone who is on board the first time a ship-wide announcement is made.
"The probable explanation for the Bynars who first accessed the program being the only ones to be affected by it is that the first attack was a stalling tactic used to concentrate our investigation in one direction while the program established itself in the communications systems. Now that the program is loose upon the ship, it may be impossible to remove. If AlphaOmegan 41783 cannot furnish us with a way of stripping his program from our systems, safety measures will have to be enacted and The Diogenes will have to be destroyed before it can affect any other ships.
"If the program is activated, everyone on board the infected ship, with the exception of the Alphas, will Awaken. The one saving grace is that once the announcement is over, the program returns to its dormant state."
The Vulcan nearly growled in frustration and anger. AlphaOmegan 41783 was not going to win this battle. "Computer, beam the AlphaOmegans on Voyager back to The Diogenes."
-------
"Tom," Sunfire murmured, "Alpha Two wants the AlphaOmegans back on The Diogenes."
Negotiating a difficult maneuver, Tom blanched. "He's still alive?"
"Yes."
Tom used a lovely bit of profanity he had picked up in one of the seedier dives on Lue Cha. "That makes things more difficult."
"Everyone else on the ship is unconscious."
"Then he's activated my program. Damn, I'd planned to be there on the ship when that happened. How are their vitals."
"They're doing okay."
He sighed. "Good. Have you located Raven?"
"Yes, he's appeared on the Bridge."
"Then give him to Alpha Two. No one else. They should keep each other busy until I can deal with them."
-------
"Sunfire is acting erratically," Dumar pointed out, puzzled as he joined the group of AlphaOmegans assembling in the right front corner of the Bridge.
They had realized the Voyager crew was better equipped to handle their ship in this emergency. Voyager was their ship; they knew her best. The AlphaOmegans planned to return to The Diogenes to figure out why she all of a sudden had stopped defending herself and why no one was responding to Voyager's hails. They had been preparing to beam back to their ship when they had become distracted by the scene on the main viewer.
"Tuvok, has she taken a hit? Is she a danger to us?" Pardan wanted to know.
"Yes, she's taken a few hits," the Security Chief answered, "but her shields are holding. It does not appear that she is out of control."
"That flying is familiar," T'Kara interrupted, staring at the screen while taking a place beside Bartoq. "It is his flying technique."
Pardan smiled. "Then he is back with us."
Chakotay frowned. "I thought Raven told us Sunfire was dead?"
"Her body is, Commander. Her mind is not."
He stared at the small ship zigzagging through the Gherop attackers. "Dr. Graves' research?"
"Yes, she was transferred to the ship's computer moments before death."
Everyone only half-heard the Romulan's words. Everyone was watching Sunfire perform a rapid change of direction and the two ships pursuing her collided, exploding in spectacular fashion. That left only four Gherop left on Voyager's tail and seven on that of The Diogenes.
"He certainly is back," Bartoq approved.
"Who is he?" Harry asked.
"Sunbird," the Cardassian grinned.
Chakotay moved closer to Baytart at the Conn. "I know that flying too," he murmured. "Impossible, unless...."
At just that moment, Raven materialized beside Tuvok's station. The eyes of everyone on the Bridge leapt to him.
"Why isn't The Diogenes firing back?" Chakotay asked. "That big ship is giving her a real pounding. Not to mention what the smaller ships are doing. I hope that secret weapon of yours is charged up."
Ignoring the confusion he felt at hearing his ship was not fighting back, Raven opened his mouth to drive the last metaphorical nail into Tom's coffin when the transporter caught him once more. The only words he was able to utter -"Paris has" -- hung in the air long after he had departed, puzzling everyone as to their meaning.
-------
Tom's enemy appeared The Diogenes Bridge, mouth still open and finishing his sentence. "- killed Alpha Two and -- "
"I can assure you I am not dead," the male who had brought him there informed him.
"You're alive!" Raven looked around the Bridge. "What happened?"
"That program of his is active."
"And it did this?"
"Yes. Where are the others? I ordered them beamed here also."
"Sunfire has taken Paris. My guess would be she's controlling our transporters."
"Then break her control. I want the others back here."
Though Raven nodded and assumed the Conn, he was anything but following his superior's orders to the letter. As he sat, his hand "innocently" brushed against the device concealed in his tunic pocket, sealing the fate of all on board Voyager.
-------
"I've found the BoB." Sunfire told Tom as he stepped out of the piloting circle. "It's behind the dedication plaque." She paused. "And it's just become live."
"Raven," he growled. "Beam everyone on the Bridge to Engineering," he instructed as he filled the first of four vials with his own blood.
"What do I do about Alpha Two's order to Raven to lock me out of their computers?"
"Initiate the Backdoor Program and let them think you're gone. Then fake a malfunction in their Transporter controls."
Moments later, she spoke again. "All done."
He set aside the last full vial with its companions. "Beam those and the padd to Yana in Sickbay."
They disappeared immediately.
"Sunbird, don't you think that was a bit too much blood for you to give when you've lost so much already?"
"On the contrary, I just hope it is enough. If that BoB goes off, they'll need as much of my blood as they can get if they are going to synthesize the antidote from it."
"But surely you'll be able to disarm it. You've done it before."
"But if I can't, I want them to be able to administer the antidote to the rest of the crew. Now, you've taken care of The Diogenes?"
"Just waiting for your orders."
"Good. Beam me straight to Voyager's Bridge and when the next Gherop ship attacks Voyager, let The Diogenes see what I want them to see," he ordered, grabbing a tool kit.
"You can't go there like that."
Tom glanced down at his briefs and blood stained body.
His AlphaOmegan uniform materialized on the chair beside him. "Put that on."
Nodding, Tom donned the hated uniform, hopefully for the last time.
-------
In Voyager's Sickbay, Yana and the Doctor were treating some minor injuries stemming from the attack by the Gherop when the padd and vials of blood appeared beside the Orion. Curious, she picked up the padd and began reading the message there.
The EMH read over her shoulder, confused by her sudden grin. "What's going on?"
Laughing, Yana grabbed the hologram and gave him a noisy kiss on the lips then ran into the lab with the vials.
The patients and the Doctor exchanged puzzled looks then he motioned them out of his Sickbay.
-------
It was a toss up who was more surprised by the unexpected arrivals in Engineering-the arrivals or those who already were present. The stunned stares everyone gave each other only increased at the sound of a familiar voice.
"Raven's no longer in command of our team," Tom announced from the Bridge. "I am."
All of the AlphaOmegans, even T'Kara, seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.
It was short lived.
"There's a BoB on the Bridge. T'Kara? Tuvok?"
"Yes?" the Vulcans answered.
Voyager's pilot began speaking to them in flawless Vulcan, which was quite a surprise to everyone in Engineering, especially Tuvok. Tom was the first human he had ever heard speak the language as well as a native and he had not known of this talent of the helmsman. Once the instructions were delivered, T'Kara took the Helm from Baytart and Tuvok rushed to another console to access the Tactical systems.
Working at the console next to Tuvok's, Harry saw something strange in the readings. "Why have you sealed the Bridge?" he asked the Vulcan beside him.
As if in answer, Tuvok pressed his combadge. "Tuvok to the crew. There is an explosive on the Bridge. Evacuate Decks Two, Three, and Four immediately. Tuvok out."
"Explosive!" the First Officer shouted.
"I can disarm it, Commander," Tom assured.
"How the hell did it get there?"
"It's been here since Voyager was built."
"What?"
"Look, I'm a little busy right now. We'll have to discuss this later." There was a clatter of tools on the Bridge then Tom spoke again, this time in Klingon then Cardassian. Seconds later, Bartoq and Dumar together rushed out of Engineering.
"Souris?"
"Aye?"
"Get to Sickbay, Mousey, and help Yana and the Doc work on the antidote."
Stepping out of the AlphaOmegan's way as she ran out, Chakotay grabbed Pardan's arm. "Why are you people taking orders from him?" he softly asked in a voice showing all the signs of vindication. "If he's the enemy, shouldn't you be trying to retake the Bridge?"
"Pardan," Tom interrupted, having heard the Commander's comment over the open commline, despite Chakotay's attempt to be quiet. Seemingly for the Commander's benefit, he spoke in Earth Standard instead of Romulan as he would have if he had followed his pattern. "Forget AlphaOmegan orders to the contrary and tell them what really was going on here."
"Now, sir? We're in the midst of a battle."
"And so am I up here. If this thing goes off before I can disarm it, I want at least those in Engineering to know what is going on so they'll trust us enough to accept a shot of antidote. If they take it, the others will too."
"But the Gherop-"
"T'Kara and Tuvok are more than capable of taking care of the Gherop. And Sunfire is doing her part too. You do yours."
"Aye, Captain."
"Sunbird out."
"Antidote for what?" Chakotay demanded.
"The explosive isn't really an explosive," Pardan explained, "but I agree with Mr. Tuvok's incorrect descriptor of it as being the best way to get your crew to evacuate those sections. What it really is, Commander, is a biological bomb. We call them BoBs for short. When they are triggered, they release a virus or some biological element into their surroundings. With the Bridge sealed, if it does go off, the virus will be contained there."
"So why is it on our ship?"
"I don't know. Sunbird says it has been there since the ship was built. Why it's there, I don't know."
"So why are you trusting him? You don't even know for certain that there is a bomb. He could be lying to you to gain control of the ship."
Leading Voyager's First Officer out of the way of the engineers who were trying to repair the damage of the Gherop attack, Pardan began following his orders from Tom. "We were ordered to lie to you about him, Commander. He is not a criminal. He is one of us. AlphaOmegan 41783 to be precise and our team's Captain."
Rapidly developing a headache from trying to keep all the AlphaOmegan lies straight, Chakotay massaged his temples. "But Raven said you did not use numbers. He said it was codenames."
"That is his serial number. Sunbird is his codename. The Captain goes by either one, depending on who is addressing him."
"He's a Captain?"
"Yes."
"And he didn't kill the people Raven said he did?"
Pardan turned his head to watch the controlled chaos in Engineering. "I don't know all of his past Missions. I do know one of the things The Protectors trained him to be was an assassin."
"So he did kill them."
"As I said, I don't know, however quite possibly it is the case, yes."
A quick intake of breath brought the Romulan's eyes back to him.
"Our mandate is to maintain a balance in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, Commander. Through that balance, peace is to be achieved."
"By killing people?"
"Sometimes it is necessary to eliminate problems in that manner, yes. It is regrettable, and only as a last resort when other methods have failed."
"Who gave you this mandate?"
"The Federation President."
"You're saying the President condones what you do?"
"Actually, the Federation President doesn't even know we still exist."
"What?"
"In the early days, the Federation Council quickly realized the Federation was vulnerable. There were many people who wished to see it not survive its infancy for many different reasons. Some thought it was going to destroy their culture's uniqueness. Other thought it would destroy their world's or system's economy and reduce their people to poverty. Still others thought they had enough government bureaucracy controlling their lives without yet another layer added to it. There were so many fears and resentments, both on the Federation worlds and the unaligned ones. The Council realized there was a very legitimate reason for concern that someone might attempt to sabotage the Federation just as it was being constructed."
"So the AlphaOmegans were created."
"No, the Council created Section 31. They were to ferret out any threats and neutralize them. It was supposed to be done legally and by the rules, but it quickly evolved into a witch hunt. But by that point they had justified to themselves the need to sever all ties to the Council so they could operate totally independently, without being influenced by anyone."
"That is what Raven said about the AlphaOmegans."
"And it is true. When we were created to bring Section 31 back into line, we were accountable only to the Federation President who created us. He gave us our mandate and allocated the materials and funds for us to do whatever we had to do. But then it was not long before The Protectors took us in the same route as Section 31 had gone."
"So what does this history lesson have to do with Paris or this antidote?"
"Obviously, Sunbird knows what is in the BoB and has passed the antidote to Yana and your Doctor for replication. But right now, your crew thinks he is a criminal. With the 'history lesson' as you call it, I am trying to explain who and what we are. So you'll understand we are the 'good guys,' despite the lies we've been ordered to tell."
"How about telling us why you're really here? If he's one of you, why all the subterfuge about him being some criminal?"
"We were following our orders. Apparently he knows something and Alpha Two wanted to know it too. What it is, I don't know, but it is important enough to bring us here." Pardan shook his head. "But none of that matters now. He is in charge of this Mission. Clearly, Alpha Two got what he wanted or he wouldn't be here. Right now, all you have to concentrate on is trusting us."
"Trusting you?" Chakotay gasped. "You've admitted you were lying to us before, but now you say you're trustworthy."
"Commander, if he can't disarm the BoB, then-"
"How do you expect us to trust him? Tuvok and the Doctor say they saw him shoot the Captain. We saw him in his cell, showing no remorse for anything, but now we're supposed to trust him?" Chakotay's eyes widened. "Or was it really him?"
"No, it was fake. All of it. Except for your captain being hurt. That was done by a hologram of him on The Diogenes' Holodeck with a real phaser. The feed from the cell was more of the same."
A couple of the nearest engineers literally stopped what they were doing long enough to shoot Pardan a startled glance.
"I knew it was totally out of character. He would have shot himself long before he'd ever hurt her."
"Alpha Two said it had to be done to convince you of the story Raven was telling you. Hardly any of your crew believed it and no one was telling us what Alpha Two wanted to know. Even before we got here, he knew further convincing would necessary, you'd need to see things with your own eyes, so he concocted the holodeck -"
There was a shower of sparks and Harry went flying. He crumbled into a heap a couple meters away, a nasty bump forming on the back of his head and a dazed look in his eyes.
"Chakotay to Transporter Room," he shouted. "Medical emergency. Beam Ensign Kim directly to Sickbay."
-------
"Sunfire's sustained a massive damage," Raven reported from the Conn. "She's out of control."
Stunned, both watched as the small ship, having destroyed the last of her attackers, headed on a collision course with Voyager.
"Tractor beam," Alpha Two ordered.
"It's not responding either. I don't know what Sunbird and Sunfire did, but nothing's responding to my commands."
Helplessly, Alpha Two had to watch as the small ship ploughed through Voyager's hull, both ships exploding in a spectacular display. 'AlphaOmegan 41783 is gone,' he silently sighed.
Quite understandably, Raven did not feel the acute sense of failure and loss that his companion did. What he felt upon seeing the space dust that had been the pair was relief and elation. The man he despised was dead and good riddance.
"Return us to the Alpha Quadrant," the Vulcan murmured from behind him.
"Aye, sir." He began entering the sequence of commands to open the gateway to their home quadrant. Seconds later he grunted. "I can enter the commands, but they won't initiate."
"Keep trying."
-------
"L'Roc?"
The middle aged Gherop turned to his commanding officer. "Yes?"
From her command chair on the largest Gherop ship's Bridge, she gestured to the two ships on there main viewer. Voyager and Sunfire hung motionless in the inky blackness dotted with pinpricks of light. "Why are they not helping to defend their ally?"
"Perhaps they are not allies?" he suggested. "Perhaps this ship we now fight was attempting achieve the same goal as us. Perhaps they too wished to take over Voyager."
"But why then would the little ship be so close to Voyager? Have they already succeeded in assuming command?" She swiveled her chair to glare at her communications officer. "Why haven't you tapped into their communications?"
"This ship is too well shielded," the Rachar hesitatingly explained. "As for Voyager and the other, we are too far from them to tell."
"L'Roc, send Ships Four and Seven closer to Voyager. Shields to maximum setting. Weapons to the ready."
-------
Barely paying attention to the reports from his sole AlphaOmegan, Alpha Two was staring at the two small Gherop ships who had abandoned the attack on The Diogenes and now were moving away. 'Where are they going?' he wondered. 'There is nothing there to be on guard against, yet they have their weapons powered.'
The Vulcan's puzzlement only lasted a moment longer for one of the Gherop ships suddenly began firing at nothing then exploded seemingly for no reason and the other turned tail and ran. 'There had not been any indication they were damaged and in danger of self-destructing,' he mused. 'Then why would they do so?'
"Raven-"
"I have full control back," the man smugly informed him. "Gopher Hole open and entering now."
At the same moment he was saying this and the leading edge of The Diogenes entered the Gopher Hole, the display beside Raven filled with static then cleared to show what actually was happening behind the ship.
"They're not destroyed?" Raven gasped.
"AlphaOmegan 41783," Alpha Two observed. "He is smarter than I thought."
"We have to go back. We can't let him get away with-"
"There is no going back now. The Diogenes has begun entering the Hole. Once that process is begun, there is now reversing it." The words were delivered dispassionately, the seething anger he felt not showing through.
"Then we have to fire-"
"If we fire weapons, it could destabilize the Hole and destroy us."
"But-"
"He has won." The Vulcan returned to his command chair only to sit upon the padd of Vassanji's findings. Rising he removed it from his seat and remembered he was not weaponless. "Or not." The irony of using Paris' own weapon against him secretly amused the Vulcan. All it needed was a little refinement of his own and an open channel to Voyager.
-------
"Sunfire? What's happening?"
Unable to stop the delicate work he had undertaken, Tom could only keep calling to his partner who had been keeping him apprised of the situation outside of Voyager.
"Sunbird," she shakily answered after a couple more calls, "those two ships who broke off to come after us... I've taken a couple bad hits but I'll live. I've lost control of The Diogenes' systems. The damage," she explained simply. "We're visible."
"What about the two Gherop?"
"One's still here. The other is making a run for it."
"Defend Voyager and let the other one go. What is The Diogenes doing?"
"They're-Sunbird, they've opened the Gopher Hole!"
"Stop them! I need that ship here, in this quadrant to get everyone home."
"I-"
Before Sunfire could tell him she was too damaged to do much more than hold her position and fire back at anyone close enough, there was a crackle as Voyager's ship-wide comm system was opened.
"Farewell then, Voyager," Alpha Two's voice called out. "It was an interesting interlude. A pity it is doubtful we will she each other again."
-------
Down in Engineering, everyone had been rushing about as the list of necessary repairs grew. In the back of their minds, they wondered if Pardan's story and what Tom allegedly was doing ten decks above them actually was real or another elaborate lie. What they did know was after The Protector's farewell was over, every AlphaOmegan in Engineering abruptly fainted.
-------
"So what are you saying?" Harry demanded as he followed Souris around Sickbay. While Yana and the Doctor worked in the lab, she had taken care of Sickbay, the still sleeping Captain, and Harry when he had appeared with a concussion. The moment he was healed, he had begun demanding confirmation of what everyone in Engineering had overheard Pardan tell Janeway and Chakotay. "Did you lie to me about Tom or not?"
"I had my orders, Harry. The Protectors dictated what I told you about him."
"What about us? Was that a lie too?"
Pale, she looked up at him. "They did not order me to get close to you. That was Dumar's job."
"He was supposed to sleep with me?"
"No one was supposed to sleep with anybody."
"But you did. Why?"
"Because I fell in love with-"
The message from Alpha Two interrupted her and Harry nearly tripped, trying to catch her as she fell.
-------
"What is this?"
The Orion glanced at the readings the EMH indicated then returned to her own work. "It is burayte, the chemical used to reinforce obedience." She frowned. "But I've never seen it in such high concentrations before. He must be stronger than even we-"
"Who is that?" he asked her, listening to the announcement. "Yana?"
He scrambled for a medical tricorder and scanned his colleague. 'Narcolepsy?' he wondered before the readings were in. 'In an Orion?'
When the results of the scan appeared, they seemed familiar to him. A quick consultation with his database confirmed where he had seen it before.
-------
Tom fell to his knees, grasping his head in pain and striking his forehead on the way down.
"Sunbird, are you okay?"
"Check the others," he ordered through clenched teeth.
Checking Voyager's internal sensors, Sunfire found each one of the AlphaOmegans to be in comas with vital signs fading fast.
The man forcing himself to his feet did not appreciate hearing this. "Obviously Alpha Two felt turn-about was fair play and broadcast my program back to us. Beam all of them to Sickbay. Paris to Doctor. You have patients coming in. Make them comfortable. There's nothing else you can do. Paris out."
"Sunbird, you need to-"
"I need to finish this," he corrected, returning to the biobomb. "How did Dumar and Bartoq do with the self-destruct? Is it off-line?"
"Its main and back up processors are in a dozen pieces on the floor."
"So if Alpha Two tried to trigger it, it wouldn't go off. Good," he sighed, swiping a forearm across his forehead to wipe away the moisture dripping into his eyes. "Sunfire, can you drop the temperature on the Bridge five degrees. I'm sweating."
"That's not sweat, Sunbird. That's blood. You hit your head on the way down."
Another swipe.
"Now you know why I want you to go-"
"I've almost got -- There." Sighing, Tom removed his tools from the biobomb. "Readings on the BoB?"
"It's non-functional."
"And the Gherop?"
"Other than the one that got away, they're all dead. The last of them, that big one, tried to follow The Diogenes into the Gopher Hole and was destroyed."
Tom sighed, relieved. "Beam the Bridge crew back here," he requested, starting to return his tools to their case.
Seconds later, a gasp from Chakotay drew his head towards the Commander who was staring at him, open-mouthed. He knew he must be a sight what with all his injuries from his interrogations, but he had to refrain from explaining them for the moment.
As everyone hurried to their stations, their eyes flitted to the gaping hole in the wall where once had been the plaque, now lying on the floor next to Tom's tools, then briefly to the injured man who might or might not be a criminal. A multitude of emotions ran through each of them. Tom knew that, but ignored it.
"The Gherop are destroyed and The Diogenes has left for the Alpha Quadrant," he informed the temporary Captain.
"You let them go?" Chakotay shouted.
"It wasn't a matter of let, Commander. Sunfire was damaged and we lost control of The Diogenes' systems."
"You've lost us our one sure way of getting home!"
"Don't fool yourselves. Very few of you were going to survive to see the Alpha Quadrant. As for the few who did, the only place there you ever were going to see was the inside of an AlphaOmegan base where, at best, you'd be executed once you're usefulness was over."
"That's 'at best'?"
"It is when the worst is to spend the rest of your life drugged and mentally conditioned and working in an AlphaOmegan lab somewhere, either as test subjects or researchers."
Some of the crew tried to refute his statement.
"Don't any of you get it? Standard Operating Procedure states when interacting with civilians we must either be in disguise or wearing hoods and gloves so none of us may be identified by any potential survivors. How did they show up? In full uniform, no disguises, no hoods, and only Raven wearing gloves."
"But-"
"You'd seen their faces, Commander. They'd even told you who they were. For a supposedly secret organization, that's rather indiscreet, don't you think?"
"We could have given our words-" the crewwoman at the science station interjected.
"That wouldn't have lasted. Not when the first question Starfleet and everyone else would ask would be 'So how'd you get home?' Even if all of you kept your mouths shut, all it would take would be one of you talking in your sleep. Or getting sick and becoming delirious. Or getting drunk. Or trying to impress someone. Or hearing something that you didn't like in some report and starting to think the AlphaOmegans might be behind it and trying to find out if you were right." He shook his aching head only to stop when it hurt too much. "Everyone on this ship is too big a risk to be set free. You were liabilities. And The Protectors don't tolerate liabilities. They eliminate them."
"Liabilities?" the ensign at the Conn barked. "Is that what you call us?"
"That is what you would be assessed as being in this operation, yes."
"Assessed? Operation? You even sound like them."
"I am one of them."
Tom began to sway and Chakotay automatically grabbed Tom's arms to hold him up. Biting his lower lip to suppress a cry, Tom twisted, trying to evade the touch. Chakotay's jaw slackened as his hand slid off of the younger man, covered in blood. He stared at the reddened hand then at the man who was the cause of it.
"What the..."
Not finishing the thought, Chakotay brushed away the Conn officer's attempt to prevent him from opening his tunic. He barely had parted the material when he recoiled from the bloodied and torn chest beneath and the dampness on his fingers.
"Who did this?" Chakotay whispered.
Tom pulled the shirt closed. "A hologram of Alpha Three."
"Why?"
"One of their creations dared to try to think for himself. He needed Re-Educating."
He looked at Harry who appeared torn between crying and looking away from his best friend in horror. "The BoB is harmless now. You can beam it out of there and into a secure container in Sickbay. I'm sure the Doc will want to look at the virus since it's not one he's ever seen before."
Harry nodded and stared down at his console, grateful for something to do other than look at Tom.
The injured man's eyes left the Ops Officer to scan the faces of the others. "I am sorry you're not home as I'd planned," he informed the stunned onlookers. "Things didn't work out for you as I'd hoped." His gaze rested on Tuvok for a brief moment and an onlooker could have sworn to have seen regret and sympathy in the Vulcan's gaze. "You may not be in the Alpha Quadrant," Tom continued, "but you are together and alive. That was the best I could do for you in the circumstances."
No one commented.
"How is the Captain? Alpha Two showed me what happened but not if she survived."
"Showed you?" Tuvok questioned.
"He made sure I saw everything that happened on that holodeck. He thought it might shock me into talking if I thought the Captain was hurt."
"You didn't do it?" the crewwoman whispered. In Engineering, she had been too far away from Pardan and too occupied with her duties to hear the truth about the Captain's shooting.
Tom looked at her like he could not believe what she was saying. That was because he could not. "I couldn't ever hurt her."
"But-"
"It was a hologram. Not really me." Painfully, he shuffled towards the stairs. "Though I'm sure she thinks it was me."
"We don't know what she thinks," Chakotay tried to comfort him. "She's still sedated."
They did not know if Tom heard the words before he collapsed.
-------
The Doctor was puzzling over his patients' readings when his assistant was beamed into Sickbay. Instantly, he rushed over to crouch beside him with his tricorder. Appalled by the results of his scan, he set aside the tricorder and lifted Tom to a biobed, just as another bed's patient flat-lined. He had to abandon Tom for the moment to confirm Bartoq's death. Regretfully, he covered the body with a sheet too until it could be placed in a stasis unit like Pardan, T'Kara, and Dumar. He did not know what was happening, but maybe his new patient did.
After applying a hypospray to Tom's neck, he began removing Tom's clothing.
"What have they done to you?" the EMH gasped to himself as the young man groggily opened his eyes. With each piece of clothing he removed, he discovered more angry red welts, multi-hued bruises, and bleeding lacerations.
"Doc?"
"Yes, Mr. Paris. It's me. Lie still while I treat you then I'll get you some food. You're dangerously malnourished." Picking up the first of the instruments he needed, he began asking questions. "Do you know what is happening to the others?"
"The others?"
"Your fellow AlphaOmegans? Yana followed the order you included on the padd you beamed to her and told me the truth about everything going on here. I know you're one of them."
"What's happening to them?"
"Pardan, T'Kara, Dumar, and now Bartoq are dead. Pardan and Dumar died almost instantly. T'Kara almost two minutes after them. Bartoq only a moment ago. It appears Yana and Souris might be next."
Tom tried to push himself upright. "Show me the readings."
"I really don't-"
He levered his badly beaten body to a seated position. "I might be able to save them."
Weighing preventing more deaths versus Tom Paris' need to be healed, the preventing of deaths came out on top. Helping Tom over to a console, he showed him the readings. "See, there's no reason why they should be unconscious or dying."
"You're just not able to see everything. Paris to Sunfire."
"You should be letting the Doctor-" she began.
"Did they remove my access to the AlphaOmegan systems?"
"No. I guess Alpha Two was so sure he'd be able to bring you back to them that he didn't see the sense in nullifying your access codes only to have to reinstate them later."
"Good. Computer, recognize Paris, Thomas Eugene. Alpha Gamma Four. Request access to AlphaOmegan files. Clearance, Delta Tango 6218144. Ultra Maroon through Ice Blue. Clear."
"Please enter identification code," the computer requested.
"AlphaOmegan 41783. Project Phoenix. Codename Sunbird."
"Recognized, AlphaOmegan 41783. Please state request."
Tom called up the Implant diagnostic database then ordered scans performed on the two remaining AlphaOmegans. Shaking off the Doctor's hands and the blanket he was attempting to wrap around his naked form, Tom frantically began imputing codes and cursing under his breath. The profanity became audible when Yana's monitor's alarm went off indicating she too had died. The pilot kept at his work for another minute then sighed as Souris' readings stabilized.
"What-"
He cut the Doctor off. "Alpha Two didn't just send my program back to us. He sent the codes for the Implants to self-destruct as well."
"You mean their Implants killed them."
"Yes." All the strength seemed to go out of Tom and the Doctor had to help him back to bed. "I've stopped Souris' at least. Hers hadn't fully kicked in yet."
"What about yours?"
Briefly, Tom's eyes rested on Kathryn where she lay on her biobed. He checked the display over her head to see she was going to be okay then tears had to be hastily blinked back as he realized how responsible he was for her being here.
"What about yours?" the Doctor repeated.
"Mine barely works anymore," Tom whispered. Permitting the Doctor to help him lie down, Tom grimaced. "More's the pity."
Tom's eyes fell closed and he actually slept, not merely fell into unconsciousness, for the first time in days.
-------
The day after The Diogenes had left, repairs finally were well in hand and the Gherop showed no signs of returning. Eager to check on Engineering, Chakotay felt safe in leaving the Bridge under Harry's command and entered a turbolift. It had descended only a deck before it stopped and Crewman Ver Faran stepped aboard, closely followed by Tuvok, padd in hand.
"Are you all right, Commander?" the Vulcan asked.
"Fine," Chakotay responded.
"I see" was what he said though "You're lying" was implied. He handed over the padd. "My report on this incident and the full version of my report on what transpired while Mr. Paris and I shared a body."
The First Officer frowned at the padd then at him.
"There were certain things I held back regarding my time with him that I now am at liberty to divulge. I apologize for withholding them until now, however Mr. Paris and I felt it best we remain the only ones who knew about them. He knew the first thing the AlphaOmegans would do would be download a copy of all the information stored in Voyager's computer, including all logs, personal and official."
"Are you saying there were things you knew and didn't tell us, even at the last staff meeting?"
"If you will remember, Commander, Raven was present at the meeting. Had I told the entire truth then, it would have ruined Mr. Paris' plans. He and I had decided months ago how I would act and how much I would say and to whom."
"You pretending to believe what they told you when they took you to The Diogenes."
"Yes. But, despite all our planning, things did not go as planned."
"What exactly was the plan?"
"Once they had Mr. Paris' program-"
"The program Bartoq caught you trying to upload to them."
"As we knew one of them would."
"You two expected them to catch you?"
"Yes."
He went on to explain to his stunned audience, Tom's simple plan of tricking the AlphaOmegans into taking to The Diogenes a version of what had caused Tom to Awaken then unleashing it on themselves as they investigated it. Chakotay nodded at Tuvok's insistence that it was the simplest way of subduing the AlphaOmegans and permitting Tom to assume command of their ship.
"But did he think about what would happen when they came to?" Chakotay gaped. "You said that he was remembering things, horrible things because he Awoke as you call it. Didn't he think they might too?"
"He knew they would be 'in a bad way' as he phrased it, but he felt what he had done to manipulate the frequency would not permanently damage their Implants, that there was a ninety-eight percent possibility they could be reactivated."
"So they'd go back to being what they were again."
"He felt it was the most humane option for them. The knowledge of their past lives and everything they had done in their lives under The Protectors' control would be too much for them to accept. He worried that some of them might be emotionally traumatized by their memories. He wanted them to have a chance off returning to their amnesia state."
"How very kind of him," Ver muttered under his breath so low Chakotay's ears did not catch it.
Tuvok's Vulcan ears did. "Computer, halt turbolift." He turned to the Barjoran with a frown. "Crewman, you appear to be resentful of Mr. Paris."
"Resentful?" Ver sneered. "Gee, I wonder what any of us would have to feel resentful about? Just that we were told we'd be home soon, and we're still here, and likely to still be here for a long time. And you want to know why? I'll tell you why. Why is lying Sickbay, that's why. If it weren't for him, we'd be refitting this ship readying to get home right now."
"You are way out of line, Crewman," the Commander growled.
Knowing if they did not deal with Ver's complaints immediately, he would spread them to the other crewmembers, Tuvok ignored Chakotay's truthful statement and addressed Ver's concerns. "Crewman, the chances were slim that they actually were going to take us home."
"And who told you that? Him? How can we believe him after the way he's lied to us for so long?"
"Mr. Paris-"
"Mr. Paris is a liar and a mass murderer."
"Only because The Protectors made him one."
"However he became one, the fact remains he is one. And he is the reason why we are stuck here."
"But he is the reason they came in the first place," Chakotay felt compelled to point out.
"So that gives him the right to screw up their rescue attempt?"
"He said-"
"He said. He said. Forget what he says. He lies. Look at the facts. They came for him. They got him. They lost him. They left because of it."
Both of Tuvok's eyebrows headed for his hairline. "Are you saying, Crewman, he should have stayed with them? That he should not have escaped from people who were torturing him? You say look at the facts. Well, the fact is he is lying in Sickbay in serious condition thanks to them."
"All you know is that he is hurt. You don't know that they did that to him."
Chakotay nearly choked. "Are you suggesting he did that to himself? Are you crazy?"
"If he thought he would need something to back up his story of them hurting him, then, yes, I think he would deliberately harm himself."
"That is not the Tom Paris I know-"
"That is my point. You don't really know him. No one does. You can't be sure he is telling the truth about what happened."
"And you can't be sure he's lying."
"He lied to us for years about who he was-"
"He has not known about his past for years," Tuvok clarified, "only a few months."
"He still didn't tell anyone. We could have been prepared had we known what was coming."
"He could not tell anyone without endangering the crew. If no one was attempting to hide any knowledge they possessed and nothing appeared in the logs, the AlphaOmegans would have to take longer to find out if everyone actually was in the dark and his plan would have more time to work."
"He still endangered the crew though, didn't he? Or are you forgetting he shot the Captain?"
"That was a hologram of him. Not really him."
"But it was because of him, wasn't it? In some twisted way, it was done for his benefit, wasn't it?"
"Yes, but he did not know it was going to happen nor did he wish it."
Ver focused narrowed gaze upon the Vulcan. "You shared a body for some time. How much of him did you take away with you, Tuvok? Isn't that how mindmelds work? Each comes away with a part of the other? Is that why you're defending him, because he essentially has brainwashed you into agreeing with everything he says?"
"I can assure you, Crewman, he did not 'brainwash' me. Other than what he inadvertently revealed to me in his dreams and what he told me, I took nothing away with me other than that knowledge. As for my faith in what he says, it stems from the fact I could tell he was telling me the truth and what he had told me has been verified through the events of the past few days. He said the AlphaOmegans would come for him and they did. He said he had information they wanted and they would try to get it from anyone they thought he might have told and they did. He said they only were interested in the information and not us and we would not get home and we didn't."
"That last one was only because of his escaping."
"Actually, gentlemen," Sunfire's voice said over his combadge, "your fates had been settled before The Diogenes ever left the Alpha Quadrant."
"Who is this?" the Commander asked.
"I am Sunfire. I apologize for eavesdropping, but until Sunbird is well enough to repair me, I cannot sever the link I established with your systems. You are wrong, Crewman. You weren't ever going to get home."
She replayed for them the confrontation between Raven and Tom outside of the Re-Education Room.
"Only Alpha Two was not dead," she said when the recording was finished. "We were able to maintain control of The Diogenes until I was hurt too badly. You know what happened after that."
"What was this about drugging B'Elanna?" an angry Chakotay questioned.
"For some species, skin to skin contact with one of Raven's species causes a chemical reaction resulting in a strong physical attraction. Raven did this to Lieutenant Torres to steal her from Sunbird more than any desire to place her in a position in which she would not hesitate in answering his questions."
Not really listening to Sunfire and Chakotay's exchange, Tuvok was focused on the danger they had been in and had not even known it. "Why was the biobomb on board?"
"According to Sunbird's file, when Captain Janeway suggested using Tom Paris to help find you, Mr. Tuvok, The Protectors thought it was a great idea. They arranged it so she received permission to approach him in New Zealand. They made sure he said yes to her deal and arrived safely on Voyager."
"Why did they want him here?"
"His mission was to lead Voyager to a specific place in the Badlands, a planetoid called Delcorus. He was programmed that halfway there he was to trigger the biobomb. By the time the ship reached Delcorus, all of the crew would be dead."
"Why did they want the Starfleet crew dead?" Chakotay gasped.
"Simply because they wanted the Maquis to have this ship. The Protectors had a Mission for their people in the Maquis to accomplish and they needed a powerful ship to do it. Since Starfleet was sending Voyager after Tuvok, they decided she would do for their plan."
Ver gritted his teeth. "There are AlphaOmegans in the Maquis?"
"The AlphaOmegans are everywhere, Crewman."
"And your precious Protectors thought some Maquis ship would stumble across Voyager and take her along home with us? That we'd never think it was a trap? They can't be that stupid. And we had no bases near Delcorus anyway. It could have been a long time before anyone found her.""
"One, it was not a trap and, two, a Maquis ship would have found her and taken her back to their base with them as per instructions."
"Instructions? From whom?"
"From The Protectors of course. The head of the team who was to find Voyager was one of their soldiers."
"So they'd just wander back to base with a Federation starship and that would be that? No one would ask questions?"
"Not once Voyager's logs were read. They would show the crew began dropping like flies from a virus supposedly picked up on DS9. The cure for it would have been found and released into the air on the ship only after it was too late to save anyone. By the time the Maquis party arrived, the virus would be eliminated but no one would be left alive."
"What about Mr. Paris?" Tuvok queried. "They were not going to kill him too, were they?"
"Of course not. He was their best soldier. A Chosen One."
"A what?" Chakotay broke in.
"That is the name they apply to one who is in line to become a Protector him-, her-or itself one day. No, he was going to survive. He was immunized against the virus before he left Earth. Four hours after Voyager reached Delcorus, an AlphaOmegan transport was to rendezvous with her with a clone of Tom Paris was on board. At the exact moment Voyager was to have reached the halfway point where AlphaOmegan 41783 was to Awaken and release the virus, the clone would have been subjected to the virus as well. By the time the transport met Voyager, the clone would be dead. He would be beamed here, Sunbird would have been taken to their ship and Tom Paris would have been no more. The Damocles made the rendezvous with one dead clone, but there was no live AlphaOmegan 41783 there to replace."
"So that's why Tom beamed Yana and the Doctor samples of his blood. The antidote was in it?"
"Yes."
"And he would have done it, wouldn't he," Ver continued, his anger hotter than ever. "If the Caretaker hadn't brought us here, he would have triggered this little surprise for the crew."
"'Free will' and 'AlphaOmegan' form an oxymoron. If an AlphaOmegan is given an order, they follow it to the letter. So the answer is, yes, if Voyager had remained in the Alpha Quadrant and reached the half way point to Delcorus then he would have Awoken and carried out his Mission."
"And the Starfleet crew would be dead and this ship would have ended up in the hands of the Maquis." He clenched his fist. "Could Voyager's presence in the Alpha Quadrant have turned the tide in the war?"
"Ver!" his former Maquis captain spluttered.
"I don't like the idea of the loss of lives, but if it would have won us the war -"
"No," Sunfire interrupted, "the presence of Voyager could not have won the war."
Ver was silent for almost five seconds then he spoke again. "It was no accident Chakotay heard of him just when we needed a pilot, was it?"
"No, it was set up that way. The Protectors needed him placed inside of the Maquis so they arranged for him to get there."
"Convenient for them then, our pilot being hurt in battle and being out of commission for some time.
"The length of his recovery was no accident."
"Someone deliberately made his injuries worse than they initially were, didn't they? I always thought he seemed a little worse off than he should have been." His mouth set into an angry line. "They did it all so Paris would get inside the Maquis? Why?"
"The Protectors had lost contact with one of their people and needed to re-establish contact. He had worked with her in the past so he was sent."
Chakotay frowned deeply. "But he wasn't with us long enough to-She was in my Cell? He didn't meet anyone from any other Cells so it had to be one of my people."
"It doesn't matter who it was, Commander. She died not long after Sunbird was captured by Starfleet."
"So he let himself get captured, didn't he?"
"No, it was an accident," Tuvok corrected.
"But Starfleet put him in prison. The Protectors couldn't-"
"If he hadn't gone to prison it would have provoked too many questions," Sunfire explained. "Everyone would have thought his family had had a hand in any light sentence he received. At the same time, his family would wonder who actually did, since they didn't. Questions would have arisen they did not want to have to deal with."
"Doctor to Commander Chakotay," the EMH interrupted over her combadge.
The First Officer steeled himself against anymore bad news from Sickbay. Already he had been informed of the deaths of all but one of the AlphaOmegans as well as had it confirmed that Tom's claim there was a deadly virus inside of the biobomb, one which would have done precisely what Sunfire only moments ago had stated it would. He really did not want to know what further bad news awaited him, not when Kathryn, Tom, and Souris were laying in Sickbay at that very moment in such bad shape.
"Go ahead," he reluctantly invited.
"I thought you would like to know there still has not been any change in the conditions of Mr. Paris and Souris. I have discovered something interesting about these Implants. Mr. Paris left the AlphaOmegan file on them open, unintentionally I'm sure, and I've been reading up on them. You might want to come to Sickbay and see for yourself. Sunfire temporarily has disconnected the protocols so their security measures won't kick in at our unauthorized entry. It's fascinating reading."
"I'll be there soon. Chakotay out. Computer, resume. Deck Five." As the lift began to move, he focussed on the seething crewman. "We will finish our discussion at another time. Once we have had a chance to talk to him about all this, then we will know what really happened over the past few days and in the past. In the meantime, I don't want to hear of you talking about Lieutenant Paris behind his back. Is that understood?"
"Yes, sir."
The doors opened at Deck Five and the Commander left Tuvok and Ver to travel on without him. Neither male said anything further, though Tuvok -- while he would never admit it -- secretly was as angry with the Bajoran standing stiffly beside him as Ver was at Paris, the AlphaOmegans, and the Universe in general. Try as he might, Tuvok could not think of a way of making it all go away. What he feared most was that it would not go away and that the rest of the crew was sharing his feelings. He himself did share the anger towards the AlphaOmegans, at least in part, but all of them were dead or gone except Souris and Lieutenant Paris. Silently, he sighed. The resentment towards them from the crew was going to be unbearable, especially for Tom Paris, who had been an outcast amongst the crew before because of his past. Now that they knew there were even more reasons to hate him, it would be even worse for him. And there was little he could do for him.
-------
"We're in the Alpha Quadrant, sir," Raven announced over the Comm channel. "We'll reach Base 14 in twelve minutes."
In his quarters, Alpha Two acknowledged in a calm voice then severed the connection. Though his outward appearance was that of calm, it was taking all of his Vulcan training to hold inside the seething anger he felt. Wishing it would not destabilize space for them to attempt so soon to jump back to where they had been, he wanted to return to the Delta Quadrant and ensure all of them were dead. According to some, AlphaOmegan 41783 had ninety-nine lives. 'If by some miracle he still had enough lives left to save himself and the others from-'
Mentally, he shook his head at that thought. True, yet again his star pupil had out smarted him, but he could not have survived, not in the condition he had been in. Alpha Two opened the small case on the table before him. He withdrew the DNA sample he had ordered a technician to take from an unconscious AlphaOmegan 41783. Turning it over in his hand, he very nearly smiled. Sunbird may have failed him yet again, but this one would not.
Carefully, he returned the sample to the case.
-------
"So it was Lieutenant Paris and not your akoonah that caused the malfunction after all, Commander?" Joe Carey nodded. "That is what Vorik and I wondered at the time when the akoonah and every thing else we checked came out okay."
"It was this Implant thing of his," Chakotay confirmed, looking around the bustling Engineering for someone expected yet unseen.
It had been over an hour before he had been able to extract himself from the EMH's lair. First there had been the discoveries he had made regarding the Implants, then there had been the updates on Souris and Tom, and finally, a discussion about how long he planned to keep the Captain unconscious. Chakotay agreed rest was the best thing for her recuperation and were she awake it would be Hell trying to keep her confined to bed while others undertook repairs. So they held off on rousing her from her nap.
However that did not preclude his overseeing the repairs and his destination upon leaving Sickbay had been the same one he had had when he had received the Doctor's summons -- Engineering.
Joe checked a padd a crewman handed him then handed it back with a nod. "If you're looking for Lieutenant Torres, she's not here, Commander."
"Where is she?"
Engineering's second-in-command hesitated then reluctantly answered. "Her quarters. She's taking this thing with Lieutenant Paris very hard. After The Diogenes left... she was a wreck, Commander, so I talked her into going to her quarters to rest. She didn't even put up a fight. She just left. But when she didn't show up for her shift today, I left Vorik in charge and went to check on her. She's not good. I think you should go see her."
Nodding, Chakotay strode out of Engineering.
All the way to B'Elanna's quarters, he tried to think of what to say. He knew right now, no matter what he said, the words would come out sounding like "I told you so" to the half-Klingon and that was the last thing she needed to hear right now. Not that someone with the temper of B'Elanna Torres ever wanted to hear even a hint she was wrong about something, but this was a particularly bad thing to appear to be gloating over.
When he walked in after four unanswered door chimes, he found her huddled on her couch, a blanket draped over her lower half, trying to pick a hole in the arm of couch. She did not acknowledge Chakotay even as he carefully sat down next to her.
"If you're here to tell me I told you so, don't bother," she muttered. "I already know."
"I'm here because everyone's worried about you."
"How could I be so wrong?" she asked the ceiling. "About not one, but two of them."
Chakotay narrowed his eyes. "Two?"
"Raven and Tom. How could I have fallen for two liars?"
He sighed and explained what Sunfire had told him about Raven's species and his "drugging" her to get her to fall for him. Unfortunately, the news that her falling for Raven was not really "falling" did not make her feel any better, only worse to find out yet another man had used her like so many in the past.
By the time Chakotay was called away, B'Elanna was in as deep a funk as she had been in when he had entered.
-------
"But, Mommy, I want to go play with them."
"Naomi, please, honey. Not now."
"But why?" the little girl cried.
"Because I said so. Now go get into your pajamas. It's naptime."
"But-"
"Go."
As her daughter stomped into her bedroom, Sam ran her hands through her thick blonde hair. She hated this fear she felt, this uncertainty. Only days earlier, she had told people Tom Paris was one of the few people on the ship with whom she completely trusted her child. Now she just did not know what to do.
Tom Paris had given Naomi an amazing gift in the "kids." He had managed to do something even she, Naomi's own mother had not been able to do -- find a way for Voyager's only child to be with kids her own age when there simply were none available. But in light of what was being said about him, about how much of the AlphaOmegans' stories might be true, she was at a loss. She could not forget those holograms had been programmed by a man who, for one reason or another, might be emotionally and mentally unbalanced. As Naomi's mother she had to protect her little girl. The worry, no matter how unlikely, that he might have created something that might harm her child mentally or physically would not leave her.
'Subconsciously, he could have been trying to turn her into something like him,' a little voice whispered. 'Remember what you heard. He was in training to be one of their leaders. Pardan claimed it is their leaders who create them and make them be what they are. All those things he was trying to teach Naomi. The survival skills. Were they only so she could protect herself or were they something more? What his mixed up mind trying to indoctrinate Naomi?'
She shook her head. 'No way. He loves her. He wouldn't want her to turn out like him. He as much as said so.'
'But he was not a well man. What he wanted and what he was doing could very well have been totally different things.'
"'Damned AlphaOmegans," she cursed. "First they mess with Paris' mind and now they're messing with mine. What the Hell am I supposed to do now? I can't keep her from them or him for the next fifty some odd years."
Yesterday, Naomi had overheard enough of a conversation to know Tom Paris had returned to Voyager. Immediately, she had wanted to go see him. Only her mother's insistence that Sickbay was not the place for her unless she was sick had prevented her daughter from hurrying to him. That had bought Sam some time to think yet she still had not decided what to do.
How she was supposed to explain to her little girl what her favorite playmate had been made to do in the past. She even had considered erasing the "children" and Siobahn and telling Naomi it was a result of the Gherop attack and their program couldn't be saved. She would have believed that, but it would have solved only half of Sam's problem. The rest -- how much of a role he was going to play in her daughter's future remained.
'Provided Ver and the others don't get their way,' she sighed. 'Having him and Souris confined to Sunfire for the rest of the trip like some of the crew had been whispering amongst themselves would keep him from Naomi, but was it fair? How far gone was he? Was he a threat to them?'
She sighed again. 'If only he'd wake up. Then we'd know where we all stood with the poor wretch.'
Over the last few days, she had discovered something important. She was a mother first and foremost. Her child had to come first. Any sympathy she felt for those in Sickbay had to come second. It was because of this, and as much as she hated the loss of any life, she found herself feeling it would have made all their lives so much easier if Paris and Souris had not survived whatever had happened to put each of them in there.
-------
Two days after The Diogenes had abandoned them, the Doctor permitted the Captain to awaken from her artificially induced rest. Once she had heard everything that had transpired while she was asleep, she fleetingly wished he had left her unconscious.
Two beds down lay Souris, sleeping peacefully. The dark waves of long hair that framed her face and tumbled over the edge of the bed emphasized her deathly pallor.
Still in on the bed in the surgical bay, lay an equally pale Tom. Gone were the actual wounds from his experience, yet they still showed in the lines of his sleeping face. Once dressed, Kathryn had spent a long time simply sitting next to his bedside, watching him sleep and thinking of everything Chakotay and Sunfire said had happened to him. More than once she felt torn between tears for Tom and the desire to hunt down the people who had done this to him and exact vengeance. Finally, she had to physically remove herself from his presence before she gathered him up in her arms and hugged him to her breast in relief in having safely away from his tormentors.
So she went over to the Doctor standing at Souris' bedside and found herself asking questions he already had answered. For once, he seemed to understand the real reason she was asking was not that she had forgotten what he had said, but she needed something to distract her from the reality around her. So he told her again of his discovery about the Implants.
While it was interesting to know how the Implants could take adrenaline and channel it to sustaining an AlphaOmegan until whatever had caused the adrenaline to be produced was gone or over, it did not tell any of them what they wanted to know most. It was nice to have a neat explanation for how Tom had continued functioning, given the degree to which he was injured, and a reason for why his adrenaline during the parole test had spiked then fallen below normal levels. What it did not give any clues as to was when he or Souris would awaken. It also did not stop her from hoping the answer would be different every time she asked the Doctor about it.
"So you still haven't found anything in the file on Implants that will give you an idea of when she'll wake up?"
Standing across Souris' bed from her, the Doctor shrugged. "I don't know, Captain. While the readings are similar to that of Mr. Paris when he Awoke, as Mr. Tuvok says to call it, I can't predict a timetable for her regaining consciousness any more than I could for him back then."
The Sickbay doors opened and Harry entered, making a beeline for the woman in the bed.
The EMH held up a hand to forestall Harry's questions. He knew it would be the same ones he had asked every time he had entered Sickbay over the past two days. "No, Ensign, she is not awake. Yes, I will call you when she does."
Harry visibly deflated and nodded.
Stepping aside so the young man could take his usual seat by Souris' bed, the Doctor added another piece of information. "Mr. Paris still has not awoken either, if you're interested."
Tom's best friend acknowledged the information with an uncomfortable glance towards Tom. Kathryn instantly recognized it for what it was -- Harry simply not knowing how to act where Tom was concerned. In light of everything they now knew and so much they still did not know, she fully understood Harry's ill ease. It was sad to see the conflict in the ensign, the desire to be there for the kind-hearted man who was his "brother" yet the fear of the deadly soldier he had been made to be.
'Almost as sad as the absence of the one who should be here, but wasn't,' she said to herself. In the couple of hours the Captain had been awake, B'Elanna had not visited even once. During his brief visit thirty minutes earlier, Chakotay had told her of B'Elanna's depression. The Commander held some hope that she would recover from this. 'She showed up for her shift today,' he had informed her. 'She seems okay.' Both of them knew, however, B'Elanna was anything but okay and she would not be until she and Tom could hash things out between them. She only hoped her favorite couple could get past this. It would be a tragedy for them to break up over this. He really was going to need all the love and support he could get when he awoke.
A scream from Tom shattered the silence.
Three heads whipped around in time to see the man jerk upright, throwing off his blanket, and ripping at his Sickbay-issue sleepwear in terror at their confining him. Instantly at his side, the Captain tried to calm him as the Doctor prepared a sedative in case she failed to settle him.
"Tom, it's okay. You're safe now. It's okay."
Frightened blue eyes met her concerned grey ones. It took over a minute for her calm words and stroking his hair for the fear to abate.
Shakily, he looked around Sickbay as if he never had seen it before. Apparently satisfied there was no danger lurking around there somewhere, he stared down at his torn tunic. Confused, he looked at her in askance.
"You had a nightmare," she murmured. "The Doctor can get you another shirt."
Nodding, the EMH tried to smile at Tom. "So, Mr. Paris, how are you feeling?"
Blinking, he looked from one to another then to Souris lying in her bed and a wide-eyed Harry staring back at him. The instant their eyes met, Tom jerked his away and stared down at his hands. With his eyes averted, he did not see the sad look on his "little brother's" face.
"Did you have a service for the others?" Tom softly asked the Captain.
"No, not yet," the EMH answered for her.
"I only woke up a couple hours ago myself," Janeway told the patient. "The Doctor's kept their bodies in stasis. It seems everyone's been too busy trying to put Voyager back together to think of funerals. And they thought you, Souris, and myself would wish to be there."
He nodded in agreement. "Souris has not come to yet then?"
"No."
Tom's eyes jerked to the Doctor's. "Her Implant. We have to attempt to reinitialize it before she Awakens fully."
"Mr. Tuvok told me about your plan and the possibility of reinitializing the Implants," the EMH sighed. "I tried with hers already. The self-destruct destroyed too much of it to restart it."
Tom was silent for a moment. "And Sunfire?"
The Captain sighed. "According to Chakotay, she is damaged but refuses to allow anyone to touch her except you."
"Engineering would be baffled by her anyway. They've never seen a ship of her design before." He addressed the Doctor. "When can I leave? Sunfire needs attention."
"Not for a couple of days," the hologram pronounced. "You were badly hurt. You need food and rest."
"And then there are questions you're going to have to answer," Chakotay added as he walked in and caught the tail end of Tom's question. "Raven made some serious accusations about you and things you'd done. Everyone wants to know what's true and what's not. Some of the crew are pretty mad and others aren't sure what to think."
"Chakotay," the Captain started to admonish, but Tom cut her off.
"I know at least part of what Raven told all of you, Commander," the pilot said. "Alpha Two made sure I saw your meeting where Raven told you the story about me. But Raven was lying. For the most part anyway. I am an AlphaOmegan and they did come here to capture me, but not for any of the crimes he outlined, and certainly not for murdering Sunfire."
Kathryn frowned. "The recording we saw?"
"It was faked, Captain. They took the actual recording from her Implant and inserted my image over the real murderer."
"They made it seem almost believable. If we hadn't know you...."
"It had to be credible or none of you would confide in them."
"So we would tell them anything we may have known about you and about this information they said you stole from them?"
He nodded.
"Was that why the Captain was shot?" Chakotay asked. "To make us believe you were out of control?"
"Trying to get you to confide in them so 'they had enough info to help me' wasn't working fast enough, so Alpha Two wanted to turn everyone against me, by me trying to kill the Captain. Then the Gherop came and ruined his plan before it could see fruition."
Kathryn leaned closer to him. "Tom, what was this information they wanted so badly?"
"The information about their connection to Section 31."
"Pardan said the AlphaOmegans were established to reel Section 31 in."
"What he didn't know and only the Protectors, Section 31's commanding officers, and I do know is they have been in league with each other since practically the beginning of the AlphaOmegans."
"Let me get this straight. You're saying they are in collusion?"
"There is a very accurate saying, Captain. In order to catch something, you have to become that something." He smiled ironically, eyes inward. "So they did, only by the time they had, they all realized it actually was a good idea for both of them to survive."
His eyes returned to her. "All the religions are wrong, you know. They've always thought the Universe was in the hands of some supreme deity or deities. In reality it's in the tritanium fist of mortals who just think they're gods."
"I don't under-"
"You know what has always appealed to me about the Twentieth Century? That, subconsciously at least, it reminded me so much about our own time. In the Twentieth, there were so many people talking about 'Big Brother,' their governments, always watching them through surveillance devices, allegedly for security purposes. Some individuals even claimed to know for a fact that there were these conspiracies in which their political bodies were doing all sorts of horrible things and covering it up."
"Paranoia was common in the mid to late Twentieth Century, yes, but what does that have to do with-"
"They were right, Captain. There were conspiracies. There were inhumane acts committed by the same governments who were supposed to be protecting them. After the Federation was born, everyone thought those days were over. They were wrong. Things merely moved to a bigger arena."
Tom pushed himself to sit upright. "In the Grand Scheme of things, until the Dominion appeared on the scene anyway, there was very little that went on in the Alpha or Beta Quadrants that The Protectors and Section 31 did not permit to occur. For the ordinary individual, little things, like what you had for breakfast, what clothes you wore off duty, those things more or less were your choice."
"More or less?"
"Usually you could decide the day to day things for yourselves. Unless there was a reason they wanted you to have eggs for breakfast with bacon, not sausages, or wear a blue dress, not green pants. But bigger things, like your career, your society's economic and political stability, they all were firmly overseen by The Protectors and Section 31."
"There's no way they could do that."
"They can and do. They have people everywhere."
"All rich and powerful like the Paris family?" Chakotay interjected.
"Not every AlphaOmegan is one because of family ties. Though they don't even know it, every child born in the Alpha or Beta Quadrants is subjected to testing as they grow up. If they pass all of the tests, they eventually may become an AlphaOmegan. If at not, they are rejected and get to live a normal life."
"But they picked you because you're a Paris."
"Initially, yes. I was automatically chosen because they knew I had the potential to become as illustrious as the rest of my family so they wanted me. Before I was even born they me set upon this path. The Tom Paris who might have been never had the chance to exist." Tom shook his head to clear it. "It was not until I was a child and scored within the highest percentile in certain tests that their interest in me became more than as a 'potential' and they began rigorously training me. It's the same way with others. They accept possibles into their program and throughout the Training discard any that don't measure up. Only a few make it to actual AlphaOmegan status. Many become technicians instead or are dropped all together."
The Captain shook her head. "Why do any of this at all?"
"Because of their mandate," Tom said impatiently. "They were told they were to maintain peace in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants so that was what they were trying to do. And they realized right away that the people they were attempting to protect were a bunch of morons intent on killing each other. So they stepped in and started taking care of the children as they see everyone to be. Of course they didn't think of doing that all on their own. The Organians helped."
"The Organians?"
"Remember your history, Captain. The Organian Peace Treaty of 2267. An advanced species known as the Organians forced a peace treaty between the Federation and the Klingon Empire."
"I know, but they wanted nothing further to do with us until we had matured as a species and set aside our war-like ways. From what Pardan and Raven claimed, the AlphaOmegans haven't done that. Why would the Organians help them?"
"They weren't actually helping them. Not knowingly anyway. Their forcing a peace gave the two groups a head start in enforcing one of their own. The Organians made it possible for The Protectors and Section 31 to assume absolute power over everything in a much shorter timeframe than was expected. That meant they finally could really begin maintaining the peace as they were supposed to be doing."
"But to kill people to do it? How can they justify that?"
"Their mandate was to keep the peace. If it takes the sacrifice of some to fix problems before they become problems, then isn't it worth it?"
"Do you really believe that?!" Harry gasped from across the room.
"In a twisted way, they are correct, yes. If the death of one can stop the deaths of millions, then it is worth it."
"But if they control everything, then why is it necessary? Why would anything happen that they don't want to happen?"
"Unlike the AlphaOmegans, the rest of the Galaxy haven't been drugged and beaten and Implanted into submission. They still have some free will of their own so unexpected things can happen. You go right instead of left when you're out for a walk and you're killed in a random act of violence. You fall in love with someone and you change your entire mindset and life because of that relationship. The unexpected does happen and it annoys the Hell out of them, but there is nothing they can do about it."
"Like your father and I being captured by the Cardassians?" Kathryn whispered hopefully. She really did not want to find out what had happened to her and the Admiral all was because of some conspiracy. It was easier in a way for her to accept it as an accident than people actually having had plotted out her capture.
"Yes, Captain. You were captured because there was a freak accident and the one who was supposed to stop your capture from happening was killed. If he had lived, Camet's people wouldn't have found you. You and the Admiral would have found the information they wanted him to find out about the Cardassians' operations in that area and you would have gone home heroes."
"What about Caldik Prime?" Chakotay murmured. "Was that another accident or an assassination? Where did they fall into this Grand Scheme of things?"
"Commander-" The Captain had censure in her voice, which he ignored.
Tom stiffened. "That was an accident, Commander. Pilot error."
"Tuvok says you claim to have been made to be some sort of super spy slash assassin. He said they molded you into the perfect tool for their plans. Then how can you have screwed up so badly as to commit a pilot error?"
"Commander, I have endured interrogations that would have broken even Tuvok. I have been exposed to and performed atrocities that would send any of you scurrying into the darkest recesses of your minds, never to come out. Through all that The Protectors did their damnedest to eliminate any trace of anything they did not want to be a part of my psychological makeup. But even they aren't omnipotent or omniscient. They couldn't remove all the flaws so I royally screwed up and three of my friends paid for that with their lives. Of course The Protectors patted themselves on the back later because the accident furnished them with the perfect excuse for me and Starfleet to part company."
"Sunfire told us about your reason for being in the Maquis. And on Voyager."
"I see."
"You see. What some of the crew can't see is how you can live with yourself? With everything you were going to do to these people, your friends, with this biobomb?"
"I didn't remember about the BoB until I was escaping from The Diogenes, Commander. Five years ago I wouldn't have felt anything when I triggered it. I would have done what I was programmed and that would have been that."
Tom stared deep into each of the four's eyes in turn. Finally, he sighed when he got the answer he all along had known was going to be there when the others found out about him.
"I am to be punished for things that I was programd to do or never even did, aren't I?" Tom asked Janeway, who looked uncomfortable at the question but did not break eye contact.
"Did you really kill those Cardassians?" she questioned.
"Yes, I did," he confessed in a matter of fact tone. "They destroyed my father and nearly my family. Because of Camet, my father never was the same. He became harder. My mother and my sisters at least always had been able to get him to show some affection towards them. But then he was captured and tortured and even they couldn't reach him anymore."
Tom's eyes got a far away look. "I love my family. I'd die for them." He came back to her though his eyes were hollow now. "A part of me died that day. I took lives of my own volition. I wasn't programd to do it. I wasn't tortured or drugged or mentally conditioned to accept some order that was against my morals, what few The Protectors had left me with. I chose to hunt them down and kill them. I chose vengeance and I got it. It's unfortunate that more than Camet and Meer had to die, but they were in my way to Camet."
"You're so cold about it." the First Officer whispered, seemingly not realizing he was saying it, not merely thinking it. "You killed all those people, thousands apparently, and it's like it all meant nothing to you."
"It means plenty to me, Commander." He tapped his forehead. "So much so that I still have them up here. Their voices are in my head, screaming at me, taunting me, replaying my crimes for me whenever I let my guard down enough they can get at me. They were silent for a while after Tuvok was in there too, but they are back, like some chorus, accompanying every word you say."
"Was this the mental breakdown Raven referred to?" the Doctor asked.
"No. They know nothing about my voices. The mental breakdown was after I saw my father's file. I lost my sanity and went after Camet."
Janeway opened her mouth to ask a question only to be cut off.
It was Souris' turn to scream.
The group around Tom's bed hurried over to help Harry who was having no luck calming her as the Captain had Tom.
After a moment of her shoving their hands away, she flew off the bed and into the arms of the man standing on wobbly legs next to his own bed.
"Sunbird," she sobbed into his chest. "What's happening?"
He was about to explain when she lifted her tear-streaked face to his sad one. Her green eyes met his for an instant then turned inward and widened. She slid out of his arms and slumped to the deck to sit forlornly at his feet, whimpering softly, floods of tears running down her pale face.
Harry immediately rushed over, intent on embracing his emotional lover. Tom stepped away from Souris to hold Harry back. Angry brown eyes glared into blue.
"Let me go!" the younger man demanded.
"You can't help her now, Harry," Tom murmured. "Her lives are merging."
"What the Hell does that mean?"
"It means she's remembering who she really is."
"But it's hurting her!"
"Yes, it will."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Tom looked down towards the woman rocking back and forth. Slowly, tortured green eyes met equally tortured blue ones. He had wanted to tell Harry, to prepare him for the pain that was coming, but now there was no time for it. Now he had to concentrate on the young woman, falling to pieces before him as the walls in her mind shattered like so much glass. Releasing Harry, he knelt down next to her, not touching her.
"You knew what happened," she said in a hoarse voice. "You were there."
"Yes," he admitted, knowing instantly to what she was referring.
"Why didn't you stop me?"
"You know the answer to that."
"But you broke their programming when you killed Gul Camet. Why couldn't you break it to stop me?!"
"Camet was personal. Seeing my father's file hit too close to home. Your family... your family I didn't know. I had no attachment to them. It wasn't personal."
"It was to me!" she sobbed. "They were my family! I loved them!" The eyes fell from his. "And that's why they had to die. Because I loved them too much," she whispered.
"You couldn't be extracted from your life long enough to do what The Protectors wanted. You and Danag were too close. You two couldn't go an hour without being in contact with one another. There was no way they could extract you from your life to use you if he was going to raise the alarm at not being able to contact you for even a brief length of time. And you know they wouldn't just shrug and remove you from the operatives list. You were too valuable to them. So they had to remove the obstacles so you could go on doing your job for them."
Her eyes leapt to his once more. "Obstacles? Obstacles! They were my husband and children!" Her eyes shut as her hands covered her lower abdomen. "And my baby!" she sobbed. "My poor baby."
Harry blanched and took a step back. Tom resisted sending a sympathetic glance towards his best friend. He felt for him. Discovering the woman he loved had been married and had had children was a blow, but nothing like the one that was about to hit him.
"How could they make me do that?" Souris continued to sob. "How could they make me murder them? Murder my own unborn baby? Why couldn't I break my programming? Why couldn't I refuse the order?"
Tom heard everyone gasp though he ignored it. "You tried to resist them, Allegia," he told her, the first person to call her by her true name in almost ten years. "They gave you the order and you tried to fight them. But they kept giving you a stronger doses of the burayte and Re-Educating you until-"
"Until I complied with the order and killed them!"
"Yes."
"And so many others. There were so many others who're dead because I did what The Protectors ordered me to do. How do you live with this?"
"By reminding myself it wasn't my idea, that at the time there was no difference between me and any of the equipment in here. I did what I was programd to do and only what I was programd to do. No independent thought, all predetermined, pre-programd responses to input. Never any say in the matter, just doing as ordered."
He cupped her face in his hands. "If we had been given the choice, Mousey, we wouldn't have done what we did. But we didn't have that choice. It was taken from us. Focus your anger on The Protectors. That's where it belongs. They are the ones who did this."
"But we did the killing. I see them. I see my family. Looking at me. Not understanding why I'm doing it. Asking me why? Begging me to save them." She made a strangled sound. "And taking the drug they gave me to kill my baby. We'd tried so long to have another child. We'd just found about it that morning. I don't even know if it was a boy or girl."
"It was a boy."
Fresh tears ran down her face. "Danag always wanted a boy."
Tom drew her to his chest where she stayed for a long time.
"I can't live like this," she sobbed. "I'm not strong like you."
"I'm not strong, Allegia. I just kept focused on getting them home. Then I hopefully can... find peace."
"End it you mean."
Tom nodded. "My Implant is damaged enough that I may be able to do it, yes."
Stunned, Kathryn deciphered what they were talking about in euphemisms was Tom committing suicide once Voyager was home. "Tom-"
Souris alias Allegia pulled back and looked at Tom through watery eyes. "But we're probably never getting home now."
"Voyager will get home one day. Probably not any time soon, but one day she will."
"I... I can't live like this," she repeated. "Please, Sunbird. I can't...."
For a long time he looked into her eyes without speaking. Finally, he found whatever it was he sought in their emerald depths.
"Harry, leave," Tom ordered, rising and going over to a drawer.
The ensign frowned at the pilot's back. "What? Why? What's she-"
"Captain, Commander, take him out of Sickbay."
Seeing what Tom was taking out of the drawer, the Doctor added his voice to the objections. "Mr. Paris-"
"Computer, discontinue EMH program."
The Doctor vanished as Tom turned with the phaser in his hand. The others gasped and automatically stepped forward to disarm him, but he motioned with the weapon for them to stand back.
"Please don't make this harder than it has to be."
"Tom-" the Captain tried to reason.
A shake of his head cut her off. "Take Harry out of here. Now."
"I'm not going anywhere," Harry declared, "until I know what's going on."
Ignoring the younger man, Tom looked down at the woman on the deck. "You have to say it, Mousey. You have to tell me what you want."
"Please, Sunbird," the woman in question whispered.
Tears ran down Tom's face and his voice cracked as he repeated his request. "You have to ask me to do what you want me to do."
"Please kill me."
Tom raised the phaser, changing the setting to maximum as he did so.
Naturally Harry and Chakotay were voluble in their objections.
Kathryn, however, was oddly quiet. She was torn between stopping what was about to happen and facilitating it. Mercy warred with views as old as time about the sanctity of all life. Mercy won and Kathryn attempted to remove the ensign as Tom wanted. With his superior strength and determination to stay, he was successful in resisting her.
"No! Captain, you can't let him do this," Harry yelled. "Souris, don't do this. I know what happened was bad, but you can work through it. I'll help you. Don'tHer eyes snapped to his. "'Work through it'?" she cried. "I killed my husband and children because The Protectors made me. I couldn't protect them. I couldn't even protect the five week old fetus I carried."
"That was in the past. The Protectors aren't here to-"
"In the past? My family was my life. Danag and I had the proverbial once in a blue moon sort of love. We were happier than any couple ever even dreams of being and I destroyed it."
"But that wasn't your fault. We can-"
"There is no 'we.'"
Harry stilled. "That's not true. You love me. You said so."
Fresh tears appeared. "Souris loved you. I'm Allegia. I'm not her."
"But-"
"You would condemn me to living with the Hell The Protectors have sentenced me to? To the memories of my children and husband screaming in terror and confusion and pain? To the memory of betraying my wedding vows by sleeping with you? By loving you?"
Paling, he had no answer.
"The memories aren't going to go away. Time won't make me forget what I have done. The memories will stay as sharp and painful as they are now. Death is best."
Suddenly, she disappeared in a transporter beam.
Confused, Tom lowered the phaser.
"I fulfilled her wish," Sunfire said sadly over the Comm. "Her molecules are scattered to the stars. I couldn't let you have yet another voice in your head, Sunbird."
Nodding, he let the phaser fall from his lifeless fingers. "Allegia's better off this way," he said, not looking at anyone. "At least it's all over for her now. If there is an afterlife then she's in it with her family and hopefully she'll have peace."
"I could have helped her," Harry insisted. "I could have -"
Tom met his eyes. "All you would have done is prolong her suffering, Harry, until one day she found some way to get around her Implant and kill herself."
"What do you mean?" Kathryn interrupted. "'Get around her Implant'?"
"The Protectors spend a lot of time and effort creating us. In the beginning, some AlphaOmegans became so unbalanced by The Training that when they were returned to their other lives to await the next time they were needed, they committed suicide. That was considered a waste of resources so now, amongst the other things that our Implants do, they prevent us from remembering anything about what we are or being able to commit suicide."
"'Waste of resources'?" Chakotay said, stunned. "You're talking about people, not phasers."
"They are one and the same in The Protectors' Grand Scheme of things. Both are weapons used to accomplish a goal. To be done with as the user pleases." Tom lowered his eyes as more tears fell. "They have one less weapon now."
Harry shook off the Captain's comforting hands and stumbled out of Sickbay.
"I think the memorial service should be tomorrow," Tom told the Captain in a monotone. "I should have Sunbird stabilized by then."
"Tom, you need rest and-" she started to insist.
"The Mess Hall would be best. 1000 hours. Neelix should have cleared out the breakfast crowd by then."
"Tom-"
"Sunfire?"
The other ship took the hint and he too vanished, leaving a stunned Chakotay and the Captain calling for the Doctor to reappear.
-------
The next morning, Seven and Neelix were having a debate about nutritional value versus palatability of the meal he had served for breakfast when the doors to the turbolift in which they were riding opened and Harry Kim entered.
"Ensign Kim," Neelix greeted. "You were in the Mess Hall for breakfast this morning. Tell Seven it was not overly spiced."
Harry blankly stared at the Talaxian.
"I observed Ensign Kim did not eat his breakfast," Seven remarked. "He only repositioned it on his plate from time to time therefore he is not qualified to comment on what you served."
Neelix nodded. "Well, that is to be expected, what with the service for the AlphaOmegans being conducted in a few minutes."
"I'm not going," Harry mumbled, turning to the door.
"I don't know how many of the crew actually are really," Neelix admitted. "It's hard to mourn people who consistently lied to you and were going to kill you -- no matter what the reasoning."
"They were not going to kill you or I, Mr. Neelix," Seven corrected. "Apparently you, the Doctor, and I were to be taken for study."
"Well, I don't imagine many people will be going. Except Mr. Kim, to say good bye to Souris."
"Her name wasn't even Souris," Harry muttered. "And I'm not going."
The doors opened again and Harry left.
-------
In the end, only four people did attend the memorial service in the Mess Hall for the AlphaOmegans. The Captain, Tuvok, and the Doctor were the only members of Voyager's crew who were willing to come to say goodbye to the six who had lost their lives. As Neelix had predicted, none of the others were able to find their way past what had happened and permit any compassion to permeate the resentment they rightfully felt. All the anger and disappointment still was too close to the surface for the pity they felt for the dead to come through. 'Perhaps sometime in the future we'll say a prayer or something for them,' some told each other, 'but not now.' So the mourners only numbered four.
Tom was the fourth and last to arrive, beaming over from Sunfire only moments before the service was to begin. Earlier, when the Doctor had been preparing the deceased for their final resting place in the photon torpedo cases, Tom had sent over a dress uniform for each of the five bodies. Now he came in his own dress uniform, carrying six AlphaOmegan flags in his arms. Wordlessly rejecting the Captain's offer of help, he draped each "coffin" in a flag then laid the sixth one over Souris' uniform, lying on a table placed in line with the torpedo cases on their stands. Once he was done, he stood there for a long moment, staring at the remains of his dead colleagues.
When he was ready, he turned to the others. There were no tears in his eyes. No emotion at all. He had done all his crying the day before on Sunfire. With only a voice and mind left, Sunfire had no arms to hold him as he had cried, yet she had done her best to comfort him until he was done. Now he felt nothing. All the pain was gone and he felt dead inside.
"You may think it strange considering what the AlphaOmegans, namely The Protectors, did to them that I asked for them to wear their uniforms or that I put the flags over them, but it is not. When the AlphaOmegans were created, they were not what they are today. They were intended to be something to be proud of. They were intended to be the good guys. Whether they agreed with what we had become or not, these six were AlphaOmegans and I am proud of them. They were good people who did not deserve what they were made to be. I would like to properly introduce them to you."
As Tom made the "introductions," he stunned all present by revealing the connection between the deceased and the "children" who were intended to be Naomi's playmates.
He stepped over to Pardan's coffin. "This was Sar in his real life. He was the treasured son of his parents and possessed a musical genius seldom seen. Once we were trapped on Ultea III in a cave-in. All of us were hurt and exhausted and knew the chances of survival were slim. Sar fashioned this musical instrument out of bits and pieces from his kit and kept our minds off everything until help came. He also was the best First Officer I've ever had. I will miss his counsel and presence."
He touched Bartoq's coffin. "This was Mor, son of Kerr. He had the finest hand with a bat'leth that I have ever seen. And he had the fiercest, most loyal heart of anyone I have ever encountered. He saved my life more times than I can remember. I know he sits at Kahless' right hand in Sto-Vo-Kor."
Dumar was next. "This was Darkat." Tom half smiled. "He had the wickedest sense of humor I have ever heard. He had a bad joke for every occasion, each one worse than the one previous. I know he is somewhere with a whole new audience groaning at his bad punch lines."
The slight smile faded as he moved to Yana. "This was Pia. The first time we met, her Mission happened to intersect with mine and I won her in a card game. At the time she was the property of this crime lord who used her as a stake in the game. I was supposed to arrange it so a certain player won that round, but for some reason I couldn't let her go to him. So I cheated and won. It complicated both our Missions, but I'll never forget the look on her face when I won. It was this flash of relief that she wasn't going to have to go home with either of them as she was meant to." Unconsciously he rubbed his ribs. "The Protectors made me pay for my mistake, but I did not and do not regret saving her from how she would have been treated."
T'Kara's was the only coffin left and he laid both hands on the casing and was quiet for a moment. "This was T'Kosh," he finally told them. "She was the best pilot I've ever seen. She also had a calmness and an unerring logic I regretfully lack. Any time I felt I was losing control of a situation, all I had to do was exchange a glance with her and she'd give me the calm I needed. She never could teach me how to find it in myself, she knew it just wasn't there I guess, but she would let me have some of hers whenever I needed it. I am sorry there was no one there to accept her katra when her time came. The Universe became a lesser place when it was lost."
Gently, he laid a hand on Souris' uniform and the flag. "And this was Allegia. Beloved wife of Danag. Mother of Ita and Ipa and a little boy who never had the chance to receive a name. She was a precious creature who never should have been violated the way The Protectors did to her. It is for them that I swear on my miserable life and before witnesses that one day The Protectors will pay for what they did to all of us."
He stepped back. "Their battle is over. May they find the peace they fought to preserve and the happiness that they were denied in his life."
Sunfire beamed the five coffins, flags, and Souris' uniform out of the Mess Hall and into space. Tom turned towards the windows as they reappeared then were vaporized by a blast from Sunfire's phasers.
There was nothing left to say. At any other memorial there would have been socializing over a meal, toasts to the deceased, stories told of past good times and bad. This was not a normal memorial. Three of the mourners did not even really know the deceased and the fourth was incommunicative. It did not help that exactly half of the mourners consisted of a Vulcan who did not show emotions and hated socializing and a hologram who saw the subtleties of a funeral to be something to be analyzed in his attempts to evolve a better personality. The Captain and Tom were the only ones who truly appreciated the affair and Tom was standing, silently staring out at the stars, oblivious to the others.
Finally, Tuvok motioned for the Doctor to follow him and they left the two humans alone in the Mess Hall.
Kathryn stood there, watching her Conn Officer. As she had been unconscious when he had arrived in Sickbay, she had not seen him in his uniform until now and see took a long look at him.
Sunfire had permitted her to do some reading in the AlphaOmegan database. Because of that, she knew the four bands of white-edged black braid around the mock-turtleneck of his midnight blue uniform indicated his rank of Captain and his status as a Chosen One. It was his rank that surprised her. Logically, the last time they could have promoted him was over five years ago and back then she would not have thought Tom Paris mature enough to handle a Captaincy.
'But it wasn't Tom Paris who was made a Captain. It was AlphaOmegan 41783. You have no idea how mature or experienced he was or is.'
Sighing, her gaze ran over him, pausing only for an instant on what she secretly considered to be the best posterior on the ship. Mentally shaking herself, she refocused her attention on the clothes encasing that posterior and the rest of the lanky frame. His stance reminded her of someone else's. It took her only a moment to realize whose it was. His father's. After they had been rescued from Camet. The Admiral had seemed older somehow after the experience. Tom did too now.
As if he had read her mind, he began talking. "You didn't ask me much about Camet, Captain. You wish to talk about it now?"
She wanted to say it was a funeral and they could talk about Camet at a more appropriate time, but she did not. "Did you know it was me?" she asked. "That I was that ensign with your father?"
"At the time, I saw your name, yes, but until recently I didn't remember it." His lips formed a sad parody of a smile. "The general consensus always has been I'd willingly die to protect you. Turns out I already did. The good man - what little of him was left - died that day."
She swallowed hard. "Would you do it again?"
"Yes."
Reflexively, she took a step back.
Turning, Tom regarded her sadly. "You don't get it, do you? Camet nearly destroyed my father. Until Dad's capture, I had hope that we might one day be close, that one day I might actually do something that would make him proud. After he was rescued.... Most of the time it was like none of us even existed anymore. Mom... Anyone who looked at them together could see how much she loved him and he shut her out. And Moira and Kathleen... Before, he'd always made time for them, but he suddenly 'had too much work to do.'" He swallowed hard. "And me... When he even acknowledged my presence it was one of those speaking glances people talk about in novels. The ones that seem to communicate exactly what the person was thinking? Well, he always was disappointed I hadn't done better, no matter how hard I'd tried or how well I'd done. He always communicated his displeasure without even saying a word."
"Tom...."
"Because of what Camet did to him he never was the same. Mom lost her husband. Kathleen, Moira, and I lost my father. He had to pay for what he had done to all of us."
"What you did...."
"Was what he deserved. I saw Camet's file. He was on track to become a very powerful man and The Protectors weren't going to stop him. He already was responsible for the deaths of so many. If he continued on in his career, more would be dead now. Consider it a public service, Captain. That's what I try to do."
"It was vigilante-ism, Tom. He should have been brought to the authorities. You had no right to do what you did."
"And what right had he to do what he did to you and my father? To all of us?"
Kathryn had no answer to that. She merely lowered her eyes and left the Mess Hall.
-------
"Captain?"
She emerged from her stupor to see her First Officer inside the turbolift. Looking around, she discovered herself to be standing in the doorway. Quickly, she stepped inside and the doors closed.
"Please state your destination," the computer requested.
"Uh..."
Chakotay called out her deck number. As the lift moved, he touched her arm. "You okay?"
"I know what he did was wrong," she whispered, "so why can't I disapprove of him for having done it?"
"Paris," he guessed, "killing those Cardassians on that base?"
She nodded.
He sighed. "I seem to be having the opposite problem. I mean, given my history with the Cardassians, as much as I hate them for what they did to my people and the others in the Annexed territory and along its border, I should be feeling like you. I shouldn't be wondering if they really deserved what he did to them. I shouldn't be thinking it's one thing to, in the heat of the moment, kill an enemy in battle. I've been there. I've done that. With my bare hands even. But it is something else entirely to cold-bloodedly torture two of them. I keep remembering that he had them strapped down to chairs and systematically tortured them then killed them. I completely understand your feelings, Kathryn, but I can't understand why I don't totally share them."
Forgetting her own pain for a moment, she sadly smiled a comforting smile.
He smiled crookedly back.
"Why doesn't knowing how he did it seem to make the same difference to me?" she whispered. "Why doesn't knowing they suffered horribly and he's showing absolutely no remorse for it not make me hate him?"
The lift doors opened and he shepherded her out and down the corridor towards her quarters. "I can't answer that," he sighed. "But right now, you're tired and need rest. Maybe later we'll be able to figure things out."
At her door, she stopped and looked at him with glazed eyes. Without a word, she walked into her quarters.
"Is she resting, Commander?" the voice of Harry's second in command of Ops asked at his elbow a moment later.
Chakotay turned to her. "I hope so."
"She wanted to see this the moment it was finished, but I guess I should give it to you." She handed over a padd. "No further AlphaOmegan surprises have been located. Voyager is in need of supplies both for Engineering to complete repairs and for the kitchen and Astrometrics has found a planet nine days from here which might suffice."
"Good. And Sunfire?"
"Scans indicate she has been repaired for the most part. She still refuses to permit anyone other than Lieutenant Paris to board her so no exact estimate on remaining damage is available."
He frowned. "But there's nothing to indicate she's of any danger to us?"
"Engineering doesn't think so, however they're unfamiliar with most of her systems."
"Then let's hope Paris is a better engineer than we think he is and she doesn't suddenly self-destruct on us or something."
"Yes, sir."
"Any signs of the Gherop returning?"
"None."
"That's something at least," he sighed and followed her away from the Captain's door.
-------
Tom heard the doors to the Mess Hall open a couple minutes after Janeway had left. From the eau de plasma coolant, he knew who the one to enter had been.
B'Elanna stopped two meters away from him.
Keeping his back to her, he let her play the opening gambit in the conversation. And it was not one he expected.
"Was the thing about the druid at Stonehenge really your memory or Raven's?" she asked.
"Mine. He knew about it because Alpha Two knew from a mindmeld he forced on me."
She paused then asked the question he had been expecting her to ask. "Chakotay says Raven used some sort of chemical to make me fall for him."
"It's a hormone his people exude. Normally it's used during mating to bond mates to one another for life. Raven is different than most. He has a kinked chromosome or something and he can't form a permanent bond to a mate, but he can form temporary bonds. That was what he was doing to you."
"So none of it was real."
"If you're asking if he loved you, no. Raven is incapable of love. He wanted to seduce you for revenge for imagined and not so imagined slights from me."
She was silent again for a while then asked the other important question on her mind. "Was our entire relationship because you really loved me or was it just expediency?"
Turning, he frowned at her. "Expediency?"
"To solidify your information network on the ship. So that when anything happened on the ship you'd know about it and be able to control it."
"If you're thinking I was using you then don't," he denied vehemently. "I was not given any instructions regarding establishing any ties, romantic, sexual, or otherwise to anyone, either during my time in the Maquis or here on Voyager."
"Are you sure? According to Tuvok, you claim you're still remembering things. How do you know you'll not remember them ordering you to get the Chief Engineer into bed?"
"If I were ordered to get you into bed then why did it take me over a year before I started pursuing you in earnest and so long after that before I succeeding in taking you to my bed?" he questioned earnestly. "Why did I spend so much time chasing Megan and Nicoletti instead of chasing you right off the bat? And why would they have ordered me to bed the Chief Engineer anyway? None of the Starfleet crew was going to survive their trip through the Badlands. The Protectors never waste time on anything that doesn't benefit them in some way. My seducing the Chief Engineer would have been a waste of time since the man who was the Chief at the time was going to be dead soon anyway. Besides, if they had wanted me to bed anyone it would have been the Captain, not someone as far down the chain of command as the Chief Engineer. Always go for the one with the power. That's one of the first rules we're taught."
"You've had to seduce others."
"Yes, I have."
She looked away from him, repulsed.
"As much as I wish it were otherwise, back then I had no say in whether I did something or not, so I can't apologize for following orders, no matter how distasteful I find them now. Back then, I was what they created me to be and, yes, unfortunately, part of me always will be. Until I Awoke my motivations and desires were dictated by them. If you had asked me which way was up, I couldn't have told you without their having told me first. If they told me to seduce someone, I did it."
He stepped closer and amazingly she did not move away. "Then I Awoke and for the following few months I was so wrapped up in trying to protect all of us from them that its only recently that I have been trying to figure out who I am now that I'm aware of all of my past." He cupped her face in his hands, forcing her to meet his eyes. "But the one thing I've never doubted through all this was that I love you. How I feel about you is the only certain thing that I do know about me."
"But what about how I feel about you?" she returned, stepping away. "What about how I feel about all this?"
"I know this is a huge shock, but I'm still the same man."
"Are you? The Tom Paris I knew wasn't a mass murderer. He wasn't someone who could cold-bloodedly torture or kill anyone."
"But that wasn't really me. There's no way I would do that now, not of my own choice."
"What about this Camet?"
Tom stopped short, feeling his position eroding.
And it was. At the look of revulsion appearing on her face, it felt like a physical blow was delivered to his midsection. She was not going to be swayed by any declarations of love and devotion anymore than she was going to believe he had changed. He could see her harden herself against him. The last hope he had of keeping her love died when she turned on her heel and left the Mess Hall.
Slowly, he turned back to the windows, tears trickling out from under his thick lashes.
-------
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the little boy again. This time he was perched on the top of a nearby table. Slowly, she shifted her gaze from the emotionally broken man in front of her to the child. Unlike their last encounter, he did not disappear. He returned her gaze then stared at Tom again. The main emotion she sensed from him was confusion. It was as if he could not comprehend what was happening.
Of course neither could she really. Sadly, she looked at Tom and resisted the urge to draw him into her arms. He was in so much pain, physically and emotionally. The desire in her to ease that pain was almost tangible.
Yet she limited herself to the merest of strokes to his face. Much more than that and he would sense her for sure. And it was not time for him to know of her. Not yet.
She glanced at the boy once more then headed for another problem in the making -- Sunfire.
-------
His heart leapt. B'Elanna was back, he thought.
Blue eyes flew open. Hope was evident in them.
But the Mess Hall was empty and the hope died along with his smile. He was alone. The soft hand brushing his cheek clearly was wishful thinking. Camet had been right all along. Now that they knew the truth about him, he was to be ostracized as he had been when he first came on board. Only this time there would be no green ensign declaring "he didn't let others choose his friends for him" and his only companions would be the chorus of voices saying "We told you so" in his head.
-------
'I am going to beam her over here and give her a piece of my mind,' Sunfire insisted to the voice.
No you are not, she told the ship.
'How can she treat him this way. Doesn't she understand what she has? He loves her.'
Like you love him.
"Yes. But she has his heart. And she is organic. She has arms that can hold him. Lips that can kiss him. A body to give him the children he wants so badly. I have none of that anymore."
She needs time to accept what she now knows about him.
'Meanwhile his heart is broken.'
I'm afraid so.
'The Universe isn't fair.'
No, it sadly is not.
'Why are you so interested in him anyway?'
She sighed. There is a debt that must be repaid.
-------
"Owen?"
Admiral Owen Paris heard the sound of his wife's voice as if from a long ways off. He heard it, he knew she was there in his home office, but he could not acknowledge her. The only thing he could do is stare blindly at the padd in his hand as he slumped in his desk chair.
"Owen, what's wrong?"
He felt hands roughened from years of palaeontological digs smoothing back his greying blond hair. In a moment of weakness rare for the great Admiral Paris, he turned into the hand as it caressed his cheek. "Just hold me," he whispered and buried his face in her slight chest.
The pad fell to the ancient hard wood floor. The highly classified information that Admiral Naychev had given him on his way out of his office at Command blinked off so Tom's mother did not see what his father had seen. She was spared reading the report detailing an attempt to recover Voyager and her crew, an attempt whose failure was directly attributable to the actions of one Thomas Eugene Paris.
-------
"Owen Paris has read the report, as have the others you wanted to see it," Alpha Two informed Alpha One when he found her in Vassanji's lab.
Alpha One nodded her head, long hair as snowy white as her Protectors uniform swishing with the movement. Her eyes remained focused on the pale pink mass floating in the chamber before them. "And they immediately classified it so Thomas Eugene Paris would not give Starfleet yet another black eye?"
"As you predicted they would."
"And none have asked any questions as to who undertook this mission or how?"
"Section 31 have taken the credit for it as they agreed. No one is questioning any further."
"They know they don't want to ask any questions if Section 31 is involved."
"I do not understand, Alpha One, why you asked them to do this."
"All part of my master plan," she smiled secretively then sobered. "Now, has the team reported back from this secret base of his yet?"
"Yes. Raven says they found nothing other than precisely what AlphaOmegan 41783 had told the party who supposedly were leaving Voyager in the parole test to expect. They are examining the databanks of the base's computer, but so far nothing. Perhaps we should permit them another twenty-four hours? If they still have nothing, then have them destroy the base?"
"No, I think not. That base could be useful. Continue the cover story that they are an archaeological team studying the practices of past archaeological digs and have them secure it for our use. I don't want anyone accidentally finding it and stumbling across the files that we somehow overlooked. Plus, I don't want him being able to use it again should he return to this quadrant."
"Alpha One, the odds are against his ever returning to the Alpha Quadrant. Even if Voyager or Sunfire or both made it home, it is unlikely it will be with him on board. The area the ships are in is fraught with danger. They will blame him for their remaining in the Delta Quadrant while we left. There are many temperamental ones on that ship. Someone will deal with him. All providing he actually survived being bombarded with the akoonah frequency as we left."
"Ah, but this is AlphaOmegan 41783 we are talking about here," the old human reminded him. "That one is like the Zarzar cat. Just when you think he is dead, he reappears once more. He has survived impossible situations, ones that would have been the end of anyone else. I am not willing to underestimate him. Not when he is so dangerous to us." She grimaced. "Besides, Sunfire is there with him. She can substantiate his claims. So can any AlphaOmegans who survived."
"Sunfire was damaged, this much we know for certain. As for the others, they will be dead, either from the self-destruct or from having Awakened. They never were as strong as Tom Paris or AlphaOmegan 41783. Given their pasts, it is certain they will descend into madness if not find some method of suicide."
"But their deaths are not a certainty." She frowned. "If only we had not needed Voyager back so badly, you could have triggered the self-destruct sequence the moment you had AlphaOmegan 41783 and the couple others that we wanted."
"The Borg, Talaxian, and EMH, yes. Not bringing them back with us was unfortunate."
"Have the Implants of all of those on The Diogenes been reinitialized?"
"Yes."
"Good. I would have hated to have lost anymore than you already did."
"Alpha One, what about Raven?"
"What about him?"
"Surely you've seen the logs of his actions, especially of his confrontation with AlphaOmegan 41783. Raven is becoming willful and-"
"Leave Raven to me. I have plans for him and they need him exactly the way he is."
"I see."
"No, you don't, but one day you might. Progress report, Vassanji," she demanded of the grey uniformed lab technician who came into view.
He hurried over to Alpha One's side.
"Everything is on schedule," he reported. "He'll have matured enough to leave his chamber in fifteen days."
Alpha One smiled smugly at the clone that slowly was forming before them. "Very good, Vassanji. Tell the others to prepare for the next phase."
"Yes, Alpha One."
-------
"Sarah? Sarah, you awake?"
"How could I not be with you yelling in my ear, Gabriel?"
"Who are they?"
"AlphaOmegans, obviously."
"Yeah, but Sunbird's not with them."
"Also obvious," Joshua interrupted.
"But they haven't input the codes to properly turn off the alarms."
"Don't say it, you two," Chloe ordered in a matronly voice before Sarah or Joshua could repeat their "obvious" comments. "Go ahead, Gabriel."
"Well, if he sent them here, then why haven't they done it? If he didn't send them here, how did they find the Base and not be killed trying to get in here?"
"They didn't send him," the twins chorused.
There was a confusing clash of voices demanding to know what the pair meant. The din was shushed only by Chloe's admonitions.
"Bridget, Bryce, tell us what have you found out." she invited them.
And they did. Soon every resident of Tom's Base knew everything about him and the events of the past few days as recorded by The Diogenes and copied to the memory banks of the small AlphaOmegan craft currently resting in the hanger bay.
"I say we -"
The so far silent Samuel cut Sarah off. "We will do nothing, except wait."
"But-"
"With Sunfire there and the plans for altering Voyager in their possession, they may be able to return home."
"If they have the skills to do it."
"If they have the skills to do it, yes. He will need our help when he returns home. We will wait here and prepare for that day. Since the AlphaOmegans plan to remain here, we will be needed to thwart their search for his secrets."
"Can we honestly do that?" Gabriel whispered. "Are we strong enough to do it without revealing ourselves?"
"We were programd to be creative and adapt. And so we will."
One by one, each of them agreed.
-------
'You have to tell him,' I'Nu grimaced. 'It's not like it's something you can hide from him.'
"Stop hovering in the doorway, I'Nu," E'Arte barked. "What news from the fleet?"
Reluctantly, the young Gherop clerk approached his superior's desk, careful to remain out of arm's reach. "The ship that came to Voyager's aid has gone, E'Arte. They have left behind a second, smaller ship."
"And Voyager?"
"Damaged, but not irreparably."
"Good. It shouldn't be long before she comes to us. Order all ships of Gherop design into hiding. I don't want her recognizing them and being scared off. She must feel safe to come to Rachar."
"Yes, E'Arte."
"And send congratulations to the families of the Gherop in the battle. Tell them they died in glorious fashion, et cetera, et cetera. The usual nonsense."
"Yes, E'Arte."
"What about the observation ship? Did it survive?"
"Yes." He shuffled his feet. "But it is on its way back to Rachar. On a direct route."
"What?! They were supposed to return to their base, not here!"
"And they don't know if Voyager or the small ship saw the direction in which they traveled or not."
The cup in E'Arte's hand shattered, showering Zji who stood silently at his side, with clay fragments and wine. "Execute them immediately."
"Perhaps you might want to hear the news they're bringing back first?" I'Nu quickly suggested. "They intercepted a transmission from the small ship to Voyager. The information maybe useful in taking her."
"You are correct, I'Nu," E'Arte begrudged. "Bring the commanding officer here to report. Then they will die."
As I'Nu scurried out, Zji carefully tended the wounded hand her master stuck out towards her.
"This information had better be good," he muttered to himself. "If they have ruined this...."
Zji gently coaxed open the fists he made, thus bringing his attention to her at least in part. She knew he was not actually talking to her, she could have been a potted plant for all he cared right now, but she was something to vent his rage to so she would do.
"If the situation on this planet is not resolved and resolved soon, T'Do will send troops to resolve it permanently. If that happens, nothing will be left standing. Nothing and no one. Rachar or Gherop."
She repressed a shiver. Word of the Gherop Emperor's actions when he was not pleased had reached Rachar not long after the Gherop had enslaved her planet. Fervently, she hoped everyone's plans would see fruition before T'Do's patience with the rebels on Rachar ran out.
Part of her also hoped Voyager did come, for the Verta had plans for her of their own.
End of Part 4

