Disclaimer: Everyone and everything in this story, is the property of Paramount. I just let their ideas ramble on a bit longer than the hour that they confine themselves to.
Synopsis: B'Elanna, Harry, and Kes go back to the planet where Janeway and Chakotay were left behind a year ago, to rescue them. J/C and a little P/T
Author's note: I know there are a few temproral shifts that don't belong in this story. (eg. What the Captain said to Kim in sickbay was a lot further along in their journey. I changed it slightly, but people who know Voyager well, might object.) Please, don't prosecute me, just enjoy the story.
A True Resolution
By Kat Calls
B'Elanna's story
Belanna's anxiety increased with every lightyear that passed.
Would they want to come? Was one of the questions which asserted themselves most often in the back of her conciousness.
What were they like now? Maybe they've discovered a cure, and have left the planet already. Would we meet them en route? Will it be the same as before?
The questions became more and more convoluted every time she had the chance to stop and think about it. Which was quite often on this away mission. It had been generally quiet for the past month. They didn't need to stop until arrival at the command planet, as everyone had been calling it. So B'Elanna was given the frustration of slowly going stir crazy worrying about her friends.
The hum of the nacelles at the stern of the new shuttle would have been peaceful had it not been for the sickening jolt every time Harry readjusted the phase transistors. B'Elanna curled herself into a coccoon, and willed sleep to come to her.
Instead, memories of the Vidiians and Captain Solotek invaded her mind.
He wasn't like any other Vidiian she had seen before, and B'Elanna had seen more than her fair share. Most of them looked like disgusting globs of something her Klingon ancestors would eat for dinner. The stolen skin practically hanging from their muscles. Their mottled eyes empty of compassion or care. Most of them killed without remorse to save themselves or their loved ones from the phage. Stealing organs from their victims to keep their slowly degrading bodies functioning for another menial month.
But Solotek was different now. He had changed.
He was a clean man, with a bright smile, and an even more vivid personality. He felt great sorrow for the things he and his horrid kinsmen had done, and seeked to repay his victims with kindness and gifts.
The phage no longer controlled him. He was a relic to what his people had once been, and what they could be capable of.
He had helped the Voyagers to no end.
B'Elanna had been sickened by him when she heard that a Vidiian was once again on board the starship Voyager, and had even entertained thoughts of murdering him in her revenge.
But her mind changed when he came to apologize to her.
"I cannot erase what my people tried to do to you. All I ever want is to make sure you will be happy for the rest of your trip. I offer my help in any way shape or form that might be needed."
B'Elanna had been stunned into silence. She began to feel slightly guilty about her murderous thoughts, and was quick to rein in her anger.
She wouldn't allow them the satisfaction of seeing her pain.
"I wasn't under the impression Vidiians cared for their victims?"
"Oh we do now. I'm afraid in the past you may have been correct, but we seek to redeem ourselves."
"Now that you have a cure you mean. How noble of you to all of a sudden, feel guilt for hurting something now that it's no longer necessary."
So much for not showing her pain.
"I can offer you anything you need in recompense, even my own life if it need be so. You are allowed to kill me for the sins of my people. Our laws agree it must be so."
"I don't think that will be necessary. I'm sure something else can be arranged."
"Technology? Or maybe medical supplies? The Vidiians are well known in this quadrant for their medical skills. Or else maybe there's something you want personally?"
A plan began forming in her mind, and it was one she felt she had to think on. She needed to talk to Tom and Neelix about it. They had been the others whose lives had been changed by the Vidiians. The one other crewman who had been involved with the Vidiians had not lived through his experience, and Solotek would never be able to help him.
"Let me think about it." Was all she had said, and left him alone. Still kneeling in an act of self castigation.
B'Elanna rolled over again in her bunk while the new engine remodulated once more. She felt the sinking in her chest, and felt briefly nauseous while the gravitational plating adjusted itself to the new phase variance.
She'd thought that after a month of that same feeling, she would have adjusted her metabolism to ignore it, but this was not the case.
She still felt just as awful, and sleep eluded her just as often now, as in the beginning of their journey.
A full month at transwarp.
And she would finally see her friends again, and bring them home where they belonged.
It was all due to the fact that some of the Vidiians had felt guilt for their crimes.
Crimes that had split B'Elanna into two women for the sake of scientific research. Crimes that had stolen Neelix of one of his lungs. Crimes that had relegated Tom Paris to spend a week in fear, and forcing him to work tirelessly in the Vidiian mines. Crimes that had taken Lieutenant Durst's life.
She still felt the old anger simmer inside her when she recalled what she had gone through.
To have her DNA resequenced, and split apart. To become two women, one Klingon, the other Human. The sickness and fear she had felt as a full human was a feeling she hoped she would never have to endure again. As a half Human half Klingon, she felt strong, but it never overwhelmed her as she had seen in her Klingon self.
The usual shudder went through her when she thought about what her counterpart had been subjected to. She hadn't had the time to ask her before she had been killed, but B'Elanna got the idea that it had been very painful from what the doctor had told her of the autopsy results.
The doctor was the one who had given her back the strength of her former self when he realized that being without her Klingon genes was slowly killing her.
B'Elanna contracted the muscles in her arms beneath the blankets reveling in her well toned physique. One thing the Vidiians had given her already, was the realization that she wasn't a misfit of both her ansestors worlds, but just simply B'Elanna Torres. A woman who liked to be hugged, but could drop kick someone who didn't do it tenderly enough. She was proud of herself for once, and it showed in her demeanor.
The captain had had something to do with that too.
She had been willing to act the part her mother never had. She listened, and encouraged, and seemed to know just how much to push her to get her to understand. It hadn't always been easy. In fact B'Elanna had been inexcusably rude the first time they had met. But things had changed.
B'Elanna missed her.
It had been almost a year since Captain Kathryn Janeway had been left behind, and B'Elanna's confidence had been pressed to it's limits. She was more than ready to have her surrogate mother back.
B'Elanna was even more ready to have her best friend back.
It was almost ironic that Chakotay had been left there at that same planet, to live his life with Kathryn Janeway. It was too much of a coincidence that fate would chose to leave the man who had been her concience, and a replacement for the father she'd never known, with the woman who had taken her under her wing as a daughter.
In their absence, B'Elanna had turned to Tom Paris for comfort. It wasn't even close to the same kind of feeling she had for Commander Chakotay and Captain Janeway. Tom Paris was argumentative, and brash, but surprisingly sweet, and caring. He listened to her, and he comforted her. The current of sexual tension between them made for some interesting conversations, but it wasn't the same as having your mother and father around.
That was why, the thing she had asked Captain Solotek for was to have them back.
He had readily agreed, and at once, she was the proud owner of a set of beautiful transwarp coils, and schematics to integrate them onto a ship.
Tom had filled in the rest of the order by asking the Vidiian captain for medicine that would allow Captain Janeway and Commander Chakotay to leave their planet.
The ominous warning Solotek had given them was in no way a deterrant in their effort to rescue the Captain and Commander.
"There are those in the central Vidiian spacial grid, who are still beholden to the old ways. They have no qualms of abducting people to further their own purposes. I should caution you that many still believe themselves the supreme species."
Just to make matters worse, It turned out that Voyager's engines, no matter what the phase modulation, were not acually compatible with the transwarp coils. The engineering staff, headed by B'Elanna, had been forced to create a whole new shuttle to function as a rescue vehicle.
She wished, not for the first time, that they had gotten this new technology months beforehand. A year without outside humanoid interaction would have driven B'Elanna crazy. She didn't want to think about what the Captain and Chakotay were going through.
When the command team had first been bitten, B'Elanna had been extremely annoyed by the fact that she hadn't even been able to say goodbye to them properly.
A simple word over the comm system was all that was allowed. They couldn't afford the risk of any more of the crew becoming infected. So there were no hugs exchanged in farewell. Only the words, which had always seemed so inadequate for their intended use.
She would see them again now. She prayed they were all right, a full year was a long time to leave two people behind. Especially when it was assumed they'd be there for the rest of their lives.
The infection they'd received, denied them the ability to leave the planet. If they were to even try, they would suffocate. There was something in the atmosphere keeping them safe, but to leave would be a death sentence. All because of some little burrowing insect, their lives had been altered dramatically.
That was partly what made her toss and turn under these covers so often.
They had no idea what consequences were supposed to result from their illnesses, but she hoped to Kahless they were all right.
To come all this way, only to find that they were at death's door, or dead, would be the worst thing she could imagine.
She'd rather think of them as happy and safe on that little paradise of a planet they'd been left on, rather than know for sure that they were dead.
B'Elanna asked the computer for the time, and growled when she found it to be only half an hour before her call to wake.
She threw the covers off her in a huff, and winced as the phase adjusted at the same time.
"Harry, Why couldn't you have made that transition a little easier?" She called to the front of the shuttle.
His voice came back muffled through the bulkheads. "Sure, blame it on me why don't you? And anyhow, I kind of like that feeling. It puts me to sleep. Like being rocked by your mother."
"Speak for yourself Starfleet." She grumbled, pulling herself out into the open cockpit, where Harry and Kes were working.
"Did you not get any sleep again B'Elanna?" Kes' anxious voice was like smooth water running over stones.
"No I didn't and thanks for asking, now that my sleep shift is finished."
"You should have come to me. I could have given you a sedative to help you relax." Kes pulled out her medkit, and tricorder, and scanned B'Elanna.
B'Elanna eyed her warily, not liking the feel of having her innards on display.
"How long have you been having trouble? This doesn't look like your classic case of insomnia."
"Pretty much the entire trip. I've been a little edgy the whole way here. I never get any more than three or four hours a night."
Kes gaped at her, shocked. "No wonder you've been so difficult to work around. I can give you something now, and we'll start your shift later than usual if you'd like?"
Harry's voice interrupted. "We might need her soon. The command planet isn't more than three hours away at maximum warp. If you want any sleep, you'd better be prepared to only sleep for that time."
"Three hours? Oh thank Kaless. I was beginning to wonder if we were on the right track." B'Elanna's relief brought with it a wave of exhaustion. "But if you can give me something light just for about two hours, It might help. I do need to be rested for when we get there."
"Sure." Kes stood up, and they went back to the second bunkroom, where B'Elanna had been keeping her few belongings.
According to Harry, these little rooms couldn't be considered bedrooms, nor could they be considered quarters, due to their size, so he had been calling them bunkrooms, and the name had stuck.
They were tiny rectangular boxes intended only for sleep, and meant to be shared with two other crewmen. The bunks were one on top of the other, and tended to cramp the style of anyone over five foot seven.
B'Elanna lay herself out on the hard mattress, and Kes touched her neck with the hypospray. A hiss and a little twinge, indicated it's arrival in it's intended body.
"I'll be back with a stimulant in two hours."
"Thanks." B'Elanna mumbled, and fell into a deep doze.
* There's more to come folks. I'll add another chapter soon. I'd enjoy to hear your feedback
Synopsis: B'Elanna, Harry, and Kes go back to the planet where Janeway and Chakotay were left behind a year ago, to rescue them. J/C and a little P/T
Author's note: I know there are a few temproral shifts that don't belong in this story. (eg. What the Captain said to Kim in sickbay was a lot further along in their journey. I changed it slightly, but people who know Voyager well, might object.) Please, don't prosecute me, just enjoy the story.
A True Resolution
By Kat Calls
B'Elanna's story
Belanna's anxiety increased with every lightyear that passed.
Would they want to come? Was one of the questions which asserted themselves most often in the back of her conciousness.
What were they like now? Maybe they've discovered a cure, and have left the planet already. Would we meet them en route? Will it be the same as before?
The questions became more and more convoluted every time she had the chance to stop and think about it. Which was quite often on this away mission. It had been generally quiet for the past month. They didn't need to stop until arrival at the command planet, as everyone had been calling it. So B'Elanna was given the frustration of slowly going stir crazy worrying about her friends.
The hum of the nacelles at the stern of the new shuttle would have been peaceful had it not been for the sickening jolt every time Harry readjusted the phase transistors. B'Elanna curled herself into a coccoon, and willed sleep to come to her.
Instead, memories of the Vidiians and Captain Solotek invaded her mind.
He wasn't like any other Vidiian she had seen before, and B'Elanna had seen more than her fair share. Most of them looked like disgusting globs of something her Klingon ancestors would eat for dinner. The stolen skin practically hanging from their muscles. Their mottled eyes empty of compassion or care. Most of them killed without remorse to save themselves or their loved ones from the phage. Stealing organs from their victims to keep their slowly degrading bodies functioning for another menial month.
But Solotek was different now. He had changed.
He was a clean man, with a bright smile, and an even more vivid personality. He felt great sorrow for the things he and his horrid kinsmen had done, and seeked to repay his victims with kindness and gifts.
The phage no longer controlled him. He was a relic to what his people had once been, and what they could be capable of.
He had helped the Voyagers to no end.
B'Elanna had been sickened by him when she heard that a Vidiian was once again on board the starship Voyager, and had even entertained thoughts of murdering him in her revenge.
But her mind changed when he came to apologize to her.
"I cannot erase what my people tried to do to you. All I ever want is to make sure you will be happy for the rest of your trip. I offer my help in any way shape or form that might be needed."
B'Elanna had been stunned into silence. She began to feel slightly guilty about her murderous thoughts, and was quick to rein in her anger.
She wouldn't allow them the satisfaction of seeing her pain.
"I wasn't under the impression Vidiians cared for their victims?"
"Oh we do now. I'm afraid in the past you may have been correct, but we seek to redeem ourselves."
"Now that you have a cure you mean. How noble of you to all of a sudden, feel guilt for hurting something now that it's no longer necessary."
So much for not showing her pain.
"I can offer you anything you need in recompense, even my own life if it need be so. You are allowed to kill me for the sins of my people. Our laws agree it must be so."
"I don't think that will be necessary. I'm sure something else can be arranged."
"Technology? Or maybe medical supplies? The Vidiians are well known in this quadrant for their medical skills. Or else maybe there's something you want personally?"
A plan began forming in her mind, and it was one she felt she had to think on. She needed to talk to Tom and Neelix about it. They had been the others whose lives had been changed by the Vidiians. The one other crewman who had been involved with the Vidiians had not lived through his experience, and Solotek would never be able to help him.
"Let me think about it." Was all she had said, and left him alone. Still kneeling in an act of self castigation.
B'Elanna rolled over again in her bunk while the new engine remodulated once more. She felt the sinking in her chest, and felt briefly nauseous while the gravitational plating adjusted itself to the new phase variance.
She'd thought that after a month of that same feeling, she would have adjusted her metabolism to ignore it, but this was not the case.
She still felt just as awful, and sleep eluded her just as often now, as in the beginning of their journey.
A full month at transwarp.
And she would finally see her friends again, and bring them home where they belonged.
It was all due to the fact that some of the Vidiians had felt guilt for their crimes.
Crimes that had split B'Elanna into two women for the sake of scientific research. Crimes that had stolen Neelix of one of his lungs. Crimes that had relegated Tom Paris to spend a week in fear, and forcing him to work tirelessly in the Vidiian mines. Crimes that had taken Lieutenant Durst's life.
She still felt the old anger simmer inside her when she recalled what she had gone through.
To have her DNA resequenced, and split apart. To become two women, one Klingon, the other Human. The sickness and fear she had felt as a full human was a feeling she hoped she would never have to endure again. As a half Human half Klingon, she felt strong, but it never overwhelmed her as she had seen in her Klingon self.
The usual shudder went through her when she thought about what her counterpart had been subjected to. She hadn't had the time to ask her before she had been killed, but B'Elanna got the idea that it had been very painful from what the doctor had told her of the autopsy results.
The doctor was the one who had given her back the strength of her former self when he realized that being without her Klingon genes was slowly killing her.
B'Elanna contracted the muscles in her arms beneath the blankets reveling in her well toned physique. One thing the Vidiians had given her already, was the realization that she wasn't a misfit of both her ansestors worlds, but just simply B'Elanna Torres. A woman who liked to be hugged, but could drop kick someone who didn't do it tenderly enough. She was proud of herself for once, and it showed in her demeanor.
The captain had had something to do with that too.
She had been willing to act the part her mother never had. She listened, and encouraged, and seemed to know just how much to push her to get her to understand. It hadn't always been easy. In fact B'Elanna had been inexcusably rude the first time they had met. But things had changed.
B'Elanna missed her.
It had been almost a year since Captain Kathryn Janeway had been left behind, and B'Elanna's confidence had been pressed to it's limits. She was more than ready to have her surrogate mother back.
B'Elanna was even more ready to have her best friend back.
It was almost ironic that Chakotay had been left there at that same planet, to live his life with Kathryn Janeway. It was too much of a coincidence that fate would chose to leave the man who had been her concience, and a replacement for the father she'd never known, with the woman who had taken her under her wing as a daughter.
In their absence, B'Elanna had turned to Tom Paris for comfort. It wasn't even close to the same kind of feeling she had for Commander Chakotay and Captain Janeway. Tom Paris was argumentative, and brash, but surprisingly sweet, and caring. He listened to her, and he comforted her. The current of sexual tension between them made for some interesting conversations, but it wasn't the same as having your mother and father around.
That was why, the thing she had asked Captain Solotek for was to have them back.
He had readily agreed, and at once, she was the proud owner of a set of beautiful transwarp coils, and schematics to integrate them onto a ship.
Tom had filled in the rest of the order by asking the Vidiian captain for medicine that would allow Captain Janeway and Commander Chakotay to leave their planet.
The ominous warning Solotek had given them was in no way a deterrant in their effort to rescue the Captain and Commander.
"There are those in the central Vidiian spacial grid, who are still beholden to the old ways. They have no qualms of abducting people to further their own purposes. I should caution you that many still believe themselves the supreme species."
Just to make matters worse, It turned out that Voyager's engines, no matter what the phase modulation, were not acually compatible with the transwarp coils. The engineering staff, headed by B'Elanna, had been forced to create a whole new shuttle to function as a rescue vehicle.
She wished, not for the first time, that they had gotten this new technology months beforehand. A year without outside humanoid interaction would have driven B'Elanna crazy. She didn't want to think about what the Captain and Chakotay were going through.
When the command team had first been bitten, B'Elanna had been extremely annoyed by the fact that she hadn't even been able to say goodbye to them properly.
A simple word over the comm system was all that was allowed. They couldn't afford the risk of any more of the crew becoming infected. So there were no hugs exchanged in farewell. Only the words, which had always seemed so inadequate for their intended use.
She would see them again now. She prayed they were all right, a full year was a long time to leave two people behind. Especially when it was assumed they'd be there for the rest of their lives.
The infection they'd received, denied them the ability to leave the planet. If they were to even try, they would suffocate. There was something in the atmosphere keeping them safe, but to leave would be a death sentence. All because of some little burrowing insect, their lives had been altered dramatically.
That was partly what made her toss and turn under these covers so often.
They had no idea what consequences were supposed to result from their illnesses, but she hoped to Kahless they were all right.
To come all this way, only to find that they were at death's door, or dead, would be the worst thing she could imagine.
She'd rather think of them as happy and safe on that little paradise of a planet they'd been left on, rather than know for sure that they were dead.
B'Elanna asked the computer for the time, and growled when she found it to be only half an hour before her call to wake.
She threw the covers off her in a huff, and winced as the phase adjusted at the same time.
"Harry, Why couldn't you have made that transition a little easier?" She called to the front of the shuttle.
His voice came back muffled through the bulkheads. "Sure, blame it on me why don't you? And anyhow, I kind of like that feeling. It puts me to sleep. Like being rocked by your mother."
"Speak for yourself Starfleet." She grumbled, pulling herself out into the open cockpit, where Harry and Kes were working.
"Did you not get any sleep again B'Elanna?" Kes' anxious voice was like smooth water running over stones.
"No I didn't and thanks for asking, now that my sleep shift is finished."
"You should have come to me. I could have given you a sedative to help you relax." Kes pulled out her medkit, and tricorder, and scanned B'Elanna.
B'Elanna eyed her warily, not liking the feel of having her innards on display.
"How long have you been having trouble? This doesn't look like your classic case of insomnia."
"Pretty much the entire trip. I've been a little edgy the whole way here. I never get any more than three or four hours a night."
Kes gaped at her, shocked. "No wonder you've been so difficult to work around. I can give you something now, and we'll start your shift later than usual if you'd like?"
Harry's voice interrupted. "We might need her soon. The command planet isn't more than three hours away at maximum warp. If you want any sleep, you'd better be prepared to only sleep for that time."
"Three hours? Oh thank Kaless. I was beginning to wonder if we were on the right track." B'Elanna's relief brought with it a wave of exhaustion. "But if you can give me something light just for about two hours, It might help. I do need to be rested for when we get there."
"Sure." Kes stood up, and they went back to the second bunkroom, where B'Elanna had been keeping her few belongings.
According to Harry, these little rooms couldn't be considered bedrooms, nor could they be considered quarters, due to their size, so he had been calling them bunkrooms, and the name had stuck.
They were tiny rectangular boxes intended only for sleep, and meant to be shared with two other crewmen. The bunks were one on top of the other, and tended to cramp the style of anyone over five foot seven.
B'Elanna lay herself out on the hard mattress, and Kes touched her neck with the hypospray. A hiss and a little twinge, indicated it's arrival in it's intended body.
"I'll be back with a stimulant in two hours."
"Thanks." B'Elanna mumbled, and fell into a deep doze.
* There's more to come folks. I'll add another chapter soon. I'd enjoy to hear your feedback