The P Team

by Alex Mcpherson

Instead of Caldik Prime, Something else happens, but the solution to the situation means that Starfleet had to do something familiar, to prevent war. Yeah, Tom got kicked out anyway. Features some DS9 crew, like 'Caretaker' did, but is VOY focused.

The P-Team.

Prologue

Starfleet Personnel Transport Craft 317, en-route to Caldik Prime

Ensign Thomas Eugene Paris looked around the cabin he and three others shared, bored out of his skull. He knew someone must have done this on purpose, assigning him to a bunkroom with humourless Vulcans, but what did he care? He was on his way to join up with his best buds, on their new posting.

Didn't stop the boredom, but helped curb his tendancy to get into trouble because of it.

He was about to wish for something to happen, when something did.

The ship shuddered, and then jerked, klaxons started blaring and the ships' pilot, a Lieutenant, was heard half-shouting. "Red Alert! All personnel be prepared to be boarded!"

Tom was fast in arming himself.

Unlike aboard a starship, where weapons were stored in specific points throughout in small numbers, in addition to some ships having an armory, a transport craft was largely designed to carry people and small amounts of their belongings, in addition to any of their standard issue equipment that each of them kept with them in storage bins directly beneath each bunk.

Part of that included weapons.

Specifically, as Tom pulled his storage bin open, he picked up the belt with his standard tricorder and type 2 phaser, a bulky thing with poor aim. He yearned for the older type 2 phasers, the phaser pistols iconic from the missions of the Enterprise-A. Not as many settings, but then they were just combat items, rather than multitools as these new ones were intended to be.

Beside the belt, were various other items, wrist-torches, and so on.

He reached the door, and stood beside it, and gave a tight nod to the other Vulcan in the room, the other two had not been present.

The door opened, and both of them pointed at the intruders, only to sigh slightly to wave the two unarmed vulcans in.

"How's your nightvision?" Tom whispered to them, glad when the 2 newcomers armed themselves also.

"Perfect to 5 percent standard." One of them replied, and the other two agreed.

Smiling, Tom whispered, "Computer, reduce lighting throughout the ship to 8 percent standard in 1 percent per second increments." To the others, he whispered, "Most of our people onboard should cope with 8 percent..." Then he added, looking up a little, "Computer, additionally, reduce lighting within this room and this section of the corridor to 5 percent, same increment."

Soon, it was dark, and within seconds, the four had opened the door a little, and saw that some people were coming down their hallway, who were not wearing the familiar Starfleet uniform of primarily red, yellow or teal with black shoulders.

There were five, and tom whispered, "numbered from left to right. I mark number two."

One of the vulcans whispered "one", another "five", and the one who had been in the room with him, a light-skinned Vulcan who was in the security division, rather than operations, spoke, "three and four."

Since he was the same rank as the others, but in the command track, Tom knew that command defaulted to himself. "3 seconds to fire." He whispered at them, and began counting down...

At the same time, they fired, and took down their marks, with the Vulcan security officer following up with a shot at the last one standing.

"Keep watch." He whispered, and backed from the half-open door.

So far, aside from when this team showing up, one of them had kept an eye on a tricorder, with it's outer lights and volume turned right down of course. Tom took his out and scanned again, and declared to the others, "Their jamming is down. They're Cardassians."

Looks were shared, so Tom added, "I'm picking up some in the forward control room, and in the engineering compartment. We'll need to split up, Tenik," He looked at the security one, "You take Virok and head towards engineering. Sirol, you're with me."

Virok quietly protested, "Who are you to know what is best?"

Tenik inserted quickly, "He was very quick to arm himself, he has been well trained, and since you, Virok, are an engineer, and Sirol, you are an Operations officer, it makes sense that you both go to Engineering and the control room respectively. Ensign Paris is a Conn officer."

Virok took that and nodded, somewhat sheepishly for a Vulcan. Anyone who hadn't spent hours in his company wouldn't have seen it. Anyone who knew him well would be Vulcan and therefore wondering at his control.

Tom and Sirol left behind the other two, in silence.

Sirol was the first to break the silence, "I find your ability to be quiet in this situation, most different from what I would have expected, Mr Paris."

Tom simply kept scanning for cardassians in the area, tricorder in his left hand, phaser in the right, and stayed silent. Sirols' comment did not require reply.

Sirol did that Vulcan version of a smile, understanding that his lack of reply was intentional, for the correct reasons.

"This way." Tom pointed to one side, "Comes out behind a console, we'll have cover."

The first bit of evidence that something was, not so much wrong, as more wrong than the situation should have been by now, was when Virok had opened a commline to him, an unsecured one at that, "Virok to Paris... Tenik is d-fizzle-AAAAAH!-gurgle"

Tom looked at Sirol, worried. The sound of cardassian beam weapons was clear on the line, as well as the death of Virok.

They had cleared the control room rather quickly. The craft was not so big that it had a 'bridge', using starship terms.

Tom took the Conn, while Sirol took to the Flight Ops consoles, using one hand while keeping his phaser ready.

"We're on course for Cardassian territory." Tom spoke. "I can't change course."

"We are being escorted by Cardassian Infiltration vessels, and one shuttle is docked to the ventral exterior emergency access hatch." Sirol inserted. "All flight and tactical controls have been slaved to it. I am unable to restore control from here." He looked at Tom, "It has to be done from engineering."

"We still have Operations, right?"

Sirol nodded.

"Here's the plan..."

The secondbit of evidence that something was more wrong than the situation as it had become, was worsethan it should have been, was when the ship lost power... but they knew, they were still at warp.

Sirol opened his tricorder, and reported, "I am picked up signs that we are under tow."

Tom sighed, "Figures. Can we rig beam out?"

"To where? There are no locations within trans-warp beaming range." Sirol spoke, "Not to mention that it is beyond this vessels' capabilities."

Tom just grinned at Sirol, the first significant show of emotion from the human since the hijacking began.

"I do not like the look on your face." Sirol commented, "I conclude that I am not going to like your plan."

"I do not like this plan." Sirol spoke at the earliest, safest opportunity.

They were sneaking through the infiltration ship – one they knew would have the capacity for trans-warp beaming, which was the beaming from a ship moving at warp to a fixed location within a specific range (which was greater than standard transporter range thanks to a little modifier being in warp makes to it. Call it a subspace transportation magnification effect, though not quite accurate.)

Ships had to have certain pieces of technology to be capable of it, indeed, all federation starships built prior to 2346 did not, and most of the modern ships now, galaxy class, nebula, ambassador (post-refits) did. Only the Excelsior and Miranda classes didn't, out of the main fleets.

The equations to allow transport either way, fixed to moving-at-warp and vice-versa, had existed for half a century, and only in the last twenty was there the capacity to actually use those equations, from a vessel to a planet. They were still a ways away from doing the reverse, as the equations had variables related to speed of the ship, but with the current warp scale as it stood, it was currently impossible to calculate for speeds beyond Warp 3.

Regardless, they were intending on doing the much easier one – from a ship at warp to a fixed location – starbase, outpost or colony, and the equations to do that had long been cracked for upto warp 7. They were only travelling at Warp 6.

They made it to the transporter room, and after seconds and identifying upcoming locations they could beam to, Tom recognised one.

"This one... locking in... Activating transport in 5 seconds." He started to run to the pad, Sirol infront... when the doors to the cardassian transporter room opened, and Tom was forced to stop. He saw Sirol escape, and hoped he made it to the USS Al-Batani...

Two Months Later

Tom grinned at the various escapees that were with him on their commandeered' Klingon attack cruiser.

Said ship had been captured by the Cardassians and teams of Cardassians had been going over the ship, trying to learn its secrets. They hadn't expected that troop transport coming in to be under the control of the prisoners, prisoners intended for the mining camps on the planet below... Bajor.

He nodded as a young Klingon male sent a message to their new friends among a Bajoran resistance cell.

"Warp drive is online," came the voice of former 'shakaar resistence' cell member Kira Nerys.

The crew numbered 50, 34 of whom were Bajorans, including Kira. The other 16 included three humans (Tom and two others he hadn't had time to learn the names of, both were civilians), the klingon boy whom had agreed to let them call him Kor Rygel, after the Bajoran who had been his 'father' of sorts the most, a heavily traumatized Betazoid who had lost her ability to read thoughts long ago, and her empathy was almost similarly atrophied, limited to physical contact, and multiple members of 3 or 4 other races.

Of them all, only Tom and Kira had any idea of how to operate technology that wasn't their own races. In this case though, Kor was an exception even there, having been born in a prison and having never learned Klingonese.

As such, Kor was limited to using bajoran technology, but was quite comfortable doing so.

Kira began to grin, Tom's mood becoming infectious, as they shot forward at warp, before Terok Nor's offensive systems could even lock on.

"Do we have cloak?"

"... trying. Our 'engineers'," Kira emphasised a little, "are doing what they can to put things back together." She looked to Kor.

He listened to the handheld comms device for a minute, before speaking in rapid fire bajoran. It took about three minutes for him to get enough to tell them, "Cloak will be restored within 10 minutes. Shields are at full strength, and they shall have Warp 6 within the hour."

Tom nodded, as even though he was sat at the pilots station, everyone knew that the man with the training was in charge.

A few hours later

"10 minutes to Federation territory." Kira reported.

"Any answers to our hails?" Tom asked.

"No... wait... detecting a vessel, unknown, on an intercept course, I cannot tell if they are coming from the federation or cardassian side of the border... they will intercept as we cross."

"Activate Cloak."

The sound of the device far off into the ship was heard, the deep thrum vibrating throughout. Klingons did not ascribe to the installing of sound dampening through the ship. They loved the sounds of a warship thrumming with their beating hearts... to be a little poetic.

Kira continued, without pause, "ETA to intercept, 8 minutes. They already have our course and speed."

"Reducing to Warp 5..." 3 seconds later, he said, "Back to warp 6."

Kira raised an eyebrow at him.

Tom simply grinned, "They'll fire a little too far ahead of us... plenty of time to change course."

6 minutes later, Kira reported, "We are being hailed... Its the federation."

Sighs of relief flooded everyone present.

Tom moved over to the Captain's chair. Autopilot had been restored awhile ago.

"On screen."

The image of a young commander, wearing the black-shoulders-on-red uniform of Command-division Starfleet, came onto the screen, stood just behind the helm officer of the Starfleet vessel. Other crew could be seen, and Tom almost grinned at recognising one face...

"This is Commander Kathryn Janeway of the USS Al-Batani to klingon vessel, we are responding to your distress call, and are on intercept, ETA 13 minutes. We read a Cardassian Galor class warship on intercept, ETA 1 minute. Hold on tight."

Tom paled a little, and rushed to helm.

Kor, in bajoran, demanded down the comm device, "We need weapons!"

Kira sighed, "We have disrupters, but no joy on photons. The Cardassians took them all."

"Changing course and Increasing speed, Warp 6.4... 6.5..." Suddenly, strain could be heard throught he ship. "...6.8."

Kor relayed, "They cannot give you more."

Kira inserted, "ETA to USS Al-Batani now 5 minutes... 4 to Cardassians intercept."

"Intercept on Card or Fed?" Tom asked.

"... Federation." Kira began to frown, "they wouldn't cross..."

Tom shook his head, "They will. And when they do, and fire on us as the Al-Batani arrives, I want you to open an audio channel, readying visual when I signal."

"What are you going to say?"

"Ever heard of Special Order 'Alpha Mike Foxtrot'?" Tom spoke with a smile.

"No."

"Well... lets just say that it's named after a special manoeuvre used long ago on Earth."

The waited until they were about to cross the border...

"Dropping from warp..."

"We're still on the cardassian side of the border...!" Kira exclaimed.

Tom smiled, "Making like we have engine problems..."

"Both ships have dropped out of warp... I don't think the federation ship has been detected."

Tom knew it wouldn't be.

"The Cardassians are hailing..."

Tom nodded, "Lets hear and see them, but don't open a channel back."

"This is Gul Dukat, Prefect of the Bajoran Sector. You have illegally hijacked the property of the Cardassian Empire, and are haboring fugitives. Surrender or be destroyed."

Tom rolled his eyes, even as the face of the gul disappeared from the screen. He continued to keep the ship wavering about, on an eratic course but still looking like 'they're trying to go somewhere'.

He looked at the distance from the border, and smiled.

"Open the audio channel, wait for my hand signal to switch to visual." He looked at them, and corrected before Kira could do so, "And make it open. Wide-band, let the federation see..."

Kira nodded, and as Tom began to speak, he also began inputting a series of commands onto his console. "This is the Klingon Vessel P'Kogh," Kira began to grin, suddenly realising certain parts of the plan, as Tom sounded like a klingon. "You had illegally captured this vessel, and we are returning it to their owners. If you fire we will be forced to respond."

An answer came back promptly. "You have no weapons, we disabled them long before you hijacked it."

Tom really grinned then, and still with the klingon-like voice, spoke, "I never said anything about me firing on you, Gul. I said, We will be forced to respond."

Suddenly,t he ship shuddered, Tom knew it was weapons fire. He glanced over at his console, and grinned even wider.

"P'Kogh to Gul Dukat... You have illegally fired on the property of the Klingon Empire. Alpha Mike Foxtrot." He began... the ship shuddered and he grinned even wider, as he gave the hand signal to Kira...

Bridge, USS Al-Batani

Sirol stood at his station on the Al-Batani. Ever since escaping, he had been allowed to stay aboard, his deep sense of debt to the human who allowed him to escape had not disappeared, but he knew, a gut feeling, that what was happening was related.

He frowned at the voice on the speaker, and thought it sounded familiar. Then...

"-Alpha Mike Foxtrot." The voice finished, before they saw the Galor class ship fire.

The human at Tactical suddenly grinned as she looked at her console.

"Commander," She spoke up, and Commander Janeway looked over at her. "They are both on our side of the border. Permission to carry out special order Alpha Mike Foxtrot."

Janeway didn't understand it, but nodded.

The woman at tactical didn't immediately carry it out however... strange, Sirol thought.

The voice continued... "I repeat, you have illegally fired on the property of the Klingon Empire..."

Then, he noted that the klingon vessel had started to transmit video aswell as audio.

He put it on screen, only to be shocked to see, not a klingon, but a human... in fact, the human whom he owed his life.

"... Carrying federation Citizens and a Starfleet Officer... in Federation Space. In other words..."

Both Tom and their tactical officer began to speak, as one, "Adios... Mother... Fucker..."

Immediately, the ship fired a salvo of photon torpedoes, and fired phasers at a point on the ship.

The video transmission having ceased, they all got to see that the 'P'Kogh' had also began to fire disrupters at specific points of the cardassian ship's shields... and through one of those points of impact, the photons they had fired, passed through the shields... and detonated on the hull of the Cardassian ship. Seconds later, it detonated too, from a warp core breach it seemed. The blast went over the Al-Batani and the P'Kogh without causing damage, the latters' shields were still strong enough.

Kathryn shot an angry look at her tactical officer, but merely said, "Open a channel to the P'Kogh."

Seconds later, Tom was on the screen, grinning at the commander.

"Thanks for the Save, Lieutenant... or was it Commander? I was too bus-"

She interrupted, "You were too busy goading that Cardassian vessel into federation territory. Yes, I am Commander now, Ensign."

Tom was silent for a moment, before he scratched the back of his head, "Strange to be called 'Ensign' after so long of being called 'Dog', 'Targ'," With that he looked at someone off screen with a small grin, then back, "Git, and last but not least, shouted in anger by Cardassians who can't believe that a lowly human like myself could possibly be so brilliant... 'PAARIIISSS!'" Tom chuckled at the winces coming from his 'crew'.

After a moment, he continued, "Any chance me and ... my crew..." he looked away and then back, nodding, "Crew, can come over... most of us have unhealed injuries, and many go back years. Then we could do with showers, shaves for us males... a few rounds of nutrient supplement injections... you know, the works..." After a moment, Tom glanced to the side, and Janeway realised he was looking at someone on her bridge. "First, though, I believe I have a friend who wishes to say 'Hello Tom'."

Sirol spoke up, deadpan, "Hello Tom."

Tom chuckled, "Nice to see you have a sense of humor after all, Sirol."

"Indeed."

Janeway looked around, and then back at Tom, "Permission granted. I'ld like to send over an engineering team and a few others, and we'll tow you to the nearest Starbase."

As she spoke, the bridge crew had gotten on with that very job.

"Sure. Ahm... been awhile but reminder, protocol and that... am I considered to be a 'Captain', since I am commander of this ship," Tom was smiling again, "Well, that is until I can give it back to the Klingons."

"I believe so..." Janeway begrudged, "Perhaps, Captain, when you are, cleaned up, you can meet with me in my ready room? I am looking forward to your... explanation behind why my tactical officer destroyed that vessel without my order."

Tom went all serious, and sternly told her, "Special Order Alpha Mike Foxtrot, look it up. I must go, Commander, my ship's half falling apart here." With that, the transmission was cut, and Janeway sighed, and looked at the tactical officer for explanation.

Sirol inserted first, "Commander, it is a genuine order, and the cardassian government is well aware of it. It's invocation and clear observation of the incident will show that we are not in breach of the peace treaty. It is not so much a 'catch-all' to allow Starfleet to destroy enemy vessels with impunity, it is meant as a deterrence against their ships crossing the borders without permission. Woudl they not destroy a federation vessel, when otherwise unprovoked, if only because it had stumbled across the border?"

Janeway had to nod, and accepted it. Course that was when the captain of the ship got onto the bridge... No, Janeway was not the actual captain of the ship.

Deep Space Nine

Tom Paris looked over at his long time friend, Kira Nerys, now Executive Officer of the Starfleet-administrated/Bajoran-owned/Cardassian Built space station.

"Nerys." He greeted warmly, and despite her tendancy to avoid large displays of affection of any sort, especially around Quarks, Nerys greeted him with an enthusiastic hug.

They were all on the top level of Quarks bar. That is to say, Tom found Kira there, with some of the senior officers of the station.

After a second of holding the hug, they parted.

Commander Benjamin Sisko stood, and greeted him with a curt welcome, better than he'd expected, but then it was probably Kira's actions that helped in that regard.

"Commander Sisko." Tom greeted, shaking hands for a barest second, and then looked at the other two sat at the table, whom were giving him odd looks, to say the least. "You must be Jadzia Dax, a joined trill, and Julian Bashir, 2nd best doctor in Starfleet apparently." He said with a smile, "To be honest, When Nerys told me that, I had to wonder what you did that demoted you in her opinions."

Nerys hit him gently on the arm, and laughed.

Jadzia was the one to speak first. "You must be Tom Paris, whom we've heard nothing about from the Major." She glanced at her friend, and so did Tom.

"What, you didn't tell them about me?"

"... Why should I have?" Nerys joked. "It's not like you're anything special. 3rd rate flyer, horrible sense of humor and last time I heard from Rygell, he said that you'd gotten into trouble on Qo'Nos..."

"Let's see..." Tom began, running through a familiar routine with ease, "I broke you out of one of the worst Cardassian prison camps on Bajor after being there only two months, Same response to that, I've won races in rustbuckets that those '1st rate flyer's lost in brand new ships, my sense of humor isn't that bad and Rygell told me that the woman had been talking about my prowess and wanted to bed me. How was I to know it was General Martoks' wife? At least he saw the humor in the situation."

Nerys waited for his words to filter into the minds of the people she worked with. She'd known for awhile that ever since Tom was booted out of Starfleet for having faked that 'alpha mike foxtrot' thing that was not a real order, (which was apparently news to the tactical officer of the Al-Batani at the time) and then caught running a mission for the Maquis, practically every member of Starfleet who knew his story had the preconception that he was a very dangerous liar, and not a hero, as he was to the Bajorans.

When Sisko was about to deny some of those by actually calling him a liar, she nodded and spoke up first, "Okay, so Shakaar's attempt to free me failed 3 times in a row, yours worked first time... fine I get that. And yes... those races. But it could be argued that you cheated."

"Nothing in the rules about using a slingshot manoeuvre." Tom interjected with a grin.

"Which is the most horrible use of time-travel I can think of," Nerys continued as if she had expected the argument. "Your sense of humor is so bad you were banned by Kai Opaka from visiting temple."

"She loves my sense of humor! She just said it wasn't appropriate to have in the temple. I didn't know we even were in the temple at the time."

She continued, having expected that, too. "And that's not the trouble I was talking about. I knew about that one..." She grinned, "I suggested it."

Tom honestly frowned now, the routine over somewhat. "So what incident?"

"Chancellor Gowron, A targ, and-"

"Okay..." Tom said, shooting forward so fast that Sisko felt threatened, though within a second he'd realised Tom had only moved forward to cover Kira's mouth. "None of that story now." He smiled charmingly at Jadzia, "Don't want to ruin my charm, now do I?"

Jadzia found herself almost giggling, and only the Dax part of her held it down. Instead, she gave him one of her looks, that said she agreed but still was curious.

A disturbance down on the main floor of the bar caught his attention, and before any of the others could move from the table to see to it, Tom sighed and walked away, saying over his shoulder, "Excuse me while I stop the Ferengi from extorting lots of latinum from an obviously green ensign so wet behind the ears ... wait... wrong phrase to use in this situation."

Nerys chuckled as his voice trailed off as he went down the spiral stairs two steps at a time.

Sisko peered down, and tried to listen in. That was when he realised the reason they were all on the top floor was for the privacy, which worked both ways.

Delta Quadrant

Janeway nodded to the 'Observer', Tom Paris, And said, "Take the Conn, Mr Paris." A small smile, she added, "May not be a klingon Battlecruiser, but she'll do."

No one got the reference, except the Vulcan who spoke up from the science console, despite his normal area being Operations (that position taken by Ensign Kim, despite the seniority), "Just don't go making up special orders this time, Thomas."

Janeway smirked as Tom sat down, somewhat flustered.

AN: An AU where the reason for his booting out was different.

Lets just say I watched a certain film awhile ago, and a certain element, the 'put the enemy in a position so they essentially pull the trigger on themselves' thing, gets put here too. Dukat knew humans were there, afterall. Tom simply goaded him in, like the A Team did with that dude.

Yes, the Vulcan at the end was 'Sirol'. I gave them names and decided I liked them, so you could say that when given Voyager, and asked what crew she wanted from her old command, she picked Sirol. If anything, to help 'handle' Tom.

And the battlecruiser comment isn't even about the P'Kogh. Didn't you get the part where I referenced that Tom travelled around klingon space? And I haven't mentioned though, that Tom was ever in 'Auckland'.

Lets just say, exile instead, and the exile was taken back in exchange for the mission, instead of 'freedom from prison'. :-P