Ripples on the Water
B'Elanna's troubled sleep pulled her deeper into the dark maze of the Mokra prison. With no light to guide her she felt her way. Her hands traced irregular rock walls that tantalized with twists and turns leading nowhere. A cool draft promised a way out only to lead her smack into another rock face. B'Elanna swore and banged her fist against the wall in frustration.
"This way, Lieutenant." Tuvok's infuriatingly calm voice directed her around the outcropping to a wider section of dimly lit corridors.
In the soft light B'Elanna saw Captain Janeway bent in sorrow over an alien figure, an old man recently dead. Tom Paris approached the Captain from behind and gently touched her shoulder. "Captain," he urged softly.
Tuvok stepped into the light. His face was a blank mask, composed, unflappable. Then Mokra guards converged from all directions. Tuvok's mask shattered exposing a face raw with blood and bruises. Rock walls crumbled, screaming in agony. The piercing screams threw B'Elannaback to reality and jolted her awake.
"Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!" B'Elanna drew up her blanket-covered knees and pressed her hands against her forehead.
She didn't need dreams to remind her of Tuvok being tortured. She'd hated sitting in that Mokra cell not able to do anything but listen. It hit way too close to home.
B'Elanna threw off her covers and swung her feet to the floor. If she was going to be troubled by dreams she might as well get some work done. B'Elanna dressed quickly and set off to jump-start her brain with caffeine from Neelix's latest version of new, improved coffee.
It was quiet in the mess hall. Although Neelix wasn't around the thermos that he always left on the counter was still half full. B'Elanna poured herself a sample size and sipped cautiously. It wasn't that bad. Either his brews were actually starting to improve or her taste buds were so hopelessly compromised by his cooking that she could no longer tell what good coffee was supposed to taste like. She topped up her mug and replaced the thermos. Its bottom edge clanked on the hard surface sending echoes across the empty mess hall.
B'Elanna turned and rested an elbow on the counter to survey the room. The tables were carefully ordered, spotlessly clean, you would never know they were in general use at all hours of the day. She picked out the table that Tuvok preferred to use, vacant now like all the other tables.
She'd seen no sign of Tuvok since the Doctor examined the away team and uncharacteristically hustled her out of sickbay. Tuvok must be in bad shape. It had to be bad for his control to slip during the Mokra interrogation. Although he never did answer when she asked if it was his scream she heard after he was led away from their cell for questioning.
Tuvok returned calm and emotionless. He said that the way he'd fought back was by refusing to tell the Mokra what they wanted to know. B'Elanna couldn't understand that kind of rationalization. She would have raged against her tormentors, clawed and scraped with fingernails if those were the only weapons she had left.
B'Elanna examined the rim of her mug before taking another sip. She knew that Captain Janeway hadn't raged in the prison. The Captain had put grief aside to pull herself together. She'd taken charge of the rescue team and led everyone to the beam out point. That couldn't have been easy for her.
So maybe fighting back wasn't always punching somebody in the nose. Maybe sometimes it was a stubborn refusal to give in, a refusal to give up. If that really was true, B'Elanna wondered what else she'd scornfully rejected might turn out to be true.
B'Elanna decided that her coffee didn't taste so good after all. She left the mug and headed down to engineering. The world of machines had always welcomed her, even when she wasn't human enough for her father or Klingon enough for her mother.
There was only a slight flutter when the Chief showed up for duty two hours early. She'd made it clear she wanted these latest repairs completed as quickly as possible. B'Elanna shook her head to let Lt. Carey know that he was still overseeing regular operations and made a tour of the engine room.
Voyager was struggling to recover from the strain inflicted by weeks of insufficient power. B'Elanna knew her systems inside and out. The ship's quirks and moods were predicable and familiar. It was no surprise to her that back-up life support stubbornly refused to slip back to reserve.
B'Elanna opted to leave back-up systems to the gamma shift in order to concentrate on a fluctuation that was evident to her in the colors of the warp core. There was a yellowish tinge to the pulsating blue that Joe Carey insisted couldn't possibly be there, not according to the Starfleet manual. But B'Elanna knew more about warp cores than any manual. There was a disruption in the flow somewhere.
B'Elanna selected a workstation and let her knowledge and her instincts guide her. The intricacies of the warp core held her full attention for the next hour.
A slight modulation in the ship's ambient hum alerted her to an energy surge indicating a spike in the use of sonic showers and replicators. Alpha shift was awake and preparing for duty.
When the new shift reported in, Carey handed over to B'Elanna and left. B'Elanna put the warp core problem aside and made another tour of the engine room. After checking assignments and logging an update on the current state of repairs B'Elanna planned to return to the elusive warp core disruption. A disagreement at a console on the other side of the room sidelined that plan.
The disagreement appeared to have something to do with the tool that former Maquis Olandra Jor was waving dangerously close to Crewman Sandra Peterson's face. B'Elanna didn't think there was any real danger that Jor would attack Peterson with a microscanner. Despite the irritating rhyme created by their first names, Olandra and Sandra made a good team. That didn't mean that B'Elanna would let this incident pass unchallenged. She strode across the room to confront the two crewmembers.
"What's going on? Not enough work to keep you busy?"
The Starfleet trained Crewman Peterson snapped to attention. "Sorry, Lieutenant. I was just explaining to Crewman Jor that her microscanner is the wrong tool for the job."
Crewman Jor didn't snap but she stopped glaring long enough to explain, "And I was trying to tell Crewman Peterson that the recommended scanner is too clumsy to access the link we installed during our last set of repairs."
"I see." B'Elanna instinct was to sympathize with Jor and be annoyed with Peterson for insisting on Starfleet regulations. However more than a year in charge of a department staffed by members from both crews had given her new insight into some of Starfleet's more irritating practices.
"Let me see that scanner, Crewman." B'Elanna examined the tool that Jor handed over and also the relevant link. Then B'Elanna announced her decision.
"You're right," she told Olandra. "This scanner will do a better job. And you're right too, Peterson. Using it on this link will throw the calibrations off. It would waste valuable time if every department member had to check every tool in case the last person to use it threw it out of alignment. So, Jor, after you're done, make sure you recalibrate the scanner before you put it away. And in the future if you plan to use a non-regulation tool inform me first so I can check for potential problems. Now if there isn't anything else can we all get back to repairs?"
A "Lieutenant" and a nod later and B'Elanna returned to her own station.
B'Elanna ran an efficient department. There were no further interruptions until Chakotay dropped by in the middle of what should have been her lunch break.
Even in a standard regulation uniform the Commander was an imposing presence. When he entered the room B'Elanna's engineering staff almost tripped over themselves in an effort to attend even more diligently to their duties. B'Elanna rested one hand on her hip to silently demand an explanation for this intrusion on her domain.
"Aren't you planning to eat today?" He prodded rather than asked.
B'Elanna shrugged off the unwelcome question. "I'm fine."
"You won't be if you don't eat something."
"I'm fine," she repeated more forcefully.
Chakotay wasn't deterred. He simply changed strategies. "Of course you are," he agreed amicably. "That's why you came on duty two hours early this morning.
She sidestepped this tactic by ignoring it. "Has the Captain had a chance to read the report on ship repairs?"
"Captain Janeway beat you to work by an hour. She is also 'fine'." Chakotay informed her wryly. "I left her in her ready room adding her comments to your report. She wants an update on the impact of the new supply of tellerium on ship's efficiency as soon as possible. I have another meeting with her in fifteen minutes"
B'Elanna nodded. She could understand the Captain's need to keep busy. What Captain Janeway had gone through on the Mokra planet was undoubtedly more than routine. She'd been noticeably upset by the death of that old man.
There was a time when B'Elanna would have asked Chakotay more questions about the Captain. Now either he knew and wouldn't tell her or he didn't know and B'Elanna didn't want to force him to admit that. Instead she asked, "How's Tuvok?"
Chakotay frowned. "The Doctor ordered him to take the day off. I think he's meditating in his quarters."
"I see."
"I think you do. That's another reason why I wanted to know how you are."
B'Elanna shook her head. "Tuvok was the one they interrogated. They didn't touch me."
"That's what I'm talking about. It's not the first time you or I had to keep our heads down listening to the screams of others who weren't so lucky."
B'Elanna gave up evading the issue. "It was hard, not being able to help."
"It always is."
"I hated it. I wanted to rip someone apart." B'Elanna wrapped her arms around herself as if to contain the remembered impulse. I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't gotten us out of there."
Chakotay squeezed her arm gently. "Then I'm glad the rescue team got through to you when it did."
Chakotay didn't make everything better, but at least B'Elanna knew she wasn't alone.
Chakotay smiled and added, "This time it came in handy that Tom Paris enjoys flirting with danger."
His tone troubled B'Elanna. She'd seen the sympathy on Tom's face when he coaxed the Captain away from her grief. It wasn't the face of someone indulging in an act of bravado. It harkened back to the Tom Paris who'd been so surprisingly supportive when B'Elanna was divided into her Klingon and human halves in the Vidiian mines.
Working closely with Tom on Voyager, B'Elanna was more and more uncomfortable with the way he and Chakotay rubbed each other the wrong way. Today, though, she wasn't in the mood to argue with a valued friend. She shook her head. "I'll get over it. I just have to keep busy."
"Maybe," Chakotay agreed. "But it would help if you spent time with people who can understand how you feel.
"I will," she promised.
"How about now?" he persisted. "There's a crowd in the mess hall. Why not join them and get some lunch at the same time?"
B'Elanna scowled at him. "You weren't such a nag about eating on the Val Jean."
"On the Val Jean food was in short supply," he replied smoothly. "I was concerned about people grabbing more than their fair share, not them forgetting to eat."
B'Elanna put away her tools and walked out the door with Chakotay. "I liked you better then."
He smiled, not at all offended, "So eat and I won't nag." Then Chakotay walked her to the mess hall before heading off for his meeting.
As soon as B'Elanna stepped through the mess hall doors Neelix rushed up and started fussing over her. "Lieutenant, I'm so glad you're here. You know, I didn't see you at all at breakfast. I was busy getting the casserole started, but still …"
"What is it, Neelix?" B'Elanna interrupted him.
"I wanted to explain to you that I would never have left the team on that planet if I'd known you were going to be locked up by the Mokra."
"You don't have to explain, Neelix. You did the right thing. You followed the Captain's orders. If not for you the ship wouldn't have gotten its tellurium and Voyager would still be stuck in space."
Neelix perked up at the praise, but wasn't entirely satisfied. "Well, you still went through a lot. I'd like to do something extra for you. Instead of the casserole, why don't I make you a special lunch? It will only take me a few minutes. Have a seat and I'll bring it over when it's ready."
B'Elanna wasn't confident that his special lunch would taste any better than his casserole. "That's really not necessary."
"I insist."
She gave in to the inevitable. "All right, I'll be joining the big group over there." She indicated a cluster of tables that were obviously occupied by ex-Maquis crewmembers. They jostled and teased. Their laughter jumped the gaps between tables. Even in uniform they stood out, louder and somehow more colorful than the more reserved Starfleet crewmembers.
Neelix nodded and hurried off.
B'Elanna was on her way to sit with her friends when she spotted Tom Paris alone at a table off to one side. Idly noting that Harry must be busy, she decided that Neelix's 'show appreciation' idea had merit. This was a good opportunity to thank Tom for leading the rescue team that got her out of the Mokra prison. There was enough room for her to sit. Even the half table beside him was unoccupied.
Tom looked up from the remnants of his lunch when she stopped beside his table. He half rose in courtesy when she sat down. "This is a pleasant surprise. What's the occasion?"
"I thought I'd join you while Neelix makes me a 'special' lunch." She grimaced half seriously at the thought of the lunch and then smiled. Although she and Tom had gone through some early rough patches she enjoyed his company once he let up acting like a jerk.
Tom grinned. "Are you sure you don't want me to cover for you while you make your escape."
B'Elanna laughed. "Thanks for the offer. But if I try that Chakotay will pester me until I come back and eat."
Tom's jaw tightened at the mention of Chakotay's name. B'Elanna sighed. Well she'd given Chakotay a pass today. She supposed she owed Tom one too. This time she let it go. "I wanted to thank you for putting yourself at risk to lead the rescue team. I know that there was a good chance you could have ended up stranded down there too."
Tom shrugged to make light of it. "It's all part of the service," he told her with self-mocking gallantry.
B'Elanna frowned. They were getting on so well and now he was spoiling it. She cut him short. "Don't act like that!"
"Act like what?"
"Like it doesn't matter, like you don't care."
Tom shifted uncomfortably. He stabbed at an invisible scrap on his plate. Then he tried another tack, closer to the truth. "Well let's just say that I can't afford to lose one of the few people who will sit with me over lunch."
B'Elanna frowned again, this time perplexed. "What are you talking about? I see you with people lots of times."
Tom carefully placed his fork beside his plate and sat back in his chair. "Yeah, on duty or at Sandrine's on the holodeck where half of the people are holograms and anybody can come in. I mean here in the mess hall where you get to choose who you sit with."
B'Elanna wanted to contradict him, but couldn't. How many times had she seen him eating alone? Except for Harry, Kes and more recently Neelix, she couldn't remember any others who chose to join him. The empty table beside him now seemed less of a happy accident.
Neelix interrupted what was becoming an awkward moment. "B'Elanna, I have your lunch ready. I thought you were going to sit at the other table. I can leave it here instead if you'd rather."
B'Elanna hesitated. "Well …"
Tom took the decision out of her hands. "It's all right, Lieutenant. I have to get back to the bridge soon anyway. Don't let me keep you from your friends." He tossed his napkin on the table and stood up. He waited until B'Elanna made it to her feet before adding, "I'm glad you got back safely." Then he left.
Although B'Elanna had only intended to stop for a moment, she was disappointed that her visit with Tom was over. She had the feeling that she'd just missed something important.
With nothing else to do she found an empty chair at one of the Maquis tables. Neelix trailed along behind and placed her lunch in front of her with a broad smile. "Enjoy!"
B'Elanna quickly fell in with the group's light banter and familiar jokes. She decided that Chakotay had been right about the company. It was good to feel no need to rein herself in, no need to scrape off rough edges to fit round Starfleet holes. In the mess hall titles were left at the door. Rank was irrelevant. Respect was given to those who'd earned it.
As an added bonus Neelix's lunch proved to be surprisingly edible. She worked her way around the more questionable parts including a greenish chunk of something that might have been a potato if it weren't so squishy. It gave off a slightly putrid odor when she poked it with her fork.
Ken Dalby leaned across the table to ask, "So, you going to eat that potato thing or not?" Dalby had never had any use for the social graces and his indestructible stomach was legendary in more than one Maquis cell.
B'Elanna laughed. No, you go ahead. If it doesn't kill you I'll tell Neelix to put it on the menu." She scraped the unappetizing lump onto Ken's plate.
Mouth full, he merely grunted and kept chewing.
Talk shifted to B'Elanna's recent away mission. Michael Jonas started it off. Jonas was one of the few Maquis who was stiff enough to look like he belonged in a Starfleet uniform. He was usually careful about sharing his opinions so his opening remarks caught B'Elanna by surprise. "You must be relieved to be back among the living."
"Yeah, I guess so."
"Talk about hardship duty! Stuck in a cell with Tuvok!" Then he added more clever observations about B'Elanna's rotten luck in being stranded on the planet in that kind of company.
B'Elanna didn't appreciate his humor. There was a time when she might have shared in the joke. But that was a brutal prison down there and there was nothing amusing about a fellow crewmember being forcibly interrogated by an enemy. She found herself annoyed with Jonas's yammering.
Fortunately Mariah Henley shared her opinion. She and a few others eased up on their attitude toward Tuvok after he risked his life to save Gerron during a training course that Chakotay forced them to take with Voyager's Chief of Security. Mariah elbowed Michael in the side to shut him up. "Eat your lunch before Ken decides you must be finished and stakes a claim to the rest." She leaned closer to whisper to B'Elanna, "I heard what happened to Tuvok. That was tough."
Apparently her whisper wasn't quiet enough. Ken Dalby picked up her words and chimed in, "Yeah! That sucked. How is the Vulcan professor? Has he pulled his head back out of his a** yet?" Dalby's expressions were crude but his interest was sincere.
B'Elanna shrugged, "I'm not sure. I think he's keeping to himself so he can perform some sort of healing ritual."
Dalby nodded in understanding. "Yeah. Vulcans. Go figure."
That settled, B'Elanna was deciding what to eat next on her plate when Karl Hogan called out, "Hey, B'Elanna! I was really worried when I heard they sent Paris to pull you out of that prison."
"Why?" B'Elanna asked. "Paris is a good officer. He knows what he's doing."
"So far, maybe," Hogan agreed. "But you have to admit that you can never tell if he'll run out on you. I remember Seska telling me how she found Paris spewing his guts out when we were getting ready to skim the Cardassian border. Back then …"
B'Elanna glared at Hogan. She should have guessed that he'd use the opportunity to reminisce about Seska. Karl and Seska had been close. B'Elanna got that. Seska had fooled a lot of people. But enough was enough! Even after Seska was unmasked as a Cardassian spy, Hogan and some of her other former friends in the Maquis let her off the hook while having no qualms about setting Paris up for target practice.
"A lot has happened since 'back then', Karl. You'd do better to update your facts. And I wouldn't believe every story Seska ever told you. She wasn't exactly the most reliable source of information."
Hogan's mouth hung open where he'd left it. A strained silence followed. This time Ken Dalby came to the rescue. "Maybe that's why Chakotay dumped her." The way he said it left all possible innuendos open. It made the table burst out laughing and smoothed over the moment.
B'Elanna finished her meal while the uneasy truce held. Karl kept glowering and was clearly not happy. B'Elanna felt some of the others stare at her when they thought she wasn't looking. She made her excuses and left the mess hall early, berating herself for snapping at her friends.
She would have appreciated an excuse to vent when she got back to engineering. She was almost annoyed to find everything running smoothly.
Kurt Bedera also came back from lunch early. He greeted B'Elanna with his usual informality. "What's up, kid?"
"I'm not a kid," she answered almost automatically. Like the two of them, the joke had a history that stretched back before their time on Voyager.
"I know you're not a kid, but it's no fun calling you 'Chief' anymore.
B'Elanna shook her head in exasperation.
Kurt grinned. "Besides, I'm not officially on duty yet, so I don't have to call you 'Lieutenant'" Something in her expression made him add, "Or do I?"
B'Elanna was embarrassed by the idea that an old friend who'd saved her life on the Cardassian border would think that she was pulling rank. "I didn't mean that. It's just… "
Kurt nodded. "I heard that Karl gave you a bad time today."
"Where did you hear that?"
"I have my sources."
B'Elanna folded her arms and waited.
"Okay, Karl told me."
"He told you that he gave me a bad time?"
"That's not what he said. That's what I heard." Kurt rested his hands on the railing in front of him. "B'Elanna, Karl's not a bad guy. He just hasn't gotten over the fact that he was hung up on Seska. Give him time. He'll come around."
B'Elanna nodded, as much for Kurt's sake as for Karl's. The two of them went way back. She'd once asked Kurt what it was with 'K' names on his home planet. He'd just laughed.
"I know," she assured Kurt. "I try to take that into account. Some of it today was my fault. I'm a little off balance."
"No kidding! I can tell you that the Mokra won't be making my list of drinking buddies."
B'Elanna allowed herself a small smile. "That's not it, not all of it anyway. Before we got stuck out here sides were pretty clear. Now I'm not so sure what to think anymore – about people and other things."
"Well about people, I can only tell you to take them as you see them. If I'd sat around waiting to figure out who I should back in that miners' fight on Telfas Prime, I never would have met up with Chakotay and ended up out here."
"That turned out well," B'Elanna commented dryly.
Kurt grinned. "Exactly! Good company, a comfortable bed, regular meals and a little excitement now and then. What could be better than that?"
He winked and grabbed a hyperspanner. "Got to pay my dues, you know."
B'Elanna laughed. Kurt was one of the rocks, solid, dependable, no guff. By Starfleet standards he wasn't officer material. In many ways he was wiser than most who wore rank pips. He had insight that they couldn't teach at the Academy.
That was one of the problems B'Elanna had with Starfleet. They didn't value you unless you fit into one of their boxes.
B'Elanna watched the rest of first lunch crew return and second lunch trickle out. Then she went back to her chosen station and picked up from where she'd left off.
That night B'Elanna dreamed again, hearing screams. She sat up in bed, hugging herself to shut out the cold.
B'Elanna knew from past experience that screams can depersonalize the soul. They rip pain from the body and fracture the illusion of safety. Starfleet personnel weren't supposed to scream like that. Starfleet personnel did their duty, whatever that was. It was the Maquis who knew the ugliness of pain and what it was to struggle and endure.
B'Elanna criticized Starfleet for insisting on soul suffocating boxes. It was disturbing to think that she had boxes of her own. She'd looked down on those in Starfleet uniforms with the haughty superiority of a Maquis who'd experienced the messiness of the real world and learned first hand the harsh realities of life. But out here no one had an easy ride, Maquis or Starfleet.
B'Elanna pulled the blanket up to her shoulders. "What the hell is wrong with me?" People she'd viewed with distain weren't unfeeling martinets. Others she'd counted on weren't necessarily friends. Nor was it that simple. So where did that leave her?
Once, at school on Kessick V, she'd gone on an excursion to a rustic farm on the outreaches of the colony. The old farmer had never seen a half Klingon. He'd eyed her like some form of exotic livestock and declared that she was neither fish nor fowl. She'd been so angry! But at least he'd said it to her face. He didn't put on a false front like her father who told her that he loved her and then abandoned her.
When B'Elanna joined the Maquis she finally found a place where she felt completely accepted, just the way she was. Now she was back in no man's land, midway between Starfleet and Maquis. A part of both worlds, she belonged in neither.
B'Elanna wondered if it was still too early for her to head down to engineering.
…..