Author's Note: Many months ago CaptAcorn sent a request: "I'd like to see a story focused on B'Elanna and one of the members of the command team: KJ or Chakotay…"
So that's where this started…but it sort of expanded from there… Set in the middle of my earlier piece A Space Between, though hopefully it stands reasonably well on its own.
As always, endless thanks to Photogirl1890 for her patience, encouragement and assistance throughout.
Stealing Home
"Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home."
—Matsuo Bashō
…
"That can't be right."
Leaning forward, B'Elanna squints at the monitor, trying to make sense of the results on the screen. She blinks and rubs at her eyes, before reaching for her mug which is, of course, empty. Sighing, she rises tentatively from her chair, shrugging out the stiffness in her shoulders and glancing around the darkened living room to locate the coffee carafe.
"OK, computer," she intones quietly: Miral is asleep in the smaller of the two bedrooms and the pre-teen hasn't been sleeping well the last few nights. "Run a simulation using those parameters."
The computer acquiesces with a beep. :Simulation commencing:
Methane raindrops continue to splatter softly and soundlessly against the viewport; they haven't let up for more than an hour at a time since Voyager made its emergency landing on the moon six days before. At least, B'Elanna reflects, the liquid is non-corrosive: a rare instance where their circumstances could actually have been worse.
B'Elanna spots the carafe – one of Tom's better notions even in the years when personal replicators had still been operational – on the end table near the sofa. Limping over, she refills her mug and gratefully takes a long swallow. Spatial astrotheory is not her strong suit even when fully awake; when half-asleep, she might as well be trying to write a Drabian love sonnet.
Ignoring the pain in her ankle – the EMH had implored her to stay off of the sprain for at least another day – she hobbles back over to the monitor, her eyes shifting from the simulation's scrolling streams of numbers to the text document still open on the screen.
Sitting back down, she taps to enlarge the text, rereading through the paragraph that she has spent the last five hours mining. "Come on, Seven – tell me you have just one more trick up your sleeve."
:Simulation complete:
The latest simulation, B'Elanna notes without surprise, has ended in a catastrophic failure of structural integrity: she's blown up her ship. Again. She scrolls back through the now familiar progression of events until a single variable catches her eye.
"Huh."
She enlarges the section, compares it against the last paragraph of the text document.
"Computer," she begins, taking another sip of coffee, "let's try inverting the coefficient between the modulators and maximizing the main deflector amplitude. And then," B'Elanna hesitates, glancing at the chronometer, but, after all, she now has a full cup of coffee, "let's run the simulation one more time."
:Parameters have been adjusted and the simulation is commencing:
"Seventeenth time's the charm, right?" B'Elanna leans back into her chair, cupping her mug with both hands and closing her eyes to fully appreciate its warmth. Whoever had determined standard gray mode temperature for starships had not had half-Klingons in mind; B'Elanna can't remember the last time she had felt truly warm. Certainly not since Voyager had started its latest round of cat and mouse with the Borg…
:Simulation complete:
Despite the coffee, she'd been half-drifting towards sleep and it takes an extra moment to open her eyes. It takes even longer to comprehend what's flashing on the screen in front of her.
Voyager is in one piece.
The coffee is still hot enough that, when it ends up in her lap, it causes her to jump up – much to the displeasure of her injured ankle. She yelps and then curses – quietly for Miral's sake – before ignoring both her sodden uniform and her throbbing ankle and focusing squarely on the monitor.
Her ship had not blown up. And it's forty-seven hundred light years away from where it had started.
B'Elanna reaches for her comm badge to call Tom and then stops. She slumps back into her seat – much to her ankle's relief – fingers hovering over the badge. Swiveling the chair, she stares at the darkened bedroom door.
She lowers her hand.
"Computer, create a back-up file with the parameters from the last simulation. And," she adds, glancing again at Miral's door, "request a meeting with Captain Janeway in the morning." Her gaze shifts back to the still blinking monitor. "As soon as she is able."
Once the computer assures her that her work is saved and backed up, B'Elanna powers down the console and rises – carefully this time – to head to bed.
Morning will come all too soon.
…
"Come in."
Kathryn looks up as her ready room door is opened and then winces as her chief engineer limps through and gingerly turns to pull the door closed behind her. Kathryn starts to rise, but B'Elanna has already covered most of the distance to the waiting chair. "I could have come to you, you know," Kathryn points out.
"I'm fine," B'Elanna insists, stubbornly standing behind the empty chair – though Kathryn doesn't miss the shift of the other woman's weight to a single leg.
"Clearly." Kathryn lets an eyebrow rise in exasperation, but she leaves the matter there: that's one battle she'll cede to Tom and the Doctor. "At least sit down."
B'Elanna hesitates for a moment but practicality wins out over pride, and she moves around the chair to sit. Kathryn smiles in vicarious relief. "At least the turbolifts are back online this morning and you didn't have to climb up eight decks on that ankle." Kathryn tilts her head, considering the younger woman. "Though I get the sense you would have." B'Elanna's expression confirms that suspicion. "So what's so important?"
B'Elanna motions toward the console on the desk and Kathryn nods her permission, swiveling the monitor to face the engineer. B'Elanna quickly pulls up a file and then turns the screen back around: "This."
Kathryn leans forward, scanning the results on the screen. Her eyes widen in surprise. "A spatial flexure?"
"That's the idea, yes."
"Created using the deflector dish…"
"Using the harmonics between the main and auxiliary deflector actually."
Kathryn nods, scrolling down the screen. "This is remarkable work, B'Elanna."
"It's not mine."
Kathryn looks up in puzzlement. B'Elanna avoids catching her eye – and suddenly reminds Kathryn very much of the barely-more-than-adolescent Maquis whom Kathryn had met twenty years before. "B'Elanna?"
"It's Seven's. The theories and groundwork are Seven's – I just worked out a couple of the variables at the end."
"Seven's?" Kathryn hears the rasp in her own voice. Deliberately she draws a long breath in and then, just as deliberately, exhales, re-focusing. "But I went through all of her official logs. There was nothing like this."
"It wasn't in her official logs."
"B'Elanna…" Kathryn slumps back in her chair, distancing herself from the monitor with its possibilities of salvation. "Her personal logs?"
B'Elanna nods in confirmation, her gaze now steady.
"You broke into them?"
The engineer nods again. "Icheb had mentioned – years ago – that Seven had been interested in the idea of creating a spatial flexure – that she had debriefed him in detail on his experience with Q – the younger Q." B'Elanna shrugs defensively. "I knew she would have kept her notes somewhere. And it wasn't in her official logs, as you said."
"Chakotay had her personal logs sealed. He has always been very clear that they were to remain that way." Kathryn's brows rise. "You knew that."
B'Elanna leans forward now. "We needed a miracle —we need a miracle. I didn't have any left. I thought maybe Seven might be able to deliver one – one last time." She gestures to the console on the desk. "And she did." B'Elanna sits back. "If Chakotay has a problem with that, he can take it up with me. In fact," and her dark eyes flash, "I wish he would."
Kathryn raises a hand back to the monitor, scrolling through the data, considering. But B'Elanna isn't done: "And please don't tell me, Captain, that you're suddenly developing qualms about using research from ethically suspect sources."
Kathryn's head jerks up and her eyes narrow. But she waits a long beat before replying: B'Elanna is obviously spoiling for a fight. It will do Kathryn little good to rise to the bait.
"What does Tom think?" she tries instead. And then, as B'Elanna stiffens, Kathryn clarifies, indicating the monitor, "About the flexure."
"I haven't told him."
Kathryn's brows climb again. "That surprises me."
"I wasn't aware that the chief conn officer's permission was needed before bringing an idea to the captain." A minute before Kathryn would have sworn that it would be impossible for the engineer's tone to be any more defensive. Clearly, she would have been very wrong.
Kathryn's own voice has turned to gravel, but she keeps her temper in check. "Obviously that's not the case. However, I assumed that given the implications of these findings, the two of you would have discussed them."
"We might have, had I known where I could have found him. Would he be on a second shift on the bridge?" B'Elanna begins ticking possibilities off on her fingers. "Or perhaps in the shuttlebay running flight simulations with pilot trainees? Or sorting through personnel scheduling with department heads? Or…"
Kathryn holds up a hand. "Do you have a point, Lieutenant?"
B'Elanna blows past the implied warning. "My point, Captain, is that there are only three people on this ship that you've ever fully trusted – and now you only have Tom left. And he knows that – and he's slowly but surely drowning beneath the combined weight of duty and guilt." With that pronouncement, B'Elanna's anger seems to drain and she slumps back into her chair in resignation. "There isn't much I can do about that but at least I could keep that," she waves wearily toward the flexure calculations still displayed on the console, "off his desk – and off his conscience."
Sighing, Kathryn closes her eyes, raking her fingers back through her graying hair. She finds that she has no more will left for a fight than does her chief engineer. Opening her eyes, she taps the console with a single finger. "I'll call a senior staff meeting at 1300 hours to discuss this." B'Elanna nods and begins to rise. "B'Elanna?" The other woman pauses. Kathryn weighs her words carefully: "There is no need to keep this information confidential from other senior officers until then."
B'Elanna nods again, her expression neutral, and adds a, "Thank you, Captain," before limping to the door. Once she is gone, Kathryn turns back to the monitor, staring with fixation at what could be Voyager's salvation - or its doom.
…
She tracks him down in the mess hall, engaged in a cutthroat game of durotta: Miral's shriek of displeasure followed by a cascade of giggles meet B'Elanna as she walks through the open doorway.
B'Elanna smiles. Laughter has become a rarity for Miral over the last couple of months. Except when she's around her father.
"You and your mother – always falling for the Novakovich gambit," she hears Tom tease as he reaches across the board to tweak his daughter's nose, taking a bite out of the sandwich held in his other hand as he does so. Miral ducks away from her father's gesture, still giggling.
B'Elanna grins – something which has also probably become a rarity - and calls over: "I only fell for that ridiculous feint once."
Tom looks up, visibly pleased to see her. He even manages to smother his frown of concern as he notices her still pronounced limp. "'Once' a week, for at least two months is more like it." He winks at Miral, and then, so smoothly that B'Elanna can't even think to protest, he stands and pulls over a third chair, having it ready for B'Elanna to drop into when she makes it to their table.
"Thanks," she says simply and fully appreciates Tom's nod and slight smile in reply: they'll save that argument for another time. B'Elanna looks over at her daughter who is pondering her next move, hand outstretched over the board. "Sleep well this morning?" she asks. Miral had still been snuggled deeply into her pillows and coverlet, one arm flung around an ever tolerant stuffed targ when B'Elanna had left their quarters earlier that morning.
Choosing a durotta piece and handing it to her father, Miral turns to B'Elanna with a sheepish grin. "Yeah, I couldn't believe how tired I was!" Then she glances down at her mother's ankle with a frown. "But I'm sorry I didn't get up to grab the fresh coffee for you."
B'Elanna waves away her concern. "I had an early meeting with the Captain – I wouldn't have had time to drink it anyway." She reaches over to muss Miral's short curls. "But thank you, targhHom. It's been nice not to have to come all the way up here chasing after it the last couple of days."
Miral smiles and then turns her attention to the piece that Tom passes over to her. Tom, however, lifts an eyebrow at B'Elanna's words. "An early meeting with Kathryn?" he inquires.
B'Elanna raises her chin to indicate Miral. "Later," she tells him. And then, "And you should eat your lunch."
"Yes, ma'am," Tom replies, taking a large bite while Miral is contemplating her play.
The game ends abruptly a few moves later when Miral realizes that she's fifteen minutes late to help Ensign Bronowski clean up the damaged airponics bay and, with a quick hug for each of her parents, runs off.
B'Elanna's eyes linger on the door through which her daughter disappears.
"What is it?" Tom asks before finishing the final bite of his sandwich.
B'Elanna shakes her head. "It's just been a while since I've seen her that happy."
Tom nods, still chewing. "The extra sleep probably helped," he suggests. "Normal hormonal twelve-year-old moodiness, do you think, or -"
"—very abnormal lifestyle stress?" B'Elanna finishes and shrugs. "Probably some of both. She's getting past the age where we can shield her from the worst of it." She shakes her head ruefully. "Hell, she's probably been past that age for a while, but it hasn't been the worst of it." Her ankle is throbbing again. "Or not this bad anyway."
It's never been this bad.
Neither of them states the obvious.
Tom swipes at his fingers and mouth with a napkin and leans back in his chair. He looks a full decade older now than he had just minutes before. "Your meeting with Kathryn?" he asks.
B'Elanna nods. "Yeah. We should talk about that."
…
There is no one in the room that she does not hate right now.
Once the senior staff had gathered and settled into their accustomed seats, Kathryn had nodded over to B'Elanna to begin her presentation. B'Elanna had stood and limped over to the briefing room viewscreen, turning back around just in time to see the concerned and significant look passing between her husband and the EMH.
She had ignored it, gritted her teeth and begun her prepared explanation.
"Did you say a 'spatial flexure'?" Chakotay had interrupted less than a minute in - when had he last even bothered to speak at a staff meeting?His tone had been knowing and his expression had been hurt and betrayed – infuriatingly so.
Stone-faced, B'Elanna had nodded. "We'll be able to create a resonant oscillation between the deflectors. Once the amplitude peaks, we should be able to open a flexure stable enough for Voyager to pass through."
As she had closed, the room sat silent until Tuvok, with a single raised eyebrow, had remarked, "Ingenious."
"The theoretical work was Seven's," B'Elanna had quickly credited, silently cursing the Vulcan and not looking at Chakotay.
With that she had limped back to the briefing room table, bristling at yet another long glance between the Doctor and his sometime assistant – they just couldn't help themselves, could they? – and settled herself in between that sometime assistant and Harry – the latter of whom was nearly twitching out of his seat.
"I can have the collimators modified within the day." Harry leans across the table towards the Captain, two decades worth of slow-building impatience and frustration disconcertingly visible in his expression. "We could be ready to start testing by beta shift tomorrow.
B'Elanna opens her mouth to correct his assumptions but the Captain raises a hand first. "I appreciate your enthusiasm, Harry, but we haven't yet decided what option to pursue." Kathryn's eyes travel around the table: "That's what this meeting is for."
"What other options do we have?" Harry's posture and tone are well past what would be acceptable on a normal Starfleet ship – or, for that matter, what would have been acceptable on Voyager a decade before.
"I assume the Gibrati's offer is still on the table?" the Doctor pipes in from across the table. At his glance, Kathryn nods. "They were offering full sanctuary…"
"…on the condition that we destroy Voyager." Beside B'Elanna, Harry slumps back into his chair, arms crossed. "The Gibrati will offer full sanctuary only if we agree to destroy Voyager."
"A necessary condition if their plan is to succeed," Tuvok notes from his position beside the EMH. B'Elanna glances at the Vulcan whose fingers are steepled together and resting on the table. As he speaks, his gaze remains concentrated on his hands before him. B'Elanna sighs: Tuvok might contribute to the conversation but, undoubtedly, he will decline to offer his opinion on a course of action. "Without Voyager's unique technologies, the crew would no longer be of interest to the Borg."
"So we blow up the ship and live out our lives on an alien planet whose technological sophistication barely makes it out of Earth's 21st century?" Harry retorts.
"At least we will have lives to live out – Lieutenant Torres's plan is far from guaranteeing that." The EMH glances at her apologetically, but B'Elanna's stomachs are twisting at the Doctor's all too accurate counter.
At the head of the table, Kathryn holds up a hand again. "Gentlemen, please." She turns to Harry. "Lieutenant Kim, what's our latest information on the Borg cube?"
At the Captain's use of his rank, Harry's arms relax as he sits up to something more like proper attention. "It's flitting in and out at the far end of sensors: still searching for us."
"And the ablative armor?"
B'Elanna stirs, turning to catch Harry's grim nod before responding: "I'd estimate it's at twenty percent integrity." She hesitates and then adds the obvious: "It won't last long against a full-out attack from a Borg cube."
"And there's no chance of replicating more mercassium?" Kathryn's voice is steady, albeit strained.
B'Elanna glances again at Harry before shaking her head. "Not in the quantities that we would need to repair the armor, no."
"Harry?" Beside B'Elanna, Harry turns to the Captain, his earlier anger now drained. "How long until the Borg find us?"
"The moon's topaline and magnesite deposits should help mask the ship for a while longer, but I'd say they'll have us within seventy-two hours."
On her other side, B'Elanna feels Tom tense at Harry's somber assessment, but he remains silent. Even a couple of years before, he would have thrown out a joke – likely a bad one – to break the tension in the room. Now, as B'Elanna steals a quick glance in his direction, he simply looks tired.
Kathryn is speaking again: "…and time is very much a factor. I'd like to hear what each of you are thinking – Tuvok?"
B'Elanna growls internally as Tuvok begins his expected "given the impaired state of my reasoning abilities" non-response and Kathryn continues to move around the table. The Doctor will be in favor of taking the Gibrati's offer; Harry and B'Elanna herself will side with attempting the flexure. Chakotay –
"Chakotay, what are your thoughts?" There is a level of carefulness that borders on brittleness as Kathryn addresses her first officer.
From the other end of the table, Chakotay shifts ever so slightly in his chair, half-raising a brow at the question. "You know my thoughts on this, Kathryn. They haven't changed since last we had this discussion – ten years ago."
The temperature in the room seems to plummet another dozen degrees – B'Elanna knows that, if she were to turn, she would see the blood drained from both Tom's and Kathryn's faces.
Fuck you, Chakotay. Fuck you and your fucking undying, self-righteous…
Recovering more quickly than B'Elanna, Kathryn moves on to her next officer: "Harry?"
Chakotay retreats back into silence and B'Elanna pulls her attention away from her one-time mentor, mentally completing her head count: two in favor of attempting the flexure; two wanting to take the Gibrati's offered sanctuary – with Tom as the only undetermined voice. All B'Elanna's maneuvering had gained her was a half-hour of briefing room hell: Tom's thoughts would still be the only ones that the Captain needed to weigh. The rest of them might as well be reading from a well-worn script.
Fifteen years has passed since the senior staff of Voyager had gathered in the mess hall and declared themselves a family. Twenty years into their isolation together and they are still a family – just a highly dysfunctional one.
Harry finishes up his enthusiastic endorsement of the flexure and B'Elanna follows with her more measured assent: she is the chief engineer of a starship. Her job is to figure out a way to keep the ship in one piece. Right now, this is the best that she's got.
With a nod to B'Elanna, Kathryn turns to Tom. "Commander Paris?"
Tom had leant back in his chair, his eyes focused on his fingers as he brushed the crumbs from his sandwich onto his plate.
"What are the odds that it will work?"
"If we get everything right? Fairly good."
"Fairly?"
"It worked in the simulation, didn't it?"
"And if we don't get everything right?" His gaze had flicked first to the durotta board - the last three pieces left unplayed - and then up to B'Elanna, his fears all too easy to read, not least because they so closely matched her own. "What happens then?"
"Then we don't get a second chance."
"Commander?"
Tom raises a hand and runs his fingers back along his ever receding hairline. He turns to look past B'Elanna to Harry. "'Within' seventy-two hours, Harry – do you think we'll have that long?"
Harry nods, more confident now. "I do."
Tom nods as well and then, turning back to Kathryn, raises a brow. "Then I think we need to try to pull out one more miracle."
Kathryn raises her chin and draws a breath. "Harry, get started on the collimators. B'Elanna, pull extra staff to Engineering as you need them; coordinate with Tom on the scheduling." B'Elanna gives her "Yes, ma'am," along with Harry's as the Captain formally ends the meeting, adding, as everyone starts to rise from their seats, "Commander Paris, if I could have a moment more of your time…"
B'Elanna manages not to roll her eyes as Tom promises to catch up with her in Engineering.
So much for trying to keep his desk and conscience clear.
…
She makes it halfway down the corridor before she hears her name. Drawing a breath, she straightens her shoulders and turns, meeting Chakotay head on as he approaches. "Chakotay, I'm a little busy at the…"
"You read her logs. Seven's personal logs. You read them." Chakotay's voice is quiet. From long experience, B'Elanna recognizes the danger there.
In years past, that tone might have given her pause; now, it only fuels her own temper. "Yes, I did," she admits readily. And then continues, "And you did too." Chakotay opens his mouth to respond but B'Elanna cuts him off: "You read them and you knew about the flexure." She looks at him in open disbelief. "You knew her theories were there – you knew they could save us. And you said nothing." B'Elanna searches his expression for some sign of the friend whom she had once trusted unquestioningly. "How could you?"
Chakotay has the grace to look discomfited. "You know how – and why." He reaches for her arm. "B'Elanna, you must understand how I feel about this question–"
"To hell with your feelings, Chakotay. And no, no I don't understand." She backs away from his reach, fingernails pressing into the flesh of her palms. "And you know what? Neither would Seven."
B'Elanna doesn't see Chakotay's reaction to her words; she's already turned and continuing her slow progress toward Engineering.
…