Mok'tah
Author: Penny A. Proctor

Act 1

"We're being hailed," Harry Kim announced. Frowning, he added, "That's odd. It's not from the Flyer but they're using the Flyer's identification code."

Captain Janeway frowned. "Let's have it, Lieutenant."

The view screen filled with the face of Tal Celes, surrounded by cramped and unfamiliar equipment. Her hair was disheveled and her face streaked with grime. "Voyager, thank goodness."

Kathryn Janeway rose, shocked. "Celes?"

"Captain, you need to beam Lt. Paris to Sickbay, he's been badly hurt."

She signaled Harry and watched as Tal turned her head to check behind her. After the beam-out she turned back to the screen. "These engines are dead, Captain. Ensign Vorik is literally holding things together with his bare hands. Can you tractor us aboard?"

"Commander Tuvok is taking care of it. What happened, Tal?"

"We were hijacked." The young Bajoran looked disgusted. "It was the man who helped you on that Cardassian ship."

"Ramon Hernandez?" Janeway asked, stunned.

"I think that was his name. Lt. Paris recognized him. He said his ship was falling apart." Pausing, she smiled lopsidedly. "He was telling the truth about that, at least. He said his companion was ill. Lt. Paris ordered them beamed to the aft section so he could treat her. Vorik and I were forward when he attacked Mr. Paris and after that…" she bit her lower lip. "He stunned us both, then he transported us to this ship. He didn't even leave us a medikit, Captain. We did the best we could for Mr. Paris, but he hasn't regained consciousness and I'm afraid he's hurt badly."

The Captain felt a bubble of rage begin to form. "You did a good job. We'll take it from here. Did Hernandez give you any reasons?"

"Nothing," she said. "He didn't even seem worried about Mr. Paris." She brightened. "You should be able to track him easily, though. Before he was phasered, Ensign Vorik opened the ion dampeners by .25 microns."

"A trail of breadcrumbs," Chakotay said. "Good thinking."

"Mr. Kim, find those breadcrumbs. I am not about to lose the DeltaFlyer." She slammed a control. "Janeway to Sickbay."

"I'm rather busy, Captain," the EMH responded, sounding distracted.

"So am I. I need a report, Doctor."

"I don't have any details yet. He's critical. Give me ten minutes."

The bridge was quiet as Janeway rose and turned to her first officer. "You and Tuvok should begin the debriefing as soon as Tal and Vorik are on board. I'll join you shortly."

"You aren't staying for the chase?"

"I'll be back. But first, I have to go to Engineering and tell B'Elanna."

B'Elanna sat on the only chair in the Engineering Lab and rubbed her aching back as she listened to Icheb and Carey argue over the analysis of the test on the holodeck. "The initializing sequence must be incorrect," Icheb said. "If the stabilizer comes on line first, it overrides the transwarp command and affects temporal placement. The freezing effect was clearly an analogue to a major destabilization in time."

"But the stabilizer has to be operational when transwarp initiates or it can't buffer the gel packs from the nanoprobes," Carey said, sounding frustrated. "But when we brought them on line simultaneously, they seemed to negate one another. I thought bringing the cloak up would counter that, but it didn't work."

"But why?" B'Elanna asked. "Each component works fine individually. Why does the system fail?"

The door to the Engineering Lab opened, and Captain Janeway entered. B'Elanna stood up, surprised and instantly concerned. The Captain's expression was grave, and since she rarely made unannounced visits to the Lab during her duty shift, something was wrong.

"Sorry to interrupt," she said, and turned to Carey and Icheb. "Please excuse B'Elanna and me for a few moments."

Carey nodded, and the two left without a word. B'Elanna felt a lump rise in her throat. "What's happened?" she asked.

"The away mission ran into some trouble," the Captain said, so carefully that B'Elanna knew what was coming next. "Tom has been hurt. He's in Sickbay now."

"How bad is it?" she asked quietly.

"I don't know. He's been unconscious for two days, but that's all I know. The Doctor is examining him now. Come on. We'll go find out. I'll tell you what happened on the way."

By the time Kathryn and B'Elanna arrived in Sickbay, the Doctor had already summoned Sam Wildman and Trish Gallagher to assist him. That, Kathryn realized, was not a good sign. After Tom, they were the two most knowledgeable and experienced medical assistants on board. If he called for both of them to deal with one patient, that patient was in bad shape.

B'Elanna realized it too, because she skidded to a halt when she saw the three medics hovering over the biobed. "Oh," she said. "Oh."

Sam saw them and, after saying something quietly to the Doctor, came over. "It's a closed head injury. If it had been treated immediately, it wouldn't be serious, but -"

"But it wasn't treated and that was two days ago." B'Elanna was composed, even though her eyes never strayed from the biobed. "Is he going to die?"

"Not if the Doctor can help it." Samantha smiled reassuringly. "We're prepping for surgery now."

B'Elanna reached blindly for Kathryn's hand and squeezed it. Sam didn't need to tell her that surgery was rare in this age of advanced medical equipment and technique. "What kind of surgery?"

"He has a depressed skull fracture. Ordinarily, an osteoregenerator could correct it, but because of the time involved, it has to be surgically elevated. Once the operation is done, we have to remove some bone chips and evacuate the intercranial hematoma – the blood that has collected in the brain - but that can be done with the medical transporter. They're causing pressure, and that pressure has damaged tissue and neural pathways." Sam bit her lip. "Afterwards, the doctor plans to keep him unconscious for at least 48 hours for regeneration. We won't know until then how successful we've been in repairing all the damage."

B'Elanna's throat constricted, trying to swallow but it was suddenly too tight and too dry. "Can I see him?"

"I'll ask the Doctor." Samantha patted her shoulder reassuringly, and returned to the sterile field.

"I'm sure it will be all right, B'Elanna," Kathryn said, looking at her with concern. She had expected anger or fear or both from her volatile engineer, but instead B'Elanna was almost unnaturally calm.

"Yes," B'Elanna said distantly. "It has to be."

Samantha hurried back over. "I'm sorry, B'Elanna. I'll call you as soon as we're finished. You can see him then."

For a moment, B'Elanna simply stared at her. Then she said, "All right," and turned and walked out.

Kathryn paused only long enough to tell Samantha, "I want to know the instant the surgery is finished."

She found B'Elanna waiting in the corridor. "Why don't you call it a day?" she suggested. "I know your thoughts won't be on the engines."

"No!" B'Elanna said harshly. Then she remembered to whom she was speaking. "I'm sorry, Captain. I'm not good at waiting. I need to keep busy."

Kathryn studied her closely, looking for signs of fatigue or suppressed emotion and saw none. "All right," she said slowly. "Keep me posted."

"I will." She started to leave, then stopped. "Thank you for telling me yourself, Captain. I appreciate it."

Kathryn sat at the desk in her ready room, staring at the computer monitor. She had Starfleet's records on Ramon Hernandez on the screen. The picture showed a man of twenty-eight years old, young for the rank of Lieutenant Commander, with jet black hair and just the slightest hint of plumpness in his face. Perhaps it was only her imagination, but she thought there was a hint of an idealistic gleam in his eyes. Thirty-five years in the Delta Quadrant had turned the thick hair iron gray, honed the plumpness into wiry strength and burned the idealism away.

The door chime sounded and Chakotay came in. "We've picked up the trail," he said as he sat opposite her. "Harry found Vorik's bread crumbs a few minutes ago."

"Any estimate on when we'll catch up to him?"

"It depends on how long he stays at maximum speed. We're at warp 8 now. If the Flyer continues at warp 6, we'll meet him in a day and a half."

She swung the monitor around. "Recognize him?"

Chakotay studied the picture, then frowned. "I wouldn't, if I didn't know better. This quadrant has changed him."

"Let's be blunt. Living with the Cardassians changed him." She shook her head. "He was a promising young officer, Chakotay. One of the rising stars of Intelligence. His father was a regional director of Federation Security, his mother a hospice physician. At the time he disappeared, he was engaged to marry his mother's protégée, a physician at that same hospice."

"Sounds like a model officer with a strong ethical background."

"And now this model officer is stealing shuttles and assaulting my officers." She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. "Why do I feel so betrayed?"

"You liked him," Chakotay replied. "He was a link to your past. He helped rescue you, and you offered him a place with us. And…" he let the sentence die.

Tilting her head, she waited for him to finish. When he didn't, she said, "Out with it. Since when do you not tell me what you're thinking?"

"And his history is similar to yours." As her eyebrows lifted, he went on, "Raised in a family with a strong sense of duty and ethics, a model Starfleet officer, engaged to be married – and then pulled into this quadrant."

"There but for the grace of God go I?" She sighed and leaned back in her chair. "Perhaps. Perhaps it requires shedding every scruple and ethic to survive thirty-five years as a Cardassian prisoner. I like to think I'd have managed it differently."

He smiled. "Oh, you would have. I've got no doubt that you would have led a mutiny and taken command of the MalikOhn years ago."

Her answering smile was brief. "When we catch him, he's got to go to the brig. And then what? Do we keep him locked up until we make it home? Do we dump him on a planet someplace?" Her expression and her mood darkened. "And I don't even want to consider the ramifications if Tom doesn't make it."

"If Paris doesn't make it, I think you'll have to leave him someplace." Chakotay was unusually somber. "It might not be safe for him here."

"What do you mean?"

He shrugged. "Tom has a lot of friends on this ship, and so does B'Elanna. The temptation for revenge could be strong."

Much as she wanted to protest, she understood the reality of the situation. Tom was no longer the outcast he had been at the beginning of Voyager's journey; he was part of the family. And family ties were not violated lightly, even in the enlightened 24th century. Veering away from that line of thought, she said, "I want to find him, Chakotay. I want to know why he didn't just come to us for help. He had to know we'd have given it to him. Why didn't he just ask?"

"I don't know. But I have a feeling we may not like the answer."

Ramon flipped a toggle on the pilot's console and grinned. Over the years he'd become adept at learning alien technology – and after thirty-five years in the Delta Quadrant, Federation technology was alien to him – but whoever had designed the Flyer had a fine appreciation for the relationship between pilot and ship. The switches and toggles let him literally feel the Flyer's reaction to commands, which had helped him figure out the strange controls quickly. With the ship on autopilot, he slipped out of the seat and headed to the aft cabin.

Lynella lay on the biobed, her eyes closed. Quietly, he checked the readings on the monitors. He frowned and picked up the medical tricorder. As he ran the scanner over her, Lynella opened her eyes and he felt a tiny shiver of fear. Her normally crystalline green eyes were dull and glassy. "How do you feel?" he asked, hiding his concern.

"Not so good," she said, and his concern ballooned to full-fledged worry. She never complained, never acknowledged how ill she was. She must be bad indeed to admit it now. "But it's all right, Ramon. I'm free. That's all that matters." She smiled weakly, and her eyes closed again. The monitors showed that she was asleep.

"No," he said softly, his voice cracking. "That's not all." He checked her medication levels, returned the medical scanner, and slipped back to the main cabin.

Sliding into the pilot's seat, he restored manual control. For a long moment he sat without moving, simply staring at the streaks of stars passing by at warp speed. He couldn't even seem to muster up a coherent thought as he looked out at blur of space; he seemed capable only of feeling, and in the jumble of emotions within him, the one that stood out was fear. But for the first time in a very long time, it wasn't fear for his own fate.

"All right, Captain Janeway," he said to no one in particular. "Let's see how well Federation justice holds up in the Delta Quadrant." With a quick, angry movement, he turned the ship about.

On the Cardassian warship Malik Ohn, Gul Datik sat with his back to the wall, facing the only door to the small space that served as his office, and held a disruptor set to kill in his lap. "Come in," he said.

"It's just me," his chief of Sciences said as he entered. "You can put the disruptor down."

"Sit down, Ghemot." He changed the setting on the weapon back to stun and laid it on his desk. Ghemot had served with him for nearly fifty years; they had been friends long before the Caretaker pulled their ship to the Delta Quadrant. "It's getting tiresome, you know. Wondering which of them is going to make a move, and when."

"It's your own fault. You never should have let that Federation ship get away without a fight." His eyes narrowed slightly. "They think you're getting soft."

"And you? Do you think I'm … softening?"

Ghemot laughed briefly. "Of course not. I have to admit, I don't understand why you did it. But then, I never understood half the things you did. You always seem to have your own agenda."

The Gul smiled slightly. "Tell me, my friend, have you given up on seeing your family again?"

"Yes," Ghemot said bluntly.

"I'm sorry for that. I still have hopes we will make it back. Seeing Janeway's daughter reminded me of my own family. And … it reminded me of the way we used to be, you and I and the others from the old days. We had such ideals."

"You had ideals. I had hopes of promotion." He shook his head. "You're fortunate, you know, that the Starfleet officer killed Rekela. If she had survived, she'd have organized a mutiny and your assassination – and probably mine - months ago."

"Yes, he did me a favor." He had pondered the irony of it many times. Without Rekela, the dissident factions on the ship had splintered into disorganized and viciously competitive groups. For weeks after the incident, one faction would actually warn Datik of plots against him hatched by another faction, just for the satisfaction of watching the failure and subsequent punishment of their rivals. The sheer stupidity of it had both astonished and amused him. "It's odd, to be indebted to a Starfleet officer and the Borg for my life."

This time, Ghemot laughed heartily. "Yes, you have to be the luckiest pirate in space. Who else could have a ship caught in the middle of a Borg civil war and come out of it stronger than before?"

The conflict between the Borg had boiled into the Corish Crescent not long after the MalikOhn's encounter with Voyager, and after witnessing a sphere and a cube annihilate one another, his crew had united in one request to him - save the ship. He had promptly issued an order to leave the Crescent to the Borg and move forward, seeking a new safe haven. The ship was in unfamiliar territory for the first time in over a decade. "Yes, for now they appreciate the value of experience and age. Sooner or later, though, one of the young bloods will be restless enough to make another try. And eventually one of them will have sufficient guile – and balls - to succeed."

"Keep an eye on Kheyint."

Kheyint. The warning was unnecessary; Datik knew the danger he faced from the helmsman of the MalikOhn, one of the eager youngbloods. Born to the ship's original Engineer and a Kazon slave the first year they were in the Delta Quadrant, it was, in Datik's opinion, fortunate that the young man's mixed heritage was evident only in the coarse and unruly hair that he kept clipped short. It was unfortunate that he was the source of a whispering campaign that questioned Datik's abilities. "I know. Is that what you came here to tell me?"

"That, and that we've got a report back from our scout ship. They picked up word about the traitor, Hernandez."

"Oh?" Until recently, he has assumed that Hernandez had remained with Janeway on her ship; any sensible being would have. But last month they had learned differently, and many in the crew were eager to track him down. Hernandez had become the scapegoat for the death of Rekela and the perceived defeat of the ship at the hands of the Federation. If he could capture Hernandez and make an example of him, he might be able to regain some support among the younger crew. "Where?"

"He stole a shuttle from a repair yard on a planet about 10 light years from here." He paused, obviously preparing to deliver a message of great significance. "They said he had a woman with him. From the description, she was a Skan-Filar."

Datik's eyes flashed. "He found Lynella."

Ghemot nodded. "Apparently."

"Which means he is headed for her homeworld." He thought for a moment. "How far are we from the Skan-Filar system?"

"About 24 light years. We can easily catch up to him."

For the first time in months, Datik smiled and meant it. "Then let us catch him, my friend." He placed the phaser in its case on his hip and rose. "Let us catch him."