A/N: Elements of this chapter echo events in my previous stories, "Off the Shoulder of Orion" and "Grace". As always, though, I have tried my best to make it unnecessary to have read these.
Thanks, as always, to Runawaymetaphor for allowing me to fly trial balloons at inconvenient times.
Chapter 4
The remaining Federation envoys had received unambiguous orders from Starfleet to stand down from their current mission pending further developments; none of the designated diplomats were to venture out in a shuttle until given clearance from Headquarters. Federation vessels in the vicinity were put on standby, pending further orders (and, Tom hoped, developments).
On both Voyager and the Challenger, speculation as to just who might have an interest in acquiring – and possibly commission the abduction of - a Federation hostage dominated discussions. At the request of Admiral Janeway, the two briefing rooms were linked via secure comms for a joint brainstorming session.
"It probably all boils down to business," LaForge suggested from the Challenger. "Assuming your contact on Bethesda is correct - and I guess there's no reason to doubt him – kidnapping for ransom must be a much more developed industry here than we thought, with a centrally-run organization."
"Not necessarily, Captain," Asil chimed in with her impeccable logic. "Perhaps that might be the case in this location, but there has been no indication elsewhere in the Tarikoff Belt that the phenomenon is anything other than local enterprise or that specific interests are being targeted. It seems largely to be a crime of opportunity."
"Icheb's tracking hasn't shown any coordinated movement, or a tendency for ships to head for a particular location, like a transfer point," Harry nodded in agreement.
Tom rubbed his face with both hands, and sighed.
"No, it hasn't, but we've also only just learned that they may have technology to reduce or eliminate warp signature tracing. So for all we know, the trajectories we've been mapping for the last couple of weeks give us only a piece of the picture. Any one of those ships we've marked as suspicious could have been intercepted by a third party at some point, but all we've got is a rough map for the hidey-holes of the foot soldiers. We've got nothing on the people pulling the strings – if they exist."
No one felt it necessary to add, 'And nothing on the whereabouts of Owen Paris and his crew'.
"And your friends on Bethesda? Any chance they would let us interview any of the … foot soldiers, as Tom called them?"
Kathryn's question was directed at both Mike Ayala and B'Elanna; the former remained silent – unused to speaking in the presence of his former Captain - and looked to the Chief Engineer to respond.
"They're in a difficult position; I don't think they can afford to antagonize the bandits. So I wouldn't recommend we involve them. But that shouldn't stop us from going in ourselves and asking a few questions directly."
That last she said, lifting her chin defiantly as if challenging anyone to contradict her.
"Could be dangerous," Harry noted.
"We're Starfleet. They're basically farmers with pitchforks dressed up to play pirates," B'Elanna said, with an uncharacteristically snide edge for someone who had once fought alongside and on behalf those same farmers. "We've dealt with far worse."
"True. But we can't take any action that might bring us into conflict with the local population," Kathryn interjected forcefully. "Any part of the local population, including its more questionable members. No upsetting delicate internal political balance."
"We're not going in, B'Elanna," Tom silenced his wife softly, when he saw her begin to bristle and get ready to protest. "We can't, not without undermining what chance Jaen and her friends may have on joining the Federation. But …" he looked to Kathryn for confirmation, "we can seal the pirates up in their hole, and stop them from going anywhere until they've given us some answers. Right?"
"If by sealing them up in their hole you mean, prevent them from going on any more raids, then yes. We could certainly keep one of our ships in orbit around Bethesda to discourage them, but we won't have the authority to interdict unless there is imminent danger to Federation interests."
Tom thought for a moment.
"The people on Bethesda don't know that, do they?"
Kathryn allowed herself a small smile.
"No, I don't suppose they do."
"So let's be visible then." The grim smile that turned up one of the corners of his mouth was answered by a flash in Kathryn Janeway's eyes. Neither needed to complete his sentence: "… and see if we can't find some imminent danger to Federation interests."
Geordi LaForge stared out of the screen with his curiously unmoving eyes, eyes on the logistical requirements, as always.
"We could have the Challenger patrol Bethesda; that would leave your hands free to do other things. We have our orders to run those tests of the transwarp shuttle, but there's no time limit on those. So with Admiral Janeway still onboard, I'm taking the 'standby' order to mean 'stay in the neighborhood'."
Kathryn nodded.
"Yes, and I can use the time to speak to the people Harry and B'Elanna met with, without running the danger of having it look as if they are taking sides. We'll call it a 'formal contact' by the Federation, not the very specific intelligence-gathering visit you had. Just because I can't travel around the Belt in a shuttle anymore, doesn't mean that I have to abandon official outreach mission entirely."
The small, grim smile confirmed to her former crew that her idea of speaking to the people might more closely resemble an inquisition than a polite chat – an assumption that gave no one particular pause, even if it didn't seem entirely consistent with Starfleet's orders to stand by.
Tom was spared from any need to comment further by an announcement, in the computer's cheerfully detached voice, that there was an urgent personal call for Captain Paris from Starfleet Medical Headquarters.
He gestured his officers out of the briefing room with a nod, and undertook to contact Kathryn and Captain LaForge if the news concerned them before signing off. Starfleet Medical, at a time like this, could mean only one thing: Dr. Kathleen Paris, with news about their mother. The call would, most likely, be very personal indeed.
"Stay?" he asked B'Elanna softly. She had not followed the others out; if this was about family, she was no longer the Chief Engineer. Her response was to move behind the desk and to sit down on its edge, close enough to Tom to provide support but outside the range of the comm's field of capture for now.
Kathleen was Tom's senior by a number of years; having chosen a medical career, she had achieved the rank of Commander and was presently the head of the xeno-pharmacological research unit within Starfleet Medical. With the same fair colouring, blue eyes and straight nose, she and Tom were the most physically alike of the Paris children; they had always enjoyed a special bond, despite the age difference and Tom's best efforts to, as Kathleen liked to put it, to be "a total pain in the butt" when she was in her teens. More often than either of them cared to admit, she had interceded on his behalf to protect him from the excessive ambitions of their father - usually without success, but the protective instinct still lingered.
Maybe it was that closeness, or maybe it was the unusual fact that she had called at all - reaching out to one another was not the Paris way, particularly not in the midst of a crisis where everyone was expected to keep their professional focus. Whatever it was, something told Tom the moment Kathleen's face materialized on the screen that something – something else - was very, very wrong.
"What is it, Katie?" he asked simply, confident that she would understand he was not speaking about their father at this moment. That was a matter being handled elsewhere (or not). As expected of a Paris, she got straight to the point.
"It's Nicole, Tom. She's dead."
"What?"
It was not the most articulate of responses, and it came out in a rasp. But for the moment it was all Tom's vocal chords could produce, based on very limited input from a mind seized by a sudden tsunami of images.
Nicole - his father's assistant from the day he had joined the admiralty. Fearless, smart, determined, utterly loyal. Legendary in Starfleet circles as the Woman Who Knows Everything (And Has Something On Everyone). Most importantly, though, Nicole had for years served as the human link between Owen and his family, whenever he was unable or unwilling to acknowledge that there was a life beyond his duty to Starfleet. To Julia Paris and her three children, she was family.
To Tom, she was … the one who had reached out to him in Auckland, at a time when he had hit rock bottom and had been ready to surrender himself to the darkness. That he was alive and able to accept Kathryn Janeway's offer to take him aboard Voyager was a debt he owed to Nicole – a debt perhaps greater than the offer itself.
Tom's eyes were dry and he felt B'Elanna's hand on his shoulder, but he could not – nor would he try to - cover the break in his voice when he uttered his next word.
"How?"
He could tell by the tightness around Kathleen's jaw, and the way she crossed her arms and clamped her fingers under her armpits as if to ward off a debilitating cold, that she was barely holding herself together.
"She was murdered, Tom. I commed her to tell her about Dad. There was no answer, which you'd know would be totally out of character, regardless of where she was and what she was doing at the time. So I checked, and verification showed that she hadn't left her quarters in several days. I went over to her apartment immediately. She gave me the access code years ago … in case."
Kathleen took a deep breath, almost a sob, before continuing, but the telling – probably not for the first time, investigators would have interviewed her repeatedly – seemed to anchor her a little as she continued speaking. But not enough. Never enough.
"I expected the worst, but not … what I found. She was laying there, Tommy, in a pool of blood. Her throat had been cut and … things had been done ante mortem."
Tom let out a hissing breath even as B'Elanna's nails dug painfully into his shoulders, although he did not feel the pain. Kathleen no longer bothered to suppress the tears; still, she continued, the seemingly well-rehearsed words at odds with the shaking voice that gasped them out.
"Her apartment was a complete mess, although there was no sign of forcible entry. The investigators think she let someone in, possibly someone dressed in a Starfleet uniform. She wouldn't just let anyone else in, would she, Tommy? I mean, she was so careful all the time. And they … whoever it was, security thinks they probably made her give them the location of whatever valuables or information they were after. Although I looked, and there didn't seem to be anything missing. Even the Kylarian vase Daddy gave her was still there, and it's right out on her dresser. I told them that."
Tom could hear by the anger that started to creep into his sister's voice now that she had a theory.
"Information?" he asked, focusing on the facts rather than the impact of what he had heard. Forward. Look forward. Don't … imagine.
"Her terminal was activated around the time that's been established as probably time of death."
Ah. The cold hand that had been keeping a hold of Tom's insides throughout the exchange twisted his gut a little harder.
"Dad's itinerary."
Kathleen nodded, the tears now stopped. "She would have had information about his routing, I'm sure of it. But there's no way to tell for certain; the data was wiped by an expert. All the investigators could determine was the last time of activation of the terminal itself."
"Is there any indication as to the perpetrators? Fingerprints? Security recordings?" B'Elanna, always the practical one.
Kathleen shook her head. "Nothing that Starfleet has been able to trace."
But then she took a deep breath, and her next words were very careful.
"There is something, Tommy. But it could be nothing."
There was an undercurrent in her voice that caused both B'Elanna and Tom to look at each other.
"What is it?" Tom asked cautiously.
"I … I think Nicole may have tried to tell us ... Dad, or you … something. Before she died. But …"
"But?"
"It means you have to look at a picture, Tommy. It's … really hard to look at. You … may not want to."
Tom swallowed, and set his jaw. He understood now why it had been Kathleen who had made this call – to give him the out, if he wanted it, or else to make sure he was prepared to see what he needed to. Still, after all these years, her first instinct was to protect her little brother from harm.
But if Nicole had tried to pass a message to someone he, of anyone she had ever known, owed her a duty to attempt to read it. Kathleen knew this, too.
"Show me."
Kathleen gave him a lingering look before turning sideways to punch a few commands into her console, and initialized transfer of the requisite image. Her voice was firmer now, the hardest parts of her self-imposed task behind her.
"I think her message is in that code she told you about when you were little. You know, the one you and your friend Harry played with in that black-and-white holovid thing of yours. Here it is."
Tom heard a hiss of breath from B'Elanna, and felt himself suppressing a wave of nausea as the image appeared on the screen in his ready room.
A small, grey-haired figure, splayed on a tiled floor, a pool of dark, partly dried blood surrounding her like an obscene halo. The image, likely from a camera held by one of the investigators on the scene, zoomed in on a pale hand, clenched in death above a pool of dark blood, the index finger still reaching forward, pointing. Pointing at the last conscious act of a woman bound to duty and loyalty, until the end – a message written in blood where she knew her voice would fail.
Three darkened dots, in a row.
"The letter S, in Morse code."
Tom's voice was scratchy, but firm.
"Yes, that much we figured out at this end. But does it mean anything to you, Tom? Some kind of signal or word you and Nicole may have come up with when you were little?"
Tom shook his head. "No. She introduced me to the code itself, because she knew I was interested in this kind of thing and she was a bit of a history buff herself. But we never used it for anything."
He thought for a long moment. S. No relevant names came to mind, no locations, no noteworthy event in the history of Nicole's association with the Paris clan …
"The only thing special about the use of the 's' that I can think of is that it's the beginning of the old signal for distress – S-O-S. Save Our Souls. Three short blips, three long ones, another three short."
"But that doesn't make any sense here, does it, "B'Elanna interjected. "Nicole must have known at this point that she was dying, and that there was no one who would see a signal for help. Not until after she was gone."
Both Tom and Kathleen nodded in agreement. Nicole had never been anything other than matter of fact; she wouldn't have made an exception for her own death. B'Elanna continued, thinking out loud for the three of them.
"So what else could she have tried to tell your Dad? She probably suspected they were going after him, assuming it was the itinerary they had come for. It must have been something about her attackers. Something she thought Dad would need to know."
Tom chewed his lower lip in thought, wishing Tuvok were onboard. His impeccable logic had solved more than one crime while Voyager was in the Delta Quadrant; sure he would know …
He forced himself to look at the frozen vid again. Three dots, in a row. Commander's pips. Ellipsis?
No. An image. A familiar image. Zoom back, see it from a distance.
The truth was a punch to his gut, a blade to his throat.
"It's not Morse code. But it's definitely a message."
Nicole had named her killers as surely as if she had recorded their names. And knowing that she would be too late to help the Admiral she had served for so long, the message she had left as her life ebbed away had been for his son.
A warning.
"Those three dots … They're the stars in the belt of Orion."
…..
"You have to tell Starfleet." B'Elanna's voice was firm, and uncompromising.
"And they'll do what? Tell me to stand down, like they did Janeway?"
"It's the safest thing to do, Tom." On the screen, Kathleen Paris, stunned into silence, nodded in agreement.
"Safe for whom? Dad? Who was abducted – if not killed – because these … these criminals want to get to me?"
"Don't flatter yourself, Tom Paris. What makes you think this is about you?"
Tom fixed his wife's eyes with a baleful blue-eyed stare. He knew. Why didn't she?
"Please. You heard what they said in the threat assessment. Why they sent me out here, to the armpit of the Alpha Quadrant, to begin with."
But B'Elanna was not so easily deterred.
"For all we know, this really is about the Federation trying to gain influence and control in the Tarikoff Belt. The Syndicate's been trying to expand beyond Orion for some time – first the Snowflakes, then Talar and Denaros. Infiltration, destabilization, domination. And yes, so you interfered with their plans both times. That doesn't mean they care about you personally as much as they do about their goals."
"It also doesn't mean that they're above exacting revenge."
"No. But if anything, anything that might bring you within striking range is more likely just a fringe benefit."
Talking through his fixed glare now, she added, "And how are they going to get to you through your Dad anyway? Do you think they're going to ask you to offer yourself up in exchange? That would make no sense whatsoever. As a Federation envoy, Owen is a lot more valuable than you are, revenge or no."
"But if that's what they want, they can score their point – about the Federation being vulnerable here, and this place being too high risk for membership – and get their hands on me - and possibly the Cap … Admiral Janeway - all at the same time."
"I guess we'll have to wait until they make a ransom demand then, don't we?"
B'Elanna's frustration – and anger, at Nicole's senseless death and the danger Owen Paris was in (if he was, in fact, still alive) started to register in her voice, and in the way she balled her fist.
"I guess we do." Tom's eyes narrowed a little. "But we don't have to do nothing."
He turned to Kathleen, who had remained silent throughout the exchange, following it with keen interest and no desire to draw attention to the fact that she was still there, listening in.
"Katie, I need you to do me a favour. Don't tell Starfleet about our theory quite yet. I want … I need to do some more thinking about what that might mean, talk things over with my crew and Admiral Janeway, and maybe make some decisions at this end before some eager bureaucrat makes them for us and fences us in."
Kathleen opened her mouth as if to protest, and Tom intensified the pleading look in his eyes. Years of practice of being the little brother, and it came down to this.
"Can you do that, Katie? Keep your mouth shut, I mean? You used to be good at keeping my secrets. All I ask for is a day or two. Please?"
She pinched her lips together in an expression B'Elanna recognized as one Tom always gave when he had to do something unpleasant, or been given an idiotic order.
"Fine," she pressed out. "They know I've contacted you. You have forty-eight hours, and then I'll tell them that you have a different theory. In the meantime, you simply don't know what the Morse Code 'S' stands for."
"Thanks Katie," Tom said earnestly. They spent another few moments discussing the logistics of Nicole's memorial service, and how their mother was holding up, but it was clear to both of them that there were things to be done and she signed off with a "Be careful out there, Tommy".
Tom nodded and tapped the internal comm link.
"Lieutenant Ayala and Commander Kim to my ready room, please."
B'Elanna lifted her head in surprise.
"What … what do you want with Mike?"
Tom's lips were thin, and his jaw set in its most stubborn line.
"The Orions seem to know a great deal about the Paris family, and how we do things. It's time for us to learn something about them."
The door swished open; Ayala must have been at his console, while Harry had been holding the bridge in Tom's absence.
"Sir?"
Mike Ayala was the consummate security officer – never presuming anything, always ready for everything. Harry said nothing, but studied Tom's face carefully before sending a brief frown of concern with B'Elanna to which she responded with a minute shrug.
Tom wasted no time with explanations. His jaw tight, he went straight to the point.
"Are you still in touch with Lemarr, Mike?"
Ayala's face twitched a little as he obviously was torn between frowning at the unexpected question, and smiling a little at the thought of the young Orion dancer, who had hitched a ride on his back through Voyager's transporter in order to escape her life as a 'slave girl'. He settled on a blank look, and a "Yes?" that was sufficiently drawn out to include an unspoken, "Why on Earth do you ask?"
"Good." Tom nodded. "I need to talk to someone who knows from the inside what might make the Orion Crime Syndicate and its leadership tick."
"There's lots of information in the computer data banks, Tom," Harry chided softly. "I doubt that there's anything she would know that Starfleet doesn't already. And Lemarr has been formally debriefed."
Tom turned a pair of uncharacteristically cold eyes on his best friend.
"I'm not looking for factual information on the hierarchical structure of the Syndicate, or on its known bases of operations. I'm looking for things that no one ever thinks to ask for or record, because they don't scream that they might matter. Intangible stuff. Quirks. Preferences. I don't know. Stuff I haven't thought to ask yet."
"Like what?" Harry was skeptical, to say the least, and not a little confused.
Tom slammed both his hands down on his desk and snapped, "If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn't have to ask now, would I?"
B'Elanna put a hand on his arm – probably not the most professional thing to be doing in what amounted to a briefing session with half of his senior staff, but perhaps what he needed just then. Tom took a deep breath and, without looking at anyone, explained in a very low voice.
"They murdered someone who was very important to me. Someone who mattered a great deal to my family, even though she would never in a million years would have thought so herself. And then they took my father. Dammit, it's like they knew how to push all my triggers. All of them."
He rubbed his face with his hands briefly, as if to wipe away something he wished wasn't there to begin with, before he continued.
"B'Elanna tells me that this isn't about me. She's probably right, and it's all about the Syndicate's expansion business and Federation interference in their plans. But I want to know whether there's something in the way these people think that could mean that it's personal. Because it sure as hell smells like that to me."
So you want to feel guilty and be able to flagellate yourself with the proper vigor? Tom could read the unspoken question in Harry's wide-open face. What Harry said, though, was this:
"And when you find out that it might be personal, then what?"
Tom held Harry's eyes with his for a moment.
"I have absolutely no idea. Yet. But information never hurts. Know thine enemy, and all that. I have triggers. Maybe they do too."
Mike Ayala had been following the exchange like a tennis match, his eyes moving back and forth between the command team, and arrived at his own conclusion. He nodded in that precise way of his, and turned to leave for the bridge.
"For what it's worth, I think you've already pushed some by pissing them off. I'll contact Lemarr."
Tom just nodded his thanks and watched as Mike left. As soon as he had gone, Harry asked the obvious question – the one Mike hadn't, because he didn't need to know in order to do his job.
"Who, Tom?"
Tom didn't really feel like answering just then; perhaps by refusing to mention Nicole and died in the same sentence he could make it less real? But he also needed to inform Kathryn Janeway about the probable link of Owen Paris' abduction to the organization that was after them both; he owed her that and his duty demanded no less. He motioned Harry to stay so he would have to tell the story only once.
In a time of blood, grief, fear and uncertainty, killing two birds with one stone was likely as good as it got.
…..
It had only been a few months since Lemarr's escape from the space station where she had been forced to perform her dancing routines (and more) at her masters' bidding, but those months of freedom had wrought changes that Tom could see even through the haze of his anger and despair. Head held high, shoulders squared, the young Orion woman looked taller than he remembered, and her clear eyes looked straight at him and Ayala.
Tom briefly found himself wondering how long it had taken his own features to lose the imprimatur of Auckland; longer than this, he was sure. But then again, he'd started from the premise that he deserved to be in the hell he'd had to claw out of, and the belief that he was worth less than those around him had been the hardest thing to shed.
In his studies of Earth's nautical history, Tom had come across an essentially ungovernable race of whalers and fishermen that inhabited the North Frisian Islands, a string of emerald beads in the North Sea. Their motto had been, "Lever duad as Slav" – better dead than a slave. For the young Tom Paris, those had been mere words (however romantic), in a language that now lived only in memory; later, branded as someone's sentient toy in Auckland, the lesson he had drawn from them was that death was the better option.
But here and now, the truth of that ancient Frisian motto came to him in the form of Lemarr, the young woman who refused to bear the name of the family that had sold her into slavery: defiance made flesh.
"Captain Paris," she said in her lilting accent, the absence of a smile the mark of respect, not deference. "I am honoured."
"The honour is mine," Tom replied and meant it, even as he got straight to the point.
"What I am looking for is two things, Lemarr. The first is this: if someone's on the Syndicate's hit list, what lengths might they go to in order to get to them? Would they take family members hostage, or …" he swallowed with a suddenly dry throat, "or even kill them?"
Lemarr's expressive face turned into a frown as she concentrated on her response.
"You understand that I was lodubyaln, not a member of the Syndicate itself. So I know little from experience. But in our training I heard tell that when Orders are given, those seeking to carry them out wishing to curry favour with the leaders may go to great lengths to find their target."
"Orders?"
She looked at her fingernails, then back at the camera transmitting her image.
"Orders to Kill."
"Ah. Of course. And great lengths means … what, exactly?"
"Exactly, I do not know. But destroying many to reach the one is common, we were told. So is setting a trap, or a lure, in a most elaborate fashion."
Tom and Harry exchanged glances. A lure. That was certainly consistent with certain reports from Deep Space Nine.
"Guess that means we can expect ransom demands for your father in the near future, with requests that you be the one to deliver the goods?" Harry whispered. Tom nodded grimly.
"Thanks, Lemarr. That's what we expected to hear. And here's the second thing. I'm sorry if this will be a bit vague. I gather Syndicate members are prepared to die for failure, so their own lives don't seem to be worth much to themselves. Is there anything, though, that matters to them? Can the Syndicate itself be hurt? And I don't mean can it have its interests damaged. I mean … can it be hurt."
Lemarr looked to be in deep thought, but she looked straight at the transmitter when she answered.
"The Syndicate? No. It is not one, but many, and has survived for hundreds of years. The people who are the Syndicate? Maybe. It is hard to tell. As you say, these are people who kill themselves rather than fail the Syndicate, or be disloyal to The Lady. What benefit then, in caring for something that is not the Syndicate?"
"You mean the only thing Syndicate members value is the Syndicate itself?" Harry interjected. "That seems kind of … incestuous."
Lemarr frowned a little, the meaning of the word lost on her even as the condemnation it entailed was not.
"For those who choose to serve the Syndicate, for whatever reason, Service – we call it lodusyuk - is everything," she said simply, her voice without judgment. "I did not choose Service. I was forced. When you have no choice, it is not true Service."
Tom had no real interest in a discussion on the politics of slavery, but he began to sense that Lemarr's words contained something of importance, and so he asked anyway.
"But being in the Syndicate is about getting others to do what you want, isn't it? I mean, these people are absolutely dedicated to forcing their own way on others. Where exactly does service fit into the equation, when you're trying to run the show?"
Lemarr's soft voice belied the edge of contempt that crept into her eyes as she reflected on what she had escaped.
"For those in the Syndicate, there is no difference between service and power. You rule through service. Lodubyaln – we … they are taught to make others want us to serve them. We rule them, even as we serve. Most of those who become lodubyaln do not wish to play this game, and do not have a choice. But we know and understand it well. Service and power are two sides of the same coin - a balance, always, and the more you understand and embrace the duality, the higher you will rise in the Syndicate. This is why The Lady is always a former lodubyaln. She understands slavery, service, power and dominance - in all their shades, from all sides."
Tom and Harry stared at each other in silence; Mike Ayala fidgeted in his seat, clearly uncomfortable. Harry found his voice first.
"You're seriously telling me that the head of the Syndicate is a former … slave girl?" His voice held a small apology for using the ancient term, the full meaning of which they had only recently understood.
Lemarr nodded, even as Harry shook his head in disbelief.
"Yes. Always. And she will always have a lodubyor by her side."
At the puzzled looks, she elaborated.
"A male slave. It is his honour to serve her, body and soul, in all things. His presence will remind her of who she was, who she is, what she must be. He and the Lady are one, the embodiment of master and servant. It must be so for her to fully serve the Syndicate."
Tom's interest was piqued.
"This … slave. This … lodubyor, you call him? He's important to the Lady, is he?"
Again, Lemarr nodded. "He belongs to her, but without him, she is nothing. Together, they are the Syndicate."
A small, joyless smile started to curl Tom's lips.
"Interesting," he said. He fell silent, brow furrowed, before continuing, slowly as if he was thinking as he spoke.
"Tell me, Lemarr, what do you know of Bella Trix, and the place where the Lady resides?"
Harry stared at him, his eyes narrowing. He had been around Tom Paris for nearly a decade, and developed an uncanny ability to recognize the imminent formation of a hare-brained scheme in his best friend's mercurial brain. Captain or no, Tom's propensity for left-field thinking was a phenomenon that had not seemed to change – for better or worse.
Worse, most likely.
"Tom?" he said, his tone a not-so-subtle warning as he drew the name out into two or three syllables. "What do you think you're getting you up to? We have a highly sensitive hostage taking to deal with here, with potentially serious ramifications."
Ayala, for his part, watched Tom silently, as was his usual habit, with a keen eye that betrayed no judgment. Whatever decision would come, he would implement – competently and loyally, with a minimum of fuss.
"I know, Harry. Believe me, I know." Tom turned back to the screen. "Lemarr?" he asked, as if the interruption had not happened. If there was one thing he had learned from Captain Janeway - however unpalatable that had been when he'd been at the receiving end - it was that not all plans were meant to be shared. At least not right away.
And so Harry spent the next half hour alternately glowering at Tom and listening to Lemarr, as she detailed what she knew of the Kalaor hills and the surrounding marshlands, and of life in the mansion that housed the Lady of Orion and her immediate staff. Rumour and hearsay, not actionable intel – Lemarr had never been there herself – but to Tom, hearing what 'they say' in the sing-song of an Orion voice provided flavours and insights that he was convinced no database ever could.
It was with a nod of satisfaction and determination that Tom thanked her for her time, even as his First and Security Officers were left in the dark about what he might want with the rather impressionistic picture they had just been given.
They did not have to wait long.
…..
Tom reached for the comm switch once more and asked the computer to contact the USS Challenger. When the face of Geordi LaForge appeared on the screen, Tom looked straight into those curiously unmoving eyes, and came straight to the point.
"Captain LaForge," he said, "I need a favour. That special shuttle of yours."
LaForge gave a sideways glance at someone off-screen, and punched in a couple of commands; the computer view panned back to reveal Admiral Kathryn Janeway in the First Officer's seat beside him.
"You called it," Geordie said to her, with as much of a smile as their current grim circumstances would permit. Then he explained. "She said you'd ask to fly the thing sooner rather than later. Guess it was sooner."
Kathryn, in turn, studied her former pilot's face carefully, keenly aware that this was unlikely to be about a joyride – not while Owen Paris was in mortal danger and Tom's family had lost someone so close. He never could hide much from her; today was no exception.
"You need the speed. What for, Tom?" she asked bluntly.
For Harry, the answer turned out to be far less of a surprise than perhaps it should have been. He almost formed the words with his own lips as Tom spoke, and watched Ayala nod out of the corner of his eyes.
"I'm going to Orion."