DISCLAIMER: You all know the drill - Paramount is God. All hail Paramount. They own everything in the Star Trek Universe - I'm just using my overactive imagination to take their characters where they refuse to go. All in the name of fun, not profit (I wish).
SUMMARY: Janeway and Chakotay devise a way to contact Voyager, and meet someone completely unexpected.
THE LONG ROAD HOME
SEPARATIONS
CHAPTER FOUR : THE PLAN
The Captain walked softly down the corridor, watching out for guards as she moved. She reached the shelf safely and grabbed the commbadge. She moved around the corner and took a few steps down the corridor so she could work underneath a light on the wall. Holding the commbadge in front of her, she pulled the back of it off and looked inside. Some of the main circuits were black and charred from some kind of overload, but the components underneath were unharmed. She grinned – the backup systems were not active but they were clearly undamaged and it should be possible to reactivate it.
"Hey – where the hell did you get that?"
The voice from one of the nearby cells startled her. She had hoped that the other prisoners would remain quiet. Most were in pain or unconscious and hadn't even noticed her out of her cell. She had tried to stick to the shadows until she needed the light to see, and now someone had noticed her. She addressed the speaker while she continued to work.
"It's mine," she growled, then looked up towards the cell where the voice had come from. "They took it from me when I arrived."
"From you…you're Starfleet?" said the voice, incredulous.
She stared at the cell in surprise and took a step closer. "How did you know that?" The man who was speaking was sitting in the shadows in a corner of his cell.
"I'm telepathic," he told her, "but I also recognized the commbadge. Are you…from Voyager?"
"Yes," she said, returning her attention to the commbadge. She looked back at him when he addressed her with awe in his voice.
"Captain Janeway?"
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye suspiciously for a few seconds before resuming her work. "You're quite the telepath."
"I didn't need to be. Half of Starfleet would recognize you, although your hair's different and you do look a little the worse for wear."
Now she moved to the door of his cell. "Who are you?" she asked.
The stranger stood up and moved out of the shadows.
"Lieutenant Commander Mark Walker, U.S.S. Yukon."
He looked human, but his telepathic abilities and haunting dark eyes suggested that he was most likely Betazoid, and she could see that he was wearing a Starfleet uniform – or rather what had been a Starfleet uniform, because it was barely recognizable. It was not the same style as what the Voyager crew wore, but she had noticed the updated uniforms in their transmissions from Starfleet. He was tall, with dark hair, and he had a shadow on his face from a beard. He would be handsome under different circumstances, but he was thin and pale and he had a long cut on his cheek.
"You're Starfleet," she said with disbelief. "How did you get here?"
"Hopefully I'll tell you later…right now you should fix your commbadge."
Overcoming her shock, she began working again. "Do me a favor, Commander…keep an eye out for guards while I work." She tried to remember what she knew about commbadge circuitry as she examined the device. She needed to know which systems were necessary for the commbadge to be detected. Since the backup systems weren't working, she knew that the mechanism that should have activated them automatically when the primary systems were damaged must have been destroyed, so she would have to bypass the primary systems manually. She pulled out a microfilament and used it to activate the appropriate buttons, and the commbadge chirped and a light came on inside. She grinned and replaced the back of the commbadge. Finished that, she now turned to Commander Walker.
"How did you end up in the Delta Quadrant? How long have you been here? Where's your ship?"
He chuckled despite himself. "One question at a time. We were pulled into the Delta Quadrant by a wormhole on stardate 54281 – I don't know how long ago that was."
"About six months."
"Our Captain and many of our crew were killed, and our ship was destroyed after two months. Our crew was split up, and me and a few others were captured and brought here."
"There are more of your crew here?"
"Not any more. They know how our rank system works with the collar pips and they only kept me and three lieutenants…and a few weeks ago they took them too, and left me here." He stopped and tensed up in the cell as his enhanced mental abilities sensed something. "You'd better get out of here. There are guards coming this way."
"When Voyager comes for us, I'll see that they get you too," she told him as she retreated to go back to her cell.
"Captain…If you get back to your ship without me, will you do something for me?"
"Of course."
"Can you try and track down my crew? They're very resourceful and I'm sure some of them survived."
"I will – but I'd much rather you join us." With that, she went back around the corner and replaced the commbadge on the shelf. "Chakotay!" she said quietly, but urgently enough to get his attention. When he turned around, she gestured towards the cell and he ran towards it. When he was inside, she put her hand on the button to activate the forcefield and stepped inside before she pressed it. Chakotay had put the chair in the path of the forcefield, but she still felt the skin on her arm blister when the forcefield was activated. It stung as she pulled it back into the cell. She gritted her teeth as she moved to the bed and sat down.
"What is it?" Chakotay asked, concerned when he saw the pain on her face and the black scorch marks on her sleeve.
"My arm," she grunted. He helped her remove her jacket, and when it was off he gently rolled up the blackened sleeve of her turtleneck. She sucked a sharp breath through her teeth as the sleeve moved up her tender skin. The material slid up her arm to reveal skin underneath that was red, blistered, and burned.
"Next time you can stick your arm through," she said through clenched teeth.
"Agreed," he said. He got the water pitcher and dipped a piece of cloth in it and applied it to the burns on her arm. She sucked in a sharp breath when the wet material contacted the raw flesh.
"Did it work?" he asked.
"Hmm?" Rescue was not the first thing on her mind at the moment – she was still reeling from the shock of coming face to face with another Starfleet officer in such an unlikely place and finding out that there might be yet another Starfleet crew in the Delta quadrant.
"The commbadge." Chakotay wondered why she hadn't told him immediately if it had worked, and she seemed distracted.
"Oh…yes, it worked." She turned to him with a smile. "And you're not going to believe who I just met."
* * *
Three days later, they had come up with an outline for their plan. Instead of command codes, they would tell the Vaadwaur how to adapt their transporters to Voyager's shield frequency so that they could transport technology off the ship. Although this was risky – there was the possibility that they would use it to transport crew off Voyager or board the ship – they had agreed that it was likely that they would only use it to grab the technology. Since they would only be able to use it once, it was doubtful that they would try to board the ship. Also, since they would believe that Janeway and Chakotay were cooperating, they wouldn't feel the necessity of grabbing any other crewmembers.
The Captain had come up with the idea to give the Vaadwaur a flawed defense, and had suggested giving them the shield technology that they had encountered four years ago in the confrontation with the swarm aliens. If they taught the Vaadwaur to link their ships in the same kind of lattice that would reflect any shot from Voyager, Takken would see it as an advantage. The crew, however, would recognize it and know that they could cause a chain reaction by firing on one of the ships, neutralizing the technology. The final idea that they had come up with was Chakotay's – giving them a stardate disguised at what they would claim was a "database access code."
Chakotay thought that Kathryn should be the one to give them information while he got interrogated, but she thought it would be more believable if he appeared to give in to protect her. They had been arguing about it since they had begun forming the plan.
"Kathryn, it's safer if I provoke them and let them beat me up for a while before you give in."
"They won't believe me," she insisted, standing in front of him with her hands on her hips. "They've seen that you react when I'm being hurt, so they'll believe it if you give them what they want to protect me."
"But we'll have to let them go pretty far before we give them anything, and I don't want to let you take that kind of abuse."
"Chakotay, if it works we'll be rescued and neither of us will have to take any more abuse. I can handle it, and it will be worth it if it gets us back to Voyager. Besides, if I pretend to be weak already then it will take less before they'll believe you if you cave in."
He stepped closer to her, invading her personal space. "Kathryn – how can I let them hurt you like that? Don't you know how hard that is for me?"
She closed her eyes. "I can imagine."
"No, I don't think you can. If you knew how important you are to me, if you felt what I feel…"
She took a deep breath. There were many ways she could respond to that, and she waited for the courage to give him an answer that would show him how her outlook had changed since his supposed death. When she opened her eyes and looked at him, she realized that silence was the only answer he needed. He could see the emotion in her eyes, and the set of her jaw told him more than her words had over the past seven years. His lips parted in surprise as he searched her face, but before he could say anything she looked down at the floor and continued in a low voice.
"I don't want to watch you get hurt anymore than you want to watch me get beat up…but one of us has to do it, and if we want this to work, it has to be me."
His shoulders slumped in defeat and he nodded.
They heard footsteps approaching their cell, so she spoke quickly in hushed tones. "Do it, Chakotay. And no matter what they do to me, wait as long as possible before you give them anything. I can handle it – I'm a lot tougher than you think." She sat down against the wall and closed her eyes as if she was unconscious as the guards approached. She heard the forcefield deactivate and heard Chakotay defending her.
"Haven't you done enough to her, Takken? She's barely even conscious and she's useless to you like this."
"We'll see," he replied and Kathryn felt two guards lift her by her arms. She remained limp and groaned. She was dragged by her arms to the interrogation room where she was put in a chair, but her arms were not fastened behind her back in the usual fashion, and they hung limply by her sides. She cracked her eyes open and saw that Chakotay's arms were being fastened behind him with the usual restraints. Takken approached her when he saw her staring at him.
"Ah, you are awake. Good. Feeling any more cooperative today?"
"Go to hell," she responded, and received a punch to the midsection for her trouble, knocking the wind out of her and sending a throbbing pain through her body..
"Leave her alone!"
She hoped that they wouldn't listen to him, and fortunately for their plan they ignored him as usual.
"You'll never get your filthy hands on my ship," she gasped as she got her breath back. One of the guards lashed out from the side and she received a blow to the side of her head that caused her vision to blur momentarily.
"I said leave her alone, Takken!"
One of the guards punched Chakotay in the stomach to silence him while Takken circled Janeway and then reached out and put his hand around her neck. He squeezed, and his fingers pushed into the cartilage of her throat, choking her.
"Give me the command codes," he hissed as he squeezed harder.
Kathryn answered him in gasps as she struggled to get air into her burning lungs. "You'll. Never. Get. Voyager."
He released his hand after a moment and she gulped in air as he looked at her in frustration and disgust. "I was hoping you wouldn't force me to use my little toy again. It seems it has…unfortunate side effects after repeated use. I've lost quite a few valuable prisoners over the last few days." He stared at her coldly for a few minutes, and she returned the gaze, unmoving. "It seems that I will have to use more persuasive measures and risk the consequences." He turned to one of the guards. "Fetch the device."
"No!" yelled Chakotay. "Don't you dare bring that thing near her." The panic in his voice was real – one of his fears in letting Kathryn take the abuse in their plan was that Takken would use that device on her. He was even more concerned now after what Takken had just said about its effects on other prisoners – he feared that if he used it on Kathryn again it could be fatal.
"I won't…if one of you gives me the command codes."
Chakotay hesitated for appearances and then began their planned script. "What if I gave you access to Voyager's database instead?"
Janeway followed his lead. "Commander, don't you dare…" She stopped in mid-sentence as Takken turned around and delivered a backhand across her face, knocking her out of her chair and onto the floor. She felt a trickle of blood run down her cheek, and her head hit the ground when she impacted on the floor, disorienting her.
Takken looked at her with distaste and turned back to Chakotay. "Go on."
"I can give you a code so that you can download Voyager's database and learn about our technology…but I'll only give it to you if you leave Captain Janeway alone."
"Agreed," said Takken. He motioned for the guards to back away from Janeway on the floor and they did. "Now give it to me."
"Commander, don't – that's an order," growled Janeway.
"Silence! The code!"
Chakotay looked at Janeway with regret as if he was actually betraying her. "Omega-five-one-three-eight-four-alpha."
Takken grinned sadistically and then behaved exactly as they had predicted. "Very good, Commander. I wish I had learned how to persuade you earlier." He turned around to Janeway who was still laying on the ground and drew back his foot. He delivered a sharp kick to her already tender midsection, then turned back to Chakotay. "Perhaps you have other information you'd be willing to share?"
"You said you'd leave her alone!"
"I lied," said Takken. "If you want her left alone you'll have to keep me occupied in listening to you. So…where would you like to start? Perhaps some of Voyager's defenses?"
Chakotay was silent and he looked at Janeway as if deciding whether to talk or not. Their plan was proceeding perfectly. He made eye contact with her, and her eyes were still bright, so he remained silent for now as planned and stared at Takken angrily.
"Very well," said Takken. He kicked at Janeway again, but this time harder. She gasped involuntarily as his hard boot came into contact with her side and she felt two of her left ribs snap. The pain blinded her for a few seconds, and she could hear Chakotay yelling at Takken.
"All right! Leave her alone. Take her back to the cell and I'll give you a shield technology that we discovered."
"Does Voyager use this technology?" he asked suspiciously.
"No – it needs multiple ships to work and links them together to absorb weapons fire and reflect it."
"Fascinating…I'm listening."
"Take her back to the cell."
"She stays here. Now talk."
Chakotay let out a deep breath and explained how the lattice of interferometric pulses worked. One of the engineers that had been brought in conferred with Takken when Chakotay was finished and told him that it would work and would make their fleet not only invincible to weapons fire but they would act like a mirror and reflect whatever was fired at them back at their attackers.
"Begin implementing it immediately," said Takken.
"I would sir, but we don't have the technology to emit the kind of pulses he's talking about."
"Voyager, however, does." He moved around Janeway and stood by her head. "Shall we continue, Commander? It appears that we'll have to take Voyager after all."
"No – take her back to the cell."
"Why would I do that when you're being so cooperative? Now, give me the command codes."
Chakotay looked at Kathryn to decide whether or not to give Takken the last piece of information that they planned to feed him. He could tell that she was in pain, but the look in her eyes as she stared at him told him that she wanted him to hold out longer. He remained silent and stared at Takken.
"Very well." Takken moved forward and stepped on Kathryn's arm that was laying on the floor. He ground his foot into it as she gasped in silent agony. She felt the bone snap in multiple places and the pain was searing. Everything swam as she became disoriented and had trouble thinking clearly. Normally, she could handle the pain of a few broken bones, but she was so weak from malnutrition and torture that her body was unable to cope.
Chakotay went pale as he heard the snap of her arm. Refusing to wait any longer, he gave Takken the last red herring.
"Stop it! I'll tell you how you can get the technology – but not Voyager. I can show you how to modify your transporters to our shield harmonics so they can be penetrated, but you'll only be able to use it once before they catch on."
Takken nodded to the engineer, who approached Chakotay with what looked like a PADD. Chakotay's arms were unshackled and he entered a few commands into the device that would allow the Vaadwaur to transport through Voyager's shields. When the engineer confirmed that it seemed to be a valid idea, Takken was finally satisfied. "Take them back to the cell. And set a course for Voyager."
* * *
The pain in Kathryn's arm had subsided a little after a while and she was able to think clearly again. Chakotay had related all of the conversation that she had missed in her half-unconscious state, and she had nearly cried when he had told her that Takken had ordered a course set for Voyager.
"We're lucky that he was satisfied with what we gave him. For a minute there I thought he was going to start in on you again and I had no more fake information to give him."
"That's because you folded too soon," she slurred. She was laying on the bed with her broken right arm at her side, and Chakotay was sitting on the edge of the bed near her waist tending to the cuts on her face. When she answered him, he stopped what he was doing and leaned closer to her.
"Kathryn – he broke your arm and probably gave you a concussion."
"Not to mention I think he broke a couple of ribs," she groaned. "But I've had worse."
He frowned – she hadn't mentioned the broken ribs before, but she hadn't been complaining. She had even refused to admit that her arm was broken until he told her that he had heard the bone snap.
"Where?"
"My left side."
"Let me have a look."
He finished cleaning the worst cuts on her face and put the water aside. He reached down and gently cupped his hand around her side, moving up from her waist and probing gently with his fingers. When he was about halfway up her side, she tensed and sucked in a sharp breath. "There," she said through clenched teeth.
He reached down to her waist where her shirt was tucked into her trousers, but then stopped. "I should probably take a look," he said tentatively. She looked at him for a second, then nodded. He gently pulled on her shirt and the tank top underneath it until they came untucked from her waist, and slid them up her abdomen until the clothing was above the tender area that he had touched before. He could see where the ribs were broken because the internal bleeding had created a nasty looking black and blue area on her side. He pushed the shirts up a little higher so that they covered her to just below her chest and gently probed the bruised area with his fingers. He could tell from her flinching as he touched them that there were at least two ribs broken, and he thought that a third one above them was cracked.
Kathryn's breathing was accelerated and she stared up at the ceiling trying to ignore Chakotay's hands running over her exposed midsection. Her heavy breathing did nothing to help her discomfort, because a stabbing pain shot through her every time she took a breath. The pain was actually a blessing, however, because otherwise she would have been paying far too much attention to his hands running intimately over her body.
"What's the verdict?" she asked to try and keep herself distracted.
"Two broken, maybe three. I don't know what to do about it. Do you remember any of your medical history classes to know what they used to do for broken ribs?"
She tried to concentrate, but it was difficult since his warm hands were still resting on her bare skin.
"Uh…I think that they used to…bind them…we should wrap something tightly around my torso."
He looked around for something to use, but she stopped him. "Help me get this turtleneck off," she said. "I can wear the tank top and my jacket, and we can tear the shirt up and use the material."
He undid the front of the shirt and pulled one sleeve off her uninjured arm before slowly working the other sleeve off of the broken arm. She ground her teeth as he pulled the tight material over her shattered bone but was silent. With some effort, he tore the shirt into strips that when tied together would go around her three or four times. He helped her into a partial sitting position so that he could get the material underneath her and wrapped it as tightly as he could around her where the ribs were broken. He tied it tight and pulled the bottom of her tank top down to her waist again.
"Now," he said, helping her to lay back down. "Let's see what we can do for this arm of yours, shall we?" He felt gently along the length of her arm, and could tell by her descriptions that it was broken in two places that he could tell of. He told her that he would have to try, and set it, so she nodded gamely and steeled herself while he tried to set the bone back into place.
* * *
The sharp pain from her arm and broken ribs was the first thing that penetrated Kathryn's conscious mind. As with every morning, the first thing that she realized as soon as she was able to ignore the pain was that they still hadn't been rescued. After three days, there was still no sign that the Vaadwaur had confronted Voyager. This morning, though, her disappointment at this was quickly followed by the realization that she could hear voices. She panicked for a second, thinking that Takken was back, but calmed down when she realized that the conversation was hushed and subdued. They must have noticed her coming around, because the voices stopped and she heard Chakotay approach her.
"Kathryn?"
She opened her eyes and groaned as she shifted and her broken ribs sent a stabbing pain across her side. "Anything?"
He shook his head. "No," he told her, but then he smiled. "There's someone here who's anxious to talk to you." When she looked puzzled, his smile widened. "He said something about you two knowing each other." He moved aside and another face came into her field of vision.
"Commander Walker," she said, surprised. "How did you get in here?"
"They captured a bunch of…Turei, did you say, Chakotay?…and so they moved me in here to keep all the 'Federations' away from the other species. How are you feeling?"
"Sore," she muttered, gingerly trying to sit up while moving her arm as little as possible.
"Well, I understand that we're following Voyager as we speak. If your crew is half as resourceful as they were rumored to be back home, Captain, I'm sure you'll be fixed up and showing me around your ship in no time."
"I certainly hope so, Commander."
Chakotay interjected. "I hardly think this is any place for formalities. Mark, I'd like you to meet Kathryn. Kathryn, this is Mark."
She grinned and would have shaken his hand if she could have moved her arm. "Pleased to meet you, Mark."
"Likewise, Kathryn."
"Now that we've dispensed with the pleasantries," she said. "I'm dying of curiosity. How did the Yukon end up in the Delta quadrant? It's a science vessel, if I remember correctly."
"Orion-class," he confirmed. "We were charting a newly discovered wormhole that wasn't like anything on record, with unusual subspace readings. We couldn't believe it when the telemetry showed that it led to the Delta quadrant and was less than five hundred light-years from your last known position. We were all thrilled that we might have found a way to get Voyager home, especially Captain Solis – I think he knew you?"
"Solis?" she repeated. "Yes, we served together on the Al-Batani."
"He mentioned you a few times. He said that if anyone could get a crew home from the other side of the galaxy, it was you. Anyways, we sent a probe through to confirm the location of the other end before we informed Starfleet Command, but the probe destabilized something in the wormhole and it started draining power from all over the ship. We lost thrusters and impulse, so we tried to jump to warp, but our warp field acted like a magnet to the wormhole and we were pulled in. The Yukon completely destabilized the wormhole and it collapsed as we passed through it. When we came out the other end, a third of the crew were dead, and our warp field was permanently collapsed."
"I thought it was bad enough being stuck halfway across the galaxy, but without warp…I can't imagine."
"Yes, but you were alone out here. We knew that Voyager was out there somewhere and that you were in contact with Starfleet. We had some limited information on the technology they were using for communication, and once we were sure that the warp drive was gone we worked on implementing it on the Yukon."
"I guess it didn't work or they would have sent us to look for you," said Chakotay.
"No – we were getting close to being able to send a compressed data stream when we were attacked by the Vaadwaur after we had been here about two months. Captain Solis and a number of the crew were killed in the initial attack, and we were able to hold them off while we got all the non-essential personnel and our families into escape pods and shuttles, but then our shields went down for good and the hull started to buckle. We set the self-destruct sequence and abandoned ship. I think that most of us made it off the ship, but the escape pod that I was in with three of my lieutenants was captured and we were brought here. The Vaadwaur claimed that they had destroyed all the other shuttles and escape pods, but I don't know if it's true or not."
"How many of you were there?"
"Our crew complement was 95, but we lost over 30 people coming through the wormhole and another 20 in the attack. If all the pods made it, there would have been between 40 and 50 of us left."
"That must have been awful for you," said the Captain. She could certainly empathize with losing crew members, although thankfully Voyager had never endured losses of that magnitude.
He nodded. "Not only were their lives my responsibility since I was in command, but my daughter was on board and I had no idea where she was as the ship was exploding around me."
"You have a daughter?"
He smiled sadly. "Cassandra – she's twelve years old. I don't know what happened to her. I never saw her after I ordered the crew to abandon ship. My escape pod was captured almost immediately, and I didn't have a chance to contact anyone else to know how many people made it off the ship."
Kathryn looked at him with determination in her eyes. "When we get back to Voyager, I promise you I will do everything in my power to find them."
* * *
Acting Captain's log, Stardate 54835.5 After four days, we have completed our transactions at the Ledosian spaceport and have resumed course. We were able to sufficiently re-supply the ship and will be able to go many weeks without stopping if necessary.
The bridge was quiet, as usual. Tom had never been particularly thankful for the Captain and Chakotay allowing small talk on the bridge until Tuvok had taken command. His style of command was quite different from Captain Janeway or Commander Chakotay. Where they had been light-hearted and easy going, Tuvok was stern and serious. For some reason, nobody felt like chatting when Tuvok was in the big chair and the bridge was almost always quiet now, the silence broken only by the beeping of consoles. The crew was still upset over the loss of their commanding officers, and the gloomy silence on the bridge did nothing to help morale.
Tom was sitting in Chakotay's old chair on Tuvok's left, and he shifted uneasily. He still wasn't used to the chair – it was disorienting being this far back on the bridge all the time, and he didn't like not having the controls at his fingertips.
The silence was finally broken by Harry at Ops. "Commander, I'm picking up three ships on an intercept course."
"Distance?"
"Twenty million kilometers and closing…wait, there's more of them…I'm reading five…six…nine ships. They're Vaadwaur."
"Shields up," said Tom. "Evasive maneuvers." He wished that he was at the helm, but forced himself to stay in his seat.
"Scan for any gravimetric distortions. There may be a subspace tunnel nearby," Tuvok told Seven.
Seven shook her head as her hands flew over the console in front of her. "I am not reading any on long range sensors. If they came out of a subspace tunnel it is outside of our sensor range."
"They're matching our course," said Ensign Culhane at the conn. "We may not be able to avoid them."
"Hail them, Mr. Kim."
"No response."
"Power weapons," said Tuvok. "Red Alert. All hands to battle stations."
Two Vaadwaur ships drew apart from the others and began firing on them while the other ships remained farther back .
"Return fire."
Kathryn, Mark and Chakotay were sitting talking quietly in the cell. Kathryn was sitting on the bed with her legs stretched out along it and her back leaning against the wall, and Chakotay sat in a similar position on the floor beside her. Mark was on the floor opposite Chakotay, facing Kathryn. The two men were trying to figure out where the Yukon had come out of the wormhole in relation to Voyager's position. So far, all they had determined was that they had not encountered any common species or stellar phenomena, but since the Yukon had been without warp and had only used shuttles to get supplies, they hadn't explored very far.
Kathryn wasn't paying very much attention to their conversation. Her arm and ribs hurt, and she was pretty sure she had a concussion. She had a awful headache and began massaging her temple with her hand to try and make it go away. Mark noticed her rubbing her head and frowned.
"Kathryn, are you all right?" he asked. Chakotay turned to look at her as well. She looked at them both with surprise.
"I'm fine," she said. "I've just got a splitting headache."
"No wonder," said Mark. "I hear you took quite a beating. Maybe you should lay down for a while."
She glared at Chakotay, who smiled. "I see he's already under your influence," she growled.
He was about to retort when the ship shook.
"What was that?" she said, then all three looked at each other in realization: Voyager.
"Shields are holding," reported Harry.
The Vaadwaur appeared to be no match for Voyager and the crew was confident that they could fight them off, but then something strange happened. Harry looked at his console in amazement.
"Commander, I'm reading a series of simultaneous transports all over the ship."
"With the shields up?" asked Tom in disbelief. "How did they manage that?"
"It looks like they adapted their transporter to our shields."
"Reverse the harmonics and rotate the shield frequency," ordered Tuvok. "Can you determine what was taken?"
"Equipment, mostly…I'm getting reports from all decks. It's all on one of the two attacking ships. I've got it on sensors."
"They're backing off," said Tom in surprise as the two ships that had been firing on them retreated.
"They are joining with the other ships," observed Tuvok.
"Our shield strength is dropping!" yelled Lieutenant Ayala at Tactical. "The ships are producing some kind of field that's neutralizing our shields – they're at 30 percent."
The Vaadwaur were still firing at them and the bridge began to shake. "Target the weapons array of the lead ship."
Voyager's forward phaser array powered up and they fired at the lead ship. Instead of damage to the other ship, the energy came back at Voyager, causing the bridge to shake violently.
"Hold your fire!" Tom shouted before he looked at his console in disbelief. "Hey Harry, does this remind you of anything?"
"No…wait a minute – it's a lattice. The alien swarm! If we – " He was interrupted as Seven noticed something at her station.
"They are attempting to access Voyager's database."
"Can you stop them?" asked Tuvok.
"I do not have to. They are not attempting to bypass our security measures – they are transmitting what appears to be some kind of invalid access code."
"Lieutenant, reverse the shield polarity and fire on one of the ships to disrupt the pulses."
"It certainly feels like we're being fired at," said Kathryn.
"That doesn't mean that it's Voyager, though," pointed out Chakotay, trying to keep them all from getting their hopes up.
"I know," she replied, "but – "
Mark interrupted her. "It's Voyager, all right." Kathryn and Chakotay looked at him as he slowly grinned. "I can hear them."
"Are they all right?" asked the Captain.
"They're being fired at…but I think they're okay. They're confused…" He looked up at her with an even bigger smile. "And they miss you."
"You can feel that?"
"It's very strong," he said. He concentrated for a moment, then laughed out loud. "Someone doesn't like your chair, Chakotay."
"Who would that be?" he wondered.
"Tom!" exclaimed Kathryn with a laugh. "He'll go insane if he's not at the helm."
They all stopped laughing as the ship began to shake violently. Kathryn was thrown off the bed and cried out as she landed on Chakotay, injuring her broken arm. Sparks flew in the hallway as things began exploding and the lights in the corridor flickered.
"Are you okay?" Chakotay asked her as he helped her sit up.
She nodded as she ground her teeth against the searing pain in her arm. "I think Voyager's fighting back."
"The pulses have been disrupted, Commander," reported Ensign Kim. "Their shields are down and they took some heavy damage."
"Let's get our stuff back," said Tom. "Seven?"
"I am scanning for all equipment with a Starfleet signature."
Mark yelled at his two companions when he saw the blue shimmer in the hallway. They moved towards him and looked in the direction that he was pointing just in time to see the transporter beam fade away on the shelf where the commbadge had been sitting. Chakotay smiled and squeezed Kathryn's shoulder. She smiled back at him. It was only a matter of time now.
Seven looked up from her station. "I have beamed the stolen equipment to the cargo bay."
Tuvok ordered the helm to get them out of there, and they all relaxed a little as Voyager jumped to warp. Tom turned around to look at Harry and Seven. "What was that all about?"
* * *
The senior staff was gathered in the conference room trying to make sense of the Vaadwaur attack.
"Where do you think they got that interferen…interferomet…that shield neutralizing technology?" asked Neelix.
"Most likely in the same place that Voyager encountered it," said Seven. "Their subspace tunnels may allow them to travel that far and they could have assimilated the technology themselves."
"I still don't get why they're attacking us for no reason," said Harry.
"This is the second time they have attacked us without apparent provocation," said Tuvok. "There may indeed be a motive behind their actions of which we are unaware."
"Maybe we should find out what their motive is so it doesn't happen again," suggested B'Elanna.
"I am more concerned that they were able to transport through our shields. They obviously had detailed information of our shield harmonics," replied Tuvok.
"I hate to say this," said Tom. "but we've been in this situation before…with Seska and the Kazon."
They were all silent for a moment before Tuvok responded. "Are you suggesting that there is a traitor on board?"
"I'm not suggesting anything…I'm just saying that they're getting a heck of a lot of information, and it has to be coming from somewhere."
"Not all their information was accurate," pointed out Seven. "If they had known Voyager's shield frequency they could have adapted their weapons to penetrate the shields instead of their transporters. Also, they mistakenly believed that they had the means to access our database."
"Besides, I can't believe that someone on the crew would betray us after this long," said B'Elanna.
"She's right," added Harry. "At the beginning, that was one thing…but now? I just don't see it."
"Nevertheless," said Tuvok. "We must consider every possibility. Ensign Kim, I want you to go over the communication logs and look for any sign that a member of the crew has been in contact with the Vaadwaur. Seven, you can assist Lieutenant Torres with the inventory of the stolen equipment, and I would also like you to analyze the data from the attack to see if we can find any logic in their actions. Dismissed."
* * *
B'Elanna and Seven walked around the retrieved equipment in the cargo bay, identifying it and directing it to the proper location. It was surprising how much equipment they had taken in one transport.
"That goes back to engineering, level two," ordered B'Elanna, pointing. "And that goes to Astrometrics, but see that it gets repaired first." She was letting others do most of the work. At more that two-thirds of the way through her pregnancy, moving around was getting more difficult and although she maintained that she was still perfectly fit for duty, she let others do the grunt work while she supervised.
B'Elanna walked around the clutter in the cargo bay and made her way towards Seven. She and the ex-drone were getting along better now, thanks in part to Tom. He had pointed out that Seven was probably just as upset over the Captain's death as the rest of the crew – maybe even more so since the Captain had helped her recover her individuality – but that she probably didn't know how to deal with it. B'Elanna and Tom had gotten together with her at Sandrine's a couple of times to talk about the Captain and B'Elanna had begun to suspect that Tom was right, which had softened her attitude towards Seven considerably.
"It looks like most of this stuff was undamaged," she said as she moved closer to Seven. "But I wonder why they wanted it." She stopped as a new item caught her attention on the floor. She knelt down and picked it up.
"Lieutenant?" said Seven.
"Looks like somebody lost a commbadge," she commented.
"There has been no report of a missing commbadge," said Seven, checking the PADD in her hands.
"They probably just haven't missed it yet. Computer, identify this commbadge," she said as she hit it.
Unable to comply.
"Hmm…" she said as she opened the back. "No wonder. The circuitry in this thing is toast." She tossed it in her hand. "I'll figure out who it belongs to later – right now we should get started on making sense of their attack."
"I can finish here if you wish to begin without me," offered Seven.
"Thanks – I'll be in my quarters going over the data."
B'Elanna leaned back in her chair at the desk in her quarters. She and Seven had been going over the attack for hours trying to figure out what was going on. It was obvious that the Vaadwaur had access to information about Voyager since they had been able to transport through the shields. She and Seven had also determined that some of the equipment stolen had been used to create the interferometric pulses, which meant that the Vaadwaur had come looking specifically for that piece of equipment and knew exactly what to do with it. On the other hand, none of the information that they had found, or been given, had left Voyager vulnerable.
B'Elanna drummed her fingers on the desk while Seven worked opposite her. Seven looked sideways at B'Elanna's hand as she drummed, and B'Elanna caught the glance.
"Sorry," she said, holding her hand still. "I'm just frustrated." She leaned forward and called up something on her computer screen. "Let's have another look at their attempt to access the database. They were obviously misinformed about that."
"They appeared to believe that they possessed an access code," agreed Seven. She called it up on her PADD and shoved it across the desk to B'Elanna. "Yet it is not in the format of a Starfleet access code."
"Omega-five-one-three-eight-four-alpha," she read. "You're right – there's too many numbers. No access codes have five digits…" She trailed off as something occurred to her. "Unless…"
"Lieutenant?"
"Except for the Greek letters, it looks like a stardate," she said. "Computer, display ship's logs from stardate 51384." The computer beeped at her and as she looked at her screen her eyes widened.
"What is it?" asked Seven.
"This has got to be more than a coincidence. On stardate 51384, we were in pursuit of a bunch of thieves…who had transported equipment off of Voyager."
"We tracked them to a nearby planet and retrieved the equipment," recalled Seven. "That does seem unusual."
They were interrupted by a chime at the door. "Come in," called B'Elanna, and the doors opened to admit Naomi Wildman.
"Naomi Wildman," said Seven. "State your purpose here."
"I was looking for you," she said brightly, walking over to the desk. "The computer told me that you were here. You said that you'd show me how to recalibrate the sensors in Astrometrics so I can be your assistant."
Naomi had always aspired to be the Captain's assistant, but had wisely decided not to pursue any such thing with Captain Tuvok. Instead, she had convinced Seven to let her become her assistant in Astrometrics.
"I am assisting Lieutenant Torres," Seven told her. "We will reschedule."
Naomi's face fell, but her curiosity overcame her disappointment and she walked around the desk to stand beside B'Elanna. "What are you working on?"
"We're trying to figure out why we were attacked yesterday," explained B'Elanna. "The Vaadwaur knew things about Voyager and tried to access our database."
"Did it work?"
"No – they tried to enter an access code but it wasn't an access code." She showed her the sequence. "Seven and I think that it might be a code, like a stardate."
Naomi perked up when she saw the sequence, seeing a chance to contribute. She pointed to the word 'alpha' on the screen. "That's in my access code," she said proudly. "'Naomi Wildman Alpha One Four.' It's the first letter in the Greek alphabet."
"Very good," said B'Elanna. "Now, I think I've got this under control, so why don't you and Seven go ahead to Astrometrics."
Naomi broke into a huge smile. "Come on, Seven."
"Are you certain that you do not require my assistance?"
When B'Elanna reassured her that she would be fine, Seven and Naomi left together.
B'Elanna sighed and stretched in the chair. She was about to get back to work when Tom came in the door.
"Are you still working?" he asked. "You really should take a break – how about joining me for dinner in the mess hall?"
She protested at first, but eventually gave in and decided to start again later.