Author's Notes: Welcome to chapter 6! I wasn't going to post this chapter until I was almost done writing the next one, but I got some really freaking AWESOME reviews today, so here we go!
Obligatory Legalities: I don't own them, and I swear that is not what you're hearing from behind my basement door... Disregard that last statement.
XXX
"Why am I always stuck against the wall? It's cold back here." Harry grumbled, rolling up into his blanket at the end of the row of camp mattresses. Although the blankets were supposedly rated for negative twenty degrees Celsius, they sure didn't feel like they reflected much heat.
"I didn't figure you'd want to cuddle, Starfleet." B'Elanna dead-panned, pulling her jacket tighter around her before laying down on her mat. She gave Harry a smirk and a wink, pulling a blush across his face. He stuck his tongue out at her with a good-natured chuckle.
"Do I see you making eyes at my girl, Buster?" Tom teased, easing down onto his mat between the two. "Don't make me jealous, Harry! I thought I was the only one you loved!"
"Oh, my God, Tom." Harry mock-groaned, "If I tell you I love you, will you trade me places?"
"Oh, Harry, I already know how you feel."
"Cold, Tom. I feel cold."
Seven, curled up in her own blanket on the bench above their heads, snorted. She rolled her eyes, but didn't look up from the PADD she was reading in her warm cocoon.
"Seven of Nine," Tom smiled up at the ex-drone. "Was that a laugh?"
Caught out, Seven schooled her smirk into a frown. "No, Tom, that was most certainly not a laugh." She refused to look down at him, uncertain if she could continue to control the upturn of her lips at what she was sure was one of his silliest grins.
"I think that was a little bit of a laugh." Tom sat back up to face the blonde. Her eyes flitted from her PADD to his face and back, her lips pursing. "Are you sure?"
"Quite, Lieutenant."
"Oh, I think it was a little laugh." Chakotay added, pulling the lantern down off its hook on the ceiling. He clicked it off, plunging the room into near darkness. The other lantern was perched in the doorway between the cabin and midsection, illuminating the carpet at their feet. He set the extinguished lantern back on its hook before taking a seat beside Seven. There was just enough illumination that he could see the mock-betrayal in Seven's eyes.
"I was merely clearing my throat, Commander." Whatever Seven was reading on her PADD was put to an end as Chakotay casually plucked it from her fingertips and skimmed it over. "Really?"
"What'cha reading, Crewman?" he asked, scrolling up. He couldn't make heads or tails of the Borg numerical code displayed across the little screen. "Oh." He scrunched his nose at her playful smirk. "Another harlequin novel?"
"Multi-spacial displacement theory. Species 0375." Seven corrected, snatching the PADD back from him. "Harlequin novels, despite the Captain's penchant for reading them, are irrelevant."
"The Captain reads harlequin romance novels?" B'Elanna snorted, cuddling up into the warmth of her husband's blanket. "That's hilarious."
"You should participate in one of her harlequin holodeck programs, B'Elanna. They are most enlightening." deadpanned the ex-Borg. She smiled when the half-Klingon laughed harder. Tom and Harry joined in.
"And just what did these holodeck programs enlighten you about?" Tom chortled.
"Why one should not participate in harlequin holonovels." Another burst of laughter filled the room.
"Why don't you go ahead and lay down, Seven." suggested Chakotay, standing up and retrieving the lit lantern. "All of you should get some sleep while you can."
"What about you?"
"I'm coming, too." With a reassuring smile, he clicked the lantern off. Without the light, he had to feel with his foot for the bench in the pitch black, but when he found it, he gave Seven's blanket a tug. "Venga, chica." He waited until he heard her click the PADD off before moving back to give her room to scoot down.
Seven settled next to B'Elanna on her camp mattress. Chakotay sunk down behind her, combining their blankets and pulling her back flush to his stomach with a tired sigh. With her cybernetic eye, she could see the cabin in shades of grey and green, and watched B'Elanna in front of her stare sightlessly up at the ceiling. Tom pulled his arm back from the swell of his wife's stomach to turn to face Harry behind him. Outside was silent; inside was quiet but for the sounds of breathing and shifting blankets.
"Are you sure this is all the blankets?" Harry groused, burrowing tighter into his thermal blanket.
"Yes, Harry." said B'Elanna. Her tone of voice was like a mother speaking to an annoying child. "We're lucky there were this many with how Flyboy keeps this ship stocked."
"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Tom, voice indignant.
"There's a twenty-first century boombox in the overhead compartment but not one pillow? No extra relays, no extra tools. There's not even enough rations for-"
"Okay, okay, I get it."
"The Val Jean had one replicator that hardly ever worked." Chakotay said quietly behind Seven's ear, his breath across her skin raising goosebumps along her neck. "You kept that ship held together with a laserspanner and half-chewed bubblegum, B'Elanna."
The half-Klingon chuckled. "And a ton of engine grease."
"We rely on replicators too much." continued Chakotay, "No one ever thinks they will need wilderness training because we travel around on these huge starships with all the food and drink you could want, heat and air, artificial light... Situations like this are why they make you take Survivalist training at Starfleet."
"Cold or not, we can survive on this planet for another week." said Tom, turning on his back to stare up towards the ceiling. "We can eat the fruit from those trees. There's a whole grove of them- enough for weeks. I'm sure there are other edible things around, too. You guys found a stream, right? Maybe we could go fishing." He glanced sightlessly towards Chakotay and Seven's direction. "We can get water from there at least. Boom- food and water, done. Then we just have to get the samples we need for Voyager, and try to pretend this is a fun family camping trip."
"Because this is so fun." B'Elanna sighed.
"It could be worse." Chakotay tightened his arm around Seven's waist, nuzzling his face into her hair as he settled down for sleep.
"Right." Harry deadpanned. "We could be cold."
"All right- that's it. Come here." Tom reached out and grabbed Harry, pulling the now flailing younger man up close to him. "Hold still!" He tossed the other edge of his blanket over Harry's, pulling it halfway off of B'Elanna.
"Hey!" B'Elanna gasped at the sudden cold, elbowing Tom behind her as she twisted to reclaim her warmth.
"Let me go, Tom!" Harry struggled to loosen Tom's hold around his waist. "Tom!"
"No, you're cold. Warm up or shut up, Harry." Tom laughed.
"Children, children!" Chakotay sat up, blindly reaching out to grab Tom. Instead, he grabbed B'Elanna, who yelped, reaching out and shoving Seven.
"Aj! Lietenant!" Seven groused, rubbing the slighted skin around her forearm implant.
"ENOUGH!" B'Elanna's voice all but echoed in the quiet room, pulling a pained gasp from Seven, and freezing the three men in their places. "I am tired, and I am cold, and if you don't settle down and quit trying to hog my blanket, I will make you both VERY SORRY! Do you hear me?"
"Yes, Ma'am!" Harry and Tom chorused. B'Elanna, satisfied, yanked her blanket back, turned her back on Tom and Harry, and began regaining her lost body heat. The two men released each other, but didn't separate. Chakotay laid back down behind Seven, his arm reclaiming her waist.
"Goodnight." B'Elanna's voice was mock cheer. Leaving Tom behind, she instead shimmied up against Seven, sandwiching the blonde between the two ex-Maquis officers.
Seven held her breath for a handful of heartbeats as B'Elanna invaded her personal space. It wasn't that she didn't occasionally enjoy the presence of the shorter woman, but she'd only recently become used to letting just about anyone be so bodily close to her. Usually when she and the engineer were this near to one another it was in the middle of a good shouting match in engineering. Finally, seeing that B'Elanna wasn't about to move, the ex-Borg gave in and relaxed. Behind her, Chakotay rearranged the blankets again, adding B'Elanna's to their own so that the three shared, leaving Tom and Harry to fend for themselves.
"Much better." B'Elanna mumbled, already half asleep.
"I concur."
XXX
Warm- she was finally warm! B'Elanna sighed, fighting wakefullness with all her might, keeping her eyelids screwed shut tight. A tiny pair of fists on her bladder, and set of little feet in her ribs, though, managed to rouse her to full consciousness. "Damnit..." she sighed quietly, reluctantly opening her eyes.
There was hardly enough light coming from the open cockpit to illuminate the room, but her vision adjusted after a handful of seconds of blindness. Instead of Tom's hand over her stomach Chakotay's heavy, muscular arm was slung out over both women. Seven's arm was also over her side, her metal-laced hand pressed behind B'Elanna's shoulder blades. The two women were pressed stomach to stomach- or at least as pressed together as they could be with B'Elanna's baby bump between them. Their faces were so close that B'Elanna could feel Seven's breath ghosting across her chin as the blonde slept. Chakotay's face was just visible behind Seven's head, his breath tousling a lock of cornsilk hair back and forth in front of his face as he slept. Behind B'Elanna, Tom and Harry had cuddled up for heat, effectively trapping her in place in the middle of the large makeshift camp bed.
Another not so gentle prod of her bladder brought B'Elanna back to focus, pushing her to attempt to untangle herself from the people around her. Seven's arm tightened over her side when she wiggled, her strength even in her sleep enough to hold B'Elanna down. 'Are you kidding me?' The Klingon hybrid blew out a semi-frustrated breath, reaching down and gently pulling Seven's arm back from her side, and Chakotay's with it. Chakotay's hand was easy to move, Seven's was like trying to move a bag of cement.
"Seven..." B'Elanna poked the girl's shoulder, running a finger down across the implant on her forearm through Chakotay's red and black jacket. Seven's eyelids barely fluttered. "Seven, wake up."
"Hmm?" breathed the blonde, her eyes blinking open. She quickly focused on the smaller woman laying face to face with her, then glanced around the dark room. "It is still night."
"Good morning, Snugglebunny. And, I know it is." returned the brunette, "And as much as I'm enjoying the Klingon sandwich, I need a trip to the bathroom before this baby continues using my bladder as a punching bag." She nearly laughed at the brief look of confusion that crossed the blonde's face before Seven sat up, pulling her arm back.
"I apologize." Seven said quietly, letting the brunette sit up beside her.
"Now.. where did I put that tricorder..?" B'Elanna mumbled to herself, carefully climbing out of the blankets, shivering in the cool air. Her hands closed around the little piece of technology at the end of the mattress, and she flipped it open to begin a scan.
"Did you find it?" Seven asked quietly, turning to readjust the blankets over Chakotay before he could wake up.
"Yep. Looking to make sure there isn't anything big and alive and predatory outside the ship so I can run to the bathroom... And it looks all clear." answered B'Elanna. "Help me open the hatch, will you?"
"Yes." Seven acquiesced, standing up with B'Elanna, stepping carefully over Tom and Harry as she pulled Chakotay's jacket tighter around her shoulders. B'Elanna flipped the locking switch on the right side of the hatch, and Seven unlocked the left. Then, the two of them pushed the heavy door until it cracked open. The door opened a good six inches before it hung, and whined in protest.
"¿A dónde vas?" Chakotay's voice was thick with sleep as he sat up on his mattress.
"Al baño." answered B'Elanna, watching the hatch finish lowering to the ground with a soft thud. Beside her, Seven had retrieved two flashlights, and strapped one to her wrist. With it's light, the two women warily inched down the opened hatch. B'Elanna continued to scan with the tricorder while Seven swept the flashlight along the treeline around them.
"Not by yourselves, you're not." Chakotay half grumbled, walking out behind them, pulling the sleeves of his grey shirt down to cover his wrists, and rubbing his hands together to generate some heat in them. Like the night before, the temperature was just above freezing, and quick to pull a shiver from even the sturdiest of individuals.
"We are grown women, perfectly capable of going to the bathroom by ourselves, Chakotay." said B'Elanna absently, folding up her tricorder.
"I'm not here to hold your hand." said the commander with a laugh, stepping up to the dying campfire and holding his hands out over the glowing red coals. "Don't go too far in."
"No peeking!" laughed B'Elanna, stepping into the treeline closest to the shuttle. "You, either, Snugglebunny."
Seven blanched, scowling at the treeline. Chakotay raised an eyebrow her way in perfect mimicry, followed by a soft snort of good-natured laughter. "So... Snugglebunny, huh? Something I should know about?" When a blush started along Seven's cheekbones, he smirked. "Should I be worried?"
"No!" hissed the blonde, crossing her arms.
Inside the treeline, B'Elanna laughed as she fixed the waistline of her black pants back in place. "Don't worry, Chakotay, I'm not after your novia." She smoothed her uniform jacket back in place. "Who would have thought that Seven likes to cuddle when she slee-OUCH!" Something dark and hard hit her shoulder and rolled down her side. Shining her flashlight at her feet revealed a flat rock the size of her palm. "Damnnit, Seven!"
"B'Elanna?" Chakotay started to the treeline, Seven at his heels. "Are you okay?"
"I was only teasing, Seven!" B'Elanna stormed out of the treeline, a ball of hormonal Klingon fury. She dodged around Chakotay and grabbed Seven's arms. "You didn't have to throw a baQa' rock at me!"
"Lieutenant!" Seven less than gently removed herself from B'Elanna's grasp. "I assure you I did no such thing!" Chakotay grabbed the smaller woman by the shoulders, holding her back from attacking the blonde.
"Oh, so you're saying a rock just fell out of the sky and hit me in the arm?" hissed B'Elanna. "What if you had hit me in the stomach?"
"B'Elanna, I did not throw anything at you!"
"She didn't throw anything at you, B'Elanna." said Chakotay, holding the pregnant Klingon back. "I was right here with her!"
"What's going on out here?" Tom and Harry stumbled down the hatch, rubbing sleep from their eyes and tugging on boots. "B'Elanna?"
"The Borg threw a baQa' rock at me!"
"Seven?" Harry gave the blonde a surprised look.
"I most certainly did not!"
"So who did then, huh?"
As Seven opened her mouth to retort, a streak of black flew from the forest, striking her in the temple just above her starburst implant. Her head whipped back from the force, and she stumbled into Harry, who kept them both from falling into the still-hot coals of their leftover campfire. The ex-Borg ran the metallic fingertips of her left hand over her temple, pulling them away bloody, before slipping into consciousness. B'Elanna immediately stopped struggling against Chakotay's grip, pulling her tricorder from her pocket and flipping it open. Chakotay was at Seven's side in a heartbeat as Harry gently laid her down, tilting her head to see her wound.
"What's out there?!" Harry asked, his eyes scanning the treeline for hidden enemies.
"There's nothing showing up!" B'Elanna answered, spinning slowly in a circle as she scanned the treeline.
"That's a bad gash." Chakotay said, wiping the blood from Seven's pale skin. Another rock flew from the woodline, whizzing by his head and hitting Tom in the leg.
"What the hell?!" B'Elanna whipped around, holding her tricorder up to Tom. "There is nothing showing up on this thing! Nothing! Not one animal, not one insect, not one life sign!"
Another rock hit Harry in the chest. The younger man yelled out in surprise and pain. "What the hell?"
"Let's get back in the-" Tom was cut off as rocks flew from left and right, raining down on the clearing and the shuttle like a waterfall of earth. Hundreds of rocks pummeled the ground and the people unfortunate enough to be standing on it, striking hard enough to bruise and bring blood.
"Inside!" Chakotay yelled, scooping Seven's unconscious form up and running up the ramp. Tom shoved B'Elanna inside, pulling Harry up behind him. The two younger men hurriedly lifted the hatch, pulling it shut and locking it as the onslaught of raining rock continued. Inside, the sound of the hull being pummeled reverberated loudly through the shuttle.
Chakotay laid Seven on the medical bed, pulling out the medkit and flipping it open. Tom joined him, using B'Elanna's tricorder to scan the blonde's wound. Ignoring the cold, Chakotay pulled his shirt up over his head, balling it up and holding it against the blonde's temple.
"No sign of epidermal hematoma." Tom said, his voice just loud enough to be heard over the concussive noise in the shuttle. "The injury isn't life threatening. She should wake up soon."
"What the hell?" B'Elanna had grabbed the extra tricorder from its drawer in the midsection, holding it up where Harry and she could see its screen. "There's not one life sign showing up anywhere!" She gave an incredulous look to Chakotay and Tom. "Who is throwing all these qeylIS quvHa' rocks?" As though a switch had been hit, the assault on the Flyer came to an abrupt end. The sounds died, leaving a heavy ringing in their ears.
"Could it be some kind of geological phenomena? Electromagnetic, maybe?" asked Harry. "Maybe the weird weather is affecting the magnetic poles?"
"No idea." said Tom.
With a wince and a soft groan, Seven pulled her hand up to rest over her temple, blinking heavy lidded eyes open to meet the concerned brown orbs above her. "What..?"
"Welcome back." Chakotay said with a smile, moving his shirt away so Tom could run the dermal regenerator over Seven's still bleeding temple. "You got hit pretty hard, sweetheart."
"Good as new." declared Tom, putting away the dermal regenerator. "I can give you an analgesic if you have a headache- which I would imagine you do after getting hit like that. Unfortunately, I am all out of lollipops."
"No, I will be fine, thank you." she answered, sitting up. "What was throwing rocks?"
"We have no idea." answered the half-Klingon. "There are no life signs on the tricorder." She blew out a frustrated breath. "If we could get Tactical functioning, we could do some more in depth scans."
"All that will have to wait for morning and daylight." said Tom, packing away the medkit. "And heat. I'm still freezing."
"Tell me about it." said Chakotay with a roll of his eyes, standing shirtless and near shivering beside Seven. When she noticed, and began to remove his jacket, he stopped her. "Just need a blanket, Seven. You stay warm." She scowled, watching him retrieve his blanket and throw it on like a cape.
"Should we go back to sleep?" Harry asked from where he stood in the doorway to the midsection. Looking at the sky through the viewscreen, he could tell it would still be hours before the sun decided to come up.
"We've got at least four hours until daylight, Harry." said Tom, coming to look over his shoulder. "Easily four." He sighed, turning back to the mattresses and blankets.
"We are perfectly safe in here." Chakotay tossed his bloodied shirt on the biobed before moving back to his mattress. A gentle prod of Seven's back convinced her to join him. B'Elanna was already re-wrapping up in her blanket in the middle. "We may as well sleep. When we wake up, we can investigate the woods around the shuttle. There had to have been a dozen of whatever it was throwing stones, and they will surely have left evidence of themselves behind. Maybe this planet wasn't as uninhabited as we originally thought."
"Whatever they were," B'Elanna began, a slight scowl on her face. "They don't show up on the tricorders. They may not be carbon-based lifeforms."
"We will deal with that possibility in the morning."
XXX
"Up and at 'em, crewman!" Chakotay ran his silver canteen along the metal screen door of the lockers, the concussive metal's rapid clanging effectively jolting his four crewmates out of apparently deep slumbers. He couldn't help the snicker as Tom and Harry jumped to sit up, grabbing their ears. B'Elanna and Seven, while having jerked at the intrusive noise, merely turned their heads to blearily glare at him.
"Eres serio, Cabrón?" B'Elanna groused, pulling her blanket back over her head, and settling back down against Seven's back.
"That was not nice, Chakotay." Harry grumbled, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
"But effective." returned the older man, dropping the canteen onto the biobed with the rest of his effects. "It's a long hike. We should get started early."
"I have all of fifteen feet to walk- I'm sleeping in." B'Elanna's voice was muffled from beneath the blankets. Seven sighed, pushing her blanket back and sitting up. "No... va..." she grumbled, watching Seven stand up and fold her blanket.
"Chakotay's right, 'Lanna." Tom said, reaching a hand out and patting her hip. "Come on- we can have some breakfast together before I have to go play Boy Scout with Tonto and the Lone Ranger."
"Who?" Seven's nose wrinkled for all of three point seven six seconds.
B'Elanna waved her question off. "Don't get him started." she said as she regretfully sat up. Her eyes cast one last Klingon glare Chakotay's way before she balled up her blankets and grumpily got out of her bed.
"Come on- I'm anxious to see outside." Chakotay said as he undid the locks on the hatch. "And figure out what the heck threw all those rocks at us last night." He gestured for Seven to help him lower the ramp, giving her a dimpled grin when she stepped up beside him. She only half-smirked his way, reaching up with him and pushing the heavy hatch door forward. "There could be a new type of lifeform out there just waiting to be discovered. That they use rocks as projectiles means that they are intelligent enough to use some form of tools, and therefore..." The commander's voice trailed off as the hatch came to rest on the ground. "What the..?"
"Chakotay..?" Seven's voice was equally absent as she took a tentative step out of the shuttle.
"Hey, what's wrong, you two?" Harry scrambled to his feet to follow, Tom and B'Elanna quickly at his heels.
The ground was completely clear. Not one rock lay anywhere within a hundred meters of the Flyer. There was no sign of pock-marks on the ground from their impact. Not one thing was out of place in the fire pit- not one bit of ash, burned wood, or firewood shifted. The logs they used to sit on were still perfectly in place, as was the pile of kindling next to the rocks surrounding the firepit. The canister lids that had been used for plates before being hand-washed and set to dry around the fire were still leaned precariously on their rocks.
"What the..?" Tom eased down the slanted hatch door like a wounded lamb to the slaughter. Once at the bottom of the ramp, he toed the dirt as if he thought it would swallow him alive. When he was not, in fact, harmed, he stepped up behind Seven and Chakotay. "Where did all the rocks go?"
Chakotay had crouched down on his haunches, and ran a handful of the sandy dirt through his fingers. "I don't know, Tom."
Seven walked back up the ramp, slipping between a confused Harry and confounded B'Elanna, and picked up the tricorder from its discarded place on the bio bed. She initiated a scan as she returned to Chakotay's side, holding the little beeping device out over the ground. After a few seconds, she turned grave eyes to Chakotay. "There is no sign of disturbance."
"I don't know about you guys, but I'm feeling pretty disturbed right about now." Harry's face was taut as he surveyed the crater they rested in, absently reaching up to finger the bruise that had bloomed across his sternum, evidence of their previous assault.
"I concur." murmured Seven with a brief raising of eyebrows. With a sigh, she gave up her scan and began a diagnostic on the tricorder.
"Tell me I did not imagine all that last night." B'Elanna rubbed a phantom pain in her shoulder.
With a dark scowl, Chakotay stood up and stalked into the Flyer. A heartbeat later he was back outside, his bloody shirt from earlier balled in his hand. He unrolled it, revealing the dried blood staining the chest. "This isn't imagined. Something hit Seven hard enough to make her bleed."
Seven scowled at the stain. "I have ruined your uniform shirt."
Chakotay waved her off with a brief grin. "De nada, Seven."
"So we are in agreement, then?" B'Elanna started, turning her head to meet everyone's eyes individually. "We all saw.. felt- heard- all those rocks last night."
"Yeah." said Tom. Harry, Chakotay, and Seven nodded agreement.
"¡Qué chingados!" B'Elanna hissed under her breath. "How could there be nothing?" She kicked over a log destined for the firepit, her eyes scanning the ground around her. "The force with which those rocks were thrown would have left something! There should be a thousand rocks everywhere!"
"Could they have," Harry began, trying to make sense of the situation, "I don't know- sunk into the ground? What if they weren't really rocks?"
Chakotay immediately latched on. "Right? What if they were meteorological? It's freezing cold here at night- what if they were chunks of ice?"
"Then they would have been cold." said Seven, watching the screen on her tricorder as it slowly ran its diagnosis. "They didn't feel cold."
"No offense, Snugglebunny, but you were unconscious for most of it." retorted B'Elanna, coming to look over the blonde's arm at the screen. "It was cold outside- they might have been cold."
"If they were cold, and made of ice," The ex-Borg began with a roll of her eyes, "Then the heat from the sun would have melted them, leaving this whole crater one large mud slick."
"Thanks a lot for the assessment, Tuvok." deadpanned Harry. "Come on- an hour ago it was just over ten degrees Celsius, and now it is easily thirty. With it heating up that rapidly, chunks of ice could have been evaporated enough to not leave much of a trace."
"Then where are all the tiny upsets in the dirt where they hit?"
Harry's confidence slipped. "Well.. I don't know.. But I'm sure there's a logical explanation for it."
"Of course there is." concurred Tom.
"Well, I'm ready for this logical explanation anytime any of you are ready to come up with it." Chakotay muttered, heading for the treeline. "I'm checking for footprints."
"I'm with you." said Tom, hurrying after him. The others stood and waited, watching the two men traipse through the woodline in a large circle around the shuttle. Once they had made a full pass, they came back into the clearing, no closer to an answer than they were before. "Nothing."
"This is ridiculous." Harry ran a hand through his hair, then wearily across his face. "Totally ridiculous."
Chakotay took in a deep breath, releasing it and his anger in a deep sigh. "What the hell is going on in this place?"
"I'm done." B'Elanna hissed. "I'm done!" She turned on the balls of her feet and marched back into the shuttle. "I'm gonna fix this damn thing if it takes me a year!" The four left outside could hear her banging around in the cockpit, spouting out Klingon and Spanish curses in between.
"So..." Harry craned his head back to see if he could make B'Elanna's form out across the open shuttle. "About that hike..."
"I volunteer." said Tom, listening to his wife list all the words in Klingon he knew by heart.
"Okay then, we should get packed up and go." said Chakotay. "This time, I plan to bring extra supplies- flashlight, rations, extra tricorder." He turned to Seven beside him. "You should stay and help work on the Flyer, Seven." He didn't miss the scowl that turned the corners of her lips down for a heartbeat or two. "We will be back before dark."
"Be careful." said the ex-drone, turning her head resignedly towards the Flyer.
XXX
I want to say thank you so very much to Voyagerfictionfan, EMcKinney, Juddysbuddy, The Cheshire Cheese, Dee474, NyGi, and scifiromance for reviews! XOXO
Thanks for reading! Please review!
~The Lady Mage