Chapter 9 – There's No Place Like Home

Mike Ayala had taken Lt. Commander Jorak's reprimand about laxness among the security personnel detailed to the transporter room very much to heart, and had taken to checking up on his team personally at regular intervals. Accordingly, he was in Transporter Room Two when he heard a sound – familiar but not quite like the one made by the regular units – and the tail end of a gurgling sound that could have been the word "… alert".

Now, Lieutenant Miguel Jesus Xavier (Mike) Ayala had spent his adolescence and early adulthood in a rough frontier colony that would later, by stroke of political fiat, find itself located smack in the middle of the Demilitarized Zone. After a childhood spent in constant struggle with a reluctant land and unwelcoming wildlife, he had served for three years with the Maquis, followed by seven in the Delta Quadrant. His ability to respond to unusual situations was an amalgam of experience and training, together with an unflappability that was near legendary among his colleagues on Voyager. But it had been Mike's innate fighting instincts and unfailing alacrity that, more than anything, had made Tom Paris lobby his Captain hard to offer his erstwhile crewmate the prestigious position of Deputy Security Chief on the Enterprise.

The First Officer's confidence, as it turned out, had not been misplaced. Keenly aware that due to its small size the emergency one-way transporter did not possess the pattern buffers that could be set to filter out weapons or other undesirable elements, Ayala's phaser was drawn and ready to fire even before the unusual tableau finished materializing on the transporter platform. And it took him but a split second to determine that accidentally hitting his XO with a phaser set on stun would be preferable to allowing the uniformed Romulan, who had a disruptor pointing at his midsection, to pull the trigger. Acceptable collateral damage - Paris would be the first to agree.

The Lieutenant did not waste time watching the Romulan crumple on top of an unknown human who, unlike the rest of the group, had materialized on the transporter floor. Instead he rushed to the assistance of his XO - who was doubling up and sinking onto his knees, retching fiercely and clearly immobilized - and to grab the disruptor from the Romulan. The other humans around Paris, in Ayala's professional assessment, presented no apparent threat, and so he ignored them completely.

Ayala's hit on his comm badge and his shout of "Medical Emergency, Transporter Room Two, beam in", were completed almost before either of the two security officers on duty in the room had recovered from their surprise. He glared at them darkly as he motioned them to take the stunned, unconscious Romulan into custody. "Brig," he snarled, barely masking his displeasure at their slow reaction speed, even as he put his hand on Tom Paris' shoulder.

"Sir?" he asked Tom, the single word containing several questions. "I'm okay, sort of," Tom choked out. "Bruised insides. Possible internal bleeding. Need Crusher. Toller probably has a broken jaw, the rest need to be tested for vitamin deficiencies, chronic dehydration, PTSD …" He retched again and sank on his knees, just as Dr. Crusher and two assistants arrived on the scene via site-to-site transport.

The Lieutenant hit his comm badge again. "Ayala to Bridge. Commander Paris has returned. With four humans. And one guest. Ready to leave orbit anytime."

"No!" the voice from the Commander was barely audible, but Beverly Crusher heard it as she bent over him, heard the urgency in it. "Not yet. More to find out … not done … ask Captain to stay. Please …"

Beverly nodded and, despite her misgivings, passed the request on over the comm line. She also advised that the Commander had passed out, but should probably recover quickly once she got him into Sickbay. There was a noticeable hesitation on the Captain's part, then assent. "Fine. Tell the Commander when he wakes up that he has three hours to convince me to stay. No more. Starting now."

Ayala nodded to himself in quiet satisfaction. His job here was done, and now that the medical team had arrived he could head to the brig to make sure the stunned Romulan was secured and comfortable. The phaser blast had been mild, and he should not require medical attention. Then there would be some serious training sessions with his new staff to be set up; as far as the Lieutenant was concerned, they had failed their first real test since his arrival miserably – the way they had sauntered rather than run down the hall during the alert the week before had obviously not been an accident. They wouldn't have lasted a week in the Delta Quadrant.

Someone else – the Captain? - could welcome the disheveled-looking but harmless arrivals; eloquent speeches, Mike Ayala himself knew as well as anyone who had ever served with him, were not exactly his forte.

….

"How is he?"

"He'll be fine shortly, B'Elanna. Bruised insides, but the transporter managed not to perforate any organs when it was jammed into him. He'll be coming to in a couple of minutes."

B'Elanna Torres nodded her thanks to the CMO and bent over her mate's prone form, cupping his face with her hands as his lids fluttered open.

"Hey."

"Hey yourself," Tom whispered back, his blue eyes sinking into his wife's dark brown ones. A sight he had banished from his thoughts for the last day and-a-half, lest the memory cause him to betray the character he had – apparently not entirely successfully – attempted to slip into. He breathed in deeply, enjoying with as many of his senses as he could B'Elanna's closeness, the definitive confirmation that he was home.

Slowly, deliberately, she touched her mouth to his, smiling knowingly when his tongue started to trace the outline of her lips, seeking entrance. She pulled back remorselessly and looked over at Beverley. "Systems check out normal. He's perfectly himself again. Can I take him home now? I promised to kill him when he came back, but I think I'll need some privacy for that." She turned back to Tom, the truth of her fingers' slow, tender movement across the planes of his face belying the fierceness of her words.

"At the very least, I need to make sure he takes a shower." B'Elanna ran her finger over the bride of Tom's nose – apart from his eyes her favourite part of his face, she had once admitted in a moment of uncustomary mushiness – and gave him another kiss, deeper than the first, responding this time without holding back.

Beverly Crusher cleared her throat. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but you said there was something you wanted to tell the Captain, Tom. If you're going to have a shower before you get back to the bridge, you better leave now, and make it a quick one. Will wants to leave within three hours. One of which you spent in here."

"Shit," Tom spat as he gave B'Elanna a look that was a mixture of regret and apology. He swung his long legs over the side of the biobed, wincing a little when his abdominal muscles complained of their sudden call back to duty. "Can you tell Will to stop the clock while I clean up? I don't think the environmental controls are up to compensating for this stuff I'm wearing, do you?"

Beverly suppressed a smile as she prepared to pitch his case to the Captain. It sure was good to have the XO back in his usual form, apparently none the worse for his experiences of the last thirty-six-or-so hours.

The brief visit to his quarters allowed Tom a short but soul-reviving encounter with a streak of something small in bright purple that hurled itself into the room, hands outstretched, shouting, "Daddy! Daddy! You're back!" followed by an equally hearty, "Ewww – you stink!" He picked up his daughter, that protest notwithstanding, and swung her around before huggingher to him with tightly closed eyes.

"Out of the mouth of babes," B'Elanna chuckled. "Libby says they couldn't keep her in the nursery when she heard you were back. She almost escaped and headed for Sickbay on her own; turns out she's figured out the door codes by watching people's fingers. They had to practically hold her down."

Tom gave Miral one last kiss. "I love you too, munchkin. And I'd like to stay, but I have to talk to the Captain. Urgently. And to the senior officers. We're not done down there." That last bit was directed more at B'Elanna than at Miral. He set the little girl down on the floor, and looked her earnestly in the eye. "Sweetheart, Mommy and Daddy have to go to work, right after I have a shower. 'Coz you're right, I need one badly. You can stay until I'm done but are you okay going back to Libby and the other kids after? If I promise a story as soon as I'm done with everything I have to do?"

Miral looked at him and nodded solemnly, and they agreed on Pooh - although Tom resisted giving in to her request for a fixed time commitment. That had been a lesson quickly learned, once he had put on that third pip, and to his surprise she seemed relatively tolerant of his all-too-frequent inability to keep his promises right away. As long as they were kept eventually.

Tom raced through a record-quick sonic shower and a cursory shave, and put on a clean uniform with undisguised relief. He paused only for a moment to remove the morning's vegetable from the pocket of his prison pants, before tossing them into the recycler. Consigning the grimy, sweat-stained and rough-textured clothing to oblivion caused him no regrets whatsoever, but the thought had crossed his mind that the ship's botanists might be interested in the small reddish tuber and its undeniable nutritional properties. He stuck it in his pocket so he could drop it off at the arboretum at some later point.

A few minutes later, after dropping Miral back off at the day care and exchanging a few words with Libby, Tom found himself striding down the corridor towards the bridge briefing room with his insides in far better shape, and feeling less … squished than they had in two days, not to mention that he felt several pounds lighter. In order to limit tissue damage, Beverley Crusher had removed the device with the fetal transporter, fixing the internal bruising at the same time. Even without any prejudice having been caused to his skin or musculature, Tom was pretty confident that he now appreciated the process of giving birth in a whole new way. Something he'd have to take into account the next time he tried to convince B'Elanna how nice it would be for Miral to have a little brother or sister...

He was still basking in the afterglow of the short but satisfying reunion with his wife and daughter, when Deanna Troi stepped onto the turbolift. "Tom, can I see you for a minute? Before we go on the bridge?" He looked at her in mild irritation. "The mission isn't finished, Deanna, and I'm fine. Right now, I need to see the Captain. Urgently. Ship's business."

Magic words, usually, which somehow failed to have any effect whatsoever on the half-Betazoid. "Computer, halt turbolift."

Tom realized that she must have practically lain in wait for him from the moment she had been informed of – or sensed - his return to the ship. He was almost beginning to regret the detour through his quarters; the delay had likely not only given her enough time to ambush him on his way to the bridge, but also to muster a strategy of attack once she had him pinned down.

He could have reactivated the lift of course, but to pull rank and ignore Deanna Troi's request for a minute of his time would have meant a deliberate affront, and as little as Tom wished to delay his return to the bridge, he could not bring himself to do that. Certainly not to a woman whom he had come to consider a friend. But he didn't have to like it, and he felt free to let his resentment show.

"Psych detox already? Don't we have, like, a week for that under the rules?"

"I really wish you wouldn't call it that, Tom. And no, that's not why …"

"Ah, I see. Trying to assess whether I'm fit to return to my post?" Friendship or not, he was in a hurry, and feeling increasingly punchy about the delay. "I can assure you, Counselor, I've never felt sharper or more alert. Hell, I even had a snack in my quarters while I changed. So if you don't mind …"

Deanna's dark eyes flashed an unmistakable warning sign; she was in no mood to play games. Not after the last two days, and her still seething anger at the manner in which her husband and, she was convinced, Tom Paris himself had circumvented her ability to give her professional assessment of his fitness to do what he had done on Mokan.

"Don't make me pull medical rank on you now, Commander. Talk to me, or I will declare you unfit. Understood? Five minutes in my office, that's all I ask. Since neither you nor the Captain saw fit to grant me that before you left on that … venture of yours."

With a sigh of resignation and a glint of something between anger and defiance in his eyes in turn, Tom reactivated the turbolift. He allowed himself to be pushed rather than pulled into the Counselor's office on the deck below the bridge; Deanna Troi put her hand on his back and gave him a little shove, just to make sure he would come all the way in. The door whooshed shut behind them; Tom decided to make a point by leaning up against it rather than heading for one of the chairs. He crossed his arms and glared a challenge at Deanna as he waited for her to speak her piece.

"I'm sorry about this, Tom, but since neither of us has the time to mince words, let's get straight to the point: You have just been through a harrowing couple of days and I have to make sure that you are fit to make decisions without …"

"… emotional compromise? Please, Deanna, what I experienced down there paled in comparison to the crap I went through in Auckland and Akritiri. Nothing I haven't dealt with before." He considered for a moment; speeding through the analysis for her seemed like a good idea if he wanted to get away and on with things.

"We discussed what's been bugging me lately. So does what is going on down there hit me where I live, and make me angry? You bet it does. The place seems to exist for the sole purpose of hiding people away from public view, and that bothers the hell out of me, because it tells me there's something I'm not seeing yet. But being pissed off and outraged doesn't mean I'm incapacitated."

Without thinking, he slapped the wall behind him with a balled fist, but stopped self-consciously when he realized what he had done and resumed his defensive posture. "Maybe they'd have gotten around to doing nasty things to me once they figured out I was a plant, but I got out before that happened. And having my ticket home right there with me helped me keep my nerves."

Tom knew instinctively that now was not the time for obfuscation, and it was unlikely that he would be leaving the office unless he gave the Counselor something other than a straight-up denial and claim that he was 'fine'. But doing so would come at a price. Tom's fingers tightened around his arms; Deanna, for her part, could have sworn that, if she made him take off his tunic, she would see finger marks.

"And … I had no real flashbacks. Some, yes, but not debilitating."

He relaxed very deliberately, dropped his arms by his side and looked at her openly, willing her to sink her empathic senses into his mind and find the truth, or as much of it as he knew and cared to reveal.

"Honestly, Deanna, I actually feel better coming out than I did going in. Less … scared." He studied his fingernails for a moment while Deanna waited to hear what he would say next; already he was giving her more insights than he realized.

"I admit that I wasn't particularly keen about this assignment. And in all truth, if you'd managed to catch me on my way out … you'd probably have put the kybosh on the idea pretty damn quick. There were times when I was … damn close to freaking out. Particularly when I heard I'd have to be strapped to that gurney."

He gave a self-deprecating snort. "I have a … a thing about being tied down or stuck in enclosed spaces, you see. Anyplace where I can't move, when I'm physically helpless, gives me the major creeps. And no, it's not claustrophobia. And yes, I got that way in Auckland."

Deanna's lips tightened in displeasure. Her husband was a smart man, especially when he needed a job done, and if it hadn't been clear to her before that Will had deliberately allowed Tom Paris to bypass her scrutiny, these comments sealed the matter. Had she been in Sickbay when Beverley prepared Tom for his mission, she might never have allowed him to leave the ship, she was certain now. They would have words again later, she and her imzadi.

Seeing the sudden flash of anger in her eyes, Tom raised his hand in protest. "No, don't go after Will. He did the right thing, asking me to do this. Those guys down there in Sickbay are the proof of that. Also, I know Will's been wondering about me and that … little souvenir from Auckland on my neck, and maybe he thought the mission might help get one or two of the balls off my personal chain. Not sure yet, but it may have worked. Give me time to think it through." He put both his hands on the Counselor's arms, looking deep into her eyes.

"I'm good to carry out my job, Deanna, really. And I've long since learned my lesson about admitting when I'm not, including to myself. Ask B'Elanna about her being my alarm clock some day, and tell her I said it was okay to talk about it. That was … an important moment for me. Learning to admit when I needed help. But I don't, not right now. And now I've really got to go. Okay?"

She held his eyes for a while longer and nodded slowly, finding herself unable, despite her empathic senses, to tell whether his equilibrium was genuine or merely a demonstration of the iron self-control that reportedly ran in the Paris family DNA. Deanna Troi sometimes suspected that both Admiral Paris and his son were borderline empaths, untrained in reading others at the emotional level but instinctively able to shield their own feelings from prying eyes. She would have to re-read Tuvok's report about his mind meld with Tom Paris, which she had once come across in his medical file. Either way, the Counselor could find no sound professional reason to hold the First Officer back any longer.

"Fine for now, Tom. The emphasis is on the 'for now'. But you will come back later, when we're back in Federation space and have some time to sit down for real. Deal?"

Tom sighed in mock resignation and rolled his eyes for her benefit, his relief visible to Deanna as a flash of bright colour in the carefully muted, now almost grey palette of his emotions. "Fine, Counselor. Deal. You provide the tea. Anything but mint."

He turned serious again, all business. "But for now, the people you really need to give some attention to are the ones I brought with me. They're probably still in Sickbay; Beverley said they need a serious physical work-up, but that doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't get started on them." Deanna cocked her head with professional interest. This was the part-time medic talking to her now; his insights would be useful.

"I'd keep my calendar clear for a few days; they've been through some serious shit. Nyere and Schmidt have it together more than the others. Karsgaard will probably be looking for his teapot by now; it holds his sanity for him. Bring one to your first session. Not sure whether whatever he was … before Mokan can be coaxed back, but he's harmless, and kind. Toller … let's just say, that guy has serious issues, violent tendencies masking in verbal abuse. Keep security close in case he goes off in your direction."

Summary delivered, he turned on his heel and was out the door before she could respond or hold him back. He left, his eagerness to be gone visible to her as a bright blue swirl of colours in his wake as she followed him to the bridge.

…..

The briefing room was tense, and opinions sharply divided as the senior officers were, in turn, attempting to convince the Captain of the rightness of two widely divergent courses of action. The fact that the Enterprise still remained in orbit above Mokan, and squarely in the middle of the Neutral Zone, only added to the urgency of the discussion.

"Captain, the Romulans' discovery of Commander Paris' true identity is likely to have resulted in a request for assistance. We should expect war birds to arrive in short order; the maximum travel time between here and Romulus at Warp 8 is eighteen hours. It has already been nearly three hours since his return with the officers from the Hiroshima and we cannot assume that they had to come all the way from their home base, nor do we have any way of knowing when reinforcements might have been called for. By my calculation we have a maximum window of fifteen hours, but probably much less."

The impact of Jorak's dispassionate calculation was not lost on any of the other officers around the table. Tom cast a pleading look at Riker. "Of course, he's right, Captain. But as I said, I have a very strong feeling that there is more to Mokan than I was able to figure out in the, what, barely two days I was down there. There's more to the place than even the Hiroshima crew was able to learn, given that they were stuck in the one place."

His mind cast about for examples, desperate to make them see the need – his need – for further investigation. "Take this mythical 'Ulak Six'. Talar mentioned it to you, Captain, almost like it should be a known quantity to you as a Federation representative. But none of the humans who'd been there for ten years knew anything about it, other some vague reference to the name. I asked Nyere directly, and got nothing. "

Tom's voice took on an almost pleading tone that sounded oddly familiar to Harry – the voice he would use with Captain Janeway when she was reluctant to give in to one of his hunches. Harry recalled with a shudder how often those hunches had been proven right. Monea

"I have a feeling, a real gut feeling, that we need to go looking for it, find out what that's all about. Based on what I've already seen, it can't be good. And someone from within the Federation may be involved. Isn't our mission from Admiral Nacheyev to find out whether Federation vessels are active here?"

Tom stood up and started pacing. When he returned to his seat, he put his hands on the table instead of sitting down, looking down at his fellow officers from his considerable height.

"Besides, I doubt that a Romulan war bird would attack us here. I doubt they would risk scuppering all the progress made in relations between the Empire and the Federation since the Scimitar. I mean, come on - the Neutral Zone is all about sweeping stuff under a rug, not about blowing things up, or even just clearing the air. So the Romulans should be more interested in finding a way to make this go away, rather than putting it under the spotlight of a battle."

He let out a deep breath and sat down, looking around expectantly for support. It came from an unexpected quarter.

"Talk about sweeping stuff under the rug," B'Elanna chimed in. "The symbol Tom saw in the prison? We ran it down on our database. It's a corporate logo, belongs to a company apparently heavily invested in military procurement for the Federation. It would be useful to find out how deeply they are involved here."

She paused for effect, looked at Harry, who nodded his confirmation even as he marveled about the sudden apparent change in her attitude. For the last two days her dark eyes had been shooting daggers at the Captain each time he was within visual range; now all of a sudden she seemed to be interested in further investigations? Go figure. But regardless of his surprise at B'Elanna's suddenly siding with Tom – what had he told her in the privacy of their quarters? – Harry felt compelled to do so as well.

"The problem is, we haven't been able to determine ownership of this company. Information on both ownership and production is classified, access purely on a 'need to know' basis given the sensitivity of the kit they produce. And apparently senior staff on the Enterprise, with all our command codes and clearances, don't 'need to know'."

Harry looked around the briefing table to gauge his colleague's response, then continued. "Same thing we got when we tried to find the registered owner for the Ares. Exactly the same stonewall. Someone who likes to operate under a cloak of commercial secrecy, does not like to be found, and has the official connections to make it really, really hard."

Tom gratefully picked up the thread of his wife's and best friend's summaries. "So the big question is - does anyone in the Federation know that a company from which Starfleet apparently buys some of its more sensitive hardware is involved in also transferring technology to the Romulans? And has been active in the development of lethal force fields and the mass-replication of cloaking devices, both of which are illegal acts in Federation space? And doing all that inside the Neutral Zone where they have no business being in the first place?" He paused for effect, as much as for allowing his still-sore diaphragm to control his breathing a bit better.

"Add to that the fact that while the Romulans are finally getting to be people we hang out with occasionally, most of the stuff down there looks to have been brought here at a time when they weren't. I believe there are laws about that sort of thing – 'trading with the enemy', and all that. Right, Jorak?"

He broke off again, this time to cast a challenging look at Jorak, whose jaw was firmly set, and to provide emphasis in what was already a rather lengthier and more impassioned speech than Tom was used to giving. "And quite possibly they're also dealing with the Cardassian Union, given how many of their citizens are down there. Cardassians who were brought to Mokan by a Federation-registered vessel, if you can believe what they told the Hiroshima guys. Call me paranoid, but to me this whole thing smells of corruption or dirty politics at a strategically meaningful level. And the last time we lifted a rug on that sort of thing, with my father's help, some rather interesting dust bunnies turned up."

Ah. Harry cast a knowing look at B'Elanna. Her revived interest in pursuing investigations was beginning to make sense. Tom sure had his buttons, but so did his wife …

Riker shook his head slowly. "I appreciate that there's a lot we don't know. But we got an amazing amount of information as it is, enough that Admiral Janeway can take it to the Romulan High Command and the Cardassian Detapa Council for that diplomatic mission she is going on, and use it as a major attention grabber or even bargaining chip. I'm inclined to think that we should just take what we've got and head home."

It was Deanna Troi's turn to nod her agreement. She looked sternly at Tom, as if determined to keep him away from any more visits to the planet below. "Yes, we do have enough. Just keeping the Hiroshima officers incommunicado for ten years is a violation of every humanitarian principle the Federation stands for, and if the Romulans and the Cardassians are serious about wanting to be friends, in case another Dominion shows up, they will have to come up with some pretty significant explanations. Let them try and provide those to Admiral Janeway, before we risk any more lives. Including yours, Commander. Again."

Harry Kim had followed the ebb and flow of the argument for nearly an hour now; a new cycle was obviously about to start. Someone had to toss something new on the table. Maybe even some bait? The irony that he, too, would now be throwing his lot in with the man he had tried to talk out of going to Mokan a mere two days ago, and possibly causing him to do it again, was not lost on the Lieutenant.

"What about the ship that O'Reilly spotted? The one that without any doubt brought in that new-release holovid that almost got Tom killed." He was unable to suppress a small grin. While he was relieved that his best friend had come back from his most recent stint at playing the hero relatively unharmed, he couldn't help but see the humour in the role Captain Proton had played in that return. Harry tossed a smirk in Tom's direction. "Next time better make sure you bring your sidekick, oh Scourge of Intergalactic Evil. Sir."

He turned professional again. "Surely that ship holds some answers, and if it's Federation, wouldn't we be within our rights to track it, stop it and ask it some cogent questions? And my guess is that it isn't far."

Tom nodded eagerly and took up Harry's thread. "I know we haven't been able to track anything through the cloak, but someone had to drop off that vid and conduct whatever business they do down there. Smart, by the way, getting Dad's goodwill by being nice to the kids – right out of the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition. But Harry's right, maybe the shuttle is still there? I doubt the Romulans would have told them about the prisoners escaping. Not the kind of thing a 'superior species' would share with their business partners."

O'Reilly decided to use this moment to add his two slivers of latinum worth, much to his Captain's surprise. The pilot tended to be quiet at senior staff meetings, unless the topic was astral navigation or helm control. But a certain little aerial skirmish near Andor had proven to Marc's satisfaction that Tom Paris' soul would forever have wings. And so - commanding officer or not - he now regarded his XO as a brother, and brothers stood by one another.

"The Romulans apparently are used to seeing something like the Flyer, and if one has just touched down – what's one more? We've already established that they can't tell the difference through the cloak, and have to rely on visuals. Commander Paris and I could take one of our own Flyers, maybe the one he messed up last week so you can't see the markings, fly a few sweeps, see whether we can find a trace of this other Flyer. Or its mother ship, if there is one. The Flyers have enough range, it could just have come here on its own." He looked down at his hands, a little surprised by the lengthy speech he had just delivered. Tom shot him a grateful look.

Riker clenched his jaw and stroked his beard. "I'm still not comfortable with this. The Romulans already know we have a Flyer, so I doubt they'd buy into any deception. Not anymore. They also know that we're still here, or at least close to Mokan, thanks to the Commander's rather recent beam-out. It's only been, what, three hours? And I said three hours is all we'd have."

The Captain shook his head, looking around at his senior officers, one by one, his eyes finally resting on Tom Paris. The man he had sent on what his imzadi, Chief Medical Officer and Chief Engineer had unanimously characterized as a complete fool's errant, but who had come back – astonishingly – seemingly wanting to go back for more. With support now from some rather unexpected quarters.

"Part of me, quite frankly, wants to be convinced. But this smells of serious political complications, and I'd want some official backing before going on a wild goose chase with potentially wide-ranging consequences. As it stands, we've solved a ten-year-old mystery, successfully rescued four Starfleet officers everybody believed were dead, collected some extremely useful intel, and done all that under circumstances that are just about defensible under the Treaty of Algeron. But if we go on a crusade now and cause a serious incident with the Romulans, at this stage of Admiral Janeway's diplomatic talks … The potential fall-out of upsetting a rather carefully balanced apple cart could be enormous."

He let the thought trail away, knowing that everyone in the room was fully cognizant of the current status of relations with the Romulan Empire. No one would wish to be the plasma spark that would ignite a dormant inversion nebula.

Tom slapped his side with his right hand in quiet frustration, muttering something very private and very unkind about the last time he'd asked for backing from Headquarters on a matter of political delicacy. And froze for a moment, as his hand touched the small bulge in his pocket. B'Elanna's eyebrows shot up; she looked at her mate sharply, questioningly. Now what?

Carefully reaching into his pocket, Tom pulled out the forgotten breakfast carrot, and held it up in his outstretched palm. Something about his XO standing there staring at a small reddish vegetable, gone slightly soft with dehydration, reminded Riker absurdly of Prince Hamlet with poor Yorick's skull, contemplating the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

The look Tom gave his Captain could have been construed as bordering on triumphant insubordination, but Will knew him well enough by now to know that what he would in fact get next would be just a straightforward challenge from a mind (and a mouth) that would never in its owner's lifetime be contained by the bounds of protocol, nor made coward by conscience.

"Alright then, Captain. Talk about upsetting apple carts – I would think that, even if the Federation Council might not want to hear about it, Admiral Janeway at least would be very interested in just who it is that's growing fresh vegetables on a cloaked desert planet in the middle of the Neutral Zone."