A/N: Life is crazy crazy crazy crazy crazy (good) crazy but I want to try to get this done. Big love to anyone still reading and willing to be patient as I get back into it. Bigger love to MissyHissy3 for betaing.

Thirteen

"What are you doing here?" I ask, as B'Elanna storms ahead of us into the shuttle, heading straight for the controls. "How did you find me?"

She emits a harsh bark of laughter. "You think I can't follow a trail? When someone asks me to help them crack an ultra-high security alarm system and then vanishes days later – supposedly without trace – I for one tend to take notice. The better question is," B'Elanna goes on, breaking our ship away from the satellite as she angrily punches in commands, "what is that sorry excuse for humanity doing here?"

Her vitriol is aimed at Chakotay, and I remember that she hasn't seen him for five years, either. The man in question is standing behind me. I turn to look at him and he flashes me a guarded look. It occurs to me that their reunion is likely to be no less fraught than our own was. He left her behind too, after all. He took all of her Maquis friends, but not her. Judging from her reaction, she hadn't known what was coming any more than I had.

"Never mind that now," I say. "B'Elanna, you have to get out of here. This is a quarantine zone. They've probably already detected this ship-"

My former chief engineer swings her chair around. "There's a dampening field around our emissions. They'd have to know exactly what they're looking for. We're a damn sight safer aboard this shuttle than you were on that satellite."

I put a hand up to my forehead, trying to process all of this, once again feeling my control of the situation slipping away. I feel Chakotay press his fingers to the small of my back lightly and then drop them again. When I glance at him this time I can see the hesitation on his face. He's not sure how he's supposed to act around me in front of her. I'm not sure I know, either. Chakotay takes a step away from me and turns his attention to B'Elanna.

"B'Elanna-"

"When I want to talk to you," she says, "you'll know about it. Kathryn, do you trust him? Because otherwise I'll lock him aft while I explain. We don't have much time."

My gaze drifts to Chakotay again. "Yes. Yes, I trust him."

B'Elanna makes a harsh noise in her throat, as if she can't quite believe my answer. "Fine." She sets a heading and the shuttle slides into warp.

I grip the back of her chair, my anxiety threatening to overflow. "Where are we going? B'Elanna-"

"Tom's waiting for us in a cloaked ship just outside the quarantine zone. If you think we're letting you take a trip into that cube alone, you've got another thing coming." She glances up and smiles grimly at the expression she sees on my face. "Yeah, we know about that. You could have told us, you know. What did you think, that we couldn't be trusted?"

I rub a hand over my face. "Of course that's not what I thought. I was trying to protect you. All of you. You have a family now, B'Elanna-"

She stands up to face me, eyes flashing. It's as if the years between when we first met and now never existed. At heart she's still the fiery young woman she was back then, but now her troubles are mostly someone else's. Mostly mine, in fact.

"You're family," she tells me, with a warm kind of fury. "Seven is family."

"You know what I mean. Miral-"

"Is just fine with her grandmother. Meanwhile, her grandfather wants you to know he's behind you every step of the way. Figuratively speaking, of course. Literally, he's back at Starfleet headquarters, making excuses for a missing prototype and an absent without leave flight instructor."

I blink at her. "Owen knows about this?"

"We wouldn't be here without him. Well, Tom wouldn't. I'd have come even if it had meant stealing a damned tug to make it."

"What exactly does he know?" I ask. It's not that I don't trust my old friend, but there was a reason I never tried to talk to him about what had happened to Seven. Section 31 can't have been clueless as to my longstanding friendship with Admiral Paris.

"That Section 31 have Seven and that they also have a Borg cube sequestered out here. He knows you've been trying to find Seven and he knows you're out here now."

I take a deep breath. No specifics, then. Thank whomever for small mercies. "That's it?"

B'Elanna shrugs. "It was enough for him to agree to let us come out here and help you."

"With what?" Chakotay asks. It's the first time he's said anything since B'Elanna shut him down, and she doesn't seem any more inclined to warm to him now. "You said a prototype," he adds, persisting despite the glower darkening her face. "What prototype?"

When she answers, B'Elanna is looking at me. "A new cloak. Almost completely impossible to detect. It's what you want for a mission like this, believe me."

"Then why come with this shuttle?" Chakotay asks. "Why not just bring the ship?"

B'Elanna shoots him a glare that could stoke the fires of Sto'vo'kor. "Because I knew where Kathryn would be, but I didn't know when she'd be here. It took more time to get the ship out of dry dock than we'd anticipated, so I came ahead. I only got word that Tom was at the rendezvous an hour before I detected you aboard the satellite."

A beep sounds from the control panel and B'Elanna turns to look at the read-out. Over her shoulder I can see we're reaching our destination, a red dot approaching a blue dot, the distance between the two reducing fast. I look out of the viewscreen but there's nothing but void and stars ahead. According to the panel I've been watching over B'Elanna's shoulder we should be able to see whatever it is we're heading for – the prototype ship – but there's nothing. Not a ripple, not a sheared reflection. Nothing.

B'Elanna opens a channel with a deft flick of her hand. "Tigris to Dieglian."

"Dieglian here," says a familiar voice. "Good to have you back, Tigris. Transmitting approach vectors…"

"Received," B'Elanna acknowledges, checking another screen before nodding briskly at her husband. "Tigris out."

Then a panel opens in space, as if someone has called for the holodeck exit to show itself. A narrow oblong appears, cutting into the void to show a cargo bay not dissimilar to Voyager's own, if somewhat smaller. B'Elanna checks her heading and manoeuvres us towards it.

Tom Paris never was one for holding back. Therefore it doesn't come as a complete surprise that a few moments after we walk onto the ship he has commandeered, I find myself being pulled into a particularly fierce embrace. Clutched against his chest, I see B'Elanna make for helm and start keying in coordinates. The ship moves imperceptibly – there is no hum of engines as we slide into warp, just the stars spinning past us like fireworks.

"Kathryn," Tom breathes into my hair, as if in immense relief.

I pull away, not really managing to keep the smile off my face despite my preoccupation with the mission that is currently going extremely awry. "Tom," I begin, but he's looking over my head at his other guest: the unexpected one. The one he's nearly come to blows with on more than one occasion.

"Chakotay?"

Chakotay dips his head in a nod of acknowledgement. "Tom."

Tom looks down at me with one eyebrow raised and with an expression that I know of old. It's the sort of look I used to studiously avoid aboard Voyager for fear that it would wheedle out of me secrets best kept deeply hidden.

"Well," Tom says, turning back to Chakotay. "I'm pretty sure there's not enough time in the universe for you to explain what you're doing here – or how you got my wife to hold off killing you."

"You're right," I say. "There is no time. Tom, B'Elanna, listen. I'm grateful that you're here, but you have to let me take the shuttle and go."

"Go?" B'Elanna asks, from the helm. "Go where?"

"You said you knew about the cube. You must know that's where I was headed before you intercepted me."

"We'll take you there," Tom says. "You can explain the plan on the way and we'll work out how we can help."

"No," I say, "you don't understand. I have to do this alone."

"Well, that doesn't sound like a very good plan," says Tom.

"It's not," Chakotay says, softly.

Tom grimaces. "Must be bad if even your first officer can't get behind it."

"He's not my first officer," I tell him, exasperated, "any more than you're my pilot or B'Elanna is my-"

"She's planning a one-way trip," Chakotay adds, talking over me and staring intently at Tom as he speaks. "Kathryn plans to go in and send Seven out. But she doesn't have an exit strategy for herself."

Tom nods slowly as B'Elanna turns away from the ship's controls to stare at me.

"Did I say bad?" Tom asks. "Scratch that. I mean terrible. And also, never going to happen."

Chakotay smiles for the first time since B'Elanna levelled her phaser at him.

[TBC]