21.

"I knew you got hit hard, but...Oh damn, I'm so sorry."

No response met Dejin's sympathy, nor did she expect any, for what she saw in the lounge over subspace. Exhausted, dirty and hard-eyed, the six there were an opposite picture to the last time she'd seen them. All the optimism that followed their first trip to Andal had vanished, leaving behind a crew as battered as the ship had been. They all flinched a little at her apology, too. Likely, they had spent the past several days pushing themselves in part so they could set their friend's death in the back of their mind. Now, sitting at mostly separate tables not eating their rations in the darkened lounge, they had welcomed the seeming numbness in their fatigue, or perhaps resignation.

"Have you contacted his family yet?" Dejin continued.

"I sent a subspace message yesterday," Tom answered. He'd brought an extra glass to the table out of habit. He pushed it around in small circles with his index finger. "He left no directions. Guess he thought it'd be safer here."

Dejin dropped it at that. "Look, I contacted you because the Ligarans are cutting their losses. The investors are pulling out and they're packing up. It's too hot and the timing's all wrong, not to mention they've lost four shipments already. I have your payment for this leg-this shipment gives them enough power to dismantle and get home. But the contract's null and void upon payment."

"And I was so ready to pummel you for it," Maryl smirked. It came and went unfelt.

"Have you anything lined up?" Dejin asked her.

"Actually, I've already contacted Ygrad," Maryl told her. "We'll get back on our regular route starting at Hidirin."

"You've confirmed it?"

"This morning, yes. I just sent back the contract. They were glad to get us back sooner."

The Betazoid blinked her approval. "They should be. Things are already getting rough along the border," she explained. "The Maquis are starting to gain a lot of sympathy-and business."

"Not on this ship," B'Elanna interjected, finally pulling her glare off the table. "Or there'd better not be. We're just trying to do a job and they picked off almost every one of our systems like it was a game, then beamed a bomb on our ship to finish us off." Stopping as soon as she started, she looked away again, obviously having said more than she'd wanted.

Dejin's eyes widened instantly at the admission, however. "A bomb?"

Ridge nodded. "They got it through our shields during some part of the chase and detonated it before they broke off. There were triceron signatures all over deck three starboard."

"Which makes no sense," Maryl joined. "If they're after the cargo, why try to take out our holds? And if they're not after the cargo, then why bother at all?"

"What I want to know," B'Elanna added, "is how they got triceron out here and managed to work with it."

"None of that really matters now," Tom said, "does it?"

The engineer's lips pressed together again as she pushed herself back in her seat.

"What is your ETA, Tom?" Dejin asked, keen to get back to business. "B'Elanna pulled out the rubber bands and got us going again," Tom said. "If nothing else blows, we'll be there in four days." He'd meant the nod to B'Elanna as an apology for his remark, but when he glanced over, her stare was still nailed to some point on the floor. He shrugged to himself. He didn't have time for that.

"You'll be pegged in for a while?"

"At least a week if we get everything we need there. Can you arrange for a gross drydock?" Tom asked.

"As soon as I close this channel," she assured him.

Starships are made to live and die in space.

Many are built within giant pylons in the clean and weightless vacuum in planetary orbit. They are repaired in space, often while still moving, and they are decommissioned-or in unfortunate cases, destroyed-in the same vacuum. Even when a ship regularly flies into planetary stations, there is a great relief to be back out among the stars again after that stop. Atmospheres feel unsafe.

The oncoming entrapment of gross drydock feels far worse. After plunging through the atmospheric window as best it can, the damaged ship must fly-or be flown-into a massive hangar. For safety, security and gravimetric purposes, it is usually located on one of the planet's poles. The weather coming in is often extreme, making the crawl downwards a noisy, if not unsteady, experience. An encompassing shell surrounds the ship as it lowers, ever so gradually, into the docking clamps.

Once there, the hangar forcefield zaps on above, and the lateral clamping assembly is extended around the hull like tendrils, automatically making connections at selected power junctions. The suctioning sounds echo through the access tubes, one after another, until the docking unit finally shunts with the main computer access port. The crew is silent as they wait for that final insult to be done with, tenser still as the metallic hum rises from the guts of the ship to the bridge, then finally locks on topside.

Tom closed his eyes at the final clang, then pushed himself to stand.

He didn't speak as he left the bridge for the deck four hatch. But then, no one else was talking much lately, except when they needed to. This suited him just fine. Besides, they all knew what he had to go do and that he would do it as efficiently as possible. The dock was also expensive.

With a sigh through her teeth, Maryl finished the last of her license transmittals and moved to follow, leaving Savan to coordinate with the engine room. The Vulcan barely glanced as each of them exited. Several minutes later, seeing the repair approvals begin to scroll up on her screen, she opened the comm to engineering.

"I am able to accept the new sequences when you are prepared," she told B'Elanna.

"I'm not nearly ready yet!" the engineer responded, following her outburst with a heavy clash. "Nadrev, get me the spectrometer. Yes, that one! -Savan, I told you it wouldn't happen before fifteen hundred. I'm just opening up the starboard field generator and it looks like someone dragged the whole grid through acidic sludge, so I'm not ready to start anything else."

"I have not forgotten your priorities. I simply wanted you to know you may begin at your convenience. I will continue with the deck three venting as our cargo is unloaded."

A pause, then, "Thanks."

The comm was cut immediately afterwards. Savan did not mourn the silence, considering the opposite. Instead, she began to run through the procedure to transfer their cargo to Dejin, who was ready and waiting to take it. She did not open a channel to the Casiat, however. Indeed, she too was not anxious to speak with people. The quietude had provided her with time to settle her own well-tended Vulcan nerves.

You wanted that speed run, you craved the challenge and got it. Had you been in a better ship, you'd have probably cracked a goddamned joke while they were blowing us to hell

Tom stood with his arms crossed, watching the latest load of bulkhead flats materialize in the back bay. Like ants on chunks of watermelon, three groups of Andalan workers activated the anti-grav dollies and set off for the forward sections.

"Another fifteen bars, right there," he mumbled as they disappeared into the corridor. They were set to repair the demolished bulkheads around holds four, five and six...where the rest of Jerod was found.

He hadn't been there. Savan, as science technician and the ship's medic, had insisted on the duty. Pressing her for details to save his excellent imagination, he soon learned that Jerod had not been killed in the initial starboard hit, but when the bomb detonated inside the forward hold five, near the end of the attack. There were no remains for suitable viewing, she added quietly, but they were indeed contaminated with triceron and should not be kept long on the ship.

He'd heard enough at that.

Maybe I should start a kill list, Tom mused sardonically as the workers disappeared. Eventually, I'm sure I'll lose count, otherwise. But he shook his head in the same sigh. He knew damn well he hadn't killed Jerod. He wondered why he always went there, anyway.

Because you're the captain, he answered himself, grinding his teeth as he spun away for the rear lift. There was no use staying down there and watching the ship's pot fly out of the hatch. Ridge would be calling him soon enough to help him with the isolinear bundle replacements. His chair topside was probably full of PADDs, too. Maryl had been her usual efficient self about getting their paperwork cycled as quickly as they could requisition supplies.

The response from the Jerod family was properly discomforting. Text only and in carefully controlled sentences, they thanked Captain Paris for his efforts and his friendship with their son, who had spoken often and well of him. They were sorry, too. They had no spiritual requirements for burial, so the Guerdon's crew could do as they saw fit with Jerod's remains. They added that the remaining family, in light of recent events, had finally decided to vacate Umoth and relocate to Varessi, an inner Federation colony where some cousins had moved the year before.

So it took him getting killed by the very people you swore were protecting you to do what he'd been asking you to do all along. He deleted the message with two clicks and told Savan to prepare a capsule.

Tom polished off what was left in his flask by the time he climbed into the middle of deflector control. The assembly sat in pieces around the deck, waiting on replacement parts being sent from Megra. Ridge must have been up all night, cleaning the components and reorganizing the pieces. The corrosion and blast soot was gone, leaving the duranium slightly blackened but otherwise ready. Just the day before, Tom had needed to sign off on a biohazard transport from the same section.

Ridge had been the only one to say anything at the funeral. No one else was up to so much. They weren't a Starfleet ship-they weren't even a Federation tradeship-so there wasn't really a set procedure in place. They had to get rid of the remains, but felt they should at least show a little respect for their friend. They were hardly poetic, though, and they showed even less emotion. Not that anyone expected much. They were, after all, just a freighter crew who knew they should say something, but couldn't collect words worth the air they used. They all seemed to figure their own thoughts were good enough. So instead, they stood around the small capsule in a long, awkward silence before Ridge muttered to himself a little, then spoke.

"We'll miss you, buddy," he managed, shrugging as he tried for more. "I'll miss you. You're...you were a great guy and, well, you're gone too soon. Sorry."

He put his arm around his wife when her hand rubbed his back.

Collecting a breath, Tom peered around for anyone else's offering and, not seeing one, walked over to the release button. Pressing it, the outloader creaked and cranked its small burden into place, aligned, then spit the capsule through the forcefield and into empty space.

He left the bay the moment the porthole slid shut.

A week later, Tom strode down the deck one corridor to the bridge. It was empty, but he knew where everyone was. Pushing the PADDs on his chair off to the console table, he sat and released a breath through his nostrils. Then he stopped.

What the hell am I doing? Why am I bothering to make any of this work?

That time, he had no answer for himself.

He had a pile of work to get done before heading off to help with repairs, he hadn't eaten all day and his to-do list wasn't getting shorter any time soon.

Why do I think anything's going to change?

He sat and stared at the black viewscreen for nearly a minute before shaking himself out of his pause. Even if he had a single answer for the uselessness his life had become, it wouldn't make any difference if he couldn't find someone stupid enough to replace him. On that route as it'd become in the past months, even fools were in short supply. And now a registered Maquis target, Tom knew better than to torture himself with impossibilities...though he knew he would, anyway.

Reaching over, he picked up the PADD nearest to him and settled himself into his work. Immediately, he snorted. He'd started on a positive note: A thirty strip credit for an overcharge on isolinear chips was the first thing for him to sign off on.

His lips turned down when he pressed his thumb to the ID field. It could only go downhill from there. Not a minute later, his assurance was confirmed.

"I have the list for sign off."

Tom glanced back and found his engineer in the jamb of the entryway, her angular features hard in the light above her, her mouth and dark eyes shadowed. "I can take them now." He held out his hand when she came down. "They start on the hull plating?"

"Just a few minutes ago," she confirmed.

"Thought that's what I heard." Wrapping his fingers around the PADD when it met his hand, he quietly pulled it in, clicked it on and let his eyes fall over the list. He could feel the engineer's eyes drilling into him as he clicked for detail on one, checked off another. Her arms crossed and she began to breathe slowly through her nostrils, an obvious attempt at patience.

Tom didn't care. The list was everything he dreaded-and more they couldn't afford-so he took his time picking through it. It made Maryl's initial list look cheerful. Starfleet had helped where they could, of course, but they couldn't replicate but the basic parts or refit what they had in stock to fit the Guerdon's various specifications. They did enough to help B'Elanna get them moving to Andal. It was still a lot, considering.

Looking at the primary items again, he shuffled them to the top and marked off one. "We can't afford the initiators this time out," he told her. "They'll have to wait."

"They can't wait," B'Elanna responded. "They're fried."

"They got us here," Tom noted. "What happened between drydock and now?"

"We were literally holding them together with glue. Once we shut down the engines, they cracked through the plating."

"The Draden's engineer didn't offer to repair them?"

"It's not something they could replicate-and even if they could, the shafts didn't crack until after the Draden was gone."

"You'll have to paste them together again. When we get some funds in the ship's pot again, we'll be able to deal for them."

Blowing a breath, B'Elanna took a step closer. "You're not hearing me. The initiators are dead. We need new ones."

Tom looked at the PADD again. "I've just dumped the entire pot into our hull, deflector and starboard nacelle. This list takes us over my earnings. The Andalans don't work with credit. We're flying to Hidirin on an empty purse. What else can we give up on this list?"

"This isn't the wish list," she replied. "We need everything here if we're getting to Hidirin at all."

He shook his head, still not looking at her. In the corner of his eye, her frown and forward stance said enough. He didn't feel like dealing with that. "Really, B'Elanna, you'll have to patch them for now. It doesn't have to be pretty. Just enough to get us going."

"It can't be done."

"You did it before."

"We were lucky," she insisted. "The stresses on the engines nearly blew out the whole warp assembly as it is."

"Amongst a few other blows." He scrolled down the list again. "If you think we need them that much-"

"I don't 'think'-I know they're not coming back online."

"And I know we can't afford a new set until we have some fresh funds in the pot. Make your own deal for them and we'll work out the difference later."

"I can't throw this together like a flight plan," she instantly snapped back. "We're not going anywhere without a full replacement."

Finally, she gained his full attention. He peered up at her askance. "Excuse me?"

"I said we can't go any-"

"Flight plan?"

She tilted her head. She had nothing to retract. "Those initiators wouldn't have burned out without the stress you put on them pulling those Academy tricks."

His eyes narrowed. "As I recall, I was trying to get a fully armed Maquis ship off our backs."

"And you did a great job," she returned flatly.

"If you have a problem with how I fly this ship," he retorted, "I'll be happy to let you have the chair. I'll call the Maquis and you can shake them next time."

"I don't want your seat!"

"Then what do you want?"

"This list fulfilled."

"I can't afford it right now. Patch the initiators until we get to Minjau."

"I told you, I can't!"

"Be creative."

B'Elanna snorted. "I think we've had enough creativity on this ship."

"On that, I'd have to agree," Tom rejoined. "What the hell was he doing there when he was supposed to be back with Ridge working in deflector control?"

"I comm'd him three times!"

"And still couldn't keep your team in check! He'd been here long before you. It's not like he didn't know his way around."

"I knew what I was doing-and so did he! He was on the way back but obviously stopped to resecure the last forward holds. It's not my fault he didn't listen!"

"And it's not my fault the Maquis were somehow able to beam a bomb through our shields and blow our hull to hell both ways. But I'm starting to regret I got us out of there alive."

"Not all of us."

Tom drew a breath, leaving a hard silence on the bridge for several seconds as they held each other's glare. The hammering starboard resumed, its tinny echo bouncing around them like a gnat. He held out the PADD, waiting patiently for her to take it and back off a step. Finally, she did.

"Let's get something straight," he said, forcing a measure of calm into his tone. "I'm not your emotional trash can. You need to get it out? Go stationside and get laid or beat someone up-or whatever the hell you do to cool off. Don't ever bring it up here again. You buy the initiators with your own share and I'll pay you back. You have Savan write that up, I'll sign it. Outside of that, do your job. Get off what's left of my bridge and crawl back into your hole so I can start counting the days until your contract's up."

B'Elanna held his glare without blinking for several more seconds before finally pivoting on a heel and striding out to the corridor. Turning at the arch, she shouldered past Maryl with a growl. Soon after, a smack against a bulkhead echoed on the bleeping bridge. Tom's mouth tightened in his steady frown.

"What was that all about?" Maryl asked as she moved to her console.

"The reincarnation of Livich," Tom muttered and pushed himself to stand. "Give me a yell when Kokrit bothers to patch in. I need a break."

"Go," said the Bajoran immediately, not wanting a piece of it. She tapped in a message to her husband to make sure he didn't take one, either.

Savan reached up into the cabinet and extracted one vial from a set she'd begun to store within easy reach. Loading it calmly into the hypospray, she turned, checked that the level was set to full, then set the nozzle against the young captain's neck. Pressing the release, she patiently waited for the drugs to take effect. Eventually, it did: He breathed then gagged a little on his bile. Turning his head to the side, he unconsciously spit the offending mucus onto his shoulder and reached up groggily to wipe his mouth.

From this, Savan tactfully looked away and waited until Tom had rolled completely over to face her again. His appearance was no more pleasing than two hours ago, however. His bloodshot eyes were shadowed heavily against his pale skin; his mouth was slightly flaccid. He was rumpled from being out binging in clothes he'd worn since the day before. As for his particular odor, Savan had already rubbed a numbing agent in her nose after Ridge had transported him to her lab.

She opened her tricorder to confirm his recovery. She frowned at what she saw and diverted her stare to meet his. "I think it is time for me to lecture you, Tom," she started.

He groaned as he pushed himself to sit. "Look, I appreciate what you do, but-"

"You will appreciate far less when you are permanently debilitated by your addiction."

"Can't I have my vice and eat it, too?" he complained, trying to divert her even while he knew its futility.

"You have a number of vices less detrimental to your health." She set down the tricorder. "Your liver is not responding to my treatments as readily as in the past, and your episodes are increasing in frequency."

He watched her steady gaze for a moment longer, then nodded. "I'll go to the clinic on Minjau," he promised as he slid off the bed.

"You require a specialist in Human medicine."

"I'll run it by them. -Where's my coat?"

"On the table," she replied, pointing.

"Okay. Thanks." Collecting his coat over an arm and stuffing his hands into his trouser pockets, he started out.

"We will require a final sign-off before they begin the final plating installation," Savan said, stopping him. "Where may I find you, Tom?"

"The comm's still down?"

"Yes," Savan answered, her eyes following him as she added, "B'Elanna will have that cluster up again when she completes the initiator installation. This will not be until tomorrow."

Tom nodded, frowning at the reminder. He knew he'd come down on his engineer like a load of bricks. His engineer definitely knew how to cut, but pissed off was he was, he knew she'd been venting, needed to as much as he had. Still, she did exactly as he'd suggested: She bought the initiators herself, had Savan write up a debit to the ship's share, and he hadn't seen her since. It should have been more comforting than it was.

"Yeah, okay. Deck two aft."

Savan let him go that time.

On either side of the Guerdon sat a pill-shaped nacelle, which, through the power created in the warp coils, generate the fields necessary to go to warp. Within those coils, twelve plasma injectors sat at the end of the power transfer conduits, which extended from the plasma flow initiators. These were located at the hub between the conduits and the warp drive. The configuration was outdated, but the process was the same: The initiators got the plasma from the drive to the conduits. They were loud and clumsy, but when they were working, they did what that freighter needed: Generated bursts of power at the right levels to get the ship going.

When they weren't working, nothing moved.

B'Elanna personally whacked the lid off the first ringset. The initiators sat clean and shining black in the casing, ready for installation. The engineer only felt angrier to see them. For all her insult, she went out and bought the sets with, indeed, her own share from the Ligaran deal-and without Maryl's assistance. Rather, B'Elanna didn't want to deal with anybody at that point. She paid the price for it, too. Learning that she needed them, the supplier charged her exactly what he'd initially quoted. Three quarters of her earnings disappeared in a case with the supplier attached not an hour later.

Damn right, I'll get paid back, she growled to herself as she grabbed her tools and slipped through an access hatch to the ladder that ended on the warp core catwalk above deck three. The casing between the engine and the primary EPS had been disassembled the night before, thanks to Ridge. The initiators themselves were not too bulky, so she told him to keep going on with the deflector, then get some rest. She could handle that unit alone.

She distinctly remembered the look of concern he gave her before nodding and leaving. He wanted to say something, but didn't...like everyone else. No one was touching the issue.

The worst of it is knowing everything I installed to prepare for this deal got smashed, she finally admitted. She could handle stress without her pulse speeding a few beats, but discouragement blackened her mood without fail.

Activating her demagnitizer, B'Elanna started taking down the outer control rods they had drop-welded to keep together on their trip to Andal. They and the plates they were connected to came easily apart, clanging on the grate beside her boots. She sighed at what laid behind, rings half-rotted away and dripping with plasma residue. Pulling on a pair of protective gloves, she peered in to see if the notch housings were still in tact. They weren't. Instead, a series of laser scars marked where the rings had been re-ground and reset five times at least. Jerod's "queen of patch and go," echoed in her memory.

It'd been a full breakdown waiting to happen. Moreover, she'd had that assembly on her replacement list before the Ligaran deal even came up. Their ultimate failure wasn't Tom's fault. He did stress out the power distributors and nearly cracked their impulse driver coils with the jump-and-go and ducking tricks, but in the end, nothing he did caused any real problems.

She knew that, too, and attacked him, anyway. For his part, he'd seen through her all too readily: She'd used him as an outlet and she got just what she wanted when he railed back at her with equal force. Now he wanted her gone.

You just can't have a good thing and keep it that way, can you?

She still couldn't bring herself to apologize, however. The captain simply hadn't listened to her-refused to hear what she was saying. He just stared at the PADD like some officiating asshole shrugging her off because he could... But then, he'd given her the opportunity to take over the engine room in her own way and made time for her when she requested it; he'd made sure she had what she needed to improve his ship when he could get it. She should have backed off. She shouldn't have blamed him. She shouldn't have secured an escape route when she didn't want one.

Not that that matters now, she snorted bitterly.

Just as she finished shaking her head at herself, the usual long tunic suit of the science technician appeared in her peripheral vision, approaching from the other catwalk access ladder. B'Elanna groaned to herself. As if her mood wasn't bad enough, she wasn't at all up for a visit. If she sent any such signals out, however, Savan did not pick them up. Instead, she drew near and stood next to the engineer, who studiously made herself careful in extracting the next chunk of wasted duranium. The Vulcan waited without so much as a breath. The woman knew her target was aware of her presence.

Finally, B'Elanna pulled her head out of the initiator core and looked up. "Yes?"

Savan wasted no time. "You have been favoring your left leg again."

"I banged it a couple times," she explained and shook her head. "It's nothing serious. Just a bruise."

"May I treat it while I have the time? I am en route to the bio-holds and have the equipment I need. This will not take long."

"You don't have to bother."

Savan kneeled beside her, then. "Please let me treat your injury, B'Elanna, before it is exacerbated. Your activity will not improve it."

Considering the other woman's steady gaze again, B'Elanna finally turned and offered her leg. Dipping her head a little, she offered a shrug of apology and said, "Thanks."

Savan set herself to work. A minute passed as she examined the renewed injury and activated the regenerator to heal it. With great care, she waved the wand over the engineer's knee, letting the beams' hum fill the area for a full minute before she spoke again. "I did not recommend you to be hired," she stated quietly, almost gently.

B'Elanna grinned despite herself, remembering. "I didn't think you had."

Another minute passed as the hums echoed around them and over her leg again.

"It is at times good to be wrong," Savan finally finished, taking up the tricorder again to see the result. She nodded at it. Then, the women's eyes met, one patiently searching, the other coming to understand. Satisfied with what she saw, the Vulcan blinked. "I am done."

The engineer got up and shook out the remaining sensation from the regeneration beam. "It feels better," she told her.

Savan bowed her head. "Good."

With that, she left.

She stretched her arms wide as she finally left her main station and started forward towards the crew quarters. She had another hour before Ridge would hunt her down for the final waste dump sign off. She could use a shower-and now that the ODN was doing what it was supposed to again, she could do so without worrying about a malfunction elsewhere-for the most part, anyway. She was more than due for a break, in any case.

A ping aft made her turn before she got to the forward entry, however. Though it was late and she was looking forward to getting clean, she knew better than to ignore any noise on the Guerdon, especially lately.

She and Nadrev had finally patched the comm together again-a little later than she had projected, but no one could have predicted the internal sensors would go down, either. Still, it was fixed, and the initiators were tucked neatly into their new housings and responding to her diagnostics just as she would like. The warp drive was unsteady, but operating well enough to check out for their run. The shields would handle the usual stresses. She would have time between there and Hidirin to keep working on those.

Continuing to follow the irregular pings and scrapes down the starboard corridor, then coming around to the supply section, she finally recognized the sounds: Tools on the deck. Quietly turning into the aft corridor, she continued through to the lit scrap room and stopped at the entry.

He was sitting at the other end, with his back to the entrance and a half-emptied flask at his knee. An empty bottle had already rolled away to the nearby wall. Bending over a control grid, he inserted new isolinear strands, tapped the unit to life, then shut it down and set it aside. Then he picked up another one. One by one, set by set, he rewired the small grids, tested them and stacked them up on his other side. She could barely see him breathing.

Before him sat the hull of a small, half-charred shuttle. The room was full of neatly organized pieces. She could tell in but a glance that the disassembly had been Jerod's work.

She'd almost forgotten about Jerod's junk pile.

The pings and beeps and hisses of connections finding homes echoed softly in her ears. He worked with an easy hand, but his process was mechanical.

Staring at the scene for a few minutes as he finished the stack, she turned and walked away.