51.
The space outside the Hanolin system was what navigators liked to call "crowded." Outside of the large, rambling system, the Gitta Nebula, a greenish gas cloud, sat right on the Federation border. A rippling stream of asteroids surrounded it, trickling out a series of random tachyon eddies that regularly sucked in unsuspecting prey. Not quite the best place to hold a meeting, Tom had smirked to himself when he plotted it out, but given most ships avoided the area when possible, Tom and Dejin agreed upon further conversation they'd feel safer there. Both starting their careers as pilots, the conditions certainly didn't bother them as much as they knew they should.
"Switching to manual." He tapped off the automated guidance control and maneuvered his ship over and around the rocks. It was almost too bad he didn't have the little cruiser he'd first visited that area in, back during his assignment to the Copernicus, when he'd been loaned out to run a surveillance mission. He'd had a lot of fun there...
"Will you need me to alert you to tachyon eddies, Tom?" Savan asked.
He frowned. Or maybe it's better I don't have that kind of maneuverability now. "Yeah."
His eyes held to his board as he steered his chunky, old ship through another series of rocks. His mouth remained turned down, and he didn't think to straighten it. He hadn't slept well since they left Ulinas. Without her deserving it, he blamed B'Elanna for making him like that and running away. But at least they'd have the last parts they needed and enough time to get them in before hitting Velir. All the general maintenance stuff could wait until they got a new engineer.
"God damnit," he mumbled, thinking about having to interview for a new person. How the hell am I going to find anyone I'll be satisfied with? he asked himself, but knew he would. B'Elanna would disembark and he would take the best person he could find, and if that one didn't work out, then they wouldn't get a new contract in six months. It was business, it was a ship, and he needed to get past that-and her.
His father would be insanely proud to hear him admit that one at last...
"Tom!"
Tom jerked the ship up and out of the way as an eddy came up fast on them. Diving again between a couple of small asteroids, he shot a look back. "I thought you were warning me!" he snapped at Savan.
She blinked slowly. "I did."
"I didn't hear it."
"You are obviously distracted," she replied, withholding what he knew she would suggest next were she any more apt to tell him what to do.
He shook his head. "Didn't sleep last night. I'm wide awake now, though."
"Do I need to see you?" Savan asked.
"No," he frowned. "I'm fine."
With that, Tom pulled the Guerdon around and into the preplanned coordinates, ducking back a little to make room for the Casiat.
Waiting, he kicked the case of latinum softly with his foot. It was half of the pot with a portion of his reserve, in case Dejin was in a very bad mood. He was willing to give her whatever she needed for the parts, though. They had to have their sensors in good order, and certainly none of it would matter at all if the starboard power transfer conduit came crashing down on their toes, a sort of feat he'd seen enough of already.
And he wanted to tell his old friend that she'd saved his skin again. Maybe that would make her suffering a little less acute. Not much less, he was certain. He knew where she was...
He also wondered why, if she was working with the Maquis, she hadn't scored the same deal with protection. Maybe the Maquis had sucked her in another way, but it didn't make sense that her was still that beat up when she was running their supplies. -Or at least he assumed that was what she'd been doing, as he and others in their class had.
He'd get his information soon enough, he knew, as the battle-streaked Casiat slid into their meeting place and settled itself nicely next to the Guerdon.
"Is she knocking yet?" Tom asked.
"Opening visual," Savan reported.
Dejin's face appeared before them a moment later, though she wasn't looking at the screen. "Keep an eye on them, then," she ordered someone behind her, then turned forward. Looking at Tom, she nodded quickly. "Good. You're up."
"Good to see you again," Tom said, eyeing every evidence fight on her bridge. There were many-and even some new ones. "Can we meet, or do we-"
"Sorry, Tom," Dejin cut in, glancing back at her ops man, "but we don't have time for that. We think a Maquis ship tracked us coming in here, so we don't have much time. Gillens didn't catch it until we pulled up. He's watching."
"Okay." He tapped the latinum case into a place where she could see it. "I still want to have a word with you if we can."
"Can we deal first?"
"Sure. It'll be good to get that out of the way."
"I have the brackets and the sensor half pallet," she told him, "plus all the installation gear and the iso nodes you asked for on the side. I think four bars, fifteen strips for the lot will do it."
Tom shrugged. "Sold."
"What?" Maryl piped in from behind him.
"You know where I'm getting the difference," Tom shot back. "Stay the hell out of it!"
His retort took even Dejin aback. "I'm willing to deal down a little," she assured him.
"We don't have time to barter, I'm covering the difference and I want you to have it," was Tom's reply. Leaning down to the box, he took out the appropriate amount and pushed the box further out for her. "Transport the parts to the deck two workroom?"
"Doing it now," Dejin responded. As the box disappeared and Savan confirmed the transport below deck, Dejin turned her gaze at her old friend askance. "I've meant to tell you, Tom, that your looks have suffered some great improvement, but your mood's not tagging along. What's up with you?"
"Lots," he told her sourly, then added, "But there's one thing in particular, you should know about."
She leaned back in her seat. "Which is?"
Seeing her relax a little made him do the same. Leaning back, too, he drew a deep breath and started in the middle of everything he knew she'd find out eventually. He wished he could talk to her about everything that was going on. He needed her particular wisdom just then. "A couple months ago, I was contracted to run a setup for-"
"Maquis ship on approach!" came Gillens' voice from behind Dejin. "They're one parsec off the port!"
Dejin ran to his post to see it. "Get the hell out of here!" she barked at Tom as she ran to her navigation control. "Deal's done! They'll tag us both if we're caught."
"I was about to tell you how we'd been granted some protection," Tom said, starting the impulse drive and glancing back. "Savan, tell B'Elanna." "I suspected they'd gotten to you, too," Dejin said as she kicked on her systems, "but there's no such thing as protection anymore. We had it, too, until a few weeks ago. New rules for everyone-everyone but them. The sects are severed and really don't care about blasting another sect's pigeon straight into hell as long as our cargoes go undamaged."
Tom needed no more warning than that. "Then you'd better beat me out of here, then way you look. -Savan, raise shields!" Whipping them up and out of their hole, he swore to himself that he wasn't surprised and damn the Maquis anyway for being as true to their word as any other power playing dice on the border. "We're off. Good luck, Dejin!"
"And you!" she called and cut the comm.
With that, she spun and banked out into the rocks as well, throwing back a series of long phaser shots directly into the face of the Maquis ship.
Tom glared at that-the blatantly illegal weaponry at work, obviously recent upgrades, because he knew Savan would've known about them before. Biting back his greed for just half that much firepower, Tom popped the Guerdon into full impulse and tapped his fingers on the board. The warp drive was still powering up. They still needed that PTC repair before warp could activate more immediately.
"Come on," he breathed, zigzagging them through a series of asteroid trails, hoping to throw them off a little. It didn't seem to be working. The Maquis had already broken off from the Casiat and was lining up a shot. "Come on, I can't afford a firefight right now."
Suddenly, a line a phaser fire came their way, knocking out their aft deflector and the kicking the crew forward in the bargain.
"Guess I'll just have to budget that in, then," Tom grumbled, then turned them back and through the asteroids again.
"You're not going to play tag in here, are you?" Maryl demanded.
"No, I'll be taking us out into open space, instead," Tom replied, "where they'll have a nice clean shot. Saves time, right?"
"They are firing," Savan reported.
Tom braced his feet below his station and tried to move them out of the way. The blast knocked them all to the left.
"We have hull damage on deck three!" B'Elanna reported shortly, obviously in a full run across the deck. "We're sealing it! -And secondary sensors are offline!"
"Hang on!" Tom told her. "I'm working on losing them. Where's warp drive?"
A pause, then, "Forty more seconds!"
"Forty? Damnit!" Dropping to half-impulse, Tom drove the Guerdon out of the way of a long row of asteroids in full spin, then looked ahead a little. The Gitta Nebula was right there, and one of its many arms dipped into the steam of rocks. Running a quick scan, Tom sped to full impulse again and took off towards it. "B'Elanna! Can you light up a tachyon dump?"
"I'm a little busy for... Yes! Yes, we can! But you'd better be ready to jump out of the way!"
"I'll be ready in twenty-eight more seconds. Get it ready!"
"The Maquis are likely aware of this tactic," Savan warned him.
"And they're not aware of beating the snot out of a tradeship, anyway?" he returned, then grabbed his console to keep from smacking it when a blast punched the whole ship forward. "B'Elanna, add some waste to the mix!"
"Done! -They're going for the deflector! I'm compensating, more power to the shields-and the dump's ready! But you'd better jump before-"
"Ten seconds!" Tom yelled, driving them directly into the arm. Another hit and Tom heard a blast and sizzle behind him. He didn't look. Warp drive was coming online and B'Elanna was ready to go. The streams of gas surrounded them and Tom circled underneath it then came back over, sliding up the gaseous arm for another couple of seconds. The sleek little Maquis ship was just touching the end of it...
"B'Elanna, light it up!"
A second later, a flood of tachyons mixed with tricarbonate gas spit out of the belly of the Guerdon, propelling a bright green firestorm down the arm of the nebula.
"Warp drive is online!"
Tom punched in their previous trajectory and slapped the control. The Guerdon lurched around and, with a slight jerk, pounced off into warp.
Savan eyed her board, ignoring the curiosity around her. Finally, she blinked at her station's response. "The Maquis ship does not appear to be following-presently."
Tom blew a breath and fell back into his seat. "Now let's hope they don't find Dejin," he said, looking over at his armrest monitor. "So, let's see how much they did this-"
The ship fell out of warp.
"-Time." Tom sighed. "Okay then, let's hope they don't look this way." Looking at a thoroughly disgusted Maryl, he added, "And maybe the base on Hanolin might throw a repair vessel at us?"
She instantly went to work on the crackling panel before her. "How about hoping this message gets through a fried sensor board?"
"That too."
"We're going to need some more hands down here when you're able," B'Elanna told them, then exhaled. "-Ridge, get the other end of that. -That deathtrap of a coolant assembly collapsed onto the deck and I'll need everyone here to help me get it resecured. Warp went back offline as a safety measure."
Tom nodded. "I was about to ask."
"It was waiting to happen!" she responded. "There's no way I could have stayed ahead of that! Now that'll probably need a full rebuild, too."
"Just make me a shopping list, okay?" Tom told her, struggling to get the long-range sensors to send him back something besides spaghetti.
"That'll take all day at this rate," she snapped.
"I've a got a few problems of my own up here, B'Elanna, in addition to the many of yours. We all knew things were getting worse, but I'd hoped we'd be able to manage at least one run without getting a few holes blasted in our side by our old buddies."
"Yeah, some protection we gained by selling out to those bastards."
"We were protected from Chakotay's people blowing our asses to kingdom come," Tom shot back. "But he's not the only clown in the circus out here, and you're a fool to think otherwise, particularly after being where we've been. And by the way, while I think venting is good and you've earned it to a degree, I promise you, B'Elanna, I don't have the time right now to go over the long list of who's to blame for any of this, so get off my back. Get to what you can and we'll be down as soon as we're able. Let's fix what we can before someone else decides they want a chunk of us."
He heard her take a breath to respond. With a wave of his hand, he slapped off the comm.
How many times she'd come into the lounge and seen him like that, she couldn't count by then. Hunched over in that worn brown coat, hair but an afterthought with a brush of his fingers, his long, steady hands surrounding a mug of coffee, his eyes on the viewport, lost somewhere in another galaxy, it seemed-and yet, he was totally there every time he turned and looked back at her.
That time, his presence reflected some measure of regret.
Hers did too, though she blinked it away to go to the replicator.
"Ridge and Savan are finishing up," she quietly informed him as she tapped in her choice, a sandwich and a coffee. It would get her through the night. "It's going well."
Tom nodded, picked up his mug. "Need me again tonight?"
"If you could check in with Nadrev in the deflector control room and run the backup diagnostic, that'd save me some time."
"I'll go when I'm done here. How the rest of it looking?
"Warp drive is stable and the PTC output is back into the ninetieth percentile, which is fine." She pulled out her tray, then programmed a side of coleslaw. To her surprise, she'd never tasted that old fashioned salad until Tom and Ridge helped program the new replicator, dreaming aloud to each other about barbecue picnics. Though she shook her head at their distractions, the new dish was an instant favorite with her...though she tried not to let on until Ridge noticed its frequency on her plate. "But I'm going to be on repair duty at least another three days, and then I'll install the sensor pallet. We'll fix the hull at Irtrin if we can get the parts."
"I'll see that we have them," he told her.
Closing her eyes to the cheery LEDs for a moment, B'Elanna released a sigh and went to take the seat across from the captain. Catching his full attention, she drew another breath and said, "Look, I apologize. For what happened earlier? I was wrong to go off on you like that, especially over an open comm."
His lips ghosted upwards. "Don't worry about it," he quietly replied. "I know it's hard to stay cool when the room's falling down around you."
"I should know better, though. I just...it just comes out, and I don't like it-and it's still wrong of me. I know you're not to blame for anything going on here. You've done all you could to keep us going."
He accepted that with a small but grateful nod. "Thanks. I'm sorry for blasting back. I know you know what's going on."
"So," she continued, trying to get away from her apology, now that she'd made it, "it's getting worse, now."
"Yeah, and it'll get worse still when Starfleet or Cardassia finally makes a move, or if someone else sticks their foot in the puddle." He made a wave with a gesture of his hand. "Everything overflows."
"Who else could do that?"
"The usual: Whoever might be interested in the resources at play in the region-or the power. There's so much that can happen. I remember stories coming back about the Border Wars, when I was a kid. It happened in this same region; my dad saw the hard side of that fight here, too. When he got back, I remember eavesdropping on the crew when they talked about the bloodshed and the firefights, the tortures...my father included." He nodded at her, then went on, "Then the Talarians got involved and everything they'd been working on blew up in their hands."
"Leave it to the Talarians to kick a bomb," B'Elanna frowned. She'd had her own run-ins with a few members of that race at Ibaten. She was forced to bring Ridge in as an oversized fly swatter.
"Their double-teaming was part of the reason it was so hard for the Federation to manage a truce." Tom snorted. "Naturally, the Cardassians went right out and broke the agreements, but now the Maquis are in it, instead." He shrugged, not trying to lighten what he knew was true. "It'll be better that you got out now. -Really, B'Elanna, I don't know what's going to happen here, but it's going to be bad. It'll be a smart move for more than your qualifications."
For all the returned camaraderie she'd felt just then-a really good feeling, to talk to him as they had come to-she stared at him now, insulted that he just had to go back to pressing her. He just couldn't drop it and let her think for herself. "You want me to go that badly, Tom, just go ahead and dissolve the contract, get it over with. I'll save you the trouble of even going to Velir. I'll hop a trip over with an Irtrin transport."
"Our final Hidirin drop off is scheduled at Velir, B'Elanna," he quietly reminded her, then sighed. "I'm sorry, but this is getting to me in so many ways, I don't know what to think sometimes. One thing's sticking out, though."
"What's that?"
"When I first signed you up, it was with the idea that we could help each other and fix up this ship somehow, as the latinum could be collected." He laughed derisively. "Boy, was I delusional. We have everything opposite to that now, and really, B'Elanna, you shouldn't be hung up in ship's business, either. Everyone else can deal with being stuck in neutral. Hell, they pretty much design to be, so I've never had to think about them being there."
B'Elanna was surprised. "I don't think Maryl or Ridge or the others have futures any less worth seeing to."
Tom snorted and leaned back in his seat. "Are you kidding? Look at them, B'Elanna."
"I do every day. So?"
"Ridge is a fine technician," he returned, "but he learned everything on the road and never got around to using that brain of his for more than basic engineering. Maryl paid to get her entire family to move to Bajor and makes sure they live comfortably, but she never visits, never contacts them, even though she had no problem with them and we're regularly at DS-Nine. She's so stuck in this life that she's afraid to look outside of it. Or, maybe I just don't have their brand of faith. They have no dreams, no plans, and they're going nowhere. Nadrev's just trying to get by, too. He'll be a grade-two tech for life. Maybe he can live with it, but even he knows he's smart enough for better. Savan-hell, she went through all the rigors of a Vulcan education, along with a great run at Starfleet Academy, but never graduated into anything. She reports to me then goes to pick apart flowers every day, five years now on this ship. She was on her former ship ten years, doing about the same thing.
"You're all great friends that I couldn't do without, and I'm not saying we all have to have ambitions, but no one here's living up to themselves-that goddamned potential-remember us talking about that? I sometimes think it's simply because they never had the confidence or drive to take it a step further. I thought I did, but I burned myself badly enough to have to take what I can get and watch the people around me stand still when they do have a choice."
Staring deeply into his engineer's dark eyes, so full of herself, so alive with emotion and wit, curiosity and regard, he concluded more softly, "Yeah, I think you're wasting your time here being stuck on 'repair duty.' I don't want to see you walk away-I don't want to lose you-but you're worth a hell of a lot more than what I can offer you here. Really, you deserve so much more, B'Elanna. I wouldn't care about you at all if I tried to dissuade you from getting everything you could."
B'Elanna continued to stare into his unbroken gaze for several seconds after he finished. She hardly knew what to do but let his words sink in. There was so much there, indeed, she needed that minute.
At last, Tom stood, making the break for them. "I'll go see how Nadrev's doing." With that, he got his mug, walked across the room and set it in the reclamator.
B'Elanna slumped a little when he was gone, the weight of his presence and his words removed with him. But the content remained.
She would never look at the crew quite the same way again.
He cared about her. She knew it before, but she wondered how much. She was starting to wonder...
She needed to go. It was time to go.
She did not move, however. All but forgetting her untouched sandwich, she slid her hands around her still warm mug and let her gaze fall out onto the stars, racing by.
Tom's eyes drifted up and around winding the inner coil that was the Guerdon's deflector housing. Scars from the past, months old and brand new, patches and parts from over four sectors worth of depots, marked the assembly like a series of bandages from different hospitals. Old, knotty, a pesky patient that had to be serviced and serviced well, only to be beat up again...and again. Eventually, the old bastard would hiss a final curse and die, just no one could say when.
The tricorder Nadrev had helpfully given him hung limply in his long fingers. His lips were pressed together.
No real weapons to speak of, a twenty-something year old barge with a crew of but six, roaming the most dangerous region of space in the Alpha Quadrant. That they had lasted that long was a miracle. And yet, it was his life, trudging on in that territorial hell, turning in new and bitter directions.
He wished any of it surprised him.
That Maquis ship wasn't after Dejin. They gave her up too quickly. The Guerdon had a full bay of power supplies, among other desirables.
"Are you all right, Tom?" asked Nadrev when he saw the captain shiver.
Tom shook his head, flipped open the tricorder. "It's nothing," he muttered and started to move around the deflector. "Just a pilot's instinct."
