VII

Three Days Later, The Beta System

Tuvok was at the helm as the Phantom approached the area where Sloan had indicated he would meet whatever ship would bring Seven of Nine to him. The Doctor was with him as well, reading over some information about Sloan, Section 31, and where they were heading, allowing Tuvok to concentrate on flying.

Tom and B'Elanna had turned in about six hours earlier, to get some much-needed rest. Tuvok wasn't thrilled with waking them, but they were nearing a place where they might not get much rest for a while.

"Tuvok to Paris and Torres", he said calmly.

"Go ahead, Tuvok", Tom Paris said with a groggy voice.

"We are approaching the designated coordinates at Arloff IX."

Paris sounded wide awake when he answered. "We'll be there in a moment, Paris out."

Five minute later, Tom and B'Elanna were on The Bridge, Tom now at the helm, Tuvok at Tactical, B'Elanna at the Engineering station, and The Doctor at Ops.

"According to this", Paris said, after doing a perfunctory check of his systems, "we're within five million kilometers of the location."

"Nothing on scanners", Tuvok allowed, slightly curious that nothing was here. They were a day ahead of Voyager, so it wasn't completely unexpected.

"Maybe they're not here yet", B'Elanna noted. "They're throwing this party, so I would expect that we'd see something nearby."

"Not at the moment", Tom said with a sigh. He would have loved another few hours of sleep, but Tuvok had been asked to wake them when they arrived.

"I'll begin a slow, counter-clockwise scan around the planet, making it our center-point", the helmsman said. "Might as well not stay idle."

Despite the absence of any ship in the area, all four of them felt the tension rising.

Aboard Voyager

"Admiral", Seven alerted Shelby from her First Officer's chair, as Shelby was in her quarters, "we've just received the hyper sub-space message from Phantom that they are at the rendezvous point."

"Thank you, Seven", Shelby replied. "I'll be right out."

Within two minutes, Shelby appeared.

"Admiral on The Bridge", Seven announced calmly. No one would rise, as Shelby would have scoffed, but it was protocol to let the crew know she was at the Conn.

"What have we got, Number One", Shelby said, as was her tradition, going back to hearing it form Picard. For all the grief the two of them had given each other over the years, she never stopped emulating him in more than a few ways.

"Current heading 155 mark 232, Warp 3, all systems normal, Admiral."

"Thank you, Commander Hansen", Shelby nodded. She had given Seven the provisional rank of Commander, and to make it easy, Seven had agreed to go by her birth name. "Commander Seven of Nine" just didn't quite work.

Shelby sat in the command chair, bringing up the transmission that Tuvok had sent. "No sign of the Numeri. Not unexpected, but it'd be nice if we had some idea where they are."

Seven glanced at the information on her screen at the First Officer's chair, showing the location of the meeting. And idea struck her.

"Is it possible that, knowing Sloan's history, that he may have the ship in Romulan territory, perhaps masked from sensors?"

"I thought about that, Seven", Shelby said with a nod, "but even with his...unique history, I think he'd be playing with fire doing that." Shelby was up to speed on exactly who Sloan really was, that thought not only playing with the corners of her mind, but with anyone else who know Sloan's biography.

"I don't know why", Seven said cautiously, "but something...is just not right here."

"Whatever it is, Number One", Shelby pointed out, "we'll find out soon enough. At midnight, we go on Yellow Alert."

Three hours into their slow circle of Arloff IX, Tuvok got a hit on sensors.

"Mr. Paris", he announced, "I am picking up some scattered echoes of some kind, four-hundred thousand kilometers off the starboard, sending you coordinates."

"Got it, Tuvok", Tom said, adjusting the course of their ship. A slow fifteen minutes later, they were at the coordinates. "What are sensors saying, Tuvok?"

"Sensors are detecting some a fine layer of what I believe is debris, but there isn't a lot to go on."

"Let me adjust the sensors to analyze what's out there", The Doctor suggested. It took only a few taps of his console. "I'm picking up mostly duranium and tritanium, as well as some..." The Doctor stopped. "Tuvok, are there any piece large enough to beam onboard to examine?"

Tuvok scanned the field. "I am retrieving a piece approximately one meter by three meters."

"Bring it right here to The Bridge."

Everyone suddenly caught wind of what he was thinking.

"The Numeri?"

B'Elanna wasn't too busy at the moment. "Let me pull up the specs for Numeri, and see what her makeup was."

The Doctor had the piece in front of him in a matter of moments. He pulled out a tricorder to scan the piece of debris. "B'Elanna, I'm sending you the results of the scan to your console."

"Got it, Doc." B'Elanna compared the scan of the debris to the makeup of the Numeri, looking up in horror. "It's an exact match." She glanced around the room.

"That doesn't mean what I think we're all thinking it might mean, guys", Tom said hastily.

"Tom", B'Elanna said, "this piece is from the Numeri, of that there's no doubt."

"I think what Mr. Paris might be alluding to", Tuvok reasoned, "is that it's possible that, as was hypothesized, Sloan has transferred his flag to another ship, and has Kathryn with him."

"Admiral Patterson was pretty sure he wouldn't stay on a freighter, with limited defense and weapons capability."

"Precisely, Doctor", Tuvok agreed. "It may be they are currently not in the area, and on a different vessel."

B'Elanna didn't like any of this. "Something is just...not right about this", she said, in the same tone Seven had used on Voyager not long before that.

Tuvok insisted that Voyager needed the information, but he didn't want to send Seven into a panic. They decided to send an eyes-only message to Shelby, that would route directly to her command chair on that ship.

Shelby read the message carefully, knowing why Tuvok had sent it, and only so she could read it. The Bridge crew knew she had received a message.

"Admiral", Seven inquired. "Does Phantom have more information?"

Shelby phrased her response carefully. "Only that they believe that Sloan and his crew have transferred to another ship. They didn't give much in the way of details", she hedged, "but it was something that we knew was possible."

Shelby was as cool a customer as existed in The Federation, but Seven noticed a slight change in the Admiral's heartbeat and a slight dilation of her eyes. Seven had learned discretion over the years. On Voyager years ago, she would have pressed Captain Janeway for an explanation to the change, but here, and now, she didn't push it.

The Qeh was a very old Warbird. After the collapse of the Romulan Empire, most military ships had been pirated and scrapped for the metal and some of the technology to help people simply live. This particular ship was forty-five Earth years old. It was still a formidable ship, whose disruptors could still destroy almost anything, and it's cloak, while not as good as what the Klingons now had-or what Phantom had, it could still give an enemy a major headache.

One thing this Warbird couldn't do was fire while cloaked, and because spare parts were hard to come by, it had developed that its long-range sensors were nowhere as effective when cloaked. Sela had explained this to both Sloan and Maxwell, but none of them had seen it as a major concern. They could de-cloak, take a full, long-range sensor sweep in twenty seconds, and go invisible once again. They had done it several times since arriving in the Beta Sector.

They hadn't done it since Phantom had arrived on station.

True to her word, Commander Sela had let Maxwell run the ship as they were in Federation space. She was available if needed on anything technical, but she knew Ben Maxwell's reputation as a cunning Captain, and he could handle just about anything.

The Romulan First Officer who was assigned to Maxwell gave him a timely reminder about getting some long-range information.

"Captain Maxwell", the middle-aged man said stiffly, but politely, "it's time to do a long-range sensor sweep, sir."

"Thank you, Sub-Commander Selk." He turned to his Tactical officer. "Mr. Brighton, disengage cloak, Ops, prepare long-ranger sensor sweep."

"Aye Captain", both men said from their respective positions.

"Cloak disengaged, Captain."

Tuvok was the one resting now. He had been up fourteen hours straight, B'Elanna finally...convincing him...that he needed to rest. Right now, it was just she and Tom, as the Doctor had shut down for the time being.

"According to what Seven sent us", B'Elanna noted, sitting in the co-pilot seat to the right of Tom, "Voyager is about nineteen hours away." She rubbed her eyes. She had slept decently, but the building tension and stress was gnawing at her.

"Can't be soon enough", Tom replied. "Only thing missing from this scene has having old Harry here with us", he said, smiling over at his wife.

"It was good to see Harry, even under the circumstances at Ganymede", B'Elanna said with her own smile. "I'm so damn proud of him."

"Me, too, although even now, he can't relax around Janeway", he said with a stifled laugh. "She still thinks he's gonna sprain something."

B'Elanna laughed at the mental image that Tom had raised. Just as she was about to respond, an alarm sounded.

"Sensors are picking up a ship, B'El", Tom said first, "202 mark 127."

"On screen", Torres said, as she gave the command to the computer.

"Oh my fuckin' God", Tom said, barely able to breathe at what he beheld.

"Son of a bitch", B'Elanna said in the same voice.

No more than ten-thousand kilometers, directly ahead now, was the glowing green of a Romulan Warbird.

"What the fuck are they doing here?" B'Elanna pressed a button on her console, The Doctor materializing suddenly.

"I wasn't quite ready to wake up...oh, my God", the hologram said in disbelief.

"Paris to Tuvok."

"Go ahead, Mr. Paris."

"You need to get your ass parked up here ASAP. We got trouble."

No more than thirty seconds later, Tuvok was on The Bridge, the sight on the screen stopping him in his tracks, although his face didn't change.

"I concur in your assessment, Mr. Paris: we 'got' trouble."