I don't own Star Trek Voyager.
Enjoy.
The Irony of trying to kill each other.
If there was one thing B'elanna did not like thinking about it was her work on the Cardassian missile Dreadnought. It wasn't that she was afraid of owning up to what she had done to the missile in order to make it work for the Maquis - the work had been challenging since she'd had to deal with the Cardassian matrix's automatic defence systems; Cardassians were xenophobic and they were arrogantly cautious to the point of paranoia where they imaginatively came up with ways of booby-trapping their weapons and facilities, but the work had not been impossible and she had gained a greater respect for Cardassian computer engineering - she did not like thinking about Dreadnought since she had let down Chakotay.
No, it was because of how close to being blasted into oblivion by the missile they'd come and how the missile was nothing more than a flying booby-trap containing so many other booby-traps which would vaporise anyone who didn't pay attention to their surroundings. In many ways, Dreadnought was a typical piece of Cardassian technology, and now she knew where the other woman's loyalties lay even if it hurt like a d'k tahg blade to the knife, B'elanna had no problem comparing Seska to the missile.
Like Seska, the missile had appeared harmless on the inside before several engineers who shared the same annoying naivety shown by so many people in the Federation paid the price.
Like Seska, the missile paraded its weapons which worked wonderfully but something would go wrong. In Seska's case, it was not bothering to beam down that replicator which had enjoyed a short-lived career on that Kazon Nistrim ship before its radiation killed everyone onboard instead of meeting with them personally.
Like Seska, Cardassian treachery seemed programmed into it.
When she had launched the missile it was because B'elanna had assumed she and her friends were going to die in the displacement wave the Caretaker used to bring ships close to his array. That made sense. But at the time she had found herself in the Delta Quadrant, B'elanna had merely assumed the missile had been destroyed by the displacement wave. The Val Jean had nearly been destroyed by the displacement wave, and it suffered twice more damage on top of what Evek inflicted before the wave hit them like a tsunami.
But B'elanna like all the other Maquis on the ship hadn't known what would happen. She had honestly thought they were going to die, regardless of whatever creative things she programmed the already strained thirty-year-old impulse engines to do, so she had launched the missile. At the time she had thought if she and her friends were going to die, why not take a few Cardassians with them? Chakotay and the others had spent a long time coming up with the perfect list of targets. A colony was possible. But there was the possibility the colony's defences would find a way of breaking through regardless of her modifications to adapt to whatever weapons a ship near the missile carried. She had ironically gotten the idea from the Borg, who adapted their own weapons and defences after a few minutes of fighting. But while her idea was simpler and its implementation was even more so, it was a brilliant advantage.
In the end, the target was chosen.
Ashlon V was perfect. It was the Cardassians main munitions depot, supplying weapons to dozens of ships and colonies. Its loss would save countless lives in the DMZ and would hopefully give the Maquis plenty of time to regroup and hopefully launch a few major offensives against the Cardassians. The missile had been fired from the Val Jean and it was carried into the Delta Quadrant instead but now she was fighting the computer, struggling against the life-support systems which had been shut off (she was cursing herself in every filthy Klingon epithet she knew for that, but she had known as soon as the Cardassians realised the missile was non-friendly they would do what she had, get inside and reprogram it, so she'd responded accordingly).
But what had gone wrong? What had happened?
Had the displacement wave damaged the missile's more delicate computer, or was the computer always flawed and she hadn't seen it? B'elanna had trouble equating that considering her trouble in taking the computer apart in the first place, but she had to admit the possibility. All she knew was the missile had attacked and destroyed several ships in this part of the quadrant.
B'elanna wondered just how many people, how many ships, and even planets had paid the price for her work, but also why it wasn't until now they had found the missile had been drawn into the Delta Quadrant. The Caretaker had had her and the crew of the Val Jean captive for a week or so in a medical examination to determine compatibility for mating - how that would work out since it would take time for any offspring to grow and to the learn was beyond B'elanna's comprehension, but she had come to see the Caretaker was stupid in many ways - and it would have worked out quickly the missile was a weapon and had let it go on its way without a word.
Where the hell did I go wrong with this? What has made Dreadnought this crazy? Is it something in the original Cardassian computer matrix I didn't notice, or is it because despite the weeks and weeks of work I put into Dreadnought in the first place I didn't realise as soon as I launched this damn thing in the Badlands after the Caretaker brought us here?
Or is it something simpler?
The thought popped into her exhausted brain like a transporter beam bringing a rescue team to a crash site. But it made a great deal of sense to B'elanna.
When she had gotten inside the missile with Seska's help, B'elanna had first mapped out Dreadnought's computers. The Cardassians, despite their stupidity in selecting an obsolete kinetic detonator (she still didn't know what had made them select that in the first place, but she guessed they'd been pressed for funds or they hadn't been able to develop a detonator of sufficient compatibility to make the missile work right, or they believed it would work anyway), had known what they were doing when they came up with the missile's computers, even if the voice interface drove her mad.
Not only was the computer constantly telling her she couldn't do this, she couldn't do that, but it spoke like a computer. Say whatever you wish about Starfleet computers, at least they spoke like a sentient humanoid and not like a machine.
Some might call it vanity, but B'elanna had opted to use her own voice because she was still new to Chakotay's cell to properly know everyone under his command B'elanna had opted to use her own voice to keep it all simple. One of the first things she had done was create a number of subroutines that wouldn't only ensure the missile was working for the Maquis, but it would be very, very hard for the Cardassians to reprogram it and she had made it very difficult.
So difficult in fact the computer was fighting her every step of the way. B'elanna was beginning to realise the programming she'd put into the computer, elaborate enough to keep the Cardassians out, was now too restrictive for it to cope with the notion the missile was in the Delta Quadrant. She had spent weeks reprogramming the computer to work for the Maquis instead of for the Cardassians, putting in codes and traps, adding programs to make the missile respond against any attempts to attack it, to come up with strategies but what she hadn't done was make the programming open-minded enough to accept the notion the displacement wave had drawn it here, to the Delta Quadrant.
It had taken the destruction of the Rakosan ships and being starved of oxygen that B'elanna had realised that.
When she started breaking down the warp core, the heat of being so close to the collapsing core and the deprivation of oxygen, B'elanna struggled to concentrate on the job while Dreadnought spoke to her. But she was done talking. All she wanted was to stop it from blowing up and killing a whole civilisation.
It was ironic. B'elanna had spent weeks on Dreadnought, the pair of them playing hypothetical games in order to branch the missile's programming out, and now here they were, trying to kill one another.