To Stay Where You Are (Part Five)
A sillier Fanfic written by TaTTooGaL™
She stood in front of the mirror, staring blankly at her reflection. She felt as if her whole life were falling apart. How could this have happened? Merely days ago she'd felt like she had been in control of everything. Nut now she could feel that control slip from her fingers like sand from an hourglass. She'd always prided herself on her control. She controlled everything.
Or did she?
She pushed away the nagging self-doubt angrily and glared defiantly at the mirror. She hadn't let a few sentences from Chakotay trouble her before and she wouldn't now. Or so she thought.
Because, somewhere deep inside her, something she'd hidden for a long, long time, was beginning to surface again. She'd used to ignore Chakotay by telling herself that much as she loved him, he was a revolutionary crackpot and nothing more. But now that a second person- still Chakotay, admittedly, but yet different- had told her the same thing, she found it harder to suppress the thoughts welling up within her.
I am now in a world
Where I have to hide myself
And what I believe in
Not good. With the aberration on its way and her plans still on track, she was going to need every single iota of focus she had. She'd have to leave her doubts and insecurities for later.
The reflection in her mirror seemed to be staring at her wistfully, as if she was wishing for something long forgotten. Her childhood, perhaps. Or things that she used to stand for and were now lost.
Who is that girl I see?
Staring straight back at me
Why is my reflection someone I don't know?
Must I pretend that I'm
Someone else, all the time?
When will my reflection be my own?
Enough of that, she chided herself, snapping out of her childish reverie. What had been done could not be undone. It was a sign of weakness that she doubted herself. How could she still be so foolish? She sighed. She hadn't purged herself of that feeling, emotional self yet. The lost child which nobody wanted, not even herself. She certainly didn't want it: it was a hindrance; weaknesses in her character that would lead to her undoing. To keep at her work she had to remain strong. To remain strong she had to rid herself of the very wanton humanness that she was trying to preserve. Such was the world, full of strange paradoxes and the like.
She squared her shoulders and prepared herself for duty, briefly wondering if she should bring Chakotay out of his cell into her room again. Then she decided against it. Better to play safe, especially during these tumultuous times. The Intendant was about to leave when the ship suddenly rocked like it was being hit. Unreasonable anger and fear leapt into her heart. How could the Borg arrive now when the ship was not prepared? They had barely survived the last skirmish-and the Borg Cube had been damaged.
Well, easiest was to find out was to head to the bridge. She practically dashed out of the room and headed for the bridge at a breakneck speed.
Finally, they were ready. It'd taken them most of the ten hours to prepare for the upcoming mutiny, but they were ready.
Janeway and Tuvok were heading down the corridor towards the bridge. Tuvok had been uncharacteristically silent for the past five hours of frenzied planning, and Janeway could see that something was bothering him. "Is there a problem, Tuvok?" she prodded.
A moment of silence. Finally, Tuvok admitted, "I must express my … reluctance towards the idea of you personally rescuing Commander Chakotay from the other ship."
"You're worried that I may not come back."
"It is an unwise move, considering that our ship may lose both its commanding officers in the process."
Janeway sighed. "I know I'm taking a big risk, Tuvok, but you needn't worry. I have faith in the plan. It's going to work. Besides," she added dryly, "I'm a big girl, and I can take care of myself, Mom."
Tuvok raised one eyebrow. "I was not aware that I had recently adopted you as one of my children," he remarked.
The turbolift arrived on the bridge and Janeway stepped out briskly with Tuvok behind her. "Well, are we ready to roll?" she asked Chakotay, who had been on the bridge for the last couple of hours. He nodded in affirmation,
"Paris says the last of the modifications are almost complete. The alert message is now being passed around the members of the rebels."
Janeway nodded. "Excellent. The time is 0930 hours, T minus zero. Ensign Kim, hail the other ship."
The Voyager sent out a carefully modulated pulse calculated by Seven and Kim to disable the cloaking shield of the other ship. On the viewscreen, the starscape rippled briefly, then pulled back to reveal a sleek, black ship, monstrous and glittering in the starlight. Even from the bridge of the Voyager Janeway could tell that it was armed to the teeth- even with Chakotay's assurances that the Voyager would probably outgun them at this stage. Perhaps it had slipped his mind that the Voyager had similarly been for long periods without restocking at Federation starbases and was not exactly in ship-shape.
"Hailing," said Kim.
The viewscreen dissolved into static for a moment, then coalesced into the image of a utilitarian bridge of sharp gray and gunmetal. Tuvok's face appeared on it, looking infinitely harried and annoyed. "You've gotten us at an inconvenient time, please call back- oh. It's you." His face hardened into planes of black marble as he recognized the occupants of the bridge. "What do you want?" he drawled dangerously, shooting daggers at Chakotay.
"To speak to the Intendant," said Janeway crisply. "Now."
Tuvok glared at her, hard, but she glared back, undaunted. Fury made his face almost unrecognizable. Behind Janeway, Tuvok Original made no response whatsoever to his alternate counterpart. "She's very busy."
Janeway shrugged. "I could always get her attention by firing on your ship."
Tuvok snickered evilly. "Go ahead and try."
Janeway gestured to Tuvok at Tactical. "Do it."
The Voyager let fly a salvo of photon torpedoes one of the Warrior's slim warp nacelles. The torpedoes hit the shields-deliberately weakened by the rebel elements- and detonated, sending a shock wave through the Warrior so intense that Janeway could see it's bridge shaking on the viewscreen.
Intendant Janeway stormed onto the bridge, looking livid. "You told me that there was an hour more to the Borg arrival-" she stopped and stared at the viewscreen. "Double-crossing scum…" she muttered darkly.
"Have we met?" asked Janeway.
The Intendant merely glared at her. "Yes and no." She folded her arms severely and scowled. "Let's get straight to the point. I suppose you want to negotiate the return of your first officer, don't you?"
Janeway nodded. "And the dilithium I found."
The Intendant grinned wickedly, leaning on Tuvok's shoulder. Amazingly he grinned back at her. "Then how's this for a fair deal? Exchange Chakotay and the dilithium for your ship."
"Do you take me for a fool?" asked Janeway dangerously. "Because I'm not."
"Oh, really," replied her counterpart. "Then you must realize that we here do not negotiate." She nodded to someone offscreen. "Fire."
The Voyager shook from the assault of the Warrior's phasers. "Red alert!" shouted Janeway. "All hands to battle stations." She nodded to Tuvok. "Evasive maneuvers. Return fire."
The Voyager took a deep dive downwards whilst firing a salvo of phaser bolts at the ventral surface of the Warrior. Locked in a deadly dance, the two starships pirouetted and bucked as its occupants struggled in a mighty war for dominion.
Tom Paris fumbled in the depths of the Warrior's bowels, trying to remember what Lenn had told him about the decoupling sequence. Unfortunately he kept mixing it up with what BE'lanna had told him about rewiring circuit junctions over the past few days. After the alert light had bleeped red for what seemed the umpteenth time, he felt ready to give up.
The ship had started shaking again. Lenn poked her head into the cramped cavity where he was working to see how he was doing. "They've begun," she told him. "You'd better hurry, he haven't got much time left."
Paris groaned. "I've forgotten how to decouple these safeties," he told her. "Could you show me how to?"
Lenn rolled her eyes. "Here, let me do it. Watch carefully." Her deft fingers worked the safety controls, and within a few seconds, the light turned green. "There. It's done."
"I feel like an idiot," said Paris, grinning.
"That's because you are," she replied, grinning back. "Okay, now go do all the rest- oh damn! Annika's back. Okay, hide, quickly!" Lenn darted off to man her Surveillance station while Paris burrowed deeper into the crevice. Somewhere at the back, he knew, was a conduit which linked the engineering core to the rest of the ship. He wriggled beneath the wires as silently as he could, feeling for the ledge of the conduit. His hand latched onto it, and he excruciatingly pulled himself into it.
As he slid to his next destination, he began running through the battle plan again. Hot-wire everything, fix dilithium and brig force-fields, wait for shields down, grab the payload and be done with it. At least, that was the procedure for him; the Captain and the rebels seemed to have much other agenda on their list. It was risky plan, he knew; they'd had no proper planning, no prior sims, nothing to rely on except their wits and past experiences. I hope that these so-called rebels aren't cheating us, or something, he thought pessimistically as he reached the holding bay where the dilithium was kept.
Pulling himself cautiously of the conduit, he checked to make sure that no-one was in the holding bay. It was empty, as he had expected. Smirking, he popped the panel which contained the wiring for the force-fields and proceeded to disable the field, whistling as he worked. His echoes resonated strangely in the empty hold, and the shaking and distant booming in the distance only served to enforce the impression of loneliness. He shuddered.
The field clicked off, and immediately he heard it- a barely discernible thrumming which set his hairs on end. "Borg clarion call," he muttered, bringing his equipment to bear on the cloaking units on the dilithium containers. He scanned through it once, and frowned. Uh-oh, he thought. Not good. He re-scanned again, and hailed the Voyager through his scrambled opchan. "Bad news, Voyager. The technology protecting these suckers aren't Borg." He frowned. "My best guess is that they belong to the civilization which owned this dilithium and which later got assimilated by the Borg. Question is, how the heck do I disable it?"
On the bridge of the Starship Voyager, Janeway frowned at Paris' report. She did a quick calculation-they had at most ten minutes to the commencement of phase two of the attack plan. Not good. "Leave it," she told him. "Proceed to the next step of the mission. There are still plenty of stores of dilithium on the planet."
"Aye, Captain. Paris out."
The Voyager took another violent slamming, shuddering violently to port. It might have been Janeway's imagination, but she thought the dim alert lights flickered a little.
"Minimal structural damage to starboard nacelle," reported Tuvok tersely. "Shields at sixty-five percent and holding." As he spoke, he fired another round of phasers at the Warrior. "At this rate, Captain," he informed her, "we will not be able to hold out for more than six or seven minutes more."
"That's not nearly enough," she replied, her brow creasing. "We need to find another way to distract them." She turned to address the bridge. "Suggestions at this point would be very welcome."
"How about the Borg?" asked Chakotay. "If we can't disable the transmitters now it means they'll still be coming, won't they?"
Janeway snorted. "They'll be coming either way. It just depends on how fast and how many."
"I was thinking…" Kim piped up from the back. "What if we used the presence of the Borg to our advantage?"
Janeway stared at him incredulously for a moment. "Elaborate."
Kim shrugged. "I mean… look at it this way. We've been in the Delta Quadrant for a long time, and I'm pretty sure we've had more experience in dealing with the Borg than them." The ship shuddered again, interrupting him slightly. "If the Borg do appear on scene here, I'm willing to bet that they're going to get more flustered than we are. We'll be able to adapt to the change in equilibrium faster and gain the upper hand."
"May I also point out that the Borg will be the fastest adapters of the three," noted Tuvok dryly.
"That's crazy," mumbled Chakotay. "They'll just cut and run."
Kim looked a little flushed. "Well, nobody has got any better ideas, do they?"
"He's got a point," said Janeway. "We don't have much time left, and I'd rather take a risk with the Borg than face a certain obliteration." She hit her commbadge. "Janeway to Seven of Nine. I have another task for you…"
Intendant Janeway paced back and forth angrily on the bridge of the Warrior. "Stupid… stupid… stupid…." She muttered angrily to herself.
"Intendant, when is this going to end?" whined Harry from the back of the bridge. "The shields won't hold for much longer!"
"Shut up," she snapped, "Just shut up." She wheeled to face Tuvok. "How much longer are the bloody invasion fools going to take?"
"Not much longer now, they say," replied Tuvok. "They say. For all you know, they could be ganging up with those blundering idiots out there." He gestured to the other ship. "After all, Chuckles was stupid enough to…"
Janeway shot Tuvok a suspicious look. "You don't think-?"
"Intendaaant!" wailed Harry. "They just shot at us again! Do something!!"
"I will kill you if you don't shut up!" she snarled furiously back at him. "I'm trying to do something important and-"
The Warrior suddenly lurched violently to one side, proving his point. Harry set up a loud howling to accentuate it. Snarling in irritation, the Intendant reached for the nearest heavy object –which happened to be the ship's ceremonial bat'leth-and hurled it backwards. The bat'leth buried itself in one of the back panels, raining sparks all over Harry. He slinked under the console and hid. "Useless coward…" muttered the Intendant darkly. "Now where were we?"
Tuvok didn't answer. The violent lurching of the ship seemed to have thrown him against the navigational panel where he lay slumped. That is, until the Intendant noticed that Engineer Kesin at Systems Ops was standing in front of her, phaser leveled at her chest. "This is a stick-up. Don't move."
Kim grinned with triumph as he sped down the corridor unnoticed by anyone. The whining had distracted the Intendant enough to allow him to escape and hopefully give Kesin time to ready his weapon. Reinforcements should be here in a minute… he thought, scanning the corridor. Sure enough, a group of seven rebels came trooping into view, each armed with reassuringly big phaser rifles. "The bridge is open for hostile takeover," he told them. They nodded and went on their way.
Now. The alternate Paris should have deactivated the security locks on the holding cells. It was time to rescue Chakotay.
"We're all set ," Janeway told Chakotay, handing him the compression phaser rifle. On the transporter platform, Seven was doing a last minute check of all her equipment. 'I hope you're familiar with the battle plan."
"All but one aspect," he told her. Janeway gave him a blank stare. "The Borg." He shrugged. "I've absolutely no experience in fighting them. The Intendant does, but apparently it was only once."
Janeway smiled grimly. "Focus on acquiring your ship," she told him, "and leave the Borg to us." She stepped on the transporter platform as Chakotay flipped his commlink open and handed it to her. "Captain Janeway to Lenn. We're ready."
"I got that." Torres' voice filtered over the device. "Give me a sec… I've got a few sticky problems to iron out here." A thudding sound, then a few beeps. "All right. Prepare to initiate beamover…. Energize."
The world around them dissolved in a bluish haze as hell began to unfold before them.
Lenn leaned back to admire her handiwork for a second. Annika lay crumpled in a heap in the corner of engineering. Human weaklings-it'd taken her just one punch to knock the science director out. Though she had to admit that she'd rather enjoyed that. She glanced back down at her work screen. Reports were pouring in from every corner of the ship. People were rising, fighting, rioting, and rebelling, and soon the ship would be theirs. A small smile touched her lips. Then she noticed an urgent message flashing in the corner. It was from Tom, coordinating the attacks on the upper levels with Kim. "A last-minute change in plan…." She read it and took a deep breath. She had absolutely no idea who these Borg critters were, but from what she'd heard, they were pretty terrible people to be around. Having them arrive in the middle of their mutiny was surely not a good thing. She frantically typed a message back to Tom.
A loud crash announced that she had company. She turned to look. A counterstrike team led by Joe Carey had come ramming through the door of the engine core. "Stupid idiots, they're wrecking the place…." Growling, she picked up her bat'leth and set to work.
Intendant Janeway took no time to think. She pointed behind Kesin's shoulder. "Look out!" Distracted for a moment, Kesin glanced behind him, and in that instant Janeway had seized him by the wrists and tossed him neatly over her shoulder. He hit the floor and rolled, then lashed back at Janeway with his legs. She sidestepped his wild swipe and kicked him in the groin. Hard. Kesin winced with a grunt of pain, but amazingly he still managed to stand up and point the phaser at her. Janeway rammed her shoulder into his and they both went down, grappling for the phaser. She nearly had it in her grip-
In a desperate move, Kesin bit her hand hard, breaking the skin.
Janeway let out a surprised yelp of pain and withdrew her hand. Kesin shoved her hard and she rolled off him.
Just then the secondary raiding party stormed onto the bridge, rifles waving. Realizing that she was outgunned and outnumbered, Janeway made a run for it, kicking open an access panel and diving down it. "Don't let her get away!" yelled Kesin, firing his phaser wildly at her retreating back. He lunged into the access port and slid down the Jeffries tube, coming to a halt at an intersection of four tubes.
Nothing. She had gone.
Kesin thumped his fist in frustration on the side of the tunnel. "Rebel crew, be on the alert! We've got a screw loose on the ship."
Atoms Paris sat in the navigational chair of the Starship Voyager, feeling excitement rush through him, as if he was a little boy flying his first spacecraft again. This ship was marvelous! The fine navigational control… the power…
And most of all, the way the crew worked together so well.
Tuvok was in the captain's chair, commanding the battle with calm eye and firm voice. One thing he had to get used to. He wished the Tuvok he knew could be more like this: it would make life so much easier. Beside Tuvok was the EMH, wearing a distinct ha-ha-I-get-to-be-in-the-command-seat kind of look on his face. Behind them all Harry was reporting on the ships' status every once in a while.
And he was flying the ship. That was the most important part.
"If the ship's bridge has already been taken over," mused Harry, as the Warrior let fly another salvo of torpedoes, "then how come it keeps firing at us?"
Atoms was about to answer, but the EMH beat him to it. "The firing commands are automatic. However, the rebel elements are now trying to disable the mechanisms. I hope."
Atoms pulled the ship into a series of tight maneuvers, trying to shake off the photon torpedoes on their tail. He dived down, then did an abrupt turn left, feeling his stomach lurch just a little -more from adrenaline than anything else. He then pulled up rapidly, accelerating towards the surface of the asteroid. Mid-climb, he suddenly cut his thrusters and put them on reverse, stalling the ship almost instantaneously- and amazingly, the inertial dampers managed to compensate for it fairly decently. The torpedoes zoomed past them and exploded in a brilliant crimson ball on the asteroid's surface. Had he attempted that maneuver on the Warrior, his guts would be lying somewhere on the deck by now.
He grinned. This was going to be a lot more fun than he thought.
The moment Janeway had fully materialized on the transporter pad, she leapt off it, eager to plunge into the heart of the action. Tom Paris and Hairs Kim were already there-with Chakotay. She smiled at him. "Glad to see you in one piece," she told him. He smiled back at her.
"I want to help them in this," he told her, "so I'm not going back to the ship as yet. Did you bring any spare rifles?"
"I thought as much," she said dryly, tossing him a rifle. "Here, take this."
Paris nodded to Seven. "I'll show you where the dilithium is being kept. Follow me." He strode off into one of the darkened corridors, and Seven followed him.
Hairs handed Janeway and Chakotay- both of them- a large glowstick. "You'll need this," he informed them. He gestured opposite to the direction which Paris had taken. "We'll assist the teams on Deck 12-that's where most of the ship's vital systems are based. It's bound to be fairly heavily guarded."
Nodding grimly, Janeway tightened her grip on her phaser rifle and followed him.
Lenn knocked out the last of the invasion force with a mighty blow from her bat'leth. She stood over the carnage, breathing hard. Well, it had been good exercise, and she was mostly unscathed. Whatever they said, Terrans simply just couldn't stand up to a Klingon. Not even a half-Klingon.
Then she suddenly noticed that one inert form was missing from all the bodies lying on the floor. Science Director Annika Hansen was nowhere to be seen.
She let out a cry of disgust. She'd been to busy fighting off Carey and friends to notice that she's escaped. Muttering obscenities under her breath, Lenn marched over to the work console to message the bad news. Ot was then she realized that she'd missed a message from Paris during the fight. It simply read, Hairs says that there's a screw loose on the ship. What's that supposed to mean?
She let out another loud groan and typed a reply. That means the Intendant's still running loose. More bad news-the other screw's loose too. Dang their bad luck, she thought. Having both the Intendant and Annika still in commission was definitely not good news for their attack plan. "Well, at least Tuvok seems to be taken care of for the time being," she muttered. Ask Hairs what the status of the bolt is, she added.
Sighing, Lenn reached under the console and pulled out a roll of heavy-duty twine from a storage cabinet. "I'm not going to take any chances of you guys breaking loose," she addressed the comatose forms on the floor as she tied them up.
Paris was jogging down the corridor with Seven when he heard a distinct beep from his commlink. "Finally! She's replied to my message." He flipped the commlink open, read the message and frowned. "Bolt? Screw? More funny stuff. I suppose that means Tuvok and Annika…" He shot Seven a look. "If we bump into someone who looks just like you along the way, try not to look too surprised."
Seven merely rolled her eyes.
"Paris to Lenn. Begin recording message: I think the bolt's secured for now. Everything so far is going according to plan. Good luck. End message. Paris out." He winked at Seven. "Here's where things start to get interesting." They turned the corner and entered the holding bay, where the rows of stolen dilithium lay gleaming quietly. Paris nodded. "It's all yours. Now, if you will excuse me, I think Hairs needs some help on Deck 12."
"Good luck," Seven told him as he hurried away. She strode up to the nearest stack of dilithium and deactivated the field, running a quick scan over the external cloaking unit. Species 635, she noted to herself. Tough exoskeleton, sturdy frame, makes extremely hardy drones. She opened up her engineering kit and started to work.
A sillier Fanfic written by TaTTooGaL™
She stood in front of the mirror, staring blankly at her reflection. She felt as if her whole life were falling apart. How could this have happened? Merely days ago she'd felt like she had been in control of everything. Nut now she could feel that control slip from her fingers like sand from an hourglass. She'd always prided herself on her control. She controlled everything.
Or did she?
She pushed away the nagging self-doubt angrily and glared defiantly at the mirror. She hadn't let a few sentences from Chakotay trouble her before and she wouldn't now. Or so she thought.
Because, somewhere deep inside her, something she'd hidden for a long, long time, was beginning to surface again. She'd used to ignore Chakotay by telling herself that much as she loved him, he was a revolutionary crackpot and nothing more. But now that a second person- still Chakotay, admittedly, but yet different- had told her the same thing, she found it harder to suppress the thoughts welling up within her.
I am now in a world
Where I have to hide myself
And what I believe in
Not good. With the aberration on its way and her plans still on track, she was going to need every single iota of focus she had. She'd have to leave her doubts and insecurities for later.
The reflection in her mirror seemed to be staring at her wistfully, as if she was wishing for something long forgotten. Her childhood, perhaps. Or things that she used to stand for and were now lost.
Who is that girl I see?
Staring straight back at me
Why is my reflection someone I don't know?
Must I pretend that I'm
Someone else, all the time?
When will my reflection be my own?
Enough of that, she chided herself, snapping out of her childish reverie. What had been done could not be undone. It was a sign of weakness that she doubted herself. How could she still be so foolish? She sighed. She hadn't purged herself of that feeling, emotional self yet. The lost child which nobody wanted, not even herself. She certainly didn't want it: it was a hindrance; weaknesses in her character that would lead to her undoing. To keep at her work she had to remain strong. To remain strong she had to rid herself of the very wanton humanness that she was trying to preserve. Such was the world, full of strange paradoxes and the like.
She squared her shoulders and prepared herself for duty, briefly wondering if she should bring Chakotay out of his cell into her room again. Then she decided against it. Better to play safe, especially during these tumultuous times. The Intendant was about to leave when the ship suddenly rocked like it was being hit. Unreasonable anger and fear leapt into her heart. How could the Borg arrive now when the ship was not prepared? They had barely survived the last skirmish-and the Borg Cube had been damaged.
Well, easiest was to find out was to head to the bridge. She practically dashed out of the room and headed for the bridge at a breakneck speed.
Finally, they were ready. It'd taken them most of the ten hours to prepare for the upcoming mutiny, but they were ready.
Janeway and Tuvok were heading down the corridor towards the bridge. Tuvok had been uncharacteristically silent for the past five hours of frenzied planning, and Janeway could see that something was bothering him. "Is there a problem, Tuvok?" she prodded.
A moment of silence. Finally, Tuvok admitted, "I must express my … reluctance towards the idea of you personally rescuing Commander Chakotay from the other ship."
"You're worried that I may not come back."
"It is an unwise move, considering that our ship may lose both its commanding officers in the process."
Janeway sighed. "I know I'm taking a big risk, Tuvok, but you needn't worry. I have faith in the plan. It's going to work. Besides," she added dryly, "I'm a big girl, and I can take care of myself, Mom."
Tuvok raised one eyebrow. "I was not aware that I had recently adopted you as one of my children," he remarked.
The turbolift arrived on the bridge and Janeway stepped out briskly with Tuvok behind her. "Well, are we ready to roll?" she asked Chakotay, who had been on the bridge for the last couple of hours. He nodded in affirmation,
"Paris says the last of the modifications are almost complete. The alert message is now being passed around the members of the rebels."
Janeway nodded. "Excellent. The time is 0930 hours, T minus zero. Ensign Kim, hail the other ship."
The Voyager sent out a carefully modulated pulse calculated by Seven and Kim to disable the cloaking shield of the other ship. On the viewscreen, the starscape rippled briefly, then pulled back to reveal a sleek, black ship, monstrous and glittering in the starlight. Even from the bridge of the Voyager Janeway could tell that it was armed to the teeth- even with Chakotay's assurances that the Voyager would probably outgun them at this stage. Perhaps it had slipped his mind that the Voyager had similarly been for long periods without restocking at Federation starbases and was not exactly in ship-shape.
"Hailing," said Kim.
The viewscreen dissolved into static for a moment, then coalesced into the image of a utilitarian bridge of sharp gray and gunmetal. Tuvok's face appeared on it, looking infinitely harried and annoyed. "You've gotten us at an inconvenient time, please call back- oh. It's you." His face hardened into planes of black marble as he recognized the occupants of the bridge. "What do you want?" he drawled dangerously, shooting daggers at Chakotay.
"To speak to the Intendant," said Janeway crisply. "Now."
Tuvok glared at her, hard, but she glared back, undaunted. Fury made his face almost unrecognizable. Behind Janeway, Tuvok Original made no response whatsoever to his alternate counterpart. "She's very busy."
Janeway shrugged. "I could always get her attention by firing on your ship."
Tuvok snickered evilly. "Go ahead and try."
Janeway gestured to Tuvok at Tactical. "Do it."
The Voyager let fly a salvo of photon torpedoes one of the Warrior's slim warp nacelles. The torpedoes hit the shields-deliberately weakened by the rebel elements- and detonated, sending a shock wave through the Warrior so intense that Janeway could see it's bridge shaking on the viewscreen.
Intendant Janeway stormed onto the bridge, looking livid. "You told me that there was an hour more to the Borg arrival-" she stopped and stared at the viewscreen. "Double-crossing scum…" she muttered darkly.
"Have we met?" asked Janeway.
The Intendant merely glared at her. "Yes and no." She folded her arms severely and scowled. "Let's get straight to the point. I suppose you want to negotiate the return of your first officer, don't you?"
Janeway nodded. "And the dilithium I found."
The Intendant grinned wickedly, leaning on Tuvok's shoulder. Amazingly he grinned back at her. "Then how's this for a fair deal? Exchange Chakotay and the dilithium for your ship."
"Do you take me for a fool?" asked Janeway dangerously. "Because I'm not."
"Oh, really," replied her counterpart. "Then you must realize that we here do not negotiate." She nodded to someone offscreen. "Fire."
The Voyager shook from the assault of the Warrior's phasers. "Red alert!" shouted Janeway. "All hands to battle stations." She nodded to Tuvok. "Evasive maneuvers. Return fire."
The Voyager took a deep dive downwards whilst firing a salvo of phaser bolts at the ventral surface of the Warrior. Locked in a deadly dance, the two starships pirouetted and bucked as its occupants struggled in a mighty war for dominion.
Tom Paris fumbled in the depths of the Warrior's bowels, trying to remember what Lenn had told him about the decoupling sequence. Unfortunately he kept mixing it up with what BE'lanna had told him about rewiring circuit junctions over the past few days. After the alert light had bleeped red for what seemed the umpteenth time, he felt ready to give up.
The ship had started shaking again. Lenn poked her head into the cramped cavity where he was working to see how he was doing. "They've begun," she told him. "You'd better hurry, he haven't got much time left."
Paris groaned. "I've forgotten how to decouple these safeties," he told her. "Could you show me how to?"
Lenn rolled her eyes. "Here, let me do it. Watch carefully." Her deft fingers worked the safety controls, and within a few seconds, the light turned green. "There. It's done."
"I feel like an idiot," said Paris, grinning.
"That's because you are," she replied, grinning back. "Okay, now go do all the rest- oh damn! Annika's back. Okay, hide, quickly!" Lenn darted off to man her Surveillance station while Paris burrowed deeper into the crevice. Somewhere at the back, he knew, was a conduit which linked the engineering core to the rest of the ship. He wriggled beneath the wires as silently as he could, feeling for the ledge of the conduit. His hand latched onto it, and he excruciatingly pulled himself into it.
As he slid to his next destination, he began running through the battle plan again. Hot-wire everything, fix dilithium and brig force-fields, wait for shields down, grab the payload and be done with it. At least, that was the procedure for him; the Captain and the rebels seemed to have much other agenda on their list. It was risky plan, he knew; they'd had no proper planning, no prior sims, nothing to rely on except their wits and past experiences. I hope that these so-called rebels aren't cheating us, or something, he thought pessimistically as he reached the holding bay where the dilithium was kept.
Pulling himself cautiously of the conduit, he checked to make sure that no-one was in the holding bay. It was empty, as he had expected. Smirking, he popped the panel which contained the wiring for the force-fields and proceeded to disable the field, whistling as he worked. His echoes resonated strangely in the empty hold, and the shaking and distant booming in the distance only served to enforce the impression of loneliness. He shuddered.
The field clicked off, and immediately he heard it- a barely discernible thrumming which set his hairs on end. "Borg clarion call," he muttered, bringing his equipment to bear on the cloaking units on the dilithium containers. He scanned through it once, and frowned. Uh-oh, he thought. Not good. He re-scanned again, and hailed the Voyager through his scrambled opchan. "Bad news, Voyager. The technology protecting these suckers aren't Borg." He frowned. "My best guess is that they belong to the civilization which owned this dilithium and which later got assimilated by the Borg. Question is, how the heck do I disable it?"
On the bridge of the Starship Voyager, Janeway frowned at Paris' report. She did a quick calculation-they had at most ten minutes to the commencement of phase two of the attack plan. Not good. "Leave it," she told him. "Proceed to the next step of the mission. There are still plenty of stores of dilithium on the planet."
"Aye, Captain. Paris out."
The Voyager took another violent slamming, shuddering violently to port. It might have been Janeway's imagination, but she thought the dim alert lights flickered a little.
"Minimal structural damage to starboard nacelle," reported Tuvok tersely. "Shields at sixty-five percent and holding." As he spoke, he fired another round of phasers at the Warrior. "At this rate, Captain," he informed her, "we will not be able to hold out for more than six or seven minutes more."
"That's not nearly enough," she replied, her brow creasing. "We need to find another way to distract them." She turned to address the bridge. "Suggestions at this point would be very welcome."
"How about the Borg?" asked Chakotay. "If we can't disable the transmitters now it means they'll still be coming, won't they?"
Janeway snorted. "They'll be coming either way. It just depends on how fast and how many."
"I was thinking…" Kim piped up from the back. "What if we used the presence of the Borg to our advantage?"
Janeway stared at him incredulously for a moment. "Elaborate."
Kim shrugged. "I mean… look at it this way. We've been in the Delta Quadrant for a long time, and I'm pretty sure we've had more experience in dealing with the Borg than them." The ship shuddered again, interrupting him slightly. "If the Borg do appear on scene here, I'm willing to bet that they're going to get more flustered than we are. We'll be able to adapt to the change in equilibrium faster and gain the upper hand."
"May I also point out that the Borg will be the fastest adapters of the three," noted Tuvok dryly.
"That's crazy," mumbled Chakotay. "They'll just cut and run."
Kim looked a little flushed. "Well, nobody has got any better ideas, do they?"
"He's got a point," said Janeway. "We don't have much time left, and I'd rather take a risk with the Borg than face a certain obliteration." She hit her commbadge. "Janeway to Seven of Nine. I have another task for you…"
Intendant Janeway paced back and forth angrily on the bridge of the Warrior. "Stupid… stupid… stupid…." She muttered angrily to herself.
"Intendant, when is this going to end?" whined Harry from the back of the bridge. "The shields won't hold for much longer!"
"Shut up," she snapped, "Just shut up." She wheeled to face Tuvok. "How much longer are the bloody invasion fools going to take?"
"Not much longer now, they say," replied Tuvok. "They say. For all you know, they could be ganging up with those blundering idiots out there." He gestured to the other ship. "After all, Chuckles was stupid enough to…"
Janeway shot Tuvok a suspicious look. "You don't think-?"
"Intendaaant!" wailed Harry. "They just shot at us again! Do something!!"
"I will kill you if you don't shut up!" she snarled furiously back at him. "I'm trying to do something important and-"
The Warrior suddenly lurched violently to one side, proving his point. Harry set up a loud howling to accentuate it. Snarling in irritation, the Intendant reached for the nearest heavy object –which happened to be the ship's ceremonial bat'leth-and hurled it backwards. The bat'leth buried itself in one of the back panels, raining sparks all over Harry. He slinked under the console and hid. "Useless coward…" muttered the Intendant darkly. "Now where were we?"
Tuvok didn't answer. The violent lurching of the ship seemed to have thrown him against the navigational panel where he lay slumped. That is, until the Intendant noticed that Engineer Kesin at Systems Ops was standing in front of her, phaser leveled at her chest. "This is a stick-up. Don't move."
Kim grinned with triumph as he sped down the corridor unnoticed by anyone. The whining had distracted the Intendant enough to allow him to escape and hopefully give Kesin time to ready his weapon. Reinforcements should be here in a minute… he thought, scanning the corridor. Sure enough, a group of seven rebels came trooping into view, each armed with reassuringly big phaser rifles. "The bridge is open for hostile takeover," he told them. They nodded and went on their way.
Now. The alternate Paris should have deactivated the security locks on the holding cells. It was time to rescue Chakotay.
"We're all set ," Janeway told Chakotay, handing him the compression phaser rifle. On the transporter platform, Seven was doing a last minute check of all her equipment. 'I hope you're familiar with the battle plan."
"All but one aspect," he told her. Janeway gave him a blank stare. "The Borg." He shrugged. "I've absolutely no experience in fighting them. The Intendant does, but apparently it was only once."
Janeway smiled grimly. "Focus on acquiring your ship," she told him, "and leave the Borg to us." She stepped on the transporter platform as Chakotay flipped his commlink open and handed it to her. "Captain Janeway to Lenn. We're ready."
"I got that." Torres' voice filtered over the device. "Give me a sec… I've got a few sticky problems to iron out here." A thudding sound, then a few beeps. "All right. Prepare to initiate beamover…. Energize."
The world around them dissolved in a bluish haze as hell began to unfold before them.
Lenn leaned back to admire her handiwork for a second. Annika lay crumpled in a heap in the corner of engineering. Human weaklings-it'd taken her just one punch to knock the science director out. Though she had to admit that she'd rather enjoyed that. She glanced back down at her work screen. Reports were pouring in from every corner of the ship. People were rising, fighting, rioting, and rebelling, and soon the ship would be theirs. A small smile touched her lips. Then she noticed an urgent message flashing in the corner. It was from Tom, coordinating the attacks on the upper levels with Kim. "A last-minute change in plan…." She read it and took a deep breath. She had absolutely no idea who these Borg critters were, but from what she'd heard, they were pretty terrible people to be around. Having them arrive in the middle of their mutiny was surely not a good thing. She frantically typed a message back to Tom.
A loud crash announced that she had company. She turned to look. A counterstrike team led by Joe Carey had come ramming through the door of the engine core. "Stupid idiots, they're wrecking the place…." Growling, she picked up her bat'leth and set to work.
Intendant Janeway took no time to think. She pointed behind Kesin's shoulder. "Look out!" Distracted for a moment, Kesin glanced behind him, and in that instant Janeway had seized him by the wrists and tossed him neatly over her shoulder. He hit the floor and rolled, then lashed back at Janeway with his legs. She sidestepped his wild swipe and kicked him in the groin. Hard. Kesin winced with a grunt of pain, but amazingly he still managed to stand up and point the phaser at her. Janeway rammed her shoulder into his and they both went down, grappling for the phaser. She nearly had it in her grip-
In a desperate move, Kesin bit her hand hard, breaking the skin.
Janeway let out a surprised yelp of pain and withdrew her hand. Kesin shoved her hard and she rolled off him.
Just then the secondary raiding party stormed onto the bridge, rifles waving. Realizing that she was outgunned and outnumbered, Janeway made a run for it, kicking open an access panel and diving down it. "Don't let her get away!" yelled Kesin, firing his phaser wildly at her retreating back. He lunged into the access port and slid down the Jeffries tube, coming to a halt at an intersection of four tubes.
Nothing. She had gone.
Kesin thumped his fist in frustration on the side of the tunnel. "Rebel crew, be on the alert! We've got a screw loose on the ship."
Atoms Paris sat in the navigational chair of the Starship Voyager, feeling excitement rush through him, as if he was a little boy flying his first spacecraft again. This ship was marvelous! The fine navigational control… the power…
And most of all, the way the crew worked together so well.
Tuvok was in the captain's chair, commanding the battle with calm eye and firm voice. One thing he had to get used to. He wished the Tuvok he knew could be more like this: it would make life so much easier. Beside Tuvok was the EMH, wearing a distinct ha-ha-I-get-to-be-in-the-command-seat kind of look on his face. Behind them all Harry was reporting on the ships' status every once in a while.
And he was flying the ship. That was the most important part.
"If the ship's bridge has already been taken over," mused Harry, as the Warrior let fly another salvo of torpedoes, "then how come it keeps firing at us?"
Atoms was about to answer, but the EMH beat him to it. "The firing commands are automatic. However, the rebel elements are now trying to disable the mechanisms. I hope."
Atoms pulled the ship into a series of tight maneuvers, trying to shake off the photon torpedoes on their tail. He dived down, then did an abrupt turn left, feeling his stomach lurch just a little -more from adrenaline than anything else. He then pulled up rapidly, accelerating towards the surface of the asteroid. Mid-climb, he suddenly cut his thrusters and put them on reverse, stalling the ship almost instantaneously- and amazingly, the inertial dampers managed to compensate for it fairly decently. The torpedoes zoomed past them and exploded in a brilliant crimson ball on the asteroid's surface. Had he attempted that maneuver on the Warrior, his guts would be lying somewhere on the deck by now.
He grinned. This was going to be a lot more fun than he thought.
The moment Janeway had fully materialized on the transporter pad, she leapt off it, eager to plunge into the heart of the action. Tom Paris and Hairs Kim were already there-with Chakotay. She smiled at him. "Glad to see you in one piece," she told him. He smiled back at her.
"I want to help them in this," he told her, "so I'm not going back to the ship as yet. Did you bring any spare rifles?"
"I thought as much," she said dryly, tossing him a rifle. "Here, take this."
Paris nodded to Seven. "I'll show you where the dilithium is being kept. Follow me." He strode off into one of the darkened corridors, and Seven followed him.
Hairs handed Janeway and Chakotay- both of them- a large glowstick. "You'll need this," he informed them. He gestured opposite to the direction which Paris had taken. "We'll assist the teams on Deck 12-that's where most of the ship's vital systems are based. It's bound to be fairly heavily guarded."
Nodding grimly, Janeway tightened her grip on her phaser rifle and followed him.
Lenn knocked out the last of the invasion force with a mighty blow from her bat'leth. She stood over the carnage, breathing hard. Well, it had been good exercise, and she was mostly unscathed. Whatever they said, Terrans simply just couldn't stand up to a Klingon. Not even a half-Klingon.
Then she suddenly noticed that one inert form was missing from all the bodies lying on the floor. Science Director Annika Hansen was nowhere to be seen.
She let out a cry of disgust. She'd been to busy fighting off Carey and friends to notice that she's escaped. Muttering obscenities under her breath, Lenn marched over to the work console to message the bad news. Ot was then she realized that she'd missed a message from Paris during the fight. It simply read, Hairs says that there's a screw loose on the ship. What's that supposed to mean?
She let out another loud groan and typed a reply. That means the Intendant's still running loose. More bad news-the other screw's loose too. Dang their bad luck, she thought. Having both the Intendant and Annika still in commission was definitely not good news for their attack plan. "Well, at least Tuvok seems to be taken care of for the time being," she muttered. Ask Hairs what the status of the bolt is, she added.
Sighing, Lenn reached under the console and pulled out a roll of heavy-duty twine from a storage cabinet. "I'm not going to take any chances of you guys breaking loose," she addressed the comatose forms on the floor as she tied them up.
Paris was jogging down the corridor with Seven when he heard a distinct beep from his commlink. "Finally! She's replied to my message." He flipped the commlink open, read the message and frowned. "Bolt? Screw? More funny stuff. I suppose that means Tuvok and Annika…" He shot Seven a look. "If we bump into someone who looks just like you along the way, try not to look too surprised."
Seven merely rolled her eyes.
"Paris to Lenn. Begin recording message: I think the bolt's secured for now. Everything so far is going according to plan. Good luck. End message. Paris out." He winked at Seven. "Here's where things start to get interesting." They turned the corner and entered the holding bay, where the rows of stolen dilithium lay gleaming quietly. Paris nodded. "It's all yours. Now, if you will excuse me, I think Hairs needs some help on Deck 12."
"Good luck," Seven told him as he hurried away. She strode up to the nearest stack of dilithium and deactivated the field, running a quick scan over the external cloaking unit. Species 635, she noted to herself. Tough exoskeleton, sturdy frame, makes extremely hardy drones. She opened up her engineering kit and started to work.