A Line I Crossed (Part 2)
Another Voyager fanfic by TaTTooGaL™ (Lt Taya 17 Janeway)
B'Elanna Torres was working in Engineering when she heard a voice from behind her, one she hadn't heard for ages. "Lanna?"
She turned round, hardly believing her ears. "Res?"
The Tellarite was standing behind her, an almost-silly grin on his face. "Hey. It's good to see you again."
Torres let out a small cry of delight. "Res! I don't believe this… what are you doing here?"
"I'm part of the damage control team Data sent over," he told her. "I was told to help the chief engineer in the replacement of some deck plating, but it didn't occur to me who that chief engineer was going to be until I beamed over." He scratched a tuft of hair on his head, a movement that was so endearingly him, and smiled. "Well… it was a bit of a shock initially, I must admit. We thought you'd been lost when Chakotay's ship went to the Badlands and never came back."
"That still doesn't explain what you're doing here. Last time I checked, you were a Maquis renegade on the run with several charges of treason under your belt… and now you're serving on Starfleet's flagship."
He laughed. "I might say the same for you. Last time I checked, you'd dropped out of Academy and weren't in danger of being made chief engineer anytime soon."
Torres shrugged. "The most absurd things can happen under the hand of necessity. But how about you?" She grinned up at him. "What, did you bribe the Federation president to give you a royal pardon?"
Reskin laughed. "Of course not. As you said, necessity makes the weirdest things happen. Starfleet needed help, so I promised I'd be a good boy and they let me back on board. It wasn't the easiest transition, but one gets used to it after a while."
She nodded. "I know the feeling." She passed him a padd. "Damage inventory… see what your people can do to help mine."
Reskin scanned down the padd. "All routine repairs… we should be finished within a couple of hours."
"I'm glad you agree." She smiled at him. "We have a lot to catch up with… but I suppose we'll have plenty of time to do that back in the Alpha Quadrant." She laughed, suddenly feeling light. "I still can't believe it. We're finally going back…"
He shrugged. "Well, it's not exactly the happiest of places to be in right now, but I guess that's what they mean when they say home is where the heart is… things just don't feel the same when you are in an alien place."
She picked up an engineering kit, preparing to move on to the next repair job. "What do you mean, it's not exactly the happiest of places?"
"Well… you probably wouldn't know of this, since it began after you left, but the Federation has been fighting a war with this race called the Dominion-"
"The Dominion wars? Aren't they over?"
Reskin gave her a singularly odd glance. "How would you know about the Dominion war?"
"Starfleet contacts us regularly now… why wouldn't I know?" She stared at him, starting to grow suspicious now. "That's right… they never told us anything about sending the Enterprise to rescue us… and if I'm not mistaken it was still the E when I last checked."
"That's odd." Reskin looked seriously spooked now. "We've been looking for you ship for twelve years, but never once have we made contact with the ship…"
Torres' eyes widened. "Twelve years? We've been missing for only six and a half!"
Reskin took in a deep breath. "Damn."
She gave her friend a long, hard stare. "What does this mean, that you're messing up the timeline now and things are changed because we aren't originally supposed to meet you?"
The security chief blinked rapidly. "This can't be right… we checked everything! Our calculations, our sensor sweeps… we can't have gone back!" He frowned, crossing his arms. "There has to be some mistake here… maybe we're all just too excited by the prospect of completing our respective missions. It might just be miscommunication."
"Or one heck of a weird dream." Torres shook her head, trying to clear it. "Why can't things just be simpler?"
Reskin put the padd down, the repairs forgotten. "We should sort this out now with our captains before something goes seriously wrong and it's too late to change it."
Despite the situation Torres laughed. "Now there's the pessimistic doomsayer I remember from the Maquis," she ribbed. Then she sobered. "I guess you're right. Problem is, our captain's still missing, and we need to find her as soon as possible. We can KIV the repairs for now, but not this."
Reskin glanced suspiciously at Torres. "Her?"
Torres' commbadge chose that moment to beep, interrupting their conversation. She tapped it. "Torres here."
"Lieutenant." It was Seven. "Report to Shuttle Bay two at once. We've found the Delta Flyer."
Torres didn't need any second prompting. She was out of the door at once.
******
On the way down to the shuttle bay Reskin kept peppering her with questions, trying to keep pace with Torres' brisk jog. "What's so important to you on that shuttle that you have to keep rushing like this anyway?"
"My husband's on it!"
"Your… husband?"
"Remember Tom Paris? The one you used to think was a complete jerk? I married him." She gave Reskin a wicked grin.
"Paris? Him?" Reskin looked puzzled. "What the heck is he doing on this ship?"
"Same thing as me. Earning a decent living."
Reskin frowned oddly. "I might have remembered it wrongly, but Alena's uncle was in prison when the Voyager was launched."
"Emphasis on was. Who's Alena?"
"Magaret Paris' and Tolvik's daughter. Tom's niece, in other words."
"I never knew that he had one." Torres arrived at the doors to the shuttle bay and they swished open at her approach. Inside, Chakotay and Data were engaged in a seemingly heated debate.
Chakotay looked up as Torres entered. "Oh, you're here already. As a matter of fact we don't require your assistance anymore. Captain Data here and I have decided that Ensign Kim and Lieutenant Tighe will be assigned to retrieve the Flyer instead. They'll take one of the shuttles from the Enterprise- it'll be faster that way. Our two ships will follow them… but at a slower pace. To accommodate for us."
The disappointment showed in Torres' face but she said nothing. Instead she gave Reskin a meaningful glance. The Tellarite fidgeted for a while, then said slowly, "Have we correlated the databases on board our two ships yet?"
"No," replied Chakotay, "there hasn't been enough time."
Reskin nodded. "After conversing with Lieutenant Torres over here, I have found that there a considerable number of discrepancies between our two ships."
Data tilted his head to one side in a puzzled manner. "Discrepancies? How so?"
"In our stardates, for example. We're apparently five years ahead of their time."
"Fascinating." The android looked disturbed. "We did not detect any sign of temporal displacement when we came through the distance device."
"We should attempt to find out if any more such discrepancies exist, and if they do, why do they exist?"
Chakotay and Data nodded in unison, curious at this new turn of events. "I knew it was too good to be true," Chakotay muttered darkly. "There must be a catch somewhere."
Data gestured to them. "Come. We must talk."
******
And if I was to sleep
I knew my family had more truth to tell
And so I traveled down a whispering well
To know myself through them
******
She was back on the doomed shuttle Boaedicea, scouting a region for a starship- or the remains of a starship. Close by was the Enterprise, newly commissioned, guarding over her numerous scouting vessels like a mother hawk, sharp eyed and sharp taloned, ready to defend them in necessary. In spite of all this none of it could save her from what happened.
It was attack out of the blue. One moment she'd been sweeping the sector with all coasts clear, and the next the shuttle had been rocked violently in the wake of fire. She'd known at once that it was a Dominion attack, and the shuttle was helpless under the power of the ship's polaron beams.
The next memories were fragmented, like a mirror shattered into a million shards by a falling axe-
-she had been trying to fire back at the ship-
-something behind exploded-
-her mother, rising to put out the fire-
-then console exploding, spraying shrapnel, slashing, tearing, impaling-
-lacerations all over her arms-
-the stunned look on her mother's face as she pulled out the long jagged shard of metal from herself, the serrated edges slick with blood-
-then collapsing, power offline-
-running over to her mother, frantic, trying to stem the flow of blood with her hands, to stop up the torn gaping wound-
"-Mom please hold on, help's coming soon, look at me Mom, just keep breathing, look at me-"
-her eyes losing focus, lifeblood draining away on the floor of the shuttle-
"-don't close your eyes, Mom, stay awake! Please! Keep looking at me, no please Mom-"
"-Amanda… tell you father… not to worry… take care of ship-"
"-don't say things like that, please Mom you're not going to die, oh please-"
"-you'll have to … look after yourself… such a beautiful girl… so proud-"
-coughing, coughing up pink frothy blood flecked with red, bright against her graying cheeks-
-drawing the last rattling breath, going limp in her arms-
"-Mom? Mom! Oh god, wake up please! Mom! Don't die! Oh gods you can't do this to me-"
-tears mingling with blood, salt and copper, hugging, crying, begging-
-docking on the Enterprise, too late, too late to do anything-
-her father, first one into the damaged shuttle, eyes filled with shock-
-Dr. Crusher, trying her best-
"-she's gone, oh gods Captain I am so sorry-"
-and all through she was holding on to her mother's body, rocking back and forth and crying like a lost child, asking why did she have to die, whywhywhywhywhywhyWHY-
"Amanda! Wake up!"
Tighe cried out, startled, as Harry Kim shook her shoulder violently. She was on the Enterprise's shuttle Minorca, taking a short nap. Kim's face hovered over hers, concerned. "You were screaming… are you alright?"
She sucked air into her lungs in great gulps, trying to slow her breathing and calm herself down. "Yeah… I had a nightmare."
Kim blew air between his lips. "Some nightmare… sheesh! Does this always happen to you?"
Tighe clambered off the sleeping cot, shrugging sheepishly. "If you ask me, no… not until you guys showed up on our sensors at any rate."
"You mean you only started having such incidences when you found the Voyager?" Kim frowned. "Finding us must have been really traumatic."
Despite herself, Tighe laughed at the dry humor in his words. Then she sobered. "No, it isn't anything to do with the Voyager."
Kim tactfully remained silent, not trying to push her to talk if she didn't want to.
She angled a glance at him. "Harry… tell me. Were you very close to your parents?"
A dark shadow flitted over his features as he looked away. "Yes." He drew in a deep breath, and said slowly, "I haven't seen them for more than six years, and I … miss them very much."
Tighe slapped a hand on her forehead, angered by her own insensitivity. "I'm sorry… I forgot."
"It's okay." Kim patted her on the shoulder. "I kinda got used to it."
"Yeah… so I guess you know how painful it is." She gazed at him, her dark gray eyes misty. "Imagine if you lost both your parents forever within the space of two months. That's traumatic."
Kim's eyes widened in sympathy. "You mean…? Oh. I'm sorry." He was at a loss for words, not knowing how he should comfort her. "It must have been terrible. I'd get nightmares too."
Tighe clenched her fists in anger. "It was so stupid, for crying out loud! My mom was killed by a piece of flying shrapnel, and my dad fell prey to some new strain of virus… if the had to die at least they should have died making a difference to the war!" She gazed at Kim, her eyes filling with frustrated tears. "It wasn't meant to happen, you know. I was on shore leave. I was supposed to be enjoying myself… but I had to visit them on the Enterprise. And not only that, I had to persuade my mother to get on that doomed shuttle with me to salvage a wreck… can you believe it? She died over the remains of some worthless starship. And when my father fell ill, he just went quietly with it. He would never have done that… anyone who survived capture by the Cardassians wouldn't just give up on life like that."
"I'm sorry." Kim hugged her, and she fell on his shoulder, crying. "Don't blame yourself over their deaths, Amanda…" He paused, thinking. "I know this is going to sound weird, but… once I received a transmission from my future self, where I'd apparently spent 15 years blaming myself for the deaths of my whole crew. Subsequently I went back and changed everything… it wasn't a pretty sight."
Tighe drew back, glancing at him oddly. "A transmission from your older self… and I thought I'd heard everything on the Enterprise."
Kim shrugged. "Hey, it's true. I was lucky, I got a second chance. But you… you shouldn't waste your life with this chip on your shoulder… I mean, people die on the job all the time, don't they?"
"I'm not blaming myself, Harry… I'm just so angry that I didn't manage to get to do the right thing before they died." She gazed at him frankly. "Unlike you, I didn't have the best of relationships with my parents. I was forever angry at them… I couldn't stop blaming them for making me live such a traumatic childhood. I never really had one, you know… When I was younger I didn't understand why we constantly lived on the edge of fear, and when I grew older I thought I did, and part of me hated them for it. It wasn't until after my mother died that I realized how much they'd done for me, and by then it was too late to apologize. I hurt them a lot, and they'll never get to know how sorry I am for it."
"You can't always be sure of that." Kim's eyes softened. "Deep down inside they must have known. And I don't think they'd blame you for being angry, either… they're your parents after all. They'd still love you no matter what… you believe that, don't you?"
She shook her head and started for the command module, drying her tears. "Yeah… I guess. My mom, she wrote a letter to me to be opened after her death, and she kept telling me how proud she was of me." She sighed. "If only it all hadn't happened, things might be so different today. It was so dumb … what kind of idiots would put their captain in a shuttle bound for a potentially dangerous mission?"
"The crew of the Voyager, for example," quipped Kim. "Why else would we be out here looking for the Delta Flyer?"
Tighe laughed. "You have a point."
The science console in the command module trilled. "Hey, we've found them!" Tighe grinned, her discomfiture quickly forgotten. "Let's go get your captain."
******
The conference room on the Enterprise was large and spacious, with a table large enough to accommodate twelve. It was modestly furnished, however, and slightly chilly. Data told them it was part of the Federation's drive to conserve energy aboard starships, but what did Data care? He was an android, and he could have survived in a frozen vacuum if necessary. Denbri, on the other hand, was Romulan, and she was physiologically adapted for hot climates. This constant chill was probably contributing to part of her unease.
The other part stemmed from the eccentricity amongst the crew of the Voyager. As their two crews interacted, the discrepancies between their two time frames became more apparent. This Voyager was apparently about six years behind their own time frame. But it shouldn't have been the case. She'd watched Tighe and Dax slave over the math; she trusted that they were correct. Ezri had been a scientist in her former life, after all.
But as she spoke with Commander Chakotay and Lieutenant Torres, what she'd dismissed as the most improbable of possibilities began to sound more and more likely: that this wasn't their own timeline at all; and they'd crossed over into some weird alternate dimension where everything was different.
For one thing, this Voyager apparently had some project devoted to searching for them back in the Alpha Quadrant. Six years ago the Dominion War had freshly erupted and nobody was likely to have started any program like this. And another thing- this Voyager was launched from a space station called Deep Space Nine. No such station existed- the only Cardassian space station in the Bajoran system was destroyed in the Federation's conquest of Cardassia. And even the purported launch date of the Voyager was different.
Data frowned, addressing Commander Chakotay. "And how many times has your ship encountered the Borg in this quadrant?"
"Several… at least five or six. We've stopped counting."
Data nodded sagely. "The Enterprise-D encountered the Borg a phenomenal number of times, but the Enterprise-E… only once. That too, involved temporal displacement."
"Seven has fairly accurate accounts of that incident… Captain Picard foiled the plans of the Borg, didn't he?"
Denbri wanted to slap herself in the head. What were these stupid men doing, discussing things which were of no importance whatsoever to the Voyager and the situation at hand? Why didn't they talk about the crewmembers who'd died on the trip to the Delta Quadrant, or about survivors who came from the Enterprise-D?
Data looked troubled. "The incident discrepancies extend further than I'd thought… several years, at least. But now we can ascertain that our temporal displacement is not the cause of these discrepancies. I am afraid that we may be dealing with something different altogether- an alternate universe."
Denbri looked up. Finally, someone was making sense.
Torres frowned. "So, Captain Picard didn't foil the plans of the Borg this time?"
"No, Captain Tighe did. Captain Picard went down with the Enterprise-D on Veridian III." Data sighed. "Captain Tighe is… was a remarkable woman."
"Tighe… the name does sound familiar," remarked Chakotay. "I might have heard of her before… but I can't remember where precisely."
"She worked with Admiral Owen Paris and her father to help bring down the Cardassian Empire," Data offered helpfully. "After which she took command of her first ship, the USS Bonestell, before taking on the post of the captain of the Enterprise."
Chakotay shot him a glance. "The Bonestell was my captain's first command. What a coincidence…"
Before Data could say anything further, Dax hailed them from the bridge. "The Minorca's made contact with the Delta Flyer," she reported. "We'll be arriving at their coordinated in approximately fifteen minutes."
Chakotay pushed his chair back, preparing to leave. "Maybe you'd better take this up with Captain Janeway when she returns."
Now it was Data's turn to cast him a glance. "Wait. Janeway was Captain Tighe's maiden name."
Chakotay sat back down. "Too much of a coincidence."
Torres gasped. "Tighe… oh god, I remember!" She nudged Chakotay. "Wasn't that the name of her first fiancee… the one who died on Tau Ceti Prime? With her father?" She gave him a significant look. "Before they got married?"
Data took this all in and nodded slowly. "Much, much further than I'd thought."
Denbri snorted in amazement. "Alternate universe, indeed…"