valkryies8

Ship of the Valkryies (Part Eight)

A Star Trek crossover fanfic by Lt Taya 17 Janeway (TaTTooGaL™)

On the bridge of Voyager Crusher watched as the viewscreen abruptly turned pitch black. "What just happened?" she asked.

Troi looked up from Ops. "Captain, we've established contact with Ensign Ro."

Crusher was vaguely interested. "A help line… This must be the hardest part of the mission."

"Contact her," Janeway instructed Crusher.

Troi complied. A few moments later a scratchy connection was established.

"Voyager." Ro's voice was whispered, as if speaking from very far away. "I'm in the middle of this darkness. I can't get any bearings. Even my tricorder's not giving out light. Where am I?"

Crusher glanced up at the map superimposed on the top right hand corner of the map. Ro was in the middle of a square marked with a red cross. "You're there, where the treasure is supposed to be," replied Janeway. "What can you see?"

"Nothing," snapped Ro. "There's some kind of visible-light damping field at work here," she said.

"Let's see if it works for EM waves of longer wavelengths," Janeway said. "There's an infrared imager with your hazard suit- can you activate it?"

There was a pause, then, "I think so."

Immediately the viewscreen changed from a black abyss to a plethora of bright colors, like someone had dropped an artist's palette on it. "Ouch," said Ro, commenting on the swimming psychedelic colors before her eyes. "I think I'd prefer the darkness."

Janeway ignored her grumbling and turned to consult with Kira. Nervously, Crusher leaned back against her chair at Tactical, wishing that it weren't so damn isolated from everyone else on the bridge. She wanted to talk to Troi, but the Betazed was at the other end of the fishbone arch. Instead she focused on the viewscreen, trying to interpret the shifting colors. "The warmer colors- red and yellow- are probably walls. Try to avoid them, and move towards the blue ones."

Ro took her advice and walked towards a patch of blue and green. Then she let out a yelp. "I've run into a wall. It's made of metal."

"Sorry," was all Crusher could think to say.

"Turn around, Laren," said Jadzia from helm. "What do you see there in the center of your field of vision?"

"I don't know. It looks like a rod of some kind. I'll try moving closer." The picture on the viewscreen changed dizzily. Then, "I can feel it and pick it up. I can feel jewels of some sort embedded in it. It's made of metal, I think, and quite heavy. I'm betting that this is what I'm supposed to get."

"Quite correctly deduced," said Cass calmly, perched on the fishbone arch, the first thing she'd said all the time Ro had been on the planet. "Take it and try to leave as fast as possible."

"I don't know where the exit is. I turned around quite a number of times in the darkness."

"What's that moving in the corner of your vision?" asked Crusher in alarm.

Ro looked, and she didn't like it either. "I don't know… but it looks like it has two heads."

"That's because it does," Cass informed her. "Get out of there."

Ro's voice rose slightly in annoyance. "That's easy for you to say! I can't see a bloody thing except for the two-headed monster!"

"Commander Troi, can you lock on to her signal?" asked Janeway.

"I can."

"Beam her back to the shuttle."

"Beaming…"

The viewscreen was changed back to normal vision again, showing the interior of a shuttle. "We've lost contact with her again."

"No matter," said Janeway. "She should be coming back soon."

Something moved in the field of vision of the imager transmitting to Voyager , and Crusher belatedly realized Ro was waving the prize she'd picked up to show them what it was. She held a breath as she beheld it.

It was an intricately formed scepter with rubies embedded in it.

******

Ro was tired. Really, really tired. She sat slumped in her seat in the briefing room of Voyager, doing nothing but rubbing her temples and wishing she could get to bed. But then again, she'd just about been through the worst kind of hell she could think of, and the fact that she was still in one piece was testimony to how hard she'd tried to succeed in it. Yet none of the other crewmembers seemed to be taking note of her discomfort, instead paying more attention to that blasted scepter she'd swiped.

Kira wielded the scepter in one hand, feeling its weight and heft enthusiastically. Ironic. Ro thought that of all people she would be the one who'd sympathize most with the feeling that one was suffering from a severe sleep deficiency, but the Bajoran major was just about as enthused as everyone else about the scepter. She held it up to the light, as if to see it better.

It was a magnificent object , to tell the truth. It was shaped like a stalactite made of polished white marble and porcelain, fragile yet full of power. Dark red rubies encrusted its sides and carvings, and a single huge one occupied the center of the scepter, glowing with a certain kind of radiant energy. Set along the length of the scepter were grooves serving as handles. Preliminary scans of the object had yielded little, except for a few unusual emissions of quantum packets associated with Prophet Orbs.

Cass was there, taking the scene in with a knowing, sanguine smile. She caught Ro's eye, and somehow Ro felt compelled to smile back to the blue deepness in her eyes. After all this days, she guessed she still hadn't figured the strange Diocese out, and she was willing to bet five years of sleep that most of the crew hadn't been able to do so either.

Janeway passed the rod around the oval table for everyone to see. When it finally reached Keiko, the botanist gazed at it for a fair amount to time. Then she let out a small cry of discovery. Pointing to the inside of the grooved handle, she said, "Look at that! There's an inscription on it."

"Looks like we've found our next clue," said Torres, smiling.

"That's nice," muttered Ro, and that was as far as she got before she hit the table, fast asleep.

******

Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

They'd followed the instructions on the scepter, to the very letter. They'd found the planet they were supposed to be on. They'd landed on the planet. They'd done everything right.

So where the hell was the Quest they were supposed to be completing?

For Voyager had landed on what was a Demon-class planet, no less. They didn't venture out to the surface, not wanting to face those harsh conditions unless they were really forced to. When they'd approached Cass for an explaination, she'd given them a perturbed look and muttered something about logistical problems.

Then she disappeared, leaving the crew stranded with nowhere to go.

So Janeway had called for a brainstorming session, and the senior crew now gathered in the briefing room. They were not so much worried as frustrated, an emotion which seemed to be going around in abundance these days. They'd all been plucked out of their relatively normal lives and plunged into this living nightmare, and they all wanted to return to that normalcy as fast as possible. After this, I'm never going to complain about being in the Delta Quadrant again, thought Janeway dryly as she leaned forward to rest her elbows on the table so that she could rub her temples in peace.

Kira was repeatedly smacking her fist into the palm of her hand, Ro was drumming her fingers on the table, Torres spoke with a perpetual growl, Crusher was agitatedly twisting one lock of her hair into a tortured cord, Troi was chewing on her lip, Jadzia was grinding her teeth and Seven seemed to be intent on crushing the padd she held. Even the normally implacable Guinan and the incredibly good-natured Keiko seemed to be teetered on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Janeway had the feeling that if anyone tried to do anything funny in the room at that moment, he likely wouldn't live to regret it.

Q, with his perfect timing, chose that moment to appear, standing in the middle of the room right on the table.

As Janeway expected, he immediately got it from them. He was lambasted on all sides by angry accusations and even angrier rants as everyone in the room more or less stood up to rail at him. Cornered on all sides, Q raised his hands helplessly to ward of his ladies' affections. When that still didn't work, he snapped his fingers and silenced everyone in the room with his powers, so that even though they continued yelling there was no sound. They stopped mid-sentence as they realized what had been done to them.

Pushed past breaking point, Torres leapt onto the table and knocked Q over, snarling. With an inaudible cry of delight, Kira applauded her and joined her on the table, fists raised. Whooping silently, Ro joined in. Janeway realized that such uncouth displays of violence were unseemly for Starfleet officers, but at that point she wouldn't really care if they'd been hacking Q into bloody chunks. Besides, technically none of them were Starfleet officers, although that case would be made moot if she gave in to temptation and joined them on the table, an action which she found very hard to resist doing.

"Ladies, ladies, please!" Q pleaded with them as Torres tried to sink her teeth into his neck. "I know how much you adore me, but you don't really have to be so vehement in your idolatry…"

Janeway bit back a stinging riposte and instead asked, "What is it you want-" She stopped mid sentence as she remembered that her vocal cords weren't working as well as they should.

With a wave of his hand Q put his three assailants back into their seats. Then, with a flash, he was behind her. "Well, I know what you must all be thinking of now… that I screwed up major, sent you to the wrong planet and gave you all the wrong clues, the whole kit and caboodle. Well, let me tell you this. I'm Q. I don't screw up." He paused as if in thought, then snarled in frustration. "Alright, I'll admit! I did screw up! That's why I'm here!" He shot them all a dark glance. "But I didn't mess up on this Treasure Hunt. I had everything going on according to plan, everything perfect, until…" He paused, and he didn't seem quite comfortable with letting on with his new secret. Then he sighed, waved his hand as if to indicate that he was tossing his dignity, the whole nine yards of it, to hell. "My daughter went missing."

Daughter? "I didn't know you had a daughter," mouthed Janeway silently.

Q passed it off. "New addition to the family." He sighed melodramatically. "All I did was take my eyes off her for ten seconds, and she was gone!" Agitated, he paced up and down the room. "If my wife finds out, the lashing you three tried to give me"- he gestured to Kira, Ro and Torres- "would be a blessing."

Guinan smiled sardonically, and to the surprise of everyone present, spoke. "Looks like you got yourself into a spot of domestic trouble."

Q's expression darkened for a moment, then he wiped it away with a manic grin. "In the interest of self-preservation, then, I have changed the nature of this Quest a little bit. You, you and you"- he pointed to Crusher, Keiko and Seven- "have just been appointed to find my daughter." Then he was gone in a flash of light.