Chapter Twelve Elsewhere
The battered and battle scarred remnants of the combined Jaridian/Delkari attack force limped through space away from the Ya'sa'ra system. There were not that many surviving ships in total there were just seven – four of them Jaridian, three of them Delkari – and all had sustained damage some of it quiet serious. Now that they were clear of the Ya'sa'ra system and the Taelon battle group stationed there the remains of the fleet had dropped out of interdimensional space to allow engineers on board to patch hull breaches and repair other bits of external damage as best as they were able while the small fleet moved at full impulse in the direction of the nearest safe planet – in this case the Delkari colony on Taal'an III some four hundred light years from there current position in the interstellar no-mans land between the boarders of the Taelon Empire in this galaxy and the boarders of the Jaridian-allied Delkari Empire.
In her private strategy chamber on board the battered but still functional Jaridian battleship Vengara Admiral Sulkana tried to understand what had gone wrong with her carefully conceived battle plan. Try as she might she could not explain the disaster that the assault on Ya'sa'ra had become for the Empire. Defeats for Jaridia were rare – at least they'd been in the previous war with the Taelons, which had ended nearly four centuries ago. This time around it seemed to be a different story.
From the start of this new war with the Taelons the Jaridians had noticed a change in Taelon behaviour towards them. Whereas they would have once run away the Taelons now stood their ground and fought with surprising skill, passion and purpose. It hadn't taken them long to realise that it was the increasing numbers of rapidly breeding but long lived Human/Taelon hybrids who were responsible for the change. Their presence had altered the Taelon Commonality to an incredible degree and partially restored to the Taelons the passions of the species from which both Taelons and Jaridians had evolved. Which had sounded warning bells for both the Emperor and High Command from the start. It had forced them to seek allies in the form of the Delkari – who themselves controlled a respectable region of space in this galaxy with a fist of iron. The first joint assaults hadn't gone particularly well but just as things were starting to improve the Jaridians had abruptly found themselves distracted by a major internal problem.
A number of enslaved races had joined forces with the Jaridian republican movement and begun an open insurrection on the far side of the Empire that had for a time threatened to overthrow the joint rule of the Emperor and High Command. The High Command had been forced to divert their attention from the Taelons to the rebels – leaving the Delkari to fight the Taelons. The battle with the rebels had been long and brutal on both sides – the old methods of direct assault hadn't worked so the High Command had been forced to think more with their heads than their hearts and use sophisticated combat tactics and not charge blindly into battle. Eventually the High Command had beaten the rebels and been able to return attention to the Taelons.
Only to find that the war between the Taelons and Delkari had practically reached a stalemate, with neither Taelons nor Delkari able to defeat the other, it had become a battle of attrition. And that was a battle that the Taelons with their near infinite patience – when you had life spans that measured in centuries and millennia you could afford to have such patience – had been winning. Upon rejoining the war the High Command had resolved to break the stalemate.
And so it was that Sulkana – who'd distinguished herself in the civil war – had been chosen to prepare an assault that would break the stalemate. After consulting with the Delkari Sulkana had chosen Ya'sa'ra as her target since it was one of the closest territories to Delkari territory and had only moderate defences since it was one of the Taelons smallest colonies – home only to around four hundred Taelons and about fifteen thousand hybrids – and also served as a forward supply post for the Taelon fleet. Destroying it would have weekend the Taelon fleet and enabled them to break the stalemate – at least until the Taelons could regroup.
But the assault had failed. What had been meant to be the first big push against the Taelons had turned into a complete and total Jaridian and Delkari route. Sulkana's fleet had been all but destroyed with relatively little damage done to the Taelon fleet and no damage at all to Ya'sa'ra itself. And Sulkana just didn't know what to make of it. And neither would the High Command. A Jaridian fleet being defeated by the Taelons was almost unheard of.
Everything had looked so promising at the beginning. She'd had more ships than the Taelons had based at Ya'sa'ra and therefore more firepower at her disposal. And she'd sent her fleet in in two distinct waves. The Taelons had fallen for her tactic and engaged the first assault group with almost their entire battle group save for that mothership which had stayed near the orbital station. When she herself had arrived with the second assault group she'd expected only to have to deal with the planetary defence net since the first assault group should have been able to delay the Taelons long enough for her to break through the network of defence satellites, destroy the orbital station and get into bombardment position over the colony.
But it hadn't worked out that way. The casualties the first assault group had suffered so quickly had shocked her as soon as she'd come out of ID space – it had been obvious to her that the Taelons weapons had to be more powerful than she'd been led to believe by the intelligence services and had to have a longer range than reported. She'd been somewhat concerned when a significant number of Taelon ships had broken off from engaging the first assault group to move to engage her but not overly so. She'd had more ships than them in her second assault group. Then that mothership had moved to join the battle with long-range fire from its main positron torpedo banks and the Federation ship – the Voyager if she'd read the nameplate correctly – had joined in as well tipping the scales more in the Taelons favour.
Sulkana had been curious about the Federation ship being here. Sensors had shown no transwarp or interdimensional drive being onboard, just a simple warp engine the likes of which they'd abandoned millennia ago. Which was why she'd only disabled Voyager and not destroyed her even after Voyager destroyed the Cobatha. As soon as Voyager had lost shields she'd transported a number of assault replicants on board to investigate and take control of the ship. One had quickly run into a hybrid – who'd appeared to be a member of the crew – on Voyager's bridge and been destroyed the rest had been destroyed a mixture of Federation security teams and hybrids beaming over from a Taelon cruiser. She hadn't been in a position to beam anymore over. By that point in the battle the first assault group had been almost completely obliterated. More Taelon warships had been coming towards her from that battle and the Vengara had been struck by a vicious volley of positron torpedoes from a Taelon cruiser, which had overloaded the shields and breached the hull armour in three places.
Sulkana had had no choice but to order her surviving ships to disengage and retreat. Six had been destroyed and three more crippled before they could make it into ID space.
Sulkana thought about the Federation ship for a moment. She was still curious about what it was doing at Ya'sa'ra and how it had got there. Had the Taelons towed it to Ya'sa'ra from Federation space? Or had it got here by another means like a wormhole? And then their was the question of what a Human/Taelon hybrid was doing on the crew – normally they stayed with the Taelons and intelligence had reported no contacts between the Taelons and the Federation save one brief meeting eleven years ago. Was intelligence wrong about that as well? Sulkana believed it imperative that they find out either way and took steps to discourage the powerful United Federation of Planets from joining the war. She would speak to the High Command about it when she got to Taal'an.
*****
Ya'sa'raTwo Days Later
An exhausted Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres walked down the circular central corridor of the apartment block on the surface of Ya'sa'ra, which had been assigned as temporary living quarters for the Voyager crew while Voyager was being repaired. She'd hadn't spent today on Voyager at all but had been on the station most of the day working with Doctor Brahms, Commander LaForge, Seven of Nine, the Vulcan T'vren, a Taelon scientist called Su'ul and his hybrid assistance Tadoshi Nakamura, and the Klingon scientist Gorak to try and find away of making interdimensional technology work on a Federation ship.
It had been interesting but exhausting work. The Taelon ID technology was incredibly advanced and was based on theories that to them were cutting edge or hadn't even been thought of in some cases. Judging from Seven's expression some of the theories were completely new even to her and she had the knowledge of the Borg to call on. B'Elanna didn't understand half of what was explained – though to be fair she wasn't a scientist and Su'ul and Tadoshi were doing their best to teach them the basic principles involved. But they'd made some headway. Between them B'Elanna, Geordie, Leah and Su'ul had figured out how to integrate the interdimensional engine coils into Voyager's existing nacelle structure. That was one hurdle down. Seven, T'vren and Gorak with Tadoshi's help were making slow but steady progress in reconfiguring the ID drive power matrix to work with Federation technology. They'd finally called it a day an hour ago and now B'Elanna was on her way back to her and Tom's apartment to rest before they had dinner with Owen Paris this evening.
At that moment she arrived at the door to the apartment. She could tell that it was the door because it was inset slightly from the bioslurry wall, which it was otherwise indistinguishable from. A small number 22 was written above the door control panel, which like everything else was organic only in the case of the pad it was made of a tough translucent material that looked similar to plastic but was infinitely stronger and didn't melt under sustained heat.
B'Elanna reached out and touched the panel. The panel glowed under her touch checking her DNA code and energy signature conformed to one of those it was programmed automatically to admit. A second later the door glowed brightly and simply vanished. B'Elanna shook her head as she walked in. She still wasn't used to that, doors should open not simply vanish into thin air. The door reappeared behind her.
B'Elanna looked around the apartment for a moment and wondered idly if Tom was back yet from his latest training session. For the past two days Tom had been working with a hybrid whose name B'Elanna knew to be Rhys to learn to control the abilities that he suddenly had as a result of becoming a hybrid again – permanently this time. In the last two days she'd seen Tom go from being frightened of his powers to coming to accept them as his control over them grew better and she'd seen his confidence grow.
Sure enough Tom was here she could see him standing out on the balcony looking out over the city that was Ya'sa'ra's only settlement and the ocean beyond its boundary. He clearly hadn't heard her come in. B'Elanna walked over and felt a momentary electrostatic tingle as she walked through a virtual glass barrier.
Tom turned as he heard her step through the barrier and smiled warmly in greeting. Silently they kissed and embraced as normal. B'Elanna personally hoped that this would never change that they would always be able to show their affection for each other.
"How was your day?" Tom asked her quietly.
"Exhausting," B'Elanna admitted. "But productive we've finally figured out how to integrate the ID drive coils into Voyager's existing nacelles. The repairs are progressing well from what I'm told. From what I gather we're repairing Voyager enough to get us back home but that's all were doing. The destroyed sections can be rebuilt at Utopia Planetia."
"That is good news," Tom replied pulling back a little. "We'll finally be going home soon."
"Yes it is." B'Elanna eyed Tom carefully. "But I get the impression you're not as happy with it as I would have thought."
"It's not that I don't want to go home," Tom replied. "But I just don't know what's going to happen when we get there. Will they send me back to prison? Will they put you and all the other former Marquis in prison? I'm just not happy with the idea of the crew being broken up?" B'Elanna nodded in understanding it had bothered her as well.
"Somehow I doubt that's going to happen," she reasoned. "Starfleet lost a lot of ships and a lot of crews during the Dominion War. I overheard Chakotay speaking to your father about it. He said that during the war an executive order was issued by the then Federation President Jaris Inyo pardoning all Marquis with military experience. Many former Starfleet personnel rejoined to fight off the Cardassians, Jem'Hadar and Breen. From what your father said that order has not been cancelled. I doubt they'll force anyone to leave Voyager if we don't want to go."
"That would be nice," Tom agreed. "We've all been through so much together in the last seven years that it would be a shame to break up the family." B'Elanna nodded in seven years the crew of Voyager had become like a family to each other mainly because when they'd been yanked across the galaxy they'd effectively lost their own families and had only each other to turn to.
"So how did your day go," B'Elanna asked Tom. "Learn anything new?"
"A little," Tom replied turning to look back out at the sea. "Rhys showed me how to share my feelings and such with others using my shaqarava as a conduit."
"Wasn't that happening anyway?" B'Elanna asked referring to the fact that every time they'd touched hands in the last two and a half days they'd both immediately felt each other in a way that was hard to put into words it was like an awareness of each others being besides their physical bodies.
"Yes inadvertently because I didn't know how to stop it. Now I do know or at least I have a very good idea. Rhys did point out however that I won't stop it entirely until…"
"Until we let this mental love bond thing happen," B'Elanna finished. Tom nodded. B'Elanna joined him in looking out at the ocean beyond the buildings of this beautiful but very alien city. There apartment was located on the fifth floor of the apartment complex and the view was lovely from here. "Maybe we should just let it happen," she said after a moment turning away slightly from the view Tom turning with her. "From what Mit'gai said on Voyager it's going to happen anyway what's the point in trying to delay it?"
"Good point," Tom agreed. "But are you comfortable with the idea?"
"Well from what I understand about this va'ruu isn't it?" Tom nodded. "The link goes both ways and we can block each other out when we want and just be aware of each other. So yeah I'm okay with it. You?"
"Yeah I'm alright with it." Tom looked straight into his wife's deep brown eyes and B'Elanna for her part looked into Tom's grey-blue eyes. Tom smiled slightly at her. "We have a couple of hours till dad comes for dinner," Tom said. "Perhaps we should just let this bond thing form now."
"It's as good a time as any," B'Elanna agreed. "But let's go inside shall we?" Tom nodded in agreement. This was a very private thing that should only take place between the two of them.
A moment later they were in the bedroom of the apartment. They stood facing each other at the end of the bed.
"So how do we do this," B'Elanna asked.
"To be honest I don't know," Tom asked. "Mit'gai said it's instinctive so maybe we should just join hands and let whatever happens happen." B'Elanna nodded in agreement.
Tom held up his hands palms out. B'Elanna did the same and they walked towards each other until their hands touched. The moment their hands touched they closed their eyes and there was the familiar jolt of awareness of each other's being. But this time they didn't pull away but went with the feeling letting it wash over them. For a couple of moments nothing happened beyond that feeling of awareness then a wave of warmth began in Tom's body rising from somewhere deep in the very fibres of his being and surged through him. It ran down his arms, to his hands and his shaqarava before passing into and surging through B'Elanna. And abruptly the awareness changed and there minds interpenetrated each other to such a point that for a short time they were both separate and yet the same.
Neither of them noticed of cared about the shimmering blue energy cocoon that had enveloped them. They were just focused entirely on the ecstasy of the feeling between luxuriating in knowing each other in away that was previously inconceivable. For those priceless minutes there was no separate Tom Paris, no separate B'Elanna Torres but both together as one knowing each others thoughts each others memories feeling each others feelings.
After what seemed like just seconds but what was really nearly ten minutes their minds once more separated though the awareness remained behind at the back of their minds a constant feeling of knowing exactly where the other was and what they were feeling – and if they concentrated what they were thinking. The energy cocoon faded away as they lowered their hands and opened their eyes. And both collapsed to their knees shaking with the after-effects of the intensity of the experience.
"That was amazing," a gasping B'Elanna breathed. The experience had been beyond anything that she had ever experienced and more intimate than anything she'd ever known even sex. At the back of her mind she could sense that Tom was feeling.
"Yes it was," Tom agreed gasping himself.
After a couple of more moments they both stood up as the after-effects of the strange alien but incredible experience faded away aside from the mental awareness of each other. After another moment of silently thinking about what had happened they both started moving. B'Elanna going to the bathroom to have a bath, Tom going over to dinning area and beginning to lay the table for dinner tonight.