Flesh and Steel

by Hamstadini

Summary: In order to save the crew, Harry must reconcile with his past. Author's notes: First fanfic, please review. Chapter 4 up... finally.

3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: See chapter 1, 'cause I'm too lazy to repost it.

Flesh and Steel: Chapter 3

Harry wiped the sweat from his brow as he finalized the modifications to his ops station. Though he did his level best to repair the damage, the bridge still looked like the class nine disaster area that he came into. Apparently, the wolven intruders had a thirst for destruction as well as combat.

The only thing that was going Harry's way was that after the attacking ships had left all systems returned to full power, confirming Harry's suspicions that alien dampening technology was behind the warp core and primary sensor system power failures. Now that primary sensors were online, Harry took extensive scans of the region, hoping to chase after the abductors. Fortunately, the ion signature of the alien vessels decayed slowly, suggesting a vessel of low warp capability. But before he could follow, Harry needed to take care of Voyager.

The first option he had was to track the wolves down immediately using Voyager's long-range scanners and then attempt a full-frontal assault. The consequences would be that the wolves would return fire, and then Harry would have to run around like a chicken without a head trying to hold things together. The wolves, then realizing that they had left at least one potential slave behind, would then board the ship, thus ensuring the maiming and subsequent enslaving or slaying of ensign Harry Kim. So, he decided to put in effect option number two.

He spent the past hour rerouting tactical, helm, and engineering to his ops station. With any luck, he'd be able to control the entire ship temporarily from his console. Scanning with Astrometric sensors, he spied a small, airless planetoid half a light year away. Voyager got there almost instantaneously after Harry set in a course for it at warp 5. But as soon as Voyager dropped out of warp, Harry realized that the plan he outlined might have been more ambitious than he anticipated.

The goal was to drop Voyager off at a hiding place so that roving scavengers wouldn't take it after Harry left the ship in the Delta Flier. After all, what was the point of saving the crew if there was no ship to come home to?

So, he designed a simple enough plan: find a planetoid, land Voyager someplace safe, and take off in the Delta Flier. But now as he actually had to land the ship he had to swallow a dry lump in his throat. The memory of crashing Tom's '69 Camero in a parallel parking disaster on the holodeck came unbidden to Harry's mind. If he couldn't park a 2-meter long vessel, how could he manage to land half-kilometer a one? Harry pushed all his fears out of his mind with a huge sigh; he needed to focus on the task at hand.

Over the years, Voyager's crew has done numerous landfalls, and knew by experience which protocols needed to be followed, and which were absolutely unnecessary. Since he wasn't landing in atmosphere, Harry decided to let bypass atmospheric thrusters and let regular thrusters do the work. At the beginning of the decent, Harry locked in an autopilot code he whipped up for the occasion and settled in the captain's chair, His confidence growing as with every second all seemed to be going as planned.

At which point, the computer decided to inform Harry, "Warning: spatial ventral thrusters 22 through 25 off-line."

Harry frowned at the news. Apparently Voyager suffered extensive damage externally as well. "Transfer auxiliary power to the thrusters."

"Transfer incomplete. Warning: structural integrity field failing."

"Oh hell."

The bridge turned into a fireworks display of epic proportions as every power conduit overloaded and the ship whined under a thousand gees of stress. Harry lunged for the helm and he felt like he was swimming through water as everything seemed to slow down. He felt the ship buck violently as the secondary hull chafed against the tip of a mountainside. When his finger grazed the controls after what seemed to be an eternity, he brought the ship under heel by rerouting all power from secondary systems to those that were still working, compensating for the damage. Even so, Voyager had a hard landing, a small dent was created in the moon by the momentum of the descent, and Harry couldn't see the surface of the moon through the screen for the dust that flew upward.

Recovering from the close call, Harry dazedly made his way over to his flickering ops station through the dust cloud that had been disturbed in the landing and accessed damage control. The results were not promising; all propulsion systems were badly damaged by the crash. They nearly exploded from the strain of holding up Voyager for those scant few seconds, and there was no way that Voyager was going to get off the ground without extensive repairs from a specialized engineering team.

Harry rested his right elbow on the console and rubbed his temples vigorously with his right middle finger and thumb, hoping to massage away the migraine that was rapidly forming at those areas.

In his head, a familiar voice was somehow simultaneously laughing and saying, "I told you so" simultaneously.

----

20 years ago

George positioned the mannequin in exactly the way he wanted it to be; right leg forward, right fist straight out, as if frozen in mid punch. He then stood abreast of the mannequin, admiring his simple handiwork, then in a blur he swept the punch aside with a left hand block and pinned the mannequin's chest to the floor with his knee, right fist cocked and ready to punch its face if the mannequin had a mind to struggle under the hold. Satisfied that the crisp execution of the move, he got up and brushed the dust from his training clothes. He looked instructively at his son. "And that's how you execute a counter-attack," he said in fluent Mandarin.

Harry stood there, arms folded over his chest, observing quietly. Then his head cocked to the side, a sure sign that he was going to ask a question. George sighed quietly. For two years he trained the boy in martial arts. Harry had a natural affinity for it, so that given enough time, he may surpass his father if he was disciplined enough. And disciplined he was, up until the point where his brother, Michael was born a month ago. After the newborn was added to the family, Harry's mouth was filled with a deluge of questions. George may have fast physical reactions from his years of martial arts training under his father, but the questions that Harry posed left George somewhat tongue-tied for an answer.

Harry's mouth opened; George braced himself.

"Why do we have to do all this hard work?" Harry asked in Federation Standard English. "Why can't we just own a phaser, and stun the bad guys?" He grasped an imaginary phaser and fired, sounding out a "BOOM!"

George didn't realize that all his shoulder muscles were tense until they relaxed after Harry asked the question. He could easily answer it; it was just a matter of phrasing it so that the young child could understand. "Where did you learn that a phaser could solve all our problems?" George asked gently, in the same language. Despite all of the father's requests to use Chinese in the house, Harry refused to remember the request, much to George's exasperation. He supposed learning the standard language was essential to Harry's survival in the working world, but that doesn't mean he can't respect his parents' wishes once in a while.

"Defender Dave uses phasers all the time to beat up the bad guys." Harry said.

This time, George let out a loud sigh. Yet another one of those episodes of "The adventures of the U.S.S Heracles and its mighty captain, Defender Dave!" Those holovids were going to kill him sooner or later, George mused silently.

George stepped off the stone tiled patio, and sat upon the wooden stairs leading into the house. He motioned Harry to do the same. Obediently, the son sat on his left, not so much as making an errant sound, a skill that was impressive in one so young; training clothes tend to make a lot of noise when one moved his body, and when the clothes were silent, it meant that there was fluidity and grace about the body, two elements in martial arts that were the hardest to master.

George refocused on the task at hand, carefully outlining his explanation. Regardless of the talent that Harry had, if he refuses to practice it, he'll be as skilled as any other novice. Thus, the reasons must be explained clearly and carefully, so that Harry will continue to practice with as much devotion as he first started out. George took a breath. "Has Defender Dave ever shot one of his friends by accident?"

"No."

George sighed, this was going to be a lot harder than he thought. "Well what about the bad guys?"

Harry's face lit up as he answered the question excitedly. "Oh yeah! They shoot their friends by accident all the time!"

"Well, do they look dumb or smart when they do that?"

"They look very dumb," Harry replied after a thoughtful response.

"Well, that's what happens when you use your phasers, instead of your head." George said in a sagelike voice, tapping his temple. He got up and moved to the center of the courtyard, hoping his head would be clearer there.

"A phaser is ... a phaser. It has no mind of its own, no cares about whom it hits. Even worse, it only takes a second to knock someone out, or to kill him or her. So, my little Harry, what happens if you point a phaser to me, and accidentally press a button?"

The panic on Harry's face also brought dawning comprehension.

"If the bad guys were taught martial arts, then they wouldn't hit their friends with phaser blasts, and they wouldn't look so dumb." George cocked his head to the side pensively. "Then again, martial arts also would teach them discipline, the values of the law and respect for others, so then they wouldn't be bad guys."

Then, George kneeled, seeing eye to eye with the sitting Harry. "Even so, what would Defender Dave do if his phaser broke? How would he prevent the bad guys from hurting him?"

"I dunno."

"With martial arts and some good thinking. The machines that humans make can break down, Harry. They aren't perfect. And when it comes down to it, only we can fix them, too. That's why we shouldn't be reliant on machines, only ourselves. And that's why you're learning this, so that when technology fails, you'll still be able to handle yourself."

Even as he laid out the argument to Harry George realized that there were a dozen ways his quick-witted son could poke holes through it. Hell, even to his ears it kind of had a false ring to it. He'd like to blame it on the fact that he was tired from demonstrating and practicing with Harry all morning, but the simple truth of it was that he simply didn't have justifiable answers for his son on why they should eschew technology. All George knew was that this combat form was a legacy that needed to be preserved, and he didn't know if Harry would see it his way for a while yet.

To George's relief, Harry smiled and nodded as if he were in complete agreement with his father's reasoning.

But George thought that his son's eyes told a different story.

George smiled at Harry, a tint of sadness the only hint of the disappointment that George felt. "One of these days, Harry, technology will fail you, maybe even make things worse, and you'll know exactly what I mean."

----

Harry strode through the dimmed corridors of Voyager, making his way towards Shuttlebay one. By shutting down most of the systems, the ship's energy profile was greatly reduced, making it practically invisible to alien scanners. One system that was kept online was the shields, modified to deflect passive scanners in the off chance that someone else might drop by the system.

The chill of outer space was just starting to permeate the atmosphere as Harry boarded the Delta Flier. With him he carried several proximity charges, a medical kit, a tricorder, and a compression rifle, all modified with some Borg technology that Seven taught him to use. He hoped that the combined technology would adapt to whatever dampening field the aggressive aliens had in place. Other that, the half-baked plan was tenuous at best; he was no Captain. He couldn't think of plans on the fly, so all he could hope to do was find the crew all in one piece.

Once on the Delta Flier, he manually overrode the shuttlebay doors. As the Delta Flier ascended into space, he shot a look of pity at Voyager, which he wasn't used to leaving in such a condition.

Hopefully, it wouldn't be his last look.

----

Space never looked so bleak, Harry realized, especially in the Delta Flier. Most of the time it didn't seem so bad, of course, but that was when Harry was with people, conversing about life on Voyager, sharing new experiences, and doing the various and sundry. Certainly Harry wouldn't forget the time that Neelix won a game hearts against him, Chakotay and Tom, by shooting the moon before he knew what shooting the moon even was. THAT caused a lot of noise.

But now, a deathly silence hung in the air of the Delta Flier as Harry tried to figure out what his next move was while the Delta Flier was still at warp. What he needed was help at finding out who these aliens were, and who would be able to fight against him. It was too bad, really here was Harry's big break, the one that could show that he was a capable Starfleet officer, but one misstep could kill everyone he ever cared about, and he really didn't have a clue what to do next, except scan the area and follow the attackers to gain more information about them.

A lone chime heralding the Delta Flier's reentry into normal space brought Harry back to reality. His fingers hovered over the console, planning to scan the area and get on the trail as soon as possible.

One of life's lessons, however, is that nothing goes as planned.

"Proximity warning: Alien vessel detected."

"What? Where? " Harry looked around worriedly.

But before he could reply, all systems shut down, leaving him in pitch-black darkness, save for the stars peering through the Delta Flier's viewport.

Then the lights of the alien view blocked out that vista. It was relatively huge compared to the flyer, about half the size of Voyager. It was circular in structure, with pods of all sorts sticking out of all different sides. It reminded Harry of K-7 station from Captain Kirk's days.

The alien ship locked a tractor beam on the Delta Flier, and then Harry knew that he was going to be boarded. He checked his equipment, holding out hope that somehow the borg enhancements somehow adapted to the dampening field.

Dead. The only way the phaser would do its job is if he managed to knock out one of the wolves when he threw it at them.

Having nothing else to do, Harry braced himself for the oncoming assault through the aft door as the Delta Flier drew ever closer to being boarded