Disclaimer: Yes, Paramount still owns the Star Trek Universe, but they don't own any characters that I've made up (even if they own their parents) nor the vessel I made up. Dana Marcus is my creative product from some of the events in the novel "Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan" by Vonda N. McIntire, but is still owned by me, H. S. Hines. Saavik history derived from "The Pandora Principle" by Carolyn Clowes.
Notes: References to TNG and TOS
Genre: Angst, Drama
Rating: M
Codes: B/7
Feedback: Reviews beget more fiction!
Description: Back in the alpha quadrant and life is very different.
Issues
Chapter 4
"Get us out of here, Mr. Paris!" Marcus yelled as Voyager threatened to shake apart around her.
"I can't! The singularity is pulling us in!" He yelled, clutching his panel as artificial gravity failed on the bridge and all gravity in the room seemed to shift to Harry's side. "C'mon, baby," he whispered to Voyager. "Help me out."
The doctor was flooded with casualties. When Seven materialized, he checked her out and marked her as mid-critical. The nurses hurried him over to a critical patient and began attempting to stabilize her. He only spared a few glances at her, worried. He had no time for anything else as he looked down at Lieutenant Wildman, who required immediate surgery.
The quantum singularity comet floated toward Voyager, attracted to her warp field, non-sentient, not alive and completely unaware that it was ripping the little ship to pieces.
"Abandon ship! I repeat, all hands abandon ship!"
"Slam it down, then!" B'Elanna screamed over the whines and roars that filled Engineering as the ship was ripped apart. "We're running out of time!"
"How can you be certain that it is attracted to our warp core?" Vorik asked, his hands flying over the console in front of him in the shutdown sequence.
"Anti-matter, dammit! Now shut it down so we can jettison the core before we're all dead!"
"It could breach if we don't follow procedure—" B'Elanna didn't wait for him to say anything else. She shoved him out of the way. Her fingers flew over the control and a second later the core went dark.
Alarms went off in all parts of Engineering.
"Abandon ship! I repeat, all hands..."
B'Elanna worked the controls as everyone around her left for the escape pods. She had to stay to jettison the core. Vorik looked at her for a moment, and finally joined the others in fleeing the ship. As soon as the core was shut down, Voyager began being pulled toward the dark matter object at a high speed.
B'Elanna only had a few seconds to rid Voyager of the item that was drawing it to its destruction, if she wanted to survive.
B'Elanna wanted to live.
The little pods were shot from points all over Voyager. Almost as one, they turned and propelled themselves away, unaffected by the singularity due to their small size and lack of antimatter.
B'Elanna materialized in front of her pod, threw open the door and launched. She watched from the tiny window as the warp core zoomed off, towards the distorted space. She keyed in the thruster controls to set herself on the same course as the rest of the pods.
The USS Voyager, NCC-74656, barely thirteen years out of space dock, was ripped to pieces from the gravitational shears of the unknown anomaly. She crumpled, exploded and tore into little pieces, to be compressed into the gravity well until there wasn't anything left of her.
B'Elanna watched with tears streaming down her face.
Dana Marcus cursed her own curiosity.
Tom Paris blamed himself for miscalculating the distance from the event horizon.
Seven of Nine remained unconscious.
One month later...
"It's class N," Dana heard Harry report.
"Is there any habitable land mass?" She crossed her fingers in the cramped space, looking over at Chakotay for a brief moment. The Native American man gave her a tight-lipped smile of encouragement.
"Yes, sir. Enough to sustain us until Starfleet can send someone to pick us up."
"Thank you, Ensign. Marcus out." Dana patched herself in to the rest of the pods. "We have discovered a planet that can sustain us until we can be rescued. Please direct your pods to the coordinates that I am feeding into your computers now. Marcus out."
"How long do you think it'll take them?" Chakotay asked. Dana shook here head.
"At least three months. We're in for quite a wait."
Two months later...
"She saved your life."
"I'm not talking to her, Starfleet." B'Elanna ripped the leaves off the branch violently.
"Come on, Maquis. You can't carry this on forever." B'Elanna glared at Harry.
"Do you know what she said to me?" Harry flinched.
"Do you know what she told me?" he countered. "She said that she thought you were approaching her in friendship, because she loved you as a friend and really wanted you to do so. Then, you say she's beautiful—which I understand!" He cut her off as she tried to protest. "But all she ever gets are propositions and offers for dates. Never just real offers of friendship."
"She loves me?" B'Elanna asked.
"As a friend. She responded the way she did because you hurt her." B'Elanna stopped to think.
"She hurt me, too," B'Elanna said, softly, biting back tears at the memory. Harry put a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently. He walked away, leaving her to mull over what he had said. She grabbed the rest of the firewood and ran back to their camp.
Seven was brushing her now short hair, treating what hadn't been burnt off with care when B'Elanna came rushing in. Seven dropped the brush in surprise.
"What is wrong? Is Starfleet here?' She asked, assuming that B'Elanna would only enter her tent if it was important. B'Elanna stopped, her mind telling her 'this was a mistake.'
"No. I needed to see you. I wanted to tell you... that I only wanted to be your friend. Being attracted to you had nothing to do with it."
Seven stiffened and immediately went on guard. This was the woman that had gone out of her way the past four years to avoid speaking to Seven, to insult and degrade her and make plain that she hated her. She was now saying that all she had ever wanted was friendship. But she offered no proof.
"But it will interfere, no doubt. I have found that close proximity to the object of one's desire causes that desire to increase. Therefore I do not see how you wish to be only friends." Seven said the words in an anger that she didn't show, her face impassive as ever.
"I won't help you make yourself the victim, Seven," B'Elanna hissed angrily. "I came here in friendship, for the second time. You're the one who keeps pushing me away. You remember that when you spend your meals alone, when you sit alone in your corner, feeling sorry for yourself. I used to feel sorry for you, too. Now I see that you want to be alone. Fine." B'Elanna turned and stormed out of the tent to hide in her own.
Seven watched B'Elanna go, shocked beyond speech. 'Am I self-absorbed?' she wondered. 'Do I truly push others away?'
"I do not want to be alone, B'Elanna Torres," Seven said, her bottom lip trembling. "I'm scared..." she whispered, barely able to make the confession, "…of what I feel." Seven sat down and curled up in the corner of her tent, as B'Elanna had told her. Part of her wanted to chase B'Elanna and apologize. The other half wanted to hide in her tent and never come out.
The second half won. That night at dinner, B'Elanna stormed out to get herself a plate of food, then took it back to her tent. Seven never came out.To Be Continued…