Chapter Six: Sub Marine Maze

Le'letha: (sees last review date) Ack! So so so so sorry! I got a little distracted getting Sleight of Hand off the ground…and fixing my keyboard…but I still should have kept up with this! Greatly sorry for the writer's block. Please don't have abandoned meeee… (trails off into yowl and sniffs pathetically) Ok. Back on track here. Shape up! (smacks self) Ow.

"I should have stayed in bed this morning," B'Elanna mumbled to herself as she watched Tom Paris fool around inside the very, very yellow submarine they were all currently trapped in. "Then I wouldn't be in the middle of this ridiculous mess."

"So now what?" Neelix asked, rubbing a sizeable lump just forming on his head where he'd run full tilt into the ceiling.

"We get through the maze," Paris said happily, settling into the rather uncomfortable-looking black chair closest to the 'steering wheel'. "I'll drive."

"Of course," Harry muttered, not unkindly, ensconced firmly out of the way in a corner. Being very careful not to touch anything, he levered himself to his feet and cautiously made his way towards the front of the somewhat cramped submarine. With that irritating diffidence that screamed, 'I am being tactful,' he leaned over Tom's shoulder. "Do you know where you're driving?"

"Nope! Not a clue! But I didn't program in parameters for too far out to sea—there's only so far people can swim—so we may hit the wall eventually."

"If the holodeck was working right," B'Elanna pointed out waspishly from one of the back seats, which felt just as uncomfortable as the driver's seat looked. "Of course, if it were working right, we wouldn't be in this stupid mess, now would we?"

"Don't look at me, B'Elanna," he shrugged, concentrating on maneuvering the clumsy vehicle round an outcropping of rock. His laudable concentration explained his not-so-laudable and decidedly stupid next comment: "The ship's systems are your problem, not mine. It's not my fault they're all busted up again."

"Shut up!" she yelled, her voice echoing off metal walls. Glancing around bad-temperedly, she tugged a long, dull pole from its mounting on the wall and rapped him over the head with it. Dissatisfied with his yelp of "ow!' she did it again just for good measure.

"Stop it! I'm seeing stars! Ooh, they're pretty stars though," he added, getting a smile from Harry Kim, a snort from Torres, and no reaction from Neelix, who wasn't paying any attention to them. She did put the pole down, but she kept it within arm's reach just in case Tom said something stupid again, a distinct possibility.

Neelix sat quietly by a window, staring out of it with an off-putting intensity.

"See anything out there? Neelix? Neelix? Voyager to Neelix; come in please!"

"Yeah, something… I don't know what. It's gone away now though," he added, and kept staring out the window. "Are those fish?"

"Yeah," Harry confirmed. Green and silver fishes flickered past endlessly, moving in extremely erratic and increasingly pointless patterns.

"Ewww, why would anyone eat one of those?"

"Says the man who serves leola-root twice a week," Kim muttered.

"Once a week!"

"They're usually cooked first, you know," Harry explained. "Although some people do eat raw fish…it's called sushi when it's raw."

"Found it!" Tom called from the front of the sub. "Dead ahead, one maze!"

"That looks intimidating," Harry said very un-intimidating-ly. "I thought it would be a two-dimensional maze, but this has a roof over it."

"Yeah, it would be too easy to cheat otherwise," B'Elanna pointed out.

"Life's a game; cheat," Tom quipped.

"Is that some sort of new Vulcan platitude?"

"Heck no, can you imagine Tuvok saying that?"

"I wish," Kim muttered as Tom maneuvered the sub into the gaping mouth of the cavern ahead.

"There had better be some lights on this thing, or else we're gonna be bumping into a lot of walls," Tom mused aloud. "Someone find a light switch."

Harry poked at a few black buttons idly, displaying the incredibly annoying talent of Starfleet officers to press the correct button at random once more, until one flooded the compartment with external light, illuminating their surroundings.

They were in a proportionally narrow (for their submarine) corridor, about twenty feet wide and about the same tall, although it was profoundly crooked, so it was hard to judge. It was designed with luminescent green walls and ceiling, although the floor was covered in sparkling golden sand. The light from their submarine reflected dizzyingly off all six sides of the lopsided rectangular passage, fragmented by the sand below into a kaleidoscope of glittering lights. The luminescence was only visible for ten feet in any direction; the passage ahead, unlit, loomed ominously.

"So, does anyone have any idea where we're supposed to go?" Paris asked.

"You're the navigator; you tell me," B'Elanna tossed back, still annoyed by the 'ship's systems are your problem' jab.

"How about straight ahead?" Neelix suggested. "Just run the boat through all the walls and we'll get to where we're going a lot faster."

"Um, that's probably not a good idea," Kim suggested softly but firmly. "What if the submarine got damaged? I'm pretty sure that the mortality failsafes have a good chance of being down too."

"Ok, bad idea," Neelix amended, pulling the forgotten tam-o'-shanter out of nowhere and plopping it on his head, burying himself in rough fabric. "Let me know when we get out." And he promptly sat himself down by a porthole, and, to all intents and purposes, went to sleep.

Harry sighed and ignored the Talaxian. "I remember a trick my elementary school teacher taught me," he addressed the rest of the little crew. "If you're walking through a maze—any maze—and keep one hand on the same wall all the way through, eventually you'll get out. It may take a while, but you'll get out."

"I dunno Harry, that might take too long," Paris said dubiously, still toying with the controls.

"Tom, please hold the sub on an even course, you're making me dizzy," Harry scolded him, though the spinning and general foolery did not noticeably abate. "And it'll take longer if we just flounder around. Besides, if we take too long, someone might eventually notice we're missing."

"We can always hope," B'Elanna muttered darkly, but refrained from further comment as the helmsman cautiously followed the ensign's directions; said ensign had his face pressed to the glass of the starboard-side porthole, smudging it disreputably.

"Left.

"Left.

"Keep going.

"Wait! Ok, now turn right.

"Left again."

"Harry, this is boring."

"Yeah, but eventually we'll get somewhere. Now turn right."

"Somewhere" is a vague qualification. They did get somewhere. Unfortunately it wasn't where they wanted to be, and although Harry's plan was a good one, it failed to expect a large open arena set deep into the ground below and rearing far above their heads, with nine different apertures set randomly into the walls and ceiling, guarded by ominous looking submarines in widely varying colors that had no names and had never been seen in any rainbow in its right mind.

"Oh," Harry said.

"Well," B'Elanna said sullenly, "any more ideas?"

Tom lounged back in his uncomfortable black driver's seat, missing intensely his nice comfy chair at Voyager's helm, and lazily scrutinized the submarines, which were darting recklessly all around the large room. It was rather like being inside a round fish tank.

"This isn't my problem," he informed the other two, Neelix not listening.

"Nuh uh, it's your turn to think of something," Kim shot back. "I solved the last problem, so now it's your turn."

"Who says?"

"I do!"

"You can't give me orders; you're an ensign!"

"What is it with that today! That's the second time I've had that shoved in my face in the last three hours!"

"Really?" Tom asked, distracted. "What was the first time?"

"I tried to order B'Elanna to take a shower."

"Whyever did you do that?"

"I couldn't tell what was bio-gel puddle and what was B'Elanna," Harry said wryly, to the intense amusement of his friend.

Torres rapped the laughing duo sharply with her handy pole. Clunk, clunk. "Shut up, Starfleet. Both of you shut up. Now how do we get out of here? I'm hungry."

"I guess we should try one of the tunnels," Tom said with a shrug. "Unless anyone's got any better ideas?"

"No, but which one?"

"Let's just choose one at random."

"Or we could wake up Neelix and make him choose. That way, if he guesses wrong, we'll have someone to blame."

"Hey!" Neelix said, 'waking' suddenly. "That's not fair."

"Nothing's fair," B'Elanna told him. "So which tunnel?"

"WHAT? Why is it my choice?"

"Weren't you listening?" Paris teased him.

"Fine, but I get the credit if I'm right."

"And the blame if you're not," the pilot kept at him.

"Hmph." The Talaxian counted the tunnels off, murmuring under his breath, and settled on one that looked no different from any other. "That one."

"Okay, here goes," Tom muttered, and launched their little yellow submarine smoothly into the arena.

The other submarines took one look at them…and attacked!

Le'letha: I know that's a stupid place to end this. I'm still very sorry about the writer's block. Thank you to everyone who's been reading this, and the last chapter will hopefully be up soon! (At least I think it will be the last.)