Disclaimer: Star Trek: Voyager and all characters therein are the property of Americans who are not me. No infringement of copyright is intended.
This story is set approximately around Season 3-4, but no particular spoilers other than this happens before Thirty Days. Rating M/15 for mature themes. Thanks to Star Trek Voyager: Lower Decks for all factual/technical information pertaining to the layout of the USS Voyager, and Star Trek: Technobabble for the correct spelling of "Jefferies Tube".
FEEDING THE FURY
Chapter 4
Chakotay had no time to react as Tom shoved him in the small of his back; he stumbled forward into the airlock and Tom hit the override commands even as the door shut behind him. Chakotay didn't even have to time to realise what was happening as the outer hatch opened and he was sucked into the vacuum of space.
"…and after she assimilated me the Borg Queen jumped my bones and we had mad, passionate sex on the floor of the Borg Cube."
Tom snapped back into it as his mind processed what had just been said. "What?"
"That's my line," Harry Kim scolded from where he was sat across from Tom in the Mess Hall. "A minute ago when I said I'd converted to neo-Fascism and you were to henceforth address me as Mein Fuhrer, you said, "Okay." After that when I explained how I was really Count Dracula and I was about to sink my fangs into your jugular and drain you as dry as a Ferengi's generosity, you went, "Mmm." Call it intuition if you will, but somehow I had this feeling you weren't listening to a word I said."
"Sorry, Harry, I was…daydreaming."
"You hid it well," Harry retorted with droll sarcasm, "…and no, you're not."
"Not what?"
"Making any more upgrades to the Delta Flyer yet; I can see new warp nacelles floating in your eyes. The way you coo and drool over that thing it's a good job B'Elanna's an engineer and equally as interested, else she'd be jealous."
Tom felt his fingers twitch and had to consciously unclench their grip from his spoon before he snapped it in half. B'Elanna wasn't jealous of the Delta Flyer, she didn't have time to be and certainly not the energy when she had two men f-
"Tom!" Harry clucked his tongue as his friend looked likely to drift off into dreamland again. "Look, I'm your best friend and like all the greatest sidekicks I know the importance of knowing when to leave the hero to his brooding. Of course your ugly mug has also got no chance against the fact I'm taking Meghan Delaney to Maui in five minutes on Holodeck 1, so I'll leave you and the Flyer alone. Just try to remember and eat your stew before it gets cold. Aloha." Grinning at Tom's glare, Harry left the table and exited the Mess Hall with a jaunty wave.
Tom looked at the dish of Elbarak stew, and laid down his spoon, feeling suddenly sick. He had no wish to be reminded of what had happened on the day he'd sought to escape the cooking of this dish, it was there every time he closed his eyes along with that touching scene in hydroponics. It was a pity he couldn't split himself in two – half of him was wailing in anguish, wanting to throw himself at B'Elanna's feet and beg her not to leave him, whilst the other half was consumed by a murderous rage that relished in fantasising ever more brutal ways to kill Chakotay so the half-breed whore would be cowering at his feet begging him to take her back.
He didn't want to shove Chakotay out of an airlock. He didn't want to exhaust his phaser's energy cell by emptying shot after shot into the man. Those things were too…distant. He wanted…the meteorological term was an 'impact event'…he wanted to feel the impact-shock of pleasure that would travel up his arm as he smashed his fist into Chakotay's face, then did it again and again. He wanted to feel the man's bones break when his boots made contact with Chakotay's ribs, he wanted the man battered and bloody at his feet.
He also didn't want to spend the rest of his life in the brig. Tuvok's faults did not include inefficiency and unintelligence and anyone with a passing acquaintance of the heavy Paris & Chakotay 'history' would not find it a quantum leap to determine a likely suspect for Chakotay's murder. If he did just cut the man down where he stood, he would be buried under a pile of Security Officers before he could take a step and there was an outside chance that Chakotay would survive even a close-range kill shot, or at least that the Doctor would manage to pull off the best resurrection since Lazarus.
Either way, all B'Elanna had to do was scream and cry and deny everything; it would be her word against Tom's about her affair. It would take everyone all of ten seconds to compare diligent, dedicated, hard-working Chakotay with cowardly, treacherous drunk Tom Paris and pick who they believed the most. On deep space missions that lasted long periods of time from home, Starfleet Captains possessed the legal right to execute a felon for specific high crimes such as treason, mutiny and murder. If Voyager's current predicament didn't qualify as the ultimate deep space mission nothing would, and murdering one of the ship's Senior Command Staff technically carried a maximum sentence of death. Starfleet Regulations stated that he could be 'executed by firing squad on the vessel's Bridge', a gruesomely public end designed to impress on other malcontents the dangers of getting ideas above your station.
Even if Captain Janeway didn't go for that option she could superficially decide on the 'clemency' of life imprisonment. It would be quite a while before people began to comprehend the subtle cruelty of forcing Tom Paris to spend the next sixty years or more living in a ten foot by ten foot square cell separated from any and all human contact by an energy barrier that never needed to be shut off. Each cell had sonic shower and latrine facilities and they could simply beam food and other items into and out of his cell, including the Doctor, who was impervious to attempts to take him a hostage.
There was a soft clunk and Tom looked down in irritation; he'd been nervously fiddling with his com badge to the extent he'd pulled it off his uniform. Reattaching the com badge he picked up the dish of now congealed stew preparatory to throwing it in the vaporiser when he paused as a thought struck him. Deliberately this time, Tom removed his com badge and looked at it in the palm of his hand as an idea began to germinate.
What he needed was an alibi, a way to be at Place A when the computer said he was at Place B, but it was too risky for many reasons to be without his com badge for longer than a few minutes at any one time; not for nothing was one of Starfleet's most stringent regulations and most severely punished infractions that of not having your com badge on your person or in your immediate vicinity at all times.
But the traitorous love birds had shown him the way; like a good little Starfleet toy Chakotay had been wearing his com badge in hydroponics, so what Tom needed to do was figure out how Chakotay had fooled the computer without having to resort to Tom's own risky strategy of abandoning his com badge on the Holodeck. That way he could lure Chakotay somewhere nice and quiet to dish out a fatal lesson in the perils of infidelity with the computer providing cast iron confirmation that he was on the other side of the ship at the time.
Closing his fist around the badge, he left the Mess Hall with a jaunty smile, to the relief of Neelix who had been concerned about his friend's previous grimness.
Continued in Chapter 5…
© 2005, Catherine D. Stewart