AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I think some people might have missed the last chapter, so please make sure that you read that one, if you missed it, before you read this one!
I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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B'Elanna had done what it was insinuated that she should do. She'd been the best slave that the Kazons could ask for, and she'd done everything that Cebrall, her keeper, had suggested she should.
At least, she'd done everything so that it appeared to her captors that she was doing everything she was asked to do.
If they were going to get out of this, they were going to have to have Voyager ready to perform for them, at least a little. If they somehow managed to take control of the ship, they were going to have to escape the three Kazon ships that hovered around them. Voyager was faster than the Kazon ships, and she had better reaction time, but that wasn't the case when her warp drive was damaged and offline. The problem with her warp drive was what had gotten them captured in the first place, really. If B'Elanna hadn't failed them all—because that was how she felt about the whole situation—and had come through with keeping the warp drive online or getting it back online almost immediately when the Kazon had first disabled it, they never would have been in this mess in the first place.
Culluh had given the order that B'Elanna was to be given everything she needed to get the repairs underway. She'd asked for space, and she'd been given that. The Kazon might be a fairly advanced species, all things considered, but they were far behind B'Elanna and her crew when it came to understanding technology—especially Voyager's technology. They'd given her space and, from a distance, pretended to know what she was doing at each console.
It was very much to B'Elanna's benefit that they did not, in actuality, know what she was doing.
B'Elanna didn't fully understand the message that Daryl had been trying to send her with his words about the Trojan horse, but she thought she might have the gist of what he wanted to say. She'd gone to work on the warp drive and found that, with everything she needed at her disposal and no Kazon ships firing on them, she was able to get the warp drive online and functioning quickly. She didn't want the Kazon to know that, though, because she already knew that they would use the ship—just as soon as she was warp capable again—to go to wherever it was they intended to go to unload their newly acquired slaves.
B'Elanna allowed them to see the warp drive reactivating—which told her that everything functioned as it should—as a sign that she was working as hard as she could. She also allowed them to see the sleep function that she activated as the warp drive malfunctioning and shutting down again. She set up her own hardware block, encrypted the information, and set it to a passcode that nobody would be able to guess. She hid it behind some quickly executed programming that would allow the Kazon engineers to play in Voyager's computers for a while—mucking around and looking for a solution to a problem that didn't really exist—without figuring out what was really happening.
B'Elanna had gotten power back online, within the ship, so that consoles everywhere would be functioning. She'd also managed to get back helm control and short- and long-range sensors. Then, she'd put everything behind the same kind of locked and secured wall that she'd created for accessing the warp drive controls. She made sure that all of her hastily created programs would allow lesser knowledgeable engineers to tinker for a while—pushing buttons and making a mess for themselves—without actually creating a mess for her to deal with later, and without easily or quickly reaching any concrete indication that B'Elanna had sabotaged her own system.
Her last act was to create a type of blind field program in the ship's interior sensors. It would give the appearance that interior sensors were working while, essentially, cutting the actual wires to those sensors until she accessed the computer from a console and entered her personal code.
She gave the Kazons power. She gave them replicators to keep them happy and entertained. She gave them limited access to all the ship's systems, but she programmed enough visible bugs that they would believe that things were still malfunctioning and short circuiting.
Then she drew on her best performance abilities to convince them that she'd done all that she could do without the chance to simply go back to her quarters and brainstorm some possible future plan for repairs. She'd left the system in the hands of the Kazon engineers, which she had pretended to believe were capable of solving problems in her absence, and she'd begged a PADD to take back for her work—simply so it was more convincing to those who were guarding her that she was actually actively interested in solving the problems that were still too much for her.
Instead of viewing her suspiciously, the Kazons seemed to accept the working systems—and the seemingly malfunctioning systems that she'd worked over so carefully—as evidence that she wanted to be a good slave to their Maje. They'd granted her the PADD, which was little more than useless, even though she'd convinced them that she could use it for a great many things, and then they'd gotten to work pushing buttons like lesser apes trying to coax treats from machines they couldn't possibly understand.
Cebrall, B'Elanna's keeper, led her back to the captain's quarters without saying a word to her. He was a Kazon of few words, as far as B'Elanna could tell, and she was content for things to stay that way. She wasn't a fan of small talk, even with individuals whose company she enjoyed, and she absolutely didn't want to put any of her energy into trying to talk to him.
Most of her energy, at the moment, was going toward trying to figure out how they could still get out of this without losing a lot of their crew members.
She didn't believe that a diplomatic approach was really going to do anything. She appreciated Kathryn's desire to adhere to Starfleet regulations and procedures whenever possible, but she was also quick to say that, sometimes, that just wasn't possible. Perhaps it was her inner Klingon, but she felt like they weren't going to be able to sit down and have a conversation with Culluh about all the reasons that he should let them go. He'd already violently taken over the ship, claimed ownership of the ship and her entire crew, and earmarked them for slavery in different regions of the Delta Quadrant—after admitting that he was perfectly comfortable killing them all if that's what it took to simply be rid of them.
Culluh wasn't going to want to sit down and have a rational discussion about returning Voyager to those that called her home—especially not when Kathryn was going to insist that he still wasn't getting any of the technology that he coveted.
They were all going to have to accept that, if they were taking Voyager back, it was likely going to have to be done the same way that Culluh had taken her—with violence and at least a little trickery. B'Elanna, at least, had already done her part with a few well-placed tricks.
The doors to the captain's quarters opened when Cebrall punched in the code that Kathryn had provided when they'd first escorted Culluh's private collection of slaves to his quarters. B'Elanna stepped inside at Cebrall's gesture that she should do so, and the Kazon guard followed closely on her heels.
The living area of the quarters was empty, and there was nothing but silence to greet them. Seska and Culluh must be gone, taking with them their respective slaves—Kathryn and Carol.
"If I'm allowed," B'Elanna said, turning to speak to Cebrall as he stood like a sentry, holding his electrical rod, "I'd like to have a chance to think over some of these issues and see if I can't find some functional way of getting the warp drive back online."
Cebrall opened his mouth like he might respond to B'Elanna's request, and then his eyes darted just over B'Elanna's shoulder. Before he could move or respond, and before B'Elanna could even turn to see what had caught his attention, the phaser beam struck him and he crumpled to the floor. For a second, B'Elanna stood staring at the body of the Kazon. Then, she turned to look over her shoulder. Carol stood there, a phaser in her hands. She looked almost in shock—almost like she was as surprised as B'Elanna was to see that Cebrall was lying perfectly still on the floor.
B'Elanna wondered if she was in shock, too. She felt, for a moment, oddly detached from the scene surrounding her. She walked over and leaned down next to the Kazon's body. She could tell by his appearance what she already felt in her gut.
"That phaser's set to kill," B'Elanna mused. "We better get him out of the middle of the floor before someone comes back. A dead body ruins the element of surprise."
Even as B'Elanna spoke, she was surprised to hear herself. She was surprised that Carol had shot and killed Cebrall and that, though she wore a somewhat blank and shocked expression, she hadn't said anything about it. She was surprised that Carol grabbed the Kazon's arm, without hesitation, and helped B'Elanna drag him into the bedroom.
And when she got into the bedroom, if she weren't surprised enough, B'Elanna felt her whole world do something of a spin.
"BaQa," B'Elanna spat as her eyes focused on what she saw and transferred the information to her slightly stunned and exhausted brain. "That's a lot of blood!"
If she'd wondered where Culluh had gone or why he'd left his prized slave behind, she no longer had to wonder. For the first time, B'Elanna realized that Carol's face and shirt were at least a little splattered with blood—in her shock over the quick murder of Cebrall, which she'd at least partially thought might have been something of an accident, B'Elanna hadn't noticed the blood. Now she couldn't possibly unsee it.
Like a person who was truly at least a little in genuine shock, Carol walked over to look at the bed like she hadn't seen the mess there that had once been Maje Culluh of the Kazon-Nistrim.
B'Elanna's stomach churned and her heart pounded in her chest. It was one thing to be trained to fight in battle. It was another to see someone laid out with their throat slit and their blood spilled.
"You killed him?" B'Elanna asked, not entirely sure whether to ask the question or make the statement.
Carol turned and looked at her. Her chin quivered, and she sobbed one strong sob before covering her hand with her mouth. She was absolutely in something like shock, that much was clear.
"He was going to take my baby," Carol said. "He would've taken it. They all want to take them—mine and Kathryn's. They want to make them slaves. Kill them." She looked back at Culluh's lifeless body—already graying. "He would've taken it. And he would have turned everyone—everyone—into slaves or killed them. I couldn't let him do that."
B'Elanna felt the blood in her body run cold. Suddenly, she understood the Trojan horse. She understood what Daryl had been saying. She understood that he knew that the baby, and the need to protect her baby, would set off the Trojan horse. And then, all at once, B'Elanna recognized that the shock wasn't so much shock, in the traditional sense, as it was a trauma response.
Still, it was a trauma response that had already removed Culluh and one guard from the mix. It was a trauma response that could work in their benefit for the time being.
"OK," B'Elanna soothed, reaching her hands out toward Carol, but showing them, palm-forward, just in case Carol might misinterpret her actions. "It's OK. You're right. He was—going to take the baby, and we're not going to let that happen. We're not going to let a single Kazon take the baby."
"No," Carol agreed, shaking her head.
"What did you—do to him?" B'Elanna asked.
Carol reached down and quickly—very quickly, and almost too quickly for B'Elanna's comfort for the moment—produced a blade from her boot.
"I cut his throat," Carol said matter-of-factly. She returned the knife to her boot as smoothly as she'd extracted it.
B'Elanna surveyed the situation. Maje Culluh was dead. His throat was slit and, for whatever reason, it appeared the blade had also been driven through his eye socket as though cutting his throat wasn't sufficient to kill him. One of his guards was dead. There was absolutely no negotiation from this point forward. The only thing to do now was to figure out how they managed to fight against the Kazons.
And B'Elanna wondered if, despite her own earlier misgivings, they might have their secret weapon already.
B'Elanna moved to Cebrall's body. She took the phaser from his belt and offered it out to Carol.
"Trade me," B'Elanna said, waving her hand at Carol as she pointed to her phaser.
"Why?" Carol asked.
"This one has a full charge," B'Elanna said. "And I want you to have as much power as you can get. We need to get out of here. Any other Kazon that sees us is—they're going to want the same thing Culluh wanted, and we're not going to let that happen."
"No," Carol agreed. "We can't. But—what do we do?"
"I honestly don't know," B'Elanna said, waving toward the weapon again. Carol traded her the phaser for the one with the full charge. "But—I think we're off to a pretty good start."
