Uninspired Voyages
A Star Trek fanfiction by Andrew Joshua Talon
DISCLAIMER: This is a non-profit fan-based work of prose. Star Trek is the property of CBS and Paramount. Please support the official release.
Shepherd arrived in the transporter room, his steps heavier than usual on the deck. Chakotay and Harry Kim looked up from their tricorders at the heavily armed and armored security chief. The first officer and former Maquis captain gave him a look over.
"Expecting trouble, Mister Shepherd?" He asked. Shepherd shrugged.
"Well, that is my job, sir," he replied. He adjusted the phaser rifle he carried, before reaching up to adjust his shoulder-strapped forcefield generator. Chakotay shook his head in a bit of bemusement, like an academy instructor with an overly enthusiastic cadet.
"It's an uninhabited rogue planetoid," Chakotay pointed out. "We didn't pick up any lifesigns."
"No," Shepherd replied, "but there is a breathable atmosphere. And it's warm enough we don't need to go in with space suits. Which means there's something keeping it habitable."
"Geological activity and other things like that could account for it," Harry put in. "I mean, it could, sir," he hastily added. Shepherd shrugged.
"It could," he said, clearly not offended by the breach in protocol, "but it might be something else."
Chakotay hummed, looking thoughtful but unmoved.
"We'll have to ask our morale officer about that," Chakotay observed. The doors to the transporter room opened, and Neelix hurried in with his usual chipper smile.
"Hello! Sorry I'm late! Had to change clothes since I got all that grease on them-Oh! Hello Mister Shepherd!" He greeted the security chief, "you're looking quite formidable!"
"Thank you," Shepherd replied. He rummaged in his backpack, and pulled out another personal forcefield generator. "I have plenty of spares if anyone would like one?"
"I think we'll hold off on that for right now," Chakotay decided. Shepherd nodded, and tucked the generator back into his pack. Neelix looked intrigued, while Harry was already worried. "Let's get going."
"Geez, those things are neat," Neelix commented as they stepped onto the transporter pads. Shepherd nodded.
"They sure are," he replied. "Want one?"
"Well, I don't know how they'll affect my clothes," Neelix hummed, "so I think I'll leave it alone. You have no idea how various energy fields can affect certain fashions! Learned this when I was a model! That reminds me of the time-"
"Energize," Chakotay ordered the transporter chief, who shared his senior officer's expressions of relief as they vanished.
The caverns were dark and ominous, but showed signs of being bored out mechanically. So Chakotay had decided they'd go in pairs. And given how scared Harry looked, Chakotay decided he'd go with the young ensign. Which left Shepherd with Neelix.
"So as I was saying, I was a mid-tier male model on Talax in my youth!" Neelix continued brightly, his voice echoing down the corridors. Shepherd was following the little Talaxian, scanning with his exographic sensor and sweeping the walls with his rifle's flashlight. He was already feeling an eyebrow twitch.
"Were you?" He asked.
"Oh yes! I was quite the hunk of hot love! My sister encouraged me, you know. She taught me proper tucking procedure, how to apply makeup..." Neelix went on. And on. And on.
He only paused in his recounting when they came across a bare, dead end... That should have been stuffed to the gills with dilithium. Shepherd frowned deeply, and hit his commbadge.
"Shepherd to Chakotay. No dilithium here," he said. Neelix grumbled.
"I can't believe it! My sensors told me there were loads of it here!" He looked back at Shepherd. "Yours did too, didn't they?"
"Acknowledged Shepherd. We're not finding any either," Chakotay replied. "Try the cavern ahead, we'll keep looking on our end."
"Roger," Shepherd said. Neelix scurried ahead, and Shepherd picked up his pace slightly to keep up. "That's what's been bothering me, Neelix. If there's so much dilithium here, why hasn't anyone staked a claim?"
"Well, we are far outside the normal shipping lanes," Neelix explained, scrambling up an incline. Shepherd dutifully followed. "It's possible nobody's noticed it!"
"Possible," Shepherd admitted. "But the readings we're getting suggest this place is jam packed with dilithium. Someone would have had to have noticed it by now..."
"Well we haven't gone very far," Neelix pointed out. He brightened as he looked at his tricorder. "Ooh! This says the cavern up ahead should be more promising! Come on, come on!"
He rushed off, and Shepherd rolled his eyes as he chased after him.
They made it to the wide, suspiciously circular cavern. The wide, suspiciously circular, and empty cavern.
"Chakotay to Neelix and Shepherd," the first officer called over the commbadges, "anything?"
"Not a sliver of dilithium!" Neelix huffed. "And the tricorder says we should be surrounded in it!"
Chakotay sighed heavily. Shepherd scanned their surroundings carefully, his frown deepening. The readings were clear: There should be enough dilithium here to power a fleet of starships, but there wasn't so much as a shard of the stuff. Why?
"All right," Chakotay said wearily, "let's regroup and-"
"Hey, hang on a second!" Neelix called. Shepherd looked where the Talaxian was walking-A depression in the side of the cave. The little alien tapped the wall, and it... Vanished. Inside was a metallic hallway, filled with machinery. Neelix grinned back at the security chief.
"Look what I found! What do you suppose it is?" He asked.
"Shepherd, what is it?" Chakotay asked. Shepherd frowned.
"Looks like part of a base. I'm seeing a lot of metallic construction, machines-Neelix, don't!" He called as Neelix scurried inside. "Neelix, get back here!"
"Neelix, stay put!" Chakotay called over Neelix's commbadge. "Don't go in-!"
"But it's right here! What do you suppose all this stuff is?" Neelix asked.
"Neelix, that's an order! Get back here!" Chakotay said sternly. Shepherd grit his teeth and went after the Talaxian, his boots clinking loudly on the metallic grating of the hidden base.
"Neelix! Get back here NOW!" Shepherd shouted. He turned the corner. Neelix was still walking down the corridor, oblivious. He then stopped, in shock, when he saw a dark figure come around the corner. The figure then lifted up a weapon, and fired a white beam! The beams connected with Neelix, and the Talaxian screamed as he fell. Shepherd cursed and raised his rifle.
"Hostiles! Engaging!" He shouted over the commbadge, firing his rifle in beam mode. He struck the attacker in the shoulder, sending him falling down. Another one lunged from the corridor, and dragged his companion out of the line of fire. Shepherd ran up to Neelix, who was gurgling and choking desperately. He looked up the corridor-The aliens were gone. He looked down at the pathetic form of Neelix, and cursed again. He hit his commbadge.
"Shepherd to Voyager! Medical emergency! Beam us to sickbay!" He shouted. He knelt down next to Neelix and tried to hold him as he thrashed about. He grimaced.
I really didn't mean it, he thought to himself, just as the transporter beam spirited them both away.
Neelix and Shepherd were beamed to Sickbay, and the security chief had helped the holographic doctor get the gasping Talaxian up onto the biobed. The Emergency Medical Hologram sedated him, and then applied a medical sensor to Neelix's forehead. Chakotay, the captain and Harry Kim soon arrived. The news was, quite frankly, astonishing and grotesque.
"His lungs have been removed," the EMH said. "As though they were transported right out."
"By who? And why?" Janeway's gaze flicked between the two, her brows furrowed, before her eyes settled on Shepherd's own. Shepherd, who stood at attention out of habit, straightened a little further. "What do you know about his attackers?"
"I wasn't able to get a good look at them in the dark," he admitted.
He pulled off his exographic sensor, and held out his tricorder, "But I had these set on record from the moment we beamed down."
Janeway nodded, and turned to Kim.
"Download the data and analyze it with what you got off their computers," she ordered. "Shepherd, you too."
She headed over to Neelix, who was looking pale and unconscious. Shepherd looked over at Chakotay, who shook his head.
"Hell of a first away mission," he observed.
Shepherd shrugged, looking over at the Talaxian.
"Not the worst, so far," he said. "He's still alive."
Chakotay nodded grimly.
"For now," the first officer sighed.
The intercom went off.
"Bridge to captain," Tuvok announced, "an unknown vessel is leaving the planetoid."
"Lay in a pursuit course and engage!" Janeway barked.
Harry and Shepherd went to the Ops console on the bridge, where they flipped through the data the sensors had gathered. The encryption was fairly easy to break, all things considered. Once they got through it though, it was easy to see why. When Janeway walked onto the bridge, they were waiting for her like twin alert prairie dogs. She walked up to them, resting her hands on her hips.
"Well?"
Harry made a face.
"It's pretty gruesome," Kim admitted. "They're called the Vidians. They were the superpower in this region until a few decades ago, when they were hit by a disfiguring disease called the Phage."
"Apparently," Shepherd chimed in, "it literally eats away at every part of the cells."
Janeway immediately looked alarmed, but Shepherd raised his hands.
"It's not contagious to other species, weirdly enough," Shepherd explained. He gestured to Harry with his head, "and Harry checked with the Doctor over the data."
"It's almost like the Phage is tailor made to destroy the Vidians, at least according to their own data," Harry went on, pointing at the biological data on the screen. "But there's nobody in the region who could put that together! Well, except for the Caretaker."
"I do recommend we maintain full biological control protocols for dealing with any Vidians in person, Captain," Shepherd said. "No sense in taking chances."
Janeway nodded.
"Agreed. I intend to make it clear, face to face, we will not tolerate this."
The security chief nodded, and was silent for a moment.
"So, how's he doing?" Shepherd asked softly.
Janeway's lips thinned.
"The doctor has an idea to keep him alive, but it's not pretty," she said.
Shepherd nodded.
"Yeah, that sounds like it will be this entire experience, really," he said.
The Vidian ship was a small thing next to Voyager, and nowhere near as fast. So they soon caught up with it as it ducked into the next solar system.
Shepherd was in the armory with a few other security officers, keeping a channel open to the bridge to monitor the situation. He gave his officers a confident look as they settled into some chairs they'd taken from a nearby unused set of quarters.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Shepherd opened as he stood behind the plotting table, "I'm not going to lie: This is going to be a difficult journey. Probably fraught with all sorts of perils. The usual Starfleet regulations may not apply."
He narrowed his eyes in grim determination and looked around at all the officers. They were mostly freshfaced and new. Some looked scared. Some looked eager. The Maquis in the group ranged from uncertain to bored. It was a motley bunch to be sure.
He then pulled out one of the assault phaser rifles, and attached a small module to the underside. He grinned, almost maniacally, as he held it up in front of them.
"So we're going with some of the lesser known Starfleet regulations," he said cheerfully. "For instance, you there! What's your name?"
He pointed at a brown haired human in the front row. He cleared his throat.
"Munroe, sir. Ensign Alex Munroe!"
"Do you know the method of taking a fortified position in urban combat as detailed in Starfleet Tactical Guide Version 4.5?" He asked. Munroe stood up straighter in his chair.
"Well yes sir," he said, "but we barely covered those tactics."
"Well, I'm going to give you all a good refresher," Shepherd said. "Because we're probably going to need them!" He walked over to the phaser range. A holographic image of a Romulan appeared, as a low duranium wall shimmered into existence in front of him. The Romulan ducked down behind it, and fired his disruptor. The officers all instinctively went to cover as the holographic beam shot for them... And dissipated over their heads. Shepherd nodded approvingly.
"Good reactions!" Shepherd complimented them.
"Wimps," muttered a tall, broad shouldered blonde man, who hastily got back up into his chair. Shepherd nodded to the Romulan hologram, who kept ducking and firing. Shepherd took the time to load a photon grenade into the module underneath the rifle barrel.
"Now, back in the Federation, the manual would have you just trade shots with the guy until your buddy could flank him," Shepherd explained. "That is a perfectly valid tactic, and we will be training in those as well. But sometimes, the only way past an enemy," and here he knelt down, and aimed the phaser rifle up over the head of the Romulan who had just ducked down again, "is through."
With a soft chunk kind of sound, the photon grenade flew up, arcing over the Romulan's cover... Before it detonated with a loud BOOM!
Once again, the security officers ducked for cover, but the forcefield contained the low level blast nicely. It was more the holographic pieces of debris and Romulan flying around that had shocked many of them.
"HELL YEAH!" The blonde human shouted, throwing his fists into the air.
But not for long.
"Lesson one: The photon grenade launcher," Shepherd said cheerfully. "It, in addition to all the gear you are carrying now," he nodded to their flak jackets, forcefield generators and utility belts, "will be standard issue. We're not in civilization anymore, people. This is the wild frontier."
He leaned over and looked them all in the eyes.
"We're still gonna be the good guys. We're not going to be pirates or gangsters. But if this quadrant thinks we're soft just because we're not assholes, we're going to prove it wrong. They try to push us around? We'll punch back twice as hard." He looked around at the eager faces. "Sound good to you?"
"Just fine, sir," Munroe said with a smile, one many of his fellow officers shared. Shepherd internally let out a sigh of relief. First hurdle overcome.
Now came the hundreds more. Still, the first was the hardest, right?
The bridge commlink suddenly became active.
"The Vidian ship has ducked into an asteroid, captain," Harry Kim reported. The captain spoke a few words that didn't come over, before she spoke more loudly.
"Take us in Mister Paris."
"Yes ma'am."
Nothing further came in, until Tuvok spoke up.
"The reflection effect inside the asteroid will make it impossible to determine the real Vidian ship," he stated.
"Let's try an old Maquis trick," Chakotay said. "Fire a continuous phaser beam, that should flush them out."
"Do it,"
Janeway ordered to Tuvok. A few more moments passed, before Tuvok spoke again.
"We have located the real ship," Tuvok stated. "There are two lifesigns aboard."
"Beam them to Transporter Room 2," Janeway stated. "Mister Shepherd? Are you there?"
"Yes Captain," Shepherd reported.
"Arrange a welcoming committee for our 'guests' in Transporter Room 2," Janeway said, unable to keep the edge of primal satisfaction out of her voice. Shepherd nodded.
"Aye aye, Captain!"
Shepherd closed the link off and looked over at his very attentive audience.
"So! Who wants to make a good first impression on the Delta Quadrant with me?" He asked.
He had no shortage of volunteers.
The Vidians were greeted by a fully armed security team, all with their phaser rifles pointed right at them. Captain Janeway stood behind them, her glare full of death and pain for the two organ knappers.
The Vidians themselves resembled action figures that had been under a phaser on low power for too long. Honestly, it was rather horrifying-They looked like they were held together with the sloppiest glues they had been able to find. They cringed in terror as Captain Janeway walked up to the forcefield surrounding the transporter pad, her icy glare keeping them pinned.
"I'm Captain Kathryn Janeway, of the Federation Starship Voyager," Janeway announced in a low, deadly growl. "I want my crewmember's lungs back, and I want them now."
The first Vidian hesitated, and tried to keep himself calm as he spoke.
"I'm... Afraid that your crewmember's lungs are already in my brother," he stated, pointing to his cringing companion. "They-They're a part of him now! Irreversibly implanted, n-now! If you remove them, he'll die!"
"Irreversible?" Janeway asked in a deadly, soft voice. Her eyes narrowed. "You trick us and leave one of my crewmembers clinging to life, nearly dead, and that's the best you can do? You'll die if we take back what you stole?"
"We have no choice!" The second Vidian wailed. "Pl-Please! Spare my brother! It's my fault!" He fell to his knees and bowed down. "Our entire race-We must prey on others! Our cloning farms can't keep up with the demand! Every day, millions more die!"
"We're sorry for tricking you!" The first Vidian groaned, also throwing himself onto his knees in front of the wrathful captain. "We-We can't do anything else! The other powers-They don't object! They can't!"
Janeway took a deep breath.
"They may have found a way to ignore the moral implications of what you are doing, but I have no such luxury. I don't have the freedom to kill you to save another. My culture finds that to be a reprehensible and entirely unacceptable act. If we were closer to home I would lock you up, and I'd turn you over to my authorities for trial. But I don't even have that ability here, and I am not prepared to carry you forever in our brig." she growled.
She paused, and the Vidians seemed to be weeping. Biessman barely hid his disgust at the sloppy tears rolling down what may have been cheeks on the deformed aliens.
"So I have no alternative," Janeway stated, pausing again as the Vidians trembled, "but to let you go."
The Vidians started, and looked up in disbelief. Biessman was similarly struggling with his surprise. Shepherd kept his facial expressions under tight control, though he was feeling similarly flabberghasted.
"You... You would let us go? Without harming us?" The first Vidian asked.
"My people do not take life without a damn good reason," Janeway replied, eyes cold. "No matter how much we may want to."
"Then... Perhaps we can help," the second Vidian suggested. His brother looked at him in shock, but he nodded back eagerly. They both looked back.
"Perhaps we could find another way for your crewmember to live," the first Vidian suggested. "Most races... They would kill us on sight. They do kill us on sight. But perhaps... We can help?"
Janeway gave the two Vidians a cool expression.
"That depends on what you can offer," she stated. "Mister Shepherd? You and your team keep them under phaser rifles at all times in sickbay."
"Yes ma'am," Shepherd said. He gave a stern look to Biessman. "Stay frosty, everyone."
The two Vidians were escorted to the sick bay, the entire security team keeping their guns on them the entire way. The Doctor looked appalled.
"Mister Shepherd! Do not bring your entire security team into the sickbay, please! I'll never get anything done!" The hologram protested. Shepherd looked over at Janeway, who nodded.
"Tuvok, Mister Shepherd, with me. Everyone else? Wait out here," Janeway said.
"If anything funny happens, come in firing," Shepherd ordered. Janeway nodded back, and the Vidians both winced hard.
Shepherd accompanied the two Vidians into the sick bay, where Kes, Neelix's... Child bride? Girlfriend? It was kind of creepy and weird, if we he was being honest. She was doting on him, as Paris manned a nearby sickbay console. They looked startled at the Vidians as they slowly approached Neelix. One pulled out the same weapon that he'd used against the Talaxian, and Shepherd's arm shot out. He seized the wrist of the Vidian and squeezed hard.
"N-No! It can be a scanner as well as a weapon! Please! I promise, it won't hurt him!" The Vidian begged, his brother pleading over his shoulder in silence. Shepherd looked over at Janeway, and the captain nodded again. Shepherd let him go, and raised his rifle again. Tuvok raised an eyebrow, but said nothing as he kept his own phaser on the two Vidians.
They ran the device around the room, looking curiously at it when they pointed it at the EMH.
"Strange," the Vidian commented. "According to this, you're not actually there!"
"Believe me," the EMH snarked, "I wish I weren't."
The Vidian shook his head. "According to my readings," he said, "the one who might be able to donate a lung to save your crewmember..." He pointed to Kes. "Is her."
"Absolutely not!" Neelix managed from the biobed. "You can't-The Doctor says my new lungs will be ready in a week!"
"A week, yes," the EMH said dryly, "but you won't last that long. The holographic lung treatment was always a stopgap-It is proving less effective than I thought." He looked over at the captain, and shrugged. "I'm a doctor, not a miracle worker."
"I'll give up a lung to save Neelix," Kes said. She looked over at the Doctor. "And you can clone us both new lungs, can't you?"
"I can," the Doctor said.
"Then we're doing it," Kes stated.
"It's too risky!" Neelix shouted. "Don't do it! We can't trust these Vidians!"
"So you knew of them?" Shepherd asked wryly. Neelix shrugged as best he could.
"I'm... Fairly familiar with them," he said. "And their tendency to lure ships into traps with fake dilithium signatures and... Uh..."
Everyone was now glaring at Neelix. The Talaxian sighed, as the Captain walked up over him.
"I'm sorry Captain," Neelix said. "I wanted to do my best for this crew. To really contribute!"
"I know," Janeway said, "but next time? You're going to give us all the information you have on any destination or idea you have. And I mean all. Understood?"
"Yes, Captain," Neelix managed. Janeway turned to the Vidian, and pointed at Neelix.
"You will perform the procedure with the Doctor," she stated. "My security personnel will be here at all times. Understood?"
"Y-yes," the Vidian said with a nod. "Understood." He looked over at the EMH, who sighed and led the two Vidians over to the prep table. Janeway then walked over to Shepherd and Tuvok, and gestured for them to follow her into the doctor's office. Shepherd tapped his commbadge.
"Munroe, Chang, get in here. Maintain cover," he ordered. The two security officers came in, their phaser rifles trained on the scene.
Janeway walked into the doctor's office, as Tuvok and Shepherd shuffled in with her. She turned around to face the others, and crossed her arms over her chest.
"Well this was a fiasco," she sighed. "We're back where we started. Low on power, and now, there's a bigger threat to us than we ever imagined."
"We're not just letting them go, are we Captain?" Shepherd asked. Janeway shrugged.
"Do we have an alternative? We can't hold them. We can't kill them."
"What do you propose, Mister Shepherd?" Tuvok asked.
Shepherd smiled.
Neelix and Kes came through the surgery just fine. The Vidians were held in the brig, as Voyager made the trip back to the planetoid: Their ship in tow with a tractor beam and skeleton crew. Only then were the two organ harvesters brought to the transporter room. Janeway was once again waiting for them, her arms behind her back as she observed them primly.
"Gentlemen," she stated, "here is what is going to happen. We're taking your ship. We're taking anything and everything useful from your base. We will leave you behind with enough supplies and a communications beacon to contact help. You will be allowed to send out your distress signal three days after we leave."
The Vidians trembled at the icy glare Janeway delivered them, promising nothing but pain.
"This time, I am willing to be generous," she stated. "If I ever encounter your kind again, I will do whatever is necessary to protect my people from this harvesting of yours. Any aggressive actions against this ship or its crew will be met by the deadliest force."
Her eyes flashed with deadly fury.
"Is that clear?"
"Q-Quite," the older Vidian stuttered. Janeway nodded to Shepherd and his security team. The chief gave her a nod and smile back, and then turned his grin onto the Vidians.
"All right guys! We're going to play a game. It's called 'give us everything useful and we don't shoot you!' Won't that be fun?"
The captain had called Shepherdup to her ready room after everything had been settled. Voyager was back on its way towards home, the Federation still distant but growing closer every day. It was going to take a long, long time... But Shepherd still wore a smile. Janeway was staring out the windows into the warped starfield ahead of them, her eyes no doubt locked onto Federation space. She turned back, an enigmatic look on her face.
"Mister Shepherd, take a seat," she said. Shepherd did so, sitting in front of her desk. She sat down behind her desk, and looked over at the younger officer. She shook her head.
"Well. We're topped off, with plenty of data on this area of space and supplies we're still sorting through," she said. She gave me a wry smile. "I should have you arrested for piracy."
"I think I'd have to arrest you first, Captain," Shepherd replied. "After all, you ordered me to do it."
Janeway nodded, her fingers forming a steeple in front of her on the desk.
"Not a few weeks in here, and we're already raiding and scavenging," she sighed. "They wanted to take all our organs but even so..."
"Captain," Shepherd said gently, "we're in the wild west here. We gave them supplies and a means of getting home. We were a lot kinder to them than they were to any of their victims."
"I don't know if that's going to be enough," Janeway said. She shook her head and looked at me intently. "Is this what Starfleet Intelligence work is like? Bending the rules? Making up new ones as you go along?" She looked intently over his shoulder, out into some shapeless future. "What will we be like? After a long enough time out here?"
"Captain, we're both in over our heads, and we know it," Shepherd said gently. "Yeah, I'm more pragmatic, but I'm still here. On the same ship. Thousands of lightyears from home with you. It's up to you whether or not to take my suggestions. You're the captain. I'm the security chief." He sucked in a deep breath. "It's not going to be easy, but we'll be in this together. And if you're going to second guess every decision we make out here, it's going to be even rougher."
Janeway nodded slowly. She gave Shepherd a small smile. The slight woman did seem like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders. Maybe that's why she was suddenly so talkative with this security chief, this wild card she'd picked up.
"You're very genuine, for a intelligence officer," she said. Shepherd shrugged.
"Well it's not like I have to lie to you as part of my job," he said. Janeway nodded.
"That's true enough," she said. She held out a PADD to Shepherd, and he took hold of it. He looked through the data on the small computer tablet, his eyebrows rising.
"Data from the Vidians?" He asked. Janeway nodded her head.
"According to these scans, at least one Federation starship was sighted heading along that course," she reached over and pointed out the location on a map on the PADD screen. "If we are going to survive out here, more allies is absolutely essential. And we need to investigate the possibility of other Alpha Quadrant survivors ending up here. I want you to work with Harry and Tuvok on tapping into the Vidian subspace network and see if we can't find out more."
"Yes Captain," Shepherd said with a nod and a smile.
"And in the meantime? You get your security team up to snuff," she said. "We're in the wild west here. I want to be ready for anything."
Shepherd's smile grew just a hair. "Yes ma'am."
Shepherd was going to stop by the armory, but he did have one more stop to make. He entered the sickbay, where Neelix and Kes were both lying on biobeds. Shepherd looked over at the EMH, who was checking things in his office computer. He stood up and came out to the young lieutenant.
"Do you require anything, Mister Shepherd?" The hologram asked. Shepherd shook his head.
"I just wanted to know if Neelix could take visitors?" He asked. The Doctor sighed deeply.
"He can handle a brief visitation," he stated. He cocked his eyebrow. "Giving him the third degree over his kitchenette?"
"Nah, I'll leave that to the captain," Shepherd said with a smile. "But thank you."
The doctor hummed. "Thank you?"
"For everything you've done?" Shepherd explained, a bit awkwardly. The doctor hummed again, and nodded back.
"You're welcome," he returned, before he turned and headed back into his office. Shepherd could almost imagine that the hologram sounded less... Grumpy? Maybe it was his imagination.
He walked over to Neelix's biobed, where the Talaxian was soon roused from slumber. He looked up at Shepherd, grimacing.
"Lieutenant," he began, "I am very, very sorry for everything."
Shepherd sighed, and crossed his arms over his chest. Neelix winced.
"I mean, if you want to yell, you are well within your rights to! Go ahead! I feel like I deserve everything you can give me." He gestured over to the sleeping Kes nearby. "You should have heard what words she had for me. They were pretty nasty."
"I'm not going to yell at you, Neelix," Shepherd finally said. He leaned back against the nearby empty biobed. "But I really hope this entire incident has taught you why you need to A, be honest, and B? Obey our orders. This could have ended a lot worse. We could have avoided this entire mess if you'd listened to me. So, look."
He leaned back, looking the Talaxian right in the eyes.
"What do we need to do so you trust us enough to stop when we tell you to?"
Neelix worked his jaw a bit, and then shrugged.
"Well... You've already saved my life," he said, "so uh... That's a good start? I'll definitely... I mean..."
"Let me put this another way," Shepherd said, "we can't work together if you don't trust us, and if we can't trust you. So... Next time, will we be able to trust you, Neelix? And will you trust us?"
Neelix very slowly nodded.
"I... Yes sir, you will be. And I will. Really."
"Good," Shepherd said with a smile. "Now... What do you know about a group known as the Krowtonan Guard?"
Omake: Piracy
Janeway: "I'm a bit uncomfortable with piracy..."
Shepherd: "Well technically we haven't been authorized to be in the Delta Quadrant and we are in unclaimed space. Ergo, legally, we are pirates."
Janeway: "You can't be serious."
Tuvok: "Technically Captain, we could make that argument. As whimsical as it is, it is a valid interpretation of space law."
Chakotay: "You already have a crew of renegades, cutthroats, and thieves."
Janeway: "... Is all of this a lead up to you asking if we can dress up as pirates for a day?"
Kes enters, tied up by several Ocampan children all dressed as pirates.
Kes: 'I've been captured, Captain! Save me!"
Ocampan Kid: "Arr! We be taking this ship and all yer booty!"
Ocampan Kid 2: "ARR!"
Wearing two eyepatches, this kid runs into the wall, falls, and starts crying.
OK2: "Miss Kes! I hurt my head!"
Kes easily breaks free of her ropes and checks him. She kisses his head.
Kes: "You're all right, see?"
OK2: "Okay... Thank you Miss Kes."
Kes: "You're welcome!"
OK2: "Now, Arr! Back in the ropes, you wench! You're our prisoner!"
Kes: "Oh, right. Save me please from the fearsome pirates!"
Janeway... Is struggling not to laugh.
Janeway: "... Shepherd-"
Shepherd: "I'm so proud!"