Chapter 4
"Oh, no," B'Elanna said, involuntarily backing away from Gowron and Damar. "You've got to be kidding me. There's no way I'm going to stay here and serve as your sub-regent." Considering her present location, she thought it would be better to get back to her universe, still in the Alpha Quadrant, so that she and Harry could tell Starfleet Voyager wasn't missing and maybe help get the ship home. But she'd take what she could get. If she had to be sent back to the Delta Quadrant, so be it. At least there her enemies were her enemies, and her friends were her friends. Here, in this topsy-turvy universe she'd entered, she found herself in the middle of a scheme with a Cardassian who had once been her mortal enemy – being asked to play the role of a political figure in an immoral empire so that she could help lead a slave revolt and bring the empire down. No, there was no way she'd cooperate with such an absurd plan.
"How did I get here?" she asked them suddenly.
"Do you think we're responsible?" Damar asked. It sounded to her as though he was testing her, trying to see how much she knew.
"Are you responsible?"
"Damar," Gowron hissed in warning.
"I can tell you how you got here," Damar continued, ignoring Gowron, "and maybe help you get back. But you have to help us first."
"By pretending to be the sub-regent?"
"Yes."
B'Elanna scowled, her arms crossing over her chest. "And what exactly is it you want me to do as the sub-regent?"
Gowron stepped forward. "We need you to liberate a few leaders of the Terran Rebellion who are working with us. Then we'll all go to the Betreka Nebula, where we will raise an army to defeat Martok, who is trying to take power in the sector."
"It's very simple, really," Damar added.
"It doesn't sound very simple to me," B'Elanna argued.
Damar gave her a genuine Cardassian smile, a bone-chilling facial expression that meant he wasn't smiling inside at all but knew coercion would get him farther than provocation. It made her shiver. "You help us, and then we turn you loose with information about how to get back to your universe. Do we have a deal?"
"No deal," she said firmly.
"You're not in a position to negotiate!" Gowron reminded her.
She held her ground. "I have to find my crewmate. That's my priority. After that I have to get home. If you want my cooperation, you'd better come up with a plan that includes those two things."
The two men looked at each other, but B'Elanna couldn't read their expressions. Then, wordlessly, they left her alone in the room.
"Once upon a time, humans were strong," Chakotay began, pacing around the assembled prisoners in the darkness of the night. "We had a vast empire that stretched across several systems. We were powerful. We were smart. We had the entire future before us."
"If that's true," a sarcastic voice called from the crowd, "then why are we slaves now?"
There was something familiar about the voice. Harry looked across the crowd to see who had spoken, but with only the light from the stars and two moons, it was too dark to see the face.
"What's your name, son?" Chakotay asked him patiently.
"No names. I give you my name, and the next thing I know is that I'm on some Cardassian hit list."
He didn't have to give Chakotay a name for Harry to identify him. The voice, he could tell, belonged to Tom Paris.
Chakotay relented, turning his attention back to the others. "Do you see what they have done to us? How they've made us mistrustful of each other? The only way we can defeat them is to stand together."
"That, or we could just attack them at daybreak and make a run for it."
That was the voice of the mirror Harry. "Look, I think everyone here knows I have a lot of respect for Chakotay –" It didn't escape Harry that his alter ego's tone belied the truth of the sentiment – "but he talks about trust and visions of a utopia and waiting for the right moment, as if we have all the time in the world. Two days ago, Finnegan and Zach Taylor were executed by the spoonheads. How long do we have to wait to take action? To defend ourselves?" A few in the crowd murmured in support. "All we need to do is cooperate tomorrow morning to attack the guards. We come at them with everything we have, take their weapons, kill them, and make a run for it." More now indicated their approval of this plan.
"Where are you going to go?" Chakotay asked. The question was directed at the whole group. "There are force fields around the camp, and you wouldn't be able to leave the surface. You haven't thought this out. Wait a few more days. The Terran Rebellion is going to come. I have ships."
"Where are these magical ships now?" Annika asked, rising to mirror Harry's defense. "Have you been in contact with them through your subspace transmitter?"
Several people in the crowd laughed at Chakotay's expense.
"I know my cell," he said calmly. "Before I was arrested, we all agreed to liberate the camp. They're supposed to be here in four days. And they'll come. With reinforcements. If we do anything rash now, we'll risk making things more difficult for ourselves later. The Cardies might increase the number of guards or change the perimeter controls. I'm asking you to trust me. To trust me and to wait."
Harry looked carefully around the assembled prisoners, gauging their reactions. After a few minutes it seemed that the soft-spoken Chakotay had won out over his counterpart. The crowd began to dissipate, sneaking away quietly in the shadows of the night, resolved to wait until their leader told them to take further action.
As the two Harrys and Annika made their way back to their shelter together, it was quite clear that mirror Harry was disappointed he hadn't been able to rally more support. "Sometimes I wonder if that damn Indian is conspiring against us," he admitted quietly.
"No," Annika quickly corrected him. "He's dedicated to the cause. He's just…an idealist."
"What we ought to do," her lover said, "is get out of here and try to find Harry's shuttle. Maybe he can take us back with him."
Harry didn't respond but thought over the probability of success for such a plan. Even if there was some way to escape the camp, it would still be difficult to track down the Sacajawea. The last thing he knew was that it was being tractored by Seska's ship. For all he knew, it was in still in her shuttle bay. How would they get to it? Where would they go if they did manage to secure it? He didn't know how to get back to his universe.
"How about it, Harry Two?" Annika asked playfully. She had decided that afternoon to keep track of the men by numbering them, and Harry hated it. "If you find a way home, will you take us?"
If he could find a way back to his reality, Harry knew that bringing them wasn't an option. Though he didn't have much affection for his alter ego at this point, he didn't want him – or Annika or Chakotay or any of the Terrans – to suffer. But there were strict rules about these kinds of things, and his duty as a Starfleet officer came up behind him, tapping him on the shoulder, reminding him that even though he was out of uniform, it would still follow him wherever he went.
But somehow he didn't think Harry One and Annika would take too well to hearing that answer.
"If I can find a way home."
They made themselves as comfortable as they could on the floor of the shelter, with heads resting on pillows of dried leaves and rocks. Harry One and Annika curled up together, and Harry was glad there was only a very faint light coming from the entrance to the shelter so that he didn't have to look at them.
His counterpart still managed to shoot him a triumphant grin across the darkness, as if saying that he knew he'd won the big prize. He draped an arm around Annika's waist. "You know the real reason Chakotay hates me, Har? I got the girl."
True to Chakotay's word, a faction of the Terran Rebellion was making preparations from their secret base inside the Betreka Nebula. In his absence a woman had risen to power, and she was determined to get her wayward comrades in line to rescue their leader.
"There are four days until our scheduled attack on Aldebaran," Kathryn reminded them. "And we still don't have any reinforcements lined up. What the hell happened to Tuvok and Bashir?"
"The word is that the Alliance got to Tuvok somehow," Reg, a balding man who claimed to be good with technology, informed her. "Messed with his head."
"As if he wasn't messed up enough," Zimmerman, another balding man with a chilling bloodlust, chimed in.
Kathryn stalked around their makeshift command post. "There's no way the three of us can do it alone." Reg and Zimm looked at each other, and slowly smiles started to spread on their faces. "You want to tell me what the big secret is?"
"Actually," Reg explained, leading Kathryn to the nearest contraband computer, "Zimm and I have been trying to figure out alternatives, and we think we've got something." He punched a few buttons on the computer console. "Watch…this." There was a faint shimmering in front of them, and then a man identical to Zimm materialized out of thin air.
"What the hell is that?"
"This," Zimm said, gesturing to his twin, "is called a holographic man." He and Reg shared a grin at their success. "Here's what we think, Kathryn. We think we can create an army of these –"
"And fight the Alliance this way, sparing the lives of the rebels," she finished. She looked between the two. "Nice work, gentlemen."
"There's just one problem," Zimm added. "We can only create these guys in places were there are holographic projectors. So no fighting on Cardassian or Klingon ships."
"Can we create portable projectors that our people can carry around or set up spur of the moment?"
"Maybe," Reg said, using his fingers to comb a few long strands of hair over his bald spot. "But that isn't really either of our forte. We also need to create more – a lot more. We only have the one right now. But it's going to take more computer power."
Kathryn looked between the two men a little dubiously. They'd been working together in the same cell of the Terran Rebellion for fourteen months, and she still wasn't entirely sure she trusted either of them. Reg looked positively seedy with his combover, though he was shaping into a talented computer hack. And Zimm – well, Kathryn didn't trust a man who didn't have a first name.
But Chakotay had willingly gotten arrested so that he could get inside the Aldebaran labor camp, and he was counting on them to help him liberate it. There was no way he could do that alone from the inside.
And without reinforcements there was no way she, Reg, and Zimm could do it from the outside. She nodded at the two men. "Tell me what I can do to help. We're going to need this holographic army up and running in four days." A wide grin spread across her face. "And let's make sure they know how to kill."