Chapter 16
The sight of the Sacajawea parked in the shuttle bay of Seska's ship almost brought a tear to Harry's eye; he didn't think he had ever seen a more beautiful spacecraft in his entire life. And this after the hull had been rumpled by the displacement wave.
He turned to Gowron and the two Cardassians who had accompanied them and gave a nod of thanks. He suspected B'Elanna wanted a moment to say goodbye to Gowron in private, so he entered the shuttlecraft wordlessly. Then he began working on the calculations for the displacement wave that would, hopefully, send him and B'Elanna home. It was a complicated procedure that involved inverting the calculations the Cardassians had used to bring them there, hopefully with the right quantum resonance signature to land them in the right universe and not in the Delta Quadrant of this universe or another one. They had wanted to remain in the Alpha Quadrant of their universe, though it would mean leaving their friends on Voyager behind, because duty to the ship had to come first; in the Alpha Quadrant, they could alert Starfleet of the ship's disappearance and begin working on a way to bring it home. But the technology the Cardassians used had proved far too unstable in the few, quick simulations they had run. There was no way to make the wave miniscule enough to transport them to a different universe without also pushing them across vast distances of space.
Inside the shuttle Harry noticed, for the first time, that Federation ships had a certain smell to them. He'd never paid attention before, but there it was – something clean and cool, the smell of duritantium and Starfleet's recycled air content – and Harry knew instinctively that Voyager smelled the same way. As he took a seat at the helm, he burst into a smile. He couldn't wait to get back to Voyager, take a sonic shower, and sit in his quarters, just smelling the familiar surroundings all night long.
"I'm sorry I won't be with you to take on Martok," B'Elanna said with a slight frown. "I know it's dishonorable to break a promise, but –"
Gowron waved a hand, silencing her. "Given this new information about the Cardassians, I think we have other concerns for the moment than who's controlling one small sector of space. I'm going back to the homeworld so we can strategize."
"You want my advice? I'd trust the humans over the Cardassians any day. It works in my universe."
Gowron smiled, bearing his pointed teeth at her. "I'm sorry your friends died."
"Yeah," B'Elanna said quietly, staring at the deckplate, "me too." Kathryn was still alive, and she'd vowed to return to the rebel base and share the news about the Obsidian Order, but Tom and Chakotay were gone. Even the Seska of this universe, who had redeemed her counterpart with her trustworthiness, was dead. At Chakotay's hand – B'Elanna thought the universes were conspiring with irony.
In some ways, she knew, it was easier this way. She and Harry didn't have to leave Tom behind. And he'd had a chance to show, in the final minutes of his life, that he was, indeed, a hero.
And to prove his theory that heroes always end up dead.
"I should go," she said, wanting very much to turn her attention away from Tom and Chakotay and everything that had happened. She looked over at the Cardassians. "Thanks for keeping the shuttle in one piece."
They nodded, and with one last look at Gowron, B'Elanna turned to enter the Sacajawea.
"Ensign," she called with false bravado, "do you have those calculations ready for me?"
Harry shook his head as he handed her a data padd. "I knew the power would go to your head."
B'Elanna flashed him a smile as she took a seat to review the padd. After a few minutes she looked up. "There's no guarantee this will work."
Harry nodded in confirmation. "But we have to try."
"Agreed." She turned her attention to the helm controls. "Initiating pre-flight sequence."
A minute later they were moving off in space, out of the Betreka Nebula and away from the Terran rebels and Obsidian Order, away from the events of the past week.
"I'm ready to initiate the wave," Harry reported. They turned to each other, and in their silent eye contact a pledge was made. They were going to die trying to get back to their universe if that was what it took, and success or failure, they'd do it together.
Harry's slender fingers danced across the controls for a moment, and then both watched out the forward viewport as space in front of them rippled and danced.
"I'm detecting an increase in ions in the area," B'Elanna reported on cue.
"Approaching the front of the wave," Harry counted down, "in three, two…"
Their shuttle tossed violently like a kite in a thunderstorm.
When they were finally able to pick themselves up from the floor, B'Elanna was the first to confirm that they were, in fact, back in the Delta Quadrant.
"In which universe?" Harry asked, only half-joking.
Her triumphant smile was answer enough. "I've got Voyager on long-range sensors. At maximum warp we can reach them in four hours."
They settled in as the shuttle's autonavigation began leading them toward the ship that had become home. B'Elanna reclined against her seat, arms crossed over her chest, eyes closed, while Harry took his turn monitoring their course.
"I'm not going on any more away missions with you, Maquis," he teased.
Truth be told, B'Elanna was ready to agree to never going on another away mission, period. But she couldn't let him get away with making it her fault they always had bad luck. "Why not?" she asked innocently.
"Let's see. The first time I met you, we were being held prisoner and experimented on. The next time we went on a mission, I ended up dead. And then there was the time I died when the hull breached, and then, as if I'm not lucky enough to be here, my own duplicate, I almost got my head cut off on a mission to a fantasy world. And this time I met my duplicate again –"
"And he'd actually managed to get Seven of Nine," B'Elanna interrupted.
"Until he died, too," Harry finished. He recognized the shift in his voice from joking to jaded. He made a slight course correction, collecting himself, before he said lightly, "One of these days, you and I are going to get onto a shuttle and crash on a planet somewhere and not be able to leave again, ever. And with our luck, it'll be some Bronze Age civilization without any technology or medicine."
B'Elanna watched him working the controls for a moment, thinking how lucky he was to even be alive. He was right; he'd lived through too much on Voyager. And often as not, she was right beside him when whatever awful thing happened. "You're starting to sound as cynical as Tom, Starfleet," she warned. "And for the record, I think you've gotten into as many scrapes with him as you have me."
"For the record," Harry said, a slight smile appearing on his lips, "you might be right."
B'Elanna smiled, too, at his reaction. "Face it, Harry. You have lousy taste in friends."
He turned to look at her then, his face looking a whole lot sweeter. "I'm sorry about Tom, B'Elanna."
For a moment she didn't know what he meant. Spotting Voyager on sensors had put the thought of her Tom Paris, the one who loved her and was going to be very, very excited to have her return, at the forefront of her mind. Then it registered.
"Me too. I'm sorry about Chakotay – Kathryn – all of them. And Seska!" She nearly laughed. "Who would believe that Seska was, for once, actually on the right side?"
"I don't know if I'd go that far," Harry said. "She let those guards do a pretty good number on me. Cardassians and Klingons killing Terrans, Terrans taking up arms against the Cardassians and Klingons," Harry muttered quietly as he worked. "Cardassians turning on each other, turning on the Klingons. There's a chance that the Terran Rebellion will succeed, but how will it be any different than the Alliance? At some point, somebody has to put their weapon down."
"Yeah, but who wants to be the first?"
Harry frowned. "I don't know, but I hope somebody has the courage."
"To get his head blown off?"
"Maybe," Harry acknowledged. "But somebody else will see it, and maybe it will have a ripple effect."
They lapsed into silence for a minute, until B'Elanna said quietly, "Harry, let's not tell them, okay?"
He looked at her, and for a moment B'Elanna thought he was going to ask her to clarify. But then he nodded solemnly in understanding. They'd give the captain their official mission report, and they'd tell the rest of the senior officers where they had been and what they had done. But they weren't going into any details on what their friends' counterparts in the mirror universe had been up to – or what had happened to them.
"As far as they know," Harry agreed, "we never found them in the mirror universe."
B'Elanna nodded her consent to that story, and they lapsed into companionable silence as Voyager appeared as a blip on their short-range sensor readings and then, eventually, came into focus out the forward viewport.
The End
Thanks to everyone for reading and commenting, especially GLovesTrek and Sophiedoodle, two incredibly loyal reviewers.