Chapter 8 - Feinte
"Report."
"The subspace distortions are increasing, with new fissures emerging at irregular intervals and in unpredictable locations. These are beginning to place stresses on the hull, including on areas still under repair. Moreover, the entre rift appears to be expanding and contracting at random."
Asil's description, as arid as her home planet, greeted Tom as soon as he entered the bridge.
"What do you mean, expanding and contracting at random? Bottom line, it's getting bigger overall?"
"It is, sir," Icheb chimed in from the science station. "But at unpredictable intervals. Intermittently it shrinks again, but never back to its previous size."
"Analysis?" Tom already knew the answer, but wanted to hear it from his experts in case he had missed something.
Harry looked up from his chair. "Meaning that very soon Voyager will find itself far deeper in the interior of the rift that we had planned. We're already detecting increased ion fluctuations and theta radiation, and are expecting greater gravimetric pressures and the threat of plasma turbulences and sudden shears. Hull integrity could be fatally compromised. We haven't finished our repairs and are still pretty vulnerable."
Tom nodded to himself, and cursed under his breath. This was almost like being back in the Delta Quadrant, where the frying pan was almost always co-located with the fire. What would Janeway … No.
"Great. How long do we have?"
"At the present rate of progress and based on the mean of the observed data, the ship will be torn apart at the earliest within eight hours, seventeen minutes and forty-seven seconds."
"Give or take, given the unpredictability. There are some unknown variables."
"Thanks, Harry. Let's try and make it 'give', but plan for 'take'." Tom punched his comm badge.
"Senior officers to the bridge, immediately."
…..
Tom looked around the briefing room. All his officers were present with the exception of the EMH, who was still looking after patients in Sickbay. Following the Doctor's acerbic reminder that he was quite capable of multi-tasking, though, Ayala had opened a simple vidcom link to allow him to listen in. He wove in and out of the picture as he moved around Sickbay.
"This reminds me of the days before I had my mobile emitter," the EMH commented to Nurse Tval, either oblivious to or blithely ignoring the fact that his every comment was transmitted into the briefing room. He ran a dermal regenerator over Ensign Walczinsky, one of the engineers who had sustained extensive deep-tissue burns and was on his third round of treatment.
"I had to fight to be included in briefings, despite my position and the obvious advantage of having access to my unique …"
"Doc, do you mind?" Tom interrupted him rather sharply, too impatient to even feel relief at the fact that he could. "You can wax nostalgic over the bad old days some other time. We've got work to do here, and so do you."
He leaned over to Harry. "Is the Admiral coming?"
The sound of the whooshing door, followed by Kathryn's gravelly voice, pre-empted an answer.
"Mind if I join you?"
"Of course not," Tom replied, ignoring a slightly baleful look he got from B'Elanna that softened a little when it became clear that neither Harry nor Tom would budge from their seats this time. Without comment, Kathryn sat down at the other end of the table. She looked around the briefing room briefly as if intrigued by the slightly different perspective, but waited for Tom to open the session.
"Let's recap, and keep it simple. We can't stay in the anomaly for much longer without risking the ship breaking apart. But as soon as we leave, we have a cloaked ship waiting for us, with a suicidal fanatic aboard who intends to destroy Voyager unless we meet his demands. We can't rely on our sensors to pick him up before he spots us, and we already know their vessels can't be detached once they leech on to the hull. Starfleet won't receive any calls for help for at least a day, given the subspace distortions. And I'm not aware of any ships in the vicinity except for the Al Bataani. And she's limping in the opposite direction on her way to dry dock, thanks to problems of her own. Problems she developed in the same anomaly we're now in. Anyone else have any bad news to impart, or does that about sum it up?"
There was reluctant nodding around the table. "Don't quote me," the Doctor chimed in caustically from the screen. "But this does have a ring of the Delta Quadrant to it."
Tom deliberately ignored the comment, especially since he'd had the identical thought mere minutes ago. The day that he and the EMH started to think alike was probably, as the Klingons would have it, A Good Day To Die.
"Do you think they'll really try and blow up Voyager?" Harry asked. "Destroying one Starfleet vessel could be regarded as the act of an isolated madman. Doing it twice is almost certain to get Starfleet involved. That can't be what they want. Besides, they seem to think of Talith as some kind of hero. Wouldn't they want to make sure she doesn't get killed?"
"These so-called Children of Talasar appear to consider death a noble price to pay in the name of their goals. It would be logical to infer that they will be more than prepared to allow Marshall Talith to pay that same price regardless of what they said," Asil responded. "They did not hesitate when they knew she was on the Gettysburg."
"You're probably right, Asil, although the whole thing lacks a logical basis, as far as I can see. We simply don't have enough information to know why they did what they did, and what their next move might be."
Tom cast a sideways look at Janeway, who shrugged her agreement, not having managed to obtain any additional information in the meantime. She did, however, have an opinion.
"The motives of extremists are difficult to fathom, but if their main goal is to disrupt the peace negotiations, that will inevitably succeed. No action Starfleet could take will change that."
Tom nodded thoughtfully.
"So for now, we know we can't stay here, and we have to assume that Voyager will be targeted as soon as she emerges from the anomaly. What can we do to protect her? Shields are ineffective against the scourge, and we can't withstand another concussive wave until after we've finished our repairs. I could use some bright ideas, here, folks."
"Sir, if I may suggest …" Icheb was hesitant, but gathered his confidence when Tom nodded. "Our current shield configuration is ineffective. But as you yourself pointed out, the primary effects of the scourge do not appear capable of travelling through water."
"And? Last time I looked, there wasn't an ocean nearby for us to dive into."
"I do not believe we require an ocean, sir. If we could reconfigure our shield harmonics to resonate to imitate the phasic frequencies of the H2O molecule, we would …"
"… at least buy ourselves enough time to go to warp. I think it's a brilliant idea, Tom. I can have a team working on it immediately, with Icheb's help." B'Elanna smiled approvingly at the young Brunali.
Tom nodded at B'Elanna in turn. "Agreed. Go for it, but hold on for another minute. There's something else I'll need your help with. I have an idea."
The rudimentary plan had materialized in his head as he waited for his officers to gather. He could practically hear Picard's cultivated, staccato tones in his head: If you signal your move the way you just did, your opponent can see your intention from a mile away. Do that only when you want him to see, in order to lure him in. Expose the target he wants, to draw the attack, then parry and riposte….
"We'll give them what they want. The Denarians, and Naldar. We'll show our willingness to hand them over via the Flyer; they will readily believe that we wouldn't want to risk Voyager to do that. Then, when they're busy going after the Flyer, we should have a clear shot at them. Your basic feint."
"And how will you get them to go after you? They won't just accept your word. And what if there's more than one of them?" Ayala leaned forward eagerly. Cat and mouse games were a favourite tactic of the Maquis, but he couldn't see the play yet.
No one around the table, not even B'Elanna, questioned the security officer's assumption that Tom would pilot the shuttle himself.
"Based on what Talith said, they probably only have one more of those 'scourge' weapons. And the two they got aren't as powerful as the ones used on Denaros."
Tom wasn't quite sure why, but he knew the Talari Marshall had told the truth, both about the number and quality of the weapons that were unaccounted for. Perhaps it was her similarity to Nacheyev, but however much he wanted to loathe the woman, his gut told him she could be trusted in this. He shivered a little at the thought.
Ayala nodded, and continued his original thought.
"They came here prepared to melt Voyager, and so I assume they've got it onboard that one ship. But they may also try and take the Flyer down with conventional weapons. I'm guessing they have some decent assets for smart sting operations, like that ship that chased us, just not perhaps enough to mount a multi-pronged campaign. So as for your feint …"
"You'd need some pretty convincing bait to draw whoever is out there," Janeway finished Ayala's sentence, her eyes betraying her mild amusement at the blithe nonchalance with which the Lieutenant drew on his own terrorist past for his tactical assessments. He had never said much when she commanded Voyager, but she had always suspected there was a sharp mind behind the quiet reliability that allowed him to somehow always appear in the right place at the right time. She briefly wondered what it was in Tom Paris that had managed to draw the man so completely out of his shell.
"These Children appear to have more sophisticated technology than the Talari forces. And based on my personal experience with their approach to cooperation and collaboration, the people you would need to have onboard aren't going to come along willingly."
"Holograms." Tom cast an apologetic look at the EMH, who frowned in reflexive indignation. "They'll be very crude, non-sentient, Doc, no worries. The kind you always cast aspersions on, like my characters in Sandrine's. Except … with features our extremist friends will recognize."
"Holograms, Tom? What if they can detect life signs and find only humans onboard? Assuming the Cap …. The Admiral is right?"
Tom suppressed an involuntary – and slightly vindictive - smirk at B'Elanna's faux pas, even as he was grateful that she did not question his apparent intention to deliver the bait himself. At least not in front of the entire senior staff. He turned to Janeway.
"Do we know whether they might have that technology, Admiral? You've read more of the briefings on what's available in this sector, and you spent a lot of time talking to both sides."
Janeway, who had remained mostly silent but keenly focused during the discussion, shook her head.
"No, I don't know whether they d or not. But until this morning we also didn't know that anyone from Denaros or Talar had a ship capable of going Warp Eight."
"I have conducted a preliminary analysis of the interior of the vessel, Captain, from the images on the view screen. Based on the console configuration, it appears to have been equipped with Federation propulsion technology, in addition to the Romulan-origin cloaking capacity we encountered."
There were some sharp intakes of breath around the table at Asil's observation. "Accordingly, it is logical to assume that it may possess other Federation capabilities."
"Makes sense to me. I wonder who gave them that ship, anyway." Baytart chimed in, "It didn't look like any of the ones they've got in their fleets, and I don't recognize the model. It seems like a bit of a cross between a Class Five shuttle, a Rigellian racer and something I haven't seen before."
"Good point," Harry said. "Do make a search of all our data bases and see what you come up with. Even a partial fingerprint could be helpful."
He frowned a little. "We should also be asking ourselves how and when they became aware that the delegations made it onboard Voyager. Either they can detect and differentiate life signs - or someone told them."
Someone onboard Voyager.
The officers looked at one another in consternation. They had permitted the delegates one transmission home each; given the proximity of their home worlds, these would have reached the intended recipients long before Voyager's messages would ever get to Starfleet …
Asil nodded in Harry's direction; she too understood the impact of his observation. "We will track all the transmissions made from the delegates' quarters.
"Good. Thanks. Back to the hologram idea. Is there any way we can imitate life signs to make them look real?" Tom looked around the table, then at the screen, where the EMH stared at him with a pained expression on his face.
"Not imitate," Ayala offered. "Echo. We could create an echo of existing life signs. Old Maquis trick, to make your forces look like more than they are. Serves to scatter any defenders, when they go after the illusions. Of course you need portable holo-emitters."
"I hope you don't intend to use me, or my emitter, in whatever reckless and foolish experiment this might lead to," the Doctor said. He was sufficiently indignant to have remembered the location of the reciprocal vid outlet and stood before it now, arms akimbo and jaw clenched tightly.
"I vividly remember when you tried to use holo-technology to create extra ships to fool the Kazon or some other thuggish race, and thanks to someone's lack of foresight" – he glared at B'Elanna through the transmitter – "I ended up floating in space."
B'Elanna, who in turn had been staring at – or perhaps through - Ayala as his words triggered a memory, dismissed the EMH's comment with a quick glance at the screen.
"Don't worry, Doctor, that's not how it works. You need the regular kind of emitters, like the ones we installed or you around the ship, before you got the one from Starling. Also, you can't work this trick with just holograms. You need a genuine life sign to duplicate. Also, as I recall, the most echoes you can create off any one person is two or three. Isn't that right, Mike?"
Ayala nodded. "And it's best done in a relatively confined space. A spaceship, a shuttle …"
"… or a Cardassian mining operation you're trying to infiltrate," B'Elanna flashed a grin at the big Lieutenant as they exchanged a wordless reminiscence across the table.
"If I remember correctly, it helps if you flood the immediate location with Thoron particles, which hamper tricorder readings and make it easier for the deception to stick. That's easy to arrange."
Tom nodded enthusiastically. "So, if you create holograms that correspond to the number of echoes you've created, the overall effect for someone checking you out on sensors or on a visual screen would be to create the illusion of a complete complement of individuals, even if you only have a handful of organic ones aboard. See, I knew you guys would come up with a way to make this work. All we need is to be able to hold and distract them for about five minutes, to allow Voyager time to get out of the anomaly."
He sobered momentarily, looking at Janeway. "The only thing that remains will be to convince the Denarians and the Talari to lend us someone from their delegations as the base for the echoes. Guess that'll be your job?"
Tom managed to turn that last into a question rather than a directive, but armed it with one of those smiles he had practiced from the age of three - the same one he had deployed successfully when selling Kathryn on the role of Arachnia, Queen of the Spider People. Resistance would be futile.
"I thought you'd ask," she responded drily, knowing full well what he was doing, and hating to admit that it was working already. "Happy to oblige, but I have to warn you: getting these folks to do anything on a voluntary basis is easier said than done."
"And we'll have to keep them away from any access to the comms system after you have," Harry added. "In case they were talking to these people out there."
Ayala and Asil exchanged wordless glances. There would not be another unauthorized – or at least unmonitored - transmission from this ship. Not if they could help it.
…..
"Absolutely not." Qorath's voice was a growl, and his yellow eyes flashed in indignation. Tall for a Denarian, with shoulders almost twice as wide as Tom's and in no need of the augmentation favoured by his President, he looked not only capable of throwing his weight around but more than willing to do so. His ham-like fists landed on the table with a resounding crash.
"I will not give in to blackmail from a bunch of Talari …" the word that followed was accompanied by a substantial amount of spit, and the universal translator was momentarily stymied.
A form of warthog - it finally ventured in the detached, professorial tone it reserved for explanation where verbatim translation proved impossible - afflicted by a parasite indigenous to Talar that results in shrinkage of the genitalia in the male and birth defects in the female.
If it hadn't been for his utter revulsion at the man who had uttered the curse, Tom might have been interested in having the translator store it for future use; as it was, he simply glared back at Qorath. He had little patience for thugs, and even less for those who refused to deploy even what limited intellectual assets they did have at their disposal.
"No one is giving in to blackmail here."
How he managed to keep his voice so even astonished no one more than himself. "We're trying to draw the enemy ship off Voyager, and we, Starfleet that is, are asking for your cooperation and participation. It's called tactics. You've led troops into battle– you might have heard of the concept."
Tom's eyes sprayed contemptuous blue-hot fire at the Denarian, as he muttered under his breath, " … although it requires a tad more sophistication than mutilation and rape."
Janeway shot him a warning glance, to which Tom responded by lifting his chin defiantly. As far as he was concerned he'd made a major concession to inter-planetary protocol by keeping his voice too low for the translator to pick up his comments.
She saw the chin, interpreted it correctly and gave him a slightly higher calibre version of her patented glare, willing him to silence. You asked me to do this, it said, so we'll do this my way.
"The Captain is right," she nonetheless confirmed, in her most soothing-yet-firm professional tone. "This isn't about surrendering anyone to these so-called Children of Talaros. It's about making a plan work that will enable all of us to survive, so that we can do what is necessary to end the war between Denaros and Talar. Something these terrorists seem to be unwilling to see happen, for some reason."
She paused, her brow suddenly furrowed in concentration. "But I suppose … in order to carry out this plan, we don't necessarily need the Supreme Marshall himself. Correct?"
Kathryn looked questioningly at Tom, who, in the way of someone witnessing a particularly disgusting spectacle, seemed unable to take his gaze off the man.
"Tom?" She reminded him of her outstanding question gently, but firmly. He snapped out of his revulsion, considered her question, and came to the conclusion that not having to spend any time trapped on a small shuttle with this particular specimen of Denarian manhood would actually be a very good thing.
"According to Ayala and B'Elanna, all we need is a Denarian life sign. Any Denarian life sign. One of … the junior officials would do, I suppose, if …"
He let the thought trail, the mocking light in his eyes leaving Janeway under no doubt as to what he might have added, but for a heroic exercise of self-control: If the Supreme Marshall is too much of a Yellow Delta Quadrant Fainting Mouse to do it himself.
"All we need from you, Qorath, is to sit still so we can scan your physical parameters into our holo-programmer. Provided that is not too … much to ask?"
Qorath considered the statement in silence, his eyes narrowing further as a series of calculations appeared to be taking place inside his massive skull. What these were neither officer could fathom, but Tom hoped that his own barely masked contempt for this so-called warrior factored in the equation somewhere.
"That proposal is acceptable," he finally snarled out between gritted teeth. His eyes turned calculating for a moment. "Major Polkath will go in my stead. I doubt that our enemies will be as accommodating."
Qorath's aide's yellow-green eyes widened perceptibly, but he managed a crisp bow, acknowledging his orders.
Tom and Kathryn took their leave immediately; the clock on the anomaly was ticking and there was no time for formal goodbyes. Not that Tom considered the Supreme Marshall eligible for courtesy in any event.
.….
True to Qorath's prediction, the Supreme Talon was less than thrilled by the prospect of being used as bait for extremists, even if they hailed from his home system. Fortunately for him, Kathryn had already modified her approach based on the lesson learned earlier and volunteered that any Talari could act as his stand-in, if he wished not to participate personally.
"Supreme Marshall Qorath will be represented by his aide de camp," she added, giving her voice a slightly conspiratorial overlay. The reaction was both swift, and unexpected.
"I will go in Talon Naldar's place."
The voice was cool and firm, almost flat, allowing no doubt, and no refusal. Talith's eyes, almost silver in the lowered light of the observation lounge where Janeway had called the meeting with the Talari, were hooded slightly.
Kathryn turned to her in silent astonishment, even as Naldar opened his mouth in protest and Tom frowned in consternation. What game was this woman playing? Trying to show up her counterpart?
"Marshall, you heard the Envoy. An officer of lesser rank will do. It is what the Denarian delegation considers acceptable. We need do no more. We will do no more."
"I am not Denarian, Naldar. What is acceptable to them, is not necessarily so to me."
Kathryn cleared her throat. "This mission is not without danger, Marshall Talith."
Talith's sharp features creased into a slight smile, but one without the slightest spark of humour. "That much is clear, Envoy. Yet your Captain here is prepared to go, for the sake of his people. Should I do less for mine, and call myself a soldier of Talar? I will not order one of my men to do a thing I would not do myself."
A competition, then, Tom concluded. Mirror, mirror, on the wall – who's the bravest of them all? Ten points if you named the Scourge of Kyven over Qorath, who writes history in the blood of children.
Tom cast a quick glance at Janeway before testing the waters. "These extremists, whoever they are, don't want you … Marshall." And neither do I. The Flyer is a small ship …
She responded with a dispassionate glance.
"Precisely, Captain. While I understand that all you require for your immediate purpose is a generic Talari biological signature, I assume that in due course it might be helpful to reveal my presence onboard your shuttle to them. Having me onboard might buy you – and ultimately these negotiations - the time you need. Besides, there is little else of use for me to do here until after the danger is passed. Unless Admiral Janeway was planning on continuing the talks in the meantime."
Tom's mind was casting about for something to say in response to this unexpected rationale, but came up blank. He breathed an inner sigh of relief when Janeway took the floor again.
"Thank you, Marshall. A thoughtful offer."
Talith turned to Tom, clearly intent on keeping the conversation to a minimum and the focus on the essentials. He was struck again by the automaton-like quality in her voice, which reminded him a bit of Seven of Nine, at her most Borg-like.
"When will you be ready to leave?"
Tom swallowed, and found his voice again. "The shield conversion for Voyager will take about an hour, according to Icheb and Asil; we can't leave before that is completed. Mike and B'Elanna are working on the echo system; we'd need Mr. Naldar and the Denarians in the holo lab to scan in their specs - for about five minutes each - when they're done. "
"Sequentially, of course," he added pre-emptively, when he caught Naldar's incipient intake of breath. "All told, about three to four hours before departure."
Talith fixed Naldar with an unblinking gaze until he nodded his approval, curtly and reluctantly. One of Naldar's aides, a mid-level officer named Rakol whose main distinguishing feature seemed to be a pronounced partiality for flamboyantly coloured scarves, spoke up, a note of urgency in his voice.
"If the Marshall is willing to risk her life for the sake of us all, so be it. Her glory will be sung in Talar ever more zealously. We should, however, advise the Home World of the plan." He glanced over at Tom and Kathryn accusingly. "But regrettably, we appear to have been cut off all communications, Supreme Talon."
"My apologies," Tom's reply was as quick and smooth as it was insincere. "Unfortunately the changed emissions from the anomaly are interfering with communications. At first it was only subspace comms, but now we can't seem to be able to raise anything that's more than a few billion kilometers away."
Kathryn nodded in support, even if she would not herself give voice to an outright lie, in view of her current position. "We will be hard pressed to stay in touch with the shuttle when it leaves."
The aide continued to whisper in Naldar's ear with some agitation, worrying his scarf with slightly shaking fingers, and cast what could only be considered a dirty look in Janeway's direction. Talith did not appear to be fazed.
"Very well, Captain," she said evenly. "I will report to your technicians for whatever it is you require to create this … this echo, and will be ready to depart when you are."
…..
"You should consider taking Icheb, Tom," Ayala suggested, as he and Tom were getting the Flyer ready for its departure. The big Lieutenant was careful to preserve protocol in the presence of others, but when they were alone he had no compunction about calling his erstwhile peer by his first name. Besides, Tom's earlier, deliberately light-hearted and ironic "Hey, thanks for ratting me out to my wife," had set the tone at a distinctly informal level.
"Cool head in a fight, that kid. Besides, having a Brunali on board will confuse the hell out of them. Icheb's bio signs wouldn't be known in these parts; they're probably not even in many Federation databases yet. Should help the deception. When we were in the Maquis, we always tried to mix up our crews when we used this trick," he said. "Bolians, Bajorans, humans, Vulcans …"
"You used this with Tuvok?"
Tom, who was doing pre-flight checks, was intrigued, especially since Tuvok had never mentioned this idea as a tactical option. Ayala shook his head as he sat two holo emitters down in the flyer and made some minor adjustments to the setting.
"Nah, he would have been too valuable for kinetic ops." He snorted a little. "Or so Chakotay thought. But by the time Tuvok joined us we'd run out of holo emitters anyway, so he never even learned about it."
"Speaking of tricks," Tom said lightly as he watched B'Elanna stride through the shuttle bay towards the Flyer, a number of PADDs in her hand. "Here comes the Grand Wizard."
He watched his wife intently as she transferred the information on the PADDs into the ops console to permit transmission of the echoes calibrated to the life signs of those on the extremists' wish list.
Her ridged forehead furrowed even more deeply in concentration, she worked in silence for a few minutes, ignoring her husband's eyes on her.
"There," she said, her tone betraying the satisfaction Tom knew she always felt at a challenge conquered, regardless of the circumstances. "Give it a run, Mike."
Ayala activated the holo emitters, and all of a sudden the small cabin of the Delta Flyer seemed crowded. Tom reached for his tricorder and waved it in a circular motion.
"Nothing," he said, concern colouring his voice. "Just us."
"We're just checking the interface now. You'll need Talith and that other guy to bounce the echo off of," B'Elanna explained patiently. "Just having their life signs in the system isn't enough. They need to be close by."
Tom shook his head. "Right. How could I forget?" He nodded to Ayala. "Okay, you go prep Icheb. I'll have a quick chat with the Chief here."
He set the tricorder down and watched Ayala climb out of the Flyer, before turning to B'Elanna.
"Bee, I…"
She walked up to him and put her finger on his lips.
"Sshh," she said, the ghost of a smile playing across her full lips. "We've had this conversation too often already. Just kiss me, flyboy – then go do your thing to keep the ship and our daughter safe, and come back."
B'Elanna rose on her toes a little to make up for their difference in height, crossed her hands behind his neck and pulled his head down. Locking her eyes to his she slowly opened her mouth in invitation, waiting for him to bend more, until their lips touched. It did not take long for his tongue to brush her lips and their kiss to deepen. Tom's arms encircled B'Elanna's waist; he pulled her close until no space remained between them. And for just one moment, the universe seemed to shrink, until it was contained in a single shared breath.
…..
The Flyer left Voyager's shuttle bay after the usual exchanges with the bridge, now under Harry's command. The holograms had not yet been activated inside the cabin; no need to fill the small space with extra bodies, however lacking in organic substance, until they were needed. They would be called upon when the shuttle emerged from the protection of the anomaly, and it was time to lay out the bait.
Tom figured the Children of Talasar probably wouldn't care about the junior members of the Denarian delegation, and leaving them behind would make the Federation appear more reluctant to make the deal. And so the hapless Denarian 'volunteer,' Major Polkath, had been banished to the aft cabin immediately upon arrival, to spend his time, out of sight, in whichever way he fancied. All that was required of him was his physical proximity, which he could provide without cluttering up the cabin and getting in the way.
Talith, however, had insisted on staying in the main cabin, citing an interest in Federation technology, in particular the Flyer's odd console and ancillary technology. Not only that, but she had shown up in the shuttle bay early, to watch the preparations and installation of the holoemitters. Tom suspected she was the type who just couldn't stand not being involved - a feeling with which he could sympathize to some extent, but that didn't make him any happier about having her so close.
He had just begun to relax into the first few minutes of silent running – a time he habitually used to allow the hum of the engines to trickle into his body through his fingertips, to feel the flight – when his private moment was broken.
"That was your wife? The woman I saw with you before we left?"
Tom didn't quite know what to make of the rather personal query, or the voice that came from somewhere behind him. Talith's tone was as flat as always, and he found himself looking to get a grip on an inflection, a cadence – anything that could have helped him divine the intentions behind the question. Somehow, the woman who had reportedly committed the single greatest act of mass murder in the Binary War did not strike him as the person to strike up a round of small talk to pass the time, in the middle of a sensitive military operation. Nor did he feel particularly inclined to oblige her, if she was.
"Yes," he replied simply and equally monotonously, intent on choking off any kind of conversation before it could take hold. He did not turn his head.
Talith, however, was not so easily deterred. He should have expected it.
"Do you have children?"
Even if he were inclined towards rudeness, which he was not, Tom Paris would not refuse to give an answer to that question. How could you deny your life?
"Yes, one. A little girl."
There was no noticeable softening in Talith's voice, even as she asked, "How old is she, in your years?"
"Almost three. But she's part Klingon, so in terms of her development she's closer to four, for a human child."
The answer, and the fact that it had gone beyond single syllables, seemed to have temporarily satisfied Talith's inexplicable curiosity about Tom's personal life. For a while the cabin of the Flyer was silent, broken only by the tap-tap-tap of Icheb's fingers on the ops console, as he was gauging the eddies and turbulences of the subspace anomaly that enveloped them, sending the information to the helm for Tom for use in any course corrections.
Ayala had been right; Icheb was the right man for the job. With Harry, Asil and Ayala all needed for the defence of Voyager, Tom could not have asked for a better second for the task at hand.
But after a while, to Tom's surprise, Talith spoke again, still in that flat tone that seemed to characterize her speech. Although now it seemed more as if the emotion had been carefully, deliberately leeched out of it before she opened her mouth. He recognized a subtle change in her breath: the tiniest catch, suppressed out of habit and life-long practice.
"I had a child. At Talasar."
He turned, then, and looked, almost as if for the first time, at the woman who held herself as calm and still as ice - this soldier of Talar. A mother. And even as he seized on the convenient rationalization that he was gathering potentially useful intelligence, he knew deep down that he needed to know more, and for different reasons altogether.
"Tell me."
"I was what you would call an ensign then. My husband, a Lieutenant, had fallen in the battle for the Kargos moons, perished with his ship. He never even knew I was pregnant. When I gave birth the war was not going well, and all soldiers were needed. I was recalled to duty after three months, and so I left Dary with my parents, on Talasar. It was our outermost colony, and we thought it was beyond the reach of the Denarian forces. I thought it was safe."
Talith's eyes were fixed on the viewscreen, where a new plasma eddy was forming. Tom deftly maneuvered around it, and she waited until the moment had passed before continuing.
"She was two years old when they came to Talasar. Qorath's forces laid waste to the colony until no stone was left unturned, no scrap of wood unscorched. But first they did whatever they could to leave their mark on the population. By his orders, and with his enthusiastic participation. And then they left. Because they did not want this world; all they wanted was to destroy it, to spread terror amongst all Talari, so that we would give up the fight, and give them what they really craved."
The cabin was completely silent now; Icheb had ceased his tapping for the moment, listening, his ocular implant raised as if warding off echoes from a different world, a different time.
"They did barbaric things, unspeakable things. The worst were done to the children, in front of their parents. Some of those were left to live, so that they could tell the story of Talasar and of the death of its children, and be forced to relive it all whenever they did. My parents were not among them though. When the Denarians left, the survivors burned all the bodies they could find so that no one would have to see what they had seen. So that others could remember what had been, not what had been done to their children."
Talith paused for a moment, eyes far away, unblinking.
"My ship was the first to reach Talasar, after. I was given my daughter's ashes, contained in a metal pot that was all that remained of my parents' home."
She turned to Tom now, fixing him with her gaze.
"Of all the children of Talasar, none were left alive."
The statement hung in the air of the cabin, as unanswerable as the story that preceded it.
Icheb stood stockstill, not knowing for a moment what to do with his hands, until the emergence of a new plasma nodule caught his attention and he was forced to focus on his instruments again.
Tom rode out the resulting turbulence in silence, the Flyer dipping and banking under his hands as Talith watched, unblinking. Finally, he was able to say what needed to be said.
"I am so sorry."
And to ask the question he found he needed to ask: "Is that why you destroyed Kyven?"
Talith weighed her answer, not as if she had never considered it, but to ensure that the man asking it would hear the response for what it was.
"No. It made it easier though."
Tom nodded, slowly, the vista of the anomaly before his eyes replaced by the featureless grey of the melted continent, the dance of the ashes in the Flyer's wake.
"But it didn't bring Dary back, did it?"
A long silence, followed by a soft sigh, something between regret and despair – the first real evidence of emotion Tom had been able to detect in the woman who had triggered a million deaths.
"No. No, it did not."
Her statement hung in the air, seemingly unanswerable. Icheb shifted uncomfortably at his console until Tom spoke again.
"Neither will sabotaging efforts to end this conflict."
Talith responded immediately, her voice as cool and clear as ever, but with an edge Tom had not heard in it before.
"You are quite correct, Captain. And that is why I am here. Let there be no mistake about one thing. The man we are seeking to find claims to be speaking for the children of Talasar. He is not speaking for mine."
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I think everybody can guess what "feinte" means. Drop the 'e' and there you are! But in case you have gotten used to my professorial explanations at the end, here it is: a feint is the fencing world's preamble to a sucker punch: Oh look, my weapon is pointing down there – you better parry! Just kidding, really meant to go for up here ... Thanks for opening that up!
Of course, if your opponent has any brains at all, feints work both ways, and before you know it, you're on the hook.