Chapter 3 – Behind the Veil
The evening before the Enterprise's arrival at the source of the distress call found both Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres in their quarters, tucking in their daughter for the night. Tom had missed out on the family dinner, having had to scarf down a replicated sandwich as he went over crew schedules and assignments for what promised to be a challenging day ahead, but he always made a point of being there for Miral's bedtime; this night was no exception.
"Daddy," she squealed as soon as he walked in, her big blue eyes bright and not at all sleepy. No matter how much like B'Elanna she looked and acted at times – or perhaps because of it - Miral Paris was one-hundred percent Daddy's girl, a fact that was no secret on the ship and that amused her mother to no end. If she had ten little fingers, Tom Paris would have been tightly wrapped around each and every one of them, rather than, as he admittedly was, just around the two Miral did in fact possess.
She stretched out her arms in the universal pick-me-up gesture, and he happily obliged, giving her an affectionate hug as she wrapped her arms around his neck and nestled her head against his chin. Her voice took on a slight pleading tone, just in case. "Can I have a story? Please, Daddy? Please?"
Tom smiled, giving a knowing sideways glance at B'Elanna as he set Miral back down in her crib and handed her Toby the Targ, who had fallen out of the crib again - probably tossed overboard to elicit a scandalized reaction from B'Elanna, who still clung to her rather illusionary title over the tatty beast. "Of course, munchkin. How about … oh, I don't know. 'I love You Forever'? Since Mommy's here listening, and it's such a nice, totally mushy story about mommies?"
Predictably, B'Elanna rolled her eyes. "Sentimental claptrap," she declared resolutely. "How about …" "'Girl Warriors at the River of Blood'?" Tom supplied helpfully, raising an eyebrow. His wife smacked him in the arm.
"Read her something from that book about the pig and the bear with limited brain power. That's a Tom Paris-appropriate sort of thing, isn't it?" She bent down to give her daughter a kiss. "I'll leave you two to your story. Good night, sweetie. See you in the morning. Love you."
Tom had gotten about a third of the way through the chapter in which Eeyore lost his tail when Miral's breathing began to get soft and even. He put down the book and stroked her hair gently, pulled the blanket back over her shoulder and made to leave his daughter's room. He was almost out the door when a small voice came, slightly muffled by the blanket but still as clear as a bell, "Daddy, what's senti-men-tal claptrap?"
Tom barely choked back his laughter. Trust his little darling, precocious even for the slightly accelerated development her quarter-Klingon genes afforded her, to pick up on the one new phrase of the day that might have been better ignored.
Casting about for an answer that she could relate to, he said, "You know, how you and I always get all sad and cry a little when Bambi's mother gets shot?" Miral nodded slowly. "And Mommy just says something like, 'That reminds me, what are we having for dinner tonight?' or 'We haven't had venison for a while'?"
Miral nodded again, solemnly this time. "That's because you and I, we're sentimental people. And she isn't. 'Sentimental' is what Mommy calls the mushy stuff. She can take it only in small doses, and only on special occasions. And she hates it when a book, a holovid or a movie is all wired up to deliberately make you feel mushy, like it pushes all your mush buttons on purpose. That's where the claptrap thing comes in. Okay?"
"'Kay. Night, Daddy." Miral snuggled into her blanket. The suppressed giggle over his shoulder indicated that B'Elanna had tiptoed back into the room and listened to the exchange. "Tom Paris, walking dictionary," she said.
Together they looked down at Miral, who was already mostly asleep, now curled around Toby.
"Have you ever seen anything so completely and utterly adorable?" Tom asked in paternal wonderment.
B'Elanna chuckled. "Yep, just last night, and the night before. And there was that particularly cute nap last weekend …"
She looked at her daughter fondly, then directed her gaze at her husband. "But just for the record, you're pretty adorable when you're asleep, too, Commander."
Tom bristled with mock indignation. "Starfleet Commanders are not adorable. We are fierce and powerful creatures who command respect and awe."
"Uh-huh," his mate said in response, sounding neither respectful nor particularly awed.
Quietly they left their daughter's bedroom, Tom's fingers lightly placed on his wife's lower back, enjoying the simple touch. He closed the door behind them softly with his other hand. "Glass of wine before bed?" he asked, and B'Elanna nodded her affirmation. "Small one, just enough to help us sleep," she said. "Lord knows what we're facing tomorrow; we can both use some rest."
Tom went to the replicator, ordered two glasses of Kitarian Merlot - his favourite vintage, 2282, both for oenophile and sentimental reasons. Whoever had programmed this replicator had clearly been both a connoisseur and a genius. Geordie LaForge, maybe? He and the Captain, who had lived in these quarters before his brief commission on the USS Titan, had been pretty good friends.
He took the glasses over to the couch where B'Elanna was already curled up, handed her one of them and plonked himself down beside her. He stretched his long legs out on the coffee table as she snuggled up to him, wrapped his left arm around her and pulled her closer.
"Yeah. In the meantime, let's enjoy five minutes of domestic bliss while we can." Tom took a sip of wine and looked down at his mate's dark head thoughtfully. "You know, if someone had told me a few years ago that I'd end up like this …"
"… you'd have laughed them out of the room?" B'Elanna finished his sentence for him. Tom nodded his assent, his lips ending back up in B'Elanna's hair on the downward trajectory. "Or thrown whatever I was drinking at them. I certainly wouldn't have believed them."
He twirled the stem of his glass between his fingers pensively, the silence stretching out between them, but not uncomfortably so given the contentment each always found in the other's physical closeness.
After a few minutes of quiet reflection, Tom lifted his head and found his voice. "I finally had my psych detox with Deanna today."
"And?" B'Elanna knew better than to push. If he was ready to talk, he would; otherwise she'd be content to sit there beside him, breathing in his scent and soaking up the warmth his body seemed to radiate no matter what the temperature. Tomorrow and its unpredictable events would come soon enough.
"And … I realized again, how lucky I am to have you and Miral. How genuinely lucky." He unconsciously twirled some of her hair between three of his fingers now, winding it through and around, again and again.
"You know, that whole Andorian mess … it got me thinking. About how thin the dividing line can be between making it, and failing miserably. And how often you're completely subject to outside forces, maybe something or someone you've never even heard of before, that'll push you over one side of the line or the other. This side, you're golden. That side, you're a sitting duck. Or worse. And most of the time, you don't get to have any choice in the matter."
He took a sip of his wine. "I hope that never happens to me again, that I get to be … at the receiving end of somebody's agenda. Or completely at someone else's mercy. You know, like Ramara, the Andorian guard I told you about, when she threw herself at the Emperor's feet. Or like the colonists in the DMZ, when the Federation signed away their lives and their homes, just because some asshole politicians had swung a deal with the Cardassians so they could make more money."
He fell silent for a moment, and then added softly, "Or me, when they carved that number in my throat, and … and all the … things that happened after that."
B'Elanna burrowed her face into the crook of her mate's neck. Even though there were things he would still hesitate to speak about - even to her - she knew where his mind was headed now, or thought she did. And so she said softly, "And you've kept the tattoo because …?"
Tom sighed. "Honestly? I think at this point, my reasons change every five minutes, and seem to depend on whom I'm talking to. And I think they're all true. At first, it was because I got totally rattled when I walked into that bar on Nardik Station, and so I thought there's something there I should deal with or it may catch up with my ability to do my job some day. So that's what I told Riker. Then I thought of some of those supercilious assholes on Andor, like that Terran ambassador, and how useful it would be to shock them out of their Aurelian silk socks."
He took a sip of his wine, looked down and put his lips on B'Elanna's hair for a minute. She remained silent, content to let him speak, now that he had started. It had been a long time coming, the ability to open up to one another; it remained a slow dance between them, where one would lead and the other would follow, lest a wrong step wreck the pattern.
"And by the time I finished talking to Deanna this afternoon, I had myself convinced it was all about making a political statement, along the lines of what I just mentioned. I don't think she bought it though, and it's probably just as well. That's part of it, but certainly not all of it. So, the short and the long answer is, Bee, I have absolutely no idea why I'm keeping the fucking thing. All I know is that is seems important for some reason that I look at it, and that others get to look at it on me, at least for a while. Especially since I'm still trying to figure out what kind of a commanding officer I want to be when I grow up. And I have a feeling that once I work it all out, I'll be ready to cover it up again."
He leaned back, cocking his head in an attempt to find B'Elanna's eyes. "That make any sense?" She took her head off his shoulder and put her wine glass on the table. "Mmh-hmm. Yeah, I think it does." She knew from experience that he was finished with his explanation – or was it an exploration - for the time being, and that it would likely be counterproductive to comment now.
His next question, therefore, came as a surprise – both that he asked it, and that it came out with such a sense of hesitation, trepidation even. As if he feared the answer. "You don't … you don't mind, though, do you? That it's out there, in the open like that? Where people can see it? And see what kind of … person you married?"
B'Elanna knew very well that the question was loaded with a host of others - neither formed nor asked - and that there was no right answer, at least not one she could put into words.
She turned herself around and swung her leg over Tom's, pulling herself up on his lap until she was comfortably straddling him. She leaned into him and ran the tip of her tongue up the length of the tattoo, tasting the slight saltiness of his skin, and finished with a light bite on his neck.
"That answer your question, Thomas Eugene Paris?" she breathed into his ear, wrapping her arms around his neck and lightly rubbing her breasts against his chest.
Tom smiled broadly at her now, that blinding, totally genuine, supernova smile that still, after almost six years together, could cause B'Elanna's breath to hitch in her throat.
"Yes. Yes, it does."
He cupped her face with both hands and looked deep into her eyes before lowering his mouth to hers for a deep kiss. Before their lips touched he whispered, softly, the two Klingon words that had shaped his life, both their lives: "JiH dok ..."
And her response, when they eventually broke apart: "Maj dok..."
They did not speak again that night, as they instead sought and found within each other's bodies the reassurance and affirmation that words so often failed.
…..
"We'll be coming out of warp in five minutes, sir." Marc O'Reilly's voice, confident and professional, came from the conn. "Three billion kilometers from destination."
Cran's astrometrics team had unearthed an old star chart, predating the Federation, that showed the same yellow dwarf star Harry's sensors had detected but, due to the unsophisticated telemetry of the day, no planets at all had been recorded. She took the absence of a useful finding as a personal affront, and after reporting had left the bridge in something like a professional huff. The rest of the bridge staff was faring little better; the absence of concrete information in the face of what was potentially at stake was taking its toll on almost everyone.
"When you do get there, slow to one-quarter impulse. I'd like to have a good look around before we commit ourselves to anything," Riker responded to the helmsman. He turned to the Ops console for the sixth or so time, knowing the answer before posing the question. "Anything yet?"
Harry Kim shook his head. "Not from inside the warp field, sir. The recalibrations we need to make to circumvent the cloaking can only be done in normal space, even with the new sensor array."
Riker gave a frustrated sigh, while Tom hid a smile behind his hand. He understood the Captain's frustration and eagerness – felt it himself, in fact – but admired Harry's restraint in providing the very obvious answer. If it had been him asking the same question of his best friend, he would have doubtless worn it, senior officer or not.
He turned to the Captain, speaking in a low voice so as not to unnecessarily alarm the bridge crew. "We may need to prepare for entry into whatever atmosphere this planet has, in order to get under the cloak and be able to collect comprehensive data. If there is a net of cloaking satellites, like B'Elanna suspects, it will act like a Faraday cage; nothing in, nothing out - unless you have the technology to cut through it. The only exception is a distress signal, and there are very good reasons for the prohibition on using those for anything other than what they're meant for, so we can't reverse engineer that."
Riker nodded slowly. The implications were clear. In order to collect the necessary information, not only would the Enterprise have to fly through unknown atmospheric conditions, but she would also be exposed to whatever defence systems might be in place on a previously unknown planet, kept deliberately hidden from view – possibly for decades. And close to Romulan space at that, with all that entailed. Conditions would be at red alert all the way.
"You think he should be the one to fly in …" Will pointed his chin towards O'Reilly. "Yes," Tom replied firmly. "I'm sure he can do it. And if he's never done an atmosphere dip before, there's no better way to figure out how than flying by the seat of your pants." He gave a lop-sided grin at his Captain.
"I did my first starship landing absolutely cold, totally terrified. Classic swan maneuver – I probably looked like I was gliding serenely at the top, but in reality was paddling like fuck underneath. But hearing Captain Janeway say 'nice flying, Mr. Paris' afterwards - it made me feel like Voyager was really mine, you know? Every pilot deserves that feeling. So I'll be happy to look over Marc's shoulder if you're really worried, but I'll be doing it from this chair. Otherwise we may as well keep him in his quarters for the rest of the mission, and you'll be out a First Officer."
Slightly taken aback by the vehemence of his XO's response, Riker nodded his assent. He remembered the days when he was responsible for crew assignments, schedules, and career development, but didn't recall ever putting quite that much thought into their individual psychological well-being as Tom Paris apparently did. Well, it seemed to work for him, at least so far. O'Reilly had already come a long way since Paris had stepped on board.
"Coming out of warp … NOW."
"View screen?" "Is on, sir. Nothing there except the planets we know about. The cloak over the moon seems to be holding. And it is a moon rather than a planetoid, that we can confirm now."
Tom turned to Harry, and gave him a nod. Harry made the necessary adjustments, and before the eyes of the bridge officers, a small portion of the space before them seemed to … lose cohesion, and blur. Where there had been just nothing before, now there was a visible absence of something instead, a spherical area without stars. An improvement, however incremental.
"Sensors detect no major energy signatures or man-made objects in the field of interest," Jorak announced in his usual clipped tones.
"Permission to approach and go for a dive?" Tom asked the Captain. Riker nodded, and Tom walked over to O'Reilly. Putting his hand on the pilot's shoulder in a gesture unconsciously copied from one that had sustained him through seven long years, he explained what he and Riker had discussed. O'Reilly gave his XO a long questioning look, to which Tom responded with a crisp, encouraging nod before returning to his seat. "He'll do fine," he whispered to Riker. "You'll see."
As they approached the planet and its invisible moon, something occurred to Tom. "Harry," he said, with just a touch of child-like eagerness in his voice. "Do you remember that … that big fish finder gizmo we used in Chapter Seventeen, The Creatures of the Abyss?" Non-plussed, Harry wrinkled his brow before breaking into a big, toothy smile. He nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah, of course – the echo sounding system. I wonder …"
"Exactly!" Tom slapped the side of his chair with his hand before doing the same to his comm badge. "Paris to Torres. B'Elanna, can you come to the bridge? We need a touch of your magic up here."
"Care to enlighten us all, you two?" Riker asked with a tinge of amusement in his voice. He had already discovered that the two officers in tandem – or even better, reinforced by the Chief Engineer – seemed to constitute a think tank capable of generating the most brilliantly unorthodox solutions to a variety of problems, including some that seemed to come from ninety degrees of any reality known to mankind. And he had of course heard how, during his own involuntary confinement on Andor, Tom and Harry had used a twentieth-century device to briefly circumvent the Andorians' comms blackout during the siege of the Enterprise. If this was another example of his senior officers using glorified bongo sticks to outfox twenty-fourth century technological sophistication, he was not about to knock it.
"Sorry, Captain," Tom said. "This is a thing the Germans came up with during the First World War on 20th century Earth; they called it echolot. Basically it bounces sound waves off … well, at first it was only metallic objects, via a transducer. It pings the direction where you are looking for something, and you can figure out whether there's something there, depending on whether or how soon the sound comes back."
Harry interjected. "You can also tell by the type of the ping what it is the sound is bouncing off of. Later the technology was refined to track all sorts of objects, including fish. Sports fishers used it, if they were too impatient just to wait for fish to put in an appearance. Cheating, really. Anyway, it's the precursor to much of our current sensor technology, but extremely basic."
Tom picked up the thread again. "As our friend Seven of Nine would say, 'crude but effective'. And because it is so rudimentary and doesn't work over interspatial distances, the Romulans' cloaking technology may not shield against it. Now if we find three of the cloaking devices, we should be able to develop a base algorithm for their likely dispersal, right?" He looked to Jorak for confirmation, getting a nod from the Vulcan in return.
Just as B'Elanna came on the bridge, O'Reilly asked from the conn, "And you think you can use this … echo technology to find something on the moon? That would have to be one hell of a ping, no?"
"Not stuff on the moon, Marc. The satellites. I've been giving it some more thought, and I believe B'Elanna's original idea was right: In order to cloak a mass of that size, you pretty well must have an orbital network of cloaking devices, all linked together. If we can find just half a dozen of those and tractor them in, it should disturb the field enough that we can penetrate it with the rest of our sensors without the Romulans noticing a thing from underneath, unless they happen to be staring directly at the hole."
Tom's enthusiasm was catching; even Jorak started to look more thoughtful than skeptical, although skepticism won out in the end. "How do you propose to get around the fact that sound does not travel through a vacuum, sir?"
Tom's responding grin bordered on smugness. "By getting rid of the vacuum, of course. Think outside the box, Commander. If we vent a wee bit of plasma, even dispersed widely, we should be able to get and trace bounce-backs. We may be using a 20th century idea, but that doesn't mean we need to use 20th century pick-up. We should be able to crank up the volume much higher than they could in the Olden Days, and get much better resolve."
B'Elanna, who had listened to Tom's theory, nodded her affirmation. "Yes, that makes sense. We should be able to dumb down our sensors enough to create a simple echo effect, and at the same time adjust our receptors for minimal molecular density."
She went over to the engineering console, where the duty ensign readily cleared a space for her superior but stood by in case assistance was required, and to learn something. The Chief Engineer punched a few quick commands, then looked over at Harry Kim. "Harry, if you can route some additional power to the deflectors now, and reconfigure .."
"I'm on it," Harry said. He had been busy at his own console ever since the first exchange with Tom about their old Proton adventure. Tom shook his head fondly. His best friend and his wife never ceased to amaze him in their ability to read, and leap over, each other's thoughts as they ran towards solutions to problems that would have stymied any half dozen endowed fellows at the Daystrom Centre.
"You online?" Harry asked. "Yep, ready to go," came B'Elanna's response. "I'll go back to Engineering and get ready for venting. Now all we need to do is get close enough for Tom's ping to resonate, and if there's anything there, we'll find it."
"Including, I trust, any potential alien vessels?" Jorak interjected. "We are, after all, in the Neutral Zone and it can be assumed that if the planetoid is protected by Romulan technology, there may be Romulan ships around."
"If there are, I do hope we don't get close enough to one of those for Tom's ping to work," Riker remarked. "If it's any comfort, I should think they would make their presence known well before then," Tom supplied. "Recommend yellow alert regardless, at least."
"Agreed. Yellow alert."
"Coming in range of the planet's ionosphere; distance to surface 1,500 kilometres." O'Reilly's voice from the conn betrayed a slight tension, but was otherwise professional and calm. "We're in, sir."
Tom looked over at the Ops console. "Activate … what are we calling this? 'Tom's ping' doesn't exactly ... resonate."
Harry rolled his eyes at his XO and best friend and worked the console with nimble fingers. Only moments later, he slammed his hand down in triumph. "I don't think we need to call it anything, beyond 'wildly successful'. We got one already."
"I liked the 'fish finder' idea, personally," Riker remarked. "Pull it in and let's see what we hooked. Riker to Engineering, first cloaking satellite is coming into …" "Cargo Bay 3," Harry confirmed.
"You got that, Engineering? Cargo Bay 3." "Acknowledged, sir. We're on our way."
The Captain nodded to Harry. "Let's do some more fishing."
A mere forty-five minutes later, the Enterprise had brought in three more of the cloaking devices; Engineering reported that they had been left partially activated. With any luck, the operators of the grid would not notice that the devices had essentially been removed from active service in their original location.
Minutes later Jorak had successfully extrapolated the location of the entire grid, and verified his findings by accurately locating two or three more of the satellite devices, which they left in place. "Astonishing," he said, looking up from his screen. "If these calculations are correct, the moon is surrounded by over 147,000 individual cloaking devices."
Harry whistled. "Someone must have had a very big and busy replicator or three."
"Someone must want to be hiding this place pretty desperately," Tom replied softly. "Wonder what's down there … Marc, bring us into the space created by our four absent little fishes, and let's have a look."
"Aye sir. Entering atmosphere, dropping to 900 km above surface. Holding orbit."
"Ops, keep scanning for repeats of the distress signal we heard. Harry …"
"I'm on it, Tom. Sorry. I'm on it, sir."
Tom cast his best friend an amused look, but refrained from commenting. They were both still getting used to their respective positions on board the Enterprise, and while Tom had at least officially outranked Harry for most of their journey through the Delta Quadrant, his position as XO seemed – to Harry at least – command a bit more formality on duty than had ever existed between them. Tom still found it odd to be addressed by him as sir, but had reconciled himself to it after Harry promised him to 'drop the act' when they were not on the bridge. Keeping things straight had presented more of a challenge than Harry had foreseen, though, and he slipped up regularly, to Tom's vast entertainment.
With the Enterprise dipping down below the grid and the instruments benefitting from the weakening in the cloaking field caused by the missing satellites, Harry and Jorak were able to collect a fair bit of information about the mysterious moon. Neither, however, found any residual trace of the distress signal. What they were able to do, though, was to project images of the moon's topography on the main view screen.
Albeit blurry, the picture resolved into a world that seemed dominated by salt water and one major land mass – at least on the side now facing the Enterprise – which seemed largely sandy and brown in colour, as if the entire continent was a vast desert. A series of small islands on the Southern tip, strung out like pearls, seemed to be the only places where there were smudges of green to be seen.
"Not very hospitable looking," Harry muttered to himself. He made a few adjustments to his instruments. "The atmosphere is M-class, breathable, but with a distinctly reduced quantity of nucleogenic particles. A bit like the Ocampan homeworld, Tom – err, Commander. A desert, basically, despite all the water."
Tom leaned forward in his chair, and stared intently at his screen "You're right, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence of catastrophic intervention." Once the Caretaker had told them about the mistake he and his partner had made on the Ocampan world, Voyager's sensors had easily spotted the traces of the cataclysm that had caused most rainfall to cease for over a millennium. The world that stretched beneath them, by contrast, simply seemed naturally bereft of one of the attributes enjoyed by most M-class bodies.
"Any signs of habitation on that string of islands?" Riker asked, his calm voice almost masking the eagerness betrayed by the rhythmic manner in which he stroked his beard. "Or any transmission traces? That area definitely looks the most promising."
"Nothing so far." Harry Kim's voice was tight with concentration as his fingers continued to dance across the ops console.
A chirp of the comms system was followed by the voice of B'Elanna Torres, who had gone to Cargo Bay Three to inspect the cloaking devices the Enterprise had tractored in. They were surprisingly small, as it had turned out, only about the size of a human fist – ideal for the mass replication that would permit the creation of a network on this extensive a scale.
"Captain, Torres here. We've done a preliminary analysis of the satellites, and the technology is intriguing. Essentially, they each contain a miniature cloaking device that seems to have two separate functions – to hook into the grid, and to cloak the satellite itself. Quite brilliant, really. Too bad that the Federation is prohibited from having these things; I could see all sorts of uses for them."
Riker smiled, a little grimly. So could he, few of them good. "Thanks, B'Elanna. Just make sure that your little … exploration doesn't trigger any alarm bells down on the planet, okay?"
"Captain, Commander," Jorak's clipped tones as usual betrayed no emotion whatsoever. "I am detecting a minute amount of plasma explosive residue at the Southern tip of the largest island."
"The one that looks like it ends in a lobster claw?" Tom scrunched his face up in concentration. His eyes had always been sharper than most people's – a gift for any pilot - and with the image still excessively pixilated, he tried to compensate for the problem by squinting and letting his eyes go blurry. "Yes, there it is. Do you see it? There's something like a little smudge on the northern part of the claw.."
"Yes, I've got it," the ops officer confirmed. "And according to my instruments, this is also the source of the plasma residue Jorak mentioned."
Harry made a few adjustments, and the image on the screen magnified. Although still indistinct, the scene started to resolve into a square outlined area, with solid structures at the corner of each square and midway along each of the sides. A number of larger, more solid shapes were located inside the square, in two lines, with the two largest in the centre. A couple of additional structures could be seen just outside the perimeter.
"Wonder what that is," Harry mumbled to himself, even as O'Reilly remarked from the conn, "I'm reading plenty of energy signatures now, mostly Romulan origin but not all. It seems like a blend of stuff, including … some … Federation?" He cast his puzzlement as a near question, but elicited no responses; everyone seemed more focused on the emerging image. Jorak merely raised an eyebrow and nodded his affirmation of Harry's and O'Reilly's findings.
Harry continued his monologue undeterred. "Something down there is generating and using a lot of power. And it appears to be fully functional, despite the evidence of a recent explosion."
The conn officer took up the thread of his own reporting, voicing everyone's thoughts as he turned around. "But Captain - I didn't think anyone was permitted to build inside the Neutral Zone."
"They aren't," Riker said firmly. "Whatever that is down there, it's not supposed to be here. Which presumably explains the cloak. But they did send a distress signal, so we are not only within our rights, we're obliged to go have a look. Tom? What …"
He turned to his XO, who had remained silent, but had risen from his chair to take a closer look at the screen; the movement seemed to be beyond his own volition, as if he was pulled by unseen strings. Deanna Troi's head shot up, and she looked at Tom Paris with sudden wide-eyed concern, as his fists clenched by his sides so tightly the knuckles were turning white.
"I know what that is," Tom said softly. "I'd recognize that architecture anywhere."
Not looking at anyone in particular, but rather at something far away – and not on the screen - he said, in a voice stripped of all expression,
"It's a prison."