The Caretaker
Source Episode: VOY 1x01 Caretaker
They say that the hardest part of a mission is the getaway. More often than not, they're right.
Six months had passed since our cell first formed, and we'd gotten pretty damn good at working together. For two weeks, our latest mission went almost exactly as planned. We met with traders and dealers, and we resupplied several colonies with fresh weapons and ration packs. We even managed to raid a small Cardassian outpost thanks to some brilliant planning by one of our newer recruits, a Vulcan ex-Starfleet tactical officer named Tuvok.
Our luck ran out when a Cardassian intelligence probe detected us leaving the Dorvan Sector. It wasn't long before Gul Evek was on our tail, and once again it was up to my talents for shaking him in the Badlands before he destroyed our ship. Luckily, Evek didn't get very far before he was hit and disabled by a plasma storm, and we all let out our breath.
Chakotay turned to me from the forward ops station. "Can you plot a course through these plasma fields?"
"I can, but it'll be an indirect route."
He nodded and stood. "We can use the time to make some repairs."
As I began plotting our course back to Daenyr I, Chakotay made his way around the cockpit to check the other stations. I was so focused on my readings that I nearly fell out of my seat when the ship was struck by an energy discharge that entered the cockpit just behind me.
"Curious," Tuvok mused in his typically dispassionate way. "We've just passed through some kind of coherent tetryon beam."
He hardly had time to look for the source before his console notified him of an even more strange and dangerous phenomenon, one that would change the course of our lives forever.
A massive displacement wave poised to hit us in under thirty seconds.
We sprang into action, rerouting all our energy into the engines and pushing Valjean to fly faster. But she was running on fumes. With a blinding light and a jolt that shook me to my bones, the wave overtook us.
I barely even felt my skull collide with the console before everything went black.
The next thing I remembered was waking up on the floor beside my seat with a wicked headache. Someone was touching my face and calling my name. My eyes fluttered open and Chakotay's blurry face hovered over me, haloed by dim—yet still painful—light. I snapped my eyes shut.
"Talia," Chakotay said again as he squeezed my hand.
I hadn't even noticed he was holding my hand.
"Tay," I tried to say, though it was barely a croak. I pulled his hand to my chest and dragged my eyes open, squinting up at him and offering a weak smile. "Think I bumped my head."
He exhaled sharply and pushed a red blur of hair away from my eye. "You really know how to make a man worry." It was supposed to be a joke, but his tone was all wrong.
As my eyes adjusted to the light, his features came into focus. He wasn't just worried. The look on his face spoke of terror that was being reigned in by sheer power of will. It was a look I'd seen a few months before when one particular mission went really bad.
Shards of a memory surfaced—excruciating pain, hot breath on my face, Chakotay laying my bleeding body on the deck and begging me to hang on just as Cardassian phase canons jolted the ship. I forced them back.
That was not today.
"We're alive," I said, my voice still rocky and weak.
"We're alive," Chakotay confirmed.
Glancing around the room, I found it more or less in one piece. A few simplistic observations started to emerge from the blur in my mind.
I was lying on my back in the cockpit. I was not bleeding to death. Chakotay and Tuvok were kneeling on either side of me. We had air. The crew were making repairs. We weren't moving. Other than the dim lighting, it was dark.
Wait... why was it dark?
I looked out the windows to find a million stars shining in the black.
"What—?" I started to sit up, but my head and stomach both twisted in protest.
Tuvok offered me a space-sickness bag. Just in time, too, because I immediately vomited up whatever precious little was in my stomach.
Once the heaving stopped, Tuvok sealed the bag, set it aside, and ran a damp towel over my mouth. My sluggish brain couldn't decide if I should be touched by his forethought and care or offended at being cleaned up like an infant who'd just spat up.
His black, harshly-angled eyebrows framed brown eyes even darker than his skin. Despite his general lack of emotion, his face was surprisingly expressive if one paid close enough attention. At the moment, it was tight with tension.
What the hell had happened?
Tuvok handed the towel to someone outside my field of vision, then turned back to me with two cups—one empty and the other half-full of water. I rinsed my mouth and spit into the empty cup, but shook my head when he suggested I try to drink the rest of the water. My stomach was entirely too queasy to accept anything.
Tuvok exchanged the cups for a hypospray. "This should relieve your nausea and headache."
I nodded.
Gently, Chakotay propped me up against himself while Tuvok administered the cocktail. I closed my eyes and pressed my face into the crook of Chakotay's neck, waiting for the dreadful feelings to pass.
Thankfully, the meds worked fast.
Chakotay stroked my hair. "Take it slow, Talia. You hit your head pretty hard. Do you remember anything from the array?"
Array?
When I didn't answer, he prompted me with, "The farm simulation? The holographic people giving us food? That medical lab with the big ugly needle?"
I frowned into his vest as I tried to think through the fog in my brain. There was something niggling in the back of my mind—some vague sense of familiarity as if I'd been to that place in a dream—but I couldn't quite reach it.
Chakotay pulled back to see my face. "You don't remember?" Nudging my chin with his finger, he guided my gaze towards the main viewport.
The array was massive, with six arms extending out in all directions. Pulses of energy shot out from it towards a nearby star system.
"I don't understand," I whispered.
"The displacement wave carried us here from the Badlands. We barely had enough time to secure all the systems before we were transported inside it."
"There is an unknown life form operating the station," Tuvok said. "It held the crew for several days and performed biometric assessments on each of us. Ten minutes ago, it transported most of us back."
"Most of us?" I asked, this time putting my voice into it. My head was finally beginning to clear.
Chakotay looked out at the array and swallowed hard. "B'Elanna didn't come back with us."
My whole body stiffened. B'Elanna Torres was our cell's chief engineer, a young but brilliant half-Klingon-half-Terran academy dropout who Chakotay had recruited after saving her life on a cargo transport. She was somewhat like the baby sister of our cell family, so hearing she had been taken struck a particularly sensitive nerve.
"Can we get a subspace message to the Maquis," I asked, "request help to rescue her?"
He turned back to me with an expression that I would never forget. "Talia, no one can come help us. I don't know how, but that wave carried us seventy thousand light years away from home. We're in the Delta Quadrant."
For a few seconds, everyone fell silent and all the fight went out of me.
"There is another matter of some importance," Tuvok said. "Upon our return, we detected an Intrepid-class Federation starship nearby."
My muscles tensed again. "Starfleet?"
"It is likely that they were brought here the same way we were. However, for the moment, there is no one on board."
"Where?" I asked.
Tuvok stood and stepped over to the operations station. He tapped the touch-controlled interface, activating the main viewscreen. Our natural view of the array faded as a computerized, holographic image took over the glass panel above our conn.
The overall structure of Starfleet ships had hardly changed in the last hundred years, but the vessel that appeared on our viewer was unlike any I'd ever seen. She had no distinguished neck, instead connecting the primary and secondary hulls directly to each other. This gave her a more condensed and solid structure. The saucer section was no longer a saucer, but an oval-shaped spearhead. Her build seemed to acknowledge a need for more rugged and durable ships in the fleet. Extending out from either side of the stardrive section were the twin warp nacelles, glowing electric blue.
Painted across the bow of the ship were the identifying markers, 'NCC-74656, USS Voyager.'
She was state-of-the-art, I guessed. It was unlikely she'd been made to chase Maquis raiders through the Badlands, but evidently she'd been appropriated for that purpose. Never before had I seen a Starfleet vessel that could handle the challenge of navigating the plasma-storm-riddled Badlands—which was precisely why the Maquis built our bases there. But if any Starfleet ship could survive our turbulent swath of space, it would be this one.
Chakotay squeezed my hand. "The crew are busting their asses getting repairs done. We were here for at least a day before they arrived, so we should have some time. But, I don't intend to be around when that Starfleet crew gets back to their ship. There's no way we can outgun them."
"What about B'Elanna?" I asked.
Chakotay sighed and rested his forehead against mine. "I don't know yet, but I'll think of something. We won't leave her behind."
Ten hours later, the tactical station alerted Tuvok that the Starfleet crew had been returned to their ship.
"Well," Chakotay said, straightening up from the engineering console where he had been working with Seska, "I guess we're out of time."
I hovered between ops and the conn. "How are those engines looking, Seska?"
After replacing the EPS manifold she had been working on, and closing the panel, Seska rolled out from under the engineering console and stood to take the station. "They're not even close to maximum efficiency, but they'll get us far enough away to hide."
"The array is transmitting energy pulses to the fifth planet of a system five thousand kilometers from here," Tuvok said. "I am detecting multiple moons that would sufficiently mask our signature from the Federation vessel while we continue our repairs."
Chakotay took his seat at ops, while I took mine at the conn, and he quickly started us on our familiar warm-up routine. "Activating EPS relays, bringing up the sensor array."
"Raising shields," Tuvok declared.
"Engaging impulse engines," reported Seska.
I breathed deeply as my fingertips connected with the conn. I'd be damned if I let a concussion keep me from doing my job. "Heading, thirteen mark three-two-zero."
The order to engage had barely left Chakotay's lips when the ship jolted.
"Sir," Tuvok informed us, "the Federation vessel has locked us in a tractor beam."
"Initiating full reverse," I answered, changing our course. Despite my efforts, we remained tethered to the vessel. I cursed and slapped my console. "Damn it! No effect."
"Tuvok, are the weapons systems operational?" Chakotay asked.
"Affirmative," Tuvok replied. "However, I must remind you that the odds of successfully engaging them are very slim."
"We don't have to beat them," Chakotay countered. "We just have to outrun them. Charge phaser banks and target their—" He stopped mid-sentence as his console flashed with a notification. "They're hailing us." He looked at me, and back at his console. Then, he opened the channel.
The viewscreen flickered to life, revealing a trim but authoritative-looking Terran woman with a tight brown bun and bright blue eyes. Her black uniform was capped with crimson across the shoulders, denoting her position in Starfleet's command division. Peeking out from beneath the uniform jacket was a grey turtleneck bearing four brass pips, which identified her rank as captain.
"Commander Chakotay," she said. "My name is Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation starship Voyager."
Next to me, Chakotay flinched. "How do you know my name?"
"We were on a mission to find you when we were brought here by the array."
A stone dropped in my stomach, and I briefly wondered if I'd get sick again. They knew who we were. Had they been looking specifically for us?
Janeway continued. "One of our crewmen, Ensign Harry Kim, is missing. Was he transported back to your ship by accident?"
"No," Chakotay stated simply. I expected him to cut the transmission then and there so we could make our escape. Instead, he admitted, "A member of our crew is missing too. B'Elanna Torres, my engineer."
"Well then, Commander," Captain Janeway decided, "it appears that you and I have the same problem. I think it makes sense to try and solve it together. Don't you?"
Chakotay looked at me, seeking a second opinion. While my first impulse was to suggest we shoot Voyager and run, my mind reminded me of something else. How the hell were we supposed to get B'Elanna back if we were working against these people? We would never succeed—not in our condition, and not against their ship. So, I did the most un-Maquis thing I could have done and nodded my agreement.
Chakotay turned to the viewscreen. "Three of us will transport to your ship." He cut the transmission and turned to Tuvok and me. "Arm yourselves. They won't try to detain us until after we help them recover their crewman, but we need to show that we will be ready when they do."
Tuvok and I nodded. I reached inside my vest to where I had a small, concealed blade strapped under my breast. I checked that it was secure in its sheath and joined Tuvok at the weapons locker.
Chakotay turned to Seska. "You have the ship. If it comes down to it, leave us behind and get these people back home. Understood?"
She nodded, false confidence not entirely masking the confusion and fear in her green eyes. I'd never seen her look so shaken. "Yes, sir."
Three of us stepped onto the transporter pad, standing back-to-back. "Lower shields and beam us directly onto their bridge," Chakotay instructed.
When I materialized in the middle of Voyager's bridge, I unexpectedly found myself once again looking into the handsome face of my old friend Tom Paris.
In the far corner of the bridge, Captain Janeway's tactical officer pulled his phaser on us. Janeway threw up a commanding hand. "Put down your weapons. You won't need those here." Without hesitation, she walked right up to Tuvok and smiled broadly at him. "It's good to have you back, Mister Tuvok."
Tuvok turned to Chakotay. "I must inform you that I was assigned to infiltrate your crew, sir," he stated matter-of-factly. "I am Captain Janeway's chief of security."
I glanced from Chakotay to Tuvok, Janeway, and Tom. Moments slowed to a crawl as my mind ricocheted between shock, anger, and understanding until—quite involuntarily—I started laughing.
Chakotay glared at me, but I didn't care anymore. What did it matter, anyway? With both Tuvok and Tom helping them find and capture me, Starfleet had two aces up their sleeves. And there was no doubt in my mind they were here for me. Chakotay was highly respected in the Maquis, and no doubt a high value prisoner to the fleet. But for reasons I didn't yet understand, I was at the top of the Federation's most-wanted list.
And now, because of some strange alien array that dragged us across the galaxy, we had to work together. Meaning we'd have to run this op according to Starfleet regs. I had to laugh, just so I didn't scream.
"I'm sorry," I said, catching my breath. I looked at Janeway and gestured to my head. "I'm a little concussed."
She frowned.
"Are you kidding me?" Chakotay growled, still throwing daggers at me with his eyes.
"Oh come on, Chakotay," I snapped. "As if waking up on the other side of the galaxy wasn't enough. Now, we find out that they put a Vulcan in our cell to spy on us, and then hired Tom-fucking-Paris to show them the way! That's got to be the most ironic goddamn thing I've ever heard."
Tom, at least, appreciated my sense of humor, responding with a chuckle and flashing that damned charming smile. "It's good to see you, too, Tal." His eyes shifted left. "Hello, Chakotay."
Chakotay turned his glare to Tom. "At least Tuvok was doing his duty as a Starfleet officer. But you—you betrayed us for what? Freedom from prison? Latinum? What was your price this time?"
At that, Captain Janeway went toe-to-toe with Chakotay, looking him squarely in the eye as if she were unaware of the significant difference of height between them. "You are speaking to a member of my crew. I expect you to treat him with the same respect as you would have me treat a member of yours."
Chakotay clenched his jaw and held his tongue.
Having settled our differences, at least for the time being, Janeway redirected our focus back to finding our crewmen. "Now, we have a lot to accomplish, and I suggest we all concentrate on finding our people and getting ourselves back home."
"Based on my initial reconnaissance, Captain," Tuvok said, "I am convinced we are dealing with a single entity in the array. I would suggest they scanned our computers in order to select a comfortable holographic environment. In effect, a waiting room to pacify us prior to biometric assessment.
"An examination?" Tom asked.
"It is the most logical explanation," Tuvok replied. "Why else would they have released us unharmed?"
"Not all of us were." There was a strange edge to Tom's voice, but I didn't have time to decipher it.
"Break out the compression phaser rifles," Janeway ordered. "We're going back. We'll divide into teams. Mister Tuvok, while Chakotay and I are looking for Torres and Kim, you and Miss Eelo will try to find out as much about this array as you can. It brought us here. We have to assume it can send us home." At that, she looked at Chakotay. "Agreed?"
Chakotay nodded.
Janeway turned to the officer at tactical. "Mister Rollins, maintain red alert." She then looked to a young, wide-eyed Bajoran woman manning the operations station, which was located opposite tactical. "Crewman Celes, Keep us on constant transporter locks."
The woman gave a jerky nod. "Yes, Captain."
Chakotay and I followed as Janeway and Tuvok made their way towards the turbolift. Tom shouted after us, calling Janeway to a halt. "Captain. I'd like to go with you."
The captain eyed him suspiciously. "If this has something to do with what Chakotay said—"
"It doesn't," Tom insisted. "I'd just—I'd hate to see anything happen to Harry."
Janeway studied him for a tense moment, then nodded. "Come on."
As we entered the turbolift, Tom gave me apologetic look. I stared at him, still trying to puzzle out everything that had just happened.
"Tal?" he murmured. "You okay?"
I shook my head and turned my gaze to the closed doors in front of me. "Fine."
After we beamed over to the array, Tuvok and I split off from the rest of the team. Fingering the square, metallic scanning device Janeway had issued to me, I flipped it open and smiled to myself.
Tuvok raised an angled eyebrow. "Have you forgotten how to use a tricorder, Miss Eelo?"
"Not at all," I reassured him, setting it for data collection before I started scanning. "I just never thought I'd be using one of these again. Didn't figure Starfleet would be keen on taking me back after I was done with the Maquis, you know? I guess it reminds me of simpler times."
"Do you wish to return to service in Starfleet?" he asked.
"I never wanted to leave in the first place, Tuvok, but they treated me like a criminal before I had done anything wrong. Even after I resigned and moved to Bajor, I only meant for it to be temporary. I never intended to join the Maquis."
"Until your mother recruited you."
I nodded. "She didn't recruit me on purpose. In fact, when I saw her on Bajor, she specifically told me not to join her. But, as much as she cared about those people, she missed our family deeply. I could almost feel her loneliness, and I didn't think I could live with myself if I let her go alone."
"Curious. I consider you to be one of the more logical Maquis I have met, yet that is a highly illogical choice to make."
I chuckled. "Yes, well, if there is such a thing as a universal truth, I think it must be that love makes its own logic. Even Vulcans can't escape that."
"A rare perspective," he conceded. "I presume you have studied Vulcan emotional and cognitive theories in your graduate training."
I swept the tricorder from one side to the other, hoping for any hint of a lifesign other than our team. "I did—under Professor T'Lona."
"I am familiar with her work."
"She was one of my favorites. She also taught me how to use a Vulcan meditation lamp."
"Such a practice is certainly beneficial when one is required to maintain emotional distance from clients who are enduring significant inner turmoil."
"It became foundational to my self-care routine as a professional. I still use the technique, though—" I glanced over at him— "I don't meditate as often as I used to."
His eyes remained focused on the tricorder readout. "I have not found the lifestyle of the Maquis to be conducive to a consistent practice of meditation. It is impressive that you make the time to practice at all."
I shrugged. "Yeah, well, I may never be the deep space counselor I wanted to be, but I could start a private practice someday. I don't want to lose my touch. Though I don't know what the Federation Counselors Association will do with me if I end up in a penal colony."
Tuvok paused and looked at me. "I cannot speak for the FCA, but it would not be entirely impossible for you to rejoin Starfleet. Difficult, perhaps, but with help, it could be accomplished."
I raised an eyebrow. "Is that an offer, Tuvok?"
"That would depend on choices you have not yet made," he said carefully. "However, there are many at Starfleet who would be gratified to see you recommissioned, myself included."
It wasn't a very realistic option. I was not convinced that the Maquis cause was wrong, and Starfleet would never consider such a request while I still sympathized with the rebels. Still, I smiled at Tuvok's kindness as I returned my gaze to the tricorder readout—which seemed brighter than before. "I'll keep that in—"
Weight suddenly seemed to evaporate from my head. My vision blurred and I felt a little like I was spinning. I grabbed Tuvok's shoulder for balance, murmuring an apology as I did.
His hand came around to steady me from behind. "Are you alright, Miss Eelo?"
I squeezed my eyes shut and took a few deep breaths. Soon, the disorientation receded.
"Just a little dizzy," I said, trying to keep my voice calm and unaffected. I opened my eyes and released Tuvok's shoulder. "I'm fine now."
Concern tightened his brow, but he let his arm fall away. "You require medical attention. When we return to Voyager, I suggest you accompany me to sickbay in order to treat your concussion."
"No!" I snapped, taking a big step back.
"I assure you, my suggestion is not a trap. You will not be arrested for seeking medical treatment."
His tone was calm, but the emotions were bubbling up inside me now—rage and bitterness and fear. The wound Starfleet left in me was inexplicably torn open once again. Just when Tuvok had complimented me on my levelheadedness.
"No," I muttered, "I'll just be arrested because Starfleet bureaucrats can't stand to face their own goddamn hypocrisy."
What was wrong with me?
"That is a conversation for another time," Tuvok said.
"It always is."
Needing something else to think about, I turned my attention back to the tricorder in my hand and walked forward. We continued scanning for a few more minutes until we came up to a barn. There weren't any life signs inside, but Tuvok insisted we go in.
His decision was rewarded when we discovered a console hidden behind all of the illusion. It gave no hints to where our missing crew mates were, but it had the potential to be useful for something.
When we met up with the rest of the team, we learned that they'd had even less luck than we did. As far as we could tell, our people weren't on the array.
Faint banjo music drifted towards us, and we spotted a grandfatherly man playing on a nearby bench. Questioning him proved frustrating, though, since he regarded us as little more than another "minor bipedal species." He said that we would have to leave our people behind, that the rest of us lacked what he needed, but they might not. He said that he had to honor a debt, that he didn't have the time to explain, and we wouldn't understand anyway. We tried to convince him that we could help him, that we wouldn't leave without our people, and that we were too far from home to get back on our own, but the conversation fell apart.
The next thing we knew, we were standing on Voyager's bridge once more.
Chakotay and I opted to stay on board Voyager while both ships traveled to the fifth planet of the nearby system. That was where the array was directing its regular energy pulses. Captain Janeway offered to have the ship's Emergency Medical Hologram—EMH for short—treat my concussion while we made the trip, so I could think more clearly and hopefully avoid having anymore ill-timed emotional outbursts.
Partway there, we came across a debris field that had been claimed by a local scavenger; he introduced himself as Neelix, and was willing to trade water in exchange for his guidance in finding our people. He informed us that we were not the first aliens to be transported across the galaxy by the alien aboard the array. Neelix also told us that the individuals he separated from their crews were sent to be cared for by the inhabitants of the fifth planet, a people called the Ocampa. He didn't know much about the alien in the array, but he did tell us one thing.
The Ocampa referred to him as 'The Caretaker.'