Episode One - Crazy Old Man
Chapter 3
The Relative Merits of Cooperation
Jadzia opened her eyes. She was on the floor. Something was broken, but she wasn't sure what. Not including the bridge. It looked like none of the consoles had taken to the impact very well. She also wasn't sure what, exactly, the impact had been from.
A ribbon, a wave of golden energy had come up on the Defiant from behind. It wasn't like anything Jadzia had ever seen, and it wasn't friendly. Obviously.
Her eyes adjusted to the darkness sparking intermittently with the dead and dying consoles. Bodies sprawled on the floor in various states of charred and marred. The smoke burnt her eyes and lungs, but she was alright.
She was alright, right?
She tried to pick herself up from the floor and felt two hands grasp her shoulders. "Are you alright, Lieutenant?" So they were Chakotay's. Commander Chakotay. She was on the Defiant.
"Well enough," she said.
He moved to the next person on the floor, crawling under the smoke accumulating on the ceiling. Jadzia could make out Worf sliding out of the captain's chair, and straighten with a distinctly Klingon resolve. "Report!" he demanded the crackling room.
Jadzia pulled herself up to her console and tried to coax it into telling her something. "Hull breach on deck five. Comm lines to Engineering are down, trying to reestablish." She cast a glance toward the science officer that had been sitting at the console—she was on the ground, and her face was no longer the color it had been. Jazdia tried to get to the science console, tripping over the tactical officer.
She paused to check for a pulse. Nothing.
"Repair crews, seal off the hull breach on deck five," Worf barked, and went to kneel beside the Catullan conn officer. "Mister Paris, take the conn."
Jadzia saw Paris pull himself out of the corner he'd wedged himself into before the disaster. And what the disaster was…? "Aye, sir," he said, his voice cracking with pain or shock. Maybe both.
"Casualty reports coming in…" Chakotay said. "Chakotay to sickbay."
Jadzia gulped back a soft gasp of either relief or pain when she heard Julian's voice over her. "Sickbay here." His voice was thin and raspy, but he was alive.
"Status? Are you alright, Doctor?" Chakotay asked.
Jadzia heard him take a few breaths, and for a moment didn't know what to think. Then he answered. "Yeah, yes, sir. I'm alright… oh, god." He certainly wasn't as "alright" as his words advertised. He took another small breath and added, "The medical staff is dead. What the hell happened out there?"
"Trying to figure that out, Doctor." Chakotay straightened as if to listen more closely, his head tilted in what might have been concern. "Do you need assistance?"
"No. No, sir." Even though he was still clearly in pain, he sounded a bit more clear-headed. "No time like the present to test out that emergency medical hologram…"
"Understood. We'll keep you updated, and, Doctor? You do the same."
"Yes, sir."
She couldn't worry about that right now. Jadzia took a breath and watched the Defiant slowly start to talk to her again. Like a patient emerging from a coma, it was fuzzy. Uncertain. Most of it was indecipherable. "There's something out there, Captain."
"Gonna need a better description than that," Chakotay said, and looked at Worf. "Captain, may I?"
Jadzia saw Worf step over the body that had been at tactical, with a nod and crisp, "Yes, sir," as everyone reverted back to their most familiar stations. Chakotay took charge and Worf made sure their weapons were available.
"I'm uncertain what I'm reading, Commander," Worf said.
Jadzia experimentally pressed into the console with both hands. Neither of her arms seemed broken, or else her adrenaline levels were just that high. But she was pretty sure she had broken ribs—something. "Trying to get the viewscreen operational."
The viewscreen flickered on, showing an enormous space station in a configuration Jadzia had never seen before. Metallic arms reached out in all directions, and there didn't appear to be any windows. Pulses of white energy fired like lasers away into the blackness. And then, Jadzia saw a small ship near the station. She turned back to the console to see what it was telling her—if anything.
It was clearly very confused.
"Is that the Valjean?" Chakotay asked.
"Yes, Commander," Worf said. "I read no life signs onboard."
"Commander, if these sensors are working…" She glanced over her shoulder to see Chakotay staring at her. Blood from a cut in his temple formed a sheet down one side of his face. "If these sensors are working, we're over seventy-thousand lightyears from where we were. We're on the other side of the galaxy."
Everyone was still for a long moment. "Can you confirm that, Mister Paris?" Chakotay asked, waiting only for Jadzia's nod before turning to Worf. "And what about on that?" He pointed to the station in the center of the screen. "Any lifesigns on that?"
"Our sensors cannot penetrate it," Worf growled.
"Try hailing it," Chakotay crossed the bridge and stood next to Jadzia. "Any idea what those pulses are?"
"Massive bursts of radiant energy?" Jadzia shrugged slightly and tapped a bit more. "Directed toward a nearby G-type star system."
"Engineering to Bridge?" Another voice shot through the smoke over their heads—Subcommander T'Rul. Tight with confusion, pain, maybe more. "We have severe damage," the voice reported without waiting. "Most of your engineering staff is dead, and there's the possibility of a warp core breach."
Chakotay sighed, and tapped his combadge. "Understood." He paused then, as if realizing that he was speaking to a Romulan in engineering. "Subcommander?"
"Yes?"
Jadzia could see his dark eyes glance over his limited options and find none of them appealing. "The Defiant is currently seventy-thousand lightyears from where we were in the Alpha quadrant. We're working on how that's possible and how to get back, but I'd say we have bigger problems to solve at the moment."
The pause the subcommander gave was barely perceptible. "I agree."
"I'm opening the computer to you. I know you're not an engineer, but do what you can about the breach. I'll send someone down." After Subcommander T'Rul gave her agreement and Commander Chakotay granted her access to the engineering systems, he looked at Jadzia. "I know you're a science officer, but I think you're the closest thing to a chief engineer we have right now."
"On my way, sir." Jadzia pressed up from her seat, pleased to find her legs still working even with the adrenaline mostly drained away.
"Mister Paris, I think you're probably familiar with any of the scouting programs for children on Earth?" Chakotay turned to the conn.
Everyone left alive on the bridge stopped what they were doing to look at him curiously. Even Worf seemed blatantly confused with the question. Jadzia didn't know why, but he struck her as the type of man to show as little of that type of emotion as possible.
"Sir?" Paris asked.
"Boy Scouts, Sea Scouts, Star Scouts?" Chakotay looked irritated, but sounded amused. "You're familiar? Fire building, astral navigation, splinting broken bones?"
After a long hesitation, Paris nodded. "Yes, sir, I'm familiar with them." It sounded more like a question than a statement, but Chakotay was apparently taking it as such.
"Good enough. You're a medic now. We're not going anywhere at the moment, and I think sickbay might appreciate the help. See what you can find out."
Jadzia didn't wait to hear the instructions for anybody else. Someone had to stay on the bridge, and Jadzia was pleased to know it wasn't going to be her. She stepped into the turbolift one second before Mister Paris.
"I guess Doctor Bashir is a friend of yours?" he asked.
Jadzia nodded. "A good friend."
He gave her a bracing smile. A smile that tried to say it was all going to be okay. She appreciated the attempt, anyway. "Well, I'll tell him you said hi." The doors opened, and they parted ways.
She wasn't sure what she was going to do in engineering, but she hoped she made Chief O'Brien proud.
Engineering was filled with the smoke of burning consoles when she arrived. The Defiant's engineering room was deceptively large, taking up at least the rear third of the otherwise small ship, bearing the brunt of the impact over those compartments further forward. It was filled with straight edges and sharp corners, rather than a more aesthetic design that other Starfleet vessels shared, it was boxy and industrial. Even a Romulan didn't really look out of place here.
The computer squawked petulantly as Jadzia entered: "Warning. Warp core microfracture. Breach imminent." Well, she'd just have to channel Tobin—imminently. Never mind that his engineering expertise was out-of-date, and it was Tobin that was gifted in engineering, not Dax. They'd figure it out anyway. They always did.
"Thank you for joining us, Lieutenant Commander." Subcommander T'Rul didn't look up from her station in front of the warp core. The dead and dying Starfleet uniforms littering the floor made Jadzia wonder who exactly us was.
The female Reman appeared on the other side of the warp core, tapping so feverishly into a PADD that she didn't seem to notice Jadzia had arrived. Some of that may have had to do with the burn on her face and the dark purple blood trickling from her dark right eye socket. She wondered if their emergency medical holographic program knew anything at all about Reman physiology.
"My pleasure," Jadzia said with a tight smile in the subcommander's direction. "What's the warp core pressure?"
"Twenty-one-hundred kilopascals," the Reman said.
"I'm trying to lock down the magnetic constrictors," Subcommander T'Rul said, and Jadzia wondered if the calm in her voice was a deception. It was, perhaps, stereotypical to think that it was.
"If we lock them down at these pressure levels, we might not be able to reinitialize the dilithium reaction." Jadzia went to the dilithium chamber, peering inside to see the glow of the blue crystals. The nearby console indicated that wasn't an unfounded concern, but it was only a concern if there was still a Defiant left to fly.
"Yes, but would you rather a warp core breach?"
"No, I suppose not!" Jadzia felt her smile turn cold, but the subcommander returned it.
Jadzia hurried to the console next to T'Rul and went to work. They shouted updates and instructions to one another as much as anyone alive. If they got stuck out here without a warp core… well, it was going to take a long time to get back to the Alpha quadrant, anyway. Seventy-thousand lightyears without a warp core, though…
Finally, Subcommander T'Rul looked up. "Constrictors online."
The Reman nodded, consulting her PADD. "Twenty-five-hundred kilopascals and holding."
"It's working!" Jadzia gave her Romulan companion a smile and reported to the bridge that they were out of the woods—at least as far as the warp core exploding on them was concerned. "Good work," she said, and then looked around.
The bodies of the engineering crew littered the floor. It looked like some had been thrown from the catwalks above, and one of the main exhaust ports had broken free from the wall in the upheaval to trap at least one person underneath it.
"Sulla." T'Rul stepped up to the female Reman, brushing streams of dark purple blood from beneath her eye as she seemed to inspect her wellbeing with concern. "Are you alright? Where's Marius?"
"My injuries are minor, Mistress." The Reman growled, and looked to the dislocated exhaust port. Without answering the second question, she knelt on the floor and slid around to where the enormous metal casing bent away from the wall.
Jadzia could see from where she was standing on the other side of Engineering that green blood was dripping down the steps from under it. She assumed it was not Marius's, since the female Reman's blood didn't look green. She confirmed that the Human beside her still had a pulse, and climbed across one of the consoles to come down on the other side of the ragged exhaust port.
"Can you see him?" T'Rul pulled at part of the port, and a groan came from underneath it.
"Wait!" Jadzia said, deciding there was going to be no way to avoid getting blood on her uniform. She crouched, and saw a pale hand resting on the floor, a coppery green slicking the knuckles. "Leave it there. We need to see what we're doing."
T'Rul nodded. "My apologies."
Jadzia negotiated herself under what now looked more like a jagged and bent metal sheet than an exhaust duct, and cleared the debris. "There are two people down here!" she said, and visually inspected the Vulcan next to her. An ensign in a yellow uniform.
T'Rul shouted to the few remaining in Engineering. "Who in here knows first aid?"
Jadzia wasn't sure that was going to be enough.
The Reman looked like he had sustained a blow to the head: a gash disappeared on the other side where she couldn't see. His eyes were closed and his breathing was shallow. The Vulcan was conscious, one of the cooling rods normally inside the duct had punctured his chest. She wasn't familiar with Vulcan anatomy, but it was best to assume the worst and work from there. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth as his brown eyes focused mistily on the duct above him.
"I see him," Jadzia said to T'Rul, pulling herself closer to the Vulcan instead. "He's unconscious and has a head injury, but I can't see much more. I can't reach him without…" She paused, deciding T'Rul didn't need to know that she wasn't going to crawl over another injured crewman just to check on one of her people.
"Your sickbay is not responding," T'Rul growled.
"The medical staff is dead," Jadzia said. And, frankly, the last time she'd heard Julian talk it seemed like he was just about there himself.
"Ah. That explains it. Sulla, find the emergency medical kit. There must be one around here somewhere."
Jadzia didn't know where it was. Hadn't gotten the tour, yet. "Ensign?" she said softly, reaching across his neck to find a pulse. At least she knew that much about Vulcan anatomy. That, and, the rod had narrowly missed his heart. How was it that in seven lifetimes she had been a gymnast but never a doctor?
Well, maybe next time. If there was a next time.
The Vulcan shifted his gaze to her after a few seconds, gagging on the blood.
She lifted his head to help him breathe past it, looking at the rod and wondering how far it went. It must have gone through one of his lungs, based on the way he was breathing, his blood was foaming, and how weak his pulse was. She'd have to cut it, get him to sickbay with the rod right where she'd found it…
But then what?
"You're alright," she said, though she was sure that wasn't true.
"With respect," the Vulcan rasped past a quaking groan, "based on what facts?"
She smiled encouragingly, surprised he'd been able to speak at all even though it had only made his situation seem more ominous as blood bubbled up around the wound in his chest and slid down his chin. "Save your strength, Ensign," she whispered.
He focused on the metal sheet above him again, gasping painfully.
Jadzia blinked at tears from the smoke, maybe from the futility, and reached for her phaser. Even if Sulla found the first aid kit, it would do the Vulcan no good. Even if she could get him out from under here, it would do him no good. While she adjusted the setting, she decided she should find out what his name was.
The Vulcan seized, unsuccessful in his most recent attempts to breathe.
She readied her phaser, moving her other hand to cover his wound while she worked. He was running out of time.
Just before she started to cut the rod, the Vulcan disappeared, leaving behind the rod jammed into the floor and a broad pool of blood where he had been. She only barely got to think that he never would have survived before she found herself in the dirt, surrounded by grass and trees and the sound of flickering birds and insects.
She picked herself up, only glancing at her dark green hands before rubbing as much of the blood off on her shirt as she could. Wherever he was… he was probably dead. He would bleed out quickly without the rod staunching the blood.
Jadzia stood up, found T'Rul and Sulla next to her, and other Starfleet officers in the yard around them. Chakotay was there, and Worf stood beside Tom Paris, and two Human engineers stuck close to one another like a pair of scared kittens. A pair of Earth horses grazed nearby, and a field of corn was almost as tall as Jadzia was.
T'Rul's fingers clenched at her side, though her face seemed the picture of calm. "Where," she said, her tone low, "are we?"
"Come on up here! Come on, now!" a friendly, yet unfamiliar voice called.
Jadzia spun to see a large white farmhouse, like those of Earth in another century. Some of her favorite places to visit were in the North American "Midwest" region, with its corn, fireflies, cottonwood, and deer. The woman standing on the porch was middle-aged, with slightly-graying blond hair and friendly wrinkles around her mouth and nose.
She held a pitcher aloft. "I have lemonade and some sugar cookies."
Before Jadzia could think much further about T'Rul's question or the dead Vulcan, she noticed that almost every crewman had whipped out a tricorder to take readings. She did the same.
"We've only transported about a hundred kilometers from the Defiant," she whispered over T'Rul's shoulder.
The Romulan nodded. "Then I assume the Human and her dwelling are holographic projections?"
"There's no indication of stable matter." Jadzia spun slowly with her tricorder beeping helpfully.
The woman on the porch kept inviting them to come, rest, eat, and drink. Chakotay rebuffed her. More holograms arrived, distracting very few of the crew while Chakotay tried to coax their hosts into giving them more information.
Jadzia stuck with her tricorder, even when the holographic people started dancing to the sound of a plucky folk song. She shared a quick glance with T'Rul, surprised to assume without scrutiny that they were thinking the same thought. T'Rul nodded at her, and they moved away from the house together. Fields of tall green plants sprouted in the distance under a blue sky, and a few brown outbuildings. A cement cistern squatted in a nearby hollow.
"You're awfully sanguine about all this," Jadzia offered as they walked, eyes up for interest or danger. Sulla went to the cistern and pushed away the cover. "I expected accusations that this was all some sort of Federation scheme to steal the cloaking device."
T'Rul averted her eyes toward the trees edging the yard. "This would be a truly elaborate scheme if all you wanted to do was steal the cloaking device. Besides, my own instruments confirmed our location. Whatever trouble we're in, cooperation is my best option at the moment."
Jadzia smiled, watching the indication for the nearby lifesigns appear. "But not your only option?"
"Cooperation is never the only option." T'Rul's eyes glinted with mischief.
The tricorder beeped again, more urgently. "Huh…" Jadzia scrolled her thumb on the tricorder's readout. "Sporocystian life signs."
T'Rul glanced over her shoulder, then looked up in the direction indicated by the tricorder. Jadzia wasn't surprised, per se, that T'Rul was so familiar with how to read it—though she did take note of it. "Apparently in that structure."
Jadzia took a deep breath, holstering her tricorder, and removing her phaser. "Shall we?"
T'Rul eyed Jadzia for a moment before apparently making some sort of decision. Jadzia was surprised to think that she'd probably made the same decision. They walked off toward the barn together.
#
Thomas picked himself up off the floor of the bridge, legs weak more from horror than anything physical. Tuvok was already standing, leaning over his console.
"What have you got?" he croaked, and cleared his throat.
"We appear to be missing… one of the crew." Tuvok looked at the empty seat. B'Elanna was here, the last time they were here. "B'Elanna Torres."
Thomas clenched his teeth, didn't catch back a curse. "Alright. How long were we over there?"
"Three days."
"Three days, well… great." Thomas sighed and sat in the chair. The Defiant was out there. He didn't remember that having been the case the last time he was sitting here. He tapped his comm panel. "Anyone in Engineering?"
Kenneth's voice came through. "Here." He cursed, too.
"Get me engines, get me anything you have."
"Yeah, okay." The comm shut off almost as he spoke.
Thomas sorted through the readings on his panel, and couldn't make sense of it. Not that it didn't make sense: he could see the Defiant out there, along with another metallic structure he'd taken note of but didn't know anything about. He glanced at Tuvok, who was studying the readings he was pulling off it.
Seska swung onto the bridge. "Thomas—" she breathed, and crossed the floor in the time it took for him to stand. It was so good to see her—
Seska wasted no time or effort throwing herself into him, wrapping her arms around him, kissing him with an urgency and passion he'd almost become familiar with. He was only mistily aware of Tuvok's sideways glance in their direction, but, for the moment, it didn't matter. He didn't realize how much he needed to hold onto her until she was in his arms.
Her hands on his neck, her lips on his, managed to communicate everything he felt and wanted to say but couldn't. He thought they were dead. He thought she was.
"Thomas," Tuvok said, adding, "I regret the interruption, but the Defiant is hailing us."
"Okay." Thomas brushed Seska off, and straightened his shirt as he sat back down. "Okay, thanks. Onscreen."
Chakotay appeared on the small screen to his right. Thomas couldn't see much from the close angle besides Chakotay, but Thomas figured Chakotay had everything on the Defiant in hand… though, not that it mattered that much at seventy-thousand lightyears away.
"Lieutenant," Chakotay said with a friendly nod, adding, "I'm Commander Chakotay."
"Nice to meet you, Commander." Thomas smiled lightly, wondering who the display was for. Probably not Tuvok. What was he going to do? "What's a nice girl like the Defiant doing all the way out here?"
"We were on a mission to find you when we were brought here by that array. Some of our crew is missing. Were they transported back to your ship?"
Thomas gave Tuvok a glance, and he shook his head. "Seems not. A member of my crew is missing, too. B'Elanna Torres, my engineer." Her name tasted bitter. He didn't think he could forgive himself if something happened to her.
"Seems like we have the same problem," Chakotay said. "What do you say to pooling our resources? Figuring this out together?"
Thomas nodded. "Four of us will transport to your ship."
"Sounds good. See you soon, Lieutenant."
Thomas nodded and shut off the comm. "Tuvok," he said as he stood, turned, and saw Ayala standing in the doorway. Thomas held a hand out to him with a grin. "Ayala. I swear to god, you're absolutely prescient sometimes."
Ayala gave him a lopsided grin of his own, hand resting on his phaser. "I try."
Thomas laid a hand on Seska's shoulder. "You have the bridge. Be ready for anything." He tapped the comms for Engineering. "Suder down there?"
"Yes." The Betazoid's slick voice was unusually grating, unusually rough. It had been a tough day, and Riker didn't want to know that intimately what the rest of his crew were dwelling on now.
"Get up here. We're going to the Defiant, and I'm not convinced everything's going to go our way." Suder gave an affirmative response, and Thomas looked, again, to Seska. He hoped his sharp glance communicated literally anything could happen here.
Of course, Thomas didn't think he was about to die. If anybody were about to die, he'd bet on Tuvok. Or Chakotay. It depended on a lot of information that Thomas didn't have. If Tuvok reacted badly to the news that his rescue was actually a deeper deception, he didn't know what that would mean. On the other hand, maybe it was logical to just go along with it. Thomas wasn't the best at predicting what should have been obvious.
Thomas went to the raider's single transporter pad on the other side of what would have been the bridge, but was really most of the main areas of the ship except Engineering crammed into their own corners.
Thomas drew his phaser, Ayala and Tuvok following his lead and turning their backs to each other. "Remember, our plan is still to take the Defiant," he said.
"An illogical goal, considering the circumstances," Tuvok said, and Thomas could swear he sounded annoyed.
"Sounds pretty logical to me," Ayala offered. "I don't think we're flying seventy-thousand lightyears in this tin can, do you?"
Tuvok hesitated, then nodded. "You may have a point."
"Damn." Thomas chuckled. "You may have a point."
"However," Tuvok was quick to add, "our best course of action is cooperation. Our number is insufficient to crew the Defiant for that long."
Thomas nodded. "Understood," he said. "I fully intend to cooperate with Commander Chakotay."
"Then, if I may ask, why have we drawn our phasers?"
Thomas looked at the phaser in his hand, then at Ayala. "Force of habit?" He smiled, and looked at Suder as he walked onto the bridge, armed and dead-looking as ever. "Care to join us?" Thomas asked, motioning to the fourth pad on the transporter.
Suder drew his weapon, and gave nods of greeting to everyone else there. Didn't say anything else. He dwelt on Tuvok perhaps a bit longer than he would have anyone else. It was no secret that Tuvok's mind was guarded to their local mind-reader, but that was, apparently, not entirely unusual among Vulcans. Thomas learned a lot more among the Maquis than he remembered learning at the Academy…
Thomas turned his attention to Seska. "Drop shields and get us over there."
Seska nodded, and she disappeared into the hazy blue of the transporter. The bridge of the Defiant crystalized less than a moment later.
Thomas saw a female Trill draw her phaser before Chakotay held out a hand to dissuade his crew. "Put down your weapons," Chakotay said, and Thomas wasn't sure who he was talking to.
This wasn't how things were supposed to go. Chakotay was supposed to join them now. They could take the bridge, especially with the Defiant in the shape it was in. But Chakotay obviously had other plans, and Thomas had to play along somehow.
With a sidelong glance at Ayala and Tuvok, he saw that neither of them had put away their weapons. At least, Tuvok seemed to be playing his part until told otherwise. "You first?" Thomas turned his eyes back on Chakotay in full, noticing another familiar face with a phaser leveled at him. "Mister Worf, right? How's your aim?"
The Klingon growled. "Fine."
"I'm not playing games here, Riker. Put the phaser away, or we'll take it by force."
Thomas fought the impulse to just do as Chakotay said, meanwhile trying to do the same math Chakotay had been doing regardless of which side he was on. Was he a turncoat or a double-turncoat? Or was there some third layer in there Thomas hadn't seen? He wasn't exactly being very clear if he was still on the Maquis side. Thomas gave Suder a subtle glance to find the Betazoid glaring knives into Chakotay's forehead.
At the moment, Thomas was outnumbered. He knew he shouldn't have trusted Chakotay, but he didn't want to completely give up on him, either. He held both hands up, pointing his phaser to the ceiling. "It's a little tough figuring out whose side you're on this far away from the lines," Thomas offered, hoping that Chakotay not only caught his meaning, but responded appropriately.
Ayala, Tuvok, and Suder followed suit, redirecting their weapons, but not relinquishing them.
"If that's not the understatement of my life, I don't know what is," Chakotay mumbled, and motioned to Mister Worf. "Stand down, Commander. We're not taking him into custody this far away from Federation space."
Though obviously not entirely pleased, Worf did as he was told.
Tuvok looked like he was in a similar position to Thomas. They were both looking to Chakotay for a cue Thomas was beginning to think was never going to come for either of them.
"So what the hell happens now?" Ayala looked to Thomas for the direction.
"I don't know," Thomas admitted, giving Chakotay a glare packed with all the confusion and threat he could muster. If he turned on them now, when they were this close to taking the Defiant? "I'm standing on the bridge of a warship, seventy-five-thousand lightyears from Federation space, and I guess were negotiating?"
"We're cooperating," Chakotay said. "We're not leaving here without our people. I assume you don't want to leave your engineer."
Thomas nodded, distantly. Not that he hadn't thought about her—it was just that he figured he'd think about B'Elanna later. "I had other priorities that seemed more pressing. But, yeah. I wasn't going to leave her here."
"Then we have the same goal," Chakotay said, and Thomas still wasn't sure who he was talking to. "We can get back to business once we get back in the Alpha Quadrant." Chakotay spun slightly to look at the viewscreen, and the enormous array stretching out like the points on a compass. "The answers are over there."
"Yeah. Sure are." Thomas observed the situation on the bridge of the Defiant, and the two exits on either side of the back of the room. "Do you mind if I confer with my crew?"
"Go ahead." Chakotay didn't even look at him. Thomas couldn't decide if that was a good indication or a bad one.
Thomas turned to Suder, stepped close enough to whisper over his shoulder. "What do you got?"
"He's completely focused on getting back the others," he said, his voice just registering over his breath. "B'Elanna, their doctor, a kid, and a Reman assistant to a Romulan they have on board."
Thomas looked to Tuvok, like he was somehow supposed to explain that. He finally decided to just ignore it, while Suder shook his head so slightly Thomas wondered if he would have missed it if he wasn't practically kissing the man's ear.
"He's not deceiving you," Suder offered finally. When Thomas took a step to move away, Suder pulled him back violently by his arm to whisper directly in his ear. "Yet."
Thomas leaned away, looking directly into the blackest eyes he could fathom even in a Betazoid. He nodded. "Alright." He turned back to Chakotay. "So, what, we break out the compression phaser rifles and beam over there, guns blazing?"
"Excuse me." Thomas spun, almost surprised to see Tom Paris leaning against the conn. As soon as they made eye-contact, Tom gave a friendly nod, though Thomas wasn't sure he felt all that friendly. "Hey, Thomas. Excuse me, Chakotay, but I have a question." He raised his hand slightly, just enough to match his condescending tone.
"Don't keep us in suspense, Paris."
"How the hell do we know they're even alive?"
Everyone on the bridge, except for Thomas and Suder, looked at Paris like he'd popped out a second nose somewhere.
"Because," Paris went on, pointing dramatically to his abdomen, "the last thing I remember was lying on an alien examination table, naked, and with a needle just—"
"Move on, Paris, we get it." Chakotay glared at the array on the viewscreen. "What's your point?"
"I passed out two seconds later, and I don't want to know what the hell they did to me after that," Paris said. "Whatever the aliens over there did, it was violent and invasive."
Thomas tried to ignore the shiver creeping down his spine at the description, but didn't have the answers any of them were looking for. He noticed Suder standing straighter, narrowing an eye on Paris. Thomas could only imagine that, of all the minds on this bridge, Paris's was the loudest. After all, he'd been the only one brave enough to speak it.
"If I may?"
Not that his attention hadn't been turned by the beautiful Trill in the back by the bridge's lonely science station… But now that she was talking, he had a better reason to get a good look at her. "Please do, Commander…?"
"Dax," she said, with a smile, as if she weren't talking to her worst enemy at the moment. Thomas wondered if she was one of Chakotay's Maquis sympathizers, assuming he'd not been lying about that, too. "Based on our scans, we seem to be dealing with a single entity in the array. It scanned our computers and kidnapped us in order to perform a biometric assessment."
"Fascinating," Tuvok said. "Have you performed any medical scans to determine what material was harvested?"
"Unfortunately, no," she said, and looked at Chakotay. "The point is that it obviously doesn't want to hurt us."
"Obviously?" Chakotay spun back to her, an annoyed edge to his tone tempered only by years of experience and lack of any actionable way forward. "What's so obvious about that? We're missing eighteen crewmen."
"At least seven of them were already dead." Dax shifted to one of the ops consoles and started tapping there. A few keyed inputs, and the screen displayed the list of the missing crew. "We heard from Julian that the entire medical staff was dead. That's these six. The conn officer was dead when I left the bridge and she's not here."
"So what you're saying is that B'Elanna, the doctor, the Reman—they're all dead," Chakotay said.
"I… don't know. I hope not." Dax spun back. "We know they were alive when they left. And whatever else it's done, I know a Vulcan in Engineering left with a mortal chest injury and came back completely healed. I probably had a concussion, but I feel fine now. Why would it return the rest of us to the ship healthy and whole, but kill four others?"
Out of what was apparently habit, Thomas looked to Tuvok for his confirmation that made sense.
Tuvok, to his credit, noticed. "Given our limited information, her logic is not unsound."
With a deep breath, Thomas looked around the bridge again. It was him, Suder, Ayala, and Tom Paris against Tuvok, Worf, and Dax. Chakotay was the only one he didn't have an answer for. They were so damn close.
"Chakotay?" he said.
"Riker?"
Thomas twisted his phaser in his hand. He saw Tuvok tense, his fingers gripping his phaser ever so slightly tighter than he had been as he shifted his weight to face Thomas indirectly. Suder, who'd stepped back from the small crowd, was just as keyed into the action and looked as ready to let fly his phaser as anything.
Thomas really didn't want to mess up anything Chakotay had planned here. But he had to do something. Without warning, he leveled his phaser on Worf's chest and fired. The Klingon flew back into the console behind him before tumbling down to the floor.
Dax dove for his side without a word or sound while Paris tried to wrestle Tuvok for his phaser from behind. Suder put an end to the tussle by shooting Tuvok in the back with his own.
"I'd put it down," Ayala said as Dax raised her hands in surrender as she dropped Worf's phaser. Her lips drew into a grimace of disgust.
Even though it looked like Dax wanted to say something, another bolt flew from Suder's phaser, catching her directly in the chest.
"That had better have been on stun," Thomas snapped to Suder, who smiled while he looked at the Vulcan in Maquis-brand scrap-trader clothes lying on the floor.
"It was." With that, Suder turned his phaser on Chakotay. "But now it's not."
"Hold on!" Chakotay held both hands up, backed up toward Dax. "Thomas, this wasn't the plan! You were supposed to wait for my signal. My signal!"
"We were getting a little tired of the ambiguity," Suder said, before giving Thomas an apologetic nod. "Sorry. Speak for yourself, Captain."
Thomas sighed, put away his own phaser since they certainly had the upper hand now. He nodded to Ayala, who went to manually lock the doors. "You weren't exactly giving me friendly signals."
"I'm supposed to be the goddamn Federation sheriff come to take in an outlaw!" Chakotay snapped. "What did you want? Me to announce my intentions over the comms?"
"It doesn't matter now: we have the Defiant." Thomas glanced toward the viewscreen, shrugged. "Now we can just swap crews. Should be easy from here."
"We are seventy-five-thousand lightyears from Cardassian space, Thomas!" Chakotay threw a hand in the direction of the viewscreen and the foreign stars out there. "What do you want to do? Fly back at warp nine and hit Cardassia Prime when we're over a hundred? Which, by the way, we can't even do warp nine right now."
"Okay…" Thomas considered that briefly enough to wonder if he'd made a mistake. But he still didn't think he had. Not with the information he'd had. "That's not the best news. But it sure as hell isn't the worst news, either!"
"No, I've got worse news. You don't even have an engineer to fix the problem." Chakotay took a bold step in the direction of Suder's phaser, but only pushed Thomas back against the consoles behind him with an open hand. "You lost yours, and the one sympathetic lieutenant in engineering I managed to get here is dead. So what's your plan now?"
"There's no guarantee we're stuck here." With a placating gesture, Ayala stepped between them. "We go over to the array and see what's what."
"Okay, and then what?" Chakotay asked, turning his ire on Ayala. "If the alien over there sends us back, great. I'd sure like to know if Dax is going to help you figure out how to adapt the technology to send the Defiant back without ripping her in half. But what if not? Is Tuvok going to help you decode a maze of alien code to get it done ourselves?"
"It's kind of tough to figure out who's trustworthy here. For all I knew, you were luring us into a trap over here," Thomas said, shoving past Ayala to point his finger in Chakotay's face.
"Nobody in Starfleet cares enough to arrest you, Thomas!" Chakotay gestured toward the unconscious Vulcan on the ground. "I was here for him."
Thomas didn't get to step back in for the rage and shock before Suder laughed. "Alright. Thomas, Chakotay's telling the truth about that. He had every intention of getting us the Defiant."
"Great time to tell me that," Thomas snapped, turning on Suder before he could completely decide it was a bad idea. "Also, what the hell were you doing?"
"His mind was on his precious Starfleet officers basically the whole time." Suder tapped his forehead. "I can read what he's thinking. Not being explicit for me is pretty damn alarming."
"Yeah, I'm concerned." Chakotay turned to Suder as if in disbelief. "I'm not going to strand them here." At the slight pause, he glanced at Thomas. "We agreed on that—we aren't leaving anyone to die. We're Maquis, not murderers—give me that."
Thomas watched Chakotay snatch the phaser from Suder's hand to no resistance. Suder slouched comfortably against the console behind him.
Thomas hadn't known Chakotay before his father was killed in service of the Maquis, but he had known Kolopak. It seemed like Chakotay was made of an entirely different fabric. "Not to seem… insensitive, but your dad would never make that distinction."
"My father was a crazy old man, but he didn't deserve to die like that," Chakotay snapped. "Just because I think what the Federation is doing is wrong doesn't mean I think what the Maquis are doing is right."
"You clearly haven't seen what the Cardassians are doing to our people out there…" The Federation was more civilized, but somehow less forgiving.
Chakotay threw a hand in Thomas's direction, but didn't answer.
"Okay." After having walked around it a few times, almost in reverence, Ayala slid into the captain's chair. "Now that we've shot everyone and come to an agreement, how do we want to play this?"
Chakotay sighed. "Thomas… we need them. I know you don't want to hear that, but I don't think any of us is getting out of here without them. And in the worst case scenario, that the array is incapable of sending us back?" He raised his hands in a questioning gesture. "I know your crew doesn't know how to handle a ship like this even if there were enough of them to try. Hell, even the Starfleet crew we have left would be walking dead trying to run it within a year."
With a heavy sigh, Thomas looked to Ayala. "I'm not ruling out that we can't get out of this ourselves. Who do we have with us that could help out with the array situation?"
"None of us are experts in xenolinguistics, if that's what you're asking me. Everyone we brought, with the exception of B'Elanna and Michael, most of us would have no idea what to do with a starship." Ayala contemplated the viewscreen for a long moment of silence. He shook his head. "I have two boys at home…"
"We'll get back." Thomas looked at Chakotay.
Some of the Maquis actually did have someone. He might have been the only one who had exactly no one back in the Alpha Quadrant. More of the Maquis followed their closest friends onto the Valjean—Tabor, Jor, and Eddie; Danny and Hod; hell, even B'Elanna and Seska were best friends and regular crew.
"We aren't getting anything done sitting here," Suder said. "Send me over to the array. I'll be conscious this time. We'll get what we need to know, and that should be enough to keep both of you happy. We can keep these…" He gestured vaguely at the bodies on the floor, all breathing shallowly. "At least until we know more."
With that Suder gave Chakotay a thick glare.
"Alright!" Chakotay sighed. "We'll go over there. You and me."
Suder looked at Thomas like he wanted to know if Thomas was going to let Chakotay get away with that. The answer was, yes, he was. Thomas nodded to Ayala. "Can you transport them from here?"
Ayala shrugged. "Assuming I have command codes, I can do anything."
Chakotay huffed. "Of course, you do."
Arranging transport from the otherwise isolated bridge was easy to do. Thomas decided Chakotay and Suder would go over on their own. He trusted Suder about as much as he trusted a Cardassian kindergartner, but Thomas knew if nothing else Suder was motivated to stay in line. And if he killed Chakotay in a fit of helpless rage, then even that wouldn't be the worst news.
While they were gone, Thomas looked at Ayala. "What the hell are we going to do here?"
Ayala stepped over Worf's body, looking at Dax. "Immediately or long-term?"
Thomas smiled, albeit mirthlessly. "I'll take whatever you got. But I think in the meantime, we should restrain them."
While they waited for any news from Chakotay or Suder, they tied Worf, Dax, and Tuvok by the wrists and ankles and propped them up in their respective chairs. Thomas only hoped they kept snoozing long enough for Chakotay to get back.
Thomas's plan to keep everything relatively nice kind of depended on it.
Paris knelt on the floor in front of Dax, tilting her head with a gentle touch to her chin. "How far down do you think the spots go?" he asked.
Thomas gave a solitary glance, but didn't dignify that with a response. Ayala didn't even look at him, but he answered: "All the way."
With a frown and a nod, Paris stood and turned toward the rest of the bridge.
Thomas was inspecting the panel in the arm of the captain's chair when Chakotay and Suder blinked back onto the bridge. Chakotay looked confused, and Suder looked furious. He managed to contain his rage for a whole half a second.
A half second after that, he snapped his phaser from his belt and shot Chakotay in the back.
Maybe Thomas trusted a Cardassian kindergartner more than this guy. "What the hell, Suder?"
Suder waved Thomas away as Ayala knelt beside Chakotay. While Ayala gave Thomas a reassuring look that Suder hadn't killed anyone this time, Suder was mumbling. "He can't do it. He can't send us back."
"He can't?" Thomas pressed. "Or he won't?"
"He can't!" Suder whirled to face Thomas again, glancing once at Ayala and Paris propping up Chakotay in the captain's chair. He didn't seem interested in that. "He's been kidnapping ships from all over the galaxy for the last six months. You want to know how many he's sent back?"
"Zero?"
"Zero!" Suder laughed, clawing at his thinning hair as he turned toward the viewscreen. "Because why spend the time and energy? He hasn't arranged to do that, and he doesn't know if he could even if he tried."
With a sigh, Thomas looked at the array, then at the phaser in Suder's hand. "Well, is he alive?"
"Yeah. He's dying anyway, so there didn't seem like much of a point."
"He's dying?"
Suder laughed again, nodding. "He's dying and he'll destroy the array when he does. He thinks he's got days left. Maybe less."
Thomas sighed, pressed his fingers to his forehead just as Commander Worf began to stir. "Well, shit."