by Melanie
but once he had it, he had a very short attention span. When he finally tired of her, she would go the way of all things of which he tired -- straight to the refuse pile. Were it before or after he had her, he did not care. He only would find another to take her place. Either way, she was dead in the end unless the rebellion succeeded and forced the Gherop from Rachar before then.
"But the captains and first officers of the ships are our fellow Gherop. We aren't in the same seemingly never ending supply."
E'Arte released his slave and returned to his meal. "What are a few sacrificed Gherop if it means getting Voyager? If even a tenth of what we have heard of her is true, we will be able to crush the Verta once and for all."
"But the people on the Homeworld-"
"What the people on the Homeworld want is everything Rachar can produce. The minerals. The agricultural products. The fabrics." He held up his goblet. "The pottery. Don't care how we get what they want as long as we do get it. They don't want to hear or even think about the loss of any Gherop lives or the conditions we are forced to live in so long as they get everything we can take from this planet."
He set down his goblet and swiped his mouth with his sleeve. "You won't hear any outcry from them about what we have to do to get what they want. The only thing we'll hear is more communiqués from T'Do demanding to know if we are daring to hold back luxuries for ourselves and that is why exports to the Homeworld are down seventeen percent and why haven't the rebels been eliminated. I, for one, do not wish to have to explain to T'Do yet again why we are failing to destroy the Verta. Do you?"
"No, E'Arte."
"I thought not. I want to know the moment our ships report in again."
I'Nu bowed low and retreated as E'Arte thrust out his empty goblet for filling once more.
-------
"Welcome to the Bridge, Naomi."
After a quick smile for the Captain, the little girl let go of her mother's hand and moved farther out of the turbolift. "It looks just like Tommy's."
"Tommy's?" her mother asked squatting down next to her.
"Yeah. The one Tommy made for me on the holodeck. He said I was too little to see the real one, but it was okay if I looked at the one he made me."
"Tommy made you a Bridge?"
"Yeah. And an Engineering 'cause he said I'm too little to go there either."
She sent a pleading look towards the Chief Engineer, who immediately caved. "We'll see," was what B'Elanna said, though everyone knew Naomi in Engineering was a forgone conclusion.
Grinning, Naomi followed the Captain over to Tuvok's station. Though everyone continued to monitor their stations, they listened in on the Captain's tour. All were surprised by the extent of Naomi's knowledge about the Tactical station and other stations along the rear of the Bridge. She was asking a very intelligent question about the Ops console when the turbolift doors opened and the imparter of all her Bridge knowledge stepped out, padd in hand.
"Watch it, Harry, she's after your job."
Harry Kim scowled at his best friend who was walking towards him and the group around his console.
The moment the tall man was in range, Naomi raised her arms for him to pick her up. Once he had handed the Captain the padd from the Doctor, he obliged the little girl.
"No, want to fly," she declared.
Holding her away from him, Tom tilted her this way and that, pretending to study her. "Well, you're not all that aerodynamically sound, Cucumber, but maybe if we shot you out of a torpedo tube or something you might fly okay."
"Tommmmy."
"Naomiiii." He gave her a quick kiss. "So what haven't you seen yet?" She whispered in his ear. "Oh, the most important part." He thought for a moment. "No, that's probably the Captain's chair. Nice and comfy." He lowered his voice to a stage whisper. "I'm pretty sure the Captain's fallen asleep there. I've heard snoring from behind me a few times."
"That wasn't me," Kathryn objected. "That was Commander Chakotay."
In his seat, her First Officer whirled around. "Hey!"
As everyone laughed, Tom carried the visitor to his station. "Baytart, I've brought your replacement."
The young human looked up and affected an innocent look. "Frankly, I thought she was yours, sir."
Tom raised an eyebrow at Naomi. "Does that mean I get your job, Cucumber?" Wearing his most ingenuous look, Tom turned to Ensign Wildman. "Can I go play now, Mommy?"
Sam chuckled. "I am *not* claiming you as my offspring."
Tom pouted and sniffed. "Nobody wants me."
"Ham," a voice from the direction of the Engineering station declared.
"Apparently everyone missed us at breakfast, Torres," Tom shot back. "Bacon was on the menu. I missed out on feeling outraged at Neelix serving one of my fellow pigs." He met her grin for grin then turned back to his station's console to point out features he had not shown to Naomi in the past.
At seeing the read outs the Tactical station automatically sent to the Helm, Tom suddenly was in alert mode.
"Captain, Gherop ship approaching," Tuvok announced.
"Wildman, take her." Tom thrust the little girl at her mother who had followed them down to the Conn. She immediately raced up the stairs with her daughter and into the turbolift. "Baytart, up."
The well-trained ensign was up and out of the seat before his superior could finish his order. The Chief Helmsman's fingers were flying over the controls before his body ever touched the padding of the seat.
Baytart, too, retreated from the Bridge.
For nearly thirty minutes, the-best-damned-pilot-in-the-Delta-Quadrant tried everything to shake the ever-increasing number of the small and agile Gherop ships. Soon there were eleven of them in pursuit of their Federation prey. Tom put the ship through maneuvers her designers never would have contemplated performing, even in a much smaller craft. Somehow the Gherop stuck with them. He was about to try another prohibited move when there was a familiar reading on his sensors.
"Tom, what is it?" Kathryn asked, hearing unfamiliar words she guessed was profanity coming from the helm. Until now she had tried not to unnerve him by hovering. Now she leapt to her feet and approached his station.
He swore again and began punching out commands all the more furiously.
"Captain, I'm getting some strange readings," Harry called from behind them. "They're- Tom, what'd you do that for?"
"Mr. Paris," Tuvok intoned, "why have you assumed control of the Tactical station?"
The pilot said nothing to any of them. He kept up his frantic pace of flying fingers.
The Captain opened her mouth to demand an explanation when her eyes saw what everyone else on the Bridge had noticed by then. On the main viewer, a star in the distance seemed to be growing at an astounding rate. As it grew, an irregular, dark mass could be seen in the very centre.
Chakotay go to his feet and came to stand beside the Captain. "What is it?" he wondered.
"Some would call it the cavalry," came the muttered answer from the Helm.
"Huh?"
Had anyone been watching, they would have seen the eyebrow of a certain Vulcan give a nearly imperceptible twitch. If anyone had missed the action, they merely would have assumed the rapid commands he began to input into his console were a vain attempt to wrestle control of the Tactical station from the Helm. At least that is how it would have appeared.
When the object on screen finally fully emerged, they saw it was a ship, far bigger than Voyager and all of the Gherop ships put together. As the light faded, two of the Gherop ships foolishly broke off their pursuit to attack the newcomer.
This was Gherop tactical error number one.
Their weapons bounced harmlessly off of the shielding of the big ship as it relentlessly pushed forwards,
never even bothering to fire back.
Soon all but one of the Gherop ships broke off to join their ineffective brothers in their attack.
This was Gherop tactical error number two.
The instant t
he ships were in range, the exterior of the big ship seemed to shatter, leaving only the core of ship and twenty-five pieces of "debris." Only it was not "debris." Without warning the pieces suddenly came "alive" and took after the Gherop ships. Like border collies herding sheep, they coaxed the attackers between themselves and the core of their ship. Within moments the Gherop were trapped between the little shards of ship and the core.
Permitting this to happen was the third, and, for these ships anyway, final, Gherop tactical error of the battle.
The crew of Voyager never knew exactly what happened after that, though the one remaining Gherop ship - the one that had stuck with them - could have told them. Those next few brief seconds were imprinted on their sensor banks and retinas until they died.
As Tom slipped Voyager behind a moon and effected an emergency-braking maneuver, the Gherop ship shot past them and back around the moon at the same instant its brothers discovered they had fallen into an impenetrable trap.
The twenty-six pieces that made up the large ship began to glow with an eerie blue-white light. Like tentacles, shafts of the light shot out from each of the evenly spaced ships. Each beam merged with another to form a geodesic framework. The second all of the beams touched, the light from the core ship at the sphere's epicenter pulsated into a blinding flash, eclipsing the nearby binary stars.
When it faded, only a single ship was left of the Gherop attack force - the one that had not been inside the framework. In the space of less than ten seconds, the ten trapped Gherop ships had been vaporized. The framework slowly dismantled itself and the ships' glow faded.
On Voyager, no one other than Tom knew of this development. All were still picking themselves up off of the deck after Tom's abrupt and unannounced stop. The pilot had cut all power to Voyager, except life support, and set all windows for maximum opacity so no one actually saw and the switched off sensors did not register the blinding flash of light flying past the edges of the moon. Naturally the first thing the Bridge crew did upon regaining their collective feet was to turn on Tom, not knowing he had just saved their sight and their systems from massive and irreparable damage.
Janeway automatically began demanding "one Hell of an explanation" from "Mr. Paris." Tom silently ignored her. He powered up the ship and slowly edged the ship out from behind the moon.
By the time they re-emerged, the shattered ship was reassembling itself. The awesome sight of the twenty-five pieces reassembling like some sort of giant, three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle caught everyone's attention. Except Tom's. He had seen the sight before, even been apart of the procedure, both as pilot of one of the "pieces" and as overseer of the maneuver from the core ship. His attention, instead, was on the remaining Gherop vessel, careening wildly out of control. It was on a collision course with one of the twin suns of the system.
Janeway finally noticed the out-of-control ship and her innate goodness demanded she do something to assist her impotent enemy. "Tuvok, tractor that ship back."
"I cannot, Captain," he told her. "Mr. Paris still retains control of that system."
"Lieutenant-"
"Let them die," Tom instructed quietly, holding Voyager in its position and his fingers away from the tractor beam controls. "Their lives are over. Once someone's seen a Destroyer class ship at work...." He shook his head sadly. "Unless you're properly shielded, it does things to a person. Physically, you're blinded, but psychologically.... I've heard it likened to looking into the face of Hell itself." His eyes turned inwards. "That I doubt. The ones who told me that hadn't ever seen true Hell." He came back to her and blue eyes met grey. "You have no choice in this, Captain. Death is the best thing for them."
There was a brief flash. All turned to the screen. While Tom had talked, the Gherop ship had entered the influence of the stars. The flash had been the ship's destruction.
"End of discussion."
Tom felt the tingle of a transporter beam and suddenly he was in a familiar room facing an even more familiar Vulcan visage.
'And the beginning of another,' Tom thought without missing a beat.
-------
Sunfire had known the moment he had been brought on board. Though none of the others knew it, she was tapped into The Diogenes' computer, her tracks carefully hidden.
'Should I risk doing it now,' she wondered, 'or bide my time?'
'Best bide your time,' she counseled herself. 'Certainly they'll bring you two together soon enough. They wouldn't have brought you and the rest of the team with them unless they had some plan up their sleeve. Best wait and collect as much Intell as you can so you'll be ready to when the time comes. Tipping your hand now would only endanger everything.'
Having decided upon a plan, she settled down to wait.
-------
"Well, I'Nu?"
The younger male Gherop tried not to cringe as he informed his superior of the message from the dying Gherop captain about the second, more powerful ship entering the field of battle. Needless to say, E'Arte was not pleased to hear of this development. When he had calmed slightly, he removed his boot from I'Nu's neck and stomped across his office to glare into the glass offered him by Zji. I'Nu picked himself up off of the floor, desperately trying to swallow to see if his throat still worked.
"How many intervals' travel are they from here?"
"Four point seven," I'Nu croaked.
"Get together our fastest and best armed ships and send them there. I want to know if this new ship is there to assist Voyager or to take her for themselves."
"What if they are not still there when our ships arrive?"
"Then they'll have to find them," E'Arte slowly enunciated. "I want Voyager."
"What about this new ship? If the message was correct, it's far more powerful than Voyager."
"Perhaps, but I know Voyager has what I want. This new one might not. I want Voyager."
"Yes, E'Arte."
I'Nu left, massaging his bruised throat and wishing he had become a tz'Mer wrestler like his grandmother had wanted. The tz'Mer might have seven sets of sixty-two teeth and the disposition of someone with a toothache in each tooth, but they still were sweeter than E'Arte in a foul mood. He only hoped Voyager fell quickly or he might not survive this plan of his superior's. Just in case, he would start writing down his filing system for the next unlucky soul who came to take his place after E'Arte killed him.
-------
If a hue and cry had arisen when Tom Paris had abruptly disappeared fifteen minutes earlier, it was nothing to the shocked gasps at the sudden appearance of a human male in a midnight blue uniform and matching gloves. Automatically, Tuvok, Harry, and Chakotay whipped out phasers and pointed them at the newcomer standing a meter away from the Captain who had been pacing behind Tom's -- now Baytart's once more -- chair.
The Captain was the first to find her tongue. "Who are you and what have you done with my Conn Officer?"
The man smiled disarmingly. He was as tall and equally handsome as the missing pilot was, but the similarity between Voyager's Conn Officer and this man ended there. This man was far more muscular and had hair so black it shone with blue highlights that rivaled his navy blue eyes "I'm Raven, Captain Janeway. Starfleet, Special Ops. Tom Paris is on our ship, The Diogenes. As for why we're here, we've been sent to help get you home."
There was a collective gasp from the Bridge crew, but the phasers did not lower.
Through narrowed gaze, the Captain regarded him. "And just what proof do you have you are who you say you are?"
Raven nodded. "Tom said you had been tricked recently by one of this quadrant's residents. But I can prove we really are from the Alpha Quadrant and are here to get Voyager home." Never breaking eye contact with her, he called out to Harry. "Ensign Kim, please verify there have been no unauthorized attempts to access Voyager's computer."
Harry waited for his captain to indicate he was to go ahead before he did as Raven asked. "There's no indications of anyone trying to enter our systems, Captain."
"Identity verified. Welcome to Voyager, Raven."
Withdrawing an isolinear chip from a pocket in his tunic, he held it out to her in one gloved hand. "A message from Starfleet Command and the Federation President, Captain. It will explain the plan for Voyager."
"Plan?" Chakotay asked suspiciously.
"Yes, Commander. On The Diogenes is an Assessment Team who will have to complete a survey of Voyager to ensure she is not bringing anything back with her that we don't want in the Alpha Quadrant. Little critters, et cetera. Anything the Alpha Quadrant doesn't need to be exposed to. And we need to check out any modifications you've made to Voyager so we don't have any nasty surprises when we begin the alterations to her so she can use the Gopher Hole to get home."
It was B'Elanna's turn to stiffen. "Define 'alterations.'"
Raven gave her a reassuring smile. "Nothing too horrible, Lieutenant. A Gopher Hole is our name for very long, very forgettable technical term for what amounts to an artificial worm hole."
The Captain's eyebrows rose. "Starfleet's finally managed to create a stable one?"
"We have, yes. The Gopher Hole, it exerts tremendous pressures on any ship venturing inside of it. Unless a ship is properly designed, she won't survive entering the Hole. The technicians aboard The Diogenes have studied Voyager's design for a long time and we think we can alter Voyager just enough to protect her during the trip without having to dismantle and rebuilt her properly."
Janeway looked at him for a long time without speaking then at the chip in her hand. "You will understand I want to review this before-"