by Alys Landale
After things had been cleared up with security, Admiral Paris stepped over to his son. He couldn’t believe what he had just seen. How had Tom been able to beat a Klingon? A Klingon?!
These thoughts were swimming through his mind as he addressed Tom. “Could I speak with you in private?”
Tom conceded and walked away with the Admiral. “Yes?” he asked.
The admiral had never been very good with these types of moments. In fact, he never had been able to understand his son, so it was only natural that this moment seemed awkward. “I just wanted to speak with you,” he said. “We haven’t spoken for almost eight years.”
Tom’s eyebrow rose. He didn’t know who this man was. And hadn’t he only been stuck in the Delta Quadrant for six years.
But he said nothing. “I suppose we haven’t.”
The admiral felt his temper rising. He was trying to talk with his son but Thomas seemed to still be holding the same old grudge with him. He decided to change the subject. “I heard you were the one who discovered the new warp core.”
Tom smiled. “It wasn’t that hard. A lot of the credit should go to B’Elanna though. If it wasn’t for her, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
“You seem to spend a good amount of time with her and Xara.”
Tom nodded. “Xara lives with me and as much time as B’Elanna spends in my quarters, she should just move in as well.”
The Admiral was caught by surprise when he heard his son speaking of this half-Klingon in such a way. His son was dating a half-Klingon Maquis?! Had things changed that much. “You two are together? Have you ever thought about what kind of an image that would create here? You’re a Paris after all.”
Tom shook his head. “Well, I won’t be around here that long so it shouldn’t matter.”
“What do you mean?”
“Once we install a new warp core into one of the shuttles, I’m heading back to the Delta Quadrant.”
His father was speechless. What reason would Tom want to go back to the Delta Quadrant for? He never had understood his son, now it seemed he never would. Then the only reason he could guess of came to his mind.
“Let me guess, it’s a woman.” he said.
Tom’s eyebrow rose. A satiric smile touched his lips. “Actually it is. Takma’s her name. We have, ‘unfinished business.’”
The Admiral had heard enough. “So you are seeing Voyager’s Chief Engineer yet you’re going back to the Delta Quadrant for another woman?! You never will change Thomas. I had hoped you had finally grown up. You have a chance to rejoin Starfleet yet you throw it away to go after a woman. You’re not a teenager anymore, you’re a grown man.” His eyes turned to ice as he said his next words. “You don’t deserve the Paris name.” He then walked quickly away from his son.
Tom watched as the man walked away. He had no idea who that old man was or what that was about, but he decided that perhaps he should steer clear of him for the rest of the day. The man was a riddle that he didn’t care to solve.
Janeway and Paris met together later that night. She was bent on persuading the younger man to stay in the Alpha Quadrant.
“Tom, at least stay here a month. You have a life here; you have family and friends. You can’t just give all that up.”
“And I can’t give up my life back in the Empire.” he told her. “Captain, I don’t remember a thing about being here and from what I’ve heard I don’t need to. I was an ex-con and a traitor here. At least in the Empire, my life had meaning.”
Janeway walked over to him. “I’ve known you for six years. Sure, you were rough around the edges at one time, but you changed. You’re one of the best officers I’ve ever had. I don’t want to lose you.”
Tom looked to the ground. He remained silent for a while and then spoke. “I’m a different person now. I can’t just walk back into a life I don’t know.”
She gave an exasperated sigh. “What about B’Elanna? Do you plan on leaving her here so you can go back?”
“She said she would come with me,” he said. “In fact, she’s the one who insisted that I go back in the first place.”
Janeway’s eyes widened in surprise. She had never thought that B’Elanna would want him to go back. “Is there anything I can say to convince you to stay?”
He put a hand on her shoulder. His voice had a more compassionate air to it now. “I’m sorry. I just...I have to go back.”
She nodded reluctantly. Her eyes were downcast as she said. “I’ll prepare for a shuttle to be fitted with a subspace core.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for everything.”
She smiled somewhat sadly. “Promise you’ll keep in touch?”
He smiled as well. “With this new core, I can even come back on the weekends.”
She gave him one last hug. “As long as you’re here, you can still look around though. The shuttle won’t be ready for a couple of days. I expect to see you and Xara every day before you leave.”
“Yes Ma’am,” he told her. “Speaking of Xara, I told her I’d be back in a few minutes. I’d better get back.”
She nodded. It wasn’t until he had left that she realized she hadn’t told him about the Admiral. She sighed. It would have to wait until tomorrow. Maybe then, he would decide to stay a few more days if he knew his father was here.
Admiral Owen Paris paced up and down his quarters. He hated not understanding something, and for over thirty years, he had never understood his son. Now he finally realized that he never would.
He was about to go to bed when he was alerted to a message that had come in earlier that day. He walked over to the computer console in his room and began to read the letter.
“Dear Father,” it started out. Owen read the letter once, then reread it and read it again. It was a letter of explanation as to why Tom had broken the Prime Directive over a year ago and then ended up in Voyager’s brig.
At first, he was angry and disappointed with his son for doing something so entirely against Starfleet philosophy, but after reading it a few times, he began to realize Tom’s motives for doing such a thing.
Now Owen’s emotions were mixed as he looked at the letter from his son. He could somewhat understand why Tom would do such a thing but anger still prevailed that his son would be so irresponsible.
Didn’t Thomas know that his actions reflected not only on him but his entire family name? He was a Paris; didn’t he appreciate his heritage? He must not if he was going by the name Rune as well as his given name.
Owen understood his son somewhat better after reading this letter. He never had been very open with Tom, and now it was apparent that Thomas blamed him for it. But didn’t his son realize that he had treated him the same way as his father had treated him? He had raised Tom to follow in the Paris line, but now it looked like all his hard work had been in vain. Tom had disgraced his name years ago.
He left the console. The letter had been dated from over a year ago and set to be sent when in contact with the Federation.
Tom probably didn’t even realize it had been sent. After all, Owen had tried to talk with his son earlier, but Tom had given him the cold shoulder.
*If that’s the way he wants it.* Owen thought. If Tom wanted to talk to him, he would be the first to come forward. The
Admiral had already tried; he wasn’t about to try again.
Owen went to sleep that night with a troubled mind. If he didn’t have to be on Deep Space Nine right now, he would have long since left. But now he was forced to stay and wait and see what move his son would make next.
The next day Neelix was busy running around the station. The crew of Voyager had been asked to remain on Deep Space
Nine until they could leave the next day. By then, all matters pertaining to Voyager could be settled and the crew would be free to go on their own ways.
The Talaxian ran into Tom, literally. Neelix apologized for the inconvenience immediately. “I’m sorry Tom. I didn’t see you there.”
&nbs
p; “It’s okay Neelix,” Tom replied. “You look a bit preoccupied.”
Neelix nodded. “I’m meeting with some of Starfleet’s elite personnel. I’m hoping they will give me a job such as ‘Official Federation Ambassador.’ How does that sound?”
Tom patted the shorter man on the back. “You’re sure to get it.”
Neelix smiled and then went on his way. Tom was left alone in the corridor as he prepared to meet B’Elanna at her quarters. He didn’t even take two steps before his mind was assaulted by a series of images. They were scrambled at best, but he was barely able to discern a few of them.
He saw a bridge full of Borg drones with Takma and Kail leading them. He saw what looked to be a Resistance ship floating through space in shambles. Then the images shifted to more drones and the actual Borg Collective. It was all going so fast, he couldn’t make out anymore.
And then it stopped. It was gone as fast as it had begun. He looked around his surroundings. *What was that?* he wondered. He shook it away. Something was about to happen, he knew that much for sure. The current date as well as seeing
Captain Picard were signals to that.
Xara then appeared at his side. “Are we going to see B’Elanna now?” she asked.
Tom smiled. “Right away, Squeaker.”
*
“Get us out of subspace now!” Takma ordered. The drone was finally able to comply and they emerged from the rift.
She sighed. Why did this have to happen now? “Is the Resistance ship still behind us?” she asked.
“Negative.” Replied the drone. “It left subspace one second prior to our departure.”
She cursed her luck. They were hours away from them. It looked like she wouldn’t be able to take her revenge out on them, so she would be forced to do so on another species. “Where are we?” she asked.
The drone paused for a moment then replied. “We are in the Alpha Quadrant.”
Takma smiled as she recalled the region as the same one to which Voyager’s crew had come. Perhaps this wasn’t so bad after all. “Scan the region for colonized areas,” she ordered.
An image appeared on screen. It showed a large space station that, according to the files Takma had stolen from Voyager, was called Deep Space Nine.
Her smile broadened. “Put up our cloaks and take us to that station. Perhaps we can make this a lucrative trip after all.”
Maris’s ship pulled out of subspace a second before Takma’s. Now his crew was struggling to keep the ship in one piece. Sargon was working in Engineering as fast as possible.
“I need a team to reinforce the aft hull plating,” he ordered. He then pointed to individual crewman and barked out orders. “You, reroute all available power to shields. You, take a repair kit and try adjust the conduits in sector five to emit a plasmatic resonance wave, it might just keep us together. You, you’re with me. We have to try and stabilize the core.”
He took a second’s glance around at his crew. Only half of his original engineering staff remained. The rest had either been killed during their travel through subspace or were in sickbay seeking treatment.
*May the Fates help Satira right now.* he thought. Despite all the work he had ahead of him, he knew she had more. He needed more crewmen though. He decided to hail the bridge for help.
Maris received Sargon’s transmission. “Yes,” he said. “I need some extra people down here. Send Meylin and anyone else you have available up there.”
Maris was silent for a moment. “Meylin can’t come down there.”
“Why?” Sargon asked. “Does she not want to be seen with a certain Parvanian in public anymore?” It had taken Meylin a long time to let their relationship be brought into the open. Now he joked about her previous behavior.
Maris paused for another second. Both Sargon and Meylin had joked about their relationship often, but he knew that they loved each other deeply. He also knew that Sargon had an extremely short fuse and something like this could drive him over the edge.
He decided to tell him the truth. “Sargon... Meylin was killed on our trip through the corridor.”
Sargon was silent for a few seconds. He felt his world begin to constrict around him. He pushed his pain away and just said. “Send whoever you can down here now, Sargon out.”
The bridge crew had dwindled down to only three conscious people. All the rest had been sent down to sickbay due to the injuries they had sustained while entering the corridor.
“I’ll go down there.” Maris said. “Danag you have the bridge, or what’s left of it.”
*
Captain Picard was talking with Commander Worf as they made their way down one of the station’s corridors.
“I still can’t figure out how Paris was able to break that Klingon’s arm so easily.” He shook his head. “I still wonder how he lived through a fight like that in the first place.”
“I am not certain as to how he accomplished such a task, but it was done none the less. I am still holding the fight’s instigator in the brig. He had no right to start a fight with Seven of Nine nor Paris, although I can partially see how the fight began.”
“What do you mean?” the captain asked.
“Ensign Paris acted as if he was not a part of the incident at Caldik Prime. His lying as well as his past history as a traitor makes him a likely target.” Worf explained.
Picard was silent for a moment. He, along with almost everyone else on DS9 knew about Paris’s history. He wondered what would make the younger man lie about something that was known by so many.
*
Kail positioned the ship near the station. Takma was a strong leader, but when it came to military tactics, he was much more adept than she.
Now their battleship was positioned just beyond Deep Space Nine. So far, the station’s sensors hadn’t picked them up and it was very unlikely that they would. The Empire had modulated their cloaking devices on such a wavelength that very few could ever detect them until it was too late.
“Have we penetrated their shielding yet?” Takma asked. The key to Kail’s plan was to attack the station from an internal point. They both new that their battleship was powerful, but Deep Space Nine had a fire power to match theirs.
“Yes,” Kail replied. “The drones are ready. We can begin transporting them in at any time.”
Takma smiled. Kail had planned to transport drones onto each deck and subdue any resistance before they could notify any other ships to send aid. If this worked, they would have the station under their control in a matter of only a few minutes and all the crew aboard would be interrogated and then brought forward for assimilation.
The only thing that Takma berated her drones for was that she still couldn’t retrieve any past knowledge they had held before she had assimilated them. So it didn’t matter that she had assimilated almost all of the Resistance’s higher officers; she had tortured them for their information for days with still no luck. Those who had not died during the interrogation were now assimilated.
She looked at the station before her. She could retrieve no telling how much information about the Alpha Quadrant from this target. If they moved in fast enough, the crew would have no time to encode the station’s computers. That meant she would have free access to the station and all its information.
She smiled. Perhaps this detour wasn’t so bad after all.
*
Tom and Xara were walking down one of DS9’s corridors. They were making their way to where they were going to meet B’Elanna when all of a sudden Paris’s senses went wild.
He leaned up against the wall as he struggled to take control of the images running through his mind.
Xara’s face turned pale as she noticed Tom’s distress. “Rune, what’s wrong?!”
Tom didn’t have a chance to answer her. Images of all the decks of the station came flooding through his mind. Drones…Kail…Takma...They were all attacking his senses.
He understood what was going on though. Deep Space Nine was being att
acked. He took Xara by the hand and made his way to the closest terminal he could find.
Crewmen were running past him to where the disturbance was. He could sense their fear as they realized that the Borg were attacking their ship. It wasn’t the real Borg though, just a set of make-shift drones.
He quickly linked himself to the terminal. Xara was looking around nervously. She had no idea what was going on but she knew it wasn’t good.
*There, it’s done.* Tom thought. He disconnected from the terminal. All of DS9’s systems were locked out to anyone but himself. He knew that no one could hack through these codes except for himself so at least one problem was under control. Now all he had to figure out was what to do with Takma.
Drones were coming around the corner quickly. One had already appeared at the end of the corridor. Xara’s eyes widened as she realized what was going on. She had already been put face to face with the Borg once before; it wasn’t a situation she wished to repeat.
The drone was alone. He had been part of a group before, but the others had already captured most of the crewman on this deck and were now taking them to a secure holding area. No drone could assimilate someone like the Borg could. People had to be assimilated one at a time in a certain chamber to join Takma’s collective.
The drone approached Paris in an attempt to apprehend him. Tom knew he would have a hard time to try and fight him, so he linked himself to the drone instead. The drone fell to the floor as Tom searched its memory banks for anything that might come in useful. It didn’t take long before he had found what he was looking for.
Xara stood behind Tom and looked around his back at the Borg on the ground. “The Borg are here?” she asked.
He shook his head. “These aren’t the Borg. Takma made them.”
Xara gulped. In her mind, the Empire was just as bad as the Borg.
Tom disconnected his link. He now had a good idea of what to expect and what course of action to take.
He took a nearby Padd that had fallen to the floor as crewmen had run past them only minutes ago. Erasing the data that was present there, he entered in a new set of commands.