To Tell The Truth Series 05 Turning Point

by Melanie

  "When we're ready we will contact you."

  When the screen went black Janeway and Chakotay exchanged surprised grins.

  "He seems friendly," Harry smiled.

  "Need I remind you, Ensign," Tuvok asked, "that first impressions can be deceiving?"

  Rising, Janeway cut off Harry's retort. "Janeway to Carey."

  "Carey here," Joe answered from Engineering.

  "Meet Tuvok and myself in Transporter Room Two with Lieutenant Torres' shopping list."

  "Acknowledged."

  Mounting the stairs, padd in hand, she looked at Harry. "Keep a lock on us at all times."

  He nodded. "Yes, Captain."

  "Commander, you have the Bridge."

  -------

  The party who beamed down ten minutes later found themselves on a terrace overlooking the formerly beautiful gardens of the Rachar Royal Palace. Not knowing the overgrown vegetation was not how its designers had intended it to look, they thought nothing of the unkempt landscaping. Even if they had, the smiling faces of the immaculately dressed and well-scrubbed E'Arte and I'Nu would have distracted them.

  "Captain Janeway, welcome. This is my clerk, I'Nu. You may give him your list of requirements and he'll see what we can do for you."

  Two padds were handed over. One was Engineering's requirements and the other was the Mess Hall's which Neelix had left with the Captain when he went off with Tom and Seven. I'Nu accepted them with a slight bow then retreated to his place a pace behind his superior.

  "If you will follow me," E'Arte suggested and led them into the dining hall.

  The trio from Voyager did not know the flurry of preparations their ship's eminent arrival had inspired. E'Arte knew were his plan to succeed he had to win Voyager's crew over. The intelligence he had received about them indicated these visitors would find nothing but faults with his people and conditions on Rachar as they had been. Therefore, much was done to bring things back up to standards guaranteed to impress, not offend.

  On the Gherop Homeworld and the majority of the other worlds under its empire's control, elaborate and highly ceremonial manners and behaviors were observed. This had not always been the case. It was only since T'Do had ascended to the throne upon the mysterious demise of his father and mother that these had become necessary and, for the most part, despised.

  The Gherop living on Rachar, however, had lapsed in their adherence to these rules. Those stationed there considered Rachar to be the frontier. A frontier was, by definition, a rough and dangerous place for living and concessions had to be made, rules and conventions of the more settled places had to be forgone out of necessity. It was reaching in terms of justification, but any excuse to exempt themselves from the hated conventions imposed by T'Do's court was a good one.

  Now they returned to those ways, at least in part. Complex and convoluted speech used when greeting someone still was out. Manners, especially table manners, were back -- no more using his sleeve as a napkin for E'Arte -- as was meticulous cleanliness. Crisp new uniforms all around, twice daily baths for all Gherop, and the parts of the palace they could logically expect the Voyager people might see were scrubbed within a millimeter of removing the paint from the tiles. There was nothing left at which E'Arte

  thought his guests could take offence. Everything they could possibly do to conform to the Voyager crew's own social habits and likes and dislikes were followed.

  And they had done well. None of the guests could find a single fault with anything over the course of the meal. E'Arte was a charming host. The food was very much to their liking and safe for their digestion as Tuvok's tricorder scan of it had indicated. Well received was the good news I'Nu briefly reappeared to bring them that they had nearly everything on the Engineering shopping list was the perfect end to a perfect meal.

  The only problem was with Zji. As she served each course, Janeway and Joe surreptitiously gave each other looks over the pre-adolescent's head. They clearly did not approve of the nicely washed and cleanly dressed child as a serving girl.

  Naturally, E'Arte had known this would happen and had kept the girl in plain sight for a very specific purpose. When she disappeared with the dessert plates through the curtains to the hall to the kitchens, he finally played his next card.

  "You try to hide it, yet I can tell you do not approve of her."

  So as not to offend, Janeway carefully phrased her objection. "Where we come from, she would be in school, not serving at table."

  He nodded. "And that is where she should be, Captain. Unfortunately, Verta make that impossible," he sighed.

  "Verta?"

  "The ones I spoke of earlier, when we first contacted you, the cause of our... difficult times. They're a loosely connected band of terrorists who are not happy with the change in government. Every opportunity they find, they try to disrupt life here." Another deep sigh. "And we seem powerless to reason with them."

  "What do they want?"

  "My people gone from this world. The return of the Royal Family to the throne. Life as it once was whether that is advantageous or not."

  "Your people are not indigenous to this planet," Tuvok observed.

  "No, we are not. We came here to open trade talks with the Rachar, but ended up staying on to take over from the Royal Family."

  Carey frowned. "Take over from them?"

  "There was a revolution. We stepped in to temporarily lead Rachar until her own people could learn to properly lead themselves. Their government -- if you can call it that -- had been a monarchy system for so long the people here had no idea how to do anything without someone to tell them what to do."

  Tuvok set aside his napkin. "May I ask what became of the Royal Family?"

  "The Queen was deposed. She and the members of her court either were killed or killed themselves. Of course, the Verta do not believe this. They claim the Queen and her infant child were smuggled out to safety and are hiding until the day the Verta can restore them to their throne." He shook his head sadly. "All dreams on their part, I'm afraid. The Queen is dead. I saw her body myself. But the idea she may still live is a powerful symbol to some."

  "So how does this prevent the child from going to school?" Janeway asked.

  "The Verta are the worst kind of terrorists. They do not confine their violent acts to government offices or residences. They do not strike solely at the ones they wish to force to leave, namely my people. No, they attack schools and hospitals and orphanages and crowded village squares. In the past two days alone, there have been two dozen citizens killed because of these criminals. My people and those who are loyal to what we are trying to accomplish are doing our best to find the Verta and stop them, but until we do, the schools have been closed and the children are educated in their homes."

  He gestured to the curtains. "There are many orphans due to the revolution and events since. Zji is one of them. She has no family to educate her, no home to be educated in. There are so many orphans the Rachar cannot take them all in so some of my people have taken them into our homes. The majority of Rachar have a very strong work ethic. It is almost inbred. Because of it, these orphans feel like they are not earning their keep as it were so we make a deal with them and they do some light chores. Zji considers this her chore." He shrugged his massive shoulders. "It does no real harm so I permit her to do it."

  "It makes her happy."

  He smiled. "Precisely, Captain."

  Carrying a tray of after dinner drinks, the topic of conversation passed through the curtains again. Once she was close enough to him, E'Arte set the tray on the table and swung her up into his lap. "And you're a fine little worker, too, aren't you, Zji?"

  The child ducked her head and her wild hair concealed her face. Even the length of time he had granted her to make herself look presentable was not enough for her to tame her hair.

  E'Arte laughed. "She is so shy. All right, child. Off you go."

  He set her on her bare feet and she scurried back behind the curtains from whence she had
come. Making a good show of it, the Gherop leader watched her go, smiling and shaking his head before rising to offer his guests the drinks.

  "So," Janeway began, accepting a glass along with Joe, "do you think my crew will be safe from the Verta if we come down here for shoreleave?"

  "If you are asking can I guarantee their safety, no. My people and the non-Verta will do our best to see they remain unharmed. I cannot speak for the Verta. They never furnish us with any warnings prior to their acts of terrorism."

  Tuvok refused a glass. "Perhaps if the numbers of personnel on the surface at any given time were kept to a minimum and a constant transporter lock were kept on them, it would increase their safety."

  The Captain nodded.

  "Well, then," E'Arte smiled, raising his glass in a toast, "may we all have a very successful relationship."

  The two humans joined in the toast and the Vulcan inclined his head.

  -------

  The moment the guests and host left the dining hall, Zji hurried from her place behind the curtains. Despite what E'Arte would have said if asked, she had not been the one running back and forth to the kitchen throughout the meal. Another of the staff had been doing that while Zji had remained at her post, listening to their master's carefully edited version of truth. It amazed her how he was able to leave out just enough of the facts to still be telling the visitors the truth yet give the situation on Rachar an entirely new spin.

  Any outsiders -- like his dinner companions -- listening to his version would have believed him, it was so flawless. They never would have guessed how a reintegration of the conveniently omitted facts would have left the listener with a totally different -- and more accurate -- version of the Rachar's lives.

  'Soon they'll know the whole story,' she promised. 'Soon it will all be over for the Gherop.'

  -------

  When I'Nu found him, E'Arte still was standing on the terrace. Lunch and the subsequent tour of the palace and capital city finally over, the guests from Voyager had beamed up to their ship without incident or inkling of the Gherop's machinations.

  "The three ships are on their way and expect to intercept Sunfire soon."

  "Good," E'Arte approved. "I don't want that ship to arrive here and complicate my plans for Voyager. They will start sending down their people tomorrow. Ensure everything is prepared for them."

  "Wouldn't it be easier just to-"

  "We have discussed this before, I'Nu. This is how I have decided we shall proceed."

  "Yes, E'Arte."

  As the clerk departed for his office, his superior smiled to himself. Everything was working out as expected. They were right where he wanted them and soon he would have the only possible snag in his plan eliminated. He had wondered where the second, smaller ship had gone when Voyager had arrived alone. Their Main Shuttle Bay was not large enough to hold her therefore; she had to have left them for some reason. He was trying to figure out some way to ask where when one innocuous question unexpectedly had yielded the answer.

  "So, Captain," he had said as he showed them the Royal Rachar art collection, still hanging in its places instead of on its way to T'Do as all treasures were supposed to, "how long do you think you'll be with us. Not that I'm trying to get rid of you or anything," he had laughed.

  "A few days," Janeway had smiled back. "If that's all right? Three of our shipmates have gone off on a mining expedition and are to rendezvous with us here the day after tomorrow."

  "Perhaps we could save them the trouble and supply you with whatever you need."

  She had gone one to explain the scarcity of the ore they needed and the immediacy of situation regarding the nova. It had been relatively simple for I'Nu, at his superior's tacit command, to excuse himself from the remainder of the tour, use the information the Captain had supplied to pinpoint Sunfire's exact location and flight path, then notify him in the guise of an urgent report to be reviewed. It was easy to tap out the command for I'Nu to send ships from their base nearest that system out to intercept the ship and destroy her.

  His grin broadened. Soon it would all be over for the Verta.

  -------

  "May I come in?"

  Sitting on his bed, back against the cabin wall, Tom looked up from the padd he reading. "Of course."

  "I thought you were going to sleep."

  "I did for a while." He did not complete the statement by saying the "while" was a few minutes and he had woken thanks to yet another nightmare. Tom had wanted to go repair the cloaking device, but Sunfire was adamantly against it. He was supposed to rest, not work. The malfunctioning cloak could wait.

  Looking uncomfortable, Neelix stepped farther into the quarters. Though Tom did not know it, Neelix had spent considerable time pacing about his quarters, wondering if he should do this or not. After all, this did not concern only him, but Sam and Naomi as well. Did he have the right to give this man hope of an entree back into Naomi's life, hope that could so easily be dashed by Sam when they returned to Voyager? Finally, he decided to do it and damned be the consequences.

  That had sounded good to him a moment ago, however, now that he was there, he stood there, looking around at quarters identical to his own in all respects, as though he was expecting to see something different.

  "Is everything all right?" Tom finally asked.

  "Oh, fine."

  "You're finding your way around okay?"

  "Oh, yes. Sunfire's been most helpful when needed."

  He looked pointedly at the ore dust on Neelix's clothing and guessed what he had been doing over the past couple of hours Tom had been incarcerated in his room. "Problem with refining the ore?"

  "No, it's going quite well so far. We've done half a container so far."

  "Any problems with the ship Sunfire hasn't told me about?"

  The ship had unwillingly confessed her cloak suddenly had developed a glitch and had cut out. Tom had been all for going to fix it immediately. Sunfire had negated the idea, saying he needed to rest and her sensors did not detect anyone in the area at the moment so there was no pressing need to remain hidden. The cloak could wait until later.

  "Not that I know about."

  "So what brings you here then?"

  "I..." He whipped his hands out from behind his back and the thirty-centimeter by thirty-centimeter piece of off-white paper rustled with the action. "Naomi wanted me to give this to you."

  Tom accepted the drawing like it was some precious idol unearthed from an archaeological dig. He stared at it, drinking in every millimeter of the one-sided communication from the little girl he so loved.

  Totally forgotten, Neelix watched the pilot's mask fall and the sadness the man felt appear on the fair-skinned face. It was that moment the Talaxian realized what an injustice he had paid his friend. He suddenly knew all the fear and discomfort and suspicions had been unnecessary and, more importantly, cruel. Until this moment, he could not remember a time in his life when he had been truly cruel to any living creature, but he had been to Tom, his friend.

  Sadly, he reached out to touch the young human's shoulder. The action brought the pilot back to him with a jolt. He stiffened, the mask fell back into place, and the drawing was set aside.

  "Thank you, Neelix," he said, rising. "If you will excuse me, I need to-"

  "Gherop incoming!" Sunfire announced. "Three ships."

  "Two to the Bridge."

  -------

  "Captain, we have them."

  The Gherop Captain of the lead vessel nodded to his first officer. "Send a message to the other ships. Remind them our orders are to use whatever means necessary. Take no prisoners."

  "Aye, Captain."

  "Tactical, shields to maximum. Weapons to the ready. Helm, take us in."

  -------

  "The odds do not favor us," Seven remarked from her seat at Ops as the other two materialized.

  "They never do," Tom quipped, taking the Helm. "Damn, I knew I should have got the cloaking device back on line instead of going to
my quarters. Seven, stay on shields and be ready to do any repairs as needed."

  "Yes, Lieutenant."

  "Neelix, let's see what good Tuvok's tactical training course has done you. You're on weapons. Just stay away from the upper left-hand section. They're last a resort only."

  The Talaxian took the seat at Tactical when the station and chair had slid out of the wall and floor. "Yes, Tom."

  For a while, it seemed Seven's dire prediction for their survival was correct. Tom's death defying flying through an asteroid field, Neelix's creative use of the available weapons, and Seven's alterations to the shields made in between patch jobs on the various ship's systems kept them in one piece a lot longer than would have been expected.

  Then the Gherop brought out the heavy artillery.

  A curse in some language unfamiliar to either of Tom's companions cut the air as the torpedo brushed their aft shields and impacted on the huge, porous asteroid Tom had been using to hamper their sensors. They barely had made it through one of the tunnels to the other side when the space rock began to melt like an ice cube in the sun.

  "Aft shields are down," Seven shouted. "Unable to re-route power to re-establish."

  "Great," Tom muttered. "Neelix, hit those last resort weapons I told you not to touch and both of you sit back in your seats!"

  The pair did as ordered only a split second before restraints flew across their bodies, anchoring them to their chairs. This was of major necessity as the ship only a second later shuddered and shook. Neelix and Seven would have thought this was the end were it not for the stations' displays showing them a graphic of Sunfire still in one piece. The shuddering and shaking was from concealed weapons hatches all over the exterior of the ship opening to expose nasty looking phaser cannons.

  Before the first blast from the newly revealed armaments could be fired, the Gherop ships each fired a torpedo like the last one.

  Within moments, the battle was over.

  -------