Be Careful What You Wish For

by Barbara Watson

  Tom tilted his head slightly to receive the hypo. He felt an improvement almost instantly. "Thanks, Doc," he said without breaking his concentration.

  Tuvok and Chakotay were next, followed in succession by Ayala, Ashmore, Tabor and Kyoto. Finally, the doctor administered one final prescription, this one gathered from inside the captain's ready room. "I also took the liberty of bringing you this," he said to her, indicating the tall mug in his hand. "Your drug of choice: coffee. Black."

  She smiled at her physician and marveled for a moment at how he had appeared out of the blue, with none of his usual puffery, doing exactly what was needed without being asked. He was every bit the Starfleet professional she needed him to be. She wasn't sure why she was surprised.

  "Can you check on Engineering, Doctor," she said before he left.

  "Already on my way."

  ~*~*~*~*~

  They were well into hour five when the world began to crash down around them.

  It came suddenly, and not from any of the places the simulations predicted. Without warning, the major EPS conduits on decks 9 and 10 exploded, unleashing a fury of plasma, energy, and radiation. There was nothing they could do. The bridge erupted in chaos.

  "We're losing power!" Chakotay was shouting furiously.

  "The helm is sluggish! I can't hold her...!" Tom was practically standing, as if the extra force of his touch might make the ship respond.

  "The wedge is collapsing! Attempting to compensate!" It was Seven's voice on the open channel. They could hear B'Elanna frantically shouting orders to her repair crews.

  Tuvok interjected, "I am reading severe radiation leakage on deck 9. Casualty reports are coming in. Structural integrity is down to 53%."

  "Captain!" It was Seven's voice. "I think we may be able to adjust the termination point of the conduit."

  Janeway knew that would bring them home short of their target, but she didn't see another alternative. She didn't let herself think about the fact that their trajectory took them through the heart of Romulan space. They could be popping up in the middle of it in a matter of seconds. "Do it!" she shouted. The alarms continued to wail.

  "Hull stresses are increasing!" Chakotay warned. "Whatever you're going to do Seven, do it now!"

  Tom readied himself for the termination sequence. He could barely hold the course. "Come on, Seven," he said under his breath. "Give me the signal."

  It arrived only seconds later, and Tom and Tuvok began simultaneous, perfectly-timed adjustments to bring them back into normal space. Chakotay began the countdown, "Exiting the singularity in five. Four. Three..."

  It was the last thing any of them would remember hearing.

  Almost seven years of patchwork and bubblegum fixes, improvisation and inspiration, and a slow death born of deprivation, were all reaching their inevitable climax. This was the final straw. Bulkheads imploded as whole sections of the ship lost containment. And with their ship's screams and moans, her captain and officers found themselves bombarded with thoughts and images born of almost a decade of experiences, dreams and hopes. "Captain, if these readings are right we're over 70,000 light years..." "I have friends among species you don't even know exist..." "Captain, we both want very much to be a part of your journey..." "That's not who I am now; At least it's not who I want to be..." "I guess I have to resign myself to fighting with her for the rest of my life..." "Tell them the captain sends her regards..." "I have exceeded my original programming..." "We do not stand alone. We are in the arms of family..." "The Yankees in six games..." "Akoochimoyah, we are far away from the sacred places of our grandfathers. Far from the bones of our people..."

  Then there was silence.

  ~*~*~*~*~

  She dreamed she was floating in space, nothing in sight but a field of stars. Yet it wasn't peaceful, like floating in the womb. She felt a little nauseous. She reached down to hold her churning stomachs. Something wasn't right. Her hand made contact too quickly, her abdomen was distended. Where was her environmental suit? And she had been tethered to...think...where was...Tom?

  Thinking his name was enough to jolt B'Elanna to consciousness. Her slowly-opening eyes soon told her that she was floating. About six meters off the main engineering deck. On Voyager. Ugh, now she was really nauseous.

  Her engineer's mind was kicking in, though. Okay...she was breathing, but floating: they had life support but no artificial gravity. Her engines were quiet. The ship was stopped. Reflexively she hit her combadge. "Engineering to the bridge." Nothing. "Torres to Paris...Torres to anyone." Her heart was beating faster, which seemed to make her head throb. "Computer, locate Lieutenant Paris." Silence.

  'Stay focused, B'Elanna.' She looked around for her crew, but the emergency lamps in this space weren't strong enough for her to see very far, and she could only make out a few shapes. She reached out and grabbed the railing of the upper engineering deck and pulled herself to a communications console. It lit up at her touch. 'Thank you. Something's working,' she thought. She steadied herself with one hand while she tapped out the instructions with the other. Her head was swimming in time with her stomachs now. 'Keep concentrating B'Elanna. You can do this.' Three more instructions and it was done. 'Someone will hear," she thought as she drifted back out. 'Someone has to hear...."

  ~*~*~*~*~

  PART 6--CONSEQUENCES:

  "Admiral Paris," she said a little too softly, since his eyes didn't open. "Admiral Paris." She spoke more clearly, and touched his shoulder gently for good measure.

  The admiral looked back this time, raising his head off of the arm on which it had rested. "Yes, Yeoman."

  Gods he looked exhausted, she thought. "I'm sorry to wake you, sir, but you requested to be notified the second we got any news on Voyager."

  That was the key word; Owen Paris was wide awake, and standing up from his desk to reach out for the PADD in Yeoman Dawson's hands. Of course, that was why he was sleeping in his office. They had received the last datastream and knew that Janeway was going to attempt their plan. If it worked, Voyager should be back in the Alpha Quadrant in just a few hours.

  "Yes, what is it?" She decided to let him read the message for himself. Dawson suspected, had she spoken the words, he would have stopped hearing her after the first few. She stood silently as he learned the news.

  Owen had to blink the sleep from his eyes to focus on the message. Were they intentionally making this type smaller and smaller? "The deep space scout ship USS Resnick has picked up an automated distress call with a Starfleet signature fourteen light years inside the Beta Quadrant. Sensors indicate it is an Intrepid class cruiser with the designation USS Voyager. Heavy damage has been reported. With the permission of the Klingon government to pass through their space, two rescue ships have been dispatched, however all attempts to hail Voyager have failed. No other information is available at this time."

  The Admiral was famous for his composure in a crisis, and this time was no different. "Thank you, Dawson. Notify my ship to prepare for departure in four hours; I'll be heading for the Neutral Zone to rendezvous with any survivors." He began to gather up his PADDs--reports on the Voyager recovery project, mostly--and placed them in a travel case as he prepared to leave.

  As he reached for one, his hand brushed the clear frame of the only picture on his desk. He stopped for a moment and let himself look once more at the face of his only son, a young man he hadn't seen or spoken with in over ten years. In a quick move, he added the picture, frame and all, to his case and latched it. As he stood up he said softly to his yeoman, "I'll be at my home for the next several hours."

  As he left Headquarters, he realized the sun was starting to rise. It looked to be another beautiful spring day in San Francisco. In a way, that made it harder. How was he going to tell his wife such grim news on such a lovely morning?

  ~*~*~*~*~

  As the commander of the USS Resnick, a Dresden-class scout ship on tactical patrol near the neutral zone, Captain Wheaton was used to living at a high state
of alert. Every move held the potential for diplomatic incident, every unusual sensor reading could be the coming of a war. He wondered occasionally at the run of bad luck that put two of the Federation's oldest adversaries, the Klingons and Romulans, so close together and so near Federation space. Even in times of truce, Wheaton always suspected a full-blown battle was just one mistake away.

  So, when the call came, he couldn't believe it. It must be a trick.

  A civilian Federation science vessel, on deep exploration at the other side of Klingon space, had picked up an automated distress call from a ship that seemed to appear out of nowhere. A ship with the Starfleet signature of the long-missing USS Voyager.

  Wheaton had served on the USS Onizuko with Commander Cavit, Voyager's first officer, and he remembered the day he heard about his friend's ship disappearing into nothingness in the Badlands. Starfleet had immediately classified all information relating to Voyager's disappearance, but rumors were flying. The most popular was that Janeway's ship and crew had been captured by the Maquis using some unknown technology. Everyone knew she had taken Thomas Paris, an ex-Maquis traitor, on the mission as an observer. His capture had probably been some kind of set-up--he had probably tricked Janeway into taking Voyager right into the hands of the Maquis.

  Of course, that rumor was shot to hell over three years later when Voyager's EMH--a Mark One, of all things--suddenly appeared in the Alpha Quadrant with some tall story about Voyager being pulled into the Delta Quadrant by some kind of entity. The details were still hush-hush, but Wheaton got news that Cavit had died in the initial incident. Starfleet was also careful to spread the word that the Maquis rumors had been false. Not only had the ex-traitor been given a Starfleet field commission (he was apparently serving as Voyager's helmsman), all of the surviving Maquis were serving as provisional Starfleet officers.

  Wheaton supposed he was relieved to hear that Paris had been cleared, if only for the sake of the young man's father. Admiral Paris had been one of his favorite instructors at the Academy--almost like a second father to him--and Wheaton knew his son's transgressions were an embarrassment to the whole Paris family. He was less thrilled to hear the rumor that a Maquis was now serving as Voyager's first officer. What an insult to Cavit's memory, he thought.

  Now, deep in the Beta Quadrant, Voyager had appeared out of nowhere. Wheaton was suspicious, and contacted Starfleet Command on a secure channel. He was surprised when the word came: proceed immediately to the ship's last known coordinates and render all necessary aid and assistance. The mission had already been cleared with Klingon High Command, and Admiral Paris was on his way from Earth to rendezvous with them. It had to be true, he supposed.

  And it was. They came upon Voyager's wrecked hulk within eighteen hours. Wheaton was amazed when his sensors showed lifesigns aboard. He was even more surprised when he saw the damage first-hand.

  He beamed to Voyager's bridge with a full security team in environmental suits. It had been hard to find a safe place to materialize; luckily, the area near the main viewscreen was mostly intact. Amazingly, life support was still online, though artificial gravity was down throughout the ship. The bridge was almost unrecognizable, and the bodies of the crew--in outdated uniforms, he noted--were alternately pinned under massive wreckage or floating at odd angles above the deck.

  Considering the devastation around him, Wheaton was amazed to find his first survivor wedged between a huge piece of debris and the conn, unconscious but with strong vital signs and without so much as a scratch. 'This guy must lead a charmed life,' he thought to himself. He had the young man beamed directly to the Resnick's sickbay.

  He didn't need to reach the starboard engineering station to see that the crewman stationed there hadn't been so fortunate. The young Bajoran had been struck by a support column and was clearly dead, a horrible volume of his blood now floating in the air around his lifeless body.

  He moved toward the bridge's command deck and motioned his team to check the science and tactical stations. Pulling away a large chunk of what had once been the illuminated ceiling, he found his primary target: a red-haired woman he recognized from the database as Kathryn Janeway. She had what looked like a massive head injury, and her lifesigns were very weak. Again, he summoned his transporter chief.

  He could see Phillips, his chief medic, scanning the floating body of a young brunette woman at the port science station, her dark hair drifting oddly around her burned and lifeless face. "She's dead, Captain," Phillips called, though Wheaton had suspected as much.

  The captain worked his way to the upper deck. He found another lifeless body just outside the turbolift doors, a tall, muscular man--either security or engineer--practically impaled on a damaged section of railing. 'This man is Maquis,' he thought, noticing the provisional rank insignia. Was Maquis. Another fatality.

  The port ops console itself was intact, but its operator seemed to have been thrown forward somehow, over the station, and was now pinned on top of the aft railing. His body was twisted at an unnatural angle facing the ceiling, and partially buried by a tangled mass of conduit. Oddly, the man wore the red colors of command; ops was usually manned by an engineer. When he moved his tricorder to scan the crewman, Wheaton noticed the tattoo on the man's left temple. He checked for bioreadings, and was surprised to find a faint pulse. "Get this man to sickbay," he called to Phillips.

  "Captain, give me a hand!" Burton, his chief engineer was motioning to the tactical station, or what was left of it. He could see their target, trapped under a pile of debris that had once been his console. A Vulcan. Wheaton knew from the crew logs that this would be Lieutenant--no Lt. Commander--Tuvok. "Don't bother," he ordered. "He's dead."

  ~*~*~*~*~

  Everyone always joked that working security detail was the worst. 'First to fly, first to die,' was the joke and he knew all the clichés about the 'gold shirts' being expendable. But Russ was proud of his work. He kept the rest of them safe, he thought to himself. Sure, he was on the front lines much of the time, but at least it never got boring. He couldn't imagine those poor suckers locked up in some lab during a crisis on board, with no clue what was going on and no power to impact it. Tactical work meant you were always in on the news, and might even be able to participate in your own rescue. Of course today he might have preferred to be babysitting a console. This wasn't his favorite kind of security assignment.

  His gravity boots sucked his feet down to the deck, making his progress slow, but he wasn't in any great hurry to get anywhere. They had long since transported the survivors off this floating scrap heap. Search and Recovery duty meant surrendering hope before you even left your ship. He hated having drawn Deck 8--it was among the most badly damaged--but he knew he would want someone to come looking for him if the time ever came.

  Finally he was at his target. He engaged the suction handle and pushed the doors apart. He steeled himself for whatever he would find, but the level of destruction was still a bit of a shock. If he hadn't read the designation on the door, he never would have recognized the room's function. This mess had been Astrometrics. He activated his tricorder and followed the beacon of the damaged combadge. The ping was coming from a semi-circular junk pile that looked like it had once been the main console. Splintered and jagged, it would have been almost impossible for him to lift alone if the artificial gravity were online. Without it, he could almost raise it with one finger. Russ half pulled, half floated the mess out of his way.

  He could see it now. The combadge was still firmly in place on the uniform of a young man whose legs were twisted grotesquely and wedged into a fissure in the deck plating. Asian decent. It looked like the bulkhead had erupted right underneath the man's feet. He didn't stand a chance. The single pip surprised Russ; this fellow looked a little old to still be an ensign.

  Gods, what a tragedy. He attached a transponder to the dead man's sleeve and signaled to his ship. "Russ to Resnick. I found another one. Ready to beam him over." The lieutenant wasn't a particularly reli
gious man, but he found himself saying a silent prayer for the ensign, before pulling out his tricorder and moving to the next room. It was a ritual he would perform too often today.

  ~*~*~*~*~

  "Does that mean you're in the mood for some mushy stuff?"

  Somehow she became aware that she was sleeping, but it was one of her favorite recurring dreams so she didn't try to wake herself too quickly. "It usually requires a proposal...." That was her cue. She moved her hand to her right side, but felt only the hard edge of the bed. Not their bed. 'Think, B'Elanna. Where are you?' Her eyes peered open, barely. They were crusty, like she hadn't opened them in a long, long, time. The lights in the room had been dimmed, but they still stung her eyes enough to make them water. A few blinks and she was starting to focus. The bioreadings scrolling above her head told her she was in sickbay. A sickbay--not Voyager's. She started to pull herself up on her elbows, but couldn't find the strength. The sigh her exertion forced out of her was loud enough to wake the man sleeping in the chair by her bed, however, and he was up and at her side instantly.