by Melanie
He sighed. If only there was some way the Doc and his family could go as well, he thought yet again. Over the past two months, he had agonized over this dilemma as often as he had over the Holo-family's case. After all of that worry, he still lacked a solution. No matter how long or hard he thought, he could not think of a plan which did not cancel itself out at some step of the way.
How would they leave Voyager? The mobile emitter might have been the answer, but it was designed for only one hologram at a time. Who would go and who would stay? The entire idea was for them to be able to stay together. And what if the emitter needed repair? Only the engineers on Voyager understood the emitter and then it was only the basics. Some of its technology still was a mystery to them.
So the mobile emitter was out.
What if the programs for the EMH and his family were downloaded into his back up module or a small memory core like that of a shuttle? If anything happened either during the transfer or the trip to their destination, they would be risking losing them. But there was a chance of success.
Plan okay so far.
What would their destination be? Being holograms their universe necessarily was confined to a Holodeck. The problem was where. Holodecks need some place to be. Since they were trying to evade Starfleet, the site would have to be out of the way and secret. Easier said than done, but do-able.
A pre-existing Holodeck would be good, but if it existed it probably was earmarked for public use. A private one for them alone would be best. But how would they pay for the cost of constructing and maintaining the Holodeck? There was no way other than the Doc going into private medical practice. Potential patients would have to know where to find him. Eventually Starfleet would hear about the hologram practicing medicine and where and Starfleet would know who the hologram was and come to reclaim him. All would have been for nothing.
What about the Base? The Holodeck there would do. Whomever left Voyager could transfer the programs to it once they arrived there. But the same problem would arise. The Doc had become accustomed to socializing the others. He craved it the way most other species did. Eventually he would become bored in the holographic Universe and yearn to interact with the real one. When he finally gave in to that desire, he would either have to leave or invite people to him. Then word would get out and Starfleet would swoop in and get them. Only quite a few might die in their attempts to breech the Base's natural and artificial defenses.
No, there was no way for them to leave Voyager.
"Computer, time remaining?" he sighed.
"Twelve minutes, fifty six seconds."
"Beam me to the location of canister alpha."
-------
With no one awake to monitor the use of the transporters, he now could make liberal use of the site to site function to uninstall the myzine gas canisters. In less than a quarter of the time he had taken to install them, he disconnected each one then sent them to Sickbay. Once that was finished, he used the transporter one last time to beam himself to the corridor outside Holodeck Three to see how many of the seventy-one had decided to stay.
He was taken aback when he saw there were only seven missing from the Holodeck. As the Computer announced the end of the thirty minutes, Tom rechecked the names on his padd against those listed on the display outside of the Holodeck. The count stubbornly remained the same. Only seven were leaving and Chakotay and B'Elanna were two of them.
His chest tightened at the absence of his beloved's name amongst the list of those inside. Part of him had hoped she might chose to remain. She and Harry were going to need each other soon. He closed his eyes and sighed. Too soon, he thought. All along in planning this, he had been thinking of some point in the future, not now, not yet. But it was now and he had no choice. She would have Chakotay and Harry would have his family. They would help them survive what was to come.
After tucking the padd back into the bag, he removed an access panel. Quickly, he detached the connections which permitted the Holodeck to access systems beyond those of the Holodeck. Leaving the panel leaning against the corridor wall and the parts he had removed in a carefully arranged pile next to it, he entered the Holodeck.
The moment he walked down the Resort steps to the main terrace where everyone was milling about, they gave him their full attention.
"As the thirty minutes are up, I am assuming everyone is here and those who are here are positive they wish to stay."
There was a general murmur of assent.
"Fine. Seven?"
"Yes, Lieutenant?"
"When was the last time you regenerated?"
"Nine point three hours ago."
"Okay. You'll be alright here for some time then."
"For some time?"
"Yes." He turned to everyone. "I know all of you came here in good faith, and I appreciate that, however I am going to ask your indulgence for a little longer, approximately ninety minutes longer. I know it's asking a lot for you to remain here for that long, but I would not be doing so if it were not necessary. I hate to phrase it this way, but those who are leaving cannot risk any of you suddenly having an attack of duty and attempting to stop them. Therefore, I'm going to secure the Holodeck to keep all of you in here."
There was a general shout of disagreement.
He held up a hand to calm them. "I know you don't like that idea, but it will only be for ninety minutes and it is necessary, not only for the others, but for all of you as well. Fake logs for the internal and external sensors will be substituted to cover up what will soon happen. When the rest of the crew wakes, they are going to want to know what happened, where the others are, and how they left. They will want to statements from everyone to confirm what the logs say. I don't want to put any of you in the position of having to lie about what happened. I could offer to remove the memories of the last thirty some odd minutes from your memories, but I won't. I doubt any of you want me messing about in your minds, seeing as I'm not the Doc. My reassuring you I know what I'd be doing and had done it before, successfully, wouldn't mean much."
"Um, Tom," Neelix interrupted, "where *is* the Doctor?"
"Confined to Holodeck One," he admitted, frowning. "I couldn't come up with a way for him and his family to leave Voyager and have any expectation of a life." Tom looked hopefully at the others. "But if any of you can think of something, I am all ears. I don't know if he'd agree, but he is aware of his rather precarious position now that this ship has a realistic expectation of returning home. He and his family *might* just choose to go. If there is a way."
There was silence and Tom tried to hide his disappointment. Still, he was not entirely successful.
"He is in Holodeck One with his family," he told them. "I have told him there is a malfunction and he cannot leave for the time being. Once this is all over he automatically will be returned to Sickbay and the computer is programmed to inform him of the crew's medical status and why."
"The Computer will?"
"Yes."
"Then you're leaving too."
Tom looked away momentarily. "I won't be here, no," he told him.
The Talaxian immediately rushed up and gave him a bear hug. "I shall miss you, Tom."
He very briefly permitted himself to return the embrace. Stepping back from his friend, Tom stiffly nodded to the others then walked out into the corridor.
"Compu-" Tom's voice cracked he was so overwhelmed with emotion. He cleared his throat. "Computer, run program Paris Padlock on Holodeck Three."
"Paris Padlock running."
Tom checked the Holodeck display to ensure the locks were in place as the Padlock secured the doors and blocked communications to and from the Holodeck. Everything was in order.
"Paris to B'Elanna, Chakotay, Hydrat, Moi, Oliva, Redstone, and Vavin. Meet me in the Main Shuttle Bay with your belongings. Paris out."
For a moment, he leaned against the corridor wall. All of a sudden he was so tired, he realized. All these weeks of planning almost were over and now, with the end in si
ght, he wondered if it would be of any use to the seven who were going. What kind of life were they going to have? The Maquis were no more so there would be no returning to them. Not that it would have been easily to do so anyway. They had spent nearly five years walking, talking and acting as Starfleet. If they could have found their way back into their old lives, they'd never have been trusted. They would have been suspected Starfleet spies. Now the Maquis were finished and there was a new war, with new players at the table to join the old. Would they revert to their old ways of being rebels? Would they just include the Dominion in their list of accepted targets? Or would they settle down somewhere out of the way and try to begin new lives?
That was for them to decide, he thought, fingering the special hypospray in his bag. He had his own plans for the future to worry about. He straightened and strode off down the corridor.
-------
When he entered the shuttle bay, he saw all seven were present and standing with their possessions in front of the large, long distance shuttle, Argo. B'Elanna looked as though she wished to say something to him, but Chakotay's hand on her shoulder forestalled her.
Other than their names and Maquis affiliation, Tom knew little about the others. Hydrat, Moi, Oliva, Redstone, and Vavin. None were big fans of Tom Paris, the Maquis traitor. Yet there they stood. Obviously whatever they had done in the past had made them so desperate to evade Starfleet that the idea of placing their trust in his orchestrating their escape was viewed to be the lesser of two evils.
"If you'll join me over here at this console? Computer, access Holodeck programs. Run program Paris The Great Escape Simulation with variation One Red Herring, One De-boned, Stage One on this console."
"Acknowledged."
"The first thing that happens," he told them, "is a faked log for the external sensors is spliced into the real ones to show the following."
As they watched, the display showed two shuttles leaving the Main shuttle bay.
"The first shuttle is yours. The other is unoccupied and on autopilot," Tom explained.
Ninety seconds after it had exited the bay, the first shuttle and Voyager both leapt to warp. At the same instant a phaser beam from Voyager caused the unmanned shuttle to explode into fragments of less than a decimeter square in size. Everyone gasped.
"When triggered by a phaser beam, the explosive which will be used to blow the shuttle has an interesting effect on warp trails -- it scatters the warp particles making it extremely difficult to trace the trails for some distance from the epicenter of the explosion. By the time a ship's scanners will be able to detect the shuttle's trail you'll be far enough into regularly traveled space that it will be exceedingly difficult to pick your trail from all the others."
"But why blow the shuttle?" Chakotay asked. "Why not just detonate his explosive of yours in open space?"
"There needs to be some debris for any investigation to discover. Given the size of that debris they won't be able to tell how many shuttles exploded, but- Computer, run Stage Two -- the logs for the external sensors will tell them this is what happened."
The simulation repeated, this time one of the shuttles collided with the other and the pair exploded as Voyager leapt to warp.
"The explanation for it will be pilot error," he said in a monotone. "Naturally, I will be the responsible pilot."
"Tom, they won't believe it," B'Elanna insisted, horrified.
"Yes, they will. The internal sensors will show me as suffering from lingering side effects from Steth's occupation of my body. My personal log will be altered to reflect me hiding the effects so I wouldn't be removed from the helm."
"So then what happens?" Oliva demanded.
"Computer, Stage Three."
The display changed to show a star chart of the surrounding region of space. The site of the explosion was marked with a sizeable crimson splash. The path of Voyager to the nearest Starbase was a lavender line in one direction. The path of the surviving shuttle was a pale blue line in another. Both lines lead into Federation Space though the blue one was a long a less traveled route.
"Stage Four."
The display zoomed in on the shuttle's journey. Finally it stopped at a tiny moon in a small, uninhabited system identified only as System 476254.
"A thousand years ago, this system supported a thriving population, but the planets are uninhabitable now. The only people who come there are the occasional archaeologists who think there might be just one more significant find to be coaxed out of the ground." He smiled ironically. "They'd find quite the treasure if they knew just where to look and how to *see* what it was that they were looking at."
Before anyone could ask what that cryptic comment meant, the shuttle on the display approached a moon's northern pole and deliberately began to nosedive. The jagged peaks of mountains and deep valleys of the surface came into sharp focus as the ship rushed towards it. Just as they all thought a crash was inevitable, the ship veered away at a thirty degree angle to the ground and slipped neatly into a cave otherwise hidden by the outcropping of rocky cliffs which surrounded it on three sides. The craft flew on for thirty seconds in total darkness before motion sensitive lights snapped on. With the illumination they saw the shuttle was in a huge cavern which looked large enough to hold Voyager. There it landed.
"There is no atmosphere on the moon but if someone puts on an EVA suit they can go out to establish one for the cavern."
A figure in an EVA suit was beamed from the shuttle to an innocent outcropping of rocks a few meters away. The person triggered what proved to be a hologram of rocks to disappear and pressed a button. Two enormous doors slid into place and the cavern was sealed. Moments later a light on the panel flashed from red to green. The EVA suited figure tripped a door in the cavern wall and walked through then the display went black.
Tom turned to the group. "An artificial atmosphere has been created so EVA suit can be removed. Beyond the cavern, there are living quarters, a science lab, medical bay, you name it. There are enough rations in storage to sustain all of you for three months if the replicators go off-line. All of you can stay there quite comfortably until you decide where you're going next."
"What is that place?" Hydrat asked, pushing her too long brown bangs out of her eyes.
"It's a hiding place of mine. I haven't used it in years, but I know it'll still be there. In the entire system, there isn't a single resource left that is of interest to anyone. The previous inhabitants picked her clean before they died out. Other than for archaeologists, there is no appeal to the system. For obvious reasons, the chances anyone has stumbled across the Base are slim. You'll be safe there."
"You keep saying 'you,'" Redstone remarked, looking at him carefully, "why?"
"Because I won't be with you."
B'Elanna looked like someone had punched her in the midsection.
"There is something I have to do here before I can leave."
"Then do it now," the half-Klingon urged him.
"I can't. Not until everyone is gone."
"But then you'll come."
He stroked her cheek. "Then I'll be gone, yes."
She smiled slightly and his hand dropped as he looked at the others.
"The Argo is the biggest of all the available shuttles so-"
"The Montgomery is the biggest," Moi interjected in her superior tone.
"Yes, but at the moment it's in about fourteen pieces in Shuttle Bay Two as shuttle maintenance has it in mid-overhaul. The Argo is the next best thing *and* it has just finished being serviced so it should be in perfect condition. The Marcus will be the one sacrificed. It's never handled quite right anyway. It'll be no great loss."
"Why not just use some parts and blow them up?" the ever-practical Vavin asked. "Why blow an entire shuttle?"
"Two reasons. One, for safety's sake, until the time of detonation, the explosive is not a single compound. It is four harmless components that must be kept a very specific distance from one another. Too close and they will cause
a premature explosion. Too far and they'll never explode. It will all be timed so that point zero zero nine four seconds before the phaser beam will hit, a small charge will blow the components from their mounts and towards a central point where they'll explode."
"So what's that got to do with the shuttle?"
"The shuttle is an enclosed space. I can mount the components in precisely the correct locations. With scraps we'd have to take the time to phaserweld them together to hold them in place when they were launched. And I wouldn't have any control over their trajectory like I will with the Marcus. If the explosion didn't happen in exactly the right place at exactly the right time, the explosion could damage Voyager or the Argo."
Oliva's snort indicated his thoughts- probably the same ones that were going through Redstone, Moi, Hydrat, and Vavin's heads. Tom Paris, self-professed best-damned pilot in the Galaxy, telling them a maneuver was too difficult. Tom ignored it.
"The second reason a shuttle is better is because very careful records are kept of what supplies are on board. They'd know there wouldn't be enough room in the shuttle for all of you, your things, the supplies you're going to take with you, *and* some spare shuttle parts. Sacrificing a shuttle is the only way."
"Where'd you get this explosive?" Redstone inquired suspiciously in his best security officer voice.
"I don't have it yet. I'll replicate the components in a few minutes."
Hydrat's eyes bulged. "You're going to wander around Voyager with them?"
"It is dangerous only when all four of them are together. I'll replicate three of them, mount them on the Marcus then do the fourth."
"Where'd you get this... recipe anyway?" Redstone questioned.
"That's not important. What is important is it works."
"You've done this before?"