by Alys Landale
Tom’s gaze then finally rested on B’Elanna’s form. Before, he had focused more on the two holding the weapons and only paid attention to the other pair for any sudden moves. Now his eyes focused on the dark-haired woman in the group. He had wondered if he had ever seen her before, so now it seemed he had his answer. She was even more beautiful in real life than she was in his dreams. But he couldn’t let that effect him now. He had to leave.
B’Elanna’s voice finally returned to her. “Tom,” she said.
He stared at her. “Sorry, I don’t know anyone by that name.”
Those in the group just seemed at a loss for words. Janeway then regained her voice. “What’s going on?” she asked incredulously. If this wasn’t Tom then who was it?
Sargon then took over for Paris. “What’s going on is you are about to die unless you leave right now.”
Chakotay’s anger was rising. “If you aren’t Paris then who the Hell are you?”
Tom was getting tired of this now. But before he could say anything, B’Elanna had cut him off again. “If that’s Tom, we have to get him to sickbay. We have to find out if it’s him or not.”
Paris shot her an exasperated look. “Listen, I’m not this...”
His thoughts were cut off as the ship rocked to its port side from a hit. Aria turned to Paris and Sargon.
Chakotay kept his eye on Paris. “Whoever you are, why are you firing on us?”
“It’s not my ship.” Tom ground out and then hit his communicator. “Meylin, report. What’s going on?”
“Sir, we’ve got an Imperial vessel firing on us out here.” she replied.
“Voyager’s shields are down now. Beam us back to the ship.” he said.
B’Elanna was about to protest that he had to stay, but she never had the chance as she watched the transporter beam engulf him and his two associates. What she didn’t realize was that the same transporter beam was surrounding herself the other three around her.
Paris materialized on the bridge of the Jihaid. To his surprise, so did four of Voyager’s crew as well. The four new occupants of his ship looked equally surprised by their new surroundings.
Tom turned to Danag. “What are they doing here?” he asked.
Danag feigned a smile. “Sorry, I didn’t have time to distinguish a lock on each of you. I had to do a sweep and they got caught in it.”
Tom nodded. He then turned to Meylin. “Get some security personnel to take them to the brig. I don’t have time to worry with them.” The ship rocked to its side as if to emphasize the truth of his statement.
Janeway stood in protest. “We’re not going anywhere until we get some answers. Where’s the captain of this ship? I want to talk with him.”
Paris sighed. Two guards appeared to take them away but the four struggled in protest. “Just leave them there but make sure they stay out of the way.” he told the guard. Then turning to Meylin he asked. “Do you have any idea who’s firing on us?”
“No sir, this appears to be a new ship.”
“Can we use a back door procedure on them?” asked Aria.
Danag jumped back in the conversation. “Negative. They have adapted their shielding to prevent it. Not even the captain could hack through this thing.”
Janeway’s ears pricked up when she heard mention of the captain. Were they talking about Captain Landis? The others around her seemed to wonder the same thing.
Danag looked back down to his console. “Sir, we’re being hailed.”
Tom shrugged. “Put them on. I’d like to know who’s trying to kill us today.” He walked over to the front of his bridge as the viewscreen was filled with the image of General Kail. Due to the Starfleet officers position in the back, they were invisible to Kail’s glare.
Paris opened the conversation. “Why General, it’s so nice to see you again. I see you’ve gotten a new ship since the last one I destroyed.” Tom was wearing a rueful grin as he said these words.
It proved to sway his former crewmates into believing this was indeed Tom Paris.
The General sneered at him. “Captain Landis, I have to admit I only came over here to confiscate Voyager, but you’re an added bonus.”
Janeway didn’t know which was more shocking. Their betrayal by the Empire or the fact that this man who looked so much like Tom was indeed Rune Landis.
Tom realized that he could probably milk this man for information so he began his chore. “You came after Voyager. By our last encounter, I would have figured the two of you to be allies.”
Kail looked at him in disgust. “The Empire needs no such allies. We aren’t weak such as yourself. They were merely resources to be used to our advantage. Their time of usefulness is gone now so both your ships are hereby property of the Empire.”
Tom couldn’t help but laugh. “Tell me General, how many times have you said that. Really, you should stop deluding yourself. It’s quite unbecoming for a leader to do.”
Kail let out a small roar and cut his communication with Paris. Tom’s face shifted to one of pure seriousness as he turned to Meylin. “Did you have enough time to do a scan of their ship?”
“Aye sir,” she replied. “I’ve sent all information directly to your console.”
Tom sat down in the Captain’s seat. Aria sat beside him and Sargon took his place at the Engineering console.
“Load two torpedoes and target their weapon’s array on my mark.”
He watched as the battle cruiser skulked by. When it began to charge weapons he ordered, “Now.”
Three shots erupted from the Jihaid and found their mark, not in the ship, but its shielding. Not one penetrated through. Tom however seemed unfazed by this.
“Now scan their shielding. Try and find their phase variance while their weaponry charges take most of their power.” he ordered.
Meylin did as ordered. “Their shielding is calibrated on a phase variance between 2.89 and 2.97.”
Tom nodded. “Remodulate weapons to that variance.” The other ship was about to fire. He turned to his pilot. “Evasive maneuvers.”
The ship spun on its heels and just barely missed the first three shots. The Imperial Cruiser’s fourth shot however was aimed at Voyager. Tom saw this before the torpedo was able to do any damage. “Plot an intercourse shot for that torpedo.” he ordered.
Janeway was amazed that he would try to protect her ship. By all his actions prior to now he had seemed to regard them with hostility, now he was saving them and the Empire preparing to destroy them.
Meylin was able to destroy the torpedo before it hit the other ship. But the Imperial Cruiser seemed to be targeting on Voyager again.
Paris turned to his console and began to reinstate Voyager’s shielding. Danag looked up from his console but said nothing.
The next of Kail’s fire was buffeted by Voyager’s shielding but Tom knew that wasn’t going to last for long.
“Put us between Kail and Voyager.” he ordered his pilot.
Meylin looked up incredulously. She rarely questioned her captain’s orders but now felt prompted to do so. “Sir,” she said. “We’ll be putting ourselves at risk if we do this.”
Paris waved a dismissive hand. “I know what I’m doing. You’re objection is noted, but I’m not going to let the Empire destroy a ship I crippled.”
Kail realized he wouldn’t be able to shoot through Landis’s shielding. For that reason he directed his shots at Voyager. He also knew Rune wouldn’t allow him to destroy this ship as well. He hadn’t been suckered into foretelling his information regarding Voyager for nothing. If Rune became sympathetic of the other ship, then perhaps he would put himself in position to take more hits than he would on normal circumstances.
His hypothesis was proving correct. Rune was moving his ship between him and Voyager. Now was his chance.
He turned to his Tacticians expert. “Ready our new weapons and fire on my mark.”
Tuvok was working furiously to get the weapons back online. Well, furiously for a Vul
can. His first logical conclusion was that the Jihaid was the only threat. When the Imperial vessel had shown up he had believed it would aid in their assistance. It had first opened fire on the Jihaid and then turned its aim on Voyager.
Now the Jihaid was their only protection from this friend-turned-foe. And to top it all off, Janeway, Chakotay, Kim, and Torres were now missing and supposedly aboard the other vessel.
He didn’t try to determine which one enemy to trust at the moment. Neither, in his mind, warranted any trust. He just set his mind on the problem of getting the controls back online.
The Jihaid took another hit but its shielding was still holding.
Paris walked over to Danag’s console. “Change our shielding modulation up three percent then target three torpedoes to this area of the Cruiser.” He ordered as he pointed to a segment of the ship.
Aria walked over to where he stood. He was pointing to the refuse bins of the enemy ship. “The waste storage compartments?” she asked.
He smiled. “You heard Kail. If what he said is true and he’s been tracking us all day then he hasn’t had time to dump any refuse yet. And that includes poleynetic waste.” Polyneurons were the driving force of most Imperial vessels. Although they were an extremely potent energy source, they proved to be quite unstable.
Another shot rocked the ship. “Fire.” he ordered. Meylin did as she was told. The newly calibrated torpedoes ripped through the other ship’s shielding and created a hole in its hull. Within moments, Poleynetic charged ions were flowing out of the ship and blanketing it in radioactivity.
Kail cursed under his breath. He wasn’t going to be destroyed now.
“Fire our weapons proto-type and get us out of here.” he barked out.
“Sir, Voyager’s shields can’t withstand the coming explosion. I’m recalibrating their shielding to match ours.” Danag told Rune. Paris wondered when it was that his crew had learned to read his mind so well.
One final shot emanated from the Imperial vessel before it began to turn away from battle. It impounded itself within the hull of the Jihaid and sent many of the crew falling to the floor. Tom, however, remained on his feet.
“Fire.” he ordered.
Another shot detonated the unstable neurons surrounding the cruiser. The force of the explosion managed to impale a serious amount of damage on the ship before it jumped to warp.
Now only the Jihaid and Voyager were left to bask in the glow of victory.
A battle had just been won, but now in its after math stood a new problem to be solved: what to do with the newly acquired guests aboard the Jihaid.
Tom turned to face the four behind him. They all wore similar expressions of disbelief and confusion. “Well, now we have to figure out what to do with you.” he told them.
Chakotay stepped toward Paris but was stopped by a guard. “What you’ll do is give us some answers.”
Paris cut him off. “You seem to have forgotten that this is ‘my’ ship and you are prisoners aboard it. You’ll do what you’re told until I determine what to do with you.” He addressed the guards. “Take them to my briefing room. I want to have a few words with them. I need to go to my quarters right now but I’ll be in there shortly. Meylin you have the bridge.”
B’Elanna was still struggling to comprehend what was going on around her. She had just found her lost love or some impostor posing as him and was now being deemed his prisoner. She was about to yell out in fury but Janeway stopped her. The captain put a hand on the younger woman’s arm. “Not now,” she whispered. B’Elanna relented, although reluctantly, and the four of them were escorted away.
Paris watched them leave. “So, Commander, what do you think?” he asked Aria.
“I think we may have just stumbled onto a few of your old friends,” she replied. “Either that or a very clever Imperial trick.”
He seemed to be thinking the same thing. “I don’t think the Empire would go to this amount of trouble to catch us. But I’m not going to underestimate them either. Keep an eye on them and we’ll decide later on what to do with them. But for now, I think you should come with me to my quarters.”
The two then left the bridge.
Seven reported to the bridge in record time. Tuvok had already informed her of the situation. Now he needed her expertise to get their systems back on line.
“Seven, I need you to reinstate our weapons array. Once we have successfully undone the damage to our computers we can attempt a rescue of Captain Janeway and the others.” Tuvok told her.
She nodded and proceeded about her work. Neither noticed the Ensign behind them. Her eyes grew wide as she heard the news. She had come to deliver a Padd and now left with a heavy load of news. The ensign left the bridge. Her first stop was the mess hall.
Neelix listened in fascination to what the Ensign was telling him. As she walked away to inform another group of the Captain’s disappearance, he pondered over the news he had just been given,
“Are they going to be alright.” came a small voice from behind him.
He hadn’t even realized that Naomi had been listening in on his conversation as well. He knelt down to the little child.
“I’m sure the captain and the others will be just fine. After all, remember when Seven got taken away by the Borg, we came back and rescued her didn’t we.” he told her.
“Yeah,” she said. “But when the captain, Tom, and B’Elanna went on that away mission, Tom didn’t come back.”
He was taken aback by her logic. *She’s such a smart girl* he told himself again. He further reassured her. “Naomi, I promise you we’ll do everything we can to make sure they get back safe.”
Paris opened the door to his cabin and prayed she was alright. That last hit had been fairly strong but Sargon had assured him that it hadn’t done much damage. He now walked further into his quarters with Aria in tow behind him.
“Xara,” he asked. “Squeaker, are you alright.”
The tip of her pink hair came up from behind her bed as she raised her head from the floor. She took one look and saw Aria and ran to greet her.
“I’m so glad you’re back.” she said as she hugged the older woman.
Aria smiled. She had spent a lot of time in Tom’s quarters and so had become closer to the little girl who lived with him. “I’m glad to be back too.” she told Xara. “Rune here tells me you missed me.”
Xara nodded.
Tom watched the two converse. He had become sort of a surrogate father to the younger girl, and Aria was in many ways like her mother. With a bit of reluctance, he came to interrupt the couple’s conversation.
“Well, Xara, I told you I’d bring her by first thing.” he said in reference to Aria.
She looked up at him. He was towering above her but soon knelt down so that they were on the same level. “I knew you would.” she told him. “You always keep your promises.”
He pulled the little girl onto his knee. “Well, I’m going to have to take Aria with me for a while. There’s some business we have to attend to. But we’ll be back as soon as possible, okay.”
“Okay, can I go and see Satira then. She wanted to show me something in sickbay today.” she asked.
He looked a bit reluctant. “Tell you what, why don’t you hang around the cabin for a little while right now. We’ve got some other peopled on the ship right now, but once their gone, you can go and see Satira all you like.”
She nodded in agreement.
Tom then turned to Aria. “Well, I think we’d better go. We don’t want our guests to get too impatient if we don’t show up. We’ll be back later,” he told Xara. “I’ll have Meylin come visit you if we get too held up.”
The older couple then exited the cabin. They had a new group to contend with.
B’Elanna tapped her fingers on the table again. She was getting impatient. The initial shock had finally worn off and now all she wanted was answers.
Harry looked at the half-Klingon next to him. She was ready to burst with imp
atience. He, himself, was also ready to find out what was going on. The room they sat in now offered little to divert his attention. They sat at a large oblong black table made of a substance he couldn’t name. The walls were bare except for one window and a large viewscreen taking up over half a wall.
He began to tap his fingers as well. Something had to happen soon.
Paris was just outside of his Conference room when Sargon approached him, followed by Meylin and Danag.
“I have the diagnostics of our damage in the fight. Little was damaged aside from a few fried terminals in one side of the ship. Nothing major, just a few secondary systems brought off-line. It shouldn’t take long to fix.” Sargon informed him.
“Good, now all we have to take care of is this little matter.” Tom said, referring to those behind the wall.
He opened the door and proceeded to the front of the table. Those out in the hall came in as well. He had always made it mandatory to have the input of those on his senior staff when making a decision of this kind.
Aria took a seat beside him and the others sat down as well. Janeway was the first to speak. “So are you prepared to give us an explanation?” She knew this man looked like Tom Paris but by what they had learned he wasn’t. After all, Tom died a year ago. How could this possibly be him?
Tom looked at her with disinterest. His face was a mask of casualness, yet his eyes and heart bore a professional, don’t-shit-with-me coat.
“Actually, I was hoping to hear what you have to say.” he said calmly.
B’Elanna’s patience broke at that moment. She rose out of her chair and began her tirade. “Who the Hell are you to tell us what to do? If you aren’t Tom Paris, I want to know just what gives you the right to impersonate him!”
She was breathing hard. All her anger was bubbling to the surface. Anger of not knowing, anger of not being able to do anything, and anger at this man’s nonchalantness.
He waited until she had calmed down. “For starters, I’m not impersonating anyone. And as for who I am, the name is Rune Landis if you didn’t catch it before. Now maybe you could tell me a few things. To begin, why have you sided with the Empire?”
