Title:   Colony
Author:  Jemima
Contact: jemimap@crosswinds.net
Series:  VOY
Part:	 2/20
Rating:	 PG
Codes:	 crew, J/C
Date:	 November 2000

Disclaimer:  Copyright has expired on the works of Alfred, Lord
	     Tennyson quoted herein.  Certain of the names below have
	     been trademarked by Paramount; be assured I am not
	     conducting trade with them.

*****

Part 2

*****

    When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;
    When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed: 


The Periti left as quickly as they'd come.  News trickled in slowly.
It was probably only a warning strike, Janeway was told by a
representative of the loose structure that passed for the government
of Leigus Fifteenth.  Rumor had it that almost every Leigan vessel in
the system had been incapacitated or destroyed by the cloaked Periti
attack force.  She hoped against hope that Voyager had escaped, but
the afterglow of antimatter weapons in the stratosphere, the meteor
shower which once had been a star fleet, and the despair in B'Elanna's
eyes made it difficult for her to believe her own ship had survived
the vicious onslaught.

Hope ebbed as the hours passed.  Janeway tapped her comm badge for the
hundredth time and heard the now familiar static of a contaminated
atmosphere.  "Don't bother, Captain," B'Elanna said wearily. "They
won't work again until the sky stops glowing, if ever."  Along with
the six crewmen from Voyager they'd managed to gather without benefit
of communicators, she, B'Elanna and a few Leigans were digging for
survivors in the rubble of the Chamber of Commerce.

The mindless labor gave her time to reflect on the events of the past
few months.  They'd been crossing Leigan space, stopping here and
there for shore leave, transporting supplies, taking on passengers,
making friends and generally letting their hair down.  For once the
Delta Quadrant had seemed like a friendly place.

Three weeks before, she'd been offered a commission in the Leigan
equivalent of Starfleet.  Voyager's weapons systems weren't as
powerful as the local armaments, but the Leigi respected her crew as
explorers and scientists and were willing to integrate Voyager into
the Leigus Union's fleet in that capacity.  Looking back on it, that
offer was the first rumor of war; at the time she was flattered, not
alarmed.

More precisely, Janeway had not been alarmed at the Leigi's offer
itself.  She'd been too busy being alarmed at her crew and
occasionally even herself.  More of the crew than she was willing to
admit had wanted to settle down in the Leigus Union.  She had seen it
written in their furtive glances and distant, dreaming eyes.  Chakotay
had estimated that a third of the crew was ready to desert on the
spot and the rest were daydreaming about it, except for Torres, the
Vulcans, the Borg and the two of them.  Or so he had thought.

She wasn't so sure which side she was on.  What did she want to go
home for, but to continue her career in Starfleet and maybe have a
chance at a private life?  Here in the Leigus Union she could have
both, and much more readily than in the Federation.  She'd spent some
time reading over the Code of Colonization, which would have regulated
her conduct as a Leigan starship captain, paying particular attention
to the extensive section on the right of cohabitation and the duty to
reproduce.  She wasn't very clear on Leigan mores, but it sounded like
fraternization was definitely one of them.

One morning on the bridge, a week ago, she'd had more difficulty than
usual suppressing her daydreams of garden tomatoes and red-haired,
tattooed children.  She'd found him smiling back at her, mocking her
reverie.

"What's on your mind?" he asked.

"Tomatoes," she answered, still distracted by her dreams.

He looked in her eyes - even the memory gave her chills - and she
turned away quickly, worried that too much was visible there.  Rightly
so, for he paused only a moment before saying, "They want to stop,
too."

"All of them? Even you?"

"I don't care if I never see the Alpha Quadrant again, but as for
stopping now - where you go I will go and where you stay I will stay."

She'd left herself wide open for that comment, and before she could
stuff him back in the uniform over it, he spoke again.  "But you're
right.  Not all of them want to stop, though most are thinking about
it.  Some are ambivalent.  A few have someone at home waiting."

"Sam, Tuvok..."

"Tuvok will bow to the needs of the many."  Ouch.  That cold,
calculating Maquis tone was back in his voice.  She took him for
granted, but she didn't really know him - or rather, she picked and
chose which parts to know and which to ignore.

"Then there are those who would want to stay, if they didn't have
other people to think about."

"Harry," she replied sharply, meaning 'not me.'  A year ago she
wouldn't have felt it necessary to clarify that.  

She recalled the gleam in his eye, and how she'd thought that the
Leigan Chakotay was going to be a lot more trouble than the Starfleet
one had been, trouble she was quite willing to take.  Now she looked
up at the glowing sky, regretting the trouble and pain she'd caused
him in their all-too-short trek across the Delta Quadrant.

*****

   And she turn'd--her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs--
   All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes-- 


Chakotay frowned at the rubble below, once a mid-sized city and the
Captain's last known location.  The shuttle's sensors were little
match for the radiation suffusing the atmosphere, but if they flew low
enough, they could distinguish human and Leigan lifesigns.  They had
found one ensign from Engineering and beamed several Leigans out of
collapsed buildings.  But the Commander had left Voyager in a slowly
decaying orbit, so he hadn't much time left to find the Captain and
B'Elanna.

The other three crewmembers in the shuttle didn't dare speak.  The
senior officer was in a mood only the Maquis and a few dead
Cardassians had seen before, and any sentient being would have known
enough to keep its mouth shut when Chakotay's eyes burned that way.
As he examined the sensor console, he also searched his memory for the
signs he'd missed.  He should have known this attack was coming.  He
berated himself for failing to see the clues that must have been there
somewhere, and for not inquiring more closely into the history and
politics of the region.

He had behaved like they were waltzing through Sector 001 rather than
traversing the ever-hostile Delta Quadrant, and now Kathryn had paid
the ultimate price for his lack of vigilance.  If he hadn't been
daydreaming about a life with her on one of the smaller islands of
Leigus Fifteenth...but it was no use rehashing his mistakes.  Now they
weren't settling down, they were stranded.  Judging from the condition
he'd left Voyager in, they weren't going anywhere soon.  If he didn't
find B'Elanna alive, and he didn't expect to, the ship would probably
never be spaceworthy again.  Carey was good, but he was no
miracle-worker.  Torres was the force that kept the engines going.  

In the back of his mind, the Maquis considered the best way to
cannibalize Voyager for parts, eyed the remains of the local
infrastructure, and counted the surviving populace.  He was already
making the preliminary plans for a guerrilla war against the Periti.
But time was running out; he needed to get back to his failing ship.

He was about to tell the pilot to turn about when the sensor console
beeped.  "Fifteen degrees to starboard, Ensign," he ordered instead.
When they were just under a kilometer away, he called a full halt and
beamed to the uneven surface with one member of his security detail.
Here in the center of the city, those buildings which had not yet
collapsed were in danger of doing so.  Buzzing them with a shuttle was
out of the question.

Tricorders were little use, so they followed the bearing the shuttle's
more powerful sensors had given them until they stumbled across the
blue and black of a Starfleet uniform jacket.  Chakotay rushed
forward, climbing up a hill of rubble to see a dusty group of Leigans
in shirtsleeves pulling at a bent girder.  He joined them, gripping
the smooth metal and examining the faces around him.  

He recognized a few crewmen in native dress.  "Not what you planned to
do on shore leave, Jones, is it?" the Commander asked.

A familiar Klingon growl filtered up to them from what had been the
basement of the building.  "Pull harder this time!"  With the two
extra pairs of hands, the beam finally moved.  "Hold on!  We almost
have him," B'Elanna called.  Faint dragging sounds were followed by a
new order, "Ease it back down before the ceiling falls in on us."

"Is there a way down?" Chakotay asked Jones.  The crewman indicated
the remains of a staircase.  The Commander picked up the medkit he'd
brought from the shuttle and climbed down.  Three figures in Starfleet
dress were gathered around a moaning Leigan.  His eyes were still
adjusting to the semidarkness when he saw a familiar gesture: a hand
pushed back a stray wisp of auburn hair.  The voice that belonged to
that hair asked for a piece of wood or plastic to use as a splint.
The fire in his eyes was replaced by another emotion; the Periti had
just gotten a reprieve.

She didn't see B'Elanna look up; she could no longer focus on the
broken limb she had been feeling gingerly - she only heard his voice
saying something about a medkit.  A figure leaned over her, handing
the kit to Crewman Mitchell, then crouched down beside her with his
hand on her shoulder and his arm across her back.  

"B'Elanna, you don't look so good," he said shakily.  He certainly
couldn't trust his voice to address the Captain.

"I need a sonic shower, that's all.  How are my engines?" she asked
nervously, wondering whether Chakotay had reached them in an escape
pod.  Mitchell wondered the same thing as he busied himself with the
bone knitter.

"They've seen better days."  He felt Kathryn relax slightly as he
said, "We need to get back to the ship soon."  B'Elanna nodded and
scrambled up the shattered stairway.

"I thought you were--" the Captain began to say, but he interrupted
her.

"I did too.  We'll have to walk back to the shuttle - can you make
it?"  There was dried blood on her knees - perhaps he meant that, or
maybe he was offering to leave her on the surface until she lost that
shell-shocked look.

"I'm all right now.  Give me a hand up."  She clung to his hand
afterward, asking "It's bad, isn't it?"

"We're still alive," he answered.

*****