Title: Colony Author: Jemima Contact: jemimap@crosswinds.net Series: VOY Part: 7/20 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 7 ***** Can I but relive in sadness? I will turn that earlier page. Hide me from my deep emotion, O thou wondrous Mother-Age! The Captain was crammed into a Jeffries tube with her chief engineer, rewiring the deflector array by hand. As usual, she'd left someone else - Tuvok this time - to deal with the Leigi while she supervised repairs. For once, though, she wished she hadn't passed off her Leigi problem. B'Elanna was tired and snappish, and now the half-Klingon was asking personal questions about her and Chakotay. "I've grown accustomed to his face," Janeway answered reluctantly. If she'd had any coffee in the past month, she might have deflected the question a bit better than that, but without caffeine she couldn't work up a good glare. "Did you tell him that before you sent him on that mission?" Torres spit out the last word as though it were a Klingon expletive. "That 'mission' was his idea, and our only chance of getting out of this God-forsaken quadrant." "Did you tell him?" Janeway counted to ten, silently, reminding herself that B'Elanna was one of the few people on Voyager whom she could count on to focus on the goal of getting home rather than on the troubles of the Leigi. And the deflector array was not going to be fixed any quicker with her best engineer in the brig for insubordination. "I don't have to tell him; he knows." "I don't know. Why don't you tell me? It's too late to tell tales once you're on the Barge of the Dead." Janeway sighed. "I don't know either. Sometimes it's like he's my brother, and sometimes he's my right hand, inseparable from me and indispensable. Sometimes it seems like he's the captain of this ship and I'm only a figurehead, but other times he's just my prisoner, on the long journey to a Federation jail cell." "It's too late to make up your mind, on the Barge of the Dead." "I, for one, have no plans to sail on that ship for quite some time yet." "Me, neither," B'Elanna replied with a toothy grin. She admired the Captain's ability to fight destiny like a rabid p'tak, but her inner Klingon knew that the Fates could only be dodged for so long. Seven years was a good record, especially for a human, but she was only postponing the inevitable. The Captain didn't want to know what Torres was grinning to herself about, and in any event the engineer's expression quickly changed as she opened the next panel, revealing a block of blackened and melted isolinear chips. A torrent of Klingon oaths, interspersed with the phrases 'the Periti' and 'let Chakotay drive', failed to impress the fried circuitry. ***** Jenny had been the most enthusiastic member of the expedition; now Tom missed hearing her voice over the comm system. He hadn't been looking forward to a week in the Delta Flyer with Chakotay, but the senior officer had turned out to be pretty good company. When he wasn't sleeping in the back or plotting with Ayala, he told Tom stories of B'Elanna's exploits in the Maquis. The pilot had heard most of them before, but not from Chakotay's perspective. "Why Jenny?" Tom wondered. Chakotay turned towards him and he realized he had spoken the question aloud. "I mean, I know why I'm on this mission. I'm a good pilot, and I had loud arguments with B'Elanna over the Leigi, in public places. Ken was even more vocal, in his own way. Neelix wore his sympathy for them on his sleeve, where everyone had to look at it three times daily in the messhall. You and Ayala are good at this sort of thing, and Icheb is a medical necessity. But why did the Captain send Jenny?" "You're assuming it was the Captain's idea." "Isn't everything? Whether or not Jenny volunteered, I guess deep down I think Janeway was trying to get rid of us. I mean, why Neelix? He may be a good guy to have around in diplomatic situations, but the Leigi are already friendly. It's obvious he's only here so that he won't be there, on Voyager." "I chose the away team, Tom." It was gratifying, even after all these years, to see the surprise on Paris' face. ***** Iron-jointed, supple-sinew'd, they shall dive, and they shall run, Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun; The Leigi had salvaged one Periti cloaking device from the battle of Leigus Fifteenth. Unfortunately for Jenny, it had been installed in Shuttle Third, not Shuttle Second. Chakotay wouldn't risk it on a mere reconnaissance mission. Instead, the crew of Shuttle Second would do it the hard way - prod the Periti hornets' nest until something flew out to sting them. First, they swept by in a comet's orbit - merely brushing the edge of the solar system. The Periti did not respond. Ken had the pilot hang back for a few hours, then come in from another direction, passing through the cold outer reaches of the system, where Neptune and Pluto would have been, if this had been Sol and her familiar planets. Still, the Periti made no response. It was a good sign, Jenny thought; the Periti didn't feel they had the manpower - or rather, the non-humanoid-power - to chase down every passing ship. Then again, it was dangerous to speculate about the thought processes of non-humanoids, or so the Leigi said. Shuttle Second cut across what would have been the orbit of Jupiter, but on the far side of the sun from Leigus Prime. The Periti dispatched two ships, and the humanoids fled at warp speed. At the edge of the system, the Periti turned about and rejoined the blockade. They waited four hours this time before trying their luck again. Maquis operating procedure dictated much longer pauses, but the endangered Leigi couldn't spare the time to run their guerrilla war properly. Starting just beyond sensor range, they went to warp and came back out just out of weapons range. Pushing the impulse drive to its limit, they fled first and looked behind them afterwards. Jenny's eyes went wide at the sight of at least twelve Periti ships in pursuit, three of them bigger than Voyager, all of them bigger than Shuttle Second. "Cheer up, Jen - it's a good sign," Ken said. "They're easily drawn off. We can probably get through the blockade by--" Ken was interrupted by an explosion which rocked the ship. "Shields at 74%," Ken reported from the shuttle's tactical console. "That was one of their antimatter weapons - we can't go to warp until we're clear of the debris." By then, he didn't say, there would probably be more debris. Fortunately, the small shuttle was more maneuverable than the hulking Periti ships. Their Leigi pilot evaded antimatter torpedoes and - it all happened so quickly Jenny missed it - managed to dart between two of the smaller Periti ships, where one took out the other with phaser fire intended for Shuttle Second. "We're not here to destroy them," Ken reminded the pilot, "just to test their reflexes." "They're slow," he answered the Maquis, but obediently turned into a slingshot maneuver around the moon. Why are all pilots like that? Ken wondered. Suddenly, a lucky shot rocked the ship. "Shields are down. The impulse drive is down," Ken reported calmly. Jenny rushed to the back of the ship with one of the Leigi to attempt repairs. Dalby was glad she had something to distract her while he related the worst of the news. "We are caught in the moon's gravitational field - can we break out using the warp drive?" he asked the hotshot pilot. "I wouldn't normally recommend it, sir, but under the circumstances..." ***** They had barely engaged the warp drive when Ken's voice rang through Shuttle Second. "We've come out of warp! The warp core is off-line." He glanced at the sensor readouts, then shouted again, so that Jenny could hear him in the back, "Shut everything down!" His hands flew across the tactical console. Jenny crawled over pieces of the disassembled impulse drive to reach the front of the shuttle. "You've cut off life support." At that moment, Ken cut the lights as well, and the shuttle became unnaturally still. Ken began to whisper in broken Leigan. He must have taken the universal translator off-line as well, Jenny realized. She hadn't known he'd learned so much of the local language. After a short discussion with the three Leigi, he translated the gist into Standard for her. "The warp drive couldn't take the strain of breaking out of the moon's gravitational field. The warp field collapsed almost immediately - we barely cleared the outer planets. I didn't see the Periti on the sensors, so I assumed they went to warp behind us. If we run silent, we may be able to lose them entirely." "How long can we go without life support?" "Twenty minutes." *****