Disclaimers, ratings and warnings are in Part 1.
THE BADLANDERS
PART TWENTY ONE
"Look, Harry. I know what I did. I killed Jenny. I killed Torres. I engaged in unspeakable atrocities. It's not easy to live it down. It will never be easy. I don't think I will ever live it down. But right now, I need your help on this mission."
Nick looked from Tom to Harry, wondering when the ensign would make up his mind. He had been wary of Tom, but Tom looked finished. They had beaten the snot out of him. Besides, the man wanted to reform. Blood flowed thicker than water. He too had reformed and what do you know? It was Captain Janeway who engineered their change of hearts. In retrospect, it was not so unusual after all. Their own sister helping them on the straight and narrow. He still had nightmares about Joshua Albert and Tom would have nightmares about Jenny until he died. It was collateral damage in the reformation process.
"Harry, Harry, Harry," he cajoled, "we need your help."
"Now it's we," he grumbled angrily. He could understand Harry brooding on his anger. He had suffered great humiliation at Tom's hands.
"You could stay on the Neruk. We'll find someone else. Then again, you're the best man for the job. And Dickson here is our munitions expert."
"I've decided my home can wait. This is an important mission," Eldred Dickson added, the look he gave Harry suggesting that they would never be able to get the job done without an operations expert.
"Well…"
"There. Done. Harry, pack your bags."
"Hey, I haven't said anything yet."
"But you're going to," he told the ensign, placing his hand on Harry's shoulder. "Thanks, Harry."
Harry shook his head, looked bullish and then got into the shuttle. Minutes later they were cleared for take-off.
"Where are we going?"
"Utopia Planitia, Federation Headquarters, Starfleet Headquarters, Palings..."
"Tom! Are you crazy? Aren't you a wanted man? How are you going to get past security?"
"Harry, Harry, you're supposed to get us in," Tom replied.
"And do what?"
"You'll see."
"And that's where you come in," Tom explained. "But first, we're going to dock with the USS Audensberg."
"That's my ship!" Dickson declared. "They'll be glad to see me."
"Captain Mo'ayer Bon is the son of my father's closest friend."
Nick grimaced. He knew Tom, knew O. M. Paris, knew of Admiral Bon. Tom had built up many more contacts that he had, knew many more people. Nick sighed. His mother, a Starfleet doctor, kept him mostly out of the spotlight, if being O.M.P's son meant being in the spotlight. A very negative one at that. It didn't stop him from going off the rails. He had been on a damned good wicket at the Academy. Stupid Kolvoord Starburst.
"That's drawing the circle narrow," Nick said as he watched Tom maneuver the highly maneuverable Limpet away from Vulcan on its way to rendezvous with the USS Audensberg.
"Admiral Bon's son almost got ensnared by Daddy, Nick. And you know what that means."
It meant Admiral Bon and O. M. Paris were no longer friends.
"I know. Sorry, Tom."
"We were all victims," Tom said bitterly. Nick couldn't see his expression but if he became angry and bit his lip every time he felt bitter, that was probably how Tom looked too. They had the same mannerisms, according to Kim. Yeah, he knew how Tom looked right now.
"Okay, Tom, I've got the PADD. I'll download it to this sweet stolen Federation vid-com. What am I looking at?"
"Listen up, you guys," Tom started. "Here's the deal. Captain Janeway, uh...Kathryn, brought a small trunk with her on the Neruk. It's Chakotay's property. She found this PADD. It is the recorded moments of the explosion of Voyager."
"You fired at us," he and Harry spoke simultaneously.
"Yeah, that we did. But my guess is Chakotay wouldn't have taken the time to record the death of a starship for his amusement. There must have been something there. Something he saw and which, God help us, we might also see. Got the download ready?"
Nick worked quickly and soon he saw the images. He was piloting, doing a damn good job of it too. Maneuvering through a small nebula, approaching plasma turbulence loaded with debris from other wrecks, asteroids... He had been concentrating hard on keeping Voyager on an even keel.
Then suddenly, the appearance of the Limpet. Against Voyager the Limpet looked minuscule. Eldred Dickson was studying the footage with interest. Nick saw him frown.
"The Limpet fired into the plasma turbulence," he said reflectively.
"Meaning it didn't strike Voyager."
"No. Here," he pointed to a small cloud, "you can see where the phaser fire hit a piece of debris."
Nick nodded. At that point Voyager had not fired yet, but her shields were not raised.
Curious, as Tuvok and every Vulcan would have said.
"Voyager's shields aren't raised."
"They never were, Dickson."
"Tuvok tried to raise them but his console jammed at that moment," Harry said where he sat in the seat next to Tom.
"But only after the Liberty's phaser fire hit the turbulence. Tuvok had been trying desperately to get the shields up."
"And when he did, it was too late - "
"And Voyager exploded? Don't you think it a little strange?"
Of course it was strange.
Nick looked. He looked again. Couldn't keep his eyes off the screen. They really needed a holodeck simulation to do this properly and make an analysis of the explosion. His eyes popped. Then his ears buzzed. He wasn't going to mention anything more now but simply feed his own suspicions which, up until now, had never even been there. If he thought hard about it, tried to enact in his mind and create a scenario of his place on the bridge, Captain Janeway standing behind him, Cavit standing near the command chairs... He heard something. Harry shouted.
Goddammit!
Lie
to them, for now, Locarno. Lie to them. The truth is a swinger.
You know how to lie. Tell the truth afterwards...
"Yes, it's a little strange," he replied. "Maybe the asteroids and debris and the turbulence created a cascading effect."
"Could be," Tom said, sounding very sceptical.
Yet, the images before him produced nothing of the kind in his view. They couldn't see it because they were Voyager; they were under attack. But Chakotay, on the bridge of the Liberty and piloting, had a better picture. An overall view. And eyes like a hawk.
The moment the Liberty fired on Voyager, it hit Voyager on her starboard side. The ship had careened sharply to her left. Then, the first explosion that rocked the vessel's aft side, disabling the port nacelle. Rather, it was the nacelle that exploded... The crippled ship was a sitting duck, but under whose attack? It seemed sure as hell not the Liberty or the Limpet with her puny phaser bank. Did the shields create an aperture right where the explosion occurred? How was that possible?
"Nick!"
"Yeah, I'm on it," he replied irritably when Tom glanced backwards.
"Lieutenant," Eldred Dickson whispered, "am I right I thinking what I'm thinking here?"
Nick nodded, pressed fingers to his lips. Dickson acknowledge that he had to remain quiet while the others' attention was on the small viewscreen.
"Tom, what I'm seeing here can best be simulated in a holodeck…"
"That's why I've secured an invitation for us to join the Audensberg. Mo'ayer Bon has promised to keep our presence there circumspect, even yours, Dickson. You're supposed to be dead."
So
are we all…
"I know," Dickson replied. "My co-pilot died in the shuttle crash in the Badlands when we were trying to evade the Liberty. Well, let's just say I'm glad Torres isn't around anymore."
"Good for you, Dickson.," said Nick, signalling to him again to keep his eyes on the screen of the vid-com. Dickson nodded.
Nick pointed to the port nacelle, then pointed again to the starboard side where the Liberty's phaser hit Voyager.
It was unbelievable, he thought. Maybe a holodeck simulation may not be needed after all. How could the port nacelle explode after Voyager was hit on the starboard side close to the bow of her primary hull? And, it didn't just burst into flames. It exploded. He remembered hearing that sound, remembered pulling Voyager sharply to starboard again. Remembered hearing the second explosion. Remembered that the Liberty fired and hit their primary hull near the bridge only seconds after that explosion.
Nick felt his stomach heaving as a wave of nausea hit him. It was unbelievable. He hoped that he was wrong. He hoped that Voyager had been destroyed by the Liberty and not by… He gulped in air, swallowed hard. Dickson was looking strangely at him, not saying anything as he had been instructed.
"I believe," said Dickson, saving the moment, "that a holodeck simulation on the Audensberg would improve our chances of analysing Captain Chakotay's recording."
"As our munitions expert," Tom replied, "we will be docking at Utopia Planitia shipyards."
"Are you thinking that the ship's design may have been flawed? Could that be possible?" Harry asked.
"Not with Doctor Leah Brahms heading Engineering Design and Admiral Krog in charge of Armaments."
"You're saying there isn't a flaw, Tom?"
"I'm saying there isn't a flaw."
Nick considered it sensible to shut off the vid-com and sink himself into his own thoughts until they reached the Audensberg, several hours away. The extreme nausea had lessened to a lingering queasiness.
We were all supposed to be dead, he thought. What the hell was happening?
And then, Chakotay. Did he realise the same thing and therefore wanted to keep a record of the event? All of them had thought that Chakotay simply transported the ten survivors for their usefulness as trading bargains, to sell them into slavery. Chakotay - closed off, enigmatic, brooding, hardly ever talking of whatever thoughts plagued him or whatever was on his mind. Courtesy Paris during their own private conversations on route to Vulcan.
Closed off. One might think him a complete madman.
Chakotay was anything but.
He didn't want to think how Tom and Harry were going to react when they ran a simulation and confirmed his own theories. Hell, they weren't even theories. They were facts, evidence clear as daylight. Only, they had been so traumatised for days after being "rescued" that none of the survivors, including Kathryn Janeway had given it any thought. Her ship collapsed from under her feet and she thought the plasma storms, the phaser fire from the Liberty and the Limpet killed it in a cascading series of fires and smaller explosions until it erupted into one ball of flames.
It was easy to see why Chakotay simply let everyone believe that firing into the plasma storms ignited a series of explosions on Voyager. Kathryn believed that another vessel had been aft of starboard when the starboard nacelle exploded.
A photon torpedo programmed to set off seconds after the port nacelle also exploded. God in heaven!
He had been hit, burned badly and lost consciousness. He knew that Kathryn had been lying somewhere just behind him. Cavit had given a scream, and then was quiet, his body sliced in half by a flying bulkhead.
On the screen it was so clear to see.
So clear.
Did he fall asleep? It went quiet in the shuttle and remained so for some time. He woke with a start when Dickson shook him.
"We're in the shuttle bay of the USS Audensberg," he said proudly.
********
"Oh, God in heaven…" came Tom's exclamation after almost two hours of programming and running the simulation. .
They were in holodeck four where they had downloaded Chakotay's recording. Tom had set up the bridge of Voyager and they had placed themselves strategically, enacting the last minutes of the ship's existence.
Just as he had seen and concluded studying the recording on the vid-com about the time lapses between the Liberty and Limpet's phaser fire and the explosions of the nacelles and now, clearly, other areas of Voyager, they could see now during the holodeck simulation. Deck by deck the ship virtually folded. All ship's systems collapsed. They were sitting ducks, and the Liberty had only fired once or twice. It was possible for Voyager to blow the Liberty to space dust with one photon torpedo, but those heavy missiles were on self-destruct the minute phaser fire hit the bridge.
Not the ship. Self-destruct sequence could only be initiated and halted by the commanding officer of the vessel. By that time Kathryn Janeway was already lying unconscious on the bridge.
"There," said Dickson, "the Liberty's phaser fire hit Voyager here…" then, pointing to the primary hull, starboard side, "and the port nacelle explodes on impact, as it were."
"That can't be right," said Harry.
"Harry, you can programme the computers of a starship to do anything, right? Have you considered that the nacelles may have been programmed to explode once Voyager was hit anywhere? Or, in hell's damnation, just one photon torpedo? Those photons did self-destruct. Just look. Look!"
Nick grabbed Harry's arm and clucked impatiently. Harry, manacled and beaten into submission on the Liberty, still believed the world could be good.
"Not possible."
"I design and programme photon torpedoes, Nick," Dickson said, looking to him for support. "It's possible to set just one torpedo to activate and detonate on impact, once certain parameters for an explosion had been set."
"And then provide remote settings so that … Holy mother of God…"
"Here, the big explosion, precisely 0.036 sec after Chakotay transported ten of the ship's crew to the Liberty. Was that coincidence? Or was it intervention?" he asked.
"Sabotage…" Tom whispered. "Someone murdered a ship full of people..."
There was a stunned silence after he spoke, each mulling the implication and magnitude of what they had discovered.
"Then Chakotay didn't transport the survivors just because he needed to barter with them," Harry conceded unwillingly. "Or whore them on his ship."
There was a twinge of bitterness in Harry's voice. Nick could understand, but he found Chakotay's behaviour incongruous. He had them on his ship in his cargo bay and then he used them for his amusement. That was one Chakotay, or the evil version of Chakotay. The other had known, had seen what was happening and transported as many who were still alive from the stricken vessel.
"No, Harry," he sighed. "Not based on this evidence before us."
"He abused us, whored us, treated us like fucking shit," Harry said quietly, his eyes darkly unhappy.
"He saved our lives…"
"What kind of a paradox is that?"
"If we want to find out, we have to go to the source," Tom answered. Nick knew what he meant.
"Who is the source?" Harry asked. Nick wanted to laugh. One moment Harry fumed like hell and the next he was totally perplexed.
"Owen McKenzie Paris."
"Your father?"
"Aye."
**************
END PART TWENTY ONE