Chakotay lifted his head--and quickly pressed his face back into the dirt as four rounds of  flechettes zipped through the space where his head had been to splatter against the granite wall behind him, sending down a rain of stinging spall. That was close. He wouldn't do that again. He lay, panting, behind the meager protection of a stone barely wider than his shoulders and waited for his heart to stop roaring in his ears.Cautiously he racheted his chin down against his shoulder. To his right and slightly behind his position, he saw two pairs of black clad legs. He mentally labelled them Janeway and Tuvok, although he couldn't see their faces. The Captain and the Chief of Security had been ahead of him when they'd filed into the clearing.  Ever so slowly he turned his head without lifting it, gaining a mouthful of grit in the process. To his left were four more sets of legs and the  sprawled, bloodied body of Ensign Santiago. The security guard had been killed the moment the landing party had passed from the cover of the stone defile and entered the open space where they were suppose to meet the Farellen rebel leader.

Chakotay took a moment to appreciate the elegance of the ambush that the rebels had set.  Voyager's people were pinned down by a well-organized crossfire. The surrounding vertical granite walls of the col effectively cut off any possibility of retreat and the few scattered boulders in the clearing offered only the sparsest of cover.  It was brilliant set-up, one he might have admired had he not been the object of the ambush.

The sound of cursing reached him.  B'Elanna's invective was blistering and inventive, and, apparently, directed at her phaser.  Belatedly Chakotay drew his own and aimed it at a cluster of Farellen miltia soldiers peeping from behind a boulder at 11 o'clock.  He fired.  Nothing happened.  He checked the settings and tried again.  Nothing.  Shit.  That explained the cursing. He worked his hand under his chest to tap his communicator.  Nothing, not even a chirp of activation.  The nilobium, he realized.  There must be a vein of the ore near to the surface here and it was damping the operation of their E-M transtators.  A perfect trap--and it explained why the rebels were armed only with old fashioned mechanical weapons.  His admiration for the cleverness of their attackers rose another grudging notch at the same time a feeling of doom settled heavily in his stomach.  With no weapons, no communications and no retreat, it was just a matter of time until the Farellans picked them off one by one.  Chakotay wondered if the landing party would be able to hold out until sunset, which he judged to be about four, maybe five, hours away.  The shadows and the twilight would offer them a slightly better chance at escape, provided the rebels didn't have night vison enhancers.

From both sides, he heard the unhappy mutter of voices as his fellow crewmembers realized the gravity of the situation.  Then Janeway's clear voice called out to the rebels.  "We're here to meet with Lord Rahomon.  We are from the Federation ship, Voyager, in orbit around this planet."

Good, Chakotay thought.  Engage them in dialogue.  Find out what they want.  If the enemy was talking, then at least they weren't shooting.  It was Starfleet SOP--standard operating procedure--in all tactical situations like this.

A heavily accented voice answered Janeway. "We know who you are, Voyager.  And we do not wish to speak with you.  You have given aid to the illegal government of this planet which seeks our eradication. We are going to kill you as an example so that anyone who assists the government will have cause to reconsider the wisdom of his actions."  To emphasize his words, the speaker sent a burst of rapid gunfire putt-putt-putting and a noisy hail of metal projectiles clattered against the rock wall behind them.

Chakotay expected it all to end then, to hear the wordless cry of attack as the soldiers surged forward, to feel the icepick pain of metal puncturing his flesh, but, for reasons known only to the soldiers themselves, the attack didn't come. Perhaps slaughtering essentially unarmed strangers lacked sufficent glory; perhaps they only wished to torment their victims a bit longer before killing them. Chakotay didn't know and didn't particularly care so long as their hesitation allowed him a few more breaths.

The afternoon settled into an uneasy stand-off. The militia fired sporadically at the landing party, enough to keep them pinned in their positions behind the sparse shelter of the rocks. Janeway demanded to speak to Rahomon from time to time, but their attackers ignore her. Seven issued volleys of verbal taunts, designed to provoke the soldiers into some rash behavior. They ignored those too.

Chakotay resisted squirming as the sweat ran down his back and gathered along his hairline. He shifted a few stones with his feet, moving them so they were within his reach. He wasn't sure of what use the stones might be, but he felt better for having arranged them. He could hear Janeway and Tuvok whispering urgently together, planning, but, frustratingly, he was unable to make out any of the words. The day stretched on and on unbearably, a faint, cooling breeze providing the only relief.

Some two or three hours had passed,  as Chakotay judged by the lengthening of the shadows, when the rebels made their first charge. Six of them, fortified by chemical courage from the bottle they had been passing back forth, ran toward the landing party's position, yelling and brandishing their weapons. One broke toward the Captain's location, another toward him and the the remainder homed in on Seven and her scurrilous remarks.

Chakotay flung one of his carefully collected rocks into the soldier's onrushing face and held another solidly in his fist when he swung. The next moments passed in a swift jumble of thudding fists, pain, the muffled sounds of gunfire and shouting. His attacker retreated as a slew of metal slivers pocked the earth all around Chakotay. Chakotay eeled his way back to the protective lee of his rock and glanced right and left, surveying the aftermath of the attack.

Janeway held with one of the Farellan's projectile rifles which she'd wrested from her now unconscious assailant and was struggling in vain to make to make it fire. Tuvok lay gray-faced and bleeding next to her, his entire left arm shredded by a deadly stream of fletchettes fired during the attack. Chakotay marveled that the man was even conscious.

On his left, Seven lay calmly on her back examining her purloined weapon whose owner she had killed by throttling him with her bio-mechanical hand. Torres gushed blood from a ragged gash to her forehead but seemed otherwise unharmed. Beyond her, Sims and Erickson huddled together, also bloodied, though both signalled they were OK.

Seven finished her inspection of the weapon. "DNA identity lock," she shouted across the intervening meters to the Captain. Janeway cursed fervently while Seven solved her dilemma expediently by ripping the thumb off the deceased rebel who lay still draped across her legs like some gruesome afghan and pressing it against the rifle's stock. She rolled over and sighted along the barrel. The weapon fired a satisfyingly loud round that sent the milita soldiers diving under cover for the first time since their trap had been sprung.

Janeway found a way  to recode or override the weapon's lock. She fired, sending another flurry of projectiles slinging toward the militiamen. Chakotay took advantage of the momentary confusion in the enemy ranks to belly crawl over to Janeway's position. She reached out  as he neared and pulled him behind the meager safety of her cover. She fired off another burst then spared a sliver of her attention for her First Officer.

"Situation?" she demanded tersely.

He relayed information about each crewmember's condition and deployment. He reported every observation he'd made about the enemy's tactical arrangement  and wracked his brain for still more data. She nodded absently and fired three more rounds.

"Tuvok and I have a plan. He'll explain it."  Janeway inched forward to gain a better vantage for targetting and coincidentally signaling the end of the conversation.

Chakotay listened intently as the Vulcan spoke in low, breathy whisper.  "Tell Seven she will surrender her weapon to me. The Captain and I will provide covering fire while the rest of the party retreats back down the defile by which we originally entered. Captain Janeway and I will follow as soon as the last member of the landing party has evacuated the area.  Once the initial group has cleared the zone of communications interference, you will transport  immediately back to the ship and take charge of operations from there. You are not to wait until the secondary retreat party has exited the engagement before returning to Voyager. Is that clear, Commander?"

Chakotay clamped his jaw shut while he listened with a kind of an appalled fascination as Tuvok proposed suicide. The cover group had a next to non-existent chance of emerging alive from the firefight. Yet, what the Vulcan outlined had a logic and sensibility about it Chakotay couldn't deny. Tuvok and Janeway were farthest away from the egress and held the best position to offer defensive fire for a retreat back down the canyon. Tuvok, who was seriously wounded,  would only slow down those trying to escape. And finally, between them, Tuvok and Janeway held the highest marksmanship scores of any member of the landing party. Chakotay wanted to protest the order, argue some reason why it wouldn't work, but he couldn't. He didn't have a better plan, only some vague and sentimental notion that he shouldn't leave Kathryn to deal with this untenable situation.

"Is that clear, Commander?" Tuvok repeated, this time with an edge of irritation shading his voice.

"Crystal," Chakotay snapped back. He rolled onto his right elbow. This was a hell of time for last words and farewells, much less declarations of unrequited love, even without the supercilious Vulcan there to witness. He drew a breath and let it out again. He had nothing to say to her, here, now. Everything that needed saying should have been said a long time ago. Now it was too late. Instead, he asked, "Any final orders, Captain?"

Janeway spared him a brief glance, one he fancied had a bit softness to it, some regret or affection or other soft emotion, before she looked away. "Get them home, Chakotay. Get them home. That's all I ask. That, and always remember your first  duty is to the ship."  She fell silent for a moment. "Get ready," she warned, "I'm going to lay down cover so you can get to Seven." She began firing and he made the risky dash to where B'Elanna and the Borg hunched behind one of the larger boulders. He relayed the plan to them and returned to Janeway's position in short order, carrying the other rifle.

The light was failing fast, but there was still enough to blind anyone foolish enough to pull on their night vision goggles. It was time to put the plan to action. Janeway and Tuvok wriggled themselves into position. Janeway nodded 'Go' and began laying down heavy, sweeping fire.

Chakotay ran for the canyon's mouth, chivving the others to hurry. He had them all safely shepherded into the defile when he heard it--a cacaphony of weapons fire and Kathryn's scream. B'Elanna heard it too because she stopped and turned to confront him, drawing herself up as tall and as threateningly as she could manage in unconscious imitation of the Captain.

"Aren't you going to help her?" she demanded.

"No," he answered stonily. "And if you don't get moving, I'm going to knock you senseless and haul back to the ship over my shoulder."

For a long moment, Chakotay thought the Klingon was going to swing at him or try to shove her way past him, but all she did was look at him with her emotions pinwheeling across her face, first  disbelief, shifting rapidly to anger, disgust, and disappointment. She turned and stomped double-time down the trail, putting all three landing party members between her and him.

Chakotay forced himself forward and resisted looking back. He knew if looked back now, he would be lost like Lot's wife, frozen and unable to turn away. He had a greater duty now, an obligation to ship, so although he knew that he would never again know a single peaceful night, that years from now he would still wake with her scream echoing in his ears, Chakotay continued down the canyon.

There is a sequel to this story. Ghosts in the Rain