Caretaker - L. A. Graf [1]
But Chakotay had known all that already. He'd known it from history tapes and museum exhibits--known that the tolerance and freedom he and his people enjoyed on their fertile colony world had not always existed. And he had been fiercely grateful to everyone who had fought to preserve this life for him.
Yet now, hundreds of thousands of miles away from the planet his ancestors had called home, Chakotay found himself allied with a band of proud colonists who wanted only to save their homes and families and ways of life, just like those Indians on long-ago Earth. No matter how just and necessary the Federation believed its treaty with the Cardassians--no matter how many times some admiral claimed they were sorry to abandon the border colonies to the uncertainties of life under Cardassian rule--Chakotay couldn't make himself believe this situation was any different than a hundred other stories where the dominant culture imposed its will on peoples who hadn't the power to turn back the tide.
He'd be damned if he let that happen again here. If nothing else, he owed it to his grandfathers.
Something shoved at the ship from behind, and Tuvok reported evenly, "Shields at fifty percent."
Damn. Chakotay twisted a look at Torres without lifting his hands from the controls. "I need more power."
"Okay..." She blinked, her thick brow ridge wrinkling as the fluid mind beneath her black mane darted through more engineering options than Chakotay even knew. "Okay," she said again, suddenly, "take the weapons off-line. We'll transfer all power to the engines."
Tuvok lifted his head with a politely arched eyebrow.
"Considering the circumstances, I'd question that proposal at this time."
"What does it matter?" Torres shot back acidly. "We're not making a dent in their shields anyway." She returned Chakotay's unhappy sigh with a battle stare that, even coming from a half-Klingon, could have melted pure deuterium. "You wanted `creative."" Not "wanted"--didn't have a choice. There really was a difference.
Chakotay turned back to his panels as another blast from the Cardassian ship burned into their shields. "Tuvok, shut down all the phaser banks." He flicked a hopeful look at Torres. "If you can give me another thirty seconds at full impulse, I'll get us into the Badlands."
The best of all possible options, and not a good one, at that.
"Phasers off-line," Tuvok reported. He sounded as unhappy as a Vulcan ever did.
"Throw the last photons at them," Chakotay told him, his mind already racing ahead in an effort to construct a preliminary course through the Badlands' plasma storm maze. "Then give me the power from the torpedo system. ..."
"Acknowledged." Tuvok primed the warheads with a flick of his hand.
"Firing photons."
A bark of percussive thunder, and the little ship jolted at every launch. The answering flash and rumble of the torpedoes slamming against those impenetrable Cardassian shields only encouraged Chakotay a little.
"Are you reading any plasma storms ahead?" he asked Tuvok.
"One," the Vulcan replied. "Coordinates one-seven-one mark four-three."
Chakotay nodded once, shortly. "That's where I'm going..."
The ship responded to his commands like a brain-dead mammoth--slowly, stumbling. We've got to get out of here, Chakotay thought, feeling weirdly as if that urgency had only just occurred to him. As they dropped down and starboard, a surge of unseen energy splashed against the ship like a careless wave. The absence of curses and alarms told him it hadn't been a Cardassian torpedo.
"Plasma storm density increasing by fourteen percent..."
Tuvok's dark eyes stayed riveted to his sensors. "... twenty...
twenty-five..."
Chakotay didn't need the Vulcan's recitation to feel the growing fury in the space distortion. It was just what he had