Pathways - Jeri Taylor [97]
It would be several days before the messages could wend their way from relay station to relay station and reach their destinations, and several days more before a reply could be expected. But five or six days wasn’t too long to wait to get the answers she sought. B’Elanna felt almost at peace. A reconciliation with her mother and a relationship with her father were tangible possibilities, well within her grasp.
She found her longing for Chakotay had abated somewhat, and she felt almost friendly toward Seska. She sensed a balance to her life that had always eluded her. She had several conversations with the Vulcan Tuvok, and found him as calming an influence as Setonak had been. She looked forward to knowing him.
Two days after she had sent her messages, the ship suddenly went to red alert and B’Elanna bolted from the crew’s mess to the bridge. Tuvok was there, and Chakotay. “Cardassian ship approaching,” Chakotay said, and she heard the tension in his voice. Scanning her own station, she saw that it was a Galor-class warship, the most heavily armed of all the Cardassian fleet.
They leapt to warp, but the warship was already within range. Phaser fire began pummeling them. Tuvok released a photon torpedo, which did them some damage, but they kept coming.
“We have to get back to the Badlands,” Chakotay said, just as a volley of fire ruptured a coolant conduit.
But the Badlands was not to be sanctuary for them that day. Amid the plasma storms, with which they were familiar, was another lurking anomaly, their first indication of which was a brilliant flash of light.
“What was that?” queried Chakotay.
“Curious. We’ve just passed through some kind of coherent tetryon beam,” replied Tuvok.
“Source?”
“Unknown. Now there appears to be a massive displacement wave moving toward us . . .”
They watched their monitors as a strange, foglike phenomenon swept toward them from behind. “At current speeds,” announced Tuvok, “it’s going to intercept us in less than thirty seconds.”
They tried to outrun it, but it swept relentlessly toward them, quickly overwhelming them in a light that dazzled, then blinded them.
And so it was that the Liberty was plucked from the Alpha and into the Delta Quadrant, where the crew was eventually thrown together with the crew of the Starship Voyager, and B’Elanna, in spite of all her efforts to avoid it, was reunited with Starfleet.
Almost immediately she was reminded of all she didn’t like about the institution. It manifested itself in the person of Captain Kathryn Janeway, who stood for all the lofty principles that Starfleet represented, but who made a decision that severely impacted every member of both crews: she destroyed the technology that brought them to this part of space, and which could have returned them home.
“Who is she to be making these decisions for all of us?” B’Elanna had erupted when she realized Janeway intended to destroy the Caretaker’s Array.
“She’s the captain,” said Chakotay simply, and B’Elanna had no choice except to watch as Voyager fired tricobalt devices that demolished the Array and thereby prevented the warlike Kazon from being able to invade the gentle Ocampa people.
And that meant that all the myriad loose ends of her life at home would be left dangling. She’d never be able to talk to her mother and father, never have her questions answered, never reconcile the conflicted feelings that lay within her. She was on a Starfleet ship surrounded by Starfleet personnel, butting right up against all the regulations and protocols and restrictions that had driven her from the Academy in the first place.
This was going to be a long, long journey.
CHAPTER
7
B’ELANNA LOOKED AROUND AT THE FACES OF HER FRIENDS, who were staring at her intently. “I hated her at first. I was furious because she’d cheated me of the life I thought I wanted.”
She was silent for a