All Neelix saw was the blurred arch of something slashing toward him.
The razor edge tugged at his shoulder as he spun away.
In a sheer blind panic, Neelix ran right over the top of the beaked hominoid. The hall link was his only goal, his only hope, driving him right through Rep’s frantic jabs.
His mouth was open but he didn’t realize the high-pitched squeal that accompanied his flight across the lobby came from his own throat. As he skidded around the lift depot, one of the Enforcers called out, “Hey, you! No running in public spaces!”
Neelix dove for the open lift door, having barely the presence of mind to call back, “In a hurry! My mate’s waiting. Lovely time… I had a lovely—” The door slid shut in front of him, cutting him off.
Neelix collapsed against the wall. I can’t believe I did that!
But he’d spent so many hours lost and looking for the ship, and the hall link had been his only way back. He could still see the outrage in Rep’s eyes as he was bowled over, and the way his beak thrust forward as if to punch him in the chest.
Neelix felt around the back of his jacket, letting out a shaky sigh.
Just as he thought—it had been cut by Bladdyn’s knife.
He had known something was behind him, a native sense of everything around him that had saved his life before. This time, he was lucky he hadn’t tried to retreat. They had gotten that close to slicing him into bite-sized pieces, all because Paris had left him behind.
Just wait until he got hold of Paris.
Paris woke cramped and slightly nauseated. He tried to stretch and bumped into the walls.
“Blast!” he exclaimed, rubbing his hand. He’d hit it on an airlock handle.
He sat up. That was as far as he could go—the metal globe was barely three meters across, with an airlock hatch at either end.
The implications sent a surge of adrenaline through his body.
Instinctively, he struck the comm badge on his chest. It responded with an open channel.
“Voyager! This is Paris. Can you read me?”
He shifted to see out the tiny window in one side. His panting misted the lower half of the clear surface, but it was clear he was in a small blister on the outside of the Hub. His view was blocked by docking spires thrusting up from the hull.
“Lock on to my coordinates, and get me out of here!” Paris called frantically, keeping an eye on the outer airlock.
Bursts of static responded, unlike anything he’d ever heard over a comm badge.
He hit the badge again. “Voyager, this is Lieutenant Paris. Can you read me?”
Another stream of static was his only answer.
Paris smacked his fist against the wall next to the window. Even if the ship’s communications systems were functioning properly, the juxtaposing gravity bases in the Hub distorted subspace, preventing a clear signal from getting through.
He slumped down, leaning back against one of the curved walls.
His neck was throbbing, his eyes were burning, and those two airlocks were bothering him quite a bit. One obviously led back into the Hub and the other apparently opened into space. The hatch was too small for most common airlocks on ships, and he wasn’t able to see if there were grapples or any extensions for docking. Still, he tried to tell himself this could be a relay station, and he was being transferred someplace else off the Hub.
He’d heard about the Cartel “bonding” people to their jobs for certain periods of time. Usually it was to pay back training or work off debts, but from what Paris could tell, the large majority of Tutopans were bonded until they died.
He didn’t want to spend the prime of his life flying a supply ship-in the asteroid fields….
Actually, he wanted to believe that would be his fate, but he was basically trying to ignore the more obvious reason for his being here.
The automation of the outer airlock left little doubt in his mind. It looked like he was on a one-way trip to vacuum and instant decompression—the only way to die.
He’d gotten trapped once in a Tellarite life pod after the ancient freighter he was piloting on an “easy” one-way run suddenly developed spontaneous combustion of many of its necessary systems. It fell apart so fast Paris hardly had time to make it to the life pod, and he wasn’t sure that it wouldn’t suffer the same fate as the ship. It had taken two days before someone ambled out to find him. Apparently, the owner had been too busy collecting insurance money to bother with him.
Waiting for his rescue, Paris’s fear had plenty of time to disintegrate into philosophical musings on the futility of life, and then into screaming boredom. The first thing he’d done when he finally made it back to the planet was to find the owner of that worthless hunk of metal, and when the Tellarite tried to buy him off for his “trouble,” Paris had punched him in his hairy snout.
Paris almost smiled, shaking his head. He’d gotten out of that one, all right. He had even convinced the insurance company to pay for his way off planet. He remembered he’d taken passage to Malhalla, where he met that Palusion who’d been stuck on a communications relay station for over a year. And boy, was she ready for a real good time….
But that wasn’t helping him get out of this situation. He removed his comm badge, and turned it over to examine the back.
What if he could boost the power somehow? Maybe he could make a blip on Voyager’s sensors. By now Kim would have told them what had happened, and they must be looking for him.
He checked his pockets—he had a small fibroknife, and a couple of silver bar passes left. Not much in the way of tools, but it was a start. He quickly searched the cubicle for anything else he could use.
The inner hatch was smooth with a grooved seam, and he couldn’t even force his fibroknife into the crack. The outer hatch had both an automated locking system and a manual wheel, but he wasn’t ready to mess with that hatch. Not yet.
That was it, except for a tiny waste-processing system in the wall across from the window.
“Great,” Paris muttered. “Were you planning on keeping me here for a while?”
There were no spy-eyes or scanning devices that he could see, but that didn’t mean anything. They could probably hide an entire diagnostic array in the manual locking wheel. The shiny nub in the center would be perfect for recording opticals.
Paris leaned forward and spoke into it. “I hope you’re enjoying this, you sadistic butchers!”
He tried the communicator a few more times, but static was his only answer. Using his fibroknife, he pried off the outer casing. It wasn’t easy, until he figured out exactly where to apply pressure.
When the casing finally separated, he wondered why Academy survival training hadn’t told him there was a trick to it.
He stared down at the microprocessors and circuitry in his hands; an intricate maze of electron transfers etched into silicon slivers he could barely see. The communicator was so unassuming when it was on his uniform, its slight weight familiar and reassuring….
“Who am I kidding?” he sighed. If he was one of those legendary Starfleet heroes they told you about all the time in the Academy, he’d know exactly which circuits to reroute to turn the tiny thing into a beacon that would call the entire Federation across the galaxy to his rescue. But he wasn’t a hero, he was Tom Paris, and he’d have just as much luck performing heart surgery on himself.
When he tried to put the comm badge back together, it didn’t connect correctly. He had bent the casing getting it open. Now he when he tapped it, it couldn’t even access an open channel anymore. That must be why they didn’t teach cadets how to open their comm badges.
Paris tossed the pieces onto the floor and crossed his arms, brooding.
He had only wanted a little excitement, something interesting to do, he hadn’t intended for this to happen.
After a while, he realized he’d forgotten how truly awful it was to be stuck in a three-by-three cubicle with nothing to do. In the interests of making things as hard as he could for his captors, he could try to slit his own wrists with the fibroknife.
That might get their attention….
Instead, he decided that inflicting property damage would be less harmful to himself. He wedged the two halves of the comm badge into the waste-processing unit. Using the tip of the fibroknife, he opened the tiny subspace generator. All he needed was some water, and he’d short out the field. It might create sparks, and it might even affect the waste processor. Then again, nothing might happen.
“What the heck,” he said out loud. He started spitting at the comm badge.
The generator sputtered, and a thin line of blue smoke trickled up.
What do you know, it’s actually working. He wet his tongue and spit again. Maybe if he really got it wet…
Before he could adjust his position, the automatic lock on the outer hatch was triggered. He could hear the faint sound of locks releasing inside the frame.
Paris grabbed the manual wheel, trying to keep it from rotating.
It slipped, moving a few centimeters.
“No!” he cried out, hanging his entire weight from the wheel, trying to brace his feet against the wall.
The wheel turned, lifting him up as if he weighed nothing. As the pressure seals broke and the door cracked open, Paris cursed the fates that had brought him to this sorry place.
After everything, is this how it ends?!
Never one to turn his back on the inevitable, Paris let the door carry him with it as it swung open.
Expecting the blackness of space and instant oblivion, Paris blinked stupidly up into the faces of two Tutopans. “Spray him,” one of them said.
Paris cringed as the gas hit him, but a wave of relief almost made him laugh out loud. He had never blessed the sight of a plain white corridor more, and he could have kissed the two handlers, even as they roughly pried his fingers from the locking wheel.
Light-headed from the gas, Paris heard one of them say, “He did it too.
Did you hear him? He said something when he thought he was going to die.”
“Calling for help,” the other dismissed, getting a better grip on Paris’s sweaty arm. He was being dragged, face down.
“No, it’s more than that,” the first one insisted. “Most of them act like they’re angry, like they’ve been cheated. Like there’s something important they have to say before they die…”
The other guy let out a snort. “You better leave the psych-behavior to the experts. You and me, we tested out for hauling waste-cases like this one.”
Paris tried to lift his head, protesting their unnecessary roughness.
“Hold it, he’s awake!” one of them cried out, as they dropped Paris.
His neck burned even more, and the chemical taste of a sedative flooded his system. Everything blurred as he lost consciousness.
“He left me there!” Neelix wailed, as he slumped against the door of sickbay. He was a little disappointed that only Kes was there to see his dramatic entrance, but the concern in her beautiful eyes more than made up for the lack of audience.
She ran to help him, putting her shoulder under his arm and supporting him as he stumbled into sickbay. “What happened to you?”
Neelix let her guide him into the examining room. “I was brave, my dear, you would have been proud of me. But they were almost too much to handle alone.” He fell back on the table, rolling to his side to reveal the torn coverall at his shoulder. “How bad is it? You can tell me the truth, I can take it.”
Kes quickly sliced open the coverall. His handsomely patterned skin was marked by a thin slash that curved across the Keshy pad of his shoulder.
“This isn’t bad,” she murmured soothingly. “The one in the back didn’t even touch you.”
“It wasn’t for lack of trying, let me tell you.”
“Let me get a regenerator, and I’ll have you healed in no time.”
Neelix reared up, too indignant to be placated. “That idiot pilot left me there! With those two murderous thugs he cheated.
They attacked me! As if I had any part in his nefarious schemes…”
“Shush, my darling. There’s bad news.” She held the regenerator over his shoulder. “Paris was caught breaking into the Cartel computer, and the Enforcers have thrown him in jail.”
“Good! He deserves it.”
“Neelix! Don’t say that.” She fastened a reproachful gaze on him.
“Chakotay can’t even find out where they’re keeping him, and they’re planning to do some kind of terrible interrogation on him to get our transporter technology.”
Neelix rolled over on his stomach, grimacing at the soreness in his shoulder. “I don’t care. I was almost gutted by that big miner. It was pure luck I got away. He had arms the size of my thigh, I swear—” “Well, well, what do we have here?” Dr. Zimmerman asked as he entered the examining room. He sniffed delicately. “Kes, I think your patient needs a bath.”
Neelix wasn’t about to take any criticism from a computer program. Kes had explained it to him when he worried about her being around the man for days on end. “You wouldn’t know about space stations,” he said dismissively. “They aren’t the cleanest places in the galaxy.”
“Perhaps.” The doctor glanced at Neelix’s bare shoulder.
“That’s only a scratch. Clean it up and get him out of here.”
“I’m almost done,” Kes assured him, shaking her head at Neelix to be quiet.
The doctor examined the diagnostic reading for a moment. He entered a few notations, then turned back to Neelix. “Well, well, what do we have here?”
“You already asked me that,” Neelix said, giving him a sideways look.
“I did?” The doctor vaguely turned away. “Ah, yes, I did.
Carry on.”
The doctor wandered out of the examining room, muttering to himself.
“That’s one sick doctor,” Neelix said.
“I know. Ever since we administered the anesthetic, he’s been like this. He can’t keep track of anything.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“Only if he treats someone.”
“What about you?” Neelix sat up, putting his arm protectively around her. “It’s not safe for you to be in here alone with him.
There’s no telling what he could do.”
“Neelix, there’s nothing to worry about. The doctor would never hurt me.”