Disclaimer Hudson & Simms: © by the P/T Collective Voyager & crew & etc.: © by Paramount/Viacom the lyrics to ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head‘: © Burt Bacharach and Hal David the story: © by me! (That‘s Niels van Eekelen) =/\= Any comments? Please send them to: Nielsve@Hotmail.com That‘s my sister‘s email. She‘ll pass them on to me. =/\= "RAIN" =/\= #Raindrops keep falling on my head I‘m just like the guy whose feet are too big for his bed Nothing seems to fit Those raindrops are falling on my head They keep falling #So I just did me some talking to the sun And I said to him I didn‘t like the way he got things done Sleeping on the job Those raindrops are falling on my head They keep falling #But there‘s one thing I know The blues they send to meet me Won‘t defeat me It won‘t be long Till happiness steps up to greet me #Raindrops keep falling on my head But that doesn‘t mean my eyes will soon be turning red Crying‘s not for me ‚Cause, I‘m never gonna stop the rain by complaining Because I‘m free Nothing‘s worrying me #Raindrops keep falling on my head But that doesn‘t mean my eyes will soon be turning red Crying‘s not for me ‚Cause, I‘m never gonna stop the rain by complaining Because I‘m free Nothing‘s worrying me#   =/\= "RAIN, Part One" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 20 June 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to Robert Duncan McNeill and Roxann Dawson for playing Tom and B‘Elanna so well. (I know, it‘s been done before, but they do deserve it.) =/\= Back when I was still on the Exeter, I believed away missions were the worst thing that could possibly happen to a Starfleet officer. I was still green at the time. Hadn‘t learned the meaning of ‘cabin fever‘ yet, I suppose. Probably because I had lived so near the headquarters of perfect Starfleet for so long, I absolutely loved the idea of continuous life on a starship. ‘Perfect‘ Starfleet. That‘s what my father used to say. And I believed him. Now, I had had my ‘life on a starship‘ on Voyager for the past 19 or 20 months—longer than I had ever managed to stay on the Exeter—and I had changed my opinion about away missions drastically. Voyager was a fine ship, and some of the people on it were the best I had ever met, but the Delta quadrant was simply the place to get acquainted with the aforementioned cabin fever. Unless there was any flying to be done—about that: I was getting a bit possessive about Voyager. I just couldn‘t stand the idea of anyone else sitting a the Conn during any sort of situation. Sure, the other pilots were all competent, but I knew I was better. But, as I was saying, unless there was any flying to be done on Voyager, I volunteered for any away mission I could get my hands on. I got this one, and, once again, my opinion about away missions changed. Our objective was to find and, if possible, to apprehend pirate of the spaceways and apparently well-known merchant in illegal goods, Klefon G‘Ch Tarafa. Our location was the sixth planet of the Jeekar system, which Neelix had told us was only inhabited by a small colony of traders in practically everything that was tradable, and some things that he thought weren‘t. Which in turn meant filthy bars and filthier drinks: my kind of place. Knowing this, the away mission could have been a pleasant one, no matter how serious its reasons. What ruined it for me, however, was the simplest of things: the weather. The main city‘s spaceport, where I had landed our shuttle, was located well over two miles from the city‘s commercial center. The locals were very likely used to second-hand and third-grade ships, judging from what I‘d seen, so it was probably an understandable precaution. I just wished they could have done something about the rain. It was pouring, and before we were halfway to our destination, we were all soaked to the skin. There were six of us on the team altogether. There was me, of course, and there was Tuvok, two guys from Security, Hudson and Simms, and last but not least, the two ladies from engineering, Nicoletti and B‘Elanna Torres. It was weird. Before we‘d left Voyager, I‘d been planning to lure Sue to a romantic place in one of the bars, but once we were planetside, I kept finding myself thinking of getting the chief engineer in a similar situation. Heh. That would probably be rather unhealthy. Tuvok finally seemed to have found out that only one of the bars was really doing business that night—something I could have told him immediately. The other four were showing definite signs of beginning bankruptcy. Or maybe the crowd picked a different bar each night. Some people seemed to think that that meant they got to see a lot of variance. But, with only five bars? When the security chief wanted to open the door, I put a hand on his arm to hold him back on an impulse. "Tuvok," I said, "this might not be a good idea." Then he looked at me and pulled up one of those eyebrows of his. That was such an irritating habit! It drove me crazy. I continued: "I mean, wearing civvies is all very well, but there is not a single man—or woman—or whatever there is in there who is not going to take one look at you and yell ‘Military!‘ or at least ‘Cops!‘ Your demeanour practically screams it itself, and so do Simms‘ and Hudson‘s. Which means that if our friend is in there, he won‘t be staying." Tuvok looked at me without answering for a few seconds. That was another bad habit of his: he looked at people like he was certain they must have some ulterior motive, and that he was determined to find it. Usually he didn‘t, however. Like this time. I was just wiping off the latest in a long series of drops of water that gathered on the tip of my nose when he answered. "Then what do you suggest, lieutenant?" he asked. Well, that‘s what his words asked. His tone asked: ‘Why for the devil didn‘t you mention this any sooner?‘ I simply hadn‘t thought of it yet. Fortunately, I had a plan at the ready to calm the Vulcan down. "Let me go in alone. I have some experience in this kind of places. I can find out anything we need to know without being obvious about it. If Tarafa is here, I‘ll come and get the rest of you." "Unacceptable. I cannot let you enter a possibly dangerous situation alone," Tuvok replied. I‘d just known he was going to find something wrong with my idea. For a moment, I nearly let him go on and ruin the mission, but then I had another idea. "Then let Lt Torres come with me," I said, "the Maquis used to spend a lot of their down time in bars. I‘ve noticed Starfleet sort of discourages it with its employees." Again Tuvok looked at me, searching for that ulterior motive. I couldn‘t really blame him for it this time. I wasn‘t so sure about my motives for asking B‘Elanna to come, either. I couldn‘t make sense of myself at all. All right, I‘d always chased women wherever they could be found, and I‘ve always tried not to play favorites, but I never ever chased the women who made efforts to make clear that they were no prey to be chased. So why did I keep getting ideas about engineer Torres? Not that I had any ideas that had any chance of succeeding, of course. I was‘t exactly her kind of man. She liked them friendly and stable like a rock. Like Harry. Like Chakotay. If Harry hadn‘t introduced us to each other, and if he weren‘t mine as well as B‘Elanna‘s friend, she would probably avoid me as much as possible. Anyway, Tuvok ultimately agreed to my plan and took the others to another bar across the street to wait. B‘Elanna and I went inside. =/\= At this point, it might be useful if I tell a bit more of how we came to be on Jeekar VI, looking for a pirate. It all started six days ago, when one of our shuttlecrafts failed to report back to Voyager. When we went to investigate, we found that the shuttle had crashed on a rogue planetoid. Both crewmen had died instantly. What was almost as shocking to discover, however, was that someone had removed the transporter. Evidence indicated that it had been damaged in the crash, but, given time and the proper equipment, could be fixed. Once more, our Federation technology could shift the balance of power throughout the quadrant. Goodbye, Prime Directive. Then, when we were stuck with an away team still on the planetoid‘s surface, a small ship blasted off from the opposite side of the space rock and immediately went to warp. Warp eight, actually. It was a very fast ship. Without any sort of atmosphere to slow down his take-off, our new friend, who few doubted had the missing transporter, had quite a lead before we could pursue. Fortunately, we did catch a good image on our sensors, and two days later a passing Talaxian convoy identified the ship as the ‘Profit Runner‘, belonging to the infamous Klefon G‘Ch Tarafa. I thought the name of the ship sounded kind of Ferengi-like. Together, Chakotay, Tuvok and the captain decided with near certainty that Tarafa was heading for the Jeekar System, most likely to sell the transporter to the highest bidder. Don‘t ask me how they could be so sure. I never was much of a detective. Well, that was how I and B‘Elanna ended up in a louche bar on a rainy planet, waiting for some scrap of information about the whereabouts of a G‘Ch to slip our way, while the chief of security and three others were waiting for us to come out, and Voyager was hiding a quarter of a lightyear away, waiting for us all to return or send a message. =/\= end of part one =/\= "RAIN, Part Two" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 20 - 21 June 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to Rick Berman, Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor. Can you guess what for? =/\= I stepped into the bar one step behind Paris, and I was amazed at how well he fit in. Spread over dozens of tables sat what seemed like a nearly hundred customers. Each of them looked like they were doing their very best to become the new definition of either ‘villain‘, or ‘scum‘. And Paris fit right in. Now, I‘d be the first to admit that Paris is, in fact, scum, and a pig, but on his worst day on Voyager he was never as bad as the average... person... in that bar. When he had said so confidently that he could get the information we wanted, I‘d been a bit... sceptical. I didn‘t think the locals would tell outsiders much, if anything, but Paris no longer was one of the outsiders. All it took was one of his famed masks, and he fit right in. Outside, in the rain, we had fabricated a background, an explanation to why we were on Jeekar VI. Or rather, Paris‘d fabricated it. He had told me—with an absolutely straight face -- that we were the crew and co-owners of the merchant vessel ‘Golden Bird‘, currently sans cargo. He stressed that we carried strictly legal cargo only in a way that made me doubt it. The man was a liar to the core. Still, even qualities like that could come in handy, especially in the Delta quadrant. Once we got inside and had shaken the godsforsaken rain off of us as well as we could manage—which wasn‘t very well: I felt like I had just climbed out of a big, cold lake— Paris ordered us something to drink. ‘Something‘ being the operative word. It might have been the house special, but I wouldn‘t have drunk something that smelled like what was in my mug if my life depended on it. I held onto my mug for show, though. Paris darted from table to table, dropping in on conversations with an attitude saying ‘if you want to know what really happened, you ought to be listening to me‘. He got some suspicious glances, but in a place like this those might as well have been casual greetings. I, as our ‘vessel‘s‘ engineer, hung back while my pilot was fishing for fresh contracts. At this point, I was starting to feel a bit useless. Well, I suppose I should have known I would be from the start. Paris had wanted to go alone, after all. He‘d only let me tag along to get Tuvok off his back. And I couldn‘t blame him for it, either. His plan could work. I did most definitely not want to see what would have happened if Tuvok had marched into this place, ‘authority‘ written all over his face. There probably were a few people in here who didn‘t have a phaser or a disruptor with them, but not very many. Not that we didn‘t bring any ourselves. Still, I wished Paris would think a bit different about me. If I hadn‘t been Harry‘s friend, just like him, I doubt if he would even remember my name. Well, we did meet at the senior staff meeting every morning, so he probably would remember my name, but little else about me. I appreciated not being chased like he did all the other women on Voyager. I did not appreciate apparently being considered as not worth chasing. Weird. Weird was the word that came to mind in this situation. If Paris made any move on me, I would break the pig‘s nose, and yet, I wanted him to do it anyway. I started to watch the crowd for any signs of sudden violent behaviour, which didn‘t at all seem unlikely to occur. I stood guard, if you like. At least I was doing something. From time to time my attention would suddenly be drawn back to one of Paris‘ conversations, when he mentioned Klefon Tarafa. Casually, of course. Like he did everything. I wondered when and where Paris had gotten his experience with this kind of people. Certainly not in his youth, in San Francisco, Earth. I decided it must have been in the time after Caldik Prime and before he joined the Maquis. It was a period of several months, and as far I knew, he never talked of it. I could simply have asked Harry what he could tell me about it—if anyone aside from Paris himself knew, it would be him—but he would have asked why I wanted to know, and I would have had no idea what to answer to that. One of those times when the pirate was mentioned, perhaps an hour after we came in, I saw a man standing behind Paris, reaching into Paris‘ pocket. A pickpocket. At first I thought it was just a boy, because of his limited hight, but when I noticed his short, black beard, I decided that his hight must have been a characteristic of his species. He had hair, and he didn‘t have the ears, but for the rest, he looked pretty much like a Ferengi—one about to pull off the scam of his life. Any form of leniency would have looked seriously out of place in the bar, and I wasn‘t in the mood to be lenient anyway, so I took a firm grip on the bastard‘s arm, and threw him across three or four tables. Some of the scum sitting at them reacted fast enough to save their drinks. Most didn‘t. One guy didn‘t even look up from where his head was resting on the table when an entire mug of the so-called house special spilled over him. Long before the bruised pickpocket managed to get to his feet and run for the door, a dead silence had fallen over the crowd. Everyone of the filth was looking at me. For a moment, I was afraid that I had personally started the brawl I had been worried about, but—thank the sword of Kahless—one of them started to laugh, and soon the rest started cheering me—cheering! They must have been even more drunk than I‘d thought before. Paris was shocked—I‘m not sure if it was because of what I had done or because of the filth‘s reaction—but he covered it with a grin. "Thanks," he said, "that fellow was smooth. Didn‘t notice him at all." Then, without another word, he turned back and tried to get his newest friends at the table where he was sitting to talk some more. The scene with the pickpocket had some less than pleasant results. Better than the large-scale fight I had been worried about, but still. Before, I had hung back in the shadows and in return, the bar‘s customers had generally ignored me. Now, however, at any specific moment there would always be at least one pair of eyes directed at me. In those people‘s jobs, it was unhealthy to ignore anyone who could fight. The looks made me distinctly uncomfortable. A little while later, Paris pulled me into a quiet corner by my arm—relatively quiet, that is. "What have you found out?" I asked him. "Our friend with the transporter is on this planet," came his whispered reply, "he‘s not here, though. He‘s at some sort of secret market elsewhere, and he‘s already organized an auction for his loot. That‘s not so bad, though, ‚cause I can tell around that the Golden Bird is interested in making an offer, and maybe get someone to take us there. Now, I need you to go to Tuvok, tell him everything and get his permission for the two of us to go the that market. We can‘t bring the rest, I‘m afraid." Because of the proximity of his two large blue diamond eyes and his hand lying on my bare arm, it took me a moment to realize what Paris meant. "What!" I yelled—though I managed to do it softly—"Paris, there‘s no way I‘m gonna leave you here alone!" Tuvok would skin me alive, Vulcan or no Vulcan. "No choice," Paris answered, "B‘Elanna, our deadline ran out fifteen minutes ago. If one of us doesn‘t report back to Tuvok, he‘ll come charging in here, and ruin everything. And I have to keep these people talking, now that they‘ve started, or we won‘t get the information we need either." Someting in his voice or face made me feel like he was trying to get rid of me, but, unfortunately, his reasoning was sound. So I said: "All right, Paris. But I‘ll be back as soon as I can." "You really can‘t bear being away from me for long, can you?" he quipped, with a twinkle in his eyes. The pig. He was very lucky that I chose to stalk out of the door instead of biting his head of. Kahless! I did not mean that the way Klingon women normally mean biting! At the door, I turned back one last time, to find that Paris was still looking at me. When our eyes met, he quickly looked away. So did I, and I stepped outside, in the pouring rain, once more. =/\= end of part two =/\= "RAIN, Part Three" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 21 June 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to Voyager‘s most annoying crewmember, Vorik, for being the catalyst of the events in ‘Blood Fever‘. You did well, Vorik. Now get killed. =/\= Now why did I look away like that when mine and B‘Elanna‘s eyes met? I wasn‘t sure, but I‘d felt like I was guilty of some sort of hideous crime. I decided it could wait. Preferably a long time. This was a business trip, not pleasure, or whatever. I was glad that B‘Elanna had left when she did. She‘d attracted way too much attention, and not just from the locals. For the first hour or so, I‘d been perfectly all right. I was doing business, nothing more, nothing less. Then B‘Elanna had saved my credits from that sneaky pickpocket, and caught my attention, and I couldn‘t help but look back at her a few times every minute. The woman was like hell on my nerves. I kept seeing an image of myself being thrown halfway across the room, and kept thinking that that was exactly what would happen if I tried to ask her for a date. The whole situation made the business at hand extremely hard to concentrate on. I stared at the rain falling down by the bucketload behind the windows for a moment before I returned to my new associates at the table. My thoughts were racing. If B‘Elanna could get us Tuvok‘s permission for the two of us to go on a business trip, there was a good chance we could either recover or destroy the lost transporter before anyone got the chance to copy its technology. I‘d have to concentrate on that. If, however, Grumpy refused to let us go, I had no idea what to do next. I pulled back a chair and sat down with Fegool, Tk‘shda and Wystria again. "Well, gentlemen—and lady—where were we?" I started. "You were just about to tell us what you sent your woman to do, Paris," said Wystria. She was an amazingly pretty woman, and from the looks she gave me, she seemed to like her men tall and blond. Pity she was a professional killer. Ah, well, I was here on business anyway. B‘Elanna would have hated Wystria. "My engineer, Wystria. Not my woman. If you told her that, you‘d be in deep trouble. I understand there aren‘t any hospitals on this miserable planet." Fegool and Tk‘shda laughed wildly, both in the manner of their own species, but I think Wystria took my jest as an insult to her professional honor. "Tell me what she‘s doing, Paris," she ordered curtly. "Easy. She‘s just checking what tradables we can get together from our belongings on the Golden Bird. Wouldn‘t want to offer Tarafa any more than we have, would we? I think he‘ll prefer cash to long term payments." Fegool laughed again. He was getting a bit drunk. Though I have to admit, he wasn‘t the only one. I‘d only had two of what they called drinks in this place, but I was getting a trifle tipsy. It was strong stuff, and synthehol was all very well, but it did tend to destroy your tolerance for the real deal. I‘d have to be careful. Then, suddenly, a man, or possibly a member of a sexless species jumped up from his/its stool at the bar and tried to vaporise another one of its species. It missed and hit the wall instead. The wall was scorched, but it held—thank god: otherwise the rain would have been blown inside. The creature at which the blast had been aimed responded quickly, and a second later the one who had shot first got a taste of its own medicine. To this all, I reacted instinctively. Before the second shot was ever fired, I was back on my feet, my phaser drawn from where I had had it hidden beneath my clothes. Stupid action. For two reasons. One: my phaser, being Federation, wasn‘t exactly standard design, and there was no way to know if anyone in the bar could identify it as the same technology as Tarafa‘s transporter. Two: from the way the crowd had reacted to B‘Elanna‘s handling of the pickpocket, I should have known that the people here had a policy of not interfering with each other‘s messes. Oh, there was even a number three: I‘d just sent my backup away. A number of people grabbed me from behind and pulled me down onto the ground before I could break their policy. It hit me as being a bit ironic that these people wouldn‘t interfere with anything, except for interfering itself. I suppose I could have resisted, but I knew very well that I couldn‘t take them all out, and if I shot anybody, it was likely that I wouldn‘t be able to talk my way out of it, either. A Klingon would have called it the coward‘s way out, but I prefered to call it the politician‘s. It was surprising what you could accomplish with the criminal element of society by using politics. I had been using the politics used inside of Starfleet Headquarters almost since I‘d walked in, with good results so far. After all, what difference is there between criminals and politicians? When some four people were holding me down on the ground, one man hit me on my right temple and I saw stars dancing in front of my eyes. I would have resisted then, but it was too late. Fortunately, beating me wasn‘t the intention of the others, so they pushed that guy away. Then Tk‘shda appeared and kneeled down at my side. "We don‘t shit with other people‘s business on Jeekar VI, Paris," he said, "there‘s even a law against it. One of our very few." I would have expected a lot of grins in the crowd at that, but apparently these people took their own laws very seriously. "I‘m sorry," I responded, "didn‘t know that, but I‘ll try to keep my reflexes in check from now on." I tried my best sheepish grin. "All right then," said Tk‘shda, returning my grin, "you are new here, after all." He gestured to the others to let me go. He liked me, I could tell. I must have acted like his favorite kind of bastard. Lucky me. "Just a minute," came Wystria‘s voice. She was standing behind where my feet lay, studying my phaser. Damned! Wystria knew—or thought she knew—every single kind of weapon used in the sector. That was what she told me again now. "... And I have never seen any phaser like this. Where‘d you get it?" I wished I‘d made up some story about the phaser in advance, too. Now, I‘d have to make it up on the go. Apparently, the rest of the assorted outlaws didn‘t think my phaser was all that important—it was, after all, my business, and Wystria shouldn‘t ‘interfere‘—so they let go of me. I worked my way up to a sitting position, trying not to wince. My head hurt. Then I looked up at Wystria again. "It‘s not on the market," I explained, "the people who made it don‘t believe in export." Well, that was certainly true, considering the almighty Prime Directive. "Then how did you come by it?" Wystria demanded. "We had a... a special arrangement." Wystria laughed. "I thought you said that you of the Golden Bird were only involved in stricly legal business.?" I shrugged. "We are," I answered, "they shot at me, so we confiscated their weapons. It‘s only fair, don‘t you think?" I made sure that my straight face was decidedly imperfect. I wouldn‘t want those people to know that I was actually good at lying, now, would I? It might have made them think. "And why were they shooting at you?" She tossed the phaser in my lap and I put it away again. I wished very fervently that the woman would stop asking questions. I was starting to run out of ideas. "Don‘t ask me," I tried, "they‘re a very strange people. Now, why don‘t you give me a hand in getting up. Yes. Thank you, my lady." I sat down hard, in my chair this time, not on the floor. I didn‘t have to act feeling bad. The combination of the drinks and the blow to my head were giving me one hell of a headache. "My pleasure, Blondy." Oh, god! Why did she have to call me ‘Blondy‘? Over the years, I‘d been called a lot of names, and most of them, I didn‘t care one way or another, but Blondy? My god, how I hated that name. "Mectaal!" Wystria called to the bar‘s owner, "Get this pretty boy here some ice!" That was positively the best idea I‘d heard in hours. It even made me forgive her the ‘Blondy‘. Wystria sat down beside me and smiled at me. "You‘re quite fast," she complimented me. I thought that perhaps I shouldn‘t have told her that B‘Elanna wasn‘t ‘my woman‘, as she‘d believed. Then again, she was pretty. "Thanks," I said hesitantly, "it‘s sort of necessary to survive. Thank you," I said to Mectaal, when he handed me the ice, and I pressed it to my temple. It had already started to swell. On the other side of the table, Tk‘shda cleared his throat. Fegool had laid his head on his arms and had fallen asleep. "Let‘s get back to business, shall we," Tk‘shda spoke, "You wanted transport to the Market?" "If Torres can get to our spare money, yes. Else I don‘t think it‘s worth trying a bid for Tarafa‘s device." "Well," Tk‘shda said, "if you do get to your money, I think I can get you a ride." Bingo. =/\= end of part three =/\= "RAIN, Part Four" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 21 - 22 June 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to the unidentified person who first invented ‘fanfiction‘. It‘s one of the best things to come around since the invention of the wheel. =/\= Needless to say, Tuvok wasn‘t happy. And I don‘t mean that he didn‘t have any emotions. He was decidedly unhappy about the fact that I had left Paris in the bar by himself. Simply crossing the street—even running—had soaked me to the skin again, just when I‘d been starting to get dry, so I wasn‘t in too joyous a mood either. Fortunately for the both of us, Sue Nicoletti intervened before I could yell at Tuvok. I suppose the past two years in Engineering must have taught her a lot about dealing with angry superior officers. After Sue had managed to calm us down, we started to discuss our options. It was obvious that we wouldn‘t be able to do a thing unless Paris could get the coordinates of this secret market, but the opinions of what we should do if he did varied widely. Tuvok was still in favor of marching in and demanding the return of our equipment, and Simms and Hudson, as security officers, deferred to him. I believed that we ought to go along with Paris‘ plan, or at least some version of it. I honestly didn‘t know why Tuvok couldn‘t see it. He‘d been with the Maquis for a time, too. The Maquis were nowhere as rowdy as these people, and even with them a show of force would have worked adversely. I was offering Tuvok a series of different versions to execute Paris‘ plans, when Sue spoke up for the second time. "Excuse me, lieutenants, but can I say something?" Tuvok nodded at her. "From what I understand, Lt Paris isn‘t very likely to get this ‘market‘s‘ location, but rather transportation for two to the site. We won‘t have much choice of what to do then, will we?" I felt so stupid! That was exactly what Paris had said, and Tuvok and I were arguing about something that wasn‘t even going to happen! "Indeed," Tuvok stated. He didn‘t even have the honesty to look embarrassed. I was sure I did. "I still do not agree with Mr Paris‘ plan of action, yet it appears that we have no other choice than to follow it." He continued to give me the obvious instructions about how to locate the transporter and what to do when we did. I hoped we would be able to contact the rest of the away team and handle the situation by the book, but I suspected that Paris and I might have to adapt the plan as we went along. As long as we could contact Tuvok and the others when we needed a beam-out, we would simply have to do what we had to do. Tuvok and his team would keep an eye on Paris and me, and when we left for the secret market, probably somewhere in the following morning, they would take the shuttlecraft into low orbit and monitor us, ready to beam us out, or to beam down to come and get the transporter. Then I took some stuff we might need from what we had brought with us from the shuttle, and returned to the other bar. I was getting very tired of being soaked each time I so much as crossed the street, and I vowed that the next one to go outside would be Paris. Of course, by that time the rain would most likely have stopped altogether, but it still was a nice thought. When I re-entered the bar, it took me a moment to find Paris. Then I saw him. He was no longer talking to his new friends, but instead was sitting at the bar, apparently lost in thought. I walked over to him. I hoped this meant the deal had been closed, not that Paris had given up for some reason. "Hey, Paris," I said, when I was standing right next to him and he didn‘t seem to notice me. He started, blinked and looked at me. I nearly dropped my bags. "Kahless!" I called, "what happened to your face?" The entire right side of his forehead and his right eye were colored purple, and were swollen. "Oh," Paris said, reaching a hand towards the bruises, as if he‘d forgotten they were there. "That‘s nothing. My own fault. A guy hit me. But I got us passage to the Market. Will Tuvok let us go?" "Yes, but—" "Good. I‘ve rented us rooms for the night. Let‘s go upstairs, it‘s a bit more private there." Then he noticed the bags I was carrying. "Let me take that," he said. I handed him one of the bags and followed him to the stairs. He had quite some explaining to do. The rooms Paris had gotten us were on the second floor. They were two separate rooms, connected by a door. Before I went to get the explanations, I changed into some dry clothes. What could have happened to Paris? I wondered. He hadn‘t appeared to be really injured, aside from the swelling, but I still wanted to run a medical tricorder over him. I should never have left Paris alone in the bar. Whatever had caused this could undoubtedly have caused something much worse. I wasn‘t sure if I should be angry at Paris for sending me to Tuvok, be angry at myself for going, or be worried about Paris. When I went to Paris‘ room, he was half-lying on the armchair, nursing a drink. I hoped he was smart enough not to get drunk while on a mission. Well, at least it wasn‘t the same stuff as we‘d had downstairs. Without saying a word, I stalked over to him, put a hand on his head to hold it still, and pointed my tricorder at him. It wasn‘t an official medical tricorder, but it could handle a few simple scans. "B‘Elanna!" Paris objected, "I‘ll be *all right*." "Maybe," I replied "-- if you have a really good explanation for this. Then you‘ll be fine." He snorted in response. Still, his explanation was good enough, I suppose. He said he should have known not to do what he did, but I wouldn‘t know how. And once he‘d gotten into the situation, he‘d certainly handled it better than I would have. Not that I was about to to tell him that, of course. His only real mistake had been to send me away. Fortunately, he had some good news as well. A new acquaintance of his, an alien called Tk‘shda, was going to the Market, and was prepared to take the two of us with him, along with some other people, including a woman called Wystria, whom Paris had also met. We would leave the following morning—as Tuvok had anticipated—in a skimmer. Apparently, no spacecraft were allowed to enter the Market. With just a little luck, we would be able to locate the stolen transporter before the end of the day. Paris disagreed with my optimism. He thought it was possible, but he also noted that this Market was obviously not just a simple pirate and smuggler get-together, as we‘d thought before, but seemed more like something along the lines of an organized black market. Neither of us thought they would have advanced enough security measures to stop us, but we would have to be more circumvent than we‘d have liked. After that, I decided I‘d better get some sleep, because the following day would bring us plenty of action, and probably because I didn‘t feel like making unwanted small-talk with Paris, as well. He would have talked—he could always think of something to talk about—but I rather doubted if he would really be interested in what I had to say. Even though I was pretty tired already after today‘s events, I couldn‘t manage to fall asleep. Maybe it was the bed. It was in as bad a state as the rest of this place. Anyway, I lay awake for hours. From time to time I could hear Paris moving around in the other room. Didn‘t sound like he planned on going to bed anytime soon. There‘d been a large bottle on his table. If he was emptying it, he would be bad company in the morning. Some time after midnight, I heard the door connecting our room opening. When I‘d worked up my eyelids a fraction, I could see Paris‘ silhouette standing in the doorway. He couldn‘t have been able to make anything out in the darkness of my room, but he was watching in my direction. I didn‘t let him know that I was still awake. Instead, I smiled. Didn‘t know why I did, though. Normally, I would have called this peeping, and would have gotten pretty angry about it even if it hadn‘t been peeping at me. Then, however, for some reason, it struck me as being rather funny, and I smiled. I‘d better watch myself. I was having the craziest ideas. Paris kept standing in the doorway for perhaps a minute before he turned and walked back into his own room. I fell asleep not long after that. =/\= end of part four =/\= "RAIN, Part Five" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 22 - 23 June 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to some of my favorite Voyager fanfic writers: JoAnna Walsvik, Brenda S. Antrim & TerriTrek. Keep up the good work. =/\= On the skimmer, there wasn‘t much else to do than watch the raindrops hitting the windows. It was raining even harder than it had the day before. Who would have thought such a thing was possible? I hadn‘t. Living on a starship must have been making me soft. I sighed. If I pretended that there was so little else but the rain to watch, I would be lying. Actually, I spent most of the trip thus far watching B‘Elanna, who was sitting in front and to the right of me. I didn‘t pretend to understand women, and never had, but I could honestly not remember the last time I had come across a mystery as big as B‘Elanna Torres. She tended to tie knots in my brainwaves, using my thoughts on the one side, and my instincts on the other. Yesterday, I had almost asked Mectaal to give us one single room. I could have justified it to my fellow lieutenant by pointing out that it was safer in case of any trouble during the night. At the last moment, I had changed my mind. One more knot inside my head. Later, at night, I‘d gone to look at B‘Ella while she was asleep. That was pretty low, even for me. With an effort, I tore my gaze away from B‘Elanna and turned it back to the window. I wanted to have coherent thoughts for a while. I‘d already tried studying the other passengers in the skimmer. Tk‘shda and Wystria were sitting in the pilot‘s compartment, and I recognized two more of the remaining three from last night in the bar. They were all rough types, but they weren‘t very interesting to watch, so my gaze kept being drawn back to B‘Ella—better make that B‘Elanna. If I was going to give her a pet name in my thoughts, I might call her it out loud accidentally. Where was I? Oh, yeah, since the rest of the passengers weren‘t distracting enough, I watched the rain fall. At least there were things moving outside. It was hard to see through all the falling water, but from what I could see, I judged that the Market must be in the mountain range that was rising up some ways ahead, at the horizon. The timetable Tk‘shda had given me said that we would get to the place in roughly half an hour, and that would be about right. The terrain that we‘d been passing had all looked pretty much like a dead desert—which seemed to me to be rather strange, considering all the water that was practically flooding it. Well, I was no biologist, so there were probably reasons for the lack of vegetation; I simply couldn‘t recognize them. Perhaps we‘d arrived just at the beginning of the rainy season. Wouldn‘t have surprised me one bit. When we got closer to the Market, however—farther to the south, away from the planet‘s equator—some plants started to appear. They were barely more than brown leaves at first, but soon I could see a bunch of trees every few minutes. Maybe we‘d actually get a forest. I wouldn‘t have minded the change of scenery. Looking at little clumps of the most common fluid on most M-class planets falling through a basically standard oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere was getting decidedly dull, and my thoughts were drifting back to B‘Elanna. I didn‘t really think about her seriously, though. If B‘Elanna would have been able to listen in on some of the thoughts I was thinking about her, she would have collapsed in laughter. If she‘d been in a good mood. If she‘d been in a bad mood, however, I didn‘t think she would have let me live. Strange—I didn‘t usually think about our chief engineer in that way, but I supposed that‘s what you got for leaving the only other woman on the away team with Tuvok. Pity Sue wasn‘t interested, or I might have looked for some way to get her alone in one of the rooms in Mectaal‘s bar. But then, if truth be told, I‘d have had to admit that I wasn‘t really interested in her, either. Not too much. Lately, my appetite for women in general was faltering a bit. I‘d have to be careful, or I might damage my reputation. Ha! I looked at the door to the pilot‘s compartment a minute later. I wished I was flying the damned skimmer, not Tk‘shda. It wasn‘t that I didn‘t trust him to deliver us to our destination in one piece—he was a professional pilot himself, so he must have known what he was doing—I simply detested being flown anywhere. I‘d have preferred very much to do any flying myself. Precisely at the moment I turned to that door—naturally—it opened. Out stepped Wystria. She saw me looking and blinked at me with a smile. I could guess what she was after. She hadn‘t put on provocative clothes, or make-up or anything. It was just written in her eyes, and the way she held herself. I sent a roguish grin back to her. The previous night, I had held her off, telling myself that I was on an away mission and really couldn‘t give in to Wystria‘s advances, but I had to admit: she had a heck of a body. Both her skin and hair were a very dark tone of brown, nearly black, and she had the loveliest round face. Her species‘ heritage had made the bones in her arms thicker than any human‘s, and they stuck out of her skin in a low ridge running from the back of her hands nearly to her shoulders. She probably had something much alike on her legs, but, of course, I couldn‘t see those through her trousers. I found myself telling myself that I‘d never cared much for Starfleet protocol, and that there was no reason to start now. I decided I could have a little fun—after all, I didn‘t want to insult the alien in a first contact situation, did I? Still, I made myself promise I wouldn‘t get into anything serious. Otherwise I‘d undoubtedly get in deep trouble, with Wystria if not with the Starfleet rulebook. Briefly, I wondered if I was about to break the Prime Directive. I bet I could have a profound effect on Wystria‘s personal culture. She walked down the four rows of chairs. Casually, even though she was definitely heading for me. "Paris," she said softly when she passed my chair, "give me a hand with something in the back, will you?" I couldn‘t be sure if she was trying succesfully to be direct, or trying very badly to hide the fact that she was. As far as I knew the only thing ‘in the back‘ of the skimmer was a cargo compartment that was currently empty. It wasn‘t very likely that there would actually be anything to do there. "Sure," I replied innocently, "why not." I planned to find out a little more about what Wystria‘s people expected in terms of loyalty before I did anything. Lots of species were all too strict about monogamy, and some would use the slightest slip to force two people into spending the rest of their lives together. I could remember one certain instance where I had only barely escaped such a fate. But let‘s not dwell on the past, shall we? The present is usually more entertaining by far. I couldn‘t afford to get involved in anything serious. Too much potential for trouble, especially with me. I didn‘t really get round to asking any of those questions, though. Once the door had closed behind our backs, Wystria grabbed the collar of my dark-blue civvie jacket and pulled my mouth down on hers. Naturally, I responded, practically in a reflex, and I put my arms around her waist. Now, we spent some time continuing doing this, but I could have sworn that we weren‘t busy for more than five minutes, ten at most. And still, just when we were taking another break to catch our breaths—I noted with a little satisfaction that Wystria was distinctly more breathless than I was myself: I hadn‘t lost my touch—Tk‘shda announced over the intercom that we were about to land. Hastily, Wystria and I disconnected ourselves from each other. We shared a decidedly warm look, and then she nearly immediately walked out of the door, back into the passenger compartment. I took a moment to straighten myself before I followed. I pulled my jacket straight in a manner much alike one used by a lot of Starfleet officers to straighten their uniforms. Considering the situation, that was not a pleasant comparison. I did not want to know how much regulations I had just broken, or how many more I would have broken if Tk‘shda hadn‘t called when he had, for that matter. When I followed Wystria through the door, just in time to see her entering the pilot‘s compartment, the first thing I noticed was B‘Elanna glaring at me. In lack of any better response, I smiled at her. All right! So I did feel a bit guilty. Idly, I wondered if she was thinking about the regulations I‘d just broken, or if she was jealous. Ha! That‘d be the day! The second thing I noticed was that we were now flying over a forest—one more deserving of the name ‘rainforest‘ than most—in the mountain range I‘d seen earlier. In the mountain right in front of us I could make out a whole network of tunnels. One of them was illuminated by lights, obviously to guide ships inside. If the Market was underground, we might not be able to use the transporters. Thus, we went into the lion‘s denn. I just hoped the lion could provide us with a back door, ‚cause the one we‘d been planning to use had a good chance of being locked. =/\= end of part five =/\= "RAIN, Part Six" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 23 - 24 June 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to my sister, for infecting me with the fanfiction-addiction. I have it from a very reliable source that even in the 24th century this addiction is still incurable. =/\= The entrance hall of the Market drove all thoughts of Paris‘ despicable behaviour—which, for some obscure reason, I took as a personal insult—straight from my head. Paris had been right. This was not simply a gathering of a few smugglers. In my time with the Maquis I had visited some less than legal places, and I would have said that the Market on Jeekar VI must have been the center of all criminal activity for the entire sector. The hall was some four hundred meters across and five floors high, and from where I was standing alone, I could make out over a dozen skimmers and ground vehicles. I was a bit surprised that this Tik-something fellow had agreed to bring Paris and me—complete strangers to him—to such a place, which must have been a well-kept secret from whatever local authorities there were. Paris‘ lies must have been pretty convincing. As the saying went, ‘speak of the devil...‘ Paris nudged my shoulder to get my attention. Tk‘shda had exited his skimmer and was walking over to us, accompanied by the woman, Wystria. She was wearing a roguish grin on her face, not unlike one of Paris‘, and she blinked at him. He blinked back. I shot a furious glare at him, and was surprised when he flinched ever so slightly. Good. I hadn‘t expected any response. "Paris, Torres," Tk‘shda greeted us, with a nod of his head, "if you come with us, I can take you to Klefon Tarafa. He has a shop on the second level." Paris accepted his offer graciously, and we started walking. I decided to let Paris handle our interim hosts for a while, so I could keep an eye on the rest of the local population. The Market obviously wasn‘t a normal port: the hole place was decidedly filthy, and I didn‘t see anyone who wasn‘t at least armed with a dagger. Most had one of a broad variety of kinds of disruptors. All in all, I thought the Market was... impressive, and I could tell that Paris felt the same. After we had taken a turbolift to the second level, we still had to walk a few hundred meters to deep in the back of complex, where our thief had his ‘shop‘. Tk‘shda took the lead, Paris and Wystria followed and I closed the line. I noticed Paris had taken Wystria‘s arm in his. The shop was actually more like an office—though I suspected that would have sounded to official for these people (no pun intended). For one thing, it didn‘t have any windows, and when Tk‘shda pressed the doorchime, we had to wait for a while before the door was opened. When it did, I recognized the man behind it at once, from the holopicture the Talaxian convoy had sent us. I felt a bit relieved about that. At least we‘d found the right ‘Tarafa‘, then. He and Tk‘shda exchanged warm greetings. That came as a surprise. Paris hadn‘t known the two of them were so close. Then Tarafa greeted Wystria, and, when he noticed her arm in Paris‘, shot her an amused glance. Wystria brusquely pulled her arm free. I thought that that was rather funny. After that, we all went into Tarafa‘s shop, and when we were all seated, Tk‘shda introduced Paris and me as the crew of the merchant ship the Golden Bird. We had had some financial luck lately—a story Paris had forgotten to mention to me—and were now hoping to improve our ship with Tarafa‘s new technology. Tarafa gave us a pretty standard speech about how he was planning to get some good amount of money for the transporter, which, he insisted, the thing was certainly worth. At that point, Tk‘shda, who had probably heard it all before, if he‘d tried to get hold of the transporter himself, made his apologies and went to attend to his own business. Wystria went with him, after she‘d whispered something in Paris‘ ear. Then we got down to business. Paris acted for all the world as if he seriously wanted to buy our own technology, but he was smart enough to make certain Tarafa knew we weren‘t going to make any offers until we‘d found out every single detail of the technology that went into the transporter. That way we wouldn‘t in reality end up with a contract. As our vessel‘s engineer, Paris let me question Tarafa. It was weird, asking an alien what we could do with our own technology, but in our supposed position, it was only logical. I found that Tarafa could give me a pretty accurate description of the possibilities of the transporter, though, of course, he exaggerated more than a bit. He was trying to sell us something, after all. However, when we got to the technical side, Tarafa was far off the mark. It was an effort to keep the amusement I felt at his descriptions of the engineer‘s side of the transporter from my face. If we‘d made our transporters like that, and used them, we would soon run out of crewmembers. Ultimately, I simply couldn‘t keep sitting there any longer, so I asked. "Can we see it?" If we knew the transporter‘s precise location, we could confer with Tuvok and make our final plans. There was still a good possibility that the transporters of the away team‘s shuttle could reach us through the rocks above us. Unfortunately, Tarafa stalled. He was expecting some more people who were interested the following day, so he wanted to show it to us all at the same time. I didn‘t want to seem suspicious, so I reined in my eagerness. We decided that, in that case, we had done all the bargaining we could today, and Paris and I would leave the man alone until noon the next day. "One more thing, Tarafa," Paris said as we got up from our chairs, "something I want to know. Why aren‘t you going to use this ‘teleporter‘ yourself, if you can make as much profit with it as you claim?" "A very intelligent question," Tarafa replied, "and one deserving of an honest answer. Fact is"—he raised his hands to indicate his greying hair—"I‘m getting older each day. I‘ve saved some credits, and with what I‘m going to get for the device, I‘ll have enough to go enjoy my retirement on a pleasure world I know in a sector where I‘m not wanted." "Fair enough," said Paris, "see you tomorrow, then." And we left. We decided we would get some lunch before finding rooms and contacting Tuvok and the others. We‘d had breakfast before we left Jeekar City, but, to our mutual regret, the barkeeper shared his tastes with Neelix, and he had served us a leola root stew. I hoped the people here were sane enough to have something else. Soon I discovered that they were. Our lunch was, actually, quite good, and I don‘t just mean compared to Neelix‘ cooking. Paris didn‘t talk much, except for a few smart-ass comments on the food, and neither did I. We were both lost in thought. I was concerned about how we should handle the situation with the stolen transporter if we discovered that the shuttle‘s transporters were indeed useless. Tuvok should be able to confirm or deny that when we talked. I also worried that these other people who were interested might decide to buy the transporter at once, before we could take it. I supposed we could go looking for Tarafa‘s hiding place today, but that would make us look suspicous and, besides, by now I had realized that the Market was far to big to give us a good chance of finding the transporter in such a search. I hoped Paris was thinking about the same things I was, yet, somehow, I doubted it. I would never have cared to admit it, but I would have given a lot to know what it was Wystria had whispered in Paris‘ ear, and probably a whole lot more to prevent whatever she was planning. It was something of a surprise to realize that I felt jealous, even if it was just a little bit. After all, I knew any number of really pretty women—some of them were working for me in Engineering—and the last few months the male part of Voyager‘s crew had had a lot of crushes on them, most likely from a lack of anything better to do, and I had never felt anything like jealousy before. Not really. Well, I was probably just upset about the mission. =/\= end of part six =/\= "RAIN, Part Seven" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 24 June 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to Gene Roddenberry, for the obvious reasons. I couldn‘t very well go around dedicating stories to people without mentioning the Big Guy, could I? =/\= When B‘Elanna and I had finished eating, we went to see if we could find a hotel. Well, apparently a lot of the locals didn‘t want to be tied to one place by owning any real estate, ‚cause there were rooms for hire all over the complex. We picked one place, that didn‘t look too expensive. This time, I did manage to suggest using one room for the two of us, using the security-excuse. B‘Elanna reluctantly agreed. She looked like she meant: ‘All right, do it, you‘re right, but if I could find some excuse to get out of it, I would.‘ Then again, she must have been pleased with the idea of being able to keep an eye on me, so I wouldn‘t be able to cause any trouble. Once we were safely inside, we contacted the shuttle. Because we were underground, B‘Elanna used some gizmo to boost the signal from our commbadges. Dunno what it was. I could hear from Tuvok‘s voice that he was not pleased with the turn of events. I felt a little pity for Ethan, Mike and Sue, who were locked in the same tiny shuttlecraft with the Vulcan. Still, mostly I was glad that I was here down on the planet. Tuvok never really got angry, of course, but he had a way of finding the most unpleasant jobs to be done when something happened to him that would have upset a lesser being. It appeared that we wouldn‘t be able to beam anything out of this place, including ourselves. Considering my luck, I hadn‘t really expected we could, so I had considered our alternatives. While B‘Elanna and Tuvok were still exchanging technicalities about everything we couldn‘t do, I interrupted. "We can blow the stolen transporter up," I said. That certainly caused a shocked silence on both ends of the commline, I can tell you that. "It‘s the next best thing," I continued hastily, "if we can‘t bring the transporter back, at least we won‘t leave it behind for anyone else to use. It‘s the logical thing to do." I shrugged. "Unless, of course, you want us to somehow buy it." Then Tuvok admitted that he was ‘forced to agree with my conclusions‘, which led to an astonished sounding exclamation from B‘Elanna. I didn‘t think she liked the prospect of destroying one of the things that she normally had to try so desperately to keep whole. She objected, saying that we didn‘t have any explosives, but I had already seen some three places where we could purchase those, and even if I hadn‘t, I thought that with her engineering skills, B‘Ella—I did it again! I meant ‘B‘Elanna‘—could turn a lot of things into dangerous explosive devices with no trouble at all. Wisely, Tuvok decided to leave the details of our bombing to B‘Elanna and me, depending on the location of the transporter and the kinds of explosives we could get. We had a bit more trouble figuring out how to get to safety afterwards, though. Fortunately, B‘Elanna had seen what she thought was a public transport, which flew to the city once each day. We could take it, and as soon as we got clear of the mountain, the shuttle could beam us out. So Tuvok didn‘t bother us with too many instructions and guidelines. It couldn‘t have been more than a hundred. After we‘d cut the commlink, B‘Elanna and I both went sightseeing around the complex of the Market—separately. It would come in handy to have a good map of the place in our heads in case we had to make a run for it, and we needed to do something more relaxing than plotting bombings anyway. Aside from all that, it would give me a chance to think on what Wystria had suggested in Tarafa‘s office without B‘Elanna‘s constant intrusions upon my thoughts. So I walked around, heading in the general direction of the entrance hall without paying much attention to my surroundings. I still didn‘t want to get involved in anything too serious with Wystria, and I was trying to decide if I would be able to avoid that if I went to meet her tonight. Well, I guessed I‘d just have to give it a try and see. But seriously, I didn‘t think I could have stayed away. That would have been completely out of character for the role I was playing. I sighed. Now, if I could only figure out why I had this image of B‘Elanna floating around in my mind every time I thought of Wystria, I would be perfectly happy. =/\= The dances in this part of the galaxy, I decided, weren‘t all that much different from those in the Alfa quadrant. Some steps were different, but the basics were pretty much all the same. I‘d been dancing with Wystria the whole night, and I hadn‘t had much trouble with catching on to any of the local dances. It seemed a broad variety of dances were currently fashionable: some I had danced would on Earth have been called classical dances, while others were modern to the extreme. At the moment, we were dancing something that wasn‘t unlike a Bajoran waltz. Same rhythm, only slightly different pace. Suddenly what I was doing seemed very weird, and I smiled. Just a few hours ago, B‘Elanna and I had bought a device that should do its job of erasing every track of our Federation transporter very nicely, and then I‘d gone on a date, as if nothing special was going on. I couldn‘t really answer that when Wystria asked why I was smiling, so I simply told her it was because I was with her. I‘d encountered very few women who would ask any further if I told them something like that. I wondered if B‘Elanna could dance. Ouch. One woman at a time, Paris. One woman at a time. When the song had ended, Wystria and I sat down at our table again and ordered another round of drinks. Some of the dances had been very lively, and the crowd had made it hot inside the club, so we had lost a lot of moisture to sweat. I felt my right temple exploringly, where that guy in Mectaal‘s bar had punched me. It was still black & bruised, but at least the swelling had lessened. All the moving around and the drinks were making it throb just a bit though. "What are you thinking about?" Wystria asked suddenly. I must have looked a bit surprised, ‚cause she explained: "You seemed distracted." Yes, I‘d been thinking about B‘Elanna again. "Sorry," I replied, "I keep thinking about business. That teleporter device is really something, you know." She got a look on her face that indicated that she had just a bright idea. I had only met Wystria the day before and I could already tell what was on her mind most of the time. I liked that. A lot less complicated than some other women I could mention. "Did Klefon show it to you yet?" she asked. I explained about the other possible buyers and that we were going to see the transporter tomorrow. "Don‘t you want to see the thing today?" There was a smile growing on Wystria‘s face now. Apparently her bright idea somehow involved the transporter. I agreed with a grunt. Where could she be going with this? She stood up and took my hand. "C‘mon Tom, I‘ll show it to you." "Huh?... You serious?" "Completely. Let‘s go." I still wanted to know how she could get us to the thing, though. "I have the access codes to Klefon‘s storage depot. We were... close friends a while back. It‘s a very private place." That didn‘t happen to be a hint, now, did it? I wouldn‘t have minded a private place for a while myself, but for once, I was cautious. There was a first time for everything, I supposed. I definitely didn‘t want Tarafa to think I was trying to steal the transporter. "Don‘t worry so much!" Wystria chided me, "he‘ll probably never even find out we‘ve been there, and if he does... Well, it‘s not the first time I sneaked into one of his places." I praised her with a broad smile, drained my glass, and we left. It wasn‘t far to the depot from the club. We just had to go down one level, to level four, and we were already there. "Here it is," Wystria said, and drummed her fingers on a dull metal door. Number seven, it had written on it. I‘d have to remember that. Level four, depot seven. The door could definitely use some cleaning, but I didn‘t see any rust, or any other weak spots B‘Elanna and I could use while breaking in later. I tried to make out the code Wystria was feeding the lock, but I could only see about half of the numbers: 8XX7X438X7X. When the door swished open, Wystria took my arm and led me inside. The interior of the depot was quite a bit different from what I had expected. It was clean, for one thing. One wall was covered with a large closet filled with what seemed to be spare parts for a spacecraft, and in the back stood a half-dismantled skimmer. I didn‘t pay any attention to any of those, though. I focused on what was standing in the center of the room. A Federation transporter. Our transporter, to be precise. =/\= end of part seven =/\= "RAIN, Part Eight" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 24 & 26 June 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to Robert Picardo and Jennifer Lien, for their roles as the Holodoc and Kes. If we didn‘t have the two of them to fix Tom up time after time, there‘d be too little of him left by now for even a hint of P/T. =/\= It was well past midnight, and I was still awake. Paris was still out in the Market somewhere with that Wystria. I decided that being on an away mission with Tom Paris was terrible on one‘s nights‘ sleep. I couldn‘t really make myself believe anymore that I was was upset about the mission, either. I was upset about Paris. In part, I was worried about that something might happen. A gathering place for criminals wasn‘t exactly my idea of a safe place. But mostly, I lay thinking about what he was doing with the woman. That was the part I was upset about. Then, suddenly, I heard a knock on the door and Paris entered. I sat up in the bed. "What kept you?" I demanded from him. In truth, I hadn‘t expected Paris to come back for quite a while yet, but I wouldn‘t let that ruin my yelling. "I‘ve seen the transporter," he answered simply. That certainly shut me up, my mouth still hanging open, ready for some good insulting. "And I know where it is," continued Paris. He walked over to a chair, turned it, and sat down. He rested his chin on his arms on the back of the chair. "We may have trouble. It was fixed. Professionally, I‘d say, from what I could see. If whoever did the job made a blueprint, we‘re in deep shit." "Waitaminute!" I said, having finally recovered enough to speak, "first tell me how you got to see it. You didn‘t break into anywhere, did you?" "No," Paris responded, "Wystria took me to see it. Thought the depot would be a good spot to get some, uh... privacy... She knew I wanted to see the transporter, and she has Tarafa‘s security codes. I wouldn‘t be back yet, but Wystria suddenly had to leave. That was weird. I‘d just seen enough of the transporter, and I turned to her and wanted to..." He faltered. I glared at him. He actually blushed! Not much, but due to his pale complexion, it was visible. "Never mind," he said, "anyway, she was looking at some part of the transporter, too. When she noticed me looking at her, she started, and then said she had remembered something she had to do, so we would have to leave. Really weird." "Yes, you said that," I replied coldly. So they hadn‘t... For some reason I didn‘t completely understand, I felt hugely relieved to hear that. Back to business. If Paris could get us to the transporter, we could set the explosives early tomorrow morning—I really needed some sleep first, we couldn‘t afford to get sloppy—and be out of this place soon after that. We would have to let them detonate well before noon, or Tarafa would be there with those other people. I didn‘t care much for the thief, but I didn‘t want him to get killed, either. After I‘d harried Paris for some more details—about the damned depot, not the woman—we decided that that would be what we would do. Still, we would have to contact the shuttle about the risk of a blueprint. Once we had decided this, Paris lay down on the couch and dropped of to sleep immediately. I wished I could do that! But, nooo, I lay awake for half of what was left of the night before I finally drifted off to sleep. I wasn‘t really ready to wake up when the alarm went off at 0630, but I knew that sometimes, in the Maquis as well as on Voyager, I had worked on less sleep, so I got up anyway. Paris wasn‘t very enthousiastic about the new day either, and I noticed him reaching for the bruises on his head. "Are you all right?" I asked, worried. "Yeah, I will be," he answered, "guess I should have drunk a little less." Oh. If his head hurt because he had drunk too much, I wasn‘t about to waste my pity on him. We ate a quick breakfast—standard Starfleet rations we had brought from the shuttle—and then went on our way. Paris carried the explosives, and I took the detonater and a tricorder to scramble the lock. Not surprisingly, there weren‘t yet many people outside in the corridors, and we didn‘t attract too much notice. I couldn‘t help but think that what we were about to do seemed so much like a Maquis action. Had we been in the Alpha quadrant, I sincerely doubted if we‘d be doing this. A bombing. Maybe that was why Tuvok had approved: he had been with the Maquis for a time, too, even if he‘d been with us as a spy, so he had seen the effectiveness of our kind of actions. Tuvok was giving way to his Starfleet Alpha quadrant principles reluctantly, but he was giving way. I let Paris lead me through the maze of the Market, since he‘d been in the storage depot before. I recognized some of the corridors we crossed from my exploration of the afternoon of the previous day, and I was glad that I knew how to find a way out of the complex. Another remnant of my days with the Maquis; the desire to always know a way out. We took a turbolift and went to the fourth level, where we continued on to the eastern side of the Market until we reached our destination, depot seven. Ha! I smiled. I guessed you could have called it a Transporter room right now. "This is the place," Paris said, "and don‘t worry, the inside is a whole lot cleaner." I didn‘t respond to his bad joke, but instead set to work on the lock with the tricorder immediately, leaving Paris to watch the corridor. "I caught part of the code," he said softly, "it‘s eleven digits: 8, something, something, 7, something, 4, 3, 8, something, 7, something." I complimented him on his memory, but all I got in return was a flippant remark about the genius passed along with the Paris genes. Paris was spilling more bad jokes than usually, and I wondered if it was because he was nervous. I couldn‘t recall any comparable cascades of jokes from other dangerous situations, but then, I was usually too busy myself at those instances to pay attention to him. If it was true, I was glad that at least I wasn‘t the only one who was nervous. I worked furiously on the lock, but the damn thing wouldn‘t open! Ultimately, it did, yet we spent near to ten minutes outside the door to the depot. I checked my chronometer: it was already nearly 0730 hours, and it wouldn‘t be long until the Market would start to wake up. We quickly slipped inside and closed the door behind us. Paris had given me a detailed description of the storage depot, so that we had been able to plan where to set the charges in advance, and I found that he had been fairly accurate. We would put most of the explosives inside of the transporter itself, but we would also place some of them around it. Paris set to work on those while I let my tricorder take a scan of the transporter. As the results of the scan appeared on the screen, I cursed. In Klingon—it was much better suited for cursing than standard. Paris looked up at me with an amused smile on his lips. "The transporter has been carefully taken apart and put back together again," I told him, "somebody‘s made that blueprint, all right." Then Paris cursed as well, and my opinion about standard and cursing was reinforced: even the swearwords someone like Paris could make up simply couldn‘t be compared to the Klingon ones. "Well, we‘ll still have to destroy the original," he said finally, "let‘s set the explosives first, then we can worry about the blueprint. I may even have an idea." He was right about the explosives, of course. We couldn‘t do anything about the blueprint from here, and we were still at risk of being discovered. It took us less than twenty minutes to finish the job, so at 0800 I was setting the timer. I set it to go of at 1100 hours. That would give Paris and me three hours to find and destroy the blueprint and get the hell out of this place. I hoped it was enough. When we were finished, we left the depot. A passer-by nearly saw us coming out, but we managed to stay hidden inside without letting him see us. Fortunately, we had no further trouble getting back to the hotel. All the while, I wondered if Paris‘ plan was as ridiculous as his previous ones, and if Tuvok and I were going to let him go on with it anyway. Again. =/\= end of part eight =/\= "RAIN, Part Nine" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 26 June 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to Jeri Ryan, the actress playing Seven of Nine. I have to admit it‘s not because of anything she did, but in the hope that the Dutch television will hurry up so I‘ll finally get to see her! =/\= "Once again, Mr Paris," Tuvok spoke after a few tense moments of silence, "though I would act otherwise if I could, I am forced to agree with your plan of action. Do as you see fit. I contacted Voyager three hours ago," he continued without a pause, "and captain Janeway commended the both of you for your actions during this mission thus far. Also, she ordered you to proceed with extreme caution." Well, that was a relief! It hadn‘t been easy to convince Tuvok that my plan was worth the risks it brought along, and I didn‘t exactly look forward to break into Tarafa‘s shop myself—who knew what booby traps that guy might have had? -- but we‘d agreed that it was the best we could do. I looked over happily—for some reason, I felt very victorious—at B‘Elanna, who was sitting on the couch next to me. Awfully close next to me, actually. Our legs almost touched. It took some doing not to pay too much attention to that fact. Still, I wasn‘t about to say anything about it. B‘Elanna looked decidedly *un*victoriously. Though she had supported my plan, she looked as if she had just discovered the down side to my reputation for recklessness and my urges to go on suicide missions. Well, a downer side than she‘d already known, actually. And speaking of urges... We said our goodbyes to Tuvok, and then I decided I‘d better get up quickly—to start packing my stuff, of course. "Oh, cheer up, B‘Elanna!" I said, when I noticed her still very unhappily-looking face, "*I*‘m the one who‘s gonna be in danger, remember? If you don‘t cheer up, I‘ll start thinking you‘re worried about me," I teased. Of course, she made an effort to look at me angrily, but she didn‘t fool me: I saw the smile she was holding back. I almost didn‘t realize it, but I had just ‘read‘ B‘Elanna like a normal person. Good. Now maybe my brain could stop sweating every time I looked at her, too. Somewhere, strangely enough, that would be a pity. Back to business. "Let‘s go over the details of the plan, okay?" I continued without waiting for an answer. "I go into Tarafa‘s shop, break into his computer and erase everything that‘s in there concerning the transporter. Then I get the hell out of there and rendezvous with you in the entrance hall, 1110 at the latest. Meanwhile, you—" "How do you know Tarafa doesn‘t have a back-up of the files somewhere? That would make your whole plan useless," B‘Elanna interrupted me. I shook my head. "I don‘t think he has. Too paranoid. If he had a back-up, there‘d be a bigger chance of someone else getting his hands on it, and then his new business would be ruined. You agree?" She nodded reluctantly. "You agree. Now, while I‘m doing my things, you will arrange our transportation out of this place for 1115 hours and you cover our tracks." "I get it," B‘Elanna told me, "I just don‘t like it that you won‘t have anyone to cover your back." She held up a hand to stop me from speaking. "And, yes, I know," she continued, "two people would only make the risk of discovery greater, but I still don‘t like it." Well how about that. Maybe she was worried about me. B‘Elanna got up from the couch, too, and walked over to the table where we‘d gathered our stuff. "You‘d better get going, Paris," she said, "I‘ll take care of this." So I took what I needed and went outside. I said goodbye to B‘Elanna from the door, but she didn‘t respond. Perhaps she didn‘t hear me. She could get pretty dense once she started working on something. The corridors of the Market were filled with people now, so I did my best to blend in. It wasn‘t very hard. After all, I had spent quite some time actually being like these people. Fortunately, there weren‘t as many people in the corridor on the second level where Tarafa‘s shop was. I waited a few minutes, and then, for a while, there was no one at all in sight. I started picking the lock. I‘d always had a way with locks, and for once I was lucky: Tarafa‘s wasn‘t particulary good. The shop, I noticed in relief, was empty of people. Tarafa had mentioned picking up the other potential buyers from their transport at this time, but they could always have been delayed. Only when the door had closed behind my back did I realize I was holding my breath. I let it go, since I was now out of sight from the outside and, so far, nobody was yelling for the police—or whatever they had in this place. It struck me suddenly that had somebody seen me, he might not have done anything, considering their code of non-interference. That set me off chuckling softly, until I checked my chronometer: 0912 hours. Damn. Most likely, I still had plenty of time, but tight schedules always made me nervous, and we really couldn‘t afford to be late today. Tarafa‘s shop was neither very clean nor large, and a lot of small instruments lay strewn about. I knew everybody thought that I wasn‘t so tidy myself, and everybody was probably right about that, but I did notice that sort of things. I saw two different computer terminals, and I figured I ought to hack into to one that looked newer, and in better shape. They were probably connected in a network anyway. Wrong. I spent nearly an hour breaking into the cursed thing—with just a little help from my tricorder—and searching through all its files before I finally concluded that Tarafa had definitely not, I repeat, not hidden any information about the transporter in it. When I had managed to break into the other computer, I found out why. The older computer wasn‘t in any way connected to the Market‘s network or any kind of subspace system. That made it completely impossible to gain access to it from outside the shop. Too bad for Tarafa I was inside the shop. Once I could move around freely through Tarafa‘s files, my job became easier by the minute, and at about a quarter to eleven, I was finished: all I had to do to erase every mention of the transporter was push one lousy button. All hell, naturally, chose that particular moment to break loose. I‘d been wondering for a while now why a place like this had doors that swung open instead of sliding doors, but now I finally figured it out: it made people storming into a room look far more impressive. I heard the loud bang of the door slamming into the wall and twisted around in my chair to see what was going on. Klefon Tarafa, Wystria and two well-muscled goons came screeching to a halt just inside the shop, all carrying some really ugly looking guns—pointed at me. "Hello, Tom Paris of the Voyager," Tarafa said. Needless to say, I was sort of startled. Not only had they apparently expected to find me here, but they knew who I was—who I really was—as well. I prayed to god—whichever god was available—that B‘Elanna was still safe and sound. Then Wystria took a step forward, not changing where her disruptor was pointed for an inch. She looked upset. Furious, actually. She reminded me of B‘Elanna throwing a temper tantrum. "You gave yourself away, you dirty liar," she said, her voice acid, "I saw your weapon in Mectaal‘s bar. Then, last night, when I first saw your cursed teleporter, I saw that it was the same kind of technology. It even had the same sign on it. You slimy bastard! And I actually liked you!" Gradually, Wystria‘s voice rose, until she was screaming. So that was why she‘d so suddenly wanted to leave. I should have suspected something. I tried to swallow, and found that I couldn‘t, not until I had tried several times. Tarafa laid a restraining hand on Wystria‘s arm. Thank god, ‚cause I thought she would have shot me otherwise. She must have believed I‘d been using her all along simply to get to the transporter. Then, Tarafa spoke again. His voice was cold, but held no emotion. It was all business to him. Even now he was just trying to protect his profits. "Please don‘t move, Mr Paris, or I and my associates here will be forced to shoot and kill you." I had my mask of calmness firmly in place, and decided that I might still get out of this alive, if I played it right. "I think not, Tarafa." I nodded to my right hand, which was still firmly on the delete button. "I push this button, and you lose all your precious information on our device—which, by the way, is called a ‘transporter‘, not a ‘teleporter‘." I just had to stall a few more minutes. "I‘d say we‘re at what my people call a stalemate." I could see that my apparent calmness startled them—except for Wystria, who was still to upset to notice much of anything. Figured. It seemed like each and every race in the Delta quadrant believed that we humans were weak and easily intimidated. "I think you‘re forgetting something," Tarafa said after a tense minute of silence, "I do still have the original machine, so erasing that information will gain you nothing beside me getting upset, something that you should be trying to avoid." He didn‘t mention the explosives, so I gathered they hadn‘t found them. "I wouldn‘t care to bet on that first thing you said, if I were you," I replied cryptically. It got the result I hoped for. There was another thirty-second silence, and then it was exactly 1100 hours. KA- booom! The entire complex seemed to shake and a low sound like striking thunder sounded as the contents of storage depot 7, level 4 were reduced to ashes—to atoms, actually, but ‘ashes‘ sounds so much better. I had to say, it might have looked as if I was screwing up another mission, but my timing in doing so was perfect. Before the assorted hostiles had a chance to recover from their shock, I punched the delete button, jumped from my chair, and sprinted forward. I wanted to get a hold of Tarafa, since he seemed to be in the least good physical condition, and because he was the one calling the shots. Ouch. Wrong expression in these circumstances. If I could overpower Tarafa, I could use his life to buy my ticket out of the Market. Unfortunately, I never reached Tarafa. Before I was halfway to him, Wystria jumped in front of me. Serious trouble. Some people might have underestimated her because she was a woman, but even though she had dropped her disruptor during the tremors, she was still a professional assassin. One with a reputation to chill your blood and rattle your bones. My only hope of getting past her was that her anger was clouding her fighting instincts. We exchanged a few blows, but neither of us did much damage. Then I put all my strength in a swing at her head. Wystria brought up both of her arms to block it, barely in time. Too late, I remembered the bone ridges on the outsides of her arms, and I couldn‘t stop or change the direction of my blow anymore. When I hit her, I thought I could hear the bones of my arm breaking, and I cringed in pain, cradling my arm. I tried to straighten, but that just gave Wystria an opportunity to punch me in my stomach. I fell back a step, and Wystria hit me right between my eyes. Again, I hoped desperately that at least B‘Elanna would make it out all right. Then everything went black. =/\= end of part nine =/\= "RAIN, Part Ten" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 27 June 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to Kate Mulgrew and her character, captain Janeway. If she hadn‘t decided to blast the Caretaker‘s array to bits, Voyager would have been a very short series, and that would have been a shame. =/\= Paris was fine. Everything was all right. He would be in the hall in time. Paris was fine. Everything was all right. He would be in the hall in time. Aargh! I wished the pig had let me come with him! The waiting was driving me crazy. I checked my chronometer for the fifth time in ten minutes: 1052 hours. Still over a quarter of an hour until I could justify myself being worried—if Paris hadn‘t shown up by then. I‘d sat down on our luggage in a corner of the Market‘s entrance hall a few minutes ago, mainly to keep from pacing. I couldn‘t understand why I was so agitated. I had been in situations like this before, with the Maquis. On Merova IV, on Terwyll VII, and other times. I couldn‘t recall being so nervous back then. "B‘Elanna Torres?" I heard a voice say. I started and looked up. Two tall, muscular men were standing next to me. The one that had spoken, on the left, had an ugly scar covering his whole left cheek. There were disruptors on their belts, but then again, who in this place didn‘t have at least one of the things? "I‘m afraid we need you to come with us for a moment," the ugly guy continued. "What for?" I demanded. That man might have been pretending politeness, but I sure as hell wasn‘t going to. Slowly, I got to my feet and placed my right hand on the phaser I had concealed beneath my jacket. "Our employer, Mr Tarafa, would like to hear some more about this so-called ‘Federation‘ of yours," was the answer. For a moment I stared at him. How could he possibly have known? With all his faults, I knew that Paris would never have told anyone. Then the second guy grabbed my arm, and I snapped into action. He was strong, but he didn‘t expect the strength of a half-Klingon. I twisted loose, turned and threw him over my shoulder. The sound of air being forced from his lungs was audible. Then, moments before the first one could grab me from behind, I ducked to one side, into the hall, and started shooting with my phaser. Of all the rotten luck! The one still standing tripped over my own luggage, so that I missed him. I didn‘t get the time for another attempt, because they both drew their disruptors. This part of the hall was suddenly completely deserted, and I didn‘t have the slightest bit of cover. Though I absolutely hated it, I had no other choice but to make a run for it. The two P‘taQs would never give me enough time to start one of the skimmers, so I ran back into the maze of corridors of the Market, dodging disruptor fire at every step. Gods, did they have Paris? I had to assume that they did. Suddenly, the ground shook, and I could barely stay on my feet. The two men following me must have had the same problem, but one them still managed to take a shot at me, and a good one, ‚cause he scorched the right side of my jacket. Fortunately, I wasn‘t hurt myself. The explosives! I had almost forgotten about them. The explosion must have meant that the transporter, at least, was destroyed. Unfortunately, I did not have time to celebrate. I heard another shot being fired and ducked into a side-corridor. Then I jumped to my feet and fired a volley of phaser bursts around the corner. I didn‘t think I hit anyone, but it bought me some time to take a look around and to find out where the hell I was. Luck was with me. I had been in this corridor the day before, and if I was not mistaken... Yes, there it was. I fired another volley, then sped into the next corridor. Two hundred meters and three turns later, I was where I wanted. An entrance to the natural caves of the mountain. The day before, a drugs vendor had told me, when I‘d asked why it hadn‘t been closed off, that the tunnels led to the outside in several dozen places. Some of the inhabitants saw them as an escape route, should the need arise to have one. They would be mine. Once I got safely outside, I would contact the shuttle, and Tuvok could beam me up. What was not where I wanted, were my pursuers. They were still close behind. Maybe I ought to have tried to find Paris before I left, but I couldn‘t afford to take the time to think about that. One step into the tunnel, everything seemed to change. The corridors of the Market had all been brightly lit, and the natural tunnels were pitch-dark. All the artificial surfaces had been either made or worn smooth, and the natural rocks were rough and, like everything natural on this accursed planet, decidedly moist. And last but not least, in the corridors, I had been followed, and here I wasn‘t. From behind the rock where I was hiding, I could still make out one of the P‘taQs standing guard just inside the door. The other one was undoubtedly getting them flashlights. I wasn‘t planning to wait for him. I fired one last shot at the guy at the door, just to try, and to keep him on edge. I missed, not entirely unexpected. Then I started to make my way down the tunnels. Softly, so my pursuers would have to waste time finding out in which direction I had gone. A few minutes later, after I had covered a reasonable distance, I stopped and took the one small bag I had managed to take with me from my shoulder. I had seen Paris pack it, and I wasn‘t certain why he had put his flashlight in it, but nevertheless, I was grateful. The flashlight might have been very handy, but except for some emergency rations, there wasn‘t anything else useful in the bag. What was that? A datapadd with a novel on it. Didn‘t know you read, Paris. And it wasn‘t even some dirty story. A Klingon tragedy? What the hell were you doing with that? Still, this might all have been interesting to know, but it didn‘t help me one bit to get out. I started walking again, and with the flashlight, I could travel considerably faster than before. =/\= Less than two full hours later, I could see daylight shining into the tunnel from above, and I hadn‘t seen my pursuers once. By now, I was pretty tired, so I took a five-minute break before I started to climb out. I was worried about Paris, and it was a very justified worry this time. Was he dead? No, I couldn‘t think about that. Either they had captured him, or he had somehow managed to escape. I wondered what Tarafa would do if he had Paris for a prisoner. Most likely—if both the bomb and Paris had succeeded in erasing every trace of the stolen transporter—he would try to bargain with Paris‘ life for a new transporter. Janeway would never agree to that. I couldn‘t really fault her for that, and I knew that she would still do everything in her power to get Paris back unharmed, but the entire idea somehow felt wrong. Curse Paris! Why did he always have to do dangerous things! He would always get in some sort of trouble, and then I‘d worry myself sick! That wasn‘t a very rational thought, so I ignored it. At least I couldn‘t think of any reason for Tarafa to want to harm Paris. Unless he decided he was useless to him... Damn it! Enough of this stuff already! Paris was probably sitting back comfortably in the shuttle, just waiting for me to finally show up so he and the others could go back to Voyager. I would find out soon, if I climbed out of the tunnel. The climbing was actually easier than it had looked, so I got to the surface pretty quickly. And there was little doubt that I was really on the surface. It was pouring. I had to admit though, the view was nearly worth the rain. From where I was standing on the side of the mountain, perhaps ten meters above the treeline, I could see miles of rainforest in every direction, dotted in a dozen places with dark mountains rising out of the sea of green. I‘d have said it was breathtaking, but the rain was falling so hard that that made breathing hard as well, so I didn‘t think it counted. I reached for my pocket, where I had put my communicator, and froze. My communicator. In the pocket on the right side of my jacket. The right side of my jacket was toast. Literally. I couldn‘t even find a trace of my communicator. A considerable time later, after I had finished yelling and cursing, I considered my options. Since no one had discovered me while I was screaming, I thought I could safely assume that my pursuers had either given up, or had taken a wrong turn somewhere. I could see only two things I could do. The first was to simply keep walking, hoping for the off chance that Tuvok would perform the right scan and he would find a half-Klingon lifesign and that he would beam me up. The second option was to go back in, free Paris, get back out and use his commbadge to signal for the beam-out. I chose to go back in. That didn‘t necessarily enlarge my chances, but at least it would give me something to do, and, hopefully, someone to take my anger out on. =/\= end of part ten =/\= "RAIN, Part Eleven" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 27 - 29 June 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to Tim Russ. I think he deserves this, after all the complaining Tom did about Tuvok in the earlier chapters of Rain. =/\= Have you ever woken up with a horrible headache, for instance, from a hangover? Then you probably know that that‘s pretty awful. Have you ever been woken, while you had such a headache, by an alarm clock? It‘s far worse, isn‘t it? Maybe you have experienced either or both of those horrors, but I doubt if you have ever been woken from unconsciousness, while having a headache, by a person who keeps slapping your face. I was woken exactly like that. And my head hurt like hell, as did my arm. "Wystria," I heard a voice say, "he‘s waking up." When Wystria didn‘t show any intention to stop hitting me, the voice spoke again, more firmly. I could recognize it now. It was Tarafa‘s voice. "Wystria, stop it!" Thankfully, she did. When Wystria stepped away from me, I could see part of the room. Everything was still kinda fuzzy, but I could make out two more people standing in front of me. I tried to raise my hands to hold my head and found that I couldn‘t. One of the people standing in front of me stepped up to me and pressed something roughly to my neck. It must‘ve been some sort of hypospray, ‚cause the next thing I knew, I blinked a few times and my head was considerably clearer. I realized that the reason I hadn‘t been able to raise my hands was that I was tied to a chair. My arm still hurt, but I didn‘t think it had actually been broken. The third person in the room, aside from Wystria and Tarafa, turned out to be Fegool, one of the ‘friends‘ I had made on my first night on the planet. What had..? Oh, yes, I remembered. They‘d caught me in Tarafa‘s shop. Fegool hadn‘t been there, though. "Welcome back to the waking world, Mr Paris," Tarafa spoke in his cold, emotionless voice. I licked some blood from my lips. "Gee," I replied in the most disappointed voice I could manage, "and I thought I was just having a nightmare. Well, thanks anyway for waking me up. Can I go now?" "I don‘t think so, Paris. You are going to tell me how I can build my own ‘transporter‘." I laughed at him for that. Unfortunately, even I could hear that it wasn‘t a very joyous laugh. Then I told Tarafa that to my eternal regret, I had to refuse to do what he wanted. I couldn‘t even have done it, if I had wanted to. That was B‘Elanna‘s department—fortunately my head was now clear enough to realize that I couldn‘t tell them that. But speaking of B‘Elanna, I wished I could find out if she had been caught as well. I was worried. Tarafa asked a few more questions, mainly about our technology, and my politeness went down from ‘I‘m sorry, but no‘ to ‘go to hell‘. I think it were ten questions altogether. Exactly ten, like it was a first round. Then Tarafa bent over to me and held his face mere inches from mine. "You‘re a lucky man, Paris," he whispered to me, "I don‘t believe in torture. Too messy." At first, I immediately wanted to disagree with him—lucky? me? -- but after that explanation, I was inclined to agree to Tarafa‘s point. No torture did sound good. Then he continued. "So at least your body will be spared. Your mind, however, is something else entirely. You see, my friend here"—he indicated Fegool—"he‘s a telepath. He can get really messy with people without any blood flying around to make stains. He can make you want to tell everything you know. Now, do you want to confess anything before I let him at you?" I considered that he might have been bluffing—Fegool hadn‘t seemed especially strong-minded to me that night I‘d met him, though that could simply have been because he‘d been dead drunk—but I didn‘t think so. I understood from what Tarafa had said that at least Fegool couldn‘t just go into my mind and get what he wanted. If he wanted to force me to tell what they wanted to know, he was in for a shock. I could handle any thing he threw at me. I hoped. Very hard. I looked Tarafa in the eye and said: "If you want the geek to try and mess up my mind so badly, than let‘s get it over with." I was rewarded with a wonderful startled look, but I feared that that would be the last thing I would smile about for some time. Fegool took Tarafa‘s place, leaning over me, and placed his hands on the sides of my head. It reminded me somewhat of the time when Tuvok had mindmelded with me when I‘d been accused of and convicted for murder by those aliens over a year ago. Fegool held my head much more firmly, though, and I could feel the places where Wystria had tried to wake me up quite clearly. Fegool stared into my eyes intently, but if he already was nosing around in my head, I didn‘t feel it. And suddenly I was flooded with the realization that being in this mess was, like it had happened so often before, trouble of my own making. I had screwed up again. It was my plan that had brought us to the Market, my plan that had gotten me caught. It was all just like so many times before. Oh, god, and B‘Ella! If she had been harmed because of my stupid mistakes... "Aha," I heard a voice say. Fegool‘s lips were moving, but still it took me a moment to connect him with the voice. No matter what I did, I always found some way to screw it up. "I‘ve found something," Fegool continued. I thought that maybe I should pay attention to him, try to find a way to escape, but what was the use? I would just make things worse. I didn‘t want any more people getting hurt because of me. No more. "It seems our friend here doesn‘t really have faith in his own abilities." I wanted to curl up in a protective ball, but I was tied to the chair, and I couldn‘t even do that. "All I had to do was tip over his mind, and now he believes he can‘t do anything right anymore." Too many deaths were on my conscience. I‘d killed those people at Caldik Prime. They had trusted me, and I... "Soon, he should be ready to talk simply to avoid any more mistakes." I realized I had started muttering about my constant failures under my breath. My dad always told me I was and would always be a failure. Guess he was right. I just never admitted it before. Oh god. =/\= It must have been at least an hour later. Some time ago somebody had released the bonds which had held me to the chair, and I had rolled onto the floor and curled up into a ball, holding my arms tightly around my legs. I was so afraid that if I even tried to get to my feet, I would manage to screw something up. Then I could hear the door slamming open and people walking in. I didn‘t respond to it in any way. I figured that if I did nothing at all, whatever I made go wrong couldn‘t be too bad. And still, I got myself hurt because of what I did. Someone kicked my back. "Get up, you lousy bastard." Slowly I looked up to the person who was standing over me. Wystria. Yes, I could remember I had given her reason enough to be angry at me. Why couldn‘t I ever do anything right, not harm everybody who came near me? She knelt down beside me and started to shake me roughly. "Snap out of it, Paris," she yelled at me. "Give him to me for a moment." The second voice was Fegool‘s. He took over Wystria‘s hold on me and looked intently into my wide open eyes. "I‘ll put his mind back together—partly—for now," he continued, "that way, when he answers, he‘ll be a bit more coherent." I didn‘t understand what the man was talking about—but that wasn‘t very remarkable, now, was it? And then, all of a sudden, my head cleared. I didn‘t feel any less miserable or guilty for living, but at least I realized that I hadn‘t been thinking rationally a moment ago. "Now, Paris," said Tarafa, who was standing behind the other two, "You‘ve cost me enough time. Give me the wrong answers now, and I‘ll get really pissed off." When I heard him mention that there was something I could do wrong, I started shaking all over, and tried to move back, away from him. If I could screw something up, I had no doubt that I would. From the corner of my eye, I saw Fegool covering his face with his hands. "Very clever, Klefon," he said through his fingers in an exasperated voice, "you‘ve just said the one thing that will prevent him from telling you anything. Now he‘ll be afraid to talk, because he is convinced he will tell you the wrong thing." Wystria had been glaring at me until this moment, but now she turned to Tarafa and Fegool and yelled at them angrily. "Take it easy, Wystria!" Fegool yelled back, "if you let your feelings get hurt, that‘s your problem. Don‘t take it out on us!" ‘Hurt.‘ I had done that hurting, too. Wystria apologized to the others, but she didn‘t sound very sincere. "So," said Tarafa with a sigh, "what do you suggest we do now?" Fegool said something about coming back later and took my head in his hands again. I felt so miserable, knowing all the things I‘d screwed up, and yet I knew that I didn‘t feel as miserable as I deserved. I hardly noticed that Tarafa, Wystria and Fegool left. It seemed like I‘d always been screwing things up, from my earliest memories up ‚till now. No wonder my dad‘d been angry so often. When, only minutes after the others had left, I heard the door swing open again, I could feel it in my bones that someone else who I had gotten hurt had come. =/\= end of part eleven =/\= "RAIN, Part Twelve" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 29 - 30 June 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to Garrett Wang, because Tom and B‘Elanna became friends for a large part because they were both Harry Kim‘s friends. Pity for him that he‘s a bit like the fifth wheel—or the third warp nacelle—now. =/\= It surprised me how easily I could sneak back into the Market, considering the way I had left it. True, it was still quite a walk back from where I had found the opening to the mountainside in the tunnels, but on the way out it had taken me two hours to get there, and on the way back it took me little more than one. My sense of direction must have been better than I‘d thought. It was pure luck, however, that I immediately ran into another of the doors which could take me into the complex. Before I went in, I shone the flashlight over myself to see how I looked. For the last half an hour, Paris‘ flashlight had spluttered a bit now and then. Its power supplies were running out. I hoped that if I would find Paris, we wouldn‘t have to go through the tunnels again. When I shone the light over myself, I moaned at the sight. I really wasn‘t the kind of woman who‘d die if she didn‘t look her absolute best in every situation, but I figured that even in the Market, it would attract an unpleasant amount of attention if I went marching around soaked in sweat and dust and remaining rainwater. So I took off my jacket—it had a hole from a disruptorblast in it anyway—and used it to scrub most of the dust off of me. Afterwards, I looked at least moderately presentable. A few people looked up when I stepped through the door. That wasn‘t really unexpected, those doors were probably hardly ever used. Fortunately, like Paris would have told me if he‘d been here, the code of non-interference stopped anyone from paying too much attention. I thought that code was weird. All right, I could see it was useful for a lot of people in a community like this, but I found it hard to believe -- because it was a community like this—that there‘d be no gossipping. Chakotay told me once: ‘If something unexpected happens, you just have to use it in your advantage.‘ And I did. With the last of the local credits I had, I bought a new coat, to replace the jacket I‘d left in the tunnels. It was the colour of dried blood and reached down to a few inches below my knees. It was uglier than Tholian traditional costumes, but it did make me look completely different. Maybe it would prevent people from looking at me altogether. Then I started to search for Paris. A public computer console was able to give me the location of two places owned by Tarafa, one of them his office. I knew that that list wasn‘t complete—for one thing, all storage depots were bought and rented anonymously, at least for the record‘s sake—but it was the best I could get on such short notice. I wished Paris hadn‘t taken our tricorder. The office, or shop, I decided, would be an unlikely place to hold a prisoner. It was both too small and too busily used. So I went to the highest level, level five. Tarafa‘s place was connected to the frontmost corridor, which had a view of the entrance hall through large windows. I positioned myself near Tarafa‘s door and pretended to look out of one of the windows. There were other people standing there as well, watching the new arrivals closely, but none were too near to where I was standing. I honestly had no idea if Tarafa would even come to this place at all, but it seemed logical to assume that he would if Paris was held here. I wasn‘t even completely sure if Paris was being held. The longer I stood there, the more unlikely it seemed to be that doing so would actually help me. It must have been sometime around 1545 hours when things finally started happening again. I was just considering some alternatives to simply hanging around when I heard some people walking past behind me. I froze. They were talking, and I recognized Tarafa‘s voice. Then the three people stopped in front of the door I‘d been watching. I had chosen the spot where I was standing carefully, and now I could see the reflections of the trio in the window quite clearly. Thank the gods, they didn‘t seem to have recognized me. The coat was doing its job well. One of them was indeed Tarafa, and he was unlocking the door. The second one was Wystria. I didn‘t recognize the last one. I thought I‘d seen him somewhere before, but I couldn‘t recall where. Only after the three had all entered the room could I make myself move an inch. I considered the snatches of the conversation that I‘d caught. Tarafa had said something about wanting information and wanting it now. That could mean that they were questioning Paris on our technology. The fools. Paris wasn‘t exactly an expert on machinery. Still, it probably meant that Paris was here, and, most likely, that Tarafa had lost the transporter. From what I‘d heard from Wystria, she was trying to convince the others to kill Paris. Fortunately, she didn‘t appear to be taken very seriously. Still, it was strange. I‘d really thought she liked Paris. All right, now I would have to wait for them to leave again, and then I could go in and see if Paris was indeed there, and free him. Unless they took him with them. Then I‘d follow them. Well, maybe not. I did still have my phaser. Pity that I couldn‘t go in right away, but I‘d have lost the advantage of surprise while I broke open the door. Tarafa and his two companions stayed inside for no longer than five minutes. I wondered what that could mean. I had no idea, and by now, I was too impatient to care much. It took all my control to wait a few more minutes before entering, to see if Tarafa would return. The lock, I had already seen, was of the same type as the one on the depot had been, but this time I didn‘t have a tricorder. I tried the depot‘s code. The door didn‘t open. Too bad. I thought I‘d been holding on to my temper for long enough, and I blasted the lock with my phaser and kicked the door open. A Federation phaser was, relatively, a very quiet weapon so I didn‘t think too many people out in the corridor noticed my actions. Carefully, I stepped into the room, ready to shoot anyone whose face I didn‘t like. Unfortunately, I found no such person. The only person I saw was laying on the floor next to a chair, curled up in a fetal position. I hadn‘t been sure in what kind of condition I would find Paris -- actually, I had tried not to think about it—but this was not what I had expected. Quickly, I ran over to him, putting my phaser away, but keeping it close at hand. I let myself fall to my knees next to Paris. He was shaking all over. What could they possibly have done to him to get this? His face was pretty badly bruised, but at first glance, I didn‘t think he was in any way seriously injured. I noticed now that he wasn‘t unconscious. He was continuously mumbling things I couldn‘t make out, and his eyes were wide open, staring, yet I didn‘t think he saw me. I took hold of his head and made him look me in the eyes. "Paris!" I yelled at him. I didn‘t really mean to yell at him. It was just that I‘d spent all that time telling myself that there was no reason to be so ridiculously worried, and now it turned out that there was. It made me angry, though I didn‘t know at whom. Paris‘ only response was that he tried to move away from me. I could hear now that he was mumbling something about ‘people getting hurt‘, and ‘screwing up‘. It didn‘t make any sense. "Paris," I said again, a bit more gentle this time, "Tom, snap out of it, will you? We need to get out of here." It suddenly occurred to me that I couldn‘t remember ever calling him simply ‘Tom‘ before. Tom‘s face shifted from simply miserable to include some surpise and worry. "B‘Ella?" he said, in a hoarse voice. ‘B‘Ella‘? What was that? "Yes, Paris, it‘s me, B‘Elanna. Can you get up? We need to get out of here," I repeated. I wasn‘t sure what happened to him, but he curled back up again, just when I‘d gotten him to unwind a little, and he started talking erratically in a voice that was somehow both a scream and a whisper. "No!" he said, "I can‘t! I... I don‘t want more people to get hurt. Not because of me. Not anybody. Especially not B‘Ella." Then he went back to mumbling to soft for me to hear again. What was this ‘B‘Ella‘-thing? It must have been some sort of abbreviation for my name, but I‘d never heard him say it before. Maybe I should have felt insulted, but I didn‘t. Too worried about Paris, I supposed. When I urged him one more time to get up, he spoke out loud again. "No! Please. I can‘t. I‘ll screw up. You‘ll get hurt. I don‘t want that. No more, please." I didn‘t have the faintest idea of what he was planning to screw up, but I knew that if we didn‘t leave soon he‘d probably be right about me getting hurt, if Tarafa came back again. =/\= end of part twelve =/\= "RAIN, Part Thirteen" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 30 June - 1 July 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to... This is chapter thirteen, isn‘t it? Wow, I‘ve never written a story with so many chapters before. Well, thirteen is my lucky number, so I think I won‘t dedicate this chapter to anyone. I‘m gonna keep it all for myself. My apologies to everyone who was expecting a dedication to him/her, but that‘s life. =/\= I couldn‘t understand how B‘Ella could be here. All I knew was that she had to leave before I got her hurt. I‘d told her that I couldn‘t come with her. Why didn‘t she understand that? She knew me. She‘d had the chance to see me screw up often enough. And still she wouldn‘t leave me. She seemed so worried. I could understand that, but worried about me? I didn‘t deserve that. Especially not from her. I‘d dragged her along in this screw-up. It was something of a miracle that she didn‘t seem to be hurt already. Unless you counted the look of that long coat. I wished she‘d just go. The mess I was in—that I was -- was my own fault anyway. I couldn‘t stand looking at beautiful B‘Ella anymore, knowing what could have happened to her because of me, but she was still holding my head. I was afraid. I wished I wasn‘t, but I had so much reason to be. When B‘Elanna started talking to me, I suddenly realized that I was still muttering, and I stopped so I could hear B‘Ella better. "Listen, Tom," she said. She sounded agitated. That was logical, I guessed. "I don‘t know what‘s gotten into you, but unless you get your butt moving and out of this place in the next few minutes, we are both going to be in one heck of a lot of trouble." I could only stare at her. I had thought that maybe, by doing nothing, staying here, I could prevent myself from screwing up too badly. Looked like I‘d been wrong again. I would go with B‘Elanna, if it would help her. I wished I didn‘t have to, because I knew that even if we‘d manage to get out of this trouble, I‘d simply get her into new trouble later, but I would have done anything to help her. I must have stared at B‘Ella longer than I thought—it was easy to forget time when looking at her, even if I‘d been thinking about other things—‚cause she got back to her feet with one of those despairing cries of hers. For a moment I thought that she might leave without me anyway, but then she started to physically pull me to my feet. I tried to do it myself, but I really did need her help. I was still shaking. "Good, Paris," B‘Ella said softly, once again sounding deeply concerned. When I looked up at her, I could see it written all over her face as well. Why did she care so much? I‘d never noticed her caring much about me before. Perhaps I was simply seeing what I wanted. But did I want this? It would be so much safer for B‘Ella if she just stayed away from me as much as possible. "All right," B‘Elanna continued, "now just follow me, Tom, and we‘ll be all right." She took a step in the direction of the doorway. When I didn‘t move to follow her immediately, she came back and took my right hand in her left. It felt good, somehow, touching her. Like a reassurance that everything would, indeed, be all right. This time, when she started moving, I followed her. At the door, I noticed, B‘Elanna put her right hand in a pocket of her dreadful coat. Maybe she had a phaser there? Yes, it would be wise to be careful with me around. Once I got outside, I flinched. The light out here was a bit brighter than in the room, but mostly I flinched because of the far greater chance of screwing something up I had in public. B‘Ella gave me a moment to recover, but all too soon she started pulling me with her again. B‘Ella tried to walk fast, and I stumbled and nearly fell. We slowed down somewhat, but not much. It was so stupid. Here I was feeling more certain that I was going to screw something up than I had in a very long time, and I was with the person who I wanted to get hurt least of all people in the universe. We stayed in the corridor with the windows, until we reached a turbolift. B‘Elanna pushed me inside hurriedly and jumped in herself. Then she called for the lift to go to the ground level and then turned to me. I was hanging against the back wall, relieved about being in a closed place without any strangers in it. "I just saw Tarafa out in the corridor," said B‘Elanna, "I can‘t be sure, but I think he saw me, too." Great. I hugged myself a little more tightly. If I hadn‘t been so damned slow, B‘Elanna would have gotten away safely. B‘Ella‘s suspicions were confirmed a moment later when the turbolift suddenly jerked to a halt, not yet two floors lower. Tarafa must have used some sort of override code. B‘Elanna looked up to the ceiling as if she couldn‘t understand what was going on, but still, she didn‘t hesitate for any longer than a single moment. She took her phaser from her pocket, entered a new setting into it and vaporised the lower half of the lift‘s door. We were hanging halfway between the floor and the ceiling of what must have been level three. B‘Ella took one look at me, and decided that this time, she would not waste time trying to tell me what to do. Instead, she grabbed my shoulder and practically threw me out of the turbolift. I rolled instinctively when I hit the floor, and managed to avoid most of the potential new bruises, but still I hurt my right arm, the one I‘d hit Wystria‘s natural armor with. I winced and held my injured arm in my other one. B‘Elanna was already beside me, getting to her feet. Surprisingly, I was on my feet as well. She grabbed my hand back in hers and broke into a run. I stumbled a few more times, but B‘Ella didn‘t show any signs of slowing down, and after a while, I seemed to get better at running. I only got flashing images of people either jumping out of our way or being pushed and calling curses after us. We finally stopped at another turbolift. I felt exhausted already. While we were waiting for the lift to arrive, we both caught our breaths, though I kept having trouble getting enough oxygen to my lungs. I also started shaking again. I didn‘t think I‘d shaken while B‘Ella and I had been running. At least not noticeably. Then B‘Elanna turned to me and spoke. "Paris," she said, "Tarafa probably has people waiting for us in the entrance hall. We have to get past them." The turbolift arrived and we entered it, B‘Elanna half pushing me in. "Level two," she called. Weren‘t we going to the entrance hall, then? That would be good. The entrance hall had a very high probability of things going wrong even without me. Unfortunately, my B‘Ella had other ideas. She started to explain what she wanted me to do. I was shocked when I realized how much responsibility that put on my shoulders. I didn‘t want to argue with B‘Elanna—I‘d caused her more than enough trouble already, and she probably knew better than me anyway—but I knew I couldn‘t do what she wanted either. "B‘Ella..." I started, "I can‘t do that, I‘ll just screw up. I know I will. And you‘ll get hurt. I can‘t let that happen." I could see B‘Elanna‘s temper rising. I winced. Now I‘d gone and gotten B‘Ella angry at me. "Listen, Hotshot, I can‘t get you and me out of this place all by my self." When I suggested that she should go on without me, I think B‘Elanna very nearly hit me. Maybe it was only the opening turbolift door that saved me. In the end, B‘Ella only sighed as we stepped into another corridor. We moved into the direction of the corridor with the windows of this level. "Tom," B‘Ella started, "I honestly don‘t know what‘s the matter with you, but I‘m really starting to get worried. I know you can handle this kind of situations. Dammit, you‘ve been in much worse situations, and you always stayed so damned calm!" I tried to object again, but B‘Elanna interrupted me. "Look, just do it, all right? Like I said, I‘m not gonna get us back to Voyager all by my self, and I‘m not going to leave you, so you might as well try." I nodded reluctantly. I hoped I wouldn‘t regret it. It seemed B‘Ella was determined to let me screw something up. She knew me. Why didn‘t she understand? Still, if B‘Ella wanted me to do this, I would. From where we stood, we had a view of the entire entrance hall. B‘Elanna‘s memory was pretty good, and things hadn‘t been moved around too much since she‘d last seen the hall this morning. We had a good plan, if nothing else. There were several people down there whom we recognized as Tarafa‘s hirelings: four muscled goons, two of which had been at my capture and two others who had gone after B‘Ella. And Wystria was there as well. I got very nervous as we waited a few minutes for everything to get into the best position. B‘Elanna handed me her phaser. The palms of my hands began to sweat. My hands shook -- as did the rest of me, but only with my hands was it really bad. I struggled to stay in control of myself. My B‘Ella was depending on me now, whether I liked it or not. Then, when the right—hopefully—moment came, I blasted the wall away, and we jumped down. =/\= end of part thirteen =/\= "RAIN, Part Fourteen" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 1 - 2 July 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to my parents, for not going too crazy every time the computer is taken for yet another whole day. =/\= When my feet touched the crates which were standing beneath the window, I moved immediately to slide to the ground. Paris stayed on them to fire a first volley of shots towards Tarafa‘s men. I noticed him transferring the phaser to his left hand. He‘d been holding his right arm protectively before. Was he injured after all? Damn. Then why didn‘t he say anything? Well, I couldn‘t worry about that now. I just hoped Tom was well enough to fly a skimmer. As I sped along to the skimmer we‘d picked, staying low to keep myself from being noticed, I heard people starting to panic at Tom‘s wild shooting. Good. Paris had to keep all attention directed at himself while I got the skimmer‘s on-board computer to let us fly it. I didn‘t like the danger that that put him in, but if the wrong people noticed me messing with the skimmer, I would be trapped inside of it, and then I was toast. While working on the outer lock of the skimmer, I couldn‘t stop worrying about Tom. I could hardly comprehend what was wrong with him, let alone how it had happened. It seemed that somehow, Tom had become convinced that whatever he tried to do would turn out wrong. I had to admit, it was nice, if unexpected, to hear how Tom kept worrying about me and not at all about himself, but as he was now, he could very well get us both killed. Curse this lock! Ah, finally, it opened. Pulling that last wire must have done the trick. After I‘d hurried inside, I could safely take a look at the firefight that was going on on the other side of the skimmer. Paris was just sprinting to take cover behind another pile of abandoned cargo. It looked like he‘d already taken out two of Tarafa‘s men, and was firing blindly into the hall as he ran. That worried me. There weren‘t any innocent bystanders left in the hall who hadn‘t taken cover—as far as there were any innocent people in this place to begin with—but the energy of the phaser must have been running awfully low. If I didn‘t hurry in getting this skimmer on-line, Tom might might have gone and let himself get killed. Especially in the state he was in at the moment. If he thought it would give me a better chance of escape, he might take stupid risks. Across the hall Wystria was standing—if Paris had had the time to aim, she would have been a wonderful target there—holding an enormous disruptor rifle. Unconsciously, I started to growl deep down in my throat at the sight of the mad snarl on the woman‘s face. I started to work frantically to get access to the computer. No one was going to harm Tom, not himself, and not anyone else! Not much later, I had gotten all basic functions. I skipped pre-flight and started to power up the engines immediately. Then I threw open the hatch and called out. "Paris! Get in!" Fortunately, he heard me, but he was awfully far away. A few dozen meters behind him, I could see Tarafa and the other guy I‘d seen earlier at the place where I‘d saved Paris, who had apparently joined in the fray while I was busy. Paris looked at me and back at his adversaries. I could see that he was hesitating. "Tom!" I called, "I‘m not moving until you‘re in the skimmer with me!" Aside from my simple refusal to leave him behind no matter what, I most likely wouldn‘t have made it out of the tunnel leading from the entrance hall to the outside of the mountain. It seemed to me to be some pretty tricky flying. I hoped Paris‘ flying skills weren‘t affected by whatever mental mess he was in. Meanwhile, Tom had jumped over another lone crate on his way to me, rolled to his feet and was answering the multiple shots. He was out of reach for any of the disruptors, but he also was unable to move more than a foot from that crate without being vaporized. So far, none of Tarafa‘s hirelings had taken one shot at me yet. Maybe I should let them. I jumped out of the hatch. "Tom!" I called. He turned to look at me. "The phaser! Give it to me!" Surprisingly, Tom did as I said without a moment‘s hesitation. He put the phaser on the floor, and, with a powerful sling, slided it towards me. The phaser stopped only a few steps away from me. I hurriedly picked it up and took Paris‘ place in returning fire. The man who‘d come in with Tarafa went down immediately, as he had no cover at all from where I was standing. Then I had to duck for cover myself. I retreated back into the skimmer. I motioned to Paris to hurry over, and he came running. The last two steps he skipped, instead he dove through the door, knocking me down on the deck—a fraction of a second before a disruptor blast hit the doorway where my head had been barely a moment before. Damn. I had been paying too much attention to Paris and too little to the people shooting at me. "Thanks," I muttered to Paris as I crouched at the hatch. "You‘d better get to the front compartment and get us out. I‘ll hold them off awhile longer." "Me?" Paris exclaimed, horrified, "you want me to fly us? No, you have to do that." That was more than I could take. "Yes! You!" I yelled at him, "you‘re supposed to be ‘the best damn pilot in the Delta quadrant‘, and you‘d better damn well show it to me!" After that, Paris didn‘t disagree with me anymore. Or maybe he just fled from me. I growled and began shooting again. Damn the man! He made me sick of worry and furious at the same time, and even I didn‘t know in which way I‘d respond to something he did until I did. The resulting confusion only made me even more furious. Luckily, I had a phaser and a group of outlaws to take that anger out on. Only then, my phaser quit. No more energy. I cursed and punched the button to close the hatch. Fortunately, that is when we lifted off. I could feel the skimmer rising above the ground and slowly starting to move forward. Disruptor fire scourged the left side of our vessel, but there was nothing we could do about it, since the skimmer didn‘t have any weapon systems whatsoever. When I entered the other compartment, I watched Tom for a few moments before letting him know that I was there. I had noticed earlier that the more instinctive an action was for him, the less his current condition seemed to influence it. Flying came to him as easily as breathing. Even his hands had stopped shaking now. I sat down in the seat beside Tom. He didn‘t give any other indication that he‘d noticed me, but he said: "I lost a manoeuvering thruster in the crossfire. We‘ve just entered the access tunnel, but I think I saw Tarafa running for another skimmer, so we‘ll probably be pursued." I was just preparing for the inevitable Paris-punchline, when I suddenly realized that it wouldn‘t come. Paris wasn‘t all the way back to normal yet, and he was really afraid. Perhaps he always was in crisis situations—he‘d said something like that once—but, like seemingly every emotion he was feeling, it was all over his face and body language as well, now. Aside from his total lack of confidence, that was likely the biggest change he‘d undergone. I couldn‘t honestly say that this one was very bad, though. I‘d often wondered if Paris really felt as little as he showed. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a rock formation jutting out terribly far into the tunnel. And beyond that, another. And another... I gasped. Tom flew around them effortlessly, and somewhere, in the middle of his flying—almost dancing—the skimmer, he found the time to check the sensors. "They‘re right behind us!" he yelled, nearly panicking. "Don‘t panic!" I yelled back, thinking fast, "Just keep flying. If they shoot us here, they‘ll ram into us. They won‘t take such a risk. When we clear the tunnel, go and do some evasive manouvers. I‘ll contact Tuvok to beam us out." I hadn‘t even asked Tom yet if he still had his commbadge, but I didn‘t need it now, I‘d simply use the skimmer‘s communicator. I hoped Tuvok was still waiting, not trying some plan of his to get to us, so he‘d be able to respond fast. Tom and I had only been out of contact for less than a day, but it seemed far longer. A few moments later, I could see daylight shining through the exit of the tunnel. I smiled. It reminded me of the last time I‘d tried to get away, but this time, I did not plan on going back into the Market again. When we reached the exit, and flew into the light of the early evening, Paris turned us so hard to port that I was almost thrown out of my chair. It was the disruptor blast to our already damaged left side that completed the job. It looked like I was going to have to contact the shuttle from the ground. Provided we were still alive after we got there. =/\= end of part fourteen =/\= "RAIN, Part Fifteen" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 2 - 3 July 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to Robert Beltran. He has certainly done some good acting and nice scenes as Chakotay. Why do I suddenly find myself thinking of when Tom punched him? =/\= "B‘Ella? B‘Elanna!" I had tried so hard not to let her down, but I had, of course, failed. When our skimmer had been hit, we had lost our port engines and had gone into a spin. I had managed to stabilize us, and still I couldn‘t prevent us from hitting the ground hard. And B‘Elanna had been thrown across the compartment. Now, I was sitting on the deck where she had fallen, holding her carefully. My own bruises were negligible, but I thought B‘Ella must have hit her head on something hard. I sighed in relief when she groaned softly and lifted her eyelids up half-way. "I‘ll be all right," she whispered. All I could think was that because I had screwed up flying the skimmer, I had gotten B‘Ella hurt. She got to her feet carefully, with only a little support from me. "Where‘s Tarafa, and his goons? Did they land?" she asked. I couldn‘t give the answers to those questions. In my worry about B‘Elanna, I‘d completely forgotten about our pursuers. "Never mind," B‘Ella continued, "do you still have your commbadge? Then we can beam of this planet before they can give us any more trouble." I nodded and searched my pockets. It was in there somewhere. Ah, there it was, hidden in a pocket of my shirt. I handed the commbadge to B‘Elanna. She activated it and spoke. "Torres to shuttlecraft." There was no reply. "Torres to Voyager." Again, no reply. "No! Goddammit! I want to get of this cursed mudball!" Then Tarafa‘s voice suddenly sounded loudly from outside. I could see his skimmer when I pressed my face against one of the various hull-breaches. Tarafa was speaking into what must have been some kind of voice-amplifier. "You might as well surrender!" he called, "I am blocking all communication lines with a little device I have here! You have no chance of escape!" I heard B‘Elanna mutter something about the chance of her beating the crap out of Tarafa. I turned to smile at her, and saw her sway. I called her name and worriedly moved to prevent her from falling. "I‘ll be all right," she said, "I was just a little dizzy." Her voice sounded a trifle unsteady. Tarafa‘s voice boomed across the sky again. "Torres! I know you can hear me! And I know what state Paris is in! He won‘t be of any help to you! An associate of mine, a telepath, saw to that! He enlarged Paris‘ insecurity so that he‘s too afraid to do anything! Surrender now and you have my word that I will go easy on you!" Tarafa had lost me somewhere halfway; I didn‘t have the faintest idea what he was talking about. B‘Ella‘s face, however, suddenly lit up, as if a riddle she had been pondering over for ages had just been solved. Then she stared at me wide-eyed with that worried look on her face again. It was very confusing. She shook herself and looked at me again. "I hope I don‘t need to tell you that we‘re not gonna surrender." I hadn‘t even thought about that yet, but I shook my head anyway. "We‘ll move away from them as fast as we can on foot. That comm-scrambler can‘t have a very great reach." We went to a particulary large hole in the skimmer‘s side and B‘Elanna crawled through it. I considered staying so I wouldn‘t cause any further harm, but B‘Elanna grabbed my hands and had pulled me out as well before I could resist. Because we were in a rainforest, we had at lot of cover while we ran, but that didn‘t stop Wystria from spotting us. "They‘re running away!" she yelled, and I heard footsteps through the underbrush behind B‘Ella and me, soon followed by several disruptor blasts. Fortunately, they were wide of the mark. "For the gods‘ sakes, Wystria," I heard Tarafa yell, "for once, use your brains, instead of your brawn! Capture them alive!" B‘Elanna appeared to be oblivious to it all, she simply kept on running and pulling me along, changing direction from time to time. The layers of leaves above us stopped most of the falling rain, but enough water slipped through to give us a shower every time one of us stirred a branch. I could feel it again: something bad was going to happen, because of me. Last time I‘d crashed our skimmer, what would happen now? Slowly, the footsteps pursuing us got softer, but I still felt impending disaster. B‘Ella and I had just been forced to turn to our right a few minutes ago by a ravine that we were still following, when Wystria caught up with us again. Well, not completely, she was still several dozen meters behind us. But then again, she didn‘t have to get closer. "Paris!" she called to me, "you‘re just going to get yourself hurt if you keep running, and her too! You don‘t want that, do you?" She told me what I‘d known myself all along, but only now did I realize that I was still endangering B‘Ella more than I had to by staying with her. Wystria kept calling me, and soon I had started shaking again. I had to stop this! Had to protect my B‘Ella! But how? Ultimately, my legs wouldn‘t support me anymore and I fell to my knees. B‘Elanna came to a halt as well, breathing heavily and still holding my hand. She let it go and stood panting for a moment. I didn‘t dare look at her. Then she cursed softly and disappeared into the forest. When I looked after her, I could see only trees. This was what I had wanted al along, wasn‘t it? But I didn‘t feel glad. I felt miserable, and abandoned. A minute later Wystria appeared from the direction in which B‘Ella had vanished. She was holding a disruptor in both hands. I was too terrified to move, I just lay there amidst the leaves and the dirt and the rain, which was again falling freely on me, since the ravine left the path without cover. At least Wystria was mad at me, I thought, and perhaps wouldn‘t chase B‘Ella anymore, now that she had me. She kicked me in the stomach to get my attention and then squatted down beside me. "You‘re going to regret you were ever born, you bastard," she whispered to me, still breathing hard. Then she looked at the surrounding forest for a moment, before turning back to me. "I never would have thought she would actually leave you, Paris. Pity. I‘d like to kill her too. Still, we‘ll get her eventually. I never should have believed you when you told me that she wasn‘t your woman. One of the things I‘m going to make you regret." She poked at me with one of her disruptors. And suddenly, things were happening almost too fast for me to follow, let alone participate. From one moment to the next, B‘Elanna was suddenly on top of Wystria, and was forcing her to drop her disruptors. I could hear both of the women growling. They struggled briefly, and Wystria seemed to come out on top, but B‘Elanna kicked her off of her. Wystria immediately jumped to her feet. She pushed herself up into the air a little too hard, and had to struggle not to fall backward. She knew she wouldn‘t succeed, and she knew exactly where she was standing. Time seemed to slow as Wystria balanced on the ravine‘s edge. The moment passed, and she plunged down. At the last moment before she vanished from sight, our eyes met. Wystria threw one last look of pure hatred at me. Then she was gone. I threw myself at the edge, to look down, but I couldn‘t see her anywhere anymore. Then I heard a sound behind me and turned back. B‘Ella had sat down on the ground hard. She was panting and holding her head in both hands. "B‘Ella!" I exclaimed, rushing over to her, "are you all right?" "Yeah," she said softly, "it‘s just where I hit my head in the crash. I got dizzy for a moment again." I had had enough head injuries of my own to know that I didn‘t like that, but what could I possibly do to help? "Are you all right? I saw her kick you," B‘Ella asked me. I nodded. Then she gathered Wystria‘s disruptors in one hand and held out the other to me. "Okay," she said, "then help me up. We still have Tarafa to deal with." So I pulled her to her feet, took one of the disruptors when she held it out to me, and we started to run again. I wanted to refuse when B‘Elanna tried to give me the disruptor, but by now I had realized that, for some reason, B‘Ella was ignoring the way I attracted trouble, and would not let me not take the disruptor, and second, she probably didn‘t have much use for two disruptors anyway. We were still in sight of the place where the struggle had taken place when Klefon Tarafa stepped out of the underbrush in front of us. He had a disruptor pointed at B‘Ella, who was walking out in front. We had put ours away to have our hands free for overhanging branches. "Well, well," he said smugly, "look who‘s here. I must say, I‘m half surprised Wystria hasn‘t caught up with you yet. She‘ll be disappointed. Still, I could have told her that this little thingie"—he held up our missing tricorder—"would be of considerable help. It was nice enough to track your lifesigns for me." Tarafa had stepped up to barely a meter and a half in front of B‘Ella, with me some two meters behind her. The two of them had locked their eyes on each other. Tarafa‘s were showing smug victory, and though I couldn‘t see them from where I was standing, I had little doubt that B‘Elanna‘s eyes were spilling with defiance. She signed to me with one hand behind her back. I wanted to scream that she was crazy, that I couldn‘t possibly do that—nor could she, for that matter. But screaming would only make it more certain that Tarafa would shoot. It was miraculous enough that he wasn‘t alarmed by the widening of my eyes alone. Then, there was no more time for doubts. Before Tarafa realized what was going on, B‘Ella had kicked the arm holding the disruptor aside. Tarafa held on to the weapon, but was in no position to fire it. B‘Ella immediately dived at him and swung a punch at his stomach, but the wound to her head made her unsteady and just a trifle slower than usual. Tarafa was fast, and less out of breath. He sidestepped B‘Ella‘s blow and scored a grazing blow of his own on her head. It couldn‘t have been hard, but in B‘Elanna‘s condition, it was enough. She dropped to the ground. Mere seconds after B‘Ella had first jumped into action, Tarafa was swinging his disruptor back up, aiming it at me. Mere seconds were al I needed. Almost without thinking, I reached into the pocket of my jacket. I didn‘t bother to take the disruptor out. Instead, I fired, and before Tarafa‘s disruptor was halfway up, my shot hit him dead-on on his heart. At least, his heart, if his physiology was that much like a human‘s. He was vaporized completely, taking our tricorder with him in oblivion. Once again, I rushed to where B‘Ella had fallen. This time, she was out cold, and this time, there was something I could do. I knew Tarafa had most likely carried his communication blocker on him, in case we got too far from his skimmer, so I quickly searched B‘Ella for my commbadge. I found and activated it. "Paris to shuttlecraft. Two to beam up immediately." "Acknowledged, lieutenant," came Tuvoks dead-calm reply, "energising." And in a shower of light, B‘Ella and I dematerialised from a forest path leading along a dangerous ravine, near a black patch on the green and brown ground, all of it being soaked in a never ending rainshower. =/\= end of part fifteen =/\= "RAIN, Part Sixteen" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 4 July 1998 =/\= This chapter is dedicated to Ethan Phillips. When the Kazon, Vidians and Borg start to get dull, we can always count on his character Neelix‘s cooking to give us some really scary scenes. =/\= My head hurt. It wasn‘t very bad, but I could feel that it hurt. I could also feel that I‘d been unconscious, or maybe asleep, and that I was just now waking up. I opened my eyes. Like I should have known, it wasn‘t wise to do that all at once. Hastily, I partly closed my eyes again, until they had gotten used to the bright light. "Rise and shine, lieutenant," the Doctor, whose face suddenly hung before mine said, "it‘s time to wake up." The doctor? "Doctor?" I said, still a bit sleepy, but waking up rapidly, "I‘m back on Voyager?" "You certainly are, Ms Torres," the Holodoc replied, wearing his smile that said ‘see? you‘re better of if you let me go on without trying for bedside manner‘, "and you have even been restored to your full health. You still need rest, of course, but feel no need to listen to the advice of your medical officer. I hardly expect that anymore." "B‘Elanna? How are you feeling?" When the Doctor stepped away, I could see that Chakotay and captain Janeway were standing at the foot of my biobed. I sat up. They looked relieved to see I was awake. "The Doctor said you were fine," Chakotay continued, "and that we might as well let you wake up for yourself, but I‘m still glad to actually see you awake." "I‘m all right, I guess. What happened? Waitaminute! Where‘s Paris? Is Tom all right?" Chakotay and Janeway exchanged a worried glance. "Well," the captain began, "physically, Lt Paris is perfectly all right. He only had some bruises and some damage to the bones of his right forearm. Nothing the Doctor couldn‘t fix. But he has been behaving... strangely... since he got back on board." "Let‘s start at the beginning," Chakotay said, "the shuttlecraft beamed the two of you of Jeekar VI and left to rendezvous with Voyager. We don‘t know what happened on the planet yet. We were just coming to the Jeekar system ourselves, and at 1900 hours you were transported to Sickbay. There the EMH treated your concussion and Paris‘ bruises. After that, Paris... fled... straight to his quarters. He hasn‘t talked to anyone since. The Doctor decided it would be better if we just let you sleep." He shrugged. "And now, ten hours later, you‘ve woken up." Captain Janeway spoke up. "If you are sure you‘re all right, could you tell us what happened down there? I wanted to give Tom a little privacy, if that‘s what he needed, but I‘m starting to get worried. This isn‘t like him at all." "It‘s.. a bit complicated." I looked up at Janeway. "Captain, can I go see how Tom is before I start explaining?" She hesitated for a moment, then agreed and went away with Chakotay, leaving me with instructions to report to her ready room in one hour at most. I got up carefully and dressed. I wondered if there was anyone who didn‘t hate Sickbay clothing. When I walked away, I could see the Holodoc glaring disapprovingly at me from his office, but I didn‘t really care. I still had a bit of a headache, but it was nothing I couldn‘t handle. At Tom‘s door, I hesitated. I didn‘t know what state I‘d find him in. There was a chance that he was recovering from what the telepath had done to him, but I doubted it. Also, I neither understood nor liked the fact that I took the pain Paris was in so personally. I should have told Chakotay and the captain what was wrong with him at once, but I was hoping for some reason not to have to reveal things about him that he had kept hidden until now. And maybe, just maybe, I was a little bit afraid to be with Tom now that all his hidden feelings were showing, and there would be nothing to distract me, like there had constantly been planetside. When I finally brought myself to press the doorchime, there was no response. I asked the computer to confirm Paris‘ location, and it told me that he was, in fact, still in his quarters. The fact that he wasn‘t answering the door did nothing to reassure me about his condition, so I used my override code to open his door. Tom wasn‘t in his living room, and did not respond when I called his name. Then I saw him laying on his bed. I felt a bit foolish, realizing that he might simply have been asleep all along, but I soon noticed he wasn‘t. He was curled up in a fetal position, much like when I had found him in Tarafa‘s room. "Go away," he muttered when I entered his sleeping area. He sounded almost like a sulking child. "Tom?" I said, "it‘s me, B‘Elanna." He didn‘t make the slightest movement. I remained standing beside his bed, looking at him, for several minutes. There certainly were less emotions spilling from Tom than I‘d feared. I thought I understood, after a little thinking. We had returned from the mission alive, but I had had to be brought to Sickbay, and I was sure Paris had thought of some excuse to blame himself. Now this one danger was past, Paris wanted to prevent getting involved in anything where he could cause new danger, and a remote possibility of that existed in virtually everything he could do. After some time, I left. I didn‘t know of anything I could do to help. I just hoped that there was someone who did. =/\= "I see," Tuvok said after I had finished explaining—for the second time in less than an hour. Chakotay had suggested bringing Tuvok in after I had explained Tom‘s condition to him and captain Janeway. It was an effort not to explode at Tuvok‘s calmness, but I knew the Vulcan wasn‘t under-appreciating the seriousness of the situation, that the lack of expression of worry was simply his species‘ nature. But it was still hard not to explode. I was uncomfortably aware of Chakotay being aware of my nervousness. I thought he was amused. Well, he didn‘t understand. I had been down there with Paris. I had a right to be concerned. The captain opened her mouth, but I spoke before she could say anything "Well? Can you do anything to help him?" Tuvok frowned at me. "It is not simply a matter of entering Mr Paris‘ mind and repairing the broken element, as you would a warpcoil, lieutenant," he replied, "I cannot say if any attempt to aid the lieutenant will be in any degree succesfull. Still, I am prepared to investigate the matter." It was fortunate for him that he was. I didn‘t like to think about what I would have done to him if he hadn‘t been. Thankfully, the captain could see my tension, and she suggested that I got some more rest, as per the Doctor‘s orders, while Tuvok conducted whatever tests he needed to do to find the best course of action. Rest, she said. Well, I went to my quarters and sat down, but I don‘t think you could call why I did ‘resting‘. In the first half hour, I must have stood up and paced the room at least a dozen times. A little later, after his shift was over, Harry came by. Harry had always been very good at calming me down, and he did so in this case, but still, I had to tell the entire story for the third time. As I had done when I told Tuvok, Chakotay and Janeway, I left the more personal details that Paris had revealed of himself out. Harry was Tom‘s best friend, so he might have known a lot of it already, but to my knowledge Tom had always hidden all of his feelings, and I had decided that I would respect that. Anyway, I would still remember it all myself. Tuvok would probably learn of those things if he went into Tom‘s head, but he would have to consider that information to be protected by the privacy of the doctor/patient-relationship, and as a logical Vulcan, would tell no one. It was strange. I could remember wondering if Tom had any feelings at all three days ago, at the beginning of the mission to Jeekar VI, and now I thought about those same feelings as if I knew them inside and out. Tom had let me see his emotions once before, I suddenly recalled, but for my own reasons, I had very succesfully tried to forget about the incident in the Vidian prison. Shortly after Harry had left, the captain called me to come to the conference room. Tuvok had finished his preliminary examinations—despite Paris‘ unco-operativeness—and had concocted a treatment which he thought had a considerable chance of succes. =/\= end of part sixteen =/\= "RAIN, Part Seventeen" =/\= By Niels van Eekelen =/\= 3 & 5 July 1998 =/\= There‘s such a thing as ‘coming full circle‘, and since this chapter is the last in this story—and possibly because I have no one else left to dedicate to—I dedicate this chapter once again to Robert Thomas Duncan Eugene McNeill Paris and Roxann B‘Elanna Dawson Torres... Uh... Did I say that right? =/\= "My mind to your mind." I heard the drone not so much with my ears, but rather inside of my mind. "My thoughts to your thoughts." I closed my eyes in a reflex, to compensate for the abundance of perceptions taken directly in my mind. There was another presence there. It was very confusing. Tuvok had told me earlier that he was going to do something to me, but I hadn‘t really understood. His two hands, holding my face on opposite sides, were accompanied by a feeling that reminded me of something. I couldn‘t recall what, but I knew that it was something bad. The presence in my mind seemed to sense my discomfort, and somehow assured me that everything would be all right. It wasn‘t exactly comforting, but more like a logical explanation that the first time I had felt this, something had been put wrong, and now the presence was there to put it right again. It was Tuvok in my mind. Slowly, my perceptions seemed to... shift. Nothing changed with my eyes or ears or anything, but... I thought my mind‘s eye was the best description of what shifted. My inward perceptions. It‘s hard to describe. Perhaps it took hours to complete, perhaps only minutes. I didn‘t know. But when I opened my eyes I realized exactly what had happened. It was not good. God! All the things I‘d shown of myself! I thought I was going to die of embarrassment that very moment. (Un)fortunately, I did not. When I took a look around the room—I realized I was still in my own quarters—I saw Chakotay, B‘Elanna, Harry and captain Janeway all watching me expectantly to see if Tuvok had done his job. I grinned slightly to cover my embarrassment. "Hi, everybody," I said. There was a general sigh of relief. Then Harry and the captain came over to me asking me if I was all right again, telling me how glad they were that I was. I did my very best to assure them that I was fine now, and especially to hide my uneasiness. Chakotay and Tuvok remained on the background, content to see me behave more or less normal again. B‘Elanna left nearly instantly after I had shown myself as having recovered. I found myself staring at the door through which she had left. Now that I could think again, I certainly had a lot of things to think about, not just the things that had happened in the last few days, but older things as well, that I only now had come to understand, or even had come to realize existed. =/\= I was watching the stars through the windows in the Messhall. It was gamma shift, that meant the middle of the night, so I was alone. Not even Neelix was there, as he practically always seemed to be. The stars looked different from a starship than they did from a planet, colder, somehow. After away missions, I would often sit down in front of a window and wonder which way I liked them best, if I was glad the mission was over or not. Heh. No, I didn‘t mind that the mission was over this time, not at all. But still, there were a great many things to wonder about. Things I wished had happened differently... "Are you thinking about her? About Wystria?" a voice asked from the entrance. I hadn‘t heard her come in. For once, the amused expression on my face as I turned my chair to look at B‘Elanna was one hundred percent honest. "And here I thought I had left that lousy telepath behind on Jeekar VI. Tell me, Ms Torres, since when can you read minds?" She smiled back and came to sit next to me. "Couldn‘t sleep either?" she asked. "No. Too much on my mind, I guess." "Me, too." "She might still be alive, you know. Wystria, I mean. That ravine wasn‘t all that deep, and there were lots of trees to break her fall." "I think you‘ll be lucky if you never find out. She‘d probably try to kill you again if you ever see her again." I smiled again. "Probably." B‘Elanna could apparently see right through me, and noticed that I wasn‘t entirely convinced. "Forget about her, Tom. She got involved, tried to kill us, and then we were forced to deal with her. We did. Not a single screw-up there." I wondered at the ‘Tom‘. Before Jeekar VI, B‘Elanna had never called me just Tom. I didn‘t know what had changed that, but I liked it. It made me feel like we‘d gotten one step... closer... to each other. I didn‘t like the remark about the ‘screw-up‘, though. Harry and the others all seemed to believe that my insecurity had completely been due to what Fegool had done to me, but not B‘Elanna. She had seen behind my mask, and no amount of lying was going to make her forget what she‘d seen. "So, Paris, tell me," B‘Elanna said, changing the subject, "what does ‘B‘Ella‘ mean?" I started and stared at her for a moment before I realized that I had called her that when I was a loon for a while. "Nothing," I managed to say, "it means nothing. It‘s just a name I have for you." I was sure I was blushing. B‘Elanna shook her head. "No, I can tell, it means something." I didn‘t respond. I wasn‘t about to tell her that I called her ‘beautiful‘, not B‘Elanna. That she knew of the pet name was bad enough. She‘d really kill me if she knew what I felt for her. Then again, maybe not. A lot of things had become clearer in the last few days, but B‘Elanna was still a complete mystery to me most of the time. "How come I‘ve never heard you use it before?" she asked after a moment of silence. My cheeks must have gotten very red at that moment. "I... I never really used it before. I was afraid you‘d bite my head off if you heard." There it was again. B‘Elanna Torres as the greatest mystery in the universe. Why should that innocent remark upset her so much? "Bite your..." she spluttered angrily. Then, all of a sudden she was calm again. "Do you know anything about Klingon... customs?" she asked out of the blue. I was totally confused, but I answered honestly. "Only that Klingons are about addicted to honor. Why?" "Never mind." For some reason, she blushed, too. Then she stood up. "Well, I‘d better try to get some sleep tonight. See you tomorrow at breakfast, with Harry?" I nodded. "Good. Good night." "You too," I replied, and she left. I got back to watching the stars and wondering. All things considered, for an away mission that went so horribly wrong, the results weren‘t half bad. I might have shown a side of myself to my friends and particularly B‘Elanna that I‘d rather have kept hidden away, but at the very least, my... mental instability... had finally made me realize what I felt for B‘Elanna. I cared for her. A lot. I hadn‘t realized it before, because among the countless girls I‘d dated in my life, there had been about half a dozen who I thought I had truly loved, and what I felt for B‘Elanna was so different. Compared to her, I‘d hardly felt anything for those other girls, even if I added it all together. Aside from that was, there the fact that I had discovered that she didn‘t really dislike me. That had simply been my imagination. It seemed that B‘Elanna was more like the B‘Ella from my dreams than I could have imagined. I was almost ashamed to admit it, but that made me feel all warm inside. Now, if I could just persuade her to complete the transition to my dream-image, and become my B‘Ella... Who knew what might happen? =/\= end of part seventeen =/\= end of Rain =/\= #Raindrops keep falling on my head I‘m just like the guy whose feet are too big for his bed Nothing seems to fit Those raindrops are falling on my head They keep falling #So I just did me some talking to the sun And I said to him I didn‘t like the way he got things done Sleeping on the job Those raindrops are falling on my head They keep falling #But there‘s one thing I know The blues they send to meet me Won‘t defeat me It won‘t be long Till happiness steps up to greet me #Raindrops keep falling on my head But that doesn‘t mean my eyes will soon be turning red Crying‘s not for me ‚Cause, I‘m never gonna stop the rain by complaining Because I‘m free Nothing‘s worrying me #Raindrops keep falling on my head But that doesn‘t mean my eyes will soon be turning red Crying‘s not for me ‚Cause, I‘m never gonna stop the rain by complaining Because I‘m free Nothing‘s worrying me#