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Here There Be Dragons: Part 2

by Mizvoy

Time: Five Years Following the disappearance of Admiral Janeway’s Shuttle

Location: The Republic

“Chakotay! Hey! Chakotay?”

Chakotay turned to see B’Elanna Torres waving to him from the balcony of his cabin near the top of the hill. “I’m down here!” he called, making his way toward her from the garden plot he’d been tending at the foot of his back yard. “What are you doing here on your day off?”

The half Klingon woman, heavy with her third child, leaned against the railing and let her friend climb up the hill toward her. “The Bastaan traded for an old beat up shuttle they want to sell us. I thought we’d better go check it out before Junior arrives.” She absently patted her swollen belly. “Sounds like it might be the kind of ship we need for interstellar surveys.”

Chakotay was interested. They were desperate for more ships, and even a worn out shuttle could provide much needed transportation or serve as a platform for deep space scans or patrols along the border with non-aligned space. “Don’t we have six weeks left before your due date?”

“Yeah, but Conner was two weeks early, remember?”

He smiled. “I do, but I also remember that Miral was two weeks late.”

“Don’t remind me,” she groaned as he put an arm around her shoulders. She wrinkled her nose at his sweaty smell. It was a hot sunny day, and he’d been working hard for hours. “How long will it take for you to clean up?”

“Fifteen minutes, if you can spare them,” he teased, appreciating the way she was excited about the new ship. “What’s so special about an ‘old beat up shuttle’?”

“They claim it’s a Delta shuttle.”

He stared at her. “You must be kidding. One of the Starfleet shuttles based on the Delta Flyer?”

“That’s what they claim. I’ve wanted to study one of those shuttles for years to see what we could adapt to our ships. The technology might be five years old, but it’s new to me.”

Chakotay hurried into the house, B’Elanna on his heels. “How did they find a Starfleet vessel on this side of nonaligned space?” he asked as he disappeared into the bathroom.

“That’s the other thing I want to know.”

Untraah watched with undisguised admiration as the human female walked back toward the house carrying a load of vegetables from the garden. She shouldn’t be alive, shouldn’t have survived the injuries she’d suffered, and yet here she was, working and contributing to his tiny household in spite of the odds against her. He wished he could take credit for her miraculous healing, but she had largely done it herself. He’d never seen such spirit, determination, and relentless effort to become whole again.
The first time he had seen her, he was sure she was already dead. Her skin was white with the cold of space and her face was caked with a dark brown substance that he later realized was blood from the long gash that spread through her hair from just above the middle of her forehead to behind her left ear. The left side of her body was battered and bruised by the shuttle’s rough ride. A quick scan revealed a broken leg and arm, shattered ribs, collapsed lung, ruptured spleen, and a severe concussion. Plus, she’d lost a lot of blood. Only the cold of space had kept her from bleeding to death, but just barely.

The pirates who’d found her damaged ship wanted her alive, and they knew of Untraah’s skill as a doctor. They were hoping that she would be able to help them decipher the shuttle’s computers and instruct them on its specifications, greatly increasing its value at auction. At first, they’d willingly purchased whatever he’d needed to treat her injuries—sterile glucose water and oxygen, antibiotics and plasma—but they’d withdrawn their support when they realized the shuttle’s computer was a total loss and that most of the ship’s components were fused beyond repair.

At that point, Untraah had no longer cared whether they paid for her treatment or not. He’d wanted to save this resilient woman simply to pull off the miracle and complete the healing he’d begun.

She’d lain deathly still for two weeks in a deep coma. Untraah and his assistants had faithfully cared for her, spending a small fortune on the supplies she needed. Her species required three times the water of Untraah’s people, an exorbitant expense on their arid planet. Plus, coming from an oxygen rich world, she’d needed supplemental oxygen or expensive triox compound even after she was breathing on her own. In spite of this ongoing expense, Untraah never considered giving up on a woman who wouldn’t give up on herself. He never regretted keeping her alive.

She wasn’t the first of his species that he’d come into contact with. Seven years earlier, he’d had the pleasure of meeting another group of humans who were traveling through non-aligned space. His own ship had been damaged and was adrift space; Untraah was waiting for the inevitable attack by pirates and probable sale into slavery when a small fleet of ragtag ships arrived. He’d never seen vessels like theirs, and was, at first, distrustful of them.

They’d called themselves the Maquis. Their leader, Chakotay, had offered to protect Untraah’s ship while members of his crew repaired it, free of charge. Untraah had been so grateful for their help that he’d invited them to follow him to his home planet for a brief period of much needed rest and relaxation before they continued their journey. He’d approved of their plan to head for the Republic, where their skills and talents would be well- received. They’d stayed a week, sharing with him their considerable data base on xenobiology and medicine, which had been invaluable when the female human had arrived. It was his desire to repay them for their generosity that had made him so determined to save her life years later.

The woman arrived at the door and fumbled with the load she carried. He’d warned her that their slightly stronger gravity would necessitate lighter loads, but she continued to push herself to be self-sufficient and to do her share of the work.

“Here, Jane, let me help you.”

She handed him the basket gratefully, panting for oxygen. “I forgot to take the O2 canister with me,” she said, struggling through the door and toward a chair. He reached for the syringe of tri-ox compound. “No,” she insisted, knowing how expensive the drug was, “just let me rest and catch my breath on my own.”

“You need the medicine.”

“I’m fine,” she insisted. She could be incredibly stubborn, and Untraah had learned not to push her too far when she disagreed with him.

He watched her collapse in the chair and take a long drink of water from the canteen she carried with her. The sheen of sweat on her face told him how much she was suffering from the heat and the planet’s gravity. She pulled the thin tube of oxygen over her head and breathed deeply, closing her eyes in relief. “Stay inside for the rest of the day,” he suggested. “You can help Unlas fix the meal.”

“You don’t really want me to cook, do you?” she said, smiling in spite of her distress.

He smiled back, remembering how quickly she’d learned their language, how soon she’d adapted to their lifestyle. But, she had never mastered cooking and had never really seemed interested in the process. “You can wash the vegetables,” he suggested, “as long as you don’t use soap.” He enjoyed her laugh. “But first, a nap.”

“All right,” she agreed reluctantly, her back aching with fatigue. “Just a short one.” He watched as she stretched out her legs on the ottoman and laid her head on the cushions with a sigh, almost instantly asleep. He quietly picked up the bag of vegetables and took them to the kitchen.

He wondered again who she was and why she was this far from her home territory. He was pretty certain that Jane was not her real name, but her memory had been slow to return following her recovery, probably a side effect of the spatial/temporal anomaly that had thrown her ship so far away from home. After nearly a year, he was beginning to wonder if her memory would ever return. Too much time had passed for her to experience a natural restoration, and, in spite of his research, he’d been unable to find a treatment to help her.

Her amnesia was spotty, affecting mostly her memory of her identity and of the past ten or fifteen years of her life. Even so, she was bright, perhaps the brightest person he’d ever met, with an almost incredible understanding of science fueled by an insatiable curiosity. She was already able to repair most of the technology in the village, and she had endeared herself to almost everyone from the infants to the elderly with her kindness and gentle sense of humor. They dropped off portions of their water rations for her and left a few cents toward the purchase of her ever- present O2 canisters. In return, she visited them regularly, checking up on repairs she’d made weeks earlier, remembering names and details of people’s lives, even if she hadn’t seen them in a month. She was a natural leader, mediator, and politician.

But, who was she?

“I don’t think we got our money’s worth.” B’Elanna slumped in the pilot’s seat, tossing a PADD onto the console where it clattered against a variety of discarded tools. “I can’t tell what’s what without the computer core.”
Chakotay looked up from the rear of the shuttle. “Isn’t this shuttle supposed to be four or five years old?”

She swiveled toward him in the chair. “It has to be. I checked the production number. This is one of the earliest models, completed five years ago.”

“I don’t get it. I’ve checked the chronometer a dozen times, but it’s off.”

She shrugged. “Maybe it got damaged in a temporal anomaly.”

“An anomaly that was smart enough to reset the chronometer four years?”

“You know that stranger things have happened, Chakotay. The anomaly could have brought the shuttle 200 light years in a split second.”

“But the hull should be at least four years old.”

She looked up at that. “What do you mean?”

He stood up and gave her his tricorder. “These readings show that the shuttle’s hull is only about twelve months old.”

She studied the readouts and sighed. “Maybe it hasn’t been in space all that time? I know when this shuttle was built—nearly five years ago.”

“Yet the hull is just barely a year old?” He shook his head in disbelief. “Didn’t the pirates say it had just appeared within their sensor range?”

“Well, yes, they did. They said it wasn’t there one minute, there the next.”

“So it must’ve just experienced whatever brought it here. What could cause a discrepancy like this?” he asked, prodding her brilliant engineering mind to grapple with the problem.

She frowned. “The laws of physics exist, Chakotay, and we can’t change them. If these readings are right, then the ship is less than a year old.”

“Time travel?”

“Maybe.” She reactivated her tricorder. “I’ll scan for it.”

While she took her readings, he looked longingly at the slot where the replicator would normally be located. He could use a cup of tea, but the replicator wasn’t there. He’d found essential pieces of it stashed under the pilot’s seat and strewn near the sleeping bench at the back. It hadn’t survived in one piece, of that he was sure, but it was so fragmented that he wondered if it had been in pieces to start with. He fiddled with the power conduits, smiling when he was able to flood the area with light.

“Good work,” B’Elanna said absently as she studied her console. “I was about to go cross-eyed in the dark.”

Chakotay chuckled, the strong light revealing a stain on the carpeting in front of the replicator. “What’s this?” he said, training his tricorder on the spot. “Coffee?”

B’Elanna interrupted his chain of thought as she pulled up the results of her scan on a screen. “Look at this. The whole ship is saturated with signs of time travel, Chakotay. There’s evidence of chronotron contamination all over the ship.”

“So it really is just a year old?”

She looked up at him. “I think so.”

“That means it was thrown across at least 200 light years and four years into the future.” They looked at each other. Chakotay could feel his stomach flip over. He was almost afraid to admit to B’Elanna what he was thinking. “Wasn’t Kathryn Janeway lost in a shuttle like this?”

“According to the message we got from Harry, the shuttle disappeared without a trace.” She paused. “It would’ve been about five years ago.”

“A spatial and temporal displacement wave?”

“She was near the Serena expanse when it happened. That region is a spatial and temporal nightmare to navigate. Other ships have disappeared there that were larger than this one.”

He pointed to the stain on the floor. “That’s a coffee stain on the floor, B’Elanna.”

“She loved coffee.”

“Scan for DNA residue while I look in these compartments for clues.”

They worked quietly for several minutes.

“Look at this, Chakotay. This brown stain on the edge of this console is blood. Human blood.”

“Is it Kathryn’s?”

“I don’t know,” she said, frustrated. “But I do know it’s from a human female.”

“I found this.” Chakotay’s hand was trembling as he held out a small piece of metal toward her. “It’s an admiral’s rank bar.”

She stood up and stared down at his hand, barely breathing. “Admiral Janeway’s?”

Chakotay could feel his heart pounding. “No way to tell. Did your Bastaan contact ever mention whether the pilot was recovered?”

“I didn’t think to ask.” She grabbed his arm. “Don’t they usually sell captives into slavery?”

He nodded. If Kathryn had been on the shuttle, the chances were good that she had been killed in the violent trip through space and time. If by some miracle she’d survived the trip, she’d probably been sold into slavery about a year earlier. He found that he couldn’t think about that possibility, but he also knew they needed to work quickly if they hoped to find her. “Do you know how to reach the pirates who first found the ship?”

She headed for the shuttle’s door. “I’ll get started on it right away.”

“Good. I’ll make arrangements to follow up on whatever you find out.”

“I want to go with you, Chakotay.”

He looked at her swollen belly. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

She cursed silently. “Then take Tom.”

“I don’t know how long this will take, B’Elanna. He might miss the baby’s birth.”

She stopped at the door and put her hand on his arm. “If Kathryn’s still alive out in nonaligned space, you’re going to need the best pilot we have and someone you can trust implicitly. Besides, Miral was two weeks late.”

And Connor was two weeks early, he thought. He nodded, grateful for her sacrifice. “I’ll make it up to you.”

“Just find her and bring her back in one piece. That’s all I really want.”

Tom Paris sat in the powered-down shuttle trying not to shiver in the deepening cold. Chakotay had been gone almost six hours, long enough to have found the pirate Renat and pummeled the information out of him twice, if necessary. Tom decided to wait one more hour before he went out looking for him. In a blizzard. Why did these pirates choose such unpleasant hiding places?
Fifty-eight minutes later, while Tom was pulling on his snow boots, someone started pounding on the hatch. Tom activated his scanner and picked up human life signs. Moments later, a nearly frozen Chakotay stumbled into the shuttle. He was reeking of alcohol and smoke—probably from the bar supposedly frequented by Renat.

“I’m gonna be sick,” he announced matter-of-factly, as he turned and retched into the waste receptacle. Tom swallowed hard and headed for the helm. Even after a decade as a medic and many years as a father, some smells were just hard to take.

“I assume we need to get the hell out of here,” he said, warming up the engines and preparing for launch.

“The sooner the better,” Chakotay answered, collapsing onto the sleeping bench in the back of the ship. “Renat wasn’t very cooperative, but I found out what I needed to know. It was Kathryn, all right, but he didn’t know or care whether she’d survived. As far as he knows, she never even regained consciousness.”

Tom grimaced as the ship lurched off the planet’s surface, slowly gaining speed and altitude against the vicious wind speed of the blizzard. He couldn’t see ten feet in front of him, but his scan of the surface showed several life signs approaching the ship’s recent hiding place. He knew that a pirate’s vessel would soon follow them into space. “Any suggestions on where we should go?”

“Remember Untraah?”

“That guy we bailed out of trouble in non-aligned space?”

“The pirates left Kathryn with him. What was left of her.” Chakotay groaned as he slumped forward on the bench, cradling his stomach.

“That’s good luck. Untraah’s a decent doc, remember?” As soon as the tiny ship reached orbit, Tom programmed the helm to take them deeper into nonaligned space and turned to his partner. “Did you have rough him up?”

“I had to kill him.” Chakotay’s voice was cold, unemotional. “He jumped me after I left, Tom. He would’ve killed me if I hadn’t killed him first.”

Tom stood up just as his friend slumped sideways on the bench, his eyes glassy with pain, his hands dark with fresh blood. Tom’s eyes widened in horror, “Chakotay!”

Untraah decided that Jane would never completely recover until she was somewhere more like her home world, so he began to look for a water- and oxygen-rich planet somewhere close by, one with sufficient technology to provide a chance for the treatment she needed. Of course, “close by” was measured in dozens of light years in this region of space and involved travel through pirate-infested and troublesome territory. His felt sure that Jane’s recovery had stalled because of her struggle to keep herself hydrated and oxygenated sufficiently didn’t allow her the luxury of a complete healing. Jane was receptive to the idea of leaving, although she insisted that she was happy living with Untraah’s people.
Jane’s technical skills and his medical experience were the factors that made their departure possible. Untraah found a trading ship that needed two individuals with their training, so he and Jane signed on for a short- term tour with the understanding that they would leave if they found a planet more suitable to her physical needs. In the meantime, the ship’s environment was closer to human specifications, something Untraah could easily adjust to, and its equipment lent itself to the construction of a neural stimulator, a device that Untraah had found in the human medical database and that he believed could help restore her memory.

“What is this?” Jane asked as she helped him unpack his few belongings on the transport ship. She held a Federation PADD in her hand.

“It’s a PADD. A data storage device I was given by the Maquis. It contains medical information on humans, like yourself, as well as on other species they’d come into contact with.”

“PADD. What does that stand for?”

He shook his head. “I never asked. Would you like to examine it?”

“Yes, I would. Does it contain the specifications for the neural stimulator you were telling me about?”

“Let me show you.” They sat down side by side at his tiny table while he activated the unit. “These touch pads activate the device and allow you to examine its contents.”

Her long auburn hair fell down around her shoulders as she examined the PADD, pulling up page after page of data. “I’ve used these before,” she said, quickly mastering the program. “Who did you say gave it to you?”

“The Maquis. They were humans, like you, who passed through our region of space five years ago. They saved my life and brought me home after my ship was disabled.”

She looked up, her eyes narrowed, yet unfocused. “The Maquis? That’s a familiar term to me. What were their names? Do you have pictures of them?”

Untraah rooted around in his bag for a data chip that included some holoimages of the humans he’d met. The oxygen rich atmosphere of the transport ship, while making him a little woozy, was already improving Jane’s thinking abilities. Her curiosity was growing by leaps and bounds, and she seemed intent on researching her history and solving the mystery of her identification. “Here it is,” he said, pulling out a thin chip. “This should fit into the access port on the ship monitor.”

She followed him to the built-in computer access and watched him slide the chip into he receptacle. Immediately, pictures of their recent departure appeared on the screen, including Untraah’s wife and children. Jane ducked her head. “I’m so sorry to be taking you away from your home and family,” she apologized.

“Think nothing of it, Jane. You need to find a home more suitable to your biology. I’m glad to help.”

Tears came to her eyes. “I owe you so much, Untraah. How can I ever repay you for your kindness?”

“You don’t need to,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulders. “These humans, the Maquis, saved me from death or slavery and wouldn’t take payment. Taking care of you helps pay back my debt to them.” He scrolled through the menu on the disc. “Here are the leaders of the group.”

The screen filled with the images of three humans—Chakotay, Tom Paris, and B’Elanna Torres—standing with their arms around each other and with huge smiles on their faces. Jane’s eyes widened with surprise. “I know these people!”

Untraah was sympathetic. “It’s just that you’ve gone so long without seeing your own kind.”

“No. I recognize the tattoo on this man’s face.” She frowned. “Jack? Chak?”

He was stunned. “Chakotay?”

“Chakotay,” she whispered, reaching out to touch the screen. “And Tom? Or Tim? And Bella? No, not Bella.”

“Tom Paris and B’Elanna Torres. You do know them.”

She was suddenly dizzy and swayed on her feet. Untraah helped her to his bunk. “I feel sick,” she admitted as he lowered her onto the bed, her head swimming.

“Rest here. This is a big moment for you. Perhaps their familiar faces will trigger more of your memories. When you feel up to it, I’ll show you more pictures.”

She turned her face to the wall to hide her tears. “I can’t remember. I know them, but I can’t remember how.”

“We’ll figure it out, Jane. I promise. We won’t give up until we find some answers.”

She sobbed quietly until she fell into a fitful sleep.

B’Elanna Torres swore at the communications console as she struggled to clear up the recent subspace message from the Federation. Two hundred light years wasn’t much, but with all the illegal traffic and eavesdropping done in nonaligned space, the absence of subspace relay stations, plus the spatial anomalies, clear subspace communication was always beset with difficulties. After nearly thirty minutes of effort, she finally cleared up the recent message from Harry Kim at Starfleet HQ in San Francisco.
She had sent him a message a week earlier regarding their discovery of the Delta Shuttle. She was hoping that he could shed some light on what Starfleet thought had happened to their former captain five years earlier. She wished for the thousandth time that they could establish a real-time subspace channel with the Federation, but realized that this reply to her questions was about all she could realistically expect.

After what seemed an interminable wait, the familiar face of her friend appeared on her screen. She was gratified to see the pips of a lieutenant commander on his turtleneck.

“Hey! B’Elanna! It was a pleasant surprise to hear from you! Admiral Paris forwarded your previous letter to me, so I was hoping to hear that you’d had the baby. Not yet, huh? Well, if it’s a boy, I still think Harry Paris has a special ring to it.”

“Not hardly, Starfleet,” she chuckled.

“I’ve verified that the serial number on the shuttle you found matches the one Admiral Janeway was flying five years ago. We’re all wondering if you’ll discover that she survived, as well–she’s come back from the dead before, you know. Unfortunately, her mom passed away about six months ago. Her sister and her family live in the Alpha Quadrant and want you to let them know what you find out. I’m sending their location to you now.

“I’m also sending some technical data on the shuttle you found. It may help you access what’s left of the computer and understand some of the upgrades we made. Of course, it’s an older version of what we’re using now, but if you can get it back to speed, it’ll be a great little ship for you.

“Now, here’s just a quick update on some of the old gang. Tuvok is a senior captain. He has seven grandchildren and a peppering of gray hair, but, I swear, he doesn’t look a day older than he did on Voyager eight years ago. Sam and Naomi are living in the same Starfleet complex I am here in San Francisco.” He went on to tell her about half a dozen more people before the reception became so bad that she couldn’t see his face or understand what he was saying.

B’Elanna pushed away from the console and stared out the window into the gathering darkness. Just as she and Chakotay had suspected, this shuttle was Janeway’s, but with the interesting twist that its hull was four years younger that it should be. She was almost positive that it had been caught in a spatial/temporal rift of some sort and that it had been in non-aligned space for less than a year. If the admiral had survived the trip through the rift, she might very well still be alive. And if she was alive, B’Elanna knew Tom and Chakotay would find her.

Chakotay gradually became aware of his surroundings. At first, he thought he was on Voyager again and struggled to remember what he needed to be doing. But then he realized he was on the Flyer, with Tom Paris’ voice a constant companion. He opened his eyes to find the pilot smiling down at him.
“Good. You’re finally waking up. Your injuries were almost too severe for me to handle without help.”

“What?” He struggled to sit up. “What happened?”

“I wish you would’ve told me you were injured during your struggle with Renat. You almost made treating you a moot point.”

He was groggy, but remembered fragments of what had happened. He remembered the struggle with the foul-smelling alien outside a run-down bar and the burning pain of a knife blade in his side. And he knew that Renat’s crew was after him. “We had to get away first, or both of us would’ve been killed.”

“Well, right now we’re hiding in a nebula with three of Renat’s pirate ships waiting patiently for us to emerge. I give them another twenty-four hours before they come in after us.”

Chakotay managed to swing his legs over the side of the bed, his arm pushed instinctively against the newly healed wound in his right side. “They won’t wait long. As soon as they realize Renat is gone for good, they’ll begin maneuvering for his position. They’ll be at each other’s throats any time now and forget about us.”

“I hope you’re right.” He helped Chakotay to the tiny table. “Let me get you some tea and some broth.”

“I told you what he said about Kathryn?”

“That he left her with Untraah? That was good luck. If anyone could help her, he could.”

“That was only part of it. Her ship had been adrift for days. He said she was nearly frozen when they found her.”

Tom placed a mug and plate in front of his friend, and then sat down across from him. “That could actually work in her favor, Chakotay. The cold could slow down her metabolism enough to actually keep her alive.”

“I hope so. When the pirataes realized the ship was unsalvageable, they just left her with Untraah and sold the ship for junk.” He sipped the tea and closed his eyes as the warm liquid moistened his dry throat. “You remember what Untraah’s planet was like.”

“Class M, barely. Arid with minimum oxygen. And the gravity. Whenever we beamed back from the surface, I felt like I’d just finished running a marathon. Still, she could survive there. Untraah could take care of her better than almost anyone in non-aligned space.”

“If she were there for any length of time, she’d need extra water and O2, neither of which comes cheaply.”

“Untraah’s a good guy. He’d take care of her.”

Chakotay fought down his sense of panic. “We need to go there right away.”

“As soon as your pirates start their infighting,” Paris promised. “In the meantime, drink your tea.”

Chakotay sighed. What else could he do? Their chances of surviving a confrontation with three pirate ships were next to none. And, they couldn’t do Kathryn any good if they were dead. “Do you have any crackers to go with this?” he asked, finally.

“Whatever you’d like, Commander,” Tom replied, smiling. He sat forward, suddenly earnest. “Really, old man, you had me scared. I’m glad you’re getting better.”

“Thanks, Tom.” He’d been lucky to have Tom, a well trained medic, with him on this trip. He’d have to thank B’Elanna for sending her husband once they got back to the Republic. Once they found Kathryn.

To be continued . . .