Star Trek Voyager: The Gift

Star Trek Voyager: The Gift 40. Misleading Truths

Tom’s stomach strained violently in his abdomen as the shuttle’s thrusters surged into life somewhere far behind his low set pilot’s chair, unable to resist the sudden pummelling of the onset of high G force. Just as quickly as the sensation had come on him though, he felt himself relax into that same tattered chair, his fingers settling on the pilot controls with the practised grace of a concert pianist at his instrument. Sometimes it worried him, how much he thrived on the adrenaline rush of flying, it couldn’t bode well for his chances of dying as an old man peaceful in bed, but he wasn’t sure he wanted that as the engines calmed into a seductive hum, peace was overrated. He couldn’t afford to shrink away from his usual fearlessness now, not when he’d just launched from the Valjean with his torpedo bays packed and was at this very moment ducking around the sensors of the ships huddled around the very installation he was about to attack. He’d certainly need to call on all of his natural born talents, every carefully honed skill he’d ever dedicated to flying to complete this mission of his successfully, and in his definition of success he including surviving the attempt, something Chakotay seemed to put a bit further down his list of priorities. He didn’t much care what the other man, officially his boss, felt about all this, but he had to admit that it had disturbed him to see B’Elanna’s doubtful eyes boring into him as she finally finished with the shuttle and retreated back to Engineering. Worry had been there in her eyes as she looked at him, concern even, it had been confirmed when, for once, she’d refused to rise to his teasing, treating him as seriously as she did the anointed Chakotay. His main incentive to get back from this was to see relief flicker, if only for an instant, over her beautiful dark eyes at the sight of him, and to hear her, no doubt begrudging, thanks.

Seven of Nine’s clipped tones unapologetically interrupted his thoughts as his comm. link with the Valjean flared into life. “Mr Paris, you are approaching the defence net. Are you able to read it through your sensors?”

Tom, feeling as if he’d been caught out daydreaming by a strict teacher, hurriedly overlaid his sensor readings of the net onto the benign view of space presented by his viewscreen. Almost immediately, a patch of black and apparently featureless space a few thousand kilometres distant of Deep Space Eleven lit up like a Christmas pageant under the scrutiny of his scans, lasers crisscrossing to form a protective web around a rectangle several thousand kilometres square. “Don’t worry; I’d have to be blind not to see it.” He assured Seven after gulping away his awe, a little of the feeling escaping as a nervous chuckle, “Tell Rhianna her mom did an impressive job on this.”

“You may compliment her when you return; this comm. time should not be wasted on irrelevant conversation.” Seven replied sternly, “Do you see the path through the net to depot that we discovered earlier?”

Tom smiled to himself; he had a feeling that despite the chastisement in her words, Seven had been trying to comfort him in her own…unique way. She had spoken of his return as a certainty just when he’d begun to doubt it himself. So, he obliged her by focusing entirely on his target in front of him, feeling a rush of relief when he saw the first blind spot, exactly where Seven and Rhianna had calculated, at a point where the sensors didn’t quite mesh. “It’s there alright.” He confirmed, urging the shuttle rapidly forward with ease even while talking. “I’m going for it.” Of course, there was always the chance that this hole in the net was the only one and he’d be trapped like a fish in barrel, but he decided not to think on that as he directed the shuttle straight for his goal, hoping to bolt through before anyone noticed, that would start this off easy.

At first, it almost seemed too simple. Under his quick manipulations the shuttle slipped smoothly through the first layer of defences before making a beeline for the hole in the second layer too and squeezing through that before any of the ships around the station even seemed to realise anything was amiss. He saw at once however, when he looked at the last bastion of sensitive sensors, that his luck wasn’t going to hold. The gap was so narrow he’d need to flip the shuttle sideways and fly through it fully vertical. Even then, despite his dedication to optimism in these situations, he knew he was bound to trigger something… Just then though, he saw it, the black beast of a space depot that he was supposed to bring down. It was unmistakably Cardassian in design and his blood boiled at the thought of Starfleet allowing such a thing to be protected by one of their installations. Well, it wouldn’t be protected anymore. He swung the shuttle into a vertigo inducing half roll just in time to glide past the sensor net without as much as grazing it, almost laughing in relief as he eased the shuttle into clear space.