II. Breathless

"I'm lowering the oxygen ratio," he informs her, sounding out of breath , even through the grav suit's comm line. "That should give us a few more minutes."

"I'm feeling kind of groggy," she admits.

"Oxygen deprivation."

"And you're lowering it?"

Though B'Elanna doesn't say 'you idiot', Tom can hear it in the engineer's incredulous tone. Strangely enough, her familiar frustration goes a way in making him feel better.

If they're going to die out here- and he recognizes that they are mostly likely going to die out here- he's grateful that she's being herself, being honest. Right up until the end.

"We have to try to make it as long as possible," he responds, trying to infuse as much as hope into his tone as he can.

"It's ironic, isn't it?"

"What?"

"Today," she begins, sounding vulnerable, uncharacteristically weak, "the Day of Honor. . . is the day I'm going to die."

"We are not going to die. Would you stop talking like that?"

It's a lie. And he knows it as much as she does. But as that famous Klingon stubbornness has apparently deserted her, he feels even more pressure to keep her going. Keep her clinging to hope.

"We have to face up to it, Tom," she pleads earnestly, and for this, he has no retort. He can't sell her hope at the cost of honesty. Not when honesty is the only thing they have left.

"There's something I've been. . . wanting to ask you," he ventures, his thoughts slowed by lack of oxygen, the overwhelming fear of their situation.

"Well, now's the time. . ."

"When we first met, you didn't have a very high opinion of me."

For once he makes the observation without a sarcastic joke or even the taint of bitterness; those defenses are meant to stall, designed to shield. Two pursuits that, upon reflection, now seem laughably pointless to him.

"That's putting it mildly. . . I thought you were an arrogant, self-absorbed pig."

So much for pointless, he thinks ruefully. And by reflex, covers his hurt with a quip.

"Flattery won't get you more oxygen," he taunts darkly, but after the ensuing pause stretches, finds the courage to ask, "do you think I've changed?"

"A lot," she sighs, her voice much weaker than his. "Now you're a stubborn, domineering pig." He grimaces, the sound of her thready breath filling his ears as he looks away, into the last starscape he thinks he'll see. "I'm just kidding," she says miserably. "There I go again; just pushed you away. . . You were right about me. . . It's what I do. Push people away."

"Well it's a sure fire way of not getting hurt," he confirms. He should know. It's a fine art he's been practicing most of his adult life, and with not much to show for it until Voyager.

"What a coward I am."

He doesn't know what to say to her whispered confession, her throbbing regret. Not when it's one, he knows, can only be assuaged with time. An irony he now contemplates as he curses himself for starting this conversation in the first place.

Pulling her into the tightest contact they can manage given their situation, barely an embrace, he closes his eyes and listens to the sound of B'Elanna's ragged breaths. Every few now punctuated with a long inhalation that sounds remarkably like a sob.

As they crawl through the darkened tube, Janeway tries to not focus on the sound of Tom's labored breaths; the haggard, uneven rhythm the only noise to fill the small space, aside from the low thuds of cautious limbs.

Twice she's slowed when she heard him stop, no comment made by either, even on the second occasion, when she heard the telltale hiss of the hypospray before Tom continued forward.

Two doses in less than an hour.

She knows that this can't be normal, likely isn't even safe. And in the back of her mind, she's grateful that her medical knowledge is as limited as it is. It's easier not to focus on the meds her officer is pumping into his body when she honestly doesn't know the harm it could be causing, the exact nature of the obvious danger he is courting.

It's a dark consolation. But so far it's one of few, another being that they've made good progress in the Jeffries tubes, until they hit deck thirteen, a few minutes earlier.

Being within two decks of Engineering means an increased presence of repair personnel, and from the number of conduits they have to avoid, Janeway guesses out loud that Torres is taking the chance of using some of the Starfleet crew for labor.

"Let's hope no one tries anything heroic," Paris whispers, as Janeway taps into a control panel in one of the section breaks.

It's one of only three they've passed that's linked to emergency power, and the light of it, however small in radius, allows the Captain to see her helmsman face. She's deep in her work, trying to find a way to mask their lifesigns before the ship's internal sensors come back up. But still, she spares him a subtle inspection, silently noting his pale pallor and sweaty brow.

When she returns to her calculations, she arches an eyebrow as she belatedly latches onto the dark humor of Tom's last comment. It isn't as if his own efforts with Mister Kim have set the bar high for 'prudent cooperation'- however much his Captain appreciates her officers' tenacity.

"Some of the Maquis are probably agitating for a less friendly stance towards us," the pilot continues, his hushed voice now dipping solidly toward bitter. "The next person on our side who steps out of line will be made into an example. Chakotay won't think he has a choice."

Outwardly, the Captain fails to acknowledge her officer's dark prophecy, her face remaining set even as she tightens her grip on all the worries that Tom's words, uttered with such confidence, now send spinning.

"That should buy us more time," she says, nodding to the panel as she steps away from it.

"What did you do?" he asks, his inhalation catching as he bends down to resume their trek.

"A little of this," she responds, her tone casual even as her eyes catch his pained movements, "a little of that."

Her glib dodge earns a smirk from him, just as she'd hoped it would.

"I didn't realize they taught sneakiness in command school."

"Sure they do. It's what they teach you after the importance of coffee, but before they coach you on how to glare properly."

"I'm sure it helps if you have some natural talent to begin with."

"Are you commenting on my personal level of sneakiness, Lieutenant?"

"Actually, that remark was directed toward your ability to glare impressively. But I can't deny claim to certain theses regarding your innate craftiness."

"Fair enough. Just promise me you'll keep the truth about my seedy side a secret."

Tom doesn't quip about his current inability to gossip, what with three-quarters of the crew being held captive, and the remaining fourth being out of their gourds. But in the ensuing pause, all the possible rejoinders about the bleakness of their current situation echo loudly in the newly darkened shaft, the duo's fragile banter quickly caving in on them.

. . . . .

It's twenty minutes into the silence that they stand in another section break and panels flicker. Paris glances at Janeway to see slight purse of her lips, before the small sign of worry disappears into the darkness.

More flickering, this time rhythmic; when all goes dark again, Tom tries to focus on following the noise of Janeway's movements down a new tube, closes his eyes and tries to shake the lightheaded sensation that's crowding his thoughts, the tide of nausea that finds him with every turn of his head.

"B'Elanna's attempting to reroute internal power," Janeway murmurs eventually, "finding a shortcut around whatever roadblocks Harry's put up."

Tom doesn't trust himself to speak at the moment, at least not while they're moving. But Janeway's statement hasn't told him anything he didn't already surmise, so he settles for a grunt of agreement, the noise sounding distant inside his head.

"Tom?"

It isn't until she says his name that it occurs to him how far behind her he's fallen. He does his best to catch up, but it's already there, in Janeway's voice, however faint its trace: the worry and the fear.

"Sorry, Capt'n. Too much pizza, not enough exercise. Guess. . . . married life has already made me soft."

He tries to infuse as much lightness into his voice as he can. It would be more convincing if each breath wasn't torn from his chest, the meager cheer he succeeds at projecting quickly fading at the mention of his spouse.

"When this is over, you're going to start joining me in Tuvok's martial arts program," Janeway remarks, managing to sound stern.

"Training with the Captain. . . Harry will be. . . so jealous." And as he says it, he forcibly swallows the bile that's filling his mouth, then reaches into the band of his pants, fumbling for the nearly empty hypospray.

"At the next break we'll stop and stand up," Janeway begins neutrally. "I don't know about you, but my knees are killing me."

"Standing up would be good," he allows, no longer able to keep the pain from bleeding through to his voice.

"It's alright," she says, looking back at the man she can't see through the darkness. "We're almost there."

"Almost," he repeats. And for a second, it nearly feels like he believes her.

. . . . .

"I don't know, Captain," Tom shakes his head.

"It's our best option, Lieutenant. As you yourself noted, the bridge is more than ten decks from here. Sickbay and the transporters half that, but if we get to a planet before then- "

"What about after the core is shut down?" he cuts her off, his voice now becoming animated, rushed. "What if he can't retake the ship after that? Being dead in space doesn't help anything then. If anything, it makes the Starfleet crew's prospects . . . more dire."

As they stand in a main juncture, Janeway crosses her arms defiantly. Paris isn't voicing anything she hasn't considered, but still she harbors the conviction that their worst case scenario is being marooned on a planet, with no hopes of making it back to Voyager and recovering the former Maquis' memories.

"We can't allow any members of the crew to be transported off the ship," she argues, feeling an old ire begin to peak at the thought she's having to defend her decisions to Tom Paris.

"You mean onto a planet," he says, running a clammy hand through his sweat-drenched hair. "Chakotay will be perfectly capable of beaming us all into space even with core down."

He knows before she opens her mouth that she's going to say it won't come to that. That Chakotay, even under the control of a fanatical Bajoran, won't be responsible for the deaths of over one hundred people, let alone one hundred people he used to call friends and colleagues.

"Do you really think it's wise to bank on Chakotay's principles?" he asks haggardly, his arm reaching for the shaft wall when his head once more begins to spin.

When Janeway's silence lingers, he looks over to search her face. It's then, in the faint light, that he sees the shadow of something just before it lifts. Doubt? Fear?

"Tom, I have to believe that we can reach them. That somewhere, even if deep beneath the surface, the people we trust are there."

It's an unfair plea, both given fact she hasn't told him about Tuvok passing Chakotay's little test of loyalty, and the pilot's obvious personal turmoil, in light of his recent marriage to a woman who, no doubt, is somewhere, frantically working to rid her Maquis comrades of Tom and the people he considers family.

Even then, Janeway's words aren't just manipulation either. Rational or not, she genuinely believes there's only so far Chakotay will betray her- a limit to the commitments he and the other Maquis will break, the harm they will inflict, in the pursuit of their new, radicalized objectives.

"You don't know him like this," Tom warns again, though his voice is now as forlorn as it is weak. "You don't know any of them. . . They aren't the people they were yesterday."

"I have to believe there's some trace of them," she says again, her voice now shaking despite her efforts. "If not. . . I don't know that there's hope for any of us."

As main power kicks back on, the break they're standing in floods with new illumination. Tom reflexively closes his eyes against the light, his memories momentarily hovering around another woman. Another confession in the dark, before a rush of energy and an encapsulating light.

. . . . .

From Tom's vantage point in an auxiliary duct on the second tier of Main Engineering, he spots three armed Maquis. Even if there are two more outside of his limited field of vision, this is half of what he would have guessed. But then, when he thinks about the number of Maquis guarding the Starfleet crew, manning the bridge, and likely searching for himself and the Captain, the math of this, in fact, checks out.

Janeway is in another conduit, one that lets out just behind a column on the side of room below. The position should give her about a second's advantage on one of the guards. A slim margin given that she's unarmed, but enough time (if she's lucky) to get to a position where she can draw fire from the others.

She's banking on them having their phasers set to stun, something Tom still thinks unwise. But really, they didn't have many options; two people without weapons, any efforts to tap into the main systems alerting the Maquis to their position within the ship.

With this, Tom wills his body and mind to focus. A challenge in itself, given the only thing he's running on is his own adrenaline, the effect of the artificial stimulants having worn off completely a few minutes earlier.

The pain is now debilitating, as is the nausea. And in the brief moments when he's focused on either, he feels the lightheadedness overtaking him, his body threatening to give way to unconsciousness.

Focus, he chides desperately. Then reach across his own wrist and pinches it savagely; forces his thoughts to concentrate on the sensation of the sharp, but by all means tolerable pain, as he waits for the sound of Janeway's move.

It comes ninety seconds later. The soft thud of a panel hitting the carpet, and not long after, the sound of phaser fire.

He manages to make it out of the duct quickly, but as soon as he's on his feet, he feels his legs begin to sway. Barreling onward anyway, he makes it three meters and around the corner, where he's surprised to see Janeway standing below him, on the main floor, with two phasers in her hand.

There's no time to contemplate how in the hell she's taken down two Maquis by herself, because as soon as sees him, she's tossing a phaser up to him and then exchanging fire with a third and fourth Maquis- evidently angled on the opposite side of engine room.

On legs that are quickly losing sensation, Paris makes it to a panel and begins keying in commands. He's almost done when he hears heavy footsteps coming up the platform behind him, feels his thoughts rush with the realization that Janeway herself is likely laying on the floor of Engineering, her prone form not far from the stunned Maquis.

When Tom exchanges fire with the first one to make it to platform, he's relieved to see it's Ken Dalby, an officer who Paris vaguely recalls as having trouble hitting a target with the broad-side of a starship. Dalby goes down quickly, and it couldn't be better timing. He'd been providing cover fire for the second person coming up the platform's ladder, leaving Tom at an unquestionable tactical advantage.

Paris attempts to still his fingers' shaky grip on his weapon as he positions himself behind a nearby panel. One shot good shot, then go back to the main interface. After that, get to Janeway.

But for all his mental preparation, he isn't ready for the familiar head that emerges from the ladder. Doesn't exhale when he sees B'Elanna's dark eyes scan the platform, locating Ken on the floor.

The window is only a second, but it's there. A clear opening when she's spotted him, but isn't yet able to lift her own phaser.

B'Elanna's phaser.

B'Elanna. His wife.

The thought consumes him as he tells himself to fire, but doesn't let out the oxygen frozen in his chest; doesn't put an ounce of pressure on the button that will send a stream of energy into the body of the woman across from him.

The last thing Tom sees, as his body finally passes out from the internal hemorrhage that began hours earlier, is B'Elanna lifting her phaser, the bright line of energy it emits connecting with his chest.