Shepherd in the Darkness

Chapter 4

Only seconds before, Tuvok and the Captain had stood on the Flyer. Then the transporter beam caught hold of them and morphed their bodies into shimmering particles of matter and energy. Now there was no trace of them left on board.

The Doctor moved quickly to break an uncomfortable silence. He cleared his throat and made a few other unnecessary noises as he took his station to monitor the away team's life signs. The dematerialization of the away team was too much of a reminder that another type of transformation could well await the Captain and Tuvok inside the nearby Borg structure. This exit might turn out to have been their final one.

Tom kept his attention on the controls in front of him. He avoided the temptation to steal a glance at the heart of the Borg maze where Tuvok and the Captain were now working their way toward Seven, and more than likely, the Borg Queen too. Tom's task at the helm was difficult enough. He had to keep the Flyer as close as possible to the Borg complex without interfering with the movements of any of the Borg vessels around them. Tom made his calculations, then set the Flyer into a complex dance of apparently random moves.

The Doctor didn't challenge Tom for the helm this time. In his holographic heart of hearts the Doctor knew that the speed at which Tom could calculate angles and vectors and his ability to coax a ship to do what he needed it to do made him the best pilot for this task. Mind you, he had no intention of sharing this opinion with Mr. Paris, and it wasn't as if his piloting skills were of much use to Mr. Paris in his job as medic.

"Hang on, Doc. This is going to be a rough ride." Tom called out from the helm.

"Why does that not surprise me," the Doctor muttered back rhetorically. He adjusted his position so that he could grab hold of something stable without losing sight of the monitors that were relaying information to him about the away team's life signs.

Their flight followed a torturous, unpredictable path, never moving them beyond the critical distance from the inner Borg chamber. But despite all of Tom's skill at the helm, he soon noticed a disturbing change in the flight patterns of some of the Borg vessels. They were being a bit too careful when passing through the area around the Flyer. Tom didn't think that they had penetrated the Flyer's shields yet. They had picked up on something though.

It was never easy to elude the Borg once they knew that there was something out there to find. Tom kept the Flyer moving in sharp, twisting turns and shifted the shield frequency. The Doctor kept his eyes on his console, trying not to look too closely at the all too vivid streaking of space around the rolling, twisting Flyer. But the Borg were on the hunt now and all of Tom's reflexes and flying ability couldn't hold them off forever.

All too soon came the words that, even after hearing them so many times, still sent a chill running down Tom's spine. "We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile." A tractor beam grabbed hold of the Flyer and started to pull them in. Tom fought with the controls, stubbornly refusing to give in. Even if he couldn't break free of the beam, he could angle the ship and reverse thrusters in alternating pulses to weaken the lock and slow the Flyer's progress toward the Borg cube.

While Tom was pulling back against the Borg in this deadly tug of war, the Captain's voice came through the comm system, trying to reestablish contact with the Flyer. From somewhere inside the Borg chamber, Tom could hear a second speaker too. Whoever or whatever this voice belonged to sounded as if it been had drained of anything remotely related to a living soul. It was the sound of a nightmare snapping at the heels of a victim.

This dispassionate, deadly voice dismissed the possibility that the Captain would actually fire on the chamber. "You would be destroyed," it reminded her.

"Better than being one of you!" Tom heard the Captain retort. Under the circumstances, he totally agreed with her. At that moment his priorities crystallized and time seemed to slow. Tom felt a tranquil surety that displaced any anxiety. His voice was level and calm as he acknowledged that he was ready for the Captain's orders.

"Tom, high yield torpedoes, full spread. Fire on my command." The Captain's order came back to him, loud and clear.

Tom spared some attention for the Flyer's weapons while working against the tractor beam that was trying to drag them toward a closer acquaintance than he ever wanted to have with the Borg. He'd never given much thought to what it was about the Borg, aside from the obvious that is, that cut him so deeply. Maybe it was the fact that he had struggled his whole life to make his own decisions and to choose his own destiny. To lose that freedom to the Borg would be an almost unbearably cruel irony. Or, maybe it was the secrets that he still carried and wasn't ready to share yet. As a Borg drone, his deepest thoughts would be open to everyone in the hive.

In the past, Tom had never found the time to examine his personal reasons for not wanting to be Borg. He was certainly too busy to do so right now. "Fuck!" He spat out, along with a few other choice words that rattled innocuously off the Borg shields but made him feel better.

The Borg might be efficient. Tom still knew a few tricks that would throw them off a bit longer. There! That did it. Even if he couldn't break free of the tractor beam, he'd gained enough time to be able to fire on the chamber before the Borg ship swallowed him up. No matter what happened to him inside that cube, he could now be sure that the Captain and her team never had to endure being Borg.

Before he received that final order to fire, the tractor beam suddenly released the Flyer. It was too quick for the inertial dampeners to fully compensate. Tom was jolted out of his seat. The Doctor complained as he crashed into the equipment behind him.

"I told you to hang on, Doc!"

"You didn't say anything about adhering myself to my seat!" the Doctor shot back.

Tom grabbed the edge of his own console and pulled himself back into place. "Captain, shields around the Borg chamber are down. They've disengaged the tractor beam," he reported.

"Hold your fire. Get us out of here," the Captain amended.

Tom was much happier to hear that order. But, when he tried to lock onto the team the Borg shields went back up. The Borg Queen seemed to be playing cat and mouse with them, at one moment ready to let the away team go, then throwing Borg shields back up around the chamber. Tom cursed again as yet another attempt to lock on a transporter beam was thwarted by the Queen. This game was getting old, fast.

The Captain seemed to think so too. Tom could hear weapons fire, apparently targeting what he heard Seven identify as the communication link that connected the Queen to the Borg hive. In seconds, the Queen was isolated and helpless. Tom took advantage of the resulting Borg confusion to finally get a successful lock on the away team.

In the Borg chamber, the last thing that Kathryn saw when the beam grabbed her was the Queen's face, glaring in outrage as she watched the transporters take Seven and the away team out of her reach.

After she reassembled on the Flyer the Captain immediately resumed her station. The Doctor ran a quick scan before releasing Seven to take over at Tuvok's vacated station. Tuvok moved up beside Tom to co-ordinate weapons fire.

Tom could give his full attention to flying again. He entered a course that sent the Flyer racing away from the Borg complex. They all knew that it wouldn't take long for the Borg to regroup. In fact some of them were already in pursuit. Tom felt no need to edit the emotion from his voice now. "Three vessels, closing fast!" Even with evasive maneuvers, the ship was being targeted with weapons fire from multiple Borg spheres.

"Direct hit," he heard Tuvok report.

Tom made the necessary calculations to access a conduit that would take them back to Voyager. He was plotting a direct route home. There was no need to waste time with another scenic tour. The sooner they got back to Voyager, the better. They just had to stay in one piece long enough to make it to the rendezvous co-ordinates. Of course, the Borg ships behind them had other ideas. Another jolt rocked the Flyer, weakening their shields.

"Tom?" the Captain asked, urging him to move faster.

"Transwarp in 3-2-1," Tom finished his countdown. "A vessel entered the conduit with us just before it closed," he reported. That wasn't good news. It was one more complication that he would have been happier to avoid. Flying inside a transwarp conduit with a friendly ship could be tricky. Sharing it with an enemy was simply dangerous. The enemy didn't even have to make a direct weapons hit. They could cause serious damage just by making the ship lose control.

Tom concentrated on making sure that the Flyer was a difficult target to hit. He didn't have a lot of room to maneuver here either and the Borg vessel was showering the area around them with heavy fire. Tom flinched as a panel exploded behind him. Strong jolts buffeted the Flyer and the Borg vessel rapidly closed the distance between them.

Tom knew what the ship he had designed was capable of doing and he was her pilot. Even with the Captain on board, he felt that it was his responsibility to get the crew home safely. He made one more readjustment, pushed the Flyer and they shot out into normal space.

Up ahead the pale shape of Voyager waited for them at the rendezvous point, hanging undisturbed in the serenity of deep space. Her sleek lines were a welcome contrast to the menacing confusion of the Borg complex they had left behind at the other end of the conduit. The crew on the Flyer savored this moment of quiet stillness. No Borg, no danger, just two ships poised in space. It felt almost surreal. Then a spread of photon torpedoes shot out from Voyager, passed the Flyer and exploded in the aperture they had just exited.

"We've collapsed the conduit." Chakotay reported from Voyager.

Kathryn Janeway forced herself to stand down from her temporary return to high alert. "Clear us for docking," she instructed Chakotay. "We're not going to wait around for surprise guests. Get ready to move Voyager away from here. Have Lt. Torres assemble an engineering team to meet the Flyer in the docking bay. I want the transwarp coil transferred to Voyager as soon as possible."

B'Elanna immediately replied, "Already on it, Captain. We made the necessary preparations while you were gone. We can get the coil out of the Flyer and installed on Voyager in three hours."

"Very good, Lieutenant." The Captain knew that B'Elanna didn't exaggerate. If she said that they could be ready to go in three hours, that's when they would be ready. "Commander, we'll be taking Voyager to transwarp as soon as the coil is installed. Meanwhile, prepare a course out of here, full impulse."

"Aye, Captain."

On the Flyer, the Doctor fluttered around like a broody hen hovering over his charges as the crew wound down from the stress levels of the previous few days and the last few hours.

Seven was surprised to discover that she felt tired. She had regenerated not that long ago. She didn't yet realize that her fatigue had less to do with her body than it did with her spirit. It would take time for her to assimilate this experience and the unexpected discovery that she was now an alien in the once familiar Borg world.

The Captain watched Seven's reactions with concern. Once this business was over, she knew that she would be spending a lot of time helping Seven to recover from this encounter with her former Borg family. For the moment, the Captain had other matters that required her immediate attention.

"Doctor, you can run a thorough examination of Seven after we finish installing the coil on Voyager," she instructed him. "Right now we need Seven's expertise to scan for any further signs of Borg activity."

"Very well, Captain," he said. He accepted the delay only because his preliminary scans already told him that, physically, Seven was fine."

The Captain moved on. "Tuvok, you'll be needed on the bridge while I meet with Commander Chakotay. Keep us at full alert."

Tuvok quietly acknowledged her order while keeping weapons and shields at the ready. Kathryn motioned for Tuvok to change places with her. He slipped past her to switch to another console while she sat down beside Tom. "You did a good job back there," she told him as he laid in their docking trajectory.

Tom could still feel the adrenaline rushing through his system. Concentrating on docking maneuvers helped him to ease back down to more normal levels. Docking was routine for Tom. He could handle the Flyer and listen to the Captain at the same time. "I've gotten the knack of transwarp flight now and the Flyer's an old friend," he told the Captain.

"I'm sure she is," she said. "But, I wasn't just talking about your piloting."

"Oh," he said.

"That was a difficult command that I gave you. I couldn't make things easy. But, I knew that I could count on you."

"Well," Tom quipped in reflex reaction, "if I had to fire, it would have been one way to move on up the chain of command." He winced when he realized what he had just said and how it sounded. His mouth was obviously still in overdrive. "Not the way I would choose, though," he muttered.

"It's good to know that my officers aren't lining up to get rid of me," she joked to help him out of an awkward moment. "But, it's also good to know I can depend on you to carry out difficult orders," she added, going back to her earlier point.

He nodded wordlessly, not trusting himself to say anything more with his foot still in his mouth.

She squeezed his shoulder, and then changed the subject. "You'll have two hours, at most. B'Elanna will need your input when she fine-tunes the coil. Then you'll be at the helm while we're at transwarp."

"Aye, Captain."

The Captain watched Tom guide the Flyer flawlessly into Voyager's main shuttle bay. Others on Voyage could manage the ship. Managing wasn't enough for transwarp flight. None of the other pilots could get what Tom could get out of the ship. They had only one shot at getting all the distance they could out of the coil. It wouldn't last long on the bigger ship and once the coil gave out that was it for transwarp. They couldn't afford to waste a second. As long as the coil held up, Tom would be on duty. They could all rest after the transwarp flight was over. That's what life was like in the Delta quadrant.

"Ready to dock, Captain."

"Take us home, Mr. Paris."

"Yes, Ma'am."

The End

Author's notes:

1) Some of the relevant events and dialogue from the episode, Dark Frontier were adapted for use in the last two chapters. The rest of the action, dialogue and the added interpretation were invented for this story.

2) I used this opportunity to provide an additional reason why Tom reacted so strongly when he was trapped inside the Borg assimilation chamber in the episode, Collective.

3) The paragraph about Tom getting more out of the ship than the other pilots was inspired by something that one of the pilots from the real Top Gun school said about the difference between learning to be a pilot and learning to be a top pilot.

4) Sometimes Tom's piloting skills seem to be undervalued because so many other people fly the ship too. For me, this is like saying that because many other people also work in Engineering, any one of them is as skilled and as valuable an engineer as B'Elanna is.