If At First You Don't Succeed...
Part 3 of 4
Synopsis: While investigating a nebula, strange
things begin to happen. Set pre-Scorpion.
If At First You Don't Succeed...
The mood of the officers' meeting was foul. The engineering team was still working on the damage to the shuttle, and Paris was upset about his close call with the pirates. Harry glanced down the table at his best friend, wondering what could cause him to look so anxious and angry... all at the same time.
I suppose if I'd been ambushed in the nebula, I'd look a bit like that.
"The way I see it," Janeway was saying, "we can't go through the nebula. While we could conceivably beat back the pirates, I don't like the idea of trying to do it without shields. We have to go around."
"Which direction?" B'Elanna asked.
"Can I make a suggestion?" Paris jumped in.
"Yes?"
"How about heading 315?" He looked around for anyone to nay-say him.
Kim shrugged. "One direction's as good as any," he said.
* * *
Satisfied that he'd done his job, Paris joined Harry and B'Elanna for supper at the mess hall, then retired to his quarters for a rest. It had been a long, stressful... day. He'd already ended up in his two least favorite locations on the ship, and ambushed by Renkal and the pirates four times.
He was awakened hours later by the red-alert klaxon. Tuvok's voice came over the comm. "Senior officers to the bridge." Paris jumped into his uniform and raced to the Bridge as quickly as he could, hoping that this time, Voyager could safely escape. If its Renkal, I'm going to scream. Right there, on the Bridge.
It wasn't Renkal. It was a Borg cube.
"We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Your technological and biological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile."
Paris groaned, trying to make evasive manuevers that would get them away from the cube. Despite his best efforts, though, the cube hit them several times, managing to disable Voyager's propulsion. Then the drones boarded.
* * *
The mood of the officers' meeting was foul. The engineering team was still working on the damage to the shuttle, and Paris was upset about his close call with the pirates. Chakotay glanced across the table at the chief helmsman, wondering when Paris last got sleep. He didn't look too chipper.
But if I'd been ambushed like he was, I'd probably look pretty exhausted, too.
"The way I see it," Janeway said, "we can't go through the nebula. While we could conceivably beat back the pirates, I don't like the idea of trying to do so without shields. We have to go around."
"Which direction?" B'Elanna asked.
"Can I make a suggestion?" Paris mumbled.
"Yes?"
"How about heading 115?" He looked immediately to Ensign Kim.
Kim shrugged. "One direction's as good as any," he said.
* * *
"There's no way to scan the nebula... but a shuttle could get in there. If shields were deactivated, it would be small enough to avoid getting tossed around if it hit any real turbulence."
"Tom?" Paris swiveled around in his chair, a frown on his face. "Take a shuttle in and make detailed scans every inch of the way. Try to find a safe route for Voyager."
"Yes, ma'am... but could I talk to you first?"
"Of course." Janeway replied, heading toward her ready room door.
"Thanks," he sighed.
When the door closed, Janeway turned to him. "Now what did you need, Tom?"
"Um... you see, I hate this nebula." Janeway's eyebrows raised. "Captain, I have taken a shuttle through this nebula thirty-five times. Thirty-two of those times, I've been chased by pirate ships, and even been caught by them three times. The other three times, I've missed them, and they attacked Voyager as we tried to pass through..."
"What are you saying, Tom?"
Paris sighed. "What I'm saying is that I've been stuck in a sort of a time loop. We try to enter the nebula or go around it and something goes wrong every time!"
Janeway looked astonished. "Thirty-five times, Tom?"
"And every time, we either get attacked by the Borg, ambushed by pirates, damaged in an ion storm, spend four months trying to go around before getting conscripted to fight an alien war, run into an asteroid belt, sucked into a black hole..."
"Four months?"
"Oh, yeah, that was a real treat because it was different, except for the two-and-a-half months I spent in the Brig because you thought I was some kind of alien..."
"Tom..."
"Which reminds me... before you grab a tricorder, I can't be scanned. You try to scan me, and nothing shows up..."
"Tom..."
"I can also walk through things. I can be hurt–I found that out, all right–but only if I'm surprised or distracted. And Renkal's sick of repeating the same thing over and over and over, too. He's so tired of it, he says he's not going to try to capture Voyager any more, though I wouldn't trust him as far as I can throw him..."
"Lieutenant Paris! Take a breath, that's an order!"
Paris sucked in a breath, realizing that he'd been on the verge of hyperventilation.
"Now, tell me what's been happening... slowly."
He looked up, grinning. "What if I show you instead?" She barely had time to register a look of surprise when he grabbed her arm, and violet-tinged lightning coursed down his arm. Janeway gasped and slumped to the floor, unconscious.
* * *
Tuvok stood his post, trying to puzzle out the expression on Paris' face when he'd asked to talk to Janeway. It was... desperation.
Then the doors to the captain's ready room slid open, and Paris walked out, an unreadable expression on his face. He walked straight to the turbolift doors, and stepped forward as though he was about to enter the lift. Instead, he turned toward Tuvok, bowed deeply, and said, "If anyone needs me, I'll be in the Brig."
To the Vulcan's relief, none of the humans on the Bridge looked any less confused than he felt. He was still attempting to decipher the meaning of the lieutenant's words five minutes later, when Janeway came out of her ready room, her eyes blazing with anger.
"Where is Lieutenant Paris?"
Tuvok raised an eyebrow. "He said that, should anyone need him, he would be in the Brig." He paused. "I confess, Captain, I am most perplexed by his behavior."
"I'm not perplexed, Tuvok," Janeway snapped, heading for the turbolift. "I'm downright livid."
* * *
She stormed straight to the Brig. "Parker," she snapped to the ensign standing inside. "Is Paris in here?"
The bewildered security guard pointed. "He just came in here without a word of explanation and sat down on a bunk. I was about ready to contact Commander Tuvok, but the lieutenant said to not bother..."
Her eyes narrowed. "Commander Tuvok will hear soon enough." She whirled to face Paris, who was lying on the bunk, counting ceiling tiles or something.
"Yup. Still forty-two of 'em," he sighed, and she knew that's what he'd done.
"Lieutenant, you have a lot of explaining to do."
"Sorry. I got tired of explaining it to you every time, so I decided to make you see. Can you tell Parker to leave?"
She didn't see that Paris would be going any where with the forcefield in place, so she dismissed him. "See what?"
He groaned and sat up. "I've been stuck in a time loop. An alien I attacked has also been stuck, ever since I hit him with the same lightning-stuff I got you with. I hit you with it so that you'd go to the next time-shift with me and believe what I'm trying to tell you."
"Time shift? And just when is this time shift?"
"Whenever I can concentrate hard enough to do it," he explained. "Except I can't do it within eighteen hours of the starting point. I already tried that, so we have about... seventeen hours and thirty more minutes to go. Give or take a few minutes, that is."
She rubbed her temples. "You attacked me, Tom."
"I know, and I'm sorry for it. But I had no other choice."
"Tell me what's been happening before this 'time shift' What has happened in this time loop? Who is this alien, and what was that thing about a tricorder?"
"Oh, okay. The first time... for me... you asked me to take a shuttle into the nebula. I did, didn't find anything, and we sailed on in, oblivious to what was happening. In the middle of the night, we were attacked by pirate vessels... twelve of them. They fired at us, and I was able to move Voyager just enough so that only a few of the energy bolts hit us, but it was enough to take out our impulse engines. Also, when we were hit, this energy stuff–" he demonstrated by doing the "human Jacob's Ladder" effect "–ran up my arms from the helm."
"We couldn't restart the impulse engines in the gas," he continued, "so it was going to take us fifteen months to get out on thrusters. About that time, we found that I could pass through solid objects and cause the energy to run across my hands. We also discovered that I couldn't be scanned with a tricorder."
"And this was the first time?" Janeway asked, incredulous.
Paris nodded. "But it got worse from there. Eventually, I found out I could jump back in time to the point just before you ask me if I want to take a shuttle into the nebula. I kept us from getting hit by the energy weapons that time, but we were boarded by the pirates. I attacked Sub-Commander Renkal after he tried to kill me, and Tuvok transported all of them to Cargo Bay 2. I thought I'd fixed everything, but B'Elanna was killed in the fighting, so I decided to try to keep us from entering the nebula."
He looked embarassed. "That time, I thought I'd tamper with the sensor readings to make the nebula seem impassable. You saw through it, called me to your ready room, and confronted me about the changes. You also had a tricorder hidden in your desk drawer, which showed you that there was no one standing in front of you, so you thought I was some kind of alien and had me tossed into the Brig."
"Tampering with the sensors wasn't a good idea."
"I know," Paris sighed. "Later, I asked you what I could do to convince you not to take Voyager into the nebula. You said I should go in and get a good scan on the pirates. Well, I did that. Thirty-one times. Each time, I chose a different heading after exiting the nebula, but something stupid always happened to keep us from going around in less than four months. It takes only three days to go through at maximum impulse and the way the currents flow, we would have to go through sector J-14-25. Think of the nebula as shaped like a great big hurricane with all the currents leading to or from the eye. Sector J-14-25 is the eye, and we can't avoid it. "
Janeway looked a little bewildered by all this. "This is too strange to be made up, Tom, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. And you said I should be able to cross the time shifts with you?"
"I think so. Renkal wasn't aware of the first ambush, but he is of the second and every one after it. The second ambush is where I attacked him." He drew in a shaky breath, then stood. To Janeway's amazement, he walked over to the forcefield, then passed straight through it. "Computer: time."
"1457 hours," the flat voice of the ship's computer replied.
"Just sixteen more hours to go," Paris sighed.
"How did you–?"
"Walk through the forcefield? Hell if I know. I just think about being insubstantial and I am."
Janeway sighed and self-consciously uncrossed her arms. "To my ready room, Tom, and explain everything from the very beginning. If the time shift works I want to know where and when we'll end up, what we'll be facing, and what exactly I'm supposed to do about it."
Ignoring the strange looks everyone gave Paris as they returned to the ready room, Janeway sat down at her desk and listened to every word. The exhausted-looking helmsman explained everything in great detail. By the time he was finished, only eight more hours remained. She dismissed him to his quarters for a meal and a rest, ordering him to not go to the mess hall, then retreated to her own suite to think.
She woke up at 0700, an hour later than her usual time. She contacted Chakotay to tell him she was running late. No sooner had she set her feet on the floor to head for the sonic shower, then she found herself on the Bridge, fully clothed.
"There's no way to scan the nebula... but a shuttle could get in there. If shields were deactivated, it would be small enough to avoid getting tossed around if it hit any real turbulence."
The least you could have done was give me some warning, she thought, resisting the urge to glare at Paris.
"Thank you, Mr. Kim," she said, pursing her lips. "All right, I need all senior officers to report to the conference room."
At the front of the Bridge, Paris nearly fell over with relief.