Title: One Week 1/?
Author: quew
Disclaimers: Paramount owns Voyager and all its crew. I am doing this for fun, not profit. This story also contains elements of a romantic relationship between women: If that isn’t your thing, please don’t read.
Rating: R
Archiving: PM, if wanted, P&P if wanted: Anywhere else is fine too, just let me know *g*
Warnings: Contains strong language and violence in later parts.
Notes: Ok, I’ve had a bit of a block for a little while, which has annoyed me because I’ve had this idea for about the same length of time…here’s hoping I can express it adequately without degenerating into mindless drivel.
#
‘Seven, what are you doing?’ When she got no answer, B’Elanna sighed and started to crawl through the jefferies tube once again. ‘Stupid Borg efficiency,’ she mumbled. ‘Probably too busy working to stop and tell me where she is.’
After a few more minutes crawling along, she emerged into a junction where she was surprised to find Seven crouched down, pouring intently over something in her hand.
‘Seven?’ She called.
The blonde jumped like B’Elanna had touched her with a live wire, and the engineer was surprised to see shock clearly expressed on the ex-drones face when she turned to face her. ‘I have found…this.’ Seven said, carefully handing B’Elanna what appeared to be a medical tri-corder.
‘What’s this doing all the way up here?’ B’Elanna asked. Seven merely shook her head; she did not know.
‘You should examine the data stored there, Lieutenant,’ Seven said, and B’Elanna noted with interest the disbelief that Seven was openly expressing.
‘What’s got into you, Seven?’ She asked as she tapped in the commands to enable her to read the data stored on the errant tri-corder. ‘Anyone would think you’d seen a…’
She trailed off, her eyes widening as she watched the information stream past on the tri-corders little screen. Then, when her shock had abated, she threw back her head and laughed, a reaction that obviously took Seven by surprise.
‘I do not see how this is funny, Lieutenant,’ she admonished, frowning almost imperceptibly.
‘Oh Seven, I’m not laughing at the contents, I’m laughing because this is obviously one of Tom’s sick jokes gone wrong. He must have left this here to freak us out.’ She chuckled as she spoke, shaking her head from side to side. ‘Listen, here’s what we’ll do – we won’t tell him we’ve figured him out, and we’ll pretend to be really shaken while we think of something to trick him with!’
‘It is not a joke, Lieutenant Torres,’ Seven said, speaking quietly and keeping her eyes locked on B’Elanna’s.
‘What?’ The half-Klingon said. ‘Of course it is Seven! How could this possibly be true?’ She tried to maintain her sense of levity, but the shear sense of certainty that Seven was projecting was starting to shake her resolve. Then, after a pause, she grinned again.
‘Well done, Seven! You really had me there! Has the Doc been trying to get you to develop your sense of humour or something? ‘Cause if this is your idea of a joke…perhaps you ought to work at it a little more!’ She chuckled again, but Sevens expression didn’t flicker.
‘Have you forgotten, B’Elanna, that my ocular implant can detect irregularities in space-time?’
B’Elanna shrugged. ‘No, of course not, but what’s that got to do with anything?’
‘B’Elanna, look at the date on the data in the tri-corder’s memory.’
Slowly, B’Elanna obeyed, scowling slightly as her eyes scanned the information. ‘That’s not possible.’
‘It is.’ Seven disagreed quietly. ‘Temporal travel is not impossible: you know that it is not.’
‘I know,’ B’Elanna gruffly acquiesced. ‘But I don’t believe this.’ She waved the offending tri-corder around.
‘Scan it,’ Seven suggested softly.
B’Elanna scowled at her again and pulled out her own engineering tri-corder, snapping it open and waving it over their find slowly, and then with increasing urgency. ‘That’s not possible,’ she maintained, scanning it again and again.
‘Why do you constantly deny something which you know from experience to be entirely possible?’ Seven questioned.
‘Because, if you were any less analytical, would you want to believe what this tri-corder is telling us?’ B’Elanna countered, her voice holding the hint of a growl.
Seven paused, and then shook her head. ‘No. I would not.’
Just for the hell of it, B’Elanna scanned the medical tri-corder once again, expecting and receiving exactly the same result as had obtained the first five times. ‘Seven,’ she murmured, looking at her tall blonde colleague, ‘we have a problem.’
#
‘Captain…we have a problem.’ B’Elanna placed the medical tri-corder down on Janeway’s desk and looked sidelong at Seven before saying, ‘Open it up.’
Captain Janeway balked at the commanding note her Chief Engineers voice held but did not say anything; to be spoken to like that must mean that this was important. She opened the tri-corder and accessed the data, and then she gasped.
‘This isn’t possible,’ She said, looking at B’Elanna, then at Seven, then back again. Both her officers were wearing almost identical worried expressions, although Seven’s was harder to detect.
‘That’s exactly what I said, and then I scanned it.’ She lay her own tri-corder down on the desk, and the Captain perused its contents quickly. Then she sighed.
‘I know that relations between the pair of you are a lot less strained now, and don’t get me wrong, I am happy for you both…but if this is some sort of practical joke that you two have cooked up, I will most definitely not be amused.’
‘It is not, Captain,’ Seven said calmly. ‘The tri-corder is saturated in chronoton particles that place it exactly one week hence in Voyagers present timeline.’
‘Then this data is true?’ The captain said, the sudden realization that it might be making her pale slightly.
‘We think so, Captain. It’s possible it was faked, but why would someone do that?’
The Captain dropped her eyes to the data once again, her mind slowly starting to swim with the enormity of what she was reading. 'Are you telling me…' she read the data again, in case her eyes were playing tricks on her. She found she could not finish the statement, her breath taken away by what she was once again reading.
'Yes, Captain,' Seven confirmed. 'We think that what the tri-corder is showing us has not been faked.'
'Basically,' B'Elanna continued, 'That tri-corder was used in several post mortem examinations.'
Janeway struggled to comprehend the scope of the situation, shaking her head from side to side as she felt a huge sense of responsibility for her crew, 'You're saying that...in one week...all these people will be dead?'