Fic: "Preventing Actions", Voy, P/T, PG

[Voy_Girl]

Preventing Actions
by VoyGirl

Rating: PG

Summary: Alternate "Day of Honor". P/T. The warp core was never ejected. Was nearly suffocating in space their only chance?


A/N: Hmm... This was written sometime this spring, and I�m going to post it now because, well, I haven�t posted a fic in a long time. Besides, I�ve been writing for another fandom for about six months, and haven�t had the time to write as much Voyager fic I would like to.
Therefore, this will have to do.



+++


Harry Kim looked up, startled, when a full tray made contact with the tabletop, distressingly close to his elbows. He slowly raised the chin he'd rested against his knuckles. "Bad morning?"

"Bad evening, bad night, bad morning� Bad, period!"

"Is it the warp core incident?"

"No, the incident with the lost PADD. Of course it's the warp core." B'Elanna Torres picked up her fork, gave the yellow glob on her plate one look and then threw the fork in it. In a second, the dish had engulfed it with a sickening sound. "Is this supposed to be lunch?"

"Unfortunately." Harry�s eyes narrowed with concern as he eyed his friend. She looked haggard, he decided. Uncombed and dirty with dark circles beneath the eyes. And, as if that wasn't enough, even more irritable than usual. "How are you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Uh� You look a little worn, that's all."

"Oh, excuse me! For the last three days I've been trying to come up with a plan for what we should do the next time we're 4, 7 seconds away from ejecting the core� But don't worry, Harry, as soon as I've cracked that little nut, I'll run for Miss Delta Quadrant!"

"That was not what I meant," he said, trying to coax an apple from his tray over to hers without her noticing it. "Is work really your only reason for looking worn? I heard Tom was helping you with a holoprogram�"

Her eyes narrowed dangerously, but she did answer him. "The 'Day of Honor' was three days ago, too. Lucky me, huh? For once I thought I'd go through with it, but I couldn't. I didn't do anything honourable at all, didn't even thank my staff for their help. Didn't thank anyone, for that matter."

"But you didn't lose the core to the Caatati. It stayed on board. Isn't there some honor in that?"

"You wouldn't understand." She noticed the apple on her tray, and quickly snatched it, asking no questions. She�d probably already forgotten just what Neelix had handed her. "And even if there some little spark of honor, it surely didn't make me feel better."

Harry nodded solemnly. He did not understand, that was true.

Without giving him a chance to start a more cheerful conversation, B'Elanna rose. "I'd better get back to engineering. Oh, and� thanks." She shifted the apple in her hand, so that he would see it.

He smiled faintly when she left, swearing he could hear her mutter 'just three days too late.'



+++


Janeway nodded thoughtfully. "You're absolutely right, B'Elanna. We have to know how to react if we some day should be forced to eject the core. Unfortunately, not all of the Starfleet directions are practical in the Delta Quadrant, as we have noticed before. I put you in charge of the research, lieutenant. Use as many people as you need."

"Thank you, Captain," B'Elanna smiled faintly, and sat down. The sooner she was through with that, the sooner she could go back to living as before.

"Anyone else who wants to bring something up?" Kathryn asked. When she was met by nothing but negative responses, she rose from her seat. "Then this briefing is ended. You may return to your duties."


+++


With a frustrated yelp, Tom Paris slammed his fist into the side of the replicator. A paprika wasn't exactly what he'd wanted. The only thing it had in common with tomato soup was the vegetable kingdom and the color.

"Is it malfunctioning again?" A tired voice with absolutely no modulation asked behind him.

He spun around, hoping to see a high-spirited B'Elanna with rosy cheeks, not the gloomy lieutenant he'd been seated next to during the briefing. Her voice didn't promise much, though.

"Well?" She prompted when he didn't answer immediately. Her cheeks were definitely not rosy; on the contrary, they were paler than usual.

Tom knew that if he said yes, she'd try to fix it herself on the spot. "No� I was just disappointed, when it� gave me such a small one." He picked up the paprika and tried to give it a look of dismay.

B'Elanna shrugged and turned away from the replicator. To Tom's relief, she hadn't tried to acquire something from it.

"You'd like to share this with me?" He asked, trying to remember how paprika tasted and whether he liked it or not.

For a second, her lips curved upwards, but it was not a smile, merely a suppressed sigh. "No, thank you. I have work to do."

"You must be busy� No time for dinner. Is it the emergency plan for the warp core?"

"Yes, I must finish it before the Caatati return. And if it's not them, it'll be some other alien race."

Tom tried to come up with something to say to her, for once thinking before he talked. Somehow, all the sentences he managed to form inside his head all sounded pestering and totally wrong. After a few quiet seconds, he realized that he had to give it up and just say something, especially since B'Elanna had begun to balance on a heel, apparently waiting for him to speak. "Well, I can understand that� Do you need any help?"

She looked up from her boots. "Yeah, I do� Got any ideas?"

"Always. They just vary in quality, and feasibility."

"I have to get going, but if you could follow me down to main engineering, you could tell me about them on the way."

"Sure," he shrugged and smiled at her. "Haven't been down there in three days."

B'Elanna winced, but quickly shook it off, and led the way out from the mess hall, urging him to talk.

Tom saw to the quick disposal of the paprika before beginning. "There's always the holodeck�"


+++


Tom placed his hands on his hips and took a deep breath, as if he was embraced by some crisp wind that only he could see. "Can't you just smell the possibilities?"

B'Elanna frowned and shifted the little stack of PADDs in her hands. They were useful, but awkward to carry several of. "It's just the holodeck. The empty holodeck."

"Ah, but just wait until we've started."

"Remember, Tom� Focus on making the shuttle and warp core as lifelike as possible. This means you don't have to go to any excesses when it comes to the space around it."

"Don't worry, I understand. We can call up a part of space that Voyager already has visited from the database."

"Great. What should we begin with?" She looked around, frowning in exasperation. If he didn't start to create soon, she'd ask the computer for a chair, where she could put her PADDs down, perhaps one big enough to fit both them and her sore feet.

"It would be wise to start with the shuttle, I think. We could start with the surroundings, but then we�ll probably end up floating in space with no craft�" He winked, before giving the computers orders to create a standard shuttle hull.


+++


B'Elanna ran a hand down the length of an EVA-suit; its peculiar texture caused chills to run down her spine. "Are these really necessary? We won�t use them, anyway."

"No, maybe we won�t� But this was going to be a realistic program, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, but then again, so was the 'Day of Honor'-program you promised to help me with."

Tom frowned, leaning back against the, now closed, door to the locker where the suits were stored. He'd known she was going to bring that up some time. "Did you really have such a problem with it?"

"No, it was� fantastic. Just a little too much, since�"

"Since you never planned to complete it in the first place."

B'Elanna suddenly found a very interesting spot of engine coolant on her boot, and stared hard at it. The color on her pale cheeks rose.

"You are going to complete this program, aren't you?" Tom tried his best not to sound too accusing, but it was hard, since he had put a lot of effort into the 'Day of Honor'-program. She hadn't even used it for five minutes.

"Of course I am!" She snarled, bringing her head up to look him in the eye.

"Yes, of course you are� Because it's your work. As soon as it affects nothing but your personal life, it doesn't matter."

"Are you saying that I don't care about myself?"

"Oh, so you do?"

"Yes!" She spat out, but immediately after the words had left her mouth, she seemed to give it some thought. "Yes," she mumbled again, trying to re-discover that spot on her boot.

"When, exactly? When you're pulling double shift, giving up sleep to read reports, skipping meals because you're too busy? Lately, you meet Harry outside work more and more seldom --he complains, you know--, and those occasions were rare to begin with. Heck, you don't even have a minute to go on a lousy date!"

Again, B'Elanna brought her head up, this time giving him a perplexed look.

Tom bit his tongue. Hard. That was what he got for being relentless. Without a peep, he retreated to the holographic helm.


+++


"You know�" B'Elanna said forty minutes later, when she finally had worked up the courage to leave the familiar company of the engines. The unlimited holodeck time the Captain had assigned them proved to be a good thing. "The program will remain in the database, and there will be a Day of Honor next year, too."

Tom, who had spun his seat around to face her, pretended not to notice how she winced when she mentioned it. "Are you going to give it another shot?"

"I have to. Guess I owe you that much. After all, it can't be worse than this year."

"Yeah, almost losing the core must put a damper on every day. Too bad it happened when it did."

"I don't think so," she sat down in front of the nearest station. "Then we wouldn't have thought about taking these preventing actions."

"Don't you think that we would have managed even if we had been forced to eject the core?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, some times the best solutions show up when you're unprepared."

"Would you mind if I asked you how you learned that?"

He sighed. "Yes, I actually would mind."

B'Elanna brought her feet up on her seat. To keep them pinned against the station was just too uncomfortable. "Would you mind if I asked you why you're helping me, then?"

Tom felt compelled to bite his tongue again. He should have seen that coming. He had no choice but to answer her; if the simulation had been turned on, he could have given some commands to fake turbulence, and bought himself a few seconds that way. But he couldn't.

"And I'd also like to ask you why you volunteered to write my Day of Honor program. I didn't think you knew anything about Klingon customs?"

"It's quite easy to find information in the database. I read fast." He tried to sound collected, but groaned on the inside. Oh, why hadn't he simply answered her first question?

"Have you lost your tongue? I'm quite certain I just asked you two other questions, and you haven't answered either of them yet." Apparently, he wasn't the only one who could be relentless. "I don't know� Your tone of voice kind of lures me into thinking that you already know the answer."

For a moment, she gave up the drawling voice she'd tried to tease him with, and became her sober self again. "Maybe I do. Maybe I think I do. Either way, I really want to hear it from you."

Tom sighed. How to put it? I just wanted to be close to you. No, that was no good. A minute later, he had come up with the perfect wording. "I just wanted to be friendly, that's all."

B'Elanna, who rested her chin against her knees, tried to shrug, but the position cramped her movements. "Yeah� That was what I thought, too."


+++


The next morning, Tom let his fingertips slide gently over the helm controls, not pushing a single one. "Take one," he mumbled.

"What?" B'Elanna asked from her station.

"Nothing. You ready?"

"I've been ready since last night."

"Good� Though not so ready that you couldn't sleep or eat breakfast, right?"

"If you have to know, I slept for seven hours and 38 minutes, and had that yellow porridge for breakfast. I even took a long shower."

Tom smiled, "That's all I need to know. Computer, start simulation."

The shuttle and the stars outside started to move simultaneously, and even though the back of Tom's chair was turned to her, she knew he was smiling. She could see the reflection of his teeth in the vast dark velvet outside. Facing her own controls, she smiled too.


+++

Several hours later, B'Elanna was leaning over Tom's shoulder, for what seemed like the hundredth time that day. She punched in a command, and then another. "What if we did it like this? What about taking this route?"

"What about lunch?" Tom punched in a command of his own, shutting down the map on the screen. It was a bold move, since B'Elanna had grown testier and testier for each failed simulation. She had placed both her hands on the back of his seat, and could grip his head and smash it into the conn station in the blink of an eye. But she didn't.

She was so close to him, that when Tom turned his head to see why she didn't punch him out, her hair brushed against the base of his neck. He shuddered, but B'Elanna didn't react to that either.

When Tom noticed that all she did was to stare out into the frozen scenery plastered over the screen, he began to worry. "Hey, Torres," he said softly, and placed a hand on her shoulder.

She cringed and wrenched out of his grip. "Sorry, she said, shaking her head as if to clear it.
"I was thinking."

"About the possible ejection of the core?"

She surprised him by saying 'no', and then "Did you say something before?"

"Oh� How about lunch?"

"Lunch� With you? I mean, sounds great."


+++


After lunch, Tom had managed to talk B'Elanna into running the entire simulation all the way through, with no pauses, and no modifications. "All right, this will be the last simulation for the day."

B'Elanna squirmed in her seat. "What if we come up with something groundbreaking after we're finished with this simulation?"

"What if we succeed with this simulation? If we one day have to eject the core and then retrieve it, we can't ask the computer to fine-tune the space surrounding us."

"All right. Let's test it then. Computer, isolate the roughest part of the course that has been laid to fit this program."

"B'Elanna?"

"Let's see if we're prepared. Now, where should we start from?"

"You choose."

"All right. Then we'll start from the point where the core has been ejected, the crewmembers -in this case you and I- are alone in the shuttle, and -for some reason- Voyager is far from here."

"Sounds like an intriguing plot. Perhaps you should write a novel."

"You're still not getting your steamy love scene."

They laughed together for a moment, wanting to forget about their task for a moment, though it was utterly evident.

"You really want to make this interesting?" Tom asked when they'd grown quiet again.

"Why? What do you suggest?"

"Call off the safety parameters."

B'Elanna smiled wryly. "Interesting. But why?"

"I haven't piloted a shuttle through rough space for weeks. This is the next best thing."

"Great. Just you and I against the Delta Quadrant."

"Isn't it time for us to stop prolonging this?"

"Definitely." "Take 23� Computer, disengage safety parameters and start simulation."



+++


"Ion storm straight ahead!"

"No!" B'Elanna cursed audibly. "Can't you avoid it?"

"It's too wide! We have to let the core go."

"It's no use; it will end up inside the storm anyway. What are we supposed to do now?"

"I don't know; you were the one who called up the roughest terrain!"

The shuttle moved slowly through space; it was hard to keep hold on the warp core with the tractor beam.

"I have an idea," Tom shouted. "You remember one of the first simulations, where you wrote in those Caatati who wanted to steal the core?"

"Yes� But we agreed on not modifying the program!"

"This wouldn't be modifying; I'm just spicing it up a little." He quickly gave the Computer the order to bring the greedy Caatati back. Soon enough, their clumsy vessel appeared to drop out of warp, close to the shuttle.

"I'm glad they aren't real," B'Elanna muttered and shut down the tractor beam.

"I'm glad as long as they take the bait!"

And, since they were greedy and, honestly, a little stupid, they approached the core that floated, unguarded, in open space and put their own beam on it. It was not until then they seemed to notice the shuttlecraft at the brink of an ion storm. Apparently, they found it too tempting to leave the alien shuttle alone, or perhaps they simply were mean, because they didn't leave until their vessel had gotten to show that it was a functional battle ship.

A couple of well placed photon torpedoes were not what Tom and B'Elanna needed, already fighting to keep out of the storm, something that soon proved worthless.

The shuttle was out of control, it spun around, twitched and jerked like a dying beast.

"We have to get out of here!" B'Elanna shouted, snatched the med kit from a shelf, and placed it in front of some leaking gas.

"Unless you want to get into an EVA-suit and crawl around in space for a few hours, I say we abort this now!" Tom, who finally had abandoned the smoking helm, said.

"I thought we said we'd run it to the end."

They faced each other in the middle of the thin passage between the front and back section of the shuttle, smoke and leaking gas surrounding them.

"This is the end, Torres. If this had been real, we would either blow up together with the shuttle, or suffocate in space� This is the end of this simulation."

"Fine," B'Elanna cursed, as the sound of crumpling metal made its way through the vessel. "Computer, end program."


+++


"So we should just accept that we can't be prepared?"

"Yes, I think that's exactly what we should do." Tom watched his coffee first swirl around in the cup, and then splash over, when B'Elanna rammed her fist into the tabletop.

"Why?"

"Perhaps it will be simple to retrieve the core, if it's ever ejected. We could localize it, track it down and have it safely on board in maybe twenty minutes, if the conditions are right. That simulation was pretty extreme."

"Still, it wasn't the worst case scenario." She said morosely and emptied her cup.

"Try to think of something else," Tom advised her. "I could call Neelix over here� I'm sure he could come up with several interesting topics of discussion."

B'Elanna glanced in Neelix's direction. Apparently, he told Janeway and Chakotay, who had dinner in a corner, a story. As is his wont, he accentuated his storytelling with body language, this time waving a ladle frantically, forcing the command team to press up against the wall. She smiled at the scene, mostly because it was evident that the two humans wanted to be left alone.

"Now, that smile is something I haven't seen in days." While Tom and B'Elanna had been looking at Neelix, Harry had come up behind them, also smiling.

"So you don't think I look 'a little worn' today, too?"

"No, today you'd get my vote." Harry pulled out a chair and sat down.

Tom looked a little puzzled, since he was unable to understand Harry's reference to 'Miss Delta Quadrant'. He was just about to get up and leave them to make up, when Harry suddenly asked how things were going with the simulation.

B'Elanna froze immediately, her dark eyes narrowed, and she opened her mouth, almost certainly to run the whole thing down completely.

"Why don't we take that during the briefing tomorrow, instead?� Tom put in, ignoring B�Elanna�s glare. �Because right now, I'd like to hear if you have any plans for tonight, Harry?"

Harry shot him a bewildered glance, but he did start talking. Over their respective empty coffee cups, B'Elanna gave Tom a look, which he could only describe as thankful.


+++



Steel met steel with a piercing sound. B'Elanna was taken aback by the force of the blow, and stumbled backwards until she tripped over a rock and landed with a thump on the hard ground.

She kept her bat'leth up, though; held it close to her chest. The male Klingon approached her with slow movements. B'Elanna waited until he was as close as he could get without stomping on her. She kept her gaze locked with his, then wiggled her weapon a little, luring him to look at it� And quickly placed a foot behind where his knee was bent, and yanked.

B'Elanna sighed deeply, and scrambled to her feet when the Klingon didn't move. She had a splitting headache and instantly found that she couldn't name one part of her body that didn't hurt.

Her bat'leth fell to the ground with a hollow sound, and she stumbled further into the cave, instinctively wanting to create a little distance between herself and the fallen Klingons. After contemplating her situation for a moment, she ended the program and watched it fade away.

She could finally tell Tom that there was nothing wrong with the program, and be absolutely truthful. She had gone through with it, and probably would have been able to do so the year before, too. She wiped a strand of hair away from her eyes and wondered, for the hundredth time, whether things would have been different if she had felt like that -- ferocious-- 365 days ago.

Then, she might have had the courage to speak from the heart when the opportunity had arrived. And she'd had opportunities.

Tom seemed to have accepted her whims, though. He knew that dinner with her in the middle of the crowded mess hall was fine, while dinner in private was not. She often felt bad because of that, knowing that she'd forced her best friends to adapt to her.

It had been a year since she almost had been forced to eject the core, and they still didn't have an emergency plan. B'Elanna had often thought about bringing it up again, just so she could work close to Tom. It was childish, and she knew it, but she didn't know what else to do.
She couldn't volunteer for every away mission he was assigned either, she knew that. She felt like a stalker, following Tom around with some pathetic white lie ready.

A little voice inside her told her that they were friends, good friends, and that she should be thankful for that friendship. And she was; their friendship could have been at a much lower stadium, permeated with working life. It could have been much worse, and she let that thought comfort her for a while. But she had barely left the holodeck before another little voice told her, that it could have been much better, too.



THE END

[Tuvok8917]

No more episodes???To bad....Because i liked it

[1/1]

That was a great story

[Voy_Girl]

[Voy_Girl]