Chapter Seven

“There just isn’t a whole lot I can do until we get some materials from the city,” Torres complained. “The shuttle is just too beat up.”

“What have you managed to repair?” Tuvok asked.

“Well, impulse engines are up, as well as one of the phaser emitters. Half of the thruster array is completely destroyed, and I can’t do anything with the nacelles until I get something that I can weld with. The shuttle is too damaged to repair with these primitive tools!”

“That should be sufficient for now,” replied Tuvok. “The Bint’Ari seem to be short on operational fliers, so I have agreed to allow the use of the shuttle for transportation to the mainland.”

Tuvok and Torres continued to work on the shuttle when Oro approached, in a considerable hurry.

“Friends, it is nearly dawn. We are preparing to raid the city for supplies.” He looked at Tuvok. “If you would come with me, I will get you an Aria. When in the city, you can find what you need to repair your shuttle.”

Tuvok shook his head. “I will remain behind and continue effecting repairs on the shuttle. Lt. Torres is more qualified to determine which materials she might require to complete the repairs.”

“She cannot come,” Oro answered.

“Why not?” demanded Torres.

“She is a woman,” replied Oro, as if the answer is obvious.

“Your telling me I can’t go, because I’m a woman?” Torres was fuming. “I’ll rip your scrawny little head off, and then you can tell me I can’t fight!” Tuvok stepped in front of her, heading off her advance on the confused man.

“I am certain you will find that Lieutenant Torres’s combat skills meet with your approval.”

“But,” stammered Oro, who was nervous of Torres’s angry glare. “Alright, but the others won’t like it at all. But, if you die, they can gloat. Come, let us find you a blade.”

The sun began to rise as Torres and Oro entered the camp. The other men began to murmur as they approached.

“Where is the Vulcan?” one asked.

“What is she doing here?” asked another.

Oro ignored them, and escorted Torres into the weapons tent. Several different sized blades were scattered along the ground inside.

“Chose the blade that suits you,” instructed Oro, before he left her alone inside.

Outside, he was greeted with the angry stares of several men.

“You let a woman inside of the weapons tent?”

“You dishonor the Aria!”

“Friends! She is willing to fight, while the Vulcan is reluctant. She is not of our world, and we do not yet know what she is capable of. Save your anger for the Borg!” pleaded Oro.

A few of the men turned and quietly left, accepting Oro’s explanation. Most remained, however, and loudly objected. B’Elanna then exited the tent, and stopped in mid-stride in face of the angry group. A young looking Bint’Ari stepped forward.

“I invoke the Arijedo!” he loudly called.

Torres looked confused. Oro immediately stepped forward, and confronted the man.

“Be serious! This is the first time the Aria have been used in hundreds of seasons. You can’t expect that challenge to be honored now!” protested Oro.

“That woman has no right to wield the Aria!” the man yelled back. Many men in the crowd murmured their approval.

“What the hell is he talking about?” Torres asked.

“He has issued a challenge. He questions your right to your blade. It is an ancient custom, but I think we will have to uphold it,” explained Oro, indicating the crowd of men already forming a large circle for the challenge to take place. “You must prove that you are worthy by fighting, and beating him.”

Torres’s lips curled into a half snarl. “Do I have to kill him?”

“That is one way to prove yourself. If you don’t kill him, you must prove that you are the superior fighter. We,” Oro motioned to the crowd, “the observers, are the judges. If you do not kill him, it is we who decides who has won the challenge.”

“Isn’t there any other way to settle this?”

“You can forfeit your blade,” said Oro.

Torres growled. “Bring him on.”

Torres stepped into the circle of people, there her challenger was already waiting for her. She took a couple of swings, to get used to the feel of the strange sword, then turned to face him. The crowd was chanting, eager for the fight to start.

“What is your name?” she challenged.

“I am Alu!” the man angrily called back.

“Who is your wife?” she demanded, noticing he did not have a double name like Jaskin’Oro.

“I am not bound,” replied Alu, a bit confused at the question.

“That’s what I figured,” Torres taunted, as she raised her sword. “What woman would want an ass like you?”

Alu was not entirely certain what an ass was, but he gathered that is was bad. He angrily lifted his sword, and charged Torres.

Torres remained calm. She knew that Alu would react angrily, and even counted on it.

She was worried, however. Though she was confident in her fighting abilities, it was her sword she was concerned about. Alu had used this blade since he was a child. And even though Torres, being part Klingon, had learned to use various weapons since she was a toddler, this one was bizarre. The awkward hilt would take some getting used to, time she did not necessarily have.

Alu rushed forward with his sword over his head. When he reached Torres, he brought it down with tremendous force. Torres twisted around the blow, and brought her forearm down forcefully across his back. Alu flew forward, and landed face-first in the dirt. A few people in the crowd laughed, while he lifted himself back to his feet.

Alu approached Torres more carefully, surprised at her agility during his first strike. Again, he lifted the sword over his head, and brought it forward with a more controlled, balanced slash. Torres met his sword this time with her own, and used her superior height to press Alu backwards into an uncomfortable leaning position. She then thrust her blade to the side, bringing Alu’s sword down and spinning him off-balance. Before Alu could right himself, she lashed out with a vicious backhand across his face. Alu staggered backwards, then weakly thrust forward again. Torres used a disarm technique she had learned using Terran blades, and Alu’s Aria flew out of his hand. A part of the crowd parted, allowing the sword to come to rest on the ground unobstructed. She angrily brought her blade down as if to kill, but stopped her strike a fraction of a centimeter from his face.

“Yield!” she ordered.

“Kill me,” he replied, quietly.

Torres laughed at the pitiful looking man, breathing deeply to control her rage. “Your not worth it,” she replied, lowering her sword. She then turned, and walked away from the circle.

Alu started forward to follow her, but Oro and another man stopped him.

“It is over!” said the second man.

“I will not yield to a woman!” Alu spat.

“Your challenge has been satisfied,” said Oro, forcefully. “She has beaten you. Save your anger for the Borg, and stop acting like an, like an ass.”

Alu grumbled to himself. “B’Elanna!” he called. She turned and faced him. “I yield,” he mumbled before he sulked away from the crowd. A few men, obviously his friends, followed closely after him, as if to console his loss.

“Now that it is settled,” Oro announced, “to the city!”

A cheer erupted throughout the crowd, and the partisans began to filter out of the camp.

---

“They couldn’t even speak?” Chakotay asked, amazed at Janeway’s story.

“Not a word,” smiled Janeway. She leaned back in her chair, and resisted the temptation to prop her feet on the desk. “The drones were just the beginning. I think we saw six different variations of Khamish down there. Each were almost totally unique from the others. It was incredible.”

“I’ve read about quite a few insectoid races, but I’ve never heard of anything like you are describing,” Chakotay said. “What about that artist you told me about. What kind of environment produced a basic change in the species like that?”

“Incredible, isn’t it?” asked Janeway, leaning forward. “Such a change in limb placement would be like a human having four legs and no arms. And it was all perfectly natural, no one was put off by it in the least. I would wager that a Khamish’s life path it completely determined by your physical characteristics. I suppose at one point in their history they found that four-arms would be useful to an artist. I wonder if that was a natural variation, or if the Khamish induced the change at a genetic level.”

“Either way, it must have happened quite sometime ago, judging by the attitude of the Queen,” replied Chakotay. When he first met Captain Janeway, he wanted nothing to do with her. He would have crashed his small ship into Voyager just as quickly as he did the Kazon ship, if it would have been beneficial. Now, he was glad it wasn’t. He had become very good friends with the Captain, and he found that he could enjoy serving aboard a Starfleet ship. And with most of his Maquis friends back home slaughtered by the Dominion, it was good to know that he would not be so utterly alone when Voyager finally made it back to Federation space, if it ever did.

“I just can’t help wondering if it was right to accept her offer to send a fleet to accompany us. Certainly we could use the help finding Tuvok and B’Elanna, but I’m worried about the Borg. Alone, they would most likely ignore our ship, unless they thought we were a threat. With the Khamish armada along with us, we are most definitely a threat. They won’t hesitate to confront us then.” Janeway rested her head on her palm.

“We might be forced into a confrontation with the Borg, but it also might be in our best interests to confront them,” Chakotay replied.

“How so?”

“Well, if they are able to mount monofilament weapons on some of their fighters, I don’t see how the Borg can stop them. The Borg have shown themselves to be very adaptive, but they do have limits. The Khamish combine too many unique threats for the Borg to be able to adapt to. The antimatter is a serious thing, very simple but very dangerous. There is no way to stop the matter/antimatter reaction from happening once the two make contact. They only way the Borg could avoid such a reaction would to avoid being laced in the first place, and that would be impossible. I don’t see how a cube could outmaneuver a few thousand small fighters that happen to be much faster than it at sub-light speeds. No one is that good a pilot, not even a collective consciousness. Or Tom Paris, for that matter.” Janeway chuckled, wondering if Paris would think he could accomplish such a task. He was a good pilot, and he made certain everyone knew it. But he did tend to think he could do more than he actually could.

“As far as the monofilament cannon,” continued Chakotay, ” even if the Borg could adapt their shields to block it, the Khamish seem perfectly willing to crash a few of their fighters into the cube, like they did during the second Borg attack on their world. As long as a few of those pods rupture, a cube wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“And with us along, it would be easier,” Janeway added. “We could use our weapons to burst enough of those pods to do the job, and from a safe distance.”

“Exactly,” Chakotay replied.

“But I still wonder if we should accompany them at all. They don’t need our help to fight them. I would just assume avoid any contact with the Borg, if it can be helped. If they begin to see Voyager as a threat, we can’t be certain that they will ignore us if we happen by a cube in the future.”

“In all likelihood, the Khamish are too strong for the Borg. If the Khamish were, in the near future, to win a decisively one-sided battle in this cluster, the Borg will respond by putting any nearby resources that they can muster into eliminating that threat. In that case, we would have a very good chance of not running into any Borg ships for a thousand light-years. If we accompany that fleet, and are forced to fight the Borg, we may provide the extra bit of force needed to insure that the Borg will be very busy here for years to come.”

“Wouldn’t that be the same as condemning the Khamish to assimilation, and only so that we could have an easier trip home?”

Chakotay sighed. “If we hadn’t followed that cube in the first place, the Khamish would most likely be Borg now. The Khamish realize this, and are doing what they can to make certain that situation never happens again. They are going to force a full scale war with the Borg whether we are there or not. That is the only way that they could survive, being this close to Borg space. So I am suggesting that we take advantage of that fact, accept their offer of aid, find B’Elanna and Tuvok, and get as far away from here as possible.”

“I think I agree with you,” Janeway said. “I refuse to believe that Tuvok and B’Elanna are dead, and I won’t leave them here. I just hope that the Khamish are as strong as we think they are. I don’t want to do anything that would lead to their assimilation.”

“What does Seven have to say about them?” Chakotay asked.

“She told me about the Borg’s first two attempts at assimilating the Khamish, from the Borg perspective of course. It would seem that the Khamish got lucky the second time. The only reason more than one cube wasn’t sent was because of the conflict with Species 8472. They couldn’t spare the ships.”

“They have to spare the ships now, though,” Chakotay replied. “There could very well be a whole fleet of Borg ships in this sector right now, assimilating every system with life in it. The war with Species 8472 was devastating to the Borg. They must be in dire need of resources. B’Elanna and Tuvok could be in a great deal of trouble.”

“The thought occurred to me as well. We may have to fight through the Borg to get to Tuvok and B’Elanna. If that is the case, I will be more than happy to have along the Khamish. I’d like to have a weapon’s system readiness report before we depart, Commander. With B’Elanna gone, I want to be absolutely certain everything is in perfect order.”

“I’ll see to it,” Chakotay replied, rising to his feet. “Who knows, we may find Tuvok and B’Elanna’s shuttle waiting for us at the rendezvous point.”

“I hope your right,” Janeway replied.

“Oh, and by the way,” Chakotay added, before he turned to leave. “It seems we are having a bit of trouble with the Doctor;s program.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Somehow, the attack by the Borg cube damaged his holo-matrix. There are now six of him, each demanding that the others be deleted.”

“When it rains, it pours, eh Chakotay?” Janeway smiled. “I am sure when B’Elanna comes back, she will think of something. Until then, the Doctor, all of them, will have to suffer with each other’s company.”

“Understood,” Chakotay smiled. “None of them are going to like it very much.”

“I suppose not,” Janeway smiled back.

---

Ensign Nikolayevich followed the long passage that the Nurse directed her down, and emerged into a giant repair bay. Hundreds of ships filled the chamber, each with several workers climbing all over them. She noticed to the side that there was a soldier making angry gestures at a worker, clearly not happy with what that worker was doing to her fighter.

“You must be the Starfleet person.” The voice came from below the Ensign. She looked down, and saw that it was a worker who addressed her. The worker was less than a meter tall, and certainly the least attractive Khamish she had seen yet.

“I am Ensign Nikolayevich,” she replied, with a polite smile.

“That must be your name, because I can’t understand it at all. Just some inaudible grunting sound. I suppose the same is true of my name, though. You may call me Technician, if you can understand that.”

“I can,” said Natasha. “You may call me Ensign then.”

“That was what I was going to call you anyway,” the Technician shrugged. “Come on, I will show you the fighters.”

The fighters were impressive. They were very sleek, almost bullet shaped, and about twice the size of a Federation Runabout. They had simple wings, jutting out of the sided of the fighters at a forward angle. They were not very long, and clearly not designed to keep the craft aloft in an atmosphere if its engines were damaged. Each fighter could carry two hundred antimatter pods, and had three energy weapons mounted on the front.

The re-fitted fighters were identical in shape, but the storage space was used differently. The components of the mini-cannons took up most of the storage space, but each fighter still carried about twenty anti-matter pods. The release system was removed, though, so clearly the pods were only there in case the cannon somehow failed, and the pilot was forced to crash his fighter into a cube.

“Very impressive,” Nikolayevich finally commented. “Your people work very quickly.”

“It is what we do,” replied the Technician. “Now I will show you the hangar.”

The hangar was even more spacious than the repair bay. Four giant mother ships filled the space, each surrounded by an intricate web of pillars and supports, clearly a ground-based launch system. The ships were like large spheres, with two thick nacelles jutting out behind them. All around the ships were hundreds of circular doors. Natasha decided that they must have been fighter-bays. Mounted on the front side of each of the spheres were moon-sized versions of the monofilament cannon. It seemed that the Khamish were not going to take any chances with the new mini-cannons.

As the pair approached the mother ships, Natasha noticed that all of the other workers in the hanger were doing whatever they could to avoid them. One worker actually bumped into her, looked up, and scurried away like a scared child before Natasha could utter a word.

“Why are they all avoiding us?” she finally asked.

The Technician looked at her for a moment as if she were stupid, then replied, “They are afraid of you.”

“Why?”

“Well, they think you are a Queen.”

“A Queen!” Natasha laughed. “That is absurd? Where did they get that idea?”

“Workers never leave the planet. And rarely do we ever get to see any sort of official visitors, unless you work in the palace,” the Technician explained. “Those of us who work in the shipyards have never seen any aliens. And you are extremely tall-”

“Are you saying that you thought I was a Queen too?”

The Technician shrugged. “I knew you weren’t, but I wasn’t expecting someone twice my height. You are rather imposing. Are you certain you aren’t a Queen?”

Natasha didn’t know if she should be offended for being called large, or embarrassed for being mistaken for a Queen. “I am certain,” she explained. “Among my people, there are no Queens. We are all the same.”

“That is no way to keep order,” commented the Technician. By that time, several of the workers had gathered, assured that Ensign Nikolayevich was not some form of royalty.

“Well, it works for us. Even our men are treated as equals, though our men are just as intelligent as we are.”

The Technician gasped. A loud murmur went through the crowd. Natasha’s translator opted to remain silent, rather than try to sort out the flood of conversation that it was picking up. The Technician placed her hand on the Ensign’s arm, and offered in a comforting voice,

“We are truly sorry for you, my friend, for your hardship. To have thinking, intelligent drones! It must be terrible for you! I would not know what do if I had to deal with my mate as a thinking, intelligent person. The idea is disgusting!”

Natasha thought back to Tom Paris’s endless annoying advances towards her back when she first met him, and was half tempted to agree with the worker. But, she decided that it would be best to support the men of her species, purely in the interests of diplomacy.

“No, really, our men are actually quite pleasant. You can talk and work with them as equals. In can be quite nice to have a mate that you can have a relationship with, other than pure procreation. Our men are more than the mating machines that your drones are.” Barely, she added to herself.

The crowd continued to murmur. The Technician looked up at Natasha and said, “You aliens are completely insane,” and continued on towards the mother ships. Natasha thought that the little worker was not too far from the truth.

Star Trek, Voyager, and related properties are © Paramount Studio, and the author makes no claim towards them.

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