Disclaimers, ratings and warnings are in Part 1.
THE BADLANDERS
PART FOURTEEN
"Lieutenant Locarno!" the doctor's voice sounded up, aghast when Nick and Harry dragged Tom Paris into the medical bay. Tom's face was puffed, his body limp. Tuvok was instantly on hand to help them haul the injured Tom Paris on the bed occupied earlier by Nick. Nick turned to the doctor, looking at the CMO with Tom Paris's eyes. Neither he nor Tuvok had seen Tom Paris who had, if not on the bridge piloting the Liberty, been in his cabin or the ship's underbelly maiming and torturing, raping and killing.
"Doc, to my eternal shame this idiot here who resembles me is one Tom Paris, son of Admiral Paris," Nick responded, pointing to the injured man on the bed. "I am Nick."
"Forgive me. For a moment there I thought - "
"That they slaughtered me too in the halls of the evil mountain king?" Nick asked.
The doctor had looked perplexed for a moment and Tuvok looked like he couldn't in his lifetime ever look surprised.
"I'd better look at this one. Who beat him to a pulp, do you know?"
"I swear to Odin I never laid a finger on him. Right, Harry?"
"Right."
Harry looked like a conspirator. In the turbo lift his mouth couldn't stop opening and closing from shock at his revelation that he was Tom's half brother and that Kathryn Janeway was his half-sister. No doubt the doctor would soon put two and two together, but certain knowledge was collateral damage against the overthrow of the Maquis in the Badlands. He was on a mission within a mission and they had to succeed.
"And Doctor, you might want to give Harry a medical check, just to make sure he'll not hallucinate. He thought I was Paris. Leave this hound and treat Harry first."
"You have taken a chance to walk the corridors of the ship, Lieutenant Locarno. It is not safe."
"Tuvok, Captain Janeway sprung me from prison, from a similar fate, understand? I can fight, defend myself. I was lucky to catch the first Maquis by surprise. Oh, here. The specs of the ship, and locations of every crewmember," he said, handing Tuvok a PADD.
Nick gave Harry a smirk. He bet the young greenhorn had never even noticed that he carried one. He carried a dagger too, and a phaser, and a few other things that might be useful. The pants he wore courtesy the half dead Maquis - the man may be indubitably dead by now - had a number of pockets, useful for carrying illegal items such as site to site transporters. Though by way of the Maquis moral code, illegal was not a term they knew or understood.
Harry had been standing while the doctor checked him and declared him fit. Lieutenant-Commander Rollei was in the process of waking up. Nick could see the man still looked far out of it and was sure the doctor would sedate him again if only to keep him unconscious and out of commission. Doctor Krell had again studied the scans of Tom Paris.
"Lieutenant," declared the doctor, "I gather you know that Tom Paris is related to you?"
"To my eternal shame, Doc," he admitted, feeling like spitting on Paris.
:"And that Captain Janeway - "
"Yes, I have always known that too, though I swear to Odin I never used my relation to her to be freed from prison. I came highly recommended as the best pilot in the Federation."
"I understand, Lieutenant. Now, Tuvok here has informed me that this vessel is heading for Alkorea."
"A trading post. Mainly trafficking in slaves, Doctor. I know."
"We have to prevent the Liberty from reaching Alkorea. If we knew this area of space well enough..." Tuvok said.
Harry looked fired up, angry enough to want to kill Tom Paris.
"Yes. They have already arranged that five of us be sold to slave traders," he answered.
Harry walked calmly to Tom's bed and landed a fist with all his might against Tom's jaw. "Bastard!"
Nick strode to Harry, grabbed his shoulders.
"Harry, Harry, Harry...don't kill the man...right now... Doc will keep him in a coma for some time. He'll be inactive. Let Chakotay decide what's to be done with him. We have work to do. Come..."
"H-Hey, where are y-you going to?" Harry stammered, fear clear in his eyes as Nick pulled him out of the sick bay. "W-What kind of work?"
"Lieutenant!" cried the doctor. "Where - !"
"See you later, Doc. You'll have your problem solved in a jiffy. No worries, okay?"
"Be careful..."
Back in the corridor, Nick pushed Harry against the bulkhead.
"Now, Harry, you're going to teach me Tom's mannerisms while we're going to look for someone. They will simply think I'm Tom and you're Harry, Tom's mate. Sorry, I mean no disrespect, okay?"
"Know what, Nick Locarno? It may not be necessary to teach you to be like Paris." Harry spit angrily on the floor. "You've got his mannerisms alright. Though not his manners. And your voice sounds like his."
Nick grimaced, not liking being likened to Tom Paris. Then he strode quickly to the first turbo lift, waiting for Harry to step inside before giving the order for a certain deck.
****
"Where are we going?" Harry asked as they skulked along a dark corridor near the cargo bays of the Liberty.
"You'll see."
They stopped in front of a cabin. Nick glanced at Harry, saw the fear in his friend's eyes and swore under his breath.
"Harry, don't bail on me now, okay? I need you to be strong."
Nick sighed as he punched in a code, hearing Harry's slight gasp.
"Amazing the things you learn in prison, Harry," he bit out as they entered the cabin. "Quick!"
Phasers drawn, they pointed at four men who scrambled off the bed for their weapons.
"Tom! What the hell do you think you're doing?" Ayala asked as Nick pointed the phaser at him and fired without answering. Harry clipped two while Nick stunned the last Maquis in the cabin.
They looked at the naked woman on the bed.
"Holy mother of God..." Nick exclaimed.
The woman lay on her stomach. Three men had been on top of her while the fourth... What the hell did it matter what the fourth one did? She looked wasted, wasted beyond any recognition. Lack of control, lack of dignity, lack of compassion, lack of sleep. Or, did the woman sleep and they fucked all her orifices? Was she so completely exhausted that she couldn't wake up anymore? He knew she was breathing, God help him. The woman was breathing. He took the bed cover, soiled with her faeces, her urine, their urine, their wine, her vomit, their semen, her blood, her hair that had been pulled out and bloodied blonde strands criss-crossing and threw it off. Her feet were so bruised he doubted if she could walk.
When he turned her on her back, he drew in a sharp gasp of despair. Her breasts were cut or scratched, long jagged cuts, and her mouth was bleeding. He couldn't say whether the blood came from her throat that couldn't protest anymore against the cruel invasion and continued onslaught of someone's hardened flesh seeking to injure her irreparably.
He didn't know he had tears in his eyes until he turned on the unconscious four lying around on the floor and stunned them again.
"You fucking criminals! She had no defence, bastards! None!"
And Harry lifted Megan Delaney's head on his lap and began to sob. From a wardrobe Nick procured another blanket and threw it over her.
"Harry..."
"She is Jenny's twin sister. She was on another mission - "
Megan stirred awake. Not much of a wakefulness, Nick thought, but rather as if she just groggily emerged from a coma. Weak eyes turned on him, then like a small puppy she began to whimper, the sounds plaintive as she tried to move away from him.
"Megan, shhh, it's alright," Harry assured her, but she continued her whimpers, shrinking away from Nick's touch.
"No, Tom, please, don't..." she pleaded.
"Megan, I know this is going to be hard for you to believe, but I'm not Tom. We appear identical, but my name is Nick Locarno. I was on Voyager when it was destroyed."
He spoke calmly, moving his hand away from her face. If he didn't touch her at all, that might establish in her tortured mind that he meant her no harm.
"Nick Locarno?"
He could see she swallowed with difficulty but he had to speak with her first before she reached sick bay.
"Yes..."
"They killed Jenny. They say Tom Paris did it..."
"I know, Megan. But Megan, before we take you to sick bay, there's something I want to ask you."
"I don't know if I can help," she said as Harry stood up, holding her wrapped in the blanket closed against him.
"Trust me, you can. You and Jenny were both stellar cartographers..."
"Yes."
"We need for you to plot the quickest and safest route out of the Badlands, using the star charts I've downloaded..."
"You could do that?"
"Don't worry how I did it, okay? I'm going to pilot the Liberty through the plasma storms and two sectors, but I'm going to need your help here..."
"My life is finished, Nick. I'm dead. What good will it do?"
"You will help save the lives of many, Megan."
"And that man, Chakotay? The one who - "
Megan's eyes closed. They both knew what she had gone through at the hands of Chakotay. Nick wasn't sure about what they would do with him, and there he could only rely on the Captain's guidance on Chakotay's fate.
"Chakotay, I think, Megan, has his own demons to fight."
"It's not good enough, is it?"
"I guess not. But at the moment, Captain Janeway is with him and I am sure she is bargaining for our safety. We've disabled a few things on the ship, including these crazy bastards who have no honour in them as well as Tom Paris."
"Megan," said Harry, "you are safe now. We're getting you to sick bay now, and after that we're in Tom's quarters, okay? I've changed the locks there, so to speak, and they think Tom is still in his cabin."
Megan nodded mutely.
"I'll do whatever I can to help..."
Nick tapped the Maquis communicator pin.
"Locarno to the doctor."
"What can I do for you?"
"Prepare to transport Megan Delaney to the medical bay. Heal her body, Doc."
"Will do."
The next second Megan dematerialised from Harry's arms. Nick almost wanted to laugh at Harry's comical expression.
"She is in a bad way..."
"I know. But she is a Starfleet officer, Harry. She'll help as she promised."
"We have to get away from here. Are we taking over the ship?"
"Nope."
Then he calmly took an instrument that had been lying on a dresser in the corner, studied it for a second before saying, "How dumb can they get?"
Without so much as blinking an eyelid, Nick punched in coordinates into the site to site transporter.
"Nick, what the hell are you doing?"
"Doing some transport business," he replied as one by one, he transported Ayala, Gerron, Dregor and Busby out of the cabin."
"Where have you sent them?" Harry asked, aghast.
Nick, a little irritated by Harry's greenness, pulled him by the collar to the small viewport. There was nothing they could see, except the moving mass of the plasma turbulence which looked like sick green-pink-yellow pus.
"There... See there those little dots there?"
"But - but..."
"But nothing, Harry. They're in cloud cuckooland."
***********
END PART FOURTEEN