This is the beginning of a DS9 story about Voyager's disappearance; I hear that
TPTB have their own version in the works, so I figured I'd better post mine
first. Parts of it appeared on a.s.c. in February 1995 but I never got around to
figuring out how it ended, and then seeing Tom's projection of Admiral Paris in
"Persistence of Vision" made it impossible for me to finish. Paramount owns
Voyager and DS9 and I'm just trespassing in their playground.

Feedback to emwycedee@writeme.com, please.

MEANWHILE, 70,000 LIGHT YEARS AWAY

by YCD

"Your move, Benjamin. Or are you ready to concede?"

Sisko shook his head at the young woman smiling placidly at him with a slice of
pizza in one hand and some kind of Klingon worm in the other. "If you were
Curzon instead of Jadzia, I'd suspect you of moving the pieces around while I was
getting the food," he noted.

Dax was trouncing Sisko; she had just taken his queen for her third check when a
buzz summoned them away from the game. "Message from Starfleet headquarters,"
Kira's voice reported from Ops.

"Patch it through here," Sisko requested, waving Dax back into her seat as she
started to rise. "We'll finish this--or I should say YOU'LL finish this--in a
minute." He leaned over his desk as the viewer activated and the face of a
senior officer came into view.

"Admiral Paris?" Sisko knew the older man slightly, in fact had seen him not long
before, when his officers traveled to San Francisco aboard the Defiant. He'd
been under the impression that Paris had retired from active duty.

"Commander, I'm contacting you about the Voyager," Paris stated without any of
the usual pleasantries. "I've already asked your chief of operations whether an
alternate flight plan was filed when the vessel docked at DS9. Now, I need to
know whether any of your officers spoke to Captain Janeway while she was on the
station, or whether you've had any contact with the ship since its departure for
the Badlands."

Sisko glanced at Dax, who had met Janeway as both Curzon and Jadzia; she shook
her head slightly. "I'm not sure Captain Janeway ever left the ship when it was
docked," he puzzled, turning back to Paris. "And no one reported any
communication from the Voyager to me. Is there a problem?"

Paris suddenly looked much older than he was. "Yes. Voyager is...missing."

Sisko sat up straighter. "You mean they haven't checked in?"

"I mean they've disappeared, same as the ship they were sent to search for. The
Murasaki was sent to investigate--they've already left the Badlands, they're on
their way now to you. But the captain has already reported in to us, and there's
no sign of the Voyager. No debris, no resonance trace from the warp core, no ion
trail. There are some very unusual energy readings, similar in some ways to
tractor emissions, plus what appears to be a rupture in subspace similar to a
wormhole. But there's no wormhole in the vicinity, and nothing resembling any
cloaking technology we know of. The Voyager has vanished without a trace."

Sisko did not need to word his next utterance as a question: "You think it might
not have been some kind of accident."

"Commander, a Maquis ship went into the Badlands and never reappeared," Paris
reiterated icily. "We sent a Starfleet vessel in after it, and that ship
disappeared as well. If the Maquis have some sort of hidden base, or a passage
to another part of the galaxy, we need to know about it fast."

"And you suspect the Voyager may be with the Maquis." Sisko lowered his eyebrows
into a scowl, trying to make sense of what the admiral was saying.

"I don't suspect anything yet. But Lieutenant Tuvok, Janeway's chief of
security, was undercover with the Maquis on their ship, which was helmed by a
former Starfleet commander named Chakotay. It's possible the two knew each other
before Tuvok joined Chakotay's crew. And Janeway, well, she's known Tuvok for
years."

"Are you suggesting that Captain Janeway is somehow involved with the rebels?"
Sisko's eyes widened. Janeway's reputation held her to be more interested in
scientific exploration than politics; he found it hard to think of her as
harboring a serious grudge against the Federation, let alone allying herself with
dissidents.

"Commander, Kathryn Janeway was my science officer during the Arias Expedition.
She's one of the finest people I ever served with. But then again, Commander
Chakotay was one of Starfleet's best pilots until he threw it all away over the
situation in the Demilitarized Zone." The bitterness in the admiral's voice came
through clearly over the comm channel. "There's something else. The Voyager was
carrying an...informer, a former Starfleet officer who joined the Maquis and was
captured. Our reports indicated that the officer had simply made mistakes when
we caught him, he has a poor record in crisis situations. But we must consider
the possibility that the 'informer's capture might have been part of an elaborate
plan by the Maquis. They might have contrived to capture a Starfleet vessel all
along. If they suspected that someone might come looking for Tuvok, they would
have anticipated that this agent would point them right into the path of the
Maquis."

Sisko had been having trouble following the admiral's train of thought; now he
held up his hand. "It sounds like a very elaborate scheme, with a lot of
variables. The Maquis could have found easier ways to lure a Federation ship
into a trap."

"To lure one Federation ship, yes," Paris agreed. "But not just ANY Federation
ship. Commander, I think we must acknowledge the prospect that Tuvok, and
possibly Janeway, are involved in ways we hadn't imagined. Or we must consider,
alternately, that the Voyager was infiltrated by Maquis agents who wrested
control of the ship from its Starfleet crew."

"That would still take a lot of people," Sisko insisted. "This informer you
mentioned, the former Maquis who was on the Voyager. How much Starfleet
clearance did he..."

"That man," Paris stared at Sisko hard, "was my son, Tom Paris. He was
courtmartialed out of Starfleet and joined the Maquis. Captured very shortly
afterwards and sent to a penal colony. Janeway got him out." The admiral's eyes
blazed with betrayal. "She didn't tell me she was planning to use Tom for this
mission," he emphasized. "Nobody told me where he was until after the Voyager
disappeared."

Two hours later, Sisko sat around a conference table with his senior officers.
"That's where Admiral Paris left things," he sighed. "A half hour later, Admiral
Necheyev contacted me. Since we're the closest station to the Badlands, she
wants reconnaisance handled from here. Opinions on where we start?"

O'Brien spoke first, leaning over the table with a scowl. "With all due respect
to Admiral Paris, I don't see how the Maquis could have the technology to build a
cloak we can't penetrate or an artificial wormhole. However those ships
disappeared, if there's no warp signature or trail into the subspace fracture,
then it was either a natural phenomenon unlike any we've ever seen, or a
technology that's ahead of the Federation's."

"The Cardassians, too, I assume?"

"Except for members of the Q Continuum and a few extraordinary beings, the only
aliens we've encountered capable of producing subspace fissures..." O'Brien
paused uneasily, looking at Sisko "...are the Borg. And I can't imagine why
they'd want a Maquis ship, let alone an Intrepid-class starship."

Kira looked uncomfortable interfering with what was, after all, a Starfleet
problem, but dove in. "If I can extrapolate from what you've been saying,
Commander, Admiral Paris has a very personal stake in this. His son, whom he
already sees as--well--a traitor, is missing, along with a colleague he served
beside for many years. I understand why he senses a conspiracy, but I'm not sure
there's any real evidence to back it."

"I agree," Sisko nodded. "But the fact remains that two ships have vanished.
Whatever's going on, we need to find out, before the Cardassians do.
Suggestions?"
----------------

"We can't send any of our ships into the Badlands," O'Brien responded
immediately. "Intrepid-class vessels are the only ones with a chance of
navigating through the plasma storms. If Evek's ship couldn't do it, neither can
the Defiant. We'd have to find an older ship somewhere, Peregrine class or
smaller, yet with Galaxy-class shields."

"I take it sending anyone else undercover is out," Dax pondered.

"It may be possible, but there are a number of problems," Sisko agreed. "It
would take weeks or months to find the correct Maquis group. And... Starfleet
doesn't like to talk about it, but several agents sent to infiltrate the Maquis
have ended up joining the rebels outright, pulling out of the assignments, or
disappearing like Lieutenant Tuvok. We'd have to find someone with a believable
reason for wanting to join the rebels, someone far enough down the hierarchy not
to attract attention, yet whose loyalty to the Federation has already been amply
tested. If a Vulcan could be won over to the Maquis..."

"With all due respect, we don't know that he was, sir." Bashir, who had seemed
faintly bored with the discussion, looked surprised that Sisko had suggested it.

Sisko stared down the younger man. "We also can't rule out the possibility.
Even Ambassador Spock has been known to go off against Starfleet orders if he
thought it was logical."
There was a long moment of silence around the table. Then, "If you want
someone to infiltrate the Maquis, I'll do it," Kira offered. "There are a lot of
Bajoran Maquis--didn't Ro Laren leave Starfleet to join? All of them will know I
was with the Resistance, they'll know that I have a huge grudge against the
Cardassians..."

"Out of the question," Sisko said so forcefully that Kira started to protest. He
held up a hand. "Cal Hudson knows you're my second in command, he'd smell a plot
in a minute. The only way they'd agree to take you would be if they thought they
could use you to compromise security on this station, and I'm unwilling to risk
either your life or DS9. Plus, we can't spare you for that long." He sat with
his chin in his hands, brooding. The comm beeped. "Yes?" Sisko asked.

"Message from Admiral Necheyev, sir," the Ops lieutenant reported.

"On screen," Sisko snapped, shaking his head and gesturing at the officers to
keep their places. Necheyev's pinched face appeared on the conference room
monitor. "Admiral," Sisko began, "as you can see, my staff and I are already
working on the..."

"I wasn't worried about your response to my request," Necheyev said glossily.
"Commander, I thought you should know. Admiral Paris will be joining you during
this investigation. He wants to supervise it personally." Her beakish look told
him that this was not an issue open for discussion.

"I understand," Sisko grated. "Thank you for informing us. We'll await the
admiral's arrival before proceeding."

"Well done, Ben. We'll be counting on you." Necheyev's artificial smile
indicated that she knew exactly how Sisko felt about this development.

Sisko pressed his fist down to end the link, looking across to his oldest ally.
"The conspiracy's coming to roost," he observed wryly. "Dax, you know Janeway
better than I do. Is she someone who could be turned?"

"No." Dax sounded very sure. "If Kathryn Janeway had a problem with the
Federation's policy in the Demilitarized Zone, she'd have taken it up quietly
with her superiors, or refused this command. She might even have resigned her
commission. But I'm certain that she would never betray Starfleet: she believes
too strongly in the greater good of what it stands for."

"That was my sense too," Sisko admitted, gesturing in the air with his hands.
"Well, we have a puzzle. I think it's time I spoke to Gul Evek about the
incident in the Badlands which started all of this. The Cardassians claim that
they saw the Maquis ship destroyed by a plasma storm, but Evek had to admit that
they picked up no antimatter traces. And he got very quiet when I asked him
about the residual energy readings the Murasaki picked up. They say they know
nothing about the fate of the Voyager, but they're not telling us everything they
do know."

Odo had remained silent through the entire proceedings. Now he gestured to Sisko
like a schoolboy with a question he felt should have been answered as part of the
lesson. "You know we've had several suspected Maquis on the station during the
past several months, as well as Bajorans suspected of assisting the Maquis. If a
full-scale Starfleet investigation into a possible Maquis plot against the
Federation is going to commence..." He paused, looking sour. "Should someone
perhaps mention to Starfleet Command the risks of launching such a project from a
Bajoran station?"

"What risks do you mean?" Sisko asked.

"I mean that there are many on this station and on Bajor who sympathize with the
Maquis in principle if not in practice. Who's going to have jurisdiction if we
find a conspiracy? What is Starfleet going to do if Bajor grants amnesty to
Maquis agents being held here? And what are we going to do if the Cardassians
come demanding their extradition?"

"We're going to wait for Admiral Paris," Sisko decided. "And in the meantime,
we're going to do some research. I'll talk to Evek. O'Brien, Dax, I want you to
contact the Murasaki, find out everything you can about this energy field they
picked up in the Badlands. Major, get ahold of Starfleet Command and have them
upload all the information they have on both the Voyager and the ship she was
pursuing--specs, personnel, whatever they've got, and cross-check their records.
Odo...get me a list of every known or suspected Maquis who's been in the vicinity
of this sector in the past six months, and see if you and Kira can come up with
any connections. And Doctor...see what you can find out about Thomas Eugene
Paris."

"Who, the admiral?" Bashir asked, jumping slightly.

"The admiral's son. I want to know what happened on Caldik Prime that got him
courtmartialed, and the circumstances of his capture with the Maquis. I want to
know anything that's on file about him, and anything you can dig up that isn't."

He dismissed his officers and went to his ready room to call Gul Evek.

Evek was of little help. While he admitted that Cardassia could not prove that
the Maquis ship was in fact destroyed, as his own ship's sensors had been damaged
by a plasma storm, he evaded questions about the region of space and the unusual
energy readings. Similarly, the Murasaki offered little of use: while their
scans had shown massive tachyon emissions which might have been associated with a
huge displacement wave, the science vessel had found no evidence of a
singularily, natural or constructed, which could have caused such an event. It
was going to take Kira and Odo days to go over all the information about the
crews of the missing ships and the Maquis activity in the region, and everyone
seemed very reluctant to talk about Tom Paris.

Everyone, that is, until his father arrived on the station.

Sisko went to the airlock to greet the admiral personally, wondering what Paris'
reaction to the Promenade would be. He'd glanced over Paris' career record: the
man seemed most comfortable with scientific and reconnaissance assignments,
avoiding local politics wherever possible. Sisko did not think that Admiral
Eugene Paris would appreciate the Promenade even on one of his better days, and
he suspected that this wouldn't be one of those anyway.

Indeed, Paris looked unhappy from the moment he set foot on the station. "Your
Bajoran officer cleared us for docking mighty quickly, Commander," he chided once
they had gotten through the formality of greetings. "You couldn't possibly have
performed a full scan. In this part of space, you can't be too careful."

"If we performed a full scan on every ship that came to DS9, we'd have a two-week
backup just to dock," Sisko told the admiral. "Admiral Necheyev kept us updated
on your progress." Guessing what his superior was thinking, he went on, "There
have been no reports of Maquis activity in the vicinity of the station since the
Defiant was returned."

"You mean other than the disappearing ships," the admiral retorted. "Commander,
I think we have to assume that there's something going on which Starfleet
intelligence has overlooked. We don't know who might be involved." He paused to
look hard at Sisko. "I gather your Bajoran officers have already been informed
of the situation. I hope that wasn't a mistake."

"What do you mean?" Sisko had been resisting the thought that the admiral might
be paranoid; now it returned.

"Well, you know how the Bajorans feel about the Cardassians, there's a lot of
sympathy for the Maquis on Bajor. If someone with strong Federation ties had a
link to a Bajoran-Maquis connection..."

"I assure you, no one with clearance on this station represents any security
risk," Sisko guaranteed firmly. They were coming to the Promenade; shouts of
"Dabo!" rang out from Quark's Bar, while several officers were removing what
appeared to be evidence of a brawl from in front of the Klingon restaurant.

The admiral looked around silently, lips pressed together. "I gather my son was
here. This looks like the type of place he'd have wasted his time in."

"I know what you mean." Sisko released an exaggerated sigh, hoping to get the
man talking. "My son dated a Dabo girl, and his best friend works in that bar
over there. Right now he seems more interested in latinum than calculus."

Paris glanced sharply at Sisko. "I did not realize you had a son," he admitted.
"Where is he now?"

"My chief of operations has been teaching him about the systems of a runabout,"
Sisko rolled his eyes. "Last week Jake wanted to be a dilithium trader. This
week he wants to pilot a ship."

"My son was like that too..." Paris started to say, when a crashing sound from
the bar interrupted him. Both men watched as Quark stormed across the bar,
shouting epithets. A young Ferengi raced from behind the bar, waving some sort
of machinery.

"It was an accident, Uncle Quark! We were just trying to make a profit off these
worthless replicator parts!"

"STOLEN worthless replicator parts!" Quark roared. "Stolen from ME! Get back
here, you little thief, and tell your cowardly human friend to show his face!"

Sisko abruptly took the admiral's arm, steering him towards a lift. "That's
enough excitement down here," he said with forced cheer. "Now why don't we get
up to Ops..."

A teenage human charged across the bar, leaped over a table, and grabbed the
replicator parts from the younger Ferengi. "Actually, they were stolen from
Chief O'Brien, not from you," he told the bartender. "He was going to let me fix
the replicator in the Rio Grande, and I took some of these broken parts to see
what I could do with them. We were just storing them in your...uh..." The young
human had become aware of a presence from across the room. He was going to be in
serious trouble, and Quark was the least of his problems.

"Hi, Dad," Jake Sisko said.
-------------------------

Not long afterwards, Benjamin Sisko knew more about Eugene Paris and his son Tom
than he wanted to. He knew about the error in piloting which had ended the
younger Paris' career as a pilot, and the error in judgment which then ended
Tom's career in Starfleet. He knew about the dinner table argument between
father and son during which the younger Paris had accused the elder of being a
hypocrite and the senior had called junior a worthless playboy, while the rest of
the family stonily took sides. He knew about the arrest and trial, the strings
the admiral had tried to pull in spite of himself, to no avail when his son
calmly reported that he knew nothing about Maquis hiding places. "I can't
imagine why Janeway would have wanted him on this mission," Paris finished his
long saga. "Tom didn't have any information of value, he never met Tuvok, he
didn't even get along with the Maquis commander. And then she didn't even inform
me."

"It sounds like she didn't want the Maquis to know he was free," Sisko mused.
"If they did, if they thought he knew more than he said he did, they might have
moved some of their people around. I really don't think we have cause to suspect
Captain Janeway, Admiral."

"Well, I hope you're right," Paris sighed. "I think you'll agree that we should
proceed with the scientific investigation before we draw any other
conclusions...hell, if circumstances were different, Janeway would be the first
person I'd turn to for advice. Remarkable person, Kathryn Janeway was. Science
officers are sometimes so stuffed full of technical knowhow they forget about the
people they serve with. But she always managed to stay tuned in to the crew, she
always had an instinct for getting people to work together." He shook his head.
"I hope someone will be able to recreate her thinking, because whatever she's
involved in, we need to get her back."

"And your son," Sisko prompted.

"My son," Paris repeated. "Tell me about YOUR son, Commander. Stolen replicator
parts?"

"It's not as bad as it sounds," Sisko said ruefully. "O'Brien said that he told
Jake to recycle the old parts with the scrap metal. But Jake and Nog apparently
had a plan for a self-replicating drink holder, if they could get the parts..."
He hit himself in the head. "What am I going to do with him?" he asked
rhetorically.

"You said he was learning to pilot a runabout?" Sisko nodded, puzzled. "Why not
let him come along?"

"To the Badlands? Absolutely not. It's too dangerous."

For some reason Sisko could not begin to fathom, the admiral chuckled. "Why not
ask him? Risk and responsibility build character. Commander, with your
permission, I'd like to ask your son to come along. At the very least, he'll
discover how much he needs to learn to be a Starfleet pilot." Sisko repeated his
negative response, but the admiral seemed not to pay attention. "Let's just ask
that young man what he wants, shall we?"

O'Brien shook his head at Kira, who could not see him as he was hanging legs-
first out of a hatch in launching pad C. "Major, I know you think you can pilot
a runabout through anything. But ships like this weren't designed to withstand
the plasma storms. Even if we modulate the shields, the risks of taking the
Orinoco into the Badlands are not insignificant."

"Well, what alternative do we have, Chief?" She leaned against the metal struts,
smiling down at O'Brien who resembled nothing so much as a parent sending a child
off to a tournament. "You've said yourself that the bigger ships are out, and
the smaller ones don't have either the shields or the equipment to get the job
done. Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt your runabout."

"It's not just the ship I'm worried about!" O'Brien snapped. "It's you and the
admiral and Jake!"

Kira stared at O'Brien's headless body, then stuck her head into the hatch
herself. "The admiral's coming too? And JAKE?"

"Apparently he insisted. You're going to have to them and Dax safely past the
storms and the Maquis before you even get a chance to look at whatever wiped out
those other two ships."

"Does Sisko know about this?"

"Of course he does. Why do you think he decided you should be the pilot?"

Kira stood up, shaking her head in annoyed disbelief. "I'm surprised he isn't
going himself."

"I think he wanted to, but he's counting on you to talk your way past the Maquis,
if it comes to that. Your big secret life as an undercover agent and all." Her
glare could have melted metal, but, buried in the open hatchway, O'Brien didn't
see it.

Three hours later, they were ready to launch--or as ready as they were going to
be. Dax had uploaded all the information on the Maquis flight plan which the
Cardassians provided. "We assume that Voyager was following that heading,
compensating for the plasma fields. Our best guess is that they were aiming for
the planetoids in the Terikof Belt, but without a map of the storms from when
Voyager disappeared, we can't really be sure of anything," she reported.

Paris nodded understanding and signaled the Major that he was prepared to launch.
Kira contacted Ops, cleared the mooring clamps, and set course for the Badlands,
thinking that it was going to be a long trip. They traveled mostly in quiet,
echoing the radio silence they were maintaining in case of Maquis interception,
discussing little beyond the physical properties of that region of space and the
scanning techniques they would use to locate the singularity which had produced
the unusual energy readings. Jake made the only noise as he puttered with the
broken replicator, humming and occasionally asking Dax a question.

As soon as they approached the Badlands, however, things got loud rather quickly.

"I'm picking up a ship," Dax reported, sitting bolt upright. "Heading two-zero-
mark-six, right into the Badlands. It's an old Lyppian fighter, one of..."

"...the kind intelligence reports the Maquis use," Kira finished grimly. The
shuttle jolted as she changed their course. "Initiating evasive pattern delta.
Have they picked us up?"

"I don't think so, there's a plasma field barely a thousand miles off their
port," Dax reported. "They're going straight in. Beginning ion trace." Kira
adjusted a parallel course with the larger vessel. "It looks like they might be
heading for the Terikof Belt--I think our guess was...Kira, they're turning!"

"Shields at full! I'm taking us behind the plasma field." The ship shuddered as
the white intensity raged outside the viewer. "Shields holding. Once we clear
the storm, we should be able to pick up their trail."

The shuttle jerked and tumbled, but held steady through the storm. "I'm picking
up traces of the same energy pattern the Murasaki found," Dax called over the din
as she attempted to modulate the shields. "Massive tachyon emissions, in a
spherical subspace pattern but there's no determinable source at the center."
The ship jolted again and Paris uttered an oath. "Don't worry, that was the
plasma field, not the emissions."

"Great," Kira snapped. "As soon as we clear the field, we should be able to pick
up the Maquis ship's trail. Jake, since you're here, I want you to call up the
path of the Maquis ship that disappeared and compare it with the ship we're
following. As soon as they come into view..."

The white rage of the plasma field evaporated into normal space, and the Maquis
ship appeared on the screen. In quadruplicate. "Dax, tell me that's a sensor
ghost," Kira whispered, frantically working the controls, at the same time Paris
raged, "I knew it! I knew there had to be a Maquis base!"

Dax shouted a cry of warning as Kira attempted to put the ship in reverse.
"They're locking some kind of tractor..." The ship shrieked around them.

{Maquis capture DS9 people and admiral in Badlands, plan to hold him for prisoner
exchange w/Starfleet, Tom Paris is on their list of people to get free; Admiral
reveals he's already out and missing, pursuing Chakotay whom they've presumed
dead, they agree to investigate jointly. Cardassians rescue them all, Paris
pretends the Maquis are still Starfleet to get them out, then makes a deal so
they will be. Meanwhile they all agree that finding the other two ships looks
hopeless based on what they know.}