NEW Justice [PG] VOY AU (P)
Title: Justice
Author: Dave Rogers (daverogers@geocities.com)
Series: VOY AU (Virtues series, 4/?)
Part: NEW 1/1
Date:
Rating: [PG]
Codes: P
Summary: Sequel to "Truth", fourth in the Virtues series. Rough
justice can take varied forms for Tom Paris.
Disclaimer: I wrote the story, but if I don't tell you that Paramount
created the characters I may have to worry about justice myself.
Acknowledgements: Jeri Taylor's "Pathways" for background
material. The secret of Tom's piloting skill is based on ideas
from "Lord Valentine's Castle" and "Valentine Pontifex", by
Robert Silverberg.
Justice
It seemed that, with the proper help, even an Admiral's son could pass
out bottom of the class from Starfleet Academy. And in the weeks that
followed the Caldik Prime enquiry, Tom Paris was afforded help in full
measure.
After the enquiry, he was allowed to return to his final year, with
two months to go and sufficient credits already amassed to graduate,
albeit barely. Returning to his studies, he slowly began to notice the
careful attention of his classmates. It began in his first tutorial
class, in the applied exobiology course. He arrived early, trying to
avoid being noticed, and sat in the third row in the lecture theatre.
The fact that one seat to his left was vacant, and two to his right,
seemed coincidental at first; no close friends were taking that course
now - Bruno had been the only one anyway - and he hardly expected
company. In his second class of the day, though, a seminar on coaxial
warp theory for advanced students, he again found that seats on either
side were vacant; this time, two on the left and one on the right.
The class and the morning over, he ate in the canteen, and sat at a
table with eight seats. A group of five cadets came over, and four sat
at the far end of the table; the fifth excused herself and looked for
friends elsewhere, leaving Tom surrounded by three empty seats.
Any lingering doubts about the coincidence of the number three were
dispelled that afternoon. Tom paid a visit to the Academy library for
a copy of the standard text on Beta Quadrant exobiology, and a few
minutes after filing his request he received an automated message that
the text was available in a study booth. When he arrived, not one, but
four padds awaited him, carefully stacked so that each one overlapped
the one below it. Down-stepped echelon, the standard ground attack
formation, and the one that had conspired with Tom's inattention to
cause the deaths of his three closest friends.
For the next two months, care was taken - although it was never clear
by whom - to ensure that wherever Tom went, three ghosts travelled at
his side. He received four copies of all official messages, four sets
of work assignments, four certificates for every course completed. One
evening he returned to his quarters to find four complete sets of
furniture in the room, almost blocking the doorway. When he booked the
use of a shuttlecraft, four were reserved. Nothing was said, and no
public disrespect shown, and Tom felt it best not to enquire; but it
was clear that most, if not all, of the Academy shared a common
opinion.
For the final month, Tom found it easier to study and work alone.
As he became more reclusive and withdrawn, though, his work suffered,
and few of his last assignments were completed on time. So it came
about that the Admiral's son, so recently the outstanding cadet of
his year, fell through the ranks to an ignominious final rating, and a
posting of similar quality. His orders, made out, he noted with
resigned despair, in quadruplicate, were for a small, outdated science
vessel, the USS Bohr, and the general consensus was that the title of
the ship fitted the nature of its work precisely.
A few days later, Tom's few worldly possessions packed, his quiet,
reserved goodbyes to his mother and sisters completed - his father, it
seemed, was too busy to see him - he reported to a transporter pad, and
the world faded around him, to be replaced by the single transporter
room of a very small, rather faded, but at least clean and tidy
starship. Stood before him were the Captain, as Starfleet custom named
the ageing and rather overweight Lieutenant-Commander in charge of this
minor vessel, and a younger man with the uniform of a full Lieutenant,
presumably the First Officer. Tom suspected that both had come to
welcome him aboard because they had nothing better to do.
The Captain spoke first. "Welcome aboard, Mr. Paris. My name is
Culbertson, and this is Mr. Nasir, my first officer." He extended a
hand in friendly greeting, but as Tom shook it he had the uneasy sense
that he was squeezing a dead fish. He was beginning to see already why
this grey-haired old man had never risen to higher rank.
Nasir was a different matter entirely. Young, only about three years
older than Tom, dark-haired and tall, his face was serious and his eyes
burned with a grim intensity. As Tom shook his hand, he felt a lump in
his palm, and realised with shock that Nasir had folded his middle two
fingers in before shaking hands. It was an insult peculiar to Starfleet
Academy - Tom had used it himself once, shaking hands with the captain
of an opposing Parisses Squares team just before a grudge match - and
at once he realised that there was to be no escape from his past on
this ship. But the Captain was talking again, and he'd missed some of
his words.
"...directly related to the great Eli Culbertson - do you play bridge,
Mr. Paris?"
However great Eli Culbertson may have been, Tom reflected, his
greatness didn't seem to have been passed on to his descendent. And he
politely denied any interest in bridge, a game he'd always found far
too cerebral, hoping as he did so that there might be some other
diversion on board.
Over the next two months, as the Bohr meandered her way towards the
Romulan Neutral Zone at rather less than her maximum speed of Warp Six,
he started to long for the excitement of a game of bridge. The other
two Lieutenants aboard, Chief Engineer T'Kon and her husband Dr. Kovek,
played a rubber most evenings with the Captain and one of the two other
pilots, Ensigns Shabeer and Mulholland, while the other kept watch. The
science staff and the two Ensigns in Engineering kept themselves to
themselves so much that Tom barely noticed their existence. The petty
officers and crewmen operated a rigid class system that excluded Tom
from any social events, an uncommon but not unknown setup on Starfleet
ships. The only company left, therefore, was Nasir, a situation that
presented more problems than it solved.
Firstly, there was the problem of the meaning of his handshake on Tom's
arrival. Nothing was said, and Nasir was politely formal whenever they
were on duty; but at times, Tom could see the First Officer watching
him, as if waiting for a mistake, something to take Tom to task for. As
a result, Tom concentrated on his duties with a silent intensity that
was completely foreign to his good-humoured nature, and tried to be the
perfect, faceless junior officer.
Warring with this, though, was Tom's gradually evolving realisation
that Nasir appeared to like him. The first sign of warming came seven
weeks into the mission, during which time Tom had barely spoken to
anyone except when on duty, and was starting to feel miserably lonely.
It was not an unwelcome surprise, then, when Nasir came over to Tom at
the end of their shift and said, "Join me for coffee in Four Starboard,
Mr. Paris?"
Typically for such a small ship, the coffee lounge was the only
informal area available, and as a result functioned as the social
centre of the ship. When they had sat at a table, and Nasir had made
some comment on Tom's choice of coffee - he was evidently some kind of
connoisseur of coffees, and felt that Tom's mild Colombian blend was a
little unadventurous - he made his pitch.
"Mr. Paris, there are very few recreational facilities on board this
ship. Since you have some spare time, would you like to look into
providing some?" His deep voice, ringing slightly with an unfamiliar
accent that suggested the Indian subcontinent, rang clearly through the
lounge, and several crewmen looked round briefly. If he wanted to drop
me in it, thought Tom, he's picked a good way to go about it.
Tom thought quickly, and came up with one of his favourite solutions.
"There's no holodeck, so we'd have to replicate one, but... I think
there's room for a pool table in here." At Nasir's surprised look, he
added, "Well, it's not much, but it'd be a start."
"No, Mr. Paris, it would be an excellent idea. Is the game a hobby of
yours?"
"Not a serious one, but it's good for relaxing. Do you play?"
Nasir laughed. "I was three times all-Asian eight ball champion in my
Academy days, Mr. Paris. Speak to Engineering, they should be able to
make the modifications necessary."
Within a few days, a regulation size pool table adorned the coffee
lounge, and the feeling among the crew was that the loss of seating space
was more than justified. For the first week a booking system had to be
organised, but as interest steadied Tom and Nasir were able to spend most
of their off-duty time in relaxed competition, and with practice Tom
reached a level where he won about one game in four. Throughout all this,
though, their conversations carefully skirted round such subjects as
Starfleet Academy, asteroid strafing and accidental deaths of cadets. So
Tom was left in doubt, and tried hard not to trust his superior too much.
After twelve interminable weeks, the Bohr finally arrived in the Kennar
system, on the edge of the Romulan Neutral Zone. Kennar III and IV had
once been twin Romulan colonies, established just inside Federation
space in defiance of the peace treaty of the last century, each home to
about fifteen million settlers. Kennar III was now uninhabited, the
sites of each of its three main cities having simply been... removed.
Vast canyons of subsoil and rock occupied their locations, torn out by
an unknown, but often speculated over, agency, and sterilised so
radically that even now, four years later, nothing grew over areas a
hundred kilometres across. On the whole planet, no animal life larger
than a rat survived.
Kennar IV had not been so lucky. It was now a chaotic jumble of
asteroids, in a belt that presented perhaps the worst navigational
hazards in known space. Nobody knew, again, what kind of weapon had
such power, but again there was one leading suspect. The Borg.
The mission of the USS Bohr was a simple, but open-ended one. Study
what was left, and find out anything that could be found out. A minor
complication was, of course, the presence of Romulans in the vicinity,
who might take a more than casual interest in a Federation presence on
a world they still considered theirs; a more immediate complication,
though, was the presence of stray fragments of Kennar IV on grazing
orbits, threatening to impact the third planet at any moment. The first
mission, therefore, was to clean up the system enough for safety's
sake.
For Tom, it was the realisation of his worst nightmare. The Bohr
carried four Type Two shuttlecraft, each identical to the craft that
he, Bruno, Odile and Charlie had flown on that fateful day at Caldik
Prime. The mission, a standard four-formation asteroid attack, was the
reality that the training mission had been intended to prepare him for.
But most dangerously, there were only four pilots aboard the Bohr, and
there was only one choice of leader. Was Nasir's apparent friendship a
trick, a sham to lull Tom into a false sense of security? He knew, even
though it was never spoken of between them, that the memory of Caldik
Prime had some special significance for the Lieutenant. Would this be
an opportunity for him to exact a personal form of justice?
He tried, and succeeded, to appear relaxed at the briefing. The Captain
had emerged briefly from his quarters to explain what everybody already
knew; he finished, "I'll now hand over to Mr. Nasir, who will lead the
mission."
Nasir stepped forward. "We will carry out the strafing run in standard
stepped-down attack formation. I would like to use the opportunity for
some training, so we will rotate positions. I shall lead all three
strikes. Tom, Dermot, Ali, you take second, third and fourth places
for the first one; Ali, rotate to second place for the second, Tom and
Dermot move down one; Dermot, you move to second for the last strike,
Ali third and Tom fourth. That way, we will even out any differences in
phaser power."
Then came the words that stirred up Tom's suspicions even more.
"The third asteroid is over forty kilometres in diameter, and is
headed directly towards us. We will have to hit it hard to move it
enough, so we will go in really close. Keep a tight formation and make
sure none of you hold the dive too long. Does anyone have any questions?"
It seemed rather too much of a coincidence; Tom would be fourth in
line, and the slightest navigational error, accidental or deliberate,
on Nasir's part and he would share the fate of his friends. And it
could be done, with care, so as to look like an accident, and without
risk to the other pilots.
He shook his head, not at Nasir's question, but at his own suspicions.
Lies and corruption at the highest levels of Starfleet, he could not
help but believe in; but premeditated murder, and in a way that would
jeopardise the gathering of what might be information vital to the
Federation's very survival, was too much even for his advanced state of
paranoia. He decided there and then to try to trust Nasir, to believe
that his friendship was genuine, that his view of Tom had changed from
their first meeting. He needed something to believe in, and here and now
Nasir was the only choice. And Nasir, taking Tom's shake of the head as
having the same meaning as Shabeer and Mulholland's, dismissed them.
The four shuttles, phaser banks fully charged, took off in a neat vee
formation, determined to maintain Starfleet discipline despite their
broken down ship and disinterested Captain. Seven minutes' flight at full
impulse, taken up by Tom with engine and weapon status checks, took them
to the first grazer, an irregular lump of rock a few hundred meters
across; a crisp "Assume attack formation" from Nasir issued from the comm
panels, and Tom swung his shuttle in neatly behind and below the leader,
while Shabeer dropped back and Mulholland moved across from the far side
of the formation. Despite his misgivings, Tom found himself nodding in
quiet approval; the manoeuvre had been executed to Academy standards.
In an asteroid belt, a dive was largely a matter of context, and Nasir
had selected the approach angle well in advance; so there was no need for
any course correction for the next few seconds, and Tom and the others
could devote all their attention to charging and aiming the phaser banks.
As they neared the asteroid, Tom kept his attention fixed on the shuttle
above and ahead of him, while his right hand waited on the phaser fire
controls and his left, operating almost independently, prepared a course
correction ready for the pullout.
The red beam of a phaser flashed ahead of him, and he saw huge chunks of
rock thrown upwards ahead of Nasir's shuttle. Then the lead ship was gone
from sight, and his right index finger stabbed down on the firing pad.
His shot was good, too, blasting tons of debris into a cloud ahead of
him, which had largely cleared his course by the time he engaged his
prepared correction and began to pull out. A quiet pattering, like rain
on a tin roof, came to his attention, and he realised with shock that
some of the smaller fragments, probably almost the size of dust, were
getting through his shields and impacting on his shuttle's hull. In all
his Academy exercises, he'd been the leader and had got clear before the
flight path became so congested. He wondered how much of a battering
Mulholland and Shabeer were getting behind him; but by now, of course,
they would be through as well, and he looked back and saw both their
shuttles, still in perfect formation on his and Nasir's.
"Slow to one quarter impulse." Nasir's second order came through clear
and strong, and the four shuttles orbited the asteroid for a moment
while he fired off a tracer beacon and took a velocity reading.
Apparently satisfied, he continued, "Rotate formation." Tom and
Mulholland dropped back, and Shabeer moved up; "Full impulse," and the
formation was headed for the second grazer.
Again the phaser banks charged; again Nasir took the formation straight
in; again, Tom steered his shuttle straight through a curtain of falling
rock, but this time with one or two noticeable impacts. He began to feel
that maybe his Academy training had missed out on a few points; it had
certainly failed to prepare him for this feeling of helplessness, and his
mistrust of the man in the lead ship simply made matters worse.
Again they slowed for a velocity reading, then Nasir spoke again.
"Rotate formation, Mr. Paris to fourth position." Why had he said that?
The briefing had been quite clear, and Tom had executed every manoeuvre
correctly so far. It slipped his mind that Nasir, Mulholland and Shabeer
had been together long enough to be accustomed to each other, and that
Nasir might simply be helping the new man along; instead, the small
inconsistency took on an alarming significance. Nasir was making sure
Paris, the man he wanted to get rid of, was in the vulnerable spot.
In the event, though, there was nothing for it but to suppress his
suspicions and carry on. If he left the formation it would be in
violation of a direct order, and once he was in place there was no
alternative to the attack pattern. And maybe, Tom realised with a touch
of resignation, it would be simpler if his worst suspicions were true. If
he was to be dogged by prejudice and hatred even here, on the edge of
Federation space, then there was nowhere far enough to run to escape his
past, and a quick end here would at least be relief. There was a kind of
justice to it too, of course, and in his imagination the irony of the
situation was simply one more item of proof of Nasir's deadly intent.
So he was committed, and his training allowed him to put aside his fears.
Mulholland's shuttle rose behind him, and when it was clear he slowed
briefly to one-eighth impulse and dropped down into the last place in the
formation, staying rigidly in formation with Shabeer as Mulholland moved
into second place at three-eighths. One final order from Nasir, and the
four shuttles struck off towards the third and greatest target.
It was difficult to judge size with no reference points, but Tom could
see that this third asteroid was a completely different proposition to
the first two. It looked huge, almost like a planet in miniature,
although still irregularly shaped; one face was almost flat, but the rest
was just as jagged and irregular as every other rock in the system. There
was a small blemish on the flat face, maybe a hundred meters or so
across, and it was slowly rotating towards them. By the time they made
their strike, Tom decided, it would have rotated past them and they
would be coming in low over the flat face, which should make it easier to
judge the course Nasir had chosen for the attack dive - one way or the
other.
As they neared the asteroid and charged phasers, Tom slowly became aware
that he had drastically misjudged the perspective. The blemish on the
flat face was - a chill ran down his spine at the realisation - the ruins
of a Romulan city. So this must be a fragment of the planet's surface,
blown far out of its orbit by the Borg's unknown weapon, and orbiting
ever since, the silent tomb of millions of once thinking, breathing,
loving, hating and living beings like himself. His stomach heaved, and he
tried not to be sick; a shuttle wasn't as bad as a space suit, but it was
enough of a confined space to make things very unpleasant.
Nasir's voice was silent now, the course locked in and Tom's fate sealed,
whatever choice the Lieutenant had made. As he tried to estimate distance
and angle, Tom realised that, even after Nasir pulled out, it would be a
few moments before he could tell whether his own pullout would be
possible. Looking downwards, though, he could see the formation was
already above one edge of the asteroid's face, so there was no
possibility of escape that way. And with such a wide plain below, turning
to one side would only slow his pullout manoeuvre; no escape that way
either. With a dull sense of fear, he knew that his life and death were
totally in Nasir's hands now, and he himself was powerless. And over the
next few seconds, he learned another new lesson; that a brave man, too,
can die a thousand deaths. He died suddenly as his shuttle crashed
headlong into the asteroid and exploded; died quickly as a hull breach
threw him out into vacuum; died slowly as the shuttle spun away, air
leaking slowly from a thousand fractures; died in gradual agony as jagged
metal tore his body.
Ahead and above, he saw the flash of Nasir's phasers and breathed again.
A few more seconds now, and he would know - or know nothing. Either way,
it would be over; Nasir would never have a better chance, if that was
his intent. Then Nasir's shuttle was gone, and Mulholland was firing. As
he, too, pulled away, Tom saw that it would be so close for him that he
still couldn't tell whether he could pull out, whether he would live or
die. Then Mulholland was gone and Shabeer was firing, and time slowed
down.
This had happened before for Tom. As events crowded in on him, he was
able to divide up the seconds into fractions of seconds, and live in
each one in turn, and act in the spaces between them. It was the secret
of his piloting skill, that however fast events were moving, he was never
hurried, never rushed or panicked. Rediscovering this ability now was his
first ray of hope that he could somehow survive this test, even if Nasir
had intended otherwise. So, in one moment, he observed Shabeer's shuttle
pull away, then shake as a sizeable rock struck its port nacelle. In
another moment, he saw the boulders thrown up by Nasir's strike, and knew
without knowing how he knew that if he pulled away they would crush his
shuttle like an eggshell. And in another, he saw the ravaged ruin of a
river valley on the surface below him, and knew that his one safe path
lay there. Another moment, and he was below the surface, the valley walls
high on either side, twisting with the path of the long-gone watercourse.
Again not knowing why, he held his phaser fire. A moment, and the river
valley turned too sharply to follow. A moment, and his right index finger
struck the firing pad one last time. A moment, and the phaser bolt struck
the valley wall ahead, and behind the wall were stars. And in one last
moment, he flew his shuttle through, not around, the edge of the asteroid,
and out into safety; and he could live again.
Tom's shuttle was last to return, and by the time it was safely stowed on
the hangar deck Nasir was long gone. Tom suppressed his anger while he
oversaw the operation, but once the last restraining clamp was fastened
he stormed out into the main corridor.
Tom strode towards the corner where the corridor joined the main saucer
support pylon. "Computer, state location of Lieutenant..."
"Nasir? Right in front of you, Paris." The First Officer stood, arms
folded, leaning against the wall just around the corner; he must have
been waiting for Tom.
"Neat little stunt with the asteroid there, Lieutenant," Tom retorted,
slurring the last word insultingly. "What were *you* going to say to
the court of enquiry?"
Nasir's head tilted slightly to one side, and he half-smiled as he
held out a padd for Tom's inspection. "I was going to say that the
closer we get, the more effective the mission. Check the numbers. The
projected path of that asteroid will miss the planet by less than two
thousand kilometres." Then his face darkened. "You saw the size of that
thing, Paris. It was a dinosaur killer. A strike from that would have
set off every volcano, every hot spot, every fault line - by the time
things settled down, we'd never have found where the cities used to be,
let alone get anything useful on the Borg."
"And that was worth losing a man for?" Tom felt his anger begin to
cool slightly. He'd seen and heard too much about Wolf 359.
"Yes." Nasir's voice was cooler too now. "They'll be back, Paris. We
need everything we can get in our favour when we see them next. It was
worth losing the whole ship for."
Tom still wasn't quite satisfied. "So how did you go about choosing,"
stringing the word out for emphasis, "which man to lose?"
Unexpectedly, Nasir laughed. "Paris, you are the best pilot I have ever
seen. I could have grazed that asteroid myself and you would have found
a way to miss it." His mercurial mood changing again, he was suddenly
serious. "But you needed to learn a lesson, and that was the best way
I knew to teach it."
"A lesson? You risked four lives, and the mission, just to teach me a
lesson?"
"As I said, I felt there was no risk."
"So how about summing up what I've learned?" Tom was calm now, but
couldn't keep the sarcasm out of his voice.
"You are a born leader, Paris. You've been brought up to lead by other
leaders, taught all about leadership since you were old enough to spell
the word." He straightened up now, standing clear of the wall, and
drew himself up to his full height. Tom realised the Lieutenant was
about five centimetres taller than him, which somehow he'd never
noticed in the past three months. "Too many leaders in Starfleet are
just that, and no more. They forget what it's like to be one of the
others, the ones who are being led. Maybe if someone had taught you
six months ago..."
He left the rest for Tom's conscience to fill in, as he turned on his
heel and strode away.
He'd been right and wrong about Nasir, Tom thought as he stood alone
with his remorse. The Lieutenant had, after all, been intent on
dispensing rough justice; but it was not the justice of the lynch mob,
of mindless retribution and an eye for an eye, that Nasir had dispensed.
It was the justice of atonement and rehabilitation, of learning from
mistakes so as not to repeat them. It was the justice he had believed
in from his early youth, that he had thought an illusion but that had
sought him out in the end.
It was the justice of Starfleet, and the Federation.
THE END
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