Path: newsspool2.news.atl.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!elnk-atl-nf1!newsfeed.earthlink.net!newshosting.com!nx01.iad01.newshosting.com!yellow.newsread.com!news-toy.newsread.com!netaxs.com!newsread.com!POSTED.newshog.newsread.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated Approved: ascem@earthlink.net Organization: Better Living Thru TrekSmut Sender: ascem@earthlink.net Message-ID: From: "Layla V." MIME-Version: 1.0 Mailing-List: list ASCEML@yahoogroups.com; contact ASCEML-owner@yahoogroups.com Subject: NEW VOY "Absolute Power" Chap 4b 10/21 (C/P, J, AU) [NC-17] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 525 Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 12:55:23 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.198.142.218 X-Complaints-To: Abuse Role , We Care X-Trace: newshog.newsread.com 1092142523 209.198.142.218 (Tue, 10 Aug 2004 08:55:23 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 08:55:23 EDT Xref: news.earthlink.net alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated:82609 X-Received-Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 05:55:28 PDT (newsspool2.news.atl.earthlink.net) TITLE: "Absolute Power" Chapter 4b (July 2004) AUTHOR: Layla V CONTACT: v_layla@hotmail.com WEBSITE: http://www.geocities.com/laylatrek ARCHIVING: Personal website, CPSG, Cha_Club, ASCEML SERIES: Star Trek Voyager RATING: NC-17 for violence, sex and language PART: 10 of 21 CODES: C/P, J/m, P/T implied, All Voyager characters, AU, Angst, H/c, OCC SUMMARY: Voyager's encounter with an intergalactic STORY NOTES: Evil!Janeway alert. See Part 1 of 21 for the details. DISCLAIMER: All characters, other than the original ones created by me, are owned by Paramount. I am merely playing. No copyright infringement is intended. NOTES: Thank you, Britta, for your clearheaded suggestions CHAPTER 4b When B'Elanna Torres had gone out to lob those two torpedoes at the station's power regulator, she'd not expected to be thrown in the brig. "What were you *thinking*, B'Elanna?" Harry stared at her from across the forcefield, his face screwed into a mask of absolute disbelief. Except that was the problem, wasn't it? She hadn't thought. Why should she? B'Elanna Torres wasn't the sort of person who wasted time in moral deliberations and logical discussions when she was short on time and the safety of those she was loyal to was in question. She knew the shield grid should've come down in three days. It hadn't. She'd figured the away team was in some kind of danger. When she got no positive response from her... superiors, she'd decided to take matters into her own hands. End of story. But if she had to actually explain all that to Harry Kim, who was supposed to be one of her dearest friends on the ship, then what good was that so-called friendship? She stared at him in incredulity. "What?" she growled. "You *agree* with the captain?" She couldn't believe how anyone sane could agree with what the captain had done. And while she was at it, she decided to remind Harry of his last comment on the subject. "The three days are OVER, Harry! Tom and Chakotay, and Tuvok are supposed to be back onboard..." "B'Elanna--" Harry tried to interject. However, she wasn't about to let him do that. "...but they're NOT and the captain is shacked up in her Ready Room with that creepy Kel'zian asshole..." He tried again, "B'Elanna--" And was bulldozed once more. "She didn't even listen to a word I was saying, Harry." B'Elanna's breath was hitching, her face hot with fury. "Do you know I went to her Ready Room *five* times before she even admitted me, and then when she *did* let me in and I told her about the situation, you know what she said to me?" B'Elanna was pacing the length of the brig, her face flushed in anger. "She said she had everything under CONTROL. That I had nothing to worry about regarding the away team..." "B'Elanna--" Harry ground his teeth. "...can you fucking *believe* that?" B'Elanna threw up her hands in indignation. "Everything under control. Hah! If that isn't the biggest joke I've heard in years," B'Elanna huffed. "The captain has no *clue* what's going on with her own ship. I can't believe she asked me to disregard my concern about my crewmates. We have no idea what's going on down there and the captain is fucking oblivious--" "MAQUIS!" Harry yelled. That stopped her. She glared at him. "WHAT?" "Tell me this," he stared at her, trying to keep his breathing under control, "what have you accomplished here? You launched two torpedoes," he shook his head, "...TWO... fucking torpedoes at the power grid of the station Voyager is currently docked into. Did you stop to consider that it could possibly have destroyed Voyager?" "Don't be an imbecile, Starfleet," B'Elanna snorted. "I disabled the detonating mechanism on both those torpedoes myself. They were nothing but empty casings. And don't act like you didn't know that," she huffed. "Besides, that power grid is so fucking powerful, nothing we have in our arsenal could ever affect it." Harry stared at her in bafflement. "So why the hell did you fire those torpedoes?" "I..." Feeling slightly peeved, B'Elanna shrugged. "I was trying to... make a statement." Harry couldn't help but slap his palm against his forehead. "Some statement you made. You're in the brig, B'Elanna, and the captain is damned pissed off. How does that help our situation?" She felt anger boil inside her again. "Don't mention how pissed off the captain is, Harry. She has no idea how pissed off *I* am!" Harry sighed. "B'Elanna..." "Goddammit!" Grunting, she swiveled on her feet and stalked up to the wall, balled her hands into fists and struck them against the wall hard, once, twice. Then she stood against the wall, her shoulders hunched, her breath heaving, her head lowered in misery. Her back to Harry, she sighed, her voice low. "I messed it up, didn't I, Starfleet?" "Well, we'll find out," he replied softly. She turned around and faced him, her brow furrowed. "What do you mean?" He looked at her gravely. "The Zokaa'rian System Control Monitors are here, B'Elanna." She felt her heartbeat quicken. "What are they gonna do? Are they upset at the, uh, torpedo thing?" "I said we'll find out." Harry looked into her eyes. "For one, I think they will at least take down the shield grid now." # # Had they taken Tom out of that wretched cell? Chakotay felt his body caught in a flux of paradoxical opposites. The alien toxins in his body dulled his motor functions, slurred his thinking processes, blurred his perceptions, and yet at the core of his being he felt peculiarly, shamefully stimulated. His heart hammered a staccato beat inside his chest and he could feel the pollutants intoxicating his senses, tingling along his nerves, winding him up in an appalling mesh of carnal, sordid responses. But he was not going to give in to their loathsome designs. He was not going to let them touch him that way. He was going to fight till his fucking last breath. But had they taken Tom out of that wretched cell? Spirits, he hoped they had. He hoped Tom was safe by now. # # Neelix stared at the closed doors of the Astrometrics lab, stared at the two Zokaa'rian guards posted outside, and felt his brows furrow in dismay. The planetary grid had finally come down but to the consternation of Voyager's Morale Officer, things had become even more complicated than before. It was preposterous how the Voyager crew was being treated, he thought. It was they who had been harmed, they who had suffered at the hands of alien terrorists. Commander Chakotay and Tom Paris were still missing since the attack on the away team, Commander Tuvok himself was witness to the whole debacle. Even the planetary authorities had confirmed the frightful intensity of the transgression the Voyager contingent had suffered. Yet, it seemed to make no difference whatsoever to the System Monitors. Ever since the grid had come down, ever since Tuvok had returned to the ship, Voyager had been invaded by Zokaa'rian security personnel posted at every corridor, treating the crew like prisoners on their own ship. Neelix was bewildered to say the least. Yes, B'Elanna Torres has acted a bit hastily but it was only out of deep concern for her fellow crewmates. And now that the shield grid had come down, all her fears had in fact come true. Why then weren't the Zokaa'rians listening to Commander Tuvok? And what about the Zokaa'rian Overseer who had been so willing to come forward and fight Voyager's case with the Zokaa'rian Council, why wasn't anyone paying attention to him? Neelix hoped Captain Janeway's remarkable leading capabilities and her influence with the Kel'zian Chieftain--with whom she seemed to have formed quite a... rapport--would help get Voyager out of this unfortunate situation. Moreover, in all this commotion, it appeared everyone had forgotten about the monthly datastream that Seven and Harry Kim had downloaded during their technological exchange with the Zokaa'rian engineers. Neelix had really been looking forward to taking every crewmember's individual messages to them personally. After the difficult time the crew had faced recently, he knew they had been eager to receive news from home. This was the reason why he had come down to see Seven. She had informed him earlier that he could take the first batch of messages to the crew this afternoon. But now it appeared he couldn't even talk to her. The System Control Monitors had ordered all 'key Voyager personnel' to be detained until further notice, and they weren't to be contacted by any of their shipmates without authorization. It looked like the Voyager crew wasn't going to have access to that datastream anytime soon. With a resigned sigh, as Neelix turned and walked back to the turbolift, he wondered if the crew--in the face of these more pressing problems--even cared about it. # # His Excellency, Chieftain of the Kel'nohr homeworld, Kel'kar'vheel the Eighth, felt like he was at his wits' end. Even under normal circumstances, it would've been hard to hold out for long against such impudently opprobrious behavior. It was harder still because he couldn't allow his disdain to show in front of Janeway. He had to keep up the masquerade, keep the supportive mask on, keep feeding her the half-truths and outright lies she so pathetically needed to hear in order to assure herself that she indeed had things under control. Control. What a joke; Kel'kar'vheel thought he'd laugh in her pinched little face. Kathryn Janeway had no idea what it meant to exert control over anyone. Her entire crew was a pack of wayward, contumacious lunatics. That ill-bred Klingon female, for instance, who had visited Janeway in his very presence, had gone off and attacked the planetary grid like some rabid animal simply because Janeway had turned her request down. And Kel'kar'vheel didn't believe one word about the warheads being inactive. It was a contemptuous act of outright hostility against a sovereign power, and if he had been her leader, he would've punished her with nothing short of death. But all that Janeway had done was thrown her in the flimsy imprisonment facilities onboard Voyager. Such nefarious leniency from one who so arrogantly gloated about the power she exerted over her crew was farcical. It was something else, he reflected, that the Klingon female's actions had only helped his own cause. Her intemperate conduct had so outraged the Zokaa'rian System Control Monitors, who were a subsidiary committee serving under the System Kings, that they--on his quiet persuasion of course--had sent one small contingent of their own disciplinary guards to Voyager to keep everyone under control. With the tension building over this unruly crew, and the barbarous blunders they had the tendency to revert to under pressure, it could only be a matter time before they would do something far worse than throwing ineffectual torpedo shells at the planetary grid. However, while it was true that Janeway--who in her single-minded quest to obtain the technology he'd mentioned to get her crew home, and be decorated as the greatest captain in the history of Starfleet that she believed herself to be--had accepted everything he had fed her, the same could not be said for the Vulcan, Tuvok. Shrewd, calculating, and overcautious. These were the words that swam in his head as Kel'kar'vheel sat back in his chair and observed Voyager's Chief of Security give his report to Janeway. He realized this was someone who was suspicious of everything at the moment. After the unfortunate mishap in which the Vulcan was able to avert his abduction, it appeared he'd gotten intensely involved with the Zokaa'rian investigation efforts and seemed to be getting along quite well with their officials. "Just look at the numbers, Tuvok," Janeway was urging him. "These readings are indisputable. The Chieftain has provided us with sensor logs straight from the station's power control system and it draws a remarkably clear picture." Tuvok raised one dark brow. "Am I to assume that from these readings, you've deduced that the precise moment the shield grid came down, Commander Chakotay and Lieutenant Paris were transported to one of the ships docked at the station and taken away from the planet?" Kel'kar'vheel felt an urge to smirk at the words chosen. Janeway had deduced no such thing. He'd simply led her to believe that he wanted the Zokaa'rians looking for her Voyager crewmates elsewhere, rather than wreaking havoc on his homeworld, in order to prove their duplicity. He just wanted a seed of doubt planted in the Zokaa'rian mind and like everything else, Janeway had seemed to like the idea. "That does seem to be the case, don't you think?" Janeway stared into her subordinate's eyes, her voice cool, her chin tilted up in that arrogant stance which Kel'kar'vheel found so annoying. "That remains to be seen," Tuvok responded, as he cast what appeared to be an openly suspicious glance in Kel'kar'vheel's direction. "There are many issues which I need to look at before I can come to any favorable conclusion." This rather brazen behavior suddenly rankled Kel'kar'vheel. Who the hell did this alien think he was? He may have been back on his own ship but he was still in Kel'zian territory, and still bound to the Kel'zian customs that confined him and his entire crew to honor the Royal House at all costs. What did he think he was doing showing his discourtesy to the Kel'zian Chieftain? He looked at the dark alien. "I am sure the Zokaa'rian arrested on the surface would've lead you to some favorable clues." Tuvok turned to him, his neck tilted up as arrogantly as his female captain's. "As did the autopsied remains of the Kel'zian male who was killed during the initial attack on the surface." Kel'kar'vheel recognized the challenge in those words. The Vulcan wanted him to remember that he knew there were more than just Zokaa'rians involved. He stopped himself from physically blistering in reply. "You mean the Kel'zian you killed." "Indeed," Tuvok replied. "I was forced to employ extreme measures in self defense. However, the Zokaa'rian officials on the surface shared all the investigation details with me. It is fortunate they work with complete impartiality, with no regard to personal or political motivations." Another rib. "Are you suggesting the Kel'zian citizens work against the Sovereignty's interests?" "On the contrary. I am confident of their greatest loyalty to the Sovereignty." Tuvok stared at him. "I am merely bringing all the facts together. Great Overseer Resh'lon has much influence with and great respect for the Kel'zian people. He has assured me of their utmost cooperation in the recovery of my two shipmates." Resh'lon of Du'kazinon IV--Kel'kar'vheel felt his jaws clench--that insolent, self-righteous, condescending charlatan who acted like a Kel'zian sympathizer. The truth of the matter was he was nothing but a double-crossing faithless revisionist who didn't know where to draw the line as far as long-held traditions were concerned. He also loved meddling in affairs that were none of his concern. Kel'kar'vheel couldn't stand him. However, it appeared his indoctrination had worked well on Janeway. She was quick to intervene. "Tuvok, I don't want you to mingle with anyone on the surface right now." She looked at her Security chief earnestly, her steel gray eyes serious. "I have no idea who was involved in Chakotay and Tom's abduction. Right now every single person who was present in the negotiation process is a suspect in my eyes." Tuvok frowned. "I assure you, Captain, they are all suspects in my eyes too. But I must not abandon my collaboration with the investigating team on the surface." "But if Chakotay and Tom are not even on the surface," Janeway's voice hardened and her nostrils flared, "what good would those efforts do?" "As I already noted, I am not yet certain that Chakotay and Tom are not on the planet," Tuvok said. And once again those eyes turned to him, a suspicious glint in their dark depths. "I need to keep my link with the authorities on the surface open in order to succeed in my inquiries." Kel'kar'vheel noted that a permanent frown had formed between Janeway brows. As always, she found it hard to believe someone had the gall to disagree with her approach. "Tuvok," she growled, "you're not getting my point." A voice over the commlink interrupted the discussion. "Kim to Tuvok." Tuvok gazed at both of them serenely as he answered the hail. "Tuvok here." "Commander, we're getting a transmission from the surface. It's for you." The Vulcan was as adamant as that wild Klingon as he responded. "Ensign, please route it to the Ready Room." Kel'kar'vheel felt like snorting. "Acknowledged." He watched Tuvok audaciously ask Janeway's permission to use her console to receive the hail, which she gave with a deadly glare. Of course, it made no difference whatsoever to the Vulcan. He swung the console his way so that all three of them could watch the transmission. Kel'kar'vheel felt his mouth turn bitter as the face of Resh'lon appeared on the screen. The Zokaa'rian too seemed put off when he saw Kel'kar'vheel in the background, which made the Kel'zian feel slightly better. The good mood didn't last for long though. "Great Overseer." Tuvok addressed the Zokaa'rian. "Observer," Resh'lon nodded. "A significant development has been made in our search. Your presence is required on the surface." Kel'kar'vheel bit the insides of his cheeks as he felt a wave of consternation descend on him. What had Resh'lon done now? "Can you tell me what has transpired?" Tuvok probed. "A member of a third species involved... the one I spoke to you about... has been caught." Resh'lon's words unsettled Kel'kar'vheel, and for a moment he thought he saw the Zokaa'rian's eyes shift his way before the other man continued. "Your expertise will be required in interrogating him." Tuvok nodded. "Very well. I will transport down to the surface at once." "Thank you, Commander." "Tuvok out." With that, the Vulcan turned to Janeway and Kel'kar'vheel saw that she was glowering at him. "Tuvok," she began warningly. But of course, her illusion of control was just that: an illusion. "Captain," Tuvok interrupted her. "We can discuss these issues another time. Right now, my priority is to find Commander Chakotay and Ensign Paris, and for that I need to go and cooperate with the Zokaa'rian officials on Kel'nohr. Diplomacy demands no less." Her mouth turned down, Janeway had obviously run out of schemes for the moment. With a stiff nod, she submitted. "Of course." Tuvok nodded at her, nodded at him--his eyes as distrustful as before--and quietly walked out of the office. "Well, that can't be too bad, can it?" Janeway had her left brow raised and she wore that sneaky half-smile, which she thought made her look endearing. "Perhaps Tuvok's presence will keep them on their feet after all." Such a contorted way of endorsing your weakness at controlling those who serve you, he thought. As Kel'kar'vheel smiled at Kathryn Janeway and launched into another of his effervescent affirmations of her great crew and her ability to handle them so effectively, he hoped the contempt he felt for her didn't show on his face. Yes, he certainly did feel like he was at his wits' end. Now he had to resort to backup measures. # # END CHAPTER 4 Continued in Chap 5a _________________________________________________________________ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ ASCEM messages are copied to a mailing list. Most recent messages can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ASCEML. NewMessage: