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