NEW VOY: Saving the Universe for a Friend (1/2) PG [T&K, P/T]

Title: Saving the Universe for a Friend
Author: Dave Rogers
Email Address: daverogers@geocities.com
Series: VOY
Rating: PG
Codes: T&K, P/T
Part: 1/2
Date Posted: 

Summary: PTC Archivist's Challenge story: What role would B'Elanna 
play in 'The Adventures of Captain Proton'? Postscript to 'Alice'; 
B'Elanna decides to continue her journey into Tom Paris's head.

Disclaimer: Paramount is saving the universe. I'm just a friend.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Jenn for beta reading; and for Jim 
Wright's Delta Blues website, first port of call for the Voyager 
fanfic researcher.



Saving the Universe for a Friend


A Captain Proton adventure!

Starring:      Tom Paris
     And:      B'Elanna L. Torres

Featuring Harry Kim as Buster Kinkaid

And introducing... The Doctor!




B'Elanna Torres crept quietly out of Tom's quarters, hoping the swish 
of the door wouldn't disturb him. Despite her offer to the Doctor, she 
hadn't had to break either of his legs to get him to rest. Behind 
closed doors, exhausted by the pain and trauma Alice had inflicted on 
him, his carefully maintained facade had crumbled suddenly, and she'd 
had to manhandle him into his own bed. He was undressed now - not much 
of a hardship to have to do that, she thought with a smile - and fast 
asleep beneath the covers. She'd left him a message to call her when 
he woke, and now she was going to have some well-deserved time on her 
own.

"Hey, Maquis," Harry Kim greeted her as he rounded the corner ahead. 
"How's the patient?"

"He's sleeping. You should see him, Harry. He looks so sweet."

Harry grinned. "He's not my type." Then his face took on a more 
serious expression, and he asked gently, "How about you, B'Elanna? Are 
you okay?"

"I'll live." B'Elanna waited for Harry to say something. After a few 
seconds the silence started to feel uncomfortable, so she added, "I 
mean, it's not like I was being tortured by that... thing, is it?" No 
reply, and the silence dragged out even longer. Eventually the dam 
broke.

"No, I'm not okay, damn it! That thing nearly killed Tom, and I just 
let it happen. I should have known sooner, should have stopped it 
before it got out of hand."

"Hey, come on. You got him back in the end. And Alice won't be back."

"True." B'Elanna felt a grim sense of satisfaction at the memory of 
the small ship disintegrating in the particle fountain. "It's just... 
I feel like I need to do something. I've got some holodeck time, and 
I've got my martial arts program, but..."

"What's the matter?" grinned Harry. "Holographic Klingons not enough 
of a challenge?"

"I guess it's just boring. Go into a cave, kill some warriors, go back 
out of the cave and use the dermal regenerators. I've had enough of 
that."

"So?"

"So what?"

"So I know you, B'Elanna. You're planning something."

Kahless, Harry, thought B'Elanna, can't I hide anything any more? She 
brought the padd out from behind her back. "This sort of thing's 
happened too many times. I want to be able to see it coming next time. 
I took a trip inside Tom's head, and I think I need to know some more. 
I thought this might help."

Harry took a quick look, then beamed at B'Elanna. "Great idea, Maquis. 
What part do you want to play?"

"Tom's part." In response to Harry's look of amazement, she added, 
"Look, that's the whole point. I've never seen any of his Captain 
Proton stories. I want to know what he sees in them. What better way 
than to be Captain Proton myself? I've looked at the script, and it 
shouldn't be hard to learn - after all, Tom manages."

Harry recovered rapidly, she'd say that for him. "You'll need some 
help, won't you? After all, we can't have Captain Proton saving the 
universe without Buster Kinkaid at his - at her side?"

B'Elanna tried to look uncertain. "I don't know, Harry. I thought I'd 
like to just look around the program on my own." She watched his face 
fall, and felt her own start to slip. It was like kicking a puppy; she 
just couldn't keep it up. "Come on, Harry, of course I want you to 
help. It wouldn't be the same without you."

"Great! I've got some holodeck time booked for 1900 hours, and I'll 
be..."

"Harry, I've got some holodeck time booked for right now, and you're 
off duty. Come on, let's do it now."

"Dressed like that?" Harry indicated B'Elanna's uniform with a sweep 
of his hand. "You'll need the costume."

"No. I am not wearing that stupid leather jacket."

"B'Elanna, please." That puppy look was back again, and B'Elanna 
realised it would be much simpler to give in.

"Okay, okay. I'll try and get it out of Tom's closet without waking 
him up. See you in holodeck one in ten minutes."



"Don't say it, Harry."

Tom's Captain Proton costume was, to say the least, a little large for 
B'Elanna. She had managed to turn up the trouser legs, after much 
effort, and the result wasn't too unpleasant; but the jacket arms were 
getting in her way, and the whole thing reminded her of the times when, 
as a small child, she'd dressed up in her mother's clothes. And there 
was no way she was going to wear the goggles. Not with her forehead.

"Hey, I never said anything. Come on, the credits are about to roll."

"Credits?"

Harry indicated the imagizer screen in front of them. "Just watch. Oh, 
and listen."

"It's time for another thrilling episode of... The Adventures of 
Captain Proton!" The narrator's voice took B'Elanna by surprise, and 
her ray gun fell to the floor with a clatter. As she picked it up, she 
heard, "Chapter 37 - The Web of Pain." She watched the pictures on the 
screen as the story so far was presented for her. "As Dr. Chaotica's 
evil minions, animated by the power of Arachnia's web, invade Earth, 
the intrepid Captain Proton and his faithful companion Buster Kinkaid, 
lost in the slave mines on Planet X, search for the secret entrance to 
the Fortress of Doom. But Chaotica's personal guards block their way. 
Lost and outnumbered, is this the end for... Captain Proton?"

"Let me guess, Harry. We're not expecting any subtle plot twists here, 
are we?"

Harry just grinned. "Come on, let's save the universe," he said, 
turning to face the cave mouth opening up in glorious monochrome 
before them.

B'Elanna looked around cautiously. "Shouldn't we be outnumbered by 
evil guards, or something?"

"No, I think we have to walk through this tunnel and discuss our 
plans," replied Harry. "Don't take too much notice of what happens in 
the teaser. The scriptwriters never did. Anyway, if we don't have a 
bit of dialogue here, the audience'll never catch up on the plot."

"Okay." B'Elanna surreptitiously glanced at the padd hidden inside her 
Captain Proton jacket - at least there was plenty of room for that. 
She tried to put on a suitably corny voice. "We must find the secret 
entrance, Buster, so we can destroy Arachnia's Web of Power."

"Right, Captain," replied Harry in an equally stilted voice. "I can't 
believe she's fallen under Chaotica's evil spell again, after all you 
and she went through together."

"What the hell *did* they go through together?" hissed B'Elanna under 
her breath. Maybe she'd have to take a closer interest in the holodeck 
logs; Harry seemed to be trying not to answer.

A moment later, though, her thoughts turned to more immediate matters 
as a tall man stood before them, with about a dozen slightly smaller 
companions milling around in a loose group behind him. All wore 
tunics, shorts, strange open sandals with leather laces criss-crossed 
up their calves, and absurd grey capes that hung down to waist level. 
On their heads, each had an impossibly shiny metal helmet, and the 
leader's was ornamented with foot-high black plumes. As he raised his 
hand and announced, "Not so fast, Captain Proton!", B'Elanna burst out 
laughing. 

"Surrender, Earthlings," continued the leader of Chaotica's personal 
guard (or so it appeared from B'Elanna's hidden crib sheet), "or your 
heads will adorn the gateway of the Fortress of Doom!"

"Uh - Never!" shouted B'Elanna with a mixture of amusement, 
uncertainty and defiance. "Captain Proton will never yield to the 
misguided minions of the evil... Harry, do I really have to say this 
stuff?"

"And neither will Buster Kinkaid!" Harry totally ignored B'Elanna's 
aside and drew his ray gun. B'Elanna was about to do the same, when 
she saw the leader of the guards draw a short sword.

"Your ray guns have been disabled by Arachnia's Web of Power," said 
the leader with a cruel laugh. "Surrender now, or be taken by force."

"Computer, one bat'leth, source program Torres gamma three," ordered 
B'Elanna, almost without thinking. She watched for a moment, checking 
her balance, as the guard leader approached her slowly and his evil 
minions formed a loose circle around them, waving their swords 
ineffectually.

What followed was brief, violent and, apparently, rather at odds with 
the plot of the story.

"They were supposed to take us prisoner," said Harry peevishly, 
looking around at the cave, strewn with surprisingly bloodstain-free 
corpses. "Then Arachnia uses her Web of Power to torture us, I pretend
to give in, volunteer to join her, set you free, and we destroy the 
Web and save Earth. Didn't you read the plot?"

B'Elanna managed to bring her respiration and heart rate under control, 
and the red haze of battle gradually died away. "Sorry, Starfleet, but 
I needed that. Hey, look - I left one of them alive. We can surrender 
to him."

"Never mind," replied Harry as the evil minion tried to get up, failed 
and fell unconscious, artistically draped over a styrofoam boulder. 
"There are some more guards coming."

"They look just like the first lot."

"Yeah. Tom says they couldn't afford too many actors."

"Right. Computer, delete bat'leth." The weapon vanished, leaving 
B'Elanna waving an ineffectual ray gun in the general direction of the 
oncoming troops. "Captain Proton will never yield to the, to the... to 
Chaotica, okay?"

In a lifetime that included being the only half-Klingon on Kessik IV, 
a misfit Starfleet cadet, a Maquis and an experimental subject for 
half the Delta Quadrant, B'Elanna had had considerable experience of 
being beaten up and taken prisoner. Never before had it been done so 
gently or so ineffectually. As she and Harry were marched by the 
guards in exactly the direction Captain Proton and Buster Kinkaid had 
wanted to go in the first place, she had to catch at the rope 
supposedly tying her hands together to stop it falling off. She also 
had a sneaking suspicion that they were going round in a circle; the 
styrofoam boulders and shaky wooden cave walls looked extremely 
familiar.

There was some time for reflection now, as she neglected her script 
and left Harry to trade insults, sardonic humour and badly disguised 
plot exposition with the guard leader. What was the attraction of all 
this, anyway? She'd tried holo-novels occasionally, but they had at 
least allowed some suspension of disbelief; this was so obvious, so 
trite, that she couldn't immerse herself in it the same way Tom seemed 
to.

Eventually they arrived in what appeared to be some kind of room, 
with strange devices, apparently made from some crude thermosetting 
plastic, in every corner. All around and above them the room was 
criss-crossed with strands of what was very obviously ordinary rope 
spray-painted silver, and in the background a pair of curved 
electrodes generated a series of arcs which travelled upwards and 
disappeared at the top. Behind it, high on a plywood throne, sat... 
well, at least she didn't look too much like the Captain now, but 
B'Elanna assumed this was Arachnia, Queen of the Spider People. Manic 
laughter rang around the room as the guards tied her and Harry to the 
nearest ropes in the Web of Pain. Arachnia barely had time for a brief 
"So, Captain Proton, at last you are in my power!" before a messenger 
entered, and the shift in the centre of the action allowed B'Elanna a 
brief exchange, sotto voce, with Harry.

"I thought Tom lost interest in all this after all that trouble with 
the photonic aliens," whispered B'Elanna. "When did he pick it all up 
again?"

"Didn't he tell you?"

"Harry, I'm just the love of his life. That doesn't mean he ever 
actually *tells* me anything."

"I'll let you in on a secret. He doesn't tell me much either," 
whispered Harry in reply. "He wrote a new chapter just after we parted 
company with the Varro generation ship." 

"What, he just came and said 'Harry, Harry, Harry, isn't it about time 
we saved the universe some more'?" B'Elanna saw Harry grin for a 
moment at her imitation, but then his face darkened a little. She 
remembered Tal, and the state Harry had been in after she had left; 
but Harry's expression defied her to make anything more of Tom's 
decision. Never mind; even if Harry wouldn't admit it, they both knew 
why Captain Proton was back.

The messenger had left, and Arachnia seemed to want their attention 
again. "Maybe you can resist the Web of Pain, Earthlings, but when I 
add my own powers, your wills will break like straws in the wind!" She 
closed her eyes, appearing to concentrate on something. Harry took his 
cue, responded with a scream worthy of Constance Goodheart - B'Elanna 
was, at least, familiar with the secretary's only line - and managed, 
by stretching the ropes a little, to fall to his knees.

"Noooooooo!" screamed Buster Kinkaid, fully in character now. "No more 
pain! I can't stand it! I'll do anything if only you'll stop the 
pain!"

"Very convincing, Earthling," came a new voice, "but Captain Proton's 
faithful follower would never give in that easily. You have done well, 
Arachnia, my love, but it is time for the master to take over now."

"Chaotica?" Harry sounded genuinely surprised. "What's he doing here?"

"Besides, I will have no more need of these two soon. Even now, my 
servants are putting the finishing touches to -" Chaotica indicated a 
large metal cylinder behind him - "the new Captain Proton!"

As Chaotica's evil laughter rang through the room, Harry rolled his 
eyes in exasperation. "It's okay, B'Elanna, I know what's happened. 
Tom was working on chapter thirty-eight, "Double Trouble". The files 
must have got crosslinked. I think the holodeck's still under control."

"Computer, freeze program," ordered B'Elanna. Chaotica's evil laughter 
was cut off abruptly, and the Web of Pain stopped swaying gently in 
the breeze, acquiring a rigidity which greatly enhanced its realism. 
B'Elanna quickly freed herself and accessed the nearest control panel.
"Looks fine to me. Shall we see where this chapter goes?" Despite 
herself, B'Elanna was starting to enjoy this. The total unreality of 
the setting gave the whole experience a relaxing air of detachment, 
and she could see what a shock it must have been for Tom when reality 
had intruded on his fantasy world, those few months ago.

"Okay. We'll have to make up the dialogue as we go along - but that's 
not so hard, I guess", admitted Harry. "Computer, resume."

Chaotica picked up in mid-cackle. "All I need now is the life force 
of Captain Proton to animate my android. Unfortunately, Captain, the 
process will be fatal."

"You insane madman, Chaotica!" shouted Harry, redundantly. "You'll 
never... uh... get away with this!"

"Foolish Earthling, the process has already begun," replied Chaotica. 
"See, the robot is coming to life." A door in the front of the 
cylinder behind him creaked open, and there stood... "A perfect 
replica of Captain Proton, indistinguishable from the original in 
every way!"

Which original it was indistinguishable from, appeared not to be a 
variable parameter in the program. Stepping rigidly and mechanically 
out of the cylinder came a holographic Tom Paris, complete with the 
full Captain Proton outfit and ray gun. In Tom's voice, he 
announced, "Your wish is my command, Dr. Chaotica."

"Brilliant, Majesty," crooned Arachnia. "He is completely identical to 
the real Captain Proton. Even my spider senses cannot tell them 
apart." B'Elanna found herself involuntarily reaching up to her 
forehead to check that her ridges were still there. Then she put her 
hand down hurriedly as the Web of Pain, still attached to her wrists, 
threatened to collapse around them.

"And his first mission," said Chaotica as a dramatic chord sounded in 
the background, "is to... kill Captain Proton!"

"Shouldn't I be dead already?" whispered B'Elanna to Harry.

"It seems such a waste, your Majesty," pouted Arachnia. "Can't I keep 
him as my slave?" B'Elanna renewed her mental note to talk to Tom 
about Arachnia.

"Sadly, no, my queen. If Proton remains alive, the robot's life force 
will return to him and it will be of no use to me." He snapped his 
fingers imperiously. "Robot! You have your orders. Do my bidding!"

The background music rose to a crescendo as the holographic Tom Paris 
turned to face B'Elanna, raised its ray gun and pointed it directly at 
her. Suddenly the program froze, and the announcer's voice sounded. 
"Trapped in the Web of Pain, at the mercy of Chaotica's evil robot - 
is Captain Proton doomed? Tune in next week to see -"

"Computer, freeze program. Harry, we can't leave it here."

"But it's the cliff-hanger ending, B'Elanna. Every odd-numbered 
episode finishes this way."

"Can't we just skip on to the next episode?"

Harry thought about the idea briefly, then said, "Okay, maybe just 
this once. Computer, jump to chapter thirty-eight, just after the 
opening credits."

The scene around them started moving again - but one slight 
inconsistency caught B'Elanna's eye, and a suspicion started to form 
in her mind. He hadn't, had he? She turned her attention back to the 
holoprogram as Chaotica spoke.

"Robot, you have your orders. Kill Captain Proton!"

With a fizzing noise and a shower of sparks, a white beam emerged from 
the muzzle of the imitation Captain Proton's ray gun - but not quite 
towards B'Elanna. Instead, the ropes tying her to the Web of Pain fell 
away, and the Web itself collapsed to the ground. Arachnia screamed in 
anguish, quite excessively loudly in B'Elanna's opinion, and fell to 
the ground in badly-depicted pain. The robot Captain Proton fell to 
its knees as B'Elanna shook away the ropes.

"Why?" asked a stunned Chaotica of the fallen robot. "You were my 
finest creation, my most evil work of genius! Why did you betray me 
this way?"

"You gave me... Captain Proton's life force," said the robot in 
halting words. "With it... came his sense of... justice and honour. My 
death... is unimportant... if justice prevails. Long live Captain 
Proton!" With these dramatic last words, the robot collapsed to the 
floor.

"Curses! Foiled again!" Even Harry nearly cracked up at Chaotica's 
line. Then the dark lord of intergalactic evil rose and faced 
B'Elanna's ray gun. "You may have won this time, Proton, but Chaotica 
will return! Come, my queen!" The entire set abruptly jumped two 
inches to the left as Chaotica and Arachnia disappeared, leaving 
B'Elanna, Harry and the fallen robot surrounded by twisted pieces of 
rope.

"Curses, foiled again?" Harry wilted slightly at the tone of 
B'Elanna's voice. "Tom really knows how to write good dialogue."

"He says it's authentic."

"Right." B'Elanna knelt beside the prone form of Chaotica's humanoid 
robot. She was certain she'd seen it start moving a moment too late 
when Harry had restarted the program. "I told you I'd break your legs 
if I had to," she whispered. "Don't make me."

"Okay, okay," Tom whispered back. "I just wanted to know who was 
running the program. I'll get back to bed, I promise."

"You'd better." B'Elanna stood up, making a mental note to check the 
holodeck logs later to make sure he really had gone back. Harry didn't 
seem to have noticed anything. "So is that it?"

"No, we still have to get back to Earth and fight off Chaotica's evil 
minions, remember?"

"Weren't they animated by this?" B'Elanna kicked at a coil of silver-
painted rope.

"Yes, but there's got to be a plot twist. Come on, we have to get back 
to the rocket ship. We can use the hover bikes, I think they're down 
in the slave mines."

"Lead the way, Har... Buster." Harry gave a nod of approval at 
B'Elanna's belated effort to get into the swing of the program.

The hover bikes were right where Tom and Harry had presumably left 
them in a previous episode - though, given the parlous continuity of 
the story so far, B'Elanna was prepared to doubt even that - but it 
didn't take the practised eye of the best Starfleet engineer in the 
Delta Quadrant to see that they had suffered somewhat from the 
attentions of Chaotica's evil minions. The basic structures were 
undamaged, but control wires and instrument faces hung, ripped out, 
smashed and torn apart, all around them.

"Ghuy'cha'!" exclaimed B'Elanna, not pausing to wonder whether Captain 
Proton spoke any Klingon. "How far is the ship, Harry?" Seeing Harry's 
pained expression, she corrected herself. "Sorry, Buster?"

"About a mile, Captain. We'll never get there in time - and some of 
Chaotica's guards are coming this way." Harry fired a few warning 
shots from his ray gun, and ducked as an energy bolt sizzled slowly 
overhead in reply.

"I think I can fix these. Hold them off for a few minutes."

"It's no good, there are too many of them!"

"I only need a few minutes! I can fix the bikes!"

"Computer, freeze program." B'Elanna looked up in shock at Harry's 
departure from character. "B'Elanna, you're a superhero, not a bicycle 
repairman. We're supposed to fight them off, then use their rocket 
packs to get back to the ship. It's just more... I don't know, heroic. 
Otherwise we'd just be running away."

B'Elanna felt her jaw drop, and quickly closed her mouth. Harry didn't
often face up to her this way; he must feel really strongly about this
game he and Tom had created. "Okay, Starfleet," she relented, "We'll 
play it your way. Computer, resume."

Chaotica clearly hadn't chosen his guards for their shooting ability, 
and after less than a minute B'Elanna and Harry were the only ones 
standing.

"Come on, Buster, let's get those rocket packs," said B'Elanna - then 
flinched slightly as the set dissolved around them, and they found 
themselves back on the bridge of Captain Proton's rocket ship. Clearly 
some time was supposed to have passed since their departure from the 
Fortress of Doom, because already the imagizer was showing the face 
of the President of Earth, who appeared to bear a striking resemblance 
to Voyager's Emergency Medical Hologram.

"Captain Proton, thank the stars you're... Lieutenant Torres?"

"Doctor?"

The Doctor at least had the decency to look embarrassed. "Mr. Paris 
persuaded me to link my program to the Captain Proton simulation. I 
only take part if there isn't a medical emergency in progress."

B'Elanna chuckled. "How did he talk you into that?"

"As you know," grimaced the Doctor, "Mr. Paris can be very persuasive. 
Besides, he gave me a role I find quite acceptable."

"President of Earth?"

The Doctor was almost cringing. "Please, Lieutenant, can we get back 
to the script? Chaotica's evil minions are threatening to overrun our 
forces, and Washington D. C. is only minutes away from annihilation. 
Besides," he added as a new thought seemed to strike him, "I could ask 
what you're doing in this program too."

"You could," replied B'Elanna, "if you want your subroutines 
rearranged." Then she took pity on him. "Look, I'm just saving the 
universe for a friend. We've destroyed the Web of Evil, okay? Chaotica 
and Arachnia seem to have fled the Fortress of Doom, and the evil 
minions shouldn't be bothering you much longer. If I take out their 
leaders with the Destructo Beam, can you cope with the rest?"

The Doctor turned away from the imagizer screen and spoke to an off-
screen character for a moment. Then he turned back. "That would appear 
to be an acceptable plan, Captain Proton. Our forces are ready."

"Destructo Beam charged and ready, Captain," announced Harry from 
stage right. "Let's do it!"

The next few minutes finally won B'Elanna over to the Captain Proton 
camp. The view from the front screen was exhilarating as the rocket 
ship swooped low over the battlefield, its Destructo Beam felling cape 
and sandal clad Evil Minions left, right and centre. She found herself 
joining in with Harry's whoops of excitement as the Earth troops 
advanced and, Captain Proton's rocket ship flying at their head, 
routed the last of Chaotica's broken army and made the world safe for 
freedom and apple pie once more. As they landed on the battlefield and 
descended from the hatch, she felt, for the first time in her life, as 
if there was some point to her mother's childhood stories of the great 
Klingon heroes. And as the General in charge of Earth's armies stepped 
forward to present her with the Triplanetary Star, the Solar System's 
highest decoration for valour, she felt she knew at last what Tom saw 
in this simple series of black and white morality plays.

Then she saw the General's face, and everything changed.

It was over a year since she'd seen that face. Over a year since, 
recovering from injuries sustained in the Kyrian attack, she'd started 
browsing personnel files out of sheer boredom. Over a year since she'd 
seen the photograph, in Tom's file, of Admiral Owen Paris. And now, 
unmistakably, that face was looking at her from under the General's 
cap.

She barely heard the words the General spoke, words of praise, respect 
and admiration. She glanced at Harry, but it seemed from his 
expression, as the General moved across to honour him too, that he'd 
never seen Admiral Paris. Looking back at the General's face, she 
could see now that some of the facial details had been subtly altered, 
so that only someone who knew Admiral Paris well - or who, like her, 
had once spent over an hour staring at his picture, trying to 
understand the man behind the face - was likely to recognise him. So 
Tom had at least taken some care to conceal the obvious, to cover up 
the way the program was meant to gratify a lonely child's need for a 
father's approval. She wondered, though, how he'd dared let Janeway 
into the program; the one other person on board who would both 
recognise the General's true identity, and understand its 
significance. Something didn't seem right, but she couldn't quite put 
her finger on it.

It was with relief that she heard the announcer's voice again, and as 
the program reached its end she felt she had to get out. Harry was 
left staring after her as, with a few brief words, she hurried out 
into the corridor and ran for the turbolift. In minutes she was 
outside Tom's quarters, wondering what to say to him when she went in. 

As it turned out, there was no need to wonder. Tom was fast asleep, 
his chest rising and falling peacefully and a curiously satisfied 
grin on his face. By the side of the bed, carelessly dropped on the 
floor, was his spare Captain Proton uniform. No wonder he never had 
any spare replicator rations.

B'Elanna sat quietly beside Tom, put out a hand, and gently stroked 
his forehead. He stirred slightly, then settled again. She sat for a 
while, watching his face, bearing the carefree smile of a sleeping 
child. She wondered how deep beneath that smile the scars ran. She 
thought he'd been dealing with some of his feelings about his father, 
that he was making progress and starting to live for himself. Somehow, 
what she'd just seen had completely thrown her off balance, and she 
wondered how long it would take before he could think of his father 
without pain again.

Finally, she remembered her resolution to check the holodeck logs. She 
turned on Tom's desktop console, scanned some entries, and saw that he 
had indeed left just after the change of scene. While she was at it, 
she decided to have a look at the program access logs to see how he'd 
changed the program to write himself into it. There were always useful 
tips to be picked up from Tom's holoprogramming work. She nodded with 
approval as she unravelled his modifications. Harry had been nearly 
right; he'd simply taken part of the next, unfinished, chapter, 
inserted it in a fairly rough and ready fashion into the program they 
were running, and deleted a holocharacter to make room for himself. It 
was typical of Tom; he made it all look easy.

"What the..." B'Elanna muttered to herself. There was one more entry 
in the logs, and this was a little more subtle. It appeared to be a 
one-off scene modification, designed to delete itself after playing; 
and it had been entered just after Tom had left the holodeck. B'Elanna 
followed the external link, and found it led to Tom's personnel file. 
And there, on the screen before her, was the very same picture of 
Admiral Paris she'd found over a year earlier.

She checked the original character files. Here was the General, and 
the program listed him as a metre sixty high, overweight and bald. The 
man she'd seen had looked down at her from nearly two metres, and had 
a head of greying blonde hair that had reminded her of Tom's. And the 
time of the modification was just before she and Harry had routed 
Chaotica's attack on Earth. Gradually the truth dawned on her. "The 
sneaky, devious, underhanded Pe'taQ!" she swore, barely managing to 
keep her voice down so as not to wake the subject of her description. 
This had been a set-up, and she'd fallen for it completely.

He must have known she'd check the logs. Must have known she'd find 
out that he'd modified the program just to give her a shock. Kahless, 
he must have known she'd been looking at his personnel files, although 
he'd never mentioned it. Now that *was* typical of Tom, damn him.

B'Elanna cut off the stream of quiet Klingon curses she'd been 
muttering, and looked round at her sleeping lover. She laughed 
quietly. Maybe he was infuriating at times, maybe he had an over-
active sense of humour, and maybe he did get obsessed and shut her 
out sometimes, but for once she really felt she was beginning to 
understand him a little better.

There was just the little matter of revenge to attend to. Grinning 
broadly now, she burrowed a little deeper into the narrative parameter 
file, taking care to cover her tracks a little better this time. Now 
how would Arachnia look - and, more importantly, behave - as a 
Klingon?





THE END