The BLTS Archive- A Duty to the Ship
by Ragpants (mhkurtz@earthlink.net)

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Chakotay lifted his head--and quickly pressed his face back into the
dirt as four rounds of flechettes zipped through the space where his
head had been to splatter against the granite wall behind him, sending
down a rain of stinging spall. That was close. He wouldn't do that
again. He lay, panting, behind the meager protection of a stone barely
wider than his shoulders and waited for his heart to stop roaring in
his ears.

Cautiously he racheted his chin down against his shoulder. To his
right and slightly behind his position, he saw two pairs of black clad
legs. He mentally labelled them Janeway and Tuvok, although he
couldn't see their faces. The Captain and the Chief of Security had
been ahead of him when they'd filed into the clearing.

Ever so slowly he turned his head without lifting it, gaining a
mouthful of grit in the process. To his left were four more sets of
legs and the sprawled, bloodied body of Ensign Santiago. The security
guard had been killed the moment the landing party had passed from the
cover of the stone defile and entered the open space where they were
supposed to meet the Farellen rebel leader.

Chakotay took a moment to appreciate the elegance of the ambush that
the rebels had set. Voyager's people were pinned down by a
well-organized crossfire. The surrounding vertical granite walls of
the col effectively cut off any possibility of retreat and the few
scattered boulders in the clearing offered only the sparsest of cover.
It was brilliant set-up, one he might have admired had he not been the
object of the ambush.

The sound of cursing reached him. B'Elanna's invective was blistering
and inventive, and, apparently, directed at her phaser. Belatedly
Chakotay drew his own and aimed it at a cluster of Farellen militia
soldiers peeping from behind a boulder at 11 o'clock. He fired.
Nothing happened. He checked the settings and tried again. Nothing.
Shit. That explained the cursing. He worked his hand under his chest
to tap his communicator. Nothing, not even a chirp of activation.

The nilobium, he realized. There must be a vein of the ore near to the
surface here and it was damping the operation of their E-M
transtators.

A perfect trap--and it explained why the rebels were armed only with
old fashioned mechanical weapons. His admiration for the cleverness of
their attackers rose another grudging notch at the same time a feeling
of doom settled heavily in his stomach. With no weapons, no
communications and no retreat, it was just a matter of time until the
Farellans picked them off one by one. Chakotay wondered if the landing
party would be able to hold out until sunset, which he judged to be
about four, maybe five, hours away. The shadows and the twilight would
offer them a slightly better chance at escape, provided the rebels
didn't have night vision enhancers.

From both sides, he heard the unhappy mutter of voices as his fellow
crewmembers realized the gravity of the situation. Then Janeway's
clear voice called out to the rebels. "We're here to meet with Lord
Rahomon. We are from the Federation ship, Voyager, in orbit around
this planet."

Good, Chakotay thought. Engage them in dialogue. Find out what they
want. If the enemy was talking, then at least they weren't shooting.
It was Starfleet SOP--standard operating procedure--in all tactical
situations like this.

A heavily accented voice answered Janeway. "We know who you are,
Voyager. And we do not wish to speak with you. You have given aid to
the illegal government of this planet which seeks our eradication. We
are going to kill you as an example so that anyone who assists the
government will have cause to reconsider the wisdom of his actions."
To emphasize his words, the speaker sent a burst of rapid gunfire
putt-putt-putting and a noisy hail of metal projectiles clattered
against the rock wall behind them.

Chakotay expected it all to end then, to hear the wordless cry of
attack as the soldiers surged forward, to feel the icepick pain of
metal puncturing his flesh, but, for reasons known only to the
soldiers themselves, the attack didn't come. Perhaps slaughtering
essentially unarmed strangers lacked sufficient glory; perhaps they
only wished to torment their victims a bit longer before killing them.
Chakotay didn't know and didn't particularly care so long as their
hesitation allowed him a few more breaths.

The afternoon settled into an uneasy stand-off. The militia fired
sporadically at the landing party, enough to keep them pinned in their
positions behind the sparse shelter of the rocks. Janeway demanded to
speak to Rahomon from time to time, but their attackers ignore her.
Seven issued volleys of verbal taunts, designed to provoke the
soldiers into some rash behavior. They ignored those too.

Chakotay resisted squirming as the sweat ran down his back and
gathered along his hairline. He shifted a few stones with his feet,
moving them so they were within his reach. He wasn't sure of what use
the stones might be, but he felt better for having arranged them. He
could hear Janeway and Tuvok whispering urgently together, planning,
but, frustratingly, he was unable to make out any of the words. The
day stretched on and on unbearably, a faint, cooling breeze providing
the only relief.

Some two or three hours had passed, as Chakotay judged by the
lengthening of the shadows, when the rebels made their first charge.
Six of them, fortified by chemical courage from the bottle they had
been passing back forth, ran toward the landing party's position,
yelling and brandishing their weapons. One broke toward the Captain's
location, another toward him and the remainder homed in on Seven
and her scurrilous remarks.

Chakotay flung one of his carefully collected rocks into the soldier's
onrushing face and held another solidly in his fist when he swung. The
next moments passed in a swift jumble of thudding fists, pain, the
muffled sounds of gunfire and shouting. His attacker retreated as a
slew of metal slivers pocked the earth all around Chakotay. Chakotay
eeled his way back to the protective lee of his rock and glanced right
and left, surveying the aftermath of the attack.

Janeway held with one of the Farellan's projectile rifles which she'd
wrested from her now unconscious assailant and was struggling in vain
to make to make it fire. Tuvok lay gray-faced and bleeding next to
her, his entire left arm shredded by a deadly stream of fletchettes
fired during the attack. Chakotay marveled that the man was even
conscious.

On his left, Seven lay calmly on her back examining her purloined
weapon whose owner she had killed by throttling him with her
bio-mechanical hand. Torres gushed blood from a ragged gash to her
forehead but seemed otherwise unharmed. Beyond her, Sims and Erickson
huddled together, also bloodied, though both signalled they were OK.

Seven finished her inspection of the weapon. "DNA identity lock," she
shouted across the intervening meters to the Captain. Janeway cursed
fervently while Seven solved her dilemma expediently by ripping the
thumb off the deceased rebel who lay still draped across her legs like
some gruesome afghan and pressing it against the rifle's stock. She
rolled over and sighted along the barrel. The weapon fired a
satisfyingly loud round that sent the militia soldiers diving under
cover for the first time since their trap had been sprung.

Janeway found a way to recode or override the weapon's lock. She
fired, sending another flurry of projectiles slinging toward the
militiamen.

Chakotay took advantage of the momentary confusion in the enemy ranks
to belly crawl over to Janeway's position. She reached out as he
neared and pulled him behind the meager safety of her cover. She fired
off another burst then spared a sliver of her attention for her First
Officer.

"Situation?" she demanded tersely.

He relayed information about each crewmember's condition and
deployment. He reported every observation he'd made about the enemy's
tactical arrangement  and wracked his brain for still more data. She
nodded absently and fired three more rounds.

"Tuvok and I have a plan. He'll explain it." Janeway inched forward to
gain a better vantage for targetting and coincidentally signaling the
end of the conversation.

Chakotay listened intently as the Vulcan spoke in low, breathy
whisper.  "Tell Seven she will surrender her weapon to me. The Captain
and I will provide covering fire while the rest of the party retreats
back down the defile by which we originally entered. Captain Janeway
and I will follow as soon as the last member of the landing party has
evacuated the area.  Once the initial group has cleared the zone of
communications interference, you will transport immediately back to
the ship and take charge of operations from there. You are not to wait
until the secondary retreat party has exited the engagement before
returning to Voyager. Is that clear, Commander?"

Chakotay clamped his jaw shut while he listened with a kind of an
appalled fascination as Tuvok proposed suicide. The cover group had a
next to non-existent chance of emerging alive from the firefight. Yet,
what the Vulcan outlined had a logic and sensibility about it Chakotay
couldn't deny. Tuvok and Janeway were farthest away from the egress
and held the best position to offer defensive fire for a retreat back
down the canyon. Tuvok, who was seriously wounded, would only slow
down those trying to escape. And finally, between them, Tuvok and
Janeway held the highest marksmanship scores of any member of the
landing party. Chakotay wanted to protest the order, argue some reason
why it wouldn't work, but he couldn't. He didn't have a better plan,
only some vague and sentimental notion that he shouldn't leave Kathryn
to deal with this untenable situation.

"Is that clear, Commander?" Tuvok repeated, this time with an edge of
irritation shading his voice.

"Crystal," Chakotay snapped back. He rolled onto his right elbow. This
was a hell of time for last words and farewells, much less
declarations of unrequited love, even without the supercilious Vulcan
there to witness.

He drew a breath and let it out again. He had nothing to say to her,
here, now. Everything that needed saying should have been said a long
time ago. Now it was too late. Instead, he asked, "Any final orders,
Captain?"

Janeway spared him a brief glance, one he fancied had a bit softness
to it, some regret or affection or other soft emotion, before she
looked away. "Get them home, Chakotay. Get them home. That's all I
ask. That, and always remember your first duty is to the ship." She
fell silent for a moment. "Get ready," she warned, "I'm going to lay
down cover so you can get to Seven." She began firing and he made the
risky dash to where B'Elanna and the Borg hunched behind one of the
larger boulders. He relayed the plan to them and returned to Janeway's
position in short order, carrying the other rifle.

The light was failing fast, but there was still enough to blind anyone
foolish enough to pull on their night vision goggles. It was time to
put the plan to action. Janeway and Tuvok wriggled themselves into
position. Janeway nodded 'Go' and began laying down heavy, sweeping
fire.

Chakotay ran for the canyon's mouth, chivving the others to hurry. He
had them all safely shepherded into the defile when he heard it--a
cacophony of weapons fire and Kathryn's scream. B'Elanna heard it too
because she stopped and turned to confront him, drawing herself up as
tall and as threateningly as she could manage in unconscious imitation
of the Captain.

"Aren't you going to help her?" she demanded.

"No," he answered stonily. "And if you don't get moving, I'm going to
knock you senseless and haul back to the ship over my shoulder."

For a long moment, Chakotay thought the Klingon was going to swing at
him or try to shove her way past him, but all she did was look at him
with her emotions pinwheeling across her face, first disbelief,
shifting rapidly to anger, disgust, and disappointment. She turned and
stomped double-time down the trail, putting all three landing party
members between her and him.

Chakotay forced himself forward and resisted looking back. He knew if
looked back now, he would be lost like Lot's wife, frozen and unable
to turn away. He had a greater duty now, an obligation to ship, so
although he knew that he would never again know a single peaceful
night, that years from now he would still wake with her scream echoing
in his ears, Chakotay continued down the canyon.

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The End