It wasn’t so bad, Sara thought, the Maquis, after she adjusted to it. After a year she had celebrated one bygone birthday that passed without acknowledgement but also without hazard, and had learned much from B’Elanna’s teachings of various principles and tricks. She found that she actually liked Tuvok somewhat, even though his Vulcan stare pinned her in place, he did not mind her telepathy, perhaps because by nature he was one himself. She no longer had to do work such as dangerously, and though Seska still hated her, everyone else was content to either ruffle her hair, toss her to the ceiling casually, pat her head or simply leave her alone.
Of course, the grand adventure that Sara saw in the Maquis was soon to come to an end, by an entity so powerful that not even the combined powers of the Federation and Cardassia could have stopped it.
The Caretaker.
It happened so fast that Sara’s telepathy didn’t have to do any more than detect sentience behind the coherent tetryon beam that hurtled through the Badlands. They were scanned, and then a huge wave swept over the ship, hurtling everyone and everything backwards…quickly. Very quickly.
Looking back, Sara found she didn’t remember much about their trip into the Delta Quadrant. One minute they were in the Badlands, the next they were outside of some…machine-looking piece of equipment that displayed brightly-lit energy pulses. She remembered little of disappearing from the bridge of the Liberty, although did remember being restrained, most likely because she hated it, and therefore fought it at every available opportunity. She felt the prick of a needle, cold, smooth, and unrelenting, and passed out from the pain it brought.
Her eyes opened to stare at the ceiling of the bridge, with a very large Federation-marked ship looming over them.
She remembered a woman’s voice on the comm link that separated the two ships, Chakotay’s voice confirming that B’Elanna had disappeared and was nowhere to be found. She remembered Tuvok pushing her to the floor out of sight, for some unknown reason, away from the comm screen. Soon after Chakotay and Tuvok both beamed away, and Sara spent most of her time in the engine room trying to figure out what had gone wrong, not to mention cobble together enough to make the ship last. They were held in a Federation tractor beam, so it wasn’t all that hard to take things offline.
B’Elanna beamed back with Chakotay, after spending time on the planet they now orbited. An hour later, the ship was destroyed, and everyone including Sara had been ordered onto the transporters and beamed aboard the plush, monstrous ship that had overshadowed them throughout their time.
She stood outside the transporter room not willing to admit to herself that she was scared. Chakotay had stayed on board the Liberty to pilot the ship manually on a crash-course, hopefully destroying the alien ship (someone called Kazon who was obviously not happy with them), and she wondered for a brief moment if he would come out alive. She found that she need not have, because five minutes after they were safely aboard, he followed, grasping the transporter engineer’s shoulder in a gesture of thanks, heading out the door only to run into her.
Sara hugged Chakotay close with all her strength, small arms around his waist, something that surprised him, but nevertheless they were both glad they’d come through it alive.
“Go with the others,” was his only direction, pushing her down the corridor towards the cargo bay. “I’ll see to you later."
Sara soon learned how big of a variable the word ‘later’ could be.
