Title: Hyperspanners at Dawn 
Author: Starburst 
Email: starburst@igc.org 
Rating: PG 
Part: 1/1 
Synopsis: Set after "The Q and The Grey," and spans the 
events in "Macrocosm." A sequel to Briar Rose's story 
"Civil War of Words." 
Disclaimer: Star Trek Voyager and its characters belong to 
Viacom, nee Paramount; which explains why there is so much 
fanfiction. 

Thanks Briar Rose, for the inspiration, First of Five, for the ideas 
that made the story work. 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
  

B'Elanna Torres was a wreck. 

Dark shadows propped up her tired, red-rimmed eyes, 
and her uniform was smudged and torn. She'd spent the last 
three hours of a double shift crawling through Jeffries 
Tubes between Decks 13 and 11, double checking wiring that 
she'd thoroughly double checked only two days before. She 
reached to open the hatch leading to the corridor, then 
hesitated. 

She tapped her commbadge and said softly, "Computer, 
locate Lieutenant Paris." 

"Lieutenant Paris is in his quarters." 

B'Elanna let out a long, slow breath. Slumping over 
slightly, she sat for a moment, staring at the rivets 
holding the metal floor in place. Then, with a grunt, she 
grabbed her engineering kit, pushed the door open, and 
crawled out of the tube. She moved quickly down the 
corridor, glancing around before she entered Main 
Engineering. Her crew, working at their stations, looked 
at her a little nervously. 

For the last several days she'd been on edge, unable 
to sleep, shunning food, and subsisting primarily on double 
raktajinos; and her crew was getting jumpy. 

Neelix put down her loss of appetite and sleeplessness 
to the aftereffects of the Macrovirus and Klingon 
physiology. While the entire crew, with the exception of 
the Captain and the Doctor, were queasy for a while, after 
a few days everyone seemed to get back to normal. But not 
B'Elanna. And the cumulative effects of prolonged sleep 
deprivation, combined with her unholy reliance upon large 
doses of supercharged caffeine, were beginning to raise 
some eyebrows; although Tuvok had not formally discussed 
his concerns with the senior command staff. 

B'Elanna certainly knew that speculation about her 
physical and psychological condition was rampant among the 
engineering crew. She'd heard the whispers. 

"Hey, give it a rest. She's got redundant stomachs so 
she must have been twice as nauseous. I wouldn't want to 
eat anything for a while either, if I was her." 

"Yeah, but that's eight so far in the last 14 hours! 
If she keeps this up, we won't need a warp core -- we could 
install the Lieutenant and run on raktajino power. Hey, I 
wonder what would happen if that stuff got into the gel 
packs...." 

B'Elanna decided that, in fairness, she couldn't 
really blame them. The amount of raktajino she'd consumed 
could run the holodeck for a month; and she was starting to 
make herself nervous at this point. 

She took a deep breath and then let it out as the 
doors to Engineering hissed shut behind her. Noting that 
everything seemed to be running smoothly, she smiled 
wearily, nodding at the engineers working at their 
stations, and then slowly walked to her office. She set 
the engineering kit down next to her desk, and began 
sorting through the pads containing various engineering 
status reports. Then, she suddenly slapped the pads back 
onto the desk and straightened her shoulders, and a new 
fire burned in her eyes. 

"All right, Torres," she said to the wall. "That's 
enough." 

She smiled ruefully and shook her head. Oh, what was 
that old Earth saying, the one that Tom had been going on 
about a month or so ago...you can fool some of the people 
some of the time....She laughed. 

"But what's the point of trying to fool yourself," she 
finished, aloud. 

It wasn't an upset tummy that had turned her into a 
nervous wreck. It wasn't trying to figure out what to get 
Chell for his birthday. It wasn't even the cumulative 
stress from grappling with a never-ending onslaught of 
engineering crises, each of which, if it got out of hand, 
had the potential to strand Voyager's crew in the Delta 
Quadrant until the end of their days. The double 
raktajinos weren't responsible for her sleepless nights -- 
she couldn't sleep anyway. The raktajinos were keeping her 
alert. On her toes. Primed to react in a nanosecond to the 
next blip on the Paris sneak attack sensor array. She 
knew it was coming. It was way overdue. It was just a 
matter of what. And when. And where. And the suspense was 
driving her batty. 

Oh yeah. There was that other old Earth saying. 
‘Don't start something if you can't finish it.' Well, 
she'd started something alright. And she'd gotten him, but 
good. 

B'Elanna's smile grew as she recalled the look on 
Tom's face when he realized she was the one who had tweaked 
the Resort holoprogram to incorporate his new nickname. 
She'd giggled madly as his jaw thudded to the floor. Tom's 
head had been swiveling back and forth between her and 
Harry like one of those deranged puppets in that old 20th 
century horror movie he'd dragged the two of them off to a 
couple of months before. As his look of stunned 
embarrassment had morphed into outraged comprehension, 
she'd collapsed back onto the cushions in hysterics, 
holding her arms across her stomach to keep her ribs from 
aching. Harry had been laughing so hard he almost fell out 
of the lounge chair. 

Then, just as B'Elanna was poised to depart, 
triumphant, Tom had caught her by surprise, deploying a 
weapon in his arsenal that she had hitherto been unaware 
of. 

"What's your hurry?" he'd asked innocently. "You just 
got here -- Spunky." 

She groaned inwardly, and tried to make a dignified 
exit. 

Later, in the messhall, Harry told her about yet 
another old Earth saying that Tom had mentioned after she 
left. "What goes around comes around." And it had been 
going around and coming around ever since. 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

Two days after B'Elanna tweaked the Resort program, 
she was on the floor, on her back, beneath a console on the 
main level of engineering, disemboweling a piece of 
equipment that was giving everyone fits. The engineering 
crew was beginning to think it was possessed by a sentient 
life form with a warped sense of humor. 

The console would seem to be fine. It would work 
perfectly for a couple of hours. Then, just when the 
crewman working at that post would start to relax, the 
thing would go haywire. Either it wouldn't accept 
commands, or it would start spewing gibberish, or it would 
leak plasma from someplace not readily detectable by any 
instrument known to Starfleet. And work would grind to a 
halt as the crew tried to find the problem. They would fix 
it -- or so they thought. But when they'd fire up the 
supposedly repaired console, the vicious cycle would start 
all over again. 

After a day-and-a-half of this, B'Elanna had had 
enough. She started taking the thing apart, piece by 
precious piece, determined not to quit until she got to the 
bottom of whatever ailed it. She was reaching up to grab 
some wires with one hand and gripping a hyperspanner in the 
other, when a pair of black boots walked up and clomped to 
a halt right next to her. 

"Can't this wait?" she asked, without looking up from 
her task. "I need to finish disconnecting this thing. 
It'll take me another 15 minutes." 

The boots didn't move. With a grunt, B'Elanna 
released the wires, pulled herself out from under the 
console, and glared up at -- Tom Paris, standing there with 
an innocent expression on his face, brandishing a pad. He 
peered down at her expectantly, looked up and around, 
smiled amiably at the engineering crew, and glanced back 
down at her; all the while tapping the pad up and down, 
drumming out a catchy little rhythm on his finger tips. 

"Oh, no," groaned B'Elanna to herself. She scrambled 
to her feet, adjusting her uniform. Cringing inwardly, she 
smiled back at him. "What can I do for you, Lieutenant?" 

"Hey Spunky, sorry to interrupt you, but here's my 
helm report," he said, with a gleam in his eye. "It's ten 
minutes early," he pointed out, obviously quite pleased 
with himself. 

B'Elanna glared at him. Out of the corner of her eye, 
she saw Dalby look quizzically at Ashmore and mouth, "Spun- 
ky?" Ashmore looked up, saw the look in her eye, and 
froze. Dalby's face became increasingly contorted. He 
quickly turned around, suddenly mesmerized by the blinking 
lights on a console in the wall. B'Elanna noted that his 
shoulders were shaking. 

"Oh, *I'm* sorry," said Tom, glancing around as if he 
was suddenly aware of the crewmen working within earshot. 
"*Lieutenant* Spunky. "But I still outrank you," he cooed, 
wagging a finger at her. Leaning forward, he looked over 
her shoulder and said, "Although, under the circumstances, 
Lieutenant Sparky might be more accurate...." 

B'Elanna whirled around and saw sparks shooting out of 
the wiring underneath the console. She spun back quickly 
to look at Paris, who was already halfway to the exit. 

"Well, you've got your hands full, so I'll let you get 
back to work," he called, helpfully. "We're still on for 
breakfast, right Spunky?" Then he ducked out the door as 
the crew moved quickly to put the fire out. 

This was war. Oh sure, she'd started it. But what 
she'd done to him was funny! Ok, it had been a little -- 
well a lot -- embarrassing, but it hadn't cost him twelve 
hours worth of work. If he hadn't insisted on giving her 
the damned helm report right then and there, she would have 
found the faulty relay, the panel wouldn't have caught on 
fire and she wouldn't have had to practically rebuild the 
thing from scratch. One lousy relay plus Tom Paris equaled 
a totally unexpected and unnecessary double shift. And to 
top it off, Rumor Central -- a.k.a. Alpha Shift, 
Engineering -- had gleefully seen to it that the 
conversation between Lieutenants Spunky and Paris was 
number one on the gossip hit parade. 

"Half the ship thinks we're dating,"fumed B'Elanna, as 
she relayed the incident to Harry early the next morning, 
when they were on their way to the mess hall for 
breakfast. "He just had to mention breakfast. The 
three of us eat breakfast together every day, but he had to 
make it sound like a date. And *Spunky*!" she practically 
spat out the word. "People probably think it's some sort 
of...pet name... that he calls me," she sputtered. 

Harry just laughed. "Well, you knew it was coming. 
After all, you started it," he reminded her. 

"Yeah, don't I know it," she said, ruefully. They 
stopped walking, pausing at the doors to the messhall. 

"Ok, look at it this way," said Harry. "You're even. 
You don't have to sweat plasma wondering when Tom's going 
to get you back. You can both just call it a draw and this 
thing can end peacefully." 

"But I got him when he was off duty," protested 
B'Elanna. "Tom got me in front of my crew and he cost me 
twelve hours worth of work. I wouldn't call that even." 

"Suit yourself," said Harry, as the Messhall doors 
slid open. "Tom's not here yet," he said, looking a little 
surprised. "Let's grab some food and get the corner 
table." 

Twenty minutes later, Tom strolled into through the 
messhall, whistling. When he spotted Harry and B'Elanna 
watching him from the corner of the room, he slowed, 
seemingly hesitant to join them. 

"Tom," Harry called, and waved him over. 

Harry had an inquiring expression on his face. 
B'Elanna's expression was unreadable. 

"Sorry I'm late," said Tom. "My sonic shower was on 
the fritz." 

"For a while there I thought you were going to stand 
us up," said B'Elanna, a little smirk playing across her 
lips. 

"Uh, yeah," Tom laughed nervously. "A truce at 
breakfast, ok, B'Elanna?" he asked. 

"Fine," she smiled. "You should really try Neelix's 
kokatat fruit popover," she said. "It's very good." 

"And staff meetings are off limits, too, all right?" 
said Tom. 

"Fair enough," she replied, pleasantly. 

Tom went to get his breakfast. B'Elanna watched him 
cross the room, toying with her food and pondering revenge. 
She'd take her time. Lull him into a false sense of 
security. Make him think she thought they were even. 
Then, when he least expected it, she would execute an 
appropriate counter strike. Unfortunately for B'Elanna, 
she'd forgotten about yet another old Earth saying: great 
minds think alike. 
  

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

As luck would have it, B'Elanna was scheduled for her 
physical later that same morning. Since she needed to fix 
a problem with one of the biobeds, she brought her tool kit 
with her, figuring that she could kill two birds with one 
stone. She strolled into sickbay promptly at 10:00 and 
glanced around, looking for the doctor who, strangely, was 
nowhere in sight. 

"That's odd," she thought out loud, peaking around the 
corner into his office. 

"Computer. What is the location of the Emergency 
Medical Hologram?" 

"The Emergency Medical Hologram is off-line." 

"Computer, activate Emergency Medical Hologram." 

The Doctor shimmered into view, and strolled towards 
B'Elanna, smiling. "Please state the nature of the medical 
emergency -- Spunky." The Doctor's smile grew broader and 
he slapped his leg, chuckling a little at his own joke. 

Startled, B'Elanna sputtered, "What did you say?" 

Slightly flustered, the Doctor began to explain. "I 
asked Lieutenant Paris to help me improve my bedside 
manner, since he seems to get along with the patients so 
well. He believes that a little humorous ...repartee... will 
help me establish a better rapport with the crew," he said, 
gesturing a little nervously. 

Then, he gazed sincerely into her eyes and, smiling 
hopefully, added, "Since your physical was scheduled for 
this morning, he thought this might be a good opportunity 
for me to test my new skills. We've made a few minor 
additions to my subroutines." 

B'Elanna didn't say a word. She just looked at him, 
and gave herself a mental slap on top of the head. 

The Doctor was mystified. "I hope I didn't offend 
you," he said. "That wasn't my intention at all! I was 
just..." 

"It's ok Doc," sighed B'Elanna. "I know you meant well 
and it's a good idea to work on improving your rapport with 
your patients." Then a flash of realization hit her and 
she shot the Doctor a look that could have melted dilithium 
crystals. 

"Just what in the hell did you think you were doing 
letting Tom Paris alter your subroutines?" she demanded, 
jabbing a finger into his chest. "They're incredibly 
complex! The two of you could have done a lot more than 
just ‘improve your rapport with the crew'!" B'Elanna 
opened up her engineering kit and pulled out a diagnostic 
tool. "Now I'd better give *you* a physical to make sure we 
don't have a repeat of that Mr. Hyde episode." 

She paused in mid-scan, and looked him straight in the 
eye, a slight flush rising in her cheeks. Poking him in the 
chest again, she said, "And *don't* call me Spunky!" 

The diagnostic didn't reveal any conflicts resulting 
from the additions to the Doctor's subroutines. B'Elanna 
suggested that they reschedule her physical, since his had 
taken the better part of the morning. 

The Doctor agreed to this, with some relief. As 
B'Elanna marched out the door, he heard her muttering, 
"...sonic shower on the fritz...well then ‘repartee' is 
what you'll get -- Helmboy." 
  

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
  

Three days later, Tom Paris strolled into the messhall 
at high noon, Federation Standard Time. He walked over to 
the replicator on the far side of the kitchen and punched 
in his order. The voice of the computer, five times louder 
than usual, filled the room. 

"One order of hot, plain tomato soup -- Helmboy. Just 
like mom used to make." 

The people sitting at the tables burst into laughter. 
Tom stared at the replicator for a moment. His tongue 
traveled slowly from one side of his mouth to the other as 
he mentally ticked off the roll call of crewmen present and 
accounted for. The Delaney sisters. Baytart. Ayala. 
Dalby. Gerron. Chell, sitting with five or six other 
members of the plasma conduit cleaning corps. That ensign 
from sciences that he was sure B'Elanna had had a crush on 
a year or so ago. Freddy Bristow. Sue Nicholetti. 
Neelix. Recognizing a couple of the voices, he picked up 
his soup and turned slowly to see Harry and B'Elanna 
sitting at a table in the corner, doubled over in 
hysterics. A twisted grin consumed his face as he walked 
over to join them. 

"Touché, Torres," he said. "So, Harry, you've gone 
over to the dark side, have you?" 

"Oh, no!" protested Harry. "I had nothing to do with 
this. I'd rather sit back and watch you torture each 
other." 

"Hey, you asked for that!" giggled B'Elanna. 

"Oh, really?" said Tom. "And just how do you figure 
that? You started this, if you'll recall. I just got 
even." 

"Yeah, but you got me twice," she said. 

"Yeah, but you got me first -- in a program that the 
entire crew uses!" he said, indignantly. 

"Well, thanks to you, half the ship thinks we're 
dating," she snorted. "That little scene in Engineering 
was all over the ship before the shift was over; and I had 
to submit an incident report to Chakotay about the fire," 
she said. 

"Hey! I didn't start the fire," he shot back. "That 
was just a coincidence. And the whole ship didn't hear 
that conversation. They had to experience it vicariously. 
There's no way that's equal to reprogramming the resort 
program. Everybody visits the resort!" 

Aware of the intense interest in the conversation from 
all corners of the messhall, B'Elanna decided not to 
mention her visit to the Doctor. Instead she pointed out 
that Tom's salvo in Engineering had cost her twelve hours 
worth of work. 

"That should make us even," she said pointedly, 
folding her arms across her chest. 

"Don't count on it -- Spunky," he said with a maniacal 
gleam in his eye. "Someday soon, when you least expect it, 
this is going to come back to haunt you." 

"Oh, I think I can take anything you can dish out -- 
Helmboy," she said. "Now, I've got to go finish a report 
for the Captain." 

As she headed for the door, she heard him say softly, 
"You will rue those words, Torres." 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

As it turned out, she had worse things to rue than 
those words -- at least in the short run. Before Tom could 
make good on his threat, the ship became infected with a 
macrovirus. For once, her redundant stomachs didn't 
suppress flu-induced nausea. Instead, they magnified the 
symptoms. She and Tom called an unspoken and, she assumed, 
temporary truce. And he had stayed by her side throughout 
the ordeal. 

Now, a week and a half after the macrovirus was 
vanquished, her stomach was back to normal, but her Paris- 
detector was running in hyperdrive. She knew it was 
coming. She knew it was going to be innovative and 
extremely embarrassing. But, what? When? Where? 

Standing in her office in Engineering, B'Elanna 
decided that enough was enough. Oh, he would strike again. 
And he might well end up getting the better of her. But 
why do his work for him? She needed food. Sleep. 
Raktajino would only go so far in terms of stimulating the 
kind of thinking needed to devise innovative battle plans. 
In fact, she was starting to wonder if excessive 
consumption hadn't actually muddled her thinking, nurturing 
an irrational paranoia -- delusions of Paris. She'd been 
backpedaling. On the defensive. Seeing Tom Paris plots 
around every corner. Well, not anymore. 

She left the pads on her desk and went to find Joe 
Carey. 

"I'm turning in," she said. "It's all yours...." 

"Aye Lieutenant," he said with a grin. As she turned 
to go, he said softly, "B'Elanna -- get something to eat, 
ok?" 

She laughed. "Ok. And I'm off the Raktajino for a few 
days. So you can all relax." 

Joe laughed. "Good night, Lieutenant," he said. The 
doors shut. He closed his eyes, tilted his head back until 
his face was reflected on the ceiling, and whispered, 
"Thank God." 

For the first time in ten days, B'Elanna walked down a 
corridor without wondering if Tom was going to leap out 
from behind every bulkhead. She stepped out of the 
transporter, walked to her door, and keyed in the security 
code to enter her quarters. 

The instant the door shut, the disembodied voice of 
Tom Paris filled the room. 

"Warp core gotcha down? Are the systems all messed 
up? Are ya' dreamin' about a nice, yummy stack of banana 
pancakes and all there is to eat is leola root surprise? 
Is that what's troublin' you -- Spunky?" 

B'Elanna halted in her tracks. Then she threw her 
head back and laughed as hard as she had ever laughed in 
her life. 

"Oh, you'll have to do better than that, Paris!" she 
crowed. 

Tom's voice resumed speaking. "B'Elanna, I promise 
not to release my new holoprogram, which features a 
modified 20th century comedy routine with about a hundred 
"Spunky" jokes, to the entire crew..." 

Her face went pale, and the bottom started to fall out 
of her stomach. 

"...if you'll come sailing on Lake Como with me." 

She paused, and then nodded, leaning back against the 
closed door with a mixture of relief and resignation. "Ok, 
Helmboy. You got me. For now." 
  

The End