B'Elanna watched as Paris nervously continued to run his one hand through his hair, the other steadily aiming the phaser at her.
Then something flashed across Paris' face. The tense look dropped from his features. In it's place, his typical half-scornful, half-furtive expression appeared.
Paris had just had an idea.
That was probably not a good thing.
She shifted, both out of apprehensiveness and out of discomfort, her shoulder sending urgent signals of pain down her spine.
The hand holding the phaser twitched when she did that, as if she were going to lunge at him.
Which was indeed what she had been planning on doing while he was still distracted.
But now he was looking her, blue eyes watching her every move, but his face betraying the fact that half his attention was still on whatever it was that had just entered his mind. He had a half-grin on his face. The same thought that had dissipated his worry was apparently pleasing the hell out of him. Which meant, although B'Elanna didn't know quite what he was thinking, that he'd come with up with some way to resolve the obstacle of the Maquis being in the Shuttle Bay. She didn't know why the presence of the Maquis in the Shuttle Bay bothered him so much, she could only guess he wanted off the ship. And he now thought that he had a way to accomplish that, which probably meant not having Chakotay and the others be in his way.
That couldn't be a good thing, at all.
He might interfere with Plan C.
She was not going to allow him to mess up a plan that was their third recourse. Plan D was only half-written and it was their second to last recourse, the last being desperate measures which no one wanted to take. Star Fleet wouldn't enjoy their final plan, if it came to that, and neither would most of the Maquis.
Paris felt the need to explain his sudden joy to her.
"I'm not a dead man anymore," he told her.
She just clutched her shoulder and pretended to be too hurt to care.
Come a foot closer, she thought. You'll be a dead man again.
She scowled furiously. He smiled back. In doing so, he stretched the ripped skin on his face. He hissed in pain, his hand coming up to touch the wound. His sweaty palm made it hurt worse, from the mumbled cussing that followed.
She honestly didn't mean to snicker audibly.
The glance that she received was just about equal to the beam that had hit her in the shoulder.
He was apparently realizing that he was in a lot of pain and that she had inflicted most of it. His hand, stained red with the clear indents of her teeth, dropped from his face to his chest. He twisted his legs out in front of him, and she saw for the first time what had almost given her the upper hand.
His right foot.
It looked like, well, a lot like her shoulder. Worse. Someone had hit him full on, at a relatively close range.
Good.
Paris tapped his comm badge.
"Paris to Sickbay," he began.
People holding others at bay with phasers should not look down at their comm badges.
It's pointless. The other person can't see you, so there's no one to make eye contact with.
It's dangerous. The person being held at bay with the phaser can move without being seen.
And that's just what B'Elanna did.
She didn't have far to go, so the speed she used to launch herself at him turned into force.
She purposefully brought one of her feet down on his bad ankle.
The scream that followed drowned out the sound of the phaser dropping and the Doctor replying.
She'd only just landed on him, with her elbow hitting him hard in the chest, when a transporter beam enveloped them both.
The Bridge was scary this empty. It was usually pretty deserted during the night shift, but it didn't feel as weird then. Probably because the empty station's crew was just off-duty, and hadn't just been beamed to Sickbay after being shot by the First Officer, among others.
The First Officer hadn't shot the Captain, too.
Today, he had.
Harry Kim found himself wishing again that Chakotay had stayed standing in front of the Captain's chair for just a moment longer, before beaming off the Bridge with the rest of the Maquis.
Harry might not be as good an aim as Tuvok, but he would have gotten the job done.
The loud beeping of his console made Harry look down. His eyes widened at what he saw. The Maquis had begun sabotaging other parts of the ship.
"Tuvok, life support to the Bridge has been cut off. We have fifteen minutes before we run out of Oxygen."