Part 02
> Day one.
B'Elanna groaned as she rubbed her forehead. She pulled away her hand and looked at it. "What the hell happened?" She wondered as she looked at the blood on her hand. Well, that explained the headache.
"You hit your head on the instrument panel when the turbulence set in," Seven informed.
Memory came back a bit for B'Elanna. "Turbulence set in? It felt more like hitting a brick wall. No scratch that, make it a duranium wall. A three meters thick duranium wall. And then all went dark."
"Because even though your seatbelt held you in place, your upper torso moved forward, and your head was stopped quite abruptly by the instrument panel," Seven added. "You were rendered unconscious. I was able to make an emergency landing, but I fear that the thrusters were severely damaged."
B'Elanna looked around her, but the cockpit seemed to be in pretty good shape. "We are landed? We can go out and take up the damage?" She glanced at the instrument panel and saw that it was still active. "And we have power?"
"Yes to all three," Seven affirmed. "As I said, I was able to make an emergency landing, which is not a crash. The shuttle is intact, though some of the hull plates on the bottom might be dented because I did not have time to extent the landing gear. However, I had to override the thrusters safety margins to stop our decent. I fear non-repairable damage, but it was that or crash."
B'Elanna nodded her head, knowing that she would have done the same. Why it was in fact possible to override the safety margins in the first place. Sometimes, just sometimes you had to sacrifice engines in order to survive. "Alright, let's go have a look."
"I believe we should first heal your head wound, and run a scan of you to see if there is head trauma," Seven disagreed.
"I'm fine," B'Elanna shot back, just as a drop of blood trickled into her eye. "But stopping the bleeding might be a good idea," She relented as she whipped at her eye in an in vain effort to try and stop the stinging this had caused. She had enough pain as it was, last thing she needed was stinging eyes as well.
However, when they got up, it was Seven who almost fell down. She grabbed her chair just in time to steady herself.
"I think it's better if we make a scan of you too," B'Elanna decided, "And if you even dare to say that it's not needed than I'm gonna kick your ass, bloody head or not."
"Very well," Seven reluctantly agreed.
~~~
> Still day one.
"That so bites," B'Elanna said frustrated. They stood outside and looked at the shuttle. Seven's guess had been right. There wasn't much damage to the hull. The shuttle stood on the ground as if someone had just retracted the landing gear. But B'Elanna was pretty sure that there wouldn't be much damage there. After all, shuttles were designed to withstand metal on metal landing in a hanger, in case you came in hot and there was no time to do a controlled and time consuming landing.
They were looking into one of the side panels that had been screwed off to be able to look at the main thruster engine. And there the news wasn't so good. B'Elanna cursed before continuing. "Totally fused together. The only thing that is good for is to take it out and use it as a fancy seat. I'm surprised it even lasted long enough for you to land the shuttle."
She glanced at Seven and saw that the blonde was leaning with one hand against the shuttle to steady herself. "You okay?"
"I am adapting," Seven assured. "It seems that the temporal anomaly of this planet is affecting my implants. My internal chronometer has trouble adapting, which results in my movements being off, as you would call it."
"Like you only notice that you are going to fall when you are already falling?" B'Elanna asked.
Seven hesitated before nodding. "A crude explanation, but it does get the point across. However, I am getting better with each passing minute as my chronometer adapts. It is a... troubling detail to our situation."
"Why?" B'Elanna asked. "You say you are getting better, so you should be fine in a few hours."
"I doubt that it will take that long," Seven said confidently. "However, the reason why this is worrying is because I already compensated for the time difference we measured from space. I have basically two times sensitivities stored in my chronometer. I switched over to the setting needed on this planet as soon as I started the landing."
"You are losing me," B'Elanna admitted.
"I fear that this means that the time shift is not what we measured it to be," Seven clarified.
"You mean time is passing actually faster?" B'Elanna asked. "I see that as a good thing. This thing ain't flying anymore. Even though the warp engines are still fine and we could easily go into warp if we happened to be in space. Fact is, we can't form a warp bubble here sitting on the ground. So we basically just can only sit here and wait for Voyager to come get us. We can't even go mine to pass the time because we were supposed to fly to places with the shuttle. So I'm all for time moving faster. Maybe if we are lucky,"
"Unless it is moving slower," Seven interrupted. "I have to take a look at the date the shuttle gathered. From that I will be able to determine the actual time shift. It could very well be that the temporal shift is actually four hundred to one."
"Over one year here only being a day for Voyager?" B'Elanna asked, her carefully crafter good mood gone again. "Is that even possible?"
"There has not yet been a limit found to the potential shift in a temporal anomaly," Seven pointed out. "Technically every single planet and star in the universe has its own temporal anomaly."
"Well, yeah," B'Elanna agreed. "That's one of the funny things that stuck in my mind from the Academy. On Earth they discovered that theory was true when they started to use satellites for global positioning devices. They discovered that the further away a satellite was from Earth, the faster time seemed to go for it. It was something they actually needed to compensate for. It was only a nanoseconds difference, but if they didn't compensate, soon that would add up and the device would tell you that you are standing on a hill while you are actually swimming in the ocean. That's one of the reasons why they introduced standard time in the Federation later on, including star dates. Every planet still has their own time, but viewscreen meetings are scheduled on standard time."
"True," Seven agreed. "However, sometimes this temporal anomaly is vastly outside the realm of what the gravity of a planet can do. And the problem is that nobody has yet been able to truly explain why this happens in a standard theory that can applied to all those places. There are only some explanations for specific planets. For the rest there are only theories. Even the Borg do not know for sure."
B'Elanna managed a grin. "Which means that even you can't guess what the time shift is, right Miss logical deduction?"
"Which means that I have to look at the date, yes," Seven agreed. "If for nothing more than knowing when to send our coordinates. After all, just like we could not pinpoint the dilithium, Voyager will not be able to pinpoint our location."
"I would say just start sending our location now, just to be sure," B'Elanna opted.
"We cannot," Seven disagreed. "The temporal anomaly makes sure of this. If we send out the signal it will be received either slower of faster than we sent it. Which is not that bad if it is slower. However, if it is faster and we keep sending the data over and over, we will send so much information out that Voyager will not be able to filter out a single message from the ten million overlapping signals."
B'Elanna nodded her head a little. "Aright, how about this? You start crunching numbers, and I take a tricorder and phaser and check out our surroundings." She saw Seven open her mouth and having a good guess what the blonde was going to say she added, "Making sure to stay close for now."
"Very well," Seven agreed.
~~~
> Still day one.
By the time B'Elanna made it back to the shuttle, she had taken off her uniform top and tied it around her waist. She was glad for the fact that Starfleet had realized long ago that there was a sleeveless undershirt under the uniform top, and since most women needed a bra to stop their breast from moving too much on active duty, that they might as well make the female version of the undershirt function as a sports bra as well. B'Elanna had to admit that she loved them. So much so that she liked to wear as casual clothing as well. More so because it was seen and looked as a normal top and you could actually walk around the ship in them without someone taking a second look.
The reason why she had taken off her uniform top was because it was hot out. Before the landing the sensors had said that it would be thirty-five degrees at this place, but B'Elanna was sure that it had to be forty at least. Forty and damn humid to boot. She looked at the lush vegetation. Well, the plants seemed to like it.
The area was... interesting. B'Elanna wouldn't call it a jungle because the trees and plants weren’t thick enough for it, and yet the plants and trees did look somewhat like the kind you would find in a jungle. The effect was like some spoiled brat had stepped up to mother nature and said, 'listen, I want a nice big forest here, but I want the occasional free spot so that I can sunbath if I want to, and the trees have to be far enough apart for me to walk easily and see a pretty decent distance. But I don't want those stinking boring dull colored trees, I want those nice brightly colored trees you find in jungles. Now, go and do it already'.
B'Elanna had to admit that it did look nice though. Their shuttle was located on the edge of one of those free spots. Either by luck, or by Seven's piloting, the shuttle had landed smack middle of the tree line. With the cockpit standing between two trees, and the back door opening onto the grass of the meadow. The meadow was roughly circular in form, and B'Elanna guessed it to be about two kilometers across. But from the trees all around it, it was clear that it truly just was a large open space in a huge forest.
She squinted a bit as she look at the trees that were in the direction where the shuttle had come from. She noticed that more than one of the trees seemed to miss it's top there, indicating the flight path of the incoming shuttle. 'Ah, sheer luck then. We can be glad we landed between those trees and not against them.'
The shallow trajectory had also brought another benefit, besides not being flattened against the ground that was. The shuttle had slid over the grass at the end and had come to a rest in a surprisingly level position. When B'Elanna had been standing in the shuttle before, the floor sure had felt level to her. Well at least they would be able to use the beds in the shuttle then instead of having to sleep outside.
As she stepped up to the shuttle she looked down at her top. She knew she was sweating, but the material of the top seemed to wicker the moisture away fast enough to prevent sweat spots from forming. It was another feature that she loved about the tops.
She glanced up at the burning star. Still, she didn't mind the heat too much. She was half Klingon, and Klingons preferred climates warmer than humans preferred them. And apparently, here too her Klingon genes had clear dominance. If given the choice between having to work at forty degrees Celsius, or at fourteen, she would go for forty.
She opened the back door of the shuttle and stepped inside. A shill creped over her entire body. She quickly put her uniform top back on and checked the temperature settings of the shuttle. Twenty-two degrees Celsius. Hmm, it seemed that she needed to have a talk with Seven. It may be the temperature the shuttle had been on during their trip, but here on the planet they might want to put it a bit higher just to make the difference with the outside not too extreme.
Since Seven was not in the back area, the blonde must have decided that the cockpit chairs were more comfortable to sit on. That, or she must have liked the fact that there was actually a view out of the window, even if it was only into the forest.
B'Elanna walked through the little corridor and through the open door into the cockpit. "Hey. It's hot out there. Seems like we landed in a pretty decent spot. I saw a few animal tracks, and that's pretty much it."
There was no reply from Seven, other than the blonde glancing at her and then out of the window once more.
"I don't think we'll have any problems waiting here until Voyager shows up," B'Elanna continued after a moment of silence. She sat down in the other cockpit chair. "Let's see, we sent the signal that we arrived before we started the landing. We are scheduled to send the next message once we left the planet. Three days for us, which would look like six days for Voyager. So,"
"Voyager will not come for us," Seven interrupted.
B'Elanna frowned. "What are you talking about? Of course they will come. When they don't get our signal they will come. Give them one day to put things in order at the base, and them actually giving us a bit time for being a bit late... so they should come for us in eight days. No wait, today is already our first day, so one week for them, which means basically for us they will show up in a bit more than three days."
B'Elanna groaned when she realized something. "Oh crap, that's not right. They were going to be working on the outer hull to finally fix those spots we were only able to patch up in the past. They will have to finish that, that's the whole reason we had to get back to Voyager to begin with instead of them just coming after us." She groaned once more. "It will be weeks. Kathryn won't interrupt that job for nothing more than us not calling in. Voyager has a rich history of people doing an away mission of a few days, only to be gone for weeks. Especially if you keep in mind that we are not lost as such. They know where we are and they will blame it on the temporal stuff."
"They will not come," Seven repeated. "Or more to the point, once they do we will long have died."
"What the fuck are you talking about," B'Elanna asked frustrated. "I would have thought that you of all people would have more faith in Kathryn coming for us."
"I have the utmost faith in Kathryn," Seven shot back.
B'Elanna was amazed to see a tear roll down Seven's face.
"It is not Kathryn's fault that Voyager cannot come for us," Seven continued. "Voyager cannot come for us because Voyager has not yet been built."
"What?!" B'Elanna exclaimed confused.
"Voyager has not yet been built," Seven repeated. "None of it exists yet. Voyager, the Federation, the Klingon Empire. At the moment, Human's biggest achievement is that they recently finished the great pyramid in Egypt."
"Has that dizziness gone to your head?" B'Elanna finally managed to say.
"I am certain that the temporal anomaly of this planet is not natural. It must have been created by some entity," Seven said, and for a moment it sounded like she had just started a whole new subject.
"Created?" B'Elanna repeated.
"There are actually three temporal zones surrounding this planet," Seven continued. "It is the one we are in that makes me certain that this is not natural."
"Why?" B'Elanna asked in a drawn out way that was more of a prompt to finally get to the damn point.
"Because here time is in sync with the time in space."
"So, that means that Voyager will get here faster," B'Elanna said, looking for the positive.
"Voyager does not exist," Seven snapped.
B'Elanna was shocked, she had never seen the cool blonde snap at someone like that. It had been one of the things that pissed B'Elanna off the most when they had been fighting. How Seven would just stand there and react even to the loudest shouting by calmly, and stubbornly, repeat her objection.
Seven took a calming breath before trying to explain, "There is one temporal zone on the outer edge of the planet. It is my believe that this is done deliberately to hide all that is below, yet make it look like a normal event. Then there is a second temporal zone exactly two hundred kilometers up, it is exactly two kilometers thick. Entering it was what you compared to flying into a wall. In this zone time flows in reverse. Then lastly there is this zone where time is once again normal."
B'Elanna lifted her hands. "Who, hold your horses for a moment. Time flowing in reverse? You mean we traveled back in time? That's why you say Voyager doesn't exist? Because Voyager truly hasn't physically been built yet? How far did we travel back in time, you..." A dread came over her, "... you were talking about the pyramids."
"According to my calculations we traveled back in time by five thousand years, with a three percent margin of error in either direction," Seven confirmed.
"But, but how is that even possible?" B'Elanna asked in a whisper. "If we were traveling back in time, shouldn't the planet have moved? After all, it wasn't in this spot yesterday, let alone five millennia ago."
"True," Seven agreed. "However, I assume that the entity that created these temporal zones also make sure that any vessel caught in it would stay in it; only be able to travel lower of higher."
B'Elanna snapped her fingers. "That's it. We traveled back in time moving down, so we should travel forward in time when we move back up. So if we leave, we should be at the same time; our time."
"We cannot leave," Seven reminded. "The thrusters are destroyed, and we cannot go into warp while inside an atmosphere, let alone when landed."
"Yeah but when Voyager comes, shut up, I know the ship isn't even build yet, but my point is, eventually in five thousand years they will come looking for us. Then they too will travel through time and they will in fact end up here, where we are. Right?"
"Wrong," Seven disagreed. "Because the reverse time stream in the temporal zone does not work that way. Your approach would work if we had for instance traveled through a wormhole with a temporal shift. However, here the time flow can best be described as a... side wind. Whether going up or down, one would still travel back in time. So even if we could leave now, we would only be traveling even further back in time. How much would be determined by how long we stayed in the temporal zone. As for Voyager showing up and landing as well, they would only be at the same point in history as us if they traveled exactly the same time through that lair; exactly down to the second."
"Which they wouldn't do," B'Elanna said. "When the ship starts shaking, Kathryn would order the crew to take Voyager in slowly, they would take Kahless knows how long to travel though that layer. Hell, for all we know they already tried to save us and ended up five million years in the past, let alone five thousand."
"Indeed," Seven only said, glad that B'Elanna was starting to see the problem.
"So it's a trap," B'Elanna concluded. "That's why there never was a ship that has left the planet. Even if they survived and left, they would suddenly be millennia back in time. In a time where there wasn't any space travel in this area at all. So at best they can find a different planet and land and live out their days."
"I believe that few ships would be able to leave again," Seven noted.
"So there might actually be other refugees on the planet?" B'Elanna wondered.
Seven shook her head. "We can do as scan if you want, but I doubt it. We only survived because Starfleet has experienced temporal anomalies often enough to design their ships in such a way that they can withstand the more exotic stresses formed by such events. But all the ships we have seen in these sectors were focused on a combination of weapons and shields. They would not withstand these stresses. Ironically enough, I believe we can be glad that we are in a standard shuttle and not the Delta Flyer. The Flyer is stronger than this shuttle, but the stresses would have torn it apart exactly because in our design of the flyer we did not add a buffer for stresses caused by time anomalies."
"A deadly trap," B'Elanna amended her first thought.
"Indeed," Seven agreed once more. "I believe the temporal zone was specifically designed that way; to destroy each ship that would try to land. I have a feeling that the entity that made these temporal zones did not want people to set foot on this planet. But instead of putting out warnings not to land, which may result in people still trying, the entity simply made sure that whoever tried to land would never try again."
"A little private vacation spot," B'Elanna said sarcastically. "So either we have some powerful person living on this planet that will probably kill us as soon as we are discovered, or the entity is treating this planet like others treat a vacation spot; only visiting it every once in a while. And if it's a being that can make time zones that make you travel back in time, my guess would be that every once in a while would be that this being is only here once every thousand years or so. After all, if you have that much power, you sure won't be satisfied with just sitting on one planet. So a vacation spot is something special, something rarely visited to keep it just that; special."
"As good a theory as any," Seven allowed.
"But are you absolutely certain?" B'Elanna asked, hoping that the answer was no.
"You do not trust me," Seven accused.
"What kind of crap statement is that?" B'Elanna shot back. "Of course I don't trust you. It wouldn't be the first time you fucked up. In fact, the only reason I'm not blaming you for burning up the engines is that I'm pretty damn sure that you would start quoting me regulations and stuff and remind me of the fact that you had to make the decision while I was knocked out because I didn't follow regulations and didn't buckle up properly. So how about we just skip the whole trusting thing and you fucking tell me if you are truly one hundred percent certain."
"Yes," Seven said after a moment of cold silence. "Granted, my calculations are only based on the data the shuttle gathered. If this data is wrong then the outcome is wrong even though my calculations are correct."
B'Elanna nodded her head. "Well, then I would suggest we go over the sensors and see if they are still calibrated right, if not,"
"Even though my calculations are flawless," Seven interrupted, "the calculations made me only eighty percent sure; exactly because of this option of wrong data. It is however this that made me absolutely sure." She leaned forward and activated the shuttle's main data screen. It showed an image of a big lake.
B'Elanna remembered the form. "That's the lake, the one I thought was a good idea to land close to because of the fresh wind it would provide."
"That is correct," Seven agreed. She activated the screen again, calling up a second image and putting the two side by side. "I used the scanners to be sure. Because we are now landed the scanners have only a limited rage; a two thousand kilometer radius. But it was far enough to make another scan of the lake."
"That's not the same lake," B'Elanna blurred, but something deep down told her that it was. Still she noted, "It's smaller. Still big enough to cover the entire Ra'Kor province on Qo'noS, but smaller than this one we scanned from space."
"That is because of erosion," Seven noted as she pointed at the screen. "Look at this spot here. The mountains eroded and there was a landslide." She pointed to the newest image. "Here there is a river moving away from the lake." She pointed to the image taken from space. "The landslide covers that part now, and now there is a river here. So the landslide cut off the river, the lake filled up more until it found a new route to flow out. However, if you look here and here, those are the same rock formations. It is the same lake, Lieutenant, only with a difference of about five thousand years of land erosion. My calculations may be off, but at most they are off by five hundred years to either side."
B'Elanna merely looked at the two images in stunned silence.
~~~
>Still day one.
Three hours later they were still sitting in the cockpit seats. B'Elanna had taken the PADD Seven had used and was going over the calculations, trying, hoping, to find some flaw in them. While Seven merely sat there looking out into the trees, her mind trying to come to terms with their situation.
B'Elanna zoomed in on one of the symbols and showed it to Seven. "What does this mean?"
Seven glanced at the PADD. "It means that you have to take the outcomes of the last four equations, divide them in square, multiply them by their own individual root, add them up, multiply that number with the cube root of the next equation, and use the outcome as a base for the equation after that, which you then have to multiply with the square root of the entire sum."
"One little symbol means all of that, huh?" B'Elanna said as she scrolled down the rest of the calculations. She was about twenty percent through them and honestly had no idea what she was even calculating anymore. She had a hard enough time to keep up with the calculations as it was; let alone trying to actually understand it all in context.
"If I may point out," Seven said coldly, "I do understand that you do not trust me. However, trying to do the calculations yourself while you do not even know how to do them is a truly futile endeavor."
B'Elanna merely growled. But after a few moments she put the PADD aside and sighed. "Look, I know what I said, but it's really not about me trusting you or not. I was pissed and you said something that every person with even a bit of temper would jump at; live with it." She waved the PADD a little. "This is simply Human, and Klingon for that matter, nature. We want to see stuff for ourselves. Back on Voyager, when I was told about the temporal anomaly around this planet, which you had calculated, I went over that data... which was easier to understands than this... and even then I had to go to Tuvok to help me with the really big words."
Seeing the blonde look at her confused she rolled her eyes. "I know there were no words in it. It's a saying. Meaning that I needed help with the difficult part. So if it was a matter of trust, that right there would indicate that I don't even trust myself; I needed to go to someone else."
"Yet you did not trust my outcome and went to Tuvok to have it checked," Seven pointed out.
"Nooo," B'Elanna disagreed in a drawn out way. "I went to someone else for a second, well, third opinion. If Tuvok had done the original calculation I might actually have come to you to have a second look at them. It's like... well, how often have you told Kathryn that a certain planet had nothing of interest for us, that there was nobody living there, and at best we could do some mining by beaming because it's kinda hard to walk on the molten surface... and yet she said, 'well, it's on our course, so let's have a look anyway'. How often did she say stuff like that?"
"Twelve times," Seven said after a moment of thought. "Though my description of planets was not that extreme. I see however what you mean."
B'Elanna spread her hands a little. "See, that doesn't mean she doesn't trust what you said; it merely means that she wants to see it with her own eyes, and since she won't send us on a week's trip by doing so, she gives in to that urge. You never had that? Never wanted to see a place someone was talking about?"
"I am curious sometimes," Seven allowed. "However, I do not act on it. There have been several times where you presented facts to the Captain about limits of the ship and I was certain that they were incorrect. However, I still did not go to the holodeck to see if what you were saying was true."
B'Elanna shrugged. "Why not? It's not like I would be hurt by you wasting your time on the holodeck to try and prove me wrong."
"No," Seven agreed. "But you would be hurt by me 'wasting' time on the holodeck actually proving you wrong, and then hearing the Captain in the next staff meeting saying that I did the tests again and that what you had told everyone is basically nonsense."
"Nothing I say is nonsense," B'Elanna objected hotly.
"That, Lieutenant, is nonsense," Seven countered. "You often enough deliberately talk nonsense because you know that the others will not realize it and therefore allocate more resources to your department than they would have done otherwise. For instance, you saying that 'the ion particles redistributors need an overhaul and the holodecks cannot be used for a week' was total nonsense. There is no such thing as an ion particles redistributor on Voyager. You merely wanted more resources for your department and also wanted to be sure that people did not complain about you having to take the holodecks offline for a full week for the normal maintenance you wanted to do. Normally you only are granted time for that maintenance on the 'slow' hours, which means that you have to get up in the middle of the night to do maintenance on the holodecks. You did not feel like that and therefore talked nonsense to impress people and get your way."
"Um," B'Elanna scratched her cheek. "I, um, how the hell did you find that out?"
"Because I have a list of all the parts of Voyager in my mind."
"All of it?" B'Elanna asked amazed. Even she sometimes came across names for parts that she had never heard off; and she was the Chief Engineer.
"A simplified list," Seven said in a tone that B'Elanna thought sounded almost modest. "For instance, I do not have the serial numbers of each hull piece stored. I do however have a list of each part used. I know what a bulkhead is, what a Praidar relay is, and what a Jaidon raster is. Since I started to help in Engineering, I felt it prudent to know a list of potential parts I could be working on. That way I would know where to go if you ordered me to repair an item."
"You got tired of me saying, 'what, you don't even know where that is,' each time before actually telling you where it was, eh?" B'Elanna guessed.
"I did," Seven agreed. Then she asked, "You do realize that Kathryn knows, do you not?"
"Knows what?" B'Elanna asked confused.
"That you make things up sometimes," Seven clarified. "I asked her once why she allowed you to get away with such things, and she told me that as long as it did not harm the ship she let others get away with stuff too. It depends on their own inventiveness just how much they gain out of the deal. She likes it if people can make things up if needed, because it has saved Voyager and the crew more than once."
"Really?" B'Elanna asked surprised. "I didn't even know that."
"Yes," Seven assured. "For instance, it is the reason why Tom Paris has fifty percent more time on the holodeck than the rest of the crew. He once pointed out to Kathryn that he could really use some time on the holodeck to train his piloting skills. Kathryn could see the logic in that, and therefore ignores the fact that his 'training' is normally done by participating in holographic races. As long as he does learn something from it."
~~
>Still day one
It was quiet once more after that. B'Elanna tried to do more of the calculations but eventually just gave up.
"I do not understand why you even tried," Seven pointed out.
"I told you," B'Elanna started.
"I know," Seven interrupted. "Human nature; you want to see things for yourself. Nevertheless, it was a truly futile effort, and not only because you know you cannot do the equations. As I mentioned before, the equations are flawless, however they are still only based on the data. If the data is flawed then the outcome of the equations will be flawed, even if the equations are not flawed. Your time would have been more efficiently used if you had checked the sensors instead."
B'Elanna pointed a finger at her. "Ah, but there 'I' know it would be useless. Once I did the checks to see if they were broken, which they aren't, I knew that at best they could have been affected by the time streams, but since they are working now there is no way to tell if they were. No way, except for magically having someone show up here with the date of what the actual time is in space. Because we don't even know that."
Seven looked at her confused, and B'Elanna was a bit startled to realize that she knew something the walking calculator had clearly missed. "Look, I grand you, that lake there is pretty much proof that we traveled back in time. But the real question is, did we travel back in universal time, or only here on this planet? As you put it, Voyager hasn't been built yet. But has she truly not been built because on Earth they truly did just finish the great pyramid? Or is out there time still as we know it? Is at this point Voyager still being repaired at the starbase? For all we know this traveling back in time was designed deliberately to keep the planet 'fresh' so to speak. That this entity that did this can come here, mess up the planet, and the next time they come they just travel back in planet time, and can mess it all up again."
She shrugged. "Who knows, maybe it's one of those giant space creatures and it comes here once every hundred years or so to feed by eating every living thing on the planet. But hundred years is not enough for trees to grow this big, so instead it made this time stuff so that each time it shows up it actually travels a bit further in time. Today it eats all there is, and the next time it actually travels to yesterday and eats it all again because then it's still there."
Seven frowned. "Then why not simply speed up time, then it would all have re-grown by the next visit."
"Ah," B'Elanna said more upbeat than she had been for the last few hours. "But then it would also have to eat whatever evolved in that time. Who know, an entire civilization could have formed then and nuclear reactors really give it heartburn. But if it travels back in time, well, it will know exactly what it will find."
"That would however not change the fact that we are now in a time where Voyager cannot reach us," Seven pointed out. "Even if they showed up above the planet in a few days, they would scan the planet and find nothing of us because we are dead and even this shuttle will have decomposed by then."
"Spoilsport," B'Elanna huffed. "I'm not so sure. Because if time out there is still as it was, then even if we traveled back in planet time, we still only arrived today, so we still are on the same schedule that we planned out. And since time here on the surface passes as it does in space, all we need to do then is find a way to let Voyager know, and then wait for them to find a way to get us through that backwards in time zone."
"I do not believe this will happen," Seven said.
B'Elanna was about to snap at her but then the tone in the blonde's voice registered. Seven was giving B'Elanna her opinion, and yet at the same time she was clearly hoping she was wrong. It made B'Elanna realize. Ever since Seven had told her they had traveled back in time, B'Elanna had been worrying about what she would never see again if it was true; which is why she refused to believe that this was more than a little problem and in a few days she would be back on Voyager. But Seven thought it was definite, so Seven was not just thinking 'what if', but was actually thinking that it happened. Keeping that in mind, B'Elanna merely said, "We will see. In fact, I'm willing to bet on it. Come on, Blondie, taking the repairs in mind that are gong on, and Voyager maybe sending a second shuttle to see where we are, them not landing of course, and Voyager finally coming in and starting to look for a solution... I bet you that we will be saved by Voyager within a few weeks; call it double what our original planned trip time was; call it twenty-eight days."
"And what are you betting?" Seven asked, rising to the challenge.
"Hmm, well how about if I'm right you start listening more to what I freaking tell you to do."
"In Engineering," Seven added.
B'Elanna nodded in agreement. "In engineering."
"And if I am correct?" Seven asked.
"Um, I dunno," B'Elanna admitted. "I guess I could give you some of my holodeck time. I know you don't use it, but on Voyager you can trade it for stuff."
"There is a flaw in that reasoning," Seven pointed out. "If I am correct we will not be saved by Voyager. Therefore it would be impossible for me to use your holodeck time or trade it with anyone on Voyager."
"Guess you got a point there," B'Elanna had to admit. "So it would need to be something here."
"This is still a Starfleet mission," Seven pointed out. "And technically I will have to follow your orders. How about if I win we will stop seeing this as a Starfleet mission and instead we are two equals that have to find a way to get along without one trying to order the other."
B'Elanna puckered her lips in thought. "I don't know. I kinda like the idea that I can order you to shut up."
"And how long do you think I would listen to such orders?" Seven countered. "However, by then your mentality of wanting to be in charge would already have firmly set in. It could get tiresome to deal with."
"Oh, fine, deal," B'Elanna relented. "I'm not looking forward to you ignoring all my orders anyway."
~~~