The Badlands (Book Two)

CHAKOTAY STOOD at the railing overlooking the hangar bay. The Selva, the old raider that he commanded for the Maquis, was directly below him. Its scarred and battered hull was as familiar as an old friend. The large patch on the right warp nacelle came from one of his first battles with the Cardassians. By now he knew a lot more about evading their patrols. Plasma discharges received while traveling through the Badlands had caused the scoring along the leading edges of the bow.

Chakotay glanced up through the large oval of the hangar door above him. The forcefield tinted the view blue, much darker than the thin atmosphere of the planetoid. Beyond it, he could see the twinkling of spinning asteroids in the surrounding Terikof Belt. A dark oblong asteroid was tumbling end-over-end, skimming close to the planetoid where the Maquis base was buried.

The base was deep inside an ancient volcanic caldron, on a planetoid that would not have been able to sustain life on its surface. The Maquis had appropriated several of the abandoned mining complexes left behind by the Cardassians after the quality ore had been extracted. Since the Terikof Belt was just beyond the Moriya system, on the edge of the Badlands, plasma storms sometimes swept over the entire area. After battling the storms for generations, the Cardassians had finally abandoned their mining claims here when they also abandoned their claim to the Bajor sector.

Chakotay's hands clenched tightly around the railing as a low rumbling and shuddering shook the complex. Everyone in the bay paused for a moment and looked up, but the impact had occurred on the other side of the planetoid. They went back to work, ignoring the new layer of dust motes shaken loose into the air.

In order to live in the Terikof Belt, the Maquis had stolen a computer core capable of plotting the orbit of every piece of asteroid big enough to damage the forcefield protecting the base. Right now, technicians would be calculating the effect of the impact on the trajectory of their planetoid and inputting the new data to discover if they were in danger from other asteroids.

Chakotay had participated in two evacuations since he had arrived at the base. But the Maquis had little choice in where they hid. The Terikof Belt offered safety because it was nearly impossible for the Cardassians to search all of the planetoids after their data on the asteroid movements had lapsed. The sensor shadow and plasma storms that occasionally swept over the area also managed to thoroughly confuse enemy sensors.