A Star Trek: Voyager Short Story
By Adrian Hilton
Brannon Braga looked up from his desk.
[Not a good start. Oh well, damn the torpedoes. Full steam ahead. AJH]
"Mmmm?"
His secretary, inwardly cursing her timing, swallowed her nausea and waited until Braga had thoroughly masticated and swallowed.
"There's a deputation to see you, sir. They don't have an appointment."
"They don't?" Braga's tone suggested that this didn't bode well for the deputation. "So why are you even telling me they are here?"
"Well, sir," she said, bobbing nervously on her Manolo Blahniks, "they don't have an appointment but they do have a baseball bat. A large one. With nails in it."
Braga put the roasted leg back on his plate and wiped his hands on a napkin, staring at his secretary. "A baseball bat?"
"A baseball bat," she confirmed. "Do you - do you want to see them?" The normal obeisance in her voice was mixed with just the tiniest ring of fear.
Braga thought for a moment and laughed. "They've cheek, I'll give them that. Let them wait for, oh, half an hour and then send them in."
The secretary gulped, nodded acquiescence and turned back to the door. Braga picked up what remained of the infant and bit into a juicy arm. At that moment the door opened. Not a conventional opening, this only involved the hinges as far as the splintering noise they made as they were dragged out of the door frame.
Braga looked up in time to see his secretary go down underneath the door and a flurry of denim-clad legs and heavy boots. Then the mob was on him...
"Penny for them, Katy."
"Mmm-hmm?" Kathryn Janeway had used the past seven years well. Her face gave nothing away as she turned to meet her sister. Inside she cursed at having been caught in such a clichéed pose. She had to watch herself. Acting like a heroine in one of the less reputable 20th Century romance novels was the start of a short and very slippery slope. Unless she was careful she'd soon be wearing a white floaty dress and swooning on occasion.
Idly she wondered what B'Elanna had done with her replicated novel collection. Perhaps she had burned it before her mother could discover it. Perhaps she had given it pride of place in the Paris's new apartment and invited her mother over for blood wine and gagh. Kathryn wouldn't have bet either way. Whatever, Kathryn's book borrowing record was safe with her Chief Engineer. Ex-Chief Engineer. Kathryn's mind was still not off the bridge of Voyager.
Phoebe took the coffee mug from her sister with surprisingly gentle hands.
"Your coffee is stone cold. That's not like you, Katy." No Voyager crewman would have disagreed. Neelix would have instantly called Security and demanded that the imposter reveal what she had done with the Captain. Phoebe peered out of the window. "What's out there?"
Kathryn had to smile. "Half of the town press pack, I'd say. But they're trying to be less obvious than normal, I'll give them that." Seeing her sister's baffled expression she pointed out the road crew working to run a gas pipe under the highway fifty yards down the track from the Janeway house. "Unless I'm very much mistaken the theodolite is measuring up for a road into this very window."
Phoebe's face darkened. "Why, those..."
Kathryn laughed. "Leave them be, Phoebe. They don't mean any harm."
Phoebe rallied. "You weren't looking at the press though. Since you came back you've been -- oh, I don't know -- stuck in the Delta Quadrant, near as I can figure."
"One Kathryn Janeway is still there," Kathryn rejoined quietly.
Phoebe, knowing no reply, held her sister in silence.
"Chakotay," Kathryn finally admitted. "I saw Chakotay."
It had taken three weeks for that name to pass her lips. Phoebe drew her sister to a chair and pressed a glass of brandy into her hand. "Tell me."
Chakotay took a slice off the ham with one wickedly precise flash of the carving knife. Paprika sprinkled over a drizzle of mayo, he laced the top with lettuce and slammed the half-baguette on top before halving and bagging it.
The clerk grabbed the bag from under Chakotay's hands and threw it in the direction of his customer. "Thereyagohaveanicedayyessirwhaddayoulike?"
"Monterey jack and apricot, tomato, easy on the mayo, no... oh my stars, Chakotay, what are you doing?"
Chakotay had already taken two chunks out of the cheese block, and it was but the work of a moment to add the dried apricot slices and tomato. His hips easily pushed the clerk aside, and Tom Paris was holding his sandwich order within seconds.
For a moment Chakotay enjoyed the all-to-rare sight of Tom Paris lost for words, then laughed. It was a hearty, relaxed laugh, and even the clerk joined in from his position sprawled among the boxes in the food storage area.
Chakotay pulled off his apron and threw it to the clerk. "Thanks, Bruno." A surprisingly nimble vault took him over the counter, then he pulled the stunned Paris out of the shop.
"Come on, Tom. Let's take a walk and have a talk."
A small café above Lombard Drive had a stunning view all the way down to the bay. Chakotay steered Tom to a window booth and ordered coffee.
By now Tom had regained the use of his speech functions. "Commander, I know that the Maquis weren't Starfleet favourites, but please tell me that they've not forced you into sandwich-making for a living?"
"Why ever not? What could be more satisfying? And it's Chakotay, Tom, not Commander." Chakotay sprawled across the booth seat, more relaxed than Tom could ever remember him being. "The shop lives or dies by the speed and accuracy of my slicing. We are what keeps half of the businesses of Nob Hill going after lunchtime. The taste of the "Delta Special" has brought people in from as far as San José. If I ever told Neelix what I did, he'd never believe it."
"I don't believe it either. After all you did for Voyager, Starfleet threw you out?"
"I left Starfleet a long time ago, Tom," Chakotay reminded him. "They never needed to throw me out. And I would never return to them. Not even after seven years in a Starfleet vessel."
Tom acknowledged the truth of that. "They never treated you right. Not even Dad, not even after the homecoming."
Surprisingly, Chakotay defended Owen Paris. "He couldn't, Tom. The Maquis died years ago. Starfleet have only just got used to not having to deal with them any more. They couldn't make Maquis heroes and welcome them back into the fleet. It would be crazy."
"They accepted Be," Tom objected.
Chakotay smiled. "It would be a very brave man who tried to sideline a Klingon daughter-in-law. Especially one who bore his granddaughter."
Tom was embarrassed, but Chakotay laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. The slap nearly took the younger man off the bench. Clearly Chakotay was still working out.
"You must come over for dinner," Tom insisted, changing the subject. "Be would kill both of us if she found out that you were close by and I hadn't invited you." Besides, he thought, B'Elanna had a far better chance of working out what was going on with Seven and why Chakotay had not even hinted at her being around.
"I'd like that," admitted Chakotay. "It would be good to see B'Elanna again. And Miral - has she started playing with her bat'leth yet?"
"Not yet, but Be is sewing Kevlar sheets onto her soft toys in anticipation." Tom got to his feet, feeling in his wallet. "Tonight any good for dinner?" He gave Chakotay the address card.
"You're on," agreed Chakotay. "I can be over around eight."
"Class," said Tom. "By the way, would it win me any brownie points with Be if I brought her a Delta Surprise sub?"
"It would certainly be a surprise," admitted Chakotay, "but basic honesty compels me to tell you 'no'. Did you ever wonder what happened to Voyager's leftover foodstuffs?"
A slow horror crept over Tom. "Not -- leola root?"
Gretchen Janeway had experienced a series of life-altering surprises of varying horror during her sixty years. To have both her daughters back home would have been rare enough twenty years ago. But now, after seven years secretly believing that she'd never see Kathryn again, it was stranger than a dream.
She had tried to adjust with some classic displacement activity. The kitchen was full of the warm chocolate scent of fresh-baked brownies. An expert on psychology would have identified smell as one of the most powerful senses and seized on Gretchen's maternal instincts as an explanation for flooding the house with a scent calculated to remind Kathryn and Phoebe of times when they were young, innocent and thought only of pleasing their mother.
As far as Gretchen was concerned, her girls loved brownies and she loved her girls. Life was sometimes that simple.
It became a lot more complex when Phoebe came into the kitchen and completely failed to fall on the plate of brownies like a hawk on a juicy mouse.
Instead she bounced aimlessly between the table and the dresser, rearranging the vase of fresh-cut flowers and fiddling with her hair.
"Sit down, Phoebe, you're making me nervous." Gretchen put the last dollop of cake mix onto the baking tray, slid it into the oven, pulled her daughter onto a stool at the breakfast bar and put the remaining cake mix in front of her.
Phoebe had cleaned half of the bowl better than the dishwasher ever could before she shyly looked over to her mother.
"Mom, what did you think when Katy told you about Hobbes?"
"When do you mean?"
"When he dumped her."
Gretchen thought hard. "It wasn't long after we first heard that Voyager wasn't lost. You'd just gone back to Argentina - you know what it was like when we heard that Kathryn was alive." She paused, remembering the day that she couldn't stop crying with happiness. "Then four weeks later I got a letter than Kathryn had written me, the day after she got the letter from Mark."
"You know that I've always been more protective of you than Kathryn. Heaven knows that she's always been the tough one, and I guess that a mom shelters her youngest child just by instinct. But she's never asked for anything, never complained that life was unfair, she took her lumps and and went back for more. Once I knew that she was alive, I never doubted that she'd get back from the Delta Quadrant."
"You're not answering my question," Phoebe protested.
"Keep cleaning that bowl and I'll get there." Gretchen wasn't one to be put off her stride. "Kathryn's first letter was what you expect - I'm OK mom, things have been tough but we've always come through, my crew are great and we'll be home soon - keep a lamp burning for us. She must have written it months before, held it over until they got a chance to send data to Earth. But her second letter..."
Gretchen was silent for a while, but Phoebe kept quiet too. Eventually she spoke again. "It's a mother's job to know best. I'm sure you hated it when I was right about Peter Salermis." Phoebe's cheeks glowed and she ducked further into the mixing bowl, careless of flavouring her split ends. "But I wondered about Hobbes. He was nice enough - very intense, but always polite. Still, he never seemed to have the fire that Kathryn had. Perhaps that was what she needed back then, someone quiet and thoughtful. And with thirty thousand light years holding a relationship apart, maybe ending it was the sensible thing to do. But it tore Kathryn apart."
Phoebe had been watching her mother slowly pace the kitchen as she talked. Now finished, Gretchen took the stool by Phoebe and passed her daughter a brownie.
"Thanks mom." Phoebe bit into the soft sweet slice and savoured the chocolate tang.
"What's he like?"
"Huh?!" Phoebe nearly coughed the brownie onto the sideboard. Somehow she managed to gasp a breath without inhaling chocolate, but it was a brief struggle before she managed to focus on the question. "Who?"
Gretchen laughed softly. "Just because you're a grown woman doesn't mean I can't still read your mind." She checked over her shoulder. "Where's Kathryn?"
"Out in the garden, playing with the dogs I guess." Phoebe sighed. "OK, let me tell you a story about a warrior, a goddess and a lost soul..."
On to Part 2
Web pages maintained by Adrian Hilton
Dedicated to JetC24, whose informal motto should be "Sanity? We don't need no steenkeeng sanity in here..." Especially dedicated to Caffey, listmom supreme and an expert at prodding authors into finishing what they started.
Disclaimer: Paramount own the Voyager franchise, the plots, the characters - heck, they probably think they own the fans as well. Not that they deserve this after what they've done. But their lawyers are big and ugly, so let's just try not to attract their attention.
Warning: set in the months after "Endgame", so several Series 7 spoilers in it. Read at your peril.