A Star Trek: Voyager Short Story
By Adrian Hilton
Brannon Braga ignored the pain in his ankles and concentrated on the gently oscillating horizon.
"I suppose it wouldn't help if I told you that no American cable station would ever screen a show like that?" he offered.
There was a pause and a low murmur of voices. One clear, slightly European voice came back to him.
"Help whom? Help you avoid a serious case of concrete poisoning? No, I'm afraid not."
Involuntarily Braga looked up to see the traffic passing under him. He had always lusted after a 40th floor office. Now he had it, it suddenly seemed far less of a good idea.
"Minutes after you leave my office, my lawyers will be challenging that document, pointing out that it was signed under duress."
"I don't think so," said the voice mockingly. "Photo away!"
A piece of string lowered a photo in front of Braga's face. It was without question the senior partner of Paramount's retained law firm. Braga recognised his face, though was certain that he hadn't seen the partner's attire before. He would have remembered. Even now he knew that it would take him entirely to long to forget.
"I suppose a certain fascination with handcuffs is inevitable in the legal profession," said the voice cheerfully.
[Adrian paused mid-typing to add another layer of sandbags around his PC and throw a hunk of meat, wrapped in legal briefs, to the Rottweilers chained outside.]
Braga didn't answer but his stomach churned in defeat.
"So, Mr. Braga. What's it to be?"
Braga closed his eyes to stop the nausea, to no avail...
The doorbell rang at ten past eight, but B'Elanna still wasn't quite ready.
"Tom, can you let him in?" she yelled from the bathroom.
"I've got Miral on my hands," came the reply.
"Well, can't you leave her just a second and open the door?"
"Not without making a real mess!"
B'Elanna's face twisted.
"I'm not dressed!"
"He's seen you naked before, hasn't he? And this time at least you get a towel." Tom, resigned to an early death the moment that he proposed to B'Elanna, was keen to enjoy himself before he went.
A quiet but heartfelt and continuous stream of cursing took B'Elanna to the front door. She opened the door a crack and paused.
"If whoever out there isn't Chakotay, start running now." She gave a five count and opened the door to see her Commander's smile.
"B'Elanna, you needn't have dressed specially." He came in and presented her with a flask of dark, viscous liquid. Without thinking, B'Elanna freed a hand from her towel to take it and was presented with the choice of dropping the bottle or revealing all. Dextrously she tossed the bottle back to Chakotay, adjusted the towel, kicked the door shut and retrieved the bottle.
"Nice," Chakotay acknowledged.
"Hello, Chakotay. Go in, take a seat, fill a glass, and whatever you do don't shake hands with Tom. Give me five." Grateful for the understanding of friends she dashed back to the bathroom before her toga could work loose again.
Chakotay laughed quietly and went on into the living room. B'Elanna and Tom had only been in the apartment a month, but already the decor was changing. Chakotay wasn't surprised by the painting of Voyager above the mantelpiece, nor by the bat'leth mounted well out of the reach of children. The full-size PADD running the Voyager blueprints was unexpected, though perhaps not that surprising. He took a glass from the pitcher of ice tea and amused himself by scrolling through the plasma conduits. Legend had it that a small plaque bearing the text "Abandon hope all ye who enter here" had been mounted on the conduit wall somewhere. He wondered if it had made it onto the blueprints.
"Hey, Chakotay." Tom stepped softly into the room in shirtsleeves, carrying a small blanket-wrapped bundle. "You've met Miral before, haven't you?"
Chakotay peered inside the bundle to see a frowning face giving him a searching look, much in the manner of someone memorising a image to report to law enforcement officials. Apparently he passed inspection, for the frown melted away and Miral gurgled at him.
"She's awfully like you, Tom. Her rosy cheeks, her eyes..." Tom was clearly flattered, which Chakotay soon rectified: "..., her grasp of language..."
"Careful, Chakotay, or we'll have you in the kitchen demonstrating your new skills." The grin gave the lie to Tom's threat. "I've got to put Miral to bed, but B'Elanna should be dressed right about..."
"...now," finished B'Elanna, gliding into the room wrapped in a shimmering blue dress that covered not much more than the towel had, but in a far more tasteful way.
Tom retreated with his daughter, confident that his guest was in good hands. Chakotay watched him go, then turned to B'Elanna.
"There's a Tom I've never seen before."
B'Elanna smiled, lighting up her face. "He's a good father and a good husband. He loves Miral to bits, and he and I are growing closer every day. To think that there was a day when I couldn't stand the sight of him!" She ran a searching look up and down Chakotay. "Aren't you a sight for sore eyes? And - " she swung a playful punch at him - "what's this about working less than a mile away and not even calling? What do you think you're playing at, Chakotay? I ought to rip your throat out right now." Her laugh belied the threat.
Chakotay shrugged. "You know how it is with a new job, getting up to speed with people and finding somewhere to live."
"Don't give me that crap." B'Elanna took Chakotay's glass and filled it with ale. "Tom told me that you're a sandwich slicer. What's up? And what about Seven? Sit, drink and spill."
Chakotay, sitting on the sofa, held the glass up to to the light and scrutinised its depth for foreign bodies. Satisfied, he took a gulp.
"Not bad," he acknowledged. "Romulus '03?"
"'04, and don't change the subject, you weasel. Sandwiches and Seven." B'Elanna sprawled into an armchair and kicked her feet up onto an ottoman and took a gulp at her own glass.
This moment had been coming as soon as Tom placed his sandwich order. Chakotay had though of little else the whole day. He sighed. "Most of it you know already. After the debriefing Starfleet made me an offer to rejoin -- as a Commander, I'll give them that -- but we both knew that it was not an offer to be accepted. I declined, they gave me a pension for my pre-Maquis service plus seven years, and went out the next day looking for a job. Bruno was short-handed when I stopped off in his shop for lunch, he recognised me, we talked -- and I've been there the past few weeks."
"I've a small apartment down on Geary Street; it's not much but I'm not planning to be there long. I need some time to clear my head, to work out where I go and what I do now. It's like there's a huge hole in my life, and I don't yet know what to fill it with."
B'Elanna was drilling into him with a piercing gaze. "Uh-huh. The Starfleet thing, I can see. Sandwich slicing - well OK, you were all right in the galley as I remember. Good thing too otherwise Kathryn would have starved to death those times that she drained her rations with coffee. And I couldn't see you making much money as a cab driver with your insurance claim history." They both laughed. "But there's a lot you're not telling me."
"There is," admitted Chakotay, "but I make it your turn. Last I saw of you, Owen Paris was trying to get you to take up an Engineering lecturing post at the Academy. What happened?"
B'Elanna snorted with laughter. "The first lecture was going okay, then this snot-nosed cadet starting asking questions about trans-warp field theory and making out he knew about Borg engineering..."
The Indiana Skylines shuttle glided softly onto the tarmac at the airport. It was a small model, built to carry no more than six passengers in reasonable comfort. Starfleet had no compunction about shoehorning ten cadets into the same model for a week at a time. The very low murder rate among such expeditions spoke well of decades of social engineering work on Earth.
Today it was carrying one passenger and one pilot. This passenger could in fact have dispensed with the pilot's services, but had been urged not to. Instead she sat quietly in the back, eyes focused many miles away. The two small containers beside her seemed barely large enough for a weekend away.
The pilot powered off the engines and shut down the rest of the shuttle systems. "There you are, Ma'am. Welcome to Indiana."
"Thank you." The passenger rose to her feet, picking up her bags. She had to stoop slightly to avoid the low roof as she left the shuttle. Once in fresh air she stretched up and looked around.
Centuries ago the airport had been drowned in waves of noise from turbojets and propfans on the airliners that plied their trade to Atlanta, Memphis and LAX. Now the virtually silent shuttles made it one of the most peaceful places in the city. Seven of Nine found the silence eerie and quickened her walk to the terminal.
Arrivals was quiet today, and only a couple of families were awaiting the return of loved ones. Seven was hard to miss as she marched out, and Kathryn Janeway was equally hard to miss for Seven's eyes despite her sunglasses.
"Seven!" She took the taller woman in her arms for a rib-crushing hug. "It's good to see you." Already she had registered that something in Seven's appearance had changed, but it took a moment to register. "Your ocular implant?" Sure enough, the metal above Seven's right eye had been removed.
"I had it removed last week. I wished to appear less... alien." Seven was surprised by the change in her Captain. The lines of fatigue around her eyes had vanished, but there a different expression in her face. "You look well, Captain. How are you finding Earth?"
"Not Captain, Seven, I'm Kathryn now." In fact, Kathryn Janeway had an envelope on her dresser which confirmed her promotion to Rear Admiral. But Seven had ceased to belong to Starfleet in any way.
"Then you must call me Annika." Kathryn allowed an eyebrow to rise. There was a story behind this that needed telling, but now was not the time.
"My transport is this way. If we hurry, my mother might not have let dinner get too cold."
Go on to Part 3
Back to Part 1
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