A Star Trek: Voyager Short Story
By Adrian Hilton
The Paramount office doors closed, and Braga's secretary ran over to his chair to untie him.
"Are you all right, sir?"
Braga had long passed the stage of being angry, and appeared resigned to events. "Yes, yes, no lasting damage. Nothing worth sueing over - not given Mr. Andersson's attitude to the law." He was still trying to repress the memory of the photograph where the lawyer was expressing far too much affection for a nubile police officer in a very public and unambiguous fashion.
"Shall I call the police?" His secretary was slightly hesitant in saying this.
"What for?" Braga was nothing if not pragmatic. "I have a perfectly good script for a double-length Voyager episode, with guaranteed audience figures, and I've had to pay precisely nothing to the script writers. What kind of crime will the police take this for?"
He flipped through the pages of the script. "Get me the agents of the lead Voyager cast. We've some filming to do."
Tom had rejoined the party now that Miral was asleep. B'Elanna had displayed a hitherto unsuspected talent for Terran cooking, and the trio had polished off an excellent steak with garlic mash and mangetouts, blackberry pie and cheese. Chakotay reclined in his chair, stuffed to capacity and edged with the rosy glow that two litres of ale gave.
B'Elanna had excused herself to brew coffee, leaving the two men together. This gave Tom the perfect opportunity to open the silverware drawer in the dresser, reach to the back and retrieve two carefully wrapped cylindrical packages.
He presented one to Chakotay. "Thirty-year Cuban tobacco. Present from Dad when I was assigned to Voyager. I've been saving them for a special occasion."
The men snipped the ends of the cigars, lit them and inhaled. Both coughed slightly but savoured the taste.
"So, Chakotay, what's the score with Seven?"
"Didn't B'Elanna tell you?" It was a good counter, and Chakotay was proud of it.
"She told me that you spent a lot of words not saying. So use one sentence and tell me. What happened?"
Chakotay weighed up the merits of avoiding the question again, and found them few. Besides he had long wanted to be able to tell someone who might understand.
"Tom, when you first heard that Seven and I were spending time together, what did you think?"
Tom weighed his words. "To be honest? I didn't know what to make of it. You and she had never been close in any way. I figured that you were helping her with something, but couldn't think of what it might be. When word got around I was -- well 'surprised' is an understatement but it'll do for now."
He looked carefully at Chakotay. "I can see why Seven chose to be with you. But I still don't know why you chose to be with her, rather than..." The name went unsaid.
Chakotay examined the glowing tip of his cigar. It helped to have something to focus on.
"It has never been an option, Tom. I know the subject has been discussed to death in the Voyager mess hall - conspiratorial whispering is more obvious than you'd think - but an affair between the two commanders could never happen. It would have been bad for the ship."
"So you did want to, then?"
Despite himself, Chakotay laughed. "You never give up, do you Tom? Is the book still open on the Captain and I?"
"Closed and monies refunded."
"I don't believe it."
"My wedding promise to Be," Tom admitted. "No more betting."
Chakotay raised an eyebrow.
"And hers to you?"
"That would be telling." B'Elanna reappeared, bearing a tray of coffee. "Miral's still asleep. We're going to have to get Toby off her at some point and get him washed, he's starting to look like he's spent a day cleaning the plasma ducts."
"You've let Toby go?" said Chakotay incredulously. B'Elanna's stuffed toy targ had been famous on his ship.
"I told her it was me or Toby. She had to sleep on it a few nights," admitted Tom, "but I won out."
"Well, I couldn't just throw Toby out," said B'Elanna defensively. She switched to attack mode. "Okay, you and Seven went through debriefing like the rest of us. Seven spent a while with the Starfleet docs getting some of the less convenient hardware changed for something more human, you did the whole negotiation thing and left Starfleet about the same time that Seven got out of hospital. That was four weeks back by my reckoning. Then what?"
"Then - nothing."
Tom and B'Elanna snorted disbelief together. "Come on, Chakotay, you can't stop there."
"But we did exactly that," said Chakotay quietly. "Seven came to my apartment the evening that she was discharged by Starfleet Medical. We had dinner, and talked about our future..."
Kathryn's claims to the contrary, dinner was piping hot and waiting for them when they got back. Gretchen had the four of them eat at the kitchen table, conscious that Annika had had perhaps enough of formal dinners for a while. She found it strange to be sitting with the Seven of Nine who had featured in Kathryn's letters for three years. Over that time she had built an image in her mind of a cybernetic semi-monstrosity -- Kathryn had seldom included any images in her communications because of bandwidth constraints. It was hard to reconcile this with the shy, beautiful young woman at the table.
"It's nice to have you visit, Annika. Kathryn's told me so much about you."
Annika's eyebrow raised and she half-turned to look at Kathryn. Phoebe laughed, and Gretchen moved quickly to avoid any awkwardness.
"Nothing embarrassing, I promise. I hear that you're quite an astronomer."
"I'll say," added Kathryn. "Sev - Annika - ran Astrometrics for nearly three years. She helped us discover some of the most stunning astronomic phenomena for decades."
Annika blushed slightly. "Captain - Kathryn - had me work in Astrometrics because she thought I might have an aptitude for it. I found the work interesting and challenging. I am grateful to her for the opportunity."
Gretchen smiled, a warm smile that made Annika feel part of the family right there and then.
"We're a way from the city lights here, and Kathryn's father built a telescope when Kathryn was little. It's out back in the study, and you'd be very welcome to use it to look at the stars tonight. The sky should be clear and Venus is bright at the moment."
"Thank you, Mrs. Janeway," Annika said. "That is kind of you."
"Kathryn will help set it up after supper - not that I don't think you're quite capable of doing it yourself, but it's a good way to get her used to helping around the house again." Phoebe laughed, and even Annika joined in with a smile.
"Say, Annika," Phoebe broke in, "is Kathy really as ruthless on the bridge like they all say?"
"Oh, Phoebe," protested Kathryn, looking to her mother for support. To her surprise Gretchen seemed as interested in the answer as Phoebe.
Annika thought quickly. Phoebe had grown up with Captain Janeway - she couldn't really think of Kathryn any other way at the moment - and must already know what kind of person she was. So this must be what the Doctor had called a "social question", one where everyone already knew what the true answer was. It had been asked as a way of furthering the conversation. So how to answer? She thought for a moment, then a sly smile crept around the corners of her mouth.
"I remember when we had to traverse space occupied by a species who hated telepaths. We had picked up a group of telepaths fleeing from this species, and Kathryn chose to hidden them along with our Vulcan crew members whenever the species boarded our ship for an inspection. A captain of the inspectors tried to infiltrate our ship, pretending to be a defector. Kathryn let him appear to win her trust, worked with him to locate a wormhole and even pretended to an affair with him."
"Kathryn!" said Phoebe, apparently shocked. Kathryn kicked her sister who giggled.
"Kathryn then let him return to the inspectorate, and when he betrayed the secret of the telepaths it turned out that she had misled him as to her intentions. He couldn't report Voyager to the inspectorate without severe personal embarrassment. So we escaped."
Phoebe and Gretchen laughed delightedly. Kathryn put on a wounded expression, but flashed a pleased smile at Annika.
Relieved that she had passed another test of humanity, Annika relaxed and listened to Phoebe reliving incidents from her and Kathryn's childhood.
After the meal Gretchen detailed Phoebe to pick up, and sent Kathryn and Annika out to the study for the telescope. Once they were alone, Annika took the chance to speak to Kathryn.
"I am sorry if I embarrassed you at dinner."
To her surprise, Kathryn nearly collapsed in laughter.
"Embarrass me? Oh dear Annika, you were wonderful. Now Phoebe thinks I'm a femme fatale who ravishes exotic aliens at the slightest provocation." She paused to wipe her tears away. "No, I think you let me off quite lightly." Seeing Annika's confusion she continued more soberly. "At family gatherings like this, we often embarrass one another. It's - family tradition, I guess, and often hard for people who aren't family to understand. Don't worry, Annika, accept from me that my mom and sister both now think very well of you. Now grab the heavy end of this telescope. I'm not as young as I once was."
They ferried the telescope out to the deck at the back and set it up. Once Kathryn was satisfied with its position she turned off the deck lights and started to scan the heavens.
"There!" She moved aside and placed Annika at the eyepiece. "What do you see?"
Annika missed her ocular implant at this point, but rallied and squinted to bring the stars into focus.
"I can see seven stars of approximately equal brightness. I cannot estimate their class or distance."
She heard Kathryn laugh.
"That's Orion's belt and sword."
Annika took her eye away and looked at Kathryn, who was sitting on the porch rail. "Explain."
"Orion is the name for a constellation of stars. It's supposed to represent Orion, the mythical hunter. The stars you see run across in a line with others beneath in a position similar to a belt holding a sword."
Kathryn got a dreamy look in my eyes. "My dad would take me out here when I was little and we'd search for the constellations. He'd tell me the stories about the legends they represented, and I'd imagine the constellations coming to life. Orion striding across the sky to Cassiopeia, waving his sword at the Bears. The Dolphin swimming in the water from the Water Bearer..." She was silent.
Annika wasn't sure what to say. "You miss your father?" It was obvious that Kathryn did, but she had never before said anything about him. She had pieced together things that Chakotay and Tuvok had said, but there were still large gaps.
"Yes." Suddenly Kathryn looked old and sad. "When I lost him and Justin I thought I would die with them. For weeks I couldn't even get out of my bed; there was nothing to get up for. Eventually I got myself together, got back to Starfleet and took up my command. But there's always been a big black hole where Daddy and Justin used to be."
She fell silent again. Annika felt dreadful for having brought this up and ruined the evening.
"I'm sorry, Captain. It was wrong of me to ask."
Kathryn shook her head. "It wasn't wrong of you. We've all had losses in our past. I've still got my mom - you lost both your parents."
"But I gained you," said Annika shyly.
The trio had moved back to the living room. B'Elanna had waved off Chakotay's attempts to leave them in peace, pointed out that neither of them were working tomorrow, that she'd take it as a personal insult if Chakotay refused the use of the guest bedroom, and that her bat'leth was within easy reach. Tom had supported her with the "well, what can you do?" shrug, so Chakotay was effectively trapped.
The post-Seven post-mortem was in full swing.
"Chakotay, you're an idiot." B'Elanna was predictably dealing in absolutes and using the foot-on-throat school of disputation. "For six and a half years you ignore every bit of advice, every hint which we throw at you about what you ought to be doing with, and to, the Captain."
"We could just call this regular stupidity," Tom said in defence of Chakotay. Well, a kind of defence. Chakotay made a note to steer clear of the services of a Paris for any future courts martial.
"True by itself," said B'Elanna, winding up for a delivery. "But then completely out of the blue you - a kind, thoughtful and disgustingly nice man, albeit with terrible dress sense - hook up with a cyborg for whom emotion isn't just a short suit, it's practically a void. I mean, I'm really sorry that things didn't work out between you and Seven - "
"Annika," corrected Chakotay.
"Seven," shot back B'Elanna, "and that's an important point, so don't fob it off. But what the hell were you thinking, Chakotay?"
"Annika needed someone who could give her what she found it hard to get from herself," said Chakotay in mild protest. "Do you really think that she could have had a fulfilling relationship with Vorik?"
"Not in dispute," said B'Elanna. She had been pacing the living room for her tirade, but now fell down into a chair and stared at Chakotay. "But what about you? What did you need?"
Silence fell. A faint sound carried from the far bedroom.
"Miral needs settling," said Tom, retiring with indecent tact.
B'Elanna leaned over to the man who used to lead her.
"When did you last see Kathryn?"
Chakotay saw no point in protesting.
"Five weeks ago. The Officers Dinner with the admirals."
"Why are you not on a shuttle to Indiana at this very moment?"
"They don't fly from SFO past 21:00 hours." Chakotay figured he could get away with flippancy.
"They start again at 08:00."
"With the amount of synthehol you've forced down me? I'll be lucky to be up by ten. Then there's the small matter of my job."
"Targshit. Tom will take up sandwich slicing, I'll take Miral to the Academy crèche, and you will be on a flight to Indiana by midday or else."
"I can't just arrive on Kathryn's mother's doorstep unannounced," protested Chakotay, knowing that reason wasn't going to get him out of this fix so etiquette had to be worth a try.
"I'll call her at lunchtime and square it." B'Elanna wasn't giving up.
Chakotay sighed. "I'm not going to win this one, am I?"
B'Elanna leaned across and cuffed him. "You redefine idiocy, Chakotay. If there were a Nobel Prize for it, you'd be a shoe-in. Do you not see an opportunity for happiness when it's jumping up and down in front of you? What do want, ten naked Ferengi dancing the can-can and waving signs saying "THIS IS HAPPINESS, IDIOT" in all known forms of writing?"
She fell back into her seat. "I'm beat. Let's talk about something fun. But by Kahless's beard, you're going to be on that shuttle tomorrow."
Annika and Kathryn came in from the deck around eleven. The warm Indiana evening had turned chilly as the clear sky let the heat escape back to the stars, and a soft wind was making the deck much less comfortable than indoors.
Annika had started to discover tastes in the past weeks, including what the Doctor referred to disparagingly as her "sweet tooth." She was pleased to discover that Phoebe had made hot chocolate for her and Kathryn, and delighted to find marshmallows floating in the chocolate. Kathryn by contrast was suspicious.
"All right, Phoebe, what have you done?"
"Made some hot chocolate for you, Katy. It's not poisoned, I swear."
Annika was confused. "Do you often poison each other's food?"
Phoebe giggled. "The way Katy cooks, absolutely." Kathryn looked appalled, then had to laugh.
"Sorry," apologised Phoebe, "family joke. Katy and the oven never got on well. We used to feed her rock cakes to the birds - only the birds we really disliked though. At least on a starship you've got replicators, and you can't go wrong with those. Right?"
Kathryn shuffled her feet and said nothing. Annika pretended to an extraordinary level of interest in her hot chocolate.
"Oh Katy, surely you weren't that bad?" Shock quickly gave way to laughter, and soon the kitchen was rocked with mirth.
Gretchen poked her head around the door. "What did I miss?" She was in her housecoat and clearly had a bed square in her sights.
"I'll tell you in the morning, Mom," promised Phoebe. "Just don't let Katy near the waffle maker."
Gretchen rolled her eyes. "Kathryn, you'll show Annika her room? Okay, good night girls." She came in and kissed her daughters. Annika moved back to let Mrs. Janeway pass, but was kissed in her turn before Gretchen left for bed.
Kathryn finished off her chocolate with a hearty swig. "Annika, you must be beat. Bring your drink; I'll take you to your room."
The guest room was a small but comfortable space nestled in a corner of upstairs. Kathryn had already stowed Annika's bags here, but the rest of the room's fittings were family through and through. The wardrobe had space cleared for guests' clothes, but half the hanging rail was taken up with dresses and coats that had long been without a wearer. The bookshelves bore witness to an eclectic but wide range of reading, the patchwork quilt had spent many weeks under the patient fingers of Gretchen Janeway, and on the walls hung cross-stitch pieces that showed a careful eye how one sewer had progressed from fumbling and fudging to precise and careful needlework.
Kathryn took a brown hairy lump down from a shelf. "Annika, meet Mr. Ted." Annika carefully scrutinised the object. It was a crude attempt to render a likeness of a bear, though not to scale, and one eye appeared to be missing. The bear was quite old, though she was unable to estimate how old. But Kathryn was clearly very fond of it.
"He's usually shy of strangers, but I think he might take to you." She planted the bear on the bed pillows. "When I was little I couldn't sleep without him around."
She smoothed the quilt. "I'm in the room across the hall if you need me. The bathroom's next door."
Kathryn turned to go, but Annika still had something to say.
"I didn't know what to expect when you invited me here. The past few weeks have not been easy for me. But you and your family have been kind, and thoughtful. Thank you."
Kathryn took Annika in her arms.
"It's good to have you here, Annika." She let go. "Sweet dreams."
Annika was able to go for a week without having to regenerate after the work done in Starfleet Medical, but in balance her human need for sleep had started to assert itself. Within ten minutes she was in bed and searching for the most comfortable sleeping position.
She felt something furry on her nose and nearly yelped before realising that the stuffed bear had toppled onto her pillow. She started to push it off the bed before something made her pull it to her.
By the time that the gentle rumbles started coming from Kathryn's bedroom, Annika was fast asleep.
Go on to Part 4
Back to Part 2
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