Beth 6787

December 2018

Time's Up !

Set during Endgame. After acquiring the Klingon temporal matrix technology (and a Romulan cloaking device) Admiral Janeway takes a detour to May 20th 2375 to pick up a very special momento ...

She had to hurry. Harry would only be able to hold off those Klingon ships for a few seconds more and her shuttle was taking a battering, ablative armour or not. She had to enter the detour coordinates now, she just hoped that her memory was accurate...

The shuttle emerged into what looked like a war zone. She activated the early 25th century cloaking technology which she knew Voyager would not be capable of detecting. She hoped the same was true for the Krenim in all their incarnations. She checked the timeline. May 19th 2375 2245 hours. The night before her birthday and Chakotay was to give her that watch at high noon (she smiled ruefully at her memory of Chakotay's flair for the dramatic. He had wanted to make his point about rising above impossible odds and they had done so and survived for another day). She brought the shuttle to within transport distance and activated her personal cloak. That had taken some doing. It was bad enough that she had acquired illegal Klingon temporal technology but she had had to call in a major favour from a very dubious source to acquire the cloaking technology too. Still it was worth it. There was a whole year of her life she would have known nothing about had it not been for dear Reginald Barclay. Oh she knew the drill. When a Starship and crew experienced an alternative timeline the logs were recorded and encrypted. They were then stored in the computer core and masked from the entire crew, including the ship's captain. Once the mission was over and debriefings and disembarkation had occurred, officers from the Temporal Commission came in and retrieved the classified files. Normally no one else in Starfleet would ever know about those 'missing events'. Whole areas of a crew's life were erased from memory and record. When Voyager had eventually limped home in 2394 (her timeline) she had no idea whether any such events had been experienced by herself and crew. But, after twenty three years in the DQ she had a very strong hunch they had. It took a lot of persuasion but eventually Reg had been talked into retrieving them for her. She swore they would be strictly for her eyes only - which was true as the only other person she intended to share them with was her younger self when she eventually arrived at that nebula containing the transwarp hub. But first things first. She had to retrieve a very special momento which would prove that she hadn't lost her marbles entirely. One pocket watch replicated by Chakotay under very arduous circumstances.

Besides, she was curious. Oh she had read the logs in depth but struggled with the idea that there was a whole year of her life over which she had no direct memories. She wanted to capture some of the thoughts and sensations that she must have been subjected to. What better way than spending a few hours aboard ship? She would beam over for an hour or so this evening, get the lay of the land so to speak, then beam back in just before midday tomorrow. She wanted to hear Chakotay retell the story and give her the watch in real time. She knew that two hours later he was beamed off the Bridge with Tom Paris to the Krenim timeship. Within that time window Chakotay would return to his quarters and place the watch in his bedside drawer for safekeeping. As soon as he was off ship she would retrieve the pocket watch and head for 2378.

Kathryn materialised on C deck, or what was left of it. Most of the crew quarters were 'open plan' their doors and part of the bulkheads smashed to smithereens. Astrometrics had obviously been shut down some time back and they were running on grey mode, more like black mode by now the Admiral thought to herself. This whole experience exemplified why she hated temporal mechanics so much and the Temporal Commission. The arbiters of the right to your own memories. How dare they play God and decide which parts of your life you were privy to. What authority in the universe could possibly give them that right?! She had to admit that her attitude was probably the reason for her antipathy towards Braxton and his ilk. She felt a very ignoble satisfaction that she had had a chance to turn the tables on him back in 1996. She stepped out of what had been Astrometrics and headed for the Bridge. Her younger self was still on duty as were most of Alpha shift. Perhaps by this stage it was all hands on deck unless you had collapsed in exhaustion for a couple of hours sleep! No sign of Chakotay, but Harry and B'Elanna were busy with their Captain tipping the guts out of the helm console. The Bridge lights were flickering and it looked as though they had lost Tactical and most of the Ops functions a while back. She had seen enough and decided to check out what was left of sickbay, was the Doctor's program still operational? The turbolifts were long since defunct so it was going to have to be a crawl through the Jeffries Tubes. Only six decks down but she wished that she was 26 years younger! She had to exit into several derelict deck sections as she encountered others using the network as a highway around the ship. She may have a cloak which made her invisible but she was not immaterial. In other words if she bumped into someone they would feel it and assume an alien invasion. Even she was not prepared to mess with the timeline to that extent!

Eventually she emerged on Deck 9 and stopped dead. There was Tuvok, apparently attempting to do his security rounds, according to what she could glean from Neelix's prattle about which auditory signal to use for the alarm klaxon. The thing that riveted her attention was that he seemed to have been blinded and was relying on Seven to guide him about the ship. She had read all this in the log that Reg had duplicated for her but it was still a shock to be presented with the flesh and blood reality in the here and now.

Suddenly the full impact of Chakotay's gesture the following day hit home. How on Earth had she been so blind at the time. So tunnel visioned that she had barely registered Chakotay or his gift, which was far more than the literal watch, she knew with hindsight. Oh she had found it in his shattered quarters a few days later and appreciated it then but it was too late of course. Chakotay never knew and her act of rebuttal had been yet another dagger to his heart. No wonder he had ended up succumbing to Seven's advances! She had seen enough for this evening and beamed back to her shuttle to recharge the mobile cloak and set the timer for tomorrow lunchtime. That done she decided to try and sleep for a few hours.

The next morning, feeling slightly reinvigorated she beamed back and watched THAT scene play out. She had brought a holo-recorder with her, also cloaked of course, and although she felt like a voyeur she recorded the whole scene. She fully intended to give both the watch and the recording to a certain forty eight year old version of herself who needed to face a few home truths! It was hard to keep the recorder steady as she felt her eyes welling up and her hands shaking. Get a grip Admiral, she told herself, and focus on the end objective. Her younger self carried on fiddling with some diode or other and she followed Chakotay back to his quarters and watched.

Chakotay just slumped onto the end of his bed and wept, the watch still in his hand. Her heart went out to him. Then he got up and went over to what had been the replicator he fumbled in a drawer for an old cup and tea bag then managed to coax a small amount of water out of the thing. Obviously it was tepid at best by the look on his face but beggars couldn't be choosers. "Perhaps you are right Kathryn" he said to what he thought was the empty room "this watch could perhaps supply you with the energy for a much needed coffee if I recycle it...". He headed over to the recycler and put the watch on the plate. Just as it was about to dematerialise he grabbed it back. "Forgive me Captain but I just can't bring myself to do it." And with that he placed the watch, carefully wrapped in some tissue paper in his bedside drawer.

"Oh Chakotay, forgive me" whispered the Admiral but he had already fallen asleep with exhaustion. She had seen more than enough and beamed back to her shuttle. Just one more very brief visit in a few hours to retrieve the watch. She was relieved that she only had to visit this Voyager for another couple of minutes at most.

Later her mission successfully carried out she set coordinates and headed for 2378.

Ten minutes until she had to meet the Captain in her shuttle and have that inoculation. The plan was as foolproof as they could make it and it had a good chance of working out. Just time to visit the Captain's Ready Room whilst she was in sickbay with the Doctor collecting the serum which would spell the end of the Borg's tyranny, at least so she fervently hoped.

She activated the personal cloak one last time and walked across the Bridge. There was Tuvok going over the flight plan with Tom. That meant that at this very minute Chakotay and Seven were in the cargo bay on one of their dates. Somehow the irony helped drive her on. She stepped into the Ready Room and placed the PADD with the holo-recording on and the watch in a little carved box (this she had also found in Chakotay's quarters and had remembered him carving it on New Earth shortly after they arrived) into the top right hand drawer. She then programmed Kathryn's console to play back a little introduction from her as soon as they were in Earth orbit and Kathryn was alone. She could do no more and the rest was down to fate and her younger self. She very much hoped young Kathryn would keep her end of the bargain and truly get them both home! With that the Admiral took one last glance out of the window at the nebula and went to meet her destiny.

"Set a course. For home." Captain Janeway instructed Commander Chakotay who had just taken over the helm from Tom. She counted the minutes until she could escape to her Ready Room. Eleven agonising minutes of formalities before she had been able to hand the Bridge over to Chakotay. And Seven, still there, standing by Ops making eyes at him...

Kathryn shut the door of her sanctum and engaged the privacy lock. She headed straight for the replicator and made a double espresso before collapsing into her seat behind her desk. The computer flashed up to signal an urgent message for her eyes only. She was tempted to ignore it but perhaps better to focus on anything that the turmoil going through her mind. She hit the access code and Admiral Janeway's face appeared on screen. The message was brief but brutal - she packed no punches! How some events from another timeline that she had no recollection of could possibly help matters now she did not know but her natural curiosity forced her to open the drawer.

She sat in stunned silence after watching the PADD video, the pocket watch in her hand. The Admiral was right, she had been a blind fool. And she owed her big time! Admiral Janeway had sacrificed herself to give them another chance. The least she could do was play her part.

She hit the Comm "Commander Chakotay, could you join me in the Ready Room. It is a matter of some delicacy and urgency."

Chakotay looked at Seven who just shrugged then went back to her console. Whatever could be so urgent just now? He hoped it was good news. "On my way Captain."...

THE END

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