Residuum
By Alex Voy
Rating: G
Disclaimer:
Paramount owns the copyright and all the characters. I make no profit, just enjoy writing about them.
Acknowledgements:
This Janeway vignette contains references to several episodes besides 'Endgame'. Events from 'Caretaker', 'Twisted', Deadlock', and 'Timeless' are all referred to from Kim's point of view. This is a short piece, and is unlike my other stories in both content and length.
Residuum
For an instant, the shuttlecraft is bathed in the green glow of the Klingons' phaser fire. Its armoured hull reflecting a silver bright halo as it is silhouetted in glorious defiance for one last, brief flash of brilliance before it vanishes with shocking suddenness into the unfathomable depths of the temporal rift.
"Captain, one of the Klingon ships is entering the rift." Lieutenant Sunorn the Bajoran operations officer speaks from his station behind my command chair. But even as he utters the last words, the rift vanishes from our view screen and the Klingon ship continues on its course through familiar space.
"Should we continue pursuit, Captain?" The pilot turns to face me from the conn.
"No." I look at the other two damaged ships that limp slowly behind their leader. "Hail them. See if they need medical assistance." I stand up from my chair, conscious that all eyes are focussed on me. They have obeyed my orders without question and I have lied to them, led them on a rogue mission and attacked three vessels belonging to Federation allies. Starfleet Command will have some searching questions to ask when we return to our designated patrol area even if the Klingons don't report the incident for fear of exposing their own illegal actions.
I see those same questions in the eyes of my First Officer and turn away, heading for my ready room. "You have the bridge, Commander."
"Captain…." He makes as though to follow me and I look at him. I guess he sees something in my eyes, because he hesitates and then looks up to Sunorn. "You heard the Captain. Hail the Klingon ships."
My ready room is silent but for the faint, ever present hum that is an integral part of all starships. My chair is turned sideways to the desk, just as I left it. But it isn't my chair that draws my attention. It is the empty chair on the opposite side of the desk that mocks me with its very presence.
Admiral Kathryn Janeway sat in that chair just a few hours ago and quietly argued her case, determined on an mission that would change the course of history and obliterate the past twenty six years of the lives of every being in the galaxy: an action so illegal, I should have thrown her into the brig the moment she set foot on my ship. I shouldn't even have listened to her, certainly not allowed her to persuade me to assist in her insane plan.
But how could I have refused her plea, when I had myself done the same thing she was planning? Almost thirty years ago when I found myself in an almost identical situation, I apparently did exactly what she was proposing to do. Only Admiral Janeway knew of the message I sent to myself from the future, when Chakotay and I changed fifteen years of history after Voyager and its crew were destroyed by a mistake I had made with the slipstream drive.
She had called me a 'guardian angel'. Years later, when she sat in my ready room on the Rhode Island, she smiled that crooked smile that had once been so familiar, but had rarely been in evidence during those increasingly dark last years on Voyager. In truth, there had been little to smile about.
It tore my heart to see that smile and know what she was asking. She reminded me that it was I who had wanted to take on the Borg twenty-four years ago, and she who had denied my request to go on what would almost certainly have been a suicide mission. We had argued many times over the years and the outcome had almost always been the same. This time, she couldn't pull rank on me and she knew it. This time it wasn't between the ensign and the captain, the captain and the admiral. This time it was between two old friends who knew each other too well to challenge the inevitable.
She had sat in that chair. A small, elegant, silver haired woman who emanated power like a fusion generator, and whose presence still filled the room hours after she had left it with my unwilling consent. Instead of confining her in the brig, I had gone with her to her shuttlecraft and checked out its systems, including the Klingon device that she intended using to create the temporal rift.
"I always assumed it would be a one way trip." Her voice, low and husky spoke the words as I rechecked the specs, desperately hoping my first calculations had been wrong and that somehow, she would have enough power to get back to her own time and space if something went wrong.
"You're sure I can't talk you out of this?" I knew the question was hopeless, but I had to try.
She got up from the pilot's seat and raised her chin in that old defiant way, then taking my face between her hands, stared into my eyes for a long, silent moment. I saw the pain of all those years, the hope that had been slowly whittled away until there was nothing left but the grim stubbornness that sustained her will to put things right no matter what the personal cost. She pulled me to her in a tight embrace and I put my arms around her, smelling the familiar faint perfume that she had worn during the early days on Voyager as she nestled against my shoulder.
No words passed between us, but I knew that was the last time I would feel her familiar touch, look into those smokey blue eyes that had dominated my life for more than thirty years.
It was in a ready room much like my own that I had first laid eyes on this woman who was to have such a profound effect upon my life. A newly commissioned ensign, fresh from Starfleet Academy and as green as they come, I had reported to Captain Kathryn Janeway along with Tom Paris in her ready room on the equally newly commissioned starship, Voyager.
If I could have guessed at even a fraction of the events that would result from that meeting, would I still have stood so ramrod stiffly to attention? Felt such awe in the presence of this small woman with a voice that could crush gravel or flow like liquid velvet according to her mood?
It was several years before I realised that she must have experienced very similar feelings of trepidation that day. Oh, not at meeting her youngest, newest ensign, but even the great Captain Janeway was not above feeling nervous at taking command of Starfleet's finest prototype starship on its first mission into deep space with a strange crew. I had the advantage of her there, having already made a friend on Voyager in the shape of Tom Paris; whereas until we found Tuvok on the Caretaker's array a few days later, she had no friends at all on board. Her First Officer didn't strike me as the friendly type and gave the impression he resented serving under a woman. We never got the chance to know him of course, because he was killed, along with a lot of other crewmembers when Voyager was hurled into the Delta Quadrant.
I used to wonder how she must have felt about that: losing so many of her people so soon after taking command of Voyager. Later, when I came to know her better and saw how deeply she was affected by the constant trickle of lost lives as we fought our way home across the vast distances of the Delta Quadrant, I realised what a terrible time it must have been for her. And that of course, was the reason I was there that day, contemplating her empty chair and mourning the loss of my friend the admiral and all those others who never made it back home. The burden of responsibility had grown too heavy for her to bear and I had not the heart to force her to live on as the much-feted hero of the Delta Quadrant, when she believed she had the means to set things right.
Besides, I had my own share of guilt to bear. For in a way, I was partly to blame for Voyager being stranded so far from home. If Captain Janeway hadn't been so determined to rescue me from the Caretaker, she would never have met the Ocampa and taken the decision to sacrifice Voyager's chance to return home in order to save them from the Kazon. If she hadn't antagonized the Kazon, we'd have been saved all that misery with Seska. But in those days, she based her decisions on what she knew deep down was right. It was only later, after years of struggling to uphold that right, her sense of isolation began to cloud her judgement.
All that was in the future though, when I stood so stiff in her ready room that first day and she told me: "Mr. Kim, at ease before you strain something."
Months later, when the two of us were crawling through the Jeffries tubes together while the ship contorted around us, she stopped suddenly and said:
"Harry, I just want you to know, you've been one of the bright spots of this whole mission." Her eyes shone in the dim lighting and her voice was rich and low. "You've exceeded any expectations I might have had of you."
I felt so proud she had thought that of me, and a little embarrassed at such direct praise. I was still in awe of her and hardly knew her as a person, but that was about to change when moments later, she was caught in the spatial distortion and I had to pull her free of its grip. I half dragged, half carried her through the ship to Sandrine's while she drifted, semi-conscious into delirium. In that time, when I saw her helpless and powerless to save herself or her ship, I realised she wasn't the super being I had come to believe in. She was flesh and blood like the rest of us and shared the same doubts and fears we all felt. She was just better at keeping them hidden below the surface by sheer strength of will.
When Voyager became divided into two ships with two identical crews, my captain and my crew sacrificed themselves to save the other ship. Their Harry Kim and baby Naomi Wildman had both been killed as a result of the phase shift and my captain sent me over to the other ship with the baby before she destroyed her own Voyager. We were being overrun by the Vidiians and I tried to argue with her.
"Move it ensign, that's an order!" Her voice cracked like a whiplash across the bridge.
Until today, that was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. Leaving her, standing alone on her bridge despite the crew all around her while she reeled off the self-destruct command codes. She turned to me as I hesitated at the turbolift doors and gave a slight nod. Of what: encouragement, acknowledgement, farewell? All of these and more were in the faint smile as she turned away and activated the self-destruct sequence. My final image was of her sitting in her command chair, Chakotay at her side, calmly waiting for the Vidiians to burst onto the bridge.
Over the years, I saw her at bay like this so many times. It brought out the best in her, when things were so desperate and she had nowhere to go. She fought to the last possible moment and never gave up hope no matter how bad things appeared to be. I saw her watch Voyager fly away with Seska and Cullah in command after they marooned us on a prehistoric planet. Even now, when I have my own command, I can't imagine how she must have felt, to see her ship taken like that, with no realistic hope of leaving that inhospitable planet. Yet she marshalled the crew and coaxed, cajoled and bullied them into believing it was just a matter of time before we were rescued. And she was right. We were rescued: Voyager did return for us and she just smiled that secret smile as though she had known all along and there had never been the slightest doubt in her mind.
If desperate times brought out the best in her, it was the crushing burden of guilt that brought the dark side of her nature to the fore. Periods of inactivity or deaths among her crew made her prone to increasing bouts of depression. No matter what the actual cause, she accepted each death as her own personal responsibility for having taken the original decision that had stranded us in the Delta Quadrant. Several times, the demons that lurked at her shoulder almost led her to cross the line that no starship captain should ever approach. Driven by extreme circumstances, she came close on a few occasions, most notably during Voyager's encounter with the Equinox and again a few months before we re-entered the Alpha Quadrant when we became involved in the civil war in the Vosasion system and the Emperor executed an entire away team sent to rescue casualties from a disintegrating hospital ship.
As I stand in my ready room on the Rhode Island, thinking about those increasingly desperate last years in the Delta quadrant, I know that Kathryn Janeway has now finally crossed the line and put herself beyond the laws of all civilised societies. In helping her, I too have crossed that line and the irony is, I will never know if she succeeds. I will only know, by my continued existence in the present, if she has failed.
I order a mug of coffee from the replicator, strong and black the way she always drank it. The starlight sparkles reflected diamonds on the silver coloured mug when I raise it in salute at the window.
I doubt the tormented soul that is Kathryn Janeway will ever find true happiness, but as the coffee burns a bitter, scalding path down my throat, I hope she might find in the past, the peace she has never known in the present.
====== END ======
If you enjoyed 'Residuum', try my website at http://freespace.virgin.net/voy.odyssey/index.htm
for more Voyager stories.
By Alex Voy
Rating: G
Disclaimer:
Paramount owns the copyright and all the characters. I make no profit, just enjoy writing about them.
Acknowledgements:
This Janeway vignette contains references to several episodes besides 'Endgame'. Events from 'Caretaker', 'Twisted', Deadlock', and 'Timeless' are all referred to from Kim's point of view. This is a short piece, and is unlike my other stories in both content and length.
For an instant, the shuttlecraft is bathed in the green glow of the Klingons' phaser fire. Its armoured hull reflecting a silver bright halo as it is silhouetted in glorious defiance for one last, brief flash of brilliance before it vanishes with shocking suddenness into the unfathomable depths of the temporal rift.
"Captain, one of the Klingon ships is entering the rift." Lieutenant Sunorn the Bajoran operations officer speaks from his station behind my command chair. But even as he utters the last words, the rift vanishes from our view screen and the Klingon ship continues on its course through familiar space.
"Should we continue pursuit, Captain?" The pilot turns to face me from the conn.
"No." I look at the other two damaged ships that limp slowly behind their leader. "Hail them. See if they need medical assistance." I stand up from my chair, conscious that all eyes are focussed on me. They have obeyed my orders without question and I have lied to them, led them on a rogue mission and attacked three vessels belonging to Federation allies. Starfleet Command will have some searching questions to ask when we return to our designated patrol area even if the Klingons don't report the incident for fear of exposing their own illegal actions.
I see those same questions in the eyes of my First Officer and turn away, heading for my ready room. "You have the bridge, Commander."
"Captain…." He makes as though to follow me and I look at him. I guess he sees something in my eyes, because he hesitates and then looks up to Sunorn. "You heard the Captain. Hail the Klingon ships."
My ready room is silent but for the faint, ever present hum that is an integral part of all starships. My chair is turned sideways to the desk, just as I left it. But it isn't my chair that draws my attention. It is the empty chair on the opposite side of the desk that mocks me with its very presence.
Admiral Kathryn Janeway sat in that chair just a few hours ago and quietly argued her case, determined on an mission that would change the course of history and obliterate the past twenty six years of the lives of every being in the galaxy: an action so illegal, I should have thrown her into the brig the moment she set foot on my ship. I shouldn't even have listened to her, certainly not allowed her to persuade me to assist in her insane plan.
But how could I have refused her plea, when I had myself done the same thing she was planning? Almost thirty years ago when I found myself in an almost identical situation, I apparently did exactly what she was proposing to do. Only Admiral Janeway knew of the message I sent to myself from the future, when Chakotay and I changed fifteen years of history after Voyager and its crew were destroyed by a mistake I had made with the slipstream drive.
She had called me a 'guardian angel'. Years later, when she sat in my ready room on the Rhode Island, she smiled that crooked smile that had once been so familiar, but had rarely been in evidence during those increasingly dark last years on Voyager. In truth, there had been little to smile about.
It tore my heart to see that smile and know what she was asking. She reminded me that it was I who had wanted to take on the Borg twenty-four years ago, and she who had denied my request to go on what would almost certainly have been a suicide mission. We had argued many times over the years and the outcome had almost always been the same. This time, she couldn't pull rank on me and she knew it. This time it wasn't between the ensign and the captain, the captain and the admiral. This time it was between two old friends who knew each other too well to challenge the inevitable.
She had sat in that chair. A small, elegant, silver haired woman who emanated power like a fusion generator, and whose presence still filled the room hours after she had left it with my unwilling consent. Instead of confining her in the brig, I had gone with her to her shuttlecraft and checked out its systems, including the Klingon device that she intended using to create the temporal rift.
"I always assumed it would be a one way trip." Her voice, low and husky spoke the words as I rechecked the specs, desperately hoping my first calculations had been wrong and that somehow, she would have enough power to get back to her own time and space if something went wrong.
"You're sure I can't talk you out of this?" I knew the question was hopeless, but I had to try.
She got up from the pilot's seat and raised her chin in that old defiant way, then taking my face between her hands, stared into my eyes for a long, silent moment. I saw the pain of all those years, the hope that had been slowly whittled away until there was nothing left but the grim stubbornness that sustained her will to put things right no matter what the personal cost. She pulled me to her in a tight embrace and I put my arms around her, smelling the familiar faint perfume that she had worn during the early days on Voyager as she nestled against my shoulder.
No words passed between us, but I knew that was the last time I would feel her familiar touch, look into those smokey blue eyes that had dominated my life for more than thirty years.
It was in a ready room much like my own that I had first laid eyes on this woman who was to have such a profound effect upon my life. A newly commissioned ensign, fresh from Starfleet Academy and as green as they come, I had reported to Captain Kathryn Janeway along with Tom Paris in her ready room on the equally newly commissioned starship, Voyager.
If I could have guessed at even a fraction of the events that would result from that meeting, would I still have stood so ramrod stiffly to attention? Felt such awe in the presence of this small woman with a voice that could crush gravel or flow like liquid velvet according to her mood?
It was several years before I realised that she must have experienced very similar feelings of trepidation that day. Oh, not at meeting her youngest, newest ensign, but even the great Captain Janeway was not above feeling nervous at taking command of Starfleet's finest prototype starship on its first mission into deep space with a strange crew. I had the advantage of her there, having already made a friend on Voyager in the shape of Tom Paris; whereas until we found Tuvok on the Caretaker's array a few days later, she had no friends at all on board. Her First Officer didn't strike me as the friendly type and gave the impression he resented serving under a woman. We never got the chance to know him of course, because he was killed, along with a lot of other crewmembers when Voyager was hurled into the Delta Quadrant.
I used to wonder how she must have felt about that: losing so many of her people so soon after taking command of Voyager. Later, when I came to know her better and saw how deeply she was affected by the constant trickle of lost lives as we fought our way home across the vast distances of the Delta Quadrant, I realised what a terrible time it must have been for her. And that of course, was the reason I was there that day, contemplating her empty chair and mourning the loss of my friend the admiral and all those others who never made it back home. The burden of responsibility had grown too heavy for her to bear and I had not the heart to force her to live on as the much-feted hero of the Delta Quadrant, when she believed she had the means to set things right.
Besides, I had my own share of guilt to bear. For in a way, I was partly to blame for Voyager being stranded so far from home. If Captain Janeway hadn't been so determined to rescue me from the Caretaker, she would never have met the Ocampa and taken the decision to sacrifice Voyager's chance to return home in order to save them from the Kazon. If she hadn't antagonized the Kazon, we'd have been saved all that misery with Seska. But in those days, she based her decisions on what she knew deep down was right. It was only later, after years of struggling to uphold that right, her sense of isolation began to cloud her judgement.
All that was in the future though, when I stood so stiff in her ready room that first day and she told me: "Mr. Kim, at ease before you strain something."
Months later, when the two of us were crawling through the Jeffries tubes together while the ship contorted around us, she stopped suddenly and said:
"Harry, I just want you to know, you've been one of the bright spots of this whole mission." Her eyes shone in the dim lighting and her voice was rich and low. "You've exceeded any expectations I might have had of you."
I felt so proud she had thought that of me, and a little embarrassed at such direct praise. I was still in awe of her and hardly knew her as a person, but that was about to change when moments later, she was caught in the spatial distortion and I had to pull her free of its grip. I half dragged, half carried her through the ship to Sandrine's while she drifted, semi-conscious into delirium. In that time, when I saw her helpless and powerless to save herself or her ship, I realised she wasn't the super being I had come to believe in. She was flesh and blood like the rest of us and shared the same doubts and fears we all felt. She was just better at keeping them hidden below the surface by sheer strength of will.
When Voyager became divided into two ships with two identical crews, my captain and my crew sacrificed themselves to save the other ship. Their Harry Kim and baby Naomi Wildman had both been killed as a result of the phase shift and my captain sent me over to the other ship with the baby before she destroyed her own Voyager. We were being overrun by the Vidiians and I tried to argue with her.
"Move it ensign, that's an order!" Her voice cracked like a whiplash across the bridge.
Until today, that was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. Leaving her, standing alone on her bridge despite the crew all around her while she reeled off the self-destruct command codes. She turned to me as I hesitated at the turbolift doors and gave a slight nod. Of what: encouragement, acknowledgement, farewell? All of these and more were in the faint smile as she turned away and activated the self-destruct sequence. My final image was of her sitting in her command chair, Chakotay at her side, calmly waiting for the Vidiians to burst onto the bridge.
Over the years, I saw her at bay like this so many times. It brought out the best in her, when things were so desperate and she had nowhere to go. She fought to the last possible moment and never gave up hope no matter how bad things appeared to be. I saw her watch Voyager fly away with Seska and Cullah in command after they marooned us on a prehistoric planet. Even now, when I have my own command, I can't imagine how she must have felt, to see her ship taken like that, with no realistic hope of leaving that inhospitable planet. Yet she marshalled the crew and coaxed, cajoled and bullied them into believing it was just a matter of time before we were rescued. And she was right. We were rescued: Voyager did return for us and she just smiled that secret smile as though she had known all along and there had never been the slightest doubt in her mind.
If desperate times brought out the best in her, it was the crushing burden of guilt that brought the dark side of her nature to the fore. Periods of inactivity or deaths among her crew made her prone to increasing bouts of depression. No matter what the actual cause, she accepted each death as her own personal responsibility for having taken the original decision that had stranded us in the Delta Quadrant. Several times, the demons that lurked at her shoulder almost led her to cross the line that no starship captain should ever approach. Driven by extreme circumstances, she came close on a few occasions, most notably during Voyager's encounter with the Equinox and again a few months before we re-entered the Alpha Quadrant when we became involved in the civil war in the Vosasion system and the Emperor executed an entire away team sent to rescue casualties from a disintegrating hospital ship.
As I stand in my ready room on the Rhode Island, thinking about those increasingly desperate last years in the Delta quadrant, I know that Kathryn Janeway has now finally crossed the line and put herself beyond the laws of all civilised societies. In helping her, I too have crossed that line and the irony is, I will never know if she succeeds. I will only know, by my continued existence in the present, if she has failed.
I order a mug of coffee from the replicator, strong and black the way she always drank it. The starlight sparkles reflected diamonds on the silver coloured mug when I raise it in salute at the window.
I doubt the tormented soul that is Kathryn Janeway will ever find true happiness, but as the coffee burns a bitter, scalding path down my throat, I hope she might find in the past, the peace she has never known in the present.
If you enjoyed 'Residuum', try my website at http://freespace.virgin.net/voy.odyssey/index.htm
for more Voyager stories.