Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Voyager crew. The Minatians, however, belong to me.
Rating: PG, sure.
Thing to know: The time line jumps around; you start in the "present" and go to the "past." Hope that clears things up.
JetC factor: About a 5; it's not too bad.
Author's Note: Sorry for the bits and pieces, but it's really much too long to read all at once.
Resurrection
Chapter
1
The ship
lurched as another bolt of energy seared past its hull. "Report!"
the captain yelled, and Tom Paris turned to her with fearful
eyes. "The helm's not responding, Captain!" His eyes
landed on B'Elanna for a moment, hoping B'Elanna's
hands flew over the console, trying to pull power from where there
was none. "They're draining our power, Captain. I'm not
sure how though. They're somehow by-passing our Another
shot, harder than any of the others, sent Janeway and her first
officer flying "NO!"
that she would be able to
find a way to give power to the ship's controls.
shields."
out of their seats. She sat up almost immediately,
but Chakotay remained still, lying next to
her on the floor. She
put two fingers to his neck and her face paled.
With a start,
Janeway sat up, breathing heavily. Instead of a half-destroyed,
unlit
bridge, she found herself in a cluttered, unlit bedroom. Her
breathing began to slow. It had
just been a dream. Another one
like she had been having for many nights. He would be sitting
next
to her, alive and well at dinner and then he would choke on something
and she wouldn't be
able to save him. Or like tonight's dream, he
would fly out of his chair on the bridge. The
death of her first
officer was plaguing her mind.
She threw back the sheets and
swung her legs out of bed. The gray carpeting was rough
under her
bare feet so she made her way to the bathroom quickly. Inside, she
turned on the
lights to half-illumination and pulled out the metal
basin that was her sink. Immediately, water
began to flow and the
captain splashed some of it on her face. She let the water drip off
for a
few moments before she looked into the mirror.
"You're
getting old, Kathy," she announced to no one in particular. Her
face had thin
lines showing around her brow and mouth; lines that
had not been there a few weeks ago. Her
normally sharp, blue eyes
had faded to grey. She felt older than she looked, however.
She
pushed the sink back in and walked out of the bathroom, turning on
the lights in her
quarters as she went. Maybe the light would make
it all less real, or at least banish it all to
the corners of her
room. She opened her closet door and stared. She wanted to throw on
the blue
dress he loved so much and see him like that, but that
wasn't very captain-ly. She still had to be the captain.
Slipping
into her uniform and running a comb through her short hair, Captain
Kathryn
Janeway exited her quarters. The corridors of her ship
were painfully silent; the repairs from
the Minatian attack were
almost complete so the night shift was back to minimal crewmembers.
The ride to Sickbay took entirely too long. Turbolifts were an
amazingly speedy form of
intra-ship transportation, but on nights
like this, they just took too much time. Finally, the
trip ended
and she was deposited on deck five. She made her way to Sickbay but
stopped outside
the door. She had to prepare herself every time
she went in there, in case things were worse.
Taking a deep
breath, she stepped close to the door and it opened.
She found
the lights were down in the main area, and only a soft beam
illuminated the
office area. A light sonata played and the Doctor
was humming along. Directly in her line of
sight, on a biobed, lay
Commander Chakotay, his body stiff. The stasis unit was clasped over
his
body, blocking his head from her view. Those two curved pieces
of metal were the only things
keeping him breathing at the moment.
He had been like that since the unprovoked attack by the
Minatians.
The boarding, the torture, the screaming...Janeway shook her head,
trying to rid the
images from her memory. But they would not
go.
Slowly, she crossed the floor of the Sickbay to stand
beside Chakotay's bed. She used
one of her rough hands to move a
wisp of hair gently off his forehead.
"Can I help you with something, Captain?" the Doctor asked from behind, startling her.
She shook her head, never taking her eyes of
her first officer. "Oh, no Doctor, I'm
fine. I just came to
check on Commander Chakotay."
The Doctor looked at her
with his typically straight face. "I assure you, Captain,
if
there had been any change in Commander Chakotay's condition,
you would have been the first person that I notified." His voice
almost betrayed frustration, but there was a sense of understanding
behind his words.
She finally looked at him and smiled sadly.
Slowly, she moved her hand away from her
injured friend's head.
"Yes, I know you would have, Doctor. But I couldn't sleep. I
thought
that seeing the Commander might make it easier."
"I can prescribe something..." he suggested, trying to be helpful.
"That won't be necessary," she said, moving
away slowly. She felt numb inside now, no
longer afraid. "I'll
be going back to my quarters. Good night, Doctor."
"Good night, Captain."
"You expect me to believe that, Kathryn?"
Janeway couldn't help but
laugh, leaning into the gray couch as she did so. It was a
light
laugh; one Chakotay enjoyed a great deal, probably because she did it
so infrequently. It
echoed off the bare walls of his quarters,
coming back to his ears even once she had stopped. "It's the
truth, Chakotay. My sorority sisters and I were on probation for six
months at
the Academy after that stunt. I think it was only the
grace of God that kept us all from getting expelled."
Chakotay
chuckled, sipping his coffee and resting the other arm absently on
the back of
the couch. "I think you got into more trouble at
the Academy than B'Elanna did."
She looked over at him,
blue eyes showing the embarrassment of her revelation.
Nevertheless,
she managed a smile. "Well, after the incident with the Admiral
and the spiked
punch, I buckled down with my studies. I don't
think I saw the light of day for two months until
I had brought my
grades back to where I wanted them to be."
"Amazing,"
the first officer said, placing his coffee cup down on the glass
table in
front of his couch. "Computer, time?"
"It is now 0243," the recorded female voice said flatly.
"We've
been talking almost the entire night," Janeway said and then
yawned, her body
responding to the realization that she had been
awake for over twenty hours. "And we have to get
up for the
0730 shift. I'll be drinking a lot of this later," she said,
shaking her cup a
little.
Chakotay chuckled, shaking his black and silver hair, which was just a tad too long. Janeway contemplated suggesting he get it trimmed when one of their com badges beeped.
"Bridge to Commander Chakotay."
Ensign Harry Kim's voice came into the commander's
quarters.
He
sighed and looked over at the captain. Why is it, he wondered,
that everything that
ever goes wrong happens on Harry's bridge
shift? "Go ahead, Harry."
"Sir, there's a
group of ships headed this way. They appear to be quite heavily
armed."
There was a break in the transmission as if Harry
were thinking. "Shall I inform the Captain?"
Chakotay
looked over at Janeway, who was rubbing her eyes in an effort to look
more
leader-like. "We're both on our way, Harry. Chakotay
out."
"What seems
to be the problem, Mr. Kim?" Janeway asked with only mild
interest when she
had reached the Bridge. Had it been 0800 hours,
she might have been a tad more enthusiastic
about the
situation.
"These ships, Captain," he said, moving
out of her seat. "They've been within our
scanning range for
approximately thirty minutes and they just began to power up their
weapons."
Chakotay's eyes landed on Harry heavily. "Why didn't you contact us sooner, Ensign?"
"I...sir,
that is..." Harry stammered. He dropped his head of black hair
at the
reprimand, looking up at the commander with sad almond
eyes. "They were just sitting there, sir.
I didn't really
think they posed a threat."
Chakotay waved him off, sending Harry back to ops where he belonged.
"Open a channel," she said to the Ensign standing at tactical.
"Channel open."
"This is Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation Starship Voyager. I would like an..."
"Retreat
from this area of space. You are not authorized here." The voice
was tinny as
it was filtered through the Universal Translator, but
Janeway could hear how gruff it normally
sounded.
"We didn't realize this space belonged to anyone," she replied honestly.
The voice that filled the Bridge scoffed. "This
space belongs to the Minatians. If you
proceed through this area,
you will be doing so at your own risk."
Janeway shot a
look to her first officer and he pressed a button on the console. "If
we
go around, it will add another nine to ten months to our
trip."
She shook her head of auburn hair slowly, lowering
her voice. "Nine to ten months
without friends for supplies
or a month and a half through hostile territory." She sighed.
"Why
do I always have to make these decisions?"
Chakotay smiled a bit. "Because you are the captain."
"Thanks for the reminder," she groaned, pressing the button on the console again.
"Surely we can come to some sort of
agreement. Going around your space would add almost
a year to our
trip," she said, not quite pleading but something in her tone
suggested she would
not be above that.
The voice responded,
almost bored. "We will board your ship and search it. If we do
not
think that you are harmful to us in anyway, we will allow you
to pass." It was clear he had made
this speech many times
before.
Janeway rolled her eyes. This sounds familiar, she
mouthed to Chakotay. "How long will
this take?"
"A few hours."
She raised an eyebrow and Chakotay just
shrugged. "Very well," she said, shutting off
the
communications link. "Attention all crew, this is the Captain.
Prepare to be boarded."
The crew gave a
respectful distance to the captain as she walked the corridors of
her
ship. Her attitude had changed over the past several weeks;
she had become introverted and
anti-social. Or more so than she
had been. Without Chakotay to bring her out of seclusion, she
just
sat in her room. She showed up at all her shifts, but was rarely seen
elsewhere, unless it
was Sickbay, standing by the Commander's
bed.
Now she walked to his side again, traveling the well-worn
path she had been on so many
times since the Minatians had
left.
"How is he, Doctor?" she asked as soon as the doors were open.
"Unchanged, Captain," the hologram
responded, trying not to show his frustration. "I
have been
playing some selections of music from his personal library when he
and I are the only
two in here, but I'm afraid he has shown no
progress."
"But he's not declining in health
either?" The Doctor shook his head. "That's
what's
important," she said, looking down at the comatose
officer. She rested a hand on his slowly
moving chest, feeling his
heart beat beneath the skin. "Chakotay," she whispered,
leaning down
so her lips were millimeters from his ear. "You're
going to get better; the Doctor is working
round-the-clock on how
to cure you. Just hold on," she added, her own personal plea. It
wasn't
very unique, but he would understand.
Chakotay lay still. The voices around him were muffled, clearly filled with concern.
The Doctor and Captain were talking about him. He
felt a light breeze on his skin and realized
it was the captain's
breath. Her words rang in his mind even after she had left.
Just hold on.
I'm trying, Kathryn. I want to wake up. But this
old body doesn't want to listen to my
mind. I will convince it,
Kathryn; I will wake up.
If only he could get himself to believe that.