FRIENDS
by ardavenport
- - - Part 1
"We've only got fourteen replacements. I don't know what we're going to do when we run out of them."
Commander Chakotay heard Captain Janeway's voice as he came around the corner of the empty bar and a prickly green and orange potted bush. Or perhaps it would have been blue and red in normal lighting; the room's savory yellow glow favored on this planet distorted all colors to the Human eye. Chakotay's eye immediately found the familiar shape and lines of a Starfleet uniform, back to him, in a low backed chair at the bar.
"I'm sure those multiplex phased thingies that the Gorzats use would do. That-that Neelix person you know, he would know about them. Or we could go out and get some right now," consoled the woman with tall, pinkish-blondish hair sitting next to the captain. She patted the red shoulder of Janeway's uniform and then put a jeweled hand to her painted mouth. "Oh, but they're a bit big to carry around."
"I don't know." Approaching, peering over her shoulder, the top of her hair, Chakotay saw Janeway nudge an empty saucer toward an incredible wreckage of cups and glasses, plates and leftovers spread out on the bar before the two women.
The other woman leaned toward her, clasping her arm with a hand that appeared to have two thumbs and two fingers. "It's only stabilizers, dear. Oh!" Her green-tinted eyes fell upon Chakotay, now standing just behind Janeway. At least he thought they were green; they might easily have been blue in normal light. "You must be for Janeway, here."
"Captain?" Her head tilted toward him.
"Oh, Commander." She looked past him for a moment before actually seeing him and then brushed away a stray lock that had come unfastened from the rest of her brown hair. The normally reddish hue of it had gone orange, her skin yellowed along with everything else in the room. Chakotay had been going in and out of greenish and yellowish and whitish illumination for hours and he couldn't be sure if her color were good or bad.
The other woman, bracelets and belts jingling on her gold and silvered clothes, dragged another chair over for him. "Sit with us." Janeway looked at her companion, perplexed.
"How did you know he was here for me?"
"You're wearing the same thing, dear."
She patted her chest, rediscovering the black front of her uniform, the closure in the middle partially opened. "Oh." Janeway recovered from this serendipity, "Oh, Seepa, this is my first officer, Commander Chakotay. Commander, this is Seepa." Warily, Chakotay took a seat on the inflated cushion, their chairs forming a triangle at the bar. None of the few other patrons in the main room sat near them.
"Delighted, dear." She presented both of her hands to him, rings and jewels adorning all four of her fingers and all four of her thumbs. He lifted his hands, palms up and touched the tips of his fingers to the ends of her pointed, nailless digits and nodded his head toward her. A powerful floral scent wafted from her toward him. Swaying toward him, she pressed her palms to his, the ends of her opposing fingers and thumbs barely curling around the sides of his much larger hands. She narrowed her large, painted eyes at him. He really wasn't sure if she actually had eyelashes cemented together by makeup or a large, dark flap on her eyelids. Her skin was surprisingly firm and warm, almost hot and his own skin tingled where they made contact. Her teeth were pinkish-orange.
Chakotay lowered his hands. Seepa admired him back, his face, the top of his graying black hair and the tattoo at his temple.
He addressed Janeway. "I'm sorry to disturb you, Captain, but we haven't been able to raise you on your communicator."
"You haven't?" Janeway patted her chest again, the off-tone warble of the her communicator pin indicating that it was indeed not functioning.
"Oh, is that a link of some kind?" Seepa exclaimed loudly in the low-level hubbub of the bar. No one else in the place noticed. "I'm sorry, dear, it's me. I didn't know you had anything like that on you. It's the force field; I'm always getting complaints from people about it. It's so hard to go out anywhere sometimes," she complained with long, generous vowels.
"Of course. I didn't even think of it." Janeway extended her hand to her overdressed friend. "Even a minimal subspace distortion like yours would interfere with a communicator and then with the unusual energy densities of your containment field..." She turned back to Chakotay. "You probably couldn't even find the comm signal," she finished, as if Chakotay had just found a lost sock instead of a missing starship captain.
"We have been asking around about you for the past few hours," the commander admitted. He tapped his own comm badge and got the same non-functioning chirp.
"Oh, it's all right." Seepa raised her hands with more bracelet jingling. "I can fix it." She closed her eyes, her gold-pink, painted lids outlined in a deep rose red. Chakotay thought she looked like a gypsy mystic with tall, pale, pinkish hair. She let out an exaggerated sigh and her eyes popped open again. "That should do it. So sorry about the inconvenience. It takes a little effort to restrain the effect and I am so, so lazy about it. Aaah!" She turned back to the discards on the bar. "I need something to eat."
She rummaged, scattering dishes and crumpled plastic, food rinds and crumbs. Janeway started to help her. She shifted in her chair, ignoring the rubbing noises the cushion made. Every chair that Chakotay had seen on this planet had an inflated seat, preferred for comfort, but obviously the natives didn't know about the noises that Humans thought of when sitting down in them. He checked his comm badge again; this time the answering chirp sounded right.
"Oh look!" Seepa held up a small, clear dish holding a crusty peach colored mound in amber syrup. "There's one left." She held it out to the captain who leaned away from it.
"No, I couldn't possibly eat another bite, please."
"Oh Janeway, you've hardly had a thing besides lunch. What about you Commander." He started to refuse, but Seepa suddenly remembered something.
"Oh, wait." She retrieved a green bottle from the bar and poured the last of its contents into the bowl. "Might as well finished this off, too."
"No, thank you." Chakotay held up a hand to ward off the antiseptic, fruity smell that assaulted him.
"All right." With admirable dexterity, Seepa used an eating paddle to shovel it into her mouth.
"How many of these have you had, Captain?" Chakotay had already surmised Janeway's condition and now he'd confirmed the source.
"Oh," she thought for a moment. "Two."
"No, four, dear."
"Really?"
"Of course." Not a spot, smudge or smear anywhere on her, Seepa polished off the last of the dish. "There were eleven of them, and I know I had six, plus this one, so you must have had the other four." Janeway shrugged back and Seepa put the empty dish back; it clattered among the other remains.
"I see."
"It was flambe," Janeway explained back to him, "but after the second one, the waiter didn't want to do it anymore."
"Well, we did almost set the bar on fire," Seepa grumbled.
"I see," Chakotay repeated, finding it very, very hard not to smile. Then he raised an eyebrow and smiled anyway. Janeway's brows lowered.
"Are you implying something with that remark, Commander?"
"No, nothing." He shrugged. "I just thought it might be time to return to the ship."
"What? What?" Seepa butted in, noticing the expression of suspicion on Janeway. The captain straightened in her chair. The noisy seat cushion spoiled her pretense of dignity.
"You are implying something, Commander," Janeway pronounced, her voice as crisp and cutting as when she was sober, her whole face frowning back at him.
"And I don't like it."
He shrugged again, caught in mid-implication. "I would suggest that you avoid straight lines at the moment, Captain." She folded her arms before her and stuck her angular chin out at him.
"Janeway." Seepa leaned into the confrontation. "You didn't say anything about the food."
"There wasn't anything toxic. Well," Janeway amended, "not exactly, just...recreational." Her shoulders dropped, her confession mellowing the usual edge to her tone. The room was too warm, the collar of her shirt too close to her skin. She did not like that smile on Commander Chakotay's roundish face, his dark, solemn eyes looking too wise and amused. She'd seen ethyl alcohol on the list of biological cautions on the menu but now it seemed that she'd had been more careless about it than she'd thought.
Really?" Seepa patted her arm. "Then I'm delighted for you, dear. I haven't been able to get loaded in centuries." She looked about the room, past Chakotay to the windows and the spaceport beyond. "Where is this ship of yours anyway?"
"It's in orbit." Having gotten over her confession, Janeway waved her hands. There just wasn't anything she could do about until the got back to the ship where she could hopefully retire in private after showing Seepa around. She brushed at the stray hairs tickling her neck and getting under her turtleneck collar. And fix her hair. "We'll have to beam aboard." She tapped her communicator. "Janeway to Voyager."
"Ensign Kim here. Captain we've been looking for you," Kim's clearly relieved voice answered.
"Yes, Ensign. Commander Chakotay found me. Three to beam up."
"Beam?" Seepa asked. They sat there. A grumbling set of armor plated, or perhaps scaled, customers on the other side of the room paid their bill and got up from their table to leave.
"Janeway to Voyager. What's the problem?"
"Uh, Kim here, Captain. We're having trouble getting a transporter lock on you. Are you standing near a force field?"
"Yes, dear, she is," Seepa answered, leaning over to the silver and gold communicator badge on Janeway's chest. "What's a transporter lock?"
"Shhhh!" Janeway waved her back. "Seepa can't use the transporter." She leaned toward Chakotay.
"Perhaps, Captain, Seepa could come aboard later?" Chakotay leaned closer to her, his voice low, the cushion of his chair making squirching noises.
"No," Janeway refused. "No, she has to meet B'Elanna. Seepa can...bend space with just her mind. Her whole body has been modified for space travel, her nervous system is linked directly to sub-space." She gestured, eyes wide, as she related this news to her first officer. "She has a ship, but it doesn't have any engines. She can generate gravity fields that let her travel at multi-warp speeds, just by thinking about it." The floral scent hit him again, and the commander realized that it was coming from Janeway this time.
"Oh, I do have orbital thrusters. You don't think I'd go through the bother of pushing myself through a planet's gravity well, do you?" Seepa corrected with a metallic tinkling wave of the arm.
"Captain?" Kim's forgotten voice came back to them.
"Oh, Ensign." Janeway bit her lip. "You'll have to send a shuttle craft for us."
"A shuttle, Captain?" Kim answered. Chakotay opened his mouth to object, but Janeway kept going.
"Yes Ensign, as soon as you can. Oh." She put her hand to her lips, her gaze going to the bar's windows and the wide expanses of the Zabos Spaceport outside. "Where're they going to land? Um, Ensign, send it to where they put Neelix's ship. We'll meet it there."
"Um, aye Captain," Kim's voice hesitated. "Uh, Captain, are you feeling all right?"
"Me? Yes. I'm fine, Ensign. Just send the shuttle," she ordered, her voice momentarily returning to its usual authority. "Janeway out." She slapped her communicator and reached out to Seepa. "We'd better go."
"Uh, Captain," Chakotay caught Janeway's elbow as they rose. She teeter a bit after standing, but recovered.
"Oh, we can't forget our things." Standing as well, Seepa pointed to a white bag at the foot of their chairs. The women went to pick it up and Chakotay saw that the one bag was actually three. Seepa came up with one and Janeway had a double armload.
"If you'll allow me, Captain?" he offered.
She didn't understand his meaning until he actually lifted the bags from her. One of them was heavy, filled with bottles and plastic containers. The other contained shiny fabric and small angular things that he could feel poking him through the thin plastic. Seepa handed her bag to him as well, which was fortunately light; more fabric and angular things.
Janeway let him have the bags and with a huffing exhale she headed for the door. "Captain, can I speak with you for a moment, alone?" The Maquis officer did not care for the idea of bringing this person and her personal force fields on board Voyager.
"What?" She looked up at him and brushed at the loose strands of hair around her face. "Tell me on the way."
She pushed her way out the door, into the green-tinted, sunlight, leaving the confines of the bar for the warm, breezy outdoors. Then she halted, squinting and trying to remember where Neelix had parked his small ship. She'd finally gotten used to the yellow light in the bar and now everything was green; the light, the sky, the paved landing areas and the ships scattered about in the distance. Janeway pointed and marched into the bilious glare, Chakotay trailing after the two women. An occasional hum or buzz and loud rushing of air washed over the paved field as ships rose and dropped from the sky.
Janeway's mobility seemed unimpaired, though a bit flat-footed. Seepa, belts and bracelets jingling, strolled with her, occasionally extending a hand for a friendly pat on the shoulder as they traversed the field. Most of the ships they passed were small with a few large, sub-light cargo carriers, the vast majority of the traffic being simple interplanetary craft that serviced the system's four inhabited planets. A few people waved and greeted Seepa, apparently a regular at the spaceport. Their trip lengthened as they stopped several times at the foot of some ships and at the doors of service buildings to chat. Seepa always introduced Janeway as the captain of her own ship. This accorded her some status with the locals—along with being friends with Seeps—and beaming, she accepted their deference graciously.
Chakotay hefted his bags. First officers apparently didn't merit any status at all.
As they made yet another stop, one huge, oily being driving a cargo lifter suggested that they take Seepa's ship, but she waved the idea away with her jingling bracelets before her hand returned to Janeway's shoulder again; "Yorgal won't get the mess cleaned up until tomorrow." She waved as they moved on.
Chakotay followed right behind them, carrying their bags, his eyes hardly ever leaving Janeway as she chatted with her friend about the lift capacity of Seepa's ship. They seemed to have forgotten that he was even there, silently shadowing them. He watched Janeway's gestures, more exaggerated than usual, her smiles and slightly tipsy walk. The two women were eye-level with each other, though the top of Seepa's hair, now a pasty brown-pink in the green light, was as tall as he was. Her pantsuit had gone completely green-silver, all it's gold highlights having been lost when they exited the jaundiced bar.
He knew he should have been annoyed or even angry at the indignity, at Janeway's insensitivity, but he didn't see that there was much point to it. Technically he was in command while she was...impaired. Janeway and Seepa laughed over a joke about long particle strings and soup. He planned to haul the captain down to Sickbay when they got back to Voyager. In fact, Starfleet regulations demanded it for commanding officers, and Janeway, who was such an adherent to Starfleet regulations, wouldn't have any say about it. And, he had to admit to himself, he would enjoy doing it. Not even Voyager's rigid security officer, Tuvok, could object. He would probably be obliged to help. The Maquis officer felt quite content to wait until then.
Chakotay did try to join in the conversation once when the origin of Seepa's space faring abilities came up while they stood with three, thin beings, potential customers for Seepa, who wanted her to take their cargo to the fifth planet of the system.
"So, your body was modified for space travel?" Chakotay asked.
"Oh, yes, it was horrible. Those Rashos who did it were wretched creatures. I'm glad they're all gone."
"They destroyed your world, did they not?" one of the potential customers—they were called Ee'Roos—asked in a baritone sing-song.
"No we destroyed our world, and them, too, after we found out we'd been taken for fools. We didn't even have any space travel before the Rashos came. We were such rubes thinking it would be such a grand adventure. We didn't know we were the Rashos' test animals, who didn't have the decency to try it out on themselves first." Bracelets jingling, she waved off the bad memory. "All those people coming and going all the time, after too much of that, the whole system imploded from all the holes we made in real space."
"You seem to be taking it well," Chakotay noted her casual tone.
Seepa's expression shifted, subtlety. Her face seemed to hardly change, but all the frivolity went out of it; her whole body, the ever present jingling of metal bracelets and belts...stopped. She didn't freeze or tense up, but the cessation of sound, of her constant hand fluttering fixed his attention on her, on her face. "It happened a very long time ago."
Surprised by Seepa's sudden seriousness, Chakotay didn't answer back. Janeway seemed to already know about it, and her expression was all sympathy. The potential customers respectfully withdrew with promises to contact her when her ship was ready. Seepa then waved off the moment, her slender, silver clothed body glittering green highlights as she reverted back to airiness and they moved on.
As they approached the area where Neelix had parked the small ship that normally rested in Voyager's hanger, Chakotay noticed that Janeway was tiring. Her chatter with Seepa about what sort of clothes one wore with a subspace force field faded to silence. She swiped often at the locks of hair that had come out from her bun in the warm, afternoon breeze, which only made the disarray worse. Even Seepa's shiny clothes were looking a bit rumpled, her stacked, pale hair a bit frazzled.
Chakotay readjusted his load again, the spoils of his captain's afternoon out lunching and shopping and buying things for the ship on Seepa's credit. A film of sweat covered his forehead. In front of him, Janeway stumbled on the pavement, but kept going.
- - - End Part 1