CHAP 4: failure

Chakotay sat staring at his grades on his bed. The news wasn't good, his grades were worse than they were back in high school, and it was hard to be worse than a D. He had a D in three classes. The only class he thought he was doing well in was temporal mechanics. Only because it was the easiest class where every hypothetical question had the answer,'Dont fuck with the space time continuum!' Simple answer to everything. Only a hand full of star ships even had the opportunity to change the timeline of history, and everything least seemed normal.

The unfortunate point was he was struggling. He didn't understand, he had done so well the first time he was in the academy. What had changed? Everytime he tried to figure it out Talia came to mind; but she was the reason he was doing so well in his command structure class. She was the reason he went to temporal mechanics class. She was the reason he did his last three reports. She was the reason he stayed. Starfleet had taken so much from him, his post, his command, his uniform, and sent him back to academy. But if there was one good thing they did for him, it was her. Being there with her; they may have not met her in Starfleet, but it helped them spend a lot of time together and help them grow closer. He never felt closer to anyone.

It was evening on the academy grounds. The golden gate bridge was covered in a deep fog and the city was lit up in the distance. Chakotay had been given officers quarters instead of the normal dorm rooms the average cadet received. They saw no harm since he was just doing an extra year, and he had been an officer, once. It was nice quarters. It was split leveled and had a Seperate bedroom from the rest of the room. It was better than his quarters on a few posts. He looked around his quarters. It was somewhat empty. Just a few of his possessions here and there, a sculpture his father made him take, a few native artworks and his clothes. He was alone in his quarters. Staring at his grade reports, he couldn't do anything else but stare and yell at himself for doing something as stupid as let his grades go so low. It was so easy the first time he was there. He enjoyed himself and had no questions about where he belonged. Now he wasn't so sure.

"Ferren to Chakotay." His comm badge announced, he smiled.

"Yes Talia I'm here."

"Do you want to meet me at the bar?" He heard loud music and people chatting in the distance.

"Sounds to me like you're already there. Ill beam down in a few minutes." He didn't plan on waiting. He'd rather do anything than sit there.

Chakotay walked into the bar a minute later seeing that he had nothing better to do in his quarters. Talia was waiting for him on the bar in her regular stool. A tarkalian was tending the bar, he had left several empty glasses in front of Talia, which obviously meant that she had been there for a while. She waved him over in a semi buzzed fashion. Chakotay couldn't help but grin at her cute wave. Perhaps she was more tipsy than buzzed. He sat at the bar with her non the less, she hugged him at the side and called over the tender for another drink.

"How long have you been here? And why?" He said ordering his regular betazoid burban.

"Umm, probably an hour... don't judge me on I've had a rough day. I got my grade report, two C's! What the hell did I do to get two cs?" She complained. Chakotay laughed lifting up his drink and swallowing the whole thing.

"You think you have it bad? I have three D's!" They started laughing, picking up another drink after another. It was their favorite bar. The only one in the area that served real alcohol. Whatever they were drinking was working fast.

"You do realize we are laughing at our failure? God we suck!" Talia joked. Chakotay looked at her grabbing her face. Suddenly he kissed her greatly. He did for as long as he could. She took his head rubbing her hands in his dark hair. He final withdrew to breathe.

"We totally suck." He said back. She smiled then released her hair from her pointy tail. Chakotay had messed it up when he grabbed her head. He loved when her hair was up like that because he could vividly see her spots. Talia considered herself human but she was one fourth trill and she had a few but clear trill spots on her body. They were still apparent in many generations even with just one trill ancestor like she had, her grandfather. Another round of drinks was given to them. "Toast for failure?"

It was only O six hundred hours on voyager but Chakotay was already up and about around the ship. No one but the senior officers and the night shift were awake at that time. Most crewmember wouldn't wake up for another half hour, Chakotay enjoyed the time when no one was was wandering about the corridors; he didn't use to but since he became acting captain and the crew was having such an issue, it was nice to not have anyone staring at him.

Kathryn had said "okay." Whatever that meant, but he hoped it meant that she was coming back to work. It was what she had said yes to, but shed been saying that she would come back for a week and never did. He headed to her quarters and buzzed the door. Then it was a waiting game. Would she answer in her civilian clothes, her hair down in a mess of tangles; or would she appear in her uniform, her hair perfect? To see her in her glory, with her uniform ready to take command again of her dreary sad crew would be more attractive to Chakotay than anything else. The waiting game was growing tiring though. He didn't believe he would see that glory, at least not that day. He hoped someday soon. But when the turbo lift doors opened his jaw nearly dropped, he stared into it wide eyed.

"What are you doing standing around? We've got work to do." Kathryn said demandingly with her trade mark smile. Chakotay smiled back at her and joined her in the turbo lift. The doors closed, it moved up to the bridge.

"Thank you Kathryn." He whispered in her ear, too happy to speak it normally. It was amazing to have her back. She was his rock, he was her right hand man. That was there relationship on duty; now that Kathryn seemed willing to get back to work, Chakotay didn't know what it was off duty. But if he had to sacrifice their relationship in order to have Kathryn working again, he'd do it. Their romantic relationship was was new and barely existent anyway. The crew needed her more than he did. He thought that as the doors to the lift opened onto the bridge of Voyager. Harry and Tom were at the pilot station looking over the schematics of the up-and-coming obstacles that seven had recorded. Chakotay and Kathryn stepped off onto the bridge; Chakotay couldn't hold back a smile. Everyone tu rned to look at the captain and they all had the same expression of excitement. Something Chakotay hadn't seen in a long time. The captain stood before her chair, everyone stood in respect. Paris stepped towards Chakotay.

"Good job. Don't know how you did it but good job." He said in all seriousness. Kathryn smiled at her crew, especially Chakotay. She finally sat in her chair and the rest of the crew followed.

"I would like to thank you all for your patients. I have reinstituted command of voyager from Chakotay to myself. And I'd like to say it's about time I-" she stopped speaking suddenly. Her head and Harry's was facing the view screen which showed the asteroid/meteor field... two days ahead of schedule. "What the hell!"

"Chakotay to B'Elanna! We need those shields now! Tom why the hell is so close? And why did the censors say it was days away?" He yelled. B'Elanna was at the engineer station on the bridge pushing buttons trying to spoken up the process. Tom checked censors.

"They aren't online yet! I thought I had at least another day till they needed to be ready! I can give you the old shields, maybe a little more power but that's it! I'm sorry commander!"

"Commander, I think what we saw was a censor echo ahead of the field. Seven and couldn't have known. No one could have." It moved closer and closer at nearly warp speed. The shields were up but they were no match for the irradiated rock, it was to big to go around even for Tom.

"Tuvok, what are our options?" She asked.

"As of this moment, I believe the best course of action is to continue modifying the shields to the last possible second. We will be overtaken by this; It is inevitable. That is the only option I see fit." He said without a single worried tone. B'Elanna of course was already on it. No one blamed her for not having the shields ready yet, but the fact that they didn't would have dire consequences.

Minutes went by the entire bridge crew was doing whatever they could to get the shields as strong and most radiation resistant as they could get. Tom stood next to B'Elanna, editing shield configurations as fast as she was creating them. She talked and forth with the engineering crew, giving vorik exact instructions on how to configure the shield output. Another few minutes. Kathryn put the ship on red alert, tuvok made a few adjustments to phazors. Another minute. The field was two away.

"There. That's the best I can do without changing the entire system." It wasn't nearly as much of a change as she would have made, but it's what she could do in a five minute period. The only thing left was to see if it would work, or fail horrifically. No one had much hope though, the closest meteor was at least half the size of voyager; without the shields it could easily destroy the ship. These were huge, no where near the sizes of the ones in the last storm. They were giants. Survival was low and everyone knew it. Tom stood holding hands with B'Elanna at her station, waiting for the rocks but not giving up all hope. "Lets hope we don't die." She said tightening her grip on to me hand.

"I remember when Talia died." Chakotay said softly and lowly to himself. He didn't mean to say it but the situation, all life or death situations reminded him of her, her death. "Lets see what happens next."

Tom went to his station, Harry took a seat next to the captain on one of the built in stools. Ten seconds.."Brace for impact." Kathryn said over the comm system. Five seconds to impact.