Starfleet Cadet Kathryn Janeway walked into her house and dropped her bag right in the entry hall. It was good to be home. The training mission was a great experience but nothing beat being home. Kathryn had spent the two weeks doing her job admirably during the day but at night she thought about her friend, Annika and missed her a lot. After the final debriefing, which counted as the final exam of sorts for the training mission, Kathryn had rushed home as fast as she could, hoping to grab a quick shower before calling Annika's house to say hello to her friend.
When Kathryn finally made that phone call, the line was disconnected. Puzzled, Kathryn called her father hoping for an explanation. What he told her made her blood run cold.
The Hansens, with Annika, had gone on a top secret mission for Starfleet concerning the Borg. Two days before the training mission had ended, Starfleet lost communication with their vessel. A small fleet of ships in the area were directed to the last known location of the ship and long range scans showed only a few Borg warp signatures and nothing of the Raven.
A week went by with ships still scanning that area and nothing had turned up. After the 8th day, Starfleet declared the Hansens missing in action.
Kathryn was inconsolable. She'd found the memory card that Annika had mailed her and she'd played it. She'd been stunned to see not only herself but a 6 year old Annika and a 20 year old Annika. It was the 6 year old version of her friend that delivered the goodbye message. The older version of her friend was simply stunning, and as Kathryn watched, the program ran as intended after the goodbye message.
The hologram of Kathryn and the older Annika talked and smiled a lot. Kathryn watched as her hologram did something totally unexpected, she leaned over and kissed the older Annika right on the lips. The older Annika responded eagerly and Kathryn watched as the holograms just kept kissing. It didn't go further than that but it was enough to make Kathryn wonder about what her young friend had intended by sending her the memory card with this part intact.
In the end, Kathryn just shut down the program and tucked the memory card into her pocket. She'd gone upstairs to her bedroom and put the memory card into her diary. Between those pages it would remain until Kathryn was given her very own starship to command.
Through the intervening years, Kathryn managed to let go of her young friend. Finally accepting that she was most likely dead. Kathryn moved on with her life and worked her way up the ranks at Starfleet to command her own vessel, the Starship Voyager.
When packing her things for this mission, her first in the Captain's chair with the four gold pips, Kathryn stumbled onto her old diary. A vague memory tugged at her mind and she fanned through the pages and that was when she found the memory card again.
Almost 15 years had passed since she'd last seen it but it still looked like it had that first day. Kathryn smiled, allowing herself a moment to think about her lost friend. She would never know why she brought that program with her to Voyager but she did, right along with her DaVinci studio and her gothic holonovel.
