Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

It was too soon. At the very sight of Voyager, all the perspective she had reacquired deserted her. She could taste her five A.M. cup of coffee, ice cold. She felt turbulence. She felt the nerves, and the terrible effort of putting on a brave face when she was sure her heart would break. She half expected them all to be there, standing at attention, waiting for her on the bridge. Workers pushed aside the velvet ropes for her, and as she boarded the ship she could barely see inside it. Only one or two work lights shone. As if on cue, the maintenance crewmen rose when they saw her, acknowledged her presence, and scurried away. The gestures were respectful, but in the pit of her stomach she knew what they were thinking. There goes Voyager's Captain. She's gone crazy. She thinks there's something on the ship. She can't let go.

It was a miracle that Admiral Paris had gotten her inside, considering what Starfleet thought of her. But she didn't care about that. It gave her a bizarre pleasure to think of herself as a renegade. Apocrypha was a badge of honor. Cassandra probably felt betrayed; but the fact was that they had been to Aurelius Prime and back again. Kathryn had faced her fear. She hadn't conquered it, but she hadn't expected she would. That had not been the point.

It made her inexplicably angry to see museum ropes aboard her ship. She tried dismantling one of them. It toppled to the ground with a satisfying scraping sound. She wanted to tear the rope from its velvet enclosure. She wanted to perform an act of violence upon it. She ran a tired hand over her forehead. This was not why she had come.

She should have gone to the main computer, but could not do anything until she saw for herself what they had done to Voyager. The corridors were silent. The ship smelled of wet paint and computer parts, as if it were just being built, not retired. She knew that if she made a sound, it would echo strangely through the halls, and that she would feel unbearable loneliness.

Kathryn stared into the abyss that was the mess hall.

"Computer. Lights!"

It was a scene from a horrific fairy tale. Every table was littered with trays and mugs. In the center of the room stood a Starfleet officer. A hologram, phasing in and out of sight. Another, unfinished, stood only in his trousers.

What was next? Who was next? Neelix, who she would never see again? Tuvok? Herself? Where would she be in all of this? Perhaps in the back, in the kitchen, having a talk with Neelix. Or perhaps the Janeway hologram was hidden somewhere else on the ship. Maybe there were hundreds, some look-alikes, some generic crewmen. An entire theatrical cast, waiting behind velvet ropes for the tourists to line up. See the amazing Starship Voyager. See how it all began. Relive the adventure.

When she had gone to see Deanna Troi, it had been in a spirit of capitulation. She had felt weak, helpless, at the brink of despair. But this was war. She prayed that the silverware wasn't holographic. It wasn't. She threw things off the tables. She hurled them at the unfinished holograms. Several of the tables she turned over, others she kicked out of place. Was this what Troi had wanted her to see? She paused, and glanced around the room. If she went any further, if she smashed the furniture or broke a window, she would be breaking a part of Voyager. She thought of the black racing gloves Cassandra had given her. The mess hall was in shambles. It was only the holograms she couldn't destroy – not yet. Calmed by the sight of the ruins, she slowly released the chair she was holding. She breathed deeply. She hadn't noticed that she had been crying. She pushed her tears away with the back of her hand. They had no right to rob her Voyager, and Voyager of her own dignity.

The bridge, as far as she could tell, was as she had left it except that all of the workstations had been shut down to conserve energy. She did something she hadn't done in years. She powered up. Lights flooded the room, and she heard the soft whir of the computer system booting.

"All systems online."

She got to work. As she had expected, Starfleet's secretarial nature had prevailed, and the complete inventory of records was at her disposal. Her seven-year journey, encapsulated in a nearly endless string of transmissions, star charts, and field reports. As the images materialized, her emotions slowly deserted her. The fury, the indignation she had felt, disappeared in the string of digital downloads. She could pore over it all and feel nothing. She was a nameless detective, searching for something out of place in someone else's life. The computer lights shone in her eyes. She imagined that there might have been a great mystery here, something of an even larger scope than her adventures in the Delta Quadrant. The longer she searched, the more she wanted to believe in what Troi had told her. But now she could barely remember the vision she had experienced on the Apocrypha ship.

The hours passed. Outside, the maintenance workers finished their shifts and most left the space station. The Starfleet beacon lights with chrome reflectors began to revolve, as they did several times daily. Kathryn Janeway remained motionless on Voyager's bridge, looking into her past.