Chapter 2

"The problem is the background frequency that holds the arrays together."

"We've tried modifying the sensors to compensate for all that, but so we haven't had any luck so far!"

Captain Khalid Shermik sat at the head of the briefing table, listening as his officers brainstormed for ways of finding Mr. Chakotay. He had been missing for over four days now, and Shermik's team hadn't had any luck in finding a way to locate him without alerting the Valiq to their presence in their solar system.

A couple of months ago, the USS Einstein had been tasked with escorting anthropologists, namely Mr. Chakotay and two of his upper-level Academy students, to the Valona system. As part of the cadets' training in the diplomatic corps, the team was meant to go undercover in order to assess the potential of the inhabitants for first contact. The mission in itself had not been particularly risky, which is why Starfleet had sent an Academy professor (who was admittedly also a renown Maquis-slash-Voyager-crew-turned-anthropologist) for the job. However the complexity and risk of this particular mission was increased because of an intricate surveillance system the planet's inhabitants – in particular members of the Valiq Nation – had set up in orbit of their planet to, they assumed, monitor outer space. It was so complex it was damn near impossible to scan the planet without detection – so much so that Khalid's Chief Engineer had nicknamed it "the blockade."

Mr. Chakotay and his team had been made aware that this would complicate communication and transport, but Chakotay had been adamant that he'd seen worse, and had been ready to take the risk. Khalid had sent a security officer, Lieutenant Ayala, along anyway. Ayala had been part of the Voyager crew (and Chakotay's Maquis crew before that) prior to being assigned to the Einstein, and Chakotay had seemed to appreciate Khalid's effort to make the mission as seamless as possible.

For the first few weeks, the mission went well, so Khalid was allowed by Starfleet to venture a few lightyears away to chart the area instead of just waiting around for Chakotay and his team to return with recommendations.

Things turned to the worst four days ago, when Ayala had returned with the students. But no Chakotay. The crew had spent every waking hour looking for ways of scanning the planet without detection since then, but without any luck. Another alternative would be to send an away team on the ground to investigate, but Shermik didn't have permission to confront the Valiq in any way, yet. It irked him that Starfleet Command seemed more concerned with damage control to the prime directive, than finding Mr. Chakotay. He had sent a request for back-up the day before, but so far had heard nothing.

Khalid stood to his feet as he walked closer to the monitors showing the so-called blockade. "What if we-"

"Bridge to Captain Shermik."

"Go ahead."

"Sensors picked up a Starfleet vessel approaching."

Speak of the devil… Khalid nodded as he strode toward the door to the bridge. "Right. I'll be right there. Thank you all," he told his officers in the briefing room, "please carry on."

He straightened his uniform as he made his way to the bridge. "Who do we have the honor of welcoming to this system, Lieutenant?" he asked as he made his way to stand in front of the screen.

"It's… Voyager, sir. They're hailing us."

Voyager.

Of course it had to be Voyager. Suddenly he had a pretty good idea just whom exactly he would have the pleasure of dealing with. He should have known this admiral would answer his call. He took the time to take in a deep, bracing breath, before he nodded to Lieutenant Markham. "On screen. Admiral Janeway," he greeted once the video communication was established..

"Captain Shermik," she greeted, standing on the bridge of Voyager. "I was rather hoping we'd meet again under better circumstances."

Khalid's gaze shifted beyond the admiral's shoulder to the officers on the bridge. Most of them were famous now, of course: Captain Tuvok, Lieutenant Kim, Lieutenant Paris, Lieutenant Torres, and the infamous Seven of Nine… There were a couple of unfamiliar faces, but all looked as grave as the admiral.

Khalid had met Admiral Janeway once before, at a gala to welcome Voyager back home, and he had liked her sense of humor, curiosity, and sociability. But none of that was reflected in her expression now. If he could venture a guess, he'd say she looked… deeply anxious, but doing her utmost to hide it.

"Will you tell me what the hell happened, or do I have to guess?" She drawled after a moment.

Khalid shook himself and nodded. "I'm happy to provide an update on the situation. However I imagine you'd prefer to talk with the rest of Mr. Chakotay's team directly? They are unharmed and anxious to help."

"You've read my mind, Captain." She nodded, her hands going to her hips. "Or my file," she drawled sarcastically. Her expression softened slightly. "Your message said you needed assistance in breaching the orbital surveillance, I've brought some reinforcements," she added with a ghost of a smile, pointing to the officers behind her.

Khalid let a smile touch his face. "We're all relieved to see that, Admiral. The Einstein isn't quite equipped to deal with situations like this, and, to be honest, we've hit a wall with the surveillance system. Fresh eyes are just what we need."

"Voyager's team will want to meet with your engineers so that they can be brought up to speed about what has and hasn't been done. With your permission we'll transport right away."

Khalid nodded. "We're happy to welcome you onboard, Admiral."

She gave a final nod and the transmission ended. Khalid didn't lose any time before making his way to the turbolift.

"That went pretty well, considering," Markham muttered under his breath.

Khalid was inclined to agree, under the circumstances.

oooOooo

2 months ago

Kathryn sat in her office at Starfleet Command, perusing files and taking notes to prepare for the briefing.

This felt like the bulk of what she did these days: attending briefings, going to meetings, reading reports, writing up summaries and memos of said briefings... Not that she was complaining; on a good day she enjoyed the challenges that accompanied her promotion to vice admiral. She enjoyed the feeling of having accomplished something. She enjoyed being part of the decision-making process. She enjoyed being on Earth and having a normal, mostly sedentary life. She enjoyed looking up at the night sky and finding familiar stars. And she enjoyed the perks of being able to go on missions whenever she felt restless and needed to go back on a starship.

In fact, so far she had been back on Voyager twice, and she had been proud to see Tuvok take leadership and gaining the crew's respect as the captain. Lieutenant Kim had also stepped up to his new responsibilities – especially in providing an example for the new, greener, officers aboard. B'Elanna and Tom were adjusting to parenthood surprisingly well, while Seven was of course still exceptionally bright and efficient. Kathryn's pride in them all had always superseded the nostalgia she'd felt at stepping foot inside her dear Voyager.

There were times, though… There were times when she missed it all. She missed the crew, the adventure, the adrenaline rush, the discoveries… The sense of purpose. Today was one of those days. The gloomy San Francisco weather outside her window didn't do anything to help her mood as she tried to focus on her files.

Just as she stood to get another cup of coffee, there was a chime at the door. "Come in," she called without looking up from pouring her cup.

An amused chuckle. "It's nice to see some things never change."

Kathryn's heart somersaulted in her chest when she recognized the voice, the teasing tone. Chakotay was standing in the doorway, hands at his hips and his trademark teasing smile on his face. Kathryn felt a rush of pleasure at seeing him. She put her cup down as she walked around her desk to greet him.

"You should know by now my coffee intake is a universal constant!" She replied in kind, smiling so widely it felt as though her face might crack. She stopped just short of colliding with him, suddenly unsure how to greet him. A hug? Too casual. A handshake? Too formal. In the end she reached out to squeeze his hand briefly.

He looked well – clearly his new life agreed with him. There was a certain glint in his eyes, and Kathryn couldn't quite stop staring at him, drinking him in. He seemed different, somehow – taller, more… More. Whatever it was, it stirred something inside of her, something she couldn't quite put into words. He felt like the return of spring after a long, dreary winter.

He had resigned from Starfleet and started his new position as a civilian instructor at the Academy several weeks before, and, despite the fact that they both lived in San Francisco, they could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times they had seen each other since Voyager's return. Granted, part of that was because of Kathryn herself – after learning of his involvement with Seven, Kathryn had deemed it wise to… put some distance between them for a while. If only for the safety of her own heart. She'd even been on a couple of dates, but though charming, the men she had met had never quite seemed to measure up. She'd told herself they hadn't measured up to her own standards, but, seeing Chakotay now, her heart nearly bursting with emotion, she realized then that it was him they hadn't measured up to. When had he come to embody what she sought for in an ideal partner, and why, oh why, hadn't she realized it before?

He shook himself first and Kathryn realized she'd been staring. "I hope it's not a bad time, I was in the building, so I thought I'd stop by," he explained as he glanced around her office.

"On the contrary, your timing is excellent – I don't think I could have read one more line of that file without my eyes glazing over."

He hmmed in reply, nodding. "Hence the… fourth cup of coffee? Or is it the fifth?" He teased, grinning, that glint making his eyes twinkle.

"Third, actually! Would you like one?" She asked as she gestured for him to sit and she went to pick up her cup again.

He shook his head. "No, thanks, I can't stay long," he replied even as he perched on the edge of one of the chairs across from her desk and leaned his elbows on his thighs. "I'm really just dropping by, but I actually have some news. I just came from chatting with Admiral Meyers. I'm going on an assignment."

"Going? I thought your new job was to hand out assignments."

He tugged on his earlobe as he replied in the same joking tone, leaning back into the chair. "Sometimes it does feel like it's what I do most of the time now. But it looks like the Powers That Be at Starfleet Command think I can contribute something to the Federation after all. I was asked to assess the possibility of first contact with the people of Valona, the Valiq, in particular. I'm taking a couple of students from the diplomatic corps. It's not quite the archaeological fieldwork I was hoping for, but it'll be a good anthropological experience for the students nonetheless."

Kathryn nodded. Ever since their return, she knew Chakotay had struggled to show Starfleet and the Federation that he had turned a new leaf. He and the other Maquis aboard Voyager had been pardoned based on Kathryn's vehement recommendation (vehement was putting it mildly), but with few exceptions it had seemed like the pardon had been granted backhandedly. And to an honorable man like Chakotay – that was almost as bad as not getting pardoned at all. So she understood why he would be so willing to do this, even though it wasn't entirely the kind of anthropology he dreamed of doing.

"Valona," Kathryn repeated a she half-sat on her desk. "I remember reading the recommendations from the first report. From what I hear this one might be a delicate mission – some of the nations there seem a little… xenophobic, if I recall."

Chakotay nodded. "Right. But it's nothing we haven't dealt with in the Delta Quadrant. Or even here on Earth. However it does mean that I might be there a while. Several weeks at least. Our job is to observe and make some official recommendations, so we want to make sure we have a good sense of these people before we make a decision."

Kathryn nodded as she absorbed this information, and tried to ignore the pang the news created in her chest. She should be happy for him, for this opportunity to prove himself to Starfleet, and she was – but part of her worried, and even hurt at the thought of how much she would miss him. How much she'd been missing him. It did make her curious about one thing though… "How does Seven feel about this…assignment?" She asked, carefully trying to school her expression into one of mild interest. Seven had decided to remain on Voyager, and Kathryn felt a kind of morbid curiosity to learn how this long-distance arrangement was working for them.

He seemed taken aback by the question and watched her closely for a moment, as if trying to read her beyond her tone. After a few seconds he looked down, wetting his lips quickly before looking back up again. "I'm surprised you haven't heard. Seven and I… let's just say we've agreed that our paths would diverge from now on."

"Really." Was that hope – that sudden warmth she felt in her chest?

His eyes scrutinized her face again. "Yes." He inhaled. "After our return, and the way everyone and everything was shuffled around, we both agreed that it would be for the best if we stopped seeing each other. In the end we realized our lives – our dreams – weren't… compatible, now that we're back."

"I see." Kathryn shook herself, consciously pushing that flame of hope to the back of her mind. "Well, I am sorry that it didn't work out. But you're going to be great at this job, Chakotay."

"Thank you." He paused, his eyes searching her face for a second, as if he meant to say more. In the end he stood to his feet. "Anyway, I should head out."

Kathryn was surprised at how much she didn't want him to go just yet. "Maybe we could meet up for dinner later? For old time's sake? I'd love to catch up before you leave."

He shook his head apologetically. "I'd love to, but we leave tomorrow, and I still have to brief my field team and make some preparations."

She nodded in understanding, but she didn't even try to hide her disappointment. "Of course. Be careful out there?"

His expression turned mischievous. "I promise not to do anything you wouldn't do."

She snorted in reply and he grinned. "I'll send you a postcard," he quipped with a wink.

"Better yet," Kathryn countered, more softly, more intently, "bring me back a t-shirt."

His expression shifted slightly, as if he understood what she was really telling him underneath the joking tone – that she desperately wanted him to come back. To her.

He nodded slowly, his gaze on her face. "I'll deliver it myself," he promised. He reached out to squeeze her hand briefly. "Take care, Kathryn."

oooo

For four days now, Kathryn's inside had been twisted into a constant, painful knot.

Chakotay was missing.

Worse, Cadet Martinez had told Kathryn how she had seen Chakotay being fired upon by the Valiq as the rest of them had fled. Based on her statement, Cadet Martinez suspected Chakotay had tried to lead their Valiq pursuers away from the shuttle to allow for the rest of the team to escape. Kathryn had mentally cursed Chakotay's heroism and selflessness as she'd listened to Martinez tell the story, but it had sounded just like something he would do. Ever the selfless protector, willing to sacrifice himself for others. But deep down, she also knew that she probably would have done the same thing under the circumstances. And yet, she couldn't help from wishing he'd been just a little bit more selfish this time.

Cadet Crawford had corroborated Martinez's story, though he had been busy getting the shuttle ready to fly at the time Chakotay apparently made his decision to run in the wrong direction.

To their credit, the students had argued with Lieutenant Ayala about going back for Chakotay as soon as they had taken flight, but as their security officer (and superior), Ayala had been adamant: in case of trouble, his standing order, his priority, had been to bring the students to safety – something that Chakotay himself had told Ayala over and over again. Ayala told Kathryn that he fully intended to go back for Chakotay himself, but so far Captain Shermik had been reluctant to let him, at least not without a viable exit plan or intelligence about what a rescue team would be dealing with.

Had Chakotay been taken prisoner? Had he been killed? Was he in hiding? Was he hurt? No one knew. And worse, right now they had no way to tell, all because of that damned "blockade" that blinded most of their sensors.

When Kathryn had gotten Captain Shermik's report about Chakotay's situation, it had felt as though the world had dropped out from under her. The depth of her anxiety had surprised even her; after all, this wasn't the first time that she'd been faced with this kind of situation. But this time had felt different – maybe because she'd felt helpless, thousands of lightyears away. Or maybe because she'd recently come to realize that something had shifted in her feelings toward Chakotay. Whatever the reason, she was constantly fighting this visceral, breath-catching, stomach-gripping fear.

The thought that she might truly lose him this time, and her refusal to let that happen, had sent Kathryn on a quest to meet up with the Einstein herself. She'd managed to convince the other admirals that she should take Voyager: with the ship's unique technology from the Delta Quadrant, and the combined brain power of B'Elanna, Seven, and the other engineers, surely they could figure out a way to find Chakotay without disrupting the Valiq's way of life?

Although, with Chakotay's life in the balance, she was hard-pressed to even care about the Valiq's way of life at the moment. But as an admiral she was even under more pressure to uphold the prime directive and other Starfleet values. In a way, her hands were tied even tighter than they had been as a Starfleet captain in the Delta Quadrant.

Her reaction wasn't quite the logical, cool-headed behavior the admirals had expected from her when they had promoted her, but, in her defense, they had known what they'd gotten themselves into. In fact, Admirals Hayes and Paris hadn't looked entirely surprised when Kathryn had told them she was taking Voyager to Valona. They all knew how far she would go for members of her crew, even if she wasn't a captain anymore, and Chakotay hadn't been her First Officer for several months now. Luckily they had also known not to stand in her way.

Well, they were here now, she told herself as she made her way to Astrometrics, and they were going to find him. Whatever it took. She had never given up on one of her own, and she wasn't about to start now.

B'Elanna, Seven, Kim and three of the Einstein's crew were in the middle of a briefing with Ayala when Kathryn stepped into Astrometrics. They had put up a detailed photograph of Valona on the screen. Kathryn recognized it immediately from the reports. Because most of their sensors were blocked, however, the image was two-dimensional and contained little information about the topography and geological make-up of the planet. It was, simply put, a basic satellite image.

"We'd made camp here, inside a cave – about two kilometers from this small agglomeration," Ayala was explaining as he zoomed in on a particular area. "However, if Mr. Chakotay was taken prisoner-"

He faltered briefly when he noticed that Kathryn had walked in, but she encouraged him to keep going with a nod.

"If he was taken prisoner, as we suspect, it is likely that he would have been taken to Laivon – a nearby mid-sized city of about 500,000 people. This is where we had been working for the last several weeks. We had been posing as the Valiq equivalent of reporters in order to get free access to information about the Valiquan government structure, their military, economical and judiciary systems, well, pretty much anything, really… It seemed to work – we had done our homework, so we were able to blend in fairly easily, especially with the temporary dermal surgery to make us look like them."

"What happened?" Lieutenant Kim asked, concerned.

"It was my fault," a male voice chimed in from the door. Cadets Crawford and Martinez stepped in and stood to attention.

"Permission to join the meeting?" Martinez asked formally, her expression determined.

"Come on in, Cadets," Kathryn replied. The two of them still looked a little shaken, but calm, and Kathryn recognized what Chakotay had seen in them – why he had selected them for this mission. They might look terribly young, but Kathryn knew from talking to them earlier that they were smart and resourceful, though each had a very different temperament. Joanna Martinez was extroverted and blunt, a language and politics specialist, while Ian Crawford was quieter and more serious, but kind and deeply empathetic. In fact, his file mentioned that he had some Betazoid ancestry. According his file, his strengths included economics and technology.

"It was my fault that the mission failed," Crawford said again as they walked further into the room. "I asked too many questions too quickly. They became suspicious of me."

"You couldn't have known this would happen," Martinez told him quietly.

"She's right," Kathryn jumped in. "But I asked you here precisely because of what you had been asking about: the surveillance system. We need to figure out a way to penetrate it, and your insights might be useful."

Ian nodded. "Right. Well I did manage to get some information about their Orbital Population Protection Program, as they call it, before things went downhill. It took me a while to input my notes about the design into the computer, but," he looked at Seven. "you should be able to bring it up on the screen now."

Everyone in the room turned their attention to the new data and model that Crawford had put together. There were drawings of the individual arrays, notes on their size and power sources, and hypotheses about how they were linked together. It was remarkably well-put together for a cadet, but…

"This data is incomplete," Seven stated.

Crawford cleared his throat. "Y-yes ma'am. I'm aware. Like I said, it was my asking about this that got us busted, so I was never able to get complete blueprints, let alone a clear answer as to why this system was created in the first place. Most people were remarkably tight-lipped about it. Mr. Chakotay repeatedly told me to use caution, but…"

"That's okay, Cadet," B'Elanna chimed in distractedly, her eyes riveted to the screen, her brow furrowed in concentration, "this will be helpful. In fact…" She trailed off as she walked closer to the screen, her arms crossed over her chest.

"What?" Kathryn asked curiously – she knew that look, and hope flared in her chest at the sight.

"What do you see B'Elanna?" Kim asked as he straightened, hope brightening his face.

B'Elanna's lips quirked up slightly as she turned to look at Kathryn. "A possible loophole. Here," she added, pointing to Crawford's notes about the power sources behind the arrays.

"Of course," Seven agreed as she also walked closer, her eyes on the data. Kathryn could almost see the synopses in her brain as she calculated, computed, assessed and evaluated the information.

"I can't promise anything at this point," B'Elanna went on, "since this data is incomplete, but…there might be a way to disrupt the signal just long enough to get some scans, or even transport someone out. It's just hypothetical at the moment, we'll have to study this in more detail and run simulations. Can you help us?" She asked Crawford.

"I was hoping you'd ask. Whatever I can do."

Kathryn touched B'Elanna's arm. "Get working on it. Let's bring Chakotay home, people."

ooooOoooo

More to come in a couple of days!