Disclaimer: I don't own it. I'll never claim to . . . but can I borrow it?
It made no sense at all. Internal sensors were working, external sensors, the comm systems, the helm, the engines, the weapons, everything . . . and yet no amount of computer diagnostics, scans or physical evidence provided any clue as to where the crew had gone or to why they were gone. Even the previously reported temporal anomaly was nowhere to be seen, much to the Captain's frustration. She had been fairly sure for a while that it was the root of their problems.
But nothing seemed wrong beyond the fact that they were the only two people on the ship. Although that was more than a fair indication that something was wrong.
When they had reached the bridge, he had almost expected to find everyone there anyhow and that the ship's sensors were merely having one of their myriad hiccups . . . but there was no one there. There was also no evidence of a struggle, nor evidence of any known type of transport and no ship in the vicinity that could have caused such a thing. All the escape pods were still aboard, and the whole ship was pristine. No one had left, per say, they were just gone.
Kathryn sat in her chair, a hand to her forehead and her expression thoroughly confused. He was at the helm, having stopped the ship. There was no point in going anywhere, and it was prudent to stay in the general area of where they had lost everyone . . . or perhaps where everyone had lost them.
"Well, what now?" she demanded, throwing her hands in the air. "As far as the ship's concerned, there's absolutely no reason why the entire crew isn't here."
She hated not knowing what to do. Usually, even in the toughest of situations, there was some clue to follow, some course of action they could take . . . and right now there wasn't even a sensor ghost to point them in any direction. He didn't particularly like it either, but if they didn't find something soon she was liable to start climbing the walls.
"I have no idea. And what if they're not gone at all? What if we're the ones who have been . . . misplaced?"
She shot him a sour look. "That just makes it worse!" She rose from her chair and began pacing the bridge. He watched her silently until she paused, seeming to think of something. "You know, we might not be completely alone here."
He blinked. "The Doctor?" Why hadn't he thought of that? All things considered, the Doctor was just another part of the ship, and the ship was all there.
Without further words, they both rose and headed for the turbolift. Maybe the Doctor could offer a little insight about what had happened before the crew's disappearance. And perhaps he would be as confused as they.
The Captain snapped at the computer like it was at fault, as if it was hiding her crew intentionally. He'd often noticed her tendency to get more than mildly worked up when she thought any member of her crew was in trouble. Not that they know whether or not anyone was in trouble, but she always assumed the worst when she had no evidence telling her what was going on. She hid it well, but he knew her and he could tell.
"What if he knows as little as we do?" she muttered, looking at the walls as the turbolift started to move downwards. "Then what?"
He shrugged. "Well, it always helps to have a doctor around, at any rate. If he doesn't know what happened either, which I doubt he does, then we'll keep running scans. We can go to Astrometrics and do it from there . . . failing all else, we can wait it out," he added, using her previous words to Seven.
"Wait it out? Nothing ever got solved that way unless it's a moving object in your way."
"You can't solve something you know nothing about either," he replied as the turbolift came to a stop.
They stepped out in the same movement, and made their way to the Sickbay doors, which opened to reveal an empty room. The Captain moved forward, glancing around the corner into the Doctor's office, and sighing.
"Computer, activate the Emergency Medical Hologram," she said as Chakotay moved about the room, inspecting a few things.
"Unable to comply. The Emergency Medical Program has been removed from the holographic systems."
"What?" she demanded.
He looked over at her, shrugging. "The mobile emitter is gone. He must have been using it when this happened . . . whatever it was."
"Oh, god damn it!" she exclaimed, looking as if she wanted to level a kick at one of the Doctor's carefully arranged carts of instruments. "Now what?"
He was at a loss. "I don't know. We could always go to Astrometrics and run more scans. I'm as confused as you are, Kathryn."
She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. "More scans won't help anything. We've already scanned everything that can possibly be scanned. Maybe we should just go back to my quarters, finish our dinner and hope they all reappear again!"
"Maybe," he said, "but I think we should probably go back up to the bridge. It's probably not very smart to be sitting in the middle of open space right now."
She considered that, and nodded, starting out the door. "Where will we go then?"
"That little system with the G-type star. It's at solar maximum right now and blasting off enough plasma to keep us out of most trouble. We'll just hide behind a moon somewhere and hope no one gets interested." He followed her out.
"I'd feel that much better if it were O-type at maximum."
He snorted. "O-type? I'd probably stay as far away from it as I could. Those ones are beyond hot. We'd get our nacelles toasted."
"Voyager could take it, and the radiation interference would be something to reckon with. Have you ever been near and O-type star?"
"No," he said. "They're pretty hard to find, and the sorts of ships I worked with couldn't have gotten close enough to have a good look either."
"I saw one once," she said as they reentered the turbolift. "And it had a low enough luminosity that you could look at it a bit without getting your retinas burned off too. It was the colour of the sky, Chakotay. It was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen."
"I like yellow stars better," he replied. "Although they can be hard on your eyes. Bridge."
The turbolift started upwards, and Chakotay took a glance at his chronometer. It was almost 2100 hours. Naomi Wildman's bedtime, as well as that of anyone else with an early shift the next day. He was rather tired himself, but that could be attributed to strain. When he had invited the Captain to dinner, he hadn't counted on losing the crew in the bargain.
Kathryn's day off hadn't turned out the way it should have either. What should have been a day of relative rest was now just one more big thing on the plate for her, one more thing to worry about . . . something to give her that pinched look she always got when things turned strange. Once again, she covered it well, but little things gave it away. The way she held her head, the way she tapped her foot occasionally . . . it all pointed to worry. Perhaps she didn't cover it that well.
The novelty of being alone on a ship with Kathryn Janeway was not lost on him, and in any other situation he might have welcomed it. Of course she wouldn't have. She and her protocol. But right now was no time to be working himself into knots about Star Fleet regulations. What needed to happen was for them to reach that star system and to come up with something that might help them figure this mystery out.
"When I said I wanted a little peace, this is not what I meant," she muttered. "This just better not be Q playing tricks on me or something, or I'll brain him, immortal or not."
He hid a slight smile. She was rather funny when she was annoyed sometimes. "I doubt that it's Q. He's too egocentric not to have let us know it by now. He delights in having people annoyed with him."
"Plus he probably would have made you disappear too," she muttered.
Chakotay caught her meaning. Q's interest in her had always bothered him more than a little. It appeared to bother her as well, which was a relief. He didn't fancy having to compete with an omniscient being.
Wait a moment, compete?
He shook himself. Sometimes he did too much thinking for his own good.
She glanced over at him as the turbolift stopped and the doors opened. "Something the matter?" she asked, stepping out.
He followed right behind her as he often did. "No. I'm all right." He made his way to the conn station and sat down, keying in commands. As it had been before, the star he was heading for was issuing an impressive amount of electromagnetic interference as well as an awful lot of plasma. It was a good thing the ship was still in perfect working order.
Instead of sitting down, Kathryn stood directly behind him, watching the view screen as they approached the star. He glanced at her over his shoulder, and caught her in an unguarded moment. She let her stress show openly on her face as she watched the screen, unaware that he was watching her. It hurt in some vague way that she felt the need to hide it, even when they were completely alone. Maybe it was just force of habit, but what did she think she'd lose by showing him she was worried? Certainly not his respect.
He manoeuvred the ship to rest in the shadow of the third planet's moon, shielded from the radiation and plasma, as well as curious eyes that might find it interesting to see a mid-size ship with only two people on it. He looked beyond the moon to the planet below them. It was a hostile piece of rock, its atmosphere thick and consisting of mostly chlorine. Nearly as poisonous as a demon planet, but the fact that is had such a thick atmosphere provided something.
"Look," he said, gesturing. "Aurora borealis. All that plasma must be bouncing off the polar atmosphere."
"Northern Lights in the Delta Quadrant," she murmured, watching the play of greenish-white light at the planet's upper pole. "I always liked seeing them from above, but I've never seen them from the surface of a planet."
"Me neither," he replied. "I've never been close enough to a pole at the right time."
She sighed. "It's kind of peaceful looking . . . don't you think?"
He rose from his chair to stand beside her, and they exchanged glances for a moment. He didn't know why, but it almost seemed like she blushed slightly.
"It does," he agreed. "Everyone else should be here to see it."
She nodded. "Yes, they should. They've only been gone now for what . . . ? Three hours? When has it been long enough for me to start getting really worried?"
"I started getting really worried the moment the computer told us there was no one on the bridge. I'd be worried if they'd all gone missing for three seconds, let alone three hours . . . and I know you well enough to know you would be too. Maybe something will turn up . . . or maybe we just haven't thought of something yet."
"I wish Seven and B'Elanna were around. They think of everything."
He smiled slightly. "Well, I'm fairly certain Seven knows everything that you could possibly do with this ship . . . and B'Elanna would at least like to think she does. You've had your fair share of brilliant insights too, over the years, so I can put my trust there."
She smiled warmly at him, and then elbowed him. "So it's all on me now, is it?"
He shrugged. "Well, you can't expect much out of me, and I always thought you liked running things."
"What do you mean I can't expect much out of you? Ninety percent of my good ideas come from you! I just get the credit for them because I'm the Captain."
"That's my job," he said, looking around at the empty bridge. "Isn't it part of a First Officer's job description to fill in as the Captain's brain on occasion?"
She laughed slightly. "For you more than any other, since I'm out to lunch so often."
"So what are we going to do now?" he asked, somewhat rhetorically. She wouldn't really know either, but she'd come up with something just for the sake of answering a question. She hated unanswered questions.
"We could always go wander the decks with tricorders," she said with a slightly sad smile. "Who knows? It might turn up something that the internal sensors didn't."
"That's better than standing around here," he agreed.
Her hand strayed down to where her tricorder should have been, and then she looked sheepish as she noticed she was wearing casual clothes, just as he was. He walked over to the command console and opened the small compartment behind it, which contained a small medical kit and one extra tricorder.
"I've always kind of wondered why it's one medkit and one tricorder . . . as if that would serve for the entire bridge crew when we really needed it," he said, flipping the instrument open. "What should we scan for?"
She shrugged. "Temporal disturbance, subspace flux . . . I'm leaning towards that temporal thing. How could it possibly be a coincidence that Seven reports a temporal anomaly that's bouncing all over the sector and then the ship takes a hit and our crew goes missing? There has to be something there."
The scan of the bridge turned up nothing, as he had expected, and what little the instrument could see of the decks below them showed nothing either. "You forget," he said, "that was whole Universe is one big coincidence. There are only patterns because the same types of coincidences happen so often."
"Oh, don't you start on Chaos Theory to me, I know you don't believe in it."
"True, but a lot of people in Star Fleet like to."
"And you also know that I'm not one of them. I like to have my answers concrete, or no answers at all. What does that scan show? Anything?"
Chakotay shook his head. "Nothing from here down to deck three. Let's try four."
She began heading for the turbolift. "I'm just glad the lift systems are working. I don't have the patience for Jeffery's tubes right now."
He followed her into the lift, the tricorder bleeping intermittently in his hand. There was no temporal differential anywhere that the tricorder could see, no chromiton particle concentrations that stood out anywhere. Absolutely nothing to suggest that a temporal disturbance was at fault for the disappearance of the crew.
"Deck four," he told the computer, and the turbolift started downward. Lower decks came into the tricorder's scanning range, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. Everything read the same, which meant that the time line was entirely stable. The only things missing from the ship were about one hundred and fifty life signs that should have been lighting up the sensors and the tricorder. There was nary an electron out of place beyond that.
The turbolift doors opened and they stepped out. The tricorder revealed nothing different from what it had read before. He shrugged eloquently.
"I can't tell you anything we didn't already know," he said, "and I have a feeling the lower decks are going to be no different."
"We should try them anyhow," she replied, glancing at the tricorder herself before turning on her heel towards the turbolift again.
And that was how they ended up on deck fifteen, with no more information than they had started with. They'd scanned every square centimetre of the ship -every cubic centimetre- and still nothing. Kathryn had a headache, if the fact that she was rubbing at her temples said anything. She and her endless tension headaches. It was a wonder there was ever a time when she wasn't having one.
Neither of them ever had much of an occasion to be on deck fifteen at any time, and Chakotay now concluded that it wasn't the most exciting work space ever. Maybe he should rotate the duty shifts a little more often . . . give some of the people regularly down there a break from the cramped, darkened deck. Provided people were ever working down there again.
He glanced at his chronometer. 2230. Late, when you had woken up at 0500. He was fairly certain that the Captain had gotten less sleep than he had, despite her somewhat enforced off-duty day. That was probably contributing to her apparent near-migraine.
"We should probably go get some sleep," he murmured as she paced around in front of him like a caged cat.
She stopped and stared at him. "What? How can we rest at a time like this?"
He looked dubious. "What time like this? Nothing's happening."
She rolled her eyes at him. "You know what I mean."
"No, I don't, and you can use all the sleep you can get."
"I won't be able to fall asleep anyhow," she muttered, beginning to pace again.
"Why don't you ever take a sedative?" he demanded. She was an occasional insomniac as well, but always refused anything the Doctor offered her. It was ridiculous. It wasn't as if it could hurt her. On the contrary . . . it would help and get her out of the habit of ingesting so much caffeine in order to stay awake.
"Because I don't!"
He shook his head at her, ruefully. "All right. You give me one good reason why staying up to all hours will serve anything, and I'll leave you alone."
She stopped pacing and glared at him, opened her mouth and then shut it quickly, continuing her pointless pacing.
"That's what I thought," he said. "Let's go back up, at least. There's nothing down here."
"All right," she agreed after a moment.
Amazing, he'd won an argument against Kathryn Janeway.
They entered the turbolift for what seemed like the hundredth time, he silently, she stubbornly so. She never liked to lose arguments. Not that she did lose them very often. It was a good thing that she even let people argue with her . . . unless she'd already made up her mind, because then she only shut you down before you opened your mouth. She had a stubborn streak in her as wide as Betelgeuse.
It was one of the many things he loved about her, even when it aggravated him.
They made it back up to the door of her quarters without incident, and she opened the doors silently, and he prepared to say good night and leave for his own.
"Chakotay," she said before he could get any words in, "this is going to sound strange, but would you not leave right now? I find myself a little afraid of waking up to find you gone too."
She said it with her back turned to him, one hand on the frame of her door. She was right, it was strange. It was rarely that she ever admitted she was afraid of anything, but he had to admit he understood.
"Kathryn . . ."
"Just stay with me," she said, moving into her quarters without a backward glance.
He followed her in, not really sure if he was going to stay there. On second thought, it was absolutely crazy to. Oh . . . it wasn't as if he didn't want to, by no means, and he hated to see her afraid of anything . . . yet, this just wasn't the reason he wanted to be staying in her quarters for. There was just too much to it.
"I don't know if that's wise-" he began uncomfortably.
She glanced at him over her shoulder. "Don't worry about it. Just humour me, all right?"
How could he refuse?
To be continued . . .
***
