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Temporal Loop
Chapter 3
Once she had made her decision, Kathryn became a whirlwind. She spent the next couple of months travelling all over the Alpha Quadrant, looking up everyone she cared about, and making her good-byes. She didn't know exactly what she would face on the Borg ship, but she did know that there was no way off of the cube. And she knew that the Borg queen would be good and dead when she was finished. This knowledge gave her an edge, and she found herself almost giddy with excitement, counting down the days until the encounter. It was not lost upon her that the last time she met herself, she had also spent the next few months counting the days. So, which was more desirable: coffee, or a dead Borg queen? Hmmm. That was a tough one.
When the time finally came, it turned out to be surprising easy to say goodbye to her life. She put on her most impressive admiral's outfit (not that it was likely to impress her younger self, quite the opposite in fact. Kathryn was certain that a stuffy admiral's outfit would make Captain Janeway a little bit contemptuous of her, and more likely to assume that her thinking was flawed and therefore more likely to do the exact opposite of what Admiral Janeway told her to do. Kathryn was a little ashamed of how easy she was to manipulate, and hoped that she wasn't as transparent to others as she was to herself), and got into her armor-plated shuttle. No one noticed when she smuggled eighteen PADDs onto the shuttle — the sixteen PADDs that had come down from her previous incarnation, and the two PADDs that contained the details of her own life. Although she wasn't hiding it, the delicate music box she brought along went equally unnoticed. It was a present from Mark, and she valued it highly. She knew that Mark was completely opposed to this mission, and yet he had given her a farewell present anyway. He had always been such a kind man, and Kathryn was deeply grateful that their friendship had survived her eight and a half-year absence and his marriage to another woman.
Speak of the devil! Kathryn smiled to see Mark's name attached to an incoming message, and quickly pulled it up.
"I haven't got a lot of time, Mark. I'm due for take-off in ten minutes, but I'm awfully glad you called to say good-bye."
"Yeah, I guess this is good-bye. I'm sorrier about that than you will ever guess, but I really think that you need the freedom to pursue your own future. Thank-you for being my best friend."
And then, the shuttle blew up. Into a million billion pieces. The music box that Mark had given Kathryn had contained a tiny but powerful explosive. Not that anyone ever found the music box to confirm this, mind you. The debris pieces were far too small to analyze in that kind of detail.
Mark Johnson spent the rest of his life in a prison. His wife, his children, his friends and colleagues from the Questor Group — none of them ever understood why he did what he did that day. The consensus was that his brilliant mind must have cracked. No one ever understood that he had murdered his best friend in order to give her a chance at a normal life. He just hoped that she would take it.
Stardate 62657.9
28 years after Voyager's encounter with the Caretaker
It had been five years since Voyager had made it back from the Delta Quadrant, and Kathryn was finally settling into her life. After twenty-three years of hell, they had come back to a hero's welcome. Kathryn had been made an admiral, Voyager became a museum on the grounds of the Presidio, and everyone lived happily ever after. Except for those who didn't. Tuvok was completely insane, the result of a (curable, damnit!) neurological disorder, and Seven was dead. Seven's death was unbearable enough on its own, but it had been so much worse because of its effect upon her husband. Chakotay was devastated, literally destroyed, by her death. He died himself that day. For eighteen years, Kathryn's first officer had been an empty corpse sleepwalking through life. He was ill now, and Kathryn almost thought that the end would be a kindness when it came. She almost thought that.
Kathryn was on a sabbatical from Starfleet right now in order to write a book about the Borg. She had encountered the Borg ten times as often as any other individual in Federation history (the Borg originated in the Delta Quadrant, after all), and she had lived to tell the tale. Of course Starfleet wanted to know how she had done it! So, in between her visits to Tuvok and Chakotay, she researched every thing she could about those monsters. Again and again she went through Voyager's logs, for that was where most of the Federation's knowledge about the Borg was gathered.
"Son of a bitch! How could I have missed that before?" Kathryn was mesmerized by the ship's log from Stardate 54965. Voyager had passed through a nebula with hundreds of wormholes and at least 47 Borg vessels. A Transwarp hub! It had to be! Seven years into their journey Voyager had passed by a Transwarp hub! God, how different would life had been if they stuck it out in that nebula a little longer? They had had a lead, a solid lead on a way home at that point and they never even knew it! Kathryn began to laugh at the bitter irony of it all. If they had gone through that hub, Tuvok would be healthy now, Seven would be alive, and Chakotay She couldn't finish that thought properly. Chakotay would be different, that was all. And they weren't the only ones who would have benefited from an early exit from the Delta Quadrant! Quickly she checked the crew manifold. Twenty-two crewmen would still be alive today if they had gone through that hub.
All of a sudden, Kathryn wasn't laughing anymore. She was howling in misery. Screaming her pain to the world, even though there was no one around at the moment to hear her. "Damn it! Why didn't we try harder to get through that hub? We could have saved ourselves sixteen years of misery! If only there was some way to change things"
If only. If only. Kathryn had been involved with time travel before. She had even broken the Temporal Time Directive before. There were always ways to get around temporal difficulties, if only one knew where to look
The End.
