Chapter 9

Once she had composed herself a little, Seska made her way back to the transporter room where Chell, a friendly overweighed Bolian, was now pulling her duty shift. Well, of course he was overweighed. Who has ever seen a skinny Bolian? And, like all Bolians, he talked decidedly too much.

"Hello, Chell! Thanks again for the favor. Chakotay asked me to get something he forgot on the vessel, when he beamed aboard earlier. Can you get me up there?"

"Sure! Hasn't it been an exciting day? Have you been up to Voyager yet? Isn't it a fantastic ship? I took a look at their mess hall earlier. They've got three replicators in there, alone! And they have one in every cabin! I suggested to B'Elanna that we should bring some of them down here. Wouldn't it be great if we could all have one in our quarters, and maybe one in here as well. Transporter room shifts are awfully dull. I could really do with a snack just about now..."

"The captain's ready room. Deck 1. Thanks, Chell."

Seska interrupted his endless ramblings.

Dumb Bolians! Being polite just did not get you anywhere with them, unless you had a few years to spare.

"Oh, alright..." Chell responded a little hurt.

When Seska materialized in the ready room, her attention was immediately drawn to the captain's personal computer console on the desk. As opposed to Chakotay, she had a real knack with passwords and encryption codes. Moments later the screen flashed to life. The Obsidian Order trained their agents well. A few more minutes down the line, and she had managed to access the crew manifest. The first name she noticed was that of Thomas Eugene Paris, who had apparently been taken aboard as an observer only -- no rank. She was going to enjoy dealing with him, once her superiors in the Obsidian Order had arrested him. It occurred to her that, strangely, no medical staff had been assigned to Voyager. Of course this mission had not been supposed to last very long, but there had to be someone who could administer medical aid in an emergency. It was Starfleet protocol to have a doctor accompany every mission. She made a mental note of it and decided to research this matter further at a later stage. Finally she found the captain's file. Captain Kathryn Janeway. A picture showed a woman of roughly Chakotay's age. Her hair was done up in a strict bun which made her look rather stern. She had well defined features -- high cheekbones and a prominent jaw line. By Earth standards, she supposed that this Kathryn Janeway could be called beautiful. I'll soon change that!, she thought with a vicious grin on her lips.

Janeway's personnel file was impressive. She had finished command school at the Academy with distinction, after changing her career from science to command on the recommendation of none other than the famous Admiral Owen Paris. It was obvious that she was one of Starfleet's best -- the crème de la crème of the Federation.

There seemed to be an encrypted file attached to the profile. It required a high security clearance code... Something Starfleet did not want everyone to know about? Seska tried a couple of combinations and quickly succeeded in accessing the hidden file... Starfleet's codes were so predictable!

The file went back thirteen years. This was interesting... Apparently Janeway and her mentor, Admiral Owen Paris, had once been captured by the Obsidian Order. Camet's name was mentioned as well. He had been the one to interrogate them. So that was why he was so interested in the captain. Quickly she downloaded all the information on the captain onto a padd and made her exit, before anyone could suspect that she was doing a little more than retrieving something Chakotay had left on the ship. Back in her quarters Seska locked the door, so that no one could enter unexpectedly. In the Maquis this could happen from time to time. The boundaries between people were low and not defined by protocol, which was very helpful when trying to gather intelligence -- less so, when trying to transmit a secret message to the enemy. In any case, infiltrating the Maquis was considerably easier than passing undetected through the ranks of Starfleet or the Federation Council. But it was also more dangerous. The Maquis would no doubt kill her if they ever found out that she was actually a Cardassian spy -- Starfleet and the Federation would simply send her to a pleasant little penal colony on some quaint terran continent. She retrieved the long-range transmitter and tapped in the encryption code as before.

This time she did not have to announce her call to Camet. He responded before she was able to get a word out.

"Did you get the information I requested?"

Never before had she seen him so impatient. Seska sneered,

"Have I ever let you down, Gul?"

"Don't make me answer that! Did you get it?"

Oh, she knew he wanted the information badly, and she was going to enjoy teasing the hell out of him.

"Remind me again, Camet, what did you want to know?"

He had just about had enough of her games. His eyes narrowed dangerously,

"Don't play with me, Seska! I'm not some gutless Maquis captain you can wind around your little finger. Tell me what you know, or I'll have you join Chakotay!"

Seska sobered.

"I'm transmitting her personnel file now. Have you got news for me about Tain's plans?"

"Yes, we are going to attack the base at 0400 hours. That will give you exactly six hours to prepare for our arrival. You will power down their defense systems -- phasers, torpedoes and that forcefield around the base. See that it's done by the time we arrive!"

Camet glanced at the information that Seska had just downloaded to his computer terminal. His breath caught. There she was -- a little older, but she had not changed much. Finally! He had tracked her down and she was trapped -- a hostage of the Maquis -- easy prey. A malicious grin distorted his features, and his eyes sparkled dangerously as he returned his attention to Seska.

"Make sure Kathryn Janeway is waiting for me when I get there. Under no circumstances do I want her to escape or get harmed. Is that understood?"

Seska stared at him in disbelief. What obsession had gotten into him? And she had so looked forward to her first encounter with the Starfleet captain. The things she would have done to her... She had planned to beat that pretty face into a pulp, or even better, cut it into so many pieces that even her closest family members would not recognize her again. Then she would have tortured her until she would have begged Seska to let her die.

But now it did not look as if she was going to get the chance to do any of it, unless she was happy to have Camet do the same -- or maybe worse things -- to herself when he got there. As much as she wanted gratification for what Janeway -- well, actually Chakotay -- had done to her, she was not willing to die for it, and certainly not by the hands of the ever-dreaded Gul Camet. She had heard the stories about how he drove his victims insane with pain before he finally killed them, and he had a reputation for being especially good with women. Maybe delivering Janeway to him in one piece was not such a bad thing after all.

"Consider her yours, Camet!" she said with a seductive grin.

"Good! I'll see you in six hours. Camet out!" He cut the transmission and looked again at the picture of the woman on his computer screen. She had not changed much. If anything her beauty had ripened and grown. Oh, what pleasure this long desired reunion would be!

"I've got you trapped, my dear!" he said softly to the image of the woman, caressing it with his long reptilian fingers, his eyes glazed over with the veil of mania as he leered at it.

Having prepared the couch for the night, Kathryn opened the case with her things in it and began to search for a suitable nightgown. She had to keep up appearances. Much to her dismay she only found two. The first one was a rather short nightshirt -- it stopped at the small of her back -- which she kept for extremely hot summer nights or a breakdown of the environmental controls. She hated sleeping in the nude onboard starships. You never knew when an emergency would force you to leave your quarters unexpectedly, without a chance to get dressed properly. This way she would only have to put on some trousers. The other nightgown in the case was a very low-cut peach satin negligee. The latter Mark had given to her on their fifth anniversary... Stop thinking about him, she thought and banished the memories that the negligee had conjured up from her mind.

At least the negligee would cover most of her, she thought as she strained her ears to listen to the muffled sounds emanating from the bedroom. He was talking to someone over the comm-line. If she were quick enough she would be able to get changed and tugged under the blankets before Chakotay finished his conversation.

As fast as she could she unfastened the zip at the back of her dress and slipped out of it. Immediately she pulled the negligee over her head and rushed under the covers on the couch. It was too small for her to stretch out completely, so she curled up into a fetal position. At least the blankets were warm and the pillows and plush upholstery made a soft and comfortable bed. Just as she had ordered the computer to switch of the lights in the lounge room, she heard Chakotay end his conversation. Seconds later the Maquis captain emerged from the bedroom, wrapped into a navy blue rope and probably not wearing much else under it.

Noticing that the light in the lounge room had already been turned off, he quietly entered, finding his way to the couch in the dark, aided only by the few rays of light that shown in from his bedroom. In front of the couch he halted to look at his hostage. Her long hair cascaded freely over the pillow. She had covered herself up to her neck with the blankets Lojal had delivered. She had thrown her dress over the back of the couch. Chakotay found himself wondering which of the nightgowns she had chosen to wear. Maybe he should have brought her one of the Starfleet issue pyjamas after all. But he did not want another reminder of the powerful institution he himself had belonged to not so long ago, an institution that was now bend on hunting him and his down, to the death if necessary.

He remembered having packed two of her nightgowns and they had both been rather revealing. He hoped to God that she was not going to parade around in his quarters in one of them. If she did, he would not be held responsible for his actions... Kathryn listened to his footsteps on the thick carpet as he approached her. Her heart was pounding so loudly that she was sure he could hear it. Nevertheless she continued pretending to be asleep. She had pulled the blankets tightly around her. Good God, what was he doing now? She felt his hand approach her face -- the warmth of his skin enveloping her cheek and lips. However much she concentrated, she could not stop her breathing from becoming shallow and rushed. She tried to hold her breath, but that only made matters worse. Her lungs were screaming for air. Kathryn hoped that her eyelids did not flutter with the agitation she was feeling. It would undoubtedly give her away.

With unimaginable will power she forced herself to remain absolutely motionless, determined not to jump at his touch as his hand gently brushed her cheek to remove a strand of hair from her face. Kathryn suppressed a shudder. She wanted to push his hand away and scream at him not to touch her, but she did not want him to know that she was awake. She just wanted him to leave her -- she needed to be alone. He stood there for what seemed an eternity, and just as she was beginning to think that he was going to stand there all night, he went back to his bedroom, leaving the doors wide open. Kathryn quietly took a deep breath and exhaled with relief. She just hoped he was not going to come back. When she finally heard him crawl into bed she relaxed. Now it was time to think about how to get out of here. She was not going to use the night for sleeping; that much was clear.

She would listen to the sounds from the bedroom until she could be sure that he was asleep. Then she would try to get out of this place and find her crew. There should not be too many guards around the place since they thought that all their prisoners were locked away safely. It should not be too difficult to walk about undetected, but there was one problem -- she was only wearing that rather revealing negligee...

She would rather die than have her crew or any of the Maquis see her like this. Her Starfleet uniform had disappeared into a recycler, but the dress she had worn tonight still hung over the back of the couch. She would take it with her and get changed once she found a quiet, secluded place somewhere in the base. Getting dressed in Chakotay's quarters would be risking waking him up with the rustle of the fabric. She could not afford to take that risk. She listened to the soft sound of his breathing for what seemed like hours. Chakotay obviously had trouble sleeping tonight. He was tossing and turning a lot. Finally his breathing became deeper and more regular. As there was no chronometer for her to check the passing of time, she recited the entire Constitution of the United Federation of Planets in her mind -- all nine hundred and fifty-two paragraphs of it, well, at least most of what she could remember.

"We the intelligent life-forms of the United Federation of Planets determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of intra-galactic war which has brought untold horror and suffering to our planetary social systems, and to reaffirm faith in the fundamental intelligent life-form rights, in the dignity and worth of the intelligent life-form person, to the equal rights of male and female and of planetary social systems large and small, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom, to practice benevolent tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors, and to unite our strength to maintain intra-galactic peace and security, and to ensure by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods that armed force shall not be used except in common defense, and to employ intra-galactic machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of al intelligent life-forms, have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims. Accordingly, the respective social systems, through representatives assembled on the planet Bable, who have exhibited..."

At the end of that she knew that about an hour and a half had passed. Chakotay's breath was still coming in deep regular intervals. Now's as good a time as any, she thought, as she slipped from the sofa and tiptoed into the dining room. She stopped on the threshold between the dining room and his bedroom.

She could not see his face, since his back was turned toward her, but he was not moving. Satisfied that he was asleep, she made her way back to the lounge. Kathryn took the dress that still hung over the back of one of the armchairs and approached the door that led out of Chakotay's quarters into whatever lay behind it -- she still did not know where exactly she was, only that she had been taken to a Maquis base on a planet in the Moriya system. His quarters did not have any windows, so she presumed that the base was probably subterranean. The furnishings in Chakotay's rooms exuded luxury, so this base had obviously belonged to someone else at some time. It certainly was not decorated Maquis style. They would never have been able to afford such treasures.

The door required a security code to open it. For once she was grateful for having been forced to take the Survival Training Course at the Academy. It had almost killed her, but it surely had taught her a lot about how to get out of seemingly hopeless situations. A large part of the course had been spent on physical endurance exercises and field training, but there had also been quite a few lectures and practical lessons on how to break into computer systems, decode encryptions and break door locks of all kinds.

If only I had a tricorder..., she mused. Chakotay had to have one somewhere. She tiptoed her way to the part of his quarters that served as his office. It was pitch black and she could not turn on the lights. She fumbled her way around the room, trying to locate the desk she remembered catching a brief glimpse of before she had gone to bed.

After a frustrating period of blind searching she was rewarded with the feel of solid wood under her hands. His desk! Now she carefully fingered every item that lay on it -- a padd, another padd, an old fashioned book of some kind, a computer console, a cup, another padd... What was this? Oh, a chronometer.

She pulled back in shock as her fingers made contact with something furry... WHAT was that? She took a deep breath to calm her nerves and continued to finger the desk, however she found nothing but a few more padds. The man definitely had too many padds! Frustrated with her lack of progress, she sank into his chair and tried the drawers.

The first one was locked, the second one also, but the third gave way when she pulled at the antique metallic handle. Blindly she slid her hand into the drawer -- a few pieces of paper, two more padds... She lifted the paper with one hand to feel underneath it with the other. There! Bull's eye! A tricorder! Quickly she pulled it out, tiptoed out of the office leaving the drawer open, and stole back to the door. After a few minutes of soundlessly removing the cover from the control panel to the left of the door, which was not an easy task in the dark, she interfaced the tricorder. She had set the instrument to crack the door code, and waited for it to do the work. A short time later, although it seemed to her as if hours had passed, she was rewarded with a small hydraulic hiss as the door slid open. Quickly she grabbed the tricorder and her dress and slipped out into a cold, damp and dim tunnel. The door immediately slid shut behind her.

Where the hell did they take us? As the cold from the ground crept into her feet she realized that she had forgotten to take her shoes. The uneven rocky ground was already cutting painfully into her soles, but she could not risk going back for them -- it meant opening the door again, which would no doubt rouse Chakotay from his slumber. Carefully she made her way over the rocky, cold, damp ground. She opened the tricorder to search for her crew. The tricorder registered Voyagers combadge signatures all over the place, even in Chakotay's quarters. That could not be right... The Maquis had apparently taken Voyager's combadges and used them for their own purposes. This way the tricorder would be virtually useless to her. She closed it.

After a few minutes she realized that she must be traveling through a main tunnel. Several smaller ones branched off to either side. The eerie green shine of ancient torches, that were lit by a to her unfamiliar fuel, illuminated her way.

Janeway stayed on the main path, gathering that it had to eventually lead her somewhere. The place reminded her of a dilithium mining colony she had once visited as a teenager, when her father had taken her with him on a business trip to the planet Coridan, before it had been admitted into the Federation... only this seemed much older. And the green light of the torches discomfortingly reminded her of Cardassian prisons.

The tunnel went on endlessly. Then, in the distance, she heard voices. By the sounds of it a small group was approaching her position -- no more than five people. She used opened the tricorder. It read five combadge signals. Hurriedly she took cover in the shadows of one of the barely lit side tunnels.

They were coming closer, but she was out of sight and had no fear of being discovered, unless they were going to take exactly this tunnel. Even then she would probably be able to hide in the shadows if she pressed herself right up against the wall. They were right there now... and walking past in the direction she had just come from. Relieved she exhaled the breath she had been unaware of holding.

She donned the dress she had brought with her -- at least if people ran into her this way, she would not look as suspect as she had before, running about in her negligee. Maybe they would even mistake her for one of them...

Wishful thinking, Kathryn!, she chided herself. Of course they would not be that stupid. From what she had heard Maquis cells were like families -- everyone knew each other, no matter how large their number. She had barely finished dressing and was peeking her head around the corner to see if the main passageway was clear, when the loud whine of an alarm blurred through the entire place, echoing against the walls of so many different tunnels that it was difficult to distinguish the original alert claxons. The noise was deafening and she sheltered her ears with her hands until they had adapted to the sudden assault. Then Chakotay's voice came over the comm-system.

"Intruder Alert! The Starfleet captain has escaped. She must still be in the tunnels. All hands to the search! She's not armed, so there's no reason to harm her. If anyone does, they will have to answer to me! I repeat, do NOT harm her! We need her in one piece!"

Chakotay was furious... more with himself for putting too much trust in her than with Kathryn for attempting to escape. But he had been so accommodating! Of course, he should have expected something like this.

"Idiot!" he chastised himself.

He just hoped that his people were not going to hurt her when they found her. Scenarios of what might happen if Seska found her kept going through his mind. At least he had no doubt that she would be tracked down in no time. There was simply nowhere to hide, especially for someone who did not know their way around the place. Chakotay had awoken only minutes ago to get himself a glass of water from the replicator. When he had gone to the lounge room in order to check on her she had not been there. After ordering the computer to fully illuminate his quarters, and a glance at the door panel, which lay on the ground next to the entrance to his quarters, he had switched on the alarm claxons and called for intruder alert. Now he was hurriedly getting dressed to join the search. So much for a good night's sleep before the interrogations started! It was only 0330 hours and he had not been planning to get up for another three to four hours. Still doing up his shirt buttons, he sprinted out of his quarters.