By Carolyn Carey
Chapter 2 "Ingemisco"Voyager's crew watched as their captain was carried away towards an uncertain future, a future without them. The tension among them was palpable. Although Captain Janeway had always kept a professional distance from most members of her crew, she was well liked and admired. Voyager had been in trouble many times before, and each time she had gotten them out of it. Her dedication towards her crew was unprecedented, and it had to be, if they were to survive in the Delta Quadrant. When Janeway stated they were going to get home, it sounded like an achievable goal. With her around almost everything seemed possible. She was their captain. Like a light in the dark, they followed her. And now she was gone.
Were they ever going to get out of this? What was going to happen to them? Would Lyok carry out his threats? Was this the end of their journey? Were they never to see their loved ones in the Alpha Quadrant again? And what about their captain, their leader? What did the man they had come to know as Commissioner Talshek have in tow for her?
Chakotay was probably the one hit hardest by the latest events. With the captain gone, the commander was now in charge, and that meant that he was the one now solely responsible for the well-being of the entire crew, a burden that instantly weighed like a ton of bricks upon his shoulders.
Lyok's threats had sounded like he meant them. With her little stunt of insubordination Kathryn Janeway had managed to keep them all together, but at what cost? How long would the overseer carry a grudge? Probably until hell freezes over, Chakotay guessed. But all imaginable hardship was still preferable to the separation of the crew. If the auction had taken place, they would have been scattered all over the sector. He would find a way to get the crew out of this, and somehow he would get his captain, and friend, back.
During their years in the Delta Quadrant the ex-Maquis and the Starfleet captain had formed a close friendship, based on mutual trust and admiration. There was a certain chemistry between them, that had almost developed into something more when they had been stranded on the planet they had named 'New Earth.' True, there had been times when their friendship had been put to the test, but they had managed to separate their professional differences from their friendship, had learned from their mistakes, and as a result their friendship had grown stronger day by day.
The thought of never seeing Kathryn again made his stomach knot. But there were other things to be considered now. His personal feelings would have to wait. How would the crew take the loss of their captain? 'Loss', a term that sounded alarmingly permanent. He should not be thinking that way. All he needed was some time to think, and he would come up with a plan... a way to get them out of this hellhole, and a way to get their captain back.
The crowd of Kalanar noblesse before them slowly dispersed, making their way toward the main building. The Voyager crew was led off the platform. The crowd of prisoners had barely begun to scatter, when suddenly everyone stopped dead in their tracks.
Lyok had remained on the platform and now addressed the camp.
"As a result of Kathryn Janeway's insolent behavior, rations will be withheld today. You will all proceed straight to the mines. Lets see how you like to work on an empty stomach!"
Already dozens of hostile glares shot toward the crew. Lyok descended from the platform and started in direction of the main building. When he passed Chakotay he stopped, fixed the Native American with eyes and sneered,
"Lets see how quickly you'll perish with the wrath of your fellow prisoners upon you!"
The first thing she took in was the various colored flashing buttons of computer consoles. The world once again took shape before her eyes, as she reappeared in a control room. Several consoles of alien design lined the walls, and two Kalanar guards lined each side of a narrow doorway. She felt the low hum of warp engines under her feet -- a starship. Of course. Talshek was taking her to his homeworld, wherever that was.
The commissioner signaled his guards.
"Escort her to the guest quarters. And watch out, I'm sure she's been well trained in the art of combat. Don't be fooled by her appearance. She may look like just another female alien prisoner to you, but only yesterday she was in command of a starship. I assume that this United Federation of Planets does not give out such commissions on a whim. I'll be on the bridge."
As he approached the narrow door, it opened with a hydraulic hiss not unlike that of Voyager's automated doors.
Kathryn Janeway was not going to allow him to get away without first providing her with some answers to the myriad of questions that went through her head.
"Commissioner!" she called out after him.
A little to her surprise the man actually stopped and turned toward her.
"You forgot to tell me where we're heading," she stated matter-of-factly in as casual a manner as she could muster. They both knew it was a charade. She desperately wanted to know what he was going to do with her, where he was taking her, and many, many other things. But she had to at least keep up an appearance of nonchalance. It was a matter of pride.
Talshek grinned at her. It was the most unsettling kind of smile, devilish and mocking. Whatever he had in mind for her, it was not going to be a vacation...
"My dear, I'm taking you to my homeworld. I have a large estate on Kalanar Prime. You'll work with the other servants in the fields. That should be an interesting change for you. I've read some of your ship's logs. Oh don't worry, only the official ones so far. I've not quite broken the encryption code to your personal logs. You've been ship bound for quite awhile. Take a look on the bright side. A little physical labor may be just what the doctor ordered."
That was a Machiavellian grin if she had ever seen one.
Janeway merely glared at him, her expression filled with contempt for the man before her. He did not seem the slightest bit unsettled by her death glare, however, and much to her disapproval strolled out of the door without as much as another glance.
The guards roughly dragged her through the sliding doors, towards her quarters, making sure to keep a respectful distance from their leader. But was it really respect, or was it fear? She wondered...
They had simply pushed her through the door of what she could only figure were the 'guest quarters' Talshek had mentioned. If that was the way they accommodated their guests, she did not want to know what their own quarters looked like. Words like spartan and functional came to mind. The room was small, about two meters in length and a little more in width. No pictures adorned the bulkheads, which were made of an almost black alien metallic compound that she did not recognize. The only piece of furniture in the apartment was a bunk, its gray sheets and blankets made from a rough fabric that irritated her skin. It had been placed along the wall, right opposite the door. The mattress was very thin and soft, so thin and soft that she could feel the wiry spirals that supported it when she sat down. It certainly would not offer any comfort during the night. In the corner next to the bed was an area that had been partitioned off by a gray screen. She took a look behind the screen and found a toilet and a small sink. When she held her hands under the water pipe cold water automatically emerged from it. No hot water. Not much comfort either. If these were guest quarters, she would be damned. The room looked more like a cell.
No window meant that she would not be able to determine which way they were going. She had hoped to at least determine the general direction in which the Commissioner's ship was heading away from Laxys III. Talshek was no fool. She had to give him that.
Kathryn Janeway sagged onto the mattress. She had spent hours searching the room for a possible escape route. Her efforts had been fruitless. Exhausted, she sat on her bed, head in her hands. She rubbed the back of her neck. The blow of the Kalanar guards weapon back on Voyager had left her muscles throbbing with agony. If only she could get hold of a hypospray... Of course! That was it. If she pretended to be sick, maybe the Kalanar would come and check on her. She would need a weapon of some kind, but there might just be a chance that she could fool her captors and get out of this cell...
She began to search the room with newly found energy. All she needed was a heavy ornament, a bar of metal, anything...
Not five minutes later she found herself sitting back on the bed. There was simply nothing in the room that could serve her as a weapon. It was hopeless. She would have to wait until they reached their destination. When they finally came for her, she would give them one hell of a fight. Voyager's captain was not going to go into slavery without one heck of a battle.
The pain in her neck and shoulders was getting worse. She could barley support her head any longer. Wearily she lay down, restlessly punching and repositioning the pillow under her head, again and again... She simply could not find a comfortable position. In the end she gave up. Her thoughts inevitably drifted towards Chakotay and her crew. Were they all right? Would they be able to survive in that death camp? Did Chakotay have a plan? She hoped he did, because she certainly did not. And what of little Naomi Wildman? The little girl had barely begun her life. Was this how it was supposed to end? Thousands of light-years away from home, among hostile aliens, never to see her home, or for that matter, her father? Naomi had been born aboard Voyager. Her father was still in the Alpha Quadrant; that was if he had managed to survive the Dominion War...
The specter of death hid around every corner of the galaxy -- barbarism, malevolence, spiteful tyrants, ruthless autocrats, sadistic oppressors, merciless sovereigns... was there no end to violence? Was there indeed no justice in the universe?
The cosmos was so immense that no humanoid would ever be able to travel its entirety in a lifetime. Yet some people were unwilling to share the vastness of space.
Space, so cruel and yet, at the same time, so beautiful. Life created in the translucent eddies of gaseous nebulae, worlds destroyed in the violent explosions of a red giant... Images of the red giant sinking below the horizon of the labor camp on Laxys III flooded her mind, its crimson glow against domed columns of rock casting long, eerie shadows onto the barren ground... The moon rising large in the distance, right between the twin planets that now came into view... Dark clouds, the bearers of doom, looming above her, obscuring the incandescent beauty of an alien night sky. The clouds came towards her, mysterious and foreboding, drawing nearer and gaining speed, until they enveloped her entirely in their somber embrace. Suddenly they did not appear so cheerless anymore, but took on a myriad of colors, an iridescent miasma of swirling vapors representing every hue of the rainbow, and then some more...
The ship lurched forcefully. Kathryn Janeway woke up with a yet another new sensation of pain, all along her left side. She had been thrown off the bed in her sleep. Sleep! How could she have lost control like that? She had a crew to rescue! Chiding herself for her weakness, even if she had only drifted of for scant minutes, she picked herself up and was immediately thrown back as the ship once again temporarily lost inertia. What was going on? Where they under attack? Who would attack the Kalanar? Did they have powerful enemies? Would these people be more civilized? Could they be potential allies? Too many questions...
The vessel rocked again, and this time she was thrown forward, her forehead hitting the solid bars of the bedstead. She groaned, and waited for the initial surge of pain to subside. Her hand automatically touched the spot were she had hurt herself. It felt warm and wet to the touch. She took a look at her hand and wiped it on her pants, leaving deeply crimson stains on the beige fabric. Blood from the cut on her forehead was trickling down right her temple and into her ear. She pushed herself upright and immediately felt a wave of nausea take hold of her. Concussion... that was the last thing she needed. She had to keep a clear head. Too much was at stake.
Kathryn Janeway recognized the sound of a blast of an almighty explosion in the vacuum of space. A shockwave shook the Kalanar vessel one last time, and this time she was prepared for the impact, holding on to the bedstead as best as she could. Then everything was quiet. Whoever they had been, they were gone, their vessel destroyed. It seemed there was no defeating the almighty Kalanar Imperium...
Minutes later the ship jumped out of warp and she felt the unfamiliar motions of a landing vessel. Had they reached their destination?
The door opened and a bright ray of light darted from the corridor into her cell. Crouched on the floor still fighting off the nausea, she blinked into the stabbing brightness. Then two shadows soothingly obscured it for an instant. The shadows entered the room, followed by a larger one. Then the larger one took the lead and crouched next to her, lifting her chin in a way that made her head explode.
"Veron, take her to the house! Thor, get the doctor!"
Talshek! The large shadow was the commissioner. One of the smaller shadows approached. He lifted her up, and for a moment she thought she was going to pass out as an excruciating wave of pain surged through her body. She could not suppress the moan that escaped her lips.
"Try to be more careful, Veron!" the powerful Kalanar chided.
Was that concern for her? Or was he just worried he might lose his new slave and so have wasted his precious... -- what was their currency called again? The pain was clouding her mind. Or maybe it was fatigue? Probably both. She had not slept for three days, not since the Neddiin had forced Voyager to take refuge in the nebula. Some refuge it had turned out to be...
She had finally passed out when the bright sunlight of Kalanar Prime hit her eyes. However, she figured she could not have been unconscious for longer than a few seconds, scant minutes at most, because when awareness in all its horrors returned, the arms of the guard who had carried her were only just lowering her onto a mattress of some sort. She squinted through partly closed eyes, trying to assess her surroundings. Someone was lowering the blinds on the windows. The room was now dim, so that she finally dared to open her eyes fully. It still caused her agony, but it was bearable -- just.
These definitely where no 'guest quarters'! Huge antique paintings lined the fabric-covered walls, depicting alien landscapes and oceans. The ceiling was adorned with tapestries, some of the most beautiful woven artwork she had ever seen. Paradise birds sat or flew among the richly green foliage of exotic trees that carried the most precious blossoms she had ever laid sight on. If these were images of Kalanar Prime, this planet had to be a paradise, alas for her a paradise in hell...
"I can heal the wound on her forehead, but she's suffering from severe concussion. She will need absolute rest until she has completely recovered, Commissioner."
Chakotay had been right. The Kalanar were not quite completely barbarian, not quite.... She was amazed Talshek had actually called a doctor for her. Would he have to pay him? Probably not, otherwise he most likely would not have bothered.
"How long will that take?"
The commissioner's questions were stated in a businesslike manner. There were no concern or sympathy in his tone.
"It's hard to say. I'm unfamiliar with her alien physiognomy. Usually I would estimate a week or two of bed rest, depending on the severity of the concussion and the care the patient receives. But understand this! If no care is taken she will most certainly die of her injuries. Her condition is critical. I'm surprised she did not drift into a coma. I'm going to give her something for the pain now, but someone is going to have to administer the drug to her at regular intervals, otherwise she will die of agony alone."
"Is she in that much pain?"
Was that an attempt to skimp on the medication? Or was that actually concern?
"As I said, I'm amazed she is still conscious.", the doctor merely replied.
The next few days were a conundrum of dreams, semi-consciousness and throbbing headaches. Every now and then someone would come and administer a drug into the side of her neck. Then would follow a period of relief, but it was short-lived. Sometimes she thought it might be better not to take the drug at all. The pain, when it inevitably returned, always seemed to have multiplied in intensity.
One morning she woke from a bad dream, one of many she had had in the past few days, and found that the pain had dulled a little. From then on it got better. The drip that had been fitted to her arm was taken away, and for the first time since she had become a prisoner of the Kalanar, she had eaten. It was only a watery brew of some sort, but its warmth was soothing, and it was good to feel something fill her stomach after all that time. A guard entered shortly after she had finished the meal. He took away the tray and then moved to administer the usual hypospray to her neck.
She put her hand up.
"No. I don't need that anymore. It makes me feel worse."
The guard looked at her in disbelief, then withdrew with a shrug.
That day she had a visitor. The doctor had come back to check on his patient. He examined her with an alien device that vaguely reminded her of a tricorder. Fast steps approached the open door of the room and Talshek, dressed in uniform, entered the chamber. He had not checked on her since the first time the doctor had come.
"How is she?" he enquired in the now familiar business tone.
The doctor studied the readings on his medical device.
"The swelling of the brain tissue has gone down, but its still there. Her neutrino levels are too low and she's weak. I suggest a slow recovery. Short walks, slowly increasing in duration, and plenty of rest and nutrients. I've given her something to boost her neutrinos."
"Have you finished here?"
For an instant the medical expert looked a little offended at the brusque question, but then just nodded and left.
Talshek motioned the two guards that were present to leave the room. He closed the door behind them. What now?
Talshek moved away from her towards one of the windows that were still covered in blinds. He raised the blind and Kathryn saw that the sun had already almost completely set. Talshek continued to raise the blinds on all the windows. There were four of them, large bay windows looking out on the countryside. It was beautiful out there. Rolling green hills covered in dense forests softly rose in the distance, the setting sun casting a golden glow on their grassy peaks. Below the hills lay dozens of fields, all covered in a variety of crops. They looked about ripe for the harvest, not that she was familiar with the alien crops, but she had grown up in a farming community in Indiana, and she had acquired a sixth sense for such things. Diagonally from the hills towards the house ran a small river, the sinking sun turning the water into liquid gold.
She had been so caught up in the beauty of the view before her, that she had not noticed the commissioner's scrutinizing glances until her eyes accidentally met his.
"I see the scenery meets with your approval, Captain."
"It's beautiful," she simply stated.
"Thank you. It's my land, as far as the eye can see. The grounds have been in my family for generations, as has this house. But I did not come here to discuss my property with you."
He paused and approached her sickbed. For a moment he simply stood before her, assessing her. Then he spoke.
"How are you feeling?"
"What?" she asked, a little perplexed by the question. The doctor had just told him how she was.
"How are you feeling?"
The irony of it all was too much. Here he was, the man who had abducted her and her crew, who had taken her ship and put her crew into a labor camp -- 'death camp' was probably closer to the truth --, the man who had purchased her as a slave like a piece of meat on the market... And here he was asking how she felt? She guffawed in disgust.
"How do you think I feel, Commissioner? You've taken away my freedom. You've separated me from my crew in order to enslave me and 'take me into your service', whatever that means. My crew could be dead by now for all I know. And you've taken from us the only hope we had of ever getting home -- Voyager, our home from home. To top things off you keep me locked up in a cell while your ship is under attack, and I wind up with severe concussion. How do you expect me to feel, Talshek?" she spat.
There was a short flare of anger in his eyes, but then he calmly continued,
"I was referring to your concussion."
"Oh, well, I feel like I could do cartwheels! Would you like me to demonstrate?" she countered.
He had had enough of her sarcasm.
"If that's the case you can start work in the fields tomorrow. I'll have you moved to the servants' quarters. Veron!" Talshek barked.
The guard appeared almost immediately.
"Take the captain to the servants' quarters. She's feeling better." he barked.
Fine. Just as long as she did not have to listen to his stupid questions one moment longer. She would prefer to sleep in a ditch as long as it meant that he kept out of her sight. She tried to crawl out of the bed that she had occupied for at least a week, and was surprised at how much difficulty such a simple task was causing her. Dizziness overcame her, but she ignored it and carried on, despite the fact that black spots were now dancing before her eyes. She was literally moving blindly.
Veron shot confused glances between her and his commanding officer, but he did not say anything. When she rose on very shaky legs, he steadied her and began to escort her out of the room. She thought she would fall the moment her legs were required to support her bodyweight, but Veron kept her upright with an iron grip. When they were safely out of the commissioner's sight, he began to carry her, and she let him. She could not have moved another inch.
The building that encompassed the servants' quarters was annexed to the eastern side of the manor house. The river went by it not fifty meters away. Veron told her that the servant got their drinking water from there. He helped her into the sorry looking bunk in the decrepit room that she shared with another two-dozen servants of mixed gender and varied species. All of them were alien to the Kalanar homeworld. Apparently the Kalanar had made quite a habit out of abducting aliens and enslaving them. The others had not paid her much attention when Veron had carried her into the room. That was hardly surprising, since they all looked just about as weak as herself. Veron had then gone down to the river and filled a small flask with water. He had helped her drink a few sips, before leaving. The sun had completely disappeared below the horizon, and darkness enveloped the room. Apparently there were no lights, so everyone went to sleep. She could not. Too many things were going through her head. Chakotay, the others... was it night now on Laxys III, or was the scorching heat of the red giant burning down on them? And where was Voyager? What had Talshek done with her proud ship?
She thought of all the people who had become a second family to her, and who were now never to see their friends and kin in the Alpha Quadrant again. She thought of Tom Paris, son of her mentor Admiral Paris, who would now never be able to make amends with his estranged father. She thought of B'Elanna, who had developed from a stroppy little fiery half-Klingon into a valuable officer and the best goddamn engineer she had ever had. She thought of Seven, who would never have the chance to meet what was left of her human family, of Naomi, who would never see the Alpha Quadrant or her father; of Harry Kim, who had been so desperate to get back home. He would never see his beloved parents again. She thought of Tuvok, her Vulcan friend, who had left behind a wife and three children. And she thought of Chakotay, the former Maquis leader who had become the best first officer to serve under her, and a dear friend. Chakotay had not left much behind in the Alpha Quadrant. His Maquis friends had all been killed by the Cardassian-Dominion alliance. His father was dead, and he had never talked about anyone else back home. She hoped he was alive and well. He had always been a great support to her, and she missed him sorely now.
And she thought of the beautiful blue planet that was so very far away -- the world, which she called home: Earth. No matter how picturesque and exotic some of the worlds in the Delta Quadrant had turned out to be, there simply was no place like home. Home. She would never see it again.
Under the shroud of darkness of the Kalanar night, accompanied by the strange sleeping sounds of people and species she did not know, Kathryn Janeway quietly allowed the tears that had been ready to spill for such a long time to flow freely. Eventually she cried herself to sleep.