Disclaimer: see Part 1
=/\=
Coeur de Lion
by Katie
Chapter 3
Bonds That Tie to Reality
Naomi was the sweetest thing of a girl Frank had ever
met. He'd always thought of his nieces being angels, but this
little French girl made him think otherwise. Although she had
strange-looking horns on her forehead she was the most
beautiful child he'd ever seen. Her curly hair was of the color
of ripe wheat that made her dark eyes sparkle even more
intensively. She was carrying a doll with her that looked
somewhat worn down. Naomi obviously played a lot with it.
The girl hesitated when she noticed him. Frank wasn't
quite sure how to react. So they kept standing in the middle of
the room, eyeing each other and obviously not knowing what
to make of each other.
"Qui est-ce?" she eventually asked.
"This is Catherine's husband," Jean answered. "Say
bon jour to him, he is a friend."
Naomi curtsied well-behaved. "Bon jour, Monsieur."
Frank finally closed the remaining distance between
them and squatted in front of her. He was a tall man and his
sister had told him as soon as his nieces could walk to squat
down when talking to them. "Bon jour. Just call me Maurice,
bien?"
"D'accord," she nodded.
"Now, Naomi," Jean said, "I think you've got
something for me to trade for two croissants au chocolat,
n'est-ce pas?"
The girls face brightened and she nodded vigorously.
Then she pulled up the colorful dress of her doll. Beneath it
there was a small piece of paper tied with a blue ribbon
around the belly of her rag doll. She carefully pulled the piece
of paper away and handed it to Jean.
"Very well!" he smiled. Then he handed the note to
Frank. "So, now let's got to the kitchen and see what I've got
for you, okay?" Again, Naomi nodded enthusiastically and
followed the chef into his realm.
"She's a cute little thing," Frank commented, joining
Séverine and Paul at the table.
"Indeed she is, and very clever too," Paul added. Frank
handed him the piece of paper he'd received from the girl. He
unfolded it and found a row of lower case letters written
down on it. The writer had written very carefully. "This is the
key to the code which is due today," Paul explained to the
American.
The American though couldn't make anything out of it.
He knew that as few persons as possible were to know about
the codes, in case something unexpected happen. Only
Brigitte and Catherine knew how to do the decoding, and
neither of them was there. Brigitte hadn't returned from the
Nazi headquarters yet and Catherine had run off to who-
knows-where. Séverine looked at the clock that was standing
on the mantelpiece. It was almost half past one now and the
weather forecast on the radio was due in a few minutes.
"I guess today I'll have to write down the forecast,"
Séverine remarked. She got up and went to the bar, armed
herself with a notepad and a pencil. Just when she turned on
the radio, the speaker announced the weather forecast. "I am
Reginald Smith of the British Radio Network and this is the
weather forecast for the British Isles on Thursday, September
19th 1944 ... "
Séverine wrote down the forecast as quickly as she
could, checking it and adding what she'd left out when Mr
Smith was as kind as to repeat the forecast forty-five seconds
later. Frank joined her at the counter. "I hope this isn't too
important," he said.
"I hope Catherine will return any time soon. If Jean or
Naomi bring the decoding sequence then there *is* an
important message," Séverine told him. She folded the note
with the weather forecast and switched to a French radio
station. Soft music was playing now and Séverine took
another sheet and concentrated on writing down the lyrics of
the songs.
=/\=
Fortunately had the Doctor managed to convince the
Hirogen that Ensign Kim was in desperate need of a good
night's sleep, so they'd let him sleep in Sickbay. While Harry
was sleeping—he was so tired that he even didn't need his
sleeping mask—the Doctor figured out a way how they could
get the other crew back. He'd found that he could reprogram
the neural interfaces so that they could be connected to a
subroutine of the holodecks' computers. Using the subroutine
as a relay station for messages it would be possible to smuggle
someone in who knew what was going on. Thanks to the
manipulated neural interface the Doctor would also be able to
establish a connection between the person's brain and a secret
channel of the ship's intercom. The person would be fully
aware of who he or she was and could try to deactivate the
others' neural interfaces. A system quite similar to a Borg
collective.
So far so good, but their were still two little problems.
First, he needed a patient to treat who was going to be sent to
the World War II scenario in Holodeck One and secondly he
had to find a way to deactivate the neural interfaces that didn't
shop him to the Hirogen. Those bastards were monitoring
each crew on the holodecks and as soon as one of them was
injured or their neural interfaces were damaged in any way,
there was an alarm going off. If they wanted to get rid of the
Hirogen, they had to be smarter than them.
A few hours later, Harry found the Doctor treating
Ensign Vorick's injuries he'd suffered in the fight with a
Saracen in the crusade scenario on Holodeck Two. It was a
most horrible sight and Harry turned away quickly. He didn't
know who was to pity more: the crusaders, the Klingons or
the people on Holodeck One. Luckily, Harry found a pretext
that allowed him to stay in Sickbay for the next two hours. So
when the Doctor had treated Vorick as well as possible, he
made sure that none of the Hirogen were within earshot.
"Doctor, have you found a way to disable the neural
interfaces yet?" he asked.
"I'm halfway there, Ensign. I must find a way to
disable the interfaces without the Hirogens' discovering it
immediately," the Doctor explained. The past nine-teen days
had taken their toll on the hologram. Whereas he usually
replied sarcastically, he'd lost his sense of humor soon after
the first wounded *prey* had been brought to him so that he
patch them up, only to welcome them back a few hours later.
This had been going on and on and on. Never before had the
expression *vicious circle* had a meaning that was closer to
truth than now.
"Hm, yes, that may be a problem," Harry nodded.
"The Hirogen keep looking over my shoulder when I'm
repairing something. We would have to distract them for at
least half an hour so I would be able to write a subroutine."
"That, in fact, *is* the problem," the Doctor nodded.
The furrows on his brow had never been deeper than those
days.
"Listen," Harry suddenly said. "I'm sure I can find a
pretext to go to Cargobay Two. Seven's got her console there
and I'm sure they are not monitoring the former Borg cubicles
..."
Harry never got the chance to tell him the whole idea.
The Doctor's face suddenly brightened and the hologram
almost got excited. "Eureka, Ensign, that's it!"
"What is what? I don't quite understand what you're
getting at."
"The Borg! We're going to use the Borg technology to
infiltrate the Hirogen's system," the Doctor said emphatically.
=/\=
Brigitte returned a quarter of an hour late. The
weather forecast had already been aired. However, she knew
that she could rely on her friends. Without the reliability they
were sharing the Resistance couldn't work. So she nodded at
Séverine in appreciation of her having recorded the forecast.
With the help of the decoding instructions Naomi had brought
earlier, she was able to rewrite the message. Séverine, Paul
and Frank gathered around her and she told them what it was
saying.
"It's from the Allied Forces Headquarters. We are to
gather more intelligence about the Germans. Allegedly they
know more about the Allied Forces strategies than they're
supposed to. The British suspect them of preparing an ambush
for the Americans," Brigitte read out loudly.
"Great. How strong is your relationship with
Brückner?" Frank wanted to know.
"There have been better times," the woman with the
strange ridges on her forehead answered.
"If the Nazis were planning an ambush Goulot would
be the first one to get wind of it," Paul told Frank. "So I think
it would be best if we waited for tomorrow noon. Séverine is
going to get that high frequency oscillator from him. She may
as well ask him about what's going on around his charcoal
burning."
"That would be best indeed," Frank agreed. "I don't
think that our people are going to free Sainte Claire before
Monday night."
"I take it that Catherine is still off?" Brigitte asked.
"Yes. Do you have any idea where she could have
gone?" Frank wanted to talk to her. He felt somewhat
awkward about what had happened an hour earlier. He'd hate
it if he'd hurt her after all what she'd done for him. And maybe
she could need someone to talk to, someone who was
unbiased of what had been going on between her and her late
husband. Somehow he doubted that she'd talked to anyone
about her feelings in the past three years.
Brigitte, however, hesitated before telling him where
she supposed her to be, where she was sure she would be. the
young woman wasn't quite sure whether an interview with
Frank was going to do Catherine any good, taken her reaction
earlier. But then she thought that maybe it wasn't a that bad
idea after all. "I'm sure she's gone to the lake in the forest. It's
her most favorite place to go at times like this."
=/\=
Thanks to Brigitte's detailed description, Frank didn't
have any problems in finding the lake. If she hadn't told him
how to get there he wouldn't have found his way. The lake
was very small and hidden in a tiny valley. He was glad that
the lake was in a forest, so he could escape the oppressing
heat of the Indian Summer for at least a short while. It was
quiet in the woods, except for the occasional rustling of leaves
and the singing of the birds and the humming and chirping of
the insects.
Frank followed the path that was hardly visible and
could be found only if one knew the tall old pine tree that was
standing next to it. But he found his way without any
problems and followed the path down to the small lake. There
was the tiny hut Brigitte had described him and the
ramshackle landing stage right under the weeping willow. On
the other side of the lake a brook was mounding, forming a
mini-delta.
Catherine, however, was nowhere to be seen. Frank
went down to the hut, but when he didn't find her there, he
leaned against the door frame and scrutinized the interior of
the hut. There was an huge old monster of a sofa, an old
dresser and a rickety table with a chair. On the table there was
a bottle that had served as a candle stick for several times.
Wax had dripped on the bottle and had encrusted it with many
colorful layers. Next to it there was an half-empty bottle of
heavy red wine and a simple glass. Catherine's shoes were
laying next to the legs of the chair on the wooden floor.
"Wha ... What are you doing here?" A powerful female
voice demanded to know. Frank spun around and found
Catherine standing in front of him. Her hair was disheveled
and dripping wet. Obviously she'd dressed in a hurry, because
she'd buttoned her dress up the wrong way: on the top there
was a button too much, on the hem, however, there was a
spare buttonhole. Catherine hadn't dried herself with a towel,
for the dress was sticking to her wet body like a second skin.
Frank realized that this was as good as seeing her naked. So
he tried to keep his eyes fixed on her face.
"I didn't mean to disturb you," he apologized.
"Su ... sure." She was having the hiccups because of
having drunk the wine without having eaten anything it
advance. That woman was just gorgeous. Frank couldn't help
smiling.
"Well, we were kind of worrying about you. So I came
out to look after you," Frank eventually said. It seemed
almost impossible for him to keep his eyes on a level with
hers. He caught himself letting his gaze wandering down her
body. Her dress was sticking to her skin in almost all places,
showing him her beautiful curves. Her nipples being still erect
from the swim she'd taken pressed against the fabric of her
dress. The sight of them almost drove him round the bend.
"That's sweet," she smiled. She was very shaky, so
Frank decided to offer her a seat.
"Yes," she nodded vigorously, "let's sit down ... on the
landing stage. You have to ... hang your feet into the water.
It's divine!" She gripped his hand and pulled him behind her
towards the ramshackle landing stage. Frank shook his head
and followed her staggering steps. A nightclub owner who got
drunk after only half a bottle of wine. Moreover, she lived in
the middle of a wine-growing area. On second thought
though, this wasn't funny at all. It was obvious that she'd
gotten drunk because of her emotional distress. If only he
could help her. He'd only known her half a day but she'd
already gotten so very dear to him that he had to ask himself
whether there was something to love at first sight after all ...
=/\=
"Miller is taking his own sweet time," Brigitte said
after she'd looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. She
crossed her arms in front of her chest and leaned against the
counter. It was already past eight in the evening and neither
he nor Catherine had shown up yet.
"Don't you think that they're having a lot of things to
talk over?" Paul replied sharply. The *Coeur the Lion* was
closed on Thursday nights, so he was about to leave to meet
some of his friends to have a glass of wine or two and to play
a bit of bowls in the small park in front of the church.
Séverine had left earlier to go to the pictures.
"Talk!" she laughed bitterly. "You don't really believe
they're *talking* down there, do you?" She remembered a
time when she and her American boyfriend had gone down
there to be undisturbed for a night or two several years ago.
The memories cut her to the quick and she knew that she was
being unfair. Her wonderful memories and her disappointment
now didn't give her the right to envy Catherine that much.
Even she was just a woman after all, so she too had the right
to enjoy herself—especially when she hadn't had a boyfriend
ever since Maurice had left for his voyage. However, it cut
her to the quick.
"Even if it were so—this is none of your business,
Brigitte," Paul reminded her. "Bonne nuit, I'll see you in the
morning. Make sure you lock the doors carefully. There's too
much vermin in the streets these days."
Brigitte nodded. She was going to turn in early
tonight. She got tired easily recently and she knew that she'd
soon give birth to a Nazi bastard, dammit. She'd always
wanted children, but not from that cowardly, only slightly
megalomaniac Nazi creep. Why on Earth hadn't she gone to
live safely with Bobby in the States, in a nice little house with
a white fence and five or six children playing in the garden?
She could still slap herself for having broken off
contact with him. He'd been the only love of her life and she'd
been foolish enough to let him go. Brigitte made a decision.
She wasn't going to turn in early tonight. Instead, she'd choke
down her pride and write a letter to Bobby. Maybe it wasn't
too late by now and Bobby ... no, what a foolish idea. No guy
of his type would wait for a French girl like her. The time
they'd spent together had been the most wonderful time in her
life, but it had been just a romance for one summer; a romance
like any other for a man like Bobby Davies.
*Maybe I should give it a try nevertheless. He can't
say more than no.*
When Miller had told them about his Lieutenant called
Davies earlier, it had cut her to the quick as well. But the
likelihood that the Lieutenant and her former lover were
identical wasn't very great, so she'd shoved off the thought as
quickly as it had struck her. That would be too good to be
true, it sounded too much like a fairy tale. This was war, after
all, and she was sure that there were at least as much Davieses
living in the States as there were Brückners living in Germany.
Where had she put his last letter?
=/\=
"What is so important in Cargobay Two that needs
your attention?" the Hirogen hunter asked him. Had he had
lips, his upper lip would have curled in disgust. It wasn't just
like the Hirogen to talk to puny prey. But it were the
Commandant's orders that the technicians not be harmed in
any way in order to keep the ship's systems—particularly the
holo-technology—up and running. If it were his decision to
make, Harry's guard would have hunted him down as soon as
possible and decorated the bulkheads of his quarters with his
bones.
"There's a science station that isn't needed at the
moment. If I shut it down there'll be more power available for
the holodecks," Harry explained, pulling himself together.
He'd given a year's worth of replicator rations if only he could
hunt that obnoxious Hirogen down. The bunch of them was
bad enough, but that guy seemed to be the worst of their
gang.
"Proceed," the Hirogen said, pressing the mouth of his
rifle into his back. Harry raised his hands in a pacifying
gesture and went to the next turbolift. His guard was
following him of course. Fortunately did he have no idea
about the technology of Voyager, nor did he know what a
Borg cubicle was. This was going to make Harry's work at the
Borg consoles easy. Thanks to his close working relationship
to Seven he knew exactly what he had to do. The Doctor had
given him a Padd with the instructions how to write a
subroutine so they could reprogram the neural interfaces once
they were assimilated by the Borg nanoprobes. Those little
helpers had become invaluable to them after they had helped
curing him from the assimilation of Species 8472. Since the
nanoprobe technology was unknown to the Hirogen, they
wouldn't be able to monitor them, even if they were
assimilating the neural interfaces. Then all Voyager crew
whose neo-cortexes were linked to the holodeck computer
would regain their consciousness.
The Doctor had already written a subroutine to
*infect* all food and drink in the holodecks with the
nanoprobes. At the same time they were going to beat the
Hirogen at their own game with the help of the nanoprobes.
But however persistent Harry had asked the Doctor about his
plans, the hologram wouldn't give his secret away, at least not
yet.
=/\=
Soon after they'd sat down on the landing stage,
Catherine had grown tired and eventually had dozed off into a
blissful sleep. Now Frank was cradling her head in his lap.
She'd put her head there to rest as if it were the most natural
thing to do. From Frank's point of view, it was most natural.
By now he'd realized that he'd fallen in love with her—but he
wasn't sure whether she had the same feelings about him.
She'd drunk half a bottle of wine after all, and her trust in him
could have been a result of her lightheadedness. He prayed
that it wasn't the case.
They hadn't talked much, it wouldn't have made much
sense then. You can't talk about matters of the heart if you
weren't like yourself at all. But soon they would talk, Frank
was sure about that. It was late in the afternoon now and the
sun was standing low above the treetops. Although it had
begun to cool off, it was still hot and he was glad he'd hung
his feet into the refreshingly cool water of the lake.
Meanwhile, Catherine's dress had dried in the sun as well as
her hair. He couldn't help caressing her auburn strands. When
he had been a boy he'd always loved it when his mother had
caressed his dark cropped hair. It had always soothed him and
whatever had disturbed him had soon been forgotten.
Catherine's hair was particularly beautiful. He couldn't tell
what it was that made it special, he just loved it.
After a while of caressing her this way, he grew more
confident and brushed the backs of his fingers over her cheek.
How soft her skin was, he couldn't believe it. He traced the
shape of her face with his fingertips: the powerful jaw line, her
chin, her cheeks, her beautiful nose. He brushed over her
eyebrows, drawing a line along her hairline, down to her neck
and back to her earlobes.
This soft caress of his made her stir. She turned in his
lap so that she was facing him. Her eyes, however, remained
closed. Now she was just pretending to be asleep, Frank knew
woman too well as to be fooled by their little games. He
enjoyed them, as long as they were playing it fair. His
fingertip wandered from her hairline over her nose to her lips
and paid particular attention to them. How soft her lips were,
how much did he want to kiss them ...
He kissed her then, by means of his fingers. He kissed
them and then put them ever so slightly on her lips. Catherine
decided to wake up then. She opened her deep blue eyes and
winked at him. A smile brightened her face. He withdrew his
hand and rested it on her shoulder instead.
"I like your hands. They're none like a soldier's,"
Catherine told him, now fully aware of herself. Her nap had
driven the demons of wine away. Frank didn't know what to
say. He hadn't ever been told that.
Catherine smiled. "You're none like Maurice, but you
remind me very much of him."
"In what regard?" Frank eventually managed to say.
Catherine rose and kneeled next to him. Just like his hands
had been wandering over her face only minutes ago, hers were
exploring his face now. "You're looking very much like him.
But Maurice ... wasn't that gentle as you are."
Frank looked at her askance. "I'm not Maurice," he
eventually said.
Catherine chuckled, but it sounded somewhat
lugubrious. "No, you aren't. I realize that you and him are
very different in there," she pressed her hand against his
forehead, "and here." Her hand wandered down to his heart
and rested there longer than necessary. The warmth of her
hand was burning through the fabric of his white cotton shirt.
"I hope so." Did he really say that? He didn't hope so.
Catherine smiled. "Me too." So he'd actually said it.
"They've told you our story then," she added.
"Yes. I'm sorry."
Catherine shook her head. "Don't, François, don't.
We've had more fights than we've made love. Maybe it's better
that way. Still ..." She made herself more comfortable and sat
next to him now, hanging her feet into the water as well. She
ran her fingers distractedly through her hair. The setting sun
was working his magic on her strands and caught red and
golden highlights in them.
"You'll never stop loving him," Frank finished the
sentence for her. Now it was her who was surprised. That
encouraged Frank to go on, however, he decided to tell her
the short version of his story. "I've had a relationship similar
to yours. I would be a husband now if it hadn't been for her.
Two days before our wedding she panicked, she was afraid
that she'd have to give up too much of her privacy and
intimacy. She also wanted to *live* before starting a family."
They were silent for a minute or so. Catherine was
sure that this wasn't the end of story yet, but she didn't push
him. So she waited patiently until he was ready to tell her the
rest of it. Patience had never been a forte of hers, at least not
in this regard. "Two months later she fell off her horse. There
was nothing to be done for her. I'll always love her, but ..."
Catherine trembled despite the heat. She knew what
was to come, because she was feeling it too. She too would
always love Maurice, but that didn't mean she couldn't ever
love another man. " ... but there's still room in your heart for
another woman?" Again she finished his sentence. Then she
nodded knowing. "It's the same with me. Love isn't the same
with all people, n'est-ce pas?"
"I think so, yes. But don't you think that there's only
one true love in your life?" Frank wondered, maybe more to
himself than to her. He'd never expected her answer to this.
"Yes. Although I had to wait until yesterday night to meet
him."
Then she closed the last remaining distance between
them by brushing her lips gently over his. Kissing him—even
though it was only ever so slightly—was nothing like kissing
Maurice. She withdrew quickly. Maybe she'd gone too far.
Cautiously she opened her eyes again, afraid of what she
would find in his eyes. But there was the same expression that
had been displayed in her eyes earlier. True, genuine and utter
love. Catherine didn't dare to move. Somehow she was
spellbound by the candor of his dark eyes that were telling her
of his love to her.
The next thing she felt was his hand cupping her chin,
then he drew her face gently towards his and this time they
really kissed. Her tongue found its way quickly into his
mouth, exploring and devouring his mouth just like him. She'd
always thought that Maurice was the world champion when it
came to kissing, but Frank was even better. Although his
kissing wasn't as demanding as Maurice's, it was devouring
her all the more, because it was so much more gentle and
loving.
When they separated again, both of them gasping for
breath, they smiled at each other sheepishly as if they were
youngsters. A low chuckle escaped from between Catherine's
lips. Neither of them had expected this, but that was why it
was called *falling in love*.
"Catherine," Frank started to say, but was quieted by a
tender touch of her fingers on his lips. "Don't Frank. Leave
the war outside. I mean it. Love and war don't go together
well and I love you so much I don't want this evening to be
spoiled by anything."
He answered her confession of love with another kiss.
This time, however, they lost their balance and fell into the
water. When they came up again, they gasped for air and then
dissolved into laughter. It freed them of their awkwardness
and it freed them from the bonds that tied them to reality, at
least for this night.
To be continued ...
=/\=
Coeur de Lion
by Katie
Chapter 3
Bonds That Tie to Reality
Naomi was the sweetest thing of a girl Frank had ever
met. He'd always thought of his nieces being angels, but this
little French girl made him think otherwise. Although she had
strange-looking horns on her forehead she was the most
beautiful child he'd ever seen. Her curly hair was of the color
of ripe wheat that made her dark eyes sparkle even more
intensively. She was carrying a doll with her that looked
somewhat worn down. Naomi obviously played a lot with it.
The girl hesitated when she noticed him. Frank wasn't
quite sure how to react. So they kept standing in the middle of
the room, eyeing each other and obviously not knowing what
to make of each other.
"Qui est-ce?" she eventually asked.
"This is Catherine's husband," Jean answered. "Say
bon jour to him, he is a friend."
Naomi curtsied well-behaved. "Bon jour, Monsieur."
Frank finally closed the remaining distance between
them and squatted in front of her. He was a tall man and his
sister had told him as soon as his nieces could walk to squat
down when talking to them. "Bon jour. Just call me Maurice,
bien?"
"D'accord," she nodded.
"Now, Naomi," Jean said, "I think you've got
something for me to trade for two croissants au chocolat,
n'est-ce pas?"
The girls face brightened and she nodded vigorously.
Then she pulled up the colorful dress of her doll. Beneath it
there was a small piece of paper tied with a blue ribbon
around the belly of her rag doll. She carefully pulled the piece
of paper away and handed it to Jean.
"Very well!" he smiled. Then he handed the note to
Frank. "So, now let's got to the kitchen and see what I've got
for you, okay?" Again, Naomi nodded enthusiastically and
followed the chef into his realm.
"She's a cute little thing," Frank commented, joining
Séverine and Paul at the table.
"Indeed she is, and very clever too," Paul added. Frank
handed him the piece of paper he'd received from the girl. He
unfolded it and found a row of lower case letters written
down on it. The writer had written very carefully. "This is the
key to the code which is due today," Paul explained to the
American.
The American though couldn't make anything out of it.
He knew that as few persons as possible were to know about
the codes, in case something unexpected happen. Only
Brigitte and Catherine knew how to do the decoding, and
neither of them was there. Brigitte hadn't returned from the
Nazi headquarters yet and Catherine had run off to who-
knows-where. Séverine looked at the clock that was standing
on the mantelpiece. It was almost half past one now and the
weather forecast on the radio was due in a few minutes.
"I guess today I'll have to write down the forecast,"
Séverine remarked. She got up and went to the bar, armed
herself with a notepad and a pencil. Just when she turned on
the radio, the speaker announced the weather forecast. "I am
Reginald Smith of the British Radio Network and this is the
weather forecast for the British Isles on Thursday, September
19th 1944 ... "
Séverine wrote down the forecast as quickly as she
could, checking it and adding what she'd left out when Mr
Smith was as kind as to repeat the forecast forty-five seconds
later. Frank joined her at the counter. "I hope this isn't too
important," he said.
"I hope Catherine will return any time soon. If Jean or
Naomi bring the decoding sequence then there *is* an
important message," Séverine told him. She folded the note
with the weather forecast and switched to a French radio
station. Soft music was playing now and Séverine took
another sheet and concentrated on writing down the lyrics of
the songs.
=/\=
Fortunately had the Doctor managed to convince the
Hirogen that Ensign Kim was in desperate need of a good
night's sleep, so they'd let him sleep in Sickbay. While Harry
was sleeping—he was so tired that he even didn't need his
sleeping mask—the Doctor figured out a way how they could
get the other crew back. He'd found that he could reprogram
the neural interfaces so that they could be connected to a
subroutine of the holodecks' computers. Using the subroutine
as a relay station for messages it would be possible to smuggle
someone in who knew what was going on. Thanks to the
manipulated neural interface the Doctor would also be able to
establish a connection between the person's brain and a secret
channel of the ship's intercom. The person would be fully
aware of who he or she was and could try to deactivate the
others' neural interfaces. A system quite similar to a Borg
collective.
So far so good, but their were still two little problems.
First, he needed a patient to treat who was going to be sent to
the World War II scenario in Holodeck One and secondly he
had to find a way to deactivate the neural interfaces that didn't
shop him to the Hirogen. Those bastards were monitoring
each crew on the holodecks and as soon as one of them was
injured or their neural interfaces were damaged in any way,
there was an alarm going off. If they wanted to get rid of the
Hirogen, they had to be smarter than them.
A few hours later, Harry found the Doctor treating
Ensign Vorick's injuries he'd suffered in the fight with a
Saracen in the crusade scenario on Holodeck Two. It was a
most horrible sight and Harry turned away quickly. He didn't
know who was to pity more: the crusaders, the Klingons or
the people on Holodeck One. Luckily, Harry found a pretext
that allowed him to stay in Sickbay for the next two hours. So
when the Doctor had treated Vorick as well as possible, he
made sure that none of the Hirogen were within earshot.
"Doctor, have you found a way to disable the neural
interfaces yet?" he asked.
"I'm halfway there, Ensign. I must find a way to
disable the interfaces without the Hirogens' discovering it
immediately," the Doctor explained. The past nine-teen days
had taken their toll on the hologram. Whereas he usually
replied sarcastically, he'd lost his sense of humor soon after
the first wounded *prey* had been brought to him so that he
patch them up, only to welcome them back a few hours later.
This had been going on and on and on. Never before had the
expression *vicious circle* had a meaning that was closer to
truth than now.
"Hm, yes, that may be a problem," Harry nodded.
"The Hirogen keep looking over my shoulder when I'm
repairing something. We would have to distract them for at
least half an hour so I would be able to write a subroutine."
"That, in fact, *is* the problem," the Doctor nodded.
The furrows on his brow had never been deeper than those
days.
"Listen," Harry suddenly said. "I'm sure I can find a
pretext to go to Cargobay Two. Seven's got her console there
and I'm sure they are not monitoring the former Borg cubicles
..."
Harry never got the chance to tell him the whole idea.
The Doctor's face suddenly brightened and the hologram
almost got excited. "Eureka, Ensign, that's it!"
"What is what? I don't quite understand what you're
getting at."
"The Borg! We're going to use the Borg technology to
infiltrate the Hirogen's system," the Doctor said emphatically.
=/\=
Brigitte returned a quarter of an hour late. The
weather forecast had already been aired. However, she knew
that she could rely on her friends. Without the reliability they
were sharing the Resistance couldn't work. So she nodded at
Séverine in appreciation of her having recorded the forecast.
With the help of the decoding instructions Naomi had brought
earlier, she was able to rewrite the message. Séverine, Paul
and Frank gathered around her and she told them what it was
saying.
"It's from the Allied Forces Headquarters. We are to
gather more intelligence about the Germans. Allegedly they
know more about the Allied Forces strategies than they're
supposed to. The British suspect them of preparing an ambush
for the Americans," Brigitte read out loudly.
"Great. How strong is your relationship with
Brückner?" Frank wanted to know.
"There have been better times," the woman with the
strange ridges on her forehead answered.
"If the Nazis were planning an ambush Goulot would
be the first one to get wind of it," Paul told Frank. "So I think
it would be best if we waited for tomorrow noon. Séverine is
going to get that high frequency oscillator from him. She may
as well ask him about what's going on around his charcoal
burning."
"That would be best indeed," Frank agreed. "I don't
think that our people are going to free Sainte Claire before
Monday night."
"I take it that Catherine is still off?" Brigitte asked.
"Yes. Do you have any idea where she could have
gone?" Frank wanted to talk to her. He felt somewhat
awkward about what had happened an hour earlier. He'd hate
it if he'd hurt her after all what she'd done for him. And maybe
she could need someone to talk to, someone who was
unbiased of what had been going on between her and her late
husband. Somehow he doubted that she'd talked to anyone
about her feelings in the past three years.
Brigitte, however, hesitated before telling him where
she supposed her to be, where she was sure she would be. the
young woman wasn't quite sure whether an interview with
Frank was going to do Catherine any good, taken her reaction
earlier. But then she thought that maybe it wasn't a that bad
idea after all. "I'm sure she's gone to the lake in the forest. It's
her most favorite place to go at times like this."
=/\=
Thanks to Brigitte's detailed description, Frank didn't
have any problems in finding the lake. If she hadn't told him
how to get there he wouldn't have found his way. The lake
was very small and hidden in a tiny valley. He was glad that
the lake was in a forest, so he could escape the oppressing
heat of the Indian Summer for at least a short while. It was
quiet in the woods, except for the occasional rustling of leaves
and the singing of the birds and the humming and chirping of
the insects.
Frank followed the path that was hardly visible and
could be found only if one knew the tall old pine tree that was
standing next to it. But he found his way without any
problems and followed the path down to the small lake. There
was the tiny hut Brigitte had described him and the
ramshackle landing stage right under the weeping willow. On
the other side of the lake a brook was mounding, forming a
mini-delta.
Catherine, however, was nowhere to be seen. Frank
went down to the hut, but when he didn't find her there, he
leaned against the door frame and scrutinized the interior of
the hut. There was an huge old monster of a sofa, an old
dresser and a rickety table with a chair. On the table there was
a bottle that had served as a candle stick for several times.
Wax had dripped on the bottle and had encrusted it with many
colorful layers. Next to it there was an half-empty bottle of
heavy red wine and a simple glass. Catherine's shoes were
laying next to the legs of the chair on the wooden floor.
"Wha ... What are you doing here?" A powerful female
voice demanded to know. Frank spun around and found
Catherine standing in front of him. Her hair was disheveled
and dripping wet. Obviously she'd dressed in a hurry, because
she'd buttoned her dress up the wrong way: on the top there
was a button too much, on the hem, however, there was a
spare buttonhole. Catherine hadn't dried herself with a towel,
for the dress was sticking to her wet body like a second skin.
Frank realized that this was as good as seeing her naked. So
he tried to keep his eyes fixed on her face.
"I didn't mean to disturb you," he apologized.
"Su ... sure." She was having the hiccups because of
having drunk the wine without having eaten anything it
advance. That woman was just gorgeous. Frank couldn't help
smiling.
"Well, we were kind of worrying about you. So I came
out to look after you," Frank eventually said. It seemed
almost impossible for him to keep his eyes on a level with
hers. He caught himself letting his gaze wandering down her
body. Her dress was sticking to her skin in almost all places,
showing him her beautiful curves. Her nipples being still erect
from the swim she'd taken pressed against the fabric of her
dress. The sight of them almost drove him round the bend.
"That's sweet," she smiled. She was very shaky, so
Frank decided to offer her a seat.
"Yes," she nodded vigorously, "let's sit down ... on the
landing stage. You have to ... hang your feet into the water.
It's divine!" She gripped his hand and pulled him behind her
towards the ramshackle landing stage. Frank shook his head
and followed her staggering steps. A nightclub owner who got
drunk after only half a bottle of wine. Moreover, she lived in
the middle of a wine-growing area. On second thought
though, this wasn't funny at all. It was obvious that she'd
gotten drunk because of her emotional distress. If only he
could help her. He'd only known her half a day but she'd
already gotten so very dear to him that he had to ask himself
whether there was something to love at first sight after all ...
=/\=
"Miller is taking his own sweet time," Brigitte said
after she'd looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. She
crossed her arms in front of her chest and leaned against the
counter. It was already past eight in the evening and neither
he nor Catherine had shown up yet.
"Don't you think that they're having a lot of things to
talk over?" Paul replied sharply. The *Coeur the Lion* was
closed on Thursday nights, so he was about to leave to meet
some of his friends to have a glass of wine or two and to play
a bit of bowls in the small park in front of the church.
Séverine had left earlier to go to the pictures.
"Talk!" she laughed bitterly. "You don't really believe
they're *talking* down there, do you?" She remembered a
time when she and her American boyfriend had gone down
there to be undisturbed for a night or two several years ago.
The memories cut her to the quick and she knew that she was
being unfair. Her wonderful memories and her disappointment
now didn't give her the right to envy Catherine that much.
Even she was just a woman after all, so she too had the right
to enjoy herself—especially when she hadn't had a boyfriend
ever since Maurice had left for his voyage. However, it cut
her to the quick.
"Even if it were so—this is none of your business,
Brigitte," Paul reminded her. "Bonne nuit, I'll see you in the
morning. Make sure you lock the doors carefully. There's too
much vermin in the streets these days."
Brigitte nodded. She was going to turn in early
tonight. She got tired easily recently and she knew that she'd
soon give birth to a Nazi bastard, dammit. She'd always
wanted children, but not from that cowardly, only slightly
megalomaniac Nazi creep. Why on Earth hadn't she gone to
live safely with Bobby in the States, in a nice little house with
a white fence and five or six children playing in the garden?
She could still slap herself for having broken off
contact with him. He'd been the only love of her life and she'd
been foolish enough to let him go. Brigitte made a decision.
She wasn't going to turn in early tonight. Instead, she'd choke
down her pride and write a letter to Bobby. Maybe it wasn't
too late by now and Bobby ... no, what a foolish idea. No guy
of his type would wait for a French girl like her. The time
they'd spent together had been the most wonderful time in her
life, but it had been just a romance for one summer; a romance
like any other for a man like Bobby Davies.
*Maybe I should give it a try nevertheless. He can't
say more than no.*
When Miller had told them about his Lieutenant called
Davies earlier, it had cut her to the quick as well. But the
likelihood that the Lieutenant and her former lover were
identical wasn't very great, so she'd shoved off the thought as
quickly as it had struck her. That would be too good to be
true, it sounded too much like a fairy tale. This was war, after
all, and she was sure that there were at least as much Davieses
living in the States as there were Brückners living in Germany.
Where had she put his last letter?
=/\=
"What is so important in Cargobay Two that needs
your attention?" the Hirogen hunter asked him. Had he had
lips, his upper lip would have curled in disgust. It wasn't just
like the Hirogen to talk to puny prey. But it were the
Commandant's orders that the technicians not be harmed in
any way in order to keep the ship's systems—particularly the
holo-technology—up and running. If it were his decision to
make, Harry's guard would have hunted him down as soon as
possible and decorated the bulkheads of his quarters with his
bones.
"There's a science station that isn't needed at the
moment. If I shut it down there'll be more power available for
the holodecks," Harry explained, pulling himself together.
He'd given a year's worth of replicator rations if only he could
hunt that obnoxious Hirogen down. The bunch of them was
bad enough, but that guy seemed to be the worst of their
gang.
"Proceed," the Hirogen said, pressing the mouth of his
rifle into his back. Harry raised his hands in a pacifying
gesture and went to the next turbolift. His guard was
following him of course. Fortunately did he have no idea
about the technology of Voyager, nor did he know what a
Borg cubicle was. This was going to make Harry's work at the
Borg consoles easy. Thanks to his close working relationship
to Seven he knew exactly what he had to do. The Doctor had
given him a Padd with the instructions how to write a
subroutine so they could reprogram the neural interfaces once
they were assimilated by the Borg nanoprobes. Those little
helpers had become invaluable to them after they had helped
curing him from the assimilation of Species 8472. Since the
nanoprobe technology was unknown to the Hirogen, they
wouldn't be able to monitor them, even if they were
assimilating the neural interfaces. Then all Voyager crew
whose neo-cortexes were linked to the holodeck computer
would regain their consciousness.
The Doctor had already written a subroutine to
*infect* all food and drink in the holodecks with the
nanoprobes. At the same time they were going to beat the
Hirogen at their own game with the help of the nanoprobes.
But however persistent Harry had asked the Doctor about his
plans, the hologram wouldn't give his secret away, at least not
yet.
=/\=
Soon after they'd sat down on the landing stage,
Catherine had grown tired and eventually had dozed off into a
blissful sleep. Now Frank was cradling her head in his lap.
She'd put her head there to rest as if it were the most natural
thing to do. From Frank's point of view, it was most natural.
By now he'd realized that he'd fallen in love with her—but he
wasn't sure whether she had the same feelings about him.
She'd drunk half a bottle of wine after all, and her trust in him
could have been a result of her lightheadedness. He prayed
that it wasn't the case.
They hadn't talked much, it wouldn't have made much
sense then. You can't talk about matters of the heart if you
weren't like yourself at all. But soon they would talk, Frank
was sure about that. It was late in the afternoon now and the
sun was standing low above the treetops. Although it had
begun to cool off, it was still hot and he was glad he'd hung
his feet into the refreshingly cool water of the lake.
Meanwhile, Catherine's dress had dried in the sun as well as
her hair. He couldn't help caressing her auburn strands. When
he had been a boy he'd always loved it when his mother had
caressed his dark cropped hair. It had always soothed him and
whatever had disturbed him had soon been forgotten.
Catherine's hair was particularly beautiful. He couldn't tell
what it was that made it special, he just loved it.
After a while of caressing her this way, he grew more
confident and brushed the backs of his fingers over her cheek.
How soft her skin was, he couldn't believe it. He traced the
shape of her face with his fingertips: the powerful jaw line, her
chin, her cheeks, her beautiful nose. He brushed over her
eyebrows, drawing a line along her hairline, down to her neck
and back to her earlobes.
This soft caress of his made her stir. She turned in his
lap so that she was facing him. Her eyes, however, remained
closed. Now she was just pretending to be asleep, Frank knew
woman too well as to be fooled by their little games. He
enjoyed them, as long as they were playing it fair. His
fingertip wandered from her hairline over her nose to her lips
and paid particular attention to them. How soft her lips were,
how much did he want to kiss them ...
He kissed her then, by means of his fingers. He kissed
them and then put them ever so slightly on her lips. Catherine
decided to wake up then. She opened her deep blue eyes and
winked at him. A smile brightened her face. He withdrew his
hand and rested it on her shoulder instead.
"I like your hands. They're none like a soldier's,"
Catherine told him, now fully aware of herself. Her nap had
driven the demons of wine away. Frank didn't know what to
say. He hadn't ever been told that.
Catherine smiled. "You're none like Maurice, but you
remind me very much of him."
"In what regard?" Frank eventually managed to say.
Catherine rose and kneeled next to him. Just like his hands
had been wandering over her face only minutes ago, hers were
exploring his face now. "You're looking very much like him.
But Maurice ... wasn't that gentle as you are."
Frank looked at her askance. "I'm not Maurice," he
eventually said.
Catherine chuckled, but it sounded somewhat
lugubrious. "No, you aren't. I realize that you and him are
very different in there," she pressed her hand against his
forehead, "and here." Her hand wandered down to his heart
and rested there longer than necessary. The warmth of her
hand was burning through the fabric of his white cotton shirt.
"I hope so." Did he really say that? He didn't hope so.
Catherine smiled. "Me too." So he'd actually said it.
"They've told you our story then," she added.
"Yes. I'm sorry."
Catherine shook her head. "Don't, François, don't.
We've had more fights than we've made love. Maybe it's better
that way. Still ..." She made herself more comfortable and sat
next to him now, hanging her feet into the water as well. She
ran her fingers distractedly through her hair. The setting sun
was working his magic on her strands and caught red and
golden highlights in them.
"You'll never stop loving him," Frank finished the
sentence for her. Now it was her who was surprised. That
encouraged Frank to go on, however, he decided to tell her
the short version of his story. "I've had a relationship similar
to yours. I would be a husband now if it hadn't been for her.
Two days before our wedding she panicked, she was afraid
that she'd have to give up too much of her privacy and
intimacy. She also wanted to *live* before starting a family."
They were silent for a minute or so. Catherine was
sure that this wasn't the end of story yet, but she didn't push
him. So she waited patiently until he was ready to tell her the
rest of it. Patience had never been a forte of hers, at least not
in this regard. "Two months later she fell off her horse. There
was nothing to be done for her. I'll always love her, but ..."
Catherine trembled despite the heat. She knew what
was to come, because she was feeling it too. She too would
always love Maurice, but that didn't mean she couldn't ever
love another man. " ... but there's still room in your heart for
another woman?" Again she finished his sentence. Then she
nodded knowing. "It's the same with me. Love isn't the same
with all people, n'est-ce pas?"
"I think so, yes. But don't you think that there's only
one true love in your life?" Frank wondered, maybe more to
himself than to her. He'd never expected her answer to this.
"Yes. Although I had to wait until yesterday night to meet
him."
Then she closed the last remaining distance between
them by brushing her lips gently over his. Kissing him—even
though it was only ever so slightly—was nothing like kissing
Maurice. She withdrew quickly. Maybe she'd gone too far.
Cautiously she opened her eyes again, afraid of what she
would find in his eyes. But there was the same expression that
had been displayed in her eyes earlier. True, genuine and utter
love. Catherine didn't dare to move. Somehow she was
spellbound by the candor of his dark eyes that were telling her
of his love to her.
The next thing she felt was his hand cupping her chin,
then he drew her face gently towards his and this time they
really kissed. Her tongue found its way quickly into his
mouth, exploring and devouring his mouth just like him. She'd
always thought that Maurice was the world champion when it
came to kissing, but Frank was even better. Although his
kissing wasn't as demanding as Maurice's, it was devouring
her all the more, because it was so much more gentle and
loving.
When they separated again, both of them gasping for
breath, they smiled at each other sheepishly as if they were
youngsters. A low chuckle escaped from between Catherine's
lips. Neither of them had expected this, but that was why it
was called *falling in love*.
"Catherine," Frank started to say, but was quieted by a
tender touch of her fingers on his lips. "Don't Frank. Leave
the war outside. I mean it. Love and war don't go together
well and I love you so much I don't want this evening to be
spoiled by anything."
He answered her confession of love with another kiss.
This time, however, they lost their balance and fell into the
water. When they came up again, they gasped for air and then
dissolved into laughter. It freed them of their awkwardness
and it freed them from the bonds that tied them to reality, at
least for this night.
To be continued ...