Summary:
Written for VAMB's Secret Spook, this is a J/C story (past Endgame and Seven free) Sometimes when we at least expect it the past comes back to haunt us. There may be no ghosts, but there is a demon threatening Kathryn's life and it is in Chakotay's hands to save her in time.
Rating:MDedicated to Gilly, for her outstanding art is always an inspiration to me.
Thank you to my patient and always helpful Beta and friend Kat.
NO GHOSTS BUT A DEMONBy Gine
"Coffee! Black!"
He could still see her annoyed frown when instead of her famous beverage, the replicator had produced a large cup of a frozen pitch-black broth. He had smiled into the vidcom, making a light comment about having always known that the combination of a deathglare and a frosty threat could even turn coffee to ice.
Kathryn had smiled back at this, while her fingers had fiddled nervously with the commbadge that was attached to her uniform. It had been his turn to frown then.
He'd known she was working too late hours again, taking advantage of his absence. Her eyes had easily betrayed her condition. When he'd left for the Badlands with Voyager eight days ago, she had promised him to take care of herself. But he had known anyway. If there had been any crisis, she'd have been the last to leave the bridge, be it on a ship or at Headquarters. Old habits die hard and she'd taken most of them from Voyager to her new working place. The situation with the Romulans had needed all her attention and deep down he'd even expected her to give her best. She'd never done anything else and that was one of the reasons why he loved her so much.
Still there had been something else on her mind. He'd sensed it despite the distance. Looking at her he'd felt as if the gravity of Voyager had shifted for a moment and the temperature in her former ready-room had dropped several degrees.
"Are you all right, Kathryn?"
She hadn't answered the question with her standard line. Instead her hand had reached for the viewscreen, touching the place that would probably show his tattoo.
"I miss you, Chakotay."
The mornings were cold early in this Canadian fall. The purple, cinnamon and yellow leaves were already dusted with white icicles. Heavy mists silenced Chakotay's fast steps while a blood-orange sun started to rise between the large oaks in the distance. The humid air that was pregnant with the smell of pinewood refreshed all his senses and replaced the sterility of recycled oxygen in his lungs.
Usually he loved to walk this last mile toward the blockhouse they had chosen two months ago as their temporary winter-residence.
A morning bird sung but today he wasn't listening to the beautiful song. He was drawn to the house that was coming closer faster and faster, until he was running. Her words, I miss you, were driving him forward.
The candle in the large pumpkin that Kathryn had cut out for Miral was still burning, calling to him like a small lighthouse to guide him home. A home that was not a place.
She didn't know he would come today. His mission was supposed to end in two days, so he would have been back just right on time for the Halloween party at the Paris's home. But they had finished the negotiations with the Brekal earlier than expected due to Chakotay's former Maquis-contacts with this species.
Apart from the glowing pumpkin, the house was dark, but when he keyed in the door-code he found it was already open. That was odd. He called for the lights and went into the next best room.
"Kathryn!"
A cold hand seemed to reach for his heart, when he got no answer. Something was definitely wrong here. He found a half full cup of coffee on the kitchen table, but no sign of Kathryn. Systematically he checked room by room. With every second that ticked by, the fist in his stomach seemed to grow.
When he opened the door to the bedroom the first thing he registered was the broken picture frame on the floor. Hundreds of little fractures disfigured the smiling faces of Voyager's family.
The whole place was wrecked. The vidcom was broken in a thousand little pieces; the desk and table had been moved and were turned over. It was obvious that a fight had occurred here.
Frantically Chakotay searched the rest of the house, but it was empty. She was gone and whoever had visited her last night had not asked nicely for her company.
Calling for security he returned to the bedroom and began systematically to check the room for every little detail that might give him a clue to what had happened.
In his mind he recalled again the last talk he had had with Kathryn 18 hours ago. He had sensed that something was wrong. She had been upset about the replicator that had produced nothing but frozen coffee. But there was more, and whatever it had been, she had refused to talk about it over the comm and he couldn't shake the feeling that it had something to do with her disappearance.
Five minutes later a Starfleet security team under the lead of Mike Ayala beamed in.
The shock over the news was written in Mike's eyes and mirrored his own. His long-time friend understood without words. They all knew of the consequences they might have to face.
"Whoever did this and took her, Chakotay, we will find them." He looked at his former captain with determination and added. "If they'd wanted to kill her, they could have done that here. She's still alive and we'll find her in time."
For the next two endless hours every square-inch of the room was scanned for anything that might qualify to be analysed for DNA testing. There was nothing Chakotay could do there to help, so he begun to search the rest of the house for anything unusual.
Everything seemed to be in place, apart from her beloved coffee cup that she had taken home from Voyager. It rested on the fireplace beside a picture of him. Probably Kathryn had forgotten it there. This was so much like her. He could easily see her gazing into the fire, nursing the battle-worn cup and mulling over some important issues until the flames would be nothing more than a red gleam into the dark of the night.
Despite all his attempts to repress his deepest fears and concerns for her, the emotions were suddenly overwhelming and his fist hit the wall in a thundering crush. Frustrated about his lack of control, he rested his head against the cool stones and took deep breaths to calm his temper and focus his mind. He looked anew at the silver cup and carefully picked it up, desperate to feel something that was ultimately connected with her.
There was no coffee left. Instead the rank-bar of an admiral and a commbadge were hidden inside the cup. Both looked old-fashioned and worn.
He knew that Kathryn kept some mementos. They both did. But he had never seen these before. He doubted that they belonged to her. From the look of the bulky commbadge it was at least 15 years old. Pressing the button, no signal appeared. The device was either deactivated on purpose or damaged, but it would only a question of minutes to find out its origin.
A tricorder scan showed that the inside of the badge was filled with different particle traces. Most of the energy circuits were broken, but the memory core still seemed to work. Chakotay adjusted the scanner to identify the chemical elements of the matter and downloaded the short code number that would reveal the identity of the former badge owner. He used the computer in his private working room to get access to Starfleet's personal database. The decoding would take a few minutes only.
Meanwhile Chakotay fed the computer with the data of his material analysis and asked for comparability. This time the answer came quickly. There was no doubt that the commbadge must have been stored in natural ice and from the residue of chemicals there were only three possibilities where this ice could have come from. Boral, Kuscan or Tau Ceti Prime.
Tau Ceti, an Admiral's rank-sign and a snow-covered commbadge. This couldn't be a coincidence. And still no word from Starfleet.
The seconds stretched to minutes now, while Chakotay's fingers drummed on the desk nervously. Finally there was a message coming in.
"The personal code number you requested belongs to Admiral Janeway, Edward. Died in service of Starfleet in 2358 on Tau Ceti Prime. Further information requires access code level ten alpha."
The tiny device in Chakotay's hand suddenly seemed to weight pounds. This was the original commbadge that Kathryn's father had worn when he had lost his life in the terrible accident while testing a new starship.
The trauma of the experience as a survivor had shaped Kathryn's psyche dramatically. Even after so many years and in the security of his arms she had been woken from nightmares that were subconsciously connected with the events on Tau Ceti. Sure, she had learned to move on, to repress the self-destructive thoughts of grief, pain and guilt. But they were still there, buried deep behind willpower, self-discipline, selflessness and responsibilities.
Only a few knew how much Kathryn was truly affected by the cards that life had dealt to her. Each dent in the Captain's armour had left a wound in Kathryn's soul, but she had never spoken a word about it. Even wounds not taken care of heal eventually. But the scars stay.
She had talked to him only once about what had happened on that fateful day so many years ago. Most of her memories were fragments, and she couldn't recall the moments before the ship went down.
But there was one memory burned in her mind that had slipped through her defences more than once. That was point of no return, when she had to face the death of the two people closest to her. She had spoken about these moments, her face as frozen as the planet she had returned to in her mind. Even after all this time she still felt guilty. Guilty for a decision she believed she had to make, that in truth had never been hers.
Deep down Kathryn knew that it was impossible that a transporter that was cut from the ship's systems in the moment of crashing could still function. But she had refused to accept that there was nothing she could have done. Neither in the past nor in her nightmares. Accepting defeat when it came to saving others…never.
Was the past coming back to haunt her again, now that she had finally found the peace she had longed for? The report about the accident was still confidential. There had been rumours, of course. About sabotage and assassination even. Admiral Janeway's role in the Cardassian conflict had been a leading one. Kathryn had found out later that her father had held secret contacts with the Cardassian Underground Movement, long before the Obsidian Order discovered these people.
But her father was dead, buried in an icy grave. How had his commbadge and rank-bar ended up in Kathryn's hands? And why now?
Chakotay was sure he was missing an important detail, and wished now more than ever that he'd been more insistent when he'd been so sure that something had been on Kathryn's mind.
He checked the computer again, but all her last entries were of a professional nature and Chakotay couldn't find any connection with the events of the past. He could only hope Mike and his team would detect something in the debris that had been their bedroom.
They had turned every little broken piece of glass, had scanned the floor, furniture and walls. Whoever had attacked Admiral Janeway had been more than careful not to leave traces. There were no fingerprints, not a single hair nor any kind of clothing fibres. But the newest tricorder generation would need only a single cell to identify something or someone. It was impossible to move so violently through a room without leaving a mark. It was just a question of time before they found it. And finally Ayala did.
The cell was definitely not human skin. In the moment the small computer identified the race of the kidnapper, he wished for nothing more than false readings. He double-checked the scan again and again, but the results stayed the same. He closed his eyes, desperate to find the strength to tell Chakotay his findings.
They had fought in the Maquis side by side. Nobody knew what this enemy was capable of from their own experience as they did. Mike forced himself to look Chakotay in the eye, his own full of anger, pain and compassion.
"She was kidnapped by a Cardassian. We'll need full access to the databank of Starfleet Medical if we want to find out his identity. Since the end of the war with the Dominion no Cardassianer can pass a Federation transporter without a DNA scan. If we're lucky, he's been on Earth before. I've contacted Admiral Paris and Admiral Nechejew. We meet at Headquarters in 20 minutes."
Twenty minutes can be like an eternity when you're waiting for something. Ayala was late. Admiral Nechejew was the only calm person in the room. Owen Paris stood rigidly with his hands cramped to fists, staring out of the window, while Chakotay was pacing the floor.
Finally Mike appeared, a small pad in his hands. "His name is Gul Temac. He gave this identification when he visited Deep Space Nine as an ambassador of the Cardassian Government before the war started. I tried to find out anything about him that might be useful to us, but we've no further information. With the war, most of the knowledge we have about Cardassia lost any value. Most members of the former government disappeared in the underground when the Federation won the last battle. I'm sorry, but a name and a picture is all we have." He downloaded the data into the computer and the face of a middle-aged Cardassian appeared on the view screen.
Chakotay had never seen this man before, he was sure about that. He turned to face the two Admirals. Nechejew still studied the viewscreen, but Admiral Paris's face had lost every ounce of colour. He couldn't keep his hands from shaking, and for a moment Chakotay was afraid the older man would lose it. He went to grab his shoulders, urging him to look him in the eye.
"Oh God, Chakotay, this can't be true."
Owen Paris felt sick. It had been a long time he'd seen this face. He would never forget these eyes, grey and cold. Eyes free of any emotion. And he had Kathryn. Again.
"His name is not Temac and he's never been an ambassador. This is Gul Camet. He was the second in command of the Obsidian Order."
The words dropped like a bomb, and they hurt. Beyond every possibility, beyond his worst fears, this was a truth Chakotay had never wanted to hear again. But there was no escape, not from Kathryn's demons nor from his own. The walls between the past and the present had just become transparent.
If you thought of hell as a hot place, Kathryn Janeway could tell you differently. More than once in her life she had faced the white hell that was nothing but bitter cold. A desert of ice and snow that slowly froze her body and her soul.
She didn't feel the bruises Camet's fists had left. She didn't feel the bleeding wounds that he had carved into her skin. She didn't feel the icy pearls that had been her tears.
In the last 48 hours he had tortured her body until she'd collapsed, and no further drug injection, no stimulation with the pain device he had implanted under her skin could rouse her. So he had waited like a spider in the shadow for the last moves of his victim in the web before he would inflict his deadly sting.
And he had waited long. He had never forgotten the reasons of his downfall in the Obsidian Order. Being second in command, he had been the leading head of the prison camps. Places that in his presence had become hell for thousands of innocents. He had reigned without emotion and all that counted to him was the confession and the breaking of the prisoners. No one had ever escaped under his lead, no one. Until the day a Starfleet Admiral and a young female Ensign fell into his skilful hands. With their escape he lost more than two prisoners. He lost his position and needed years to climb up the ranks again.
It was bitter irony that the same Ensign and the man who had played the major part in freeing her and Paris would mark the end of his career.
His mission was to steal the new ship's prototype that the Federation was testing close to Tau Ceti Prime. And again he had failed miserably. The small crew of the ship had somehow disabled the shields of his ship and with the next torpedo he would have been blown to pieces. He had been faster and had landed a fatal hit to the small ship's aft section. The ship went down and crashed on Tau Ceti. Instead of coming back as the hero, Camet returned to Cardassia as a broken man. The only thought that kept him warm at night was the knowledge that the humans who had ruined his life had died. At least he thought so.
He would never forget the day when he had heard her name again. Kathryn Janeway. The heroic Captain who had led her crew home 70,000 light-years back to Earth. The news was all over the Quadrant and had met Camet like a knife in the stomach. The old hate enflamed anew and the only thing he could think about was a way to get revenge. And he had planned his revenge well.
Kathryn Janeway was lying before him. Her pale skin was almost as white as the snow beneath her. He could see she was struggling back to consciousness and slowly her blue eyes opened. She stared at him, her eyes still unfocused, but even then he could see the resistance there. Her spirit was unbroken and her fire still burned.
It was time to let her taste the final meal he had prepared only for her. He had spent months planning this and he would take pleasure in every little second of her pain.
He knelt down beside her in the snow, touching her hair almost compassionately. She tried to move away from his hands as he grabbed her head and brought it violently close to his.
"It's Halloween, Goldenbird. Don't you humans believe it's the night when the walls between the worlds get thin and the dead return from the darkness?" Camet whispered. "Time for your reunion with the family, Janeway."
He reached into his pocket and searched for the small transporter control, but couldn't find it. Instead his hands touched something else that he'd forgotten to put into his package that had been delivered to Janeway three days ago.
The commbadge was still warm from his bodyheat. He looked down at the small device and smiled evilly. He grabbed for Janeway's hand and placed the badge into her frost-blue fingers. "Consider it a parting gift from me," Camet said, while he reached for the control panel that would send her to her death.
Kathryn's fingers curled around Justin's communicator. She saw Camet fumbling with the transporter. She needed to move. But the drugs had numbed her body. Despite the bitter cold, she felt like she was burning inside. She closed her eyes and willed the last bit of energy she had left to make her body listen to her mind. Her thumb pressed the commbadge and while her blue lips formed the command code she had memorized so many years ago, she slipped the device into the pocket of Camet's survival gear in one fast move and rolled away from him.
"Initiate self destruct sequence, Tighe 235!"
And then she prayed.
Two days of searching. Two days filled with worry and fear. Two days of painful silence in the cockpit of the Delta Flyer.
B'Elanna and Tom seemed to communicate with their eyes only, sharing glances that concerned their quiet friend in the background. The last 48 hours had felt like an eternity to all of them, although the Delta Flyer raced through the galaxy at constant top-speed.
Immediately after Camet's recognition by Tom's father, Chakotay had asked for permission to gather a team of specialists to track down Camet and rescue Admiral Janeway. Two hours later the Delta Flyer had been on its way.
Ayala's report stated that Kathryn Janeway had replicated the last cup of coffee 5 hours before Chakotay had returned home. Camet must have kidnapped her shortly after that because her coffee was never finished.
The commbadge of Edward Janeway and his rank bar that Chakotay had found in Kathryn's favourite cup must have been delivered in a small package 24 hours before. The courier had recognized the Cardassian as the customer. And he had remembered an important detail that would hopefully reveal the plans that Camet had for his hostage. He had been asked to deliver a spoken message to Admiral Janeway when handing over the parcel.
"We will meet again soon, Goldenbird."
Chakotay knew that Goldenbird was the nickname Edward Janeway had chosen for his eldest daughter. Camet seemed to know all this and had obviously retrieved the original commbadge directly from the crashed ship. The words of his message could only mean that he was on his way to Tau Ceti Prime.
Finally the frozen planet filled the viewscreen. They didn't need to search long for Camet's ship. It had been landed exactly at the crash coordinates of the test ship. A scan for lifesigns proofed futile. The ionic disturbances of the atmosphere blocked every signal and they would have to land the Flyer.
White, endless cold and barren white was all they saw at first. And then they saw the body or what was left of it.
Chakotay's knees gave way. He couldn't tear away his eyes from the red snow before him.
The tricorder in his hand recognized the blood as hers. He couldn't stop screaming her name.
Until the stinging pain of Tom's hand meeting his cheek brought him back to reality and he heard him repeat again and again. "It's not her, Chakotay. There are just traces of her blood. The dead is Camet."
She was walking. One foot before the other. Every step hurt. But she went on. A long time ago she had lost every sense of direction. The world around her was colourless ice, but the air seemed to eat at her skin with biting heat. The pain started to spread slowly, until she couldn't breathe anymore so much it hurt. And then the snow beneath her feet opened and she was falling into a bottomless abyss.
She wanted to scream but no sound came over her lips. The dark ground was coming closer and closer and all she could do was watch and wait until it swallowed her.
In the moment she would have hit the ground, she felt herself being lifted up, her body weightless and numb. She didn't know where she found the strength to open her eyes, but when she did, she was staring in the deep and warm brown of Chakotay's eyes that mirrored the horrible pain she was feeling.
A red handprint had coloured the left side of Chakotay's face, but he didn't feel anything but concern for Kathryn. They had scanned the place and found out that Camet had been hit directly by the detonation of a micro-bomb. There had been traces of Camosystrin in the debris, a very effective explosive charge that was only available to Special Forces of Starfleet Security. Camosystrin was used to be integrated in devices like commbadges or tricorders as an emergency weapon in covert actions. Somehow Kathryn must have been able to get hold of such a device, activate it and get away from the explosion. But where was she? There was no tail in the snow leading away from the place of destruction.
He found her lying unconscious on the transporter platform in Camet's ship. The small device to make a site-to-site transport had fallen from her hand and lay on the floor beside her.
It hurt to look at her. The only place Camet had not touched was her face. Chakotay leaned down and picked her up carefully, afraid to cause her more pain. She moaned, barely audibly, and then her eyes opened. Tearless eyes of fragile blue looked at him. She didn't cry. Instead of her own, Chakotay's tears coursed down her pale cheeks.
Like small white clouds, the smoke rose quietly from the chimney of the blockhouse into the starry night. The crackling fire filled the room with cosy warmth.
They sat in silence, mesmerized by the dancing red and orange flames. Chakotay's hand was tenderly stroking up and down her right arm in a soothing pattern. Kathryn's head rested against his broad chest, while he was breathing into her hair.
Nothing in the room remained of the horrendous ordeal she been rescued from only 72 hours before. The broken skin was healed, the implant had been removed and the drugs had been neutralized.
But the ghosts were still there. They became visible only in her face. Her eyes exposed the words she couldn't say.
She would talk to him, Chakotay knew that. But right now, they didn't need words. They needed each other, to feel, to hold on to, to break free from the shock and to live again.
Kathryn turned around in his embrace, searching his eyes. He brought his hands to her beautiful face. His thumbs tenderly smoothed her tears away that ran quietly from her eyes.
They were so close that they were breathing the same air.
"Hold me, Chakotay." Her lips almost touched his when she whispered. "I need your love to know my name."
His kiss felt like velvet and tasted like red wine. Soft, warm and deep.
"I love you." He breathed into her mouth, slowly feeding the fire that would warm more than her skin. Again and again he repeated her name, while his hands spread the flames until they were both burning.
The ice was melting and with it the ghosts faded to where they belonged. Into the past.
The End