The Unlikely Affair

by A Quarter Past

"It's not that we had an affair, it's that we could have had an affair." The first five years after Kathryn Janeway gets her crew home are a little bit more interesting (and boring) than she expected them to be, and she's pretty sure that the scuttlebutt is broken.

3. Chapter 3

3/5

---

—
- i -
—

Somewhere just beyond the farthest reaches of the Romulan Empire, a ship blinked into existence.

English and linguistic scholars would argue with physicists and philosophers about the merits of the previous sentence (1). There was one thing that no one would ever argue over (aside from those five statistical geniuses, who would go on to create a nasty schism in the field of mathematics between the three who always knew that Kathryn Janeway wasn't the correct variable to include in their equations all along, and the two who couldn't figure out why all of their calculations regarding Kathryn Janeway and starships invariably came out to one). It was a fact that, if brought up in conversation, would lead to approximately eight minutes of everyone present nodding at one another because, 'Yeah, that makes perfect sense.'

This was the small piece of information that this not-new-ship-in-a-new-place had the word 'Voyager' printed on its outer hull in utilitarian font.

—
- ii -
—

At precisely 0300 hours on what was meant to be Kathryn's last day in Emergency Ops, a private subspace message pinged on the computer near her bed. Because that particular ping could have woken the dead (and because she had been staring at the ceiling for the last four hours pretending that this was all a dream, really, she was back in the Delta Quadrant living a meaningful existence) it only had to go off once before the message was received in person.
It read,

"Qjwlamia twiaghlm yhal."

The words were something that, to just about anyone else, would look like the English language had been shoved into a blender (2). To Kathryn, they looked like a key to an encrypted message she would receive at some point in the next twenty-four hour day cycle. In a fit of forward thinking, Kathryn had worked with B'Elanna to develop a replication file that would produced traditional pens and paper (due to John's habit of long-hand communication) whenever needed. Therefore, Kathryn had several available to jot down the key before it vanished into the background radiation of the universe.

As with many of these short transmissions she had received in the past two months (mostly from Harry and Tom and on occasion the Doctor checking in) Kathryn knew that the best way to prepare for the incoming message was to navigate one of the twelve books on the Qwghlmian language she had gotten under the pretense of wanting to impress John. John (who was someone that was usually not impressed as well as someone who knew his friend well enough to know that wanting to impress others wasn't a prominent trait of hers) played along with the farce anyway. This was easier said than done, because Qwghlmian was as frustrating to read as it was to hear the universal translators butcher.

"It's phoneme, morpheme, and syntax are what you would probably call, 'unsound,'" John had warned her once, when she told him she was thinking of taking up the language as a hobby (he'd been kind enough to only look a great deal skeptical at her use of the word hobby instead of entirely unconvinced).

What he meant by unsound was that the fans who had recreated it centuries ago had done a rather poor job of it, and that its recent status as a formerly dead language had done the initial botched construction of Qwghlmian no favors whatsoever. "Qjwlamia twiaghlm yhal" could mean one thing written down but ten when spoken or vice versa or each word might mean the exact same thing depending on the use of dialects. Kathryn had been surprised to learn that enough people had been able to speak this at one point in order to produce dialects. John had responded with an explanation that the dialects formed because people had never really known how to speak it to one another with it in the first place.

That was the point.

Harry had apparently taken one look at cCmndhd's name after weeks of trying to figure out just who Kathryn had mentioned in passing once ("John Smith doesn't exist!" he'd complained loudly to no one once, before thinking to search the name in the database phonetically). An afternoon trying to understand the features of the language had convinced the Lieutenant Junior Rank that he had found the perfect means of constructing the encryption algorithms for MA'AM.

He had been right; it was now a year after its completion, and the leading intelligence officers in the Federation, Klingon Empire, Romulan Empire, and Cardassian...ruins, still had no idea if Kathryn Janeway was simply swapping mediocre anecdotes and jokes with members of her previous crew or if they were all somehow plotting a coup/war/xenocide/Borg Invasion (3).

After what could have been several pints of coffee or several pots (she never counted anymore), Kathryn figured out how to translate the Qwghlmian key, which produced a riddle she had to solve and translate back into Qwghlmian in order to decode the impending message.

What she could not count in cups of coffee, she could in time. It was 0900 hours when she solved the key under the guise of writing a report at her desk in Emergency Ops. It was 1120 hours when she received an encrypted message via a secure subspace line Seven of Nine of all people had agreed to develop (which didn't so much as decay the message if anyone attempted to hack it without access to the first word of the translated key but jumbled up the letters even more than they already appeared to be). It was 1201 hours when the first reports of Voyager's disappearance made their way to Emergency Ops and 1204 hours when Kathryn finished converting her private message into a more readable format.

It said,

'Nobody puts Aunt Kathy in a corner (4).'

The flood of reports pretty much all said,

"Voyager has vanished."

The again was left unspoken.

Kathryn, for her part, accepted this incoming information with about as much shock as someone who was being told by a meteorologist, while standing in a thunderstorm, that there was a chance of scattered showers. Voyager has vanished had been the encryption key Q Junior had made her work out, after all. Only, it had looked more like someone had vomited the letters in no reasonable order when she was done translating it.

—
- iii -
—

Several things happened in the weeks following the second Voyager disappearance. The first was that the admiralty put Kathryn in front of a number of reporters and their holo-cameras whenever they had the opportunity, as if to say, 'Look, we did our best to keep this from happening again. We kept her off that ship, didn't we?'

Her improvised speeches were full of genuine heartfelt sympathies and support directed at the families of those aboard the vessel, subtle underhanded comments directed at Starfleet Command for thinking that this didn't have anything to do with her, and the unspoken but generally well received statement, 'That's what you get for naming a starship Voyager.'

The second was that some enterprising young journalist went through the publicly available crew manifest and did an exposé on those who had been in the original, ill-fated mission to the badlands. So, once again, the faces of Tom and Chakotay as well as Jenny Delaney were splashed all over the media feeds (5). Kathryn did her best to avoid being blackmailed into providing information, and for the most part succeeded admirably at it (commenting only once after it had been intimated to her that B'Elanna had punched the journalist in question in the jaw with a wry, 'That's all she did? (6)'.

In the third week of the second Voyager disappearance, Owen Paris made his move. By tugging on the appropriate strings and calling in all the right favors, he plucked Kathryn out of her extended assignment at Emergency Ops. Her official post as the new commanding officer of the Pathfinder Project was certainly not as sexy as being granted unlimited access to the warp speeds necessary to track down her ship, but something told her that she wouldn't be waiting long for the answers she needed. Knowing the Q as she did, their omnipotence was greater than everything but their need to brag about it.

Meanwhile, the only individuals she told about Junior's involvement were those with access to Qwghlmian-to-Standard dictionaries. Although the Q involved would provide some measure of comfort, it was effectively a dead-end lead. Voyager could be anywhere. The size of a fruit fly orbiting debris? The Andromeda galaxy? 1952?

Seven had been the first to respond with, "I will focus my attention on subspace."

Which Kathryn had taken to mean: leave the physics to me.

In the fourth week, B'Elanna sent Kathryn what amounted to an encrypted technical manual regarding the more classified aspects of the changes made to Voyager's engines since their return: namely prototype slipstream technology that they had known all along was on board but had to pretend they didn't. The more important sections had been flagged by the engineer and annotated with projected lengths of time of travel to the Alpha Quadrant from various locations in the galaxy (assuming they were in the same time) with that drive. The odds looked good that if Q left them somewhere like the far-side of the Gamma Quadrant, Chakotay could get everyone home before Miral hit adulthood (provided they ignored the fact that the Gamma Quadrant wasn't exactly prime real-estate at the moment).

In the eighth week, Kathryn was introduced to two of the five mathematicians whose findings had grounded her. It was very hush-hush, in the sort of way that stank of involvement from P'ox. Knowing that whatever was said to them would make it back to the Bolian, she decided to have some fun at their expense. This meant that by the end of their discussion over stale, poorly replicated coffee regarding their latest calculations involving Voyager, Kathryn had them convinced that all of their calculations were correct: if she so much as sneezed in the vicinity of a shuttle-craft, half of the Federation would fall into ruin.

When sixteen weeks passed with no other word from Junior and no headway in locating Voyager in the night sky, she grew certain that they were going to be in this for another long haul. Whatever the Q had up their sleeve, it probably actually meant something in the grand scheme of something.

Approximately an hour after she had this thought, Kathryn received a MA'AM communique from somewhere in the Romulan Empire (she knew it was Romulan because the individual who had sent it thought that she would be fooled by the distinctly Klingon signature to the private subspace channel. Given that the Klingon's were notoriously bad at subterfuge, Kathryn took this lie as a good-nature sign of disrespect, the best type of disrespect the Romulans had to offer).
It was a set of coordinates just beyond the farthest edges of the Empire.

Three days after this, Kathryn, Harry, and Seven went missing from their posts.

Four months after that, the Doctor failed to arrive at Jupiter Station (7).

—
- iv -
—

"I like cheese."

Harry gave an expression that approached bemusement; Seven scowled, "That is not what I said; the universal translators have failed to register the intonation of my words again."

From the opposite side of the small mess hall of the Tholian cargo-transport, Kathryn could not find it within herself to tell the ex-Drone that everyone failed to register the intonation of her words, and that at any given point in time she only ever had one: boredom.

Instead, she replicated a mug of raktajino in silence. There was no need to set the grounds for an argument in a situation that was already tense with uncertainty.

The three had been traveling together for over four months, circumventing their way through the Federation, into Klingon space, and finally to the edges of the Klingon Empire. While it was always difficult to hide who they were, cleverness and a bit of hero-worship had gone a very long way to prevent both the press and Starfleet from having a clear picture of what their flight plan really was. Sure, the occasional report of their adventures made its way to the tabloids, but it was never enough to truly threaten their mission of getting to the coordinates sent to them by whatever Romulan had a plan up their sleeve.
It hadn't been Kathryn's intentions to bring along company. Harry and Seven had very bright futures ahead of them, with equally bright accomplishments to share with the people of the Federation. They had very little business tarnishing that by going on a fool's-errand with their once-captain (their once-captain who was now an admiral grounded by Starfleet). At least, that is what she had told herself before they had, on many occasions, proven their presence was necessary to make this fools'-errand work.

"Try saying it again, but this time round out and lift at the beginning and end of each word," Harry instructed, ever patient and not looking as if he enjoyed Seven's failure. Four months of intense study and the ex-Drone continued to fail at speaking the language of barely more than a 100 (herself included).

Seven obliged, "Hello, how are you?"

"You did it! Fantastic!" Harry cheered, looking over to Kathryn in very clear excitement on his otherwise tired features. Breaking the law did such horrible things to his complexion.

She rewarded him with a smile; it took so much energy to teach Seven. It suited him well (in that it kept him from going mad over what was likely to be a very dismal future).

Kathryn certainly wasn't fluent in Qwghlmian, at least not to the extent as her once-ensign, but she knew enough to answer Seven's question, "I think I've had enough practice for the day."

"I concur," said Seven in standard.

Dressed in civilian clothing and restricted to quarters or the public messes, there was at once too little and too much to do aboard their myriad of transports. With no duties, their days were filled with discussions regarding the potential whereabouts of Voyager, the potential punishments waiting for them on Earth, as well as the likelihood of Romulan ill-intent regarding the coordinates delivered. At the same time, their days were filled with silence and brooding and tension. They weren't used to traveling with one another in this way (without a clear command structure, and without a Kathryn Janeway eager to establish one).

The fact that there was very little exploration too, just clear determination to reach the destination of choice, did not help. Odd civilizations willing to increase their adrenaline by promising to kill them were never engaged, beautiful nebulae or anomalies where avoided out of practicality, and there was a depressing lack of scientific curiosity among captains manning the transports and ships they boarded.

Concern over the crew aboard Voyager and the lack of trust in the Q to protect them from danger often drove Harry into frenetic panic and Seven into a maudlin silence. It pained Kathryn to know that her friend had decided to explore the full spectrum of human emotion only to be quickly given the chance to do just that.

"Where do you think the Doctor has run off too?"

This was Harry's fourth favorite topic of conversation (8). Ever since the tabloids had accused Kathryn and her erstwhile EMH of running off on a romantic vacation, the comm's officer had been trying to locate the hologram in question. The Doctor certainly wasn't with them, and nothing in the last nine years had given any indication that his old captain and the chief medical officer aboard Voyager had actually had an affair. Had someone managed to filch his program, and in their haste to find the lost ship, they were willfully neglecting to help him?

Unfortunately for Harry, the whereabouts of the Doctor was Kathryn and Seven's least favorite topic of conversation. Obviously, for different reasons. For Seven, it was because she had pieced together Kathryn's involvement in his citizenship and civilian status without two days of their current travels and was displeased with his lack of open respect for the Admiral's sacrifices. For Kathryn, it was because she truly worried of his whereabouts but had to acknowledge that 200 lives were more important than one.

Neither women had expressed these opinions to one another via spoken or written word, but seemed to understand each other regardless. Nearly half a decade of exhausted conversations had a way of doing that.

"If he has failed to inform us of his intentions," Seven said, before Kathryn could even begin to speak, "then his location is irrelevant to our current plans."

Harry frowned, clearly disagreeing, "Isn't it possible he received the same coordinates that we did?"

"Not likely," Kathryn spoke up softly, "since I had to share the coordinates with you."

A member of the cargo-ship's crew entered the mess and effectively killed the conversation.

With an effort to lift the mood, Kathryn spoke up in that damned language, "I like cheese too" and shot Seven a wink.

—
- v -
—

Qrlthlmtrly Ccmndhd found Reginald Barclay charmingly incompetent at even the most basic forms of interpersonal communication. The very fact that they had only ever communicated through encrypted messages and had never spoken in person was the first indicator that the man who played a significant role in the well-being of the the crew of Voyager was odder than a lake full of Klingon fish (which didn't so much swim as keep everything else from swimming).

Now that they were meeting face-to-face (albeit via subspace) for the first time after each had cracked MA'AM and had (with an alarming quickness) been accosted by Voyager's former chief medical officer (who had programmed within his database quiet subroutines that monitored the use of MA'AM across most public subspace channels (and even a few private ones)). What a treat that had been, receiving a communique from a thoroughly incredulous and scandalized hologram –

'How dare you not just ask Kathryn!'

Which was fair, the woman would have probably let them both in on the secret if they had simply asked. But breaking such barriers was far more fun than asking for the keys to them.

"H-h-he hasn't responded to any of the messages I-I-I've sent, but I can assure you that his program made it through the relay stations without any degradation..." Reg's stuttering came to an uneasy halt, before being replaced with a very soft and quick, "thatIknowof."

Qrlthlmtrly sipped at his tea and pretended not to hear that. It would be one thing to ask Kathryn forgiveness for not asking her permission to help orchestrate a reconnaissance mission (one that included sending her friend's entire program matrix through a very specific set of relay stations between the Pathfinder Project headquarters and the coordinates supplied by an anonymous Romulan friend to the Doctor just a couple weeks prior), and entirely another to ask for her forgiveness for inadvertently killing him.

Reg seemed to understand the difference as well, by the way he kept wringing the small napkin he held, and so this entire conversation would move forward as if the Doctor was all good and well in the Beta Quadrant.

"I-I-I'm sorry. Admiral Paris has command of the project again in Admiral Janeway's absence. H-he's even more p-present now that she is missing. It's hard to do all I can to m-m-make contact w-without him getting suspicious."

Despite the old man's love for his missing-again son, granting Paris any sort of knowledge of their scheme to ship the Doctor off to what was hopefully Voyager (but was more likely a Romulan holding cell) was not only criminally short-sighted but also rude. It would be much easier for Paris to manufacture the appropriate permissions retroactively should this foolhardy mission be a success than it would be for him to grant legitimate permission in the present. Never-mind that it would be easier for him to claim ignorance, should this fail, if he actually remained ignorant.

(Qrlthlmtrly liked his job, but not so much that he wouldn't mind an early retirement, and certainly not so much that he wouldn't like it more with Kathryn Janeway on a starship creating misadventures. (Allowing Reg and the Doctor to talk him in to shuffling around the appropriate fake paperwork had been surprisingly easy)).

That said, there was little more he could do for them.

"I would help you with that if I could, but my position doesn't give me the power to interfere with Pathfinder any more than I have, and certainly not with Admiral Paris. I can tell you this, however: I was not lying when I told you and the good Doctor that Paris would praise your ingenious and yet mildly illegal behavior if you produce results. Right now, we're sitting on a situation where Voyager is lost at space (again) with at least five of her old crew (again), and three of her former best souls are..well, who knows where they are…:

Qrlthlmtrly sighed, then continued, "Look, what I'm trying to say is we only have a short period of time before someone in the press puts it all together and realizes that the three is really four and that Starfleet is full of officers who can only get work done when they're pulling the wool over the Admiralty's eyes. Even better yet, that they can only get work done with admirals are wooling the eyes of other admirals."

Reg looked perplexed for approximately half a second before saying, with a voice as clear as a Risa day, "Did you just say 'wooling?'"

An eye roll, a sigh, and a solid (counted) ten seconds passed before Qrlthlmtrly responded, "I have done all that I can do for you, and I certainly cannot think of another way to make your task easier. Perhaps, if Kathryn Janeway had (in her seemingly infinite wisdom) left me any indication of what she was doing, I could use my contacts to steer some of the public's attention away from Pathfinder and on to her exploits. Unfortunately, she did not. The only other person, besides the ones she took with her, who knows what is going on is a Vulcan, and the extent of my ability to speak with Vulcans begins and ends with taunting."

After another moment, Qrlthlmtrly thought to add, "And as thankful as I am that you paid me this call, it isn't my job to make you feel better about doing yours, which is, by the way, as of today, to make me feel better about you doing your job."

"U-understood, Admiral Ccmndhd."

Feeling, perhaps, a little sorry for responding so harshly to the skittish man, he tried to lighten the mood, "I doubt this will be the last midnight call you give me, Reg. You might as well call me Qrlthlmtrly."

The universal translators stuttered.

—
- vi -
—

B.L.T — T.E.P

Where are you?

::Delivered::

—

QcC— K.E.J

P'ox is frothing at the mouth; Owen's apparently received a dozen communiques from her all amounting to a single message: "I told you so." You're quite the topic at the Officer's Lounge (nee Club).

Also. Clearly, I've cracked MA'AM wide open. Don't use my language unless you want me to figure it out.

Also also. Where are you?

::Received::

—

R.E.B. III — H.S.L.K

I'm sorry, Harry. I managed to learn your encryption algorithms. They are very sophisticated!

I may have lost Doctor. Please don't tell the Admiral.

::Received::

—

H.S.L.K — R.E.

It was only a matter of time. I knew you could do it. Let me know if you can think of any ways to improve the security.

Also, I know these messages are supposed to be kept short, but you could have provided me with more than, "I lost the Doctor."

::Received::

—

K.E.J —QcC

I assumed you already knew. What did you think the language training was for? Fun?

—Soon to be the 8 Ball champion in three quadrants.

::Received::

—

R.E.B. III — H.S.L.K

We tried to send him to the Romulans.

I swear he got there!

::Received::

—

H.S.L.K — R.E.B. III

For someone so smart, you do very stupid things sometimes.

I'm telling the Admiral. She'll know by the time you get this.

::Received:

—

R.E.B. III — H.S.L.K

It was a good idea! You'll see!

::Received::

—

QcC— K.E.J.

We know where you're going already; we don't know where you are.

::Delivered::

—

K.E.J. — QcC

I'm not telling you. It's for the best.

Also, Reg Barclay lost the Doctor. If you didn't already know about this, please help find him. If you did know about this…

::Received::

—

K.E.J — R.E.B. III

I'm demoting you when I return.

Get him back.

::Received::

—

R.E.B. III — H.S.L.K

She's demoting me. I swear it worked!

::Received::

—

B.L.T — K.E.J.

Please find them.

::Received::

—

K.E.J — T.E.P.
Where are you.

::Delivered::

—

K.E.J — Ch.

Where are you?

::Delivered::

—

K.E.J — E.M.H

Stay put. We're on our way.

::Delivered::

—

7.o.9 — E.M.H.

Comply.

::Intercepted::

—
- vi -
—

Somewhere just beyond the farthest reaches of the Romulan Empire, a being blinked into existence.

English and linguistic scholars would argue with physicists and philosophers about the merits of the previous sentence for a painfully long time as well, given that this particular being had had a prior existence before that very moment...but that is truly beside the point.

Just after blinking into existence, the person in question said,

"Please state the nature of the medical emergency."

Promptly after that, he added, "Well, this isn't what I expected."

—
- End Notes -
—

(1) Examples of such debates or questions that prompted them are as follows. 'Well, the ship hadn't really blinked into existence so much as blinked from one part of the galaxy into another part of the galaxy - the Beta Quadrant, to be precise', 'It had existed previously, just never before beyond the furthest reaches of the Romulan Empire', 'What is the meaning of existence anyway?', 'Do transporters kill you and produce your clone?', 'Oh Great Barrier deity, are we all our own clones to the power of n?'

(2) To carry this analogy to its logical conclusion: which was then subsequently put into the "grind" setting and turned on for a bit.

(3) Some days, because of MA'AM's stupendously steep learning curve and decryption algorithm, she wasn't certain what she was doing either.

(4) Of course, 'Nobody puts Aunt Kathy in a corner' was only Kathryn's best guest. There were a number of other messages this could have translated to, that she wasn't entirely too keen on settling with. These being:

'The cat is brand new'

'Farewell Monica, you won't be missed.'

'We are the Borg.'

(5) For some reason, Vorik didn't make attractive storylines for the journalist writing the stories nor a particularly photogenic subject, so his decade long story remained rather sparse.

(6) That the enterprising young journalist B'Elanna assaulted was the son of an esteemed (and missing) war hero, did not go unnoticed.

(7) Naturally, the gossip rags speculated that the admiral and her holographic boyfriend had gone on vacation, failing to recognize that their disappearances didn't coincide.

(8) The first being Voyager; the second: Libby; and the third his clarinet.