Title: BIAS

Author: R.Schultz (cousindream@aol.com)

Series: VOYAGER (AU)

Pairing: Captain Annika Hansen/Torres/7 of 9.

Rating: NC-17

Summary: The Captain of VOYAGER, far, far away in the Delta Quadrant, has enough burdens already. Enough to break the back of any lesser being. She stands in Cargo Bay #2 and contemplates the cool visage of her partly human-society assimilated Borg.

Disclaimer: Trek-universe belongs to ViaBorgCom. I'm not making money. This fic is mine under common-law copyright. November, 2001. 15,700 words long.

Warning: This is TrekSmut and no one underage according to USA or local law may enter here. Nor may those whose country or locale legally declares smut non-readable. In this free and democratic society they're in charge, not you and your fellow citizens.

Posted to the FFF group - http://www.oocities.org/femme_fuhq_fest/ , and later to the ASCEM. May be archived, but please notify. Comments to: cousindream@aol.com

BIAS (To work wood against the grain)

by R.Schultz

I am a ghost.

In my mirror, here in the darkness of my cabin. Here the mannequin of hollowness that is me, all that is visible is the StarBow's of fleeting light emphasizing the darkness of space, and my faint outlines of gray in darkness; I am a ghost.

I am a ghost, and the stars are such a vast, empty, unforgiving and lonely place. I am lost in the stilly night, I am gone, all I can see in my mirror are the empty stars and the faint outlines of my naked unreality.

I turn swift as intent, trying to catch the thief tardily seen in my mirror. There is no one there, just the emptiness of the stars. Just another ghost.

I know who it was I almost saw in my cabin. It was my beautiful Borg, the one who inhabits my never-be moments of the darkness and the intrices where my fellow ghosts live.

Everyone who died on my ship since we destroyed The Caretaker comes by to dance in my cabin. They come to Pirouette and to Port de Bras in the dark, all unseen, but felt. Sometimes.

Seven of Nine is a special ghost in my shadows, not least because she is still alive. In my visions her compact nakedness does the overhead embrace of the Pivoting en Couronne for me alone. In the light no one is there. No secret Dancer, no hope.

After I've taken my solitary shower, I call the lights up, dispelling all the ghosts except Seven. Seven makes the Captain uneasy, not least because I keep thinking of her.

Over time I have come to understand in my hollowness that my feelings for Seven have become physical, emotional, sexual. I think of her, I wish to embrace her. It has taken me years to understand what I feel for her.

My clothes slip on, my persona, my Command Mask slips over my face. Some think of me as the Ice Queen, others wonder if my face is my own, or just a means to Command? How much of me is pretense? How much of me does not really understand the problems of others? Is there anything left real and genuine inside me? Am I all pretense? Am I a queen of light and shadow, all pretense and only an empty ghost inside?

I am the Captain. I must always seem cool, composed, in charge. The entire ship depends on me to get them back to the Alpha Quadrant, to home. They must be able to rely on me, the cool tall blond one who never gets rattled. I, myself, know my world is hollow, but I MUST be the Ice Queen for them, the Steel Bitch. I must never lose Command. One crack and I might be shards of ice and flint upon the floor.

But the cold stars are so empty when I look out on them each morning at the start of Alpha Shift. The cold, cold hollow unforgiving stilly night.

Without music to start, I take an Attitude, there, in my booted uniform, my command pretense. So long as I can Dance, my pretense is filled with substance. "Soliari" I softly proclaim, calling up; "Make it "The Chimney Sweep", the Urribida ballet version," I softly whisper.

Computer then gives me the mindless predictable progressions leading nowhere, perfectly forgettable melodies able to flow in the ear and disappear. Perfect metronoming Soliari. A cadence breaking reality into digestible chunks, no demands or challenges. Perfect Soliari. Did he really engineer the death of Mozart?

I turn in quarter arc's off my working foot, my other foot stretching, my head bending, my hands trailing down my leg in each partial arc. I am Dance.

There is nothing empty in me whilst "The Chimney Sweep" groans in philharmonic violins, and there is nothing empty, except the stilly night outside my aluminum window. They retreat under the beats of sensuous 18th Century mediocrity.

I am balance, weight, spine, breath, I am erect, I am without distortion, I am musculature upright and vibrating with perfection. I bend, I spin off my working foot in precise measurements, a paradigm of unmoving flight, I am the school of Cchetti, Adagion, Allegro, Allerhon, Port de Bras.

Temps, Temps, Temps, little jumps, more and more Allegro, until I suddenly snap out of my circles, and embrace of air, into a sudden a la Seconde, to the side and I am standing utterly, perfectly, deliberately still. Quivering inside. Perfectly turned out, one hand high, one hand out, heel to working foot instep.

I check my severe bun, tucking in a few stray hairs. Pretense.

Tuvok has his mantra to regain calmness, assuredness, definition, understanding, balance, control. I have mine.

I am Dance. I am full, there is nothing hollow to me when I am Dance. I am full of meaning when I Dance. The stars out there calmly warm me with their applause.

"End program."

I palm my open Service Jacket all the way closed. At last carefully putting on those few little buttons of rank on my collar.

I am now Lieutenant Commander Annika Hansen, Terran by birth, Academy graduate and veteran of - now - twelve years service in StarFleet. By accident and necessity Captain of the StarShip VOYAGER.

I know I should never have been so far out here in distant Delta quadrant space, all alone.

I should be alertly sitting in my second's chair back in the Alpha quadrant, listening to my Captain and learning the ensigns of command. My limited world should be bound up in endeavoring to follow the orders of the two or three above me in rank. My responsibilities as Captain should still be years ahead of me.

Instead I command. How can a ghost command? I do not know -- I just do it, from one day to the next. I was not READY for this, yet, yet here I am.

The cabin door opens and closes and I am in the corridor, my face already blank. smooth and unruffled. Dance still fills me with confidence and strength. I am the Captain.

I encounter Harry Kim, we manage a sentence or two of greetings, a shallow smile fleets across my lips. Harry cannot help letting his eyes flicker quickly over my body, my breasts, even when my body is in it's service uniform and a Force Two Command Persona mask on my face. I have seen his body glowing with desire like a plasma bolt in the night, at times when I've worn other clothes.

He wants me. He very badly wants me.

We danced socially thrice in Sandrine's, his hands in my long blond hair, the hair flowing down a light green dress. He devoured me like some men devour choicest viands and wine.

At present Harry is smitten with me, which is sad really, because as Captain I hardly dare make lovers of my Bridge Crew. I hope he will eventually direct his emotions towards some other female crew person who will desire him.

Yet.... As we part, I let my steps linger, letting Harry get as good a view of my retreating body as he can. At least it lets him look at something besides my breasts. He would be a gentle lover, someone to teach much to. We could give each other so much joy.

And Harry is cute, but...

I find the door I seek and quickly step inside, personal hollowness and all.

"What do you think of in your nightly non-dreaming's?" I asked the emptiness of Cargo Bay #2.

I ask my Seven of Nine; "How human are you now? Do you feel love? At least a little tiny bit? Are you my success story in this voyage of disasters and mistakes?

"Would you enjoy a kiss?" Wrong thing to ask.

"Would you enjoy...."

I cannot verbalize it. My mind asks if this icy princess would enjoy kissing me, embracing me, being my lesbian lover? I want this strange woman to lick me, hold me, be my love of life. Ice Queen to Ice Princess.

My emotions call up my dreams, my wishes. A small naked female, but rich with the curves and softness of a desirable human. Small billowy breasts, small tight chips of nipples, a dark thatch of hair between the join of her legs, soft places to kiss on her throat, auburn hair to run my fingers through.

Her name is Kathryn Janeway I know now. A Katie, lost in the Borg Collective for forty-six years, her whole life dismissed in a flash. I wonder what was her families fate, her sister Phoebe? Where out there will I find the childhood she forfeited to her father's mistakes?

An odd thing is that the crew calls me Ice Queen and her Ice Princess. She is so much older than I am, after all. So many heartless years in the Collective, so much of her life torn from her and thrown away. Yet she is the Princess to this crew. It is right.

I am too close, I come closer. I am the Captain. How much of my force of command might erode into the empty stars if I took a woman for a lover? This woman?

I've had a few women as sexual partners before, and it did not mean much to either me nor her. It was simply a non-satisfying sex thing. I've always preferred men, at least the right kind of man. But now?

That is my fear. Not that she might reject me if I held her and kissed her, but that she might accept. And doom us all thereby.

To have the Borg as my lover might tear things apart on this ship.

I stand Ciseaux, scissors, open legged before her, my darling precious Borg. My hand is beyond my control, and it's fingertips caress the shape of her implant over her artificial eye. My fingers trace the open metal lattices of the faux hand of her faux arm. A multi-pointed star in one cheek, stray auburn hairs in her own perpetual austere bun. With me willing a smile of benediction on her lips, which never comes.

In her regenerative state I can trace the ridges of her abdominal implants, those that remain. I mentally blanch to think of stripping her naked and caressing all of her. The lines of her thigh and calf implants. The passivity of her face, the smoothness of her untouched-appearing throat.

Almost every morning now I perform the same self-abasing unsaid worship of this diminutive human female so far from humanity.

I sway in inside-heard rhythm's, half-closing my eyes, a few seconds of Pirouette en Dehors, more quarter turns off my working foot, doing it in semi-jumps now, the music only of my heart beating in my ears. My hands are full outstretched, willing her to glide off her pedestal and to grasp my hand, gliding and jumping to keep alive my hand, to be the other part of myself. The inner part.

She does nothing, and I stop. Terre-a-terre, feet to the ground, my hands still caressing barrels of air. Above me, in front of me, to my hips and open, Allong, opening my arms as far as possible.

The.... My Ice Princess fails to respond. Being so, I turn once more into a Captain, with an ache inside where I am a hollow ghost.

I stride long authoritative steps out upon the corridor, on my way to the bridge. There I am not hollow, there I am not a Ghost, there I am responsible for all, there I visibly wield my uneven authority and faux surety.

Once there, a few seconds of banter as I sit into Command and my command chair. Safely fitted into my seat of command, I drink my Djareeling tea as my sole outside stimuli. I banter with Chakotay and Paris.

To begin the morning I slow VOYAGER to talk with a small culture which was barely beginning the process of seeding a few nearby solar systems.

I warn them about some of the enemies awaiting them in the area of space they live in. We show them the operation of our force fields. We tell them nothing.

Yet simply knowing such things exist means their interest and ingenuity will follow this path of inquiry. Given time, which they may not have, they will invent their own force fields. Yet the laws of non-interference have been maintained.

I shall have much to answer for if we ever return to StarFleet.

Otherwise, their existence goes into the Data Banks, ready to be transmitted to StarFleet. Someday to be studied by some scholar in Federation space.

Later, Chakotay and I go over reports in the privacy of my Captain's Cabin. Translating endless days into dry officialese, also for that far day when we might again exchange a few words with StarFleet. Never asking whether or not we will ever be able to physically follow the path of our irregular communications to Alpha Quadrant.

The contact is tenuous at best, but I think the mere proof of the existence of a line to the Alpha quadrant keeps most of us grounded to hope and reality.

Chakotay always looks deeply at me. He also desires my young body in his bed, to suck my hardened nipples into his eager mouth. But he also knows it would mean the death of our present Command arrangement. He controls himself, always, so much so that even Tuvok respects his sense of concise restraint and containment. Thus we continue to function. Me the Captain, he as my First.

Here is B'Elanna again. She seems hardly aware of her duties and privileges as my Second. I love it when that feisty little half-Klingon creates a space of two for us, easing her small female body close to me, and making a drab report a social occasion. B'Elanna is bit by bit replacing much of our warp core, and our ship. So long as our largest replicators can reproduce the parts, we will continue rebuilding our ship.

Later, again, she dropped by at lunch period, and brought some hot spicy little hard tasty Klingon biscuits with Tarq bits throughout. She curled on the couch, and I put my long legs on my desk, and she spins me all the latest gossip in the ship. I'm not sure what I could do without Lieutenant Torres to rely on.

We all have to rely on each other. We're all we have, most of the time. I never feel as if I'm contributing my share. At times I feel like such a sham. I am, after all, hollow inside. Behind my Command Mask there is nothing but a ghost. Someone who doesn't deserve to be commanding here.

B'Elanna is like the rest. She believes there is nothing I cannot solve, and nothing that can much faze me.

She peeled off my service trousers and blouse, making me lie down on my couch. Then, barefoot, she walks on my back and spine.

Very often the improvement to my back is minimal, but the alleviation of the tension is always remarkable. For some reason a small female walking on my buns and pulling on my latisimmus dorsai

leaves me with the most comfortable afterglow.

Again I fell asleep, content in her loving regard. I can trust B'Elanna to roll me awake when the unending stream of penitents and questioners began to assault my privacy again.

B'Elanna is perhaps the only person on Voyager I can call a friend.

- - - - - - - - - - -

As an example to the crew I always change into a Sports unitard and perform a thirty-minute stint in the gym. It's always crowded at end of shift, but then I get to do my warmers while waiting for my turn at the machines. We usually get a ladies sewing circle going in one corner or another. Samantha Wildman, little Naomi self-consciously working up a sweat, B'Elanna, me, and some odd other female or two. It is one of my deliberate periods of 'mingling'. Besides dropping by the Mess, or walking through the ship.

The 'mingling' always seems to take me through AstroMetrics at least once. Then I get to call on Katie.

Then I am able to watch her in her desirable older woman's body moving in it's sensual and economical movements. The plum catsuit leaves no portion of her body unproclaimed or unrevealed. People like Paris or Carey become so focused on Katie when she is moving her strong body, her breasts, or buttcheeks, in an Adagio of display. I could laugh. Except for the fact that I watch as well.

I love the plays of soft female curve and taunt musculature Katie gives me whenever she moves or bends over. Her butt and coiffure always look so touchable. My hands are always involuntarily reaching out to caress that perfect face, and asscheeks, amongst other things. Undo that stiff hairdo. But I never touch.

She would have made such a superlative dancer when she was young. A small strong body like hers, all by itself, would have been worth much to the Kirov or Chin or the New Melbourne companies.

Tonight, in the gym, B'Elanna is in her overtard of bright crimson Red, and her sports bra of green and workout pants of green. You'd never be able to accuse B'Elanna of being afraid to be garish.

Samantha and some of the others had once come to Gym au natural, indeed my native Norway has a majority of sun worshippers, myself included. But it is better for the ship that clothing protocols prevail.

The walls today slowly unreel a path somewhere in the Great Cedar Forest between Lebanon and the Persian Gulf. Another place with warm vacation memories for me. I met my first lover there. The smell of cedar in the gym makes me smile.

Naomi enjoys physical contact with B'Elanna, playing varied almost-games with my ex-Maquis. I wish Naomi would crawl over me in play that way. Instead Naomi settles so happily and so easily into those copper-toned Klingon arms.

It was so astonishing to discover B'Elanna could carve wood with a tiny plasma brush, creating characters from the stories Neelix blesses Naomi with. Naomi now has six or seven startling Talaxian character dolls to adorn her bedroom with, thanks to B'Elanna.

I take a treadmill when it comes free, enjoying the stretch of muscles after sitting in the Captain's Chair for so long. B'Elanna gets a stair-climbing machine, one that is next to me, as usual. B'Elanna always works out alongside me, if she can. She is soon explaining how she got some ingenious curve to a carving, or new efficiency to her precious engines.

She does not seem to conflict with Seven of Nine more frequently, miracle of miracles. Maybe not any less, either, but she doesn't take that particular problem to me anymore.

Also, evidently she and Tom haven't got back together again. She has had so many sexual encounters with so many people. What is it she searches for? Could she be hollow inside too?

- - - - - - - - - - -

"Can you get any movement out of the doors now?" I asked my Kathryn. In front of me the implacable metal denies us entry to Engineering. Tuvok points out that the entire interior is registering over one hundred ten degrees Celsius below. Four more minutes of this cold and the crewmen inside that malfunctioning section of the ship will die.

I am allowing the hull breaches to be held together via force field containment, for the moment. Once we get Engineering to open up and be re-set, we can repair the rest of the ship.

We had - again - outrun the hostile race inhabiting the last star system. Now it was time to put our ship back in working order again. Now it was time to rescue the suffering and freezing members of my crew dying inside Engineering Bay.

Katie and Tuvok worked together to pry the reluctant doors open while Carey and Megan Delaney play blistering heaters upon the frosty clasp of my malfunctioning doors. Their work gloves are flaming and waves of heat blacken all our clothes.

Kathryn pulls back her smoldering false arm and slams her metal fingernails into the seam of doors. An immense clanging, and Bel'Pris slams a pry into the door, following on Kathryn's initiative.

The doors flew apart, as if on springs. Suddenly the way is clear inside, and we all rush in to find our freezing comrades. There is a pocket on the first floor of the bay, a space of semi-privacy for the 1st Officer, Shift, to sit and ponder reports and work. It is filled now with everyone that was in Engineering when it malfunctioned.

Layers of freezing crewmen hide there, and the one with her back to the cold was B'Elanna. Once again trying to give that minute tiny bit of protection to someone else. I am somehow the first to the small heap of survivors, grabbing B'Elanna and calling for emergency transport to sick bay.

The EMH is waiting for all of us. He is pumping medicine into B'Elanna's neck even as I stretch her onto the BioBed.

In turn on turn he was able to stabilize all of them, transporting Emergency beds with limited BioBed capabilities onto the floor. A refuge for the others that arrive. The EMH triaged each, putting the worst cases onto the permanent standing BioBeds. He reported that all would survive, though most would need organic replacements for frost-bitten bits of hand, skin and face.

Carey had now assumed command in Engineering, making repairs. Running full diagnostics, just in case. Chakotay reported in, declaring progress in other Ship repair threads.

In hours the Doctor had finished repairing all my Engineer's. One particular Engineer was sitting upright, holding a silvery BioBed blanket to herself. My friend was shivering, and periodically bursting into full-blown shaking and crying. Tears of hysteria, signs of deep physiological and physical trauma. B'Elanna was talking nonsense, and making randomized movements. I was dismayed to find her so incoherent.

"Most of the other victims with neural damage will be disorderly through the night," the EMH stated. "Temperature repair therapies tend to do that. Most of their total trauma involved temporary loss of

varied motor relay's as they proceed to rebuild their neural pathways."

B'Elanna grasped me with shaking hands like claws, prompting my own clasping and holding, letting the BioBed sheet fall to her sides. She shook so much, she seemed so small and fragile in my arms, so exposed in her nudity. She needed to be enfolded in my arms, my friend needed me.

"Is it safe to leave her in this state?" I inquired.

Looking at me in that irritating attitude of his, he smiled and patted B'Elanna in his best and most condescending bedside manner. B'Elanna clutched at me and shied away from the Doc.

"Doctor," I asked, "would Lieutenant Torres be okay through the night?"

"Physically there is nothing really wrong with her anymore....," the EMH stated in an evasive manner.

"But?" I continued.

"But she would be able to recover more easily if someone stayed with her through the night. She is, after the worst affected. She lost nearly twelve centimeters of her spine to frostbite damage. Another half-minute of cold exposure and she might have permanently died."

I held B'Elanna close to me, enjoying the comfort she seemed to draw from my presence.

- - - - - - - - - - -

The bathtub in B'Elanna's quarters was unexpectedly ornate and decorative. Early Roman Empire, I thought, but in reality probably typically excessive Klingon. The hardware looked gold plated, and the tub itself was a good imitation marble. Green with streaks and bubbles of white. Large enough to drown in.

I replicated some of my own style of bath pearls, and threw them into the hot water. Instant perfume throughout the cabin, as the ruffles of bubbles foamed on the surface.

B'Elanna was focusing enough to get out of her hospital skivvies, leaving them in a messy pile beside the tub. I helped her into the tub and stayed nearby. Wouldn't want her to slip under the bubbles and leave me without an Engineering Chief. She made the most delightfully purring bubbly noises whenever she ducked her head underneath the iridescent tickling perfume-bubbles.

B'Elanna had lost all her hair, as most of the Engineering crew had. Her force-grown mane looked much like what she wore before, but it felt deliciously soft wearing a crown of bubble froth. She gave me a hiccuping-throaty noise of pleasure as I gently washed her, her hair first.

She stood to be rinsed, and I really noticed what a superb little body this half-Klingon had. I had to palm many parts of it, and enjoyed the smooth softness of it. I had a hand on her ass at one point, when, with eyes open, she twisted to kiss me. I enjoyed it, I giggled slightly, and she kissed me three or four more times. She was my friend.

My uniform got wet, so I disposed and replicated everything I could grab. At one point I was as nude as she was. She took the opportunity to hug and fondle me from behind for a few minutes. I was quite conscious she was naked and she was warm against my back. I enjoyed those golden few moments.

Looking for her pajama's, I discovered a drawer filled with precise cabinetry work and dozens and dozens of dildo's and vibratory toys. It would have been fascinating investigating B'Elanna's secret cache, but I quickly closed it from view. I now felt severely restricted with my own sex toy treasure's of a few Risan sex aids. At least I had a good idea now just how B'Elanna got through those long days

without a lover.

As soon as I got her into those astonishingly warm, red, and nearly-phosphorescent pajamas of hers, B'Elanna crawled into her bed all by herself. She looked at me and asked a most pathetic "Please?"

I replicated a nice long flannel night-dress and joined her. There were eight major colors woven into my garment. Thereby proving B'Elanna wasn't the only one who could be garish.

The door chimed, and I discovered Samantha and Naomi in identical blue flannel nightgowns. Naomi offered to help me take care of B'Elanna for the night, and Samantha said it was okay.

For some minutes I wondered if anyone else was going to show up, but no one did.

The blanket had to be retrieved three times in the night from Lieutenant Torres' Naomi-B'Elanna cocoon. B'Elanna growled at me whenever I took back some of the blanket for myself.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Computer was pumping in the fourth movement of the Nutcracker, giving me a base to Dance upon, in the dark dimness of Cargo Bay #2.

Port de Bras, arms embracing overhead, en Couronne, en Evant, my body twirling in a la Quatrieme, Temps, Pirouette Pas de Cheval in distinct horse steps, until I break off into Ecartr, facing my front to Kathryn on her pedestal. Again, I balance-rock, arms always ascending on the way to a new position, taking little gliding steps until I am slightly to one side of my regenerating Borg, close enough to kiss.

Pirouette, bend, Plier, quarter turn, keeping my face to one of the four corners in front, each in turn as I go full circle, Temps, Temps, Fon du, slow, slow, do my bend, touch head to knee, foot out straight. Turn, turn, Temps, back to my Katie, worshipping her crisp perfection.

Finally I Frappe, leg out front, one arm up, the other full to my side Allong, leg Arabesque behind me, a perfect position, spine straight, Musculated Physique, perfect position, end of dance.

Still she does not respond. Katie, oh Katie....

I can wait the half hour until she is scheduled to awake. Or I could touch her, caress her, kiss her. Reveal my feelings to my Borg. Stop being a coward.

Suddenly I instinctively understand all those invisible boys at parties and social dances and Lutheran Church picnics back in Stavanger, or even the young men in the nudist summers in Aleppo or Lima. I am also one of those unseen male enigma's of shyness, I am afraid to go forward in quest.

Put it all on one roll of the dice. I must do it soon. All my courage will dissipate amongst the cold empty stars if I do not act soon.

I lean forward, step onto her half-wafer of metal, bring my face next to hers. It is done.

I have already kissed her. It is done.

Kathryn Janeway turns her human eye to me, she is awake, no smile, no frown, just acceptance, she is awake and regarding me. I kiss Kathryn again, caressing her poor metal-scarred neck, willing she respond.

I need her love, I hope that if I want her, she will want me. I need her human response, please respond, do something, kiss me back I ask with my hand, I ache and ask with my fingertips, touching her cold lovable metal brow.

Please. Do something.

She does nothing, and I retreat, flying out of Cargo Bay #2.

Well, so much for that, I coldly state to myself. What a joke I am.

I make a pass at a straight girl, and I'm not even sure if I'm a lesbian. That's pretty much such a Dyke joke everyone else has heard of it before. Foolish pervert hoist by her own petard, she rolls on a straight girl and looks stupid.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

By the time I had been ninety minutes on the Bridge, the whole ship is aware it's a Bad Hair Day for the Captain. Even Tuvok gives me the inquiring eye after I've chewed on him twice.

B'Elanna is brave enough to face me three times that morning. The third time and she surprises even me. I'd never thought her a glutton for punishment without giving as good as she got.

My verbal cat-of-nine-tails is dripping so much innocent blood that even I'm aware I've gone into a very dark phase. I retreat to the privacy of the Captain's Cabin rather than inflict any more mostly undeserved sharp-tongued lashes upon my Bridge personnel. My hands are shaking from so much internalized rage and shame that I can't handle a Padd.

I am a ghost and I am hollow inside, and I feel ashamed in the tears I try to keep inside me. I curl into my couch, face to the pillow, and my tears slacken until I fall to sleep.

Come more or less middle of shift, dinner time, B'Elanna rolls in a white-linened dinner table herself, and I can hear the hush on the bridge even in the quietude of my cabin.

B'Elanna pulls me off my couch, ignoring my tear trails, and sits me before what is obviously a gourmet interlude. She rolls my chair and me to the edge of the table, and unfolds a large cream napkin across my lap. She lights four large taper candles and calls the cabin light down to something quite unforgivably dim.

"This is to let you know your crew is in mutiny," B'Elanna observed.

"As you are in an almost unheard-of blue-funk of a piss-poor state of mind, and while in this aforesaid pissed-offed-ness you are presently enjoying, you are a cranky and worthless tyrant. We, your rebellious crew, have decided to feed your inner self, ignore your shit-assed outer self, and turn your Captain's cabin into a sick ward. You are hereby abandoned, and we sentence you to a few days and rest-of-the-shift holiday since you're not worth a holy damned fuck the way you are now. We now remind you that five hours you didn't request but are due, are reserved for you on Holodeck One starting an hour and a half from now," B'Elanna calmly noted.

"We expect to see you Friday," she said. "At which point you should have returned with a good tan and a tongue unable to even melt butter on."

"Until then I'm your Maitre d'de." She started lifting covers off food.

"A little Caesar's Salad for openers, with powdered Filipe Bleu Cheese. We also have lightly crisped Asparagus Furioso, and Aquilean crawdads in garlic-lemon-mushroom cream sauce as the main dish. We have DeMepoll dinner rolls with raspberries, Wok-fried spicy Tarq, truffles and chestnuts, clear Majesto vegetable soup, and Orange puffed citrus slices with Evassberry and Cherry Flaming Agony. Heavy sweet cream is here.

"And this is my own touch, just for you. Chantral Brut champagne from the Guilleume vineyards."

She popped the cork for me and gave it to me to approve. I sniffed it and nodded my head, marveling that anyone had created such a feast via replicator. I blew out the flames on the Citrus dessert, and watched mesmerized as B'Elanna pulled an envelope from an inside-jacket pocket. First she poured me a half-flute of the New Chilean Champagne.

She opened her envelope and one by one took out five white rose petals and floated them on the surface of my bubbly wine.

"B'Elanna..." I began.

She leaned into the kiss she gave me, and by responding I was unable to deny the wetness in my eyes.

I spent over an hour sampling every part of my dinner. Someone had included a Therm bag, and I left with my doggie bag and unfinished champagne. I wasn't being cheap .... hours later I wanted to experience that moment again. I had drank the rose petals, by the way. They tasted gorgeous.

I thanked my crew, knowing everyone on my ship .... MY ship .... must have contributed a ration point to that food orgy. I told them I going to spend some time on a Holodeck beach.

One resultant was expected.

- - - - - - - - - - -

When B'Elanna breezed through the Holodeck Bulkhead, I carefully kept my smile hidden.

She came through with a light dark-blue overslick draped over her arm. Something to wear to be colorful on a Risan vacation spa. Her swimsuit was a bright red thong, sufficient for a Risan tropical part-nudist joy-spot. It covered her nipples, her Mons Veneris and there were a few other strips of iridescent cloth on her body, but that was it.

She didn't believe in Bikini trimming, that much was obvious from the large amount of pubic hair billowing out from around and underneath her swimsuit bottom portion. From the rear it was hard to find any strips of cloth at all.

She stood there with two Carry's of luggage and a large sun umbrella. Looking out on a landscape of large gray stones and small gray stones and in-between gray stones. Somehow she managed not to yelp when the first gust of frozen slush hit her full front.

Maybe a whimper. I didn't hear it. They say Klingon's are tough.

She trudged over to stand alongside me, deck shoes turning icy on those cold pebbles. I had a Tundra jacket on, and my feet were protected in a pair of silvery-and-red Nordic boots.

"This isn't Risa, is it?" B'Elanna teeth-chattered.

"No, it isn't," I dryly replied. I was enjoying this, and I shouldn't.

"I thought the beach you were going to be on was on Risa," B'Elanna returned in deadpan fashion. "I'll guess that instead it's on Terra, your native Norway, isn't it? I suppose this is Winter, also, right?"

"Not yet," I said. "Winter doesn't start for another month."

B'Elanna turned around, dispassionately judging the landscape. Letting me get a good view of that magnificent back, ass, legs and all, covered in cold tiny copper-blue goosebumps.

I blushed at her cold skin, knowing she might have thought as she in fact did. Knowing it was cruel to anticipate her discomfort.

"B'Elanna," I said, "would you please return to your quarters for more appropriate clothing? Please come back, and I will show you my family home, here, near Stavenger.

"You agree? Fine. Now go, before you have to go back into SickBay for more repairs.

"Here, B'Elanna, let's use the transporter, site to site ....

"Transporter, two to beam direct to the cabin of B'Elanna Torres." Just before we were beamed over I held B'Elanna to me, carry-all's and umbrella and all.

The closer confines of her ship's cabin home appeared around us, the heat almost suffocating after Norwegian November. I quickly stepped out of my parka, letting it fall to the floor. I stepped into Torres' sleeping quarters, already feeling as if I was in an accustomed place after that frozen debacle in Engineering Bay.

B'Elanna was more than a little surprised to see me in her bedroom. I smiled my best A-1 Grade reassurance smile at her, trying my best to look as if I belonged here. She hesitated a moment, then began slipping out of her minimalist bathing suit in front of me.

Yes, certainly. Does it every day, strips for me, yes. Puts her butt naked body in the Captain's face. Magnificent body.

B'Elanna jerked upright in a nanosecond when I used one hand to caress her naked backside. She looked at me over her shoulder, being close to full shock as she watched me shift my caressing to her other soft perfect buttcheek.

"If there is anything imperfect about this little body of yours, B'Elanna, love, I don't know what it is." I slapped one cheek on it's sweet swell and B'Elanna must have jumped half a meter.

"You should take a shower or something to counter hypothermia," I said. "I'll wait out here."

I sat there, on her bed, rocking one leg over the other. Waiting there for a naked B'Elanna to return.

She came back dressed in a large orange towel. Finally, after a long pause, she abandoned the towel, and stood before me in all her hard-soft femininity. I reached out for her hand, and the slightest of tugs brought her to me. Her head bent and I accepted her kiss. She was a gentle kisser, waiting for me to initiate something before she replied to it. I touched her lower lip with my tongue, and it was not until then that her tongue tip met mine. She was patient, too.

She'd been courting me for what? Six years? Maybe not -- maybe it was something she'd only come to accept herself these past few years, after years of friendship.

How very Romantic! She'd waited years for me to come to her. One didn't think of Klingon's as Romantic.

When she came up for breath, one finger sufficed to check her diving in for a rerun of our first real kiss.

"B'Elanna Torres," I whispered into her tender ears. "You wish to become my lover, do you not?"

She nodded her head, searching for truths in my eyes. Or lies.

"Maybe that is something which shall be, B'Elanna Torres," I noted. "It is something which does not repel me. I think you would be an eminently suitable lover, B'Elanna dear. I think -- I know -- I could accept you as my lesbian love most dear to me. The thought of you in my bed in the morning, the thought of your making lesbian love to me, it is all much more than acceptable, I wish to know you as my lover...

"I think I am already in love with you, sweet friend of mine. I hope that even if we become lovers, I shall never lose your friendship, for that I think is what keeps me alive."

"But we have to talk first. You have to realize that you may yet be asking the impossible of me. We have the time tonight, and our concourse is most needful," I warned. "Now -- get dressed for Norway in Winter. I must show you many things." With that I commanded my site-to-site, and was transported back to the Holodeck. Back to my beach of heartless gray stones.

Torres was in silver and blue when she reappeared, and I beckoned her close. We rubbed faces through our face masks, and I held her hand. I called down background noises to 25% as we began our journey through my past. At that level we could converse.

B'Elanna hesitantly asked if that was my ancestral home, to which I said yes. It stood stark and alone in these headlands. In our journey we had come to a high headland of gray majesty. We looked out for many kilometers over the North Sea. After some minutes, B'Elanna asked why we lingered here.

"Everyone dies eventually, most people feel their dying place when they come to some locale. This is my death place. My body might perish in the Delta Quadrant, but this where I felt the largest part of me died."

B'Elanna withheld her questions, trusting I would eventually reveal to her the truths I felt she must eventually hold. In my own heart I could feel a gray stone of inevitability. A doctor had pointed out to me once I had a death wish, and he was right. Whether or not it would govern my life was still a question.

"Once I thought I held another destiny. Once I felt my future held a different career. Once I thought I would become a Premier Class Dancer."

We began the trek towards my family home, not holding hands. Just B'Elanna staying very close to me. It was easy enough going, barring the unevenness of the ground. It was pastoral land, the bigger rocks visible for hundreds of meters. Easy to walk around, rather than having to climb over.

Even in the gray of early winter, the grass was very green, and heavy. You expected to see sheep, but the only animals were dozens of horses, each with their control collars.

B'Elanna watched awe struck as one aging stud ran his dozen mare's across the sward in a perfect exposition of energy and strength. Approximately a meter from the two of us standing there. The horses were having a game with us. The noise of their hooves was tremendous. The crinkle of the ice on the grass being broken was loud, this close. Their breath was very white coming out of their nostrils, the cold seemed to falter as their body warmth blew across us.

The stud came back to investigate whether B'Elanna and I had any apples or carrots, or other goodies to give him. It was quite difficult to remember he was just another Hologram.

My house was finally seen to be a distinctive style of some sort. Very high peaked roofs, great inelegant curving boles lifted up the corners of the roof. Stark thick horns of wood curved off the keels of the roof. Underneath the brown spines of thick timber, the filigree's of haphazard blue-painted curls and carvings decorated the remainder of the house's edging. It was a house built by giant pixie's, obsessed with their whimsies and their visual jokes.

"Most of my life I had thought this dwelling place hideous, and a prison," I told B'Elanna. "My Father had always gone off so very much on his expeditions with my Mother, and I hated it. Aunts had raised me here, and my Grandmother had raised me in her home.

"Now I remembered the sense of family I had been blessed with.

"My Aunt's both preached the values of an old-fashioned religious nudist upbringing, and by example, Lutheran radicalism.

"My Aunt Morgan taught me to ride horses, and more importantly how to love them and train them without breaking them. It became second nature to strip them after a ride, curry and clean them, to keep them well. They were extensions of my own life, and I badly needed their love in times of stress.

"I could once ride them naked and bareback, as our distant ancestors did. Morgan also taught me what local berries and grubs could be eaten when necessary. Also how to catch the brown-head trout with my hands, and cook him in the wild.

"Her male lover, when he was back from the Asteroid mining boats, he taught me how to make functional edged tools out of chipped rock, and make clothes out of the squirrel and the otter.

"He was my third lover as well.

"Now, years after my Father's disappearance, I stand on the Bridge and know this ship is pointed at this home.

"It is also pointed at Indiana, and other places. Do you ever hope that someday Kathryn Janeway will understand that, B'Elanna? I want our Ice Princess to return home, too."

"Where does it now point for you, B'Elanna Torres?"

She looked up at me, then said, her voice hesitant; "Wherever lives my love."

B'Elanna nodded her head and I felt her clasp my hand. She turned to me, finally asking her question.

"Do you love the Borg, Kathryn Janeway?" she asked.

"I once thought I did. I think I did." Looking down into her rich coffee eyes. "But that was an illusion that I finally banished today.

"I've been obsessed with her, but she is years from humanity.

"You're here and you're here now. You're not an obsession. You're reality and you love me and I love you back.

"We still have to talk.

"In the meanwhile, here we are, at my ancestral home. Ugly, isn't it?

"It was built in the 19th Century, by, I think, my great- great-great-great-great grandfather, with the assistance of his bride, his family, her family, and his fellow fishermen. He was a fisherman, despite these extensive pasture lands. The pasturage was what the women of my family took care of. The men went off to sea to feed Europe's appetite for herring fish.

"The men went off to the sea to die, also.

"I am the last of my line and I, too, shall probably die in the wide, deep dark sea. This time a sea of starry space. But at least not while in the search for herring. VOYAGER is at a higher plane."

After a few seconds B'Elanna turned to me, and despite the winter gear, hugged me, her head nestled between my breasts.

"Come," I invited my caring Torres, "Welcome to my home."

The heat seemed stifling after the wind-driven chill of the outside. Little noise penetrated, even though you waited for it. The Hansen's of that legendary past had built solid and close. The thick beams of the walls and stairway proclaimed a haughty conquering of time and outside cold.

The rooms were heated by variations on the old Franklin stove. Fireplaces replaced by hot metal boxes, more able to warm a room than a fireplace was.

Our Parka's went on hooks by the door, as well as our outer pants. B'Elanna was awed by the sense of permanence the house proclaimed.

"Here," I pointed, "is where we would plant our Christmas Tree. We would drag it in on Christmas Eve, then at once set it up. The oldest child, me, would wear a crown of lit candles. All the children and women would sing Christmas Carol's, and we would drink hot currant wine, even I.

"Come Christmas Day we would decorate the tree, then go to Church. Then eat our breakfast, once we were back, which would always include giant maple sugar cookies. We would probably sing two or so old songs, again. Then we could go searching for our Christmas Presents."

B'Elanna was enchanted by my old home. In real life I knew it was beginning to collapse under the weight of neglect. But I would always have my illusions -- and memories -- to fall back on.

However, now, if I ever make it back to Norway, I shall endow it and let the State make it a historical monument. I would now want to do this. It'll take a bit of my credits to save it, but I now realized it meant more to me than I had realized. I was so very homesick, and I was glad B'Elanna was so impressed. She said nothing as I wiped tears from my cheeks.

An interesting thought.... I could live here with B'Elanna.

My further career is finished if I proclaim lesbianism, especially if I come back with a wife who is Maquis and also an Academy drop-out. They'd probably advance me a grade -- I'm not much worried about the outcome of a court-martial. They'd give me a soft desk job, but my career would be finished. I could have B'Elanna or a ship.

I'd probably be able to take an early retire after a cosmetic year or two of further service. It was an intriguing prospect. Growing old together, flaunting our aging carcasses at the Summer Nudist Fest's, living here, loving here, riding my horses together in the Winter's sun. Feeding them apples or carrots off my high porch, always waking up with my lover's warm closeness and her touch.

"Come," I invited, "let us go upstairs. I want to show you my bedroom, and I want to get into one of my old Dancing Costumes. Will you help me?"

We climbed the narrow stairs, the sound of heels on wood evoking solidity. Inside my high-beamed bedroom I had my own Franklin stove. In the Nordic colds we could retreat into padded cabinets built into the walls. But the long narrow bed was my jewel. Canopied, a box with high walls into which an old bed fit perfectly. I deliberately kicked one of the support boards underneath before I rolled into it. Old memories.

B'Elanna rolled into it beside me. Her brown eyes stared into my blue ones, and I caressed my friend's face, chin, brow crest, ran fingers through her brown hair with it's coppery overtones.

"Where did you get the menu for the feast you delivered to me today, sweet friend of mine?" I asked. "Was it a menu you hoped to give to me at some other appropriate time?

"Our commitment? The first night we lived together as a couple?

"Our wedding?" Her face said it all, and I smiled before I pulled her crest to me to be kissed and to be licked. To provoke me into humming an old Betan cradle melody. It told of the Bella Bird who stole your heart and then, contrite, gave it back. We folded into each other, and I felt very complete.

"I am glad you've given some thought to us as a couple," I said, "because that is what we have to talk of." B'Elanna looked up at me with a look of pure adoration. How could I have ever mistaken her blatant open love for me to be only friendship? B'Elanna Torres wore her heart on her sleeve. I prayed this was not going to be a night of disappointments.

How could she live so closely with me for six years and believe in me so absolutely?

I rolled out of Torres' arms to once more stand on the wooden floor. Two long-annoying creaks were still there by my wardrobe, I was pleased to find. Before I remembered it was MY hologram.

My "Salome" costume hung there, clean and ready. I'd hung it there only an hour ago, so it should be. I carefully undressed, fully aware of the spectacle B'Elanna drank in. Slowly and carefully I hung my dancing costume on my body, hiding much.

A silver shawl hung from my head to my wristlets, my halter was hung with a hundred silver bangles. Several transparent veils obscured my lower face and throat. As they were removed, they would at last be reduced to a single transparent Arabian veil.

I had a puffed gaudy belt of silver, and gray transparent pants. My feet were shod in gray silver cloth ballet shoes. My legs looked impossibly thick with my silver warming sweaters on them.

Finally turning to face her, I began again our necessary talking.

"I am the Captain of VOYAGER." I reminded her. "Do you think you can be my lover both in and out of our bed, and still be my Engineering First as well?

"Each day I might have to command you to do things you do not wish to do. Do you think you could do this, every day, day after day, and do it without publicly disagreeing with me?

You might be tempted to argue with me, but you must follow my orders better than anyone else on this ship. You might stand with my body still smelling on your fingers, but yet still able to say; "Yes Sir!" whenever I barked a quick, hard, BITTER command at you?"

B'Elanna said a meek "Yes," then rolled out of my bed. With a crooked finger I prompted her to follow me down the stairs. We went through the kitchen and down the basement stairs. Down here we commanded modern lights with voice commands. Down here was a mirrored dance and practice arena, complete with Barre on one side. Down here was what was once my world. Now it was also part of the HoloDeck Programs. Here I could work miracles.

I am Dance.

I did a few practice's on this Barre, then pirouetted to the center to begin a series of warming exercises. The thick sweaters on my legs felt warm and -- right. While doing that, I continued to probe B'Elanna.

I am a ghost, here I am hollow inside, I am nothing like the Captain they mindlessly trust their lives to. I am hollow inside.

"You have friends, B'Elanna, and, as Captain, I have none. Why is that?

"Granted I might be more stand-offish than you. Why is that? Do you know?

"It is because if I have near, close and loving friends, I might hesitate to thrust my friends into harm's way. Even unknowing, I might decline to put a friend to death. All in the line of duty, I might still hesitate the disastrous second before sighing and condemning a friend to death so that the ship might be saved.

"I step onto that bridge each morning and I look about me, and you are all now my friends, and I look at you and already review in my mine which ones I could afford to kill. I review in my mind which of my crew I can kill, send to be killed, and not lower the efficient functioning of my ship."

B'Elanna looks stricken, and I call out "Salome" to the house computer. I am Dance.

The low menacing waves of the Symphony's beginning began to thrum upon the basement air. I struck my Attitude, my upright pose. From straight, with my arms overhead, I segued into my turned out, breathing hard. A quarter turn, a falling out position, I am already lost into my dancing. Yet I speak.

I am hollow inside.

"When I was four, I saw my first HoloDrama of the Vulcan State performance of "Emperor Of Thorns." I fell to the ground during it, into a crying trance, it so mesmerized me. After that there was nothing I could be but a Dancer."

"Now, when I am Dance, I am hollow no more. I exist and I am strong, very strong."

Slowly Allong, stretched out as far as possible. Off my working foot, I begin my Temps, small jumps, to tip-toe movement, my hands far overhead, carefully forming my first barrel of air. They flutter as they come down, creating moving barrels, caressing air downwards to where I am Porte de Bras, embracing air.

The oboes and base swell, my dance room darkens and embraces me with light. I begin to make constant quarter turns, time after time, climbing into small jumps, Temps, until I am in an ecstatic staccato twirl. Always turning, always dipping my head and my arms, Fondu into Frappe and constantly Plier, until I resemble a flower in a hard breeze. Moving, bending, turning.

I am not hollow inside.

"For all of my youth, I knew I was to be an aspirant to the Saint Petersburg or the Chin or the New Melbourne. I was to be one of the very best, I was going to be a star," I explained as I circled my dancing room.

I am Dance.

The room is dark and it's center is a light blue stretching far overhead. The violins build into a nagging firedance, and I go into a slow turn, on toes, rocking almost fearfully. A stream of silver motes begin to fall from a single source overhead. I Chasse it, turning into the space where they fell. I Arabesque while the motes fell onto me, curling into A La Seconde, then rising up with hands cupped to hold the silver.

I continue to rise until I am ramrod straight, hands embracing the flow of silver lights overhead. It was just a hologram special effect, perfected over many sessions on this Holodeck. But the effect of the silver motes flooding down into my hands was quite an effective bit of stage drama.

I twirled, I bent, I am Dance. I am not hollow.

"For years my parents, all my family, they felt I was truly gifted in the dance, and I was. To them, to the professionals in Kobnhaben and Oslo, I was already a Premier. I would dance in one of the Galaxy-class companies, we all felt it. I hoped, myself, to be in the Saint Petersburg Company."

I am Dance. I am not hollow inside.

The motes were flowing down onto me as I tightened to rigidity and collapsed into air. By now I was Ecarte, focusing my attention to a point which I now made my front.

As the .... fog fled, the motes disappeared, it was shown that I was dancing on the surface of a calm lake. B'Elanna gasped when it was shown she sat on a narrow log and her feet dangled to the calm surface of the water. She could stir ripples in the water which her feet did not fall into.

"Then came puberty and I grew and I grew and I grew until I was far too tall for the Premier Cru companies, and far, far too busty, though surgery would have given me the lean svelte flat-chested appearance so necessary for the Galaxy-class companies.

"Even the height could have been remedied, but that was the most cosmic jest on me. If I were shortened, I would no longer be Premier Cru myself. The balance, the TRAINED skills I had, I would no longer be able to dance as I had. It would all be lost in the action of being reduced to a size more acceptable."

I am Dance. I am not hollow.

The falling motes had begun again. Out of the mist was revealed a Herod Antipas, King of Galilee, father to Salome. But it was a fearful Herod, far from beyond Terra. His body was all mobile black volcanic stone, his eyes were glaring red lights, his mouth a blazing red smear, his nostrils bright crimson light. He was a demonic Herod -- but then, what of his daughter? I danced to this giant blackness on a three-meter throne.

"For years, months, I feared my body had betrayed me into a nothing, an incomplete, a hollow thing. Finally the zip from Saint Petersburg came and in kind terms they advised me to give up Dance, at least so far as the Premier Companies were concerned.

"They were encouraging, you know, they must have much practice in turning away the hopeful petitioners. Me, they advised, to seek a position in one of the lesser Companies. Denmark, or Brasil.

I am Dance. I am not hollow.

I danced no longer abstract. Now I danced a curving song to lust, to the heat of the flesh. I danced to seduce my father of heated black stone. I danced to provoke a sensual reaction from lava still fatal to touch.

I danced closer, ignoring the little splashes from the constant movement of my feet flying on top of the water. A small fish was fooled into splashing as well. I did not sink into the water, I was not distracted by the continuing showers of light motes. Ripples from my movements spread across this small pond, I noted the use of Bassoon in the strengthening flourishes of the music.

"That day I finally accepted the finality of my quest for dancing success. That day I walked out to that section of beach you found me on, and I died inside. It was my place of death. I walked back to my home and lay me down in my bed. My Grandmother flew her flitter from Samarkand, to lie down my bed with me, and to comfort me, and to drive me to find footing in life again."

I whirled, dancing, bowing, Temps, Temps, flowing A La Seconde, always creating a side into which I flowed. My Veils fell to the side, one by one, and disappeared into the water on which I Danced.

Pause, while the music grew and boomed and broke into units, always underscored by the plaintive violins. Poisson, knees bent, a quick Arabesque, and then it is briefly Tour En L'Air, then suddenly Battement Tendu to Enchainment. I am very near the moving black stone creature that is my Herod, my father, the one I seek to conquer through his lust for his daughter.

I am Dance.

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One arm beckoning to him, my breasts are bared now, luring his emotions to me. I am asking for the head of John the Baptist now. Herod shakes his head, I caress my breasts, he crumples on his immense throne, I turn in triumph. I close my halter, I pause, the music quiets. I turn to look at B'Elanna.

Please, let me be not hollow tonight.

"So I took another goal. I became an officer in StarFleet," I explained to her. "It provided an escape, I thought," I laughed dryly. "Instead here I am the Captain, 60,000 light years from Earth. There is no one to refer to, to ask questions of, to be my savior and my guide.

"There is only me, and each day I stand before my mirror and realize how little there is of me to save everyone on this ship.

"Do you understand, B'Elanna? I am hollow inside and each day I am afraid the rest of the ship will realize that. I am not fit to command this ship, I am all pretense, I am a lie. I am a ghost, but they need me to be alive in order to save them."

I am Dance. I am now into my firestorm finale. I am speed, I am quickness, I am passion, I am a blur of twirling motion. I am triumphant, I have won, I have seduced my father, King Herod, and my reward will be the head of John the Baptist.

Two lines of solidifying mist come from the sides, to the oboe and rising brass, the screaming strings, discordant and evil. As the lines drift closer to me they become hands carrying a silver salver, with a wooden and painted head perched upon it.

I take my prize and go insane with emotion, throwing my hair about my own wagging head. Sanity is not in me, but I keep the salver and it's faux head erect and carefully centered in my dance frenzy.

The music works to a crescendo and I dance until suddenly both the music and the dance ends. Somehow my peaceful pond's surface is gone, and I am standing on air.

It is a great scarpe I stand above, a God's slash in the earth. There is a beach far below, maybe kilometers far underneath me, it seems so distant. My hands hold the head on the salver above me, my body is poised, precise, musculated, perfect.

The sun lies indistinct behind a grayish mist. The music is gone. Both B'Elanna and I can easily hear the winds, our clothing is moved by it's strong breath. My body faintly quivers, it lightly smokes in the chill mist. The climax has now passed. "Salome" is now over, and I feel solidness under my feet, I see air below me, nothing else.

I turn to observe B'Elanna, petrified at her feet being now flush with the cliff's edge. She raises her head at my voice.

"I would always need obedience from you, dear B'Elanna Torres, far more instant, far more subservient than from any other crewperson on VOYAGER. Do you know why?"

B'Elanna looked confused, so I enlightened her.

"You must be perfectly obedient and perfectly ready to obey, each and every day on this ship. Because each and every person on this ship will be aware of the relationship between us. They will be holding you up against their perception of what is necessary for them to do, themselves.

"It will be necessary for you, EVERY DAY, to be more exact, more dutiful and obedient, more correct and more patient, and yes, more cheerful than other member of this crew. Because you will be MY loving lady, and everyone will assume I'm cutting you more slack than I am anyone else in the crew."

My arms ache as I slowly bring the salver and it's gaudily painted wooden St. John the Baptist to a place where I can support it on my hip.

"Do you understand, B'Elanna? I shall have to consciously cut you LESS slack than the others BECAUSE you are my lady. I shall have to be harder with you, and I shall expect more.

"Isn't that ironic? I know you deliver far more to this ship than any other soul on it, you and our in-house EMH. Did I never tell you that? One of my secret sins is that I constantly rate level of service while at the same time I pretend to cheerful and non-subjective? I do, and it's a secret I now assume will never be confessed away from right here and right now. You must swear it, B'Elanna. In the future you will probably come to learn more secrets, through me.

"Starting now, you must learn to keep them secret between you and me."

I opened my arms, and both the salver and it's head pitched downward past my feet. Both Lt. Torres and I watched it fall for minutes. Neither one of us could tell when it finally struck the sandy beach far below.

Both of my arms stretched out to my half-Klingon.

"There is also the matter of trust between us. The trust is not necessary for any abstract reason. This is personal. I need to be able to trust in you because I cannot trust in myself.

"I came to command here through sheer chance, and you must remember this, thoroughly and completely. I am a Lieutenant Commander, and only misfortune has brought us here, the Caretaker dead, and no easy way back home.

"I am afraid each day, I ache each day, I am hollow each day I step outside my cabin. There is not enough IN ME! I am hollow and each day I am afraid the crew will see that! I am pretending to be a StarFleet Captain. I know inside myself that I am not competent, I do not DESERVE to be a StarShip Captain.

"Do you understand? I need you to TRUST in me, and I need you every day to give me something of your own surety and daring and luck....

"I will need your CONSTANT support, each day, every day, or we shall all be in mortal danger. Whatever arguments we might have in our bed together, whatever complaints we might have in our cabin together, we cannot bring it out onto the ship.

"Can you understand that, my wild-eyed half-Klingon? I will have to TRUST you!"

More quietly; "Can I trust you? Can you trust me?"

I then beckoned to her; "Do you trust enough so that you can walk on air? For me? Then come to me....please."

I bent down to remove my leg stockings, each in turn tumbling down through the air to the beach far below. Then my ballet shoes, the long tie cords whipping bravely in the heavy breeze created by their long fall. My belt went next, and my scarf whipped off to my left somewhere.

In front of me, only a few meters away, B'Elanna stood and shook. Great heights were not one of her favorite things. Yet finally, with eyes deliberately wide open, she took a half-step into space. Her eyes went wide when she found she could walk on air, as did I. She took another step, a third, a fourth, and her attention was totally on me. A fifth, a sixth, a seventh, and the air held. Or maybe she considered her trust in me held.

In a few moments she was before me, close enough for me to fold her to me. My arms went around her, her hands bit into my flesh with their intensity. Now, now, now her eyes closed and she reached upwards on her tiptoes as I reached downwards with my lips and my kiss. She did not give pain with the force of her tight lips. She stood there, her entire body proclaiming her need, and her lips were soft shadows seeking entry into me by petition, proclaiming it, but not by assault.

Oh, my gentle, gentle, patient woman! How can there be a Klingon with so much giving, so much time in her universe, that she can wait for me to open myself in my own good time!

Our lips circled the others mouth, our teeth were felt as we opened to our same petitioner. We searched, slowly and slowly, we touched our tongues, our kisses became more passionate.

I broke and let B'Elanna strip me of my halter. My harem pants. Each in turn dropping far below us to that distant beach.

More kissing, no tentative brushings this time. We were kissing as lovers.

"B'Elanna," I began, "I want you to know that I've slept with three women in my life, but they were shadowy lifeless couplings. They left me disappointed, and I guess, cool to a repeat." I took a deep breath.

"This, however...

"Oh, B'Elanna, your touching's leave me on fire throughout my body. From my head to my toes.... Please, please, please, touch me some more, make me come, touch me and never stop loving me and touching me...."

We lay together in the air, lying next to the other, myself naked and needing. B'Elanna began touching me in my crotch, and each finger, each caress, each masturbation of my clit by her fingers brought lines of tingling and firecracker trails across my belly. It was truly exciting. I was being masturbated by my most patient of lovers, and I was already seconds from my first come with her.

Then .... I had to draw in my air hard, so very hard, gasping, I still could not get enough air. I thrashed, wheezing, being violent, I did not know what to do, I was totally confused, I thrashed until I rolled away from B'Elanna, there, high in the air, trying to breathe, having to get away from her tender invading fingers as I came, and she was fucking me so insistently with her fingers

and oh it was

so good so good and it split me in two for a few seconds

until I could breathe again.

The first thing I thought was that I really needed that. It had been -- what? Six years? Yes, I needed that. I needed loving, meaningful loving, patient loving .... especially with someone else.

I was lying on my side and B'Elanna was behind me. With her lovely practiced hand, her fingers, still inside me. She twitched her fingers, prompting a grin, a smile, and a giggle from me. She made a motion to withdraw, and I clamped my thighs on her hand. I closed my legs, and asked her to do me again that way. From behind me, this time. Obviously this was something I enjoyed with her, this touching, this kind of penetration, this way.

I hummed and chuckled as she fed her delicious fingers into me. It felt so comfortable to be penetrated that way, slowly, without pressure, just letting things happen, letting the pressures of my next come humm slowly into me and in waves out of my pussy. No demands or commands or superiority or mind games. Just me lying back, enjoying, accepting, allowing low-key sex, friendly masturbation, friends getting off. I carefully masturbated myself from the front, matching the slow careful fucking I was getting from B'Elanna's fingers inside me. A slow steady beat, wet sounds with a barely glowing heat of fornication together. In time, with my friend, my lover, my caresser, my source of the Nile.

In time I had to go faster, and faster, and faster again. My movements picked up as B'Elanna's speeded up. Faster .... Faster .... It was....

All I could hear was the juicy-wet squishy noises as her fingers beat into my wet opening, impaling me faster and faster with those glorious curving digits. Faster ....

I came. Again. It rose up slowly, and it slowly got hotter and hotter where her fingers intruded and my entire crotch became hot-cold and hard and wet and my steel-hard clit twisted between my thumb and forefinger into .... a slow, tiny, tidal wave. Oh God, I could not remember being so wet as

I came. Again.

It felt so good, there, in the soft hot after-burn, just letting my entire body tingle with running trails of rocket burn trails.

My body straightened itself as I/We brought B'Elanna back to where she was partially, sloppily, tumbled over my body. It felt good to touch her, it felt better to find her face close enough to kiss. I licked her chin, and after dipping my fingers into myself, had something on my fingers for my lover to suck on. After that we traded soft kisses. B'Elanna licked her way down my neck to my chest, then my breasts.

I partially curved into her, cradling B'Elanna, letting her nurse, a glow of deep satisfaction bathing me. Her hand kept searching down through the thatch of the most essential me. My lesbian lover kept twining her hands through my pubic hair until she again found my groin, my clit, my slushy wet vagina.

And all the time her mouth and teeth nibbled me, sucked me, milked me, loved me, kept my nipples and the inner hard ball behind each soft-hard. Chewable and responsive until I finally had to

come again.

Oh, it was such a hard build over so long a length of time and such an easy come. It lasted so long ....

And it was such a gentle, soft come.

I rested and B'Elanna nuzzled my neck. Caressing her, I realized she was still partially clothed. She'd lost her uniform jacket, but still wore her pants and one half-boot. I looked about and we were over a farm, somewhere, still high in the air. Curious gulls inspected us periodically, but we warned them off.

I rose to my knees, coaxing my lover to stand and lose the rest of her clothes. It was amusing to watch her clothes plummet down to the earth far below.

Our naked bodies could twin together, and I relished the taut femininity that Torres held to her so well. Her back accepted caresses and kisses, her buttocks were so soft and happy to be fondled and nipped with my teeth. Her legs were so smooth to my touch, so perfect, muscular, it felt so lovely to roll her over and touch all of those legs.

Mentally reminding myself to trim some of that bush of dark pubic hair sometime, my head hurried to the seat of her sex. No breast fondling, no leisurely kisses, I was in a hurry to enjoy myself in her garden of sex.

"B'Elanna," I said, "I am going to eat you. Maybe my technique could be improved, but I am going to enjoy myself, and eat you. You are going to come from my eating you, and I am going to enjoy myself tasting your come."

With that I began to nuzzle her female funky smelling and tasty groin, starting with the warm hairy growth of her pubes. After kissing the sides of her thighs, I found her clit, her puffy lips, the moist channel of her pink sex, and the flowing treasure of her vaginal opening. I could not lick her fast enough to cope with her wetness, but I was too entranced by her liquid flow to worry about licking her dry.

The taste of B'Elanna Torres in her wetness was too heady and too tasty for me to stop. I dived headlong into the glory of her moist cunt. There was so much to taste....

When I came back it was to nibble on her cuntlips, to suck and bite on her steely clit, to pull her clit forth from it's nestling flesh, B'Elanna came for me.

It was impossible to chew on her hard flexing clit and also attempt to lap up all the smooth cream coming from her pulsing vagina. But I tried, and let loose salty tears at being unable to lick and love everywhere at once.

B'Elanna squirmed as she after-glowed and sought relief from my mouth and teeth. It felt so wonderful, so RIGHT, to be there between her perfect little legs. This was what I was meant to do. To nuzzle between my Klingon's legs, to kiss her body, to enjoy the smooth breasts and hips and neck, to enjoy her love and her body.

How could I have wondered? I was a lesbian and B'Elanna Torres was my natural woman. We were meant to be together, and our both being women was just a technicality which other people will notice more than we will.

Except when we reveled in what seemed was our naturally delightful lesbian sexuality. I had a feeling being a lesbian in B'Elanna Torres' bed was going to be a lot more sexually satisfying, more fun, than anything I'd ever before experienced as a straight woman.

B'Elanna rolled me over again, making me notice where we were. We were lying in a large meadow, and light green grass was our bed and floor. We had drifted through the air until we had come to safe harbor. It felt cool, but not cold.

We just didn't seem to be able to get enough kissing, or fondling, or caressing, or licking, or anything. But this was, of course, our first date. Licking our wetness off on the fingers we thrust in our lover's mouth seemed a fun thing as well. Now I was a full blown addict of the taste and scent of female come, and it didn't much matter if it was mine, or B'Elanna Torres'.

It did not much matter if our allotted time on the HoloDeck was over. Forcefully fondling B'Elanna Torres' exquisite breasts, I put her hard swollen nipple into my mouth. Her aureole were both swollen into distinct large swellings on her breasts, now. I took each into my mouth in turn, breathless over the distinct chewiness, the great feeling as her nipples hardened. B'Elanna moaned loudly, then chittered in shock as I bit down on her dark nipples. My hand snaked down to her groin, her hand instantly forced my fingers into the sloppy heat of her sex.

It took only a minute of masturbating her steely and easily found clit back into her pubes for B'Elanna to come again. It felt so good and so right and so proper for me to be making love to my best woman. My universe was now complete. I had my woman in my arms and we were making lesbian love together. Yet there was still more to discover this night.

"Computer," I carefully said; "Site to site transport. Bring two and all their possessions to the cabin of B'Elanna Torres."

We were suddenly splayed together, on the main cabin deck of Torres' quarters. No meadow, just two very nude females on the cabin rug. We hummed and cooed together for a few minutes, ignoring our new location. Still inspecting each others new treasure. Our lover's warm soft-textured body. Piles of boots, clothes, parka's, winter pants, a hangar, everything we had taken to the HoloDeck now was strewn all about us.

"You might be surprised," I noted, "but I've never really inspected another woman's body before this." Rolling hands over her chest and shoulders and belly. Again I searched B'Elanna's groin, and she easily opened herself to my inspection.

It was all so DIFFERENT from a man. B'Elanna felt better. I rolled her over, and carefully fondled and inspected every part of her ass. I so loved running my hands over her and exploring her backside with my finger tips. This was fun! I ignored B'Elanna's squeals whenever a finger explored an orifice. I could do this for hours.

A woman was meant to be fondled. Everywhere. I am a lesbian, there is no doubt of it. I am enjoying fondling and fucking my woman too much to counter my understanding of this universal revelation.

I rose to my feet, pulling my diminutive lover to her feet as well. There's a lot to be said for being larger than your girlfriend. She looks better being upright and naked than she does being prone. I'll figure out later why. For now I'll enjoy her this way.

Not ceasing to feel and enjoy wide stretches of half-Klingon skin, I hauled B'Elanna towards her bedroom and her bed.

"C'mon, B'Elanna, I want, want, want, want for you to fuck me in a way I've never been fucked before. This is a night for new things, and if I don't experience everything right now, I know one new way I'm dying to try out.

"I want you to wear one of those thingamajiggy's and lay me down and fuck me, fuck me, fuck me to within a millimeter of my life."

B'Elanna was a little confused until I explained.

"Remember when I stayed with you that night, when you were injured so badly by the cold in the malfunctioning Engineer Deck? I helped you draw a nice bath in that great bath-tub of yours? Looking for your pajama's -- everyone's heard you wear bright red pajama's -- I ran across this incredibly organized drawer of love toy's you have in your night-stand." I couldn't keep my hands off my woman. It felt so GOOD to fondle her. Her breasts especially.

"I think, from that quick glance, that you have more than a few of those self-seating dildo's in your collection. The kind a girl wears so that she might fuck her gal like a male does.

"I'd love to see you wearing one of those sprouting all so hard and long and thick out of your crotch, B'Elanna.

"I want you to wear one of those. Then I want you to lay me back in your bed, and tell me to spread my legs, and crawl on top of me with that male thing ready to fill me. Then I want you to ease that male thing in me, slowly fill me with it, carefully feel the fit as you bottom out and I groan for my new male.

"Then I want you to fuck the shit out of me. As you fuck me and make me cry, I want to give you the best ride any male's ever gotten from his bitch.

"Please?" I asked.

We sat on the edge of her bed, with me endeavoring to ignore the gorgeous blush B'Elanna got as she opened her drawer of sex toys to me. It was absolutely fascinating.

It was also a slow process, because I kept stopping B'Elanna, making her explain what these mostly-Risan sex aides did. Many of them looked a bit intimidating, a few made me laugh, and they all spoke to me in a convincing voice that one of us, some day, was going to sink each and every one of these precious toy's into my very wet and very open pussy. I was soaking already.

Eventually my tentative lust agreed to B'Elanna wearing a long green thing for me. I stared at it. In one way my virginity was going to end on that marvel. It's base was easily twice as big in diameter as the head, and the base was equipped with dozens of little pliable knobs. And this was one of the simple ones.

When queued, a thousand and more little compoloidal threads would fly out of the base, seating itself in B'Elanna's groin. Neither one of us vocally noted that B'Elanna had fucked other women, dozens of other women, with this array. That was the past and it didn't really much matter.

B'Elanna looked like such an arrogant little male with her dildo mounted on her pubic hairs. A natural little fucker.

We rolled back on the bed, B'Elanna trailing her dick across my quivering belly. This dildo also had a twirling and bending function, but I had decided this would be an unneeded adjunct to our next sex act. This thing was scary enough looking already.

The dildo left a slick trail across my quivering belly. It was lubricated, just in case. B'Elanna was insistent about lubricant. She said there was no such thing as TOOOO much.

I had to gasp when B'Elanna took it in hand to carefully stir my patch of blond hair down there. She adjusted herself and it landed directly on my already excited clit. I must have jumped half a meter. And I realized afterward I had loudly groaned. And my legs were suddenly open, quivering, in mid-air, with my knees jerked back and up in the air.

Holding it's wet head, B'Elanna grinned close to me and stirred my groin with the head of her dildo. Then it partially entered me.

B'Elanna showed control no man could as she fed me millimeter after millimeter of green dick. I was tight. My lips came out to greet it's invader, then slid back inside me despite the tightness of my pussy.

She was in. I could feel ALL of it, it filled me tight, it fed me deeper inside than ever I had been. I could feel the taper of this dick, I could the feel the outsize circumcised head, the knobs and bumps, the hundreds of little knobs at the swelling base. We adjusted and my head snapped back. My eyes snapped back and I gasped in surprise at the world-blackness. B'Elanna jerked her dick in me, tighter, closer, and the sparkles nearly made me come. All those plastic holding threads rubbing on my steely hard and projective clit!

Then B'Elanna began to draw her long thick dick out of my tight pussy until it seemed everything was going to come out. And I almost came. Then B'Elanna slid forward, bottoming out her green knobby dick inside me, filling and my wet and tight vagina.

The fourth time she bottomed out I whipped my head from side to side and came, came, came, came.....

I forced B'Elanna out of me, rolled on my side to the wall, gasped a scream out, and shook as I continued for a few moments to the aftershock of that perfect male-female come. It had been such a GREAT fuck!

After I recovered and lay back on my back, B'Elanna crawled up me, trailing her stiff male dick. We kissed, then I told her she had to fuck me again. In seconds I was carefully aiming her hard prick into the right hole in my wet crotch. My lips felt SSOOOO puffy and sensitive as the first few millimeters were pushed inside me.

After another come, not so violent this time, we both panted together. I could feel her lovely dick at the entrance to my tight wetness. Me being tight just seemed to make it better.

"Darlin'," I began to wheeze into her ear, "Do you think you could try turning on the other possible options available on this gorgeous stiff dick?"

It was possible. My ass lifted a quarter meter off the bed when she turned the other functions on.

I had one orgasm soon after he ... she began to twirl around and around in me. Buzzing and altering its diameter up and down inside me and still B'Elanna fucked me with it's whole male length. I bent far down to kiss my lover on the lips and face, and came. My legs circled behind her perfect ass, forcing her to remain embedded as my climax built and dropped, rose and collapsed at last into a burned out state. When my long Dancer's legs fell back to the side we paused, though the Risan penis continued to flail and push and work inside me. I remained in a high state, and finally pulled my hips forward for a better fuck .

"Please, B'Elanna," I moaned at her open eyes. "Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me good with that thing. Fuck me again, fuck me until I beg for mercy, but please fuck me again with that marvelous green thing."

She began to do that, growing well-adjusted to the placements of our bodies. Smiling into my face as she fed me the long green length of the writhing dildo.

As I came again, a few minutes later, B'Elanna sighed in her own come. That happens fairly often, she admitted later. All that tugging and pulling and pushing with something only millimeters away from her own clit often made the wearer of a self-seating dildo come, just like the girl she's fucking.

She turned off the functions, leaving us both quiet together, both satisfied. The dildo lay up my belly, and it gave me a warm glow to feel it instantly ready to fuck me again.

No more head games, no more submission to the male just because he was the male. No more glowing compliments for a half-assed and frustrating performance. No more fake orgasms. No more searching for the perfect orgasm. I'd just discovered it. And, Damn!, it felt so nice to fondle this other female's body. Sucking other nipples, touching B'Elanna's coppery hair, inhaling that strange caramel undertone on her smooth skin and wet groin.

Have to get that overgrowth in her groin taken care of, though. Then maybe not, if most of our future time on HoloDeck Risa's is taken in the nude. That's exciting. Both of us naked on a perfect Risan beach. I can fondle any time I wish. Spread oils on her back, massage vigorously her plump buttcheeks, manipulate her precious billows of passionate breast. Fuck her in the open air.

I hug B'Elanna closer, realizing the best was yet to come. Pun.

- - - - - - - - -

The Bridge greeted me cheerfully when I stepped onto it. Chakotay gave me a few Padd's to read. I gave Tuvok an non-customary touch on his hand, which Paris noted. I was standing by Tuvok when Lt. Torres entered, going to Engineering.

I walked to her, placing one rubbing hand on her opposite shoulder. I had debated doing this and I decided now was as good a time as the other.

"Hello, Lt. Torres. My darling," I said. I bent to give her a warm kiss and she twisted her head to give herself the best enjoyment of it.

"Hello, Captain, sweetheart," she replied.

I turned to address my stunned fellow shipmates. Damn the Torpedo's! Full steam ahead!

"Lt. Torres is now my fiancee, and I hers. I thought it would be proper that you few here should be the first to know.

"We still aren't sure when, if ever, we shall finalize our new relationship. Or even where. But when that tine comes, she's agreed to an old fashioned Norwegian Nudist Lutheran Church wedding just as I've agreed to take the painful vows of a Klingon Commitment Blood Ceremony. With a HoloProgram Reverend and a Guide of Kahless.

"Should be interesting. By the way, attending the church wedding while naked will be optional.

"The reception afterwards will be on a HoloProgramRisa, Neelix will assist in providing the food and favors. Nudity will be necessary for attendance. If you want to attend, a good appetites will be required. ONLY a good appetite."

We both hugged, kissing, chuckling inside. "I wonder how many would sign up for the reception?", B'Elanna wondered.

"If they ever want to see either of us butt naked unclothed, it may be their only chance. Three to one says Harry agrees?" I wagered.

"No sucker bets," B'Elanna mumbles into my chest. "How about you invite me inside your Captain's Cabin? We can have coffee and raktajino and nuzzle while screwing off our jobs for a few more minutes. When's the last time I walked up and down on your spine?"

We both laugh our way inside the sanctuary of the Captain's Command Cabin.

- - - - - - - - - -

The Borg, Seven of Nine, lately again Kathryn Janeway, has been standing by Harry Kim. She raises one palm towards the two who have gone into the Captain's Cabin.

"Please," she says. Softly, very softly, no one else hears.

"Don't leave me, Annika," she pleads to the closed doors.

"I love you.

"Please, I need you. Don't go away, I need you."

A few salty human tears course down her cheek from her human eye.

END

AUTHOR INDEX