Interlude, Season 3
by  ragpants © October 2004
 

Chakotay types furiously, strong fingers pounding the keys like they are fists and he's pummeling a Trask. He stops, reads what he's written, then shoves himself out of the desk chair. He stalks five paces to the end of his couch, turns and stares out at the unfamiliar and unfriendly stars. The transparent aluminum window holds the cold hostility of space at bay, though just barely it seems to him. He can feel the animus of it pressing down on him. There is evil here. Immense evil.

He drops back into his chair, takes up a lightpen and begins slashing at his text.

"Burning the midnight oil?"

Startled, Chakotay jerks his head up, nearly colliding with Kathryn's chin. Damn that woman! She has a remarkable ability to sneak up on a person. He hadn't heard his door open. He can set this occasion down to his concentration on the task at hand, but that doesn't explain all those other times she has managed to enter his rooms, seemingly at will. He wonders if there is some security flaw revealed in her  unwonted appearances. He makes a mental note to himself to find out and fix it.

"Contingency plans," he explains not bothering to hide the weariness or the bitterness in his voice. "If you're going to go through with this plan of yours to confront the Borg,...Well, someone has to do it."

He angles his torso back to let her read over his shoulder. She rests her hand on his shoulder as she leans past him and it is all he can manage not to shake it off.

"Electro-magnetic scramming of the computer core? Infecting the bio-neural gel packs with slow acting retroviruses? Dead man switches on all vital stations? Implantable neural toxin suicide capsules for all crew? Chakotay, this all sounds so....."

He slides out from under her hand and moves away from her. "So desperate? And taking on the Borg isn't?"

 He can't look at her. He turns to stare out the window again, his arms folded across his chest. A muscle jumps in his jaw.

Long moments pass.

"You weren't there," he says softly.

"There?" Kathryn takes a conciliatory step toward him. "Where? I don't know what you're talking about."

"Wolf 359. You weren't there." He tries to make the words sound like a statement and not an accusation.

Kathryn steps back and goes very still. " No, I wasn't. And I wasn't aware that you were either."

" The John Henry arrived too late to take part in the actual battle. We warped in from Klomere just in time to see a Borg cube, a *single* Borg cube..." He repeats himself for emphasis in case Kathryn has forgotten her recent history. "...destroy Starfleet's Home Defense Armada.

One shot from the departing cube crippled the John Henry, took out our engine room and destroyed the armory. We took heavy casualties. I lost crewmates, friends."

"We all did," Kathryn reminds him. 

And it's true. There's not a member of Starfleet, active or retired, who didn't lose  someone--a classmate,  an acquaintance, a former crewmate to the Borg at Wolf 359. But some losses have a different quality than others.

 His temper flares at her platitude "Yes, but there's a difference between reading a name on a memorial plaque and wading through their blood to get to the reactor core before it blows or triaging on their partially assimilated bodies to see who can be salvaged and who will die."

His experience has made him bitter, angry. He has seen death before, but not on such a scale or inflicted with such callousness.

Kathryn's cheeks pink with anger at his suggestion that she is ignorant of facts of battle but his words don't shake her resolve. "I'm sorry for your losses, Chakotay. I understand why facing the Borg again may frighten you, but that doesn't mean it's not the right decision."

Her platitudes infuriates him. "Frighten me? This plan of yours to beard the Borg fucking terrifies me. And if you had any common sense at all, it would terrify you too."

Kathryn flings her arms up in exasperation and begins pacing around the room. "And you want me to do what? Turn around? Run away? Find some pretty green planet and settle down to play house?" Kathryn skewers him with a look. " Or maybe you'd prefer to join Dr. Frazier's nasty little experiment in mind control?

"Can you really tell me that's what you'd do? Give up all hope of getting home? Never see your sister again? Your mother?  Never walk the ...what do you call it... the Dinétah?"

"Yes," he shoots back, though a welt of pain rises in his chest at the thought. "Could you?"

When she doesn't answer, he soften his tone, tries to be agreeable, persuasive. "There is no shame in caution, Kathryn."

"There's no glory either."

He thinks this is the crux of it. Since the Kazon's seizure of the ship and the loss of the wormhole, she has been more driven to prove herself, more prone to gamble on high stakes whether it's been in the Nakami's Sacred Caves, single-handedly phasering down a shipful of macrophages, or facing down the Q. So far she's been lucky, but eventually everyone's luck runs out. He knows. He's held as she died.

 He makes last attempt to sway her. "There's no glory in being a name on plaque, Kathryn. For anyone."

He's failed. He can see it in her face. But he had to try. He swore after the planetoid that he would do everything he could to protect her--even  from herself.

He straightens himself. The time for the personal is over. He has a duty to do. He swore fealty to the ship and its crew. It's his job to safeguard their lives so they won't be spent lightly or carelessly. His voice becomes formal, polite. "If you'll excuse me, Captain, I have work to do."

She stops him as moves past her. "Wait, Chakotay. You're right.  Maybe I have been a bit...hasty...in dismissing the crew's anxieties about facing the Borg. I'll call a meeting of the command staff tomorrow at 1400 to discuss concerns and contingency plans. I know Tuvok has also been working on some ideas."

He's relieved. It's not an apology. It's not even an admission that she may be wrong, but it as close to it as he's going to get. "I'll be there, Kathryn," he promises.

She smiles, also relieved. "Good. But for tonight, promise me you'll give that a rest." She flicks her fingers in the direction of the open textfile on his workstation.  "I want everyone alert and at their best tomorrow."

It's a pretext and they both know it. She cannot stand he idea of him drudging through the night designing one grisly countermeasure after another.

She hesitates a moment. "Would you like me to stay a while? We could talk, maybe have a drink and remember old friends?"

 He knows what she is offering. More than drinks. She's willing to stay and help him exorcise his ghosts.

He thinks about it, but his eyes are drawn to the unkind stars outside and the sense of nearby evil that slithers uncomfortably over his skin, like nanites assimilating his flesh. "No. I'll be fine."

He hears the soft pop of the door as he sits down at his console and begins to type again.