One of many pieces of fluffy fanfic inspired by "Worst Case Scenario" and its
apparent sense of humor about fanfic. Paramount owns these characters but if
they can play with each other, can we play too?

NEXT TO WORST CASE SCENARIO
by YCD

Chakotay raised his phaser.

Dressed in Maquis garb, he cut a striking figure against the bright blue of the
warp core. "It's over, Kathryn," he said quietly. "Don't make this any more
difficult than it already is. I just want to do what's best for the entire
crew..."

Kathryn Janeway never wavered the nose of the phaser rifle she aimed at her first
officer's chest. "You're right. This has gone far enough." For several seconds
they stood in stalemate, weapons aimed at one another's chests. Then Janeway
smiled slyly. "Well, we could stand here all day while Seska steals the ship out
from under us, but I don't think that's a good idea, do you? Or...we could join
forces. Come on, Chakotay. Put down that phaser, and I'll make it worth your
while."

"What could you possibly have to offer...?"

Without releasing her grip on the rifle's trigger, Janeway reached behind her and
began taking down the bun that constrained her long hair. "Chakotay, I think we both
know what you really want..."

"What in hell is this?" Tom Paris demanded from the back of the room. B'Elanna
almost jumped out of her skin.

"Computer, end program!" She backed toward the arch defensively. "It's, uh, just
some leftover programming..."

"Leftover programming? Of the captain trying to seduce Chakotay?" Tom's grin was
wide. "Looks like something I'd have come up with, but I've never written
anything like this. Who wrote it, anyway?"

"I don't know." B'Elanna's tone was defiant. "I was just getting ready to delete
it."

"Well, let's figure it out, first." Waggling his eyebrows, Tom wandered toward
the center of the room. "There was something familiar about that..."

"It's a variant on Insurrection Alpha," B'Elanna agreed.

Paris whirled on her. "Are you crazy? I thought that whole thing was purged from
the data banks! Do you know what the captain would do if she knew you'd restored
it?"

"I didn't restore it. These are someone else's variations--not Tuvok's, and not
Seska's. The basic programming was wiped, but apparently someone saved this
reconstruction under an encrypted authorization code. I was running it to try to
figure out who it might have been. Any guesses?"

Tom's grin returned. "One way to find out. Computer, resume program." Janeway and
Chakotay winked back into existence in front of him. Chakotay's jaw was still
locked in determination, but the arm holding his phaser was wavering. Janeway
finished uncoiling her hair, put down her own rifle, stepped towards the Maquis
leader, and held out her hand.

"Give me the phaser, Chakotay. It's not my ship you're really after." She put one
of her hands on his chest and disarmed him with the other, while he stared at her
like a targ under infrared sensors. "Seska's just using you, letting you take all
the risks so she can make a play for Voyager. I can offer you so much more..."

"This is a cinch, B'Elanna. Chakotay must have written this," Tom snorted.
"Sheesh, I knew he had it bad for Janeway, but this is kind of pathetic, you
know? Not to mention that under the Barclay Regulations, she could probably
courtmartial him for fooling around with her image..."

B'Elanna had a slight frown between her eyebrows as she studied the images of
their senior officers. "I don't think so. It would be pretty unlike Chakotay--he's
not interested in holograms, I just can't imagine him using one for sex. And I
definitely can't imagine him using one of someone he knows, or cares about..."
her voice trailed off thoughtfully as she looked at Janeway, who was tearing open
the front of her uniform with one hand and Chakotay's vest with the other.

"Besides, if Chakotay had written this, he would have made it interactive," the
engineer said decisively. "If he can't do it, I don't think he could stand to
watch. Could you?"

"Yeah," said Tom fuzzily, staring as Janeway started to shrug out of her tank
top. "Uh--freeze program!" He turned to meet B'Elanna's raised eyebrow. "Well, if
not Chakotay, then who?"

"Tuvok?" Paris burst out laughing, but Torres pressed on. "This is probably his
idea of a worst case scenario. Can you imagine what he'd think if the two of them
actually..."

"Yeah, but you don't think it would occur to Tuvok that it might really HAPPEN,
do you? I don't think anyone on this ship honestly thinks Janeway would loosen up
enough to, um..." He glanced back at the hologram, who had frozen in the middle
of undressing with a sly, warm smile on her face, one arm inside her shirt at a
suggestive angle. "God, she looks good like that," Tom muttered, half to himself.
"Ummm...OK. No. Not Tuvok. Even if Tuvok thought this might happen, he could
never have envisioned her like that. Not unless he's only pretending to be a
Vulcan, not these details. It has to be someone else."

"Well, who would get off to the image of Janeway and Chakotay having sex?"
Torres demanded, then flushed faintly. "Hmm. OK. Maybe the question should be,
who has the skill to actually write a program like this, and save it so well-
encrypted that I couldn't pick my way around the lockout?"

"Our Morale Officer might have the motive, and the technical know-how at this
point. But he worships Janeway," Tom said thoughtfully. "You think Neelix would
try to envision her fooling around?"

"Or the Doc? He's obsessed with studying human relationships, and he's probably
just prurient enough to do something like this, Plus, he has holodeck access, and
he was very interested in helping you rewrite Insurrection Alpha. And, he
probably has greater knowledge of holographic technology than anyone on the
ship."

"Other than you, you mean." Tom was looking at B'Elanna slyly. "And to think, I
once thought you had a crush on Chakotay. Tell the truth. You wrote this. You
have the expertise, and you know both parties involved well enough to be
interested. And I think a woman came up with this. He's being way too passive.
This is a female empowerment thing..."

Torres snarled menacingly, advancing on him. "You think women like having to
resort to using their bodies to have power? You think we enjoy being told that
our wits are nothing compared to our sex? This is a male fantasy, pure and
simple--you know, Tom, it almost reminds me of that babe you used to keep at
Sandrine's..."

"Whoa! Don't look at me!"

"No? Well, let's be logical about this." The chief engineer was grinning. "It
must have been written by someone who had access to the original Insurrection
Alpha program. You and Tuvok accessed the programming parameters directly--Harry
tried to hack in from the bridge, but he never made it, and even if he had, I
don't think he would have written something like this--he thinks of Janeway and
Chakotay like his parents. Chakotay could have used a command-level override to
access the program, but I still can't see this being his handiwork--even if he'd
do something like this, my bet is he'd want her eating out of HIS hand, not the
other way around. So if they didn't do it, and we know Seska didn't do it...who
does that leave? The self-styled most talented holoprogrammer on this ship. You,
Tom Paris."

"I didn't do it, though. Really." Tom looked almost regretful. "Maybe we should
just delete it. If the wrong person found it, it might cause trouble."

"Think we should at least tell Chakotay first?" B'Elanna paused to look at his
holoimage, which was staring at the captain frozen in the middle of undressing,
his eyes wide and lips parted.

"Nah. We'd just embarrass him."

"Yeah, then I guess we should probably delete this. I'll have to put it in a
report, but I'm betting that once the captain finds out what was in this file,
she won't be sorry it's gone. I'll get to work on the override to make sure it's
taken out." Torres knelt by the holodeck controls, while Paris looked
thoughtfully at the two holograms.

"B'Elanna...tell me again how you stopped Seska's programming from killing me and
Tuvok?"

"We rewrote the program." The engineer sounded pleased with herself. "We figured
that if you could manipulate the parameters from inside the program, we could do
the same thing from outside. We wrote right over Seska's programming."

"Who?"

"Who what?"

"Who's 'we'? Who actually wrote over it?"

"Well, I set up the matrix so we could access the program, and Harry ran the
controls through the bridge relays since the comm system was down. But as for the
actual writing, that was..."

"Janeway," they both said together. Then they both sat back abruptly.

Paris looked at the image of his captain seducing her renegade first officer.
"You don't think..."

"The idea of rewriting Insurrection Alpha was to stop the scenario from playing
itself out the way Seska wanted," Torres said slowly. "I was busy trying to
implement the programming, I didn't stop to see what she was doing with it. I
know that at one point, she was trying to turn Chakotay against Seska, or come up
with some way to stop the mutiny at the source. But do you think she'd..."

Tom began to laugh, quietly, but it built into full hilarity within a minute.
"Who else would have saved it, B'Elanna? Who else could have saved it without
anyone finding out? Resume program," he spluttered.

"Wait," holographic Chakotay blurted as Janeway started to remove her shirt. "You
don't have to do this, Kathryn."

"Oh, but I want to do this. Then we can stop what Seska's planning, and you and I
need to have a talk about the need for purpose and focus for this crew, which is
why we need Federation principles..."

B'Elanna looked at Tom. "Janeway," they said simultaneously, again. The images of
the captain and first officer had halted inches from each other, exchanging
smoldering looks; Chakotay had one arm half-raised as if to help her take her
clothes off. Tom shook his head regretfully as B'Elanna turned quickly back to
the panel and entered several codes.

"Computer, delete program, engineering override Torres Omega One." Janeway and
Chakotay winked out of existence.

"Should we tell her?" Tom asked after a moment.

"She'll figure out what happened if she comes looking for it. I doubt she will.
Probably it got saved accidentally, as part of a record of the purge..." B'Elanna
grinned suddenly. "Let's tell Chakotay, instead. Not whose program we think it
was, just that we found it and deleted it before it could cause trouble. Then
he'll have to make a report to her..."

Paris began to laugh again. "Great idea. Let's go write it up now, in as much
detail as possible. Especially that she wasn't wearing a bra..." B'Elanna swatted
at him. "Want to do this over dinner?" he continued casually.

"Oh, sure." She shook her head. "Tom, I never thought I'd see you playing
matchmaker for Chakotay."

"Well, maybe I'm returning a favor. He's the one who sets up our duty schedules,
you know. Yours and mine." He raised an eyebrow at her. "DID you have a crush on
him?"

"I'll never tell." She marched ahead of him out of the holodeck, then whirled
back. "You know, it was kind of interesting the first time I ran Insurrection
Alpha. When he asked me what I'd do to prove my loyalty--" she waggled an eyebrow
at Paris, who stomped after her, making a face-- "I shot Harry," she concluded
with a grin. "I wonder if I would have shot you, Tom?"