Author: Turtlewoman
Date: 01/08/00
Rating: R, J

This was the most dangerous part of the whole night. She had to get down the whole length of the corridor without being seen and finish this. It had taken far longer than she had anticipated and she was running out of time. This was the craziest thing she had pulled yet. She tried to remember why she started on this lunatic mission to begin with.

Each year had brought her an emotional challenge. The first year she was stunned but hopeful and brave, ever so brave. The second year was spent with hidden sadness and yearning and outward cheerfulness and confidence. The reality of their situation had begun to set in. She was wracked with a longing for what she had lost and a growing guilt for what everyone else had lost. There was also that niggling little guilt because she was increasingly distracted by her first officer. Then came the difficulty of closing down what she did feel. How could she go on and make a life or let herself love here when her oldest friend and so many others could not? And the desperation, that grew too. The chances she would take to get her Voyager family home safely became crazier and crazier as she became angrier and angrier. She told herself to push it down and do her job.

But there was a cost in sublimating it all. Last year, during one of their rare quiet times, she had almost drowned in depression. She would have succumbed to the numbness if Chakotay had let her wallow much longer. Then the Equinox and Ransom, poor Ransom became the focus for all she had been fighting in herself, all she had been fighting for and against. The anger she'd repressed lashed out and damn near incinerated all she fought so hard to keep. She'd come so close to the line there. But even when he wasn't next to her, she heard Chakotay in the back of her mind, pulling her back from the abyss. She was almost giddy with the relief of having survived this latest trail. Now what she felt was this almost overwhelming desire to raise a little hell, to cut up and cut loose. It percolated and bubbled inside her. She was in a pressure cooker again, fighting not to give in to the manic. This time she wouldn't push it down. She'd push it around and shape it into a safe release.

She tried not to admit how much she was enjoying all this, but the truth was she found the challenge absolutely invigorating. It added an element of danger to what she was doing and that heightened the experience for her. Things had been quiet lately and quiet was the one thing Kathryn Janeway had the most trouble dealing with. She thought too much when it was quiet. She felt guilty for too much, responsible for too much and longed for too much when it was quiet. I suppose this beats deep depression. I wonder if the crew would agree with me she thought as she neared her objective.

She could probably blame Paris. This whole thing had started with Tom's Irish program. She'd always loved Ireland. It had been hundreds of years since her ancestors had left the place, but she felt at home there, as if she belonged to it somewhere in the deep recesses of her genes. The Dingle, in particular, seemed to call to her. Of course, there was a man involved in that particularly memory. Isn't there always. When she was young, slightly after Chub but well before Justin, she'd spent a summer on the Dingle Peninsula and there she met this man, this lovely, delicious man. He was about ten years older than she and seemed so worldly and sophisticated to her, even though he came from such a small, insular place himself. Ah what a summer it had been, wild, romantic, completely spontaneous. In looking back it seemed as if that summer was the last truly happy time of her life. She would always remember the dear man with great fondness. Nothing had come of it, of course. It was too soon. The Academy awaited her and he had responsibilities. So they had parted. Sweetly, but parted none the less. In all honesty, she hadn't thought of him in years. Not until she had walked into Tom's latest holocreation and there it was, the Dingle, the little pub and darned it if the publican didn't look a little bit like 'himself', achingly so. It wasn't that she desired that long ago lover as much as she longed for the sweet sensuality that he had awakened in her. It had been so long. It was so long since she could just flirt with a man without having an agenda. It had been so long since she had let herself dissolve in someone's kisses without remembering what and who she was, so long since she had drowned in the passion of the moment without a thought for the future.

She was drowning all right. She was drowning in constant responsibility and tension and danger and self-denial. And she was dying. She knew it. That part of her that made her Kathryn was fading away. Eventually that part of Kathryn that made her Captain would die too. Somehow she needed to reach herself again. She had to do something and once she walked into Dingle, she knew just what it was. So why was she creeping about her own ship in the middle of the gamma shift, then? Why couldn't she just write the extended scenario, implement the enhancements and be done with it? The publican was a charmer and she wouldn't have been the first person on this ship to find comfort in a bit of discrete holosex. The crew would be more or less tolerant of this although they might snigger a bit. But would they understand that a captain has very few options other than this? Would they understand how much she hated the neurotic martinet that lurked in the shadows of her mind? Would they understand how she would fight to preserve at least a shard of herself in the desperate hope that it could be rekindled in some remote future, a future that could be shared? And it was that hope that had her skulking around her own ship in the middle of the gamma shift.

It had taken a fair amount of maneuvering to keep the three people who seemed always to be aware of where she was 'otherwise occupied'. The Doctor always wanted to be a part of away missions. He was the easiest to manipulate. Just a word casually dropped about the visual interest this latest planet offered and he was petitioning to be on the away team. Not so easy was to make it apparent that a senior officer should lead the team. Lately Kim had been the officer of choice. He showed great dedication and enthusiasm for his job despite the likelihood he would remain an ensign for decades yet. She started making it known she intended to lead the away team herself. Tuvok and Chakotay almost fell over each other coming up with a plan that would keep her safely on board and one of them on the away team instead. Outwardly she petulantly, and with much reluctance, finally agreed that Tuvok should head the team. Inwardly she was laughing herself silly. It didn't make any difference to her which one stayed, just as long as she could sidetrack both of them long enough to continue with her plan.

Tuvok and team, with Tom piloting (one couldn't be too careful) set off for a two day scan of Ydelta 4/297m5. It had become standard operating policy to catalog any M class unoccupied planet within 5 parsecs of their flight path. One never knew when a safe harbor might be needed, or when possible sustenance would present itself again. That left the bridge shifts to be divided between the remaining staff. Ensign Kim had just come off a month of gamma shifts the week before so he was kept on alpha. Chakotay volunteered for gamma, saying she looked tired. She was too. For a full week she'd been writing all the programs she would need to pull off this little adventure. She took the beta shift. Perfect.

With her comm badge nesting securely on her pillow, she flicked a little switch on her mock comm badge, broadcasting her life signs back to the original. Now that she had redirected the ship's sensors, she slipped down the corridor. A quick side step into a Jeffries tube and anyplace in the ship was hers. Down a tube here, across a hallway there and in the time it takes to say 'aerobic workout' she was at Holodeck One. Using a generic access code she slipped inside and downloaded the Irish program. That she could have done outright, it was public access, but this was more fun. She wanted to keep the whole caper clandestine. Back into the Jeffries tube she went and skulked her way to Sickbay. Time to implement the second part of her plan. A little twitch here, an adjustment there and she slipped in without alerting any sensors. Now was the tricky part. She had to search the medical database for just the record she wanted, without taking too direct a path or tripping any alarms. Only B'Ellana and the Dr. knew the encryption codes. Of course she had access using her Captain's clearance commands, but that left a trail. Poor Chakotay. If only he knew the use she was putting all that Maquis skullduggery he had taught her! She'd better hope he never found out. Ah, there it was! Now all she had to do was download the file into a pad. Damn! The computer just wouldn't give up the information. She rerouted the file into the Dr.'s office comm in the hope that she could manage to download it from there. No deal. The privacy locks were firmly in place there too. There was only one other viable option. Time to go to Plan B. She always hated having to go to Plan B. When she was up to mischief in her younger days Plan B, though it did increase the excitement value of the 'exercise' had also seemed to increase her chance of exposure. She was taking a risk. Only a few people had this code. Hopefully she would be able to reprogram the med request archive to erase this part of the caper. The code was accepted. The file was sent on its merry way. Now all she had to do was let herself into those quarters and upload the file from there. Hopefully, the privacy lockout would no longer be triggered from that location.

Finally she was there. The touchpad at the door would have given her access of course, but it would also record her presence. So here she was, standing in the corridor in the middle of the night, trying to break through a door that would automatically open if she just touched it. Pushing down a rising case of the giggles, she tried first one code, then another. The third time was the charm apparently as the door swooshed open. She rushed in and then stopped. What if he had someone waiting for him? He wasn't celibate; she knew that and understood. It was supposed to make it easier for them. He had seemed to move on. Still, if there was a woman in that bed, she'd kill her and then jump out an airlock herself. Ridiculous thought. Carefully she peered into his sleeping quarters. Blessedly empty! Yes. Such relief was really silly considering what she was trying to do here. She'd better do the deed and get the hell out of here fast. Nuts! That stinker had put privacy lockouts on his console! Now what? Try this, no. Try that. Well what do you know! She was getting to be quite the 'hacker on the hoof'. And there was the little med file just waiting to be plucked. And plucked it was and tucked into her datapad, and she was out the door and down the corridor.

Finally she was in her own quarters with all she needed to build the perfect man. She was on moral gray ground here. She knew it. There were rules against making holorepresentions of real individuals without permission. Technically though, this wasn't a true copy. 'Mickey' looked just as Paris had designed him. It was just the 'family jewels' getting the adjustment. Chakotay if you only knew. I'm always true to you dear, even in this.

She overlaid the medical data projection upon the Irish publican.

"Well would you look at that! Small gifts," she said aloud. "Four balls!"

;-D
(Well someone had to come up for a rational explanation for her boffing a hologram! A nod to 40 for the running joke and a query to 17. Does this meet the 'small gifts' challenge?)
Love, Turtlewoman

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