Disclaimer:The characters belong to Paramount. I am borrowing them to weave my own fictional web. I intend no copyright infringement nor financial gain.

Kathryn M. Janeway--more commonly known as Captain Janeway--and now, henceforth and forever, at least in the minds of a few, Queen Arachnia, stepped out through the holodeck doors.

Certain that she was finally alone, she exhaled a great sigh of relief. Gods, one minute she had been minding her own business, guiding her lost starship through the trackless waste spaces of the Delta Quadrant, preparing to meet the usual splenetic aliens with their superior weapons and limitless abilities to pierce Voyager's shields--and the next, she was party to Paris' bad fantasy gone even "badder," if such a word existed, and she was sure it now should.

It wasn't enough just to try to save her crew! The irony of all this holographic folderol was that she had actually had to gussy-up like some strumpet to go save the universe! Well, the universe as Voyager knew it, of course. So now, she was not only Captain Whichway, she was also Queen of the Cosmos. It was too much for one mind to process. She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips and thought, not for the first time, that she would like to bust Tom Paris back to ensign. Unfortunately, she had already done that. Perhaps a new ranking would be in order. Forget Starfleet regs and protocol. She would make him a Sub-Ensign! "Get a grip, Kathryn," she muttered. "And go get some sleep." She started purposefully down the corridor when suddenly she noticed her shoes, then her dress, with a slit up the leg that almost met the plunging neckline. And those painted nails! Daggers the color of bruised eggplant. She stopped, just as abruptly as she had started, nearly laying a skid mark on the industrial-strength carpet.

"Now what?" she thought, rolling her eyes at her own predicament.

She could request site-to-site transport--but that would stir up even more curiosity and waste precious power reserves. Or, she could climb through the Jefferies tubes, incognito. But, she was just plain too darn tired for that, what with all that displacing of lightning shields and disarming of death rays and vamping her way through those pheromone seduction scenes.

Which, of course, left the one final and workable alternative: she could run like hell and hope no one would see her.

Which she did.

And she nearly made it too, coasting into home with a clear track ahead of her, when she heard a low wolf whistle. Instinctively she whirled around to identify the miscreant. Where was a good Destructo Beam when she needed it!

"Chacotay!" she cried out, dismayed that she had been caught in this bizarre couture. "What are you doing here?"

A wide grin slid across his face, and he said, with the slightest hint of a question mark at the end, "Loitering."

"Loitering!" she exclaimed. "It's 'night,' Commander. You are off duty. The ship is safe. What are you doing here, right now?" Irritation tinged her questions.

"Well," he answered, looking down and not a little sheepish, "I heard something about pheromones, and marrying, and that your, um, costume was something to behold, so, I, uh, decided to come 'behold.'"

She shot him with her patented "Death Glare." Then she remembered that she was indeed in costume still, in the corridor, talking to her first officer, and tempting fate for more exposure the longer she, uh, loitered herself!

Quickly, she started to key her door lock, barely able to depress the appropriate pads with her three-inch nails. Chakotay came to her rescue. "Need help?" he asked, reaching across her heaving bosom to finish the number sequence.

"And since when did you gain instant-memory access to my door!" she exploded.

"The Void," he said in a barely audible voice.

"Oh." She looked at him for the first time, really looked at him now, moved by his elliptical response.

Oddly calmed, she cocked an eyebrow and gifted him with a slow, crooked grin of her own. Then, to his amazement, she seductively extended her index finger and beckoned him hither. "You wanted to see my outfit?" She asked in a sultry, if somewhat campy, voice? "You have come to spin a little yarn with Queen Arachnia, have you?"Poor Chakotay. Was it possible for his dusky complexion to blush? Perhaps it was a trick of light, or the reflection of the blood-red ornamentation fronting Janeway's otherwise black, slinky dress. Who knew. And in the end it wouldn't matter…

"Well," she continued in husky voice, standing like some mythic siren just inside her quarters, "Will you walk into my parlor, said the Spider to the…"

She swallowed the last word. A not altogether pleasant sensation. Even if the word "fly" was just a semantic symbol, it still gave her a weird buzz.

He looked puzzled. Obviously, he was unfamiliar with this old Terran nursery rhyme.

Her lucky day, she thought. And she amended the verse: "Said the Spider to the Fly…Boy."

Well, he *had* been a pilot in the Maquis. That qualified him as a Fly-Boy.

She knew she was tired. Giddy. Over the top. And out. But the words reeled out on their own, as if to lure him in. Then, without warning, she reached across the threshold, looped one provocative nail just under his collar, and pulled him effortlessly into her parlor.

"Fly!" She repeated, as if encouraging her nonplussed friend and first officer to levitate over the doorsill. "'Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy."

Chakotay was ensnared now. The doors whooshed irrevocably shut, and the captain slunk across the room, then turned dramatically to the hapless officer still standing shell-shocked where she had deposited him.

"Uh, maybe I should go now, Capt…Kathryn…" he ventured.

But she was not about to let him escape so easily. She crossed back over to him. "Oh, no, Mr. Chakotay," she said, her voiced pitched as basement-low as it could go. "You wanted to see this outfit. So, 'along came a spider,' and now, you have pretty much entangled yourself. She ran her fingers up his chest, like so many little arachnids, to punctuate her point, smiling evilly at him all the while.

"Come," she invited him once again, "and sit down beside her. . ."

She moved to her sofa, and vamped a sultry posture. Deep within, she knew she should feel embarrassed by this little charade. And the outfit--well, this gown, what there was of it, made her "Dying Swan" suit look like long johns by comparison.

And that fact was obviously not lost on Chakotay, who sat next to her, as ordered, nearly speechless.

Well, nearly. "I, uh, well, I was curious about the pheromones…" he began lamely.

"Pesky little hormones," she sighed breathily, leaning in toward him a little more. "But, when all else fails at the Tower of Doom, I find they always work."

He eyed her discreetly, trying his best to take in the long expanse of shapely leg, the unusual display of dusky cleavage, the smooth outline of hip and rear. He swallowed. Hard.

Gathering his residual wits, he said, a tiny smile quirking up the corners of his mouth, "Well, Captain, I seem to remember that once long ago, in a distant portion of the Universe, we had a discussion of pheromones…"

"We did?!" she asked, momentarily abandoning her persona.

Chakotay sensed that he had her now--if he pressed his advantage carefully. "Remember that life form that began a romantic interlude with one of Voyager's nacelles?" he asked innocently enough.

Tired though she was, Janeway, Captain, and Queen, remembered the incident in bright relief--not as in, !whew!, but as in the mind's version of bas-relief.

"I do," she answered cautiously, waiting for the proverbial other shoe to fall.

"And," he continued, regaining his old confidence, and allowing his eyes to stray for a second or two to the more intriguing portions of her spider get- up, "you told me that should you ever need any consultation on mating habits, you would call on me…"

Janeway threw her head back and laughed spontaneously. And Chakotay leaned his head forward, ever so slightly, to enhance this once-in-a-lifetime view of the deep velvet rift between his captain's breasts.

"So," he went on, gaining momentum, "I thought that since you were supposed to 'mate' with Chaotica, so to speak, I had best get all the details…er… debrief you afterwards--in a fatherly fashion of course…"

"Fatherly!" she hooted. "Fatherly!"

He feigned petulance.

She placed her hand briefly on his knee. "Concerned, were you Commander, that the Itsy Bitsy Spider Woman wouldn't handle her pheromones properly?"

From under hooded eyes, he looked up at her. "You did promise," he said in mock seriousness. "And, I was just trying to fulfill my selfless promise…"

With the grace and nearly imperceptible motion of her kind, Queen Arachnia slid over next to the man, as if inextricably drawn by an invisible filament between them. She cocked her head, and looking deeply into his eyes, said, in great earnest: "I truly do appreciate your concern, Chakotay, and your watchfulness…"

She rested her hand on his knee.

He grinned. She stood up, stretching and yawning, giving him one last very fine opportunity to take in the scenery before she pitched the outfit into the recycling bin and went to bed.

He rose as well. "Goodnight, Kathryn. . .or Arachnia."

"Goodnight, my friend," she said.

As he turned to go, she added: "Oh, by the way, Chakotay, you do know something about the mating of black widow spiders, do you not?"

He turned, a little taken aback at her question. "Not much," he answered.

"Well," she said, jutting one hip forward in the very last Arachnia pose of a lifetime, "They mate with great passion, you know…"

"Then?" he asked, barely able to hope.

"Then," she said emphatically, "They EAT the sated suitor!"

Chakotay moved a little faster out the door.

Fin