Janeway stepped from the turbolift, Chakotay alongside, walking carefully through the corridors and passing through another temporal anomaly, the barrier of which shimmered and congealed around them. Ten steps later found them at another set of panels, which they promptly knelt and removed. Chakotay readied another ampule of the chronoton serum, only half-listening to her endless supply of questions that spun around in her mind like angry bees loosed from a hive.
“So I’m forced to merge two crews, Maquis and Starfleet? Maquis will actually consider this?” she was still in disbelief.
“We didn’t have much of a choice at the time,” Voyager’s current/future first officer paused, clicking the ampule into place but not injecting it. “It’s rather a long walk back to the Alpha Quadrant. I doubt environmental suits would last 70,000 light-years.”
“What about your ship? We’re about to enter the Badlands to try and capture it,” she pointed out.
“I destroyed it.”
“Destroyed it? How?” For all she knew, she’d ordered him to destroy it with a rifle pointed to his head, though her orders were to bring it back in one piece if possible. She wo
ndered if she’d downloaded his computer data…
“Battle with the Kazon,” he tried to sound nonchalant, reaching in and pulling out a computer chip, idly examining it.
“Kazon? The same Kazon that are down in Engineering?” Tuvok’s eyebrows had never risen higher than hers did at that moment.
“No, those are the Kazon-Nistrim. We were fighting the Kazon-Ogla,” Chakotay explained. As though that explained anything at all.
“Nistrim? Ogla? What are you…”
“To make a long story short, they wanted to destroy the Ocampa. They felt that the planet on which they lived, belonged to them. Which led to the reason for you destroying the Care…the power supply, so to speak, that cared for the Ocampa. Don’t misunderstand me,” Chakotay went on quickly at her look of shock. She had destroyed a living thing not in self-defense? “It was already out of power, it couldn’t contain its life any longer. But you destroyed it to prevent the Kazon from learning its secrets and, therefore, overpowering the Ocampa.”
“That still doesn’t answer my question.” She pressed on. “You destroyed your ship? Why?”
“To protect you,” Chakotay shrugged, replacing the computer chip. “I destroyed the Kazon ship that would have destroyed Voyager, but replacements were already in the sector. You ordered Tuvok to fire with tri-cobalt devices, destroying the power supply, saving the Kazon, and stranding us in the Delta Quadrant.”
“And to think I never wanted those things on board Voyager in the --” She stopped suddenly and looked around.
“What is it?” Chakotay asked, concern creasing his eyebrows.
She jerked her head in the direction of the corner. The edge of a human head peeked around it – one very startlingly blue eye, pale face, dark hair, and small hand that clung to the edge of the wall, ending in a gray cuff at the wrist. Chakotay got up immediately.
Janeway followed just as quickly. “What the…”
He cut her off. “Sara, come out. Stop lurking around corners.”
A small girl edged out, a guarded look of disbelief and skepticism on her face – Janeway knew it well, she wore it most of the time while researching something unkown. She was small, barely a meter and a half, if that. Trim waist made almost horribly obvious by her uniform, the likes of which Janeway only knew in records – a shale gray, darker across the shoulders and high neck with a stripe of red, yellow, and blue running one atop the other. Tight cuffs at the wrists and a waist that formed to her body, pants of the same color as her shoulders, and standard-issue boots.
The uniform of…Acting Ensign? Janeway recalled something briefly, reading through old Captain’s logs at the Academy, even while studying through command school, about such a costume adopted by a young boy of created rank upon the Enterprise, under command of Jean-Luc Picard. But she had no knowledge of it being used on Voyager – all her crew was Ensign or higher, even Harry Kim, the recent Academy graduate.
She was vaguely pretty, Kathryn realized, if in a small, slight way. Her dark brown hair wound around her head in braids that clipped snugly behind her ears. Her eyes were azure, clear and deep-set, though rimmed with hollows. Shadows flickered through them, sad, haunted shadows – they seemed too old for the body and face they were attached to. Personally, Janeway thought that she looked too young and small to be out of grade school, much less wearing the uniform she wore.
She wondered if this was another mystery she didn’t want the answer to.
“Sara?” Chakotay asked quietly, squatting down on one knee so as not to be terribly taller than her. She looked down at him.
“What are you doing here?” she asked guardedly. “How did you get back on board…why aren’t you sick any more?”
“What do you mean?” Chakotay wanted to know.
“You’re…on…the planet,” the girl was quiet, though her words carried the undertone of someone that was indeed correct and knew it.
“The planet…what’s she talking about?” Janeway asked.
“This could be the time that you and I were the victims of a disease. A sickness, actually, caused by insect bites. To live, we had to remain on a planet.”
“We stayed on a planet in the Delta Quadrant? And Voyager went on without us?” she couldn’t believe that either. “I abandoned my ship?”
“You had your options.” Sara’s voice was stout. Her chin jutted out and her eyes had somehow changed color, still blue but with the hardness of marble. A look of disbelief and realization crossed Sara’s face in the next moment of silence. “But…”
“But what?” Chakotay was gentle.
“You’re not you.” She took a step backwards. “You’re you, but you’re not…you. I…I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Sara.” He reached out and took hold of her wrist, something she gasped and jumped at, but allowed nevertheless. “What I’m going to tell you is going to sound hard to believe, but you’re going to have to trust me. The ship was shattered into different time frames when it came into contact with a temporal anomaly. Each section is in a state of temporal flux. Sara, you know that I’m not lying -- you know you can tell for yourself.”
After another minute she exhaled sharply. “Yes…” she breathed. “You’re from the future. And you…” she looked at the Captain. “You’re from the past.”
Janeway jolted visibly. How did this small girl know that? And why was Chakotay so gentle with her? He was kind, caring…almost as though he loved her.
Almost.
“That’s right.” Chakotay stood, looking down at her gravely, showing her the hypospray. “And this is something that the doctor made for us – a chronoton serum. We’re injecting it into the gelpacks throughout the ship. When that’s done, we’re going to modify the warp core to extend a chronoton field, and bring the ship back into one time frame.”
“The time from the future. Your time.” Sara examined the hypospray, looking up at Chakotay, who nodded.
“That’s the only time that’ll work. It’s the only time that I can stop what happens in the first place,” he explained.
“So if you’re here…” she paused. “That means you come back.”
“Come back?” Janeway questioned. “Come back from where?”
“The planet.” Chakotay told Kathryn, before turning back to Sara, focusing himself on her and her alone for a brief instant. “And yes, we do. Would you like to inject the gelpacks?”
“Commander!” Kathryn Janeway stopped both. “These are sophisticated pieces of equipment, not holographic learning tools, and certainly not toys. Children should not be allowed near them…”
“I’m not a child.” Sara snorted indignantly.
“She’s right.” Chakotay backed her up, a hand on her shoulder. “Well, Sara?”
She shrugged morosely. “If it’ll bring you back, I’ll do anything,” She was sad and resigned as she knelt down and, without hesitation, fitted the hypospray and pressed it in the proper place. The blue gelatin inside the pack shimmered, then bubbled slightly before returning to normal.
“I think that’ll do it.” Chakotay was kind, smiling at her, before taking back the hypospray and ejecting the ampule. He took her hand gently as they walked to the temporal barrier. He stopped her just before the bulkhead, and Janeway watched curiously as he knelt down. Though he said nothing, Sara nodded quietly. He squeezed her shoulder again, breaking contact with the beautiful blue eyes that were encased in shadows, and winked just before Janeway stepped through the barrier with him. Through it they watched her look of shock, knowing full well that they could see her but she couldn’t see them. Her pale, pretty features drooped to sadness, and she shook her head before moving back to the panel they had left open.
“Come on,” Chakotay took her elbow. “We have work to do.”
“What…was that?” Something akin to disgust churned in her belly.
“She’s not a what, she’s a who. Her name is Sara.” It was Chakotay’s turn to be indignant before he gazed back at the corridor, now empty. The girl had vanished soundlessly, though Janeway knew such things were impossible. “I always wondered what happened on the ship while we were gone…”
“How long?” she swallowed.
“A six weeks. Maybe eight.” He told her. “It wasn’t our fault what happened.”
“I’m more interested to know exaclty what the hell happened back there with…her.” Janeway wasn’t about to back down. “How did she know you were from the future, and I was from the past? How did she know we weren’t lying? And for that matter, you said nothing to her before we crossed through this barrier, and yet she nodded. Is there something between you two that I don’t know about?”
“Not yet.” He half-smiled at her. “She’s one of mine.”
“A Maquis? You had a child in the Maquis?” Janeway thought for a moment. “Then…the reports from Tuvok are true. There’s a thirteen year old aboard your ship.”
“You got it.”
“Is she yours?”
Chakotay was brought up short at the meaning behind her words. “Not literally. She’s not my child, we just happened to find each other.”
“Who’s child is she?”
She saw his face harden. “The daughter of people long dead now.”
“So you take care of her?”
“She’s always pretty much taken care of herself. I’ve been there for her, sometimes, over the years…she doesn’t need much in the way of ‘maintenance’. She needs more than she lets on, sometimes. It hasn’t always been easy on her.”
“That still doesn’t explain how she knew…”
“She’s a telepath.” Chakotay told her, as though it was natural.
“So she’s a Betazoid.” Janeway said over her shoulder, heading back to the turbolift. “That explains why…”
“No.”
“No what? She’s not a Betazoid? But what is she then, part Vulcan?”
Chakotay shook his head. “Completely human. Completely, telepathically, human.”
Janeway stopped in mid-stride. “But humans aren’t…”
“I know, I know. Look, it’s a long story, and if I do my part, you’ll find out eventually anyways…”
She looked back. Chakotay turned. “What is it?”
“Does she turn out all right?” Janeway asked softly.
He softened as well. “She turns out fine. You give her a commission to full Ensign after she helps Tom Paris get the ship back from the Kazon. She grows up here, on Voyager. Of course, circumstances were different from her than Naomi…she was born aboard this ship, had a childhood here. Sara didn’t. She was already so accustomed to NOT being a child by the time we transferred here, that it just turned out that way.”
“And she’s not…” Janeway swallowed. “She’s still alive?”
“She’s fine. At least, the last time I saw her she was.” Chakotay smiled. “She was as healthy as any twenty-one-year old human girl can be. She looks up to you…and to me. We’ve almost become her parents, though if you ask her she’ll deny needing parents. Hell, she’ll deny needing anyone.”
“Is she one of those that call Voyager home?” Her head was still spinning. Disaster after disaster in the Delta Quadrant, stranded thousands of light-years away from any known Starfleet person or station, forced to merge a crew of renegades she had originally sent out to capture…and a human telepath figured into it all?
“She has no other.” Chakotay confirmed. “In all likelihood, even if we set things straight again, this may be her home for the rest of her life.”
“But what about any other home she might have had – her parents, her family…” Janeway’s voice trailed off as she realized that his features had hardened again.
“I may break every directive including the temporal ones telling you this, but since you seem so intent on thinking it was better: her father was genetically engineered, practically right after birth. Something went wrong, he was only supposed to have enhanced perceptions, but he ended up a full telepath. Sara and her brother were the result of that manipulation – the genetics were passed on through him to them.
“Somehow his secret was kept, all his life, but it didn’t matter. He was the angriest, most hateful son of a bitch I’ve ever seen. Didn’t like anyone, and that included his wife, and his three kids, one of which was her. Sara’s got a wealth of scars on her back that’d make the hardest, most apathetic person in the galaxy cringe, and he caused every one of them. He killed Sara’s two brothers – one when she was nine, one when she was thirteen. The latter was the last one he’d ever hurt, because her mother finally put him out of his misery. She set an explosion that would destroy the building they were in, some cabin or another, isolated in the Rocky Mountains of Earth.”
“The explosion left Sara, at thirteen years old, with no memories. She found her name on an identity card, along with her birthday, but that's it. Nothing to show who she was, where she came from, nothing. She was lucky she was alive at all -- she was blown out of a window when the actual explosion happened, not that she remembered that either.
"She wandered about for six months before finally stowing away on transports and getting herself to Bajor. That’s where she stowed away on another shuttle – the one that went to my ship. Now, Captain. Are you so sad that she’s on Voyager? Are you so worried that she should have had another type of life? Because I can tell you this – she doesn’t want any other.”
Kathryn Janeway opened her mouth, then shut it, and looked bleak. “So she’s as much of a jigsaw puzzle as the pieces Voyager exists in at this very moment,” she finally said.
“Exactly. Only I intend to put this puzzle back together, and make sure it never gets broken apart again.”
She followed him down the corridor, musing again that his intellegence file didn’t do him justice. Sworn enemy of the Federation, most wanted in the galaxy…yet a reader of philosophy with an unrestrained soft spot for a lost sheep.
She was beginning to understand why he was her first officer.
