Fan Fiction
TITLE: To Cross the Rubicon
AUTHOR: Brenda Shaffer-Shiring
RATING: G
CODES: C, T
AUTHOR'S NOTES: The usual disclaimer (Paramount, baa baa woof woof.)
SUMMARY: Fearing that the former Maquis face an uncertain reception from Starfleet, Chakotay and Torres discuss a contingency plan. Set shortly after Unimatrix Zero, Part 2.
Diving, Chakotay got the very edge of his racquet under the ball, batting at it with what force he could muster from that awkward angle. The spheroid flew into the opposite wall, ricocheted wildly into the ceiling � and made solid contact with B'Elanna Torres's racquet. With a throaty chuckle, the engineer aimed it at the opposite wall. From his vantage point on the floor, Chakotay just watched as the ball rebounded to a spot well out of his reach. Match point.
Retrieving the hovering spheroid, Torres strode over to Chakotay and extended a hand, to pull the sweating first officer to his feet. "You're losing your touch, old man," she chided, teasingly.
Chakotay rolled an aching shoulder, extending his arm experimentally. Damn, he thought, at the twinge of pain. "Old man," indeed. He was going to pay for this tomorrow. Maybe he should visit the Doctor later, and....listen to a lecture on the need to moderate his sporting activities to a level more appropriate to his age and usual level of activity. No, thank you. To Torres, he said archly, "Just a little out of practice. I haven't had a good hoverball match in a long time. Now, if certain chiefs of Engineering had better things to do with their time than moon and spoon with certain pilots...."
"You'd still be old," she retorted, smirking, and loped over to the bench where their towels and drinks had been deposited. Following more slowly, he picked up his own towel, mopping his streaming forehead before he plopped onto the bench and leaned back against the wall, still breathing a little heavily. With somewhat more grace, Torres dropped down beside him, resting her own back on the wall.
For a few minutes, they both just sat there, catching their breath and sipping from their water bottles. Soon, he thought, unable to restrain the slight tensing of his abused muscles at the thought. Soon they would come to the real purpose of this session.
Torres drew in a breath, and he knew she was ready to begin. "So," she said softly, almost casually, looking at him from the corner of her eye, "You do the reset?" The odds were thousands to one that anyone would think to monitor her, or him, at this late date, but they had agreed at the start of this business that it would still be safer to speak obliquely when they could. Besides, she didn't need to say more; he knew full well what she was asking.
"Um-hmm," he answered, as softly, thinking of his morning's work. Ostensibly occupied with crew evaluations in his wardroom, he'd stolen the time to enter a series of commands into the computer -- commands that, until he'd entered them, had existed nowhere but in his own mind, and B'Elanna's. Intricate programming overlaid with an exquisitely crafted set of concealment protocols, his work would only be discovered by someone who knew exactly what he or she was looking for, and had a pretty good idea of the paths Chakotay had taken. The odds were enormous against anyone even guessing he could have entered anything so subtle. Since Chakotay's computer knowledge was mostly self-taught, there was no record of his having been trained in such arts, and he had taken pains to ensure every member of Voyager's crew (longtime Fleeters and former Maquis alike) knew that he wasn't much of a hacker. That common and definite knowledge was his best security now.
When the program was activated, it would perform the designated number of transports for the designated number of people, then shut the transporters down. That it would also dump the warp core was hardly an insignificant side effect. For a first officer to go to such lengths to sabotage his own ship....He quelled the queasy feeling that prospect gave him. If the need to activate this program ever arose, that situation would no longer apply. "How'd it go on your end?"
"Fine," she said laconically. "It was a little easier when we had a one-size-fits-all solution --"
"Don't look at me this time," he interrupted, with a touch of his old humor. "I wasn't anywhere near the Flyer. "
"Ha!" she retorted. "You were watching; that was probably close enough. Everybody knows about you and shuttles."
He shook his head, not bothering to argue, not sure he could summon up a good counter even if he were so inclined. For an erstwhile pilot, he'd had the damnedest luck with Voyager's shuttlecraft. It had gotten to the point where crewmembers assigned to travel with him had taken to bringing good-luck fetishes along for the trip, a few even resting them prominently on the control panel. But all of that was much beside the point now. He drew the conversation back to its original topic, with a dry, "As long as no one knows about you and shuttles."
"They know I'm doing routine maintenance," she said coolly.
"On?"
"Kelly and Magellan."
Mentally, he evaluated the vessels she'd named; respectably sized for shuttles, with decent shielding and armaments. Kelly had the finest long-range communications package of any of the ship's refitted shuttles, while Magellan boasted long-range sensors at a state of the art such as its Macranean designers had never dreamed. Both of those features could prove to be essential, down the line. "Good choices." He did a little math, came up a few places short. "No consensus for our new friends, then," he concluded, knowing B'Elanna would know he was referring to the ex-officers of the Equinox.
"Nope," she snorted. "They might think they're like us, Chakotay, but we sure as hell don't. Most of us don't, anyway."
"Have they been trying to make friends?" he asked, curiously. "Among us?"
"Some of them. They say rebels should stick together, that sort of stuff."
"Hmph." He blew out a breath. "They weren't rebels."
"Nope. More like perfect little Nazis." She used the archaic term with the ease of casual familiarity, and he recognized it as easily, an odd dividend of their shared experience with the Hirogen and a certain WWII holodeck program. "If they'd been rebels, they never would have followed his orders."
"True enough."
"Did you input them?"
He shrugged. "Would've been easy enough to add them. I still have to do some tweaking, now that I know which shuttles you've been maintaining."
"You don't want them, do you?" she asked, doubtfully.
"Hell, no." He took a long drink before shifting the subject. "How about your merc?"
She frowned at the use of that particular code-phrase for Paris, but it was the only one they'd been able to agree on that wasn't glaringly obvious. "Same as before, right?" The agreement had been that Paris would get ten minutes' notice of their plan. If he didn't want to participate, B'Elanna would render him unconscious with a minimum of fuss, just in case he was tempted to raise the alarm.
"I still think that would be best," he answered evenly.
She frowned again. "Is that really necessary? He wouldn't blow the whistle on us."
"Not as things are now," Chakotay agreed. "But if things change? Besides, I think he still feels like he owes her." Her. Kathryn. The captain. "It'd be a conflict for him."
"And it's not for you?"
Stung, he said shortly, "Who's saying that?"
"I'm saying it."
"There's nothing between us." It was a bitter truth, the admission that his sometime hopes for his relationship with Kathryn had come to naught � but it was, nonetheless, the truth.
"Are you sure?" she pressed.
"Nothing that overrides my duty," he answered firmly. He and Kathryn were friends, of sorts, but he would not, could not, let that stop him from acting if he must. He was a captain, after all. He had sworn an oath, and he would uphold it no matter the cost. "Do you trust me to make the call?"
She snorted and shook her head, as if the question was ridiculous. "Of course." Then, changing the subject, she queried, "63?" Seven times nine, as in Seven of Nine, as in, what should we do about her?
He accepted her assurance, and the shift of topic, with a measure of relief. "Never fly." He'd been sure of that from the beginning. Not only did Seven have no sense of her own vulnerability in the situation, her loyalty was more to Janeway specifically than to the crew or any segment of it. If he let Seven know what was going on, the news would reach Janeway's ears before the discussion was fairly concluded. And that would be the end of everything.
"I agree." B'Elanna downed some of her own beverage. "Ditto on the little ducks?" The Borg children.
Even though Seven's young charges had always made Chakotay a little uncomfortable, he was reluctant to leave them to their fate, the more so since, like Seven, they could truly have no idea of what probably awaited them. Still, it wasn't as if B'Elanna could install Borg alcoves on shuttles without attracting a great deal of completely unwanted attention. And even if Seven might have been able to manage without an alcove (he wasn't sure one way or the other), the children certainly could not. "Yes. No choice."
"True. Too bad." She picked up her towel and made to stand. "Another game tomorrow, old man?"
He also rose, bending to collect his own towel. "In a couple of days, I think." He didn't want to risk getting back into his covert program quite so soon. "These old bones need a day off."
"Maybe next time I'll take it easy on you."
Snorting, he shook his head, not certain if she was referring to the ostensible or the actual subject of their discussion. Either way, she'd never taken it easy on him. But then, he had never asked her to. "That would be a nice change of pace," he answered wryly, throwing the towel over his shoulder and heading for the men's changing room. "Give my love to Blue-Eyes."
"That'll scare hell out of him," she retorted, flashing him a grin as she headed toward the women's changing room.
Once in the shower area, he let his own fractional smile slip away. Though he knew these little planning sessions were necessary, just as the work he had done this morning was necessary, they depressed him all the same. If they ever had to act on their plans, if his work and B'Elanna's should ever actually see use, it would only be because fate -- in the form of Starfleet and the Federation -- had left Voyager's Maquis no better option than to flee the ship before the authorities could capture them. No better choice than to become outlaw once more. Still, so far as most of the erstwhile Maquis were concerned, being outlaw was better than being imprisoned. He couldn't say he entirely disagreed with the sentiment. If it were only him, and he were only dealing with the Federation, he might have taken his chances with its courts and sentencing. No prison term was infinite, after all, but outlawry could become a life sentence. But he didn't know what rights the Cardassians might claim in this little matter of the last of the Maquis -- especially those who'd been citizens of Cardassian-dominated worlds -- and he couldn't risk any of his crew being turned over to that brutal `justice' system. Not to mention, there were those in his crew who had their own reasons to fear even Federation courts.
He stripped off the sweaty exercise clothes and tossed them onto a bench before stepping into the showers. Choosing water rather than sonics, he adjusted the temperature upward and stood under the steamy cascade for a few minutes, as if the flowing stream could wash the tension from his body or the stain from his soul.
Of course, all of their plans were predicated on the possibility that there would be some opportunity for escape, once Voyager came into contact with Starfleet ships or reached the Alpha Quadrant. If Voyager were to reach its home quadrant via some wormhole that threw it into the heart of Federation space, then there would be no point in the Maquis fleeing the ship, for there would be no haven they could hope to reach at a shuttle's maximum speed. Only if Voyager flew, or was thrown to, the borders of Alpha space -- or if its first contact with Starfleet and the Federation proved to be the Starfleet ships Kathryn had informed him were heading toward a rendezvous with the space-tossed ship -- would the Maquis have the chance for a getaway. But if the chance arose, he meant that his crew should be able to take advantage of it.
If Kathryn should ever learn of their plans, she would stop them, and she would feel betrayed into the bargain. With the unshakable optimism of a captain who already had, against all odds, brought her crew more than thirty thousand light-years closer to home, she believed that she would be able to protect the men and women of his old crew from the wrath of two star-spanning governments. Fearless herself, she would not understand his fear, or that of his crew; she would see their doubts as insults. She must never know the plans, never even learn they existed, unless and until the time came to put them into operation.
She had asked him, when Voyager got the first of its new series of messages from Starfleet Command, whether he was worried for the fate of his old crew. He had passed her query off casually, with a light, "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," and helped her to compose a message she felt would be likely to inspire Starfleet Command to advocate clemency.
He had not told her that, for him, that bridge crossed the Rubicon, that once he made the crossing he could never turn back.
Finishing his shower, he toweled himself off briskly before stepping into the uniform he'd brought along, and brushing his thick damp hair neatly into place.
Perhaps it would never come to that. Perhaps Kathryn was right, and his Maquis crew's work on Voyager would truly be enough to absolve them of the "guilt" of their older affiliation. Having experienced the Federation's capriciousness himself, Chakotay did not know if he could believe that, but he could still hope for it. He did hope for it. But he knew too well that hope was an unreliable companion.
Stuffing his exercise clothes into his duffel, Chakotay strode briskly out of the locker room and headed for his quarters, planning to discard the duffel there before going to his next destination. He was scheduled to meet Kathryn in the mess hall for a late lunch, prior to the end of her duty shift and the start of his.
He knew that, once there, he would eat, and talk, and probably even smile. Just as he always had, just as he always would.
At the moment, though, he could not imagine how.
