Chapter Text
Starfleet Headquarters, San Francisco, Earth. Day 1 after Frontier Day, 0400 hours.
Kathryn Janeway had once tried to do the math on the amount of coffee that had gone into her system during her whole life.
From her early days at the Academy, to the long voyage through the Delta Quadrant, to all the years that had passed since their return… She was sure that there were more than a few organic farmers, somewhere in Colombia or Brazil, who owed the prosperity of their business to her unrelenting addiction.
She had interrupted the exercise once she’d reached one hundred thousand cups. Enough black coffee to fill a small swimming pool… and to make her wonder what would happen to her body if she quit the habit. But… after all, she had survived the Borg, the Hirogen, the Year of Hell, all thanks to her determination and her caffeinated will of iron. Admiral Janeway was sure there weren’t many things that could kill her anymore, apart from the natural process of getting old.
That is, until Frontier Day arrived and all Hell broke loose.
During the previous weeks, she had stubbornly refused every invitation from Shelby and several other admirals to grace one of the ships in the Fleet with her presence. It wasn’t a boycott, exactly… but Janeway had been opposed to the idea of an interconnected Fleet from the very beginning. The idea of every ship functioning with just one mind had some Borg-like undertones that made her feel terribly uneasy, and she wasn’t going to endorse it by taking part in an absurd parade.
She had stayed in her office at Starfleet Headquarters that day, watching the telecast relayed from Shelby’s flagship, with Chakotay by her side. He had listened to every expletive that came from her mouth with legendary patience, assuring her that the ‘fleet formation’ nonsense would probably be abandoned shortly after the Frontier Day celebrations had ended, and that things would be perfectly fine.
Janeway hadn’t expected her husband to be so spectacularly wrong.
The first inkling of a problem appeared when Shelby suddenly received a hail from the USS Titan. Janeway was aware that the Constitution-Class ship had gone rogue the day before… and that Seven of Nine was on board, along with some other Starfleet legends with a decades long reputation of happily ignoring the rules every time it suited them. But she didn’t worry too much: she was sure that the Titan would soon return to Earth having solved some previously unsolvable space mystery, Picard would pull some uncanny explanation out of his ass, like he always did, and everything would return to normal.
Instead… she had witnessed, horrified, how Admiral Shelby was ruthlessly phasered by two members of her own crew. A cacophony of alarmed voices had risen from the other ships; stuff about possessed crewmen, erratic behavior, and…
Borg.
As soon as Janeway’s brain registered the word, she had grabbed Chakotay by the sleeve of his uniform, leading him in a mad race towards the Headquarters’ armory and grabbing every other officer they could find along the way. Luckily for them, many young people who worked at the premises had been given leave that day… but they still had to outrun a few Borgified youngsters before they reached the armory and tried to make a stand from there.
A couple of hours later, they had almost managed to retake the Main Command building, stunning a few dozen young people that had been possessed by the Borg. But they were still outnumbered and outgunned… And that’s when the planetary defenses fell and the bombs started falling. Janeway had gripped the phaser rifle on her right hand and held on to Chakotay’s arm with her left, completely sure that the moment of her death had arrived. And completely determined to go into the unknown kicking and screaming, fighting to her last breath.
Then, all of a sudden… silence. No comms, no noise. Only the faint voices of the survivors wondering if it was really over, and the stunned muteness of the ex-Borg kids as they broke free from the Queen’s control and realized what they had done.
She had started assessing the damage to the Headquarters complex right away and trying to coordinate the restoring of the comms, while Chakotay saw to the injured and organized the search for survivors. He had always been good with people… and that was his job anyway, as head of the Personnel division. The Admiral had returned to her office as soon as the maintenance crew could clear a path to it, trying to make sense of the situation and of the stream of incomplete messages that arrived, painfully slowly, through the mangled comms systems of the Fleet.
The good news was that, of the more than three hundred ships in orbit, only one, the Excelsior, had been completely destroyed. The bad news, however… every single surviving ship was damaged, and the ever growing list of casualties was already too long. Janeway tried not to think of all the people she knew, forbade herself from calling Chakotay downstairs in Personnel and asking him the whereabouts of every former member of the Voyager crew, or of their children who had joined Starfleet.
That had been several hours before. It was now four in the morning… and there she was, gathering intel from scattered sources, coordinating salvage teams and repair operations, trying to work more and think less. She was also considering the idea of asking one of the doctors in the building to attach a coffee IV to her arm.
Suddenly, Janeway’s concentration was broken by a polite knock.
The Admiral frowned. Nobody, unless they were a holonovel character from a past century, knocked on doors anymore. Then she remembered that the building was functioning on limited auxiliary power, and that the sliding doors weren’t exactly sliding on their own anymore. She stood up, painfully noticing the protests of her lower back, and used the manual override to open the formerly automatic door.
Out in the corridor stood a young Vulcan woman who looked vaguely familiar. Lieutenant, Junior grade, with short hair that was an unusual (for a Vulcan) shade of auburn, and with a calm and efficient air around her that not even the chaotic events of the previous hours had managed to disturb.
“Apologies for the late hour, Admiral Janeway. May I?”
“Come in, Lieutenant…”
“T’Shak, Ma’am.”
“Lieutenant T’Shak. Please, have a seat.”
Admiral Janeway returned to her desk, slumping on her chair. The Vulcan woman didn’t take the offer of a seat at first, standing very straight until Janeway raised her eyes from her terminal and pointed a finger at the visitor.
“You’re making me crane my neck, Lieutenant. Sit. And tell me to what do I owe this visit.”
At last, the woman descended gracefully on the chair across the Admiral’s desk.
“My visit has to do with Lieutenant Miral Paris, Admiral.”
Janeway closed her eyes for a second, massaging her temples with her fingertips.
“I know some people have contacted us looking for information on Miral… On Lieutenant Paris”, she said in a tired voice. “And I simply don’t have it! The last thing I know is that she was on board a Klingon ship, like she has been for the last few months, and… the sparse information we have for now says the Klingons weren’t that badly affected by the Borg invasion as we were. So, whoever is calling to ask about her, just tell them to stop using Starfleet Command as their personal phone book.”
“Phone book?”
“Nevermind”, she shrugged, waving a hand. “I mean… tell them that she’s probably fine but there are absolutely no news on her.”
“That is the question, Admiral”, T’Shak explained in a measured tone. “Lieutenant Paris’s name has just come up in a report sent from one of the ships in our Fleet. I took it to Admiral Chakotay first, of course…”
“Of course. Personnel is his turf, after all.”
“But since the Lieutenant was on the list of people you asked to be informed about as soon as there was any news, he told me to bring it to you.”
“One of our ships?” the Admiral repeated. “How did she get there?”
“I am afraid I ignore it, Ma’am.”
“So, what is it?” Janeway said, with a look of concern on her face. “A list of casualties? A request for aid?”
“No, Ma’am. It’s a… a fraternization report”, the Vulcan said, depositing a padd on the desk.
Janeway covered her mouth with her hand, mostly to prevent T’Shak from seeing her shocked expression.
“Why would she…? What ship…? Oh, what the Hell, let me see that!”
Janeway grabbed the padd and started reading, eyes wide.
“Well, she certainly is her father’s daughter”, she finally huffed, reclining on her seat.
“I am afraid I don’t understand, Admiral.”
“It beats me. It simply beats me how two weeks ago she was in the Q’Onos system, chasing pirates or smugglers or whatever it is they do on that Klingon ship of hers, and all of sudden she’s on…” she made a pause to re-read a couple of lines. “On the infamous USS Titan, of all ships, kindly letting us know she has just embarked in a committed relationship with the captain!”
She slammed the padd on the table, startling T’Shak.
“Lieutenant, I need you to contact Commander Seven of Nine on the Titan. She will be on the crew manifest with the name Hansen… Don’t go through the ship’s public comms channels, and do not speak of this to anyone.”
“Ma’am, communications with the Fleet are not going through in ninety-two per cent of the cases. Besides, I am just a clerk in the Personnel division. I am not authorized…”
“I don’t want to hear any excuses, T’Shak. I’m reassigning you to be my executive assistant until we get to the bottom of this; you absolutely need to get me in contact with Seven. As for this… this captain Liam Theodore Shaw”, she read the name on the padd, frowning. “I want every file Starfleet Personnel has on him on my desk immediately. What ships he has served on, promotion history, personal history… Up to the tiniest detail, classified or not. I want to know everything about this man; even what he used to have for breakfast when he was a cadet at the Academy, understood? And I don’t care how long it takes… Sleepy or not, everybody works today!”
The Vulcan woman’s left eyebrow rose delicately in a barely there show of alarm, but that was her only reaction.
“I will get the information right away, Ma’am.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. Leave the door open after you leave; I don’t want to deal with that blasted manual override again.”
After the clerk left, Janeway paced up and down the office, resisting the temptation to storm into Chakotay’s department and ask for his help to get to the bottom of the mystery. But Miral was alive and… quite well, judging by that report, and in the meantime there were more pressing matters to attend to.
A sharp-toned series of chirps coming from the terminal on her desk made her jump, and she tapped the screen with a shaky hand hoping it wouldn’t be more bad news.
“Commodore LaForge?” she exclaimed, blinking.
“Good evening, Admiral”, he greeted in a tired voice. “Or… good morning, if you prefer. I wasn’t expecting to find you awake at this hour, but I’m really glad I did.”
“Sleep is a luxury past a certain age, you know that. Where are you, Geordi? We’ve been getting some very confusing reports about you, Picard, the Enterprise-D, and… well, now that we’re talking I’m really looking forward to a detailed account of all this mess.”
“You already know that we destroyed the Borg cube and Picard rescued his son, right?”
“His previously nonexistent son; yes, I’ve heard”, Janeway remarked. “Admiral Picard owes a lot of explanations to a lot of people, Commodore… and you too, considering that you and your colleagues used one of the supposedly decommissioned ships in your museum to send the Borg Queen into oblivion one more time. Are you back on Earth yet?”
“Yes. Both Jack Crusher and the Admiral needed medical attention, and since the Spacedock isn’t operative anymore we locked the Enterprise in orbit and took a shuttle to London; Doctor Crusher has a house here. They’re fine now… in fact, the whole gang is asleep but me”, he said with a tired smile. “I’ve stayed awake trying to contact my daughters in the Fleet for hours, but you know the state of the comms; the only thing I’ve managed to learn just now is that both Alandra and Sidney survived the attack unharmed. My girls are alive, Kathryn… that’s all that matters to me right now.”
“I’m really glad to hear that, Geordi. You know, I was supposed to be the bane of the Borg… but I think that distinction should go to you and the crew of the Enterprise-D now.”
“Not just the Enterprise crew… And that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, frowning.
“There was a second Borg vessel involved in the attack; a sphere, too far away from the first one to be reachable by the Enterprise. And we needed a second ship to take care of it, so I had to…” Geordi hesitated for a long moment. “Admiral, I had to set Protocol Delta Five in motion.”
“You sent the Delta Flyer to fight the sphere? But the only people with the codes to activate the Protocol are B’Elanna, myself, and…” Janeway froze in the middle of the sentence, as it dawned on her what LaForge’s words meant. “Oh, my God. Miral.”
“Yes. Luckily for us, the Klingon ship where Lieutenant Paris was serving came in aid of the Titan, and she volunteered for the mission before I had to give any orders. She did a great job, Kathryn… I don’t personally know her parents, but since they’re old friends of yours you can tell them that they raised a young woman with nerves of steel.”
“So that’s why she’s not on the Klingon ship anymore.”
“Exactly. I haven’t told anyone else about the Delta Flyer yet… It’s classified information, of course, and I’m not sure how much Starfleet Command will want to make public. After all, there was an extremely illegal weapon on that ship.”
“I will assume all responsibility for that, Commodore”, she stated. “And considering that the transphasic torpedo on the Flyer has been essential to repelling the Borg invasion, I don’t think I’ll get much flack for it.”
“Good. I just wanted to let you know in advance, before it reaches you through the official channels.”
“One more thing, Geordi”, Janeway said, narrowing her eyes. “Who else was manning the Delta Flyer, apart from Miral?”
“Captain Liam Shaw, of the Titan; I thought Commander Seven would do it, but Shaw volunteered first. Apparently he and Seven have had their differences in the past… but he’s a brilliant engineer, and a great team leader, so I felt the Flyer would be in good hands with him.”
“In good hands”, Janeway repeated, pensive. “Thank you, Commodore… You’ve just shed some light on the very murky waters of yesterday. And now, do I have the authority to order you to go to bed?”
“Not really… but I’m going to take that suggestion anyway. Goodnight, Kathryn.”
Admiral Janeway ended the call and rested her head on her hands for a moment. Her body was fully feeling the exhaustion of the long day while her mind was racing with the new revelations about Miral, the Borg, the Flyer, and that Captain Shaw who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. She didn’t move from that position until the dutiful Lieutenant T’Shak returned five minutes later, carrying a handful of padds.
The Vulcan officer let out a discreet cough that made Janeway open her eyes.
“I have the information you required about Captain Shaw, Admiral”, the woman stated, carefully lining three devices in front of her. “Academy records, service history, personal records.”
The Admiral’s hand flew to the third padd, quickly skimming through its contents until she found what she was looking for.
“Well, at least he’s not married”, she muttered, somewhat relieved.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing, Lieutenant. Thank you, you’ve been really useful”, she said, intending to send T’Shak on her merry way.
The Vulcan officer, however, didn’t move from where she stood. And the Admiral had worked with Vulcans long enough to know when they were trying to make themselves interesting.
“Is there anything else?” Janeway asked at last. “Any news on Seven of Nine?”
“I am afraid it has been impossible so far to reach the USS Titan, or Commander Hansen”, explained T’Shak. “But there is one more document, Admiral… a classified file that requires Level Ten security clearance.”
Janeway frowned, as a small data rod marked with a blue label appeared in the Lieutenant’s hand.
“Level Ten? That’s unusual for personnel data.”
“Apparently, it contains additional information about Captain Shaw’s psychological profile.”
Janeway reached for the storing device and stared at the Vulcan clerk, who seemed a bit too curious about the new development.
“Thank you, Lieutenant… Don’t let me detain you.”
Once she found herself alone again the Admiral went to the replicator, got her umpteenth cup of black coffee of the night and started reading… slowly and in order, this time.
She started with Captain Shaw’s Academy records: good grades, top marks for effort on practically every subject, bonus marks for having been an enlisted crewman before accessing higher training. His personal records didn’t tell her anything relevant, apart from the already acknowledged lack of a past or present wife; the man himself happened to be quite handsome according to the picture on his file, with his high cheekbones and intriguing grayish green eyes. He was sensibly younger than her, of course; but Janeway wasn’t blind and she could appreciate his good looks and intense stare.
As she started reading the next padd, the Admiral raised her eyebrows in a silent gesture of admiration.
Shaw’s official service history was so brilliant, it practically sparkled. As an engineer, his work had been impeccable from the start, even when he was just an enlisted mechanic. His ascension on the Command ladder, steady and well deserved. And then, as captain, it got even better: gushing praise from every crewmember under his command, dozens of missions completed with zero incidents, gleaming commendations from four or five different Admirals…
Janeway rested her chin on her hand, frowning. That was the service sheet of a man who saw the captain’s pips as a sign of duty, not privilege. A man who had never put a foot wrong in his life, who didn’t match at all with the collection of bad boys, rebels and outsiders in Miral’s past (that darned Betazoid neo-hippie during her sophomore Academy year had been a particularly low point). If you judged him by performance and observance of the rules alone, Liam Shaw was the most perfect captain in the history of Starfleet…
Except for the part where he had thrown caution to the wind and started a relationship with a mid-ranking officer half his age.
“And now, let’s find out what dark and disturbing secrets you’re hiding, Captain”, she said, pensive.
Hoping that the classified information would help her shed some light into the Shaw enigma, Janeway connected the data rod to her terminal and entered her Level Ten security code to unlock the mysterious file, looking increasingly worried as she advanced through the document.
“USS Constance… Wolf 359… Mandatory counseling…”, she said to herself in an anguished whisper. “Miral, my girl, what on Earth are you getting into?”