The trouble was—he had not been kidnapped. This was his real life. He had met a woman whom he liked, and could well have loved, and he had been ready to start another chapter in his life with her. But she wasn’t real. I wasn’t that woman. I was Voyager’s captain, and I was never going to stay.
Still, I had been happy there.
* * *
This whole period I recall as one of people getting to know their friends and family again. But we had one sad goodbye to say, to our dear friend and traveling companion Neelix. We were celebrating First Contact Day, Neelix-style, when we received news of a Talaxian settlement hidden within an asteroid belt nearby. I sent Paris and Tuvok, with Neelix, in the Delta Flyer to investigate, but the shuttle was shot down and crash-landed. They were rescued by the Talaxians, who had reached the asteroid after many years of exile, and after failing to establish a home elsewhere. We welcomed visitors from the Talaxians aboard Voyager to demonstrate our friendship. I could see that Neelix was becoming close to one of them, Dexa, a widow with a young son, Brax, of whom Neelix was also plainly becoming very fond. I wondered, watching them, whether this might be the end of Neelix’s time with us. There were numerous complications, however: a company of miners was laying claim to the asteroid belt and trying to get the Talaxians to leave. But having at last built a home there, after many false starts, they were not willing to go. And I was caught up in the Prime Directive: I could not actively involve Voyager.
But Neelix, of course, was not bound by the Prime Directive… as Tuvok, so it turned out, had made clear to him. This understanding between my outlandish and certainly very extroverted morale officer and my staid and utterly introverted chief tactical officer was one that I had noted on various occasions, although I think neither of them quite knew what to do about it. I have wondered whether it was some aftereffect of the merging of their DNA so early in our voyage. Neelix irritated Tuvok; Tuvok perplexed Neelix. And yet when it came down to it, Tuvok proved to be Neelix’s staunchest ally on board ship, and the one who came up with the solutions that brought Neelix a very happy ending, as far as his story on Voyager was concerned.
Prompted by Tuvok—I learned later, much later—Neelix realized that he had, over the years, become a little more than a chef and a host. “The most resourceful person I have ever met,” Tuvok said to me later. He had that right—and I daresay Neelix had learned a trick or two from us along the way, even as he taught us many things (if not, yet, managing to persuade Tuvok to dance). Neelix devised a plan for the Talaxians to defend themselves against the miners—a successful plan, with perhaps a little last-minute intervention from the Delta Flyer. The miners were beaten back, and the Talaxian colony left in peace.
And yet Neelix decided to stay on Voyager—out of loyalty to us, and not wanting to give up on his friends. I could see it was breaking his heart. He had been away from his own kind for a very long time —an exile surely at least as painful as any that the rest of the crew were going through. And, at heart, he was a family man: he loved children—and Naomi was growing up now; she didn’t need a babysitter —and he wanted companionship. This was plainly the wrong decision for him: But how could he put his loyalty to us to one side?
Tuvok, in fact, came up with the idea: that methodical mind of his must have been sifting through to work out a solution. “It seems to me, Captain,” he said, “that as we draw ever closer to home, and put the Delta Quadrant behind us, we might benefit from having some kind of ambassador here. Someone whom we know well, and whom we trust.”
By Jove, he had it, and when I put the idea to Neelix, I could see the sheer joy and relief on his face. He could have everything: company, fatherhood, and our continued friendship through the new transgalactic communications techniques. It was a deeply moving occasion, saying goodbye to him, and I am proud of my crew, and the honor that they showed him, lining the corridors to say farewell. I saw Naomi Wildman, standing beside me, wiping away a tear, and I have to say that if I had an ocular implant, it would have been on the fritz that day. Last of all, Tuvok stepped forward, and gave the softest of soft-shoe shuffles, and said those words that his people had said in greeting to mine, all those long years ago:
“Live long—and prosper.”
And so we said, not goodbye, but—till we meet again, to our first and best friend from the Delta Quadrant. Till we meet again, our dear Ambassador.
* * *
Of all the pigheaded, stubborn, and downright frustrating people whom I encountered during these years, there was none to compare with my own damn self. O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us, To see oursels as ithers see us! You’ve got to wonder about someone willing to pull rank on herself. Damn woman. But in the end, Admiral Janeway, my future self, helped bring us home—like she, like I—had promised, all those years ago.
She travelled back in time to come and offer us a route back via a Borg transwarp conduit, but it seemed to me that our priority was to destroy the transwarp network and protect the Alpha Quadrant from Borg attacks. I was not unaware that I was facing, yet again, a choice very like that which had stranded us here in the first place: to use alien technology to take us home, or to destroy it and protect others. The admiral complicated matters greatly by revealing details of her future to me: twenty-three years in the Delta Quadrant (dear god, the prospect…!), the deaths of Seven of Nine and twenty-two others, and the horrible thought of seeing my friend Tuvok’s faculties decline… But the crew were prepared to take these risks, if it meant destroying the network. The future is never fixed.
In the end, there was a sacrifice—the admiral took her shuttlecraft into the transwarp hub, in search of the Unicomplex, the center of Borg operations and the lair of their queen. I can only guess at how that encounter unfolded, and what my future self must have suffered. But she was our Trojan horse: she was carrying with her a pathogen that, when released, devastated the Unicomplex, causing it to be destroyed. For a while we believed our plan had succeeded completely. We entered a transwarp corridor, and then saw we were being pursued by a Borg sphere. As we shot along the corridor, I took Voyager into the center of the sphere and, just as we came out—a mere light-year from my own home system—I detonated a torpedo that destroyed the sphere.
We looked out on a fleet of ships—Starfleet vessels, all. Our friends; our comrades.
We had found the straight path. We were home.
* * *
The ships that had been sent to fight the Borg were now an honor guard. They took us to McKinley Station, where Voyager had launched all those years ago, and we docked our ship. Earth was so close I could almost touch it. We were all in a hurry to leave the ship—but first I went to sickbay, to check on the newest member of my crew: Miral Torres Paris, a fine, healthy little girl. B’Elanna was beatific, if exhausted; Tom looked blitzed. I think neither of them had entirely registered that we were home. I don’t blame them. There’s some question whether Miral was born in the Delta Quadrant or the Alpha Quadrant. To my mind, she’s the product of both: the first truly transgalactic child. I guess if our voyage was to have a legacy, it would be this: that the time we spent there as Federation ambassadors, as representatives of Starfleet, would mean that when others visited, there would be places where we would be remembered fondly, and in friendship.
I waited until everyone had left the ship to join their families and friends, and then I sat for a little while on my bridge. It was hard now, after everything, to say goodbye. Chakotay came to find me.
“Kathryn,” he said. “Your public awaits.”
I stood up. I went to join him, standing in front of the dedication plaque, and we embraced.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Kathryn, it’s been my privilege to serve.”
We left together. I had a date—with my first real cup of coffee in seven years, and with my mother, and my sisters, and the four little girls in their care.
CHAPTER TWELVE
WHAT YOU BRING BACK—2378… AND BEYOND
; HOW DID WE ALL FARE, ON OUR RETURN? How did we find life back in the Alpha Quadrant, once we had achieved our hearts’ desire? I’ve thought, many times across my life, that you should be careful what you wish for: not everything turns out to be as you expected. As a child, I wanted more than anything to visit the stars, to be whisked, like Dorothy Gale, away from the quotidian to a marvelous land, but the reality proved very different. Much more of my life among those strange new worlds turned out to be everyday worries: about resources, and maintenance and repairs; about the psychological well-being of the people toward whom I had a duty of care. Life in Oz turned out to have a lot of housekeeping! So what about the return home? Some of us settled back very quickly into our old roles and lives; for others, the adjustment proved more difficult—they had begun their lives on Voyager, or else come into their own there. How might the Alpha Quadrant suit them now?
The first few weeks were extremely odd. Given how limited our communication time had been, what none of us had entirely realized was the extent to which, since the Pathfinder Project had made contact with us, we had become celebrities. (The folks at Pathfinder had decided not to apprise us of this, thinking we had enough worry about making the journey home without adding the sense that the whole Federation was watching.) As a result, we came home to learn that people knew our names, our faces, and our stories. The news of our arrival home was greeted with enormous public interest. There were the usual official functions, meeting ambassadors and dignitaries, top brass and all the rest of it, but there were also ticker-tape parades, public meet and greets, invitations to speak… I was granted the key to the city of Bloomington, Indiana, a great honor. Wherever we went, even simply walking down the street to get a cup of coffee, we were stopped. People wanted to get a holo-image, explain how they felt about us, tell us where they were when they heard we were home. It was deeply touching, such as when, for example, you were told how our voyage had been an inspiration or had helped someone find hope. At the same time, it was very disconcerting. You felt strangely… watched. (I noticed how many of us who had the option suddenly grew beards, and there were some significant alteration in hairstyles across the board too.)
I was extremely recognizable, and I guessed that, as the captain, and the face of Voyager, this wasn’t going to go away. I had a faint inkling of how it must have been to be Neil Armstrong, back from the moon, with everyone wanting to have a chance to speak to him. Foolish, intrusive questions, sometimes: What shirts did we wear? What food did we like? Who were we not looking forward to seeing again? It was hard sometimes to keep up one’s public face: if you were just trying to get home after a long day, and someone stopped you, hoping for an inspirational moment. I tried my best, and I sincerely hope no one was ever disappointed. I increasingly found that I preferred to spend a lot of time around Starfleet facilities, and I knew that I was going to have to find a remote place to set up home—my old apartment in San Francisco had become too well known, and people would drop by at all hours “just to say hello.” A shame: I liked that place, but it wasn’t practical any longer. For the short term, I relocated to quarters within the Starfleet Command complex, which were quite sufficient for my immediate purposes, and kept intrusion at a minimum. I was bombarded with many requests for personal appearances, not all of which I could accept. I should note one that was a very special honor: my invitation to address the Amelia Earhart Society. What a speech to be able to give! How incredible to think that this woman was, surely, still alive and making a future with those colonists! That was an extraordinary evening, a highlight of my public career. Voyager’s logs changed people’s perceptions a great deal.
While I negotiated the highs and lows of celebrity, I should note that my family had quite a tough time in the first couple of years: Mom was deluged by uninvited visitors at the farm, although she was quite brisk and mercenary about the whole business, using it to promote awareness of the situation on Cardassia Prime, where she had become involved in the relief effort and postwar reconstruction. Phoebe and Yianem found this period very hard, trying to protect the girls’ privacy, and there were several occasions when stern words were sent from Starfleet on their account to various journalists who were hoping to make their name from catching an image of them. We got the public on our side here, and the girls were declared off limits. I think they often used Yianem’s surname when they were traveling, rather than identifying as Janeways.
There was one meeting that I did manage to keep completely private: with Mark. A few messages had passed between us on our return, and I think we both hesitated as to whether this was a good idea, or whether we were simply opening old wounds that should be left to heal. In the end, we both agreed that we needed closure. We decided on an impersonal setting, one of those comfortable but anodyne lounges that are all around Starfleet Command. I was glad of the familiarity of the setting, since this was a very difficult meeting for me. I did not, and could not, and would not blame him for finding someone else: for God’s sake, the man had been widowed once already. I will not describe the details of this meeting and keep them for me and Mark alone, but there were tears on both sides, and many regrets, but there was also, as we had both hoped, healing. In the end, neither side had meant harm. We met again afterward, and this time I met his wife, a good and lovely woman who has made him very happy, and his little boy. And I was reunited with my beautiful Mollie. Mark’s son was devoted to her, which made me shed a few tears. Love me, love my dog. I took one of the pups from Mollie’s next litter. I was glad to see Mark so happy, and we remain in touch. But it was hard not to feel regret for the life together that we had lost. I asked him whether he would like the copy of The Divine Comedy back—it had been an engagement present after all. “Oh, Kathryn,” he said. “I would have followed you anywhere—if I’d only known where you were. It’s yours, and always will be.”
It was easiest to throw myself straight back into Starfleet. Its protocols, rules, and regulations had been such a support throughout our time in the Delta Quadrant and were a source of continuity on my return. Naturally there was an extensive debriefing, on both sides. I for one was learning about the rapidly changing situation in the Alpha Quadrant in the wake of the Dominion War. We had received detailed briefings during our latter months, after two-way communications were established, but the reality of being back, and seeing the impact of that brutal conflict not just upon Starfleet but upon the wider Federation, and beyond, took some readjustment. I found Starfleet to be a twitchier, more paranoid organization than the one I had left, and I had to realize the extent to which the (rational) fear of infiltration by Changelings had fundamentally altered the culture. As I say, nobody these days would skip a weapons’ sweep when welcoming an admiral aboard. And then I would learn of the deaths of old friends and colleagues, people whom I had hoped to catch up with on my return, killed by Jem’Hadar. We have all said, at our regular crew reunions, how disorientating it has been, not to have this shared experience. The whole quadrant had changed in our absence.
On the other side, Starfleet Command was extremely keen to talk to me and my crew in detail about our time in the Delta Quadrant. I was now the Starfleet captain with more experience of both the Q Continuum and the Borg than any other, and there were hours of sessions devoted to these encounters. Our adaptations of Borg technology also formed the topic of many a discussion—and a dedicated team was put together to work on these innovations. Seven of Nine was naturally a person of great interest. There were lengthy sessions over specific incidents: the fate of the Equinox was a real concern, and I know that this case study now forms a significant part of an extended and compulsory course at the Academy on the Ethics of Command. I think we were all shocked at how rapidly the situation had broken down there. All cadets now attend at least two compulsory simulations which place them in environments where they find themselves with limited resources and no expectation of backup. I should note too that, following our reprogramming examples, it is no longer possible to delete the ethi
cs subroutines on any EMH, or, indeed, any other kind of emergency hologram. I spoke privately to Ransom’s family, whom I felt needed to know the full story. I am pleased to report that the five surviving crew members, who acquitted themselves faultlessly during their time on Voyager, have gone on to good things. Marla Gilmore was the only one to remain in Starfleet, and she has had a fine career. I am glad that this impossible situation in which she found herself, at the beginning of that career, under commanders who lost their way, has not blighted her potential in any way. We remain in regular contact, and I understand that she will be overseeing the cadet course on the Equinox next semester. She will, I think, be an inspiration to those students. She learned the hard way, and she has indeed learned. If anyone can teach these students to appraise themselves honestly, it will be her.
As for those of the crew who had been members of the Maquis: that war was long over as far as I was concerned. Nonetheless, a few of the top brass, predominantly those who had served out in the DMZ or who had personally been let down by Maquis defectors, were considerably more resistant. They argued that due process should be followed, and a dangerous precedent set if it was not. The matter was resolved quite simply: I threatened to resign my commission in the most public way possible if full amnesty was not granted. It’s amazing how quickly that focused everyone’s minds. All my field commissions were reconfirmed, and those former Maquis crew members who wanted to remain in Starfleet were able to do so without any repercussions. Many, however, were eager to return to their home worlds, to see how they had fared since the Dominion War. We see less of these people than we do others at our reunions— but they do stay in touch, and even drop by, every so often.
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