She retrieved it and placed it in the palm of her hand, smiling at the remembrances it brought back. The item was a small wooden box with intricate symbols carved on its face and sides.
Looks like I’m going to have to find those original designs, she mused.
“Admiral?” Decan’s voice interrupted her reverie.
“What is it?”
“Incoming transmission from Commander Tuvok.”
“Damn it,” Janeway muttered. “Put it through.”
Seconds later, Tuvok’s face appeared on the viewscreen before her.
“Good evening, Admiral,” he greeted her.
“When are you leaving Earth?” she asked immediately.
“Within the hour,” he replied.
“Damn it,” she said again. “I’m so sorry, Tuvok. I really wanted to see you before you left.”
“I appreciate the sentiment, Admiral, but there is no need. Although seeing you once again in person would have been gratifying, I can as easily bid you farewell in this manner.”
Janeway didn’t bother trying to explain her completely irrational sense that she should meet with Tuvok before he departed for Vulcan. His family was reuniting there for an extended vacation, an event it had taken months to schedule, despite the fact that three of Tuvok’s four children, Sek, Varith, and Asil, still made their home there. Tuvok had mentioned that his third son was not coming. Elieth had relocated to Deneva after Voyager was lost and married a woman, Ione, whom Tuvok had yet to meet. While she knew he was hurt, her Vulcan friend would deny it. It was going to be a long summer without him.
“Promise me you’ll pass along my regards to T’Pel and the rest of your family,” she requested.
“Of course, Admiral.”
“Did you speak to Seven?”
“I did. She is quite amenable to the idea of joining the faculty at the Academy for the summer session. If all goes well, I believe she may choose to stay on.”
“She’s not happy at the Institute any longer, is she?” Janeway asked.
“She did not advise me of any particular dissatisfaction. However, since the Doctor altered his schedule with the group last year, and given the enthusiasm with which she responded to my inquiry, logic suggests that she no longer found her work at the Institute as satisfying as in the past.”
“She was enthusiastic?”
“She said yes.”
Janeway shrugged. For Seven, that probably was as close to enthusiasm as one could hope for.
“And did you advise the Academy of your future plans?” she asked.
“I intend to discuss the matter further with my family before I make a final decision.”
The decision Tuvok was wrestling with, a return to active duty with Starfleet Intelligence, set Janeway’s nerves on edge, but she did her best to hide her qualms. It wasn’t that she doubted his abilities, but the potential dangers of such an assignment gave her pause. It seemed that her need to continue to watch over those she had commanded wasn’t fading with time.
“Did you speak with Captain Chakotay about Starfleet’s plans for Voyager?” Tuvok asked. As this had been the reason for her hurried departure from Earth, it was a reasonable question.
“It turns out I didn’t have to,” she replied. “While we were en route I received word that Command, in their infinite wisdom, has once again chosen to deny Admiral Batiste’s request to send Voyager back to the Delta quadrant. I have to say,” she went on, “I was more surprised than anyone that he had the nerve to bring it up again, after the reception he received last year.”
“You had indicated that he made a most compelling case,” Tuvok acknowledged.
“He did,” Janeway agreed. “Just saying the word Borg elicits a predictable defensive response in most people. And I have to admit that part of me understands Starfleet’s perceived need to learn as much as we can about them.”
“Then your position on the subject has softened?” Tuvok inquired.
“Oh, no.” She shook her head. “Voyager will only return to the Delta quadrant over my dead body.”
“I am sure it will not come to that, Admiral,” Tuvok said.
“Let’s hope not.”
Janeway couldn’t help but smile sadly, certain that Tuvok had others he would wish to speak with before he departed.
“Safe travels, Tuvok.”
Tuvok nodded. “Live long and prosper, Admiral.”
“You too, old friend,” she managed before he terminated the communication.
Forcing aside the unease that nagged at her when she thought of Tuvok’s new path, she looked again at the box. The symbol on its lid stood for hope in an ancient Native American language.
Despite her many concerns and well-grounded fears for the future, she was actually filled with that emotion for the first time in a long while.
JUNE 2380
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Phoebe Janeway knew grief.
She knew that one moment, life was a manageable routine of work and play, things scheduled and things forgotten, appointments to be kept, goals to be strived for, brief flashes of insight followed by days, weeks, and years of groping in the darkness toward another chunk of truth that might make a little more sense of the universe. And always the certainty that what one didn’t achieve today might be done tomorrow. Most of the time, tomorrow felt like it had promised you something, and if you just waited a little longer, that promise would be made real.
Then death would arrive. The world would tilt on its axis in a shocking roar and in an instant every single thing you thought you knew was ripped away from you. Suddenly you were alone and there were huge pieces of flesh and bone missing from the center of your being. Your thoughts refused to run in an orderly fashion. Time passed and you crawled through it in a somnambulant stupor. The living reached out with warm hands to offer what comfort they could, but the noise of one’s own mind made it difficult to hear, let alone respond to their kindness.
Thoughts for the dead would burst through the miasma like weeds. Where are you now? What was it like? Did you know it was coming? If only you’d turned left instead of right…
But those thoughts, however interesting to follow idly until they trickled into the vast unknown, were nothing compared to their insistent companions: the thoughts for oneself.
Death might have been hard on those who died, but at its worst it couldn’t possibly be as hard as what remained for the living.
Inevitably, one day you awoke from the shock of sudden death to find one impossible truth staring you coldly in the face. From this day forward, you must relearn living. You must create for yourself a new life in which the person who has died is no longer present.
You must make peace with the unthinkable.
You must accept loss.
That was the beginning of grief.
Phoebe already knew that for many days to come, grief would dog her waking hours and transform her dreams into terrors. The nightmares her mind would conjure, monsters who would chase her up never-ending staircases, horrific creatures who would use her body for target practice, and all the while she would cry out for the dead to come and save her.
The reality was, grief felt altogether too much like fear.
Phoebe wanted nothing to do with it.
The first person Starfleet had taken from her had been her father. Always on the anniversary of his death, she found herself wondering how she had lived another year without him. Though he and Kathryn had shared many interests, he had been the first and really only person who made Phoebe feel known. All things were possible as long as he lived, because whenever the questions were too hard or the darkness too impenetrable, he was there to shed a little light.
The only consolation his death had ever offered was the new closeness it created with her sister. Kathryn could never replace him, nor had she tried to. But for the first time, Phoebe had seen her sister, not as the dominant force of nature who pursued her dreams with a fury, but as a person, every bit as fragile
as Phoebe herself. She had learned to look past the face Kathryn showed the world. She had seen her broken by the only enemy that could never be conquered, and then watched in awe as Kathryn had risen from the ashes and reclaimed what life was left to her. She had found new dreams, new purposes, and through sheer determination, a new life in which their father’s memory became a beacon to guide them, even in his absence.
Phoebe had been among the handful of people who had never truly given Kathryn or Voyager up for dead. There had been a seismic shift in her body at the moment of her father’s death, though he had died on a remote moon thousands of light-years away from her. For a moment it had felt as if there wasn’t enough air to breathe, as if her limbs had been leeched of their strength and as if her feet had been transformed into lead weights. Several days later she learned that this feeling had coincided precisely with the moment her father’s shuttle had hit the icy sea on that distant moon.
When Voyager was first lost, and in the years of fruitless wondering that followed, Phoebe had searched herself for a similar sensation. This and only this would convince her that Kathryn was dead.
Her faith had been rewarded four years after her sister had disappeared, and their reunion on Earth only three years after that had solidified Phoebe’s belief that there was simply nothing Kathryn could not accomplish.
And then, just a few weeks ago, while sitting at her easel working on her latest commission, she had suddenly found herself unable to breathe.
An anguished cry, no, no, no, no, no, had risen unbidden to her lips.
Staring up now at the gleaming white pillar topped with an eternal flame, which Starfleet had erected in honor of her sister’s memory, Phoebe could find only two coherent thoughts. The first was that the pillar itself seemed a little phallic to commemorate one of Starfleet’s most venerated female officers. It looked like a damned torpedo. The second was that Kathryn would have hated all this fuss.
Hundreds had gathered at Federation Park for the memorial service, and though summer had only just begun, it was already much too hot. To Phoebe’s annoyance, none of the uniformed personnel in attendance were even sweating. Phoebe didn’t think there was a regulation on the books that ordered them not to perspire at a time like this, but then again, it was Starfleet, so one never knew.
Admirals had followed ambassadors in a seemingly never-ending train of speakers, all droning on and on about Kathryn’s most generic virtues: her sense of duty, her willingness to sacrifice herself in service to the Federation, and how honored they had been to know her and to work beside her.
As Phoebe glanced about her and studied the crowd, she felt certain that if there was a heaven and Kathryn was there now looking down on them, she would have been hard pressed not to order these windbags to shut up and get this crowd a little shade and something cold to drink. This thought brought a conspiratorial smile to Phoebe’s lips.
Finally the moment came for Phoebe to rise and take her place at the podium. As the family’s representative at the service, she had been given the honor of speaking last. She had tried in vain to prepare some brief remarks, but had settled on nothing. As she mounted the steps to the platform, she felt a brief surge of anger at Kathryn for putting her in this situation. Kathryn was the public speaker. Kathryn would have known what to say.
But she wasn’t here.
And for all the pretty words about her legacy living on in the lives of those she’d touched, the only truth Phoebe could find in this moment was the most bitter to swallow.
I will never see my sister again.
She was momentarily awed by the sight of the crowd, now that she was finally facing them. She had always secretly suspected that there were very few people in the Federation that her sister didn’t know. Obviously she had underestimated.
Her mother, Gretchen, sat in the front row, trying valiantly to hold back her tears. Their old family friends, Mark and Carla Johnson with their young son, Kevin, were beside her, their faces masks of shock.
Members of Starfleet stood behind the first row of chairs at attention, or parade rest, or whatever stupid thing they called it.
Captain Chakotay looked like a broken stone. He stared at some fixed point near the base of the pillar, oblivious of his surroundings. The always breathtaking figure of Seven of Nine was beside him, and despite the fact that he was a bit taller, Seven appeared to be the only thing preventing him from falling in a heap to the ground.
Next to them were Tom Paris and Harry Kim. These four, along with the holographic Doctor and Commander Tuvok, had been Kathryn’s most frequent visitors after everyone had assumed new roles and assignments following the ship’s return to the Alpha quadrant. Phoebe had met them only a handful of times, but knew that Kathryn had thought of them as family, and that the ties that bound them surpassed those of blood. She felt Tuvok’s absence from the ceremony today most keenly.
The Doctor stood next to three other men: one who could have been his twin in about ten years, a Trill Phoebe knew she’d met but couldn’t place dressed in the blue and black of a Starfleet physician, and the man Phoebe would always credit with returning Kathryn to her long before Voyager had arrived on Earth, Reg Barclay.
Staring out at the throngs of patient listeners, Phoebe finally knew what she wanted to say to them. Taking a deep breath, she began to speak.
“Kathryn Janeway was my sister. In some ways, you had more of her than I did. You shared her working days and nights and grand adventures in distant parts of the galaxy. You know, as I do, that Kathryn dedicated her life to service, and that she would not have minded, in the least, dying in the course of that service.”
Phoebe paused to clear her throat before continuing.
“But I mind very much.
“Kathryn would have accepted death. She would have thought it was her duty. At best, I can only see her death as a necessary evil. She died so that the rest of us can go on living. But let us not mistake that necessary evil for good.
“I can stand here and celebrate her life. But I cannot celebrate her death. It should not have happened—not this way. We have known for years that we have made an enemy of the Borg. Kathryn fought and conquered them many times. Today, they seem to triumph over us. They have taken her from us.
“You are the soldiers of the Federation. It is your duty to make certain that her death was not in vain, nor was it the final chapter in this story. Only you can avenge her, and because she can no longer stand here before us and cry out for justice, I will do it for her.
“For the love I bear her, and for the love each of you still carry with you, I call upon you not to rest until those who are responsible for my sister’s death are made to answer for what they have done. If you truly honor what she lived for, if you truly wish to memorialize the contributions she made to this Federation, do not forget how she lived, or how she died. Do not seek to heal this wound. Keep it open. And let it give you the strength you need to find and destroy the monsters who took her from us.
“Do not take ‘no’ for an answer.
“She wouldn’t have.”
Phoebe’s words took Naomi Wildman by surprise. After so many speeches praising Admiral Janeway, reaffirming her contributions to Starfleet and admiring the nobility of her sacrifice, the admiral’s sister’s words seemed out of place. Obviously, Miss Janeway was angry, but as Naomi searched her heart, she could not find a kindred feeling. She was only terribly saddened by the thought that she would never again be near the captain she had idolized for as long as she could remember.
Naomi wanted to speak with Seven of Nine. Seven usually contacted her at least once a week, and occasionally dropped by for a game of kadis-kot, which Naomi had long ago outgrown but would never acknowledge to Seven. They hadn’t spoken since her mother had greeted her at breakfast one morning a few weeks earlier with puffy, red eyes and told her of Janeway’s death.
More than anything, Naomi wanted to make sure that Seven was okay. Seven wasn’t really good at feeling things.
She was smarter than anyone Naomi knew, even the father she had come to love so much in the past three years. But Naomi could never remember seeing Seven cry. And tears were part of healing. At least that’s what her mother had always told her.
Naomi had brought along a small wreath of white mums for her to leave at the memorial. As soon as the service ended, she had quietly excused her way through the throngs of people standing near it and only managed to come within three meters of the base, as it was already piled with similar offerings.
Apart from the flowers, there was only one thing Naomi wished to say to Admiral Janeway. Maybe since she was dead, she already knew, but Naomi wanted to say it anyway.
Kneeling before the monument and carving out a small space to set the flowers, Naomi whispered softly, “I’m sure Neelix would send his love. Mom has promised to tell him what happened. It may take a while to reach him, but she’ll do it. Don’t worry. I’ll remind her.”
Julia held Owen’s hand as he spoke softly to Admiral Montgomery. But even as she smiled and nodded and inserted the occasional appropriate comment, she found it nearly impossible to tear her eyes away from her son.
Tom stood with Harry, speaking with an Academy cadet Julia thought might be one of the other Borg Voyager had rescued. His name escaped her at the moment.
Tom had wept openly throughout the service, and Julia had longed to go to him. Only Owen’s stiff, cold arm linked in hers had restrained her.
For the thousandth time in the last few months Julia thought, This is ridiculous.
If anything, she had hoped that their shared grief at Kathryn’s untimely passing might have brought father and son close enough to begin to bridge the distance that had grown between them. She had lived in the wasteland of this bitterness before and honestly believed they were long past it. It was both a blessing and a curse that one could never see too far down the road ahead. Had she known they would find themselves here again, Julia would have done everything in her power to prevent it.
Star Trek: Voyager®: Full Circle Page 24