These Ambiguities (A coda to Counterpoint)

Part Two

It was a game in the beginning. I found it made my work more ... interesting. Prax was not altogether convinced. Ah yes, Prax. As loyal a subordinate as one could wish. His loyalty has been beyond question this many a year; I made sure of that. Prax would play it all by the book. Perhaps I, the risk-taker, would have ended the game sooner, but never had I come across a more worthy opponent than Kathryn Janeway: her wit, a foil for mine, her courage, unquestionable, the passion I sensed beneath that austere demeanour, tantalizing. Besides, there was more at stake here than a dozen telepaths: could I discover and destroy the wormhole, an escape route for criminals and traitors, my future would be assured. It was not merely this woman's intelligence and tenacity that would make her useful to me, but her humanity, her selflessness. Her weakness.

Of course I should have cleared the plan with the High Command, as Prax reminded me (although he did not know the whole of it at that stage). Reminded me constantly until I suggested that he might perhaps be finding active service a little too tiring these days. He was quiet then, a middle-aged man near the end of his soldiering who had risen as far as he would in the service, but who recognized that my star was in the ascendant, and he could do worse than throw in his lot with mine.

The High Command! Should I let some young aristocrat claim my plan as his own, only to throw me to the wolves should things go awry? I married into the highest circles, as my wife was only too fond of reminding me; I was not born to it as these heel-clicking fops. I was just a farm boy from the grasslands with nothing but my wits and burning ambition to propel me forward. Yet, for all my wife's carping, she knew as well as I that it was not marriage into one of our most ancient families that brought me to where I am. Rather that was a reward for all I had achieved. She was my prize, and her father was only too glad to let her link her fortune with mine, this beautiful daughter of a house that had little enough left to commend it but its breeding. Nevertheless they continually found ways subtle, or not so subtle, to remind me of my humble origins.

Kathryn Janeway was herself from a farming community, and perhaps it was that as much as anything that suggested my plan. She, too, was born to wide skies, endless prairies, a life lived, even in our technocracies, according to ancient circadian and seasonal rhythms. Our shared experience would be the means by which I got under this stranger's guard. We both claimed kinship with the land. We both knew that sense of alienation from it that marked us for further horizons: Kathryn, Starfleet almost by birth, I, with my eyes fixed on the vastness of space, drawn to the spirals that from my earliest childhood became my talisman. In their swirling depths and ever-changing colours I saw my future glories. I knew that I was born for more than the farm and marriage to some sturdy peasant girl. My father had been an aristocrat's by-blow, sired by some noble from the city, a soldier on leave, who had enjoyed his romp in the hay, and then thought no more about it. I had inherited my grandfather's dark good-looks. And his ruthlessness.

I enjoyed the game at the outset, and so, I think, did Kathryn. Our encounters were stimulating. I knew about the telepaths from the start: our intelligence gatherers had sent word. It was obvious where they would be hidden; transporter suspension as a hiding-place is not a new idea. I kept this particular piece of information to myself for the time being. There was no sense in straining Prax's loyalty beyond reasonable bounds.

By the end of my first inspection, a reconnaissance one might say, I knew that if anyone could find the elusive wormhole it would be Kathryn Janeway and her crew. We had been receiving reports of Voyager long before it entered our space. The vessel itself was no great prize: the technology of these wanderers was not especially advanced. What interested me was their reputation for exploration and determination coupled with an all-encompassing humanity. The crew manifest showed a motley collection of waifs and strays, refugees, and asylum-seekers, some of whom hitched a ride for a month or two, a few who stayed. Most significant among the latter was the Borg drone. The Imperium had not yet been troubled by Borg incursions, but we knew of the Collective and were well-prepared to resist when the time came. A Captain who would not only take on the Borg and emerge from the encounter victorious, but abduct one of their number and then spend an infinite amount of patience on restoring the creature's humanity, would surely not baulk at finding a wormhole. If the thrill of the scientific chase were not enough, the humanitarian in Captain Janeway would miss no chance to save lives.

Of course I knew the freighter had been conveying telepaths, and even the exact hour that they were transferred to Voyager. For the moment I let them enjoy their 'freedom'. They were the bait to catch a larger fish.

I must confess that I had not expected the Captain to be as complex a character as she proved, but from the first I delighted in my encounters with her multi-faceted personality. While she complied with all instructions, and submitted to my inspections, there was nothing of the cowed or submissive in her manner. She parried my every thrust with wit and relish. We circled each other like fighters assessing the other's strengths and weaknesses. What made it more intriguing still was that I could see, even after our first encounter, that she was aware of me as a man. As I was aware of her as a woman.

So the plan was put into operation; I 'defected'. She was a little taken aback when I told her that I knew about the telepaths hidden in transporter suspension. Despite this, and my 'gifts' of technical data and patrol routes, she was naturally suspicious. I would have expected nothing less. I spent hours in the briefing room with only a silent security detail for company while the Captain consulted with her senior officers and the Brenari leader. My senses were preternaturally aware that long afternoon. I felt, as if it were my own pulse, the throb and hum of the engines, tasted the flatness of recycled air, saw the wheeling stars pass with infinite slowness. Then she returned to tell me what she had decided.

"Nervous?" she asked. And I was. By the Powers I was nervous, as apprehensive as any greenhorn cadet. She didn't tell me of her decision right away, but probed gently, expertly, curious to know why I should expect her to put her ship at risk.

"You're turning me away", I said. There was nothing lost really: an afternoon wasted. Prax was waiting for my signal to send in our teams. Yet I felt a sense of loss out of all proportion to the occasion. And, when she told me that she would help me, it was more than triumph that I felt.