fic: Shards and Fairy Tales | Mature | Beverly Howard/Kathryn Janeway
Title: Shards and Fairy Tales
Author: oparu
Artists: emmypenny and ??
Series: TNG/VOY
Characters/Pairings: Beverly Howard/Kathryn Janeway, Ro Laren/Deanna Troi, Will Riker, Jean-Luc Picard Guinan, Lwaxana Troi, Chakotay, Tuvok, Tom Paris, Seska, Wesley Howard
Rating: Mature
Warnings: major character death, mentions of teenagers having had sex, prostitution, torture, violence (brief)
Word Count: 25, 709
Summary: After the fall of the Terran Empire, the Alliance took control of the Alpha Quadrant, subjugating the lessar races, including Terrans and Vulcans. Some Terrans, like Kathryn Janeway, work for the Alliance while others, like Beverly Howard, fight against them in small resistance cells. When Kathryn's work stumbles onto the secret to finding a ghost fleet, Beverly 'rescues' her and brings her to the Terran side. Intendant Ro looks for ghost fleet on behalf of her Empress while rebels and pirates scramble to claim it before something darker than the Alliance finds them all.
Art: Bring on Ever After - fanmix (of awesome!)
Notes: Written for the classictrekbb. This was two short stories until I smashed them together and let it go epic. Thanks to touchdownpossum for her ghost-fleet love, abydos-dork for being so enabling, parcequelle for finding typos and reminding me I did like the story at the end.
This is a dark story set in a mirror universe similar to that featured on Deep Space 9. The Terrans are a subjugated race and the Klingons, Cardassians and Bajorans rule.
This fic mentions (but does not show) that characters under 16 have had consensual sex. Prostitution figures prominently and major characters are involved. There are scenes of torture and violence. Major characters die.
also available on AO3
Prologue - The Market
Kathryn
Intendant Ro has no tolerance for tardiness. Kathryn Janeway, PhD, Terran scientist in the employ of the Alliance, hurries through the busy streets of the commerce planet. She'd only meant to buy a few things, erridinite, because it was so hard to find on Alliance worlds, and woori crystals.
She is distracted, as she often is, by the chaos and noise of commerce planets. They are dirty, crowded, lawless places and she always tries to avoid them. Kathryn is not comfortable in crowds, or with dirt. Her laboratory is clean, neat and that is the way she likes things. She is not capable of adapting to change or chaos. Science and her quiet little lab are all she has or wants. She serves the Intendant, keeps her head down and has time to study halo objects when she is not needed in the business of collapsing stars for the Alliance.
Kathryn tries not to think about the outcomes of her work. She lets it be numbers on a screen: radiation and fallout, not lives lost. At the end of the day, she has her mantra. Her father and sister are kept safe and live well because she is of use to the Alliance, and has been since she scored so well on the aptitude test they gave all slaves before assigning them value as children. If she doesn't continue to live and be productive, they'll suffer the fate of her mother: dying a slow death of disease and want.
She is almost to the spaceport, almost back to the cleanliness and quiet of the Intendant's station, when chaos comes up out of the market and runs after her.
Rebels, dirty, wild Terran rebels, bolt past her, boots thumping in the dust, firing phasers at the guards. The screaming crowd starts to flee moments before one of the multiple Alliance security points explodes.
Kathryn hasn't seen an explosion since she was a child, and the air catches fire around her and sucks her in. She puts her hands over her head, crouching and curling into a tight little ball against one of the buildings. She can't move, can't breathe and the air around her stings her lungs like burning sandpaper, tearing tissues and rubbing them raw.
Time stops, filling her perception with hell and darkness. Smoke comes later, and Kathryn slowly remembers that time is passing. The fire sears the rubble and with the smoke comes the acrid scent of scorched flesh. There are dead and injured people. Is she one of them? Is she waiting to die? Will it hurt? Are her nerves just waiting to inform her of the terrible pain of being burned alive?
Something cool grabs her wrist, then another hand- she knows now it is a hand- grabs her shoulder and lifts her up. Kathryn's eyes focus on the face of a Terran woman: bright blue eyes, red hair tied tightly back and old scars that mark her as someone who would have been beautiful. Perhaps enough to grace the Intendant's renowned harem, if she'd been fortunate enough to be found young, before she was scarred.
The woman's lips move, but Kathryn's ears are full of a dull hissing. She shakes her head, unsure whether to grab this woman as her saviour or demand to be released back to the Alliance and safety.
Unable to hear and too frightened to speak, Kathryn lets this woman drag her away from the horror of the explosion. Through dark alleys and crowds of onlookers, they disappear. Kathryn clings to her, the battered angel who pulls her from the attack, and when they stop, the woman tries to speak again.
The dim, back room of somewhere dingier than Kathryn has ever been is a refuge now. Shaking her head, Kathryn stammers something and the woman's gentle eyes soften in sympathy. A cool hand strokes Kathryn's hair back away from her ear.
Lifting a hand, the woman gestures for her to wait. She is speaking, but Kathryn understands none of it. Perhaps the woman is speaking to calm her, even though she cannot hear. A battered medkit emerges from behind a scrap of cloth and the tricorder that comes from it has seen better days, decades ago, when black and chrome had been used instead of sleek metal. As the woman scans her, Kathryn discovers her injuries along with her rescuer. Her hands are burned, so is her right leg and a significant portion of her right arm. A device flashes near her ears, and the hissing fades away. Sound returns, fuzzy and indistinct.
"I'm going to start with your leg. It's bleeding."
The woman's voice is soft and calming. For an agonising moment, Kathryn remembers her mother, who had been calm and gentle.
"Who are you?"
Shards and Fairy Tales
Beverly
Death is easy. A knife, a disruptor, a poisoned piece of meat, a rope around the neck- all the living a person collects, everything they've seen and experienced, want and believe, is gone. It goes with them, vanishing in the same instant their brains stop working.
Beverly can tell when that instant is. She didn't go to medical school because she didn't score high enough. Unless they pass the intelligence screenings, Terrans are chattel: traded, used and forgotten about when they wear out like old boots. She might have passed one of those damn tests if her parents weren't already running and half dead by the time they reached the fringes. Out on the far edge of space, way out near the outer rim, no one cares who you are if you have the latinum.
Her father didn't have enough. He went back, and he's here, somewhere under the crushing arms of Alliance rule, but he's probably dust in the mines by now. Her mother lived a little longer; Beverly remembers her in that vague, childhood way. Her mother was beautiful and she loved her very much. It's like something she'd write down, to try to remember. Her mother was beautiful and she loved her very much. It's a story. Something from another life, long ago.
Glancing at the report again, the one she keeps reading at her elbow, she notes that Kathryn Janeway, Intendant Ro's favourite little scientist, passed her first intelligence screen at age seven, earning the right for her father to be released from the mines. When she passed the second, she saved her sister, who became a Terran houseslave. Houseslaves can work their way up to concubines and live a better life than the mines. Concubines sleep warm and dry at night.
Janeway hasn't seen her family in years. She must trust blindly, as all chosen Terrans do, that her family is safe. Beverly has the official report which holds the Alliance version of events. Edward Janeway does simple strategic planning for a Terran refugee camp. He's a level A administrator. He might have a tent. Phoebe is based on Andoria. The weather is terrible, but she belongs to Klingons rather than Cardassians. Cardassians find the cruel pleasurable, while Klingons are simply boisterous, loud and crude. The sister might be alive.
Tom might know. He hears the most information. It's possible they travel the same circles. Beverly reminds herself to ask him and connects the detonator.
Bombs are easy. It's the work of an afternoon to kill a handful of people, funny how it is then the work of weeks to nurse one back to health.
It's a harsh plan, but it's a brutal universe. Kathryn, pretty little Doctor Janeway with her unmarred face and innocent eyes, has no idea how bleak things are outside of her lab. If she knew the Alliance, really knew them, she'd slit Ro's throat the next chance she had.
Too bad that's not in the plan. Beverly would enjoy seeing the blood run down Ro's tight black uniform.
She bites the last wire, resorting to stripping the coating with her teeth when her knife is too dull. Spitting polymer into the dust on the floor, Beverly finishes the connection. It's a basic explosive, remote activated, unimpressive yield. A bigger one would cause more death than chaos, and there may be innocents in the market.
Collateral damage is rarely her concern. Innocence is something long gone, that of children who answer questions because they know they're going to get a treat: a little boy who doesn't know to stop talking about warp fields and subspace before the Klingons decide that he might just be worth more than the few strips of latinum it'll cost to clean him up and put him in school. Beverly grabs a rag and wipes away every trace that she was working, letting the motion pull her back to reality.
Wesley is gone. Whatever intelligence his pirate father passed on to him was too much for Beverly to control. She couldn't keep him quiet and he's been gone ten years. The last anyone heard, and Tom's sources are usually the most reliable because no one lies when breathless in bed, Wesley was assigned to special projects, research and development on Quo'Nos itself.
It would be easier if her son was dead. They probably tell him the same lies they tell Kathryn. Your mother lives a good life because of you. She has a house and a garden. How old would he be now? Fifteen? Sixteen? Somehow not remembering is easier than knowing how many years it's been since she's held him. He's probably taller than she is.
Beverly drags herself back to the task at hand, memorising what she needs to know. Kathryn's mother is dead, worn out by another pregnancy too close to the sister, killed by the birth of a stillborn boy and a lifetime of going without. That she understands, so she can exploit it. Take care of her, make her feel safe, remind her what it was like to have a mother look after her needs. It's a game, like the ones Chakotay plays to keep Seska amused, or the ones Tom employs to keep himself in Alliance noble's beds.
Like Harry, and his music, she can play this. She can convince Kathryn to trust her, to listen to her and do what they need her to do. They won't hurt her, and she'll be better off with them and their lies than the Alliance and their sadistic cruelty. At least with the resistance, Kathryn will see some of the truth: the price of any bargain with the Alliance, no matter the reward, is suffering greater than anyone can imagine. For every Edward who survives to eek out a living, a hundred Gretchens die from malnutrition. It's a numbers game, and Kathryn's never seen the score. Beverly's not sure if she hates or envies that naivete more.
Beverly tucks the bomb inside her jacket, pulling her scarf tighter around her face. Best not to be seen. Another slave walking through another market for her Alliance masters is invisible.
Kathryn walks through the crowd as if she doesn't understand how much she stands out. Her clothing is clean and fits well. Even her Terran badge, marking her as a lesser life form, is clean and neatly pinned to her chest. Everything about her, from her tight bun of auburn hair to her black polished boots, is neat and new. She looks like a newly minted piece of latinum: one that hasn't been nibbled and gnawed as people prove its worth and trade it for scrap.
Taking a last look at that unmarred face, Beverly forces down the pang of guilt as she watches Kathryn's eyes. Losing any kind of virginity stings, and this has the same kind of poetry as the first footprints across a snow-covered field. She's taking something away from this woman, something Beverly lost so long ago that she can't remember the flash of pain. Beverly presses the trigger, and the inferno rises from her bomb to engulf the square. She looks away from the flames, needing her eyes and her ear protection saves her from the blast.
She still feels it, nothing short of a forcefield would have kept that blast from slamming into her chest. She breathes into it, opening her mouth as it hits so she can lose the air in her lungs without bursting them. Even shut, her eyes flash with colour and light. She's rent the square open, brought chaos and death to the market, and it only took a second. It's over before she crushes the detonator under her boot.
Setting it off just as the Alliance guards passed the stall was good timing. Both the Cardassians seem to be dead and the collaborator shopkeeper is spilling her green Orion blood onto the ground next to them. The alarms begin to wail and Beverly has just moments to find Kathryn and steal her away. Kathryn crouches in the corner, eyes wide and white with terror, hands gripping the fragile cover that seems to have protected her. The smell of sulphur and flame covers up the scent of blood, but she'll be wounded, shrapnel should have seen to that. Beverly grabs her. Kathryn's hands dig into her arms like Wesley's did, a lifetime ago when he'd heard the screams across the camp when the Cardassians took someone away.
Terror is a malleable thing. A tool that the Alliance uses to keep down the subjugate species. Even the Romulans fell to them, and yoked with terror, the races who once built great empires are the slaves of this cycle. Who knows how it will be next time around.
Kathryn's ears must be ringing and tears leave pale tracks on her dusty face. She's half-broken by fear and Beverly aches for bringing her to this point. It's not difficult to be kind to her. Beverly forgets what it's like to take away suffering when she spends too much time having to cause it. Her fingers run over Kathryn's injuries, soothing them away. Resistance medicine is crude, they have old tricorders and older laser sutures but somehow it's more intimate. To heal her, Beverly has to touch her, rubbing in the extracts of carefully cultivated roots and herbs.
What is it Tuvok says? The rendering of pain is a far lesser thing than the rendering of it inert. Vulcans are soft-hearted poetic bastards and it's no wonder they lost. Terrans are no better. They're a rabble that would just as soon kill themselves for their own advancement. However, most of the time, Vulcans don't kill their own. They're ahead on that account.
Calling her pretty startles poor Kathryn, and her bright blue eyes follow Beverly like a child. Beverly has to smile to hide her own fear.
"Where are we going?"
It's a simple question from the genius. Maybe Beverly overdid the yield on the bomb. They need Kathryn's mind intact.
"We're going to look for a fairy tale."
That answer just brings more confusion to Kathryn's face. Beverly strokes her cheek, calming her.
"Somewhere safe, " she pauses, maybe it's time for a little truth. "Somewhere we might be safe for awhile. Did you know about the caverns under the city?"
Kathryn's eyes widen again.
Beverly reaches for Kathryn's hand, and inclines her head towards the doorway. "Stay with me, don't look up."
Kathryn's fingers tighten hard around her own, and Beverly squeezes back just enough to be comforting. She has overdone it; she thought she might. The poor woman's probably never seen death, or an explosion, and none of her bare skin that Beverly's seen has any scars. She's a demon, taking Kathryn's soul and teaching her the darkness of life. Is it enough if she saves her from death? If this invented bit of suffering keeps millions more safe?
It might be. It is a numbers game, after all.
If Kathryn can help them find the ghost fleet, if they can make even one of those decrepit old ships run, the resistance might have a chance to be more than back alley terrorists and secret-trading concubines, held together by pirates and thugs who've escaped the mines.
Some fairy tales, like freedom, have to be true.
Beverly leads her through a tunnel, passing under the market, where the caverns crawl with insects and nocturnal creatures. She can't even name them, but Beverly meant it when she warned Kathryn not to look up. The scrabbling, crawling darkness on the ceiling is enough to make anyone go mad. They make it out, crawling out into the weak ends of daylight like drowning swimmers finding air. Kathryn's shaking, her adrenaline is starting to wear off, and before she can think her way into doing it, Beverly hugs her.
It would be the right thing to do, if Beverly had done it consciously. Hugging her without thought, holding this body close to her chest without reason is dangerous.
Emotions are unpredictable and that which can't be predicted, can't be contained. Caring is the one thing Beverly doesn't have the strength to do. Vulnerability means death out here, and Beverly still has so much to do.
Yet she's here, holding Kathryn's head against her chest and whispering that she's safe, that she's all right, that somehow the people Beverly's about to deliver her to will protect her. Concubines, musicians, pirates and slaves: they're a motley crew without a hero in the lot.
They needed a genius and they chose Kathryn. Perhaps she would hate them if she knew. Maybe the hand clutching Beverly's arm would slap her. Beverly would almost rather it ended that way. Hatred is easy; it keeps you warm. The other emotions, the ones fighting for dominance in her gut, those are the ones to fear.
Beverly eases Kathryn's head up from her chest, taking her hands and rubbing them between Beverly's own.
"It's all right. I shook like a baby and vomited after my first bomb."
Kathryn doesn't have to know that Beverly's first bomb killed eighteen people, even if they were mostly Cardassians.
"You kept your lunch down," Beverly reminds her. "You're doing far better than I did."
"Thank you." Kathryn licks her lips, trying to clear what must be a dry throat. "I don't know what I would have done..."
And here's the precipice again. The dark, yawning void where Beverly chooses between the truth, and what they need to survive.
"You would have been fine."
The Alliance would have picked her up, reminded her how dangerous and violent her own species is and kept her locked up in safety for the rest of her natural life. Maybe Beverly's lies aren't so terrible. In the end, when this is over, if- when- Kathryn hates her, she'll have a whole universe full of the Alliance on whom to vent her wrath, and a fleet of ghost ships to bear it.
Beverly strokes her hair, tucking a piece of it back, away from Kathryn's face.
"You're stronger than you think."
Kathryn smiles, a flash of honest light in the dimness of half-truths and secrets. "I don't feel like it."
"Sometimes power is like love. You never know what you have until you see what you've done with it."
Now steady, calmed, Kathryn's still within reach, too close to be anything less than intimate. Beverly was keenly aware of that when she talked about love. Mention the word enough, put the thought in the target's head. She can hear Chakotay's voice in her mind, telling her what to say.
Loyalty can be earned, but it's hard to cultivate. Love on the other hand, grows in even the harshest soil.
"Come," Beverly points down a corridor, further into the darkness. "My family will give you somewhere to stay."
"I should go back." Kathryn's protest is genuine, but half-hearted. She hesitates and Beverly fears that she'll stay.
"Through that tunnel, left, right at the next fork, and activate your transponder." Beverly explains it quickly, as if taking too much time would hurt her. "If you hurry, the Intendant will still be looking for you. If you take your time--"
"I'm a traitor."
"Or you're dead."
There were Terrans there, not many, but enough for a molecular scanner to confirm that Kathryn may have died. The Intendant would miss the use of her mind, but she'll replace Kathryn easily enough. If there isn't a scientist waiting, she could always breed one. Terrans reproduce with little difficulty. She'll choose one of her favourites and breed him with a houseslave, maybe even a concubine. Gul Seska, Ro's second, finds Chakotay useful for that often enough.
"The Intendant will think I'm dead?" Kathryn's shock fades and she realises the truth Beverly's been praying for. "My family, they'll be safe if I'm dead. It's not my fault, my contract--"
"Allows that acts of terrorism are not the fault of the Terran, and Alliance obligations will be honoured in that case." One of the only ways out of an Alliance contract is death. It's an odd cultural artefact of the warlike Klingons and the detail-oriented Cardassians.
"You know Terran service contracts?"
Oddly enough, Beverly thought this part would be hard. Tell her about your son, Chakotay insisted. Empathise, be gentle, connect with her. She thought she'd have to fake her emotional response, stammer her speech so she sounded upset. She had no idea her throat would actually close.
"My son signed one." Truth hurts most of all, even old ones. "I had to help him read it, because he didn't know all of the words."
Kathryn pales, like she's been hit with another shockwave. Maybe she is about to vomit, after all.
"How old--?"
Beverly's eyes are traitors, filling with stinging tears even though Beverly puts every bit of will she has into forcing them dry.
"He was five."
"Five--"
Beverly turns away, letting her feet carry her back to her resistance cell, the closest thing she has left to family.
Kathryn, of course, follows behind. When she catches up with Beverly, understanding and sympathy written all over her beautiful face, she touches her shoulder.
The connection's forged. All Beverly had to do was blow up Kathryn's world and suck her down into the burning aftermath, like the rest of her species.
Kathryn
Terran instruments were mostly destroyed in the cultural revolution that followed the fall of the Terran Empire. Kathryn's seen a few in the Intendant's collection, including the ones Ro would never admit having if the Listener Empress asked. Kathryn knows enough of double speak to gather from Ro that the Listener Empress is aware of her quiet interest in Terran art and music but allows it because Ro is a brutal and efficient Intendant. If Ro falters, her pithy curiosity in the culture of her slaves will be her undoing with the military beneath her command and the threat of that shared knowledge helps keep Ro in line. Knowledge is greater than latinum or Tholian silk.
All Kathryn can remember is that a violin faintly resembles a Bajoran qeora, and a trumpet shines like a clean piece of gold conduit.
Her ears are still buzzing in protest of their abuse, but there's music. Someone in Beverly's camp plays music and the thought stops her feet.
She's heard the Imperial Bajoran Symphony and the Cardassian Philharmonic when they toured through Terok Sa, the Intendant's station. Both imperial orchestras were impressive in their own manner. Bajoran music is full of complex melodies and impossible harmonies. It's measured and intricately constructed. Cardassian music is often atonal: sometimes violent, sometimes wailing.
The Intendant explained that Cardassian hearing relies more on changes in pitch to determine beauty, while Bajoran hearing is more like her own, only superior. Terrans are the weakest of the sentient races, that's why they fell. They interbreed easily with the others, because their weak DNA is recessive and overcome by any race of the Alliance. Terrans have minimal redundant organs, carry their children four months longer than Bajorans, and can only tolerate a minimal level of heat.
Terrans once had music of their own, but it is nothing more than wind howling though dust now. Even through the dull ache from the long gash on her leg, Kathryn eventually recognises a Vulcan tune. The metre is too regular for it to be anything else.
"How do you have music?"
Her rescuer smiles. "Harry has to practice."
Kathryn files away the thought that Harry is a musician and remembers she never asked the name of her rescuer. She grabs the dirty sleeve of the woman who saved her and studies her face. There's too many years of worry etched around large blue eyes and aristocratic cheekbones. If she wasn't filthy, she'd be beautiful.
"Who are you?"
Her rescuer covers Kathryn's hand with her own and squeezes it warmly. "You're bleeding again."
New red blood seeps through the bandage on Kathryn's thigh, bright through the dirt.
"Oh, I didn't--"
"Come, sit, let me fix it before you pass out."
Her rescuer drags her around the last corner into a large cave. Cloth tents line the wall on the left and a fire burns in the centre of the room, smoke rising into a ramshackle atmospheric recycler.
Kathryn lets her rescuer guide her down, holding her arms. "You live here?"
There's no real light, only glow panels stuffed in the ceiling where there was space. It's haphazard, some green, some white, and a few pulsing lazily. Her rescuer knows the room and settles her on a clean slab of stone, just beneath one of the stronger white lights.
"Beats ore processing." There's mirth in her rescuer's dark smile.
Kathryn's seen the ore processing centres and the horrible conditions the Terran slaves worked under there. She can't imagine this woman there, this angel with an antique medical kit, but perhaps that is where her scars had come from. The double lines on her left cheek and the mark along her jaw had come from somewhere.
"This won't heal like it would in an Alliance medical centre, it will sting, then itch while it heals. You'll get used to the smell." Her rescuer peels back the bandage and rubs in more of the odd pungent salve, something herbal and sharp, like lemon peel.
Kathryn forces her hands to relax and releases her rescuer's sleeve. "It's nice."
"Give it time and it'll be all right. Don't push it. No dancing for the Intendant for a few days."
Another salve, this one white and soft slide over the burns on Kathryn's arm. Quick and efficient, everywhere her fingers touch goes cool.
"There you go." The woman takes a cloth and rubs ash from Kathryn's face."Good as new."
"Who are you?"
"No one of importance."
"But you must--" Kathryn coughs, her lungs protesting their abuse.
"Drink." The woman presses a cup into her hand. Behind her, figures emerge from the tents or Kathryn first notices them, she can't be sure.
Gulping the weak juice that tastes faintly of coconut, Kathryn stares at her rescuer as the others close in. "Do you have a name?"
"Slaves don't need names. Didn't they teach you that in the Intendant's bedchamber?"
Kathryn blushes. "No, I don't--"
"You're not part of the harem, right, right. I forgot. You're just her little pet scientist."
Kathryn tries her leg, which is numb instead of throbbing. "No. You don't understand."
"It's all right." The woman waves her quiet. "We've all done things we're not proud of to keep out of the Alliance's way." Darkness passes through her eyes and her story fades back into memory, whatever it was.
She sighs. Relenting, she offers her name. "Beverly."
"That's pretty."
"Sure beats Terran five-five-two-Beta-Charlie." Beverly chirps, showing the tattooed mark on her neck when she lifts her hair. "Nothing like Doctor Janeway though."
Kathryn winces again, her privilege settling in to weigh on her shoulders.
"Don't do that."
"What?"
"Frown." Beverly taps Kathryn's forehead. "You'll ruin your pretty face."
Behind Beverly, a young man with an instrument Kathryn doesn't recognise, sneaks up carrying a grin as wide as his face. He's slight, with long black hair and golden skin. He has none of the scars Beverly does, so he may have escaped the mines.
"Found a stray?" His voice is light. He can't be more than fifteen.
"Harry, this is Doctor Kathryn Janeway."
Kathryn extends her hand and he switches his instrument to his left to shake hers. He grins at the gesture, even though he knows the custom it seems quaint to him.
A young man with sandy hair and an all-too-charming smile wraps one arm around Harry's shoulders and nods to her. There's an intensity in his gaze that she's seen before. The kind of gaze that promises to know everything about her. He is more cocky than Will; more outwardly confident. He offers his hand, taking hers and stroking the back of it with his thumb. Tingles chase each other up the back of her neck.
"I'm Tom."
Beverly taps his shoulder, ending their contact. Kathryn steps back, nearly stepping on Beverly's foot. When did she get so close?
"She's not for you, Tommy." Beverly's tone is light, but there's just enough weight to make Kathryn wonder just who she is for.
She was a gift for the last Intendant: a pretty little captive genius, who could prove the distance formula by age twelve and would rather do calculus and astrophysics than sleep. Kathryn had been one of the few Terran children who survived her upbringing and reached her potential. When she was granted her doctorate, her father earned a promotion and Phoebe moved to Andor. She's seen the letters they're allowed to write each year and they're not addressed to her. Kathryn Janeway isn't a person, she's the property of Intendant Ro.
She touches the tattooed ownership mark on the side of her neck. It can't itch, it's long healed, but she's aware of it as if it were raw.
Tom leans in. He's barely a few years older than Harry, but there's more experience in his eyes. He smiles like Will.
Beverly waves them off. "You two can talk to her later, let me get her cleaned up."
Tom lifts a strand of her hair, sniffing it. "She stinks of Alliance."
Harry watches, reaching for her hair then pulling back his hand. "How can the Alliance have a smell?"
"A Klingon ship smells of leather, old blood and sword oil. You smell sweat and fresh meat. Cardassian ships reek of kanar but the air is dry, like the empty desert. Reptiles rely on heat, not smell. They're not salty with sweat like mammals. A Bajoran ship will have incense, sometimes thick enough to cover everything else, and a Ferengi vessel, that could smell like whatever the Damon desires. If you know the difference, you'll know where you are without even having to open your eyes."
The speaker circles from behind her, his voice like silver scraping stone. Beverly's breast is just behind Kathryn's back, and she can feel it soft against her before Beverly's hand cups her shoulder.
"Knowing that could keep you alive. Beverly, take care of her."
Turning to see the speaker, Kathryn's too slow and only catches a glimpse of him. He's Terran, tall and solid with steel and black hair. There's something on his face, across his forehead towards his temple. It's a tattoo, but nothing like the ownership tattoos the Alliance put on their slaves. It's not Klingon or Cardassian, or even Andorian. Could it be Terran? Do Terrans even have traditions of their own anymore? Why does he look so familiar?
Harry watches the man for a moment before he drops his eyes. "He's our leader."
"Such as we have," Tom says, shrugging. "Might tell you his name if he thinks it's important."
"I thought names weren't important in your work." Harry nudges Tom's shoulder, grinning. His smile makes him look even younger, like one of the children the Intendant collects.
"Need anything?" Tom smiles lazily at Beverly, ignoring Harry's jibe.
"We're fine, thanks."
"What did he mean, take care of me?" Kathryn asked, burying the cold knot in her stomach.
"Keep you out of the tunnels with the bugs, keep you from getting yourself killed by being where you shouldn't be."
Turning her head back towards the direction of the leader's disappearance, Kathryn looks back to Beverly. "I'm not a child."
"You are out here." Beverly reaches for her cheek, but Kathryn pulls back. "How old were you when the Alliance took you? Seven? Thenall you know of the real universe is what the Alliance wants you to see.."
"I--" What comeback could she have? Kathryn only leaves the station with the Intendant or to get supplies. She's always with an escort, never alone. On the surface on her own she'd head for the first Alliance guard she saw and hope to go home. If she wasn't already a traitor or dead.
"I don't want you to feel you have to, I'm not looking for--"
Beverly catches her cheek this time, caressing Kathryn's skin like the mother she's long forgotten. "It's all right. I know it's probably the only thing the Alliance didn't drill into your head, but you can trust me."
Her hand drops and the moment's broken. Kathryn reaches up and touches where Beverly's hand was a moment ago.
"Come on," Beverly says. "Let's find you a place to sleep."
part ii
Author: oparu
Artists: emmypenny and ??
Series: TNG/VOY
Characters/Pairings: Beverly Howard/Kathryn Janeway, Ro Laren/Deanna Troi, Will Riker, Jean-Luc Picard Guinan, Lwaxana Troi, Chakotay, Tuvok, Tom Paris, Seska, Wesley Howard
Rating: Mature
Warnings: major character death, mentions of teenagers having had sex, prostitution, torture, violence (brief)
Word Count: 25, 709
Summary: After the fall of the Terran Empire, the Alliance took control of the Alpha Quadrant, subjugating the lessar races, including Terrans and Vulcans. Some Terrans, like Kathryn Janeway, work for the Alliance while others, like Beverly Howard, fight against them in small resistance cells. When Kathryn's work stumbles onto the secret to finding a ghost fleet, Beverly 'rescues' her and brings her to the Terran side. Intendant Ro looks for ghost fleet on behalf of her Empress while rebels and pirates scramble to claim it before something darker than the Alliance finds them all.
Art: Bring on Ever After - fanmix (of awesome!)
Notes: Written for the classictrekbb. This was two short stories until I smashed them together and let it go epic. Thanks to touchdownpossum for her ghost-fleet love, abydos-dork for being so enabling, parcequelle for finding typos and reminding me I did like the story at the end.
This is a dark story set in a mirror universe similar to that featured on Deep Space 9. The Terrans are a subjugated race and the Klingons, Cardassians and Bajorans rule.
This fic mentions (but does not show) that characters under 16 have had consensual sex. Prostitution figures prominently and major characters are involved. There are scenes of torture and violence. Major characters die.
also available on AO3
Prologue - The Market
Kathryn
Intendant Ro has no tolerance for tardiness. Kathryn Janeway, PhD, Terran scientist in the employ of the Alliance, hurries through the busy streets of the commerce planet. She'd only meant to buy a few things, erridinite, because it was so hard to find on Alliance worlds, and woori crystals.
She is distracted, as she often is, by the chaos and noise of commerce planets. They are dirty, crowded, lawless places and she always tries to avoid them. Kathryn is not comfortable in crowds, or with dirt. Her laboratory is clean, neat and that is the way she likes things. She is not capable of adapting to change or chaos. Science and her quiet little lab are all she has or wants. She serves the Intendant, keeps her head down and has time to study halo objects when she is not needed in the business of collapsing stars for the Alliance.
Kathryn tries not to think about the outcomes of her work. She lets it be numbers on a screen: radiation and fallout, not lives lost. At the end of the day, she has her mantra. Her father and sister are kept safe and live well because she is of use to the Alliance, and has been since she scored so well on the aptitude test they gave all slaves before assigning them value as children. If she doesn't continue to live and be productive, they'll suffer the fate of her mother: dying a slow death of disease and want.
She is almost to the spaceport, almost back to the cleanliness and quiet of the Intendant's station, when chaos comes up out of the market and runs after her.
Rebels, dirty, wild Terran rebels, bolt past her, boots thumping in the dust, firing phasers at the guards. The screaming crowd starts to flee moments before one of the multiple Alliance security points explodes.
Kathryn hasn't seen an explosion since she was a child, and the air catches fire around her and sucks her in. She puts her hands over her head, crouching and curling into a tight little ball against one of the buildings. She can't move, can't breathe and the air around her stings her lungs like burning sandpaper, tearing tissues and rubbing them raw.
Time stops, filling her perception with hell and darkness. Smoke comes later, and Kathryn slowly remembers that time is passing. The fire sears the rubble and with the smoke comes the acrid scent of scorched flesh. There are dead and injured people. Is she one of them? Is she waiting to die? Will it hurt? Are her nerves just waiting to inform her of the terrible pain of being burned alive?
Something cool grabs her wrist, then another hand- she knows now it is a hand- grabs her shoulder and lifts her up. Kathryn's eyes focus on the face of a Terran woman: bright blue eyes, red hair tied tightly back and old scars that mark her as someone who would have been beautiful. Perhaps enough to grace the Intendant's renowned harem, if she'd been fortunate enough to be found young, before she was scarred.
The woman's lips move, but Kathryn's ears are full of a dull hissing. She shakes her head, unsure whether to grab this woman as her saviour or demand to be released back to the Alliance and safety.
Unable to hear and too frightened to speak, Kathryn lets this woman drag her away from the horror of the explosion. Through dark alleys and crowds of onlookers, they disappear. Kathryn clings to her, the battered angel who pulls her from the attack, and when they stop, the woman tries to speak again.
The dim, back room of somewhere dingier than Kathryn has ever been is a refuge now. Shaking her head, Kathryn stammers something and the woman's gentle eyes soften in sympathy. A cool hand strokes Kathryn's hair back away from her ear.
Lifting a hand, the woman gestures for her to wait. She is speaking, but Kathryn understands none of it. Perhaps the woman is speaking to calm her, even though she cannot hear. A battered medkit emerges from behind a scrap of cloth and the tricorder that comes from it has seen better days, decades ago, when black and chrome had been used instead of sleek metal. As the woman scans her, Kathryn discovers her injuries along with her rescuer. Her hands are burned, so is her right leg and a significant portion of her right arm. A device flashes near her ears, and the hissing fades away. Sound returns, fuzzy and indistinct.
"I'm going to start with your leg. It's bleeding."
The woman's voice is soft and calming. For an agonising moment, Kathryn remembers her mother, who had been calm and gentle.
"Who are you?"
Shards and Fairy Tales
Beverly
Death is easy. A knife, a disruptor, a poisoned piece of meat, a rope around the neck- all the living a person collects, everything they've seen and experienced, want and believe, is gone. It goes with them, vanishing in the same instant their brains stop working.
Beverly can tell when that instant is. She didn't go to medical school because she didn't score high enough. Unless they pass the intelligence screenings, Terrans are chattel: traded, used and forgotten about when they wear out like old boots. She might have passed one of those damn tests if her parents weren't already running and half dead by the time they reached the fringes. Out on the far edge of space, way out near the outer rim, no one cares who you are if you have the latinum.
Her father didn't have enough. He went back, and he's here, somewhere under the crushing arms of Alliance rule, but he's probably dust in the mines by now. Her mother lived a little longer; Beverly remembers her in that vague, childhood way. Her mother was beautiful and she loved her very much. It's like something she'd write down, to try to remember. Her mother was beautiful and she loved her very much. It's a story. Something from another life, long ago.
Glancing at the report again, the one she keeps reading at her elbow, she notes that Kathryn Janeway, Intendant Ro's favourite little scientist, passed her first intelligence screen at age seven, earning the right for her father to be released from the mines. When she passed the second, she saved her sister, who became a Terran houseslave. Houseslaves can work their way up to concubines and live a better life than the mines. Concubines sleep warm and dry at night.
Janeway hasn't seen her family in years. She must trust blindly, as all chosen Terrans do, that her family is safe. Beverly has the official report which holds the Alliance version of events. Edward Janeway does simple strategic planning for a Terran refugee camp. He's a level A administrator. He might have a tent. Phoebe is based on Andoria. The weather is terrible, but she belongs to Klingons rather than Cardassians. Cardassians find the cruel pleasurable, while Klingons are simply boisterous, loud and crude. The sister might be alive.
Tom might know. He hears the most information. It's possible they travel the same circles. Beverly reminds herself to ask him and connects the detonator.
Bombs are easy. It's the work of an afternoon to kill a handful of people, funny how it is then the work of weeks to nurse one back to health.
It's a harsh plan, but it's a brutal universe. Kathryn, pretty little Doctor Janeway with her unmarred face and innocent eyes, has no idea how bleak things are outside of her lab. If she knew the Alliance, really knew them, she'd slit Ro's throat the next chance she had.
Too bad that's not in the plan. Beverly would enjoy seeing the blood run down Ro's tight black uniform.
She bites the last wire, resorting to stripping the coating with her teeth when her knife is too dull. Spitting polymer into the dust on the floor, Beverly finishes the connection. It's a basic explosive, remote activated, unimpressive yield. A bigger one would cause more death than chaos, and there may be innocents in the market.
Collateral damage is rarely her concern. Innocence is something long gone, that of children who answer questions because they know they're going to get a treat: a little boy who doesn't know to stop talking about warp fields and subspace before the Klingons decide that he might just be worth more than the few strips of latinum it'll cost to clean him up and put him in school. Beverly grabs a rag and wipes away every trace that she was working, letting the motion pull her back to reality.
Wesley is gone. Whatever intelligence his pirate father passed on to him was too much for Beverly to control. She couldn't keep him quiet and he's been gone ten years. The last anyone heard, and Tom's sources are usually the most reliable because no one lies when breathless in bed, Wesley was assigned to special projects, research and development on Quo'Nos itself.
It would be easier if her son was dead. They probably tell him the same lies they tell Kathryn. Your mother lives a good life because of you. She has a house and a garden. How old would he be now? Fifteen? Sixteen? Somehow not remembering is easier than knowing how many years it's been since she's held him. He's probably taller than she is.
Beverly drags herself back to the task at hand, memorising what she needs to know. Kathryn's mother is dead, worn out by another pregnancy too close to the sister, killed by the birth of a stillborn boy and a lifetime of going without. That she understands, so she can exploit it. Take care of her, make her feel safe, remind her what it was like to have a mother look after her needs. It's a game, like the ones Chakotay plays to keep Seska amused, or the ones Tom employs to keep himself in Alliance noble's beds.
Like Harry, and his music, she can play this. She can convince Kathryn to trust her, to listen to her and do what they need her to do. They won't hurt her, and she'll be better off with them and their lies than the Alliance and their sadistic cruelty. At least with the resistance, Kathryn will see some of the truth: the price of any bargain with the Alliance, no matter the reward, is suffering greater than anyone can imagine. For every Edward who survives to eek out a living, a hundred Gretchens die from malnutrition. It's a numbers game, and Kathryn's never seen the score. Beverly's not sure if she hates or envies that naivete more.
Beverly tucks the bomb inside her jacket, pulling her scarf tighter around her face. Best not to be seen. Another slave walking through another market for her Alliance masters is invisible.
Kathryn walks through the crowd as if she doesn't understand how much she stands out. Her clothing is clean and fits well. Even her Terran badge, marking her as a lesser life form, is clean and neatly pinned to her chest. Everything about her, from her tight bun of auburn hair to her black polished boots, is neat and new. She looks like a newly minted piece of latinum: one that hasn't been nibbled and gnawed as people prove its worth and trade it for scrap.
Taking a last look at that unmarred face, Beverly forces down the pang of guilt as she watches Kathryn's eyes. Losing any kind of virginity stings, and this has the same kind of poetry as the first footprints across a snow-covered field. She's taking something away from this woman, something Beverly lost so long ago that she can't remember the flash of pain. Beverly presses the trigger, and the inferno rises from her bomb to engulf the square. She looks away from the flames, needing her eyes and her ear protection saves her from the blast.
She still feels it, nothing short of a forcefield would have kept that blast from slamming into her chest. She breathes into it, opening her mouth as it hits so she can lose the air in her lungs without bursting them. Even shut, her eyes flash with colour and light. She's rent the square open, brought chaos and death to the market, and it only took a second. It's over before she crushes the detonator under her boot.
Setting it off just as the Alliance guards passed the stall was good timing. Both the Cardassians seem to be dead and the collaborator shopkeeper is spilling her green Orion blood onto the ground next to them. The alarms begin to wail and Beverly has just moments to find Kathryn and steal her away. Kathryn crouches in the corner, eyes wide and white with terror, hands gripping the fragile cover that seems to have protected her. The smell of sulphur and flame covers up the scent of blood, but she'll be wounded, shrapnel should have seen to that. Beverly grabs her. Kathryn's hands dig into her arms like Wesley's did, a lifetime ago when he'd heard the screams across the camp when the Cardassians took someone away.
Terror is a malleable thing. A tool that the Alliance uses to keep down the subjugate species. Even the Romulans fell to them, and yoked with terror, the races who once built great empires are the slaves of this cycle. Who knows how it will be next time around.
Kathryn's ears must be ringing and tears leave pale tracks on her dusty face. She's half-broken by fear and Beverly aches for bringing her to this point. It's not difficult to be kind to her. Beverly forgets what it's like to take away suffering when she spends too much time having to cause it. Her fingers run over Kathryn's injuries, soothing them away. Resistance medicine is crude, they have old tricorders and older laser sutures but somehow it's more intimate. To heal her, Beverly has to touch her, rubbing in the extracts of carefully cultivated roots and herbs.
What is it Tuvok says? The rendering of pain is a far lesser thing than the rendering of it inert. Vulcans are soft-hearted poetic bastards and it's no wonder they lost. Terrans are no better. They're a rabble that would just as soon kill themselves for their own advancement. However, most of the time, Vulcans don't kill their own. They're ahead on that account.
Calling her pretty startles poor Kathryn, and her bright blue eyes follow Beverly like a child. Beverly has to smile to hide her own fear.
"Where are we going?"
It's a simple question from the genius. Maybe Beverly overdid the yield on the bomb. They need Kathryn's mind intact.
"We're going to look for a fairy tale."
That answer just brings more confusion to Kathryn's face. Beverly strokes her cheek, calming her.
"Somewhere safe, " she pauses, maybe it's time for a little truth. "Somewhere we might be safe for awhile. Did you know about the caverns under the city?"
Kathryn's eyes widen again.
Beverly reaches for Kathryn's hand, and inclines her head towards the doorway. "Stay with me, don't look up."
Kathryn's fingers tighten hard around her own, and Beverly squeezes back just enough to be comforting. She has overdone it; she thought she might. The poor woman's probably never seen death, or an explosion, and none of her bare skin that Beverly's seen has any scars. She's a demon, taking Kathryn's soul and teaching her the darkness of life. Is it enough if she saves her from death? If this invented bit of suffering keeps millions more safe?
It might be. It is a numbers game, after all.
If Kathryn can help them find the ghost fleet, if they can make even one of those decrepit old ships run, the resistance might have a chance to be more than back alley terrorists and secret-trading concubines, held together by pirates and thugs who've escaped the mines.
Some fairy tales, like freedom, have to be true.
Beverly leads her through a tunnel, passing under the market, where the caverns crawl with insects and nocturnal creatures. She can't even name them, but Beverly meant it when she warned Kathryn not to look up. The scrabbling, crawling darkness on the ceiling is enough to make anyone go mad. They make it out, crawling out into the weak ends of daylight like drowning swimmers finding air. Kathryn's shaking, her adrenaline is starting to wear off, and before she can think her way into doing it, Beverly hugs her.
It would be the right thing to do, if Beverly had done it consciously. Hugging her without thought, holding this body close to her chest without reason is dangerous.
Emotions are unpredictable and that which can't be predicted, can't be contained. Caring is the one thing Beverly doesn't have the strength to do. Vulnerability means death out here, and Beverly still has so much to do.
Yet she's here, holding Kathryn's head against her chest and whispering that she's safe, that she's all right, that somehow the people Beverly's about to deliver her to will protect her. Concubines, musicians, pirates and slaves: they're a motley crew without a hero in the lot.
They needed a genius and they chose Kathryn. Perhaps she would hate them if she knew. Maybe the hand clutching Beverly's arm would slap her. Beverly would almost rather it ended that way. Hatred is easy; it keeps you warm. The other emotions, the ones fighting for dominance in her gut, those are the ones to fear.
Beverly eases Kathryn's head up from her chest, taking her hands and rubbing them between Beverly's own.
"It's all right. I shook like a baby and vomited after my first bomb."
Kathryn doesn't have to know that Beverly's first bomb killed eighteen people, even if they were mostly Cardassians.
"You kept your lunch down," Beverly reminds her. "You're doing far better than I did."
"Thank you." Kathryn licks her lips, trying to clear what must be a dry throat. "I don't know what I would have done..."
And here's the precipice again. The dark, yawning void where Beverly chooses between the truth, and what they need to survive.
"You would have been fine."
The Alliance would have picked her up, reminded her how dangerous and violent her own species is and kept her locked up in safety for the rest of her natural life. Maybe Beverly's lies aren't so terrible. In the end, when this is over, if- when- Kathryn hates her, she'll have a whole universe full of the Alliance on whom to vent her wrath, and a fleet of ghost ships to bear it.
Beverly strokes her hair, tucking a piece of it back, away from Kathryn's face.
"You're stronger than you think."
Kathryn smiles, a flash of honest light in the dimness of half-truths and secrets. "I don't feel like it."
"Sometimes power is like love. You never know what you have until you see what you've done with it."
Now steady, calmed, Kathryn's still within reach, too close to be anything less than intimate. Beverly was keenly aware of that when she talked about love. Mention the word enough, put the thought in the target's head. She can hear Chakotay's voice in her mind, telling her what to say.
Loyalty can be earned, but it's hard to cultivate. Love on the other hand, grows in even the harshest soil.
"Come," Beverly points down a corridor, further into the darkness. "My family will give you somewhere to stay."
"I should go back." Kathryn's protest is genuine, but half-hearted. She hesitates and Beverly fears that she'll stay.
"Through that tunnel, left, right at the next fork, and activate your transponder." Beverly explains it quickly, as if taking too much time would hurt her. "If you hurry, the Intendant will still be looking for you. If you take your time--"
"I'm a traitor."
"Or you're dead."
There were Terrans there, not many, but enough for a molecular scanner to confirm that Kathryn may have died. The Intendant would miss the use of her mind, but she'll replace Kathryn easily enough. If there isn't a scientist waiting, she could always breed one. Terrans reproduce with little difficulty. She'll choose one of her favourites and breed him with a houseslave, maybe even a concubine. Gul Seska, Ro's second, finds Chakotay useful for that often enough.
"The Intendant will think I'm dead?" Kathryn's shock fades and she realises the truth Beverly's been praying for. "My family, they'll be safe if I'm dead. It's not my fault, my contract--"
"Allows that acts of terrorism are not the fault of the Terran, and Alliance obligations will be honoured in that case." One of the only ways out of an Alliance contract is death. It's an odd cultural artefact of the warlike Klingons and the detail-oriented Cardassians.
"You know Terran service contracts?"
Oddly enough, Beverly thought this part would be hard. Tell her about your son, Chakotay insisted. Empathise, be gentle, connect with her. She thought she'd have to fake her emotional response, stammer her speech so she sounded upset. She had no idea her throat would actually close.
"My son signed one." Truth hurts most of all, even old ones. "I had to help him read it, because he didn't know all of the words."
Kathryn pales, like she's been hit with another shockwave. Maybe she is about to vomit, after all.
"How old--?"
Beverly's eyes are traitors, filling with stinging tears even though Beverly puts every bit of will she has into forcing them dry.
"He was five."
"Five--"
Beverly turns away, letting her feet carry her back to her resistance cell, the closest thing she has left to family.
Kathryn, of course, follows behind. When she catches up with Beverly, understanding and sympathy written all over her beautiful face, she touches her shoulder.
The connection's forged. All Beverly had to do was blow up Kathryn's world and suck her down into the burning aftermath, like the rest of her species.
Kathryn
Terran instruments were mostly destroyed in the cultural revolution that followed the fall of the Terran Empire. Kathryn's seen a few in the Intendant's collection, including the ones Ro would never admit having if the Listener Empress asked. Kathryn knows enough of double speak to gather from Ro that the Listener Empress is aware of her quiet interest in Terran art and music but allows it because Ro is a brutal and efficient Intendant. If Ro falters, her pithy curiosity in the culture of her slaves will be her undoing with the military beneath her command and the threat of that shared knowledge helps keep Ro in line. Knowledge is greater than latinum or Tholian silk.
All Kathryn can remember is that a violin faintly resembles a Bajoran qeora, and a trumpet shines like a clean piece of gold conduit.
Her ears are still buzzing in protest of their abuse, but there's music. Someone in Beverly's camp plays music and the thought stops her feet.
She's heard the Imperial Bajoran Symphony and the Cardassian Philharmonic when they toured through Terok Sa, the Intendant's station. Both imperial orchestras were impressive in their own manner. Bajoran music is full of complex melodies and impossible harmonies. It's measured and intricately constructed. Cardassian music is often atonal: sometimes violent, sometimes wailing.
The Intendant explained that Cardassian hearing relies more on changes in pitch to determine beauty, while Bajoran hearing is more like her own, only superior. Terrans are the weakest of the sentient races, that's why they fell. They interbreed easily with the others, because their weak DNA is recessive and overcome by any race of the Alliance. Terrans have minimal redundant organs, carry their children four months longer than Bajorans, and can only tolerate a minimal level of heat.
Terrans once had music of their own, but it is nothing more than wind howling though dust now. Even through the dull ache from the long gash on her leg, Kathryn eventually recognises a Vulcan tune. The metre is too regular for it to be anything else.
"How do you have music?"
Her rescuer smiles. "Harry has to practice."
Kathryn files away the thought that Harry is a musician and remembers she never asked the name of her rescuer. She grabs the dirty sleeve of the woman who saved her and studies her face. There's too many years of worry etched around large blue eyes and aristocratic cheekbones. If she wasn't filthy, she'd be beautiful.
"Who are you?"
Her rescuer covers Kathryn's hand with her own and squeezes it warmly. "You're bleeding again."
New red blood seeps through the bandage on Kathryn's thigh, bright through the dirt.
"Oh, I didn't--"
"Come, sit, let me fix it before you pass out."
Her rescuer drags her around the last corner into a large cave. Cloth tents line the wall on the left and a fire burns in the centre of the room, smoke rising into a ramshackle atmospheric recycler.
Kathryn lets her rescuer guide her down, holding her arms. "You live here?"
There's no real light, only glow panels stuffed in the ceiling where there was space. It's haphazard, some green, some white, and a few pulsing lazily. Her rescuer knows the room and settles her on a clean slab of stone, just beneath one of the stronger white lights.
"Beats ore processing." There's mirth in her rescuer's dark smile.
Kathryn's seen the ore processing centres and the horrible conditions the Terran slaves worked under there. She can't imagine this woman there, this angel with an antique medical kit, but perhaps that is where her scars had come from. The double lines on her left cheek and the mark along her jaw had come from somewhere.
"This won't heal like it would in an Alliance medical centre, it will sting, then itch while it heals. You'll get used to the smell." Her rescuer peels back the bandage and rubs in more of the odd pungent salve, something herbal and sharp, like lemon peel.
Kathryn forces her hands to relax and releases her rescuer's sleeve. "It's nice."
"Give it time and it'll be all right. Don't push it. No dancing for the Intendant for a few days."
Another salve, this one white and soft slide over the burns on Kathryn's arm. Quick and efficient, everywhere her fingers touch goes cool.
"There you go." The woman takes a cloth and rubs ash from Kathryn's face."Good as new."
"Who are you?"
"No one of importance."
"But you must--" Kathryn coughs, her lungs protesting their abuse.
"Drink." The woman presses a cup into her hand. Behind her, figures emerge from the tents or Kathryn first notices them, she can't be sure.
Gulping the weak juice that tastes faintly of coconut, Kathryn stares at her rescuer as the others close in. "Do you have a name?"
"Slaves don't need names. Didn't they teach you that in the Intendant's bedchamber?"
Kathryn blushes. "No, I don't--"
"You're not part of the harem, right, right. I forgot. You're just her little pet scientist."
Kathryn tries her leg, which is numb instead of throbbing. "No. You don't understand."
"It's all right." The woman waves her quiet. "We've all done things we're not proud of to keep out of the Alliance's way." Darkness passes through her eyes and her story fades back into memory, whatever it was.
She sighs. Relenting, she offers her name. "Beverly."
"That's pretty."
"Sure beats Terran five-five-two-Beta-Charlie." Beverly chirps, showing the tattooed mark on her neck when she lifts her hair. "Nothing like Doctor Janeway though."
Kathryn winces again, her privilege settling in to weigh on her shoulders.
"Don't do that."
"What?"
"Frown." Beverly taps Kathryn's forehead. "You'll ruin your pretty face."
Behind Beverly, a young man with an instrument Kathryn doesn't recognise, sneaks up carrying a grin as wide as his face. He's slight, with long black hair and golden skin. He has none of the scars Beverly does, so he may have escaped the mines.
"Found a stray?" His voice is light. He can't be more than fifteen.
"Harry, this is Doctor Kathryn Janeway."
Kathryn extends her hand and he switches his instrument to his left to shake hers. He grins at the gesture, even though he knows the custom it seems quaint to him.
A young man with sandy hair and an all-too-charming smile wraps one arm around Harry's shoulders and nods to her. There's an intensity in his gaze that she's seen before. The kind of gaze that promises to know everything about her. He is more cocky than Will; more outwardly confident. He offers his hand, taking hers and stroking the back of it with his thumb. Tingles chase each other up the back of her neck.
"I'm Tom."
Beverly taps his shoulder, ending their contact. Kathryn steps back, nearly stepping on Beverly's foot. When did she get so close?
"She's not for you, Tommy." Beverly's tone is light, but there's just enough weight to make Kathryn wonder just who she is for.
She was a gift for the last Intendant: a pretty little captive genius, who could prove the distance formula by age twelve and would rather do calculus and astrophysics than sleep. Kathryn had been one of the few Terran children who survived her upbringing and reached her potential. When she was granted her doctorate, her father earned a promotion and Phoebe moved to Andor. She's seen the letters they're allowed to write each year and they're not addressed to her. Kathryn Janeway isn't a person, she's the property of Intendant Ro.
She touches the tattooed ownership mark on the side of her neck. It can't itch, it's long healed, but she's aware of it as if it were raw.
Tom leans in. He's barely a few years older than Harry, but there's more experience in his eyes. He smiles like Will.
Beverly waves them off. "You two can talk to her later, let me get her cleaned up."
Tom lifts a strand of her hair, sniffing it. "She stinks of Alliance."
Harry watches, reaching for her hair then pulling back his hand. "How can the Alliance have a smell?"
"A Klingon ship smells of leather, old blood and sword oil. You smell sweat and fresh meat. Cardassian ships reek of kanar but the air is dry, like the empty desert. Reptiles rely on heat, not smell. They're not salty with sweat like mammals. A Bajoran ship will have incense, sometimes thick enough to cover everything else, and a Ferengi vessel, that could smell like whatever the Damon desires. If you know the difference, you'll know where you are without even having to open your eyes."
The speaker circles from behind her, his voice like silver scraping stone. Beverly's breast is just behind Kathryn's back, and she can feel it soft against her before Beverly's hand cups her shoulder.
"Knowing that could keep you alive. Beverly, take care of her."
Turning to see the speaker, Kathryn's too slow and only catches a glimpse of him. He's Terran, tall and solid with steel and black hair. There's something on his face, across his forehead towards his temple. It's a tattoo, but nothing like the ownership tattoos the Alliance put on their slaves. It's not Klingon or Cardassian, or even Andorian. Could it be Terran? Do Terrans even have traditions of their own anymore? Why does he look so familiar?
Harry watches the man for a moment before he drops his eyes. "He's our leader."
"Such as we have," Tom says, shrugging. "Might tell you his name if he thinks it's important."
"I thought names weren't important in your work." Harry nudges Tom's shoulder, grinning. His smile makes him look even younger, like one of the children the Intendant collects.
"Need anything?" Tom smiles lazily at Beverly, ignoring Harry's jibe.
"We're fine, thanks."
"What did he mean, take care of me?" Kathryn asked, burying the cold knot in her stomach.
"Keep you out of the tunnels with the bugs, keep you from getting yourself killed by being where you shouldn't be."
Turning her head back towards the direction of the leader's disappearance, Kathryn looks back to Beverly. "I'm not a child."
"You are out here." Beverly reaches for her cheek, but Kathryn pulls back. "How old were you when the Alliance took you? Seven? Thenall you know of the real universe is what the Alliance wants you to see.."
"I--" What comeback could she have? Kathryn only leaves the station with the Intendant or to get supplies. She's always with an escort, never alone. On the surface on her own she'd head for the first Alliance guard she saw and hope to go home. If she wasn't already a traitor or dead.
"I don't want you to feel you have to, I'm not looking for--"
Beverly catches her cheek this time, caressing Kathryn's skin like the mother she's long forgotten. "It's all right. I know it's probably the only thing the Alliance didn't drill into your head, but you can trust me."
Her hand drops and the moment's broken. Kathryn reaches up and touches where Beverly's hand was a moment ago.
"Come on," Beverly says. "Let's find you a place to sleep."
part ii