Four Things That Could Have Happened To Chakotay
Bridging the gap between sleep and conscious awareness was getting to be something of a challenge for him, or perhaps it was simply the task of distinguishing between the two. One too many nights in a row where he had worked a double shift, and some of that time had been spent on the bridge with a skeleton crew and Captain Janeway. Afterwards they had gone over damage control scenarios in the aftermath of yet another alien attack. He could understand the fact that the crew of Voyager were strangers in the Delta Quadrant. 'A rather backwoods region of the galaxy in my opinion. 'What else was Starfleet did venture out into space for, other to explore the uncharted regions of space, right?'
Odd thoughts come into Chaktoay's mind when he's in his meditative state. Some of them wondering why after centuries of his people practicing the soothing and sometimes revealing trances, that it would continue into the 24th century.
In the silence of his mind, he recalled the incident of the time an alien entity, had somehow latched onto the electronic signals of his mind. 'Funny to phrase it that way, but organic or night, alien to this galaxy or not, I attracted the alien's attention all the same.'
The entity had tapped directly into his semi conscious thoughts, probed his mind. Somehow, while he was under his trance, Voyager's chief medical officer, and only EMH, had declared brain dead, all the while; he had been very much alive, trying to convince the rest of the crew of the danger posed to the ship.
'Near death experiences are becoming rather common place for the members of this ship. I've lost count, how many have there been now. Ten? Twelve? I should be writing this down, I suppose. The Doctor did request that I chronicle things that occur me while I on my vision quest, if nothing else, I'd have a record on what goes in my gray matter.'
Chakotay shifted position on the floor of his quarters, his eyelids flickering in rapid sequence, the skin around where the tribal tattoo marked his skin and stood in profile in the dim lighting of his quarters. The sudden change in position had been necessary to relieve the tension in the back of his neck, and helped to loosen tight muscles.
Everything he had ever learned from the old man, his grandfather, told him that one should not completely give over control to the trance-like state while embarked upon a vision quest. He needed to guide and focus his thoughts and his direction.
'Not a problem, just give me some directional signs to point to, old man, but where are you now, when I need you?' he thought.
In the landscape of the vision quest things appeared and disappeared at random intervals, sometimes it would be snippets of the crew and the various decks of the ship, and he would pass insubstantial and intangible through the bulkheads. Thinking over the first time that had occurred, Chakotay realized that from a purely rational and linear way of thinking it should be too surprising that the Doctor and Captain Janeway, and the others thought they were being haunted by a ghost. 'Now there's an idea.' Careful, you're getting maudlin in your middle age. Focus, man. That's what you need.'
In the landscape of the vision quest, Chakotay could feel a sudden jolt of energy spark from an unknown source, swirl around in mid air, and come to a stop smack dab right where his tattoo marked his face. It did not hurt as much as he had anticipated. In fact it felt rather like a tickle or a kiss from a lover. That musing triggered other memories: of his time he had spent with another crew, the Starfleet rebels, the Maquis, and his former lover, Seska, a fiery, rash, and determined Bajoran reactionary, Seska. She had been his everything for years before the crews of both ships had been flung into the Delta Quadrant.
Seska appeared, in the company of one of most adamant and hostile enemies they had made in the first few years of being in this sector of space, the Kazons.
Seska had done remarkably well for herself, established in the Kazon hierarchy, and had refused to join a Starfleet crew as the majority of the former Maquis rebels had opted for. Oh, she wasn't back to reconcile their differences, although he recalled with some bitterness and remorse for missed opportunities, if would have made a difference if had chosen to go with her or give into to her demands, where he would be at this moment. Betrayal was a hard thing to swallow, even more so then the aftermath of a broken relationship.
On the heels of that memory, there was another jolt of energy and he was thrust out of one dream sequence and into another.
A grassy terrain greeted his eyes, forested on three sides by a stand of alien yet still somehow familiar looking trees just verging between winter and spring, dew still damp on the grass. Chakotay felt and saw his physical body moving in among the trees, his olive- and black field uniform blending in with the terrain. He carried a something resembling an old fashioned double-barreled submachine gun over his left shoulder, field rations, a water canteen, and various other articles stuffed into numerous pockets of his flak jacket. He pushed a path through the close-hugging trunks of the trees and met up with his unit; but they did not belong to anyone he knew and recognized from Voyager. In the terms of the vision, this did not bother him as much as he knew it that it should.
"Where the hell have you been, Sir?" an aggravated male voice buzzed in his ears, seemingly coming from his left and behind his present position. Chakotay turned to confront the speaker, and saw a male belonging to a humanoid looking species. The mean leant up against a tree trunk, a piece of straw or similar material hanging out of his mouth. It reminded Chakotay of the people he had seen smoking ciagarettes in the old holodeck novels that Lt. Tom Paris kept insisting that the entire command staff watch in their off duty hours as a form of relaxation. Cigarette smoking or perhaps cigars were more in vogue these days, but who was he to pass judgement on someone else's vice. "I'm sorry, was I supposed to do something?" He asked the stranger.
"Tattoo face has obviously lost it," the stranger replied. "You're several hours late and we're missing the rendezvous point. The damn guerillas could be upon us at any second." At that instant the stranger stopped in mid sentence as a howling wail split the afternoon silence of the forest. When it finally subsided Chakotay looked up into the distance where the tree line narrowed and allowed the afternoon sunlight into the small clearing. "What the hell was that?"
"It's the enemy. They do that every afternoon" the stranger replied. "Some kind of song to the noon zenith. The stranger shifted his stance, moving from one foot to the other, obviously impatient to get moving again. "I can't stand the noise myself." He shrugged his indifference of the enemy custom. "Tattoo, man, can get we move past the 411, Sir? I'd like to get a move on."
"Look, this is obviously important. But you did mind if you fill me in before we both die of asphyxiation and save the guerillas the trouble of killing us themselves."
"Funny. I almost burst a gut laughing, but I'm holding my in. I didn't know you had a sense of humor."
"I was going for dry wit, but that's all I can afford at this point," said Chakotay.
Chakotay blinked and the forest, the stranger, the even odder conversation all vanished and was replaced by completely different surroundings.
The next sequence was one would have preferred that his mind not follow. The Hirogen ship. 'Nasty characters, as nasty as they come,' was the message his internal monitor registered. 'How many times have they purposely engaged us simply because we presented an intriguing new prey for them?'
The interior of the ship was cavernous and hung with equally gigantic wire mesh netting, where some of the nets were occupied, the Hirogen kept potential prey on storage. Chakotay recalled with a grimace of remembered pain, being strung up there like a trapped timber wolf caught in a hunter's trap, and came to the realization that was precisely what those ominous netting signified. 'Another game of flee vs. fight,' Chakotay sighed and made a quick 360' degree appraisal of his situation, checking for any weapons or items he could fashion into a weapon, and was reassured to feel the outline of his phaser in the pocket of his uniform. A Hirogen's startled reflection was mirrored in the dull lighting of a wall facing his present position, and Chakotay drew his phaser are thumbed the intensity button, however the dusty air made him sneeze, and he blinked. When he could see again, the Hirogen ship and everything inside of it had vanished to be replaced by something more comforting and familiar; outlines and rooftops of Earth-style architecture, and not just anywhere on Earth, but the tree-line boulevard of StarFleet Command's base of operations.
"This is getting to be more than one can take for a vision quest, I think I'd like to wake up now."
A man wearing the mustard colored yellow uniform of a Star Fleet ensign passed by walking in the opposite direction down the street. He was Asiatic in feature, and stood about average height. He carried a brief case and seemed absorbed in his own thoughts. As he drew closer Chakotay realized that it was Harry Kim. "Harry?" Nothing. He could be mistaken but
It was possible that he simply had not heard so he tried again. "Harry Kim?" Still no response, so he decided to see if recognition by the other man would be forthcoming.
"Harry?"
"Were you speaking to me, Sir?" asked the ensign, a puzzled look on his face.
"This is going to sound odd, but you remind me of someone I know very well"
"I understand, you like someone who has traveled a very long way, and it can be rather disorienting around here," he thought something over, the skin over the bridge of his nose crinkling in the same way as Harry's did, then he said. "Even for those of us who live and work around the brass all the time. If I were you, I think you'd ought to watch your step."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"The brass was in a tizzy a while back, when a new deep space ship got launched and it disappeared in the Badlands chasing down a bunch of Maquis rebels." He lowered his face and winked in a secretive manner; as if worried he would be over heard. "It was lost with all hands on board. Bad as losing all those good men and women, it made for bad public relations within the Federation. That's all I'm saying."
Chakotay stared at the other man, unable to phrase a reply to this startling bit of information, when it hit like a slap in the face that what the other man was talking about was the disappearance of his ship, Voyager. Forcing back his first instinctive outburst, he managed to keep his composure, thanked the ensign who looked like Harry for his help, moving on up the boulevard. He blinked again, the white noise that signaled the shift in scenarios increased in volume, and he found himself back aboard his ship, in his quarters.
Chakotay, regaining full conscious awareness of his surroundings, heard the ping of his communication badge bringing him out of his meditative state. He stood up, shrugging his shoulders to relieve the tension and tenseness in his neck and back muscles, then hit the response button:
"Chakotay, here, go ahead."
"Commander to the Bridge, we've got a situation here, Sir," Tom Paris' voice came through the channel.
"On my way. I think I've used up all my vision quest time for the next several solar cycles. Just wait until the Doctor hears about this."