Lotos Days
By Penny A. Proctor

Kathryn saw the stream of light blaze above her head and stopped. Turning, she saw that they were being followed. Two of the other walkers were gesturing at them to return, while another had a weapon pointed at them. The first shot had been intentionally high, she realized, to get their attention.

The message was clear: come back or be killed.

She looked at the others, wishing desperately that they had some means of communication. The way she saw it, they were probably dead no matter what; if they surrendered, they'd die when the portable transmitter gave out or was taken away or else they would be killed later because of what they knew. If she had to die, she preferred to die fighting. But she wasn't alone, and they had to do what they did as a group.

The others were looking at her, waiting for her to do something. Somehow this had become her decision.

All right, then. She reached with her right hand toward Chakotay, and he grasped it. She turned away from the guards. "Courage," she said, and pointed to the stars.

They all took a step forward.

"Vorik!" Joe shouted, scrambling for the aft of the shuttle. "Are the shuttle transporters functional?"

"Yes."

"I'm bringing those walkers on board, then you. Be ready when you materialize."

"Ready for what, Lieutenant?"

"Anything," he snapped, calculating the coordinates for the transport on the fly. He really wished B'Elanna were there, she was much better at this sort of thing than he was.

In a moment, two of the walkers stood on the transporter pad. "Step down quickly," he said, trying to calculate the coordinates for the next two. "Vorik! What's happening? Have they moved?"

Harry stared in disbelief as Kathryn and Chakotay disappeared. Transporter, he thought, but who? Where? Not too far, or he'd be dead; Kathryn and the portable transmitter must still be within twenty meters. That meant she was either on the Peacekeeper behind them or the Copernicus in front of them. He looked again at the small shuttle and noticed that there was someone clinging to its hull, facing them.

Emanni was suddenly in the lead, and she hesitated. She and Hrano both turned toward him, as if seeking instruction. Harry pointed toward the shuttle and tried to signal her to head in that direction. She turned and began to move where he indicated.

Then he saw another white stab of light flash by, missing them all. He gestured again, thinking, Hurry, hurry.

Hrano stumbled, lost his footing, and started to fall away from the station. Harry and Emanni each grabbed hold of the waistline tether and tried to pull him back. Hrano reached a hand toward Emanni and she stretched to grasp it.

And another flash of light streaked and caught her in the chest.

"One of the walkers has been hit by phaser fire," Vorik reported over the comm system.

"Damn." Joe moved as quickly as he dared without confirmed coordinates or sensors. A rapid movement, and two more walkers materialized, but one fell over at once. "Get out of the way," he said urgently. "I've got to get the rest in."

He didn't look up from the console as the first two helped with the wounded walker. In a moment, he had the fifth walker on board, and finally he brought Vorik in.

Only then did he look up from the board to see who he had just rescued. The sight caused him to draw in his breath sharply. Lt. Kim, Commander Chakotay and the Captain had removed their helmets and were looking down at the injured walker, a Minenne woman, lying in the arms of a Gunrath'u man.

The woman look up at the man who held her, her eyes a deep gold color that seemed to leaching out into her skin. She raised one hand slightly, as if reaching for him. He caught it in his still-gloved hand. "Emanni," he said, his voice choked.

Janeway looked up. "Can you do something?"

It was an odd question, Joe thought, but he said, "Of course." Moving awkwardly in the crowded shuttle, he found the medikit and removed the medical scanner and quickly checked the woman – Emanni, he corrected himself.

Emanni kept her eyes fixed on the man, and then said in a voice that was mostly a sigh, "No time," and closed her eyes.

Joe watched as the readings on the scanner went to flatline. "I'm sorry. She didn't make it."

"No," the Gunrath'u man looked up at her with desperation in his eyes. He held the body of the woman as closely as he could while they were both in bulky suits. "No, help her, please. Please help her."

"I'm sorry," Joe said again. The man's obvious grief moved him to pity, but at the same time he was feeling lost, as if he had missed some important briefing. "Captain, what happened?" When Janeway didn't answer immediately, he looked to the others. "Commander? Lieutenant?"

Finally the Captain said, "Do you know us?"

"Of course I know you." Joe looked at each of them, noting the slightly anxious and questioning looks. "But you don't know me, do you?" he asked slowly, just beginning to comprehend. "What happened to you?"

"Their memories have been erased," the Gunrath'u said in a dull voice, "so that they would work in the factories."

"Good God," he breathed, stunned. Then he remembered the walkers with the weapons coming out of the airlock. "We'll deal with that later. Vorik, get the shields up. Are they working?"

"Fifty percent."

The communications system began to beep, and Joe shouldered his way to the pilot's seat. "Lieutenant Ca-Ree," a pinched voice said, accenting the second syllable of his name, "you transported station personnel into your shuttle."

"Damn straight. Only they weren't exactly station personnel, were they? Look, I see six - no, seven - armed people heading my way. Unless you want an interplanetary incident, call them off. Now."

"Unauthorized use of a transporter-"

He cut the voice off and quickly entered another frequency. "Carey to Tuvok."

"Yes, Lieutenant. How is the examination progressing?"

"Fine. Are you with the ambassadors?"

"Yes. All of the ambassadors and Oligarch Tenglis. Have you been able to determine what may have happened to our crew?"

"I think we can say with complete certainty that they were impressed by the Gunrath'u."

"Impressed?"

"Shanghaied. Taken against their will. Kidnapped."

"Ridiculous!" a strange voice burst over the comm "A complete lie. Show us the data."

Before Joe could answer, the Gunrath'u man shouted, "Listen to me, General. This is Hrano. I don't care what you do to me now. It's all true. The Gunrath'u fleet has been seizing ships and taking the crews. I'll testify in any forum you want."

Then Captain Janeway said quickly, "My name is Kathryn. Kathryn Janeway. Don't let them turn off the transmitter on the island. They can kill all the prisoners almost instantly."

The comm began to blink rapidly, meaning that another signal was incoming. "One more thing," Joe said. "There's a boarding party about fifteen meters from our hatch. They've already killed one of the Captain's party. If they don't back off, I'm going to have to start shooting."

In the conference room, all eyes were fixed on Tenglis and the Chief Oligarch. Tuvok said, "General, Lieutenant Carey is an excellent marksman."

"Indeed," added the Grevel-Ash ambassador. "It would be most unfortunate if anything happened to the people in that shuttle. Or anywhere else."

Sitting stiffly, Tenglis looked around the room. He was met with stony silence from everyone, including the Chief Oligarch. Finally Tenglis motioned to the aide seated behind him, who nodded once and rose. "No one will be harmed."

"So much for the vaunted word of the Gunrath'u," the Grevel-Ash ambassador said coldly. "How many other lies have we been told?" Rising, he turned to the other ambassadors. "I must inform my government. This will be viewed as an act of war."

"Shouldn't recovering our citizens be our first priority?" the Minenne ambassador asked.

"Of course, but this affront cannot go unpunished."

"No. It cannot." The Minenne ambassador turned to the Chief Oligarch. "There must be consequences, highly visible consequences. Or, I am very much afraid there will be war."

The Chief Oligarch rose. "Gentleman, I assure you that this unfortunate incident will be dealt with." He paused. "The important thing now is that we focus on overcoming this without making hasty decisions we would all regret."

"And what do you suggest?" the Vordai ambassador asked bitterly. "That we just forget the entire incident?"

"We will of course make reparations to your people and your worlds. And we will issue a formal apology."

"It's a beginning," the Minenne ambassador said. "But it isn't enough."

The Chief Oligarch nodded. "No. I suppose it isn't." He stood, and turned to his left. "General Tenglis, you are under arrest for crimes against the Oligarchy."

Tenglis stared at him. "You are going to make me the scapegoat for this?"

"Someone has to take the blame," the Chief Oligarch said calmly. "You have another opportunity to serve your world, Tenglis. You have often told me that the price of peace is high. It's time for you to pay it."

For several seconds, Tenglis stared at the Chief Oligarch in a seeming battle of wills. Finally, he shrugged. "As you say." He stood and turned to leave the room, then turned. "It was necessary," he said. "Without us, without a strong Gunrath, you would have been at each others' throats years ago."

"And that," the Chief Oligarch said when Tenglis was gone, "brings up a very interesting point that we have all refused to acknowledge before now: this sector can no longer continue as it has been. We must evolve into something else."

"What do you mean?" the Minenne ambassador asked.

"If we continue as warring factions, we will never advance beyond our present state. We may even destroy one another." He looked around the table. "Today you proved you can act as a cooperative, if not unified, whole. Surely that is the foundation for our future." He turned to Tuvok. "Will you tell us more of your Federation? From what I've heard, its principles may be applicable to our situation."

"Gladly," Tuvok said.

EPILOGUE

The Day After

She drifted in a blue-white fog, feeling pleasantly light. It was like floating, she thought, floating on a lake on an early autumn day, when the sun was still high but the air starting to turn cool. The smell was wrong, though. The smell was sterile, like a laboratory where they worked on delicate equipment. But she was lying down. Why would she be lying down in a laboratory?

Of course. She wasn't in a laboratory. She was in Sickbay, on Voyager. She was once again Captain Kathryn Janeway, commander of a starship that was alone in the Delta Quadrant. Probing gently, she tested all her memories and found them intact, beginning with her earliest recollections through childhood, adolescence, the Academy, and then her career. She remembered the Delta Quadrant and the Borg.

She remembered the last six weeks on Gunrath.

"Ah, Captain," the Doctor said. She realized he was standing beside the biobed, hovering over the monitor. "How do you feel? Any headache? Disorientation?"

"No," she said slowly. "There's no headache. And my memory has returned completely."

He smiled, without any trace of self-congratulation, and she wondered if he was relieved. Then he took her arm and removed a wrist band. A transmitter, she remembered. The Chief Oligarch had ordered that she, Chakotay and Harry each be given functional transmitters so they could leave with Tuvok as quickly as possible. "Good. It was really a fairly simple procedure. The information the Gunrath'u gave us was correct; the restraining chip was also the mechanism that suppressed your memory. Remove it, and you're as good as new."

She sat up. "The others?"

"Commander Chakotay is still unconscious. I discharged Lieutenant Kim a few minutes ago. Like you, he seems to have recovered completely."

"What about Emanni?" They had brought her body back to Voyager at Tuvok's suggestion, to see if the healing nanoprobes could restore her.

His face fell. "I'm sorry, Captain. It was too late. There was nothing we could do for her." He paused, then added, "The irony is, she probably could have left the planet at any time."

"What do you mean?"

"She had a recessive gene that neutralized the effects of the restraining chip. Her brain was able to quarantine it and build new pathways around it. Apparently, something less than one-tenth of one percent of the Minenne have this gene."

He walked over to a nearby cart and picked up a datapad which he handed to her. "Hrano has taken her body back to her home. He left this for you."

The message was short. "Kathryn," it said,

I doubt that I will see you or Chakotay again. My hope is to remain on Minenne, at least for a while, so I can find Emanni's son and tell him about her. After that, I don't know. It's certain I cannot return to Gunrath. But I want you and Chakotay to know that I will spend the rest of my life trying to improve relations between the four worlds so that nothing like this ever happens again. Your forgiveness is not something I expect, but please believe me that I will never stop trying to earn it.

Eyes misting, she set the PADD down. Hrano had to lose everything that mattered to him before he found his moral center; now that it seemed he had, she found she could not hate him. In a way, he was as much a victim of his culture as Emanni. Blinking twice, she turned to the Doctor. "When can I return to duty?"

"As soon as you want to," he said, "although I would recommend that you rest today and start tomorrow."

"Thank you," she said, and slid from the bed.

"You're not going to listen to me, are you?" He sounded resigned.

She smiled. "Not this time, Doctor. I've got to find out what's been happening on my ship."

At the end of the bed she stopped and turned toward the bed where Chakotay lay. His eyes were closed, and for the first time she experienced a feeling of slight disorientation as she recognized the face of her lover and of her First Officer. The dichotomy made her dizzy, and she reached down to steady herself.

"Captain? Are you all right?"

"Yes," she said slowly, not looking at him. Her attention was fixed on Chakotay, and she walked over to his bedside.

He seemed to be peacefully asleep, his face in repose familiar to her now. She touched his cheek gently even though she couldn't disturb the drug-induced sleep, and she smiled. For one last moment she allowed herself to be Kathryn, the Logistics and Transport technician, looking at her lover. Then the smile faded and she straightened, and turned back to the Doctor. "When will the Commander be ready for duty?"

The Doctor was looking at her with something that was uncomfortably close to sympathy. "In about two hours. Although he, too, should rest until tomorrow."

"When he wakes, please tell him I'd like to speak to him in my ready room as soon as he's up to it." She heard the briskness in her voice. It was surprisingly simple to return to command mode. "And please ask Mr. Tuvok to meet me there in half an hour. I'll need a briefing on the status of the ship."

"Yes, Captain." He spoke quietly. "You know, you went through a lot in the past six weeks. You should take some time to process it before you make any decisions about ... anything."

"Thank you, Doctor," she said, more harshly than she intended but it was hard to keep her feelings under control. It was bad enough having to deal with the ramifications of her relationship with Chakotay without having other people know about it. Then she turned and left.

Three hours later, she sat on the sofa of her ready room, pouring her third cup of coffee since leaving Sickbay, when he came in, looking relaxed and rested and holding an apple. "You wanted to see me, Captain?"

It was an entirely professional question delivered in an entirely professional tone, and part of her wanted to cry when she heard it. She wanted to tell him how she felt, to ask him to come cook with her tonight so they could talk things through. That desire was quickly stifled. She decided to start with business, and stood. "We've got good news, Commander. Tuvok tells me that all four worlds have agreed to help us with repairs. I gather the Vordai and the Minenne feel genuinely sorry about what happened, and the Gunrath'u and the Grevel-Ash simply want us gone as quickly as possible."

"That is good news," he said. "Was there anything else?"

"B'Elanna is certain now that the transwarp failure wasn't sabotage. Apparently it was a cascade event triggered by the prolonged sonic stress - the harmonics amplified the discrepancies between the technologies."

"Yes, I saw the report. I meant, if there is nothing more you need me for, I should get back to work."

Unconsciously, she straightened and stood at attention as perfectly as a cadet. "We need to talk, Chakotay."

A soft, sad chuckle escaped him. "No, we don't. I know what you're going to say. Consider it said."

She blinked, completely surprised. She had steeled herself for an emotional confrontation, for impassioned pleas or cold anger, but this calm, almost cheerful acceptance caught her off guard. "Well. Good." She swallowed. "It really is for the best."

"I'm sure you're right."

Surprise began to turn to irritation. "I wish it could be different, but it can't. Not under our current circumstances."

"If you say so."

"It's not strictly against regulations, but it just wouldn't be a good idea. I can't afford to compromise my command by muddying things up between us. We have to be an effective command team even if that means sacrificing our personal desires."

"You're right. If there's nothing else, I should go. Paris is waiting to brief me on his filing system."

Nonplussed, she said, "Yes, go on." He was almost to the door when she said, "Wait a minute. Why aren't you arguing with me?"

He turned. "About what?"

"About us, dammit. About what happened on that planet. About how I made you promise that things wouldn't change, and now I'm the one changing them. About how stinking unfair it is that this has happened to us twice."

"Sounds like you know the arguments," he said. "You don't need me to me to point them out."

She caught her breath. "You did that on purpose, didn't you?"

"Perhaps," he said, with a slight smile. Then he became serious again. "The bottom line is, you aren't ready. No matter how close we were before this happened, no matter what happened on the planet, you just aren't ready."

Suddenly she felt close to tears. "No. I'm not. Can you forgive me?"

"Do you remember the Lotos eaters?"

The non sequitor had her mind reeling. "Tennyson? What does that have to do with anything?"

"Homer, actually. The Odyssey." He began walking toward her slowly. "Odysseus sent a landing party ashore to search for food. They ate a fruit called the Lotos and it was so delicious that they forgot all about trying to get home. They just wanted to enjoy the fruit. Odysseus had to take them back to the ship by force."

He was coming closer, moving into her space, but she held her ground. "Yes, I remember."

"I've been wondering what happened after that. Do you suppose they ever stopped wishing for more of that fruit?"

He was too close now, she thought. Her body was responding to his nearness, to his scent. She should back away, get to safety. She didn't. She had to prove, to herself as much as to him, that she could stand this. "I doubt it," she said slowly, "but they learned to live without it. They had to, to get home."

"Perhaps," he said. "But perhaps something else happened." He bent his head toward her and spoke softly, barely more than a whisper. "Perhaps they brought a seed back with them. And even though they thought it couldn't survive on the ship, they planted it. And with enough time and enough care, the seed grew and they were able to enjoy the fruit and get home."

She refused to look at his eyes. If she did, she'd be lost. "That's not what Homer said."

"Homer left it to our imagination." He stepped back suddenly, leaving her feeling confused again. "I really am late for that meeting with Paris and if I don't decipher his filing codes, we'll lose six weeks of reports."

"Well." She hoped she didn't appear as rattled as she felt. "Mustn't let that happen."

He started to leave, then stopped and turned around. Before she realized what he intended he pulled her to him and kissed her. Her body reacted before her mind, and she held him closely. The kiss was sweet and long and filled with promises; it conjured memories of dancing on the pier, of walking on the beach, of cuddling in the dark. She felt as if she were falling, gently, from the stars to the earth. Then it was over, and she opened her eyes.

Chakotay was already at the door, but he turned again and grinned at her, looking extremely satisfied. Without warning, he tossed the apple to her. "I'm a patient man, Kathryn. I can wait for seeds to grow."

With that, he left, leaving her staring at the door with a dumbfounded expression. Then she looked at the apple that she held, and murmured, "The question is, can I?"

Author's Note: Acknowledgements to Bryan Fuller and Ken Biller, who wrote the episode "Workforce," and Alfred Lord Tennyson, who wrote "The Lotos-Eaters" and oh, yes, to Homer, who wrote "The Odyssey." I borrowed from these sources but hopefully added something original. Thanks to the entire 7.5 team and especially Lt. Bonner, Christina and Rocky for their help. Thanks also to Diane Bellomo for a last minute-beta read.