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Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 18:05:39 -0400
Subject: [ASCEM-S] NEW:  Ceremony:  The Captain (VOY/TNG; J, Picard; PG-13); 4/5
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Title:       Ceremony
Author:      Kelly [Chambliss]
Email:       rather_be_reading @ yahoo.com
Website:     http://appelsini.tripod.com/Kelly/
Series:      VOY
Codes:       Janeway and others
Rating:      PG-13
Part:        4/5
Posted:      June 22, 2004
Archive:     ASC(EM); BLTS; others please ask
Disclaimer:  All that is Trek belongs to Paramount.
Summary:     Captain Janeway gets promoted.

Part Four:
The Captain

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

He was told to attend the ceremony.

To be sure, the command had come in the form of a request:  "Since
you're already on Earth, Captain Picard, we hope you'll be available
for Captain Janeway's promotion," Admiral Hayes said after a meeting
at Starfleet Headquarters.  "These events help build morale,
especially after a war.  It would be good to have the Fleet's
flagship represented."

Picard had acquiesced with a nod.  In truth, he didn't mind going.
Not that he looked forward to the speeches or to what promised to be
a massive assembly of upper-echelon egos.  It was his curiosity about
the guest of honor that drew him.

He had not known of Kathryn Janeway before her disastrous trip to the
Badlands, but that was not surprising.  Starfleet was large; many
captains were strangers to each other.  He knew that Will Riker had
met Janeway back in their cadet days, but Riker had been
unforthcoming about her.  "Intense" was all Will had said by way of
description.  Picard could well believe it.

He fancied he could feel some of that intensity as he sat watching
her from his place on the dais.  Her gaze was more piercing in
reality than in vids or holographs, the planes of her face more
defined.  The normally unflattering uniform emphasized the compact
efficiency of her movements, although Picard could not rid himself of
the notion that the maroon admiral's bands around her sleeves looked
more like manacles than decoration.  He smiled slightly -- clearly
his own unwillingness to be promoted was coloring his imagination.

Had Janeway wanted her promotion? he wondered.  Or had she been left
little choice?  A war-weary Federation needed its heroes, and thus
her career had ceased to be her own even before Voyager swooped
triumphantly over San Francisco Bay.  Still, if Picard's sources were
to be trusted, Starfleet was taking something of a chance with
Janeway.  There were rumors -- hushed, barely-whispered rumors --
that on her own, in the vastness of the Delta Quadrant, she had gone
rogue, torturing prisoners, sleeping with alien murderers, forging
unholy alliances with demagogues and tyrants and even the Borg.

Looking at Janeway now, as she sat quiet and still, her attention
focused on the current speaker, Picard refused to judge her.  No one,
not even her own crew, could know what she'd faced out there.  It
must have been. . .

~~~ hell ~~~

The word sounded in his brain, but he hadn't thought it.  The voice
was not his own, but hers. . .

~~~ Kathryn ~~~, he thought. . .

Picard saw Janeway's head jerk up sharply, her eyes wide as she
glanced about, trying to discover whose mind had spoken to hers.

But the link was already broken, Picard could feel it.  He drew a
long breath, willing his heartbeat to return to normal.  He had not
had what he called a "Locutus moment" for a long time.  These
remnants of his Borg assimilation were harmless, or so the doctors
insisted, but they always shook the hell out of him.

Janeway was shaken, too, he thought, watching her briefly press her
fingertips to her forehead.  The gesture must have concerned her
former security officer, for the Vulcan turned to her inquiringly.
She reassured him with a slight smile, but the thin hands now
clenched in her lap told Picard that she hated these
momentary losses of self as much as he did.

It eased him to look away from her, to let his eyes take in the clear
sky, the flower-decked grounds, some of the faces on the platform:
an apparently  dyspeptic Owen Paris, a Klingon ambassador, Voyager's
coolly beautiful former Borg.

As the ceremony drew to a close, he joined in the ovation, and the
crush of people soon obscured Kathryn Janeway even further from his
sight.

But still he felt her, gently, in his mind, her touch almost more
intimate than he could bear.


End Part Four of Five




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