Janeway's Cardassian Capture and Admiral Paris's Torture
Mosaic
By Jeri Taylor
ISBN: 0-671-56312-2
Previous: Young Janeway Joins the Icarus and Learns Its Secret Mission
The second half of Chapter 16 is one of the hardest sections in Mosaic. Young Kathryn Janeway learns what Cardassian hospitality really means, hears her mentor scream, and discovers that the difficult lieutenant she argued with in the lab is something far more than he appeared.
Capture at Urtea II
Paris and Kathryn are checking a sensor array on a Federation moon when a massive Cardassian ship rounds the limb. Paris runs evasive maneuvers in silence, hoping the Icarus has not been spotted.
The tractor beam comes anyway. Paris tells Kathryn not to be unnecessarily heroic. She does not understand what he means until later.
The snap throws her into darkness.
The box in the dark
Kathryn wakes on cold, damp earth in total blackness. She maps her prison by touch: a metal box about a meter and a half square, too short to stand, too cramped to lie flat. Hypothermia is a real threat.
A hatch opens. Blinding light. A corded, imposing Cardassian named Gul Camet apologizes for how she was treated and promises reprimands for his men.
He sounds kind. Kathryn wants to believe him.
In a vaulted chamber, a physician treats her head wound. When she asks about Admiral Paris, Camet says he was more seriously injured but should recover.
Then the mask slips.
Gul Camet’s offer and threat
Camet asks why they were on the moon. Kathryn says Federation territory. Camet says it was Federation territory. They annexed it. “It is quite simple. You take it.”
She gives her name and rank. Camet waves it off. If he chooses, she will betray everyone she loves before she goes insane. He would rather not. She seems intelligent. Cooperation would be wise.
Kathryn feeds him the cover story: a scientific expedition studying halo objects. Camet smiles without warmth and asks why their sensor array carried sophisticated surveillance equipment.
She denies it. He does not believe her.
He shows her a small implant that can produce astonishing pain on command. Torture, he explains, is not about information. It is about power, control, and breaking another being’s will.
The guards return. They run her down corridors, kick her, rip off her fresh bandage, and punch her wound. She lands back in the box.
The screaming outside
Kathryn curls on the freezing ground and tries to sleep. Then the screaming starts.
She sings a German lullaby her mother used to sing, louder and louder, trying to shut out the sound. Only after a long while does she realize the voice belongs to Admiral Paris.
She disconnects as best she can. Camet was right. This is not about secrets. It is about destruction.
Justin Tighe and the Rangers
A glowing line appears on the back wall. Arms reach through and drag her out. A gloved hand covers her mouth. A familiar whisper: “Be quiet.”
It is Justin Tighe. The Rangers. Paris’s hidden commando team.
They leave her at a tree while they go back for the admiral. Phaser fire moves away from her. Panic rises. Has she been abandoned?
A man slams into her. Tighe. “I told you to stay put. Now move!”
He runs her through the woods on a zigzag path until he trips on a root and breaks his ankle. He orders her to keep going to the transport site thirty meters ahead. A transgenic field blocks beaming from here.
Cardassian voices close in. Then an unearthly howling. Toskanar dogs.
The marsh and the transport site
Kathryn refuses to leave him. She drags Justin into a marsh, hands him a hollow reed, and they submerge in icy mud while searchers pass overhead. They clasp hands underwater. Hypothermia creeps in. Kathryn fights it with memories of Indiana summers.
Finally Justin pulls her up. He hops on one leg to the clearing.
A Cardassian trooper waits with a chained Toskanar. Justin fakes a fall, draws a mud-fouled phaser that fails, and throws himself in front of the beast as it charges Kathryn.
She grabs a tree limb and swings like a tennis backhand, crushing the animal’s skull. Justin’s phaser finally fires. Kathryn kicks the Cardassian in the temple with a surge of rage for everything they did to Paris and to her.
They beam out.
Aftermath and confession
On the Icarus, doctors remove Paris’s pain implant by transporter. He looks diminished in a way medals cannot fix.
He summons Kathryn and suggests she think about command, not just science. She is smart, tough, thinks on her feet, does not panic.
When she asks about the torture, he admits he told them everything he could think of. They wanted to break him, not learn anything.
Then he tells her Justin Tighe was captured by Cardassians two years earlier and tortured for three days before escaping. Leading this rescue was extraordinary.
Kathryn goes to Justin’s quarters. He deflects her gratitude. “It was my job.”
She asks if he thought about being captured again. He did.
Then he looks at her directly. “I just knew I was not going to let them hurt you.”
The chasm between them closes. What she had been fighting, she finally stops fighting.
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