The Q Files - part 11

In which our tortured hero has endured two days of torment.

Two days had passed and Chakotay was feeling mentally and physically exhausted. Q had taken to appearing at his side whenever 'David' was with the Captain and insisting that he did something about it.

So far he had managed to successfully interrupt a dinner, a lunch and a late night tete a tete with a series of mysterious but not dangerous problems, guessing correctly each time that his Captain would not be able to resist the temptation to try to solve the problem herself. He was relieved that Q had been unable to 'help' with that - somehow he imagined that any diversion he created would be a bit more elaborate than yet another problem with the aft torpedo bay.

'They're having dinner together.' He groaned as Q snapped into existence, 'you have to do something about it, go on, interrupt them, find something else that's wrong with this rust bucket.'

'There's no reason to interrupt them.'

'There wasn't any reason to interrupt them on the last three occasions, but you still did it.'

'Do you want her to suspect something? We can't keep coming up with totally spurious reasons for contacting her.'

'Then come up with a good reason. If they spend anymore time together Kathryn Janeway is very likely to do something she and everyone else will regret. I doubt she'll be pleased to discover she was nothing more than a notch on Q's bedpost - a very challenging notch, but still a notch.'

'There’s nothing we can do.'

'Nonsense,' Q's briskness was definitely a warning sigh. 'We aren't going about this the right way at all, what we need is some help.'

The silence was ominous and then Q snapped his fingers.

TBC