The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway

by Una McCormack

  “You mean the Cardassians, don’t you?” I said.

  Turning his head to look at me, he nodded. His face was the most serious I had ever seen. I wondered, briefly, however he had concealed this from us in the past.

  “Are they really that bad, Dad?” I said, quietly, just in case Phoebe was passing by. I had the sense of being initiated into something, into a graver, more sober, adult world.

  “They can be,” he said. “Have you heard of Setlik III, Kathryn?”

  I thought. “Yes…” I said, slowly. “A colony world on the border. Wasn’t there was a battle there a year or two ago?”

  “Not so much a battle. A massacre.”

  Any reply I might have had stuck in my throat.

  “The Cardassians thought the colony was the cover for a military base—”

  “Starfleet wouldn’t do that! Starfleet would never use civilians as shields!”

  “That’s one big difference between Starfleet and the Cardassian guls,” my father said.

  “Guls?”

  “The captains in the Cardassian military,” he explained. “The admirals are called legates. What do you know about how the Cardassian Union works, Kathryn?”

  The truth was, very little. My interests were flying, tennis, and getting ahead in math and science. I was starting to glimpse that perhaps this wasn’t going to be enough, if I was serious about Starfleet. “Not much,” I admitted.

  “Okay, then listen up.” And he gave me a quick briefing on how the Cardassian Union worked: a government run by the military—the Central Command—for the benefit of the military, with laws rubber-stamped by a powerless civilian Detapa Council, and everyone and everything kept in their place by the shadowy, terrifying secret police—the Obsidian Order. Almost the very opposite of our Federation, with Starfleet’s primary purpose of peaceful exploration, a culture that celebrated diversity and opportunity, and a Federation Council that showcased these values.

  “What really happened on Setlik III?” I said.

  “Cardassian Central Command sent a squad to destroy the base.”

  “But there wasn’t a base,” I said.

  “No,” he said, “so they destroyed the colony instead. Like I said—a massacre.”

  This was hard to wrap my head around at first. “Did they know there wasn’t really a base?”

  “I don’t know. Either way around, it doesn’t reflect well on the Central Command. Either they didn’t know, which means they were expecting us to behave as badly as they would, or they did, which means they deliberately and ruthlessly attacked defenseless people.”

  He must have seen the look on my face, because he reached over to take hold of my hand.

  “I don’t tell you these things to frighten you,” he said, “but because I think you’re mature enough to understand, and because you’re soon going to be making decisions that will affect the rest of your future. What Starfleet and the Federation are facing in the Cardassian Union is a cruel society that seems bent on war. You can bet your boots that our diplomats are hard at work trying to stop that from happening—but the reality is that it takes two sides to make peace. And I’m not sure that both sides want it. We do. But the Cardassians?” He shook his head. “I just don’t know.”

  “I see,” I said slowly.

  “Do you, Kathryn?”

  “Well, it’s like you said, isn’t it? If I really mean it, if I really mean to get into Starfleet and become a captain—”

  He grinned at me. “Oh! That’s the plan!”

  I gave him a steely look. “Did you expect anything less?”

  He patted my hand. “Not from you, Kitten.”

  “It’s not going to be fun and games, is it? It’s not going to be all exploration and new worlds. There’s a hostile enemy out there—and it might mean war.”

  He nodded. “So that’s why I want you to be sure before you decide completely that Starfleet is for you. And that’s why…”

  I groaned. “Don’t say it!”

  “That’s why temper tantrums like yesterday won’t be good enough.”

  Yesterday’s performance seemed years ago, as if it had happened to an entirely different person. A child. I was older already. “I know. I understand.”

  “Wanting to win and strategizing to win—those are admirable traits.”

  “I know. But pushing when I can’t win, losing badly… and, well, the rest.”

  He laughed. “And the rest!”

  “If that’s not good enough, it won’t happen again. I want to be the best I can be.”

  “I know.”

  “And I’ll work to achieve that.”

  He leaned over and kissed my brow. “I bet you will.”

  It’s strange to think back on that conversation now. Exploration turned out to be a larger part of my Starfleet career than either of us could ever have guessed. As for the Cardassians—well, there were a fair few of those in my life too across the coming years, that’s true, and little did any of us know that the border conflicts would not be fully resolved until the Dominion War—but fate ensured I ended up missing that whole damn thing.

  * * *

  It did not escape my attention that after this we had many more Starfleet visitors than we ever had in the past. Dad had often brought colleagues home, so Phoebe and I weren’t unused to captains and commanders and top brass. (Grandpa sometimes joked when we were small that we were in danger of seeing admiral’s pips as signifying “someone who will give me a piggyback.”) But often these people had come to our farm for the same reasons as Dad: to enjoy a break from command and high-level decisions. From this time on, however, there was less of a gap between the outside world and our happy home. We were getting older, and we stayed up now around the dinner table, and listened to the adult conversation, and sometimes we even joined in. I don’t underestimate how much of an impact this had on my Starfleet career: I learned at fourteen and fifteen nuances about the working of Starfleet that some ensigns who have served under me were still only starting to learn.

  I made these resources work for their suppers. With the single-minded intensity of the ambitious teen, I grilled these people not only about Starfleet, and contemporary thinking and strategizing about the Cardassian threat, but about how entrance to the Academy worked, what the tests were like, what the examiners were looking for. I was already specializing in sciences, and, quietly, with the guidance of my teachers, I began to take extra classes: contemporary galactic politics, advanced astrometrics, astral cartography, and so on. One weekend, when Dad was home, I presented him and Mom with the results from these and announced to them my intention to skip a year at school and go for entry into the Academy early.

  Mom was not convinced. “This is so impressive, Katy, but what’s the hurry?”

  Dad didn’t say anything. He just let me get on with making my case.

  “I’m in a hurry because I know what I want, Mom. I can do the work—no, better than that, I can excel at the work. Why waste time?”

  “I’m worried about burnout, that’s all.” Mom shot Dad a worried look. “This wasn’t your idea, was it?”

  “Nope,” he said.

  “Mom! This isn’t anything to do with Dad! This is what I want!”

  “What can we do, Gretchen?” Dad said. “I imagine if we said no, she’d just go off and do it anyway.”

  I nodded in furious agreement. I hadn’t, in fact, thought of this, but now that the idea was in my head… Crafty Dad, huh?

  “But you’re right,” he said, “about burnout. Kathryn, there’s no point in being accepted at the Academy early if you’re not able to function by the time you get there.”

  This, I had to admit, was true… I remembered that awful tennis match, and how badly I’d coped with being tired…

  “How about we make a deal?” said Dad. “We let you start on this, but every eight weeks we take stock, and we discuss honestly whether it’s working.”

  “That sounds good to me,” I said quickly. I was
sure I could convince them.

  He held up a finger. “But Mom and I have the final veto.”

  I frowned.

  “It’s a good deal, Katy,” he said. “And it’s what’s on the table.”

  I guessed—rightly—that this was part of the test. Did I know when to compromise? Did I recognize that I could get most of what I wanted if I was willing to give a little here and there? I stuck out my hand to Mom. “Deal?”

  Mom took my hand and shook it. “Deal, Kathryn.” She looked at Dad. “I hope you know what she’s setting herself up for.”

  I remember now how sad he looked at that. “Gretchen,” he said, “I know exactly what she’s setting herself up for.”

  * * *

  So the deal was made. I would work like I’d never worked before, and I would aim to enter the Academy a year early. But at the first sight of overwork, or stress, or burnout, my parents would nix the whole idea. Good heavens, but I worked, and I wasn’t going to skimp on extracurricular activities either. Every single minute of my day was scheduled: and I’ll say now that this skill at timetabling that I developed at this point in my life stood me in good stead when the unhappy task fell to me of preparing ship duty rosters. (Not to mention that I was the kind of kid that loved a full-color three-dimensional organizational chart.) Everything was there: classes, private study time, and, of course, breaks. I meant to prove that I could do this, and that it wasn’t going to burn me out.

  The Cardassian War took ever-increasing prominence in our lives. I mention this because I think this happened in our family much sooner than with most others. My father’s work obviously meant that we were more aware of what was happening along the border, and his increased absences meant that there was a genuine, direct, and piercing, impact upon our family. Around this time, my mother, aware of the suffering of the Bajoran people under the Occupation, began to get deeply involved in raising awareness of their plight within the Federation. By this point, the Occupation was long established, and the effects on the Bajoran people were becoming devastating. I remember sitting with her and Phoebe one evening (Dad was surely away), watching holo-images of a refugee center just within Federation space. Those images were dreadful; heartbreaking. I remember feeling Mom stiffen alongside me, as if she had come to some resolution. My mother was gentle, artistic, solitary—but she was not a shrinking violet, nor was she sentimental. She saw a terrible need, and a great injustice, and she did whatever was in her power to alleviate it.

  Her public profile as a children’s writer gave her a platform to speak, and she used it. For a woman who preferred to be at home, among familiar faces and places, this was a great sacrifice, although it was her consciousness of her great fortune in having all this that drove her. Many of the interviews she could give from her office at home, but speeches required her to be present in the hall to have the most impact, and she began to visit schools to explain the situation to children. How would they feel, to have to leave their homes? How would they feel, to lose track of family and friends? What could they do to help? There is a generation of Federation children who first came to awareness of the Bajoran Occupation through the picture books that my mother wrote at this time. Starfleet officers, specializing in humanitarian work, have told me that reading about the little girl, Amjo Jafia, leaving Ashalla to escape the Cardassians, and her journey to the refugee center on Metekis II, was the first crucial step toward them doing the kind of work that they did. I was so proud of her. I am so proud of her: my brilliant, gifted, fearless mother.

  It might have been easy, in these circumstances, for Phoebe and me to form the idea that Cardassians were a species without any redeeming features. This is, of course, inaccurate—not to mention an insidious kind of racism— and Mom and Dad were scrupulously careful about how they spoke about Cardassians. I recall one or two conversations with university colleagues of Granny-in-town, specialists in Cardassian history and culture, who had many glowing things to say about Cardassian art and literature, and how it survived under difficult circumstances. I even read some, but I didn’t understand much, and I didn’t like it. Truth be told, it was many years before I saw Cardassians as individuals, as people who might be suffering on account of their own government as much as others. It was a lesson I learned in a hard place too… but I’ll come back to that at the right time and place.

  * * *

  My hard work paid off. By age fifteen, I had passed various exams and was well on track to graduate high school a year early; I also put my head down and started a two-year program of study to prepare for entrance to the Academy. The exams were notoriously difficult, and competitive, as were the psych tests. I meant to excel.

  I don’t want to leave you with the impression that all I did was study, although this naturally consumed a great deal of my energy at the time. My father, knowing that the years were coming to an end when we would be a family unit, made a point of taking a month of leave over the summer, and we had some fine holidays. Surely the most memorable was our tour of Europe: we visited Geneva, where they had met all those years ago, and my mother spoke to the Interplanetary Red Cross and Crescent about her work; we went up into the mountains, were Phoebe and I learned to ski; we saw Paris, and nearly lost Phoebe in the Louvre, and London, where the same nearly happened in the National Gallery; and then we went to Florence, where my passion for the life and works and sketches of Leonardo da Vinci was born. And the summer I turned sixteen, my father made good his promise and taught me to fly. I slipped the bonds of Earth and began my journey toward the stars.

  But we all sensed that childhood was nearly over, and that my decision to enter the Academy a year early was hastening the day when family life as we had known it would come to an end. Perhaps some of this fed into the difficult relationship that Phoebe and I had at the time. She has said to me subsequently how she envied me being so close to getting away and leading my own life, while at the same time she resented that I was going, breaking up the happy home. Not to mention that my father’s increased absences put a strain on how the family worked. We both knew that we had more in common with one parent than the other: Mom and Phoebe shared passions for arts and activism; Dad and I were peas in a pod. With my father away so often, I sometimes felt like the odd one out, and Phoebe and I were often typical teenage siblings, quarreling and bickering at the slightest provocation. It must have driven my poor mother mad!

  Eventually, our sulks and quarrels ended in an honest-to-goodness blowup on my part. I would like to point out that at the time I was midway through studying for entrance to the Academy, and so perhaps I was more than usually stressed. I had taken a break from study and come down into the kitchen to get a drink and a snack. I brought some notes with me, thinking that I might sit in the kitchen for a while for a change of scene. I put the notes on the table, and then went outside for a breath of fresh air. When I came back inside, I found Phoebe, mopping the kitchen table, a guilty look on her face.

  “Don’t shout at me, Kate,” she said.

  I saw my pile of notes. They were covered in paint. My beautiful, hard-worked notes…

  Well, I blew my top. “You stupid, careless, selfish little brat—!”

  “It was an accident!” yelled Phoebe. “Why did you even bring them down here?”

  Mother had to raise her voice to get us to stop—something never heard in our house. And I would not be placated. I packed my little bag and marched off to my grandparents’ house across the fields, announcing my intention to remain in their attic until I’d passed these damn exams or the damn exams killed me. My grandparents—presumably forewarned by my mother that I was on my way over—didn’t even blink.

  “Bed’s made, Katy,” said Grandma.

  “Get yourself set up,” said Grandpa. “I’ll bring you a coffee.”

  And that was that: I settled into that space, and put my head down to prepare for the entrance exams, and Grandpa, bringing up regular trays of snacks and drinks to get me through all-day and late-night stu
dy sessions, helped establish my addiction to coffee. Thanks, Grandpa. It might not sound like it, but I’m supremely grateful.

  This whole period culminated in a three-day assessment at the Academy: written tests, psych evaluations, group exercises, interviews with panels, and interviews with individuals. Everything—all my hard work—narrowed down to three grueling days. Mom offered to take me there, but I knew she hated being away from home, and Granddad-in-town came up with me instead. A good choice on my part: I would have fretted about Mom, but Granddad-in-town was always cheerful, and he knew the area well, and always managed to find a good place to have dinner in the evenings. By the end of the third day, I was exhausted. I had no idea how well I’d done. Some of the other candidates were in their late teens, or even their early twenties, and had come to Academy entrance after study or travels or volunteer work. I had felt achingly young in comparison. After the last day, I went back to the apartment where Granddad-in-town and I were staying, fell on the bed, and howled into the pillow. Granddad, bless him, had predicted this letdown, and had spent the day making the best curry I have ever eaten in my life. The next day he took me on a tour of San Francisco, showing me his student haunts.

  “You’ll need to know these places,” he said. He at least had no doubt where I’d be the following year. I was no longer able to tell.

  * * *

  I came back to Indiana, spent a week mostly asleep in the attic at Grandpa and Grandma’s house, and then I went back home. Results were due eight weeks later, and I had no idea what to do with all this free time. I sat and watched Phoebe paint and wondered when she had got so good, and whether anyone had noticed. I took old Jess for a few walks, but from the way she sighed when she saw me and hauled herself up, I got the impression that my lovely old dog was humoring me and would much rather have been snoozing in the sunshine. I wondered what I would do, if I wasn’t successful this time around, and I decided that I would get some real experience, like those confident young people that I had met. I’d go out to one of those centers on the Cardassian border and work with Bajoran refugees.