Star Trek: Voyager: Endgame

a starship, aboard which Kathryn Janeway was the captain, the all-powerful benevolent dictator who kept their small segment of the universe safe and even on its keel. All things had to be approved by the captain. All problems lay at the captain's feet, all dangers and threats kept at bay by the captain's resolve. There was nothing short of hero worship in the girl's eyes now, coupled soundly with a desire to gain the approval and trust of this monumental paragon before her.
    She still wanted to go.
    “Yes, ma'am,” she said anyway.
    Janeway couldn't help but empathize. Passings of the torch were sometimes hard to swallow for those doing the passing, especially when the torch went to a higher authority who hadn't done the footwork. The girl had done her job, better than most and with fewer questions. Possessiveness over an assignment was one of those things Starfleet encouraged, and generally it went along with plain old human nature—and Klingon nature. Miral had all that going for her. She wanted to finish what she had started.
    But Kathryn Janeway had set herself upon this course single-handed and she meant to finish it alone. All these other untidy ends had to be shunted aside. She could be considerate later, if things worked out.
    “I happen to know your parents are anxious to spend some time with you,” she suggested, being deliberately vague and even condescending. If Miral resented this enough, the girl would get off this rock and take herself out of the equation as a possible target or hostage. “Take a few days' leave,” Janeway added. “Go and see them.”
    Few people truly understood the tenuous nature of dealings with Klingons more than those with Klingon blood, Klingon rage surging through their veins, however removed. The surge of temper, of passions and determinations; involuntary drives of single-mindedness were sometimes indescribable. Miral Paris, unlike her mother, B'Elanna, rather embraced the mystique of her ancestry, but that was because she had never really lived among Klingons, but only dabbled in the idea. For her this was still adventure and not a way of life. She was a Starfleet ensign on an undercover assignment. Her ability to speak Klingon without a hint of accent, another gift of genetics, had been an advantage, and even more, Janeway had wanted to give this girl a chance to prove herself as more than just a daughter of the famous
Voyager
crew, just a survivor along for the ride. Everybody deserved that.
    Miral swallowed whatever insult she found in the admiral's dismissal of her at this critical moment, and with fierce self-control she simply nodded and gestured the admiral down the correct corridor.
    There, in the torchlit cavern, Janeway left what she hoped would be the last of her “clan” involved in this new trick.
    The corridors were long, curved, and arid. The air was perfumed, but circulating and cool. Led by the Klingon guards, Janeway passed by several untidy antechambers. She saw no one else moving around.
    Ultimately they turned left, and left again into a larger room with poor lighting, cluttered with incongruous pieces of machinery, some recognizable, others alien contraband. At the center of this jagged junk heap was Korath.
    For a species that considered themselves rebellious, the Klingons did all they possibly could to look alike. Korath was as typical an old-man Klingon as any Janeway had ever seen. He seemed to be going for clichéd image—the long gray hair, uncombed, the exaggerated brow ridge that got more prominent as Klingons aged, the unnecessary body armor and uncomfortable clothing, the sour attitude. He was working on some kind of laser tool to adjust a hand weapon that Janeway didn't recognize.
    The two Klingon guards paused at the entryway. Janeway continued into the lab as if she visited every day.
    Korath knew she was here, but kept working on his toy. After a few moments of time-wasting, he turned the tool off and held up the weapon.
    “A Cardassian disruptor,” he boasted. “I've modified it to emit a nadion pulse.”
    Fine. Can it knit and purl?
    “Impressive,” Janeway bothered to say, unable to think of anything more original. “But that's not what I've come for.”
    “No. You've come for something far more dangerous.”
    In no hurry, he picked up another tool and went on tinkering with his disruptor. If he thought he was really impressing anybody, he'd been in these caves way too long.
    “Where is it?” Janeway demanded. All