Star Trek: Voyager - 041 - The Eternal Tide Page 2

  Chakotay lowered his head for a moment to hide the wide smile that erupted on his face at this revelation. Suddenly Eden’s discomfort was crystal clear. When he raised his eyes to hers again, he hoped they offered the compassion she deserved.

  “It’s a captain’s nightmare,” he said, trying hard to compose himself.

  “A what?”

  “A captain’s nightmare. Most professions have their own version of it. Performers often dream that they’re onstage in the middle of a production but don’t know any of their lines. Musicians are trying to play a concert but their instruments won’t stay in tune. Teachers arrive at their class, begin a lecture, and realize they are stark naked.”

  The corners of Eden’s full lips finally turned upward as he continued.

  “And Starfleet captains find themselves facing certain death and the loss of their ships to unconquerable foes,” he finished.

  “I see.” Eden nodded, though not without reservation.

  “Every captain I’ve ever known has a version of it,” Chakotay insisted.

  After a moment, Eden said hesitantly, “And Admiral Janeway’s presence?”

  Chakotay felt his face fall into more serious lines. “Kathryn is more strongly identified with Voyager than any other individual who has ever served her. When you first took command, you were stepping into legendary shoes. I’d have been amazed if you didn’t find that daunting, consciously and subconsciously.”

  “Did you feel that way when you first took command of Voyager?” Eden asked.

  Chakotay shook his head. “It was different. I was already part of Voyager, and at least at first, I felt like I was merely picking up where Kathryn had left off.” He considered his next words carefully, then decided this was no time to hold back. “But you’ve already told me you feel a certain amount of guilt about Kathryn’s death; you used to believe that she wouldn’t have died if you and Admiral Batiste hadn’t pushed so hard to get this mission back to the Delta Quadrant approved. I don’t agree. But it sounds to me like you’ve got some unfinished business you need to find some way to put behind you.”

  Eden sat somberly for a moment as his words sank in. Finally she said, “I’m sure you’re right.”

  Chakotay sensed that she wasn’t convinced, but he knew the words needed to be said, and might again, several times, before Afsarah actually accepted them.

  “Have you given any thought to my other suggestion?” he asked, wondering if her recent choice to share with him what little she knew of her past, as well as her belief that the answers to that mystery might lie in the Delta Quadrant, was partially responsible for increasing her general level of anxiety.

  Confusion flashed briefly across Eden’s face before the light dawned. “About seeing the Doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Okay,” Chakotay replied, unwilling to push too hard.

  “It’s a perfectly reasonable suggestion,” she acknowledged hesitantly. “I’ve never shared my full history with any medical doctor who has evaluated me because, honestly, I didn’t see the need. And you’re right that he might be able to discover some physiological clue to my ancestry. I’m just reluctant to waste resources on my personal agenda,” she finally admitted. “As I told Hugh, I’m more than content to allow this mystery to unfold in its own time. I don’t need to hurry it along.”

  Chakotay considered her qualms, then said, “I don’t see it as wasting resources, and I’m certain neither did the counselor. To seek answers to a question that is clearly troubling you is not to attempt to commandeer the fleet’s many tools for your own personal gain. You’re not Admiral Batiste, Afsarah. You’ve lived with this uncertainty your entire life, and in some ways it’s as comfortable as an old friend to you. But your reactions to the Staff of Ren and the Mikhal artifact have changed things. I don’t see the harm in acknowledging that and using every tool at our disposal to see if we can unearth any other missing pieces of this puzzle, as long as it doesn’t interfere with our other duties.”

  “We do have a busy few weeks ahead of us,” Eden said.

  “We’ll be at New Talax at least two days before Voyager sets out again.”

  Eden’s eyebrows pinched together, creasing her brow. “Two days?”

  “You haven’t forgotten about the reception, have you?”

  Eden raised her hands to massage her temples. “Actually, I had.”

  Chakotay smiled broadly. “I should have warned you earlier, but there’s something you need to know about Neelix: he’ll use any excuse for a party. And after the last couple of months, I’m not the least bit inclined to disappoint him.”

  “Nor am I,” Eden agreed.

  “Which means you have plenty of time to slip over to Galen for a physical,” he said pointedly.

  Eden sat back and crossed her arms, grudgingly admitting defeat. “Apparently I do.”

  Chapter Two

  NEW TALAX

  Lieutenant Commander Thomas Eugene Paris was in heaven—if heaven was defined as piloting the sleekest, most sophisticated and responsive craft he’d ever flown.

  For several weeks during Voyager’s efforts to rescue Quirinal and Demeter from their encounter with the Children of the Storm, Paris had known in his gut that his wife, Fleet Chief Engineer B’Elanna Torres, was hiding something from him. They’d had issues with full disclosure a few years earlier that had almost left their marriage in tatters, so he was hard-pressed to understand her willingness to be secretive so soon after their lives had returned to something resembling normalcy. He had chosen to trust her—no easy feat—when she’d promised that what she was withholding was a matter of duty. And that trust had been rewarded days earlier when, at a special briefing for the command staff, it had been revealed that part of the fleet’s complement, classified until that moment, were two dozen experimental single-pilot ships. The vessels were intended for deployment in close-combat situations, adding to the number of ships at the fleet’s disposal with the hope that they would make the difference between the survival of the fleet and the other unthinkable option.

  There was no arguing that these vessels were a departure for Starfleet design. An organization that had defined itself by peaceful exploration would seem to have little use for vessels whose primary function was combat. Even the Delta Flyer, its successor, and B’Elanna’s creation, the Home Free, could never be classified as anything other than shuttles: combat capable, but intended for exploration and self-defense. It was not for Tom to say whether or not Starfleet was right to experiment with such ships. But you had to be living in the far corner of nowhere to think that after the Borg invasion, every single aspect of defensive and offensive armaments shouldn’t be considered and evaluated for its potential use in the event that another apocalyptic force should engage the Federation.

  The flight geek in Tom had stopped listening to the well-reasoned thought processes behind the creation of the Tactical Support Flyer, with its ship-mounted phaser banks and torpedo launcher. The moment he had laid eyes on the three-dimensional holographic projection of the vessel that had accompanied Captain Eden’s briefing, he saw only a thing of beauty. Though similar in shape to the Delta Flyer, it was considerably smaller. The struts were longer, carrying both phaser arrays and torpedo launchers. The tail section was streamlined, as its only means of propulsion was thrusters. Eden had mentioned that there had been discussions of making them warp capable, though these prototypes were not.

  The aspect that beckoned to Tom like a lover’s whisper in the darkness was the bio-neural–integrated flight control systems. Voyager had been the first Starfleet vessel equipped with bioneural gel packs—small fluidic devices that processed data in a manner more akin to the human nervous system than standard Starfleet processors. The new TS Flyers’ systems were designed to sync themselves to the individual pilot. There was no organic link between the ship and pilot—which, frankly, Tom would have found disturbing—but the new flight control yoke that replace
d the standard flight interface allowed the pilot to customize individual control preferences through his fingertips. This was no steering wheel or clumsy fly-by-light stick. These controls would allow the pilot to seamlessly fuse his flying style with the ship’s operating controls and respond infinitesimal fractions of a second more quickly. Tom knew that could make a critical difference in a combat situation.

  Once the briefing was over, Tom knew that he absolutely had to take one out for a test flight. To his dismay, the ships came with a special operations force of pilots housed aboard Achilles, where the flyers were stored. They had spent months training on them in the Alpha Quadrant before the fleet was launched. Tom had been able to convince Chakotay that it was essential to fleet operations that he personally shake one of them down, pointing out that none of the fleet’s command officers could consider how best to apply this new technology without an intimate understanding of its strengths and limitations. Chakotay had favored Tom with a look that clearly indicated he wasn’t buying it, but nonetheless had convinced Captain Eden that Tom’s suggestion was reasonable, if not completely aboveboard.

  And so it was that this glorious afternoon, Tom and three of the flight specialists, Lieutenants Mischa, Purifoy, and Zabetha, found themselves darting through the asteroid field that surrounded New Talax. Twelve other pilots had begun the demonstration, flying numerous formations and mock engagements for the benefit of those attending the special reception Voyager was now holding for the crews of Voyager, Galen, and Demeter, and representatives of Neelix’s adopted home who would be hosting some of them for the next several weeks. Once the show was over, Paris and his fellow pilots had begun a more rigorous test flight, entering the asteroid field at maximum safe velocities and assessing maneuverability and tactics while coming, in some cases, so close to the individual flying rocks that Tom could have counted the individual grains of fine particulate matter that covered the asteroids’ surfaces. As it took absolutely every iota of concentration at Tom’s disposal to pilot his vessel, comm chatter was minimal. Nevertheless, in the distant portions of his consciousness Tom was aware of Purifoy and Zabetha goading one another on to increased velocity, while Mischa punctuated their remarks with brisk reminders to focus.

  As Tom executed a maneuver that would take him between two small asteroids with mere hundreds of meters of leeway, Mischa’s voice crackled into his ear, “Cutting it a little close, aren’t you, sir?”

  “Isn’t that why we’re here?” he replied, once he’d cleared the small, closing window, hoping the tension in his voice didn’t betray his relief.

  The sensation was exhilarating and terrifying, the precise cocktail of emotions most pilots lived for but rarely felt at the helm of a starship. Tom had often complained about the distance between the starship and flight control. The ability to feel the ship and its responsiveness as intimately as he felt his own inhalations was something he’d never been able to achieve, although he’d come close to replicating the sensation when flying his own shuttle designs.

  Until this moment, Tom had two great loves in his life: his wife, B’Elanna, and his daughter, Miral. No inanimate object could ever replace them. But the TS Flyer that now held him in its snug embrace and seemed to move more in concert with his senses than his thoughts was quickly making its way onto that very short list.

  VOYAGER

  “Did you see that?” Ensign Aytar Gwyn asked of no one in particular, though Lieutenant Commander B’Elanna Torres, Lieutenant Nancy Conlon of Voyager, and Commander Clarissa Glenn of Galen were all within earshot and had been chatting amiably with her since the TS Flyers’ demonstration had begun. Gwyn was Voyager’s alpha-shift conn officer, an eager, spiky blue–haired half-Kriosian woman who had spent the vast majority of the flyers’ demonstration with her nose practically embedded in the transparent aluminum windows of Voyager’s mess hall. Conlon and Glenn were clearly intrigued by the sleek ships’ capabilities, but B’Elanna, who winced internally as Tom completed the maneuver that had given rise to Gwyn’s latest outburst, was finding it difficult to hold down her food.

  He’s going to get himself killed out there, she decided for the thousandth time since the spectacle had begun. And if he doesn’t, I’m going to kill him the minute he sets foot back on this ship. This certainty calmed her momentarily, but a new wave of nausea struck as Tom’s ship disappeared briefly behind a large asteroid. B’Elanna inhaled sharply and didn’t release her breath until he once again made an appearance on the asteroid’s far side, gracefully pulling up and circling back toward the formation.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t trust her husband’s piloting skills, and she would never begrudge him a little fun. B’Elanna knew part of him still lived to fly, and truth be told, she’d known the moment she laid eyes on the TS Flyers that Tom was going to beg, borrow, or steal his way into the cockpit of one. But does he have to do it in the middle of a damned asteroid field?

  B’Elanna knew intimately what it was to take risks, even unnecessary and supremely stupid ones. And she was the last person in the universe who would ever have asked her husband to be less than he was. But she simply could not bear to watch, given the fact that even a slight misstep on Tom’s part could destroy her happiness.

  “They really are something,” Conlon said, without Gwyn’s excitement. Voyager’s chief engineer and B’Elanna had grown quite close through their work, and B’Elanna was certain Conlon could sense her discomfort.

  “That’s one way of putting it,” Glenn replied, with considerably more restraint. The lithe, strawberry-blond woman was Galen’s commanding officer, and all B’Elanna knew about her was that she was efficient and capable, and seemed friendly enough.

  “Problem?” Conlon asked Glenn.

  Glenn shrugged off a shiver. “I’ve seen ships like these before, just never in Starfleet.”

  “Where?” Conlon asked.

  “An unaligned species near Tendara, where I was raised. They used something similar to harass shipping lanes and commandeer supplies when the mood struck them. We called them pirates. In fact, I don’t even remember their real name now.”

  “Just because a tool can be misused isn’t the fault of the tool,” Conlon suggested.

  Glenn stared hard at the engineer, probably weighing whether or not the remark was worth a disagreement in a public setting. She attempted to keep her tone as even as possible. “You’re implying that Starfleet would never stray from its ideals and that the officers asked to pilot such vessels are not betraying our stated goals of peaceful exploration, despite the fact that they are operating a tool that has no real use in terms of either peace or exploration?”

  A lanky, wide-eyed young commander responded, “Perhaps we should see the uses to which our commanding officers choose to put them before we judge the ethical issues of their existence.”

  “Well said, Commander Fife,” Conlon replied, patting him on the shoulder as she stepped aside to invite him into the conversation.

  Fife, that’s right, B’Elanna chided herself. He was part of Demeter’s command staff, and if scuttlebutt was to be believed, he had been personally responsible for the mutiny aboard his vessel when it was captured by the Children of the Storm. The fact that the Demeter’s captain, Commander Liam O’Donnell, had chosen to allow him to retain his position had been cause for considerable grumbling in the weeks following Demeter’s rescue. By all appearances, whatever had transpired hadn’t chastened him.

  B’Elanna didn’t mind as in this instance, she actually agreed with him. She’d weighed the moral questions in the days following the revelation of the TS Flyers’ existence and had gone so far as to take Captain Eden to task for keeping them classified. When Eden had revealed that the fleet’s next mission was a sweep of former Borg space, suddenly B’Elanna found herself more than willing to accept any tool that increased the odds of the fleet’s survival. She trusted the officers that commanded the fleet to use the flyers wisely.

  But that didn’t mean she wanted Tom fl
ying one of them on a regular basis.

  “I trust our command staffs,” Glenn replied pointedly to Fife. “I just can’t help but think this is the result of too many years of sustained conflict. We used to be explorers.”

  “We still are,” B’Elanna finally piped up, grateful for a reason to tear her eyes away from her husband’s flying. “But as the only person standing here who’s already been to the Delta Quadrant once, I’m telling you, any native species bent on conflict—and there are some—isn’t going to think twice about firing at us because of our desire for peaceful exploration and diplomatic exchange. Sometimes there’s nothing but force that will get the job done, and the more force we bring to the equation, the better our odds of survival will be.”

  Conlon studied B’Elanna quizzically for a moment. The two had already discussed the implications of the TS Flyers, and she seemed surprised by B’Elanna’s full-throated support.

  “I know,” B’Elanna said, raising a hand to forestall a rebuke. “I want to live in a universe where decisions like whether or not to open fire on an alien species don’t have to be made, too. More importantly, I want my daughter to live in a universe where everyone is content to disagree agreeably with one another without resorting to violence of any kind.”

  Undoubtedly it was B’Elanna’s forehead ridges, evidence of her half-Klingon heritage, that caused Fife’s eyebrows to shoot almost to his hairline at this statement, but she continued as if she hadn’t noticed.

  “But that desire is a work in progress. If we want to see other sentient species embrace the ethical and moral positions of the Federation, the only way to truly do that is to show them, by our example, why it would be in their best interests.”

  “You’re saying we don’t change hearts or minds at the end of a torpedo,” Fife noted.