Caretaker (5 page)

Paris stepped through the portal as though no special emotions moved him, his duffel still balanced on one shoulder. Kim watched the older man glance left and right with the same politeness with which a high-school friend would peruse a classmate’s home, and realized that the thrill of hearing his own footsteps on the deck was not the universal phenomenon he’d convinced himself it was. It was just him, Harry Kim, being silly about the romance of what was really just another job.

“This must feel pretty routine to you by now,” he said aloud, trying for a tone of mature nonchalance, “coming on board a new ship. …”

A strange, crooked grin accompanied Paris’s short laugh, and the older man shook his head. “Not exactly.”

That odd response reassured Kim somehow. “I guess your first posting is the one you never forget. When I came aboard this morning, I couldn’t help it … I got goose bumps. …”

“Yeah.” The peculiar distance left Paris’s eyes, and he smiled at Kim with the warmth of memories shared by only a few of Starfleet’s best.

“I remember feeling like that.”

And it suddenly didn’t seem so dumb that Kim felt that way now.”Have you checked in yet?” When Paris only shook his head, Kim smiled and waved him to follow. “Come on—I’ll take you to sickbay.”

“Sickbay?” Paris stopped long enough to swing his duffel across to the other shoulder, then hurried after Kim to keep up. “Why don’t we check in up on the bridge?”

“Uh, I’m not sure, exactly.” In fact, it hadn’t even occurred to him to ask. “I haven’t been up to the bridge yet,” he admitted with a little discomfort. “But Dr. Fitzgerald’s always down in sickbay, it seems, and he’s the most senior officer next to the captain and First Officer Cavit.”

Paris dipped a wry nod of acceptance.”Then sickbay it is.” He gestured forward with one hand. “Lay on, Macduff.”

They made most of the trip in silence. Kim meant to instigate conversation at least two or three times during the twenty-minute walk, he really did. But, somehow, his Academy-trained mind couldn’t manage to compose any sufficiently intelligent opener between the station dock and the sickbay, so they passed the time in what Kim felt was an intolerable silence while Paris whistled to himself and peeked inside every open cabin they passed. Even once they reached the sickbay entrance, all Kim could think to do was indicate the double doors and announce, “Well … here it is,” as though stating the obvious had been his major course of study since joining Starfleet.

At least Paris only answered with a grin and a nod before stepping inside.

The infirmary was tiny although well equipped, hardly busy yet with most of the crew only just getting settled in their quarters and the station’s docking clamps still firmly engaged. Dr. Fitzgerald was busying himself with an array of incomprehensible computer panels against one wall, just as he had been since the first time Kim walked in here, several hours ago. Something about the doctor’s blunt, florid features had struck Kim as unfriendly even then; watching him gesture impatiently at his calm Vulcan assistant now didn’t do anything to improve the young ensign’s initial impression.

“Run a level-three diagnostic,” Fitzgerald was saying irritably, as though the Vulcan were the stupidest creature he’d ever had to endure.

“Just to be sure—” He turned to call something after her as she moved away, and his eyes caught on Kim and Paris in the doorway, as though he was more than just a little scandalized by their interruption. “Can I help you?”

Kim felt familiar embarrassment push itself surfaceward, and was angry for letting the doctor trigger that when he hadn’t done anything wrong.

“Tom Paris, reporting on board.” Paris announced himself with an easy confidence Kim envied, even when it earned the older man a glare of pure disapproval from the ill-tempered physician.

“Oh, yes … the …” What could only be disgust twisted the doctor’s full mouth. “… `observer’ …”

Paris nodded, grin in place but eyes wary. “That’s me.” He waited a moment, letting the silence between them stretch until Kim felt almost compelled to break it. Then, just before the ensign would have interfered, Paris remarked jauntily to Fitzgerald, “As a matter of fact, I seem to be observing some kind of problem right now …

Doctor.”

Fitzgerald flashed a grin that never even showed his teeth, much less any true emotion. “I was a surgeon at the hospital on Caldik Prime the same time you were stationed there.” Something closer to delight glittered in the doctor’s eyes at whatever happened to Paris’s expression. But when Kim glanced quickly up at his companion, he could find nothing but Paris’s smile. “We never actually met,” the doctor went on.

Paris nodded as though that explained everything, but said nothing.

Fitzgerald turned away from him to toy with a data chip on an exam table nearby. “Your medical records arrived from your last …

`posting,’ Mr. Paris.” He looked at Paris over the chip.

“I think everything’s in order. The captain asked if you’re on board.

You should check in with her.”

“I haven’t paid my respects to the captain yet, either.” Kim tugged gingerly at Paris’s elbow, silently urging him to take the out they’d been given before the air got too thick with tension to breathe.

“Well, Mr. Kim,” Fitzgerald told him, apparently thinking the same thing, “that would be a good thing for the new operations officer to do.”

Yeah, and the hell with you, too, Kim caught himself thinking.

He ducked into the corridor in an agony of dismay, wondering insanely what his mother would say to hear him entertaining such impolite thoughts about his superiors. Waiting for the door to hush shut behind them, he looked up at Paris and asked, “What was that all about?”

To his surprise, Paris only sighed and clapped him on the back.

“It’s a long story, Harry, and I’m tired of telling it.” He tried out a grin too tired to make it to his eyes. “I’m sure someone around here will tell you before long.”

The only problem was, Kim wasn’t entirely sure it would be something he wanted to hear.

Too much to do. Far, far too much to do, and not even an hour now until launch. Janeway blinked herself back from another mental tally of the subspace queues she still had to sort through, and found herself staring at two mugs of coffee in the tray of the ready-room replicator with no memory of having ordered either one. It was Mark’s voice over the monitor behind her, she realized with a pang of bittersweet amusement. When he was over for one of her all-night preparatory binges, they always took turns fetching coffee for each other. She called up a mug for him by habit. Only this time, she couldn’t pass it over to him, or receive his kiss in return.

Picking up one of the warm ceramic cups, she did her best to tuck a few stray data padds under her arm so she wouldn’t have to make two trips.

Even so, she had to let the padds fall into a shamefully disorganized pile on the table she’d commandeered as she settled her coffee safely beyond the reach of her elbows.

“The doctor called,” Mark told her, as though she’d never walked thoughtlessly out of his sight in the middle of his previous sentence.

He was used to this sort of chaos just before a mission, Janeway knew.

She took a sip of coffee and picked up the first in a deep pile of reports. “And … ?”

“And,” he announced smugly, “I was right.”

Janeway had to swallow fast to keep from burning her tongue.

“She’s pregnant?!”

The smile on his face was infuriating enough to have earned him a pinched cheek if he’d been in range. “The puppies are due in seven weeks.”

Seven weeks? It seemed like she should have realized what was going on by nearly halfway through a dog’s pregnancy. Janeway clapped a hand to her head, barely able to push ship thoughts aside long enough to consider what to do. “Mark,” she cried at last, “you’ve got to take her home with you!”

“With me? I just got the rugs cleaned!”

“She’s with child,” Janeway objected. It was all she could do to keep from laughing at his far-too-dubious scowl. “I can’t leave her in a kennel while I’m—” “Is this another love-me-love-my-dog demand?” Mark interrupted sweetly.

Janeway smiled at him. “Yes.”

He sighed and rolled his eyes in his best imitation of heroic martyrdom. “How could I ever refuse you?”

“Thanks, honey.” She meant it for so many things other than Bear, but felt sure Mark already knew that.

“When do you leave?”

The question only reminded her of the landslide of work still crowding the ready-room table, and she glanced down at it with throb of sudden fatigue. “As soon as I approve these system status reports.” She picked up one and made herself scan it as she spoke.

“All right,” Mark told her. “I won’t bother you anymore.”

“Hey …” Lifting her eyes from the data padd, Janeway reached out to trace the image of his face on her monitor, frustrated by the light-years of distance. “You never bother me,” she told him gently.

“Except the way I love to be bothered. Understand?”

He reached out for her in turn, the channel stopping both of them just before contact was made. “Aye, Captain.”

“See you in a few weeks.” A few very short weeks, judging from the speed with which things had happened so far. It hardly seemed long enough to get everything done. “Oh! And, Mark—go by my house and pick up the doggy bed. She’ll be more comfortable.”

“I already did,” he admitted, teasing her. “An hour ago.”

Janeway made an attempt to look put out by his humor, but, as usual, couldn’t maintain even false irritation with him. Kissing her fingers, she touched his lips on the screen and smiled. Just a few weeks.

Returning her silent gesture, he winked a jaunty farewell before breaking the channel to leave her to her work.

A mixed blessing, at best. There was certainly a lot of it, although none of it was very hard. An acknowledgment here, a verification there. Janeway affixed her thumbprint to so many different reports and manifests by the time she’d reached the bottom of her coffee, she was surprised she hadn’t worn the ridges away to nothing. At least the stack in the middle of the table was somewhat neater now, and filled with completed work instead of chores yet waiting. Just that minor triumph always had a tendency to calm her somewhat at the start of a mission.

Standing, Janeway carried her empty mug back to the ready room’s sole replicator, and was still contemplating whether or not to actually finish off the second coffee or recycle it when the chime to the outside door sounded. “Come in.”

She recognized Paris from their brief conversation in Auckland, and the boy—Harry Kim—from the crew manifest she’d filed away earlier that afternoon. Paris was cleaner and a good deal more respectable with his neatly trimmed hair and Starfleet-issue singlet. Kim looked young enough to be thrown out of every drinking joint in the sector, not to mention terrified.

“Gentlemen, welcome aboard Voyager.”

Paris nodded once, with a certain wry dignity, and Kim made a valiant attempt to pull even more stiffly to attention. “Thank you, sir,” the young ensign said breathlessly.

“Mr. Kim …” Janeway thumbed a control on the replicator, watching both mugs fade away into nothing. “At ease before you sprain something.”

He made what she assumed was an attempt to relax, but not much about his posture changed.

Janeway folded her arms and turned her back on the replicator, regarding him. “Mr. Kim, despite Starfleet protocol, I don’t like being addressed as `sir.”” He flushed and nodded stiffly. “I’m sorry … ma’am?”

“`Ma’am’ is acceptable in a crunch, but I prefer `Captain.”” She waited for him to acknowledge with a bob of his head, then stepped away from the machinery to gesture toward a door on the far side of the ready room. “We’re getting ready to leave. I’ll show you to the bridge.”

They fell into step behind her, Paris trailing a few steps behind as he hefted an underfilled duffel before following. She wondered what he’d had to bring along in the way of personal effects, or if he’d brought whatever was within reach from his quarters in Auckland, just to keep from looking out of place.

“Did you have any problems getting here, Mr. Paris?” She’d meant the question as small talk—so neither Paris nor Kim would feel the obvious difference in their positions because of her uneven attentions—but she knew Paris must have taken it as something more when he answered her glibly, “None at all—Captain.”

Well, at least she could be certain the Rehab Committee had sent her the right felon.

The doors separating the ready room from the bridge whisked open on a low but pervasive hum of working machinery. Janeway’s whole body responded to the busy sound, stepping into rhythm with this ship and its purpose as easily as a dancer was swept up into the music that made up half her art. Cavit, down by Stadi at the helm, glanced up from their work with a nod, and Janeway returned it with a hint of a smile.

As much as she couldn’t explain, she loved this ship already—loved the elegance of her powerful brain, loved the efficiency of her design, couldn’t wait for an excuse to let her loose and find out what it was like to chase the heels of warp ten. Stepping down to the main command level, she paused to rest her hand on the command chair, but didn’t yet take the seat.

“My first officer, Lieutenant Commander Cavit.” She motioned Kim and Paris forward as Cavit turned to offer his hand. “Ensign Kim, Mr. Paris,” she introduced them each in turn.

Cavit hesitated only slightly before taking Paris’s hand, but his smile was stiff and unconvincing. “Welcome aboard.”

Janeway made a mental note to speak with Cavit later. She’d given him credit for more decorum than that. From the amused but bitter look on Paris’s face, however, Paris hadn’t.

She distracted Kim by directing him toward the operations console to one side. “This is your station. Would you like to take over?”

He looked a little startled, but smiled widely. “Yes, ma’am.”

Janeway resisted an urge to pat him on the head. “It’s not crunch time yet, Mr. Kim.” She waved him into his seat. “I’ll let you know when.”

Hands laced behind her back, Janeway made a slow circuit of the bridge—ostensibly for a last stern look over everyone’s shoulder, but in truth because she was still enjoying the heady mixture of freedom and responsibility that always came with each new starship command.