The standard disclaimer applies here. I don't own Star Trek in any of its incarnations. Darn. That'd be cool if I did though. I have to admit that it was inspired by another story, on another website, that I can't remember right now. Suffice to say, it was great, it lit the fire under the butt of my muse and together we wrote this bad boy. As per usual, I have to thank Pisces, my beta reader. No more jumping off roofs.
From the Mouths of Babes
He was a drain on the ship. Those resources could be put to so much better use, keeping the baby healthy, keeping their reserve stocks higher just incase, repairing the ship, and a thousand other things. He wouldn't get in the way during emergencies, though he usually didn't leave his quarters when there was trouble, and most importantly she wouldn't have to agonize over one more person. Shuddering, Captain Kathryn Janeway couldn't believe that she had been reduced to thinking such thoughts. The Delta Quadrant hadn't and wouldn't change the integral parts of her life including her ideals, or so she kept telling herself. But then again, she should have known that they were going to be compromised the moment she accepted the gift. She just couldn't say no to him, though, and blindly accepted.
Now, as a consequence, she had near-murderous thoughts circling in her head. No, they weren't murder, if anything it would put him out of his misery. She couldn't imagine living the way he did, not even being able to know. He was her responsibility though, whether she liked it or not. That had been decided the moment that she had said, "Yes."
***
"Come on Katy. It'll be good for you. I know you way to well to know that you're going to work to death on the tour. Just do me a favor and take him alone to lighten the load." The visual of her fiancé, Mark, was almost too much to bear. After he had so sweetly anticipated her and taken her dogs into his care, she couldn't see herself turning him down.
"You know how I feel about this. It's not that it's wrong, God knows we could be doing something a lot worse like genocide, but it just doesn't settle right with me." Kathryn had a hard time expressing the rock-hard feeling in her stomach whenever this subject came up. It was like there was something in her that wouldn't let her condemn this age-old practice, however, she wasn't exactly a conscious objector either. She tried to tread the fine line between openly showing her distain, and quietly going along with the crowd.
"Please? For me Katy?" Mark pleaded, looking at her with those eyes that she could never could say no to. Even though, she was going to give it the old 'college try'. She wouldn't go down without a fight.
Placing her chin in her hand on her new desk, she countered, "Am I the only one who thinks that it borders dangerously on slavery?"
"What?" Mark looked at her with an expression of surprise, and then shook his head knowingly. "You always were a lost cause."
"You say that as if it is a bad thing. It's just something that I'm not sure I agree with."
"You always are the opinionated one, aren't you? Then again, that's one of the things I love about you." He smiled softly at her, but quickly returned to the matter at hand. "I'm serious Katy. You know that we treat them with a lot more respect then other people would. Admit it, you know that if it were any other people or planet they would have been killed off, either by the people or by nature. We take care of them."
"Yes, and you just want me to take care of him," Janeway sighed. This was the last time she ever wasted her breath arguing with Mark. She always ended up loosing anyway. He was the only person she ever lost to.
"Just think of what could happen to him if you don't. I've heard the Orions can fetch a pretty decent price for an Asian like him. He's quiet, speaks very little English, submissive, and above all very easily taken advantage of." His voice was soft, but he knew that he had her; hook, line and sinker.
Janeway was sure that Mark was unconsciously or consciously appealing to the humanitarian side of her that she could never ignore. Janeway settled into the contours of her seat. It felt comfortable, unlike her current situation. Trying to justify the decision she knew she would eventually make to herself, she attempted to take solace in the cold facts of the cultural norm. "I suppose this will pull me out of another minority. Most captains have a boy or girl."
"So you have nothing to fret over." Mark smiled. "Think of it as penance for America dropping those bombs on his countries."
"And if worse comes to worse, he's coming right back to you."
Mark mock-saluted. "Yes ma'am"
"See you soon."
"I love you Katy."
***
Janeway heard the slightest shuffle in the corner of her room. After the tenseness of the past few days, she jumped and instinctively spun in the direction of the noise. "Who's there?"
After her nerves had calmed and adrenaline realized that it wasn't needed, Janeway realized who it had to be. She had kept the lights down, since it helped her to mull over tough decisions, and from one of the resultant shadows, the person in question appeared.
He carried a steaming cup of coffee, the hot vapor shrouding his face, but he did not seem to notice. Timidly he walked over to her desk, the same one she had seen herself at during her reverie, and set down the cup. Janeway couldn't help but smile; she hadn't even asked for any.
"Thanks Harry. I need some of this. Sometimes you just seem to know exactly what I'm craving even when I don't." She looked up from her padd, making sure that she studied his every feature. After all, she was deciding his fate, but then again, people had been doing that for him ever since the day he was born.
Classically, he stared down at his fleet-issue boots, most likely not comprehending what she had said. His dark hair made him look so young, something that she had commented on shortly after she had met him. She could tell from the swatch of hair in his face and the flitting expression on his face that he felt as if he needed to get any recalcitrant locks hair back where they belonged, as if a domineering commander was inspecting him. He wouldn't move though, not in front of her. He wore a wrinkled blue t-shirt with faded, tattered black pants, which fashionably could have matched much better. No one wasted replicator rations on him, though, and he had none of his own to use. Therefore, he had the same outfit he did when he came on board, two long years ago.
All through those two years, he acted as obedient as the family dog. He asked for nothing, not even dinner when Janeway forgot to tell him to go to the mess hall. Initially she had liked to know where he was at all times; afraid of what he might accidentally do if he was to wander by himself. Back then, he would simply wait until Janeway remembered, never acknowledging her apologies, and eventually she simply stopped making excuses and just let him go whenever the mood struck him.
The light from the stars highlighted streaks of silver-blue into his hair, but he still didn't move as the minutes dragged on and Janeway continued to study him. Janeway couldn't decide if it was easy or hard to tell that this boy was a victim of horrible radiation contamination in the Asian gene pool that had wreaked havoc on the populations of nearly all Asian countries. When America, Russia The African League of Nations, and the European Union had been forced to use nuclear and quasi-antimatter bombs on Asia during the Third World War, there was no way they could have predicted the outcome. The nuclear fallout, coupled with the polyladium radiation poisoning that covered that quarter of the world was only stopped from spreading to the rest of the human race by the hastily opportune invention of force fields.
The peoples of the countries, all Asian, that had been affected though, didn't have the luxury of being cleansed by force fields. The physical genetic mutations that resulted from the scrambled DNA died down over the centuries, simply by the Darwin effect taking its natural course. The mental disabilities, however, had never lessened. If anything, the affected populaces replaced the dwindling pool of people who were still willing to do menial jobs. They didn't know better, it was proven by scientists conclusively that they couldn't even if they wanted to, so people did what they could to help. The DNA mutations, in later years, had been pronounced irreversible, and since then there had been no breeding between Asians and other ethnic groups for fear of the same mutations showing up in multiethnic children. No sane parent was willing to subject their child to a horrible, debilitated life if they could prevent it. Therefore no 'clean' DNA had been infused into the plagued populace, accounting for their current situation.
"Thank you Harry," Janeway repeated.
Softly he answered, "You're welcome ma'am."
Janeway smiled. As far as she knew, that was one of the few phrases in English that the young man knew and understood. Quickly he glanced up to see if she was still studying him. Their eyes met for an instant, and in the deep, dark recesses of his eyes, Janeway thought she saw a flicker of something there. Embarrassment, maybe? It couldn't be.
"Dismissed."
"Yes ma'am." Harry turned, with almost military precision and left. Janeway figured he must have picked it up from one of the lesser officers who had been practicing on parade.
He didn't take up to much room and, in all honesty, she didn't know what she would do with him otherwise. Abandoning him to the Delta Quadrant equivalent of Orions would do nothing for her conscience. She decided to tell Chakotay that Harry was staying, at least for the time being.