IN STORAGE
by ardavenport
"Hello?"
Captain Janeway stood just inside the wide door of the cargo bay. No one answered. She didn't see anyone amidst the bulk containers and large shelving of the main cargo area. She looked up to the control room but didn't see any movement there.
Someone was assigned to the cargo areas, but the absence didn't either surprise or disturb her. The post was a floating one, so whoever was on duty could have been in any of the other holds, or engineering if they'd needed any extra help. Janeway turned to the control panel next to the door.
"Computer, display map of cargo area." The computer chirped its reply, the black screen cleared and a lattice of yellow lines appeared. "Display crew private storage." A far corner of the map changed to blue. Janeway turned back to the cavernous hold and then back to the map. "Display location, private storage for Janeway." The screen changed to a side view of a row of shelves. A flashing blue arrow and label marked the spot on the top shelf. Janeway sighed, cleared the screen and went into the hold.
Her boots echoing loud on the deck, the captain crossed the open area, passed the stacks of cargo containers, down between the rows, two decks high, to the shelves at the far wall. All the cargo holds had been reorganized, to make room for Kes's hydroponics bay and extra space for material fabrication, for food storage-Janeway paused at a jumbled shelf-and junk.
Janeway picked at a carton full of used and burned out circuit boards. Some of them had no obvious damage, others were blackened and cracked and smelled faintly of charred plastic. Most of the boxes on these shelves were labeled, "recycle" with a Starfleet hieroglyph. But a few of the cartons, and all of the bags, were marked with some distinctly non-regulation Bajoran script. One of the Maquis was obviously in charge of this project. The things in the boxes seemed to be sorted by size and shape, not function. One box contained cabling, all types of long, coiled things from optical fibers to pieces of knotted rope. Another one held square things, and yet another, rounds and semi-rounds. And none of the boxes were covered. Someone would have to spend hours picking up and re-sorting all the pieces after the next turbulent red alert Voyager encountered.
One shelf was marked with a replicator symbol. Presumably these things could be rematerialized into new, which only took half the replicator energy needed to create them whole. When they had the energy to spare... Janeway frowned.
"We're turning into pack rats," Janeway grumbled to herself and moved on.
She reached the shelf she wanted and looked up at her goal, far above her head. She went looking for a ladder.
After climbing up to the top shelf, the captain didn't see her box. All of the crew's private storage seemed to have been moved to the top two shelves, boxes on top of boxes, except for one bare space that was marked with more Bajoran script, "Maquis Storage".
Janeway glowered at it. She realized that the Maquis had arrived as refugees with nothing after their ship had been destroyed, but at the moment she just didn't appreciate the joke. It wasn't just a momentary inconvenience either; it hurt. A reminder that the Maquis had nothing on the Starfleet vessel, it reinforced their separateness..
She touched the control on the ladder and gripped the rail as it moved down the row. The author of the Bajoran notes was probably familiar enough with the arrangement to use the cargo transporter to liberate her box without dislodging everything else, but she wasn't. She saw a familiar blue corner peeking out from behind other cartons and stopped the ladder. She sized up the stack; she would either need an antigrav or the transporter if she wanted to get to her box without the danger of pushing six others off the shelf to a five meter drop. She noticed a label on one of the boxes in front of hers.
Stadi.
She looked for more. Fitzgerald. T'Prena. Cavit. Janeway looked away and down at the floor far below.
Brrr-eet! "Chakotay to Janeway".
Janeway's head snapped up and she tapped her communicator.
"Janeway here."
"Captain," the voice of her current first officer answered over the comm. "I'm in Engineering. Lieutenant Torres has been tracking down a fluctuation in the matter-antimatter flow all afternoon and we think it's a misalignment in the dilithium chamber, but we need to shut down the engines to check it out."
"How long will we be shut down?" Janeway asked.
"Only four hours, Captain," Torres answered. Only four hours, sitting in space...
"All right, you have my authorization. But only four hours, Lieutenant," she reminded.
"Right, Captain."
"And Commander, I'm down in Cargo Bay Three. Could you please join me?"
"Of course, right away. Chakotay out."
She slowly climbed down the ladder, her boots clinking on the metal rungs. She wove her way through the aisles of storage to the cargo transporter platform. Having actually seen what was on the shelves, she could make a better judgment on transporting her own box down without having to move the whole shelf.
Six crates sparkled and formed on the platform. The two on the bottom belonged to her and her security chief, Lieutenant Tuvok. The four on top of them had belonged to members of her crew who had been killed when Voyager was forced into the Delta Quadrant. Janeway picked up an antigrav to move the boxes that were too heavy for her to lift.
When she had finished, she palmed the lock plate on her box and the light blue container clicked open. She lifted the lid to rummage inside. A bolt of cloth, a hideous formal robe that she knew she would have to wear again if the Galtaran Assembly ever demanded her as a mediator again-whenever they returned to Federation space-a box of photos and holograms, three paintings, a Toshas horn that could also be used to shoot poison darts, a bag of de-toxified darts, and more clutter. Janeway pulled her prize up from the bottom and placed it atop Tuvok's crate.
She opened the smaller box and took out one of the jars; its contents clinked within the glass. But she had lost her interest in the homemade peanut brittle. Her eyes returned to Lieutenant Commander Cavit's plain, gray box.
She and Tuvok had packed that box, emptying her first officer's quarters after the funeral, less than a week after they had been stranded in the Delta Quadrant. They were still empty. Commander Chakotay had preferred another cabin. She replaced the jar with the others and decided that she would have to take out most of the other things in her box if she was going to fit this one back in.
"Captain?"
She turned. Commander Chakotay had entered without her noticing. He peered curiously down into her box, the Maquis ranking the collar of the shirt of his otherwise standard Starfleet uniform.
"Packing?" he asked.
"Unpacking, actually." She patted her peanut brittle. He lifted his eyebrows, stepped forward and examined the jar she had removed. He smiled at it and she wondered what about other bits of ordinary life he had glimpsed.
"Private stash, Captain?" But she surprised him by not answering; she glanced away, as if his words might have been meant as an accusation of hoarding. Chakotay looked about at the other containers around them on the transported pad and then he noticed the names on them.
"They were stacked together," Janeway told him, gesturing toward Cavit's name, her hand then rubbing the back of her neck as if she were looking away because she was tired.
"I see." He bit his lip and exhaled. "I'll see to it, Captain." It wasn't much for him to offer after this insult, but he would make sure it wouldn't happen again. "Will that be all?"
"No." She dropped her hand and led him off the transporter. He looked over the reddish-brown bun of her hair at the cluttered shelves she pointed at. "Commander, do we really need all of that?"
She saw his amused, disarming smile as he rubbed his chin. She immediately felt like a micro-managing busybody; Chakotay had presented very good arguments for the materials recycling project. Seventy-five years out from the nearest starbase, they could not afford to let anything go to waste, so she had approved it. But the shelves of semi-usable discards were giving her second thoughts.
Chakotay wondered if he should mention the half room full of stuff that Lieutenant Torres was saving up in Engineering and just hadn't transferred to the cargo bay yet. Or how much Neelix had dipped into the recycle bins to build his galley. No probably not.
"I'll talk to Jackson and the others about storing it properly, Captain." The haphazard storage at least was not acceptable, even if the recycling was necessary. "But to be honest. If we hope to make it back to Federation space, we're going to have to make use of everything." He reached around her shoulder to pick out a damaged module, its micro filament connections a hopeless mass of shimmering fuzz, sticking out of one side. "It's amazing what you can do with some of this. And there aren't any starbases out here in the Delta Quadrant."
"A Maquis tactic, Commander?" she referred to his former outlaw status. He smiled back and dropped the module back with the others it had been stashed with.
"You learn to live with what you've got, when you're on your own."
He was right. She leaned on one of the shelf supports and shook her head. They stood together next to the collected debris. She and Chakotay had agreed that Starfleet discipline would bind the two crews together to get them home. But she had not realized that this would mean relying on Maquis frugality to supply them for the journey.
But how bad would it get? How many of these little bits of junk would she see turning up as they were reused, over and over? She gazed down at the boxes and their contents. How long before they started looking like a patched-together, worn out old cargo ship, one ragged crew sharing each others eating utensils and toothbrushes? Chakotay's black, closely cut hair was just beginning to gray; how gray would it be before they found a way home?
Chakotay looked down at the top of her reddish-brown hair, bound and styled in regulation fashion. When he had first joined the Maquis, it had been a drastic adjustment, going from Starfleet officer to renegade freedom-fighter. Every detail from minor supplies to getting parts for the transporter had plagued him in his new command. Ridiculous, tiny details that he had never given a thought to before, consumed his time and threatened his cause almost as much as the Cardassians he had sworn to fight.
Now the Cardassians were far away, home where they were headed, but the cause of survival still remained and those tiny, ridiculous details had landed on the woman in command of this ship. At the moment, she did not look happy about it. He smiled to himself. She would adjust; it would just take a little time.
"Well," she finally said, her introspection disappearing. "I want this mess cleaned up by 0800 tomorrow." She looked up at him again. "And I believe you were working up a plan for how we're going to deal with all this, Commander?"
"I can have it for you at the staff meeting tomorrow."
"Do that."
"Will that be all, Captain?"
"No." She touched his arm and led him back to the transporter pad where she sealed her own storage crate. She took the smaller box he had seen her removing from it. "Have these things put back." She indicated the crates on the pad and then handed him the box. "And give this to Mister Neelix." The box contained eight jars, like the one she had already taken out, filled with lumpy, light brown slabs. Puzzled, he looked up at her.
She shrugged and raised an eyebrow. "Dessert. And tell Mister Neelix to save the jars. We might need them."
%%% END %%%
Note: This story was written by me and first printed (under the name 'Anne Davenport') in a fanzine back in the hard-copy and snail-mail days in the 1990's – regrettably my record-keeping wasn't as good as I thought as it was, so I don't have the name of the fanzine right now.
Disclaimer: All characters and situations belong to Paramount; I'm just playing in that sandbox.