A/N: Wrote most of this maybe a week ago. Decided to edit and post tonight.
Naomi came skipping into the Mess Hall just as Captain Janeway was leaving.
"Captain!" Naomi practically gasped, as they nearly collided in the doorway.
"At ease, Crewman," the captain's hand flew up gently. "How've you and your mother been?"
"Great! Mezoti and I made Ktarian baltha bars for Mom this morning, and she loved them. Icheb's trying to learn how to cook with a Brunali oven, Seven's helping him on the holodeck. They're making progress. Last time he got the last batch of cookies almost completely out before the flames went up."
Naomi wasn't quite sure how to read the slow nod Janeway gave her, so she asked, "How're you, Captain?"
"Oh I'm fine. Just getting ready for an away mission."
From the way the captain glanced over her shoulder, Naomi got the sense that some of the crewmen sitting in the mess hall would be joining her on this "away mission." Naomi let the captain get away without any pestering, figuring she could interrogate the young human man and Bajoran woman in the sitting area about the details.
After helping herself to a mid-afternoon snack from the galley, Naomi headed straight for the sitting area. She recognized the man and the Bajoran woman; but with a crew of almost two-hundred, even Naomi's sharp Ktarian memory couldn't store every name. Starting up a conversation was easy, and they quickly jogged her memory on their names: Billy Telfer and Tal Celes. Naomi decided right away that she liked them both, but was a bit surprised by their lack of enthusiasm about their upcoming mission. Thinking it over, Naomi figured she knew why they weren't excited.
"It must be scary, being out here in the Delta Quadrant, when you're not from here. Guess I'm lucky I'm growing up on a starship. When we reach Starfleet Academy, I'll be prepared!"
"Actually, I did grow up on a starship." Billy sounded like he was ready to hurl.
"You did?"
He nodded, with an expression of barely-concealed nausea.
"A Galaxy-Class ship," Tal added, looking proudly at Billy. "The U.S.S. Europa, right?"
Billy nodded again.
"Galaxy-class," Naomi thought back to her studies. "That's the same class as the Enterprise, isn't it? The current Enterprise, with Captain Picard."
"Those ships are huge," Tal explained. "They often let crewmembers bring their families along to live onboard. Everyone talks about the Enterprise, but most of the really big Federation ships have an entire database full of their adventures and discoveries. Billy's included."
"That's one way to put it," Billy groaned.
Naomi could sense Billy's unease, and tried to make sure her next question sounded more out of concern than curiosity and excitement. "Did you guys run into a lot of hostile aliens? The Borg?"
Billy shook his head. "Not so much the Borg. But aliens, yes. My father was the chief engineer. My whole family's Starfleet, and most of them are," his large eyes wandered the ceiling as he searched for the right word. "heroes. My dad would've fit right in working next to Captain Janeway or Commander Chakotay."
"He sounds like awesome!" Naomi said brightly.
"Well, he has a much higher tolerance for pain and danger than I do."
"Did he get hurt a lot?" this time Naomi's concern was genuine.
"More times than I could count." Billy swallowed. "Dad was really devoted to his mission, his ship. He would just take his engineering kit and go running into…well anything. He wound up getting exposed to radiation, and alien entities, when he was fixing the ship or working with alien technology. He also got kidnapped a few times, by people who wanted help from his engineering skills."
"Did that happen to all the senior officers?" Naomi asked curiously.
It seemed that Voyager's senior staff was the most prone, out of anyone on the ship, to kidnappings and alien possession. Her mother and Neelix had explained to her, multiple times, that the senior officers were the most likely to be "at the front of the line" when going into danger, plus they had the most qualified skills alien kidnappers would want. She was now wondering if being a senior officer was a hazardous occupation aboard any ship.
"Well," Billy thought it over, "something bad seemed to happen to all of them at least once a month. But they each had their own kinds of bad luck. My dad wasn't at tactical or helm control, so he didn't wind up in too many firefights or shuttle crashes. But because he was an engineer—the chief engineer—he got exposed to all kinds of mutations and radiation. He even died a couple times."
"Like Harry Kim!" Naomi realized.
Billy's eyes widened, as if this were a new kind of horrifying analogy he hadn't even considered.
Tal added conversationally, "Lt. Geordi LaForge, of the Enterprise. That sort of thing seemed to happen to him fairly often too, from what I read."
"There's an engineer on DS9," Naomi said. "I forget his name. But my Mom told me—she lived on the space station before Voyager—and she said their chief engineer was a magnet for bad luck."
"I wonder if there's an Ensign Kim on every ship," Tal mused humorously.
"My dad was definitely the Ensign Kim of our ship," Billy shifted on the couch. "Even though he was technically a lieutenant."
"So, what happened when he got radiation?" Naomi asked curiously. "Did he just get sick? Or did he start seeing visions, like when the Pitcher Plant tried to eat us?"
"Both." Billy was now sitting with his face in his hand, his elbow resting on the arm of the couch. "He also got halfway stuck in a parallel universe once, when he was working with…I don't even remember what, something in the warp core. He almost vanished from existence, but his crew saved him at the last minute." Billy sighed heavily. "Another time he worked aboard an alien bioship, and didn't realize it was exchanging DNA with him, so he started mutating into something like what Tom Paris did after his Warp 10 flight. And then there was the time the entire senior staff was experimented on by a mad Romulan scientist, and he almost died from a hybrid of three different alien diseases. And the time a holodeck malfunction brainwashed him to think he was Professor Van Helsing, and the ship's cook was Dracula. And the time an alien parasite lodged itself in his brainstem, took over his body, and almost made him destroy the ship."
Somewhat stunned, Naomi asked, "Did anything like that happen to you?"
Billy shook his head in his hand. "For the most part, the senior officers did a good job at keeping the civilians onboard safely out of the chaos. But we still saw it. Dad always laughed it off like it was nothing, and he still expected me to go into Starfleet. I wonder if he regrets that now."
"You haven't gotten any letters from him?" Naomi asked.
It had been a few months since Reginald Barlcay's "Pathfinder" project had put Voyager in continuous contact with Starfleet Command. Crewmembers had been relieving letters from home ever since.
"I have," Billy replied. "He said he felt guilty, when he thought pressuring me to join Starfleet had gotten me killed. But now he knows I'm alive and out here, he's gone right back to the big expectations. I don't think he was happy to find out I'm still holding the rank of Crewman. But he didn't outright say anything. Yet."
Naomi searched for something encouraging to say. "Well even if you don't bring home a new rank, I'll bet you can make up for it, with all your stories about your adventures out here!"
"Probably..." Billy stretched, and left the couch.
"Billy?" Naomi looked up at him, as he headed for the Mess Hall's exit. "Where are you going?"
Tal leaned back in her seat, rolling her eyes, like she already knew.
"Sickbay," Billy said without looking back at them.
A/N: If you like lower-decks stories, go check out Laura Schiller right now. She's written fantastic one-shots dealing with Billy and Tal, Lindsay Ballard, and the Equinox bunch. And she has a new story where one of the Delaney Twins meets one of the Borg twins: "We to I." Check it out.
Also, "A Little Piece of Paradise," by Auntie Paasta. Deals with one of the Equinox characters, and the Borg baby from "Collective."