*3*
Hellstone Colony,
February 5
Jim Morrow woke up drunk. He was used to waking up hung over, but it was a new experience to wake up still ripped. Flat on his back on the damp ground, he saw the gray sky swirl above him - at least, he thought the sky was swirling. There was a good chance the churning was actually in his brain. And his stomach.
Only one thing for it, he thought. Not bothering to sit up, he raised the bottle he still clutched to his mouth and took another sip. His hand shook so much that the red liquid splashed across his face, and more of it landed in his nose than his mouth. The rotgut cut a swath of flame up his nostrils into his sinuses, and he bolted up, snorting and shaking his head. His hands hit the ground hard, and he heard the sound of glass shattering.
When he could breathe again, he lifted the hand that still clutched the neck of the bottle. That was all that was left, seven centimeters of a narrow glass cylinder, sheared to a v-point. The rest of it was scattered beside him, with a red puddle that was dimpled even as it sank into the grass.
He stared at the puddle for a long time, trying to understand the dimples. Finally, he realized that it was raining. "Of course it's raining," he said aloud. "It rains every morning on this stinkin' swamp."
Opening his fingers, he let the bottleneck drop and turned his face skyward. Closing his eyes, he let the rain thoroughly wet his face before he rubbed it vigorously. Then he ran his fingers through his hair. It was what he called a shower these days.
A low rumble from the west caused him to freeze, and then look upward. There it was. The daily ore transport, its atmospheric thrusters flaming, was lifting off on its way to - to - His mind worked frantically. This was the second day of the week, so the ship was bound for Andor Prime - unless he'd passed out for an entire day, which would mean it was heading for Bajor. But no, he wouldn't still be drunk if he'd been out that long. It was definitely heading for Andor. Every morning, just after dawn, another ship left for a world nearer the heart of the Federation. Every morning, he sat on this hill and watched them leave.
He kept his eyes glued on the ship until it disappeared into the clouds, and for a moment longer. He wasn't sure why he came and watched every day. It wasn't like he was ever going back. There was nothing for him on Earth any more. There was nothing for him anywhere.
His hand brushed against the discarded bottle neck and he picked it up. The break had been clean, leaving a sharp "v" shape that looked as lethal as any knife. He dragged the tip of the "v" lightly over the pad of his left index finger and was fascinated to see tiny beads of blood. The skin was heavily callused, and yet it had been broken so effortlessly.
Fascinated, he studied the edge of the glass, noting a smear red that was too thick to be the booze. Then, slowly, he brushed it along the flat of his outer wrist. More tiny beads of blood appeared almost at once. If it did that to the hardier outer skin, he thought, what would it do the more vulnerable inner wrist? How hard would he have to press -
"There you are."
The unexpected voice startled him, and he dropped the shard. Twisting his head over his shoulder, he saw that Sergeant Rado, the only Bajoran on the godforsaken planet, was standing over him, wearing a dark waterproof coat that already sported tiny streams of rain. Jim liked Rado; he was corrupt, but predictably corrupt and that was as close as anyone came to integrity on the aptly-named Hellstone Colony.
Twisting that way made his stomach lurch, so Jim carefully turned his head forward again. "Don't tell me I'm trespassing."
"As a matter of fact, you are," Rado said, but mildly. He sat down on the wet grass on Jim's left. "This is the property of the Hellstone Mining and Excavation Consortium."
"And I'm an employee of said landowner." His sincerity was marred by a deep and vocal burp.
"You were an employee. You were fired yesterday. Or have you managed to forget that already?"
Small planet, Jim thought. News travels fast. "Yeah, well I'm sure that's just a misunderstanding that will all get straightened out."
"I don't think so. You show up for work drunk four days in a row, and you're out." Rado studied the horizon. "Guess you've got a pretty good view of the transport here."
"Yeah."
"It would be an excellent idea," Rado said, not looking at him, "if tomorrow, you checked out the view of this hill from the transport."
Jim felt certain that what Rado said probably made sense, but his befuddled brain couldn't sort it out. "What?"
"Be on the transport tomorrow."
"Oh." He croaked a laugh and collapsed on the wet ground, closing his eyes against the drizzle. "Can't."
"Yes, you can."
Something small and heavy hit his chest, and Jim opened his eyes. A small pouch now sat on his ribs, perched at an angle. He grasped it in one hand and felt its heft. Puzzled, he looked up at Rado.
"Thirty credits," the guard said. "The cost of a one-way berth on the Bajor transport."
Feeling stupid, Jim sat up slowly, staring at the pouch. "But I can't-"
Rado stood. "You can. And you will. Because if you're still here tomorrow afternoon, I'll arrest you for theft and throw you in a cell so deep you won't be able to remember the sun."
He turned and took three long strides before Jim managed to say, "Why?" Rado wasn't exactly known as a soft touch.
The Bajoran turned, but said nothing. He just looked at Jim and kept looking at him, his face slowly hardening into an expression of disgust. Jim suddenly became acutely aware of the rain dripping off his nose and his tattered clothes and his greasy hair. Finally Rado spoke. "Because you've just hit bottom, Jimmy. You can't get any lower than you are right now."
He squatted down so he at eye-level. "There's only two things that happen at the bottom. You find a way to adapt, or you don't. I've seen a lot of people down here, and I don't think you're going to adapt. You just aren't that kind."
Jim swallowed hard. He knew what Rado meant about adapting. There were no social support networks on Hellstone, no charities, no safe havens. If you wanted to eat, you worked. And if you got fired by the Company, which hired anyone willing to work in the dark tunnels 12 hours a day, there weren't many career opportunities. If he was lucky, he could find work as a bouncer or even a janitor for one of the bars. If he wasn't lucky, he could end up working the cribs above the bars. "I- I'll make it okay."
"No you won't." Rado didn't hesitate. "You're barely making it now. You just don't have enough give in you to stay this low." He shook his head. "I've seen others like you. Sooner or later, they wind up in the morgue. I don't want to open a slab one day and see you on it. Get out of here, Jimmy. Whatever you were running from, it's not as bad as this."
Then he stood again, and walked away. Jim didn't try to call him this time.
'Whatever you were running from', Rado said. Jim huffed once, a dry chuckle that didn't quite take. He was running from Jim Morrow, ex-Starfleeter, and he had finally figured out he was going to lose that race. Crewman Morrow was always there, just half a step behind him.
Looking toward the spaceport, he thought about Bajor. Angelo Tessoni was there, and Celes. Some of the others from Voyager, maybe. If they had figured out how to start over, perhaps they could show him how.
He tried to stand and slipped on the wet grass, but finally righted himself. His hand clutched the pouch tightly. Thirty credits. It could go a long way, maybe a month even, if he didn't drink more than a bottle a night.
As he started up the hill, he remembered - Rado had promised to arrest him if he were still here tomorrow night. He stopped, and tried to organize his thoughts. The jails on Hellstone weren't like Starfleet's clean, convenient brigs. They were the subject of local legend, with their damp and mildewed stone walls, almost medieval in construction. It was said that there were still a few skeletons huddled in corners, men who were simply 'forgotten' by the local authorities.
After a moment, he turned and started downhill. If he bought his passage now, he couldn't blow the money before tomorrow. As he headed for the spaceport, he thought about just how far thirty credits could go. They could go at least as far as Bajor.
*4*
San Francisco,
February 9
"You know it's funny, Kathryn," Chakotay said as he handed her a glass of wine.
She settled herself comfortably onto the sofa in their living room and waited for him to continue. They had all evening - a rare treat these days, she thought wryly - and they'd decided to spend it at home. They'd set up this 'date' several weeks ago, after Chakotay had been called to the university lab during dinner for the second time in as many days, and when he'd finally returned home at two a.m. had found Kathryn asleep at her desk, surrounded by a jumble of PADDs and blueprints and three cups of very cold coffee. He'd decided then and there something had to be done and had composed and entered a formal invitation onto the PADD labeled urgent which lay just beside her elbow. He'd kissed her awake and led her to bed, and was gone before she woke the next morning.
Chakotay, his own glass of chilled Hestran Riesling in hand, sat down beside her.
"Now that it's actually official, and you and I are both on our way back there, I can admit it."
"Admit what?" She took a sip of her wine and nodded in appreciation. "Mmmm, this is good, Chakotay, just the right temperature."
He grinned at her. "I finally figured out the settings on the new cooler and relabeled all of them. This one's marked KJ." She laughed, batted at his knee and took another sip.
"I never thought I'd say it," he continued, "but I'm actually looking forward to going back to the Delta Quadrant."
He felt her shift slightly to look at him.
"Oh, don't worry," he said quickly, "I know things are going to be very different this time, and believe me, I'm not looking to recapture or relive anything. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of memories from those years I'd just as soon forget forever. But Kathryn, there's so much we can learn out there. The anthropologist in me is chomping at the bit to get out there. "
"Not to mention the archaeologist," Kathryn teased him. "If you're going to spend the entire mission digging in the dirt and looking under rocks..."
"That's exactly what I'm going to do," he replied with a laugh. "And I'm going to have a team of experts out there with me doing the exact same thing. "
"Oh no. I can just imagine what's going to happen." Janeway sat up straight and gave an exaggerated sigh. "Voyager to the away team," she said, her tone suddenly captain-like. "Please return to the ship. We're underway in fourteen minutes and there's a hostile ship approaching on the port side." She grinned at him and continued in a lower tone. "Just give me three more minutes Captain, we've found a fossil..."
Chakotay laughed again. "I promise I won't do that," he said, and took another sip of his wine. "At least not too often."
They both settled back onto the sofa and into comfortable silence.
After a few minutes Chakotay took Kathryn's now empty glass and placed it, along with his own, on the table beside them. He turned back to face her. Her eyes were closed, but he knew she wasn't asleep.
"There are a few other enticing factors about this mission, you know," he said quietly.
"Hmmmm..." Janeway's eyes remained closed, but she reached for his hand.
"Kes," She said immediately.
Chakotay squeezed her hand. "Yes, and Tom and B'Elanna and Miral and the others..."
"That will be nice, won't it?" she replied quietly.
"I've started thinking about the team I'm going to assemble, and it's going to be a good one. There are even a couple of students I'm considering. "
"I know T'Pel will be an incredible asset on this mission - for you and for me," Kathryn said. "And for Tuvok, of course." She added.
"And there's another thing," he said. "It may not be that cabin in the woods that I've talked about, and I know you and I are probably both going to be busier with our work than we've ever been, but we're going to be together. And we'll probably be able to do this" he gestured, indicating their present situation "far more often than we can now."
She opened her eyes and smiled at him. "Do you think I haven't thought about that?" she asked. "It's kept me from phasering more than a few colleagues recently. I just want to finish all the preparations and get out of here and underway. With you."
Chakotay got up and retrieved the bottle of wine from the cooler. He poured the rest of it into their glasses and handed Kathryn hers.
"You know Kathryn, I've been thinking," he said, after he'd sat back down beside her.
She cocked an eyebrow and grinned. "Really?"
He ignored her and continued. "We're going back to New Earth," he said, "And I don't know about you, but I've got a soft spot in my heart for that particular planet."
She didn't reply, but took his hand again.
"I'd like to propose something," he said. "What would you think if we..."
He leaned over and began to whisper in her ear.
