Chapter 7 - Awakenings

"I'm Tom Paris, Captain of the Federation Starship Voyager. This is my First Officer, Commander Jarod Tervellyan. And you are … Saleena, I believe?" Tom kept his tone firm but kind, not certain what to expect, but wanting to ensure that the Orion woman – more a girl, really, she seemed so young now that he got a closer look at her – would not be frightened off by the men in uniform.

She surprised him with a voice that was soft, but clear and determined even as her eyes remained lowered.

"Saleena is not my name, nor is it that of any of the others who dance … danced … with me. It is a name often given to lodubyaln. It is intended make us more desirable to those who watch us dance, and those who want to have us. I was, and am, Lemarr."

The Orion almost seemed to expect that they would question her claim to the name, which was delivered in a lilting accent, ending on a purr. She did not look up, keeping her eyes downcast and her head held in what seemed to Tom to be trained submissive behaviour, rather than a natural gesture of respect or deference.

"Do not be afraid to look at me—at us, Lemarr, if you wish to do so," he said, gently. "No harm will befall you on this ship. No one will judge you. You are safe here. You have my word."

She wrapped herself more tightly into the large uniform jacket Ayala had hung over her shoulders when he had first taken her to Sickbay. She was wearing freshly replicated coveralls now but had apparently refused to part with the jacket, as if it represented something much more than mere warmth. It covered nearly her entire body as she sat tightly curled up on the couch in the ready room, including the small feet she had pulled up underneath herself.

"Do you have a family name?"

Tom's inquiry was kind, but matter-of-fact. If they wanted to trace her on any Federation or other accessible database, they would need more than a first name that apparently hadn't been used in years.

"I do not. Not now." She did look up at that and her eyes, directed now at the star-filled window over Tervellyan's shoulder, held the spark of a challenge that Tom could not help but like. "I used to be Lemarr Valon. But my parents gave up their right to have me honour their name when they sold me."

"Sold?" Jarod could not help the touch of skepticism that inflected his voice.

Lemarr raised her eyes to Tom's at this implicit challenge, and for the first time allowed him to look fully into their emerald depths. What he saw in those eyes took his breath away. Not for their undeniable, staggering beauty, but because they told him a story he understood only too well. He was grateful that Tvar's empathic powers had, from the time she had entered the ready room with her charge, been focused solely on the young woman beside her; she had spared neither him nor the First Officer a glance since her arrival.

But Tom Paris knew, as surely as he knew his own name and the hell he had lived through in a New Zealand jail, that Lemarr was speaking the truth. He held out his hand as if to ward off any further skeptical questions from his XO, and nodded encouragingly at the Orion woman to explain.

"On my world, it is common for poor families to sell one or more of their own to become lodubyaln. Mostly we are girls, sometimes boys. If they are pretty enough." Tom flinched a little as Lemarr continued. "We are sent into your worlds, in the worlds where the grey uniforms go. There, lodubyaln become dancers and companions for the night. If they give pleasure to the customers, they bring riches to their owners, and this is how the contract is served."

"Owners? No one is permitted to own another sentient being," Tervellyan interjected softly, but with conviction, over Tom's hissed protest. "At least not in Federation space, and stations like this have to respect Federation law even if it doesn't formally apply."

"Do you not know what it means, lodubyaln?" Her tone was still soft, but urgent now. "We are called 'Orion slave girls' even in your worlds, Commander. I have heard this. I know this." Lemarr let her huge eyes alternate between the XO and the Captain, the challenge unmistakable now, despite her overtly deferential demeanour.

"Is it so hard to believe that it means what it says? Or do you wish to believe that the dancers you watch and want, are there because they want to be watched, and want to lie with everyone who wants them? Some do this work because they like to be watched and lie with men, it is true, and in days gone by it was always like this. And some enter into the contract willingly, because they wish to leave their family and this is the only way they know. But many, most do not want this life. Many are children when they become lodubyaln and must do as they are told by their fathers. I was a child. In the end, it makes no difference to the customers whether you wish it or not. They do not ask. But it always matters to us who have no voice. It is not right."

All three officers had remained silent during this simple speech. The expression on Tervellyan's face had become unreadable while Tvar, seated beside Lemarr, lifted her black Betazoid eyes to Tom's. Her slight nod and the tears now rolling down her cheeks told him what he already knew: The young woman was speaking the truth.

He had not doubted it, and an icy fist closed around his gut as he thought of other … possessions - the hateful breaths, the laughter, the vile touch of those who took in fear or in pain what no one should have to surrender unwillingly. Those who would defile the beauty that should be the giving of one's self to another, in love and trust.

No, it was not right. He willed his hands to open when he felt his nails digging into his palm.

Lemarr continued, almost matter-of-factly, as before. But she looked at Tom now, directly, and without fear. She knew that she was being heard, and it was enough. For now, it was enough. And it was good.

"My father made a contract for me, for twenty years. For twenty years I must serve them. Dance, make holovids, lie with customers, do what they want. And give the owners most of my earnings. They let me keep a little, so I would have hope, so I would not end my life. In exchange, they said my brothers and sisters are now well cared for. And I am supposed to be to be grateful."

"Them? They?" Tom's eyes narrowed, and if his friend Harry had been present, he would have recognized the feral glint in them – the hunter, picking up a scent; the fighter, a cause.

"They. The Syndicate. They did not exist in the old days. They do now."

Tervellyan sucked in a breath and shook his head as if in denial, while Tval cast a frowning questioning look at Tom.

"The Orion Crime Syndicate." Tom's addition was not a question, rather an explanation for the nurse's benefit. Lemarr gave a simple nod, yes.

"They are responsible for your coming to Kalpak?"

"All lodubyaln are brought to their places by the Syndicate. There are many of us at Kalpak. Dancing, working at the Dabo tables, and servicing customers."

"Do they … the Syndicate … send out all lodubyaln to work?"

"Not those who work willingly; they only work on our home world. All who are sent to work on other worlds, where the profits are greater, are owned by the Syndicate."

Tom whistled silently, and looked over at his XO who was shifting uncomfortably in his seat.

"And now they have started transporting medicine? Any other stolen goods you know of?"

"I got to Kalpak on a ship owned by the Syndicate. As for other goods, I do not know. I am lodubyaln. My knowledge is limited."

Tom nodded his thanks to her. It was clear to him that she had told them what she knew, for now.

"Thank you, Lemarr," he said softly. He felt the urge to hold her, to give her some of the warmth he felt for her, but he knew his touch would not be welcome for some time. "Thank you for trusting us with your story. Do you have any questions for us?"

She looked at him. "Can you say I am sorry to the one who carried me to the ship? I did not ask if he wished to help me. I took from him, without asking. It is not right."

Tom and his First Officer exchanged glances. Tervellyan's earlier skepticism had been replaced by what Tom saw as growing sympathy, mixed with something he could not quite put his finger on. Disgust? Sometimes it puzzled him how little he could read his XO, despite his admittedly uncommon ability to decipher almost anyone else. He knew he himself could be a blank at times, even to a Betazoid …

"You can tell him yourself," Jarod said, his tone neutral, but not unkind. "That is his jacket you are wearing; he gave it to you in the transporter room, remember? So I'm sure he didn't really mind that you hitched a ride with him."

He nodded to Tvar as the two women rose to leave. "Please take her to one of our guest quarters, Nurse Tvar, and check that she has everything she needs. And ask Mike to send a security detail to … to make sure Lemarr feels safe in her quarters."

Tom nodded his approval, both at the directive and the precaution it reflected. Her affecting and devastating story notwithstanding – Lemarr was a stowaway and protocol dictated that she should be watched. But his gut told him that she was no threat; the contrary was more likely, given what she had dared to expose.

After the door had closed, Tervellyan turned to Tom, a frown on his face. "Hard to believe that what I've heard and seen of Orion dancers has been an act. They are … pretty convincing, on many levels. Lemarr herself – you should have seen her on that stage, Tom. Hard to believe that was just an act."

Tom took his XO's measure carefully. "Well, the women of the old stories, from the days pre-dating the Syndicate, were probably for real. And what we see now is a copy of what had the Federation outlaw the use of their pheromones. But anyone can put up an act for anything, if sufficiently motivated. And if the Syndicate has a hold over her, believe me, the motivation to put on a convincing show will be pretty solid."

He remained silent for a long moment. Looking back on the last twenty-four hours, what he had seen and heard pointed to one single, devastating conclusion, and his visceral reaction to it almost dwarfed his reaction to the diversion of the much-needed antigen they had come to investigate. He rolled the word around in his mouth, nearly gagging at its bitter taste before he spat it out to his First Officer.

"Slavery, Jarod. Slavery. That's what she escaped from. I think the reason those women we found were in the cargo hold wasn't because someone wanted to get them out of the way when the ship started to fall apart, or because they didn't have enough escape pods and didn't want a scene. The reason they were in that hold cargo is because that is precisely what they were. Cargo. Commodities for trade, in the new routes that are opening up in the Snowflakes. Valuable, sure, but not taken into consideration when it came to equipping that freighter with escape pods."

He took a deep breath. "I guess we've been blind to what was right before our eyes. Kahless, we even called those women what they were: Orion slave girls. Didn't think about it twice. I know I didn't. But all this time, thanks to the Orion Syndicate and tens of thousands of oblivious customers, the slave trade has been alive and well in the Alpha Quadrant all this time."

Tervellyan said nothing, but nodded slowly, as if confirming to himself a realization he had spent the last half hour working through. His jaw was set, and the closed look that had crept over his face told Tom that his XO was as appalled by what he had heard as he was, even if there were some depths of understanding with regard to Lemarr's story he could never reach.

"Captain, I believe we have found what we were looking for on the Rigellian freighter," Asil's uninflected voice came over the comm system.

Tom and Tervellyan entered the bridge to find the Ops officer and Icheb bent over her console. Asil looked up at her Captain's approaching step and tapped a command that routed what they had ben looking at onto the main view screen: The schematic of the freighter, as before, but this time with four dark, solid shapes clustered in one of the shuttle bays.

"We were unable to trace any residual signatures from the escape pods. However, Lieutenant Baytart suggested that there might be a difference in the materials used to construct Rakota and Worfin class ships, since the former are considerably older in design and construction. Cadet Icheb has done the necessary research and has been able to confirm that since the Rakota line was discontinued, there have been advances in hull construction, including a 3.78 percent presence of certain new duranium alloys that are used both in the newer vessels themselves and in all ancillary craft. Our multispectral analysis shows that indeed, the four smaller units match the alloy predominant when the Rakota line was still being built."

Tom continued for her. "And it would be logical that the four small vessels in the shuttle bay are the escape pods from the Rakota-class ship we found."

"Precisely, Captain."

"Would it also be logical to assume that the people running our drugs through the Snowflakes, and those who traffic in Orion women, are part of the same outfit?"

"We have insufficient evidence to come to this conclusion at this time, Captain, but it would not be inconsistent with the facts we have encountered so far."

High praise of his deductive reasoning, coming from a Vulcan, Tom decided.

"Good work, team," he said, smiling particularly warmly at Icheb. The young man nodded, in an attempt at nonchalance that did not even come close to succeeding.

…..

Tom looked around the briefing table where he had assembled his officers again. Did Janeway ever have more than one briefing during a single shift? He supposed she had, and he remembered at least one such get-together that had lasted the better part of a shift.

At least Voyager wasn't flying right now; she was still in a stationary position above – not docked at – Kalpak station. As good a time as any for brainstorming. He needed options, and after his regrettable misstep with Tervellyan and the nanoprobes consultation looked like the way to go.

"Okay, folks. Here are the facts: We have evidence that the Rigellian vessel has stolen Starfleet property onboard, but they've got a dampening field around their cargo bay so we can't transport it out. We're outside Federation jurisdiction, without access to search warrants for a private vessel. Good news is that no one can yell at us for going in without one, either, so I feel perfectly free to play cowboy."

He ignored Asil's momentarily puzzled glance at the obscure reference, and continued.

"So, in short, we need to board the Rigellian vessel in order to both recover the antigen and to find out how where they picked it up, since we still haven't been able to trace the transporter diversion from our end. While we're there we should try and determine the identity of the people they took onboard, since there won't be an investigation done by anyone else out here and some of the people implicated appear to come from a Federation planet. I assume we haven't been able to identify them through existing DNA databases? That would be too easy, right?"

The EMH shook his head in agreement. "The Orions and Narovians aren't linked into the Federation data base, and the Rigellian Supremacy has a privacy protocol in place that prohibits direct access without official Rigellian authorization."

Tom snorted contemptuously. So much for a Federation with common systems, shared information, interoperability, trust among allies … . "Great. So, if we want to do DNA matches, we'll either have to wave tricorders at people we don't actually want to come across, or look for hairbrushes in the crew quarters. I need options, folks. As I said, the only one I can see so far is boarding the Rigellian and looking for clues ourselves. Jarod?"

Tervellyan shrugged. "Dangerous, of course, especially if there are Syndicate members aboard, rather than just hired minions. Might be easier to send someone to the station and hack into their systems. Kalpak will have the crew manifests and flight plans on record, at the very least."

B'Elanna couldn't hide her skepticism. "Sorry Commander, but do you really think that people who steal medicine and take in murderers would file crew manifests and flight plans?"

"Actually, that's not so far off, B'Elanna," Tom came to his XO's defence before he could reply. "The Syndicate usually works with the local authorities, at least to a some extent – outwardly playing by the rules so they won't attract the attention of anyone they can't bribe. Whether or not they file correct information is another matter, of course. But we should be able to find out at least how often that freighter has been here in the last few months, and what routings they've claimed to have flown. We can learn a lot from cross checks with what we know."

He looked to Tervellyan with calculation in his eyes. "Based on what I remember from the Kirk Centre, you're quite the hacker, Jarod. So, as I recall, is Icheb. We can't get at the necessary systems from the outside though, so let's discuss tactical options. Anyone?"

"In the Maquis, we managed to board a couple Starfleet vessels by rigging regulation comm badges to emit scrambled signals," Ayala offered. "Any computer that picked up an unauthorized life sign, it got shown a Turellian rat or some other vermin."

B'Elanna flashed him a brief grin at some mercifully obscure shared memory, and nodded. "I remember hearing about that one," she said. "Shouldn't be a problem."

Asil raised an eyebrow. "May I inquire how the Maquis got their hands on Starfleet communications badges?"

Tom shook his head. "I'm sure we don't really want to know, Lieutenant. At least this time, the badges will be legit."

A plan was quickly developed. Ayala would take Icheb on board the Rigellian ship and would attempt to download the ship's logs. A transporter lock would be maintained on them at all time.

"We're particularly interested in transporter logs and actual – not programmed - flight plans. We need info on their port of origin, and routing through the Narov system since they showed up here. Crew manifests would be a bonus. Download as much as you can to Voyager's computer, and we'll sort through it here."

Both men nodded their acceptance, Icheb with eyes that could be only described as shining with an excitement that gave Tom the briefest of pauses. Was it fair to ask this much from a student doing his practicum, still without official status as an officer? Then again, he knew what the former Borg drone was capable of, and he had no doubt that his current practical assignment on Voyager would confirm that he was ready to graduate – two years ahead of his class. But Icheb's education had begun long before then, in so many ways, and as he was eighteen now he was permitted to engage in kinetic operations. More importantly, Tom remembered another first-timer, just out of the Academy and still damp behind the ears, who had risen to answer every challenge presented to him …

Bottom line, in the absence of a Harry Kim, Icheb was the best person for the job and it would be counter-productive to choose someone less suited. He quirked the young man a quick, encouraging smile.

"Your first official away mission, Cadet. Remember to listen to your superior while you're out there. He tells you to bail, you bail. He runs somewhere, you follow. That understood?"

Icheb nodded eagerly. "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I will not disappoint you, sir."

"Right. Second thing, you'll need to either crash the dampening field they got around the cargo bay or put transport enhancers in place, so we can get our antigen back. Third, if you get the chance try and sweep the escape pods for DNA. The shuttle bay is close to where the antigen is being stored, but if we need to get you out before then, so be it. However much we all want to make sure that the bastards who left those women behind end up behind a force field somewhere, our priority still lies with our primary mission. Understood?"

Again, both Ayala and Icheb nodded, practically in unison. They would complement each other well, Tom figured – the seasoned warrior with the sixth sense for danger, and the smart technical innovator.

"Jarod, you'll go back to Kalpak, as you suggested. In civvies please; let's not be too obvious here. A quick and dirty hack job into the station's computers should do it. In and out. The trick will be finding the right data base, since I doubt records of criminal activity are being stored on the main computer."

He frowned at his former classmate, not in response to any of the recent tension between them, but in appreciation of the difficult task he was setting him. "You'll be able to come up with an appropriate access point, knowing you. We'll take off as soon as everyone is back; I don't want anyone gone for longer than twenty standard minutes. We can analyze any discrepancies between what's in the logs we find and those from the Rigellian ship en route to our next antigen drop off; should be quite enlightening."

"I'll take Schmidt," Tervellyan offered. "He's quick on his feet."

Tom started to nod his assent, when something gave him pause. What had his XO said earlier? Dangerous if there are Syndicate members aboard ... Jarod and Schmidt might able to handle themselves, but it would be better to include someone who could pass unnoticed under the Syndicate's eyes. Someone who …

He slapped the table lightly with his flat hand and stood up. Chairs, as far as Tom Paris was concerned, were inimical to creative thinking, and pacing always seemed to help advance the development of his more hare-brained schemes … Hadn't he cooked up that whole Arachnia campaign standing up? He made a quick pass around the briefing table, chewing his thumbnail, paused briefly at the observation window, and walked back to his chair. He gripped it with both hands and turned to the EMH, oblivious to the fact that his entire senior staff had been following his progress around the room in slightly perplexed silence.

"Doc, I'd like you to go with him."

Puzzled noises went around the table, punctuated by a barely suppressed "What?" from Tervellyan himself, and ending in the Doctor's own indignant response.

"Mr. … Captain Paris. I have told you and others before, I am a doctor, not a commando. Surely there is someone more suited to sneaking around a crime-infested space station than myself? My skills would be better utilized treating the casualties that will inevitably result from these reckless endeavours."

The EMH caught himself when he noticed Tom's stare turning slightly chilly, and hastily added, "Speaking freely, with permission, Captain."

Tom sighed, and briefly considered whether to make an issue of a remark that in anyone's book could only be considered as bordering on subordination. Having that kind of conversation in the confines of Sickbay was one thing; having it in front of the entire senior staff quite another. He and his Chief Medical Officer would need to have a chat, some day. But not now.

"I think we're all aware that this enterprise is not without danger, Doc. And yeah, you've given us that particular line before, whenever we tried to use your talents in new and unusual ways. But I also remember that you always managed to pull it off somehow. And in this case, you're the best man for the job."

He took a deep breath, and explained.

"Two reasons. No, make that three. First, remember when we dealt with those con artists back in the Delta Quadrant, and B'Elanna altered your physical parameters to made you look like one of them? Kalpak is lousy with Narovians and I doubt that one more would get noticed. We need someone in disguise, and you can pull one off even better than Chakotay after cosmetic surgery."

The Doctor seemed ready to vent some more indignant remarks, but Tom cut him off - Captain's prerogative. "It'll only be temporary, don't worry. I doubt you'd look too good with a snout, and hirsute isn't exactly your style. But even more important than your ability to blend in, is the fact that you can use your mobile emitter to download data in a pinch, if Jarod can't do it for some reason. And yes, I know. You're a doctor, not a data PADD. That doesn't mean we can't take advantage of the fact that you can act like one from time to time."

Tom ignored the barely suppressed snort coming from Baytart's side of the table, and continued. "But just as important is this: If this place is, as you say, crime-infested, there is a chance of a senior Orion Syndicate member being there. And they are often accompanied by one of their tame telepaths, to sniff out potential informants and other dangers. They tend to be Kintzi, which means they have relatively limited range, but within that range they are more acute than any dozen Betazoids. So if you and Jarod should run into one of them …"

He let the thought trail off, while Tervellyan squirmed a little in his seat.

"Fact is, Doc, you or your thoughts won't register. Remember Zimmerman's holographic spying fly that you told us about? What was his name – Leroy? Rodney?"

"Roy." The Doctor's facial expression could have melted the polar ice caps of Andor. First he was being asked to be a commando, then a data storing device, and now … a bug? Tom breezed on, unheeding.

"Right, thanks. Roy the Housefly, also known as Project Trojan Horse." Tom resisted to comment on the intriguingly mixed metaphors; no one could ever accuse the testosterone brigade that ran Starfleet intelligence of thinking before attaching their juvenile monikers to things in the name of secrecy. What was next – a red herring, codenamed Moby Dick? Focus, Captain Paris.

"We learned about it at the Kirk Centre, in a session on the many bright attempts at tactical advantage that fizzled out because the Federation lacked the underlying technology to make it work reliably."

Jarod nodded slowly; he'd been at the same lecture. "Trojan Horse never got off the ground because if you wanted to do some discreet spying, using a holographic agent, you'd have to put holo-emitters into a place first. And then hope that the stage you set up would be where the interesting stuff will actually happen. Kind of defeats the whole purpose."

"Exactly. But you, Doc, don't have that problem, thanks to our friend Mr. Starling." Tom stared at the EMH triumphantly, daring him to demur. "In short, you're the perfect choice for the job."

The Doc scrunched up his mouth a little sourly, but it did not escape Tom's notice that he appeared to be coming around, and was quite possibly just a little bit chuffed by the idea that he would get to play a featured role in an important mission. Even if he was being compared – however favourably – to a holographic flying pest he personally had taken great delight in squashing.

Even so, the EMH could not quite help himself. "If memory serves, Captain, our away missions have a tendency to go awry. You know, a dampening field here, an electro-magnetic storm preventing communications there. What if these … these criminals make it impossible for the away teams to, well, get away?"

"You mean, do we have a Plan B? I'll let you know about extraction options before you beam over. But one thing you can be sure of, Doc – on this ship, nobody gets left behind. Nobody."

Tom's gaze fixed on his wife. "B'Elanna, how long do you think it will take you to fix up the comm badges and change the Doc's matrix?"

She shrugged. "About an hour each? I suppose you also want me to expand the memory capacity in the mobile emitter, or take something out to make room?"

The EMH bristled a little at that, but truth be told, he found himself rather warming up to the idea of a high-profile away mission. "Well," he mused, "perhaps this little adventure could give rise to a new, low-brow masterpiece from our resident genius of adolescent fiction? Something in the detective vein, perhaps?"

Tom chose to ignore him, except for the message he had wanted to hear: the Doc would play along.

"Whatever it takes, B'Elanna. Doc – thanks for being a sport about this. Jarod, you work out your access issues. Mike, Icheb, I suggest you do a quick run-through on the holodeck. The tactical data base should have a Whorfin class layout, and you can familiarize yourself with the locations of computer access points and the route from the cargo hold to the shuttle bay."

"Aye, sir," came the clipped response from the Chief of Security.

He nodded to the pilot. "Pablo, you and Nicoletti get the engines and helm ready for emergency departure. We may get kicked out of the station's orbit rather forcefully, if they figure out what we're up to. Not to mention we may have someone on our tail if one of the teams gets caught. We're in sensor range of whoever runs the show down there already, I should think, thanks to Lemarr. Set course ready for the Snowflakes, our next scheduled drop off. Whichever of them we can get to under current EM and gravitational conditions."

The Vulcan ops officer took the opportunity of Tom's having to catch his breath to interject her own comments. "In anticipation of further deliveries, we will continue to analyze our transport data for an indication of how the diversion to the Rigellian freighter may have been effected. That task should be made easier once the away team obtains the ship's data signatures."

Tom gave one last look around the table. "Everyone clear about what they need to do?" He took in the universal nods with no small degree of satisfaction, and watched everyone file out of the room, with clear assignments and an overall plan. Maybe, just maybe, he could pull this Captain thing off after all …

He checked the chronometer on his computer screen. He had an hour; enough time to check up on Miral and reassure her that her father hadn't forgotten about her, despite his new job. B'Elanna would be able to spend the evening with her once she was done working her magic on the badges and on the Doc, but he himself would have to stay on the bridge at least until the two away teams returned. Possibly longer, if Kalpak created problems.

And so Tom headed for the nursery, and what he had come to privately call a "munchkin break".

…..

His daughter, when he got there, was absorbed in dismantling a model of the Enterprise that Will Riker and Deanna Troi had given her as a going away present. Even though she was still young enough that home was wherever her parents were, she clearly missed the big ship and the friends she had made there, especially Baby Tommy. It was no surprise, therefore, that the Enterprise had become a favourite toy; in fact, she had had to be dissuaded on several occasions from taking the pointy, hard thing into bed with her. But this was the first time Tom had seen her taking it apart.

"What're you doing, sweetie?" he asked curiously, and kissed her gently on the head.

"Hi Daddy! I'm looking inside."

"And you expect to find … what, exactly?"

He tried, and failed, to keep the amusement from his voice. No matter how tough the going got, his daughter's wide-eyed curiosity and unblemished outlook on the world never failed to brighten his day.

"Green ghost ladies, 'course. Algor says there were some on a ship we found. And now there's one on Voyager, and he says she came from nowhere, like a ghost. His Mommy told him."

Tom's jaw clenched slightly. He'd have to have words with Crewman Cor Zelis about the mouth of babes, and the values of discretion… In the meantime, there was some pre-emptive parenting to be done.

"Yes, someone came onboard, munchkin, and yes, her skin is green – like Chell's skin is blue, and Asil's dark brown - but she's not a ghost. She's a real person, very nice but a bit shy. So we have to be careful not to hurt her feelings by calling her a ghost. She's had a pretty hard time, you see. She ran away from some very bad people and is hiding on Voyager from them now."

Miral's eyes got round, and her mouth formed a little oh. "Poor, green lady. Are you and Mommy going to kill the bad people so they can't hurt her anymore?"

Tom squatted down beside her daughter, and took what remained of the toy ship out of her hand. Saucer separation had been completed, and both nacelles and most of the struts removed and scattered on the floor. To his trained eye it looked like the port nacelle could use a stint in Utopia Planitia, after an apparent close encounter with the teeth of a multi-phasic space shark.

"We're mostly going to try and keep her safe, munchkin. Remember - we don't ever kill people unless we have no choice, even evil ones. Besides, first we have to find out who they are, those evil people. That'll take a while. I probably won't be home for dinner tonight again, but Mommy will be there with you. I just came to give you a kiss. Or three."

Miral climbed into Tom's arms willingly, circling his neck with her little arms in the gesture that never ceased to amaze him with the intensity of the feelings it caused to well up inside him. As he buried his face in his daughter's hair, something occurred to him. Lemarr would be alone now in her assigned quarters, doubtless worried and scared of what her future might bring. No one would hold her… Perhaps a brief, non-threatening visit might help her to know that there were people who cared?

And if she didn't want company, at least he'd get a walk with his daughter, and Miral would learn a little about the difference between scurrilous stories and sentient reality, and the power of compassion.

"Would you like to meet the green lady, Miral? She's very nice, but a bit shy. Her name is Lemarr." Miral giggled a little at his attempt at producing the appropriate purr, so he did again a few times, and let her try it before getting up.

"But you can't be too bouncy, okay? She's still a bit scared. Like a kitten that's had a rough time."

Miral nodded solemnly. "Maybe she will like it if I showed her Toby? And the Enterprise?"

Tom smiled at his daughter fondly. "You know, she probably would. I tell you what, you put the Enterprise back together and carry her, and I'll carry Toby. That way we can hold hands when we go to visit her."

"'Kay." Miral reassembled the ship with an efficiency and fluidity of motion that nearly took Tom's breath away. Her mother's daughter, he thought with pride – not for the first time.

Together they headed out the door, hand in hand, father and daughter, to meet the girl whose childhood had been stolen in the name of profit and other people's desires.

Perhaps something of what she had lost could be returned to her, in time.