Eventually Gretchen got up, and realized with a shock, that it was almost time for her shift in Engineering. She hurriedly changed into her uniform and ran a comb through her hair, securing it in a bun to avoid any accidents in the busiest and most hazardous environment on the ship.
She downed a Bajoran soup at record speed, and set off for the turbolift.
B'Elanna was, to no surprise, yelling loudly as she arrived.
As Gretchen approached to check in, she saw that B'Elanna was shrieking at a green K'Terran.
"Stay out of our way," hissed B'Elanna angrily, "Today is crazy enough with all my help leaving, I don't need you interfering in our work. Just go back to your ship until tomorrow afternoon."
"That is not possible dearie," said the alien, smiling pleasantly with her two mouths, "We must stay with our technology."
"Then just stay with it!" shouted B'Elanna, "Stop following me around. I've told you all morning! I can't deal with this today!"
"We can't just ignore you," said the green K'Terran, smiling again, as a blue K'Terran came up behind them, "We must be hospitable."
"How can you be hospitable on our ship?" growled B'Elanna.
Gretchen looked from one to the other in dismay, wondering if she should call her diplomatic father down, and them remembering that the K'Terrans would not even speak to him. At the same moment she heard B'Elanna scream in her direction, "Kincaid! Give them a tour of Engineering. A very long tour!" she said howling and stomping off.
This is not what I expected to be doing.
Gretchen awkwardly approached them, "Hello," she said cautiously, "I'm Ensign Gretchen Kincaid. It's nice to meet you."
"Hello dearie," said the green alien, "Please do show us around."
"Sister," said the green alien again, apparently calling a turquoise alien that Gretchen recognized from Deck 5, "Do come with us on the tour."
"Yes yes, sister" said the turquoise alien.
"Yes yes," said the blue one, smiling widely, showing two sets of sharp teeth.
Captain Janeway had barely had time to think the two nights before the stasis and then suddenly the transition happened quicker that she could've imagined.
Things had been going well all day as the change over happened, small groups reporting to Sickbay starting in the early morning. Then the last alert came, the one for senior staff.
One minute she was riding the turbolift down from the Bridge chatting about the ship, with Chakotay's warm hand on her arm, and Tuvok's solid presence next to them. The next moment they entered Sickbay where Tom and Harry were joking about something as Neelix fussed at them. Then the Doctor started to take out a hypospray and directed one of them to a medical pod.
And it seemed like the next moment that Kathryn was riding the turbolift back up, by herself, in silence, to an almost empty Bridge.
Kathryn sighed very deeply to herself as she sat down in her Captain's chair, it was going to be a very long six months.
Their predicament seemed even more real to Janeway the day after, as she entered her Briefing Room in the afternoon.
Janeway looked around at her senior staff, minus the Doctor, who had his hands full with almost 80 new patients to look after. The rush toward the stasis was over and the first adjustments had been made, it was time to evaluate the situation.
Her Briefing Room looked…..terribly empty…..
In the Bridge and the halls the half staffing and missing faces gave Voyager the feeling of a long night shift. But now, as she looked around the empty chairs it gave a feeling of…..something else. A funeral, a graveyard. As if they were gone and never coming back.
Janeway shook her head to clear it, morbid thoughts were unnatural to her as Captain and she absolutely could not afford to fall into a depression and become useless to her crew.
Chakotay, Tuvok, Tom, Harry, Neelix, they're all just sleeping. Depending on me to pull this off.
She looked at the faces that were still around the table.
Seven was typing on a datapad and looked, rather annoyed actually, but not as if she were about to explode or implode, just irritated. That was natural, the low staffing numbers and duty changes had left Astrometrics running at a lower efficiency than she would've liked. Seven was the type to be annoyed by a single mistake in a shift, and she was getting a lot more.
B'Elanna looked huffy, but what was much more worrying for the temperamental Klingon hybrid, also depressed. B'Elanna thrived under the stress and challenge of situations like this, she had been a Maquis engineer after all, but Janeway knew she must be missing Tom, and many other of her friends. B'Elanna wasn't gregarious, but she cared, she really did, about all of her colleagues. She liked belonging and working together. And leaving half the crew in stasis had not sat well with her as someone who would've hated it herself.
Gretchen had never returned to sleeping in the Ready Room, and Janeway had seen her only in passing. She had been officially returned to full duty today and was currently scheduled in Engineering, considering the crunch they were still in. She looked….nervous, but aware and alert, which was all Janeway could ask.
Seven put the datapad away, and the crew turned to her to begin the meeting.
"Seven, what's your report on Astrometrics?" Janeway asked, starting with the simplest report.
"Astrometrics is transitioning Captain. Three Astrometrics crew members have been permanently assigned to Engineering, and two more, including Ensign Kincaid are temporarily stationed there. Our navigational course has been set for the present, adjusting or reading it in any detail will be difficult once we are in transit. Therefore I will turn my attention to improving our shields as the latest attack has shown weaknesses."
"Good," said Janeway nodding, "How are things B'Elanna? Are the K'Terrans getting along in Engineering?"
"They're irritating," said B'Elanna, sagging in her seat, "And I have to redo everything they work on…..they don't understand our systems as all, but they won't let me figure theirs out….so I have no choice but to play translator, rather than just doing it myself, which would be 20 times faster."
The Klingon hybrid crossed her arms over her chest, sagged further, and growled, "I swear they're going to blow up the ship if I don't sit on them every minute."
"Is that a serious concern Lieutenant?" said Janeway, in her best Starfleet Captain voice.
"No," said B'Elanna, petulantly, "But I'm not going to let them have free reign in my Engineering."
"Understood," said Janeway brusquely, "But you're under orders to be hospitable."
"How can I be hospitable when they don't even have names?" argued B'Elanna, "Am I supposed to smack them over the head when I want their attention? And if they call me dearie one more time….."
"That'll be better tomorrow B'Elanna," said Gretchen suddenly, and Janeway blinked as the woman completely ignored the half Klingon's temper, "Their Head Engineer and I got to talking…..it isn't that they can't give others their names…..they don't give them out because aliens never understand them…..their language has thousands of tones, we can't even hear a good half of them…..and all their names translate as sister, that's really important in their culture….so I asked her if I could call her the Klingon word for sister and she was really pleased…..she took a list of other alien words for sister, and they're all going to pick one out."
B'Elanna blinked at her, "How did you get that out of them?"
Gretchen shrugged her shoulders, "You had me working with them last night when it was really quiet…..They like us a lot actually…..Be'nl and their leader, Be'nl said she would probably take the name Soeur, they're believers in a philosophy that says that all females everywhere are sisters…..they're helping us as a kind of test, or religious good deed, to prove to their fellow K'Terrans that alien females count in their sisterhood, so they're really eager to make friends."
"I can't believe you got that out of them," said B'Elanna again, seemingly in shock.
"And I told them Klingons don't like endearments…..etiquette is super important in their culture, so you're Lieutenant Torres from now on."
"Well," said B'Elanna, turning forward, blinking, "That's one thing at least."
If I didn't know she was related to Chakotay before, I would now.
"Good job Gretchen," said Janeway nodding, "Where are we on installing their new Esoterian Gas core B'Elanna? I understand there will be no more phasers or transporters in Engineering once it gets going?"
"That's true, either could cause an explosion with their new core. Two more days until it's installed Captain," said B'Elanna, sagging in her seat again, "I hope. And then at least another three of switching over the adjacent systems and testing. This is not a quick process. And we don't want to blow up mid-flight."
"No," said Janeway, "Take the time you need B'Elanna. We're planning to save about 10-15 years with this alliance, hopefully more, another few days won't make any difference."
"It will to my nerves," muttered B'Elanna, "Once this is over, I won't have to deal with them. They can just put up a security camera and check up on us occasionally."
"We can't just push them back on their own ship B'Elanna," said Janeway, "Even if they'd allow it, which I doubt. This is an alliance, they're supposed to learn from us, and we from them."
"They're hopeless," hissed B'Elanna.
"That's what a lot of the Federation said about the Klingons," responded Janeway cajolingly.
"They weren't wrong," yelled B'Elanna, rubbing her forehead.
Janeway breathed in deeply for a moment.
B'Elanna's stressed to her limit, I can't ask her to shoulder all the responsibility for the K'Terrans once the transfer is over. It isn't fair to begin with….and it's not what Engineering specializes in. We're all Starfleet, but they don't exactly put the diplomats in Engineering.
"We'll work on taking the burden off Engineering," said Janeway decisively, "Other than Sickbay, and possibly the Bridge, I don't have an issue with them working anywhere on board. They'll still be watched, but we are supposed to be making friends of other species, and after all, they are getting us 15 years closer to home."
"By making us lock up all our men," hissed B'Elanna combatively.
Janeway sighed internally, rubbing her own forehead and realizing she had no other choice but to force B'Elanna down. Suddenly she missed Chakotay very badly.
"B'Elanna," said Janeway commandingly, and the woman looked at her instinctively, hearing the steel in her voice, "You don't have to like them. I'm not asking you to. And you're right that Engineering cannot be expected to handle this alone. All of Voyager is in this together. I never said this would be easy, for any of us. It won't be."
Janeway looked at each of her remaining staffers in turn, and then brought her gaze back to stare B'Elanna down, "Yes, it's true that we are temporarily being deprived of friends, comrades, even people we love. But have you thought about how many of them might not make it home if we had to travel this distance by ourselves? We lost 18 people in the Delta Quadrant, not including those murdered by the Caretaker. That's an average of 3 a year. That's 45 people we're likely to lose in those 15 years, assuming the ship itself made it."
B'Elanna looked away as Janeway continued to stare and her voice deepened.
"Would you like to give me a list of the 45 crewmen you prefer losing over holding your temper? Maybe you'd prefer to write their families yourself, and see their friends at their funerals, to face the tears, and the accusations, and the screams of grief."
"If that's really what you want B'Elanna," continued Janeway, still staring at her and leaning forward, into her clasped hands on the table, "Then I'm all ears, tell me how very much you hate being irritated by this alien race."
B'Elanna looked back and responded, partially cowed but still sputtering angrily, "You can't tell me they're still not a danger. You can't guarantee all of us will live anyway. No matter what we do this race could turn on us."
"I can't," said Janeway, finally letting some of her emotion into her voice, "I can't tell you this will save us all and get us home. But the Jen Hadar are a guaranteed threat, or did you forget that they already tried to destroy us once, and came very close to it? And if anything your treatment of the K'Terrans makes it more likely they'll change their minds about helping us. I'll be damned if I can't hold out a hand in friendship to save one member of my crew, let alone 40."
B'Elanna growled unhappily, but Janeway could see that she had gotten through.
Janeway sighed again internally, it had taken even more out of her than she expected, but she could not let it show.
The meeting continued for about another hour, as they discussed the specifics of many of the plans. Finally the three younger women left, B'Elanna and Gretchen for Engineering, and Seven for Astrometrics.
"Do you think we should plan a party or something?" said Gretchen as she and B'Elanna headed down to Engineering, "I mean after the worst of this is over? Everyone seems so depressed."
"Don't think I'm going to be all palsy walsy with you now that Tom's gone," snapped B'Elanna angrily, "I'm not your buddy….and I don't care about your stupid party plans."
Gretchen flinched suddenly and B'Elanna regretted her words.
"That's fine," said Gretchen evenly, and even the Klingon hybrid could tell she was being stone walled.
"I don't mean anything by that….," B'Elanna muttered, "I'm glad you agreed to help in Engineering during the worst of this….and I don't want to start anything….."
B'Elanna sighed heavily and held her head, "Heaven knows we don't need any fights right now, things are bad enough, months of this, if we're lucky…"
There was silence for a moment and a beat later Gretchen shot back with, "Why is it most of the congenial people on this ship are men?"
"I don't know," said B'Elanna seriously, accepting the prickly olive branch, "But I hate to say you're right, at least on senior staff. Chakotay and Harry get along with everyone, Tom's an acquired taste, but almost everyone finds him friendly. And Neelix is…..very friendly…even Tuvok is easy to get along with….in the same way the computer is….but you're definitely not going to see him blowing his top….."
Gretchen made an odd expression.
"Look I know I'm hard to get along with," said B'Elanna, "At least on a human ship….not that I want anything to do with a Klingon one…..Seven's like me but icy rather than hot….and Janeway's prone to moods…especially without Chakotay to offset her….and you're….."
"Crazy?" finished Gretchen, raising an eyebrow, and almost laughing, which did in fact make her look mentally unstable.
"Unpredictable," said B'Elanna.
"That is not the word I thought you were going to use."
"It fits….more than anything else….that one fits….who knows if you're going to endanger the ship and steal a Borg transwarp coil on your own, or have a mental breakdown in the holodeck…or sacrifice yourself to get the ship out of a space death trap, or suddenly make friends with the aliens on board that no one could make heads or tails of…."
Gretchen looked at her in surprise, "I never quite realized I was quite so….inconsistent….."
"Most of the crew doesn't know about all those things, they see you as reliable….and most of the senior staff is…"
"So enamored with the fact that I'm Janeway's daughter that they ignore them," finished Gretchen for her.
B'Elanna blinked at her.
Gretchen shook her head, "You're predictable you know…..I'd heard you called that before, in my timeline….but as well as I knew you, I never saw it until now."
"You knew me in your time? I mean seriously knew?"
"…..is that so shocking? It's a small ship."
B'Elanna looked off, unnaturally at a loss for words.
"Anyway…" said Gretchen, "I guess I….I was the only one that knew things when I first came back from the future….I knew Janeway had made mistakes last time….I knew where it lead, to all our deaths. I didn't think I could rely on anyone in this timeline to get us home, especially after Janeway refused to take my advice and leave the Equinox alone. And in my defense if we hadn't by chance been in the holodeck when they mutinied this timeline would have ended even worse than mine, all because Janeway wouldn't listen to me, like normal."
Gretchen continued, looking away as B'Elanna turned her head, "I didn't think I could rely on anyone in this timeline to get us home…..and at first I knew I was right…..until I screwed up on the Borg ship and Janeway bailed me out….I realized my future knowledge wasn't worth as much as I thought….that I couldn't do it without Voyager's crew….and Voyager's Captain….that these are my people now….as much as I wish it were different…..this is what I agreed to do."
Gretchen turned to look at B'Elanna, making eye contact, as if she was staring her down, "Yes, I broke down in the holodeck…..I do have visions of how badly my timeline went, they're better now that we're out of the Rift, but it still happens….I don't know what to tell you….except you don't have much choice but to work with me."
"I don't have much choice about working with you," emphasized Gretchen, "And you don't have much choice about working with me, B'Elanna Torres."
"I," said B'Elanna, "You're right."
There was silence for the rest of the trip to Engineering.