Winter's Child, continued.
It's easy, in memory, to claim that I knew when I woke up that morning that it would be different. The truth is, though, that it wasn't: I still snuggled into the blankets, chasing the last warmth, and the light that filtered through the ice was the same dim blue. We ate hard tack bread and applesauce that morning while my mother drank bitter black tea. She was designing a miniaturized warp reactor, which was insane considering the dangers of antimatter and requisite energy to ignite it, but kept her scientist's brain busy. Zayek and I spent almost three hours calculating the entropy and enthalpy for the same reaction under her distracted eye, while Ada and Harry tried to prove that water freezing was spontaneous at zero degrees centigrade.
She finally released us when we announced that the warp reaction bent the rules of physical chemistry and Harry and Ada concluded that water did, in fact, freeze. Ada seemed annoyed that she'd had to go through all that math to prove what she considered the one constant of her universe, but my mother was excited by the ideas that she'd come up with for containment. Over lunch, she corralled the other adults into a salvaging trip, eager to start experimenting. Everyone went, ostensibly to gather supplies but really to keep my mother from crawling inside the warp core in her enthusiasm.
Zayek and I stayed on deck one with the younger children. I had wanted to go below, too, eager to prove that I was old enough for salvage and knew my way around the plasma manifolds, but Tom had handed me his infant daughter and whispered that he considered her care much more important than rooting around dead consoles.
"Zayek can handle Ada and Harry, but a nine-week-old quarter-Klingon is a pretty serious charge," he said, and my annoyance at being left behind faded as she fell asleep against me. Miral may have inherited her mother's ridges, but she had a gentle personality and breathtakingly blue eyes, and as the others built a fort beneath the table in the conference room I curled up behind ops with a gel pack on my lap and a book between my gloved fingers, glad to have a few moments to myself. With Miral warm against my chest and the dim lighting making the words on the page swim, it wasn't long before I drifted off.
I woke suddenly to the screech of a door as it was forced open. It was the door on the far side of the bridge, by the ready room, the one that we hardly ever used; the corridors beyond it were as dark and frozen as the rest of the ship, since the garden stopped abruptly halfway around the deck. I spent my life with one small group of people, and I knew immediately that the boots crunching across the frost didn't belong to any of them.
When I imagined that moment, I had always thought that we would run to greet our rescuers, but now that the moment was there I was unaccountably nervous. What if they proved hostile? Voyager was a rich salvage prize for a space-faring race, even in its current state, and a fourteen-year-old refugee wasn't much a diplomat.
After perhaps a minute of stillness, the stranger murmured something and opened a comm. channel. "She's not here," he said without preamble.
"What do you mean, she's not there?"
"That. None of them are here." His voice was deep and controlled, but a little desperate, too. "Do you think that – "
"Hold on. I can't access the Doc or find the mobile emitter, but he can wait. Tess, do you think you could – " I heard a humming, and realized that it had to be a transporter beam of some kind. A second set of unfamiliar feet explored the bridge, followed by a crash, as though someone had punched the wall. "After all this – all this time, all this work – "
"All those broken laws," the first man adds grimly. "Do you think the ship was found by scavengers?"
"Out here? There isn't a trade route that passes within a billion kilometers of this planet."
"But the consoles are in pieces." I imagined what the bridge would look like to strangers: bits and pieces of bulkheads and circuitry from all over the ship, strewn across the lower deck.
"If that were true, though, the crew would still be here. What use do scavengers have for bodies?" They hadn't been through decks two, three, or four, then, if they hadn't seen the crew. "I didn't see a single person down by Sickbay, and I know that the labs were staffed that day." He punched the wall again, his voice bitter with disappointment. "How are we going to do this without her?"
I may have been too confused and frightened to speak, but Miral had no such qualm. The unfamiliar voices and my agitation woke her up, and after an uncertain moment she let out a wail. I dropped my book and hastily tried to quiet her, but it was too late.
"Did you hear that?" the second man said in a low voice, and before I had a chance to stand up he strode across the bridge and hauled me out from behind the ops console. He held me against the wall with a strong but shaking hand. "What are you doing here?"
I took in his graying hair, human features, and heavy environmental suit. "I should ask you the same," I hissed back, trying to protect Miral's head. Over his shoulder, I saw Zayek peer out from an access tube on the main bridge, then slip back inside.
The first man, larger and with a faded blue-black tattoo over his left eye, pulled his companion back. "What are you doing?" he demanded. "That's a baby under there, and she's a child!"
"She's a squatter!" he roared, physically restrained but still angry. "Where are the bodies? What have you done with them?" He tried to jerk out of the other man's grip. "How long have you been here?"
Miral was shrieking in earnest, and I moved out from behind the console, trying to quiet her and get the corridor to my back. "My whole life!"
That stopped him cold. I bounced the baby gently, and her wails faded to whimpers; the older man watched me, his grip tightening on his friend's arm. When he spoke, his voice was soft, but deadly intense. "And how long is that, exactly?"
No point in lying. I raised my chin defiantly. "Fourteen years."
His hand dropped from my would-be attacker's arm, but neither of them moved. Neither of them seemed sure what to do next, and the tattooed man backed down onto the main deck of the bridge. I pressed my advantage, stepping forward. "So I'm going to ask you again: what are you doing here?"
His back turned, he stared at the empty gray viewscreen. "Looking for you, I suppose." He sounded completely defeated. "We should start over, I think. What's your name?"
"Bea."
"That's it?"
I didn't answer. His companion still looked furious, if a little bewildered; it was clear that I upset his plans, and that he wasn't going to trust me. I hoped that Zayek had gone to find the salvage crew, or at least had made sure that Harry and Ada were safely hidden. This was hardly the rescue I had imagined.
"Is there anyone else here, Bea?" I just looked at him steadily. He raised an eyebrow. "Come on; you're a little young to be a mother, and in any case this isn't the kind of place you can survive on your own. How long have your people been sheltering here? I suppose you could have found the ship when it crashed. Were you trapped by the glacier?"
I didn't think he'd believe me if I said that I was the captain's daughter, so I said nothing. The younger man spun on his heel, pacing the upper deck of the bridge; the one with the tattoo sank into the commander's chair, tapping at the central console. Over Miral's whimpering and the crunch of the second man's pacing, I only heard a few words in my mother's voice: " – with distinction and valor."
Cautiously, I followed him down to the lower deck, but he wasn't paying any attention to me. He was gazing instead at the console and the empty captain's chair. I didn't know what to make of it: who were these men? What had they expected to find, and why had they been so sure? He seemed to see my mother in the final transmission, and his expression was distant, intimate. It felt rude to interrupt.
And then suddenly, it clicked. "You're Chakotay," I said to him, sitting back against the conn. "And you're Harry Kim." There was no question in my voice: I was sure. I had their attention now. "You came to find Voyager, and you expected her to be dead and empty."
"And she isn't?" Chakotay was whispering.
Again, I didn't answer. "You expected to find the crew frozen where they fell, everything intact, dead. Didn't you scan? What did you think, when you saw life support running at partial power? Why didn't you look for lifesigns?"
"It didn't occur to us," Harry Kim said. "The ship is buried under a glacier. We looked for the alloy in the hull, but not for organic material. When I saw the faint energy signature, I thought that the power grid hadn't been as thoroughly damaged as we'd expected." He paused, and when he spoke again his voice was almost pleading. "No one could possibly live here."
"It isn't a matter of 'possible,'" I said, and his dark eyes met mine over Chakotay's head. "Just 'true.'"
When my mother strode onto the bridge a few minutes later, she was every inch the captain. True, she wore skirts and coats made of environmental suits and blankets; she was gaunt and thin, and hadn't had a proper meal or cup of coffee in years. But she had her little crew at her back, and on her face an expression that had bested the Borg.
And melted promptly when she saw who stood before her. Astonishment, joy, and anger warred her face, and anger won. After a stunned silence, she almost growled, "And just what took you gentlemen so long?"
Harry Kim stood with his back to me, so I could only guess his shock from his stillness, but Chakotay was still seated in the commander's chair. At my mother's voice, his lips parted very slightly. The expression on his face was hard to read; it was as though she was water, and he was drowning in thirst. When he finally pushed himself to his feet and turned to face her, he could barely speak. "Kathryn."
Her fury was undiminished. "Bea, are you all right?" she asked sharply, and I nodded, beating a hasty retreat to her side. The rest of the survivors were frozen behind her, wanting neither to violate her authority or, I suspect, able to believe what they saw.
It was Kim who broke the stalemate. He stumbled forward, dropping to his knees before all of them, and mumbled to the deck plating, "I'm so sorry, Captain. I – I've spent every moment since that day apologizing to you. You trusted me, and I killed – I – I'm so sorry."
B'Elanna took in a sharp breath. "Kathryn," she murmured, and my mother stepped back, her face a mask, rigid and sad. B'Elanna rushed around her and sank down beside Kim. "It's okay, Harry. We forgave you a long time ago." She tucked her hand beneath his chin and forced him to look at her. "We even named our first child for you." I could see as clearly as she could that it was my mother's forgiveness he wanted, but he let a weak smile onto his face and swallowed hard. "She is right, though," B'Elanna added, pulling him to his feet. "You two did take an awfully long time."
Kim searched her face, then turned to Tom, Greg, Madelein, and Joe. When he reached my mother, he cast his eyes down again. "It'll never be enough, Captain, I know, but – "
"I don't doubt your sincerity, Harry," she said, and her voice was soft and sure. She didn't give an inch. "But the last fifteen years have marked me with regrets, too. It'll take me a while." She relaxed her stance, though, and suddenly it was a reunion, with Harry embracing everyone, clearly rejoicing to be back in the arms of his family. Zayek and I slipped outside the tangle, not sure that we belonged there, and we weren't the only ones: Chakotay still stood on the other side of the railing, his eyes on my mother, the cool center of the storm.
B'Elanna noticed, too, and made her way to where we stood. "Where are the others, Zayek? Harry should meet his namesake." Zayek ran off to get the younger children out of hiding, and B'Elanna followed my gaze to Chakotay.
"He hasn't said a word," I said.
"Well, he's a quiet guy. And he never thought he'd see his captain again." She let her own excitement slip into her voice then, and I looked up at her and smiled, just in time to see a sudden and smooth transformation in her features from amusement to astonishment. She glanced away quickly, towards Chakotay. "How could I not – " she murmured, then said aloud, "Excuse me, Bea."
B'Elanna swung under the railing and laid her arm on Chakotay's shoulder, and I turned around to find her expression mirrored in my mother's. "Come on," she said. "Let's go where it's warm." She took my hand, and with the baby stirring restlessly against me we walked toward the conference room.
Old habits are hard to break; within fifteen minutes, it had turned into a staff meeting. There may have been a living ship in orbit, but when my mother shed her outer layers and sank into the chair at the head of the table, everyone followed suit. We children quickly snagged the warmest seats, the low benches Maddie had built between Joe's oven and the windows, and I unwrapped Miral so that she could wriggle on my lap. The most senior officers got the chairs, and everyone else sank onto an improvised stool or leaned up against the wall. The survivors couldn't take their eyes off their rescuers, and a few couldn't wipe silly smiles from their faces.
Still, Harry and Chakotay's eyes kept flicking over to the corner where we sat, and they seemed distracted by the jury-rigged heaters and cooking devices lined against the walls. It was my mother who finally broke the silence, saying, "We haven't all been introduced, have we?" She looked over her shoulder at Zayek and I. "Harry, Chakotay, may I present our newest –" a minute pause "- crew members. Harry Owen Paris; the infant is his sister, Miral Kathryn Torres. Zayek Swinn, and Ada Ayala-Matteo." Harry Kim couldn't suppress an affectionate snort at that, but the somber Ada merely stared back at him. "And of course, Beatrice."
I nodded awkwardly, but I wasn't the only one to notice the judicious shortening of my name. Tuvok raised an eyebrow, B'Elanna pursed her lips, and my mother cleared her throat. "Beatrice Janeway," she amended.
However unexpected Zayek or little Miral might be, I was clearly the curiosity. The feeling wasn't a pleasant one, and I looked down at the baby in my arms to avoid Chakotay's searching gaze. "Kathryn," he ventured, and then chuckled, as though aware that that was all he'd managed to say so far. "She's – quite a bit like you."
I blushed, remembering our first interaction, but my mother's blush was deeper. "Only good qualities, I hope."
Although there was a room full of survivors, he didn't look at anyone else. "Of course." Looking around, I guessed that their banter didn't come as a surprise; Joe rolled his eyes at them, and I caught Tom with a grin. B'Elanna's expression, though, was troubled, and she leaned in toward her husband, murmuring inaudibly into his ear. When she pulled away, his eyes flicked toward me, and he drew in a quick breath.
"Finding you here," Chakotay said, tearing his eyes from his captain's and looking around the room, "makes everything much more complex."
"You didn't expect to find us?" My mother's voice was low, surprised. "What, then, are you doing here?"
"We expected to find Voyager. But we thought – we assumed you were all dead on impact, or shortly thereafter. It's been fifteen years. And there are twenty meters of ice overhead!"
"You still haven't answered my question, Chakotay." She pronounced each syllable carefully, almost delicately, each consonant crisp and precise. Cha-ko-tay.
"We're here – we were here to change history, Kathyrn." He was speaking only to her, and had been, since the moment she strode onto what never stopped being her bridge.
"Is this going to have me worrying about temporal mechanics?" My mother leaned forward, and I wondered that he had been absent from all the stories she told. She never made him sound important, but the spark in her tone and posture betrayed her: he was very important to her, as an officer and as a friend.
"That depends on whether we go through with it," Kim put in, as though impatient. "When we thought you were all dead, the plan was to use Seven's transceiver to send ourselves a message. I – well, I sent you all the wrong correction, fifteen years ago, but I've worked out the right one."
"A message to yesterday," B'Elanna murmured. She absently pulled her gloves off, turning to Tom with a distant expression. "If we'd had the right correction, we might have been able to stabilize the drive." I could tell that she was running over those last few minutes in her head. "Maybe…"
"We have the means, but – " Kim swallowed. "Obviously, it changes everything that there are survivors, and children, here."
My mother nodded. "Obviously," she echoed, but we all knew she was saying something very different.
"Captain," Tuvok said, "I feel I should remind you – "
"I don't need reminding, Tuvok."
"Kathryn," Chakotay broke in. "It's not an option anymore. We can't risk making the timeline any worse. What if we made an error and all of you died, instead of just most of you? Or if the Flyer didn't survive, and Harry and I weren't here to find you?" He tore his eyes from her, and he focused for a moment on little Harry, who was tiptoeing around the table toward his parents. "What about them? These new lives that won't exist?"
"That didn't bother you before, Chakotay," Kim murmured. "Countless lives will change, and we can't predict which children may or may not be born. We decided it was worth the price, a long time ago."
"I know that, and I thought I could live with it - but these five children will cease to exist!"
"Well, four of them will, anyway," Tom put in dryly. Everyone whipped around to look at him, but from where I sat behind the captain's chair I could tell that it was my mother's eyes he met. "Bea was conceived before the crash, wasn't she?"