Chapter 4 – Danse Macabre
The drifting vessel was unremarkable - a cargo ship of the now discontinued Rakota class, with Federation markings. It had seen at least thirty years of service judging by the small pockmarks left on its hull by inter-stellar dust, Oort cloud particles and the man-made debris found orbiting most industrialized planets. Its registration number traced back to a company called Universal Merchants Amalgamated, which a quick check identified as a company operating out of the Rigellian system, ambitiously named but without an actual place of business or verifiable ownership or activities. It had not been registered as lost, and there were no distress signals in place.
Based on preliminary scans, all four escape pods common to this class of ship appeared to have been launched. The number of pods should have been adequate to take the eight crewmembers for which a Rakota class vessel was licensed, and which were sufficient for its operations; the number of individuals remaining onboard therefore raised immediate questions.
Asil reported additional sensor findings in her usual flat and factual manner: Environmental systems were non-functional, with no sign of external factors that might have caused the catastrophic failure. Pending further examination, indications were that any breakdown that had resulted in the vessel being adrift appeared to have been purely mechanical - possibly a function of the vessel's age.
The bio signs of the deceased humanoids indicated their species as Orion. Asil opined that it would be logical to assume that disease had not been a factor in their deaths, nor in the abandonment of the ship by its crew, since no quarantine beacons had been set.
"Possibly," Tom said, "but given that the operators didn't seem to care that they had insufficient escape pod capability for everyone aboard, they may also not have cared so much what happens to anyone who claims salvage. I wouldn't assume that they were the type to bother setting beacons."
He took a deep breath. After seven years in the Delta Quadrant he was no stranger to death in space, but eighteen bodies, abandoned by the rest of their crewmates?
"Commander, please assemble an away team; take B'Elanna and another member of her team, plus security and a member of the medical staff. Priorities are to recover the ship's logs and determine the cause of both the systems failure and the death of these Orions, whoever they are. Finding out what they were doing on a Federation vessel would be a bonus, if you can do it. We'll consider what to do with the bodies when we know more, but I assume they'll at least temporarily need to be stored, so we should get stasis chambers ready. Cargo Bay Three should have space now that we've made some of our deliveries."
Tervellyan nodded his assent and left the bridge, issuing orders and calling up the members of the away team as he went. Tom's eyes followed him with a twinge of regret. Captains weren't supposed to go on away missions, he knew, but he fully intended to follow the example set by Kathryn Janeway in this regard.
Just not, perhaps, the very first time.
…..
B'Elanna wouldn't deny to herself the fact that she felt a certain mixture of excitement and apprehension at the prospect of an away mission. The apprehension part was relatively new, introduced into her conscious mind only since Miral had been born. It wasn't fear for herself as much as it was concern for what might happen to her daughter, should she not return. She reminded herself of the protocol that prohibited both parents of an on-board child to participate in missions at the same time; Tom would be there for their daughter should anything go wrong.
With that knowledge she was able to focus on the adrenaline coursing through her bloodstream, and on the memories of past missions where she had been tasked with boarding alien vessels with little idea of what she might find there: The Pralor vessel and its killer androids. Arturis' pseudo-prototype. The Malon freighter. Allowing herself to be assimilated by the Borg … Not particularly pleasant memories, any of them, but all successful missions in the end.
That all said, B'Elanna had always hated EVA suits – almost more than she hated zero grav conditions. She had a deep-rooted suspicion that the suits were either designed to be intrinsically incompatible with Klingon physiology, or to malfunction specifically whenever she personally put one on. At least this time, she would be within transporter range … She straightened her shoulders and shifted the weight of her portable diagnostic kit to the other hand before nodding to Tervellyan. Lieutenant Commander B'Elanna Torres was ready for action.
The Commander, in turn, confirmed the readiness of the rest of the team before issuing his orders to the crewman operating the transporter. Ensigns Schmidt from the security detail and Nabil from Engineering took their places together with Nurse Tval. The latter had replaced the EMH, Tervellyan's first choice, when B'Elanna had pointed out that in zero grav conditions, the hologram would essentially be at the mercy of his physically solid, and hence free-floating, mobile emitter. Tervellyan nodded at the transport operator.
"Five to beam over."
The small, cramped and dingy-looking bridge was empty, and dark. A request to the computer for lights failed to elicit a response of any kind. All systems were offline – the gravity field generator, electric, environmental, life support. B'Elanna suppressed the impulse to gag as the sudden absence of gravity played havoc with her sense of equilibrium. She swallowed hard and brushed aside a flew floating instruments, as she partly pushed, partly pulled her way to the engineering console in the corner of the bridge.
At Tervellyan's behest, Nabil headed for ops in order to try and establish the necessary link with Voyager for downloading the ship's logs from the emergency back-up, the so-called "black box" that was supposed to kick in when all systems failed. The Bajoran engineer entered the necessary commands and spat out a nasty-sounding Cardassian curse when his efforts resulted in nothing other than his being pushed away from the console.
"There's nothing here, sir," he said, his puzzlement evident even over the slight distortion of the EVA comm link. "Impossible to establish a link. The entire data storage system, including the black box, appears to have been deliberately erased before the surviving crew left the ship."
Tervellyan sounded perplexed. "Everything? Not even basic logical matrices we could use to reboot the system? Auxiliary operating systems we could boost up remotely from Voyager? A log telling what happened?"
"No sir, nothing. Complete blank. The computer's been wiped, including all back-up functions. Receptors. Logs. Crew and cargo manifests. You name it."
"That explains the absence of any residual distress beacon," B'Elanna observed. "But I wonder why someone would take the time to do this, when they're abandoning ship in what appears to have been a hurry, unless they had a protocol for a total wipe-out. We've got that for Starfleet assets, but I've never seen it on a commercial vessel. But Nabil's right, everything is blanked out, right down to the operating systems. The whole ship is dead. Someone left nothing to be found here."
"Probably because they don't want anyone to know what happened here, or what they were carrying as cargo," Schmidt suggested, a frost in his voice. He was managing to keep surprisingly still despite the zero grav conditions, doubtless the result of ten years of hard-wired self-discipline from his time in a Romulan prison camp.
"Not to mention the eighteen corpses we haven't found yet, and what may have happened to them." Schmidt, probably more than anyone else onboard Voyager apart from Tom Paris, knew a cover-up when he saw one.
Tervellyan stilled himself on a bulkhead and studied him thoughtfully through their respective faceplates. "You're right, Ensign," he said. "Their eagerness to erase the data has probably got to do with the dead passengers. Let's leave the engineering team to figure out what went wrong here and whether we can reconstruct the files, and you and I will go look for the bodies and find out what story they might tell us. Nurse?"
B'Elanna raised her hand to stop them, and hit her comm badge. "Torres to Voyager. Can you send the design specs for Rakota class ships to our tricorders?" She turned to the First Officer. "It'll make it easier to find your way around the ship, since the wall locators won't be functional."
She almost added, "I'm surprised you didn't think of that before," but she bit back the comment. Tom had impressed on her – privately - the need for a team approach on 'his' ship; second-guessing the XO on his first away mission didn't seem consistent with that. So far, Tervellyan had turned out okay, and she was prepared to cut him a degree of slack that she would not have even remotely considered giving in the Delta Quadrant. Maybe the year he had spent behind a desk had taken the edge off his mission planning skills?
The transfer of the data complete, they were able to trace the biosigns to a cargo hold on the lower deck and to map out the quickest route. In the absence of a functioning turbolift or transport, the Jeffries tubes would have to do, EVA suits or no – at least the zero grav would make the trek easier on everyone's knees.
The door they found resisted even the XO's considerable technical expertise, as well as Ensign Schmidt's inventive approach to both code-breaking techniques and accompanying colour commentary. Whoever had locked the thing, had done a comprehensive job; at least there were no booby traps. Tervellyan gave a heavy sigh of defeat, tapped his comm badge and called B'Elanna.
"Can you come down here, Commander? I'm afraid to admit it, but we're stumped. Someone went to great lengths to make sure that no one can get into this cargo hold, but it seems to be mechanical. Assume you have the tools to outwit them?"
Leaving Nabil on his own on the bridge made B'Elanna uncomfortable for reasons she could not quite lay her finger on. There was something about this ship … She shook her disquiet off only after he agreed to accompany her most of the way, so he could have a look at the engine room instead. Once there, she reassured herself that Voyager maintained its transport lock on him and headed for the lower deck, cursing her EVA suit every time it snagged on a strut or other feature of the Jeffries tube.
It did not take her long to find a way to crack the seals on the door. Applying a basic multi-phasic resonator in a few strategic locations, she first loosened the locking mechanism that secured the two sections of the door to one another, and then suctioned small power inverter devices to each of the door's two halves, cross-wiring them to blow them apart.
"Step back," B'Elanna ordered, and flipped the emergency switch on the wall. In the absence of air to carry the sound of the resulting explosion, the Voyager team felt rather than heard the shockwaves as a the two halves of the door disappeared into the wall recesses. Tervellyan was the first to step up to the opening, followed by Schmidt and then B'Elanna and Nurse Tval.
Nothing, but nothing in their preparations, in their various experiences, nor in the knowledge that their mission was to investigate multiple deaths, could have prepared the team for what they found in the cargo hold of the unnamed vessel.
Eighteen bodies, Orion females all, perfectly preserved in the vacuum that now pervaded the ship. Even in death, their beauty was staggering. Luminous green skin shimmered under the beams of the wrist lights the Voyager team shone over them. Luxuriant reddish or dark curls floating in space, the flash of an earring here and there, luscious curves barely covered by soft pale fabrics, all promising sensual delights both readily offered and expected.
'Orion slave girls,' so-called despite - or perhaps because of - the image of the forbidden conjured up by the name. Slavery was, of course, prohibited in Federation space, but the idea of playful, willing submission coupled with a hint of the dangerously exotic … now that was another matter entirely, and part of their allure.
Orion women remained the Alpha Quadrant's most coveted dancers, performers and companions in pleasure. Prized above dilithium for their ability to offer relaxation and entertainment in establishments frequented by the rich and the powerful, or to private clients who had made their names and their fortunes in matters of business, politics, exploration or conflict. Reviled once upon a time for the pheromones they would deploy to ensnare unwitting males or side-track suspicious females of other races, they were now permitted to practice their arts within the Federation subject to strict regulations, and to great acclaim.
But none of the glamour, none of the mystique was evident here, on this ship. Here, there was only death, no promises and no grace.
Several of the bodies must have been clustered right by the entrance, almost on top of one another. Now, as a result of the shockwave from the blast B'Elanna had applied to the door, they were moving away and apart in a grotesque dance, not unlike a flower opening in a slow motion vid. Tval gave a little gasp as she noticed the broken, bleeding nails on the fingers of several of the women, evidence of their desperation as they had clawed at a door that would not move.
A door that had been very thoroughly, and very deliberately, locked – from the outside.
Almost more distressing for the away team to see were those among the women who had been sitting – huddled in pairs or in small groups – with their backs to the wall, in tight embrace as life support failed. Resigned to their fate, awaiting it quietly, with what dignity they could salvage from understanding that no one would come for them. Now they, too, were floating in space in mute accusation.
"That lock. It wasn't meant to keep us out," Schmidt's voice over the comm was a whisper, almost beyond even B'Elanna's keen hearing. "It was to keep them in."
She swallowed, hard, as her mind recalled scenes she had seen while in the Maquis, scenes she wished she could forget, but never would. Memories that flowed through her Klingon blood like acid, making her want to lash out in a fury so hot, so sharp it would tear through the hull of this ship of death like a knife through butter.
She had never been as helpless as the women before her, but she had seen their like, again and again.
Had watched those not equipped to fight become the inconvenient flotsam left behind by forces beyond their control.
Had taken up their fight, when they could not do so themselves.
Without conscious thought on her part, B'Elanna's mind's eye saw Miral's face on each one of those floating bodies by the door, saw her little body floating, butterfly-light, in that bleak cargo bay. Had her daughter been onboard this ship, B'Elanna did not doubt that she would have been among them – too much trouble to deal with, not valuable enough to preserve. That old, proud sailor's mantra that Tom liked to cite, women and children first? In B'Elanna's own experience, honed in a conflict that knew no mercy, that principle was honoured far more often in the breach than it ever was in the observance.
B'Elanna itched for her phaser - for something, someone to shoot at to vent her rage. But she was Starfleet now, had been for a very long time, and after years of failed attempts had learned to contain her anguish in a balled, gloved fist. She hit the bulwark, repeatedly, longing to feel the pain that might stop her from screaming - and that might, somehow, show these dead women that someone cared.
A dangerous road, that, she knew better than most. Inflicting pain on herself would not be of help here. But she also knew beyond certainty that the atrocity before her demanded that an answer be made; her engineer's mind in turn did not take long to realize the most effective tool at her disposal. As the blood rage subsided into the fresh bruises in her hand, she activated the comm signal inside her helmet with a stab of her chin.
"Torres to Paris. Tom, you need to come over here. There is something you must see."
Tervellyan's head flew up. Notwithstanding the horror before them, he could not help but be indignant at having been bypassed in this manner – summoning the Captain, if necessary at all, was his call to make. Not the Chief Engineer's. But for the reflection of the wrist lights on his face plate, the expression on his face would have clearly shown his question: Is this what it means to have a husband-and-wife team in senior positions …?
But it was too late. Tom responded instantly to the tone in B'Elanna's voice, surprised but fully aware, moreover, that she would not have commed him without good reason. He did not question her request.
"You're still onboard," they all heard him say softly, his only response.
That was one rule Tom Paris would never break, she knew: One parent stays on the ship. Miral would never be left behind, like these women had been.
"I'll beam back," she replied, without raising her eyes to the Commander, who glared at her but knew better than to assert his authority at that moment, with the Captain on the open line. "Nabil is working on the systems from the bridge, but it doesn't look like they could be rendered operational again anyway, based on what I saw. What's needed here isn't an extra engineer, but forensic investigation and salvage. And someone who can convince Starfleet to take action."
Enough. "There's really no need for you to come over here, Captain," Tervellyan stated coolly over the short-range comm link. "We can record the scene here through our visor cams and recover the bodies for dignified disposal, once the Orion authorities have been notified …"
"Understood, Jarod. But if B'Elanna thinks I should see this firsthand, I will. I'm on my way to the transporter room now and have them beam me straight to her last coordinates, after she returns to the ship."
The last was a clear, if implicit, order to his First Officer as well as to his wife, who nodded crisply and gave the command to lock onto her comm badge without so much as a glance at the man in charge of the mission. Tervellyan ground his teeth in barely suppressed frustration, but said nothing. Instead he motioned T'val to start scanning the bodies, with the assistance of a stoic and silent Ensign Schmidt.
B'Elanna stepped off the pad and removed her faceplate as soon as the tingling of the transporter had finished. She remained silent and motionless as she watched Tom retrieve one of the EVA suits from the wall locker in the transporter room, quickly checking it for size before he scrambled into it. When he was done, he closed the distance between them with a few strides.
"How bad is it?" he asked, knowing.
"Bad," she replied. "Really bad. Tom, they … they were just left to die. In the cargo hold. Like … like …" she couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence, lest the blood rage boil up again.
Tom gripped her arms hard enough to leave finger marks, willing her to look him in the eyes. He knew her so well.
"Go get Miral," he said firmly. "Now. Take her back to our quarters. Hold her. Touch her. Feel her breathe. I will be back, and we will figure out how to respond."
And with that, he collected a small bag of transport badges, stepped onto the platform and nodded to the crewman in charge to send him to hell.
…..
"They all died of anoxia, sir."
Even though Tval summarized her findings in unusually flat tones, it did not escape Tom's notice that she delivered her report with her back to the cargo hold, refusing to look any longer at the macabre tableau of death that was even now burning itself into his retinas. He knew that in addition to the shock of what she was seeing, she would have to deal with the emotions of the crewmembers with her – his own included – and he questioned his decision to bring aboard an empathic nurse. Had the fact that he missed Kes, and been denied access to a counselor like Troi, clouded his judgment, made him pick the person most like them?
But to her credit, Tval pushed on, like the consummate professional that she was. "Depressurization must have occurred after the oxygen ran out, gradually, as the ship's other systems failed. There is minimal evidence of pressure-caused trauma to the cells or blood vessels."
"How long?" Tom asked. He did not need to elaborate.
"The tolerance of a low oxygen environment differs between humans or Vulcans, and Orions, sir. Even without knowing the precise rate of oxygen depletion, they would have become disoriented after two or three minutes, and lost consciousness after five or six. Irreversible brain damage, then death would have occurred three or four minutes after that."
Tom took a deep breath of his own at this recitation of the inevitable, remembering what it had felt like that day, when he and B'Elanna had stared a similar death in the face. Their dizziness had not been permitted to turn into permanent sleep, though. Someone had come for them …
But Tval was not done. "A few of the women show evidence of recent sexual activity, within the last forty-eight to seventy-two hours. It is safe to assume that the crewmembers who departed in the escape pods were male. We should be able to obtain and record the DNA of the … donors once we are back on Voyager, sir."
Tom nodded his thanks to the nurse, and patted Schmidt - who had been floating near-motionless beside him - on the arm to get his attention. "Make sure you get the EMH to obtain those DNA samples as soon as we get the bodies back to Voyager, and have him send it to Starfleet. It's evidence. It may not be able to help us figure out who locked that door, but it should be able to help them identify who was onboard."
He turned to his XO, grateful to have an excuse to avert his gaze from the room. Behind the plate, his features had settled into that cold, taut mask he thought he had shed for good; he could almost feel it descend on his face now like a physical thing, and found himself irrationally grateful for its constraining presence.
His next words were for the Commander's ears only, and so he motioned him to touch faceplates. "Jarod, don't blame B'Elanna for going around you like that. I'll speak with her about it, in due course, but for now rest assured that she was right. I did need to see this. Don't ask me to explain, please, just trust me on this."
He disengaged, and tapped his comm badge. "Paris to Nabil. Are you finding anything up there that might lead you to believe there was sabotage in play, or that the systems can be restored?"
Two very different questions, but Nabil was a capable engineer despite his relatively junior status, and ready to answer both. The only member of the away team who had not been near the cargo hold, he managed to respond with a tone that was almost jarringly energetic by comparison to the muted sounds that prevailed on the lower deck.
"That's a no on both counts, sir. There appears to have been a cascade failure caused by a complete breakdown first of the matter-anti-matter converters in the engine, and then by some moron's attempt to compensate by diverting energy from all other systems, including life support. The initial burst of energy that produced overloaded the plasma manifolds, which in turn set off a chain reaction in the EPS circuitry and blacked out life support. By the time they realized what was happening, the computer would have been offline and they couldn't bring any of the systems back up. The failure probably triggered the wipe-out protocol. Everything went downhill from there. Looks like the grav stabilizers were the last thing to go, likely not until after the escape pods were released."
Tom stood still for a moment, gathering his thoughts. It was easier to do than it should have been – was he getting accustomed to atrocity? Or was he adjusting to the requirements of command, the need to be the one who kept things together? He hoped it was the latter. How often had he seen Janeway march seemingly unaffected through scenes that had most others lose their composure, if not their stomach contents?
"Acknowledged. I think there is not much left for you to do here, so you and T'val can go back. The Commander and I will stay and oversee transport of the bodies into …" Try as he would, he could not bring himself to say cargo hold. "… the stasis chambers we asked the Doc to prepare. Arno, get some more of your people over here and have a look at the living quarters, see if you can find any information at all about the identity of these women, or the people who ran this ship. They may have wiped the data, but can't have taken everything personal with them."
Tom turned to Tervellyan. Everyone but the command team had left the room, where some of the bodies continued in slow-motion movement, caused by the Voyager crew's various activities. In a gravity-free environment devoid of atmospheric friction, the bone-chilling dance would continue for a long time unless stopped by outside forces …
"Let's tag them for transport," he said, holding the bag of transport badges out to this XO. "And bring them to a place where they will count for something."
Tervellyan's puzzlement came through despite the fact that his faceplate reflected Tom's wrist light, and his features could not be seen. "Isn't tagging the bodies something Schmidt and the security detail should be doing?" he asked.
Tom frowned briefly at the question, his answer a chill breath against his faceplate. "On my ship, there is nothing I would ask one of my crew to do that would not be prepared to do myself. And there are certain things I will not ask my crew to do. And I will never delegate something as essential as respect."
…..
Two mentally exhausting, debilitating hours later, Tom found himself in his ready room, cursing the Starfleet bureaucrats who had refused to permit him the engagement of a counselor on the grounds that Voyager's mission was intended to be of 'less than six week's duration'. Where had he heard that before…? The logic for not authorizing the deployment of counselors to short-term missions was, apparently, that they were an expensive resource, and six weeks was an acceptable delay in mandatory post-traumatic stress counseling. Tom had personally never been a fan of what he used to refer somewhat derogatorily as the "routine psych detox", but he would not deny its utility for others.
Nurse Tval, for one, whose control seemed paper-thin after what she had seen and felt on the freighter. Ensign Schmidt, only recently come off a lengthy course of PTSD treatment, could probably use a refresher. Remote sessions would have to do for those who felt they needed them, for now – at least they weren't in the Delta Quadrant, and subspace communications were fully functional. He made a note to pass the recommendation on at the briefing.
Tom had to admit to himself that he certainly wouldn't have minded a … chat with Deanna Troi; he suspected neither would B'Elanna. But they would have to find their responses in other ways. For now. He rubbed his face with both hands before getting up and heading for the briefing room. Time for the preliminary wrap-up and analysis of the away team's findings.
B'Elanna and Tervellyan summarized what Tom already knew, for the benefit of the senior officers who had not been present. Asil's Vulcan features remained unreadable, while Baytart was swallowing convulsively, trying to appear unaffected by what he heard even as he was evidently relieved that he had been spared the seeing. The EMH looked grimmer than usual.
Asil advised that the ops team had deployed warning beacons around the derelict ship, declaring it to be a crime scene and subject to Federation authority - based on the inter-planetary laws of salvage. Anyone who boarded or otherwise interfered with her would be subject to criminal sanctions (if caught). Additionally, she had attempted to trace the energy signatures of the departing escape pods, but had only been able to do so for a few hundred thousand kilometers. At that point they had disappeared – effectively erased by the gravitational and EM disturbances caused by the annual Dance of the Snowflakes.
The Doc had confirmed Nurse Tval's initial findings, with the addition of an estimated time of death of the Orion women, calculated on the rate of desiccation of cells and soft tissue due to exposure to vacuum. According to his calculations the ship had been without atmosphere for just a little over eighteen standard hours – meaning the escape pods with the surviving crew were likely still in the vicinity. Asil's eyebrow shot up as she punched a PADD calculating new and additional sensor sweeps that she would have her team conducting shortly.
None of the women showed any trace of the Magellanic virus. In fact it appeared they had all been inoculated, by an antigen that was not inconsistent with the one cultured by Starfleet. Tom cast a questioning look at the Doc, who shook his hand almost imperceptibly and responded matter-of-factly.
"The antigen appears to have been in their bodies for some time so it was not from our own delivery into the system. It could, however, have come from the ships Starfleet previously sent."
In addition, the EMH was able to confirm that the DNA samples taken from the victims showed two donors of Orion origin, four Rigellian and one human; all male, of course. It was an unusual combination for a Federation-registered vessel, but the presence of male Orions could be explained, to some extent, by the ship's female passengers. Available information on the ownership of the company that operated the vessel showed it to be limited to Rigellians.
Finally, Mike Ayala reported, in a few sparse words. After the Command and engineering teams had left the ship, a security detail led by himself and Arno Schmidt had gone over the remainder of the vessel. The Captain's quarters had been hastily emptied of anything that would have stored information concerning its owner's identity or the vessel's activities, course or ownership. Everything moveable had been tossed into the recycler; remnants of one possibly salvageable PADD had been given to Ops to determine whether the contents could be reconstructed.
The crew quarters had been similarly bare, although there the absence of usable intelligence was not so much a matter of deliberate destruction, as it appeared to have been the result of the transient life style of their occupants. Whoever manned this ship had simply not bothered to bring parts of themselves onboard, or else had been advised not to do so. But the salient fact was this: Voyager's security team had found only eight bunks, spread over five cabins - two singles, and three doubles.
The dead women, it appeared, had slept in the cargo hold where they had been found: the floor was covered with thick, mattress-like foam, and apart from the blankets some of them had been wrapped in, wall storage units held additional material that could be regarded as bedding.
Tom looked around the table, to see if anyone else had anything to contribute. Mutely shaking heads met his gaze.
"Right," he said. "There isn't much more we can do for now. Jarod, could you bundle Mike's and the medical team's findings up and transmit everything to Starfleet? They're in as good, if not better, a position as we are to trace the owners and operators of that ship, and the people whose DNA we collected. Ask them to send back anything they find. I also want Starfleet's instructions on what to do about the bodies, in case the Orions do or don't want the Federation to keep them. I assume there'll be some diplomatic procedure or other we'll need to follow either way. Pending a response, we'll keep them in stasis in Cargo Bay Three. They're better off here than on … that ship."
Nods around the table told him that his instincts were shared; on Voyager at least, the women would be treated in death with the consideration and respect they had evidently not been given while alive.
Tom compressed his lips grimly, before continuing. "In the meantime, we still have our primary mission to complete. There are hundreds of thousands of sick and possibly dying people out there waiting for the assistance we came here to provide. So let's get on with it. Next stop Kalpak station."
The other officers filed out of the briefing room in silence, B'Elanna giving him a long look as she left him behind – a promise that they would talk later, in the privacy of their quarters.
…..
Back in his ready room, Tom stood by the observation window for a few silent minutes, staring at the small cluster of stars, stationary for the moment, until Baytart engaged the engines again. It was remarkable, really, that neither the disaster they had just witnessed nor the intricate gravitational forces that regularly wreaked such havoc on the worlds that circled them, were reflected in the serene beauty of those far-off points of light.
Not so far off in the distance one of those suns, he knew, was Bellatrix. Also called "the Amazon star", it had been known on Earth for millennia now as the left shoulder of Orion, one of the most recognizable constellations in the Terran sky, seen in both hemispheres as the seasons turned. The great hunter of Greek mythology whom the ancients had thought they saw in the sky was himself the subject of different legends, none considered definitive, all tragic. Had he been killed by a scorpion's poison, or by the bow of the goddess Artemis? Had Ulysses seen his shadow in the underworld, or had he been elevated to the heavens by his remorseful divine lover?
Out here, Bellatrix was one star among many; the constellation had no meaningful visual shape in this part of the galaxy. It was, in fact, above remarkable that the people who called Bellatrix their sun - albeit not by that designation - and whose connection to Earth was intermittent at best and often contentious, had nonetheless accepted for their world to be called by the hunter's name: Orion III. A name surrounded by shadows and secrets, whispering of desire, of ambition - of silent death without mercy.
How very fitting, he thought, not for the first time.
Tom ran his right hand through his hair as he tried – and failed, for once - to find meaning in the silent song of the stars. He stopped at his neck to knead the hardened muscles there, but stilled his hands self-consciously when it occurred to him that maybe Captains shouldn't admit to fatigue. Had Janeway ever done so? Oh hell. He knew he was no Janeway, and no need pretending.
He put his hand on the desk and balled his fingers into a fist, which he slammed down hard before picking up a PADD marked urgent. It contained a report from Nicoletti in engineering, detailing the drain on the ship's energy reserves that would result from keeping eighteen stasis fields operational. He cursed softly. Well, they could replenish supplies at Kalpak station and if all else failed, it wouldn't be the first time Voyager's crew had been subject to rationing. He made a note and transmitted the report back to engineering with his orders. The stasis fields would be maintained.
Later that night, in the calm that was his and B'Elanna's quarters and their family's home, Tom took his own advice. Miral did not usually sleep in her parents' bed but this night, he and B'Elanna had agreed, would be an exception. He tiptoed into her bedroom and gently lifted her out of the crib, holding her tightly against his chest for a moment before carrying her through the living area and into his and B'Elanna's room. He gently lowered her into the middle of the bed, pulled the blanket over her sleeping form and crawled in beside her.
There were few things, Tom had decided early on into the adventure of fatherhood, that could not be at least temporarily relieved by feeling your child's heart beat against your own, or by touching her soft hair with your lips. And if your hand could reach across to feel your mate's warm shoulder at the same time and feel her fingers lace through your own, that was even better.
Life. Love. Hope. They existed. If not in all places, then at least here, and now. If you knew where to find them.