Zeva system
U.S.S. James T. Kirk

Reports, reports, reports. There were always more reports for the captain to read and review. Captain Harry Kim eyed the stack of PADDs on his desk and sighed. They were barely into their first mission, and he was already behind on his reports. There were casualty reports, engineering reports, maintenance reports, tactical reports, stellar cartography reports, and reports he couldn't even identify. More as a delaying technique than anything else, he took the time to sort them by importance, then quickly shook his head and reconsidered, arranging them by how quickly he could get through them. The casualty report needed only a thumbprint signature; that was complete. He quickly scanned the maintenance report to see how much longer it would be before the ship was again in perfect condition before pressing his thumb to that PADD as well. There wasn't much he could do to change those numbers. Stellar cartography had nothing new to report; that got a quick thumbprint. He took one glance at the tactical report and set it aside; that one would take more time than he was willing to give.

The engineering report, while something that was more his speed, was dense. The engineering department on the Kirk was the largest he had ever seen outside Starfleet Corps of Engineers, with ten separate sections, each of which was included in the report, even the ones that had nothing new to report. Kim made a mental note to talk to Commander Noe about streamlining his reports. He just hoped the Mizarian handled the criticism well.

He quickly skimmed through the non-essential sections—he wasn't terribly surprised that biomedical engineering had nothing new to report, as they haven't even begun their experiments yet—before taking more time to thoroughly read through some of the other sections. The warp drive was performing perfectly, although Lt. Commander El-Lachem had some ideas to make it work better than perfect. The only glitch seemed to be in the deflector systems. Taking a final sip of his coffee, he decided that there were some problems he needed to see in person.

There were four people in the main deflector control room and another on one of the side viewscreens when Kim entered. An eyebrow on the face on the viewscreen rose as the doors slid closed. "Captain Kim."

"Hey, Seven," Kim replied casually. At the sound of his captain's voice, Lt. Nenyaht also turned toward the door, an eyebrow similarly raised. "Nenyaht."

"Hey, Harry," he said, his eyes already back on his controls. "I called in a consultation."

"I can see that. Any luck?"

"No," Seven of Nine replied bluntly. "As I already explained to Nenyaht, I don't believe the problem is in the deflector. A more thorough inspection of the warp core is in order."

Kim barely stifled the impulse to grin. Some things would never change; Seven would never believe, much less admit, that the problem could be in one of her systems. "Anything I can help with?"

"I doubt you would be able to think of anything that we haven't already considered," Seven stated.

"I'm sure he'd more useful than I am," Lt. Marjorie Shin piped up from the back corner. She gave Kim a wide grin. "Hello, Captain. I'm cross-training today. Nenyaht has been showing me around deflector controls."

"I haven't been much of a tour guide," Nenyaht admitted before turning his attention back to the controls. "What about the subspace distortion?"

"What about it?" Shin asked with a frown.

"Deflector beams produce a great deal of subspace distortion," he explained. Turning toward the screen displaying his mother, he continued, "This deflector, does it produce any more or less distortion than previous designs?"

"For the size of the deflector dish, the distortion should be comparable to any other deflector array," she replied.

"Then it's probably not that," Nenyaht muttered, more to himself than anybody else. Suddenly brightening, he turned toward Shin. "Marjorie, run a diagnostic on the long-range sensor arrays."

"What are you thinking?" she asked as she started the test. Kim merely stood in the background and watched the events as they unfolded. Part of him still found it hard to believe that Nenyaht, the little boy who used stand in the background of Abbey and Joe Paris and grow frustrated as Icheb attempted to teach him how to play kal'toh, was now an expert in his field and respected leader, but from what he was seeing, that was exactly what had happened.

"The sensors are placed in a circular fashion around the deflector dish," Nenyaht explained as he handed a PADD to one of the engineering crewmen before moving to Shin's side to assist with the diagnostic. "This is both to reduce the interference from the subspace distortion and to send sensor data back to the deflector and to the warp core controls."

"So if the sensors are malfunctioning, the deflector and the warp core could be receiving erroneous information, which causes the instability while cloaked," she finished.

He flashed her a wide grin. "Exactly." Turning back to his mother, he said, "It's going to take awhile for these results to come back. Do you want me to let you know what I find?"

"Submit it in a report for Starfleet Engineering, and I'll get to it," Seven replied brusquely. She nodded briefly at the officers in the room. "Nenyaht, Captain, Lieutenant."

"See you later, Mom," Nenyaht said, giving a small wave toward the monitor as Seven signed off. As if just remembering that Kim was in the room, he turned back to his captain. "Sorry about that, Harry—Captain. Did you need something?"

"Actually, I was going to check on your progress with the deflector array, but it looks like you have things figured out."

"I hope so, anyway," Nenyaht replied. "I'm just disappointed I didn't think of it sooner. Between Mom's suggestions and my own, we had run diagnostics on just about every individual component of the system."

"He's been cooped up in here practically the entire time since we went to red alert," Lt. Shin added. She put on a slight pout. "I can't even convince him to join me in the Mess for meals."

Nenyaht's cheeks darkened ever so slightly in an embarrassed blush. "I've been eating," he replied defensively. "And sleeping. I just can't go and relax while I have this problem hanging over my head."

Kim nodded his understanding; he remembered a number of sleepless nights spent in the mess hall on Voyager as he tried to reason himself through one problem or another. "Well, there's really no hurry. We're not scheduled to leave orbit for a few more days."

"A few more days?" Nenyaht repeated with a frown. "I thought the Nygleians were gone from the sector for good."

"We hope so. We think so. Dr. Jackson and his team needed more time to take care of the casualties, and we can't very well just leave them there and come back for them later, so we're staying until they're ready."

Nenyaht glanced up briefly before turning his attention back to the computer console. There was a long pause before he said, "I see."

Kim frowned and shot Shin an uneasy look, not knowing what she knew and didn't know. If she picked up on the change in the room, she gave no indication. "She's fine, Nenyaht," he said in a low voice.

"I didn't say anything," the engineer replied, his voice carefully modulated. Having grown up with two parents who didn't express their emotions very well or very often, it didn't take much for Nenyaht to cover his own.

"Abbey's a good doctor and a strong person. You know that," Kim insisted.

"Do I?" Nenyaht asked, finally giving his captain his full attention. "And how would I know that? Do you know how many words we've said to each other in the last six years before we were both assigned to the Kirk? Let me tell you: none. So while you and Kathryn and everyone else who was on that damned ship forty years ago and can't seem to move on past that seems to think that Abbey and I have this deep, emotional connection, in reality, I don't even know her anymore. The Abbey Paris I remember was a nineteen-year-old girl who always had to have things her own way and overreacted whenever she couldn't. I don't know whether or not she's a 'good doctor' or a 'strong person' because I don't even know her. So stop deflecting your own concerns onto me. If you need to hear yourself say that she's going to be fine in order for you to believe it, that's fine, just leave me out of it. I have work to do. Marjorie, is that diagnostic complete yet?" He turned his back on his commanding officer, letting him know without saying anything that the conversation was over. Kim continued to watch as Nenyaht explained the role of the sensors to Lt. Shin for a few moments before he quietly turned and left deflector controls, thinking about what Nenyaht had just said. Although he doubted that the young engineer wasn't worried about Abbey, he did have to admit that he had a point when he accused Kim of projecting his own concerns onto him. Not for the first time since hearing that Abbey would be assigned to the Kirk, he wondered if having a niece and uncle on the same ship was such a good idea. The hardest thing for him was going to be learning how to think of her as a Starfleet officer and not as a member of his family. He added that to the ever-lengthening list of things he needed to work on for this command.

---

Lt. Marjorie Shin silently watched the doors slide closed as Captain Harry Kim left deflector controls before returning her attention to the sensor diagnostic—or, more accurately, the tall, dark engineer scanning the results of the sensor diagnostic. Lt. Nenyaht's jaw was set, his hazel eyes fixed on the screen in front of him, his expression leaving no room for conversation.

She never was all that good at letting things by. "What was that about?"

He looked up, his expression unchanged. "Nothing," he replied brusquely before returning his attention to the computer console. He turned away and activated another monitor. "When that diagnostic is complete, make sure Commander Ontibile gets the results."

"You practically dismissed the captain," Shin said, still fixated on what she had just witnessed. She had never been one of those junior officers to quiver in fear in the presence of a senior officer, but she did know her place, and telling off the commanding officer of a starship like that was not that place.

"No, I dismissed Harry. Captain Kim had already left."

"What?"

He turned to face her, his face expressionless. "How often do you think a starship captain comes down to deflector controls to chat with the lieutenant on-duty about his niece?"

"Well, never," she admitted. He only raised an eyebrow in response and returned his attention to his work, but Shin wasn't done. "So then why did you dismiss Harry?"

He sighed deeply. "Do you have a large family?"

"I'm the second of seven children. Why?"

"Seven kids? Seriously?" he asked, distracted by that news before he remembered the point he was going to make. "Well, I'm an only child, but I'm from a family of about four hundred."

"And how does that work?"

"Voyager wasn't just a ship, and its crew wasn't just a crew. They were a family, and for seven years, the only thing they had was each other. They were trapped on the other side of the galaxy, one hundred and fifty citizens of the Alpha and Beta quadrants on one ship, against the entire Delta quadrant. As I'm sure you could imagine, they became a rather unusual Starfleet crew—actually, they started out as a rather unusual Starfleet crew. They weren't all Starfleet to begin with, but that's another issue. After seven years of that, when they got back to the Alpha quadrant and civilization as they thought they knew it, not everyone was able to fit back in, and they still stuck together. There is a huge reunion party every five years that everyone goes to, but there are also smaller ones—meaning anywhere from fifty to two hundred people—all the time. If you think that's close knit, it's nothing compared to the every day lives of the former senior officers. Kathryn had a townhouse in Nob Hill and the Doctor had a place in the Richmond District. Both of those were less than two kilometers from our neighborhood in the Marina District of San Francisco. The Parises lived two houses down the street, and when they were on Earth and before they inherited some land in Texas, Harry and his family lived about a block away. There were a few other former-Voyager crewmembers and their families in the neighborhood as well. Growing up, we at each other's homes and on vacations with each other's families so often that there were times I forgot which set of parents were my parents."

"That sounds very interesting, but I don't see how it answers my question," Shin said with a frown.

He sighed quietly. "It's really more long and complicated than we have time for, but here's the short version. Abbey Paris has a twin brother, Joe. They're two years younger than I am. Joe and I were always on the same parrises squares teams, Abbey took piano lessons from my mother, I got special engineering lessons from B'Elanna, Tom always invited me along on their family camping trips, and so on. From when my parents and I moved back to Earth when I was seven until I graduated from the Academy, the three of us were closer than most siblings."

"Then what happened?" she asked softly.

He snorted and shook his head slightly. "Who the hell knows? It was stupid. Not long before I graduated, she started dating a guy on my parrises squares team who I didn't have a very high opinion of. I tried to talk to her and said some things I didn't really mean, and she lost her temper the way only someone with Klingon blood can. Then I graduated and was shipped off on a research vessel for a two-year mission of some uncharted space in the Beta quadrant. I tried to write, but it was hard to figure out what I should say." He shrugged. "That was six years ago, and being on this ship together is the first time we've had any contact since. Harry and Kathryn and everyone seems to think that we'll just pick up right where we left off and be back to normal, but I don't see how. A lot has happened in six years. We're not the same people we were then." He gave a short chuckle. "Gods, I hope I'm not the same person I was when I was twenty-one."

"So what are you going to do now?"

He gave her a sarcastic smile. "Do you have any suggestions? Because I personally have no idea."