Neelix had asked Tom to help him in the galley, which prevented Paris from seeing something that—had he been watching—might have given him a heart attack.
The Doctor had just stolen Miral from the clutches of Samanta Wildman, and had what—in the moment—seemed like an inspired idea. “Seven,” he said. “Would you like to hold the baby?” Seven of Nine had been a Borg for sixteen years, and had a well-deserved reputation for fearlessness. Yet, at the thought of holding this tiny, wriggling...individual...she found her hands trembling. The Doctor gently placed the child into Seven’s unsteady arms, and showed the young woman how to properly support the baby’s neck. With the uncanny way children have of sensing uncertainty in the adults around them, Miral chose that moment to wake up and start crying.
Seven was still trembling, but, with the Doctor’s instruction, she moved the child to her shoulder and began stroking her back gently. Of course, at the sounds of his child’s cries, Tom began the three-meter dash out of the galley—and into the grasp of his wife. “Let it go, Tom, she’s fine.”
“But I heard her crying—” He could see now that Seven was holding his daughter, and he turned to look at B’Elanna. “Seven...,” he said when he saw them.
B’Elanna interrupted him, “...is standing with the Doctor, who won’t let anything happen to the baby. Let her do this, Tom. She’s had a rough time lately. Babies are good therapy. Besides, you have to relax about letting her out of your sight. We won’t be able to be with her twenty-four hours a day. She’ll do better if she gets comfortable being around different people. Besides, you won’t be able to fly the ship with her in your arms, now will you?”
For a moment, Tom’s mind drifted back to their last time in the holodeck, and he remembered the baby carrier B’Elanna had replicated from the historical database. If he had one of those, he actually might be able to keep her with him at his post...
For her part, Miral Kimberly Paris was now thoroughly at ease on the shoulder of her Aunt Seven. And, to her own great surprise, Aunt Seven was growing increasingly content to feel the warm, wriggling bundle settle back to sleep against her. “You’re going great, Seven,” the Doctor complimented her. “She likes you.”
Seven’s occipital implant raised with her eyebrow. “She likes being held. The fact that I am the one holding her is irrelevant.” As she was speaking, Seven felt her shoulder become cold and wet. “What is...,” she moved her hand to touch the damp spot and pulled back a sticky white mess, “...this? She’s leaking some kind of fluid. Doctor—”
He reached down into a large satchel tucked next to the couch and pulled out a white cloth. The Doctor passed it to Seven as he explained. “It’s common for babies to, well, ‘spit up’ a little. Just wipe it away and place the cloth between yourself and the child.”
The look on Seven’s face was a mix of surprise and disgust. “She regurgitated partially digested milk onto my shoulder?” Gee, when she put it that way.
“It’s totally harmless, Seven. Babies haven’t developed complete control over their bodily functions.”
Seven was unsettled and mildly repulsed at the implications of the Doctor’s comment. Borg maturation chambers certainly had their appealing side, she now realized. However, as she looked down at the sleeping child in her arms, she began to feel an almost instinctual protectiveness. A humanoid child was thoroughly defenseless and totally dependent on those around her. Seven’s right hand moved to stroke Miral’s tiny fingers, which were balled up in a tight fist. As her hand felt the soft touch against it, the fist reflexively opened and took Seven’s index finger into its grasp. “Her helplessness is disturbing,” Seven said softly.
The Doctor watched as Seven began to display for this child a feeling he knew she had already experienced for Naomi and Icheb. In one of the great cosmic ironies, their Borg was great with children. It was now clearly a matter of time before Miral would be learning to play Kotis’Kot and studying the stars with her surrogate aunt. That is, if the crew stayed in contact after they got home.
The Doctor couldn’t help but consider a few fleeting and unsettling thoughts.
What would happen to them once they reached Earth? Would he be able to request a specific assignment like the other members of the crew? Would he be allowed to keep the mobile emitter that gave him the unprecedented freedom no other 24th century hologram had ever experienced? Would Seven be welcomed back as a rescued human woman or reviled as a former Borg drone? Would the Federation allow her to go on with her life, or lock her away to study her? And if they were both given their freedom and autonomy, what would they choose to do with the rest of their lives?
That led him to worry about their burgeoning romantic relationship. He had been in love with Seven, he realized, for several years, and they had been the closest of friends during that time. It was only recently, however, that she had appeared to take a similar interest in him. And, when it seemed that Voyager’s journey would last the bulk of the crew’s natural life, unusual pairings—like a hologram and a drone—had seemed almost normal. But the reality was different in the Alpha Quadrant. One’s choices of potential mates increased exponentially. Would Seven still view him in the same light when given the opportunity to know and interact with so many others of her own kind?
Whether the baby in her arms heightened her instincts overall—or perhaps she just knew the Doctor so well—Seven could sense that his mood had changed in the last few seconds. “Am I doing something wrong?” she asked, looking toward the child. She knew the Doctor was almost as overprotective as Lieutenant Paris.
“Oh,” he said, “no, you’re doing beautifully. You would make a great mother yourself one day.”
She stopped for a moment to think about the possibility before she responded. “And you would be a wonderful father,” she offered. The Doctor had never told Seven about his experiments with a holographic family, and his bittersweet experiences with the children he had programmed for himself. But, parenting an organic child had never really occurred to him. Until now.
Seven came as close as she ever did to smiling. “Perhaps we’ll discuss this topic in greater detail one day in the future,” she suggested vaguely. The Doctor returned her smile. No matter what might happened when they finally reached Earth, at this moment it was clear: Seven only had ‘ocular implants’ for him.
By Neelix’s calculations, they were now just moments away from crossing into the Alpha Quadrant. “Attention everyone,” he said over the din. “We should be leaving the Beta Quadrant in about one minute now. If everyone has a beverage, I think the Captain would like to say a few words.”
As everyone reached for their glasses and Janeway made her way to the front of the room, B’Elanna acknowledged the pleading look in her husband’s eyes and nodded. It took Tom less than a second to reclaim their daughter from Seven’s arms.
Kathryn waited for her crew to come to attention before she began. “Almost seven years ago, we began our journey together. A few days from now, it will finally come to an end. During that time we have all shared a common dream that is about to come true. Ladies and gentlemen,” she glanced at Neelix to confirm the timing, “welcome home.” The captain raised her glass to her crew and they returned the tribute.
As everyone took a moment to embrace their friends, Janeway searched the room for her first officer. He was already on his way to her. “Congratulations, Kathryn,” he said as he hugged her. “You did it.”
She pulled back and smiled. “We did it.” Only one more milestone to go...
~*~*~*~*~
Like most things one dreams about non-stop for years, returning to Earth was different than most of the crew had imagined. A single-minded focus on getting back had allowed them all to romanticize their homecoming. Of course, what they were actually coming back to was the reality of lives lived in limbo for almost seven years. Tom’s joke about Rip van Winkle hadn’t been too far from the truth; in some ways, they were coming back from the dead, and they and their families
would require a substantial amount of adjustment before Earth felt like home again.
Before they could even set foot on the planet, they had to coordinate an unending stream of complex logistics. First on the agenda, B’Elanna and the captain worked with the crews at McKinley Station to maneuver Voyager into its docking slip. Once the ship was secured, the senior staff spent the majority of the day meeting with Starfleet officials in the Mess Hall. Finally relieved of their engineering duties, the junior officers and crew were busy packing down their quarters and getting ready to disembark. Starfleet had cleared an entire floor at the Academy dormitory for the crew’s use while they were being debriefed and processed, and Commander Chakotay had coordinated their room assignments. All that remained was to finalize the timetable for transporting to the surface, where they would finally get to see their families face to face.
By the end of the senior staff meeting, the schedule for the next two weeks was set. They would spend forty-eight hours moving into their new quarters, spending time with their families, and making themselves available to answer Starfleet Command’s inevitable questions about the last seven years. At the end of the week, there would be an official ceremony, with all the pomp and circumstance due returning heroes. Of course, while the ceremony would conclude their official welcome home, it would mark the beginning of the hearings, debriefings, and reporting that would bring true closure to their journey, finally resolving some of their most critical unanswered questions.
As promised, Starfleet’s JAG office had scheduled formal hearings on the status of the former Maquis, to begin in earnest the following week. The Liberty’s crew would have several days to consult with legal council before they would face the court, and the hearings were expected to take just a few days. The other crucial and lingering questions—the status of Seven and the Doctor, Tom Paris’s parole and commission, legal guardianship of Icheb—would all be taken under advisement by a specially appointed Federation tribunal. There was no pre-determined deadline for their rulings, but everyone knew the cruel sort of limbo so many of Voyager’s crewmen now found themselves in. Kathryn was assured that these rulings would be handed down with deliberate care and speed.
As soon as their official business wrapped up, the senior officers made their own final preparations for the short trip to San Francisco. A few of them had been given permission to stay off base: Kathryn in her sister Phoebe’s apartment, Tom and B’Elanna at the Paris family residence just outside the city. Just like the rest of the crew, they had to agree to make themselves available to Starfleet officials, and, until all proceedings were concluded, they were prohibited from leaving Earth.
All that was left now was to say their goodbyes. Not to their friends and coworkers—the crew would be spending quite a bit of time together over the next two weeks—but to their home for the past seven years. The ship would have to be evaluated before a final decision was made on a refit. If she were to be repaired and recommissioned, Voyager’s crucial systems would be stripped and rebuilt from stem to stern before she would be put back into service. Of course, it was possible Starfleet would decide the damage was too extensive and take her out of service. So much was still up in the air.
Not surprisingly, B’Elanna wanted to take one more trip to Main Engineering before she could bring herself to leave. Tom was waiting for her in their quarters when she returned.
Instead of packing as he’d promised, Tom was sitting on their bed staring out the window, the baby draped over his shoulder, and a clear view of Earth filling the viewport. “Hey,” she said, surprising him from behind. “You can spend the rest of the night looking at it, or we can finish packing and actually get there.” He smiled sadly, but didn’t get up.
“I was telling MK about her uncle Harry,” he said softly. “And how happy he’d be to know we made it home.” B’Elanna sat on the bed next to her husband and rubbed his back gently. She wanted to believe their friend did know, but she suspected that thought would do little to comfort Tom. He shook off his grief and took a long look around the room. “I don’t think we’re ever going to get this stuff all boxed up and ready to go.”
B’Elanna agreed. “We should figure out what we’ll need for the next few weeks. I guess the rest can go into storage.”
Tom nodded. “I wasn’t sure how much we should take with us,” he said. “I wish we knew if we were coming back.” Every moment of their future was in limbo at this moment. Suddenly the man so determined to face his past seemed a little hesitant about what that might mean.
“We should take it all, Tom,” B’Elanna said evenly. “Just in case.” She handed him a storage box and moved the baby to her crib so they could finish compacting their lives into so many cargo containers.
It took them the better part of three hours. All of their possessions were now neatly stacked in two piles, the larger containers encoded for delivery to the storage compartment they’d been assigned on the base. Only their clothes, the crib, a few datapads, and the bat’leth would be sent to their temporary residence at Admiral Paris’s home.
After they finished packing, the couple took turns in the sonic shower and got dressed to leave. In doing so, there was now no way to avoid the last reminder that their long mission had really ended. “I will never get used to this new uniform,” Tom said as he wrestled with the proper placement of his pips on the red quilted collar.
B’Elanna wasn’t any happier about their new ‘wardrobe.’ “Is it as hot and uncomfortable as it looks?” she asked as she lifted her own version of the garment off the bed.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “Although all the fasteners are on the front and there are fewer layers. I bet I’ll be able to beat my old record time in getting you out of yours.”
B’Elanna would have thrown a pillow at him if they weren’t all packed away. She knew her body demanded a few more weeks of recovery before they could play those kinds of games.
Tom checked in with the captain as soon as they were dressed. Janeway gave them permission to head to the surface and made plans to contact them in the morning. As they prepared to leave for the transporter room, Tom took B’Elanna in his arms. “This will always be the first home we made together,” he said sentimentally. “I’m gonna miss it.”
She took a long look around them. They had lived in these quarters less than a year, but she knew exactly what he meant. “Me, too,” she agreed. “But look on the bright side: maybe our next place will have more than one room.” She leaned up and gave Tom a quick kiss on the lips. There was no way she was going to let her husband get too morose on their first night back on Earth.
“Let’s go,” she said with great resolve, handing him their duffle bags before picking up the baby. They both knew that, no matter what they would face in the coming weeks and months, the most important mission of their lives had just officially ended. There was no turning back now.
~*~*~*~*~
While everyone else packed their lives into crates, the Doctor and Seven of Nine tried to find ways to occupy themselves. They had spent most of the afternoon instructing Starfleet technicians on the proper way to install a Borg alcove, but that only took a few hours. What few personal possessions they had were easily placed in duffles. Now they stood together in sickbay, wondering what to do next.
Starfleet had suggested the Doctor’s program be transferred to Louis Zimmerman’s lab on Jupiter Station, but he had asked, instead, to stay with the rest of his crew. Out of deference to the doctor’s wishes, the base personnel had reserved a small holosuite for his exclusive use. They also agreed to let him keep his mobile emitter for the time being, with the promise that Starfleet engineers would have several scheduled opportunities to examine the device. The Temporal Prime Directive worked in the Doctor’s favor in this case, since Federation personnel were prohibited from doing too detailed a study of the emitter’s 29th century technology. Their investigation would be limited to a few rudimentary scans, which would be classified instantly.
Seven ha
d been assigned her own quarters on the base, and she requested (and was granted) a room close to Icheb. Her pupil had spent very little time alone since his reintroduction to humanity, and she wanted to be close by if he needed her.
For now, though, there seemed to be nothing left to do. After confirming that most of the crew had already transported to the base, Seven called the captain and received permission to disembark. The Doctor would have to wait, however. As the chief medical officer, he would be duty-bound to stay aboard until everyone except the captain had gone ashore.
“Well,” he said to Seven as she prepared to leave. “Will I see you later?”
She fidgeted nervously. Why was it that their little dating dance never seemed to get easier? “I don’t have plans for the evening. I could help you design a your new holographic quarters,” she offered, “if you’d like.”
Be Careful What You Wish For Page 31