Star Trek - Voy - Mosaic

by Mosaic

  Commander T'Por fixed the admiral with her dark eyes. "It would be logical to assume that we will be in situations of danger. Am I correct?"

  "Again, there's no way to predict that. But I would have to share your assumption." He paused, as though turning over a thought in his mind. "We don't know as much about the Cardassians as we'd like. They've kept their borders closed for decades. But what we're beginning to hear, unfortunately, isn't encouraging. They're mean ones. We believe they intend to expand their territory and they have no qualms about how they do it."

  He stopped and looked down at the table for a moment. "Reports we've gotten about their treatment of some of our colonists they've captured aren't-pretty. They have some particularly advanced technology for producing pain, for example. It's been a great many years since we've encountered a culture which not only employs torture as a means of intimidation, but has elevated it to a nearreligious status." Kathryn felt queasy. She didn't like to think of people inflicting pain on each other; it was the most primitive kind of violation she could imagine. She knew her people's history was rife with equal cruelty, but it hadn't been practiced for hundreds of years. Now she was hearing that people like herself were being subjected to this most inhumane treatment. "However," Admiral Paris continued, "there's no reason to believe we will encounter any Cardassians at all. Our surveillances will be technological in nature. The plan is to get the information we need without coming face-toface with any of them."

  He faced them, waiting for more questions. There were none-not, Kathryn suspected, because they didn't exist, but because everyone had been caught so off guard that they were still in a state of shock. "Any further questions?" queried the admiral, looking from one to the other. "If not, we'll proceed. But let me try to reassure you: If all goes as we hope, this will be the last time you'll be aware of our other mission. If it's successful, it will be carried out without disrupting our scientific inquiries and without noticeable interference in our day-to-day activities. It would be my profound hope that this will be the case."

  He looked around the room one more time, then put the matter behind him and began giving short-term assignments. Admiral Paris was a mature and experienced officer; he clearly had the capacity to shed one subject completely and move on to the other.

  But Kathryn didn't have that ability, though she determined at that moment to develop it. She was still so stunned by the admiral's revelation that she had no reaction at all when he assigned her to work with Justin Tighe in developing sensor-array modifications.

  Like a panther, she thought. Like a powerful, sinewy predator, sleek and assured.

  She was watching Justin Tighe move around the science lab, tapping commands into a padd, running his hand through his hair, occasionally staring off into space, then turning back to the padd.

  What he didn't do was to include her in any of his musings. He asked no questions, requested no opinion, shared no thought of his own. He was a man working exclusively with himself.

  She considered what to do. On the one hand, he was her superior officer; it was his right to proceed with their assignment in any manner he chose. But she resented being treated as a silent piece of the background; she was an official member of this team and she should not be frozen out. It was always dangerous to confront a predator, she knew; but unless you did, you would never gain his respect.

  "Lieutenant," she began mildly, "if I knew what kind of sensor modifications you were considering, I might be able to help out." Tighe looked over at her as though he had forgotten she was in the room. He blinked, coming out of some deep level of concentration. "What?" he said.

  "I'd like to be able to contribute. But I can't unless you give me an idea of how you're proceeding."

  He ran his hand through his hair in a manner that now demonstrated exasperation, rather than absentmindedness. "I appreciate your offer, Ensign, but it would frankly take more time to explain what I'm doing than it will just to do it myself. Once I've figured out a plan, I'll go over it with you."

  And he returned to his pacing, his gazing, and his computing. Kathryn felt her cheeks sting. The rebuff was so blunt, so total, that she felt physically misused. She forced her mind to clear and quiet. Don't act without thinking, she reminded herself, objectifying the anger she felt at the rude behavior of the man who was supposed to be her partner. Justin Tighe was faced away from her, studiously tapping on the padd. She rose and circled so she faced him.

  "Excuse me, sir." He looked up with mild irritation. "Permission to speak freely?"

  He let out a breath of vexation and fastened his blue eyes on her. "Granted," he said dryly.

  "We're going to be working together for the next year. Working closely together. I think it's important we establish some ground rules at the beginning." She paused and looked at him, trying to gauge the impact of her words. He revealed nothing, his features neutral, eyes icy. "I realize I'm the most junior member of this team. But I am a member of the team. I think I can make a contribution-even if it's just as a backboard, someone to bounce ideas off. I don't care how I participate-but I insist that I do."

  He didn't reply, just kept looking at her with those otherworldly eyes. "I'm not willing to be shut out," she continued, "to be treated as though I'm less important to this mission than that padd you're using. I think you'll find that if you'll just let me in, I can help. At least give me a chance to prove that."

  There was a very long silence then, with Tighe's eyes boring into hers, she holding his look steadily, willing herself not to blink, feeling her eyes grow dry in the effort.

  And then he slumped, tossed the padd down on the table, and sprawled into a chair.

  "Let me tell you about me, Ensign," he said, but there was a long pause before he did so, as though he were unaccustomed to self-revelation and unsure how to proceed. "I was born on Klatus Prime. Ever heard of it? I didn't think so. It's a small mining colony in Sector 22309. My family had been miners there for generations. It wasn't quite as easy a life as you have on Earth. When I was ten I decided I wasn't going to spend the rest of my life like my father and my grandfather." He glanced up at her as though to see her reaction to what he was saying. Kathryn tried to reveal nothing, just listened patiently.

  "Twenty years later, I've managed to become a respected member of Starfleet. I had to earn every step of that journey. Nobody gave me anything, nobody made it easy for me." She heard no self-pity in his voice, no plea of victimization. He said what he did as neutrally as though he were reciting the table of elements.

  He took a breath and leaned forward on the table, looking up at her. "I'm not easy to get along with. I know that. I wish it weren't so, but I don't know if there's anything I can do about it." He put his head down and ran both hands through his hair. "I'm not trying to shut you out, Ensign. I'm just... used to doing things on my own."

  Kathryn moved to the table and sat opposite him.

  "Thank you for being honest with me," she said. "It helps a lot. But try to understand: This mission is important to me. And my way of working is as valid to me as yours is to you. I'm willing to compromise, but I'll ask you to do the same."

  There was a silence between them. Kathryn half expected him to go back to his padd, excluding her and enveloping himself in his work. Instead, the hint of a smile tugged at his lips, and to her dismay, she found her fingertips tingling-that old, familiar, treacherous sensation. No, she thought. No, no, no, no, no. Not again.

  "You're a tough one, Ensign. I like that. Weak people annoy me. But-are you as tough as I am? I guess we'll have to wait and see."

  And without further discussion, he swung the padd around and began to give her the notes on sensor resolution and sensitivity that he'd been assembling.

  Her response was so deeply ingrained that it was barely conscious. Somewhere, deep inside, a voice was saying, "I'll show him. I'll win him over."

  But far below that was another small, wounded voice with a cry that had never surfaced, one that Kathryn had neve
r heard and yet had guided her through most of her life.

  Six months later, she sat next to Admiral Paris in the two-person shuttle, and reflected on that initial encounter with Justin Tighe. She'd been proud of the way she'd handled the situation, and confident that the going from that point would be smooth.

  Nothing could have been further from the truth. Lieutenant Tighe had proved to be an infuriating partner, a stern and demanding perfectionist, rigid in his work habits and intolerant of human error or frailty. There had been no change whatsoever in the way he treated her, which was essentially as a mobile tricorder, from the first day until now. It was a relief to get away from him and accompany Admiral Paris on this short mission to one of the moons of Urtea II, where They had mounted a sensor array three months earlier. There should now be valuable records of the K.havior of extragalactic neutron stars and nonbaryonic matter, two major components of the galaxy's distant halo. "Hear much from your father?" ventured the admiral once they were underway. "Actually not, sir. He sent me a subspace message a couple of months ago, but he couldn't really tell me what he was doing." As usual, thought Kathryn. "He looked tired. He must be working hard."

  "I wouldn't doubt it." There was a silence between them, for talk of her father always raised the specter of Cardassia, and hence the questions that remained unanswered about their own mission-questions that couldn't even be posed.

  To her relief, Kathryn had found that that other, covert, mission might as well not have existed. She was unaware of the ship's doing anything except surveying the galactic rim and amassing data on halo objects. If there was information gathering going on at the same time, she was gratefully ignorant of it.

  "I got a communication from my son Tom the other day," continued Paris. A smile of what could only be called paternal pride played on his mouth. "He won the aeroshuttle derby at his school. Set a record for the course."

  "You must be proud."

  "I knew from the time he was a toddler that he'd be a pilot. I'd take him with me on routine flights, and I remember from the time he was two he was fascinated by the controls. He'd sit and watch me work them and not move for hours. He was like a little adult, studying and learning. When he was five he asked if he could try the simulator."

  Admiral Paris shook his head and smiled at the memory. "It was all I could do not to laugh. Put a five-year-old in a simulator? How could he possibly handle it? Well, I asked him a few questions and damned if he didn't know all the answers. So we went to the Academy one weekend and we fired up the beginning flight program on the simulator."

  The admiral stared out the window as though to recapture that long-ago moment. "It was amazing. Here was this little mite of a thing handling that flight program as though he were an Academy cadet. The next day I brought some friends along and let them watch, because I knew no one would believe me if I told them a kid that age could handle a simulator." He chuckled briefly at the memory. "They said I must've programmed an autopilot sequence and just let Tom sit there and pretend. But of course they checked and saw that wasn't true."

  "How old is he now, sir?"

  "Fifteen. Already been accepted for admission to the Academy when he graduates." Kathryn thought she had never heard such naked pride in a parent before. She envied this young Tom Paris, who had a father that gloried so in his accomplishments. She doubted that her father ever regaled his cohorts with stories of her achievements. "We're approaching the upper atmosphere of the moon, sir," she said, reading from her instruments. "Preparing landing sequence." Then she gasped as she saw something else on the sensors and heard the admiral grunt as he noticed the same thing.

  "There's a ship behind the limb of the moon," she said automatically, knowing he was well aware of it. He was already keying controls, swinging the shuttle in an arc to return to the Icarus. "I don't recognize the signature," she began, but he interrupted brusquely. "That's a Cardassian ship, Ensign."

  A cold knot formed in her stomach. This wasn't Cardassian territory. What was it doing here? "Should I alert the ship?"

  "Maintain communications silence. It's possible they're unaware of the Icarus. I'd like to keep it that way."

  Kathryn was aware that he was running a fairly complicated series of evasive maneuvers. What was he anticipating? She willed herself to remain calm, and focused on the sensors, which showed that a massive ship was rounding the limb of the moon. In seconds it would be within eyesight. The shuttle was dancing in space, maneuvering gracefully but unpredictably, when the Cardassian ship appeared. It was huge, roughly arrow-shaped, with a variety of weapons systems prominently displayed along its hull. Kathryn felt her heart hammering, but her mind was focused and her hands on the controls were steady.

  A deep violet tractoring beam suddenly emanated from the Cardassian ship, and Kathryn realized the admiral had been anticipating this; his maneuvers were an effort to keep them from locking on. He glanced over at her, and his grave eyes were worried. "This may get unpleasant for us, Ensign," he said. "Do your best, but don't be unnecessarily heroic." She didn't know what he meant.

  For a few minutes he was able to avoid the tractor, but as they both knew, it was only a delaying tactic. Eventually the larger ship with its fat tractor beam would ensnare them-and that's exactly what happened, with a bonejarring snap that tossed them around like toys. Kathryn's head bounced off the console; lights flared in her head, a brief but brilliant display that she barely registered before everything went black.

  I did it, Daddy, she was saying, I derived the distance formula. She kept saying it over and over, but her father wouldn't look at her; he just kept his eyes straight ahead, not listening. She said it louder, trying to break through to him, yelling in her urgency to get him to turn and look at her. I solved the problem, I know how to derive the distance formula! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy-

  The sound of her own groan pulled her to consciousness, and her father faded; she tried to get him back but the moment had slipped away. Now she was aware only of cold and dampness, and a dull pain in her head. She reached to touch it and encountered a thick crust of dried blood. Where was she? She should be on board the Icarus, but what she felt beneath her was soggy earth. A holodeck program? She struggled to make sense of the situation.

  She pulled herself to a sitting position and her head erupted in pain. She steeled herself, waiting for it to abate, and gradually began to assess her situation.

  She could see nothing. Wherever she was, it was black as pitch. She reached out and patted the earth in front of her; it was dank and smelled of peat. She extended the range of her patting and quickly encountered a barrier of cold metal. Moving to her right, she followed the wall until it abutted with another at right angles; in this fashion she proceeded until she determined she was in an enclosure approximately a meter and a half square. And less than that tall. She couldn't stand up, could barely sit upright without her head touching the ceiling. And she could only lie down curled into a ball; the pen wouldn't allow her to stretch out. The damp ground had absorbed heat from her body, and cold seemed to have penetrated into her bone marrow. Was she in danger of hypothermia? She began rubbing her legs and arms briskly, trying to warm them up.

  What had happened? Her last memory was of being on the Icarus, working with a padd... Justin Tighe was there, cold and intimidating... Wait. The shuttle... Admiral Paris... they were on their way to check a sensor array... and then...

  A sudden sound, and an aperture opened in the darkness, flooding the enclosure with bright light that knifed into her eyes like ice picks. She covered them with her hands as a man's voice said, "Please, my dear, come out and join us."

  Head down, eyes still shut, she crawled toward the light. She could feel warmth beyond the opening, a welcoming sensation that momentarily lifted her spirits. A strong arm took hers and helped her to her feet, but she couldn't stand; her legs buckled into the fetal position they'd held for so long. She thought of newborn animals, wobbly and unstable, trying to get to their feet. The strong arms held
her firmly until her legs were steady, and then she looked up, still squinting in the harsh light, into the face of an alien.

  He was of a species she'd never seen. He was quite tall and rather thin; his face and neck were corded with cartilage. It was an imposing presence, but the eyes that peered at her were kind. "I am Gul Camet," he said, and his voice was rich and pleasant. Kathryn began to relax somewhat. "Please accept my apologies for the way you've been treated. I assumed my men had arranged quarters for you, and then I discovered you'd been treated like a common criminal. I assure you they will be reprimanded." The tall man inspected her head wound carefully. "This should be treated at once. Please, come with me."

  Grateful, she followed him from the brightly lit courtyard of stone into which she had emerged from her box, down a corridor softly glowing with muted light, and into a somewhat grand chamber with low vaulted ceilings and ornate designs on the walls. A table and two chairs were its only furnishings.

  Gul Camet pushed some controls on the table and gestured her to sit. "The physician will be here right away. How are you feeling?"

  "I'm... not sure. Cold. My head hurts."

  "You may have suffered a mild concussion. The physician will treat you. Do you remember how you were injured?"