Caretaker - L. A. Graf [18]
"Lieutenant Stadi--" The first officer's voice rang out across the busy bridge, locking in everyone's attention. "Lay in the course and clear our departure with operations."
Stadi nodded, bending to her console with fingers already dancing across the controls. "Course entered. Ops has cleared us."
"Ready thrusters."
"Thrusters ready," Kim announced, a little too loudly. Janeway smiled at the nervous excitement in his voice.
I know just how you feel.
Seating herself in the captain's chair, she forced herself to sit calmly relaxed while every neuron inside her jittered with expectation.
It wouldn't do for the captain to fidget as they took the ship away from the station. Taking a deep breath in preparation for all the things to come, she lifted her chin and commanded simply, "Engage."
Chapter 5
Not a good start for the day, Tom Paris decided as he paused inside the mess hall to yawn and rub the back of his neck. Less than twenty-four hours on board Voyager, and he'd already managed to look like an idiot in front of the entire bridge crew and still find time to get a lousy night's sleep. He'd told himself it was the bed--far too soft and well contoured after his accommodations at the penal colony--and that the silence in his sterile ship's quarters felt too unnatural after the raucous New Zealand nights. But tuning up a track of environmental "music" hadn't done much to derail the loop of frustrated thoughts whirling around in his head, and transferring to his cabin floor hadn't made him any more comfortable than the bed had. Deprived of even such harmless illusions, Paris finally had to admit that he couldn't sleep because he was nervous, and uncertain, and desperate to impress somebody, anybody, on this mission.
And now this.
Kim was the first to look up from the little coffee klatch, and the only one with the grace to look embarrassed. Cavit and Fitzgerald didn't even bother to avert their eyes when Paris looked directly at them, as though they had a right to be here talking about him and he wasn't even fit to breathe the same air.
Painfully aware that they were probably right, Paris made his way to the bank of food replicators even though he didn't feel very hungry anymore.
"Tomato soup."
The machine whirred to itself for a moment, but no food appeared on its open pad. "There are fourteen varieties of tomato soup available from this replicator," a polite female voice informed him. "With rice.
With vegetables. Bolian-style--" "Plain." He was a purist.
"Specify hot or chilled."
Paris thumped his forehead against the wall and contemplated the likelihood of even the computers on board this ship conspiring against him as a worthless example of the species that created them. "Hot," he said with some vehemence. "Hot, plain tomato soup." It seemed nothing in his life was ever as easy as it ought to be.
By the time the replicator had worked out all the refinements and produced a single bowl of plain tomato soup, Cavit and Fitzgerald were gone and Paris was left with the too-hot bowl in both hands, staring across the room at Kim as the ensign suddenly found himself both fascinated by and utterly disinterested in his food.
Paris tried not to be angry with the kid. Hey, he told himself, you knew it couldn't last. And yet, just as he'd hoped Janeway really meant to give him a second chance on board Voyager, he'd also hoped his past would leave him be long enough to choose his own direction for a change. I guess even warp 9.9 isn't fast enough for that.
He slipped into the seat across from Kim and ducked forward a little to catch the younger man's eye when Kim wouldn't look up from his food.
"There, you see?" Paris said, trotting out his best carefree smile to try and drive away the discomfort between them. "I told you it wouldn't take long."
Kim stared at his tray a moment longer,