Caretaker - L. A. Graf [8]
"What's in it for me?"
It always comes down to that with your kind, she thought. Then, immediately, she had to admit that it wasn't the goodness of her own heart that had brought her here to barter Paris's freedom.
Everyone was just a little bit selfish, each in his own way.
People like Paris just made more of an art of it, that was all.
"You help us find that ship," Janeway told him. "We help you at your next outmate review."
"Uh-uh." Paris waggled a finger at her, picking his leg up between them to tap at the anklet. "I get the anklet off first.
Then I help you."
Janeway had expected this--had arranged for it already, in fact.
If the Rehab Committee wasn't going to let their prize delinquent go, there was no sense wasting time bartering with Paris. And if Paris was ready to agree to her terms, Janeway equally didn't want to waste time arguing with a slow-as-dirt committee about something as trivial as a detention anklet that wouldn't serve its function anyway once they shipped off Earth. Still, all she said to Paris was "I'll look into it."
He rolled his eyes as though it made no difference to him, and squinted up toward the mountains as though fascinated by their whiteness.
"Officially, you'd be a Starfleet observer during the mission."
"Observer?" True insult etched a frown into his young face.
"Hell, I'm the best pilot you could have."
She shrugged, intentionally echoing him, and watched the fragile surface of his bravado crack and come apart again under the implied disinterest. "You'll be an observer," she said, more firmly. "When it's over, you're cut loose."
Paris attempted a wounded sigh. "The story of my life."
It took everything inside her not to turn her back on him and leave him here to rot in his government-paid paradise surrounded by all the rest of the losers he'd cast his lot with when he first blew off his duty more than a year before. Stepping up to him--so close he jerked a startled look at her and tried to back himself away--she took his chin in one hand and held him in place the way she would a disobedient twelve-year-old. The very childlike terror in his eyes only served to make him look even younger, even less deserving of this sacrifice or her trust.
"If a member of my crew gets hurt because you make a mistake," she told him, very softly, "you won't have to worry about an anklet, mister.
I'll make sure you don't see daylight again."
Paris didn't say anything as Janeway glared at him to drive her point home, didn't say anything when she released him, didn't say anything when she turned to walk away.
Who knows? she thought. Maybe he is trainable, after all.
Chapter 2
The slender spiral of Space Station Deep Space Nine turned in graceful pirouette against the unpopulated backdrop of open space. It made a strange yet lovely sight--unlike any other structure Starfleet recognized as an orbital space station, but still as pretty and functional as her alien architects could make her. If she had had anything beneath her to orbit, she might not even look so weirdly displaced, although Paris doubted that.
Somewhere within a few AUs of Deep Space Nine's northern elliptic, a scarred and war-battered world called Bajor supposedly marked the path originally followed by this wayward station. Paris remembered hearing rumblings two years ago about the stable wormhole accidentally discovered in this sector, and about DS9's consequent relocation to the mouth of that anomaly.
He'd discounted it all as sensationalist newsnet drivel. Shows what I know. Slouching farther down in his seat, he braced his heels against the edge of his inactive copilot's helm and watched the station draw closer through the V of his upraised knees.
It felt odd, sitting again in a Starfleet shuttle without guards at