Caretaker - L. A. Graf [9]
What's done is done, and you can't undo it, and if the last miserable year of his life didn't prove that, nothing else did. Be thankful for whatever bit of reprieve you can buy, he told himself. If, in his case, this amounted to little more than a sterile, rankless uniform, a token position under a hostile commander, and the chance to improve his status from imprisoned Starfleet traitor bum to simple free-ranging civilian bum, then it was already better than he knew he deserved.
It would have been nice to be the pilot who first slipped a starship through that wormhole, though.
Shifting his duffel to a more comfortable position across his lap, Paris slid a look toward the lieutenant who had quietly piloted them ever since they parted company with the larger crew transport seven hours ago. She was small and pleasantly trim, like most Betazoid women Paris had seen, with the same high brow and huge, chocolate eyes that had slain human men since their races first crossed paths. He'd tried talking to her when they first set out. Nothing serious, of course--just the quick, light prattle that he knew he did so well.
After all, Paris was acutely aware that Janeway might have told this Betazoid things that he would rather not have brought up when he had nowhere to run to. By usurping the onus of initiating conversation, Paris knew he also earned the right to keep the subjects impersonal, amusing, and trivial, and he did his best to keep them that way for the entirety of the journey. Stadi played along gamely enough. She smiled, she laughed, she answered his coy feints and thrusts with brief, well-aimed ripostes, and Paris allowed her to score just enough points to keep her interested in the wordplay, not interested in him.
"Stadi," he said now, alerted to a shift in her mood by the length of the silence spread between them during his study of the station, "you're changing my mind about Betazoids."
She twitched one eyebrow upward, and dipped a self-satisfied nod.
"Good."
Paris pulled his feet back to the floor to sit upright. "It wasn't a compliment," he assured her. "Until today, I always considered your people to be warm and sensual. ..."
This time, the little glimmer of condescending humor he'd been nurturing in her the whole trip flickered into life again.
"I can be warm and sensual."
"Just not to me."
She turned the full force of her playful annoyance on him. "Do you always fly at women at warp speed, Mr. Paris?"
Paris smiled, giving both of them a point with his reply. "Only when they're in visual range."
It killed the conversation again, but at a point more to Paris's liking. Sitting back in his seat, he felt the impulse thrusters take their velocity down to half, and watched Stadi gently shift the shuttle's approach without pointing out the half-dozen ways she could have done things faster, better, more smoothly. I'm an observer, after all. The ultimate in look-but-don't-touch technology.
"That's our ship," Stadi said abruptly. The tight excitement in her voice was distinct, contagious, drawing Paris's attention where she pointed even though he hadn't meant to look. "That's Voyager."
At first, he had trouble locating the ship amid the clutter of alien and Federation vessels daisy-chained around the points of the station's docking pylons. Then his wondering eye caught on the Starfleet emblem that graced the hull of a small, sleek ship that hung poised with her nose kissing the uppermost docking bay.
Almost at once, he knew this must be what Starfleet meant to send after the Maquis. Janeway had told him so little about the ship, he didn't really know what to expect, but all he could think now was that this beauty was different from any other starship he'd seen. A slim predator,