Distant Shores - Marco Palmieri [59]
Carla’s face fell. “Oh, God, Mark, I’m so sorry!”
Waving it off, Mark said, “That’s all right, you couldn’t know. It’s not something I talk about all that much.” Shooting Holland a look, he added, “I guess I should more often.”
“I really am sorry, Mark,” Holland said emphatically.
“That’s okay.” Mark got up, not having eaten any of his lunch. “I need to get back to work.”
He headed out toward his office. A voice sounded out from behind him. “Hey, Carla!”
Smiling, he turned around and looked at Carla. “Yes, Mark?”
“I wanted to apologize again. I just- ” She hesitated, which surprised Mark, as the impression she’d created over the four months since she’d joined the project was of someone who was completely forthright.
“Just what?” he prompted.
She took a breath. “If you ever want to talk, I’m here. Just say the word.”
With that, she turned and walked back toward her own office.
Mark stared after her for several seconds before finally retreating to his own workspace, completely confused about his own feelings.
Mark went home that night to be greeted first by Molly, then by the voice of the house computer. “You have four messages.”
Scritching Molly behind the ear, which got her to stop running in circles around him, Mark said, “Who from?”
“One official message from Starfleet Command. Three personal messages, one from Gretchen Janeway, one from Commander Dina Voyskunsky, one from David Alexander Honigsberg.”
Bile started to rise in Mark’s throat. His stomach felt like someone was going at it with a phaser drill. Four messages, all of them connected in some way to Starfleet and Voyager. It was, of course, perfectly possible that it was good news, but Mark knew that was a forlorn hope.
“Computer- ” He hesitated. What do I listen to first? he wondered as he walked over to the coffee table. Then: “Play messages in order of arrival.”
He activated the viewer and the Starfleet logo appeared, which meant it was either the official message or Dina.
When the logo was replaced by the image of Owen Paris, the phaser drill went on overload.
“Mark, I hope this message finds you well. Normally, you’d be informed of this by someone else-this isn’t really under my purview-but I thought it was important that I be the ones to tell the families. Especially-especially after seeing you all at DS9, I- ” The admiral looked away for a moment, then looked back at the viewer with a steady gaze. “Starship Voyager has officially been declared missing and presumed destroyed. The search has been exhaustive, but nothing has turned up. And now, with the Dominion having a foothold in the Alpha Quadrant, and with Starfleet still recovering from the Borg attack, and the trail being two and a half years old-the resources simply aren’t there, and the truth of the matter is that there likely isn’t anything to find. I’m sorry, Mark-I know how much you and Kathryn meant to each other.”
Mark’s legs felt like lead weights. For the first time in over two years, he sat on the couch.
The computer, having received no instructions to the contrary, moved on to the next messages. The one from Kath’s mother went on for several minutes about how ridiculous it was, and how could Starfleet do that, and back when her late husband Edward was in Starfleet, they didn’t give up on people, but the Dominion and the Borg had everyone in a tizzy. Mark barely paid attention to that, or to the one from Dina, which was much shorter, and mostly was a condolence call.
Davey Honigsberg’s ragged voice, however, broke him out of the half-reverie he was in. “Can you believe those bastards? They’re not ‘missing and presumed dead,’ they’re just missing, and we can find them! I just got back from Bajor, and I found something interesting. That Cardassian’s theories were completely trashed, but I think a lot of that was political because of the whole Dominion thing. I’ve been studying it, and, yeah, he was wrong about the intergalactic transporter,