Distant Shores - Marco Palmieri [95]
Chakotay was late for duty the next morning. He overslept, ignoring the programmed wake-up announcement that called him to duty three times before he realized that it was, in fact, time to get up. Even so, on any other morning, he might have managed to make it to the bridge on time, had it not been for the ten extra minutes he had spent studying his face in the mirror, making sure his unruly hair was appropriately tamed before leaving his cabin.
He needn’t have bothered. She didn’t come to the bridge once during the next seven hours. She spent her entire shift working with B’Elanna in engineering as they completely overhauled the ship’s magnetic constrictors.
Not that there was much to do that day. He dutifully entered into the logs the details of the newest uninhabited system they were passing near, forwarding the appropriate planetary profiles to astrometrics.
He spent the better part of an hour helping… no, forcing… Harry to enhance his scans of the planets, hoping against hope to find something useful they might safely add to Voyager’s reserve supplies. But nothing worthy of calling her from engineering was found, and he resigned himself to planning a romantic dinner for the evening, assuming that she wasn’t going to choose to work an extra shift.
He found himself genuinely missing her, which would have been ridiculous on any other day. That, in and of itself, was troubling enough. But he was significantly more disconcerted by two other things that happened that day.
The first was courtesy of Tom Paris.
He met Tom in the turbolift en route to the bridge. After they exchanged perfunctory good-mornings, Paris clapped him on the back good-naturedly as he said, “Well, done, Chakotay. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
And Chakotay froze.
He knows.
Even on a ship as small as Voyager he couldn’t imagine how it was possible, but somehow, at least some of the crew was already aware of his new relationship.
Forcing himself to smile he turned to Paris and managed to ask, “To what, exactly, are you referring, Ensign?”
Tom paused for a moment, obviously puzzled at the chilly tone that underlined Chakotay’s use of the word ensign. Tom had been demoted a couple of months earlier, but no one, least of all Chakotay, had ever intentionally rubbed his nose in it. “I was referring to you and Captain Grant.”
Chakotay immediately realized his error. At the beginning of the roast, sections of his Starfleet record had been read aloud. Captain Grant had been first officer when Chakotay had served under her as a lieutenant aboard the U.S.S. Heritage. For reasons that completely eluded him she had chosen to add a note to his file indicating that the two of them had been intimately involved at the time. This delightful piece of trivia had been met by a raucous round of applause and several less than appropriate comments by all of the men in attendance at the party.
“I see,” Chakotay answered, hearing a slight tremor in his own voice. “I guess you’re not the only person on this ship with a colorful past, Mr. Paris.”
Paris’s eyes narrowed. Pulling the commander aside, as the doors to the bridge slid open, he asked quietly, “What did you think I was referring to, Chakotay?”
“Stations, please, Mr. Paris” was all Chakotay replied before assuming his own place next to the Captain’s chair.
The second moment came by way of Tuvok, and it was in this exchange that he realized that if this relationship was going to have any future at all, he was going to have to get a grip.
Tuvok had evidently observed Chakotay’s merciless hounding of Ensign Kim for exactly fifty-one minutes before he requested a few moments in private with the commander. Adjourning to the conference room off the bridge, Tuvok began by asking, “Is it your intention to undermine the efficiency of the senior staff?”
Again, Chakotay stood frozen in suspended animation, wondering what Tuvok might or might not know. It was one thing to assume that somehow