Unworthy - Kirsten Beyer [69]
“It’s fine.”
“Do you ever miss your old job?” B’Elanna asked.
“Didn’t you start at ops?” Nancy added, clearly sharing B’Elanna’s desire to draw Harry out a bit.
Harry nodded, continuing to shovel stew too quickly into his mouth to speak.
“Harry was the best ops officer I’ve ever seen,” Tom told Conlon. “If there was an anomalous reading or systems glitch, he’d track it down in a heartbeat. He was so by-the-book he used to have Chakotay and Captain Janeway looking up regulations nobody else ever bothered to memorize.”
Harry dropped his spoon and stared at Tom.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.
“Nothing,” Tom said.
“Nothing,” Harry repeated. “Maybe if you had bothered to actually learn those regulations you wouldn’t have ended up in prison.”
Tom felt his face flush.
“Harry,” B’Elanna chided him softly.
Nancy turned to Tom, her eyes wide, then tossed a plaintive glance toward B’Elanna.
“It was a long time ago,” B’Elanna assured her.
“Thanks, Harry,” Tom said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “I’d almost forgotten that there are people aboard this ship now who don’t know every detail of my sordid past.”
“Oh, that’s just the tip of the iceberg, believe me,” Harry told Conlon.
The sadness on Nancy’s face clearly expressed her heartfelt desire not to wade any further into these troubled waters.
“I imagine if you go back far enough, we’ve all done things we wished we could change,” she suggested kindly.
“Oh, you don’t have to go back too far with Tom,” Harry corrected her.
Tom pushed his bowl away and rose from his seat. “I told you I was sorry, Harry. I really don’t know what else to say.”
Harry stood to face him. “Of course you don’t.”
“Sit down, both of you,” B’Elanna ordered.
“Maybe I should …” Nancy began.
“No, please stay,” B’Elanna cut her off. “We’ve all been through too much together to let anything, least of all a misunderstanding, come between our friendship.”
When Harry reluctantly took his seat, B’Elanna placed her hand on his and said, “Harry, if you want to be angry at someone, it should be me. I didn’t give Tom a choice. I was too frightened of what might happen and I swore him to secrecy.”
“I’m not angry at you, Maquis,” Harry said, softening a bit in his use of an old endearment between them. “I really am glad that you and Miral are okay. I just …”
“What?” B’Elanna urged him gently.
After a long pause, Harry said, “I just can’t pretend that everything is like it used to be. Too much has happened. I thought we were a family.”
“We are,” B’Elanna assured him.
“No,” Harry said, shaking his head. “And now I’m not sure if we ever were.”
“Harry, don’t you think I wanted to tell you? Don’t you think that if my daughter’s life hadn’t been at stake you’d have been the first person I confided in?” Tom said.
“You didn’t trust me,” Harry replied. “That’s the bottom line. Even after everything we’ve all been through together, you still didn’t trust me. The Warriors of Gre’thor could have captured me and tortured me and I would never have given them B’Elanna or Miral. I would have died for them. But you didn’t know that about me—which means that even after ten years, you really don’t know me at all.”
Shaking his head sadly, he pulled his hand away from B’Elanna’s and said, “Thanks for dinner. Good night, Lieutenant,” he added with a nod at Conlon.
“Harry, don’t go,” B’Elanna began, as Harry hurried toward the door.
“Let him,” Tom said coldly. Once Harry was gone he turned to Conlon and said, “I’m really sorry you had to see that.”
“It’s complicated,” she said. “I get that.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ensign Meegan McDonnell sat unobtrusively in the main sickbay of the Galen, reviewing the ship’s inventory of stored medical supplies. They hadn’t been in space long enough for anything to have expired, but there was little else she was permitted to do when the Doctor wasn’t busy with a patient. When she was done with the hypos Meegan moved on to the diagnostic and surgical equipment. Routine, but it allowed her to direct most of her