Letters Never Sent (Archivist's Challenge #2)
Ancarett
Synopsis: Admiral Paris struggles with the shocking news of
Voyager's Delta Quadrant existence and how to write a
letter to his estranged son, Tom. Set between "Message in
a Bottle" and "Hunters."
Disclaimer: The toys belong to Viacom/Paramount. I just
play with them (and nicely, I hope)! The title and the
brief extracts come from Carly Simon's album of the same
name (copyrighted to C'est Music, 1994). All comments
should be directed to ancarett@hotmail.com
***
How peculiar these remain
Salvaged from the fire
For some I crumpled some I burned
Some I tore to shreds
Lifetimes later, here they are
The ones I saved instead
Letters never sent to you
Letters never sent
***
"Damn! Computer, end recording," the occupant of the
dim starbase stateroom barked angrily. It was 0200 hours,
and Admiral Owen Paris was still awake. That in itself was
not unusual. The driven, dogmatic command officer was not
above driving himself to his physical limits in pursuit of
Starfleet's objectives and his own ambitions. What was
different tonight was that Owen Paris wasn't pursuing
official business. Instead, he was trying to do the most
difficult thing he could imagine: write a letter to his
son, Tom.
Owen let loose a disbelieving laugh as he raked a hand
through white hair, already disordered from previous
passes. He leaned back wearily in the highbacked command
chair and rotated it so that he stared out the viewport at
the slowly rotating starfield. Mentally calculating from
the stars he recognized, the admiral realized that he was
staring in the direction of the Delta Quadrant. His mouth
twisted in a wry grimace.
Until twelve hours ago, Admiral Paris's only interest
in the Delta Quadrant had been purely theoretical. In his
mind, it was a far distant region of space, well beyond the
most ambitious of Starfleet expeditions. With Cardassia
and its Gamma Quadrant allies, the Dominion, the erratic
Romulans and the Borg, the Federation no longer enjoyed the
leisure to map purely exploratory missions to such farflung
areas. But then the call had come in the early afternoon,
as he worked at Starbase 12, supervising the refitting of
damaged Fleet vessels and the construction of new ships,
destined to replace those lost in recent battles against
the Dominion. His aide had patched through a priority call
from Admiral Jackman. Owen had braced himself for a new
problem, perhaps with the new prototype ship, the
Prometheus, Jackman's people had taken for testing.
The familiar dusky face of Rachel Jackman replaced the
blue Starfleet screen. She sat, formally composed, at her
desk. "Owen," she greeted, "it's good to see you."
"You too, Rachel," Owen Paris acknowledged. "What can
I help you with?"
"It's been a crazy day here, Owen," she began with a
weak laugh. "You won't believe what's been happening in
our neck of the woods."
He leaned forward, concern etched on his face. "Is it
the Prometheus?"
"No, Owen, well, maybe. Don't worry, your precious
new ship is unharmed, but we had a close call with the
Romulans."
Owen Paris breathed deeply and tried to tell his
racing heart to slow down. "Romulans, Rache? I think
you'd better tell me more."
Admiral Jackman looked down at the smooth, Starfleet-
issue desk in front of her. "Romulans ambushed and took
over the Prometheus when she was on her deep space
shakedown. We . . . lost the entire crew, Owen." Regret
and sorrow coloured her voice as she continued to evade his
eyes.
The entire ship's crew? Admiral Owen Paris could
hardly believe it. Seventy two good people, some of the
best, in fact, to be given the task of testing and
evaluating Starfleet's newest ship design. The Prometheus,
with her multi-vector attack mode was intended to give the
Federation an edge against the Jem Hadar and the
Cardassians. How had the crew fallen victim? How had the
ship survived?
These questions must have appeared clear on his face,
or maybe he'd voiced them aloud, for he snapped out of his
dazed reverie to hear Rachel's exhausted voice in mid-
explanation. "We still don't know how the Romulans managed
to take over the Prometheus, but we were incredibly lucky
in its recovery. It turns out that there were two
Starfleet members still on board the ship who managed to
retake the ship and drive off the other Romulans."
"But you just said that the entire crew died!"
"That's right, in one sense of the word. There was
one part of the ship's contingent that the Romulan's hadn't
considered: Prometheus's EMH."
Flabbergasted, Owen Paris couldn't manage to speak for
a moment. An EMH, a holographic medical programme? That
was what, who, had taken the ship back when it had been
captured. But wait, Rachel had said there were two
involved. "An EMH, Rachel! That's hard to accept. Their
programming parameters just aren't sufficiently advanced
for them to act outside the needs of Sickbay. Who else was
it?"
He saw her eyes flicker upwards and to the side. "If
you had a hard time accepting that the Prometheus's EMH was
part of this, you will not believe who the second figure
is."
An obscenely cheerful, familiar visage joined Rachel
Jackman's on the screen. "Hello, Admiral."
"Dr. Zimmerman?" was all that the stunned Admiral
Paris could manage.
A disapproving frown clouded the man's features. He
glanced down fastidiously at his Starfleet medical blue and
black. Owen Paris's eyes followed and widened. The other
man wore an old-style uniform, and furthermore, not one
that Dr. Zimmerman had ever affected. The EMH on the
Prometheus, he remembered from the construction
specifications that he'd overseen himself, had been
Zimmerman's Mark Two. Blond and slightly shorter, it at
least had the benefit of not being modelled after the
acerbic computer genius. This figure in front of him was
obviously neither Prometheus's EMH nor Dr. Zimmerman.
Rachel Jackman looked at Owen Paris in sympathy.
Obviously, the man didn't, couldn't, have an idea about
what he was about to hear.
The figure next to here ended Owen Paris's confusion.
"Admiral, allow me to introduce myself. I am the
holographic ship's doctor of the U.S.S. Voyager."
***
Never reached their destination
Mostly born of pain
Resurfaced with the purpose of
A trip down memory lane
***
Across the lightyears, in his office, Owen Paris lost
all ability to respond. His mind struggled to cope with
the conundrum. Voyager, the ship he'd sent off years ago
to bring in a Maquis traitor. Captained by his former
student, Kathryn Janeway. And on that ship, had been one
young man. One young man who had once been the centre of
Owen Paris's secret dreams and ambitions. A fair-haired
wonder boy, who'd wowed his instructors at the Academy with
his ability to pilot anything with warp engines. One young
man, forced into a corner after the terrible accident at
Caldik Prime. *Forced into that corner as much by my pride
as by himself,* Owen bitterly acknowledged to himself. One
young man who'd run away to join the Maquis after Starfleet
had cashiered him. One young man who'd been caught and
sentenced. *Omigod,* thought Owen Paris, *Tom, my boy,
what I did to you.* The look of anguish that had briefly
flashed in his boy's blue eyes when Admiral Owen Paris,
stern, tall and furious, had turned upon the convict who
had brought such infamy to the Paris name.
*No son of mine,* Owen whispered again, reliving that
moment when he'd so cruelly cut Tom out of his life.
Remembering the weeping woman he'd restrained as Tom was
escorted out of the Federation courtroom to his New
Zealand. Remembering Gwynned's growing alienation, a wife
that had withdrawn from the husband who'd hurt her so
deeply by disowning their son. It had taken a long while
before Owen Paris had been able to accept even a modicum of
guilt or responsibility for Tom's fate. Even after Tom'd
been in prison almost two years in prison, when Kathryn
Janeway had assembled her crew to chase down that elusive
Maquis ship, Zola, Owen had been unable to do more than nod
dismissively at her request to take Tom along as an
"observer" to aid in the mission. The admiral had still
been consumed by anger and shame at Tom's fate.
Voyager's loss in the Badlands had almost come as a
relief. No longer did Owen Paris have to face a future
where his son might embarrass him again. A future where he
always feared that others at receptions and meetings might
be gossiping about the "Admiral's disappointment" when he
excused himself from the room. Shame was an emotion that
Owen Paris despised, and its deep roots in his soul had
cankered his spirit.
Just over a year ago, Starfleet had closed the books
on Voyager's fate. The ship's crew and passengers were
declared "officially dead." But the feeling of relief that
Owen Paris had expected never emerged. Instead, the
Admiral had found a profound sense of emptiness and failure
in himself. Here he was, at the peak of his life and what
did he have to show for it? A wife whose only words to him
were formal, distant messages conveyed in prerecorded
letters dispatched from Earth on an increasingly infrequent
schedule? Daughters who were almost as remote? Whose
formal family greetings at holidays only reminded their
father of how little of a father he'd truly been? And a
son; a son in whom Owen'd invested such weighty hopes and
dreams that in retrospect, it was little wonder that Tom
had been unable to cope. *And when he had revealed himself
as imperfect,* Owen wryly acknowledged, *I threw him out of
my family, only to find myself alone.*
His heart still racing, his voice shaky, Owen Paris
pulled himself out of his reverie by sheer force of
personality. "Tom," he managed. "My son?"
Voyager's EMH permitted a sly smirk to decorate his
face. "Your son, _Lieutenant_ Tom Paris, is currently
serving as Voyager's chief pilot and _my_ medical
assistant."
Admiral Jackman broke in at this point. "As you can
understand, Owen, I though you needed to hear this
directly. We're keeping the EMH here only for another
hour, for debriefing, but then he has to return to
Voyager."
Owen Paris shook his head in confusion. "Return to
Voyager? Rachel, what do you mean?"
"Owen," she explained haltingly, "Voyager and her
crew, well, most of her original crew, are alive and well,
but they're in the Delta Quadrant. They're sixty thousand
lightyears from home. We've established contact with them
only through the holographic doctor's being sent by Voyager
through an alien sensor net that extends from their
vicinity to the edges of our quadrant, near where the
Prometheus was detached for testing."
The heart that had leapt so high in his chest now felt
as if was ready to collapse. Owen Paris struggled for
words. "Rachel, um, Doctor, thank you, but. . . ." His
voice trailed off as he struggled to cope with the joy and
shock that warred inside him.
"No thanks needed, Owen," Rachel Jackman replied.
"Starfleet will be informing the families of all the crews,
dead and alive. Voyager's staffed both by `Fleet and
Maquis now, and there's a lot of confusion here as the
Doctor is filling us in about the crew and the ship's
journey. I'll forward some details to you a bit later,
once we've cleared the material with Security. I'm going
to have to cut this call short, now, but I wanted to tell
you, Starfleet is inviting all family members to send
letters that will be part of a message dump forwarded to
Voyager in the next few days. We'll need the data soon, to
maximize our chance of success given the distance and the
unknown technology."
Owen Paris blankly nodded agreement. "Understood.
Paris, out." The images on his viewscreen disappeared.
How long he sat there, dazed and unmoving, wasn't clear.
It wasn't until his aide paged him with a set of figures on
engine efficiency ratings on their latest refit, that
Admiral Paris shook off his blue funk. He had to admit,
however, that his work suffered that day as his mind
constantly returned to thoughts of Tom.
*I wonder if they've contacted Gwynedd and the girls,*
he mused. *Or, maybe, if I'm supposed to tell them?* That
thought was terrifying. *No,* Owen reassured himself,
*Rachel knows the score as well as anyone. She'll have one
of her officers contact them.* A part of him was
disappointed, but only a small part. While his wife and
daughters would have ecstatically greeted such happy news,
Owen feared that the messenger, if himself, would receive
no such welcome.
After the Alpha shift came to an end, Admiral Paris
caught himself lingering over datapadds and schematics. He
wasn't really working, just avoiding. Avoiding that
dizzying challenge Rachel Jackman had unwittingly laid
before him. Write a letter to Tom? How?
***
Brokenhearted, breaking hearts
All the ways it went
Evidence of what I saw
My experiments
***
Now, some six hours later, Owen Paris found himself
cursing and empty handed. He'd tried at first to use a
padd, and compose a letter. But how to begin? "Dear Tom,
Gee, it's been a while?" "How's life in the Delta
Quadrant?" "I haven't seen your Mom in three years. I say
it's been the job, but the truth is she's never forgiven me
for turning my back on you." After several futile
attempts, Owen had turned to the familiar form of
dictation, a skill that he'd perfected during his
captaincy. But he'd forgotten, the cadence and words used
for official logs didn't seem right when trying to connect
to a son he'd lost and then, miraculously, rediscovered.
And Owen Paris had recorded damned few personal logs during
his Starfleet years. The words to express feelings, hopes
and regrets didn't come easy as he struggled throughout the
evening.
As he cursed again, the composed voice of the computer
intruded on his turmoil. "Incoming personal message for
Admiral Paris."
He raised his weary head and addressed the computer.
"Route the message to my office."
"Routing," the computer affirmed.
The UFP symbols dissolved to reveal the face of Anne,
his eldest daughter. She stood stiffly at an antiseptic
desk in an unfamiliar setting. Out of sight, muted voices
murmured and unfamiliar instruments quietly beeped and
chirped. "Dad, I know it's pretty late for you, so I'm
just sending a quick message. Hopefully, you'll read this
in the morning before you go back to working on your damned
starships." Anne paused for breath, and to ease the bitter
edge that had crept into her voice.
"It's Mom. She got the news this morning about Tom.
It hit her pretty hard. I guess that she had a seizure
sometime shortly after noon. The medical monitors in the
house kicked in, but it still took emergency crews a bit of
time to find her and bring her to the medical centre."
Owen's eyes filled with tears. *Gwynedd? Sick?
Dying? Dead?* He couldn't cope with the sudden shock.
Anne, too, looked stricken. "We think she's going to
live, but the doctors aren't sure. There was some
complications and a possibility of brain damage and memory
loss, due to her seizure. We'll know more in the next
twenty four hours."
She sighed tiredly. "Dad, I know that you and mother
haven't spoken much since the trial. God knows it's your
fault, mostly, although Mom can be as stubborn as anyone,
too. I guess that's how we all turned out the way we did."
She essayed a tired grin and continued. "Please, come
home, Dad. We need you. Mom needs you. I know you
probably won't, but, damn it, Dad, you owe it to us!" The
message came to an abrupt end.
Owen blinked away the tears that came to his eyes.
*Too many shocks in one day,* he thought, *at least for
such an old man.* "Computer," he ordered, "priority one
channel to Starfleet. Get me Admiral Odinaywa's office."
As he waited for call to go through, Owen Paris paced
the stateroom. "Computer," he directed, "replay current
dictation."
The blandly female voice began, "Admiral Owen Paris to
Lieutenant Tom Paris. Today, I was informed by Starfleet
that you are alive. Your mother and your sisters have also
been informed. . . damn, that's no good . . . ."
Owen grimaced. "Computer, delete dictation." The
acknowledgment of his order was cut short as his call to
Starfleet Headquarters was put through.
"Owen, whyever are you calling me at this hour?" the
genial Admiral questioned. "According to my information,
it's the middle of the night at Starbase Twelve. There
hasn't been an accident, has there?"
"No, but there's been another problem, Jiri. You know
about Voyager, don't you?" The other man nodded then
comprehension lit his features.
"Ah, that's right, your son Tom was on that ship,
wasn't he?"
Owen nodded grimly. "My wife's been taken ill with
shock, I suspect. I'm asking for leave to return to Earth.
I need to be there, Jiri."
His counterpart at Starfleet headquarters consulted
some datapadds on his desk. "I think that Starfleet can be
compassionate considering the circumstances, Owen. I'll
direct Captain Bevok to rendezvous with you in, say, three
hours? His ship is heading to earth, anyway, to bring
delegates for a bioengineering conference." Jiri Odinaywa
somberly closed the connection after Owen thanked him for
the arrangements.
Admiral Paris sat down and started making arrangements
to temporarily transfer command of the Starbase and its
operations to his second-in-command. Files, logs and
orders were tagged and annotated to ensure continued
success in vital construction and repair work. A brief
conference with Captain Den Haas assured both officers that
important matters had been covered. Owen took a few
minutes to freshen up, don a new uniform and eat a small
meal.
As the 0530 arrival of the Toscanelli drew near, Owen
realized he'd neglected Tom's letter. He cursed again,
under his breath. What in the hell was he going to write?
A part of him wondered if Tom would even read what his
father wrote. *Considering the terms on which we last
parted,* Owen mused, *I'd be surprised if he did. But
that's no excuse for me not to write something.*
The computer chimed. "The Toscanelli is within
transporter range. Captain Bevok is ready to welcome you
aboard," came the voice of the Gamma shift commander. Owen
acknowledged the summons. "I'll be in Transporter Room One
in three minutes. Paris, out."
Hurriedly, he typed out a few words on the terminal at
his desk and marked them for forwarding to Jackman's
communications officer. The Admiral turned decisively and
left the room, for Earth and a home he hoped he still could
find.
***
Letters never sent to you
Letters never sent
Incongruous, and overdue
Letters never sent
***
An ordered string of energy streamed from the
Starfleet ship to the heart of the alien relay station.
The long pulse contained letters from over a hundred family
members of Voyager's current crew, as well as important
information from Starfleet Command. As she looked out her
flagship's viewport, Rachel Jackman crossed her fingers
behind her back. *Good fortune, Voyager,* she thought,
then resolutely turned her back on the sight of so many
hopes, dreams and heartbreaks being transmitted across the
galaxy.
At her desk were the last of the messages they'd
received. A sense of privacy forbade her to read them,
although she couldn't help but glance across the string of
names that were represented there. A familiar title
stepped out, and she caught herself, all unwilling, pausing
to read Admiral Owen Paris's message. It was so brief,
that she'd done that without even knowing. Just ten short
words comprised the Admiral's entire letters.
Admiral Owen Paris to Lieutenant Tom Paris:
Son, forgive me?
She sighed, sadly. The sorry history of the Paris
family was common knowledge among her cohort. From the
stories she'd heard during the EMH's briefing, and others
of the material he'd downloaded from his matrix during his
brief Alpha Quadrant stay, she'd begun to appreciate that
the young Paris had, against all odds, become an
outstanding officer. But whether or not he could do as his
father asked, well, that was another story entirely. Rachel
Jackman turned off the display with a tired sigh and leaned
back, rubbing her eyes sleepily. There was nothing more
she could do here today.
***
Life's a riddle, life's a dream,
Life's an accident
Now I'm gonna set them free
Letters never sent
***
On board Voyager, B'Elanna Torres worked frantically to
download and save as much of the message stream as
possible. Letters from loved ones, family and home as well
as vital Starfleet directives were being lost to the
vagaries of the relay system and the interference of the
damned Hirogen. She ground her teeth and punched in
another set of commands. A dozen words and message tags
appeared on her screen. *Download and go back for more,*
she mentally chanted as she sought to capture yet more of
the degrading message pulse.
As explosions rocked the ship, Voyager's Chief
Engineer clung grimly to her console. Half of her knew
that she should abandon Astrometrics for Main Engineering.
*Kahless, let Joe and Susan keep the engines running,* she
prayed as she attempted to restore the link between her
console and the relay station without success. She slammed
her fist and tried again. Still nothing. Slapping her
combadge, she hailed the bridge only to hear the
catastrophic news. The station had been destroyed. Worse
yet, the entire relay system appeared to have gone offline.
B'Elanna hung her head for a moment, until Klingon
determination reasserted itself. Diagnostics and
subroutines began to piece the last message fragments
retrieved into the rest. There were still some isolated
elements that didn't clearly belong with any one letter.
B'Elanna eyed the few fragments longingly. None of the
letters that had come through were for her, she knew. Not
that she'd expected a letter from her mother, or her long
absent father. But Tom's letter that she'd been determined
to bring through despite his brave assertion that he didn't
need it, that B'Elanna desperately wanted to have found.
As she scanned the results, her spirits sagged. The
computer reported that ninety three percent of the incoming
messages had been logged in part or whole. The letter from
Admiral Owen Paris, however, was one of the most seriously
degraded from the transfer. Only the salutation was
intact. Angrily, B'Elanna wondered if that wasn't for the
best. From what little Tom had let drop, she expected that
the letter was probably nothing more than a coldly formal
dismissal. *Better that he never get that at all, if
that's the case,* she thought.
Warily, she eyed the last fragments that the computer
had been unable to place. Nonsensical fragments of words,
single letters and occasional phrases betrayed no clear
sense of sender or recipient. *Who knew whose son was
being asked to forgive the writer?* B'Elanna fretted.
*What a can of worms that were opened if that went to, say,
Harry, instead of Gerron?" She punched the commands that
would lock these fragments into protected memory, then
transferred the remaining messages to Neelix's terminal.
Let the Talaxian distribute these notes. She had a ship to
put back together!
Later that night, or early the next morning, B'Elanna
slumped in exhaustion on the couch in her quarters. Beside
her, almost as begrimed and certainly as tired, stretched
Tom Paris. Amazingly, both had finally come off shift
about a half an hour ago. By mutual, if unspoken decision,
they bypassed the party Neelix was hosting on the Holodeck.
"Tom," B'Elanna managed finally.
"Hmm?," came his sleepy answer.
"I wasn't able to download your father's message. All
we got was the opening. I'm sorry."
Silence stretched on for a minute. B'Elanna felt Tom
shift closer to her, slipping an arm behind her back,
feathering her spinal ridge to finally wrap around her
waist. "Thas all right," he slurred. "I didn't expect
anything, so I wasn't disappointed."
B'Elanna secured her arm around his shoulder, pulling
Tom closer into her embrace. She looked down at the red-
gold hair nestled against the black and gold of her
engineering smock and dropped a kiss on his head. Somehow,
she suppressed the fierce growl that rose inside her.
*Someday, somehow, Admiral Paris, you and I are going to
have a showdown over what you've done to the man I love,*
B'Elanna vowed to herself, then hugged Tom close as the
pair drifted off to sleep.
THE END
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