Fan Fiction
TITLE: Chakotay's Holidays: On the Sea of Tranquillity
AUTHOR: Brenda Shaffer-Shiring
RATING: PG
CODES: C/T
PART: 13/?
DISCLAIMER: Paramount will little note, nor long remember, what I do here. But
they still own the VOY copyrights, so they get a shout-out anyway.
DEDICATION: For my dad, who shared with me his love of space stories and space
exploration, and who to this day can recount every detail of the Apollo (and
Gemini, and Mercury) flights.
NOTES: It was Buzz Aldrin, second man to walk on the surface of the moon, who
described it as "magnificent desolation." July 20, 2380 really WILL fall on a
Sunday -- I checked! And please forgive (but don't hesitate to point out!) any
errors; my beloved beta is on vacation.
SUMMARY: B'Elanna feels closer to Chakotay when they celebrate a historical
occasion together. C/T.
B'Elanna Torres poked her head into Chakotay's study. Voyager's former first officer was seated at his computer desk; even from the entranceway, she could see that the screen was split, an indiscernible image and several pages of text appearing on it. Chakotay had a PADD in his hand and was glancing back and forth between it and the computer screen, muttering softly to himself. Several other PADDS lay scattered on the flat wooden desktop.
B'Elanna wondered, idly, if he always took his shirt off when he worked at the computer. It certainly wasn't a habit he'd had on the Valjean, or on Voyager, probably lucky for the attention spans of everyone who was attracted to human males. She would gladly testify to just how distracting that broad tan expanse of shoulder -- looking much broader than when he was fully clothed -- could be.
//Hey,// she thought with some surprise, //I'm allowed to think of that now!// And she was; she wasn't married and he was neither attached nor her commanding officer. Though perhaps this very moment wasn't the best time to grant herself that indulgence; she had a stealth mission to complete.
"Hey, Professor," she said just a little too loudly, and had the pleasure of seeing Chakotay startle. The PADD he was holding clattered to the desktop.
Sighing, he looked over his shoulder with his most long-suffering expression. "B'Elanna, I am REALLY beginning to regret entering your voiceprint on my door-lock."
"Too late," she said cheerfully. "Come on, old buddy old pal. It's time to take a break from that dissertation of yours."
"B'Elanna, I just got to work --"
"Give me a break, Chakotay. You've been working at that thing for months now."
"Yeah, but TODAY I just sat down half-an-hour ago. And you know I want to get as much done as I can before the new term starts."
"I know, Chakotay. But don't you remember what day it is?"
He blinked at the apparent non sequitur. "It's Sunday." He sounded puzzled and a little bemused. "So? It's not as if I'm missing service, B'Elanna. I'm not Christian."
"Yeah, I seem to recall something like that." She looked pointedly at the chamoozee symbol hanging on his wall. "I'm not much of one myself. But Sunday IS my regular day off. Which means that it's my best chance to drag you away from that desk for a few hours. Besides, if you've forgotten what date it is, you really HAVE been spending too much time working on your dissertation."
"What DATE it is?" He obviously had to think about it. "It's July twen --" His expression cleared. "July twentieth. The moon-landing anniversary."
"You got it," she agreed. "I thought maybe it would be a good day for us to take a shuttle up there and play tourist."
He chuckled, soft and baritone. "I didn't think that sort of thing interested you."
"Well, I did think it interested YOU. So come on, Professor. Are you game or not?"
"You talked me into it." With a few quick motions, he saved files on computer and PADDs and set the equipment on standby. Then he rose and stretched, a ripple of lean muscle across his back belying the fact that he'd already marked his first half-century. Plucking his shirt from the back of the chair, he shrugged into it.
***********************
These days, of course, Earth's moon was far from the "magnificent desolation" one of its earliest explorers had described. Being one of the nearest astral bodies to the human home planet, Luna had been the first site for extraterrestrial human habitation; as early as the 21st century it had been covered with clusters of domes and honeycombed with tunnels and manmade caves. To this day, it was one of the most extensively developed human settlements on any non-Class-M sphere.
None of that, however, was apparent from the anteroom that looked out on the Sea of Tranquillity. B'Elanna admired the illusion: the area around Mare Tranquillitatus was actually no less densely populated than the rest of Earth's satellite. Only some very high-grade holographic technology kept it from seeming so, making it instead appear to be part of the vast emptiness those early Terran astronauts had seen.
Tranquility Base, where the first Terran explorers had landed, was thoroughly authentic; even the early lunar settlers had not disturbed what must have seemed like hallowed ground to them. //That's the only reason I can think of that they didn't just pick everything up, stuff it in some museum, and pave the ground over,// she thought, remembering what she knew about the settlers' rapacity for land. //And left a plaque -- at most -- to mark the landing site.// They'd done considerably better than that; even to covering the base and the lunar lander with a coat of transparent aluminum to ensure that tourists would never despoil the area for souvenirs.
That said, not much of the area surrounding it had actually remained untouched: the sites of other, later landings that ought to have been visible from here were represented only holographically. According to the maps she and Chakotay had looked at in the transport waiting area, the "historical section" was very little larger than the original Tranquility Base.
Chakotay, surprisingly, did not seem to be enjoying the view as much as she was. He looked almost disgruntled. "Hey you," she asked, puzzled, "what's wrong?"
He shook his head, obviously trying to shake whatever-it-was off. "Nothing. That stupid arcade bothered me."
They had made arrangements for their "moon walk" in the tourist plaza that preceded the anteroom. One of the other features there had been a section with an assortment of hologames. B'Elanna had taken no special notice of the area. "What about it?"
"You didn't see the lunar lander game?" She shook her head. "Yeah. It was asking people to see if they could land the descent module better than Neil Armstrong did." Chakotay frowned. "He did have trouble landing. He nearly ran out of fuel. But still -- it's a travesty. As if how beautifully he did or didn't land was what mattered."
She blinked. "Well, of course it wasn't. Wasn't what mattered was that he was the first?"
He gestured with his index finger, as if he were awarding her a point. "Exactly. Back then, this really WAS where no man had gone before. And he knew that if he failed, he and Aldrin would have been alone. Would have died alone. Compared to that kind of nerve, what difference does it make if someone else could have made it look prettier?"
She snorted. "About as much as it should have mattered that we didn't make a picture-perfect flight back to the Alpha Quadrant."
He smiled a little, as if in appreciation for her understanding. "Exactly."
She reached for his hand, feeling the warm pulse of his flesh beneath her own. "Don't let it spoil the visit, Chakotay. What's out there -- that's what counts, remember?"
He shook his head again, this time in apology. "Yeah. Thanks for the perspective check."
"Any time." She shrugged into her "spacesuit," which bore a superficial resemblance to the ones Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin had worn so long ago, but of course had all the modern improvements and failsafes theirs had lacked. "You ready?"
He fastened his spacesuit collar. "Ready as I'm going to be." His lips formed a smile almost in spite of themselves.
B'Elanna smiled back, something in her hearts easing almost imperceptibly. Between his dissertation and his visits to his sister, Chakotay had been spending a lot of time in his past, and his peoples' past, over these last months. At some level, of course, she had known that he was also a man of the modern age, and would never choose as his sister had chosen, to dwell as his people had in that past. Nonetheless, she was still subtly reassured by this clear evidence of his connection to the technological universe.
Besides, Chakotay had rarely smiled in her presence without drawing an answering smile from B'Elanna. She'd never been able to help it, and didn't think it was at all likely that she'd start any time soon.
They donned and sealed their helmets, and stepped into the airlock. The chamber sealed before internal mechanisms cycled out the air. Then the door opened, and the two 24th-century space travelers stepped out into the dry "sea" upon which their long-ago predecessors had trod so lightly and so profoundly.
Their steps long and loping in the low gravity, they moved rapidly toward the spidery framework of the descent module. Because of the transparent aluminum that covered the area, just an inch or so above the surface, their feet left no marks in the fine, powdery dust that passed for soil here.
With the skill of experienced space travelers, they stopped easily just in front of their goal. Chakotay's gloved hand touched the transparent-aluminum-coated surface of the module with searching gentleness. B'Elanna could see the expression on his face even through the smooth surface of his helmet visor: a look of reverence.
"Look." His voice was soft in her suit comm. "There's the plaque they left behind." It was affixed to the lander steps, and he leaned forward to read it, though knowing him B'Elanna would have been very surprised indeed if he had not already had the words memorized. She drew closer to examine the plaque more closely herself. At the top were two drawings, of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres of the Earth; at the bottom were the signatures of the Apollo 11 astronauts, and in the middle were words that had long since passed into legend:
Here Men From The Planet Earth First Set Foot Upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We Came in Peace For All Mankind.
Chakotay read it aloud, and B'Elanna could hear in his voice the strength and pride of the ancient words, of the small steps and the great leaps made in an era where they had been thought impossible. To her, child of a warp-speed age, travel to a planet's satellite had always been a thing to be taken for granted, and not much more difficult than traveling to another town. But just for a moment she was there, back in the twentieth century. She could picture the look on those ancient astronauts' faces as they hung that plaque and imagine the wonder felt by those on the shining world below. And then she was back in her own era, and she knew what those small steps, those prideful and hazardous voyages, had led to.
"Amazing," she whispered.
Chakotay turned to her, smiling again, and she could see the same awe on his face that beat within her hearts. "You understand."
"Yeah, I think I do." She reached for his hand, and squeezed it. Though the gloves they wore were far thinner than anything the ancient astronauts had worn, she could not feel his skin or his pulse. But she could feel his strength, and the connection between them that was more palpable than this simple contact.
They turned their attention back to the lander, to the artifact that was also a monument. After a few moments, a strong arm wrapped around her shoulder, and drew her to his side.
They stood there, in silent witness, until a signal sounded in their suit comms to tell them it was time to return from their tour.
