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“You have your orders. Dismissed.”
She stood there, padd in hand, blinking.
This isn’t like her.
He spoke again.
“Was there something, else, Captain?”
“Admiral, if I may speak with you further?” Her voice was strained.
Owen Paris didn’t smile for many people, but, for Kathryn Janeway, he made an exception. He motioned to the chair across from his desk. The hand that wasn’t holding the padd clenched and unclenched as she sat.
Must be jitters. First mission on a new ship.
“You’ll be fine,” Owen said, leaning back in his chair. “Voyager can maneuver through the Badlands and you’ll get hands-on time with her as you proceed to Deep Space Nine.”
“It’s not that, sir,” Kathryn said.
So fast someone who didn’t know her as well might have missed it, her face contorted. In that nanosecond, Owen saw his daughter Kathleen when she was four years old and had gotten lost at a beachside resort. He had spotted her first — on the boardwalk, anguished eyes searching for her family. He had rushed to Kathleen, hugged her, and gotten her a strawberry ice cream cone. She had recovered long before he did.
Owen sat up, focused on Kathryn again.
“It’s a personal matter,” she explained.
Oh, no.
“If this is about Tom —”
“No, sir. I’m looking forward to seeing him later today in Auckland. I’m sure he’ll be helpful on the mission and I’m pleased to be able to help your family.”
Owen clenched his jaw. His shame about Tom refused to fade. When Owen had asked, not ordered, Kathryn to take Tom on her mission, she had responded enthusiastically. Owen told himself she would help any officer in this way, that her eagerness to assist was intrinsic to her personality, not pliancy to his overreach.
“So, what do you want, then?” His voice was curt.
“I’m planning my wedding, sir,” she said. She bit her lips together, then continued, “I was wondering if you and Mrs. Paris would be available Saturday, October 3rd.”
Owen Paris was a man of science. But, had he been asked by a Starfleet review board with his commission on the line, he would have testified he felt a ghost drift into his office.
“Kathryn,” he said, his hands falling, palms open, to his desk. “You’re happy?”
Her smile was a sunrise.
“I didn’t think I could be, sir,” she said, the accident on Tau Ceti Prime unspoken. “But, I am. I really am.”
The ghost prodded Owen to ask more questions.
“What’s his name?”
“Mark Johnson.” She grinned as if just speaking his name brought the man closer to her. “I’ve known him since I was a child.”
“Since you were a child?”
“Yes, sir.”
A word flashed across Owen’s mind accompanied by a chuckle: Hobbes.
Owen frowned at the ghost.
“Sir?” Her forehead creased with concern.
“October 3rd.” He didn’t know how to explain he hadn’t been frowning at her. “My wife and I will be there.”
Owen waited for her to stand from her seat, but Kathryn didn’t move. Her eyes were angled toward him, but Owen felt as if she didn’t see him, like she was so focused on what she had to say that she wasn’t truly seeing anything.
“It’s in Indiana,” she said, her voice firm even if her gaze was hazy. “Admiral Patterson said he’ll perform the ceremony.”
Theo will do a fine job.
Owen wasn’t sure if the sentiment was from the ghost or his own thoughts.
“So, my mother and I were wondering …” She stopped. Kathleen. The boardwalk. Oh, God. He didn’t have a strawberry ice cream cone. What the hell? Kathryn’s face was her own again. “... if you would ...”
He understood.
“Kathryn.” Goldenbird. “You want me to walk you?”
She looked at him. Really looked at him and then nodded as if she were afraid to speak.
Owen didn’t purposefully take a moment to look at her: back straight, head tilted, padd in her lap. He knew she wanted an answer — needed an answer. But Owen catalogued her father’s eyes and mouth, her mother’s coloring, her own fingers wrapped around each other in what could be seen as tension, hope, or prayer.
He leaned forward. “Dress uniform or tuxedo?”
The fingers loosened.
“Dress uniform,” she said.
She always thought an admiral would escort her down the aisle.
“I’ll even shine my boots,” Owen gruffed.
“Thank you, sir.” Sunrise, again. “I’ll do the same.”
The ghost seized control. Owen walked around his desk and gently held her shoulder. Kathryn turned, startled. Her eyebrows went up and her mouth formed a small “o.”
“If he was here,” Owen said, his voice low, “he would be proud of you for so many reasons. He loved you and knew he wasn’t the best at making sure you knew that. He always liked the Johnson kid. It’s about time you took the smooth path.”
She stood so quickly, Owen was surprised her chair didn’t crash to the floor. As Kathryn backed away, she gripped her padd.
“I’ll look over this intelligence about the Maquis crew and I’ll send you a communique after I talk with Tom. Sir.”
With her crisp tone helping ground him, Owen shook off the ghost.
“See you in a few weeks, Captain,” he said, matching her clipped syllables as best he could. “And on October 3rd. Just tell me where to be and when. Don’t get used to giving me orders, though.”
It might have been a grin if she wasn’t so unsettled. “Never, sir. Thank you. I’ll be in touch.”
The door closed behind her and Owen walked to his chair and activated his computer. He took a deep, steadying breath and willed the ghost to leave. It refused.
“Edward Janeway, get out of my office.” Owen spoke clearly. “You know as well as I do I’ll watch over her.”
The ghost acquiesced.
“Damn Janeways,” Owen muttered. “Too stubborn to be quiet even when they’re dead.”
He pulled up his calendar for October 3rd, 2371, and entered, “Busy: priority messages only.”
Owen considered the cadet so bold as to ask him to advise her junior — not senior — thesis, the pale face that appeared at his door after they were freed from the Cardassian prison, the determined young woman who took his advice to transfer from pure sciences into Starfleet’s command track.
With the ghost gone, Owen knew what he typed next was his own choice: “Event: my daughter’s wedding.” He stared at his screen.
“Damn Janeways,” he repeated.
Owen Paris pushed away from his desk and walked to his replicator. “One ice cream cone,” he said. “Strawberry. Make it a double.”