Chapter Text
The cloud of steam billowed soft and warm against my skin, but the wet, fragrant air did nothing but freeze me in my tracks. Through steam almost as thick as a sauna, I could see a shelving unit full of bowls of various vegetables where a sideboard once stood, cabinets that weren’t supposed to be there, and a…stove?…where a bulkhead used to be. No trace of the dining table or chairs. No replicator. Cautiously, I stepped into the steamy cabin and let the door close behind me. I could hear the clanging of… pots and pans? Neelix was scooping food from various pans warming over open flame onto a plate. He handed the full plate through an opening in the far bulkhead to a waiting crewman.
“Here you go,” he said cheerfully. “Hope you enjoy it.”
I looked around once more at what used to be my dining room, shanghaied into a pantry and serving counter. I had just left Chakotay on deck three with my approval for Lieutenant Torres’ jury-rigged dilithium refinery. It seemed my crew was intent on taking my ship apart piece by piece.
“What is going on here?” I demanded.
Neelix jumped and the spoon in his hand clattered to the floor. “Captain! You caught me by surprise,” he exclaimed, hand over his heart.
“I could say the same thing. What are you doing?”
He bent to retrieve the spoon and put it in a tub of dirty dishes. “Well, I know how you and the other senior officers have been”—he squeezed passed me— “excuse me, disappointed with the rations lately, so I thought I'd use a few of the vegetables from the hydroponics bay and whip up a little breakfast.” He selected another spoon and squeezed passed me again to tend to the pots on the stove.
“You have turned this into a galley?”
“It wasn't easy,” he said with a huff as he bustled about the kitchen to serve up another plate of food. “Lieutenant Torres had to completely re-route the mess hall power conduits, and I had to scrounge a lot of supplies from all over the ship, but that's my specialty, making something out of nothing.” He paused his scooping to slice a piece of fruit in half. He thrust a piece of what smelled faintly like lime under my nose. I stepped back and pushed his hand away in annoyance. Not phased by my reaction, Neelix squeezed the fruit over the plate and continued prattling. “I know it doesn't look like much now, but in a few days you'll swear there'd been a galley here for years. Be careful, that one is a little spicy.” He handed a plate of food to a waiting crewman and turned to grab another plate.
“Neelix!” I stopped him with hands on his shoulders. “Who approved this?”
“Uh, well,” he stammered, “I’m not exactly sure.” He was flustered, holding his serving spoon with both hands as if in prayer.
I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Lieutenant Torres left the requisition list there.” He gestured to a PADD half hidden by bowls and cups on the cabinet.
I released him and retrieved the PADD. “Well someone might have asked me first. This used to be my private dining room.” I gestured with the PADD around the steamy cabin.
Neelix looked positively frightened. “Your? Your dining room?”
“If you had checked the ship’s directory, you would have noticed…” I trailed off as I read through the requisition report.
Request to turn cabin two five alpha, deck two, into a galley. For the preparation and service of meals. Requested by Ensign Seska and civilian passenger Neelix. Engineering report completed and approved by Lieutenant Torres. Request approved by Commander Chakotay. Engineering renovations completed by Lieutenant Torres, Ensign Seska, and Neelix.
It appeared that I had a Maquis mutiny on my hands.
“I guess that you'll be wanting me to move all of this stuff out of your way,” continued Neelix gesticulating wildly with his hands.
No longer hungry, I said, “We’ll talk about this later,” before turning and heading back out into the corridor.
Anger twisted in my stomach and my pulse pounded in my veins loud enough to reverberate off the walls of the turbo lift.
“Deck one!” I barked at the computer.
I had thought things were getting better. I had thought that the problems were becoming fewer and the Maquis becoming more Starfleet. But three weeks into our journey, it seemed nothing had changed.
We were three days from the Caretaker’s array when the problems started. I never expected the former Maquis to jump at the chance to become Starfleet officers, but to be honest, I had hoped that it would have been easier to integrate them into the crew. It had started with incomplete reports, missing reports, verbal altercations about replicator privileges and duty hours. It didn’t help that my senior staff had been decimated upon our arrival in the Delta Quadrant and we hadn’t filled all the open positions, so most crewmen, Maquis and Starfleet alike, didn’t know who they were reporting to, much less what to report. Chakotay, to his credit, dealt with most of these problems quickly and efficiently, but he was only one man and a First Officer, under normal circumstances, should have a level of department heads to delegate, not 150 individuals clamoring for attention. He was stressed, we both were. The few Maquis who had at least some level of Starfleet experience made the transition to Starfleet easier than those who did not, but managing and training these new crew members and those who suddenly found themselves with more responsibility than they signed on for was hard.
Less than a week out from the array, I didn’t think things could get any worse: my First Officer was a terrorist, my pilot a convict, my operations officer so green he might have well still been on the vine, and my interim Chief Engineer was a man wholly unprepared for the demands of running a department. I might have found it comical, if I hadn’t been so scared.
But then Lieutenant Torres struck Lieutenant Carey. I read about the incident in Tuvok’s security report which included a simple statement that Commander Chakotay would be handling disciplinary actions and that Tuvok had recommended the brig and a court marshal. I was fine letting Chakotay handle it the way he saw fit—discipline was the First Officer’s job after all. That is, I was fine until he recommended Torres for Chief Engineer. Of course he had brought up the matter in a staff meeting so I couldn’t dismiss the idea entirely, but he fought me on it in private and undermined me in public. When he told me I needed to give the Maquis more authority if I wanted their loyalty, at first I thought it a threat from him, that his loyalty was tied to giving them authority. But when he left my ready room that day, I began to fear that he’d been talking about the Maquis.
Torres proved to be the better engineer. She was eager to learn, eager to please, and I knew Chakotay wouldn’t have recruited her if she wasn’t good at her job. I saw in her the same potential I saw in Paris and so far, she was thriving as chief engineer. Once the initial shock had worn off, the Starfleet crew recognized that she did indeed know what she was doing and no, the Maquis were not going to fill every senior position. The Maquis seemed content with at least two of their ranks on the senior staff to balance out the two they saw as traitors. But it appeared that the Maquis were still intent on ignoring protocol and tearing my ship apart. What was next, turning my quarters into a rec room?
Seven weeks ago we departed Earth for the Badlands. When I had imagined my life then, I had thought that we’d be home by now. I had imagined that the biggest decision I would have to make in the coming weeks would be what type of flower to have in my wedding bouquet (bluebells or sunflowers?), not the possible mutiny-inspiring choice of who would be running my engine room for the next 70 years. I had imagined that the biggest fight I would have would be with my mother about what I would wear to walk down the aisle (Katie, you can’t possibly get married in your dress uniform!), not with my second in command over a damned dining room for heaven’s sake!
When the doors opened to the bridge, I strode down the decks without pause, not even looking at Chakotay as I called, “Commander, with me,” my clipped tone brokering no room for argument.
When the ready room doors swished closed, I rounded on him. “A kitchen?” I waved the PADD between us. “You approved this?”
Chakotay’s face was as passive as his parade rest. “Yes.”
“Without speaking to me?”
He sighed. “Captain, you don’t need a private dining room.” Heavy and unspoken was the rest of his statement: But your crew needs to eat.
While that was true—both parts—hearing it said so plainly stung. A series of Kazon attacks had left us with a dwindling power supply and a downed replicator system. If Neelix’s rouge planetoid didn’t hold the dilithium he said it did, we would be running the ship in grey mode before long. Emergency rations would hold out for a couple more weeks, but fresh food was more than ever a necessity.
“This isn’t about the dinning room,” I said and pointed the edge of the PADD at him. “This is about you going behind my back.” It wasn’t about that either, but I would never admit it.
I swear he snorted in derision. “Of course it is. Any other room on the deck and you wouldn’t even want to hear about it. But take away your excessive dining room and suddenly you take issue.”
“You might have told me!” I snapped.
“It’s in my report from yesterday, which is on your desk.”
I snapped my mouth closed on my response. I’d saved that report for this morning. I fought the urge to glance over at my desk and continued to stare at him.
“I didn’t know the renovations would be completed so quickly,” he continued, “otherwise I would have mentioned it.”
Under his soft gaze, I had no response. I couldn’t protest the renovation without appearing the selfish, reclusive authoritarian, and I couldn’t admit the source of my anger without appearing weak, cold, and distant. Because the truth was, the argument was about the dining room, and it wasn’t.
Since mission launch, I’d taken my meals in my dining room either alone or with one or two senior officers. But I’d begun to appreciate the solitude afforded by the small cabin even more since we’d begun our journey homeward. Captains are supposed to remain distant from their crew, to maintain authority if nothing else. I valued that distance. Even more so since I’d condemned us all to the Delta Quadrant. Even extroverts like me can wear under the accusatory glances and rapid shifts in conversation when one walks into the room. And with one approval, Chakotay had unknowingly ripped away my refuge. He’d forced me to mingle. And I hated him for it.
Before I could formulate a response however, Tuvok’s voice came over the comm. “Captain to the bridge. We are approaching the planetoid.”
“Acknowledged,” I responded. “Janeway to Neelix. Report to the bridge.” To Chakotay, I said only, “We’ll finish this discussion later.”
Silently, he nodded and followed me onto the bridge.