Admiral Edward Hayes sat in his plush office overlooking the San Fransisco bay, the weather for once casting a gleam of sunlight that glinted off the water, already causing him to touch the controls and tint his windows two shades darker than normal. On his console in front of him scrolled the passenger manifest, recorded and certified from their EMH, who had beamed in only two days previously.
Names were highlighted; the dead in red, those of the Maquis, now provisional officers, in orange. Some gone to be replaced by outlaws: Cavit, Stadi, Franklin. To name a few. The Chief Engineer replaced by B’Elanna Torres, a half-Klingon he vaguely remembered from her Academy days, mostly for the trouble she caused. To know that she had become a renegade did not surprise him, but to know she was now back in uniform, holding a rank, albeit provisional, that she would only have attained had she stuck out the Academy coursework, did.
And how Janeway had pulled that off he didn’t care to know.
Others surprised him less; Chakotay had been more than an officer, he had been a friend to anyone in need, and the surprising grace with which he resigned his commission startled everyone. Yet they showed him out with what dignity he could and wanted to retain. In the back of his mind, unofficially in a way that could never be entered even into the most encrypted of personal logs, Hayes sympathized with the man himself. He didn’t know what he would do if the Cardassians destroyed his family.
From the looks of the log entries that had been transmitted through the relay network Tom Paris was coming along suitably as well. Owen had been overjoyed, if conservative in showing his emotion, that his only son was fine and well. Even thousands of light-years away was better than nothing.
Then came the names unfamiliar to anyone: Neelix, the Talaxian who had ingratiated himself as a cook and a guide, saving replicator energy and time in dealing with hostile races (and Hayes was sure there were many), Kes, an Ocampan training in sickbay with the EMH, and had left the ship only months previous. The Admiral was unable to piece together many of the details behind such a departure, unfamiliar and unaccustomed to Ocampan lifespans and what actually occurred during them. He spent more time on the figure known as Seven of Nine, a borg disconnected from the collective, only 18% of her Borg technology remaining.
Starfleet families had been contacted; the relay network was still intact, and messages were due to arrive within the next day for any who cared to make them. Harry Kim’s mother had wept with joy openly on the viewer; Gretchen Janeway and Mark Johnson had been seen personally by Owen Paris.
And then there was one who had nobody.
Ensign Sara Thompson.
Edward Hayes was not a man that startled easily, however when the name had come from the holographic lips of the Voyager EMH it was a struggle to contain his composure. Owen Paris, sitting in the same room at the time, had gripped the table with white knuckles for a split second of an instant.
How could one explain what had happened? How could anyone speak, even if they wanted to, of the stories which were sealed, locked and guarded in a database, buried under layers of encryptions and old records. Even Captain Kathryn Janeway did not hold clearance to be able to break the seals that were as good as the ancient method of dripped wax, complete with family crest.
The crest of the Thompsons was anything but striking.
Edward Hayes knew. He along with Owen Paris, Alynna Nechayev, and a handful of other high-ranking admirals knew the entire story, from start to finish. Garnered from bits and pieces, psychological tests, and physical evidence reported covertly from teachers and aides hundreds of miles away. Thus the reason for the classification on the documents pertaining to one very human, very alone, and very telepathic little girl.
It was no surprise to him to learn, years previous from the mouth of Owen Paris no less, that Sara and her older brother Daniel both showed signs of being telepathic. Jayden, as good a man as he was, was not perfect, and there were various slipups that came to light, especially in later years, before his death.
It was somewhat of a triumph, he noted, that one had survived. One out of five was indeed terrible odds, and if he’d had his way nothing would have ever silenced the others. It did nothing to dissipate the heaviness surrounding his heart.
He knew, as most other men did, that even in the pristine paradise created by the 24th century evil still abounded, and lurked more in places upon Earth than it did in space, bearing the guise of certain races such as the Romulans. Jayden Thompson in all his eccentricity knew how to play the game as well as a master of strategema, and play it he did. A gruff and commanding presence, even Hayes and Owen Paris had never had much reason to talk to him. A man who preferred solitude over the company of his fellow officers, not much for the teamwork of politics, he was given a teaching position after his elevation to Admiral, and settled into it comfortably. He was seen as someone demanding perfection and more often than not getting it, a quiet man of few words with a family to transport home to every night in the colder regions of Canada.
And then his son had died.
It was a suspicious thing to say the least. The report from the transporter station had stated “an unattended shuttle found adrift in space, nearing a rondezvous with Spacedock” and “warp-core breach eminent.” While Jayden had tried and tried to fly his story about a faulty emergency beam-out, something gone horribly wrong, Hayes read something else, a glitter in the old man’s emerald eyes. The silence that was thought to be grief was found to be something other, what exactly even Owen Paris could never say, and though the man fooled even the most complete of Betazoids at an inquiry, other findings soon came to light. Jayden Thompson’s house of cards had begun to crumble.
By Starfleet rules, an autopsy of the body of Daniel Quinn Thompson, seventeen year old human and son to the Admiral, had to be done. Six doctors holding honors that no admiral could hope to compete with in the medical field had emerged from the sterile surroundings with bleak looks on their faces, pallor that of chalk, eyes downcast to the deck tiles.
The next day an investigation had been opened on Jayden Thompson.
Secretly, covertly, they gathered their evidence. Medical records were unearthed, dust blown off and the same high-ranking minds that had looked fearfully at the scars on his eldest son’s body now turned their attention to the other, living members of his family.
It took nearly four years before they could bring him to justice. Less than a week prior to the day they would confront the man they communicated with his wife, and the stiff profile of Owen Paris told them to leave, get away, as far away as possible, and not tell Jayden where they were going.
Two days later, their bodies were found in the charred ruins of a mountainside cabin, set deep within the Colorado Rockies.
Three bodies.
Jayden Thompson.
Corrine, his wife.
Tyler, his five-year-old son.
A fourth was gone; Sara Elizabeth Ann Thompson was nothing but a charred ID card and a birth record, paperwork of a memory. Pictures were circulated throughout transport centers, a team mobilized into action, counselors put on round-the-clock call watch for when the girl was brought in.
But she was never found.
Until now. Lost no more, Sara Thompson had joined the ranks of those listed on Voyager manifest. Alive, in good health and somewhat good spirits, and holding commissioned rank, serving aboard a Starfleet ship, albeit one 65,000 light-years away.
His concentration was broken by a chime at his door, an instant before Owen Paris entered, through the sliding panels of metal that parted to admit him.
“Tell me the Sara Thompson listed on Voyager’s crew manifest isn’t the one I’m thinking of.” A man of honor and integrity, he was also known for being blunt. He sat in the chairs across from Hayes’ desk.
“I wish I could,” Edward Hayes turned sorrowful and bleak for an instant. “Believe me, there’s nothing I’d like more.”
“Ironic, isn’t it?”
“I can think of many words, right now, Owen, but ironic isn’t one of them.”
“Neither can I. How did she end up on Voyager?”
Admiral Paris leaned forward, spinning around the console again.
“She was on the Maquis ship that was transported there, the one we sent Kathryn after.” Hayes rubbed his eyes.
“The Ma -- with Chakotay?”
“Yes.” Hayes faced his long time, albeit stuttering colleague. There was an uneasy silence for long moments before he asked, “Does Alynna know?”
Paris got up and walked to the windows, his voice grave. “She knows, Ed. She knew almost before we did. How, I don’t know. They say the old woman still has her sources here, but I’ll be damned if I can find them.”
Hayes joined him, looking out over the normalcy of a sunny bay that seemed so far removed from where they stood. “So what do we do?”
“What can we do? She’s forty thousand light-years away. The rest are dead. Jayden, Corrine, her brothers…we’ll probably have joined them by the time Voyager makes port in Spacedock.”
“Shame about what happened to them…”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Is she anything like her father?”
“From the logs that Kathryn sent back, yes.”
“I don’t know whether to be happy or sad about that one, Owen.”
“She looks like her mother.” Owen Paris smiled, albeit a grave smile, one tainted with sadness, turning back to Hayes’ desk and retrieving her personnel record. “Still hasn’t grown much; don’t understand that part. The hologram didn’t understand it either. Sara’ll be pretty small always, is what he says. She’s fit in pretty well, all things considered.”
“How old is she now?”
“Between seventeen and eighteen.”
“Older than any of the other kids made it. What’s her rank?”
“Ensign. Kathryn made her one after the Kazon incident. Before that she was just…there. There’s a whole mess of details in here, Acting Ensign, something like what Picard did for Wesley Crusher back on the Enterprise D.”
“Big shoes for such a little kid. So she joined the Maquis after…”
“From the looks of things, she didn’t remember what happened. Stowed away on transports about six months after, if Chakotay’s details are right, and I’ll bet that they are. She knew her name, knew when she was born, but nothing else.”
“But she does now?”
“Yep. She’s just like her daddy, too good at keeping a secret…she knew everything by the time she was sixteen. She just didn’t tell anyone.”
“So how’d they find out?”
“Someone – Torres – found a diary she’d been keeping. Or she slipped up somewhere and said something. I don’t know, Ed, it’s a lot of data to sort through on one little girl.”
“She’s not a little girl anymore, Owen.”
“No, she’s not.” He sadly ran his fingers over the screen before shutting it off. He turned back one last time, heading for the door. “Contact the Maquis in Auckland. See about sending a message to the Delta Quadrant.”
“I will. And…the girl?”
Owen Paris looked down at the floor, taking a moment to consider the implications of what his friend had just asked. “It’s out of our hands, Ed. The dead are dead, and no one but us knows how to unseal the records. Doing so wouldn’t bring them back. She’s suffered enough – let her be.”
