The BLTS Archive- Choices in the Dark
by Ragpants (mhkurtz@earthlink.net)

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Disclaimer: Voyager and its crew are the sole property of Paramount
and its subsidiaries. No copyright infringement is intended.

All comments are welcome. Write me!

September 1999

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General Niak sat at the desk in his office. Reports, lists and
intelligence, each marked 'Urgent,' cluttered his desk. He didn't look
at any of them. He knew what they held: more problems, more deaths. He
didn't want to see any more.

His adjutant stuck her head into his office. "Sir, your wife called.
She asks if you could meet her for dinner."

He nodded bleakly. His wife was the liaison with the Allied forces. He
knew she must be fielding her own deskful of troubles. He hadn't seen
her, save for brief snatches of terse, hurried conversation across a
briefing table, in days. They needed to talk, but he wasn't sure if he
could muster the energy.

The timer chimed just as he entered their tiny, but functional
kitchen, and she pulled a meal tray out of the heating unit. Her eyes
acknowledged his presence. She slid another tray into the warmer. She
pulled a chair out from the counter and began eating her own meal
while it was still hot. He sat down beside her and they both ate in
silence.

Finally, because it seemed that she wasn't going to broach the topic,
he  did. "I read the report on the Allied Sixth Division." It was her
old unit, the one she had commanded until she had agreed to join his
staff. "I'm sorry."

She sighed restlessly and moved to dump the remains of her meal--most
of  the stew was still on her plate, he noticed--into the cycler.
"Yes. It was the last of them," she answered, refusing to look at him.
He watched as moved in a Brownian motion around the cramped confines
of their apartment. Two rooms. That was all they had and at the moment
he was glad they didn't have more. He felt that if there were more
rooms, she would have drifted into one of them and away from him
forever. He couldn't bear the idea.

"Kath..."

"Don't. I'm tired and I have a 6 am briefing. I'm going to bed."

They lay together on the lumpy fold-out couch in their sitting room by
day, bedroom by night. Her back was toward him. He placed a tentative
hand on her shoulder. He could only guess at what she'd lost today.
She never spoke about them, about her friends in the Sixth.  "Kath, I
really am sorry."

She rolled on her back in the darkness.  "So am I. They were my
family, Gian. Closer than blood. And all I had left."

The statement jarred him. His wife was from off-world. He had
forgotten  that, often forgot the fact for weeks and months at a time
until some small thing jostled loose recollection. She seemed so
attuned to life here, so contented with him. Now her essential
alien-ness reasserted itself. "Tell me about them."

Silence stretched into the darkness. "You won't understand."

They lay, each unmoving, but still awake, in the darkness. "I want to
have a child."   Her proposal shocked him. They were in the middle of
war. Things were  going badly and would get worse quite rapidly from
here on out. Three  months, six months from now, he wouldn't give two
qoll for their  survival. He schooled his body not to show the
surprise he felt and  smoothed out his breathing. He rolled onto his
back. "Is this because of  what happened with the Sixth today?"

"No... Yes. I don't know."

He didn't understand her. He wanted a child with her. They had even
discussed the possibility during better times, but a child now was
impossible. They both knew that. What had she lost today? What was it
that drove her? "Tell me about them."

There was a long silence in the darkness. "I once commanded a
starship.  Two hundred and forty seven people looked to me as captain.
And I failed  them, Gian. Failed them twice. Once when I destroyed the
means to send  them home and stranded us 100 years from everything we
knew. And again when the Mytorians destroyed the ship. I failed them
too in small ways during the six years we spent journeying through the
Delta Quadrant.  But they followed me anyway, respected me, even loved
me, in a fashion.  If I'd lost one family when I destroyed the
Caretaker's Array, I found  another on the ship. They became my family
and in some ways they were a  better family than the one I'd left
behind."

She told stories then, fantastic, almost unbelievable stories: a
gentle, smiling girl who lived her entire life in only a handspan of
years; a machine man made entirely of light; a man of exacting logic
whose friendship once given remained unshakable, like the earth, and
who willingly followed her twice into the enemy's heart and certain
assimilation. She told stories of selflessness and bravery, of love,
of hope and of redemption. Her stories stunned him with their
grandeur.  He hadn't known, couldn't have known. She'd never told him.
And he  couldn't have guessed. A way of life so different from his own
parochial  existence.

He loved her all the more for what she'd lost and wanted to pity her,
but couldn't. There was something about her that precluded that. She
had too much pride, too much strength, for pity.  But her losses--they
were  astounding. More than  he could have borne. And today, the Sixth
Division, the last remnant of her starship crew, had been destroyed in
a surprise counter offensive launched by Tyrel troops. No wonder that
she grieved.  But why a child and why now? It seemed such an
inexplicable thing to choose.

He spoke slowly into the darkness. "I want a child too, Kath. But I
want  one for reasons I can understand."

She shifted onto her side and propped her head upon her elbow. "I
loved a man once, a fellow officer aboard my ship. He would have loved
me too,  if I had let him. But I didn't. When he died, I had nothing
left. Not even memories of  happy times. I won't let that happen
again, Gian. I married you so that no matter what I would have the
memories, and now I want a child. To remember, Gian, if nothing else."

He recalled all the stories she had told and the reports that passed
across her desk. She was trained in military strategy. She knew how
badly the war went and knew the likely outcome. Still she loved him
and still she made this choice. He reached up to find her face above
him in the dark. His hand smoothed along her cheek and pushed her hair
behind her ear.

"Yes," he whispered into the dark. "Yes."  He lifted his face to kiss
her and felt the tears spill across her cheeks.

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The End