Letters Never Sent (Archivist's Challenge #2)
	Janice Liedl

Synopsis: Admiral Paris struggles with the shocking news of 
Voyager's Delta Quadrant existence and how to write a 
letter to his estranged son, Tom.  Set between "Message in 
a Bottle" and "Hunters."

Disclaimer:  The toys belong to Viacom/Paramount.  I just 
play with them (and nicely, I hope)!  The title and the 
brief extracts come from Carly Simon's album/song of the same 
name (copyrighted to C'est Music, 1994).  All comments 
should be directed to jliedl@nickel.laurentian.ca 

***

How peculiar these remain
Salvaged from the fire
For some I crumpled some I burned
Some I tore to shreds
Lifetimes later, here they are
The ones I saved instead
Letters never sent to you
Letters never sent

***

	"Damn!  Computer, end recording," the occupant of the 
dim starbase stateroom barked angrily.  It was 0200 hours, 
and Admiral Owen Paris was still awake.  That in itself was 
not unusual.  The driven, dogmatic command officer was not 
above driving himself to his physical limits in pursuit of 
Starfleet's objectives and his own ambitions.  What was 
different tonight was that Owen Paris wasn't pursuing 
official business.  Instead, he was trying to do the most 
difficult thing he could imagine: write a letter to his 
son, Tom.

	Owen let loose a disbelieving laugh as he raked a hand 
through white hair, already disordered from previous 
passes.  He leaned back wearily in the highbacked command 
chair and rotated it so that he stared out the viewport at 
the slowly rotating starfield.  Mentally calculating from 
the stars he recognized, the admiral realized that he was 
staring in the direction of the Delta Quadrant.  His mouth 
twisted in a wry grimace.

	Until twelve hours ago, Admiral Paris's only interest 
in the Delta Quadrant had been purely theoretical.  In his 
mind, it was a far distant region of space, well beyond the 
most ambitious of Starfleet expeditions.  With Cardassia 
and its Gamma Quadrant allies, the Dominion, the erratic 
Romulans and the Borg, the Federation no longer enjoyed the 
leisure to map purely exploratory missions to such farflung 
areas.  But then the call had come in the early afternoon, 
as he worked at Starbase 12, supervising the refitting of 
damaged Fleet vessels and the construction of new ships, 
destined to replace those lost in recent battles against 
the Dominion.  His aide had patched through a priority call 
from Admiral Jackman.  Owen had braced himself for a new 
problem, perhaps with the new prototype ship, the 
Prometheus, Jackman's people had taken for testing.

	The familiar dusky face of Rachel Jackman replaced the 
blue Starfleet screen.  She sat, formally composed, at her 
desk.  "Owen," she greeted, "it's good to see you."

	"You too, Rachel," Owen Paris acknowledged.  "What can 
I help you with?"

	"It's been a crazy day here, Owen," she began with a 
weak laugh.  "You won't believe what's been happening in 
our neck of the woods."

	He leaned forward, concern etched on his face.  "Is it 
the Prometheus?"

	"No, Owen, well, maybe.  Don't worry, your precious 
new ship is unharmed, but we had a close call with the 
Romulans."

	Owen Paris breathed deeply and tried to tell his 
racing heart to slow down.  "Romulans, Rache?  I think 
you'd better tell me more."

	Admiral Jackman looked down at the smooth, Starfleet-
issue desk in front of her.  "Romulans ambushed and took 
over the Prometheus when she was on her deep space 
shakedown.  We . . . lost the entire crew, Owen."  Regret 
and sorrow coloured her voice as she continued to evade his 
eyes.

	The entire ship's crew?  Admiral Owen Paris could 
hardly believe it.  Seventy two good people, some of the 
best, in fact, to be given the task of testing and 
evaluating Starfleet's newest ship design.  The Prometheus, 
with her multi-vector attack mode was intended to give the 
Federation an edge against the Jem Hadar and the 
Cardassians.  How had the crew fallen victim?  How had the 
ship survived?

	These questions must have appeared clear on his face, 
or maybe he'd voiced them aloud, for he snapped out of his 
dazed reverie to hear Rachel's exhausted voice in mid-
explanation.  "We still don't know how the Romulans managed 
to take over the Prometheus, but we were incredibly lucky 
in its recovery.  It turns out that there were two 
Starfleet members still on board the ship who managed to 
retake the ship and drive off the other Romulans."

	"But you just said that the entire crew died!"

	"That's right, in one sense of the word.  There was 
one part of the ship's contingent that the Romulan's hadn't 
considered: Prometheus's EMH."

	Flabbergasted, Owen Paris couldn't manage to speak for 
a moment.  An EMH, a holographic medical programme?  That 
was what, who, had taken the ship back when it had been 
captured.  But wait, Rachel had said there were two 
involved.  "An EMH, Rachel!  That's hard to accept.  Their 
programming parameters just aren't sufficiently advanced 
for them to act outside the needs of Sickbay.  Who else was 
it?"

	He saw her eyes flicker upwards and to the side.  "If 
you had a hard time accepting that the Prometheus's EMH was 
part of this, you will not believe who the second figure 
is."

	An obscenely cheerful, familiar visage joined Rachel 
Jackman's on the screen.  "Hello, Admiral."

	"Dr. Zimmerman?" was all that the stunned Admiral 
Paris could manage.

	A disapproving frown clouded the man's features.  He 
glanced down fastidiously at his Starfleet medical blue and 
black.  Owen Paris's eyes followed and widened.  The other 
man wore an old-style uniform, and furthermore, not one 
that Dr. Zimmerman had ever affected.  The EMH on the 
Prometheus, he remembered from the construction 
specifications that he'd overseen himself, had been 
Zimmerman's Mark Two.  Blond and slightly shorter, it at 
least had the benefit of not being modelled after the 
acerbic computer genius.  This figure in front of him was 
obviously neither Prometheus's EMH nor Dr. Zimmerman.

	Rachel Jackman looked at Owen Paris in sympathy.  
Obviously, the man didn't, couldn't, have an idea about 
what he was about to hear.

	The figure next to here ended Owen Paris's confusion.  
"Admiral, allow me to introduce myself.  I am the 
holographic ship's doctor of the U.S.S. Voyager."

***

Never reached their destination
Mostly born of pain
Resurfaced with the purpose of
A trip down memory lane

***

	Across the lightyears, in his office, Owen Paris lost 
all ability to respond.  His mind struggled to cope with 
the conundrum.  Voyager, the ship he'd sent off years ago 
to bring in a Maquis traitor.  Captained by his former 
student, Kathryn Janeway.  And on that ship, had been one 
young man.  One young man who had once been the centre of 
Owen Paris's secret dreams and ambitions.  A fair-haired 
wonder boy, who'd wowed his instructors at the Academy with 
his ability to pilot anything with warp engines.  One young 
man, forced into a corner after the terrible accident at 
Caldik Prime.  *Forced into that corner as much by my pride 
as by himself,* Owen bitterly acknowledged to himself.  One 
young man who'd run away to join the Maquis after Starfleet 
had cashiered him.  One young man who'd been caught and 
sentenced.  *Omigod,* thought Owen Paris, *Tom, my boy, 
what I did to you.*  The look of anguish that had briefly 
flashed in his boy's blue eyes when Admiral Owen Paris, 
stern, tall and furious, had turned upon the convict who 
had brought such infamy to the Paris name.

	*No son of mine,* Owen whispered again, reliving that 
moment when he'd so cruelly cut Tom out of his life.  
Remembering the weeping woman he'd restrained as Tom was 
escorted out of the Federation courtroom to his New 
Zealand.  Remembering Gwynned's growing alienation, a wife 
that had withdrawn from the husband who'd hurt her so 
deeply by disowning their son.  It had taken a long while 
before Owen Paris had been able to accept even a modicum of 
guilt or responsibility for Tom's fate.  Even after Tom'd 
been in prison almost two years in prison, when Kathryn 
Janeway had assembled her crew to chase down that elusive 
Maquis ship, Zola, Owen had been unable to do more than nod 
dismissively at her request to take Tom along as an 
"observer" to aid in the mission.  The admiral had still 
been consumed by anger and shame at Tom's fate.

	Voyager's loss in the Badlands had almost come as a 
relief.  No longer did Owen Paris have to face a future 
where his son might embarrass him again.  A future where he 
always feared that others at receptions and meetings might 
be gossiping about the "Admiral's disappointment" when he 
excused himself from the room.  Shame was an emotion that 
Owen Paris despised, and its deep roots in his soul had 
cankered his spirit.

	Just over a year ago, Starfleet had closed the books 
on Voyager's fate.  The ship's crew and passengers were 
declared "officially dead."  But the feeling of relief that 
Owen Paris had expected never emerged.  Instead, the 
Admiral had found a profound sense of emptiness and failure 
in himself.  Here he was, at the peak of his life and what 
did he have to show for it?  A wife whose only words to him 
were formal, distant messages conveyed in prerecorded 
letters dispatched from Earth on an increasingly infrequent 
schedule?  Daughters who were almost as remote?  Whose 
formal family greetings at holidays only reminded their 
father of how little of a father he'd truly been?  And a 
son; a son in whom Owen'd invested such weighty hopes and 
dreams that in retrospect, it was little wonder that Tom 
had been unable to cope.  *And when he had revealed himself 
as imperfect,* Owen wryly acknowledged, *I threw him out of 
my family, only to find myself alone.*

	His heart still racing, his voice shaky, Owen Paris 
pulled himself out of his reverie by sheer force of 
personality.  "Tom," he managed.  "My son?"

	Voyager's EMH permitted a sly smirk to decorate his 
face.  "Your son, _Lieutenant_ Tom Paris, is currently 
serving as Voyager's chief pilot and _my_ medical 
assistant."

	Admiral Jackman broke in at this point.  "As you can 
understand, Owen, I though you needed to hear this 
directly.  We're keeping the EMH here only for another 
hour, for debriefing, but then he has to return to 
Voyager."

	Owen Paris shook his head in confusion.  "Return to 
Voyager?  Rachel, what do you mean?"

	"Owen," she explained haltingly, "Voyager and her 
crew, well, most of her original crew, are alive and well, 
but they're in the Delta Quadrant.  They're sixty thousand 
lightyears from home.  We've established contact with them 
only through the holographic doctor's being sent by Voyager 
through an alien sensor net that extends from their 
vicinity to the edges of our quadrant, near where the 
Prometheus was detached for testing."

	The heart that had leapt so high in his chest now felt 
as if was ready to collapse.  Owen Paris struggled for 
words.  "Rachel, um, Doctor, thank you, but. . . ." His 
voice trailed off as he struggled to cope with the joy and 
shock that warred inside him.

	"No thanks needed, Owen," Rachel Jackman replied.  
"Starfleet will be informing the families of all the crews, 
dead and alive.  Voyager's staffed both by `Fleet and 
Maquis now, and there's a lot of confusion here as the 
Doctor is filling us in about the crew and the ship's 
journey.  I'll forward some details to you a bit later, 
once we've cleared the material with Security.  I'm going 
to have to cut this call short, now, but I wanted to tell 
you, Starfleet is inviting all family members to send 
letters that will be part of a message dump forwarded to 
Voyager in the next few days.  We'll need the data soon, to 
maximize our chance of success given the distance and the 
unknown technology."

	Owen Paris blankly nodded agreement.  "Understood.  
Paris, out."  The images on his viewscreen disappeared.  
How long he sat there, dazed and unmoving, wasn't clear.  
It wasn't until his aide paged him with a set of figures on 
engine efficiency ratings on their latest refit, that 
Admiral Paris shook off his blue funk.  He had to admit, 
however, that his work suffered that day as his mind 
constantly returned to thoughts of Tom.

	*I wonder if they've contacted Gwynedd and the girls,* 
he mused.  *Or, maybe, if I'm supposed to tell them?*  That 
thought was terrifying.  *No,* Owen reassured himself, 
*Rachel knows the score as well as anyone.  She'll have one 
of her officers contact them.*  A part of him was 
disappointed, but only a small part.  While his wife and 
daughters would have ecstatically greeted such happy news, 
Owen feared that the messenger, if himself, would receive 
no such welcome.

	After the Alpha shift came to an end, Admiral Paris 
caught himself lingering over datapadds and schematics.  He 
wasn't really working, just avoiding.  Avoiding that 
dizzying challenge Rachel Jackman had unwittingly laid 
before him.  Write a letter to Tom?  How?

***

Brokenhearted, breaking hearts
All the ways it went
Evidence of what I saw
My experiments

***

	Now, some six hours later, Owen Paris found himself 
cursing and empty handed.  He'd tried at first to use a 
padd, and compose a letter.  But how to begin?  "Dear Tom, 
Gee, it's been a while?"  "How's life in the Delta 
Quadrant?"  "I haven't seen your Mom in three years.  I say 
it's been the job, but the truth is she's never forgiven me 
for turning my back on you."  After several futile 
attempts, Owen had turned to the familiar form of 
dictation, a skill that he'd perfected during his 
captaincy.  But he'd forgotten, the cadence and words used 
for official logs didn't seem right when trying to connect 
to a son he'd lost and then, miraculously, rediscovered.  
And Owen Paris had recorded damned few personal logs during 
his Starfleet years.  The words to express feelings, hopes 
and regrets didn't come easy as he struggled throughout the 
evening.

	As he cursed again, the composed voice of the computer 
intruded on his turmoil.  "Incoming personal message for 
Admiral Paris."

	He raised his weary head and addressed the computer.  
"Route the message to my office."

	"Routing," the computer affirmed.

	The UFP symbols dissolved to reveal the face of Anne, 
his eldest daughter.  She stood stiffly at an antiseptic 
desk in an unfamiliar setting.  Out of sight, muted voices 
murmured and unfamiliar instruments quietly beeped and 
chirped.  "Dad, I know it's pretty late for you, so I'm 
just sending a quick message.  Hopefully, you'll read this 
in the morning before you go back to working on your damned 
starships."  Anne paused for breath, and to ease the bitter 
edge that had crept into her voice.

	"It's Mom.  She got the news this morning about Tom.  
It hit her pretty hard.  I guess that she had a seizure 
sometime shortly after noon.  The medical monitors in the 
house kicked in, but it still took emergency crews a bit of 
time to find her and bring her to the medical centre."

	Owen's eyes filled with tears.  *Gwynedd?  Sick?  
Dying?  Dead?*  He couldn't cope with the sudden shock.

	Anne, too, looked stricken.  "We think she's going to 
live, but the doctors aren't sure.  There was some 
complications and a possibility of brain damage and memory 
loss, due to her seizure.  We'll know more in the next 
twenty four hours."

	She sighed tiredly.  "Dad, I know that you and mother 
haven't spoken much since the trial.  God knows it's your 
fault, mostly, although Mom can be as stubborn as anyone, 
too.  I guess that's how we all turned out the way we did."  
She essayed a tired grin and continued.  "Please, come 
home, Dad.  We need you.  Mom needs you.  I know you 
probably won't, but, damn it, Dad, you owe it to us!"  The 
message came to an abrupt end.

	Owen blinked away the tears that came to his eyes.  
*Too many shocks in one day,* he thought, *at least for 
such an old man.*  "Computer," he ordered, "priority one 
channel to Starfleet.  Get me Admiral Odinaywa's office."

	As he waited for call to go through, Owen Paris paced 
the stateroom.  "Computer," he directed, "replay current 
dictation."

	The blandly female voice began, "Admiral Owen Paris to 
Lieutenant Tom Paris.  Today, I was informed by Starfleet 
that you are alive.  Your mother and your sisters have also 
been informed.  It is good to hear that you are alive. . . 
damn, that's no good . . . ."

	Owen grimaced.  "Computer, delete dictation."  The 
acknowledgment of his order was cut short as his call to 
Starfleet Headquarters was put through.

	"Owen, whyever are you calling me at this hour?" the 
genial Admiral questioned.  "According to my information, 
it's the middle of the night at Starbase Twelve.  There 
hasn't been an accident, has there?"

	"No, but there's been another problem, Jiri.  You know 
about Voyager, don't you?" The other man nodded then 
comprehension lit his features.

	"Ah, that's right, your son Tom was on that ship, 
wasn't he?"

	Owen nodded grimly.  "My wife's been taken ill with 
shock, I suspect.  I'm asking for leave to return to Earth.  
I need to be there, Jiri."

	His counterpart at Starfleet headquarters consulted 
some datapadds on his desk.  "I think that Starfleet can be 
compassionate considering the circumstances, Owen.  I'll 
direct Captain Bevok to rendezvous with you in, say, three 
hours?  His ship is heading to earth, anyway, to bring 
delegates for a bioengineering conference."  Jiri Odinaywa 
somberly closed the connection after Owen thanked him for 
the arrangements.

	Admiral Paris sat down and started making arrangements 
to temporarily transfer command of the Starbase and its 
operations to his second-in-command.  Files, logs and 
orders were tagged and annotated to ensure continued 
success in vital construction and repair work.  A brief 
conference with Captain Den Haas assured both officers that 
important matters had been covered.  Owen took a few 
minutes to freshen up, don a new uniform and eat a small 
meal.

	As the 0530 arrival of the Toscanelli drew near, Owen 
realized he'd neglected Tom's letter.  He cursed again, 
under his breath.  What in the hell was he going to write?  
A part of him wondered if Tom would even read what his 
father wrote.  *Considering the terms on which we last 
parted,* Owen mused, *I'd be surprised if he did.  But 
that's no excuse for me not to write something.*

	The computer chimed.  "The Toscanelli is within 
transporter range.  Captain Bevok is ready to welcome you 
aboard," came the voice of the Gamma shift commander.  Owen 
acknowledged the summons.  "I'll be in Transporter Room One 
in three minutes.  Paris, out."

	Hurriedly, he typed out a few words on the terminal at 
his desk and marked them for forwarding to Jackman's 
communications officer.  The Admiral turned decisively and 
left the room, for Earth and a home he hoped he still could 
find.

***

Letters never sent to you
Letters never sent
Incongruous, and overdue
Letters never sent

***

	An ordered string of energy streamed from the 
Starfleet ship to the heart of the alien relay station.  
The long pulse contained letters from over a hundred family 
members of Voyager's current crew, as well as important 
information from Starfleet Command.  As she looked out her 
flagship's viewport, Rachel Jackman crossed her fingers 
behind her back.  *Good fortune, Voyager,* she thought, 
then resolutely turned her back on the sight of so many 
hopes, dreams and heartbreaks being transmitted across the 
galaxy.

	At her desk were the last of the messages they'd 
received.  A sense of privacy forbade her to read them, 
although she couldn't help but glance across the string of 
names that were represented there.  A familiar title 
stepped out, and she caught herself, all unwilling, pausing 
to read Admiral Owen Paris's message.  It was so brief, 
that she'd done that without even knowing.  Just ten short 
words comprised the Admiral's entire letters.

Admiral Owen Paris to Lieutenant Tom Paris:
Son, forgive me?

	She sighed, sadly.  The sorry history of the Paris 
family was common knowledge among her cohort.  From the 
stories she'd heard during the EMH's briefing, and others 
of the material he'd downloaded from his matrix during his 
brief Alpha Quadrant stay, she'd begun to appreciate that 
the young Paris had, against all odds, become an 
outstanding officer.  But whether or not he could do as his 
father asked, well, that was another story entirely. Rachel 
Jackman turned off the display with a tired sigh and leaned 
back, rubbing her eyes sleepily.  There was nothing more 
she could do here today.

***

Life's a riddle, life's a dream,
Life's an accident
Now I'm gonna set them free
Letters never sent

***

On board Voyager, B'Elanna Torres worked frantically to 
download and save as much of the message stream as 
possible.  Letters from loved ones, family and home as well 
as vital Starfleet directives were being lost to the 
vagaries of the relay system and the interference of the 
damned Hirogen.  She ground her teeth and punched in 
another set of commands.  A dozen words and message tags 
appeared on her screen.  *Download and go back for more,* 
she mentally chanted as she sought to capture yet more of 
the degrading message pulse.

	As explosions rocked the ship, Voyager's Chief 
Engineer clung grimly to her console.  Half of her knew 
that she should abandon Astrometrics for Main Engineering.  
*Kahless, let Joe and Susan keep the engines running,* she 
prayed as she attempted to restore the link between her 
console and the relay station without success.  She slammed 
her fist and tried again.  Still nothing.  Slapping her 
combadge, she hailed the bridge only to hear the 
catastrophic news.  The station had been destroyed.  Worse 
yet, the entire relay system appeared to have gone offline.

	B'Elanna hung her head for a moment, until Klingon 
determination reasserted itself.  Diagnostics and 
subroutines began to piece the last message fragments 
retrieved into the rest.  There were still some isolated 
elements that didn't clearly belong with any one letter.  
B'Elanna eyed the few fragments longingly.  None of the 
letters that had come through were for her, she knew.  Not 
that she'd expected a letter from her mother, or her long 
absent father.  But Tom's letter that she'd been determined 
to bring through despite his brave assertion that he didn't 
need it, that B'Elanna desperately wanted to have found.

	As she scanned the results, her spirits sagged.  The 
computer reported that ninety three percent of the incoming 
messages had been logged in part or whole.  The letter from 
Admiral Owen Paris, however, was one of the most seriously 
degraded from the transfer.  Only the salutation was 
intact.  Angrily, B'Elanna wondered if that wasn't for the 
best.  From what little Tom had let drop, she expected that 
the letter was probably nothing more than a coldly formal 
dismissal.  *Better that he never get that at all, if 
that's the case,* she thought.

	Warily, she eyed the last fragments that the computer 
had been unable to place.  Nonsensical fragments of words, 
single letters and occasional phrases betrayed no clear 
sense of sender or recipient.  *Who knew whose son was 
being asked to forgive the writer?* B'Elanna fretted.  
*What a can of worms that were opened if that went to, say, 
Harry, instead of Gerron?"  She punched the commands that 
would lock these fragments into protected memory, then 
transferred the remaining messages to Neelix's terminal.  
Let the Talaxian distribute these notes.  She had a ship to 
put back together!

	Later that night, or early the next morning, B'Elanna 
slumped in exhaustion on the couch in her quarters.  Beside 
her, almost as begrimed and certainly as tired, stretched 
Tom Paris.  Amazingly, both had finally come off shift 
about a half an hour ago.  By mutual, if unspoken decision, 
they bypassed the party Neelix was hosting on the Holodeck.

	"Tom," B'Elanna managed finally.

	"Hmm?," came his sleepy answer.

	"I wasn't able to download your father's message.  All 
we got was the opening.  I'm sorry."

	Silence stretched on for a minute.  B'Elanna felt Tom 
shift closer to her, slipping an arm behind her back, 
feathering her spinal ridge to finally wrap around her 
waist.  "Thas all right," he slurred.  "I didn't expect 
anything, so I wasn't disappointed."

	B'Elanna secured her arm around his shoulder, pulling 
Tom closer into her embrace.  She looked down at the red-
gold hair nestled against the black and gold of her 
engineering smock and dropped a kiss on his head.  Somehow, 
she suppressed the fierce growl that rose inside her.  
*Someday, somehow, Admiral Paris, you and I are going to 
have a showdown over what you've done to the man I love,* 
B'Elanna vowed to herself, then hugged Tom close as the 
pair drifted off to sleep.

THE END