Star Trek - VOY - The Captain's Table 04 - The Fireship

Star Trek - VOY - The Captains Table, Book 4 of 6 - The Fireship.txt

STAR TREK VOYAGER CAPTAINS TABLE: THE FIRE SHIP [065-066-4.9]

By: DIANE CAREY

SYNOPSIS:

Captain Janeway ... in her own words!

"When I went into the escape pod, part of my hair had been burned off

above the shoulders. When I came out, it was an inch below the shoulder.

How much time was that?

I wanted to walk. I tried, but had no idea where 'down' was. My foil

poncho crinkled as several strong hands lifted me. My scorched hand

moved in a pathetic wave of thanks.

I saw figures over me, humanoid if not human. "Do you understand me?'

one of them asked. "Yes, I do.' My voice was raspy, smoke-rawed and out

of practice.

"I'm Ruvan, chief medic. This is Zell, our second in command.' He turned

to Zell and said, "She has burns over thirty percent of her body, but

only four percent are deep damage. I have them treated and compressed.

Her legs are the worst. She can walk, but slowly and with help. Another

week in that pod and her muscles would have atrophied.'

"At least we found her in time.' Zell said. "She's alive. We're all

alive for now. It's good enough."

The first officer turned to me and took a step closer. "Welcome aboard

the Zingara. I don't recognize your species. Who are you and where do

you come from?"'

The sale of this book without its cover is unauthorized. If you

purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that it was

reported to the publisher as "unsold and destroyed." Neither the author

nor the publisher has received payment for the sale of this "stripped

book."

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents

are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any

resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is

entirely coincidental.

An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS POCKET BOOKS, a division of

Simon & Schuster Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark of Paramount Pictures.

This book is published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster

Inc., under exclusive license from Paramount Pictures.

portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket

Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

ISBN: 0-671-01467-6

First Pocket Books printing July 1998

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Star Trek - VOY - The Captains Table, Book 4 of 6 - The Fireship.txt

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of

Simon & Schuster Inc.

Printed in the U.S.A.

"Naow, about going'back. Allowin'we could do it, which we can't, you

ain't in no fit state to go back to your home, an' we'vejest come on to

the Banks, workin'fer our bread ... an' with good luck we'll be ashore

again somewheres abaout the first weeks o' September."

-Captain Disko Troop Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling

"AND JUST HOW DID YOU FIND YOUR WAY TO nb CAFFAIN's Table?" a stout man

in oilskins asked her.

"I smelled fire. And trouble."

"Both bad things at sea. Please go on."

Captain Kathryn Janeway sipped at her brandy, then did as she had been

asked.

Maybe it was just cabbage stew. Trouble and cooked cabbage smelled a lot

alike.

Dark planets always made me uneasy. Humans had sixth, seventh senses.

I'd turned to listen. "This way," I said with an unnecessary beckon.

"Why that way?"

"I don't know."

The narrow street was wet with recent rain, and there was a sense of

steam around us. Dim figures came and went from doorways, cloaked and

unspeaking. My mind made something of it, but perhaps the downcast eyes

and drawn hoods were due only to the night chill. I hoped so, but ...

"Captain?"

Back to work.

I turned, and tripped on a faulty brick in the streetdoors, windows,

banners, and signs spun, and so did I. All elbows, a kneel tried to

catch myself, failed-and Tom Paris caught me.

A clumsy captain. That's what every crewman wants to see-his elegant,

surefooted, universally competent captain taking a spill on a grimy

street.

"Shall we dance, madam?" Paris's college-boy face beamed at me, backlit

by a gauzy street lamp.

"Quit grinning, Lieutenant," I snapped. "Starship captains don't trip.

And we never dance."

He smiled wider and arranged me on my feet, making me ponder

courts-martial for a second or two. "I'm sorry, Captain, I just thought

your injuries-"

"They're fine."

Another few steps padded away under our feet before I realized that my

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mood had completely changed. Caution had blended to intrigue. I could no

more turn back than fly.

We were heading down an alley that made me think of Old London's back

ways, heading toward a corner and another street. I wanted to get there,

but caution boiled up a certain restraint. A few seconds wouldn't

matter.

A passerby now looked up and nodded greeting. So other moods had changed

too?

"This place feels really familiar," I mentioned.

"I thought I was imagining it," Paris said. "No place in the Delta

Quadrant can possibly look familiar to us, unless we double back on our

course-"

-and we didn't do that," I abbreviated. "This place seems like an old

movie to me ... a Gothic mystery ... one of those stories with the

light in the castle tower and the woman in the diaphanous nightgown

running across a moor, casting back a fearful glance-"

Paris bumped his head on a hanging sign. "Looks like a western to me."

Casting him a glare, I said, "Lieutenant, let's get around that corner."

"Aye, aye, Captain."

An unexplained thrill ran down my arms as cobblestones kneaded our

soles. Holmes, are you hiding there around the corner? Watson? Wet and

foggy, yet cowled in city sounds and people's voices muffled behind

shutters. There were no horses' hooves or wagon wheels-this culture was

beyond that-but I found myself listening for a clop and clatter. The

smoke-yellow streetlamps were electrical but inadequate. I had a feeling

not of neglect but purpose. Just a feeling ... nothing but a feeling ...

Usually feelings didn't so completely guide me. Usually I depended upon

rationality, upon keeping feelings reined hard, for they were inaccurate

and undependable. Not how do I feel, but what do I think-that's what

guided me, and so far had kept us all alive. Feelings were too

susceptible to fears, and fear was a daily diet on this unending

mission. And feelings were too sudden.

Even good feelings had been reined in a long time ago. I enjoyed a few

things, but always kept control and never let myself enjoy too much. I

never went over the top and forgot where we were and why. This kind of

restraint, for a human being-a human woman-was unfortunate and even

unnatural, but serviceable for me. If I kept my feelings in their place,

good and bad, then I could handle the truly awful.

Like these last few days. Truly ... Just as I cast off my thoughts as

beginning to be a little too Vulcan, I realized the voices we were

hearing had gotten notably louder now that Paris and I had rounded the

corner. Nothing raucous-just easier to hear, even delineate individuals.

Somebody was having a pleasant time. Down the street, there was a

rowdier place somewhere.

There were several doorways, each with some kind of hawker's sign

swaying gently over it. When had a breeze come up?

I came to the first door on the left, snuggled into a leathery wooden

archway by a good meter, and the heavy ak (I open by what looked like an

aged-o door was proppe iron bootscraper. There was music, and a heady

scent of fire and food. My memories stirred and pushed me toward the

door.

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"Tavern of some kind." I looked up at the dreary wooden sign and the

carved letters.

"The Captain's Table ..

"Sounds nice," Paris commented. I peered briefly at the faded paint in

the shape of four stars in each corner of the sign. "Very nice, Tom. But

why is it written in English?"

He eyed the sign again. "English ..

At a table to my right, voices muttered and drew my attention.

"-two months out of Shanghai when a gale mauled our rudder clean off. We

hove to in high seas and sawed planks out of spare spars. For four days

we fitted a jury rudder, then piloted with lines and tackles around the

Cape."

"Eight thousand miles-a feat of seamanship wizardry for sure, Captain

Moodie."

"A compliment, Charlie, from a man who ran the Bora in a steam launch."

"Oh, yeah, me and Rosie could move mountains, give or take them

leeches."

As the two men paused, noticing me, I moved on into the pub, leaving

them some privacy.

The wooden door wouldn't open without my shoulder involved. The wood was

warm from inside, but dank on its surface from the fingers of fog

slipping under the archway. I walked down a short corridor that guided

me into a left turn, through a second archway with darkened timber and a

whiff of sea rot. As I turned, the Captain's Table tavern opened before

me.

A warm smoky cloak wrapped my shoulders and took me by the waist like an

old friend's arm at a fireside, coddling me into the clublike

environment of a country pub. To my left, there was a piano, but no one

was playing. Its rectangled rosewood top sprawled like a morning

airfield, reflecting incamated gaslight from sconces on the

paisley-papered wall. Before me was a raft of round tables, at the

tables were people. Beings. Mostly men, a few women-most looked human

but there were some aliens-who sat in wooden armchairs worn to a warm

grousefeather brown.

Over there, to the right along the wall was a glossy cherrywood bar with

moleskin stools. The age-darkened bar laughed with carved Canterbury

Tales-type figures. Over a mirrored backsplash a shelf was crammed with

whiskey jugs, ship's decanters, and every manner of bottle. Over the bar

and bottles glowered a huge Canadian elk head with a full rack, which

threw me for a moment because it was so undeniably of Earth. I looked

down at my uniform, expecting to see an English shooting suit. If I

looked out a window, would I see hedgerows and pheasants?

I might see England, except that the image would be rippled by the

occupant of a majolica bowl on the piano ... a lizard? At first I

thought it was part of the ceramic design on the bowl, but no, it was a

real live gecko, a mottled yellow-green chap with two-thirds of a tail,

and he was enjoying feasting on the conch fritters in the bowl. I

would've warned somebody that a creature had crawled in, except that

several people from a table over there were watching the gecko and

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commenting on the length of its regrowing tail.

A British pub in the Delta Quadrant with conch fritters and a live-in

lizard. Hmm ... Many of the people glanced up-some nodded, others

raised their glasses to me, and still others glanced, then ignored me

further. A young man in a cable-knit Irish sweater, with longish ivory

hair and a voice like a Druid ghost's, softly greeted me, "Captain."

How did he know?

As I paused and returned his look, I noticed that there was glass

crunching under my boot. As the company turned for their own look, a

lull in the general movement of the place made me notice what they'd

been doing-that several people were scooping up spilled food and

righting toppled glasses and chairs. Here and there someone was nursing

a bruised face or a bleeding lip. There'd been a fight.

Then a fellow wearing a maroon knit shirt, with a sailing ship and

scrolled lettering embroidered on the left side of the chest, nodded and

invited, "Welcome aboard, Captain. Relax. We'll have it all cleaned up

in no time."

Beside him, a large creature, with a mirrored medallion on his chest and

a set of antlers rivaling the elk's on his head, nodded elegantly as the

lamplight played on the hollow bones of his face. He was demonic, yes,

but still somehow welcoming. I didn't feel threatened at all. Even my

instincts were voiceless.

The embroidery on the shirt didn't really surprise me-if a planet had

water and wind, there was also some sort of sailing vessel. Common sense

of function demanded certain designs, just as telling time and traffic

control had a certain universal sense that could be counted upon just

about everywhere. There were only so many ways to run an intersection.

But the two who had spoken were clearly human and shouldn't have been in

the Delta Quadrant at all. My crew and myself were the only humans in

the Delta Quadrant.

I rotated that a couple of times in my mind until I finally didn't

believe it at all. Most of these people looked very human indeed, though

quite a range of types-not unusual for a tavern in a spacelane, in a

populated sector with civilized pockets.

"My crew was a mixture of types from all over," someone was saying-a

young man's voice, but without the flippancy of youth. I looked at the

nearest table and saw several people listening intently to a small-boned

young man in a blue jacket with red facing running down the chest. His

white neckerchief was loosened, and though he seemed relaxed, he also

seemed troubled by his own story.

"The ship wasn't even ours. It was a converted merchantman on loan to

us. Many of her timbers had rot in them, and though we possessed forty

guns, several of those were inoperative. It was in the afternoon that

the enemy closed on us, and the breeze was fading. We would soon be

outmatched and crippled. On our last move, the enemy's sprit caught our

mizzen shrouds-"

"Oh, my," someone uttered, and half the company shuddered with empathy.

The young man nodded somewhat cheerily at this. "Yes, but I lashed it

there. Why not? I thought my ship would sink otherwise, and I wanted to

fight! So I lashed up to something that would keep me afloat. My enemy's

ship."

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The table's company laughed in awed appreciation. I nudged a little

nearer to keep listening.

"And I got it, by God, I got it," he said, shaking his head in reverie

of a rugged moment. "Their shots passed straight through the timbers of

our gun deck as if going through a straw mattress. They invited me to

surrender before action became a slaughter. They had this odd conception

that we didn't have it in us to establish ourselves as a power with

which to reckon. But I'd hardly begun. I turned and simply told them

such. My crew was so enthused that my riflemen in the tops dispatched

the enemy's helmsmen one by one, and then a brisk fellow of mine vaulted

the yards and dropped a grenade into the enemy's magazine. Such a roar!

Their sails were lit afire!"

"And you were still made off to them?" the fellow in the maroon shirt

asked.

I stopped moving forward because I was now listening to the dark-eyed

young officer in the blue coat with red facings.

"Oh, yes," he answered. "If they sank, they would drag us down. I had

only three guns left, but might as well keep shooting. But the other

captain's ship was a goner and he soon struck. Serapis's crewmen were

well thankful to offboard their vessel, you might well understand. A

sinking wreck is bad enough, but a sinking and burning wreck soon

becomes legend. We unlashed, and off we limped. Our entire gun deck was

gone."

An unfamiliar alien standing nearby asked, "So you won?

Or you lost?"

The officer craned around for a glance at the question, saw that this

creature might be someone who wouldn't or shouldn't already know the

answer, and offered, "My opponent's ship was a brand-new warship. Mine

was a halfrotted old merchant. My ship sank shortly after his, but his

was the costher loss and we denied the enemy domination of vital

commerce and supply lanes."

The young captain took a sip from a horn-shaped mug that looked like

pewter. He sank back a bit in his chair and stared at the tabletop,

seeing something quite else. "I heard later that the other captain had

been made a knight for that action. I told my men that if I ever met him

again, by God, I'd make him a lord!"

Everyone laughed again-and so did I-and somebody, a woman, commented,

"You're a brat, John."

The young man nodded. "Oh, thank you." Someone else said, "That's a

pretty fair story. Too short, though."

"It seemed rather lengthy at the time. I'll be longer winded from now

on."

"Do that. Short stories are for musers, not doers."

For a moment the conversation died down and I heard other things. Faint

music from somewhere, but not from the piano ... Dueling pistols on a

wall plaque, castle torchdres, coach lamps, and railroad lanterns, a

shelf with little unmatched stone gargoyles, a huge Black Forest cuckoo

clock with a trumpeting elk carved on top of flared oak leaves and big

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pulls in the shapes of pine cones, devil-may-care patrons huddled around

the tables like provocateurs in a novel, and a large silver samovar that

needed polishing-this place boggled the mind with unexperienced

memories. Was I bearing the groan of oak branches and waves against a

seawall? The mutter of robber barons plotting in a back room? It was all

seductively Victorian, and I felt right at home.

In a fireplace burned real wood, and somehow from it came the earthy

aroma of autumn leaves like my grandfatheir had heaped up and burned

outside the big farmhouse every October. He hadn't been a farmer, but he

had a good time pretending.

Keeping my voice down, I turned my face just enough to speak over my

shoulder to Paris. "This place looks like the Orient Express stopped at

a Scottish pub in the Adirondacks. This isn't like Earth, Tom ... this

is Earth." He didn't respond, so I added, "I wonder if there's a back

door to home. Somebody here has been to the Alpha Quadrant. Maybe they

can show us their shortcut. Give me your tricorder."

I put my hand out, still looking around the pub, but Paris didn't give

me his tricorder. Irritated that he could be so stupefied, I swung

around to snap him out of it and found that he wasn't behind me anymore.

"Paris?" I called back toward the hooded entrance, but he didn't come

out. I went to the archway and looked down the musky corridor to the

street door, but he wasn't there.

I turned into the pub again and looked around, taking more care to check

each person, each being. A pale-haired man, very thin and not tall,

stood at the bar, dominating a group of others who were listening to

him. His dark uniform coat, lathered with ribbons and medals, had a high

collar and tails, and the right sleeve with its thick cuff was pinned up

to the coat's chest-that arm was missing at the shoulder. He certainly

wasn't Lieutenant Paris, and neither were any of those around him.

Down the bar a stool or two were some men in naval pilot coats and sea

boots. I found myself surfing the walls for a portal back in time, and

way off in space.

I looked up a set of worn wooden stairs with a spindled railing, but

there was no sign of Paris.

Had he gone back to the street? Why would he?

I turned to go out, but someone caught my arm. I looked-a young man,

human, five feet eleven, if I reckoned right .. . and if I was Kathryn

Janeway, that was a United States Marine uniform. A captain. A flier. He

smiled, and there was a very slight gap between his front teeth that gave

a homey appearance to his narrow face, with its green eyes slightly

downturned at the outside corners.

"Have a seat with us, Captain?" The Marine turned, not letting go of my

arm, to a group of people at one of the larger tables, and he gestured

to the nearest man. "Josiah, make room for the lady."

"Actually, I've lost track of my crewmate-"

"That's how it works at the Captain's Table," the woman said. "Don't

fret over it. He'll be fine."

Annoyed, I peered at her briefly, pausing in the middle of a dozen

thoughts and wondering if she were really a captain, as everyone here

seemed to be. She wore a simple turtlenecked knit sweater, olive green,

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with three little crew pins on the collar, too small to read from here.

She was unremarkable looking, average in most ways, yet self-satisfied,

and had a bemused confidence behind her eyes that said she'd crewed a

few voyages. Beside her was a pleasant-faced Vulcan, which pummeled the

lingering theory that I was imagining the Alpha Quadrant elements. He

had typically Vulcan dark hair, but swept to one side instead of

straight across the forehead, and he wore a flare-shouldered velvet robe

with a couple of rectangular broaches. Whether rank or ceremony, I

couldn't tell. He motioned for me to take the chair they cleared, and

the woman in the olive sweater nudged a little birch canoe full of

walnuts toward me, showing a flesh-colored fingerless glove on her right

hand. Looked like an old injury, but it didn't seem to bother her.

The man called Josiah, older and more grizzled than most others in the

knot of patrons at this table, was now standing and offering me his

chair. "Right here, madam."

Smoldering aroma of burning leaves ... the musky scent of old wood ...

the comforting nods and touches of the people around me, the music, the

elk head, the paisley wallpaper ... I felt so much at home that I

lowered into the chair in spite of having a crewman now missing.

" ... and that, my friends, is how I come to be sitting here with you,

sipping this excellent brandy."

Standing ovbr Janeway, the man called Josiah turned toward the bar and

called, "Cap! Shake the reefs out, man!

Let's have those mugs here while there's still a beard on the waves!"

She had no idea what that meant, but she liked the sound of it. Her hand

didn't go through the table, at least. She lowered herself cautiously

because she felt there was still the chance another part of her would go

through the chair.

A tall man with white breeches and a double-breasted blue jacket left

the clique around the one-armed man at the bar and approached our table.

He had a deep voice, uncooperative dark hair, and he was irritatingly

proper in his manner. "Captain, welcome to our little secret," he said.

"Care for a pme of whist?"

"Not right now ... Captain," she said, daring the obvious while she

tried to place his jacket in time and came up with about 1830. Maybe

earlier. Noncommittally she added, "Just getting the feel of the place."

"It takes a moment for the logical mind," this tall man said, and pulled

another chair up to the table for himself, tapping a set of playing

cards on the table, then leaving the stack alone. Nobody else seemed to

want to play cards right now, and he didn't seem willing to push.

"There's record of places like this," Janeway mused. "That planet in the

Omicron Delta region ... people see what they feel like seeing. Relive

fond memories, great victories-" -or make new ones," the Vulcan said.

Now the cloud of dimness rose a little more before her eyes, and she

noticed that under the sleeveless velvet and satin panels of his

ceremonial robe he was wearing a red pullover shirt with a black collar

and gold slashes on the cuffs. It looked familiar ... In the flood of

familiarity and comfort here, she dismissed the nagging hint.

The man who wanted to play cards sat rod-straight opposite her-how could

he be sitting and still be standing?-and in the fingers of yellowish

lamplight she could now see that his uniform was weathered, even frayed

at the shoulders, and there was a little hole on one lapel. This didn't

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Star Trek - VOY - The Captains Table, Book 4 of 6 - The Fireship.txt

bother the others at the table or short him any of their respect as they

turned to him while he spoke, and that told me something about him. So

she listened too.

"This place has a mystical characteristic that newcomers find boggling,"

he said. "Certainly I did. I took the better part of the next voyage to

dismiss the Captain's Table to a bad bottle."

"Magic comes hard to the organized mind," the Vulcan said.

Janeway looked at him, a little amazed. Vulcans didn't buy into

mysticism any more than she did. Janeway saw in his expression that she

was right-he was much more amused than serious. The woman in the olive

sweater smiled and nudged the Vulcan as if he were being naughty. What

an unlikely couple. They obviously knew each other very well, and sile

got the idea they always sat together.

"I don't believe in magic," Janeway told them. "There's obviously some

bizarre science at work here. I've seen-"

The dark-haired officer's thick brows came down. "You call this science,

Your Ladyship?"

She paused, waiting for a laugh at his calling her that, but nobody did

laugh. Not even a chuckle. She sensed the lack of humor was something

about him more than something about her.

"Once upon a time," she answered, "people thought fire was of the gods.

We thought the stars were heaven. Then we made fire for ourselves and

went to the stars. We learned there's no true alchemy, no 'magic' that

can't be mastered eventually, but just science we haven't figured out

yet." She gjanced around again and sighed. "It's funny ... I don't really

want to figure this out. It looks like Earth, but ... it's an Earth I'd

make up myself. And that can't be real."

"Real enough, Captain," another voice interrupted. It was the elegant

officer with the tailed coat and the medals '1,I and the missing arm. He

now turned from the clique at the bar, most of whom followed him as he

approached our table. "The competent commander takes events as they come

and acts upon the dictates of duty."

"Duty often fails to proclaim its requisites before the crucial moment,

Your Lordship," the Vulcan said.

The woman in the sweater grimaced and chided, "That's it-lip off to a

historic luminary. Brilliant."

"It's 'an' historic," he dashed back fluidly. "Like 'an' horse."

"Or 'an horse's ass."' The woman looked at me again. "Don't try to

figure it out all at once. You'll just end up sitting in a corner making

sock monkeys."

The Vulcan made one elegant nod. "I have seven myself."

Janeway squinted at him. Was this all a show by some benevolent

traveling theater group?

"I think the captain should tell her first story right now," the woman

went on, looking at me again. "No point wading through hot air we've

already beard, right? Dive, dive, dive-"

"Perhaps," the Vulcan said to his cocky tablemate, "you would like to

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Star Trek - VOY - The Captains Table, Book 4 of 6 - The Fireship.txt

regale us with one of your tales of grand heroism. The time you sat on

the barkentine's deck at dawn, cracking thirty dozen eggs for the crew's

breakfast and feeding the drippings to the ship's cat. Or the time you

fell off the trader's quarterdeck step while carrying a can of varnish-"

"They were defining moments," the woman nipped.

Janeway was about to politely decline the invitation to relive one of

the many tense and disturbing incidents that had happened to her and her

ship since the accident that had dropped them in the Delta Quadrant,

when yet another blast of incongruity appeared at the entry arch.

Pushing to her feet, Janeway hissed, "That's a Cardassian!"

Her arms were clutched from both sides and she was pulled back into my

chair.

"A Cardassian captain, " the Vulcan said. "All captains are given entry

here."

Trying to get the pulse of this place, she buried what she really wanted

to say and instead pointed out, "That can be its own kind of problem.

It's one thing to club with other captains. It's something else to ask

captains to club with those who have attacked our people and killed our

shipmates."

They all fell silent at her words. They eyed the Cardassian just as

Janeway did. Had each of them seen an enemy captain in this place? Had

that been the cause of the bar fight they were now pushing out of the

way?

The fact that they didn't argue with her was revealing. They were

captains. Loyalties, emotions, and a sense of purpose tended to cun deep

among those who had held in their charge the lives of others, in such

intimate conditions as a vessel. And more, many here must have defended

innocents from various aggressors-Janeway saw that in their eyes right

now and heard it in their silence. None of them wanted to tell her she

was wrong.

Given entry, he had said. Not were welcome.

Suddenly Janeway thought this place a lot more interesting.

"Did you get another command, Captain Jones?" the Vulcan asked the man

who had told the story.

"Yes," John said, and his gaze fell to his own hands cupped around his

mug. "Yes ... but one is most definitely not the same as another."

"That's hard on the heart, I know, John," the woman said to the man who

had told the tale. "To move on to another ship after the one you love is

destroyed."

Janeway added, "Somehow we find it in ourselves to move on if we have

to."

"Have you 'had to,' Captain?" the Vulcan asked, his hazel eyes gleaming

almost mischievously.

Janeway nodded.

"Go ahead," John invited, pushing a frothing mug toward her as several

were delivered to the table. "Tell your tale."

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Star Trek - VOY - The Captain's Table 04 - The Fireship

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