Valentine's Day story - 2003

Voy_Girl · **Mon Mar 24, 2003 2:54 pm**

Mariah was extremely bewildered. During her early, replicated breakfast, a woman she used to
crawl through Jeffries tubes with had come up to her, patted her heavily on the shoulder and
asked her how she was feeling. She had ended with ‘everybody needs someone to take care of
them’ and left Mariah alone at her table again.

She guessed she must look as restless, tired and jumpy as she felt. She chewed on her plain
toast and let her mind wander. Was it so visible? The fact that the biggest struggle for her
wasn’t to survive from day to day, but to exist emotionally at all.

Ever since she was young enough to take deep emotional damage, she’d had a hard time
trusting other people. At all. During her last year at the Academy, her closest friend had been a
cactus, which she kept in the window next to her bed. A place where she, every morning,
would take a second to overlook the view outside; the wide lawn, the big tree and a huge
building. She would watch the seasons come, change her framed world, to leave and be
replaced. Exactly like her shallow friends during that time came, lied, and disappeared.

***

The next two days passed like in a slightly shifting blur for Mariah. All she did was work, eat,
sleep, shower, work until she was exhausted, and then push her body to the limits to manage to
work some more. And each night, when she went to bed, she felt an odd satisfaction in
managing to not bump into Cameron.

And every night, when she had placed herself under the soft covers, she read a chapter in a
hard-bound book she’d replicated months ago. It was about a young boy who ran away from
home, and stayed too far away, too long. Mariah hoped he would be greeted with tears of joy
when he returned home. She had yet to read the conclusion, and her version actually did not
appeal to her all that much. Because she knew, that would not be happening to her.
During her darkest minutes, she made herself believe that what ever happened to the boy in the
book, would turn out to be the complete opposite, in her case.

****

Voy_Girl · **Mon Mar 24, 2003 2:56 pm**

Warily, she paced around outside the holodeck entrance. No one in sight in either direction of the hallway. It was nearly ten minutes past the time Cameron had wanted to meet her. His message had been waiting for her when she got off her shift that same afternoon.

Boiling with anger, and the bitter realization that he might not be coming at all, Mariah decided to step inside without him. Perhaps he already was.

Just when she was about to take the few steps needed to enter, the sudden, steady pounding of those feared klaxon lights froze her moves. A red alert.

Before she knew it, both Cameron and Commander Chakotay were behind her, gently pushing her down the hallways. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought that both men had come from the holodeck. Not what she had expected as a private way to talk things through, and so she pushed that thought away.

"You’re both going on an away mission. Now!" Chakotay responded her anxious, confused look and continued pushing her forward.

Cameron ran past her, and continued ahead, while Chakotay still walked swiftly behind her.
Mariah just let herself be swept along, though she knew were they were going. Other busy crewmembers appeared and disappeared like in a blur in front of Mariah’s eyes.
She’d only been on one real away mission before, and that had been over two years since.

"Shuttle bay one," Chakotay hissed in her ear, at the same time he passed her and started jogging hastily.

At this point, adrenaline took over Mariah’s body, and she finally managed to snap into the perfect, purposeful Starfleet member, who knew her place and what she should do before she did it.
Before she knew it, she ran head over heels.

Lxe · **Mon Mar 24, 2003 9:13 pm**

i love the story ann, brilliant work as always...

waitng for the next chap, please don't leave me hanging

Thomas · **Tue Mar 25, 2003 8:27 am**

^ What she said.

Voy_Girl · **Tue Mar 25, 2003 3:19 pm**

Don't worry, finally I have the plot all figured out!

Voy_Girl · **Wed Mar 26, 2003 3:27 pm**

Aboard the Flyer reigned a hectic, near frantic tempo. Every order or idea was executed under resolute silence and clenched teeth.

Every now and then, when the steady stream of data to be treated stopped for the blink of an eye, Cameron and Mariah could glance up from their respective stations. They could exchange a look or two; and for the moment relieve their mutual wondering regarding why just them were chosen to that hastily mission.

Voyager was caught in a flux of invisible gas, filled with particles and dust. Harmless on the surface, but when it was scratched open, the danger was revealed...

The Delta Flyer was heading to an uninhibited planet fairly near the distressed ship, which according to the sensors, had many findings of a material they could use to modify a few torpedoes. In that way blast their way through the cloud. All according Seven of Nine’s swift calculations, on which the whole crew had to rely.

”We’ll soon be able to see the planet for ourselves,” Tom announced from his obvious spot at the helm, drawing an uninterested hm from Emerett, and no response whatsoever from Jones or the deeply concentrated Tuvok.

When he faced such cool team members, Tom continued to focus his energy on routing a map to a safe landing place. He should simply let the others see their destination for themselves when the planet was within visual range.

***

Lxe · **Thu Mar 27, 2003 12:50 am**

come on keep writing,

great story honey

Thomas · **Thu Mar 27, 2003 11:14 am**

Wow, come on.

Voy_Girl · **Thu Mar 27, 2003 3:14 pm**

I'm writing, I promise you...

Voy_Girl · **Fri Mar 28, 2003 3:56 pm**

This is but a piece of a longer chapter:

Thick, never-ending lianas stretched over the surface, like vicious guards. The four man strong team wandered around in a damp forest, with blinking tricorders and every muscle tense.

The planet had three climatic regions, one seeming worse than the other. The most vast zone was a dry, barren desert. The second began where the desert slowly turned into a swamp, filled with uncountable holes and ravines filled up to their edges with a beige, gluey liquid.

The smallest region was also the one with the most inhospitable image. Huge trees, unpredictable bogs... and a damp, always present heat. Drops of moist formed and trickled down the sleek leaves, raining down on the ground directly beneath, turning it into mud .

And, of course, the latter zone contained the most of the material they were looking for.

”What are we doing in this rain forest?” Mariah complained and dragged her boot up from the deep unknown interior of a hungry, deceiving tuft, where it had sunk down.

She saw how Tuvok and Paris exchanged looks, and she knew how they wondered why she of all people was with them. She wished she could clench her teeth, stop wining and toil along obediently, but her private shield of illusion had been taken over by the forest.
Almost every trace of the perfect crewmember was yet again wiped away, melted by the sticky heat.

***

-_-VoyagerFanatic-_- · Rear Admiral Joined: 20 Jun 2002 Posts: 4126

kewl chap... you had better be writing... *subtle threat... very subtle

*

Thomas · **Sat Mar 29, 2003 4:43 am**

Wow!

Hope that subtle threat does its job.

Voy_Girl · **Sat Mar 29, 2003 2:39 pm**

Now I've actually written 6 pages in a note book. This is only one...

Anyway, I don't have time to type more of it up... I'm going to see a movie in 20 minutes.

---------------------

Somewhere deep inside the thickly foliaged forest, the group had stopped to brainstorm. They needed a solution, a concrete settlement to what their next step should be.

"I think we should split up," Tuvok announced calmly, after listening to the younger people babble for a while.

Cameron and Mariah both started to look nervously around, trying to find a spot where they could rest their eyes on something else but interpretable green. Soon enough they both settled for looked at one another as a safe, steady point.

"Good idea, Tuvok," Tom complimented hastily, noticing the young couple’s mixed eagerness and doubt. ”I think Tuvok and I should go this way, since we both have fairly dry boots still, and... Whatever, just go that way you two.”

Cameron and Mariah smiled at Paris' feeble attempt to excuse himself and the Vulcan, and they quickly moved towards the natural path Tom had pointed out. It was surely there, ready for them to follow.

"If we find something, we’ll hail you!" Cameron howled while he tangled his sometimes unmanageable limbs out of a bush to the side of the thin path.

”We will do the same.” Tuvok’s voice floated back to them, distant. It indicated that the two
senior officers had begun their walk in the opposite direction.

***

Lxe · **Sat Mar 29, 2003 7:00 pm**

hey cool chap. great story ann, waitng for more chaps.

-_-VoyagerFanatic-_- · Rear Admiral Joined: 20 Jun 2002 Posts: 4126

looks like my very subtle threat worked..

kewl chap btw

shall i issue more subtle threats

Thomas · **Sun Mar 30, 2003 4:15 am**

If it gets us more story.

Voy_Girl · **Sun Mar 30, 2003 8:02 am**

"This following chapter has nothing to do with subtle threaths. Nothing at all."

Thanks everyone!

-----------------------------

They stumbled along insistent, both Cameron and Mariah pretended to grow more and more interested in where they put their feet, instead of actually talking to each other, when they finally were all alone.

”Look at that!” Cameron suddenly gasped, his breathless voice filled with awe, the importance of feet forgotten.

”It’s a bunch of lianas,” Mariah stated flatly as she caught up with him, causing her contemplated boyfriend’s jaw to drop unflattering.

”That is a piece of art!”

”Art that we must balance our way over,” Mariah sighed and rolled her eyes.

Before them lay a deep ravine, stretching at least fifteen meters from their edge to the other side.

”I’m reading a huge concentration of Seven’s recommendation... On the other side.” Cameron frowned when he studied the misfortunate readings on his tricorder.

”Then we’ll have to get there.” She still sounded utterly bored, but at the same time she looked pretty resolute.

”Mariah?”

”Otherwise we’ll be stuck here, right?” She pulled up the sleeves on her dirty uniform jacket until they reached her elbows, looked out over their fair share of work, and swallowed.

The rift was wide, but several of those majestic trees had over the years stretched their branches over to the other side, and the many strong lianas that hung down from them had grown thick and into one another. They constricted an old-fashioned suspension bridge, thin at
some places, lianas wired together to the size of a human thigh a others.

Other lianas still hung free, straight down from the trees they sprung from, resembling to ropes.

Cameron leaned as far as he could out over the ravine, tried to not look down at the landscape, which ran wild deep down in the steep cavity. He grabbed one of those loose lianas, and pulled it to him. ”We can hold on to these.” He tried to sound convincing and brave, for Mariah’s
sake, but he couldn’t keep the uncertainty away form his voice.

With resolution, he took as step out, onto the tough liana rug. ”Can you believe I’m afraid of heights?” He squeezed out between clenched teeth.

”Be careful!” Mariah gasped, unconsciously keeping her fingers crossed for his sake.

”Don’t you worry!” He whimpered helplessly as his next step strained the liana fibre and caused them to creak.

”Take it easy!” She hissed with an unnatural, high-pitched voice.

But Cameron didn’t hear her; he shut out everything but the stout tree trunk immediately on the other side. Sure, he did concentrate on where to put his trembling hands and feet too, but overall nothing upset his plan. Even the occasional strained, sobbing breaths behind him had
little effect.

*

After much puffing, blowing and groaning. After inches of hesitating shuffling steps. After many sticky, slippery or thin spots, Cameron could finally take one final leap and again feel fairly firm ground under his shaky feet.

He embraced the small part which he could stretch around of the tree, that he’d kept eye-contact with. Then he took a deep, shaky breath and waited for his body, distended with adrenaline, to calm down and leave nothing but the blatant rush everyone should enjoy.

It took him a moment to stumble back to the present; and Mariah’s shrill voice.

”I’m okay! Come!” He turned around and waved encouraging at her.

If Mariah would have been close enough to see his facial expression, she would have realized his eagerness was just a part of his adrenaline rush and a childish, longing agony.

”All right, I’m coming! What did you expect?” She shrugged and grabbed the nearest liana firmly. She wanted him to see that she surely could be brave, and wild too.

The liana felt unfamiliar in her hand; sticky, raspish and unpredictable. It was the first time she’d touched something that could be called a tree out in the wild. Otherwise she’d just spent time with holographic replicas, or the silent pine trees behind her grandfather’s bungalow in Canada.

***

-_-VoyagerFanatic-_- · Rear Admiral Joined: 20 Jun 2002 Posts: 4126

Thomas · **Tue Apr 01, 2003 10:42 am**

Bravo Bravo!

Voy_Girl · **Tue Apr 01, 2003 1:38 pm**

Voy_Girl · **Tue Apr 01, 2003 1:39 pm**

Thomas · **Thu Apr 03, 2003 10:15 am**

Guess not.

Voy_Girl · **Thu Apr 03, 2003 2:30 pm**

”You’re doing fine!”

She constantly heard his words ring in her head, although he probably only had said them once.
She couldn’t push them away. Needed some encouragement; wasn’t as self-reliant as
Cameron.

*

Mariah was nearly halfway over, when the one thing that couldn’t happen, happened. She
balanced on a single liana, while struggling to get a firm hold on one of the free, swinging ones
that seemed to be everywhere around her.

The liana she stood on suddenly creaked, and slowly began to unwind. Mariah didn’t notice at
first; not before the toe of her boot was stuck in the hole which became all larger, threatening
to swallow her foot and eventually her whole body.

Mariah squeaked; frightened. Immediately, blood rushed up to her head. It pounded in her ears
and clouded her ability to think clearly. She had never been good at acting under stress.

Thomas · **Sat Apr 05, 2003 11:39 am**

And.....?

Voy_Girl · **Sat Apr 05, 2003 1:31 pm**

And... I don't have time to type it up... Sorry. I'll do it tomorrow, but I do have it in a notebook, ready and steady.