Ad Astra :: Star Trek Fanfiction Archive ^{Beam me up, Scotty.}

Chapter Text

Well, as far as substantial shifts in his perspective in a short space of time go, this one wouldn’t make the top - that one was still solidly ‘finding out the attempted mind control cybernetics in his head were Federation tech’ - but it was definitely up there. 

The Captain isn’t Secret Police. Which is good news for him and his current and present survival. Also she’s terrifying and definitely batshit crazier than the average Starfleet Captain, and he’d hate to see that on their side. Plus, it turns out she’s very good at coming up with ways to thwart them.

Well, at least plausibly thwart them. He’s hopeful her plan will work, but he doesn’t know how far the Secret Police will be willing to go when this goes public, or what contingency plans they might have in place. 

It will be over when it’s over. Except it won’t, because Respite has to stay safe, and there will be a next murderous plot to thwart. 

At least he’ll have another ally to face that one. Or, hopefully. Chester might want to stay far away after this, or at the very least have nothing to do with him, and he couldn’t blame her. 

Better to focus on thwarting this one, first.

A few hours later, Piper watches Chester stagger into the shuttle and collapse heavily into the pilot’s seat, for once actually looking tired. She eyes him. “Any more accusations about how this means I’m secretly working for Section 31?” she asks, exhausted and wry. 

He snorts. “If the secret police are training their operatives to walk, unarmed, into Jem’Hadar camps to keep their cover, well, I never had a chance.” He shakes his head, doesn’t mention that he never had much of a chance anyway. “That takes a special kind of crazy.”

“Thanks,” she says. “I’m sort of counting on that being a bit beyond their expectations.” 

“What now?” he asks. “You think it’ll work?”

“Well, I can’t say I’ve got a better idea,” she says, “so I’ll give it a try, and if it doesn’t work, hopefully we’ll have enough warning to come up with something else. I can’t say we’ve got a wealth of choices just now.”

No. They don’t.

He sighs, and sits down in the co-pilot’s seat.  “Look, I had the measure of you wrong, and I’m damn lucky to be wrong.” 

She snorts. “Thanks, I think.”

“But the secret police are clearly interested in the Interpreter , even if they didn’t manage to get a recruit in the Captain’s chair to start with, and they’re interested in you. Whether this works or not, making this move is only going to mean they’re keeping a closer watch on you.”

Chester gives him a long, deeply annoyed look. “Hawthorne, I almost got gut shot to keep you in one piece. You’d think that would have made you trust me a tiny bit more.”

Piper shrugs. “I said if I lost comm contact I'd get worried,” he deadpans. He slumps over in his chair, and starts pulling off his boot. “I didn’t beam down there expecting to get out in one piece.” He dumps the steak knife out onto the floor. “But I thought there was a chance I might take her with me.”

Chester looks at the knife, and then at him, an evaluating look that doesn’t come out anywhere in the neighborhood of flattering. “With a table knife.”

 “Stupid, really. I wouldn’t have stood a chance,” he says, flexing his prosthetic foot, checking for scrapes, and pulling his boot back on. Gull beeps agreement with his stupidity. “It was good you managed to bluff the way you did, on why I was there. That’s what I’m trying to say. What I told you - what I know about these -” he points at the cybernetics in his head. “That - I need that to stay between us. They’re going to be paying attention, and if they know that I know about those - they might assume others know and start trying to guess who, and that would put … people at risk. Without them knowing.” He shakes his head. “They might already be trying to guess, but I’d rather not go knocking on that door.”

“No shit,” she says. “No, I don’t want you being a target, let alone anyone who might have been helping you. As far as they’re concerned, I’ll be the overenthusiastic brand new captain who had a fit of idiotic idealism and decided to pick a fight with them.”

He lets out a sigh of relief for Marbog. “Thank you.”

“You’re one of my crew,” she says. “I’m not hanging you out to dry, and I’m not abusing the trust you put in me when you accepted this post.” She pauses and gives him a very wry look. “However little it was at the time. And beyond that–you’re a fellow officer. If we can’t rely on each other, we might as well forget this whole Starfleet business, pack it in and call off the boldly going. You’ve had that trust badly enough abused, in a way that should never have happened. I can’t imagine how terrible that must have been, or how lonely. I’m not going to add to the long list of those betrayals.”

He feels the impact in his gut, like an unsecured piece of cabling had come loose and struck him across the midsection. He lets out a snort without even thinking about it. His boss had been a fellow Starfleet officer, and so had every other official he had tried to report the problems to. His team had been fellow officers, and they hadn’t been able to rely on him to keep them safe.  

But he’s not ready to pack it in just yet. 

“I’m still here because - well, I still think it’s worth keeping up this whole Starfleet business. I think there are more fellow officers that can - should - be relied on than not,” he lets out a huff of chagrined laughter, “which includes you, now. But,” he adds, “the reason I could be betrayed was that I believed that I could rely on my fellow Starfleet Officers and their superiors, and, well.” He makes a face. “The people we can’t trust don’t always show up in black leather. My boss didn’t, his boss didn’t. She didn’t, when she showed up on the base with her cadre. I’m grateful to have been wrong about you, but - be careful, when it comes to who you trust with this. And, you know, in general.”  

“I understand,” she says. “But they’ll already know what side I’m on when we pull this off. I’ll have a target on me, and it’ll be a big one. I’m all right with that.

“But you’ve had your trust betrayed enough. I won’t risk it with you.” She pauses, looking down. “I came back to Starfleet to get us away from this ends-justify-the-means thinking, even though I really didn’t want to be used as a killer again. Silly me to have thought I wouldn’t end up doing a lot of heavy lifting to get it done.”

“Welcome to the club,” Piper deadpans. “I came back for the heavy lifting. The officers that can be relied on - the Starfleet that I joined, that you wanted to come back to - it’s worth the lifting. And this secret police needs to be pulled out of it. But, if this is any indication, there’s a lot of weeding to do to stop their damage before anyone can even start to get at the roots. That’ll be a lot of lifting.” He looks at her seriously. “This is a long game. I always knew it was. And if you’re on-side - you need to know that targets on you - that those risks - some of them are going to be necessary, yes, but some of them - well, like I said, I just found someone else I can trust. I don’t want you gone so quick. Besides,” he adds, “you’re the Captain. If people knowing I know the truth puts targets on the circle around me - the circle around you is that much bigger. I’d rather ‘Pret not go the same way as - well.” He makes a face. “You know. Just - be careful.” 

“I understand,” she says again, and he’s not sure she means it any more than the last time she said it. “And I will be careful. I have a duty to keep all of you safe.” There’s a but lurking in there somewhere, but it stays hidden. 

Well, this is going to go well. “Trust me,” he says, slumping back. “I understand the impulse to scream about it very well.” He sighs, and then looks up at her. “It really is good to have found someone else I can trust. I’ve been … alone on ‘Pret for a while now,” he says with a mental apology to Marbog, who is, technically, not regularly assigned to Interpreter , “trying to find a chance to do something. Now I’m not - we’re not.” So let’s please keep it that way. “So - I guess it’s a team now. Though I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to run away screaming.” 

“I’ve made my career on not knowing when I ought to run away screaming,” she says, her voice very dry. “Don’t worry, Hawthorne, I’m not going anywhere. Not with these bastards cluttering up my home.”

He grins. “Tell me about it.” 

They sit for a little in companionable silence until Chester yawns. “It’s a long flight. I’m going to sleep.”

“You can sleep? Now?”

“She woke me up in the middle of the damn night,” Chester says, and his stomach drops at being reminded. Filed under more reasons he can’t sleep. “It’s been a while since I’ve been facing down Jem’Hadar on a grand total of three hours of sleep, and frankly, I don’t care for it. Charming codenames from ancient novels aside.”

He snorts. “Figures it was a codename. She got it from an ancient novel?” 

“It’s the name of one of the villains in The Three Musketeers .” She sees his expression of incomprehension and explains further. “The holonovel you walked in on me playing through. It’s based on a 19th century book, and Milady DeWinter is one of the major villains. A sort of secret agent figure long before that genre became popular.”

He blinks. “They seriously named themselves after the villains in your holoprogram.”

“It would appear so.”

“That’s–that’s incredibly stupid.” He actually laughs. “That’s so stupid. They were trying to recruit you, and they named themselves after villains from your holoprogram. That beats the shiny black everything.”

“Yes, that was about my reaction,” she says. “I’m not sure why they expected me to cooperate, honestly. DeWinter was very flattering, but I’m not quite that shallow.”

 “‘Oh, I’m Evil McFascist, come work for me, my secret police has a stupid codename for everything’.” He snorts. “Well, fascists do seem to get an undeserved reputation for competence, which is fortunate enough for my brain.”

“And for the rest of us.” She makes a face. “I’d have been solidly fucked if you’d actually been working for them. It crossed my mind as a possibility, but you didn’t shoot me rather than letting me near the camp. At that point, I figured we were on the same side.”

Not as fucked as I would have been. “It’s crossed my mind more than once. I’ve done what I can to make sure my head,” he taps his cybernetics, “is secure, and my best is quite a lot. But it’s not something I've ever fully ruled out.”

She’s looking at him with real sympathy. “I’m sorry. That must be an awful doubt to live with. For what it’s worth, I’m taking the fact you haven’t killed me yet as a very good sign your best did the job.”

He lets out a huff of laughter. “Thanks.”

She stretches. “In any case, there’s nothing I can do right now, I’m exhausted, and I won’t be use to anyone without rest. So I’m going to take the opportunity to catch some sleep.” 

Well, that’s accurate. He’s told his engineers that enough times.

“I’m a light sleeper, I’ll be up if there’s trouble. Take the bunk, I’ll stay here.”

Here is the pilot’s chair. He makes a face at her, but she’s closed her eyes, leaning back with her head firmly on the headrest, looking horribly comfortable, somehow.

Okay. Well. Maybe it helps to be part giant.

He steps towards the replicator, then turns to check if she’s not sure she doesn’t want the cabin, since he won’t be sleeping anyway. The sound of snoring stops him. 

That’s downright unsettling. 

He’s pretty sure he won’t be able to sleep until he’s quite literally passed out or is barricaded in his own quarters that have been re-swept at each three times and with a new set of security measures, probably with a batarang in hand and a hefty dose of anxiety meds. And given that the agent had beamed into the Captain’s quarters, actually unwanted - and they were good enough to cut through Gull’s measures - made that less likely. Maybe literally passing out was a real possibility. 

Maybe he’d sleep in a Jeffries Tube.

Might as well sit down before he falls down - the last thing he needs is more head trauma. He quickly replicates some supplies he’s most likely to keep down and a weighted cloak, while he’s at it, before thanking the shuttle and settling in the cabin.

The sound of soft snoring from outside taunts him.