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

Chapter Text

Taking off in Rustam’s antique was not like takeoff in any other ship Chester had experienced. She took the earplugs she was offered, strapped herself into the surprisingly comfortable passenger chairs, and shared an automatic dubious look with Barriss when the first set of engines coughed to life. The ship shuddered, the roar of engines deepening. Up in the pilot’s seat, Rustam patted the console with a grin, and grabbed the tarnished-black joystick.

The ship lifted off with a judder. Chester watched out the glass-bubble windows as the hilltop and the canopy of trees receded below them. It was late afternoon, golden hour, and the swampy vista looked a lot more photogenic than it had coming down. The horizon opened up as they rose, curving into an arc. In the distance, the soft pinks and purples of sunset. It would have been much easier to appreciate without the teeth-rattling vibrations of the engines at full blast. 

Rustam pulled a lever, and gravity pushed them all down into their seats. The engine noise pitched down, roaring through Chester’s bones.

The atmosphere thinned, blue sky darkening to black. A reddish moon peeked around Imdaar’s side. The ship quieted, the vibrations easing.

Rustam turned to Chester, gesturing at his ear. She pulled one of the earplugs out, and then the other.

“I’ll take us out past the debris cloud on sublights, and then we’ll get into hyperspace. You can take your seatbelts off and walk around if you want. Engine room’s off-limits, of course, but the door’s locked so don’t worry about it.”

“Got it,” said Chester. “Grandma raised me better than to go snooping around in someone else’s engines without permission.” She unbuckled and stretched, feeling her entire spine pop in sequence. She felt better than she had in a long time—finally, she was getting somewhere.

Better than she had in a long time, and yet…

She closed her eyes, acknowledging the guilt she felt at leaving, the gnawing in the back of her mind. It would not help Plo, and it would not help any of the men, and it would not help the Jedi. Nor would turning back. Tarkin had painted a target on her with the Republic as well as the Separatists. The best thing she could do for her friends here was leave, before she could be used as an excuse for violence.

Still, for all her eagerness to be home, this felt like running away. She had never been good at running away.

But there were too many people counting on her to do anything else.

It was the quietest few days Chester had had since she arrived, and probably for some time before, as well. She talked to Barriss, trying to prepare her a bit for the Federation and blunt the worst of the culture shock. This involved admitting a lot of things: the technologies she’d been concealing, for one, and more embarrassingly, that actually yes, she did know what money was. Initially, she tried to be private about these conversations, but after a while it became clear that Rustam, in some way or other, was picking up on all of it anyway.

He was Force-sensitive too; that much was obvious. She’d taken him up on his offer to look at some weird rocks, and he’d pulled fifty-odd out of storage bins at once and levitated them all for at least half an hour without any visible effort. Some of them had been boulder-sized, bigger than Chester’s whole torso. 

This was unsettling. She’d tensed up, remembering the terror of being grabbed by Krell and Dooku, completely unable to fight back. Rustam hadn’t noticed, but he’d also brought the rocks over to show her, rather than nudging her toward them. Somewhere between the moldy-pizza slice of eclogite and the hauntingly well-preserved dragonet fossil, Chester found herself relaxing. It was still unsettling. It was, however, unsettling in a strange being is so used to his own powers that general sentient mores don’t make sense to him way rather than a hostile way, which was more or less something Chester was used to. 

The questions he asked, in between showing off his rock collection like a kid in grade school, were blunt but not especially tactical. It genuinely seemed to be pure, honest curiosity. 

He’d had contact with the Federation before, so it wasn’t too hard to just decide to let him in on the conversations; he’d figure it out even without her. 

He was, in fact, more curious than even Barriss was. Unusually, for a being of his apparent power, this came with a modicum of discretion. He waited until Barriss had left to meditate before settling down across the small table from Chester like a scarecrow folding gently into an armchair and steepling long knobby fingers at her. 

“I got another question,” he said, and paused for a moment, squinting at her through wisps of his bedraggled hair. “I’ve only visited a few times, but I never heard much in the way of Force-sensitivity over in your galaxy, and the way you talked about it earlier makes it sound like there is none. And yet—” he waved a hand at her— “you’re clearly Force-sensitive, you’re running around with a Jedi, and most indicative of all, there are two kyber crystals on my ship right now. What’s the story there?” 

She smiled wryly. “I got really lost,” she admitted. “The Jedi told me I was Force-sensitive—surprise to me, I’m not psi sensitive at all, they tested me int eh Academy—and they weren’t the only ones to get interested. The kyber,” she slid the lightsaber off her hip, “was courtesy of Count Dooku, who took a brief and abortive interest in my education.”

Rustam’s stare shifted down to the lightsaber, and he chuckled. “That’s the grumpiest kyber I’ve seen in a long time. Count Dooku—he a full Sith, or just acting like it? The Force gets darker and darker the further in you go these days.”

“The Jedi seem to think he’s a Sith, but perhaps still an apprentice,” she said. “He’s eager enough to take an apprentice of his own, if so.”

“Could go either way, then. A bled kyber doesn’t necessarily make a Sith, but it’s a hell of a thing to do for no real benefit. They don’t make a better blade, they’re not any stronger—in fact they’re more likely to break. All they do is fight, in that state.” He looked sharply up at her. “He offered you power, and you walked away from it?”

“He offered me the ability to destroy worlds,” she said. “I have no interest in that.”

“Good to know!” He laughed again. “Lot of people don’t just walk away from that sort of offer. Lot of people that make that sort of offer don’t take being walked away from lightly, for that matter. I heard about Dooku’s bounty. Saw the pirate vid too. Impressive stuff.” 

“A normal day in Starfleet,” said Chester with a self-deprecating grin that she couldn’t keep the mischief out of. “I hope the bounty wasn’t tempting.”

Rustam returned her grin, hilarity glinting in his shadowed eyes. “If I was interested in bounties, I’d be flying a nicer ship than this one, don’t ya think?”

“True,” Chester admitted with a chuckle, then sobered quickly. “Brute force, ruling through fear—my people already had our experiments with that. I don’t want to be the boot in the world’s face, and that’s all Dooku could offer me, even though he seemed to think a very great deal of it.”

“So you walked away.” Between the hair and the pattern of red-brown markings that covered most of Rustam’s face, it was hard to read his expressions, but she thought that sharp-toothed smile looked like approval. 

“Well. I did cause a certain amount of inconvenience in the process, but yes.”

“Good,” he said, with a satisfied chuckle. “Men like that could always do with some inconvenience in their lives. You on the other hand oughta be running a country somewhere. Maybe in a decade or two, get some grey hairs and make some more enemies first.” 

She laughed, without entirely meaning to. “I’ll settle for a starship! Someday in the hopefully far future. I’m not bucking for that kind of wartime promotion.”

“That’ll do,” Rustam said, nodding along with her. “I mean it, though. You got a Force presence like magnetite, a whole mountain of it. Anyone who’s out there with a compass, looking for north—they’ll find you. It’s strong enough I can feel it, and I ain’t sensitive to these sorts of things at all.”

Chester blinked at him, startled. “I haven’t managed to move so much as a credit chip,” she confessed, “much to the consternation of both Jedi and Sith. And my lightsaber skill is nothing to write home about. I have been given the distinct impression that I wouldn’t make a very good Jedi at all.”

“Easiest way of moving a credit chip is picking it up in your own fingers,” Rustam said, and snorted. It was clear what he thought of that sentiment. “Way more of us out there than just Jedi and Sith, and not everyone uses the Force like Jedi and Sith. Maybe it’s an extra sense, or a language you speak, instead of an extra limb or some other thing. Most of us don’t get all three.”

“Huh,” said Chester. She looked at him more closely, took a breath and opened herself up to the Force, the way Plo had patiently taught her. It took her a long few seconds to find him, until she took a mental step back—his presence was enormous. Not in an intimidating or ominous sort of way, she thought, just… big. Kind of like the tactile equivalent of TV static on a movie screen.

“You feel… prickly,” she ventured, “like a thunderstorm. Or a really big scratchy blanket. What route did you take?”

“A big scratchy blanket? That’s a new one.” Rustam’s smile turned very wry. “You don’t wanna know where I started from, but that’s not the important part. I went out on my own, and I experimented. I learned about what other people were doing, and then I figured out what bits worked for me and ignored the bits that didn’t. There’s a whole galaxy out there to learn from.” He cocked his head like a curious dog, and amended, “Two galaxies, I guess. Point is, take whatever the Jedi taught you, mine it for sparkly bits and toss out the rest. If there aren’t any other known Starfleet Force-sensitives, that means you get to make up the guidelines.”  

“Well. That’s certainly more comforting than the Jedi fretting about my imminent fall to my anger.” She looked closely at him. “You’ve been out doing this for a while, haven’t you. Going off your interactions with your ship alone.”

“Sure have. I wander here and there, poke my nose into interesting corners, and if I’m lucky there’s something new to learn about. I’m often lucky.”

“That’s more or less what we do back home,” she said. 

“Sounds like a good life. Maybe I’ll come and hang around for a bit, see if I can find some rocks for my collection.” He grinned at her, the expression open and good-natured, and got to his feet with the ease of a man much younger than she was beginning to suspect he was. “Thanks for indulging my curiosity.”

The final approach to the wormhole was one of the more interesting parts of the journey. Apparently the closest mapped hyperlane skirted the edge of the wormfield—this, Rustam told them, was because wormholes distorted spacetime in a similar way to hyperspace engines and very few pilots or ships could handle the complexities involved.

“Luckily for you,” Rustam said, looking a little manic in the pilot’s chair, “I and my grand old dame are two of them.”

His method, apparently, was to launch the antique ship in and out of hyperspace in jumps of less than a minute each, adjusting course just slightly between each. He paid far less attention to his instruments than was good for Chester’s nerves, seeming to make half the jumps on vibes alone.

“I think that might be Force-aided navigation,” Barriss whispered, leaning discreetly toward Chester. “I’ve never seen it done before, but I know it’s possible. Master Plo can do it.”

“It is,” said Rustam. He flung the ship into hyperspace again, and the strange shifting blue-white streaks of the alternate dimension filled the viewports for barely ten seconds that time. “But it’s also practice.”

A step above vibes alone, then. Chester sat, strapped herself into her chair. Barriss followed suit. “How long until we reach the wormhole?”

“Ten minutes or so,” said Rustam. “You’ll see another one off starboard after the next jump.”

Chester kept her eyes trained in that direction. “That’s not the one we want?”

“Nope—that one comes out middle of nowhere intergalactic space.”

Hyperspace gave way to star-speckled black. Chester leaned over, looking hard, and found a distant shifting swirl of white, not much larger than the brightest stars.

“How many of these have you been through?” she asked.

“Myself? Three, so far. I sent a probe droid through another two but it never came back from the second, so I figure that’s a bad sign.” Rustam laughed, and launched them into hyperspace again. “The one that goes to your galaxy’s the most interesting by far, and the most stable, far as I can tell. It’s been around a good six hundred years.”

“Under any other circumstances, I’d be thrilled about another stable wormhole,” she said. “They’re rare in our galaxy. The one between the Alpha and Gamma Quadrants is the only stable one we’ve found, and it’s probably been having assistance from the aliens that live in it. The scientists will be all over this like ants on sugar when it’s safe to examine.”

Rustam looked back at her, startled. “There’s people living in that one?”

“Yes. The Bajorans call them the Prophets—they’re noncorporeal beings that exist outside of linear time, and they’re a cornerstone of the Bajoran faith. I’ve yet to encounter them, but several other officers have, and they disappeared an invasion fleet last year.”

“Huh. Nice of them to help out.” He looked back at the controls, frowning. “There was something weird about that wormhole, now I think of it. I don’t do minds, so I figured maybe it was the physics of it.”

“And the Prophets probably weren’t feeling talkative. They weren’t too fond of people transiting the wormhole at first—apparently what they called linear beings were deeply disturbing. The first Starfleet officer to contact them, Captain Sisko, made some kind of arrangement that helped, though I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head what it was.”

Barriss eyeballed Chester. “How do you negotiate with an incorporeal being?”

“Very carefully,” said Chester. “If I recall, Captain Sisko had to start with explaining linear time and the concept of memory, and build from there.” She looked at Barriss’s concerned expression. “You get at least some training on it in Starfleet.”

Barriss nodded mutely, looking as if this was insufficient comfort.

Three more jumps went by. They dropped out of the last, and the whirling disc of a wormhole appeared dead ahead. It wasn’t anything like looking into a star; luminous wisps of energy rippled out from a bright white pinpoint, a horizon of distorted light marking a perfect circle around it. 

“Buckle up,” said Rustam, and fired up the sublight drives. The cockpit filled with the roar of engines, and vibrations started up through the frame of the chair underneath Chester. She checked the fastenings on her seatbelt, just in case. Seatbelts were far from common on Federation starships, but she’d learned from experience that they had a very important function on Republic craft, chief among which was the total lack of internal inertial dampeners. Next to her, Barriss did the same. 

They drifted in past the event horizon. The rattling of the ship intensified beyond merely ominous into outright worrying.

“It’s a rough ride,” said Rustam, grinning like he was steering into a rollercoaster rather than the gaping white maw of a wormhole. Chester eyed it warily; this was nothing like the other wormhole, which she’d transited dozens of times. The worst of that one was when you felt like you were being watched. 

Something beeped on the console. “There we go,” said Rustam, shutting the alarm down without even looking at it. “No going back now.”

Bright white nothing filled the viewport. Chester closed her eyes, and then slapped her hand over them—she could still see the pink glow of that light through so many layers of skin and muscle. The ship lurched, and then shook even more violently, the rattling of the walls drowning out the increasing chorus of alarms.

Oh—not like the Bajoran wormhole at all. That was downright civilized compared to this. Maybe the Prophets did something to class up the neighborhood, or maybe this one was unstable enough even the Prophets wouldn’t have wanted to live in it in the first place. Chester thought about how most wormholes were thought to be impossible, how the other one was a freak of science, and then decided that she really didn’t want to be thinking about physics right now. 

The quality of the light changed—flickered, then went deep fucking red. The shudders died down, and something made an enormous subsonic groan. Chester cracked open an eyelid, squinting through her fingers. 

That red light bathed the cockpit like something out of a horror movie. Flickering waves of energy crawled across the viewscreen, lightning-like fingers reaching out and dying. Beyond that, the rippling curtains of something like an aurora, spanning the visible sky.

“You big baby,” said Rustam, clearly talking to the ship. “Come on, just a little bit further.”

Another one of those subsonic groans reverberated all through Chester’s skeleton. The red light began to fade.

“Sure, sure, you’ll get a luxury detailing after this, I promise.” Rustam turned the ship, ignoring the many, many flashing lights and urgently-beeping alarms on the console. There, in the vertical streamers of the aurora, a patch of darkness. The engines kicked on. Rustam guided them in, then cut the engines as the wormhole grabbed hold of the ship again. That terrifying shudder began anew, intensifying until Chester genuinely thought they might break apart—

—and then they popped out the other side of the rift, into a gentle, drifting silence.

“Good job,” said Rustam, and patted the console. “Let’s see what we’ve got to work with.”

Apparently going through the wormhole had fried a number of electronics. Rustam flipped a dizzying array of switches, turned a handful of knobs, and then held his hand flat against the slightly grimy surface and closed his eyes, muttering silently to himself. Chester felt something powerful flare beyond her shields. She glanced at Barriss. The kid’s blue eyes were wide like saucers.

The console hummed to life.

“There we go,” said Rustam, and grinned. “All systems go, except for the hyperdrive, which may need half an hour or so to reset. Worst comes to worst, I’ll jumpstart it, but that would be almost as dangerous as the wormhole so let’s avoid it if we can.”

He pulled up a screen, pushing it over to Chester. “Here, see if you can get hold of your Starfleet mates.”

“There’s a monitoring station here, or there should be if they didn’t scrap the whole thing when I went missing.” Chester leaned over the scanner, coaxing it to work. “I’ll need to look for the right frequencies,” she said, then, “Oh.” 

She stared down at the readout, feeling a great buoyant joy building in her chest, looked up at Rustam and Barriss who were both Force sensitive enough to pick up on her feelings and smiled what suddenly felt like the first genuine smile she’d smiled in months. The relief felt like a bubble in her chest, one she breathed out with a sharp laugh. “It’s there,” she said. “A Starfleet listening post. It’s—they did it. Even without me, they got it up and running. Guess I didn’t get kidnapped for nothing.”

She laughed again. It was a silly thing to be so happy about, but she couldn’t help it. “All right. All right. Hang around here, let the hyperdrive reset, and then head for the wormhole? The other wormhole.”

Rustam gave her a little lazy two-fingered salute before turning and making a beeline for the hatch. “You got it. I’m gonna take a nap in the meantime. Come wake me up in half an hour or so.”

They watched him vanish, and Barriss looked out at the system of planets where somewhere a Federation listening post chattered the news of their arrival quietly into the night, back to home. Chester closed her eyes briefly, feeling the utter gratitude and relief wash over her, dizzying in their intensity.

“Will they…” started Barriss, and looked at her, worried. “Will they want me?”

“Yes,” said Chester, without hesitation. “Yes, they will. You’re a healer, Barriss. You know things our doctors haven’t even dreamed of. They’ll want you. You’ll have to beat them off with a stick.”

“I’ve heard you tell so many stories about your home,” said Barriss, looking out at the stars around them with her eyes wide. “It’s just…hard to believe I’m here, I guess. That this is another galaxy, and that things are actually different here.”

“They’re plenty different,” said Chester, “though if the hyperdrive doesn’t cycle soon and we don’t start making tracks, we’re going to get a taste of the bad kind of different. You don’t have the Jem’Hadar over there, and we do.”

She looked out again, reveling in the at least semi-familiar stars. She was pretty sure she was going to be happier than anyone else ever to see Deep Space Nine again. “Thank you for trusting me, Barriss,” she said. “We’re not home yet, but just that you were willing to try… I don’t take that lightly. It means a lot.”

“I had to try,” said Barriss quietly. “I didn’t like the person I was becoming. This… this can be a new start.”

The determination in the kid’s voice was like steel. Chester reached out to squeeze her shoulder. “You don’t need a new start. You needed an escape from the things that were forcing you to grow in ways you knew were crooked and wrong. You needed a place where you could be the healer you meant to be, and we’re going to find that for you here.”

Chester had absolutely no hesitation about volunteering to stand watch that evening. It was such a pleasure to look at even vaguely familiar stars, even if they were in the Gamma Quadrant, and even if they were technically in enemy territory. She was realizing just how little she’d dared hope she’d been able to escape, and exactly how hopeless she’d become accustomed to being. No doubt she’d be due a very long session with some counselor or other, once back in Federation space. 

The sudden honk of a proximity sensor almost made her jump out of her skin. She sat up fast, leaning forward. The anomaly was writhing, the distinctive heatshimmer of distorting real- and sub-space. A moment later, a ship popped out, sleek and predatory. 

She’d hardly become an expert on the other galaxy’s ships, but she was willing to bet that was not a friend.

There was a rustle of cloth behind her and Barriss poked her head into the cockpit. “What is it?” she asked. 

No point to asking her how she’d figured that out, Jedi senses and all. Chester just pointed to the ship. “We’ve got company, and I don’t like the looks of it.”

The ship came closer. Chester’s unpracticed eye was enough to pick out the multiple turrets and other evidence it was heavily armed. Its approach path was also that of an entity with bad things on its mind. 

“I really don’t like the looks of that,” she murmured. 

Barriss leaned forward to better examine the other ship. 

“It’s a bounty hunter,” she said. “At least, it’s the kind of ship they favor—light, easily modified, you can see some of the external modifications to the hyperdrive there.” 

“And one guess what they’re here for,” said Chester. “Not that I usually expect the universe to revolve around me, of course.”

“Of course not,” said Barriss grimly. 

“I wonder if it’s Tarkin or Dooku.” Chester’s gaze flicked to the side, to where the Federation listening station had to be transmitting—but she was probably going to have to make her way back on her own. It would take time for even a subspace message to reach the relay stations outside the wormhole. 

“It could be a third party in search of some quick credits,” offered Barriss. “As Ventress said, the Hutts aren’t going to pass up an easy opportunity like this.”

Chester shook her head. “Currency,” she said. “What problems can’t it cause.”

The holotransmitter shrilled. Chester looked at it a moment. “We might as well hear what they want. It’s not like anyone’s going to believe I stepped out for a beer.”

The figure that flickered into wavering blue was one faintly familiar; it took Chester a moment to place him, or, if she was honest, his hat. The bounty hunter she’d hit with a frying pan. Cad Bane, and what an appropriate name for the man. He was a cad.

Making good on her threat to the hat, she thought with the humor of being utterly fucked and knowing it, was going to be difficult. 

“I know you’re in that rustbucket of a ship, little lady,” said the bounty hunter, and even through the hologram he sounded smug. “If you think it’ll hold together through even one salvo of our weapons, be my guest. Otherwise, stand down and prepare to be boarded.”

Chester glanced at Barriss, who looked at the controls and the ship hanging in front of them and shook her head a little. “I don’t even know what I’m looking at,” she whispered. “I only have the basic pilot training.”

“Damn,” muttered Chester. Bane looked amused. 

“I’ll go wake Rustam up,” said Barriss, and slipped out of the cockpit. Hopefully to find a weapon on the way.

“Chrono’s ticking, Chester,” said Bane. “I’m running out of patience. Dooku wants you alive, but he said that if I recorded blowing you to bits he’d take that too. Just no bonus.” He turned his hand over, making a show of looking at his fingers. “Can’t say I’d blame you for taking the second option. Rumor has it, he’s less than amused. But then I’d have to fry the kid and the old man.”

Shit. Chester needed to stall him at least until Rustam got up here and pulled a miracle, though she wasn’t sure where he’d be keeping it on a ship like this. She folded her arms and looked down her nose at him. “Missed my memo on threatening other people to get to me, huh?”

“You’re going to find it rough doing something about it.”

“Maybe,” Chester conceded. Though if he got his way, that would bring him into proximity with her and he might not enjoy that. “Still, I’m not in the habit of making threats, Mr. Bane, just stating my intentions.”

“It’s all the same if you can’t follow through on them. And unfortunately for you,” his mouth stretched into a satisfied smile around the toothpick clamped between his lips, “I’m the one able to follow through on my promises. I don’t think you can say the same—not in a ship like that.”

“Fine,” said Chester, “make your assumptions. Let’s discuss terms.”

“An unconditional surrender of yourself and that lightsaber would do very nicely,” said Bane. “I’ll let the old man and the kid go. I’ve got no argument with them. Those are the terms.”

“Well,” said Chester, in her best diplomatic voice, “they’re clear but are they terms ? You could work on some actual—” 

An alarm on the console next to her started to croak, a rusty noise. “That’s me locking weapons, Chester,” said Bane. “I said, no games. You surrendering or you killing these two to avoid facing Dooku?” He tilted his head, his pupilless eyes fixing on her face. The toothpick made a full circuit of his mouth. “Frankly, I’d heard better about you, but I guess everyone loses their nerve sometime. Jedi, Starfleet officer, or simple pain in the shebs.” 

Chester pulled in a long breath through her nose. “Give me a few minutes to say goodbye.”

“Nothing doing, little lady. You see, you haven’t exactly endeared yourself to me, either, and I’m not taking the chance of you finding another way to wiggle out of this.” His eyes narrowed. “Word got around of you taking me down. You made it personal . And I don’t like my bounties making it personal.”

Chester gave him a wry look. “It seemed most efficient at the time.”

He didn’t seem much impressed, instead stepping forward and reaching for some device out of the visual pickup. Probably the weapons controls. “I’ll accept your surrender now.”

Fuck. She was out of time. She sighed heavily. “I guess you’re not leaving me a lot of choice.” Well, at least if they used the fucking cuffs again she’d be pretty pleased to see Dooku; the sleep deprivation between here and Serenno would make death better by comparison.

Something else began to shrill on the console; this one sounded like a parakeet with the flu. Chester assumed it had something to do with the bounty hunter’s ship beginning to close in on them, and ignored it.

“You’ll leave the other two alone?” she asked. She’d almost gotten away from bounty hunters before, and Bane didn’t look like he’d come with a crew. She’d figure out a way to do it again, and maybe Rustam and Barriss would figure something out. She was far from friendless this time, and she’d already kicked Dooku’s ass once.

It didn’t make it seem any better. The sinking feeling behind her breastbone argued that maybe, just maybe, her luck had finally run out.

Well, Barriss was going to get her chance at a new life if nothing else. She’d made the kid a promise, and she was keeping it.

“Ffft,” said Bane. “They’re worth nothing. You’re the one with an 18 million credit bounty on her head.”

Something else on the console started to burble. Evidently Bane’s ship was doing the same; he looked over at something out of the pickup with a frown. Chester took the moment to check what was going on on their end. It was hard to tell on the cracked interface, but that almost looked like… 

“Huh,” she said out loud. 

“Waiting on that surrender, Chester.”

Chester drew a breath, and then the thing making everyone’s sensors go wild popped out of warp a scant thousand kilometers directly behind Bane’s ship, filling the cockpit windows wall to wall; the squat massive shape of a Federation Nebula Class Starship, so close she could see the phaser conduits glowing. 

The holomitter jumped and flickered wildly as it tried to translate a Federation-default 2D image to a hologram. It was only mildly successful, but even with the perspective out of whack, the small version of a starship bridge was recognizable, as was the diminutive figure at the center of it. “This is Captain Bonnie Steenburg of the Federation Starship Bedivere, ” said the welcome voice, very cold. “Cad Bane, was it? Let me give you a couple of choices. Stop threatening my first officer and back down, or start exploring a brand new career as a large collection of diverse gas molecules. That worth eighteen million of your ‘credits’ to you, young man?”

The cockpit door creaked open in the sudden silence.

“Oh, Federation,” said Rustam’s voice, bleary. “Is that all you woke me up for?”

“No, actually, it was…” started Chester, and gestured to Bane, who was openly gobsmacked. It felt a little silly now. 

Rustam flopped down into the copilot’s chair, gangly arms and legs going everywhere. “Dunno who that is. Introductions, please?”

“Mr. Bane, unlike my first officer, I am not a patient woman,” said Captain Steenburg. “What’s it going to be?”

“I won’t forget this,” said Bane, but his ship began to turn, withdrawing.

“Good,” said Steenburg. “Now off you pop.”  

Barriss leaned heavily on the back of the pilot’s chair. Her relief was palpable. “Those are your friends?” she asked, quietly.

“Friends,” Chester confirmed, and grinned broadly over her shoulder at her. “That’s my Captain on the comm.”

“I’m going to beg off of introductions just now,” said Steenburg to Rustam, who had started poking at the holo emitter with a puzzled frown on his face. “Number One , are you all right?”

“Just fine, sir,” said Chester, grinning widely. “Very, very glad to be home.”

Steenburg paused for a moment, giving her a visual inspection; then, obviously satisfied, she returned the grin. She turned her attention to Rustam and Barriss. “Thank you for returning her to us,” she said. “Our time here is limited, unfortunately; if a Jem’Hadar patrol happens across us, things are going to get very busy very quickly.”

   “Understandable.” Rustam gave up fiddling with the comm. “Well, my job was to get these two to you. You’re welcome to come aboard and collect them if you want.”

“No need ,” said Steenburg. “We can lock onto Commander Chester’s commbadge and beam her aboard.”

Chester rose, putting a hand on Barriss’s shoulder. “The two of us, actually, sir,” she said. “This is Barriss Offee; I’ll explain her circumstances to you fully once we’re underway, but she’s requested to come with us to the Federation. I think you’ll find her reasons more than substantial.”

Steenburg nodded. “All right. I’m sure you have some goodbyes to make; notify us when you’re ready to transport.”

“Aye aye sir,” said Chester. The transmission cut off, and she turned to Rustam. “Didn’t you want to…”

“Nah,” he said, and offered her a friendly smile. “I’ve got some errands to run here now I’m not hiding Starfleet in my hold. I’ll catch up with you sometime once I’m done.”

“All right,” said Chester. “Barriss, do you have everything?”

“One second,” said Barriss, and vanished down the hallway. She reappeared a moment later with theirs carryalls slung over her shoulder and her lightsaber on her belt. “All right. Yes. I’m ready.”

Chester looked around. She had her saber, she had Barriss. There was nothing else here for her that she could bring with her. She thought for a moment of her squad and Ventress, with a sharp pang already wearing down at the edges, looked around at the musty little cabin and Rustam. “Thank you,” she told him. 

He shrugged. “You Starfleet aren’t meant to be alone.” 

    Chester gave him a grin. “You’ve got that right.” 

She tapped her commbadge, feeling a knot in her throat loosen as it chirped acknowledgement for the first time in months. “Chester to Bedivere. Two to beam up.”

The welcome shimmer of the transporter faded to the even more welcome surroundings of the Bedivere’s main transporter room, gleaming platform and carpeted floors and everything, even a gleaming computer panel behind Chief Ulfurt’s head. She’d never thought she’d be this glad to see an LCARS interface in her life. 

She reached to steady Barriss, who was a little pale from her first experience with a transporter, and breathed deep. She’d never been so glad to smell the faintly musty but clean recycled starship air, either. 

The doors swooshed open, that intensely familiar sound, and Captain Steenburg hurried into the room, followed by Dr. Harris and one of his nurses. 

“Right,” said Chester. She’d warned Barriss about this on the flight out. “Blood screenings.” 

Barriss made a face, but was clearly pleasantly surprised at the lack of needles. For her part, Chester reveled in it. 

Once blood samples were shaken and they were conclusively demonstrated not to be changelings, Chester turned to her captain. “I thought you said you weren’t going to be able to fish me out if it all went to hell.”

“Special dispensation,” Steenburg said. “I insisted on a search party. We picked up on some strange readings after you were abducted, and Intelligence wanted to see if it could be used for the war effort.” By her expression, that had been a convenient excuse. “Besides,” she said, more sincere, “I was not going to lose two executive officers in as many months. Are you all right?”

    Fuck decorum. Chester grabbed her captain around the shoulders and pulled her into a crushing hug. “I’m fine,” she said, a little muffled. “You came back for me.”

    “I’m getting soft in my old age,” Steenburg grumbled, and hugged back. “Welcome home, Diane.”

End of Part I