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

Chapter Text

December 2301 - Bellingham, WA 

Humans were not meant to live here, McCoy was sure of that, and yet when Maya Noonien-Singh chose to start a new life, out of all the places on Earth she could have picked, for some reason she wanted to live somewhere cold, rainy, and dark.  She hadn’t exactly gone into hiding, but she hadn’t been easy to track down either.  She worked in a computer repair shop, but he hadn’t found her there.  In fact, he had been told that she kept unusual and unpredictable hours and to try again after midnight…that wasn’t happening.  He was here to speak with someone who had been willing to listen to him in the past, not to track down a person who didn’t want to be found.  He was certainly too old for this shit.

To complicate matters, Maya was rarely at home, but McCoy did find out from someone at the shop that she spent most of her afternoons at a dance studio by the waterfront. McCoy was relieved to finally find the place and step out of the rain and into the brightly lit lobby.  Her could hear a lively waltz playing from within.  There was a trophy case on the wall near the door, and at eye level he saw a massive champion’s cup with an inscription that read:

Pacific Northwest Championship

2299
Maya McGivers - Bea Durand

The music stopped, and McCoy kept his eyes on the door as the dancers trickled out, each of them wearing the odd combination of athletic apparel with dress shoes.  Each dancer walked past and paid him little attention.  Of course it would be his luck that he came on the one day she wasn’t there, but the last dancer to step out into the lobby was the one he was looking for.

Maya froze in the doorway when she saw him and dropped the black bag she carried.  

“Doctor McCoy?”

He offered her a warm smile. “It’s been a while, Maya.  If you don’t mind, I’d like to find some place to talk.  It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”

Maya inched back into the doorway. “That depends on what you want to talk about.”

“An opportunity, a job no one else can do.”

Maya visibly relaxed a bit, her shoulders softening.  “I can’t imagine what that could be, but I’ll listen, at least. Let me change my shoes, we can get a beer next door.”

The Finch fit the profile of what McCoy had seen of Bellingham so far: people trying very hard to seem like they weren’t trying at all.  The beer list was, for some reason, printed on paper and bound into what looked like an antique novella: pages and pages of choices, yet fully half of them were IPAs with poetic names.

McCoy furrowed his brows as he flipped back and forth through the pages and felt as though he was trying to make sense of a foreign language.  He glanced up at the bartender–bless that man’s patience.  The bartender had a youthful face with a carefully styled mustache and tattoos on his forearms and throat.  If he was clean-shaven he might not have looked older than seventeen.

“Need any suggestions?”  The bartender asked as he poured a pint from the tap and placed it in front of Maya.

McCoy held his hands up in defeat.  “I just want a damn beer.” Well, that wouldn’t narrow it down at all.  “A lager.”  The look on the bartender’s face suggested this didn’t narrow down the choices much easier.  “A pilsner?”

“How about a Czech pilsner?” the bartender suggested.

“I’m just going to trust your judgment on this one.”  After McCoy gave his answer, the bartender began to pour his pilsner, and McCoy turned his head to speak to Maya.  “You know, none of the official records said that you changed your name.”

Maya leaned back and gave McCoy a confused look.  “I...haven’t changed my name.”

“So the Maya McGivers who won the Pacific Northwest Championship two years ago was another person entirely?”  The bartender set the glass of pilsner in front of McCoy.

“Oh!”  Maya sat up straighter.  “That was nothing official.  A stage name.”

“Trying to hide an unfair advantage?”

“No” Maya snapped.  “Trying to protect myself from those who would judge me unfairly on the basis of my name alone.  And if I had an unfair advantage, I would have won more than a single.”

“Well far be it from me to make choices for you.”  He took his first sip of pilsner. There was something off about it, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. Still, it wasn’t so bad that he didn’t want to finish it.  “But I still think it’s dishonest.”

“Maybe so.”  Maya sipped her own beer.  “But I thought you wanted to tell me about a special opportunity, not criticize how I live my life.”

“Right.  It’s to do with Starfleet…”

“I wasn’t good enough for Starfleet.”

“You were ill-prepared and put too much pressure on yourself.  I don’t fault you for that, and neither does La’an, even if you did hurt her when you up and stopped talking to her.”

Maya blinked, something seemed to have hit a nerve.  “Then what is it that Starfleet wants?”

“There was a survey ship in the Ceti Alpha system.  It’s…bad.”

“It was bad to start.”  Maya took a long sip from her drink, as if she was trying to finish quickly.

“Catastrophic bad, not Lord of the Flies bad.  One of the planets in the system was destroyed.  No one should have been able to survive…”

“Yet somehow they did.” Maya guessed with a caustic bite in her voice.

McCoy nodded.  “Only twenty, according to the ship's scans.”

Maya slammed one hand down on the bar and doubled over, looking down at her lap.  She took a few deep breaths before she looked up to speak again.  “Good riddance.”

“Come on, I know you haven’t lost your compassion over the past ten years.  Or have you really forgotten how you begged Kirk and LeFevre not to destroy the Ceti Alpha V settlement because of the people, some of the children, who committed no crime other than being born on the wrong planet.”

Maya drank down another long draw from her beer and slammed the nearly empty glass on the bar.  “I appreciate the news about my homeworld, but I fail to see how I can be of use.”

“Starfleet needs a consultant, a diplomat for their humanitarian mission.”

“Absolutely not.  They won’t accept help, certainly not from me, and those children you’re so worried about are probably all dead by now.”  Maya stood up and picked her bag up off the floor.  “Goodbye, Doctor, I have to turn down your offer, but I will get back in touch with La’an.”

“I was wrong about you.”

“You hardly knew me.”

“I thought you had a heart, Maya.I thought you weren’t like the rest of them.”  He had one more sip of his beer, maybe he wouldn’t be finishing it after all.

Maya closed her eyes and took a deep breath.  “Doctor.”  Another deep breath. “Do not compare me to conquerors and fascists when all I’m trying to do is preserve my peace/”

“I’m sorry.”  McCoy looked away.  “That wasn’t fair, but helping is still the right thing to do.  At any rate, Starfleet is going ahead with or with your assistance.”

Maya looked up at the ceiling and let out a long sigh.  “Then I guess I have no choice.  I’ve seen how poorly Starfleet handled their past relations with Augments.  If I’m not there to offer my insights, you’re all going to get yourselves killed.”

McCoy smiled.  “Nice to see you’re just as optimistic as when we first met.  You’ll be on the Enterprise, she’s in orbit over Mars now.  La’an volunteered to pilot the shuttle.”

The color drained for Maya’s face.  “You aren’t trying to make me change my mind, are you?”

“Come on, it’s been years since you’ve spoken to her.  I think a little time to talk and catch up is the least you could do.”

“Hard to argue with that.” Maya nervously adjusted the weight of her bag.  “Who’s the captain now?”

“I doubt if you’ve met.  Her name is Saavik, she’s a Vulcan.”

“You’re right, I haven’t met her.”

“And you also might want to say hi to my daughter Joanna.  She just started on the Enterprise as a nurse.”

Maya smiled.  “I will.”