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

Chapter Text

On course, on schedule, the Cerritos was bound for Altair Six.

Mariner had just finished the first half of her shift and was heading back to the shuttle bay for a quick churro break. She was grumbling to herself as she went, more than a little disgruntled about their current mission— Altair Six of all places! Back in the day it would have been worthwhile. A century ago, legendary ships like the New Jersey had been sent to this sector to help the locals rebuild their infrastructure and repair their ecosystems after a long and grinding interplanetary war; the original Enterprise had even been there once to commemorate their first peacetime democratic elections. That was what Mariner had joined Starfleet to do, the stuff they ought to be doing all the time!

These days, though, Altair Six had been at peace with their neighboring system for like a hundred and seventeen years. Now they were just one more boring Federation-lite world, where the sun came up in the same place every day and you looked at the same two moons every night and everybody had like four full-time hobbies to help them deal with the crushing boredom of living on a planet where nothing interesting ever happened.

So why was the Cerritos going there? Well, after all this time, Altair Six was thinking about joining the Federation. Mariner honestly hadn't believed it when she'd seen the mission briefing. They hadn't even officially applied yet! This was just the lead up to their world government's diplomatic statement of intent advising they were going to form a planning committee that would administrate the different technical work groups that were going to negotiate the terms and compose the text of a potential official application. And since Starfleet didn't have anything better to do, they were sending three different starships— three!— just to show they were taking it seriously. Cocktail parties, diplomatic mixers, days of speeches about the long and boring history of statesmanship and productive dialogue between Altair Six and the Federation— ugh! Mariner could think of a hundred better things they could be doing.

"Hey, Mariner, got a minute?" Boimler said, jogging up from behind her.

"Not only do I have a minute, I have literally every minute!" Mariner said crankily. "It's not like we're going to be doing anything important for the next two weeks!"

"Oh good," Boimler said, falling in beside Mariner as she headed down the hall towards the entry doors to the backup shuttle bay. He looked pinched and worried, actually even more than usual, and she looked at him and groaned.

"Okay, what kind of trouble has 'Bold Boimler' gotten himself into now?"

"It's not me, it's Tendi!" Boimler said. He caught Mariner by the arm, stopping her before she triggered the door's sensors. "Haven't you noticed she's been weird lately? Like... restive?"

"Restive? What does that even mean?" Mariner blinked. Sure, Tendi had seemed keyed up lately, a little high energy, but wasn't that more or less normal? She'd skipped out early on breakfast this morning, said she needed to do some inventory in Sickbay before her shift... but she hadn't shown up for dinner last night either, come to think of it. Mariner frowned. How long had it been since she'd last seen Tendi sit down for a meal, or even a snack? "Wait, is she not eating?"

"Yeah. I actually, um, I checked the replicator logs and I don't think she's actually eaten anything for a couple of days."

"Isn't that a violation of her privacy rights?" said Mariner, who knew full well that it absolutely was. "Oh, you nosy boy. Bad Boimler!"

"I know, I know, but I was concerned!"

"But are you sure that something's wrong? I mean, what do you know about Orion biology?"

"You mean... the biology of Orions?"

"Yeah, that's what I just said?" Mariner said, narrowing her eyes. "Who knows, maybe it's fine if she just doesn't eat sometimes. Or it could be some kind of cultural thing. It could be a lot of totally normal things!"

"Yeah, but if it's something normal, why wouldn't she just tell us?" Boimler persisted. "It's not like we would be weird about it."

"Like, not any weirder than we're being right now," Mariner said, "having a top secret meeting about snooping on our friend and obsessing about minor changes in her personal habits?"

"This isn't a secret meeting," Boimler weaseled. "We're just... two people having a hallway conversation!"

"Ooh, we talking about Tendi?" Rutherford, said, popping around the corner. He was carrying a tray with a fancy silver plate cover on it.

"Maybe," Mariner said. "Whatcha got there?"

"Uh, nothing," Rutherford said, "just my grandmother's special recipe for arroz caldo."

"Yeah? What's the occasion?" Mariner asked, raising her eyebrows.

"No occasion! It was practically already in the replicator, I just had to spend a couple hours tweaking the pattern. But it's no big deal! 'Cause Tendi says she feels fine! Um, not that this is about anyone specific. Not that it's a thing at all! Because... it's not!"

"Sure, totally," Boimler said. "But hypothetically if someone wasn't feeling well... maybe they'd like some soup?"

"Oh, my Lola's soup would be great for that!" Rutherford said, hoisting the tray happily. "It's got chicken for protein, and ginger and garlic actually have some pretty potent medicinal properties for most carbon-based species, so maybe she— You know, maybe someone would want to try some! If they weren't feeling so hot."

"Yeah, well, give it a shot," Mariner said. "I mean, it's just soup. It couldn't hurt, right?"

"Ensign's personal log, stardate what the fuck o'clock!" Mariner hissed under her breath, bracing her hand against the locked door of the refresher cubicle. "Tendi threw chicken soup at Rutherford, threatened to break Boimler's neck for snooping, rampaged through the ship, and hijacked the Captain's yacht! I barely made it on here before she took off!"

There was a tentative knock at the door. Mariner flinched. "Mariner? Are you in there?" Tendi asked hesitantly. "Can we talk?"

"End log!" Mariner said quickly. She looked at the door suspiciously. Judging by the sound of her voice, maybe roaring rage-monster Tendi had turned back into her normal self? It could be a trap, though. She braced herself, then hit the button to open the door. "Heyyy, Tendi," she said carefully. "How you feeling?"

"I'm totally fine! I just need a leave of absence," Tendi said. She had her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, exposing the paler skin of her inner arms, and she was running her short nails up and down the soft skin there like something was itching her from the inside. "There's an Orion outpost not far from here, so..."

"Oh! Well, you know, great," Mariner said, circling around her and edging towards the navigation station in the cockpit. "I definitely encourage everyone to take advantage of all the shore leave they're entitled to..."

"And I have the time accumulated! So what's the problem? No problem!" Tendi said. She was talking just a bit too loudly, her her eyes burning just a bit too brightly. "I just need some rest!" Her hand shot out, fastening around Mariner's wrist and gripping hard, stopping her from heading any further towards the yacht's navigation controls.

"Hey," Mariner said, yanking at Tendi's grip, but unable to free her wrist. Damn, had Tendi always been so strong? Slowly, Mariner realized she wasn't going to be able to overpower Tendi by herself— at least, not without hurting her, and for so many reasons, that wasn't an acceptable option. She planted her feet and switched tactics. "You really think we're going to get wherever we're going?" she said. "When Starfleet realizes we're headed for an Orion base with all this proprietary technology, every ship in the sector is going to put themselves in our way." And maybe that was true and maybe it wasn't— personally, Mariner doubted that her mom was going to disrupt the diplomatic festivities on Altair Six to announce to everyone that her personal yacht had been hijacked by her own daughter— but hopefully it would get Tendi to think about what she was doing.

Tendi blinked, opened her mouth, then closed it again. She shook her head, and for a second it looked the fog was clearing. "Oh," she said, "oh... gosh. I'm gonna be in so much trouble!"

"No, no!" Mariner said. Not if she had anything to say about it, anyway. Maybe it was some kind of weird telepathic alien influence, or maybe if Tendi didn't get the right kind of Orion vitamins in her food it made her melt down and punch comm speakers to death— the point was, Tendi clearly wasn't acting from her own volition. All Mariner needed to do was get her back to the Cerritos and start filling out the after-mission report, so she could make that very clear. "Let's just turn the ship around, huh?" she said, gesturing towards the cockpit. "And I can help you do the paperwork for your leave! That way we can submit the request right away, just as soon as we get back."

"Okay," Tendi said, looking around at the interior of the yacht as if she wasn't quite sure how she'd gotten here in the first place. "Okay..."

"There we go! All good," Mariner said as she set a course back to the Cerritos and engaged the impulse engines.

"Yeah," Tendi said, gazing blankly off at nothing like a sleepwalker. "Good..."

"Why don't you... get some rest?" Mariner suggested. For a second it seemed like Tendi hadn't even heard her, and then she walked slowly back towards the doors that led off the main space and into the yacht's small sleeping quarters. Mariner watched as Tendi drifted into the small room, climbed slowly into the single bunk inset into the wall, and tossed from one side to the other, rolling herself up in a ball of blue blankets. The door hissed closed.

Mariner sat down between the door to the sleeping quarters and the ladder that led up to the main exit hatch, not wanting to get too far away. "Ensign's log, new entry," she said softly. "Ensign Tendi seems to be... under stress. I have her under medical surveillance. Everything is good. We're all fine down here..." She groaned and rubbed her hands over her face. "Ugh, end log."

She spent the next twenty minutes or so chewing on her own knuckles and thinking hard. How were they going to get out of this without Tendi getting knocked back to cadet or thrown in the brig? If Boimler and Rutherford testified that she'd been acting weird lately— if Dr. T'Ana could find something to explain her behavior— maybe they could get it all written off as some kind of medical-psychological emergency? She glanced back towards the room where Tendi was sleeping. They'd be within communications range of the Cerritos soon enough. Maybe she could slip a message through to Rutherford. If she used the yacht's sensor array instead of its comms, she could deliver the message as a text string, right into his implant's display screen. The bridge officers wouldn't be able to eavesdrop, and they could start getting their story straight. Already plotting, Mariner headed up to the cockpit, and glanced over at the screens showing their course and speed.

Wait a minute—

"Tendi!" Mariner shouted. She sprinted back out of the cockpit and into the sleeping quarters, diving for the pile of blankets and shaking it until Tendi emerged, blinking woozily. "Did you turn us around? We're heading back towards the Orion outpost, and I'm locked out of the controls!"

"What?" Tendi sat up. A PADD fell out of the blankets onto the floor, showing [NAV AND COMMS LOCKED] in very big, all-caps, bright red letters.

"Tendi!" Mariner said. "What did you do!"

"So here is a very funny thing, I don't remember doing that!" Tendi said weakly. She grabbed the PADD and tapped frantically at the buttons, but it just buzzed and beeped angrily and wouldn't respond to any of her commands. "Oh no," she said, her voice wobbling. She slid out of the bunk onto the floor, a blanket falling around her shoulders. She clutched it and burst into tears.

"Oh, no, no!" Mariner knelt next to her, pulling Tendi into her arms. "What is happening?"

"It doesn't matter! Just knock me out! Throw me in the brig!" Tendi said, sobbing hysterically.

"There's no brig on the Captain's yacht, you know that! Just tell me what's going on!"

"I can't! I can't talk about it!" Tendi said, gasping for breath.

"Why not! Come on! If I'm gonna get kicked out of Starfleet over this, I deserve to know why, don't I? Tendi! You were going to be a Captain someday— your career can't end like this! Just tell me—"

"I have to go to the Orion outpost," Tendi said, "or I'll die!"

"Die?" Mariner demanded, "what do you mean, die?" She grabbed Tendi by the shoulders, ducking down to try and stare into her eyes.

"I can't talk about it!" Tendi said, looking away.

"You can't just say you're gonna die and not explain! Is there a price on your head, is someone threatening you? Is this a Syndicate thing?"

"No, and it's super offensive of you to assume that!" Tendi said, some of her usual spark returning. "There hasn't been a Syndicate contract out on my life since I graduated Starfleet Academy, except for the one time, and I dealt with it! And also there's another one now, because of the thing with the Karemma, but I'm going to take care of it, okay!?"

"Whoa, okay! I mean, give me some credit," Mariner said, her mouth moving faster than her brain, "at least I didn't guess it was some wildly kinky Orion fuck-or-die sex ritual!"

Tendi shrieked and tipped over sideways and started wailing.

"Oh," Mariner muttered, "yeah, now that I think about it, that actually does make more sense."