Chapter Text
“Are you done in there?” Marbog asks, several minutes after the ‘fresher flushes for the last time.
“A minute.” Piper finishes washing his face and pulls on a fresh uniform top, tossing the previous one in the recycler. “Maladaptive stress responses, I swear,” he says, exiting the room and turning to the replicator. “‘Pret, a glass of water and an ant- ant -”
“Antacids are a common order after human digestive upset.”
“Yes, that, thank you ‘Pret.”
“Nothing else?” Marbog asks.
“Can’t. Too much to do and I have to be watching my back, clearly.”
“And you’re doing so well getting things done just letting your anxiety run rampant.”
Piper glares at him as he swallows the antacid and takes a sip of water. “Thank you ‘Pret. Could you generate some soothing - ah - white noise, from my program? Volume setting eight.” The gentle humming tones switch on, the thrum of a Federation fifth generation space station power core. “Thank you.”
“Is there anywhere else?” Marbog asks, in archaic Choblik - a language he’d learned to study old records of Choblik cybernetics and prosthesis, and one that universal translators tend to struggle with. Why Piper had learned it - well, he had taught himself Tolkien’s Elvish when he was thirteen, and at some point learning seemingly useless bits of language was entertaining.
“No,” he replies in the same language, waving Gull down so he can manually enter some requests. Interpreter’s at risk of surveillance, and he can’t trust Deep Space Nine either. Taking a shuttle out and then sweeping it would raise too many red flags. Conversation in Federation Standard starts to fill the room. He takes a breath, and keeps talking slowly, thinking through the translation into archaic Choblik in his head. “Gull’s playing one of your previous diagnostic conversations. And some background static interference.”
“Yeah, I can tell,” Marbog says, moving close to Piper and looking at his cybernetics, face pointed down so it would be hard to see his mouth. Piper does the same. “So you’re in for a fun assignment.”
“At least we all know the Romulan’s a fascist spy.”
“Your captain really wants you to trust her.” He snorts. “At least the benefit of having a reputation as a pain in the ass means she won’t be surprised when you don’t get along.”
“I’ve cultivated that reputation,” he mutters, then sighs. “Clearly, the ‘watch Hawthorne’ assignment is … a bit more serious then we thought,” he says, taking a sip of water and concentrating on holding it down.
“Maybe,” Marbog says, “Someone was definitely paying attention to how much of a rock drilling woodpecker,” the literal translation referred to a species on the Choblik home planet that was roughly analogous to a woodpecker, though they were widely known to accidentally try to drill through rock instead - and sometimes succeed. It was one of Marbog’s favorite epithets for him, “you were about making yourself a horned beetle in their burrow.” Another archaic Choblik idiom, something like ‘a thorn in their side’.
“Do you think they suspect that - I know?” That we know.
“I don’t know.” Marbog says. “Look, when it comes down to it, did she really tell us anything we don’t know? They wanted you here so you could be observed out of the way and easily shunted out of the way permanently if needed. For everyone following the official line, the nice story is that command wanted to reward your determination in whistleblowing, the cynical story is that this is a ‘now shut up about it’ bribe promotion, the more cynical story is that they want you in another quadrant so no one can hear you if you don’t shut up it, and you can’t complain because it’s a promotion with a shiny new ship, no matter how insane the design. She’s one of the people watching you, she wants you to trust her, she’s telling the nice story.”
“What if she’s not just watching me, though?”
“I’m the one who told you she was bound to shoot you in the back.”
“No, I just …” his fingers tighten into fists. “ How sure are you that the mind control tech failed? I mean …”
“Piper -”
“How sure are we that she doesn’t want me at - at her back because she knows how to - how to activate the sleeper programming. How can I - ”
“ Pip.”
He catches himself, realizes he’s slipped into Federation Standard. Fuck.
“Look,” Marbog says, back in archaic Choblik. “I’m not going to beetledung you and say that there’s no chance. But I am very good at my job, and I didn’t find anything. And we have worked very hard and put our not inconsiderable skill - yes, ‘our’, I’m actually including you in that - in making these new cybernetics secure. Maybe I’m wrong and we missed something. Maybe. But if she thinks she can find a way to overtaking-tunnel into this tech, she would have to be a lot better than the people who made the first tech, and frankly I don’t know when she’s supposed to have gotten that good.”
He’s afraid to trust his own voice, so he just nods.
“Speaking of your cybernetics… have they actually been glitching? Have you been having lapses -”
“Just within the expected parameters you gave me.”
“And you didn’t see fit to mention it.”
“They were your expected parameters.”
“Starship engineers… tell me now, and I’ll tell you whether they’re within expected parameters.”
“I forget words more often than I used to.” Like antacid. “Nothing engineering related, just like you guessed. Just - bits of memory gone here and there. It’s harder to keep my anxiety in check, though admittedly most of that’s not on the cybernetics.”
“Harder like that.”
“That doesn’t happen … often.”
“And when you say bits of memory gone.”
“Forgetting I already met someone. Or forgetting bits of … history, or political context. Not my work.”
“But noticeably worse than what would have been previously typical forgetfulness.”
“You know, I don’t really remember.”
Marbog jabs him in the shoulder with his tail.
“Worse. But not by too much. The last few weeks of calibrations have helped a lot.” Piper says. “‘Pret will be keeping an eye on me for erratic behavior. If anyone looks into it, it’s to monitor and keep full medical records of my recovery and cybernetic integration.”
“You were worried before she said anything.”
“It’s not like we hadn’t tossed around the possibility that they might have wanted a sleeper agent.”
“You’ll tell me how this progresses. Even if it’s within normal parameters.”
“May my burrow collapse if I don’t.”
“Don’t say that one lightly.”
“I’m not.” Piper says, seriously. “Starfleet’s expecting you to be a regular consultant, anyway. It won’t surprise anyone that I’m sending you reports.”
“I can’t go on this one. You know that.”
He knows. Marbog has a duty rotation the day after tomorrow. “I don’t like the idea of you being here at all. You know that.”
“You can still leave.”
He can’t. “I know.” He gets up. “I have status reports to collect. And apparently I should make sure a Tal Shiar agent isn’t wandering around engineering poking his head where it shouldn’t be.”
“At least you don’t have to pretend that one isn’t a snake in the burrow.”
That’s the truth. “You going to come complain about starship engineers?”
“Obviously,” Marbog says.
Piper reaches for Gull, but Marbog stops him before he does.
“Pip - are you going to be able to sleep here?”
It’s a fair question. “A few hours left on my shift is enough time for me to get the status reports together and get an updated list and report to the Captain. My engineers aren’t pulling an all-nighter and I’m not either.”
“Not what I meant.”
Yeah. “With a couple of batarangs under my pillow, I’ll try.”
Marbog snorts. “You are a deeply, deeply deranged little man.”
“I know,” he says, switching off the recorded conversation that had been playing over them on Gull and getting back to his feet. “‘Pret, you can cancel white noise, thanks,” he says in Federation Standard. “We’re going to go find out how much work I have to do to fix you, kiddo.”
It’s early morning. Chester’s been up most of the night, getting Hawthorne’s team what they need from the list he made, then popping in and out of Engineering to make sure they have what they need as the additional shifts start work. She grabbed a few hours of sleep once Hawthorne came back on shift, found out she’d been popping in and out of Engineering all through Delta shift, and told her to fuck off again, this time with the addition of ‘and go the fuck to sleep’. She sort of did. After reading the Chironian briefing materials.
Maybe canceling her earling-morning sparring session with J’etris would be wise, but frankly she needs the exercise.
“I don’t get it!” she says, waving the door to the fencing room in the ship’s gym locked. It locks, much to her relief; Hawthorne’s report indicates that’s a crapshoot right now. “A nonzero amount of this crew hates my guts! We only just met! I usually only piss people off when I mean to .”
“Well,” says J’etris, “the Romulan’s a given. I’m not happy about him myself. Who else?”
“Our Chief Engineer,” says Chester, pulling on her jacket–maroon, heavily padded, an asymmetrical fastening along the shoulder. It’s old-fashioned snaps. People who do historical fencing tend anachronistic in all aspects of it. Her hair is tightly braided against her skull and the end of the braid bundled compactly at the back of her head. She pauses, stretches, testing the movement of the jacket. Across the room, J’etris has already pulled her dark blue jacket over her shoulders, and is frowning at shin-guards.
“As I said, the Romulan is a given,” J’etris says. “What’s it about Hawthorne that’s got you all worked up?”
“It’s not me being worked up at him,” says Chester, a little strained as she works at the buckle of her gorget. Ambidexterity doesn’t help when the buckle is tiny and just about under your ear. “It’s him being worked up about me , and I don’t know why. It’s like he hates me. Specifically. I’ve never met the man before in his life and he’s acting like I insulted his dog.”
J’etris makes a face. She grew up in Montecito, California–the town still has a thing about pampered dogs. Chester’s been in crappy bars the universe over where you could steal a Nausicaan’s drink with less of a reaction than you’d get from insulting a Montecito artist’s dog. “I can see that being concerning. He is a pretty integral part of the crew. But I was under the impression there aren’t many people he does trust–it’s unlikely to be personal.”
“Oh, he does trust someone. He trusts Lieutenant Bu-Fsa-Fenn, who likes me even less than he does. It’s amazing, I don’t think I’ve put my foot in my mouth so many times since my first year at the Academy! It’s also like he’s scared of me.” She makes a face. “I can’t say I care for that.”
“Well,” says J’etris, taking a sword down from the wall and thoughtfully flexing the meter of steel between her hands, “I’d suggest I should talk to him, but you’re supposed to be the approachable one.”
Chester snorts. “Not in this case I’m not.” She finishes buckling the last few things and takes her own feder down–a blunt replica of an ancient Earth longsword. She and J’etris found out they shared a passion for historical martial arts when they were both assigned to the Bedivere . They’ve practiced together ever since. Both of them prefer Earth historical fencing. Chester’s been doing it since she was a kid, and J’etris…
J’etris prefers not to dwell too much on her Klingon heritage. She’s been rejected by her Klingon family twice now, and doesn’t care to continue to invite it.
“The chief engineer being afraid of you doesn’t seem like a good sign, no,” says J’etris. “We could see what we come up with to deal with that. Or… we could let off some steam sparring, and try again at the staff meeting.”
Translation: she’s overworked, far too worried, and J’etris thinks it’s time to do something about that. Chester feels herself grinning for the first time in what feels like forever. “Sparring. Please.”
“Aye, Cap’n,” says J’etris, with a straight face and a comically exaggerated salute that’s appalling in its disrespect; Chester makes a totally involuntary face at it, and J’etris grins. It is not an expression that heralds anything good. “Maybe if I kick your ass hard enough, I’ll shake something out of your head.”
Chester is briefly, overwhelmingly grateful to her in that moment. It feels normal, it feels like old times. If she’s got J’etris at her back, they can do anything.
If she’s got J’etris at her front , especially with a sword, she may well get that threatened ass-kicking–and J’etris with a sword in hand has no compunction about rank, either. Chester’s been doing this much, much longer, but J’etris has strength and reach on her.
“Yeah,” she says, “Good luck with that. Come on, show me what you’ve got.”