Chapter Text
On the first day of her first assignment of the ISS Custer T’Ralia dropped off her personal belongings in her quarters and reported to sickbay twenty seven minutes and nineteen seconds ahead of schedule. A Terran man with olive skin looked up from his work–presumably Chief Medical Officer Andrew Galanis. He gave her a confused look.
“And just who the devil are you?” he asked.
“T’Ralia Van Den Broeck. I arrived early.”
Galanis rose from his seat and walked toward her, looking her over with a critical eye. “No…this must be some kind of joke. I thought it was bad enough that the only other damn doctor on this ship was going to be someone so new, but with a Dutch name at least assumed you would be Terran.”
“It’s Flemish,” T’Ralia corrected. “And my first name is unmistakably Vulcan.”
He narrowed his eyes and stepped closer. “I take it you studied the history of this vessel?”
“I did.” If Galanis was trying to intimidate T’Ralia, it had no effect.
“Tell me if you noticed anything that stood out.”
“Captain Kimetto holds the record for the longest captaincy of a single vessel.”
“And the fewest attempts on his life. In fact, if you had dug a little deeper you might have seen that this vessel has had few assassination attempts and fewer successes. Department heads hold their position for a long time. Can you guess why?”
“No, sir, I lack sufficient information to make an inference.”
Again, he stepped closer so they were only inches apart. They were close in height, so their noses were only inches away, and T’Ralia could feel his breath. “Threats from below are eliminated before they have the chance to become threats.”
“Allow me to reassure you, Doctor, I have no ambition to take your position. As you said yourself, I lack experience. I would be setting myself up for failure.”
Galanis placed one hand on the handle of the dagger strapped to his thigh, but he made no move to draw it. “If you were to be disposed of, I might hope to have a more suitable replacement. Don’t give me any reasons to think any less of you.”
“Understood.”
“Brig to Doctor Van Den Broeck."
“Go ahead,” T’Ralia responded. She could predict what this request would be about: some prisoner who was tortured to the brink of death who needed to be brought back to some vague semblance of health. Galanis considered this sort of work to be beneath him and was all too eager to offload this work on his Vulcan colleague. He never made another direct threat toward her, but T’Ralia never forgot the first one.
“A prisoner needs medical attention immediately.”
“On my way.” T’Ralia gathered her gear and supplies and left sickbay. The ISS Custer was in orbit over Vulcan where uprisings were regrouping. Proximity to her home planet was…trying. T’Ralia had no particular attachment to the place she once called home or the people who lived there, but she could feel the closeness to the bondmate she left behind. He burned with his first Pon Farr, and their connection affected her in a way that made it difficult for T’Ralia to concentrate and to keep control of her emotions.
The prisoner sat slumped on the floor, staring ahead with an intense gaze. T’Ralia did not recognize him after so long and with his face bruised and bloody, but the link they shared told her what she needed to know. This was her bondmate, Stellek, and he was deep in the blood fever.
“No idea what happened,” a guard explained. T’Ralia kept her eyes on Stellek, and he slowly turned his head to look toward her. “He’s completely unresponsive.”
“This man is very ill.” T’Ralia did not take her eyes off of Stellek. “He will die soon without medical intervention, and any information he knows will perish with him. I can treat him, but I require privacy. Send him to my quarters.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
T’Ralia closed her eyes and took a deep breath. If not for his phaser, T’Ralia had the strength to kill this man, and she felt a creeping impulse to make the attempt regardless. “Then what can you accommodate?”
“I can leave you alone for a bit.”
She closed her eyes again. What was supposed to happen in a traditional marriage ceremony would be carried out in a prison cell where even if the guard stepped away there would be no hiding the true nature of this ‘medical intervention.’
“That will be sufficient.” T’Ralia answered. She knew not to ask for too much from Terrans.
Without another word, the guard lowered the forcefield and turned to go. Stellek rose to his feet, and T’Ralia approached him with hurried steps. Stellek reached out to cradle T’Ralia’s face in his hands to initiate the mind meld, and soon they were one in both mind and body for the first time.
The experience was overwhelming, not the sex so much as the look inside the enemy’s mind. She saw Stellek’s reasoning, saw the horror that he had endured while she lived a sheltered life. She took a deep breath to steady her thoughts. Her reaction was emotional. Logic was still on her parents’ side. Rebellion would only prolong suffering. Obedience would end it.
“Your logic is flawed.” That was all she had to say as she straightened her clothes and hair. “But I will keep secret what I saw when we melded.”
“I could say the same to you, but I can understand the circumstances under which you reached your convictions.” Stellek was back to himself, aside from the bruises on his swollen face. T’Ralia did not offer to heal those, lest she be reprimanded for being too kind to a prisoner. “I knew your family favored the Empire, but I did not expect you to live as if you were trying to become Terran.”
“I am not trying to become Terran. Live long and prosper.” T’Ralia had no more words as she turned to go. In her heart, she knew he was right, and it went back further than anything Director Van Den Broeck instilled in her. Her native tongue was Terran Standard, spoken by her parents in her childhood home, and she knew little of the Vulcan language and could read none of it. She never learned the Vulcan nerve pinch or how to initiate a mind meld, and her parents thought it was more important that she learn the history of the Terran Empire rather than that of her own planet. Stellek could be right about one thing, and wrong about others.
Over the following days, T’Ralia developed a distaste for anything that reminded her of how un-Vulcan she was. She used her adoptive father’s Flemish surname, ate meat, and knew little of her own culture. In meditation, she tried to clear these thoughts from her mind. Perhaps Stellek meant to plant seeds of doubt.
She was immersed in work at her desk when Galanis returned to sickbay. He leaned against the doorframe with a sly smile on his face. “You know, the other day I heard a rather unsavory rumor about you, and by now I’ve heard it so many times that I wonder if it must be true.”
“What was the nature of this rumor?” This was inevitable. Her encounter with Stellek had not been sufficiently private.
Galanis moved to stand across the desk from T’Ralia. He placed his hands on the surface and leaned closer. “You and the prisoner.”
“You mean the patient I treated, as I was instructed.
“You know what I mean. Was that an old flame, or are you some kind of slut?” His voice was harsh.
“I have never seen that man before.” To admit to any past history with Stellek would invite undue suspicion.
Galanis straightened up, and his hands curled into fists. “I don’t believe you.”
“Vulcans do not lie,” T’Ralia lied.
He rushed around to the other side of the desk to grab T’Ralia’s upper arm and pull her to her feet. “Literally sleeping with the enemy, it makes you look bad no matter how you try to explain it, and I’ve been looking for a good reason to get rid of you.”
His right hand was on her, his dominant hand. T’Ralia was quick enough to take the dagger that was strapped to his thigh. Restrained, she had fewer options for a swift and effective attack but was able to thrust the blade into his lower abdomen. The shock and pain made Galanish cry out and double over, clutching his wound as red blood poured out. Before he could recover, T’Ralia pushed him backwards onto the desk and held the blade against his throat.
“Your mistake was making your intentions known.”
She slit Galanis’s throat, and with that one action she became the new chief medical officer.