Chapter Text
2255
"Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
It was the first and last time in two years that he saw fear in her pale eyes.
The smoke was rolling thick, turning the ground forces into little more than blurs of shape and movement, provoking even more terror on top of the attack itself. Firelight lit the bottom edge, and the night was still filled with screams and fear, and the sound of phaser fire.
She was afraid. Standing a bare ten feet from him, on the outskirts of the settlement, the reason for her fear stood behind her in the form of three natives. An adult and two children, their wide, dark eyes flooded with tears from grief and smoke, they stared at him just like she did.
There wasn't much time to contemplate a decision. Only time to make one.
"Go," he said, both to her and to the two natives who were hiding behind a piece of wreckage, the two that he had dragged out of the maelstrom, to the edge. He had no control over whether they would live or not. Could only give them a chance, a small one, and hold no hope that it would make a difference.
They stared a moment longer, then the group of now five bolted; grabbed each other and ran.
Number One hesitated only briefly, looking at Scott, and the fear left her pale eyes to be replaced with something like respect.
He gave her nothing back, simply stood for that moment in silence, then turned around and went back into the smoke and firelight and darkness.
Despite not bringing attention to himself, the Enterprise's Chief of Security had taken notice of Scott fairly early on, when Scott had to act swiftly to assure himself an unassailable place in the hierarchy of shipboard life. It wasn't that Captain Pike encouraged such things -- in fact, his ship was the least violent in Starfleet -- but there was still inevitably bloodshed. While most of his superior officers knew that Starfleet would consider his death to be a very big problem, most of the junior officers didn't and therefore, Lieutenant Scott was subject of a few assassination attempts simply because he was another step in the ladder.
Those officers didn't survive.
Orloff had noticed after the third one fell in less than two weeks; all three killed with one knifestroke, by the same blade. The Chief Engineer, a slightly unbalanced woman named Barry, had been less than pleased with losing crewmembers, but she eventually fell to her assistant chief and it no longer mattered.
Scott found no use in killing outside of self-defense; he never sought targets, but regardless, enough sought him that his reputation walked ahead of him.
Orloff, impressed with the cold, easy way that Scott could dispatch someone, decided to make use of that talent. And so, regardless of rank or division, Scott spent as much time under the orders of Security as he did of Engineering. It was not a position that he had intended to gain, but he followed his orders regardless of what they were without any hesitations.
Sometimes those orders involved bloodshed.
Orloff noticed him first; Pike, likely told by his intensely loyal Security Chief, noticed soon thereafter. One year, then two, and Scott had never failed to act on an order. He showed no ambition, no weaknesses of greed or desire, simply did his job well and quietly. He was outside of the scheming and plotting, and again and again proved that he was efficient and reliable in both engineering and assassination.
And again and again, Pike sent him to perform the tasks that needed to be done, and well, and swiftly, and silently.
When Starfleet Intelligence came aboard the Enterprise, they made no announcements or explanations. They came onto the bridge, took Number One from the helm, and dragged her away. There was no fear in her eyes, then; Scott saw none of what he saw on Betazed's surface as she left, just the same dignified coolness she had always carried herself with.
Pike tried to demand an answer as to what was going on, but didn't find it. Regardless, the Captain called Orloff, an adept investigator in his own right, to the bridge to have a discussion. To find out if there was anything that could be done to save the first officer from whatever fate was in store for her; to find answers that might prompt her release.
The answers came too late for Number One.
Pike himself did the deed. The buzz from the guards at the door of the brig was that the Captain had gone in and spent several moments speaking to her low and calm. And then, he had embraced her and in that grip, slid the knife almost gently between her ribs. He showed no grief as he stepped out of the brig after he laid her to the floor, simply nodded to the guards and left.
Scott knew that she had been Pike's lover, and found out subsequently that Pike had known that she was a part of the rebellion, and had always turned a blind eye to the small things so long as they stayed small.
Small was three lives of the natives of Betazed, a population being culled like herds of cattle because their empathic and telepathic abilities could be a threat to the Empire. Not all of them. Some were left alive, likely to be used by the same Empire that killed most of their population off. The officers who did it, this joint mission between the Enterprise and the Farragut, believed that they were saving the Empire from a terrible threat. No doubt that everyone else who heard it would believe it too.
But rebels, or former rebels, knew how to see past the party line and how to see the truth.
Number One tried to save a mere three, a small thing. Send them into the wilderness to hide. Scott had taken two more to the outskirts of the settlement for the same reason, a carefully calculated risk. But after she left with those five charges, after Scott had gone back to perform his duties, she had been spotted by one of the Farragut's crew.
And as she was the first officer of Starfleet's finest, Intelligence had moved swiftly and certainly.
The starbase was quiet in the night hours, and he was nearly invisible as he navigated it. Armed with the tools of his trade, he moved through the access crawlways, disabling the traps and resetting them as he went, and did so easily and patiently with an eye on how long it took him.
In the most senses of the word, he wasn't 'here' at all -- the transporter used to put him here had been scrambled carefully to mask its effect, and the tricorder he carried interfered with any lifeform readings that he put out, an old trick of the rebellion.
He was simply a shadow, a wraith, following his orders.
The orders, he knew, were not ones to better the Empire or the rebellion. They were revenge, pure and simple, but he followed them as he did all others. Pike's orders.
When he slid through the narrow vent, into the quiet quarters, he wasn't rushed nor frightened. Just stood for a moment, eyes already adjusted to the darkness, assessing his position and his adversaries. Two rooms; the first with the elder man, the second with the younger, both with ox-blood hair.
Scott killed the younger man first, before he was even truly awake. The only sounds a quiet, strangled cry and then the death rattle.
The elder was long since a skilled Intelligence officer, and was out of his bed, going for his phaser by the time Scott had stepped back out. And for a very long moment, eyes burning with hatred and recognition, and grief, George Kirk looked at Montgomery Scott.
The moment broke when Kirk went for his phaser, snarling something incoherent and broken-hearted, knowing that his son was dead.
But just like Number One, it was too late.
In the end, their tongues were delivered to the young officer of the Farragut, who had been doing his duty by reporting on Number One's rebel activity on Betazed. No one knew who killed George and Sam Kirk, or who ordered their tongues to be delivered.
But when James Kirk transferred to the Enterprise two years later, there was something broken and hateful in his eyes that might not have been there before.