Title: Guerdon
Author: D'Alaire M.
Rating: R (M), for language, violence and adult situations
Codes: P/T, C, S, J, OCs; A/U
Part: 1/65
Summary: A/U. A down-on-his-luck pilot comes upon a boon he hadn't exactly planned on-or wanted. Out of a ship and job after a Cardassian ship attacks the freighter she's working on, a troubled young engineer finds herself a new situation. They both make some use of their lots, with or without trying to. Set about sixteen months before "Caretaker."
Notes: In its original form, this story has a strong R rating and is in fourteen parts with sequential chapters. The part titles will be at the head of some chapters.
8/30/10: I just noticed that this site in all its wisdom killed my minor scene breaks retroactively. I have fixed these breaks and apologize for any confusion.
Feedback is much appreciated. Enjoy!
D'A
Guerdon
With false ambition what had I to do?
Little with love, and least of all with fame-
And yet they came unsought, and with me grew,
And made me all which they can make -a name.
Yet this was not the end I did pursue;
Surely I once beheld a nobler aim.
But all is over -I am one the more
To baffled millions which have gone before.
Byron
I. Salvage: What was left behind.
"Give me that! -Hey!"
The cadet was on her way out when she heard a laugh. Starting at the sound, she only saw at first a soft gold head of hair atop a long, well-formed frame in an officer's uniform, surrounded by others as they all jostled their way through to the main path. Probably en route to the transport, she surmised.
Despite her shrugging them off, her stare was caught on them for a long moment. Their familiar jests and carefree laughter rang in her ears. When the female ensign threw a particularly pointed quip, the fair-haired man flung back one of his own without missing a beat.
When the ensign glanced over her way, however, the cadet killed her distraction. Collecting her PADDs more closely to herself, she strode away in her own right, taking the path that cut through the same field to the warp laboratory. Her crisp black uniform snapped with her pace; her heels sounded evenly beneath her small feet. Her eyes were nailed upon her destination.
She couldn't help but glance aside once more, though. The young ensign, still in possession of his friend's PADD, had shot off in a full sprint, leaving the other ensign to run after him.
"Come on, Macarden, you're faster than that!" he called back to her.
"We don't have time for this!" she protested.
The young man didn't care. He danced around on the grass as if he'd known no other life, totally free, with nothing to lose.
"You want it, you'll have to catch me!"
The cadet watched, betrayed by jealousy. She didn't want to-she tried not to, and cursed herself for being childish when she did-but she wished for a moment that she'd ever had that kind of friendship, could prance around like that, would feel so liberated. Stupid behavior, really...that she knew she'd never enjoy.
It was possible; she retreated, cursing herself again for being so pessimistic. It was only her second semester, after all, and though she'd had fallouts with her instructors and a few more other cadets and recently ousted her boyfriend, she was getting good grades, had made the track team and was starting to get herself into to the routine, if not the Starfleet culture.
She wanted it to work. It had to. She couldn't go back home.
She could still hear their laughter long after she passed.
It would work. It was possible.
The sounds of the laughter never left her.
Not three years later, she knew exactly how much was possible. Her hands ruined with grime and overwork, clenched beneath the remains of a engine drive that had finally blown and now spit coolant over the deck in spite of her efforts, she sucked a breath and prepared her explanation to the captain, that in no uncertain terms would another rebuild save them. While she knew he wouldn't listen-which was just as aggravating-she wasn't about to let it go.
Then she heard the laughter, and she saw them on that bright green lawn. She paused.
Why the memory found her then, she didn't know. She didn't try to figure it out, either. Instead, she wiped her sweat-slicked arms and straightened her back to stretch it.
It wasn't worth the work, she told herself as her stare locked upon the shambles.
She didn't bother trying to figure out how she'd gotten herself in that mess-not anymore. It wasn't worth the energy.
Not worth much at all, considering the bright future she'd thought she'd have not four years ago, when she left her homeworld, only to see all that idealism rot; to feel that crushed pride, to realize she'd screwed that up so badly, thinking she could have anything to do with Starfleet. She was too frustrated to care whose fault it was the day she left, not bothering to say goodbye. Not that anyone was expecting the sentiment.
Then, finally free of the mistake she'd gotten herself into, she soon realized she had nowhere to go. She had no plan, only knew she wanted to work, do what she knew how to do. That would give her at least some satisfaction, some experience to build on while she decided what to do with it all. She didn't need a textbook for that.
What she needed was to feel busy.
So, she wandered, not asking for much while looking for better. A few months into her travels, she got lucky and landed a position at the maintenance facility at Kabol-Five. It was often beneath her, but it was an occupation and a good chance to study different ship designs up close and continue her education in her off time. Only a year and a promotion later, the facility was dismantled due to the tensions in the area. With only two weeks' warning, the junior engineer found herself without a job again, as the Kaboli government chose not to keep on any alien workers. She left before her last scheduled day, cursing the Kaboli, her useless supervisor-who had quickly made arrangements for himself without thinking about his so-called team-and especially cursing the stupid idea that she might get somewhere with that job.
Drifting for a month or so, her money and her temper running short and finally being dropped off at the Ulinas Trade Station, she discovered a sign-in for tradeship applicants. Not seeing much other choice, she submitted herself to the degrading process of interviewing with ship captains only to end up on grime-coated salvage rejects with too little light, rotten food and no respect. One bad situation into an even worse one, and every ship she happened to get a job on couldn't prevent making her situation bitterer still.
Worst part about it, she'd asked for that, too. It didn't take long for her to learn there wasn't much for any Academy dropout without more than one real job under their belt to do but slag around on frontier tradeships for little more than living expenses, looking and feeling about as promising as any greasy warp coil, stuck with herself and her none too glorious path there...
No, it wasn't worth the trouble to ruminate on, but she couldn't quash those memories, that hope and promise, prancing and laughing on a bright green grass. That she would ever attain such an unguarded disposition was now farther away than she ever imagined it would be.
Such was her memory, so perfect, that as she strode away from her last hire at the Minjau Trade Base, her bags in her hands, she didn't place it with the dirty blond-haired man at the foot of an old freighter, casting a hard glare at the hull from bridge to stern as he tapped on a PADD. In fact, she hardly noticed him at all when he waved in a load of supplies with a lazy hand, then walked into the belly of a freighter, slapping the door control when he got inside.
Her eyes on her destination, she didn't look over again, mostly for the unremarkable qualities of the ship and the fact that it was readying for takeoff. They'd already gotten what they came for. Making her way around the drydocks, trying not to look lost on a station she'd not yet been to, she finally found a guide and followed it to the main building.
As the pigeon of a ship she'd passed floated upwards from its dock and turned slowly in the air, she moved into the registration alcove and punched her name and status, "for hire," into the visitor's log.
She didn't pay attention to the atmospheric boom behind her. Instead, she grabbed the handles of her small satchel and tool kit and moved herself into the corridor of the base. Nothing new there, she knew with just a glance. Just another crowded, stripped-down trade depot, the fifth she'd had to sign in to in six months.
After that half year of freight work, everything already looked the same, right down to the slate gray bulkheads, flimsy kiosks selling local and "exotic" wares, the smells of the various peoples combined with the easier mix of system emissions and the occasional fried circuit. Men and women alike checked out the new face, though the former often did with more than a cursory stare, maybe even a grin they were too stupid to withhold.
She disliked them all-everything there-immediately, and she knew none of those people were really worth her time. Not that she had many choices in the matter until she found an opportunity worth more than temporary status that wanted her as well. She'd formed a particular distaste for those layovers, mainly because she did have to deal with those people eventually. After finding an assignment, she found it easier to relax-alone in her work, the way she preferred it. The work would come to her soon.
Or at least she counted on that much. She'd waited for two weeks on one station and quickly learned that the worst thing that could happen to a contract-seeker was to let the station leeches get to know their schedule.
She was lucky to still have her few belongings and tool kit. They'd taken everything else, forcing her to fix replicators on that lousy station to pay her way until an opportunity came up. She came out of that experience determined to get in and out of those ports as quickly as possible.
Thankfully, Minjau looked busy, which spoke for that region of "frontier" Federation space. She'd seen the number of ships on the docking field, mentally counted how many people there looked like captains-who didn't look too busy, but walked the corridors, coolly curious. With her growing résumé, it wouldn't be too long before someone contacted her. If she managed to keep herself centered during the interview, they would be less unsure about hiring a half-Klingon-not that all of them minded. Some of them actually thought they could get something useful from that slice of genome.
She hadn't expected much different-or at least she tried not to go into anything anymore with the same idiot optimism she'd had when she went to the Academy.
So, she propelled herself beyond the busy causeway, through the central terminal and to the living spaces, where she found her assigned room within another minute. Dropping her bag inside the door, she walked across the small space and let herself fall onto the bed, turning onto her side once there.
Her eyes closed, she drew a deep breath, feeling the relief of both rest and solitude, both of which had been rare during her last assignment. It'd been a hard two-way job, three weeks stuck beneath a hissing warp chamber for most of that time, trying desperately to keep it working. The captain of that ship managed to scrape enough out of that deal to drydock his freighter-and rotate his crew.
The engine room hire had no problem with that and caught the next transport without more than a nod of goodbye. Twelve hours later, she was at square one again.
Soon enough, she'd be contacted. With any luck, it'd be a better place than the last. It was all she could hope for.
She breathed again, stretched her slim, muscular arms above her head to relieve an unusual bout of stiffness.
Her eye twitched at a light in the corner of her eye. Blinking, she glanced to a porthole window. The clouds had pulled away, revealing a clear, sunny day.
"Computer," she muttered, closing her eyes again, "close window blind."
Six months and three ship assignments later, she could at times still feel the sunshine warming her soft hair and clean clothes; hear their laughter reverberating in her ears as they jostled on the manicured lawn.
Covered with sweat and streaked with black soot, hungry and overtired, she forced a compositor alignment with her bare hands and prayed it would work long enough for her to reactivate the warp drive.
They had everything to live for; at the time, she thought she could have it, too, if only...
"We'll never make our deadline! Where is our warp drive, Torres?"
Anger flared into her temples as she heard Mesler's whining over the comm. As she considered jumping up and beating the snot out of that stupid, sniveling Bolian, that memory insanely decided to invade her again.
"I thought you said you were an engineer!"
The lawn, so green, the air, crisp and fresh, the smell of the cool dew, and their laughter echoed as she watched her grease-stained hands pull open a relay socket and tried to breathe in that stifling hole. That mixed with Mesler's incessant screaming and a ship that was about to fall apart at the threads made her temples pound with stress.
She recalled all too clearly the mingling tinges of jealousy and hope, and actually, stupidly, trying to radiate a little of that cheer, opening up to people who ended up being worthless or not understanding her as much as they thought they did.
She tried anyway, just so she could be more disappointed than before-with that memory, too, to carry with her.
Coolant steam hissed in tune with Mesler's curses over the crackling comm, and the memory of the laughter echoed behind it all.
Something's got to stop this, she thought, cringing to try and push the laughing, happy images away. I can't keep doing this. I can't keep doing this...
She never forgot wanting it; recalling it again made the lack of having it all too plain, again and again. She'd wanted it. Really wanted it.
You do this to yourself. You bring this on...
"More speed, Torres! What are you doing down there?"
Throwing down her tools, she spun to find and shut off the most annoying noise up first.
As she strode across the bay to disconnect the comm control, she could not have known that her captain's curses over the comm were probably his last.
Nor could she have known the reason Mesler was screaming at her to get the ship moving faster, even as an approaching Cardassian ship shot a clean phaser stream from its forward banks into the ship's belly, knocking her forward. Hitting her knees, she whipped her head back and saw the ricocheting charge begin to sizzle through the engine's useless core. Then, the impulse generator she'd been fighting with throughout her assignment groaned and shorted, popping off a housing cover in the death throe. A low hiss followed, and an entirely different and insidious sort of steam began to crawl from its grave.
Without the briefest thought to try to avert what was happening at that point, she scrambled to the automatic firewall. The doors slammed shut behind her as she skidded into the manual control panels there. Staring wildly at the greasy display and her two choices there-shutdown or self-destruct-she glanced through the grate at the drive plasma, quickly filling the deck. With a few taps, she shut off the plasma injectors and antimatter chamber.
To her surprise, the engines did exactly as she asked. "First time for everything," she smirked, shutting down a few more systems before giving up the panel. She knew there was another one in the forward hold that would give her more information, like any possibility of getting to a supply station without help.
Before she could turn for the access corridor, she saw the light in the corner of her eye-streams...a transporter, nothing like anything powered by that wreck, she knew in a glance. It took only a couple quick heartbeats to figure out what was going on that time, and to remember she didn't have a weapon.
Then she heard the voices.
"Check the cargo. Scan for weapons materials. Look for any surviving crew and dispose of them."
"Yes, sir."
She'd never heard those dialects before. Ducking into an open hold behind a stack of empty canisters, she did manage, however, to peek around and get a glimpse of the forms that had come with that light-and she did recognize that, what they carried in their gray, ridged hands, and where they were now heading.
"Shit."
"Got it. Yeah, that's Mesler's cruddy warp signature, all right. -Time to pay up, ol' buddy. We got you."
"Can you put the barge onscreen? Mesler wouldn't have stopped without a reason."
"I might if I reconnect...Hold on a sec. Yeah, that should do- Crap! They're not alone! Get us-"
"Have the Cardassians spotted us yet?"
"Screw the Cardies! There's another ship on approach!"
"I see it...This is turning out to be a interesting game of tag. They're locals."
"Are you trying to make me feel better?"
"No. -Let's hold up a bit, see what they're up to first before we give up...That was an interesting move. I didn't know people pulled Kresjii maneuvers anymore."
"I hate you sometimes, you know."
"I know the feeling. Easy, now."
