Title: Those Who Know
Disclaimer: Not mine. Never will be.
His eyes roaming round his bridge, William Stanton found his attention lingering on his chief helm officer. Young Mr. Chen was a fine officer, something of a protégé almost, but there was something different about him now that were out in space, actually searching for the new world. While the young man's dedication to his duty was in no way diminished, it was disconcerting for a Commander to frequently find himself minus his chief helm officer when crisis struck.
The thing was… he thought he knew why, and that reason was why he hadn't called him on his frequent disappearances. It had bothered him at first, but then he'd started noticing a pattern. Whenever Mr. Chen disappeared, it was usually in the company of Kendrix Morgan, one of his scientists before she vanished, and Damon Henderson, unofficially the best mechanic on the colony, and not long after that the Power Rangers showed up to fight off the current alien intruder yet again.
That accounted for three rangers, just leaving three unaccounted for, and he wasn't stupid enough to think that the other two people Mr Chen spent his off duty time with had nothing to do with the original set of rangers that had turned up, right at the start of this voyage: Mr. Corbett's younger brother (a connection he hadn't made at first) and the girl with the long brown hair. That just left the Magna Defender, and he didn't think it was a coincidence that not long after Mike Corbett's return to the colony, completely out of the blue, the Magna Defender started fighting with the rangers instead of just happening to be there. That theory wasn't hurt by the fact that Mike started disappearing when Kai did.
He just wished he could do more to help, but he didn't know how. Perhaps it was all he could do to appear blind to the absences and the unexpected tiredness. He knew that the young people were doing something incredible dangerous and that sometimes they paid for it. His mind flashed back to a time when Mike hadn't yet rejoined the colony, back when he was still forming his theory about the unexplained absences and wondering if he should give young Mr Chen a caution over his behaviour, when the young man in question had walked into Command for his shift. One of the other members of his bridge staff had just been relieved and had brushed past his helm officer a little more roughly than expected. It was just coincidence that he'd been looking straight at Kai as it happened, but the quick flash of pain had been unmistakable. The other man had stopped, turning back in concern, but Kai had passed it off as a pulled muscle from callisthenics. Satisfied, the other man had gone on his way, but Kai had briefly pressed his hand against the nearby wall, the other hand resting on his stomach, his jaw clenched before he'd recovered himself and gone to his station. The whole incident had taken less than ten seconds, but it had shaken him badly.
It wasn't the only incident either; he'd stopped counting the number of times Mr Chen arrived for his shift moving stiffly or simply arriving late, stopped counting the number of times his second in command arrived in no better shape. Then there were other 'incidents', including one in particular that he didn't want to think about - the time Trakeena had taken control of him, using him in another of her bids to destroy Terra Venture. The thing that hurt the most about that time was how he'd hurt his daughter and he was just glad that Jodie was so resilient, but other things stood out from that time too, the desperate face of his helm officer as he tried to break Trakeena's control, the fighting skills the young man had displayed going far beyond what was taught by the GSA training programmes.
Every time the monitors in Command picked up footage from the latest battle it was all he could do not to wince whenever one of the rangers was sent crashing to the ground. It had been so much easier when he hadn't known who they were.
The turning point came when he'd been talking with High Councillor Renier and the news came through that the colony was under attack yet again. The brief unguarded look on the Councillor's face was a mirror for how he felt inside - worry, but not for the colony. He knew, as he suspected the Councillor did, that the rangers would sooner die than let anything happen to the colony, and that was precisely why they worried. He knew the woman standing next to him had a soft spot for the blunt-spoken mechanic, Damon, and for a fleeting moment he and the politician shared a quick glance of understanding.
"You should go, Commander," she said. "Make sure they have the back-up if they need it."
When the battle was over, he'd found the Councillor staring out over the City Dome before she'd turned her attention to him.
"They did it again," she said.
"Yes. They did."
There was a quiet moment before, "They're so young."
"I know."
As they both looked out over their colony, William Stanton reflected that it was no bad thing to have someone else who shared this secret.
AN: As far as I know, Commander Stanton was never given a canon first name, although I may be wrong on that. As a result he became William, possibly from too much reading of the Dark is Rising Saga. :)