The weeks dragged by and still there was no sign of rescue. Chekov alternated between hope and bouts of depression. His work in the engine room was dirty and hard. The other crew were Tikari and left him alone. Occasionally they'd take pity on him for being so young and for being alone, helping with the worst of the work he was given. Malla would bring them their food once a day. She always seemed nervous around him. He didn't pay her much attention. His thoughts would always drift back to his girlfriend he had left behind on the Enterprise. Yelena Bogdanovna... Lyenochka... a beautiful Ukrainian engineer with her infectious laugh and her inability to pronounce the letter 'g'. She was passionate and oh so sexy. Any such daydreams were always interrupted by Haddad. He appeared with monotonous regularity and dragged him back to his work. If he was lucky, he was merely harried. If the engineer was in a bad mood, he would take him aside with a couple of his henchmen and give him a thorough beating. He hated Haddad's smiling eyes that looked him up and down in speculative lechery. The man took a sadistic delight in making him suffer. He would either return to his dormitory to recover or be dragged off to the infirmary, bruised and bleeding to be patched up by Malla. He would refuse to meet her sorrowful gaze. She would clean the cuts on his face as carefully as she could, wiping his closed eyes and pressing her broken dermal regenerator softly against his bruised arms. He would take off his shirt to let her tend the wounds on his body but he would always look away. She wasn't sure whether he despised her or whether he gave her no thought. He was proud, she realised. He hardly ever spoke to her – only to answer her medical questions with the briefest of replies. She wanted to get to know him and to find out about him, who he was. She wanted to see him smile. He never smiled.
One day Haddad's men dragged him in, almost unconscious and dumped him on the floor of the infirmary, leaving without a backward glance. Malla hurried over, pushing him up by his shoulders. He came to with a groan, tears of pain in his eyes. She helped him to stand, catching him as he swayed violently to one side. He tried to shun her, pushing her away weakly, but he was too exhausted and submitted to leaning on her as she took him over to an exam bed. She put her arms around him as she sat him down, unexpectedly thrilled at being so close to him. She breathed in the smell of sweat and grease.
She gathered herself, trying to concentrate on her medical work. "Why do you anger them so much? They'll kill you," she said softly.
Chekov suffered her ministrations in pain, clutching at his ribs. "I won't let Haddad touch me. I'd rather die."
It was the first time he had given her an opinion.
"Sit up," she said, trying to sound business-like.
She took his chin in her hand and turned him to face her. He gave her a brief, sour look before fixing his eyes on a point on the floor. She examined his face. Several bruises had made his left eye puffy and his long lashes were wet with tears and matted with blood and from a gash above his eye. A large cut bloomed across his top lip. He sat on the exam table, his head held down and his shoulders hunched. He seemed to be in a world of his own. He looked completely dejected. She felt so sorry for him. She took an antiseptic swab and pressed it to his lip. He sucked in his breath at the sting of the liquid and jerked his head away, grabbing at her wrist.
"I'm sorry," she said hurriedly. "I didn't mean to hurt you."
He did not release the pressure on her wrist but continued to stare through her, as if not really aware of her presence. His eyes said he was elsewhere, as if going over some awful event in his mind. He was holding on to her so hard she could feel his arm shaking.
"You're hurting me," she said more insistently.
His eyes moved to suddenly focus on her. He looked down at her hand and let go of it as if shocked to see it there. She saw shame burn across his cheeks as he closed his eyes in silence and turned away.
She put her hand to his chin and turned his face firmly back towards her. "It's ok."
She picked up another swab and went to press it against his upper lip. She hesitated before she touched him. She followed the curve of his cheek bone down to the soft pout to his lips, accentuated by the cut, and realised that she couldn't resist any longer. Impulsively she leaned forwards and kissed him without even thinking of the consequences. She felt him freeze momentarily in surprise. For a second she thought he might pull away, but then she felt his hand on the back of her neck and he returned her kiss, deeply and passionately. Eventually he broke the contact. Malla was vaguely aware of the metallic taste of blood from his lips.
"Not here," she whispered, cupping his face in her hands. "My cabin."
She took his hand and led him out of the infirmary. He followed her as if in a dream. He didn't know what he was doing. He wasn't thinking or reasoning. Half an hour before he had been tied up and beaten and now he was being kissed by a beautiful girl. He was just letting her carry him along. He couldn't make any decisions. They hurried through the bleak and silent corridors until they reached her cabin. They threw themselves into each others arms as the door closed behind them. He pushed her back against the door, hungrily seeking out her soft flesh; her lips, her neck, her shoulders. The rush of passion washed away the pain of his tired body. She unzipped her fatigues to reveal her slim naked body. He kissed her again, almost delirious, caught up in the moment. She led him over to the bed and lay down on it, holding up her hand. He took up her invitation. Why shouldn't he? It was only physical. It wasn't rational. It was a means of escape from his captivity. His moral self chided him even as he lay down next to her. Why was he doing this? He had thought she was beautiful when he first met her, but he hadn't really noticed her since then. The hell of his captivity and thoughts of escape had blinded him to anything but the pain he endured every day. Was he trying to find some connection with Malla? Something that would sweeten his bitter imprisonment? He felt angry with himself for intellectualising the event. Let it just be physical. He pushed all thoughts aside and made love to her, forgetting the Enterprise, forgetting his friends, forgetting Lyenochka, with her blue grey eyes and fine high cheekbones... But at the end his lust was satisfied: nothing else. He felt guilty for it.
For hours afterwards, as Malla lay sleeping, he stood by the window watching the asteroid field turn and broil around the ship. It was like a mighty river, cutting him off from the space beyond. Thick clouds of dust and ice particles swirled like eddies and currents in a never ending ebbing and flowing, glinting in the glow of a distant sun. He had to find out what that sun was if he was to escape. Beyond the field, two nebulae hung like silent guardians. The columns of gas and stars loomed like pillars of fire and ebony and at their edge flowed streams of meteorites. He concentrated on the star formations, committing them to memory, fixing them in his mind. As soon as he could get his hands on a star chart he would be able to locate his position and the last co-ordinates of the Enterprise. He had been a prisoner for nearly a month now. Perhaps the crew had given up looking for him? Perhaps they hadn't looked at all and assumed he was dead? He was only an ensign, after all, and no one of any real importance. He suddenly felt very homesick. He closed his eyes against a flood of sentimentality and sadness and leaned his forehead against the cold glass of the window.
"Kakaya glupost'" he muttered to himself.
"What are you thinking?"
Malla had awoken and found he had left the bed. At first she had thought in sorrow that he had left. She watched him stand by the window, silently lost in whatever thoughts had overtaken him, his dark eyes narrowed in concentration, his lips forming words she did not know. She saw him seek out each star and dwell on it. The light of the galaxy reflected in his eyes as if he were connected to it. The cabin was cold but he did not seem to feel it. He stood in just his trousers, his hair tousled, his lean figure almost silhouetted against the window.
Chekov turned his head briefly towards her, his features merging with the shadows of the room. "I'm sorry, did I wake you?" he asked in his soft accent. His question was gentle, something she wasn't used to.
"No." She got up, pulling the light sheet off the bed to wrap herself in it. She wanted to be near him, to find all there was to know about him. She moved to stand beside him, looking out at the stars. "What are you looking at?"
He took a deep breath as if coming up for air. He turned back to the stars and pointed at one of the nebulae. "I am pretty sure that at the centre of that nebula lies a pulsar. If it's the one I'm thinking of, from here I'd estimate it to be, maybe, 30 kilometers in diameter with a spin rate of 30.2 times per second. It is emitting radiation across the spectrum from gamma to radio and its flux will extend to above 10 TeV."
She looked at him. "You know all that?"
"Yes," he said simply. "I am a scientist. Knowing these things helps me to navigate and do my job."
"You're a navigator? I thought you were a soldier. That's what my father said."
Chekov made a quiet noise of disgust. "I am an explorer. We are on a mission, to find new planets and peoples and to learn from them, exchange information, culture..."
Again her father's opinions echoed in her head. "But Starfleet... it's the biggest military organisation in the Federation. Aren't you just flexing your muscles?"
Chekov looked at Malla with a flicker of annoyance. He had heard the same mantra many times before. He stopped himself from snapping back a retort at her. It wasn't fair. She wasn't to know.
"I have made first contact with so many new species. Some want to join us and some want to be left alone. No one is forced. But with every contact comes a risk. Like the Klingons. They only seem to want war. We have nothing to offer each other."
She shook her head. "You must be very clever. I only have the medical skills my mother taught me. I can only just read and write and then only enough to get by on the ship, and as for maths... I only know enough for trading."
"Where is your mother?" he asked.
She gave a tight, tired smile and dropped her head. "She... she was killed a year ago during an attack. We ran into a Federation starship protecting the legal trade routes into Tikar. We got into a battle, trying to smuggle arms. We were hit. Our infirmary was damaged in the cross-fire...My father blamed himself at first but then he blamed the captain of the assault ship. He was a Russian. He tried to negotiate with my father but the stakes were too high. That's why he's been so hard on you. Anything that makes him remember that day sends him over the edge. Ever since then he's been cruel. We used to be traders, but after that he fell into mercenary work. He doesn't care who he uses to fight his battles any more."
Chekov contemplated her for a second. She wasn't stupid. Surely she could see her life for what it was.
"Why don't you leave?" he asked.
She looked at him in surprise, pulling the sheet tighter around her defensively. "Leave? Where would I go? I can't leave, Pavel. I haven't known any life outside of this ship and my father's business. I don't have the skills to exist anywhere else."
He turned to hold her by the shoulders. "Then who's the prisoner, Malla? You or me?"
Malla was taken off guard by his abrupt question. She had never thought about her life before. In all her 21 years she had never considered that she could go anywhere else or do anything else. Suddenly this young man had come out of nowhere and hinted to her that there was a whole galaxy waiting to be explored, full of opportunities and excitement: with more people in it than just the downtrodden, violent mercenaries on the Caucasus. Living on the ship was as cut off and enclosed as a mountain village.
"No." She turned away, pulling herself away from him and paced the room. "I'm not a prisoner on this ship." She stopped suddenly and looked at him with bright eyes. "You could stay with me. We could run away, get married, you could teach me all about the galaxy, go anywhere we wanted to."
The hope and naivety in her voice filled him with pain.
"Malla, I..." He sighed and turned back to the window, folding his arms on the frame in front of him and burying his face in them. He shouldn't have done this. It was selfish. He hoped he would not have to say this to another girl again: "I am not the sort of man you can marry."
"Why not?" came back her immediate, hurt reply.
Why? It was a question he rarely had the courage to ask himself, knowing that the obvious answers were too awkward to face and led to an emptiness he didn't want to dwell on. Because he had chosen a career that demanded years of his life, because he was devoted to his job as a navigator and a scientist, because he couldn't imagine anyone, no matter how beautiful, limiting his exploration of the universe to the confines of a family home, because there was so much more to see with his adopted family on the Enterprise. As a result, every girlfriend he had ever had had dumped him out of frustration at his addiction to his work. Even Yelena had complained a few days before he left: you spend ten hours a day on the Bridge, you volunteer for every away-mission. You're never with me. You're a pain in the ass! His friends on the Bridge crew clucked round him like they always did, trying to point him in a direction opposite to that which they were all already embarked upon. Scotty had advised him during a drunken drinking session that he should get out of Starfleet, go back to studying, get a job at a research institute, get married, have children, live the family life. When Chekov had replied that he had no intention of ever doing any of that, Scotty became maudlin: But laddie, I don't want to see you condemn yourself to a life of loneliness like the rest of us. But he didn't feel lonely, he reasoned. He was still young. He had girlfriends. He had his pick of them. And yet if he ever stopped to look inside himself, he felt like he was moving from one to the next, using work as an excuse to avoid ever getting too close... that close. He could give them his body, but never his soul.
He turned away from the window resolutely. "Malla, I have to leave. Now. Tell me where the shuttle bay is."
She looked back at him, anger starting to mix with the pain of rejection. "No!" After what they had just done, now that he had her emotions in the palm of his hand, he wanted to leave. She felt cold and afraid.
He clenched his jaw. "Ty prosto ne ponimayesh!" he spat back at her in frustration.
"Don't talk in... that language to me!" she shouted.
He knew it wasn't her talking it – it was her father's prejudices, but it was enough to snap him into action. He swept up his clothes from the floor and shouldered his way quickly into the loose grey shirt they had given him. He pushed past Malla without a word and strode out of the room. She stood in confusion. How had this all deteriorated so quickly? Her father was right: he was just an arrogant, haughty Starfleet fly-boy like all the rest of them. He thought he was better than her with all his education and travels. An anger started to burn within her. So he was going to try to escape, was he? She'd put a stop to that. And he'd let slip he was a navigator. Her father hadn't know that. He would now.