Disclaimer: I make no claims to the characters in the following story. I recieve no money or other recompense from these writings. they are intended solely for the purposes of entertainment
Helping Hands
knoteach
Part 1
Lt. Commander Vin Tanner, First officer of the USS Wild Card, felt jumpy for no particular reason that he could consciously figure out. It was the kind of non-specific nagging uneasiness that he usually got when there had been reports of raiders in the area that it had taken a coupe of days for them to catch up with, but there had been no such reports for the couple of weeks. So why did he feel so jittery?
Captain Chris Larabee, commanding officer to Vin, kept a close eye on the long haired man who couldn't see to stop fidgeting. Tanner was young, some said too young to be first officer on a front line ship, but his instincts were some of the best in Starfleet. If he was uneasy, if was a sucker bet that something was going to go down and soon.
Chris shook his head slightly as he shifted his gaze to the other officers currently present on the bridge. At the helm, in his usual relaxed semi sprawl was his long time friend and shipmate, Lt. Buck Wilmington. Buck was one of the best navigators in Starfleet, even if Chris would never admit to it. The two of them had known each other since before their academy days. Before taking command of this ship, Wilmington had been the only one of the officers that he had known.
Sitting next to Wilmington was Ensign JD Dunne, a young genius with electronics and communication. This was his first shipboard assignment, and it showed in the young man's enthusiasm and unparalleled energy levels. Wilmington seemed to have appointed himself as JD older brother/mentor with interesting results.
On the other side of the bridge, Chris saw his Chief of Security, Lt. Josiah Sanchez. The man was getting older and there had been noises that the Academy had offered him a good position teaching, but the man seemed perfectly happy were he was. He had worked as a security officer for more than twenty years and had more than earned his position as chief.
Standing next to the Security Chief, was Doctor Nathan Jackson, the ships Chief Medical Officer. According to what Chris had found out in the last seven months, Nathan and Josiah had been friends for a few years before they were assigned this ship. The doctor was good at his job, though at times he seemed a bit to clinical in his interactions with his patients. He tended to be a bit hard on folks, but he expected himself to live up to that same high standard, so there wasn't much to be said.
Chris brought himself out of his musings when Vin's Texas accent broke the silence of the bridge.
"Capt'n, the sensors show a ship off our port side about two parsecs. Starfleet reports no authorized flight plans for that route. Ship design indicates cargo capabilities, but sensors are picking up multiple life signs," Vin's voice was harsher than normal as he had already come to the conclusion that popped into the minds of every man there.
A slave ship.
Chris ground his teeth together as he nodded at Buck for him to intercept the ship.
Slavery had been outlawed in Federation space since the very beginning, but on these outer worlds there was still a heavy black market trade in sentient beings of many species.
When they came with in visual range, Chris ordered it shown on the screen. Vin knowing without having to be ordered, added the sensor readings to it. It shown that the small ten crew freight had at least two hundred individual life signs aboard, most of them concentrated in the cargo hold.
"Bastards!" Josiah muttered as he checked the board. "Captain, I'm going to head down."
Chris nodded stiffly as he studied the configuration to the ship. Satisfied that he knew how to take them down with out destroying the ship, he said, "Buck, get a lock on the engines behind the hold, if they try to run, take them out. JD, open a line to them."
JD quickly did as Chris ordered, "Open, sir."
"Unidentified vessel, this is Captain Chris Larabee of the USS Wild Card. Please identify yourselves and state your business in this area," Chris ordered crisply, his tone leaving no room for argument.
At first the seemed to be no reaction, but Vin's sensors notified him immediately of the energy spike in their engines. "They're going to run, Capt'. Their engines are up 75 and climbin'."
"Take 'em down, Buck," Chris ordered.
With a grin, Buck took out their engines with surgical precision.
"Security to the transporter room. Vin, Nathan, with me," Chris lead them out. They had a job to do.
After they rounded up the eight men that ran the slave ship, Chris and his officers and crew headed for the hold to see exactly what they were dealing with.
Entering the large cavernous area, they quickly announced that they were from Starfleet and they were going to be getting them out of there as soon as possible. A spontaneous cheer went up as the security personnel spread out and started unlocking the chains that had held the prisoners relatively immobile. Family members that had been split up immediately started getting together and hugging as if they would never let go again. Chris smiled faintly as one man grabbed his daughter and swung her up in his arms, holding on as if his life depended on it.
Nathan quietly and efficiently moved from one group to another, looking for any that had wounds or illness that needed to be treated, but surprisingly, he found none that were seriously wounded. Many made reference the someone that had helped them, but they just called him 'the helper'. Catching Chris's eye he waved him over to where he was talking to one of the children. Vin, seeing Chris walking toward Nathan, went over to see what was going on.
"What ya' got, Doc?" Chris asked when he arrived, acknowledging Vin's presence with a nod.
"Something odd, Captain." Nathan started, a puzzled expression on his face. "I've examined almost half of the people and I haven't found a single serious injury or illness. A few cuts and scrapes and a couple colds, but nothing else. Many of them have told me about someone the call 'the helper' that heals them as they come on board or if the crew gets rough with them. Little Jenine here was telling me about him."
Vin crouched down on his heels when Nathan finished speaking, so that he could look at the little girl's face. She was young, maybe ten standard years, and dirty, but Vin knew she would be quite pretty once she cleaned up a little. "Jenine?" Vin asked. When she nodded, he asked, "Who's the helper?"
"The Keepers bring him and the little one in here whenever someone gets hurt so they can heal them," she said softly. Vin mentally translated Keepers to mean the slavers, but he didn't understand the mention of the 'little one.' "But he's not one of them!" she declared earnestly, looking from Vin to Chris to Nathan. "He tries to help us, but the Keepers beat him badly. He sneaks extra food to us whenever he can, but once in a while they catch him."
"What does he look like?" Vin asked gently, brushing her hair back gently as he asked. "We'll make sure that they can't get to him, but need to know who're looking for."
"The helper's only a little taller than me, brown hair, and green eyes." Jenine said.
"A boy?" Vin asked shocked.
"Yeah," she nodded in agreement.
"Okay, Jenine," Vin said as his mind whirled. "We'll find him."
"Okay," Jenine smiled as she hopped up form her position on the crate and scurried off to where her mother was waiting on her.
Chris and Nathan moved closer, both of there faces grim. Vin knew they had heard what they girl said and were just as worried as he was. There was another child on this ship somewhere.
Grabbing his com, Vin contacted the ship. "Tanner to Wild Card, come in please."
"Wilmington to Tanner, we read you."
"Buck, do the sensors show any life signs on the ship anywhere but the hold?"
"Checking." Vin held his breath without realizing it as Buck went over to check. "Affirmative, Vin."
Vin released the breath all at once in relief. "Where, Buck?" Vin asked as he led Chris and Nathan out of the hold and back to toward the rest of the ship. Chris caught Josiah's eye and jerked his head indicating that he should join them.
"Two, Second level, near the crews quarters. They're real weak though. I can get more precise after you get there."
"Thanks, Buck. We'll call you back when we get there." With that Vin signed off and started running down the corridor toward the lift.
Arriving on the second level, Vin pulled the com back out and barked, "Where, Buck?"
"Keep going another twenty feet, compartment on the right."
Vin eyed the corridor, but there was no door at that point. "Shit, it must access from one of these rooms. Thanks, Buck, we'll call you back and tell you what we find."
"You better, Junior. Wilmington out."
Quickly explaining what to look for, Vin pointed Josiah and Nathan at the door down the corridor while he and Chris took first one they came too.
"Vin?" Chris asked as he started searching for something, what he wasn't exactly sure.
"Buck said we had two weak life signs some where in this wall. There's no access from the corridor and all that's behind here in this model cargo ship is engine conduits, so there has to be a door in one of these two rooms." Vin explained as he quickly examined the right side of the wall that hid the compartment.
"Like this one," Chris said, bringing Vin's attention to the nearly invisible hatchway that had been concealed behind a dresser.
"Yes!" Vin darted over and started looking for a way to open it as Chris stepped back to tell Nathan that they had found a way in.
"Got it, Cowboy," Vin murmured, holding his hand over a slight protrusion in the texture of the wall.
Chris waited until Nathan had joined them before nodding to Vin and saying, "Open it."
Vin activated the release and the door smoothly slid open, revealing a sight that made them all want to hit something.
Two boys lay curled together on the floor either asleep or unconscious. Both were dressed in filthy ragged clothes and horribly underweight. The older looked to be about ten or eleven with long wavy reddish brown hair, while the younger was about two or three with equally long curly dark brown hair drawn back at the base of his skull.