Chekov lay back and relaxed in the cramped space. It was a peculiar thing to be able to do, but he had long ago developed the not-so-subtle talent. Tracing the pathways on the chip he held with both his eyes and a delicate finger, he searched with artistry for any abnormalities in its patterns.
"Are you the Chief Navigator?"
The young voice that drifted into his private sanctuary seemed eerily familiar. Was it the slight, but distinct, echo of a Russian accent that peaked some inner curiosity?
"If I am not, will you alert Security?"
"No." The voice answered with such a firm note of assuredness that Chekov smiled. "I would just assume the Chief was smart enough to get you to do his work. That's what I would do if I were him."
The Navigator's smile broadened as he put the circuit panel he was working on back together. Having heard the Admiral had brought his grandson aboard, he lazily wondered which one and he turned over their names and images in his mind. None of them seemed to match the descriptions he'd been given of this boy, however.
Chekov slid himself out from his tight environs and onto the deck. Sitting up and resting his arm on top of his bent knees, he looked for the child who had addressed him. "Unfortunately, the current Chief Navigator does not appear to be anywhere near a clever as you," he responded.
The boy was on resting on his knees with straight legs and a stiff back, not too far from where the Chief Navigator now sat. "Yes, well a boy can be clever, can't he?"
Chekov didn't answer this time. He sat paralyzed as the sight of the boy's familiar features filled his vision and took over his soul. Cold: instantly frozen from the inside out, the Chief Navigator had never felt such an empty vacuum of thought and emotion.
For the first time in his life he wished he were a Western Russian. Like all mature planets, the peoples of Earth had become nearly indistinguishable from each other, but in Russia there were those who stubbornly insisted on raising their children immersed in their traditional culture and values. They were referred to as traditional Russians--not always with respect--and you could always tell them apart from other Terrans. It was their eyes.
The child's remarkable chocolate brown eyes converged with Chekov's now, holding fast in a primitive union that left no room for pretense. The traces of the question in the boy flitted through and out of the depths of his gaze in almost an instant. He recognized the utter certainty in the Navigator's eyes which the man couldn't hide.
It erased all doubt in the boy: he knew.
Clearly uncomfortable with that information, Chekov's fist slowly closed as his jaw tightened. Where were they to go from here? What were they to do? More importantly, why was he completely unable to think?
He swallowed carefully, seized by the dread that any action on his part--no matter how small--would produce a chain reaction of disaster.
It was not so unreasonable a dread.
"What are you doing here?"
"I'm touring the Enterprise with my Grandfather."
"You shouldn't be here."
Long lashes fluttered several times over wide brown eyes. "Where should I be?" he asked soberly after a moment.
The Chief Navigator stared back at him, his soul hollow and his mind a vacuum. "I don't know," he admitted. He sighed tremulously, the slight sound rippling through their shared silence.
"You're the Chief Navigator on this ship?"
The man's dark eyes remained somberly on the boy. He lack of answer weighed heavily on the air.
"When the Captain said your name," the child observed, "of course I wondered: but it never occurred to me that it could possibly be you."
"You should always consider all possibilities," Chekov replied quietly. "That should be obvious at the moment." Possibilities now inundated the Navigator's brain which brought it to a near immobility he had to fight his way past.
"You don't belong here," Chekov attested and he wasn't referring to Auxiliary Control. "You and your grandfather should leave this ship immediately."
"A assertion it seems the Captain would heartily agree with," the child smirked impishly.
The Navigator actually smiled at this, but he continued as sternly as he could. "You have to leave."
Shrugging in an elaborate gesture of simplicity, the child gazed up at him from under the long lashes. "I'm eight, remember?"
Point well made, Chekov thought. Childhood, even for spoiled Russian children, was a cautious, ever shifting balance of power with adults who wielded control over their world and lives. Whether the Admiral and his grandson stayed depended very little on anything the grandson had control over.
Eyes narrowing, Dimitri stared at Chekov as he sat lost in thought. "What's wrong with your voice?" he asked.
"Wrong?" the Navigator asked curiously, then suddenly straightened: becoming indignant when he realized what the child meant. "There's nothing wrong with a Russian accent!" he retorted.
"Of course not," the child agreed pleasantly, his own voice having only a trace of an enchanting lilt along its edges. "But what the hell kind of accent is that garbled mess coming out of your mouth?"
Dark eyes sparkling wickedly with a decided note of triumph, it was the man's turn to smirk. "I grew up traveling, so my accent isn't specifically regional."
"I'll say," the child snorted.
Indeed, anyone with a linguist's ear could identify regional pronunciations in Chekov's voice from St. Petersburg, Moscow, Siberia, Georgia, the Ukraine and several other areas of the far-flung Independent States of the Russian Federation. "Let's say I'm fond of variety," he said.
He received a grin in response.
"You being here is a problem."
"A problem for you," Dimitri responded levelly. "An opportunity for me."
"I have to get you off this ship somehow," Chekov said then, urgently, not replying to the comment. "And you can't be here with me: it's not safe. You have to go. Besides, your grandfather will wonder where you are," he added, feeling stupid as the words came out. It wasn't as if the boy didn't fully understand the reasoning behind his insistence, or that Chekov didn't understand the child's relationship with his grandfather.
They boy smiled again, but this time it didn't reach his dark eyes. "He wouldn't notice if I were sucked into a black hole."
"I think he would," Chekov intoned. "He would have to tell your father he lost you, after all."
This time the amusement did reach the boy's eyes and an urchin-like grin lit up his face. "That would be worth seeing."
"You need to go," the Navigator repeated, trying to make his voice stern: but he knew his eyes shared the boy's amusement.
"I want to talk to you. You can keep working: I won't get in your way."
"No."
He sat down on his heels in a defiant gesture. "I want to talk to you."
"You can't always have what you…" Chekov stopped suddenly, the child's sedate brown eyes making the startling words from his own mouth sound like alarm klaxons in his head. Good Lord, he fought to keep down the horror he felt at himself. Have I been away from home that long?
In Russian culture children were simply never told 'no'. Outsiders didn't understand why the rural villages were not populated with horrid, monstrous urchins. The culture they held onto so fiercely, though, guaranteed the survival of their tight knit communities and well-behaved children.
Sighing silently, Chekov shrugged slowly. He luxuriously drew out the type of words he heard echoing even now in his dreams. "If you want to stay and talk to me, than that's your choice. Of course, thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people may cease to exist. Planets may explode, stars go nova…the very fabric of the universe as we know it could alter forever."
The child jerked to his feet, his face sullen and hard. Dark eyes glared at Chekov from beneath lowered lids. "I think you're being a somewhat over dramatic," he bit out angrily.
Shrugging again, the Navigator gestured broadly. "Than stay and talk. It's your choice," he reminded him.
Spoiled, yes--and made to understand from the very beginning of life that each action affected everyone and everything with a ripple that was unending.
The boy stood there without moving for a long moment, dark eyes fixed on the grown man's gaze. "I just wanted to ask you some things," he explained deferentially, folding his hands respectfully behind him. With just the slightest shift of his head, his eyes became liquid chocolate again and widened as he managed to gaze petulantly at the still seated Navigator.
Did the child actually think the perfect little boy routine was going to work on him? Chekov wondered with slight amazement. It had the opposite effect intended, making the man more resolute. He simply sat there in silence, returning the child's steady gaze.
Dimitri sighed lazily in defeat and turned and walked away. "It was bad enough that I have to put up with Dedushka, but now I have to put up with you too," he muttered.
"Yes, well if people knew you like I do, you'd be in chains."
The child paused at the door and turned to flash him an impish smirk. "How soon will you have the Captain send us away?"
It was clearly a threat, but Chekov's dark eyes filled with a caustic malice the boy recognized all too well.
The boy rolled his eyes and finally disappeared out into the corridor without further comment, but the Chief Navigator knew better than to think that he had won. His eyes drifted over to the viewscreen on the wall. Wrong, he thought again. The stars were wrong.
Quickly and swiftly, he reassembled the auxiliary control navigation station. It was not in his nature to do it less than perfectly, but at the moment he could not remember any task ever having taken so interminably long to complete.
He may have been meticulous about restoring the Auxiliary Control room, but Chekov found he had paid somewhat less attention to his own personal appearance after having been squirming around on the starship's deck. He shamefacedly straightened his uniform as he hurried toward the Captain's cabin and stopped long enough to brush any stray dust off the damn black pants.
Chekov hesitated again, his fingers hovering over the door chime. It wasn't that he was hesitant. It was just the ever-present irritated thought crossed his mind that he should be able to hear if the chime sounded or not. At what point had a knock become technologically inefficient?
He brushed his hand over the mechanism and the Captain's summons into his cabin told him it had sounded.
"Captain."
The Commander of the ship looked up at him from where he stood at his desk. On it's top was a sprawl of clearly disorganized and disarrayed papers, clipboards, computer tapes and stylus'. Kirk had several of these items in his hands and he was clearly searching, sorting.
"Mr. Chekov." Kirk returned the greeting curtly without looking up.
Chekov stopped the frown from creasing his forehead. The thought occurred to him, however, that it was not the most reassuring predicament for a junior officer to see his Captain in.
"May I speak to you a moment, Sir?"
The older man didn't hesitate in his frantic paced organizing. "This is not a good time, Chekov. Let me get in touch with you later."
If there was a hesitation, it was only in Chekov's mind. "Sir, this is very important. I need..."
"I said not now, Ensign," and Kirk hesitated to raise his hard, cold hazel eyes to the younger man.
Chekov didn't need to hear the tone, see the eyes, or even hear the use of his rank to know the Captain was irritated with the upstart young officer. He persisted anyway.
"It's ship's business, Captain. Important ship's business, Sir."
Kirk stared at him deliberately a moment. The junior officer didn't need to be a traditional Russian to understand the sentiment in the Commanding Officer's eyes. "I have a meeting with the Admiral, then a tour," he said without emotion. "I will contact you at a convenient time, Mr. Chekov."
The unsaid words were as clear to Chekov as the spoken ones. It was bad enough the Captain had to explain himself to his superior officers: he should never have to offer an explanation to a junior officer. He was the kind of commander who did it anyway.
Chekov stood there in silence, knowing now was the time to say 'yes, sir,' and exit without another word.
He knew more firmly that he should not leave this cabin until the Captain listened to him. In truth, in the pit of his soul, he didn't feel he should ever leave this cabin. Chekov was seized with the feeling that he was not safe out there, out beyond these bulkheads. No one Kirk is responsible for is safe while the Admiral and his grandson walks the ship's corridors, he thought.
"It's important, Sir," he insisted aloud, and he heard the accent in his voice fade. "It's about the Admiral."
Kirk was silent another minute and thought sourly: It's all about the Admiral. However, he knew Chekov better than to think he would barge in here with such fierce determination if he didn't think he had good reason.
"I'll contact you," Kirk repeated, but this time there was an acknowledgement of the young man's agenda in his voice. "I'm late." He looked back down at his desk in obvious dismissal.
"Yes, Sir."