Chapter Three
"Uh..." A splitting head ache reverberated around her skull.
"Doctor! She's awake!" She nearly screamed. Her skull seemed to fragment and her brain caught fire as Chekov's cry echoed through her ears.
"Ms. Davidovna, open your eyes." Vanya lay, digesting the noise droning on from somewhere far above, through a wall, through an ocean, through a vast universe.
"Open your eyes." She attempted to oblige, but found the minuscule glimpse, quite enough for quite awhile.
"Vanya, you're going to have to open your eyes, come on now. Mr. Chekov, dim the lights, please. Come on, now." Vanya reluctantly slowly opened her eyes. Colors blurred, but assuredly, three faces emerged before her, one at a time: Chekov, worried but reassuring, Dr. McCoy concern, and a third Vanya had never seen before, full of analytical curiosity.
"Vanya, can you tell me how many fingers I'm holding up?"
Vanya tried to omit an audible "three," but instead a low groan escaped her. Licking her lips, she tried once again, "Three."
"Good, I would like you to meet the ship's First Officer, and Chief Science Officer, Mr. Spock."
Vanya groaned an additional "How do you do?"
"Thank you for your concern, I am in good health." Vanya smiled at the purely Vulcan response. She had spent quite some time on Vulcan as a girl when the Conquest had been stationed in that sector for a year.
"Ms. Davidovna, it is evident that you suffered quite uncomfortable dreams, which happen to be a side effect of the medicine used on your right pedal phalanges, which are now, too, in good health. I've come, on the Captain's orders, to escort you to the bridge."
* * *
"Vanya Sarah Davidovna, you are now, officially an Ensign aboard the U.S.S Enterprise." Applauds and calls of congratulation sounded from around the bridge and nothing but kind faces and song greeted her.
* * *
Two months slipped inconspicuously by. Vanya was given her first real birthday, and was reacquainted with the art of Starship Engineering, and the dihydrogen-oxide balancing of matter, antimatter reactors. Whereas she knew only now-antiquated navigation, Chekov taught her contemporary.
She waited each day, expectantly for her navigation lesson, and found herself growing more and more expectant of this hour long haven. Inside, she knew that her, a sixteen year old girl, and Chekov, a twenty-two year old man could never be together, but she could not help but need to be near him.
The first two months of her stay aboard the Enterprise were rather uneventful, in duty terms: no unexplained missing planets, no odd satellites, or distress calls from far off civilizations, these two months were only exciting in the eyes of Vanya, and Kirk, who began to see just how similar this girl truly was to Anusha, and, indeed, to himself.
Near the beginning of Vanya's third month aboard, the Enterprise was scheduled to make a routine resupply of the experimental colony on Gama Hydra IV...
* * *
"Would Captain Kirk, Officer Spock, Dr. McCoy, Lieutenant Galaway and Ensigns Chekov and Davidovna, please report to the transporter room."
"Spock brief us on the situation on Gama Hydra IV."
"An experimental colony of scientists, none over the age of thirty, no children, no distress signal. The planet is of mountainous, semi-vegetated terrain. A heavy atmosphere, and two suns, varying in age, but habitable. Planet Type M."
"Thank you, Mr. Spock. Beam us down, Mr. Scott." The six rematerialized on a barren, dry planet. "Davidovna, Chekov, you look up by the main station. The rest of you, fan out." Vanya and Chekov walked up to a large, dry, earthenware makeshift lab.
"Chekov, I'll check inside, you look around out here." Vanya stepped inside, the building was freezing, and a thick layer of dust coated the instruments.
"Chek-," Vanya began to cry back that something was not right when she saw it, a gaunt, aged face carved and ripped with wrinkles staring at her...dead. She let out a terrified scream and ran from the building, in tears, throwing herself into Chekov's arms.
"Vanya, Vanya, what is it? What's wrong?"
"Dead, they're dead!"
"Dead? That's impossible, there was no distress call! Vanya, sh now, sit here, I'll call the Captain. Sit right there." Chekov pulled his communicator from his belt. "Chekov to Captain, Captain do you read me?"
"Yes, Mr. Chekov."
"Vanya found the scientists, they're dead."
"We'll be there immediately." Chekov sat next to Vanya and held her as she cried, she cried and could not stop crying. In a minute or two, the Captain, Bones, the Lieutenant, and Spock ran past them and into the laboratory.
The Doctor reemerged in another minute or two, "all dead of extreme old age, no unnatural causes."
"Bones, the oldest man here turned thirty years old on the surface of this planet. How do fifteen young promising scientists suddenly age fifty years over six months."
"I did find traces of a rare bacteria, they documented to be present in the animal life here, in their blood stream, but they documented the bacteria to add to the animals life span, not decrease it."
"Spock, review the documents, see what kind of experiments they were running, Dr. McCoy, you beam back to the ship, and test that bacteria."
Spock stepped in, "Captain, we could now, all be infected with this bacteria, and it would be very unwise to have the Doctor possibly infect the rest of the crew."
"Of course you're right Spock. Bones, can you do anything with what they've got in there?" He indicated the building behind him.
"I should say so." Bones went off to investigate the bacteria.
"Galaway, follow me, Chekov, Vanya, that way, we'll explore the surrounding areas. Stick together." Chekov and Vanya headed off into a green, wooded area, while the Captain and Galaway headed into a dry, rocky expanse.
All manner of beasts and animals slithered and quivered from behind them, above them, and below them. After Chekov and Vanya had been walking for about two miles Chekov stopped, "Vanya, can we rest for a minute. I think I've something in my shoe."
"Certainly, may I see the tricorder? I'd like to examine some of this plant life." An odd crab-like species moved slowly across the forest floor.
"Chekov, this crab is autotrophic!"
"What? Are you sure?"
"Quite sure. I've never seen anything like it!"
"I've once before. A rare occurrence, I was once lucky enough to observe at Star Fleet academy, a constantly autotrophic, asexual lizard, recovered on the first Neptune landing in 2098 by the Russian ship, the Promise."
"Chekov, we've gotten it."
"Gotten what?"
"The disease. Lines are appearing all over your face, and you're hair, it's graying, Chekov!"
"What? Vanya, I've just noticed, you've about three inches taller in the last mile or so."
"What're we to do?" Tears began to roll down Vanya's face.
"Head back, I suppose." Chekov put his arm around her. He couldn't help but think how beautiful a women she was. Vanya took a step and then, stopped wide-eyed with fear.
"Chekov, don't move. That tree just to your right, has just wrapped a vine around your leg and, if I'm not mistaken has teeth." The tree jerked Chekov's feet out from under him and dragged him closer to its now gaping maw, from which emanated the stench of a thousand rotting corpses and the very essence of Death himself.
"Chekov!" Vanya threw herself to the ground and help fast to her comrade's sliding body, but a girl is little match for a tree, let alone ones such as these.
From just behind Vanya came the shot of a phaser, and the vine around Chekov's ankle went slack.
"If I were you, Mr. Chekov, I would move exceedingly hastily in my direction." Mr. Spock, Vanya, and Chekov all ran the two miles back to the laboratory.
"Mr. Spock, how do I thank you?"
"No thanks are necessary, Mr. Chekov, I was merely doing what seemed fit in a moment of crisis."
Vanya knew both Chekov and Spock well enough to know that both quite liked one another but hated one another's pure humanity and vulcanity, retrospectively, thus knew enough to change the subject, "Mr. Spock how has the bacteria not begun to effect you. Are the others effected?"
"Both the Doctor and the Captain are equally effected. The Lieutenant was attacked by a large golden bird which, according to the Captain seemed to emanate a kind of light. The effect this attack seemed to have on Lieutenant Galaway was instantaneous aging rather than the accelerated pace you are now experiencing. Thus, the Doctor was able to utilize an element in both the bird's and my blood to make an antidote, now he merely has to adjust its strength to coincide with each of your ages."
Captain Kirk came out of the building returned to his previous young age, "Ms. Davidovna, would you like to receive the cure next, or shall Mr. Chekov."
"Well, Captain, I believe that I can wait longer than Mr. Chekov. Also, I would like a word with you in private. Chekov and I had a near death experience in the woods, and all I could think of was what if I died without telling you the truth?"
"What truth are you not telling your Captain?"
"Captain, when you were stationed on the Conquest, you knew a woman, Anusha Davidovna, my mother, and when you left she said that she thought that she would die, until she found out that-until-Captain, James Kirk, my true name is not Vanya Davidovna, but Vanya Kirk."
The Captain stood staring at the stars and for a moment Vanya thought that perhaps he had not heard or understood what she had said, that is until she saw that he was gently sobbing. His commanding form shook with gentle sobs.
"I don't know why I left her. Why didn't your mother tell me? I would have come back."
"She always said that she couldn't have lived knowing that it was she who took away your chance to be a captain, at last."
"I would have come back." Kirk placed his great arms around Vanya and they both cried. Kirk cried for all that he had missed because of all that didn't matter, Vanya cried for the love she could never have, and they both cried for Vanya's mother, and the father Vanya had never had.
After what seemed like a great long time, but could have only been a matter of minutes Chekov emerged from the darkness, "Vanya, Captain, the Doctor needs to see you both." When the three of them entered into the light of the now humming laboratory, Vanya could here the sounds of Doctor McCoy and Mr. Spock fighting a never ending battle, "Spock the risk is just too great!"
"What risk?" Vanya stepped in.
"The vaccine, it can't bring you back to sixteen."
"What?" Vanya, Chekov, and the Captain interrupted.
"Once your body has been brought through the stage of adolescence, to go back could prove fatal."
"So, what? Am I just going to die?"
"No, we'll just have to adjust the vaccine to regress your growth to a more viable age, say twenty?"
"Fine." The Doctor's needle slid gently through her skin, and as the precious medicine flowed through her, as water to the man dying of thirst, she could feel her body begin to move backward until, the sensation stopped and she rose.
When Chekov saw the women appear where the girl had been he could not have been more happy. The first thing she did was smile at him, and he was sure that he loved her, and she loved him and now they did not have to hide, at last.
* * *
Vanya sat thinking of all the years she had lost, the truth was she had been twenty for a long time before the events of the past week, in fact, she had been twenty since she was seven when she was thrust into a world completely different from all she had known: the world of flowing water, and setting suns, and the wind in your hair, and yet, she had always longed for the world she had always known: the world of the unknown, the world of endless space and endless wonders, and that was where she had found love and as long as she was not limited to the miracles of the one Earth and could always find something she knew nothing of, she cared not whether she was one hundred, one million, twenty or sixteen, it was not age, nor danger, nor even life that truly mattered, as long as she could believe there was something else out there, she could chase that something, and come as close as any to touching the face of God.