For those wondering whether to read the novel:
I enjoyed it. It was a gripping story with engaging characters. Though pretty predictable in the way it follows Trek tropes there were some good twists. Our ladies barely appear in the thing (Chapel isn't mentioned once) and we know everyone survives their ordeal from the start since they're in the rest of the show, so there's little real tension, but still a fun read. The audiobook is well voiced apart from the strained British accent, so I would recommend that too. The e- and paper editions come with maps, but you really can do without those.
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Chapel hadn't expected to be seeing Earth quite this often on their five year mission, but there it was, green and blue, garlanded in white, drifting beyond the porthole like a precious marble. Having offloaded two score pirates to the federation penal colony on Tantalus V they'd been granted a few fleeting days of shore leave, an unexpected stopover in paradise just long enough to remind her what she'd been missing. Now here they were again, waiting while Starfleet hooked them up with the tools for yet another doomed-to-disaster mission finding yet another group of people seemingly lost beyond the frontier. Some days, it felt like it would never end.
"Did you have a good trip?"
"Sure." It had been… perfect. Strange, and complicated, and beautiful in a way she wasn't ready to try and explain. "You?"
Erica grinned. "I made it back for Sebby's birthday. Took him out in a glider, twice. You're officially looking at the best aunt ever to exist."
It was nice to see her so happy. She'd been missing the kid more now he was getting older, and the unexpected visit had meant a lot. The here-again-gone-again nature of it didn't seem to be bothering her. Maybe you got used to that kind of thing.
Erica bumped her shoulder. "Still not a fan of embarkation day, huh?"
"I guess not."
"It takes some people like that. You'll be fine once we get moving. Once the mission starts up again. The waiting's the worst."
The waiting she could deal with. It was the mission that was setting her teeth on edge. She wasn't entirely clear anymore what she'd signed up for, she just knew that it hadn't been this. She'd wanted impossible new discoveries. Science that would blow her mind. Instead she'd got this glorified taxi run, a ceaseless churn of shuttle runs, courier service, search and rescue missions that inevitably left them with some form of gun pointed at their heads. Last time quite literally.
And in between? Sprained ankles. Hangover cures. Routine physicals and the occasional plasma burn. As if her decade of medical training and concomitant cutting edge PhD, the research project she'd dedicated most of her life to, were an afterthought to be fit in where she wasn't either numbing hangnails or actively fearing for her life. She'd have got more work done at Stanford.
No, that wasn't true. She'd had trouble breathing at Stanford. That was why she'd come. Because Earthbound academia was the kind of stifling prison that might have snuffed her out, if she'd let it. Whereas here…
"Man she's beautiful." Erica leant into the porthole beside her. Her eyes weren't on the planet. Instead she was tracking the shuttle that was coming towards them, all fancy fins and strange, muted hull plating. Eratosthenes, an experimental stealth observation vessel Starfleet had been itching to test. Apparently, they'd found the prefect excuse. And the perfect marks.
"How many ways do you think that thing can blow up?"
"What? No." Erica shot her a crooked grin before her gaze was drawn back out like a magnet. "She's got type D nacelles. She's got polymer coils in the antimatter injection chambers. There are quadruple backups on the impulse thruster controls. Nothing can go wrong with this beauty."
"I thought you said there were problems in testing?"
"Hiccups. Minor hiccups. Calibration errors. Trust me, once I get my hands on her, she's going to be purring like a kitten."
Chapel rolled her eyes. The way Erica talked about flying was always a little… suggestive. "Maybe you should get consent before you board that thing."
"She's not a thing, Chapel. She's a she. Eratosthenes." Erica pronounced the name as if she was reciting poetry, the only partially tongue in cheek deference making Chapel smile. She patted Erica's arm.
"I'm sure you'll be very happy together."
Although, as it turned out, she'd never even get to fly the thing.
0 0 0
Twelve days ago
La'an packing was a sight to behold, fast and meticulous and just a little terrifying, "You're not going to need the knife." "You always need the knife." a stone cold minimalist work of art.
La'an packing with hiccups was too adorable to be allowed. Chapel flopped backwards on the bed so she wouldn't have to spend quite so much time trying to control her face.
"You can say it. I won't break."
"Say what?" The past few weeks had been… complicated wasn't really the right word. More like suspended, nothing quite moving, quite breathing, nothing ever fully touching down. The mattress dipped. La'an stretched over her, hands bracketing her shoulders, trapping her in place. Chapel reached up to smooth her thumbs across the frown she was wearing, less to soothe the expression than to feel it, to take her in, every inch of her so familiar now. Still so difficult to read. Anyone else would have leant down and kissed her. La'an just held there, studying her face, her eyes a churn of everything she couldn't say. And then her body jerked, the strange, strangled gulp pulling down through her chest, and Chapel had to press her lips together to keep her grin in check.
"I notice you're not offering to fix this."
Chapel wrinkled her nose up into intent dark eyes. "It's too damn cute." She followed La'an's scowl as it settled beside her. "Everyone knows how to cure hiccups."
"I'm not drinking water backwards."
They'd tried all sorts as kids. As far as Chapel knew, that particular method had never been reliable. It was more likely something designed to amuse bystanders than to actually help. The best solution, for anyone flexible enough, had been to stand upside down, but she wasn't about to suggest that now. She pressed a hand over La'an's diaphragm in time to feel the next convulsive gulp. She was so impossibly sweet. I love you. And she really did, no question about it. But saying it right now…
La'an had been so afraid. Chapel had never seen that kind of terror, never wanted to again, and the thought of being the person who brought it out, the trigger to everything she'd buried, had kept her careful ever since. It's not you. Only it was, and there was no way around it. It was all of this. Because life didn't play fair.
"I won't break, Chapel."
"It's not that."
La'an sighed. "Come with me."
It had seemed impossible that she would be going at all, never mind to stay, but somewhere during the week it had taken Maia to realign La'an's spine she'd apparently worked some other dark magic too. Extended an invitation La'an had chosen to accept. Earth, for ten days. Ten incomprehensible nights. La'an hated planets. Although maybe, right now, she hated the ship more. Or something on it.
Another hiccup yanked La'an's stomach taut, making Chapel smile despite herself. "It wouldn't work." She made herself look up to meet La'an's frown. "You need a break, from all of this. From me."
"I don't."
"It's fine, I get it, I'm a lot, I can be..." Everything. She wanted everything, and she'd said as much without warning to someone who had nothing left to give. La'an had every right to disappear.
"You're not."
"I am. It's too much. I want all these things, and you can't…"
That one stung, Chapel realised too late as La'an rolled away from her, stomach tightening with something that absolutely wasn't hiccups. Her fists balled too, eyes blinking hard at the ceiling as she breathed.
"I'm sorry. That's not what I meant."
La'an shook her head, although she covered Chapel's hand on her stomach.
"I'm saying I want so much, and you don't have to…"
"That's my choice."
"I know, I…"
"Stop telling me I'm broken."
"I'm not." Even Chapel could tell how small her voice was right now. "You're perfect. I can't be." And man had she tried over the past few weeks. But she always slipped.
"I'm not asking…" La'an studied her for a second that seemed to stretch endlessly, exposing everything Chapel was under her searching gaze. Chapel had hated seeing La'an afraid. What had frozen her cautious was the knowledge that this might be the thing that made her leave.
"It's not you." Fingers touched into her hair, gentle as La'an curled back in, pressing their foreheads together into a dim, soft cave. "I chose this. I want this. Nothing's changed."
Only everything had. Something was supposed to break, and it might have been a delayed reaction but here it was. "Then why are you going?"
"I'm asking you to come."
So had Maia, over and over. Chapel had assumed she didn't understand. But now… "Why there? She has husbands, there are all these kids. It's a whole planet."
"Because you might need backup."
Chapel watched her carefully, the uncertainty behind her eyes that had been there since she cracked, so afraid of hurting someone, of spinning out of control. As if she ever would. "I love you."
La'an smiled. "Then come."
She had always wanted to see Santiago. And there was nothing sensible she wanted to do on Earth anyway. "Ok."
La'an smiled wider. And then she kissed her, and it said everything Chapel needed it to, and more.
0 0 0
Eratosthenes had left an actual impact crater. Not the smooth round type, a pock of rainfall in the sand, but a scorch mark over the earth, rough and jagged and blackened until the end. Chapel pressed La'an's shoulder as they stared down at it on a screen in the deserted briefing room.
"You think they're alive."
"I do."
Chapel wasn't sure how much hope that was based on, given the circumstances. Chief Kyle had beamed the crew off the failing shuttle, but whether they had rematerialized, or where, was unknown. Still, if hope was all they had then she'd take it. Spock was down there, and the captain, and Uhura. Una too, which had to be eating La'an alive. She couldn't lose anyone else.
"Then we're getting them back."
"We are. I have everyone working on ways to contact the surface. To get communications from them. We have to find out if this dampening field is permanent. How it works. Hemmer is going to send a series of probes through, see how close we can get before…"
Everything had gone haywire. Everything. It must have been what downed the shuttle. It would have taken the Enterprise too, if they hadn't already been coasting out of the planet's orbit. FGC-7781b, nestled in the Bullseye Nebula, was green and hospitable. Clearly inhabited. Only physics appeared to have taken a holiday around it, causing everything with an electrical transtator to fail. According to Oleg it shouldn't have been possible. Engineering had been downright stunned.
"Are we sure we're safe out here?" They'd taken station several hundred thousand kilometers beyond the planet's moons, skirting the apparent boundary of the effect. Further would undoubtedly be safer, but further would also decrease any chance of accurate scans. Not that they had much to work with. Erica had mentioned lidar. Now there was a blast from the past.
"We aren't sure about anything. But we're going to find out, and then we're bringing them home. I'm not leaving my people behind."
"Good." Chapel squeezed her close, hoping to ease some of the tension out of La'an's shoulders. Her own too, if it came to that. "Now I'm going to remind you you have to eat. And sleep. 24 hours and you might as well be drunk. 36 and you're all but useless. Delegate, ok?"
La'an nodded down at the screen. It wasn't her first time in command. It was the first time she'd been so alone, blocked from Starfleet by the nebula, no idea when, or even whether, her superiors might return, facing a problem apparently new to Federation science. At least by now she trusted her crew. She was going to need them.
"I will. I've got Ortegas, and Mitchell. Hemmer knows what he's doing. We might be here a while, I know I have to…" She stalled, tight before she turned to face Chapel. "Make me, ok? When I'm telling you not to, if I get…" She held up her hand, pinky crooked. "Promise."
"Promise." Chapel pulled her close to press a kiss to her forehead. Pull her into a tight hug.
Of all the people who could have been left in charge of this boat, La'an's was as safe a pair of hands as anyone could hope for. Dogged, determined, ruthlessly clever. She wouldn't leave any stone unturned, and she would be honest about it.
But more than that, fundamentally, Chapel was damn sure she wouldn't get anyone killed.
And it turned out, out here, that was what mattered most in a leader.