Charlie

Charlie was not a squeamish man by any means, but the state of the children that Chris brought back to the ship made him reconsider that stance. They were all underweight, malnourished and, with the exception of the older three, they were quiet. He wasn't surprised by that fact, just saddened by it. No child should ever have to go through something like this but Charlie did have hope that they would be okay.

The older children, two boys and a girl, seemed to know what to say to the younger children to bring them peace. They all needed medical attention but the older children were still more concerned about the younger ones then they were about themselves. Charlie was in sickbay when the girl, whose name he didn't know, told the staff to worry about the other children first.'I've had worse,' she simply said as her explanation. Charlie was sure he didn't want to know what that worse was, or who would allow something like that to happen to the girl. Charlie could see that she was a pretty little thing under the grime, and perhaps with a few more pounds on her frame.

From what he had heard, she was also smarter than most of the crew and was the leader of this group of children that managed to outlast a lot of the adults. Maybe where she came from being smart was a problem. Most adults didn't like being outsmarted, especially by a child. It was truly a shame if you asked him, people could learn from something from this girl. Even after the things that were rumored to have happened to her on Tarsus, she still managed to smile through the pain and put the well-being others before herself. As Charlie watched the girl soothe a little boy she referred to as Kevin, he had hope for the first time since this whole thing began.

Chris

Fourteen. There were fourteen kids total, the two he found and the twelve in the cave. Cody, Jamie's cousin, was the oldest at fifteen years old and Kevin was the youngest at only six years old. It gave Chris pause, hell, it made them all stop and think. What is our species coming to when a six year old is forced to watch everyone he's ever known get executed? It was all a bit too much. The only thing worse was the information Lieutenant Parker found on the governor's terminal.

Kodos' list for execution was based on eugenics, those that he spared where considered to be the best of the colony. The tests that his men ran on some of the other, less desirable colonists reminded Chris of the holocaust, as barbaric as they were brutal, the tests were ultimately pointless. Parker also found a file on Hoshi Sato, it saddened everyone in the know that one of people who fought for the founding of the Federation died this way. He did not want to be there when Archer, Reed, Mayweather, Phlox and T'Pol were told, he even felt sorry for the poor bastards who got that task.

Parker had also come across a file on Jamie. Jamie Turner was the name on the file but Chris knew in his heart that she was a Kirk. It only added to his questions when he began to read it.

Name: Jamie Turner (also known as Jamison Teresa Kirk, Jamie Kirk, J.T. Kirk).

So Kodos knew who she really was, had he always known, is that why he kept her alive but as a prisoner. Chris kept reading, the normal information followed, her birth date and location, gender, species and relatives. That's where things began to get interesting.

Mother: Winona Brown nee Davis (formerly Kirk)- Currently assigned USS Hernandez, Engineer.

Well that answers one question, sort of. Why would Winona take a deep space assignment? Chris knew for a fact that she was offered some of the best planet-side posts in the whole Federation, it was the chance to advance her career while still having her children nearby and she turned them all down. Chris couldn't understand why, so he kept reading.

Known Relatives:
George Samuel Kirk Jr. (Brother, deceased-2243)
Marie Turner nee Davis (aunt)
Jeffery Turner (Uncle)
Cody Turner (Cousin)

How is that no one knew that George Kirk's son is dead? How did he die? Why didn't anyone know? Chris was lost, hadn't this girl been through enough? She was born on the same day her father died, according to Doctor Boyce, not all of her injuries were recent, there were years old ones that healed incorrectly and given her partial hysterectomy, it was safe to assume that the sexual abuse wasn't new. If her mother was in deep space, who did she leave the children with?

Jamie's information on Tarsus starts in 2243, probably around the time her brother died. Chris didn't think it was a coincidence. It also appeared that her aunt and uncle tried to hide her identity, using Turner instead of Kirk, Chris would bet credits that they probably told people that she was Jeffery's niece instead of Marie's. Was it to hide her from outsiders looking in, or was it from someone specific? Chris knew that the only person who might be able to answer any of this was the girl herself. Chris kept reading.

Education:
Bachelor's degree in Engineering from Iowa State University-2240
Fluent in Standard, Andorian, Vulcan, Romulan, Reman, Denobulan, French, Russian, English, Xindi and Klingon.
IQ-172

"Well, fuck me!" Chris said to himself.

I.S.U. is a damn good school with one of the best engineering programs on the planet, that was the reason the shipyard in Riverside gets it's interns from there. Chris almost couldn't believe that this kid got her degree when she was seven but her IQ was higher than Einstein's. The languages shouldn't have surprised him, Jamie had mentioned being with Hoshi Sato. Since she didn't have to go to school, maybe she asked Commander Sato to teach her some languages. Sato is one of the only people to have ever heard Xindi, Chris knew Jamie couldn't have learned it from anyone else. He closed out the file, he didn't need to know anything else. Truth be told, he didn't want to know anything else. Chris needed to talk to her, he hoped that she was still awake.

Jamie

Jamie couldn't sleep. A more accurate assessment is that she wouldn't sleep. When you live with an alcoholic who had grabby hands, it was just safer to sleep with one eye open. Dr. Boyce had offered her a sedative but when she explained that she needed to be able to wake up from her nightmares he gave her a small smile, nodded his head and left her to her thoughts.

Jamie thought about Sam, what would he think of all this? Would she even be here if it wasn't for what happened? It's a thought that takes her by surprise, what if she wasn't here? She's the one that sent out the intel to Starfleet, she saved a bunch of the kids. Would they all be dead by now? Probably. In a way she was glad that Sam was dead, she didn't want him to go through something like this, she had no doubt that he would say the same thing.

Her inner musings were cut short when Lieutenant Commander Pike entered the room, or Chris, as he instructed her to call him. The look on his face told her that it wasn't a social call, Jamie figured he would come to her with questions eventually. She never thought it would take three days but she had to give him credit for not jumping down her throat like his captain did, Jamie didn't like Captain Kamnach at all. After everything they went through, he had the nerve to interrogate them like this was somehow their fault. At least he had the grace to look apologetic after Jamie pointed that fact out to him.

"Are you up early, or up late, Comma… Chris?" Jamie asked as Chris stood at the foot of her bio-bed.

"Late, couldn't sleep so I ended up doing some not so light reading," he told her. She could tell the statement was loaded. When they left Kodos' hell, there was an officer working at his terminal. Jamie could only assume that Starfleet had found the file Kodos had on her. He had one on all the special kids; Jamie, Tommy, Percy and some others. Jamie thought that he would attempt to create a super colony with their DNA or something equally crazy.

"Ah, found that file on me, huh? I always knew Kodos was hiding something when he talked to me, as if he was expecting something else. The same something that everyone expects from me, I suppose." She took a breath before she continued, "From the look on your face, you have questions. I can't answer them here, not with the children around. If you can spring me, we can talk."

Jamie could see the wheels turning as Chris considered her for a moment, she was going to answer his questions, some of them at least. Jamie knew that the captain had been trying to get information from the children and failed, his approach was to blame and she had told him as much. This was most likely the only real chance any of them was going to get at finding out everything that happened and if Chris was as smart as he seemed, getting her out of sickbay for a little while was well worth the chance for getting some answers. Chris seemed to have made up his mind, nodding his assent, he gave Jamie the sweatshirt he was wearing to cover the thin gown she was wearing and notified a nurse that he was taking the teen for a walk around the ship. Determined to make her way around on her own power, Jamie refused his aid and stood on her feet.

"Where to, Chris?"

Chris

He wasn't entirely sure how they ended up in engineering, but the look on Jamie's face was well worth it. Remembering the information he read on her, engineering was her thing. Finding a place for them to sit down that was out of the way of the officers at work, Chris just watched as Jamie's eyes took in everything. The assessment she did of the large room was almost military in quality. Chris was sure that if he asked, she could tell him where all the exits are and the approximate number of people in the room.

"What would you like to know?" she asked him, "Or should I just start from the beginning?"

"Whatever you want to tell me, but the beginning is usually the best place to start." He replied as he simply watched her.

"Well everyone in the Fed knows how it starts. The heroic George Kirk dies saving the crew of the USS Kelvin from an unknown Romulan vessel, leaving behind a wife, a young son and a newborn daughter. After the fanfare died down I guess no one ever bothered to ask what happened to me and Sam. For a while we stayed with Grandpa James. He tried to get my mother to see reason, to stick around for her kids but she was so wrapped up in herself and in George's memory that we never saw much of her, her loss if you ask me. Grandpa James knew I was smart from the minute he saw me, only good thing I got from my mother. I learned to read before most kids learned to walk and I would read everything I could get my hands on, A Tale of Two Cities is my favorite." She paused for a second and smiled. "I had managed to test out of school when I was five and took distance education credits from Iowa State. Grandpa was proud, I was the second youngest graduate that the school ever had. Sam wasn't too far behind me, he started I.S.U. the semester before I graduated, I was seven, he was almost twelve. A few months later, my mother showed up with this guy, Frank Brown." The way Jamie said the man's name set off alarm bells in Chris' head. Boyce had told him that the girl had been through the ringer and from the look that was currently crossing her features, this man was part of the problem.

"Winona married him and the next thing we know he lives in our father's house, claiming our father's most prized possessions and treating me and Sam like dirt. We stayed away from him as much as we could. We still spent most of our time with grandpa, it was okay until he got sick. Something he picked up while in the fleet. After he died, we were stuck with Frank. We tried to get Winona to send us somewhere else, hell, anywhere else but she didn't listen. She told us that Frank was our step-dad and to do what he said." Jamie slowly shook her head.

"That woman, is an idiot. I won't go into details but Frank hit us, when I was nine, he stopped hitting me and started touching me. I was ten when he raped me. I'll admit that it hurt but I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of hearing me scream. When Sam walked in the room and saw that Frank had me pinned to the table, my arms being held behind my back and my shorts around my ankles, he lost it. I tried to save him, to help him but I couldn't move. I don't know how I managed to comm for help. When the police showed up, Frank was still wailing on Sam but Sam wasn't moving. They arrested Frank, he's in a penal colony and they took me and Sam to the hospital. I managed to give them aunt Marie's contact information before I passed out, blood loss from the rape. Ended up losing half my uterus as a result. That didn't bother nearly as much as losing Sam, I never got a chance to see my brother again, he died while I was unconscious. When my aunt and uncle showed up, they were livid. After they saw me and heard what happened to Sam, they refused to leave me there. My mother made it easy, she signed her rights away." Chris saw the hurt in her eyes, he didn't know why but he wanted to shield this girl from everything in the universe. It's one thing to be hurt by someone you don't know but another thing for your mother to turn her back on you.

"Aunt Marie got the house settled, got some of my stuff and I was on the transport for Tarsus IV two days after getting released from the hospital. We only stayed long enough to lay Sam to rest. While in route to the colony, we decided that using my real name was a bad idea. When we got to Tarsus IV, I became Jamie Turner, Jeffery Turner's recently orphaned niece. They somehow managed to get the name on all my transcripts changed so I didn't have to repeat any school. I stayed with my aunt for the first few week, nothing against uncle Jeff or Cody, but I didn't feel safe alone with a guy who was bigger than me. I told Cody as much one day and a week later he's introducing me to Percy and Ella. Cody and Percy were best friends, Ella was Percy's little sister. They reminded me of myself and Sam sometimes… but in a good way. Their dad was a security officer in Starfleet for fifteen years and he trained his kids to defend themselves. They trained me, nothing fancy just some Krav Maga and a little kickboxing. It was therapeutic, getting to let the anger and self-loathing out. Anyway, I met Tommy through Ella, he lived next door to them. Like me, Tommy was out of school too. I asked him what he did all day, turned out he helped the agricultural personnel. I like science, so a few times a week I would go with him. I was walking home from the lab when I heard someone speak in a language I didn't know. Imagine my surprise at seeing this little old lady trying to plant this bush that was bigger than me." Chris could see the smile in Jamie's eyes at her first memories of Hoshi.

"I moved to help her and asked if she could teach me whatever language she was speaking. She gave me a once over and told me that I would have to learn Vulcan first. After that she would teach me Klingon, the language I heard her use. After that, when I wasn't helping Tommy in agro, I was with Hoshi learning languages, diplomacy, how to read people, even basic risk assessment. Hell, if The Hoshi Sato was willing to teach me, I was willing to learn. When I eventually told her who I really was, she didn't seem surprised like I thought she would be. I think she figured it out on her own and was waiting for me to feel comfortable enough to tell her. It was peaceful for a while, like I could breathe, but as they say 'All good things…' You know the rest, me and Tommy found the fungus in the crops and told Kodos. The lists he drew up. Hoshi warning us to get out of the colony. Saving the smaller kids. Percy dying on our way out of the governor's office after sending up the S.O.S. Kodos torturing me for info on the kids' location…" Jamie trailed off. Chris wanted to cry. He also wanted to kill a few people. Chris was having a crisis of self at the moment, what do you say to a life story that is too short to be full of such tragedy? Jamie must have noticed that his thoughts were taking a dark turn because she had reached over and her small hand grasped his.

"I'll be okay. I'll be better than okay. The way I see it, I must be pretty damn special if all these amazing people died protecting me. My father, Sam, Hoshi, and Percy were the best of us. Whatever I'm meant to do, I'll do it and it will be because of them."