Frozen Stars – Chapter 1: Can it be called blackmail if everyone knows?
Five Years Later
Bulma Briefs didn't like to talk about the Alfrmyke disaster, as she'd privately dubbed it. Not because she had been captured – she'd been off the station and on her way back to the next starbase in one of the intruders' ships not twelve hours after they'd tossed her into her makeshift cell, and seriously, what kind of dumbass didn't secure all the panels in the room before imprisoning someone? That was such a rookie mistake!
Not even because of the dent in her ego – the research station orbiting Alfrmyke along with the planet's countless moons had been her pride and joy, and she had fought hard to find the funding and get the project approved by the sometimes byzantine bureaucracy of Starfleet, especially as a relatively junior researcher. And then she'd had to essentially rip her life's work to shreds in her desperate bid to save her people. That stung, definitely, but everyone had survived, and she still had all of their collected data.
It wasn't even the lost research opportunity – sure, Alfrmyke had the most intriguing gravitational patterns she'd ever seen, and could teach the Federation a lot if they finally figured out what the fuck was going on there (because intriguing, in this case, meant Bulma was very confused – the math just wasn't mathing), but there were other gas giants with other moons out there that she could study. No, what pissed Bulma off the most about the whole thing was the way it had ruined her career and cut off all of her future opportunities. Every time she proposed another project, it came down to one thing – the fact that she was the woman who'd lost the Alfrmyke station and royally botched the first contact with the mysterious intruders, who had turned out to be a whole-ass new species the Federation had previously managed to overlook. And then someone almost as talented as her and with a better track record of not fucking up things got the money and the shiny new toys, and Bulma was left with nothing.
Well, not nothing, exactly. Not anymore. After a few years of suck as science officer on various starbases and ships, she'd been reassigned to Starfleet Academy, teaching gravitational analytics to wide-eyed space cadets, and while she itched to go back out there to look at stars and planets up close, she also enjoyed teaching. Sure, answering the dumb-ass questions that she'd just covered during her lecture over and over and over again sucked sometimes, and the cheating attempts seemed to get more insulting to her intelligence with each semester, but she loved her colleagues, she loved her TAs, she even liked her students most of the time, and she loved that she got paid to do research and share her love for her field with the next generation of aspiring Starfleet scientists from all walks of life and all planets of the Federation.
And she finally had time for her friends and her family again, time that had been sorely lacking while she'd been stationed on ships and research stations in remote corners of Federation space (or, as Launch had called it, "the ass crack of the quadrant"). The job even came with a small but cozy apartment in one of the faculty housing complexes, and was just a short walk across campus from her favorite coffee shop. Overall, life was good, and the only thing that reminded her of Alfrmyke was the recurring dream she had where she polished the infuriating stranger's smile off his face with a baseball bat instead of being unceremoniously tossed into a thoroughly insufficient cell.
Which was why Bulma walked into the semester's first staff meeting, already a little late, a little flustered by the start-of-the-semester rush, and almost dropped her coffee when she stared into that same arrogant, aristocratic face that haunted her dreams. Only that the asshole wasn't in a battered space suit this time, but a foreign-looking uniform slash armor, and standing next to the fucking Commandant of Starfleet Academy on the dais offering a magnificent view of San Francisco Bay. And once again, she couldn't help herself. "What the fuck is he doing here?"
The marvelous acoustics of the lecture hall where the meeting was held did their job admirably, amplifying her conversational tone and projecting her words to every goddamned person in attendance. Countless heads swiveled towards her, standing in the door, coffee in one hand, disheveled pack of notes tucked behind her PADD in the other, until Commandant Morris cleared his throat impatiently, making her colleagues turn towards him again as if it were a tennis match. He and Bulma had done battle before, and she knew that he wasn't a fan of her or her irreverent ways, so she amended with a roll of her eyes that she hoped he couldn't see because of the distance, "What the fuck is he doing here, sir?" Which was a fucking stupid idea, she realized the second the words were out of her mouth, but she was too angry to care now that the first shock of seeing that guy had worn off and she realized that she wasn't dreaming. Unfortunately.
A murmur of disbelief went through the officers around her, but the object of her scorn didn't even summon the infuriatingly superior smile she'd come to hate over the years. In fact, he barely looked at her, his face impassive and unreadable while Commandant Morris was about three seconds away from a coronary, if his complexion was any indication. "As I was about to say just before I was interrupted," he continued pointedly, turning towards her colleagues once again, "this is His Royal Highness, Prince Vegeta of Vegeta, and he will join the teaching staff at Starfleet Academy as a part of our new technology and personnel exchange initiative with the Saiyan people."
Bulma stared at him open-mouthedly, because she couldn't believe it. She couldn't fucking believe it! First Starfleet went and scape-goated her for the loss of her research station when she'd done everything right in an unbelievably shitty situation and managed to get all of her people to safety against all odds, and now these stupid motherfuckers put that asshole who captured her right in front of her? If she had to see his fucking face every day in the staff lounge, she was going to kill someone! Him, preferably.
Despite her anger, part of her brain knew that now would be an excellent time to shut up, gather what was left of her dignity, and find a seat in one of the back rows, but once again, she was too angry to be smart, and her mouth doubly so. "But that's the asshole who captured me!"
Bulma had driven Commandant Morris to the brink of homicide before, but she hadn't known that he could look that murderous. "Dr Briefs, please do sit down right now, and we will have a private conversation later." His tone was one perpetual troublemaker Bulma knew only to well. He was done with her shit and they both knew it, and he had more important matters to attend to than soothing her ruffled feathers. "His Royal Highness will be working as a martial arts instructor for cadets in the Security track, and I trust that all staff members," the Commandant's dark, angry eyes picked her out of the crowd of officers like the target-seeking lasers that guided photon torpedoes to their destinations, "will treat him with the respect and deference appropriate not only for a fellow officer and colleague, but also for a visiting royal dignitary."
Bulma groaned and sat on a free chair pushed against the back wall of the lecture hall in defiance of all fire safety regulations imaginable, burying her face in her notes. This semester was going to suck balls. Her stay as a Saiyan prisoner had been brief, her interactions with their Prince (whom she'd thought just a random run of the mill military asshole back then) minimal, but she had found out two things about him during their disastrous first meeting: He was a capital-a Asshole, and he pushed all of Bulma's buttons. And goddamn the Commandant and his irritating insistence on not pissing off new Federation allies, but he had just handed that asshole who'd captured her a whole fucking remote control. Because if she had to treat that guy with respect, she was royally fucked. Pun intended.
While Bulma quietly seethed in her corner of the lecture hall, trying to incinerate the asshole who'd captured her by the sheer force of her hateful thoughts – because that would solve her problem quite nicely and nobody would be able to prove that it had been her fault – Commandant Morris enumerated Prince Vegeta's titles and accomplishments, and why he was suddenly supposed to be qualified to teach Starfleet cadets here at the Academy. If Saiyan royalty worked remotely close to Earth and other planets' royalty that Bulma had had contact with before, two thirds of the titles and all of the accomplishments were pure bullshit, except, of course, for the fact that he'd gone and captured Bulma's space station. Only that it was called "spearheaded the Saiyan people's first contact with the Federation" when the Commandant talked about it, and that it wasn't really an accomplishment in Bulma's eyes.
"And now that I'm done with the introductions," continued the Commandant with his trained orator's voice, and Bulma breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Maybe they could get to the boring part of the staff meeting now, the one where Bulma surreptitiously read a book on her PADD because everything she needed to know was covered in the countless start-of-semester messages that Academy bureaucracy inevitably generated. Starfleet was not-so-secretly powered by superfluous paperwork and bad coffee, after all. "Your Highness, would you like to say a few words to your new colleagues here at Starfleet Academy?"
Bulma felt as if she'd just bitten into a lemon, but still, she looked up from her notes that she'd used as a shield to hide her embarrassed face behind, because this, she had to see. And not only because she was half convinced that the asshole would say something caustic to her and embarrass her in front of the entire staff (though, Bulma had to admit, she'd already done a pretty good job of embarrassing herself, no further assistance required). He was just the type to make her humiliation complete with a sarcastic quip and a sadistic little smile. But instead of giving a pompous speech, Vegeta just slowly raked his eyes over the gathered faculty before he scoffed, the sound so packed with derision that Bulma was surprised it didn't have its own field of gravity. And then he walked off the stage to his seat in the front row, face impassive, as if he hadn't just insulted an entire lecture hall of Starfleet officers without uttering a single word.
"Uh… well." Commandant Morris scratched his head as Vegeta sat down and crossed his arms like he'd rather be shot at than sit through this meeting, a reaction that Bulma found infuriatingly relatable. "Please join me in welcoming our newest colleague at Starfleet Academy with a rousing round of applause."
People around Bulma started to clap, confusedly, but they did clap, and rage rushed through Bulma with an intensity that took her breath away. They were fucking traitors, all of them. That guy had almost killed two dozen of her people, had captured her, had wreaked havoc on her perfect, priceless research station, and now the suckers were clapping for him, just because he'd rolled up to Starfleet Academy in his pretty uniform and scowled at them condescendingly? And what the fuck was Starfleet even thinking? Last she'd heard, the Saiyans had kicked the Federation out of their little corner of the galaxy by yeeting Bulma and her people straight back to Earth, and now they were supposed to be buddies? With people so fucking reclusive that the Federation hadn't even known they existed until they'd accidentally built a space station right on top of one of their outposts? It was preposterous!
But Bulma was pissed off about more than the sheer absurdity of the situation. It stung that Starfleet didn't even have the common fucking courtesy of warning her in advance that the asshole who'd captured her was coming to the Academy. Sure, the Starfleet higher-ups blamed her for how horribly the First Contact with the Saiyans had gone (even though she still had no fucking idea what she could've done differently – she hadn't even known that they existed before they'd attacked), of course, she wasn't their favorite person right now, and her career was probably dead in the water, any chance of promotion or another interesting assignment like the Alfrmyke Gravity Study gone in a flash of angry Saiyans punching through station walls like cardboard. But that they didn't even let her know, had allowed her to run into this shit blindly and in front of the whole fucking faculty? It smarted, and Bulma wasn't very good at handling humiliation. Suckers probably think I'll just have to get over it! As if it was that easy!
Bulma had thought she'd put Alfrmyke behind her. She really had. She'd gone to therapy after her return to Earth, grudgingly at first, because Starfleet had made her, and then because it helped her understand everything that had happened, make sense of the fear, the terror, the anger, the guilt. She'd been cleared to return to duty, and had gone and rebuilt her career from the ashes best as she could while Starfleet was doing everything it could to keep her down. She'd thought that she was over it – nothing she could do about what had happened, so no sense moping about it. And yet, now that she'd suddenly come face to face with the man who'd taken everything she'd ever wanted out of her career away from her, the reality that she had not really gotten over what had happened slammed into her like a meteorite. She'd only put it away in neatly labeled boxes in the deep recesses of her heart, and now all of it was coming tumbling out again, the door opened by Vegeta's sudden arrival. And once again, Starfleet was not helping. They were making it worse.
Commandant Morris pulled her into his office after the meeting and ripped her a new one for "embarrassing him in front of the entire faculty", "disrespecting a valued Federation ally" and "jeopardizing the Federation's fragile relationship with the Saiyans". And just when Bulma was done breathing through the urge to scream at the man loudly enough that the cadets waiting to see him in the room outside would've heard, and tell him exactly what she thought about his bullshit, the Commandant added, almost as an afterthought, "You're going to apologize to Prince Vegeta."
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Bulma knew the moment the words were out of her mouth that it'd been another stupid-ass decision to actually say them, but seriously? SERIOUSLY? "I'm not going to apologize to that asshole! If anything, he should apologize to me! I didn't toss him into a fucking cell!"
"I do not appreciate your interruption," Commandant Morris replied, and he looked like it took everything he had in him and then some to stay reasonably calm and not scream at her like he would at a clueless first year cadet who'd just tried to cuddle a warp core, "and I also do not appreciate you calling the crown prince of the Federation's newest ally derogatory names. His Royal Highness has already assured us that he will be gracious enough to overlook your conduct during our First Contact with his people, and your sincerest apologies will hopefully entreat him to forget that you attacked him without provocation, and smooth over today's frankly atrocious behavior."
Even Bulma had to admit that maybe, just maybe, she hadn't been at her most diplomatic during the meeting, but still, atrocious? After the asshole had destroyed her entire fucking research station and she'd had to escape in a tiny, cramped, smelly Saiyan pod ship? Was he fucking kidding her? Did he have any idea how devastating it had been, seeing her life's work being blasted to tiny pieces, and even aiding in the destruction of it because that meant her people would have a better chance to escape? Bulma hadn't signed up with Starfleet for the combat bullshit, after all! She was just here for the research opportunities and the way the uniform made her ass look phenomenal. "I don't think I have anything to apologize for," she ground out defiantly, adding a "sir" at the end only when the Commandant narrowed his eyes at her disrespect. "It was a combat situation, and I reacted according to my best judgment, avoiding any casualties of both Federation and Saiyan personnel, I might add."
"Starfleet happens to disagree," Commandant Morris retorted gruffly, and in a tone that said that he shared Starfleet's bullshit assessment of the situation. "Your callous disregard for Starfleet protocols alone should've earned you a court martial! But I digress..." He stood behind his desk and walked over to the window overlooking the San Francisco campus, with the Golden Gate Bridge visible in the distance, as if he had to compose himself. As if he thought Bulma so repulsive, so irresponsible, that he was struggling not to tell her in those words that she was lower than the dirt under his boots, and not fit to be a Starfleet scientist.
Try as he might to hold himself back, Bulma still bristled at the disrespect he was showing to her. Turning his back to her in the middle of a conversation, did the guy want to get smacked over the back of the head or something? But unfortunately for both of them, the Commandant was not done with her yet. "You will apologize, Dr Briefs, and be thankful that we allow you to do so. And that is the end of the matter."
Bulma challenged him almost by instinct, because if there was one thing she hated, and hated with a passion, it was assholes who told her what to do. "And if I don't?"
Commandant Morris turned towards her and smiled thinly. "Then Starfleet will quickly find itself without any further need for your services. Dimissed, Dr Briefs."
