Chapter Text
The First Secret
USS Martin Luther King Junior, 2236
The tunnels under the surface of the abandoned Gorn planet were the worst thing Ensign Una Chin-Riley had ever seen. She was new to Starfleet, only four months into her first tour of duty, but even the commander, who’d led hundreds of away missions in his time, was struggling.
There were bones everywhere. Una couldn’t even imagine how many people those bones had come from. And they were from every species imaginable; Vulcan, Klingon, Ferengi, Betazoid, human, so, so many humans. All gone now. All that potential, all those dreams, those hopes, just gone. It was senseless. Una was trying to think of them as just bones, lumps of calcium and biomatter, because thinking of them as anything else was too much.
‘How are you holding up, Ensign?’ Commander Richards had come over to stand next to her, his tricorder still out and scanning for survivors. Not that there would be any. Una couldn’t see anyone getting out of here. Besides, the minerals in the tunnel walls made their scans unreliable. Even if, against all odds, someone had survived, the chances of finding them were almost zero.
‘I’m ok,’ Una said. She wasn’t, but you’d never know it. She seemed as she always did; calm, unflappable. She’d learnt to hide her emotions after her parents died all those years ago. She’d had to.
‘Not quite what you want for your first away mission,’ the Commander was saying.
‘Second, Sir. First one was to Ferenginar.’ She offered up a weak smile – humour was her preferred method of avoiding her emotions ‘At least it’s not raining here.’
It seemed to have worked because Richards smiled in return and stepped away from her, scanning the other side of the tunnel.
Una took a deep breath. The smell was starting to get to her; meat with a metallic tang. She tried to focus on the tricorder in her hand, tried to block out the rest of it, but she couldn’t. Those bones they’d found, the human ones, were the last relics of the Puget Sound, a colony ship carrying hundreds of settlers to a new planet. There had been entire families on board and there had been children too. The Gorn had captured the ship and brought them here and, for six years, they’d been held here, while the Gorn hunted them, picked them off one by one to use as incubators. The Gorn had gone now, left in search of other prey.
Una turned right into a neighbouring tunnel, tricorder still scanning even though the whole exercise seemed futile. And that was when she heard it; those enhanced Illyrian senses of hers, the ones she had to keep secret from her captain and crewmates, picked up on a soft thumping noise a hundred metres away from her. It was regular and rhythmic; a heartbeat.
Her first thought was that the Gorn were still there and she reached for her phaser in terror, her other hand moving towards her communicator to alert her companions. And then she remembered that the Gorn were reptilian, their heartbeats were slow and sluggish. The heart she could hear was racing, frantic. She started to run then, not away from it, but towards.
There was a clattering sound as a rock flew over her head and landed just behind her. Whoever was in the tunnel was prepared to fight. And of course they were; they had just spent six years fighting for their life. Una stopped, stood still, hands in the air.
‘I’m Starfleet,’ she said. ‘I’ve come to rescue you.’
For a moment, there was no sound at all. Una could almost hear the other person weighing up her words, deciding if they could trust her – the Gorn weren’t known for being duplicitous, but there is always a first time for everything. And then she heard a voice, young sounding and female ‘How do I know the Gorn haven’t got you too? That you’re not carrying their eggs?’
Even the idea of that made Una feel sick to her stomach and her heart broke all over again for the colonists. ‘I promise I’m not,’ she said. ‘The Gorn have gone. I’m here with my ship, the Martin Luther King Junior. My name’s Una. I’m an ensign. You’re safe now. I’ll keep you safe.’
Again there was a pause and then movement. A foot emerged from a crack in the rock which was so small Una hadn’t even noticed it. The foot was followed by a leg and then a girl stood in the tunnel in front of Una. She was tiny, head not even up to Una’s shoulder and she was clearly half-starved. She looked as though she couldn’t have been more than ten years old. In her hand, she held another rock, arm drawn back, ready to throw it. She was looking Una up and down, taking in the uniform.
‘You really are Starfleet,’ she said. And then she crumpled forwards, eyes rolling back in her head, and Una ran to catch her.
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It turned out the girl was nineteen, not ten. She was only three years younger than Una. Years of malnutrition had kept her small. A DNA scan revealed that she was named La’an Noonian-Singh -the chief medical officer had visibly winced at her last name -and she’d been travelling on the Puget Sound with her entire family. Her parents had been on that ship, her brother, her aunts and uncles and cousins. She was the last Noonian-Singh left now.
She’d been thirteen when the Gorn had taken her ship. Una remembered herself at thirteen; obsessed with old Earth musicals and gymnastics and spending every moment she could with her best friend. That’s what thirteen year-olds should be doing, not running for their life while the Gorn grew eggs in their parents.
The girl was sedated now. She’d been pretty badly injured at various points over the last six years and the medics had just finished working on her. Una was back on the bridge, at her station, but her mind was still down in sickbay. It wasn’t like her; Una had never had a problem focusing on her work before.
As she tried to pull her thoughts back to the here and now, her communicator beeped. ‘Sickbay to Ensign Chin-Riley,’ the voice was that of the chief medical officer.
‘Chin-Riley here,’ Una replied.
‘Could you come down here please?’
Una glanced at the Captain who nodded his permission. She hurried from the Bridge, her mind immediately feeling calmer. She realised that she wanted, needed, to check up on the girl.
In sickbay, she was greeted by chaos. A forcefield had been set up down the middle of the room. On one side of it, three medical officers huddled. On the other side, the girl was standing on her biobed, surrounded by medical instruments she had apparently thrown at the forcefield. She had a scalpel in her hand, arm raised as if to strike.
‘We could pump a sedative gas in,’ one of the doctors was saying.
The girl could hear them perfectly well through the forcefield and this suggestion seemed to enrage her because she threw herself at it, screaming. The forcefield pulsed, knocking her backwards onto the bed. One look at the girl’s wide, staring eyes told Una that she was terrified and it didn’t take a genius to work out why she didn’t want to be sedated. On the Gorn planet, losing control like that would have meant certain death.
‘Please don’t sedate her,’ Una heard herself saying.
The three medical officers turned to look at her and so did the girl behind the forcefield.
‘She’s been asking for you,’ one of the doctors said. ‘Ever since she woke up.’
The girl was staring at her now. Una pushed past the three doctors and stood as close to the forcefield as she could, knowing without knowing how she knew that the girl needed to have her close. And suddenly the forcefield seemed ridiculous. This was a terrified nineteen year old, not a dangerous criminal. The girl had been imprisoned on the Gorn planet for long enough. She shouldn’t be kept in another kind of prison.
‘Lower the forcefield,’ Una said softly.
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ One of the doctors started to say. Una turned to him and glared. She’d always had a very effective glare. Looking a little disapproving, he pressed a button on the wall panel and the air shimmered as the forcefield was lowered.
Una took a tentative step towards the girl on the biobed. ‘Hi,’ she said softly, gently, as though she was approaching a skittish animal.
The girl looked up at her with big dark eyes. ‘Will you really keep me safe?’ she asked.
Una nodded. ‘I promise,’ she said.
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La’an had been on board the ship for three weeks now. They were months away from the nearest Federation outpost and no one quite knew what to do with her. There were plans to drop her off at Alpha Colony, the nearest Federation world, but, in the meantime, she was stuck on the Martin Luther King Junior.
They had guest quarters on the ship and she’d been assigned some, but, it turned out that she hadn’t slept by herself since before the Gorn had attacked her ship. On the breeding planet, the colonists had slept together so one of them could always be on watch. For the last few months, when it had just been her, she hadn’t really slept at all, just micronapped, snatching seconds of sleep where she could. In the guest quarters she was given, La’an couldn’t switch off, didn’t feel safe. To sleep, she needed someone to watch her back.
And that was how she ended up sleeping in the spare bunk in Una’s quarters. Una’s roommate had transferred to another ship two months ago and the bunk hadn’t been re-assigned yet so it seemed like the perfect solution. And it almost was. Almost because Una was getting attached to the girl in a way she wasn’t quite prepared for. And it seemed that that went both ways.
They were in Una’s quarters now, La’an curled up in her bunk, PADD in her hands. She was ostensibly catching up on all of the schoolwork she’d missed over the last six years, but her eyes weren’t on the PADD at all, they were focused on Una. For her part, Una was trying to go through the duty roster for the next week, but was finding being stared at somewhat distracting.
La’an was always staring at her. Wherever Una went in their shared quarters, La’an’s eyes would track her around the room. Eventually, Una gave up on her work. ‘Watcha reading?’ she asked, lying the PADD down on the bunk beside her.
La’an looked panicked for a moment; she clearly had no idea what was on the PADD in front of her. ‘Shakespeare,’ she said. ‘Romeo and Juliet.’
‘And what do you think of the greatest love story ever written?’
La’an shrugged. ‘Seems stupid to be honest.’
Una was curious now. ‘What do you mean?’
‘They fall in love too quickly, trust each other too quickly. And they don’t do anything to deserve each other’s trust. Only person I’ve ever trusted that quickly was you.’
Una felt something leap inside her chest at those words, a rush of affection, protectiveness. She’d learnt that La’an had a habit of just stating her feelings bluntly, leaving the other person completely disarmed.
‘Thank you,’ Una said softly.
La’an was looking at her frankly now. ‘You make me feel safe. I know that no one’s going to hurt me when you’re around.’
Una could feel a blush creeping into her cheeks. Unlike La’an, she wasn’t one to state her feelings quite so bluntly. She’d grown up keeping secrets, hiding everything about herself. In the face of feelings with a capital F, Una was a deflector. ‘I’m glad you feel safe here,’ Una said and then couldn’t take the sincerity anymore. ‘Ever heard of Gilbert and Sullivan?’
La’an shook her head. ‘Are they members of the crew?’
‘Let me enlighten you.’
Halfway through a holovid of The Pirates of Penzance, La’an was entranced (despite stating repeatedly that she hated musicals), but, for once, Una wasn’t distracted at all. All she could focus on was the small person sitting beside her who trusted her absolutely. Una made a vow to herself then and to La’an too; she’d always be there for her, always keep her safe.
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Three months later, they’d made their way through every Gilbert and Sullivan musical in existence and they’d also made it all the way to Alpha Colony. La’an had been stoic about leaving. She understood that she had to. After all, she’d left school at thirteen technically. She had a whole adolescence to catch up on and she couldn’t do that aboard the Martin Luther King Junior. Una was outwardly calm, but in pieces on the inside. She wasn’t sure how she’d manage without her unofficial roommate.
Una had let La’an know that she would stay in contact with her, would send her daily messages if that’s what she wanted. But now, La’an’s shuttle had left for the planet and Una was standing alone in the shuttlebay, the captain by her side.
‘You’ve done a good job with her, Ensign,’ the Captain said. ‘Went above and beyond the call of duty so to speak. I imagine you’ll be glad to have your room back.’
For once, Una didn’t know what to say. It seemed impossible that the Captain thought she’d helped La’an as part of her job. La’an was so much more to her than that – until that moment, Una hadn’t realised quite how much more La’an was to her than that. When she thought about her, there was a warmth, a softness which Una hadn’t felt for anyone else.
The Captain had turned and was walking towards the shuttlebay doors when he suddenly stopped and looked back at Una. ‘How did you find her though? You never told us.’ He asked. ‘The minerals in those rocks were interfering with the tricorders.’
Una could have said ‘because I’m an Illyrian, Sir, with illegal genetic modifications which let me hear her heartbeat,’ but, of course, she didn’t because Una was good at keeping secrets. ‘Just lucky I guess,’ she said and turned back to the shuttlebay doors, watching La’an’s shuttle through the forcefield until it was out of sight.