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“Jefferson is acting Captain until I get back.”
There’s a loud whoop from the back of the room, before the words, “Fuck yes bitches! Who’s ready to get Captained,” fill the bridge.
Washington wonders, not for the first time, if the Federation is purposely misplacing his requests for retirement.
“With Hamilton as acting Commander.”
The pleasure from Jefferson instantly turns into the most drawn out groan in existence as Hamilton rapidly begins to speak up, taking charge of their current mission and creating a plan that Washington can already imagine with lead to at least twenty pages of paperwork by the end.
Perhaps more.
Maybe if he’s lucky they’ll actually have the mission done by time he gets back. If not – hopefully the volcano on the planet below them can hold off erupting until he gets back from his meeting with Admiral Adams.
“The Yorktown is in your capable hands,” Washington says, the feeling of regret coming up even as he says the words, “Please don’t let me down, or kill each other.”
“I make no promises.”
---
It’s been five hours since Washington left and Burr’s not sure how things have yet to turn into complete chaos. The last time Washington had left things had certainly gone downhill a lot quicker than this.
Which is why he abandons engineering sooner than he probably ought to have and heads up to the bridge.
The first thing he notices when he steps on the bridge is that it’s quiet. Sure there’s the buzzing of the machines that run the ship, and some quiet idle chatter, but nothing deafening.
Which in a way, instantly indicates that something is wrong, because the USS Yorktown is never silent, not with –
“Where’s Hamilton?”
“Ah, about that,” Jefferson replies from where he is leisurely sprawled across the captain’s chair. “I may had jettisoned him out the airlock.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I jettisoned – no wait Jeffersoned, hold that thought,” Jefferson twirls the chair away at that, fiddling with the comm system, “Sally, be a dear, and see if I can trademark the word Jeffersoned,” and then turns back to center as though nothing had happened. “Let’s be honest with ourselves here. It’s nicer without him, you can start thanking me now.”
Burr had to admit the silence was nice. It was refreshing, and as much as he would like to have appreciated it for a longer period of time. But there was a pre-warp society on the planet below them, and likely a thousand Starfleet regulations being broken (not counting the prime directive) the longer he sat there.
“We can’t just leave him down there,” Burr says eventually, because even though he would like to have done so there was no way he could explain to Admiral Washington that they’d just left the acting Commander behind on a mission that technically they shouldn’t have even been on with a very active volcano set to wipe it off the map.
“Okay so I see why you might think that, but why not?”
There were plenty of good answers to that question. Plenty of answers, that Jefferson would ignore, because he was Jefferson. But there was one Burr knew would work, because it was just about the only thing that made him want to go onto the planet and bring Hamilton back.
“They’re a pre-warp society,” Burr stresses, “So what do you think they’re going to think when a man comes flying out of the sky.”
“Ah, right.”
“Technically he was in a pod, we’re not that cruel,” Madison points out.
“Not helpful.”
---
Burr leads the away team.
Mostly because he is the only person on the ship who was willing to go down there and drag Hamilton back, who wasn’t actively engaged in doing the mission that Washington had actually assigned to them before his sudden meeting with the admiral.
“Are you ready for the drop,” Peggy asks, from her seat at the front of their small shuttle.
The cold fusion device sits on the floor of the shuttle, with Eliza on one side and Angelica on the other.
It takes the Schuyler sisters to get anything done on this ship, the boys always too busy trying to guess who has the bigger dick (or debate the finer issues of Starfleet politics) to actually complete a mission. Once Angelica got a ship of her own, she swore to make sure not to let any men into her crew.
They were nothing but trouble.
“Yeah, lower us down.”
---
It had taken him fifteen minutes to pick of their language – a triumph that Hamilton was going to make sure to send an email to the stuck up Xenolinguistics professor he had had at Starfleet to brag about – and less than an hour to convince the inhabitants of this planet that what they really needed was a functioning monetary system.
Of course, it helped that they were worshipping him like a deity.
Or maybe helped wasn’t the best word –
“They’ll thank me later. I mean, Burr, do you realize how important this is. Systems of commerce are what help a society develop. You introduce the concept of money, which leads to trade, which leads to forming whole governmental systems. Thanks to me they could be a mere thousand years from joining the federation instead of forty thousand.”
“Does the prime directive mean nothing to you?”
Hamilton rolls his eyes, pointedly, so that there’s no way Burr can miss the motion. Burr’s obsessed with the prime direction, of course, has been since they were roommate at the academy. It was like a safety blanket to him.
Whereas Hamilton understood sometimes rules were meant to be broken, for the greater good.
Washington understood that. And somebody must at Starfleet because Hamilton made sure to always write detailed explanations of what happened in his mission reports and he’d never gotten any of them sent back to him with complaints. Clearly he was doing something right.
“You know if you like the prime directive so much, why don’t you-“ He starts to say, but the rest of his sentence is drowned out by a voice coming literally down from the heavens.
A voice that Hamilton hadn’t been missing at all.
“HEY MOTHERFUCKERS WE’VE SAVED THE PLANET, GET YOUR ASSES BACK UP HERE.”
For all that the locals may have thought Hamilton was a god, he had nothing on voices coming from the sky.
It wasn’t fair. Jefferson was basically cheating.
“What if I just don’t go back?”
“And let Jefferson run the ship?”
Yeah, that wasn’t happening.
“Good point. Beam me up!”
---
Washington’s just about mastered the art of pretending to listen to Adams while making it appear as though he actually is when his comm goes off. Twice in a row, from his two favorite people.
“Do you have to take that?”
“If you don’t mind I’ll just hail the ship, might be easier.”
“Of course, use my viewscreen.”
Having what is no doubt going to be a terrible conversation, in front of the person he’s trying to convince to take over his ship for a few weeks, is probably a bad decision. But leaving Hamilton and Jefferson on their own devices for much longer is probably just as bad.
The weird thing is, when the view comes up of the USS Yorktown’s bridge, everything appears almost normal. Jefferson’s lounging in Captain’s chair, Hamilton is bouncing on his toes in his usual impatient fashion, but nobody appears dead (or on fire). Which means so far so good.
“Gentlemen,” Washington starts, and that’s all it takes for the flood gates to open.
He catches a quick, “Jefferson started it,” before Hamilton’s long winded explanation comes, overlapped by Jefferson’s equally passionate rebuttal.
This is why he needs this vacation.
He holds up one hand, which by some random stroke of luck actually silences them.
“Did you complete the mission, yes or no,” Washington asks, before clarifying. “Madison answers, one word only.”
“Yes.”
“Second question, did you stick to the prime directive. Same parameters as before.”
This time Madison isn’t as quick with an answer. Which he supposes is an answer within itself.
Washington turns to Adams. “Perhaps Admiral you should step outside, I don’t want you implicated in any of this.”
Though before Adams can respond, there’s a snort on the other side of the line, before Hamilton’s very distinct voice replies, “Oh please, Adams isn’t a real admiral anyways.”
And there goes his chances of getting that vacation.
“Hamilton, he’s still in the room.”
“Oh shit.”
---
“We got another mission report from the USS Yorktown.”
The groan that comes up from the Starfleet clerk’s office is unanimous.
“How long is it this time?”
“Fifty-One pages. He really out did himself this time.”
“Just file it with the rest. I’m sure the mission went fine, no need to read it all.”
“Yes, sir.”