The lights were dimmed in Chekov’s cabin and Sulu was sitting motionless at the desk, hands folded in his lap, when the Navigator
entered. The younger man stopped, his body tensing involuntarily. He rubbed the computer tape in his hand with his fingers like it was a
worry stone. He instantly knew that it was far more than the lights that were dim in the room.
“Where is he?”
“Sleeping,” the Helmsman said tightly.
Chekov clenched the tape then, purposely making it bite into his hand. “Was he much trouble?”
The older man stood slowly, without any change in his stony expression. “No,” he bit out. “He was asleep when I got here.”
At least Dimitri knew how to follow direct orders, the Navigator thought with relief. Although he knew that wasn’t it. By nine, the Navy’s
four hour shifts had already been indelibly programmed into his body. Chekov still could sleep no more than four hours at a time. While
he did so at night, his habit of prowling the ship the rest of the time Alpha crew were asleep kept the rumors of him being some sort of
ghoul persistent.
The other two to three hours of rejuvenation his body required he caught during breaks and after his duty shifts. He could instantly put
himself to sleep and wake at pre-set will. With a body efficient at signaling him when its basic systems were running down, he realized
now that it was screaming at him of the need to sleep. He sighed wearily.
“Look,” he said, addressing the immediate problem in a rush. “I’m sorry for sticking you with baby-sitting. Thanks for doing it.”
Sulu said nothing in return: just stood, black eyes fixed on him, unblinking.
He knew the Chief Helmsman as well as any human could know another. Assigned as his mentor at the Academy, fate’s twist had later
seen him posted on the same ship as the older man. Their respective positions found them sharing a bathroom with adjoining cabins.
Whether fate smiled upon them or was ill tempered in these arrangements was open to debate at any given moment.
Service in the military had made friends between the strangest combinations of fellows wherever there had ever been a service. While
both men had a single minded enthusiasm and gusto in living, a boundless zeal in grasping each moment that passed, the similarity in
their personalities ended there. The younger man’s intense Russian soul filled him with enthusiastic, demonstrative emotions that he
restrained with effort. He had a few, close friends and when something interested him he ground the very soul out of it. The older man,
while American for countless generations, came from a family that still held to their Japanese heritage of quiet honor and restraint. The
depth of a bow is how they expressed their feelings toward one another. He had countless friends and was known to skip from one
hobby to another with breakneck speed.
While Chekov’s native language had no word for privacy, Sulu’s had no word for kiss.
Despite all this, they had found a self-declared brother in each other: perhaps the universe’s declaration that the concept of ying and
yang existed everywhere. So when there was something that didn’t balance, they knew it immediately.
“What’s the matter?” the Navigator asked bluntly.
“Let’s just say it was an illuminating experience,” Sulu sneered tonelessly into the dim room.
Chekov shook his head and gestured in futility. “I’m not telepathic,” he complained irritably.
The Helmsman stared at him another moment, then jerked his head toward the desk where the boy’s boots and hat sat. “Real leather
boots,” he commented.
“Uniform issue for every sailor,” the Navigator acknowledged.
“These are custom made,” Sulu persisted.
Chekov eyes darted over at the desk, the hair on the back of his neck prickling in instinctive warning. Realizing why, every cell in his
body came to a still. “Well, they would have to be,” he answered hollowly without looking away from the hat resting there. “It’s not as
though there are hundreds of cabin boys enlisted now, is it?”
“Strange point,” Sulu observed dryly, cocking his head at the younger man self-righteously. “I thought the Admiral doesn’t allow cabin
boys in N.I.R.N.”
The acronym for the New Imperial Russian Navy brought a sharp glance from Chekov, who knew the Commander in Chief of the Navy
was disgruntled at the ever-growing use of it. The navy often attracted society’s misfits who finally found a place in the tight-knit
camaraderie of the ships’ crews. Occasionally, it had even become a rehabilitation solution for Earth’s courts. They were brilliant sailors,
but they weren’t necessarily the kind of men you wanted influencing the young. “No. The Admiral doesn’t feel it’s an appropriate place
for children,” he replied.
The Helmsman snatched the small hat off the desk then and shoved it toward his younger friend in a threatening gesture.
Chekov stared at the belyanska and his mind froze into a vast wasteland. Sulu had picked up quite a bit of spoken Russian from him:
enough to get the man in trouble in just about any situation. His knowledge of the written language was almost non-existent, however.
Only a handful of sight words—such as Chekov’s name—did the Helmsman recognize.
The black ribbon around the hat’s brim had the name of the ship the boy served on emblazoned on it in gold, as was customary. Sulu
knew the word well.
“So, what?” the Navigator asked thinly, unable to come up with anything better. “It’s not like they keep me informed of personnel
changes.” In fact, they did. He knew whenever anything changed aboard his old ship, but he wasn’t admitting that now. He was just
grateful the boy’s name wasn’t written inside the hat. He remembered specifically the very day he got his first hat with his name in it: it
had immediately made him feel grown up. No longer could everyone automatically know which hat was his just by the size.
The sailors had told him it just meant he was getting a fat head.
Chekov kneaded the computer tape in his left hand again. It was getting damp with his sweat. “Hikaru,” he spat out with irritation. “I don’t
know what your problem is exactly, but I’ve had a really bad day and I’ve got to go back to another briefing: so it only promises to get
worse. I’m not in the mood for this. I’m sorry for sticking you with Dimitri and I’ll get Uhura or Chapel to take over if you want me to.”
“Well, don’t expect me to feel sorry for you,” Sulu spat out, throwing the hat back on the desk and knocking the boots over. “I have not
one bit of sympathy for your problems. Why don’t you just go sulk and wallow in your misery: it’s what you’re best at, after all, isn’t it?”
The vileness dripping off the Helmsman’s tone hit the younger man in the chest as though he’d been pounded by the man’s fist.
“Listen,” he bit out with a gesture of defense. “I don’t know what your problem is, but if you want a fight, fine: just not now. We can have
the all-time blow out fight of the century tomorrow morning: just not now. Before breakfast, after breakfast: your pick. Topic: your pick.
Just not now!”
“Oh, fine,” Sulu sneered, curling up his lip. “That’s the way you are: you always have to be in control. Everything has to be your way.
You’re such a spoiled brat!”
Chekov blinked hard, swallowing, but the older man stopped as he turned to move away. They stood in silence a long moment.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that,” the Helmsman said quietly.
That he was spoiled Chekov was the first to admit, but calling the Russian a brat was igniting an emotional button of epic proportions.
Sulu knew that: and Chekov knew his friend wouldn’t purposely attack him on such a basic level.
“Why are you so upset, Hikaru?” he asked, and then repeated: “What has you so upset?”
The older man made no movement for a long while. Finally, he drew a tremulous breath and turned, sauntering over to face Chekov
directly. He stared at him hard before speaking.
“You want the Japanese version?” he asked, his tone as hard as his dark eyes. With two fingers, he jabbed the Navigator’s chest
repeatedly as he spoke. “YOU dishonored our friendship.”
“What?” The younger man knocked Sulu’s hand away and nursed the sore spot on his chest. “What are you talking about?”
“Do you need the Russian version?”
“Apparently so,” Chekov blurted out indignantly.
Sulu lapsed into silence again, staring motionlessly at the other man. Chekov saw turmoil in not only the dark eyes that faced him but in
the subtle changes in the face he knew so well. The Russian couldn’t spend eight hours nearly every day sitting next to someone
without learning every nuance of their countenance.
Every relationship involved some amount of compromise, of jostling to meet somewhere in the middle where both were comfortable. This
was a testament of their friendship. The passionately emotional Russian held in check his need to be wildly demonstrative with his
closest friend: especially on the ship. With difficulty, he restrained from expressing his feelings as any sane Russian man would. Chekov
didn’t hug Sulu, didn’t kiss him on the cheeks, didn’t even talk about how he felt–except in Russia where it was downright expected.
As for the restrained Japanese-American...well, he put up with Chekov’s emotional Russian culture when necessary. To actually move
any closer to expressing how he felt took more effort than was reasonable to expect of anyone.
“You hurt me,” Sulu said, his voice hoarse with difficultly. “You hurt me.”
The younger man shook his head vigorously, complete ignorance and concern shining in his eyes. “What on Earth did I do?”
Sulu brushed his hand through his hair before answering with at sigh. “You know even in a perfect family like yours there are secrets,”
was what he drew out tonelessly, cryptically.
“You’re out of your mind,” Chekov said indignantly.
“Secrets,” the Helmsman insisted, strolling away now. “Even in your family. At least one, anyway. Do you know what I was worried about
the first time you brought me home?”
“Yes: that I was going to make a pass at you.”
Sulu hesitated, turning back to eye the Navigator. “Well, yes,” he agreed. The topic hadn’t come up and he’d honestly had more than a
few suspicions of the man’s motives for the invitation.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Chekov said easily.
“Very funny,” the older man rasped. “The entire village threw a huge party when we got home,” he added.
“It’s the tradition whenever anyone who left returns.”
“You drank a lot,” Sulu commented.
“You have noticed that I’m Russian?” the Navigator asked, wide eyes innocent.
At that moment another voice interrupted their conversation. Chekov frowned and eyed the bedroom. The chill that began to creep
through him again took his breath.
The Helmsman seemed self-satisfied for some reason. “I didn’t know if your family knew that you talk in your sleep when you’ve had too
much to drink,” he explained.
“Now why would that be a secret? And why would it worry you?”
It didn’t happen often. He actually hated getting drunk. Kirk thought he hated the feeling of being out of control, but it was the day after
he actually despised. He had no patience for being sick. He controlled his true drunkenness with a ferocity and Sulu knew Chekov’s high
tolerance for alcohol wasn’t the only way he maintained control in rec room parties. The secretive man realized early the advantages to
always drinking a clear, odorless liquid: humans couldn’t tell if a glass actually had vodka in it—or water.
The boy’s voice came out of the bedroom again, sleep-muttered words that edged into the base of Chekov’s skull. He took careful steps
toward his friend.
“Exactly how much did you give him to drink?” Sulu asked.
Between Kirk and Sulu, the pizza and beer was entirely a bad idea, the Navigator considered belatedly. “Not enough to worry about,” he
replied. Chekov wished that even he agreed with himself.
Sulu regarded him darkly. “Do you realize that while living with you at the Academy I did research on people who talk in their sleep?”
Chekov straightened indignantly at the personal intrusion. “You did research on me?”
“Yes,” the Helmsman answered without apology. “There are actually two different types of sleep talkers.”
“Oh, really,” came the droll reply.
Sulu folded his arms across his chest with superiority and resettled his back against the room divider. “Yes,” he said again. “People who
are asleep either talk gibberish, or in their native language.
“You don’t talk gibberish,” the Helmsman commented.
“Fascinating,” the Navigator sighed, regarding the man dimly.
The boy’s voice interrupted them again. It was impossible to ignore and Chekov turned his head robotically to stare at Dimitri’s
motionless legs, the only thing visible from where they stood.
“Not gibberish,” he heard Sulu say from somewhere in the distance. “The brain’s higher language functions are shut down when you
sleep, so it doesn’t translate.”
And Dimitri spoke again.
Chekov’s wide eyes darkened and his breath began coming hard and fast: rushing through him with a flood of adrenaline and heat.
“Family secrets,” Sulu reminded his younger friend with tightly controlled anger and outright gloating. “Did you actually think that I
wouldn’t recognize a little Russian cabin boy from your ship who wants to join Starfleet and who happens to talk in his sleep when he
drinks?”
Sulu stopped, glaring at Chekov. “Who talks in his sleep, but not in Russian?”
Chekov’s feet and legs were stone: cemented into the deck no matter how desperately he willed them to move.
Dimitri spoke again and his familiar voice jarred the Navigator’s body loose. He rushed past the older man, through the bedroom, and
into the safety of their shared bathroom. The lights sprang up automatically, which irritated him to no end.
Sitting down on the only seat available, he let his head fall and clenched his hands between his knees. He made no effort to chase away
the chill or control his racing pulse. He knew his solitude would be short-lived.
When he came in, Sulu stood in the doorway without speaking for a moment. “That’s not how that seat was meant to be used,” he
commented finally.
“Even I don’t make jokes that bad,” the Navigator rasped without looking up.
“Oh, I think that could be debated,” the older man replied as he moved into the room. He folded himself down on the floor directly
opposite his younger friend, fixing his position so little effort was needed to make eye contact with the man’s downcast gaze.
“Malyenki,” Sulu intoned. “You picked up so many languages traveling as a child, you should be glad you didn’t end up with Chinese as
the language you think in.”
“I don’t know any of the Chinese language tree,” he replied soberly. “What I do know are mostly Slavic dialects.”
The Helmsman eyed him. It was like Chekov to minimize his talents. “That language isn’t Slavic, Pasha. It’s from the Basque language
tree.”
Chekov blinked and made the first effort to raise wide, soulful eyes to the other man. “How would you know that?” he asked.
He received a shrug as his reply. “Your father told me.”
The Navigator’s eyes darkened. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he bit out.
Sulu nodded in understanding.
“Pavel, do you think the stories your father tells about your childhood are true?” the Helmsman asked after a moment.
“I’m sorry,” the younger man snarled. “I didn’t realize this had been declared ‘annoy Chekov day’.” Although the way the day had been
going, he should have suspected.
“I think the stories are true,” Sulu continued easily, ignoring his friend’s sarcasm.
Chekov straightened then, screwing up his face in distaste as he leaned his back against the wall. “Hikaru, you know my father has a
talent for spinning yarns: and I’m his favorite topic.”
The older man nodded somberly. “He does have an eloquence for words,” he agreed fondly. A smile skittered over Sulu’s face and his
dark eyes sparkled. “My favorite is how he used to talk to you every night while your mother was pregnant and sleeping. I can picture
him laying there, chatting away for hours.”
“It’s no wonder I got used to no sleep,” the Navigator muttered, but his eyes drifted away from his friend’s. He still kept with him tapes of
his father’s fairy tales so he could hear the familiar stories–and the man’s voice.
Sulu smiled softly, knowing exactly what the younger man was thinking. “You’ve always had a special bond with your father, Malyenki,”
he commented with emotion.
“His doing, not mine.”
Eyes widening, the Helmsman eyed his friend with amusement. Why the Navigator felt he could lie to Sulu and get away with it was
always beyond his understanding. “Your mother says you were born early because you couldn’t wait to meet him,” he said after a
moment.
“It was the only way I figured I could shut him up,” Chekov snarled in response.
Sulu laughed aloud, even though he already knew the response he was going to get. He had purposely set up a well-known joke in the
Chekov family. “Pavel, when you’re with your father the two of you are in your own world. It’s like you share the same soul.”
Chekov fixed on him, dark eyes unreadable. He scowled. “Good Lord, he’s gotten to you, too.”
The Helmsman ignored him. Instead, he observed: “You’re not jealous of my relationship with your father because you’ve got the kind of
bond with him nothing can ever touch.”
The Navigator didn’t answer. Sulu cocked his head and eyed him. “You both have an Old Soul,” he stated.
Chekov froze. Wide eyes met the older mans: dark and depthless with an openness that was raw. He blinked, but the ancient darkness
in the eyes didn’t change. There was little else that cold have proven Sulu’s point. “McCoy was right,” the Navigator said in perfect,
unaccented English. “You’re spending too much time with Russians.”
“Your eyes: it’s deep in your eyes, Malyenki,” was Sulu’s calm reply, ignoring him again. “You’ve learned to hide it, but it’s there.
Something old, older than you—as old as history itself.”
The Navigator glanced away uncomfortably, breaking contact with even his closest friend. He shook his head and chewed on his lip
dismally. How often he thought he’d escaped the babbling of Russia’s Old Ritualists. “Go away.”
“Listen,” Sulu persisted, shaking his head and gesturing fitfully. “I haven’t figured out the whole ‘everyone has a soul that goes to
heaven or hell’ thing, but I do know the Russian’s are right when they say certain individuals are born with Old Souls: souls that
intrinsically carry the emotional memory of their people. You can see it in their eyes.
“Both you and your father have Old Souls, Pavel. You don’t just know about the 900 day blockade of Leningrad or the battle of
Stalingrad, you can remember what it was like to be there: you FEEL it.
“It’s not an original concept: the Russian’s just perfected it,” the Helmsman asserted. “Cultural anthropologists elsewhere call it ancestral
memory. It’s supposed to be why even the most apathetic Americans have a nearly violent reaction to the concept of freedom: their
country’s foundation is in their cells.”
“That’s it. You’re not going home with me anymore,” Chekov snarled thickly. “And you’re not writing to my father anymore.”
Sulu laughed out loud despite himself. Chekov was dutifully responsible about keeping in touch with people. The Helmsman was not
nearly so. When he had lapsed some months past he’d received a package from Andrie Chekov. It contained paper and pens, with a
note saying Sulu had obviously ran out.
A thunderous, gentle admonition: it was typically Andrie Chekov.
The Navigator was desperately fighting back a grin.
“Look,” Sulu blurted out. “When you and your father are together, Pavel, you don’t speak Russian.”
Chekov stopped grinning. “Wha...?”
The Helmsman shot up a finger, wagging it at the younger man to stop his instantaneous response. “I’ve stayed at your house. Whether
you’re sitting out under the stars together, lying in the oven...even stopping in his office for a book: if you’re alone, you don’t speak
Russian to each other. You slip out of it instantly, unknowingly.
“What language did your father talk to you in on those nights before you were born?” he asked suddenly. “What language did your
father speak in his home as a child?”
The younger man leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and studying the Helmsman as he considered the question. His father
was not born in the State of Russia: he was not ethnically Russian. “Georgian. He’s Georgian: they would have spoke Georgian at home
even after they moved into Russia,” he concluded out loud with a note of surprise in his voice. He found it odd that the idea had never
occurred to him.
“Pavel, it’s not a secret. It’s just that the family accepts it like it’s...twinspeak. It’s your own private language. No one else in the house
speaks Georgian: not even your mother. The Georgian language is part of your fundamental connection to him.
“The point,” Sulu contended, “Is that you’re not thinking in Georgian when you sleep.” He stretched out his legs before him in a show of
great luxury and he grinned broadly. “Malyenki, you’re still talking to your father at night.”
The Navigator sat motionless, staring at his older friend with eyes so brilliant they were mesmerizing. He chewed on his lower lip with
innocent charm. “The central government spent centuries trying to eradicate every language but Russian,” he mused out loud with a
flourishing gesture. “The Georgians were particularly fierce in their resistence. It makes sense I’d identify with them: I can be a little
stubborn”
“Really, I hadn’t noticed,” Sulu observed with an affectionate smirk. His dark eyes held his friends in silence. “Pavel, why didn’t you tell
me? For two days you’ve been going through this alone. I could have helped: what do you think friends are for?”
Chekov stared at the Helmsman, unresponsive. Of course he was right, but the option hadn’t even occurred to him the younger man.
“I thought we were past this,” the older man finally said. “You don’t have to keep ME out. Do you understand that’s what hurts?”
The Navigator kneaded the tape that was still in his hand. It was true. In the culture that had come down to them, traditional Russians
were taught to be inherently distrustful of others and, more than most, Pavel’s life had reinforced this. In his family’s travels he’d found
people often acted the way they did only to ingratiate themselves with the adults around him. Instinctively, he had learned to study
people with an innate skill and carefully guarded how close he allowed them to come.
“Malyenki,” the Helmsman observed quietly. “I thought you trusted me.”
Chekov pulled his shoulders up in a miserable shrug. “I’m sorry, Koshka. I couldn’t get past the thought of telling the Captain and getting
rid of them.”
The Helmsman screwed up his face, narrowing his eyes and glaring at his friend. It was bad enough Andrie had given him the nickname,
but his friend knew better to drag it back aboard the ship. “I swear, if Uhura ever hears you call me that, I’ll kill you. Slowly.”
The younger man pouted, eyes of liquid chocolate gazing up at the Helmsman through long lashes.
Sulu glanced away, shifting his jaw fiercely. After a moment he glanced back darkly. “You’re not eight and I’m not female. Don’t make me
strangle you.”
A brilliant, crooked grin flashed across the younger man’s face. He shrugged. “It’s always worth a shot.”
Shifting his legs, the older man shook his head. “This must be difficult. Your grandfather doesn’t seem to like you much.”
Chekov’s smile faded, but didn’t disappear. The brown eyes saddened genuinely. “He does. He loves me. Only when I was young...” he
hesitated. Sulu saw a calculation filtering subtly in the depths of the man’s dark eyes. He was used to it by now and it no longer annoyed
him. In fact, it amused him. He waited to be determined as trustworthy once again.
“I remind him of my father,” the Navigator explained. “Dedushka feels like he has already had one person he loves stolen away by him:
he’s afraid to take the chance of losing another. He knows I’m going to end up working for Andrie Chekov.”
Sulu chuckled. “He may love you, but he obviously doesn’t know you.”
“I don’t make it easy.”
“It’s part of your charm,” the Helmsman observed. It didn’t come as a surprise that Chekov hadn’t thought of reaching out to anyone but
the Captain for help. His stubborn independence was something the young Russian would be battling his entire career. Truth be told,
Sulu knew the Navigator hadn’t even begun to understand how his strong-minded determination and wariness of others squirreled its
way through his everyday life. Chekov routinely avoided advances from women, but he invariably broke up with the passive women he
dated from boredom. He would never be content romantically until he found someone that would challenge both his wit and fiery
stubborn streak.
Why his mind had wandered onto such a strange road baffled Sulu. “You need a babysitter while you figure out how to send Dimitri
back?” he asked.
Chekov nodded, but his eyes were furtive.
“What else is going on?” the Helmsman asked knowingly.
The Navigator didn’t respond immediately. Sulu was, in fact, as close as he hoped a brother could have been and he allowed himself to
be grateful the man was part of his everyday life. He understood his younger friend on a basic level.
“I’m dead,” Chekov finally said.
Sulu stared at him. “Really,” he pronounced. “I must say you’re quite animated for a corpse.”
“I mean I’m going to die,” the Navigator responded with irritation, twisting the tape in his fingers furiously.
“Pavel, we’re all going to die.”
“Soon.”
The Helmsman wanted to say he was ready to help the morose Russian on his way, but resisted. He sighed instead. “And what portents
this doom today?”
Chekov held up the computer tape. “I may have chose a career in space, but I am quite rooted in my traditional culture: an obsolete
person even.”
Sulu raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. The Enterprise’s Chief Navigator was by far the most conservative man he’d ever met.
Chekov’s idealistic, noble nature often struck the Helmsman as appropriate for one of King Arthur’s knights. “No!”
“I’m an only child: an only son,” the younger man asserted. “Viktor Chekov has no sons either and it’s still important to me that my family
endures. Do you understand that, Hikaru? I wanted to work in space but I don’t want a wife here. I want a family in Russia where my
parents can help raise grandchildren in my culture: as our people always have.”
“And you can pop in every year or two to furnish more kids,” Sulu quipped lightheartedly. What he thought was that the younger man
spent far too much time considering the larger questions in life.
“I’m serious,” the Navigator retorted, petulant like anyone being dismissed as a child. “I knew the risk I was taking going to space, so
before I took my first posting I made sure that it would be possible for my family to continue even if something happened to me.”
The Helmsman scowled at him. Suddenly, a wild grin flashed across his face and he burst out laughing. “Pavel Andrievich, are you
telling me there’s a clinic back on Earth hoarding countless potential Chekovs? I’m surprised your father hasn’t taken advantage of the
option already!”
“My parents don’t know,” the younger man answered, his face coloring slightly. “I suppose it’s another family secret.”
“Well, then how…”
“Sergei and Tatiana know.”
“Just your Godfather and your parent’s ward?”
“Yes.”
Sulu shook his head, gesturing in confusing. “Isn’t planning for your death…I don’t know: bad luck? Traditional Russians don’t even plan
for the eventual birth of child when the woman’s pregnant.”
Chekov’s face grayed in silent agreement, but said nothing. He held out the tape. “We have other time travelers aboard. Go get a
viewer.”
Climbing to his feet, the Helmsman took the tape and disappeared into his cabin. He reappeared a moment later, viewer in hand with the
tape in it.
“Good God,” he said, hesitating at the door.
The Navigator chewed on his lip and took the time to examine his fingernails. “When we talked about it we always joked that Tatiana
could bear dozens of my children after I was gone.
“I didn’t think it would actually be her,” he remarked soberly.
Sulu glanced up sharply from eyeing the small viewscreen. There was not arguing with the Navigator: it was abundantly clear what
combination of genes had produced the people imaged there. Tatiana had obviously been the mother to Chekov offspring. In distracted
mind wanderings, the Helmsman had always thought the two would produce striking children together. Not in the way Chekov was
describing, however. It was almost impossible to the Helmsman that the younger man still didn’t consider more rational alternatives.
“Tatiana is the best candidate,” was the ridiculous thing he said aloud. He continued the thought. “She’s a good person and already
lives with your parents, so they could raise the children together. Isn’t that what you would want?”
Chekov eyed him tentatively. “I suppose…” he drew out.
Lowering the viewer, Sulu stared at him a moment. “Pavel,” he decided to venture. “Did it occur to you that your death is not the only
reason Tatiana may have mothered your children? I mean, there are less—medical—ways for that to happen.”
The Navigator lurched to his feet, his face immediately brilliant crimson with horror. “That–that...” he stammered, eyes wild. “That’s
disgusting! She’s my SISTER!”
Sulu scowled at him. “She’s not really your sister any more than I’m really your brother.”
“Yes,” Chekov retorted, swinging around to leave. “And she’s on the top of the list of people I want to sleep with—right up there with you
and my mother!”
Alarm flashed across the Helmsman’s face. “I hope you meant that sarcastically!”
The younger man stopped before the door and flashed his eyes back at his friend. “Why would you even have to say something like
that?”
“You’re just encouraging people,” Sulu said tightly.
Chekov looked around the room significantly. “There’s no one here,” he pointed out. “Small minds have to occupy themselves with small
things, Hikaru. The nature of our relationship is hardly the most interesting rumor roaming the ship. Don’t let it bother you.”
“I don’t see how it can’t bother you!” Sulu retorted.
The Navigator let his liquid brown eyes regard the older man until he actually squirmed under the scrutiny. “You know full well that if my
parents hadn’t taught me to ignore what people say about me I’d be impossible to live with.”
“As if you’re not now.”
“You are a catch,” Chekov said, flashing a wry grin back at his friend. “Besides, the same people that have me in your bed also claim I’m
a priest.”
“Orthodox priests have to be married,” Sulu observed.
“Yes, well, let’s not ruin their fun with facts. I’ll let you know when I’m leaving again,” he added, but then hesitated. “You going to be
around to talk tonight?” he ventured. It bothered him that he didn’t remember the Captain or the Enterprise.
His friend nodded. “We have a Monopoly game to finish, if I recall.”
“Capitalist pig.”
Sulu grinned as the man disappeared into his own cabin again. He turned as Uhura came into the room from his cabin door behind his
back.
She gave him a sly smile. “No one doing anything interesting in here? Darn: bad timing,” she added, folding her arms across her chest
and leaning on the door jam. “Do you want to join me for dinner?”
“Sorry, I’ve got to baby-sit Dimitri.”
She gave it a few minutes, then eyed the Helmsman and the empty room. “Why are you just standing in here?”
He turned and looked at her quizzically. “Am I a catch, Nytoya?”
Cocking her head, the Communications Officer fell to examining him—up and down—with great care.
“Oh, stop it!”
She let out a light-hearted laugh. “What is this about, Hikaru?”
“I just want to know how someone who is such an astute judge of human nature can be altogether stupid at the same time!” he
proclaimed.
An easy smile flashed across her soft features. “Chekov?”
“Stupid,” Sulu insisted. “His father claims he’s the stupidest person ever born,” he added.
Her eyes widened. “I’ve always thought our Chief Navigator quite bright.”
Sulu shook his head, screwing up his face. “Do you ever remember Chekov talking about his parent’s ward, Tatiana?”
She beamed. “The phrase ‘pain-in-the-ass-pest’ comes to mind. The girl seems to rejoice in annoying him when he’s home.”
“Humph,” Sulu replied, and flashed her a shrewd look. “Believe me, he does as much ‘tormenting’ as she does.”
Uhura straightened, hearing the cryptical tone behind the words with an immediate understanding of its sinister meaning. Alarm flashed
across her sable face. “Do you mean to tell me…,” she gasped, flustered. “Oh, Hikaru, Pavel Chekov would never… For heaven’s sake,
doesn’t she sleep in his bed?!”
“Of course he wouldn’t…” he began in reply, but hesitated as he recognized the peculiar reprehension on the woman’s face. “Nytoya,”
he ventured, fighting the smile tugging at his mouth. “You’ve heard Chekov talk about her: how old do you think Tatiana is?”
She considered the question before answering. “I don’t know—twelve, I suppose.”
He grinned broadly, chuckling: mostly to himself.
“Fourteen?” she corrected her estimation.
The man burst out in a whole-hearted laugh then. “Nytoya,” he said. “Tatiana is twenty.”
Uhura’s mouth dropped open. “But he talks about her like she’s just a little girl: no more than a child!”
Sulu shrugged, smirking like a child himself. “She was when they met and Chekov hasn’t seemed to notice she’s grown up over the
years. I told you he was stupid.”
“And they sleep in the same bed?” she continued in amazement. She gave him a ludicrous stare. “Does she realize that he’s no child?”
He rolled his eyes away furtively, but chortled so hard the laugh shook his body. “Let’s just say I don’t think it’s not a platonic situation on
both their parts.”
“Good heavens!” She joined his laughter. “This has the makings of a good novel, love.”
The Helmsman shook his head, considering the information Chekov had recently been faced with and his ever-continuing blindness to
what was obvious to anyone that had ever seen Pavel and Tatiana together.
“I’m just not sure he’ll ever realize she’s grown up,” he commented with frustration. Or how he actually feels about her.
Uhura smirked at him affectionately. “Love, all men are more than a bit blind and stupid regarding affairs of the heart. It’s simple really:
hasn’t it ever occurred to you how our little hothead would react if he saw some other man treating her like a grown woman, especially if
she was ignoring him at the same time? You know…say another man who’s close to him?”
The Helmsman stopped laughing. “I couldn’t!”
She shrugged. “I mean just an act. Sounds like she’d be willing to play along: grateful even.”
“He’d kill me!” he retorted in horror.
* * *
Chekov’s cabin was still dim when Sulu stepped inside again. He hesitated, eyes falling on the boy’s sleeping form. Even as a child he
slept motionless on his back like a corpse.
Bunks on Navy ships have no headroom: you can’t twist and turn. Service aboard them had permanently marked the man.
He strolled into the living area without fear he’d wake Dimitri. He slept like the dead too. The Navigator was sitting at the desk bent over
a steaming glass of tea. Cheek resting on his hand, he made no sign of noticing his helm partner’s entrance but seemed totally
entranced with whatever was in the bottom of the glass.
Sulu stopped behind him and peered over his shoulder. There was nothing but dark, strong tea in the podistranka. A full cup,
apparently only there for its visual appeal. Resting his hand on the man’s shoulder, the Helmsman leaned closer to his ear. “Malyenki,”
he pressed quietly, so as not to startle him. “You have another forty-five minutes: go get some sleep. You can use my bed.”
Chekov lowered his hand and twisted around to look at him. “Thanks, no. I’m fine.”
“Did anyone ever tell you that lie poorly?”
“You. All the time.”
“What are friends for?” Sulu observed, straightening.
“I assure you,” the Navigator replied with a thick accent. “I will continue practicing.”
“Good,” the older man agreed, patting the man’s shoulder. It was surprisingly muscular—something Chekov’s small frame hid. His body,
too, still bore the effects of working on a sailing ship. “The skill will come in handy. Go get some sleep,” he repeated. “What’s a few more
minutes of baby-sitting a sleeping kid?”
When the man began shaking his head, Sulu squeezed the shoulder to shut him up. “I’m a senior officer: don’t obligate me to make that
an order, Ensign.”
In a supreme example of military decorum, Chekov screwed up his face and stuck his tongue out at the senior officer in question.
“I’ll put you on report!” the Helmsman declared in mock offense.
“Good,” the younger man retorted, standing. “Send me to the brig: I can use the time off.”
“You’re incorrigible,” Sulu snarled, whacking him on the back sharply as he passed to follow the ‘order’.
“And you can join me in the brig for striking a fellow officer,” the man sneered back over his shoulder.
“You want to be ‘struck’, just keep it up and I’ll ‘strike’ you, alright,” the older man muttered.
Chekov stopped at the door to the bathroom and leaned back to peer at Sulu through the room divider. He flashed a crooked, wild grin
with a wicked gleam in his dark eyes. “And to think my family put up with me for seventeen years.”
“Saints: all of them! And wake yourself up—I’m not an alarm clock!”
Sulu stared at the door after it closed. Waiting. Restlessly, his eyes roamed the living area after a moment. The Navigator would want
the glass of tea disposed of, cleaned and put away. He was downright anal. Unfortunately, the fact was that Sulu was anything but. They’
d come to an easy understanding early in their relationship: he didn’t mess too much and Chekov didn’t clean too much. The Helmsman
wouldn’t put the glass away ‘right’ and it would just annoy the other man. So he left it.
His eyes spotted the boy’s boots where they had been moved to the deck in the corner, and the hat that was resting on the shelf above
them. Scooping them both up—one in each hand—he strode into the bedroom and stopped at the edge of the bed. He eyed the
bathroom door furtively. Normally, Chekov could drop right off to sleep, but he wondered how the young man could ever put himself to
sleep in the chaos the Helmsman’s cabin had become now that it was the repository for most of the Navigator’s personal belongings. He
supposed the fact that Chekov was even still in the cabin bode well. He just hoped the man wasn’t cleaning.
Sulu rested the boots and hat on the bed and shook the child’s shoulder. “Dimitri.”
The boy blinked open wide brown eyes, awake instantly.
“C’mon, get up,” he instructed. “We have to go see the Captain.”
Sitting up, Dimitri immediately pulled on his boots and scrambled after Sulu into the living area. “You’re Lieutenant Sulu?”
“Yes. Here,” the Helmsman continued, randomly pulling a book off a nearby shelf and handing it to the boy. “Bring a book to keep you
occupied.” He moved to enter the corridor, but the child stayed rooted to where he stood.
“Dimitri,” he coaxed.
The boy raised his eyes from the books spine and he offered it back. “My father hasn’t written this book yet,” he stated.
Sulu stared at it, the realization of how complicated the situation was settling on him. “Well, put it back,” he advised. “Pick something
else: quickly.”
The boy did so and scampered over to the Helmsman, standing with the obedience of a soldier.
If he hadn’t, perhaps Sulu wouldn’t have hesitated. “You’re in uniform,” he commented, eyes moving over the boy. “Where’s your hat?”
Twisting his head to the side, Dimitri stared up at the man with wide brown eyes in a cherub face. He blinked long lashes over the warm
chocolate pools several times. “I’m not on a sailing ship or outside,” he explained cheerfully. “I don’t have to wear it.”
The Helmsman stared at him silently. “I know who you are and I’m used to this,” he advised the boy thinly when he spoke. Again, had the
child not so obviously been trying to manipulate him, Sulu wouldn’t have been so sure he was right about the matter.
“I know it’s bad luck not to be wearing your cover. I don’t know about exceptions, but I’m not taking the chance of you getting me into
trouble. Get it.”
Face clouding in defeat, Dimitri scowled at him with great drama before turning to obey. Sulu heard the mutter as the child seated his
hat on his head in the other room.
“I know Russian,” the Helmsman called out broadly. “And words like that should never come out of a face as pretty as yours.”
The boy stepped into the archway between the rooms and stood motionless, fixing dark eyes on the man. “It won’t always be this pretty,”
he observed somberly.
Sulu knew he was fishing for information. Damned skilled at it too. “I can’t testify to that: you’ve seen him.”
“So I wonder when I stopped using words like that.”
The Helmsman gave in, smirking conspiratorially. “I’ll let you know when it happens.” He leaned over as the boy passed him into the
corridor. “Never in public,” he advised.
Eyes sparkling devilishly, Dimitri returned the smirk. “No,” he agreed. “Can’t spoil the innocent, wholesome thing.”
“That would be a crime.” The first female they passed in the corridor flashed the boy an adoring smile. As an afterthought, Sulu added:
“Really, think of all the women you’d be disappointing.”
The boy let out a whole-hearted giggle. Sulu glanced at him sharply, his face screwing up at the sound so incongruous to what he
expected. But this wasn’t his adult friend. This was, in hard fact, Chekov as a child. Sulu realized that when he got over his anger at the
Navigator, the situation had endless possibilities. The Helmsman’s own chuckle at the prospect brought a similarly startled look from
Dimitri.
Possibilities were what confronted them as they stepped into the briefing room. Sulu froze, clutching the child’s collar to stop him as his
eyes fell on the Captain and his companions at the other end of the room. No wonder Chekov was testy: possibilities could be daunting.
“Is that my father?” Dimitri asked with quiet care, glancing from the opposite end of the room back to Sulu.
Hesitating before he answered, the Helmsman finally said “No,” thinking it couldn’t have any reasonable consequences. “Sit at this end
of the table while I talk to the Captain,” he instructed then. “Read your book.”
Sulu strolled toward the Captain and the Security Guards, unable to take his eyes from the two crewmen they accompanied. Computer
viewscreens were a pale comparison to three-D, real life, animated humans.
He saw the man’s double-take as he approached. Seeing his reaction, the young woman followed his line of vision and blinked with
startled recognition when she saw Sulu.
Well, he thought. I’m still alive.
“Captain.”
“Mr. Sulu,” the ship’s Commanding Officer returned with what the Helmsman recognized as exaggerated cordiality. Sarcasm: Kirk was
irritated with his companions. It wasn’t a good sign. Kirk knew the Helmsman was up to speed on the situation from their private
conversation over the intercom, so he moved onto introductions.
“I’d like to introduce you to our guest…” He stopped and fixed the man that stood there with a glare, jaw hardening. “Stowaways,” he
corrected dryly. “Nikolai Chekov and Katya Chekov.”
Sulu extended a hand to the man, but he made no move to take it. Face sullen; his rigid arms were clenched across his chest and
brilliant blue eyes bored through the Helmsman with cold, hard anger. Tatiana’s eyes, he thought. The intruder was a pillar of immobile
stone. After first glance, Nikolai could never be mistaken for the always warm, teddy-bear of a man that was Chekov’s father. He may
have looked like Andrie, but he was definitely heir to the Navigator’s hot-tempered personality.
It was the young woman that took his hand, glancing at her brother with an apologetic shrug. “Unc…Mr. Sulu, it’s a pleasure.”
The Helmsman’s smile warmed. Uncle Hikaru… “The pleasure’s definitely mine, Katya Pavlova. You’re the vision of your mother.” He
preferred blue eyes to Chekov’s brown ones in the visage, but he was no genetic engineer.
“And you,” he remarked, dropping her hand to regard Nikolai dismally. “Are just like your father.”
The man’s head jerked up, startled, and the anger in his eyes flared to rage. “I am nothing like my father,” he retorted indignantly.
Sulu burst out laughing. “Oh, no,” he agreed broadly. “No, you’re not.”
Amusement skittered across the Captain’s face and through his hazel eyes in obvious agreement. He didn’t voice it. “Mr. Sulu, you
needed to tell us something regarding our situation?”
The Helmsman nodded. “Yes. You need to know that Chekov thinks he’s dead.”
Nikolai rolled his eyes, screwing up his mouth into a sneer. “By the grace of God.”
Both Kirk and Sulu regarded him darkly. He responded to the scrutiny with an indignant straightening of his shoulders: an entirely
familiar gesture to the Enterprise officers.
“I can’t imagine the psychological pressure this is putting on him,” the Captain acknowledged, turning his attention to Sulu. “We need to
have McCoy…”
“No,” the Helmsman corrected the assumption he realized he’d given Kirk. “I mean in their time frame,” he said, indicating the two grown
children. He shook his head before either could respond. “It’s not important if he is or not and I’m not sure we should know. But
Captain…”
Stopping, he thought of Chekov’s carefully formed, substantial image of what history held in store for his family—whether he was in the
picture or not. He considered the beautiful, fiery young woman the man leaped out of closets at and chased through the woods when
they were supposed to be mushroom picking. “Captain,” the Helmsman uttered. “I can’t explain why, but I know Pavel Chekov and I can
assure you that if he has any confirmation of how his life pans out…” he glanced at the young woman. “It would be disastrous and far-
reaching, at the very least.”
The significance of this information immediately flashed through Kirk’s hazel eyes. He glanced sharply at Nikolai. “Do you understand
this?”
“Yes,” he snarled indignantly. “If he knows he’s been around to torment us, we won’t be born to be tormented. There’s a thought,” he
rasped.
“Kolya!” the girl rebuffed. “It’s not just about us: we warned you going into this.”
“We?” Kirk asked, eyes narrowing as he took a careful pace toward her. “Who is ‘we’?”
“Enough,” Nikolai growled low in his throat. “We’ve said enough, Katya.”
“You haven’t even begun, mister,” the Captain charged with a snarl, swinging on him ferociously. “You’ve invaded my ship, endangered
the lives of my crew, and exposed the future of the galaxy to infinite peril. You haven’t even begun to explain,” he repeated.
“Well, now, I wish I’d met you before,” Nikolai sneered disrespectfully.
“You’re making it worse,” the woman insisted to her brother.
“How could it possibly be worse?” the man alleged, jerking away. He jammed his shoulder into the bulkhead on the edge of the
viewscreen, crushed his arms across his chest, and glared out at the stars with his back thrust toward the others in the room. Even
turned from them, the complete darkness that seized his face was repellent.
“Oh, no,” Sulu interjected immediately. “I don’t put up with this sulking bullshit from him and I sure as hell am not going to put up with it
from you. I’ll knock it right out of your stupid, stubborn little head if I have to.”
The man turned his head slowly and leveled his brilliant blue eyes on the Helmsman. For the first time the hard rage in them was gone.
There was, instead, the subtle wonder of blatant recognition there.
Sulu shuddered. “And if you don’t think I will, just try me.”
Nikolai made no immediate response, and then just turned back to staring out the viewscreen sullenly. He muttered to himself ill
humouredly.
“It’s like being in a tin of small fish,” Sulu supplied the translation to the Captain after a moment’s thought. “The stars aren’t even real.”
An amused smile of affection skirted over Katya’s gentle lips. “’Living in a sardine can’,” she corrected respectfully.
“You aren’t used to space travel,” Kirk concluded, harsh eyes on the stranger.
He silently ground his shoulder harder into the bulkhead.
“I’m not sure how much of that information you should have,” the young woman observed, a great deal of deference in her tone.
“I’ll decide that,” the Captain replied, turning his attention back to her. It was already abundantly clear to him that she was the more
rational of the two. With a solid grasp of the intricacies of the situation, Katya had a command about her that told him she was in charge
despite obviously being many years younger than her brother.
“How old are you?” he asked, smiling with a warm sparkle in the depths of his hazel eyes.
“Seventeen.”
“So that would make you a fourth level classman in the Academy,” he noted.
She didn’t respond, but he detected a subtle shift in the color of her eyes that told the Captain he was right. “How did a Starfleet
Academy freshman get hold of a ship with advanced cloaking capabilities?” he pressed. “Who did you leave on that ship?”
Her face calmed and long lashes fluttered over unreadable brown eyes several times in silence. Of course Chekov was still alive: she’d
learned that from him.
Sulu was staring at Nikolai while the Captain spoke. The young man’s stony countenance had dissolved him out of the conversation—
purposefully, the Helmsman knew. His shoulder was still jammed against the bulkhead but Sulu could tell that his supposedly downcast
eyes were not so. The intruder’s gaze was clearly fixed solidly on the boy at the end of the conference table.
“Sir,” Sulu said, shifting his dark eyes to Kirk. “I should get Dimitri out of here before Chekov shows up.”
The Captain nodded approval, glancing from the boy to McCoy as he entered. “Log your hours baby-sitting with the First Officer.”
“Yes, Sir,” he acknowledged, turning on his heel to retrieve the boy. “Dimitri,” he bid as he passed the child.
Hesitating when the boy made no response, the Helmsman repeated the summons with more force. “Dimitri.”
The boy glanced up sharply from the book on the table before him and Sulu realized with some surprise that he’d actually been reading
the thing. Hard copy books kept Chekov in another world when he was with them. That the child hadn’t been eavesdropping actually
caused Sulu some concern, however.
“Are you alright?” he asked quietly, bending over the boy.
Dimitri nodded and he gave the man a knowing, gentle smile. “I wasn’t meant to know everything before I turned nine.”
Sulu chuckled and straightened. “C’mon, let’s go find something to do.”
“I’m supposed to clean the decks,” he confided as he scampered after the Helmsman.
The man drew up short. “What?”
“I marked them with my shoes tap-dancing.”
“The bastard,” Sulu muttered. “We have maintenance. I’ll have them take care of it.”
“Watch it,” Dimitri cautioned light-heartedly as he followed him out into the corridor. “Spoil me and you won’t be able to live with me later.”
“What makes you think I can now? Besides,” the Helmsman added, flashing him a conspiratorial smile. “What if you’re not supposed to
know how to clean a starship’s decks yet?”
“I see why I like you.”