adagio for the bridge

The bridge is quiet. The impulse engines rumble in the background, right on the edge of Pavel’s hearing. It is strange, for the bridge to be this empty, this still. It must be quiet sometimes, Pavel supposes, but he is not used to it. Usually the bridge crew have some problem to focus on, some urgent task. Or, failing that, usually the bridge crew is at least present.

Just now, the captain is on an away mission, a diplomatic meeting with the leaders of the planet hanging in space beneath them. Commander Spock and Lieutenant Uhura have gone with him, and the bridge is empty and quiet in their absence. The chronometer on the navigation console reads 16:33, but it feels like the middle of night shift.

“So I have been thinking,” Pavel says, as if picking up an unfinished conversation, “about our mission.”

“What about it?” Sulu says, without looking up from his own console. That’s one of the things Pavel likes about Sulu. They can talk to each other on and off, as if their conversations are all part of one long-running discussion. It’s comforting.

“‘To explore strange new worlds’,” Pavel quotes, from the eloquent mission briefing that lives on the Enterprise’s permanent file. “‘To seek out new life and new civilizations.’ Why do we do this?”

Sulu thinks it over for a moment or two. “What do you mean?” he says, at last. “Why do we follow the mission? Or why is it our mission?”

“Why do we search for new things?” Pavel says. He scratches at his nose, thinking. He is verging on the philosophical. This happens occasionally. He is thankful for his crewmates, who seem to take his bouts of philosophy in stride. “And why not send unmanned probes, if we must search? Wouldn’t that be safer?”

“I think exploration is a very human instinct,” Sulu says.

“But not only human,” Pavel says. “Vulcans do it too. And—even Klingons, and Romulans, or they would not have starships like ours.”

Sulu hums. “That’s a pretty big assumption,” he says. “Exploration isn’t the only use for starship technology. I’m sure if you asked Spock why the Vulcans developed warp capability, he’d give you a different answer.”

From the far side of the bridge, Lieutenant Palamas joins the conversation. “The vast majority of cultures on Earth have documented a desire to explore the natural world,” she says, “but not all of them, and not to the same degree. I think it would be a mistake to say exploration is what makes us human.” Carolyn Palamas is a science officer, specializing in history and anthropology. In the absence of the captain, Spock, and Uhura, she is the ranking officer on the bridge. Palamas and Sulu are both lieutenants, but Palamas has a few more years of experience.

“All the greatest Earth explorers were Russian, anyway,” Pavel says. “Fyodorov, Lazarev, Bering—”

“All the greatest Earth explorers were colonialists,” Palamas says.

“Yes,” Pavel says. “And all of them claimed to seek out new life and new civilizations as well.”

“Are you saying that we follow in their footsteps?” Palamas says. Her voice holds no judgement; she is nearly as philosophically-minded as Pavel. As an Ethiopian-Irish woman, as proud of her homeland as Pavel is of his own, she knows the colonialism that haunts Earth’s history.

“No,” Pavel says. “The Prime Directive prevents that.”

“It’s meant to,” Sulu says.

“It is meant to protect new civilizations,” Pavel says. “Like the non-intervention policy of the Vulcan Science Academy. But we follow the Prime Directive so we can keep exploring and do no harm. We still want to explore. We seek out new things, even when it is dangerous.” He shrugs. “Why? Out of curiosity? Or something else?”

Sulu looks up at him. “I think—” He meets Pavel’s eyes and breaks off, looking alarmed.

“What? What’s wrong?” The alarm spreads to Pavel. He’s seen that look on Sulu’s face too many times before, in too many terrifying situations.

“Your face,” Sulu says. He sounds more puzzled than frightened. “You’re… bleeding.”

Pavel lifts a hand to his face. He doesn’t feel anything strange. Nothing hurts. “What?”

Palamas’s console lights up with a chime. She puts a hand to her earpiece. “Bridge here,” she says. “Yes sir. I hear you.” She breaks off, listening. Sulu and Chekov exchange looks. Who is that? Pavel wonders, in his private mental mixture of Standard and Russian. The captain? Is something wrong?

“Away missions,” Sulu says under his breath. “Every time.”

“You don’t know anything is wrong yet,” Pavel whispers. “Don’t curse us!”

“Aye, sir.” Palamas turns a dial and says, “Mr. Sulu, alter course two point five degrees to the fourth meridian.”

Pavel’s console lights up as he computes the new navigational orders, double-checking against their current position. The new course is only a slight alteration, but should take them close to the away team’s beaming coordinates. Sulu takes the manual controls and eases the ship forward, over the marbled grey-and-green surface of the planet. The impulse engines rumble and hiss in time with the movement.

“What’s wrong?” Sulu says.

“Mr. Scott’s orders,” Palamas says. “He wants a better line of sight to the away team’s location.” Sulu mutters something that sounds a lot like the English phrase I fucking knew it.

“Mr. Chekov, you should probably go to sickbay,” Palamas says. It’s not quite an order, so Pavel pretends not to hear. He taps a button to open his star charts onscreen. He sees blood on the surface of his console, and he realizes suddenly where the blood is coming from.

“Ой,” he says. Sulu looks over. “Is alright, I am fine. See?” He lifts his hand so Sulu can see the dot of blood welling from his pointer finger.

“How did that happen?”

“I don’t know.” Pavel examines it. The break in skin is barely large enough to be called a cut, and it still doesn’t hurt at all. Any small nick in the course of the day might be responsible.

“Mr. Chekov,” Palamas says, less and less amused. “Sickbay.”

“Yes, sir.” Pavel sets his console in stasis and steps off the bridge.

The outer hallway is quiet. It still feels strange, for so little to be happening during an away mission. Pavel passes a couple of science ensigns down the hall. They exchange nods. In the turbolift, he meets a couple of yeomen.

Both of them are familiar, especially an Iñupiaq girl with round cheeks and black hair pinned up in elaborate braids. “Hello, Tina!” Pavel can’t help grinning at her. He met Tina Lawton during his initial orientation onboard, and they’ve been friends ever since. Teenagers in Starfleet have to stick together.

Tina Lawton’s face lights up. She waves. “Hey Pavel!” She glances at her fellow yeoman, Janice Rand, and stifles a giggle. “I mean, Mr. Chekov.”

“Ensign Chekov,” Rand says, and somehow makes it sound unimpressive, even though Pavel technically outranks her. “I thought you were on duty?”

“Дa,” Pavel says. “But Lieutenant Palamas sent me to sickbay. See, I am bleeding.” He holds up his hand. Tina looks intently at it. Rand scoffs.

“How did that happen?” she says.

“I have no idea,” Pavel says.

The turbolift stops on Deck Five. Rand and Lawton step off, and Pavel follows them down the hall. “We’re going to the botany lab,” Tina says, “to help catalogue those soil samples the away team took from—that last planet.”

“Majel II,” Rand says. Of course she would know.

“Right, Majel II.”

Pavel nods. “Tina,” he says, “Why do you think we explore space?”

“Us?” she says, gesturing between the two of them.

“Well, yes, but—all members of Starfleet, also.”

Tina frowns. For several minutes she is quiet, thinking. “To understand,” she says at last, as they approach the botany lab. “To help us understand the things we know and the things we don’t. And to preserve that knowledge for our descendants.” Her voice is solemn. Pavel nods.

“I see,” he says. It is more of an answer than Sulu or Palamas had, and clearly it is something Tina has thought about before. “Thank you.”

The door to the botany lab slides open, and Rand steps through. Tina pauses for a second to wave. “Bye, Pavel!”

“Goodbye!”

Then he’s alone. Pavel heads down the hallway a few hundred meters more, and steps into sickbay.

Pavel has been here before; once during initial orientation, and then during many missions, all gone horribly wrong one way or another. Today is different. Sickbay is as quiet and empty as the rest of the ship, without even the steady background noise of a biobed. The quiet is disconcerting. Like the calm before the storm. Pavel rubs his thumb across the side of his pointer finger. His thumb comes away flecked with blood. It still doesn’t hurt.

Voices filter in from the next room. “...want to hear about how to kill a Romulan bounty hunter with your bare hands.” Pavel hears footsteps, and then the door at the far end of the room slides open and Dr. McCoy steps in. Nurse Chapel follows him, looking vaguely amused. “I hear enough about that from—” He stops, raising his eyebrows as his face contorts into a scowl. “Chekov?”

“Hello, sir.” Pavel waves a little. McCoy scowls deeper.

“What are you doing here? What happened? Is Jim in trouble?”

“We have not heard from the captain at this time,” Pavel says. “Lieutenant Palamas sent me. I, ah...” He holds up his hand. “I seem to be bleeding.”

McCoy squints at him. “That’s it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, that’s just peachy.” McCoy turns away, pacing across the room to his desk. “No word from Jim for hours, and the only injury onboard is a—a damn papercut!”

“The captain checked in at 1400 hours, right on schedule,” Chapel says. “Here, Ensign. Sit down.” She directs him to the nearest biobed. Pavel sits. Chapel pulls out a portable desktop from the wall and places his hand on it, palm down, with his fingers spread. Then she lifts up a set of magnifying glasses and leans in for a closer look.

“Don’t mind him,” she says. “Dr. McCoy gets nervous about away missions.”

“Oh, sure, the air is breathable,” McCoy says, to no one in particular. He’s settled behind the desk and begun scribbling on a PADD. “Oh, the environment is earthlike. Why don’t we just beam down and see what happens! What could possibly go wrong? Haven’t any of you people heard of a damn virus?”

Chapel adds another lens and leans in. The glass magnifies her eye and the side of her face. Pavel can see the individual greyish-blonde hairs framing her temple. Chapel hums and produces a pair of plastic tweezers.

“Here’s your problem,” she says, and plucks at Pavel’s finger so quickly he hardly feels it. “A splinter.” A tiny metal speck glints in the light. “I can’t imagine how it got there.”

Pavel frowns. He doesn’t remember picking up a splinter, but he was in Engineering a few hours ago, helping replace corroded pipes. He didn’t wear gloves. It might have happened then. “I have been shadowing in Engineering,” he says.

“Oh, of course,” McCoy mutters. “He’s shadowing in Engineering. How old are you, again?”

“Eighteen next week, sir.”

“Wonderful.”

“Happy birthday,” Chapel says, and wraps a temporary bandage around his finger. “That should keep it safe until the skin heals. Did you get any blood on your console?”

“I think so,” Pavel says. The whole thing seems absurd and a little embarrassing—to have acquired such a trivial wound, and then somehow failed to notice it for hours.

“Be sure to let Yeoman Rand know,” Chapel says. “You don’t have any bloodborne diseases, so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. You’re free to go.”

“Thank you,” Pavel says. He glances at the doctor, still at his desk surrounded by several piles of tapes. “Doctor?”

McCoy looks up. “What?”

“Why do you think we explore space?”

McCoy stares at him for a few seconds. “Because every person on this ship is a damn fool with more brains than sense,” he says.

“You’re on this ship, too,” Chapel says.

“Including me. Especially me. Dear God, why am I here? No one should live in space.” McCoy scoops up a handful of tapes from his desk and leaves sickbay the way he came in. Chapel gives Pavel a crooked smile and shoos him out.

The turbolift on the way back up is empty. Pavel walks back onto the bridge, nods to Lieutenant Palamas, and resumes his console. Sulu gives him an amused look.

“How was sickbay?”

“Uneventful,” Pavel says. He holds up his hand to show the bandage. “I have a clean bill of health.”

“Thank goodness.”

“Has the captain called in a distress signal yet?”

“Now don’t you jinx us.” Sulu grins. “All quiet so far.”

Several minutes pass in tedious silence, before Lieutenant Palamas’s console lights up again. “Bridge here. Yes.” She listens for a moment, and then smiles. “Aye sir. Bridge out.” She turns in her seat to smile at Pavel and Sulu. “The away team is beaming aboard. No casualties.”

“Yes!” Pavel pumps his fist. Sulu stares for a moment in disbelief before he smiles. “See, I told you,” Pavel says.

“You did,” Sulu says. He makes a couple of tiny adjustments to the helm.

A little later the turbolift door opens, and Captain Kirk steps out, with Lieutenant Uhura right behind him.

“Captain on the bridge,” Palamas says.

“At ease,” Kirk says, and takes his seat.

“Welcome back, sir,” Sulu says.

“Thank you, Mr. Sulu. Set a course for Gamma Hydra IV, please.”

Sulu pulls up the heading. Pavel glances back over his shoulder at the captain, and can’t help staring a little. The captain has a truly impressive bruise around his left eye and a split lip that looks very fresh.

“Are you alright, sir?” Pavel says.

“Never better,” Kirk says, resting his chin in his hand. He sits very straight in his chair, though he looks like he’d rather be leaning on the armrest.

“Where is Mr. Spock?” Pavel says. Their first officer has yet to appear on the bridge. “Is he alright?”

“He’s in sickbay. Routine checkup. Nothing to worry about.”

Pavel stares at him for another few seconds. “Okay, sir,” he says, and turns back to his station. Sulu snorts.

“Engaging warp five,” he says, a moment later, and pushes the lever. The engines rumble and Pavel’s stomach drops in the best way as space contracts around them and the Enterprise enters warp.

I’ll never get tired of this, Pavel thinks, staring out at the stars. Even after countless missions, almost a year living in space, it feels like a new adventure every time, warping to unknown corners of the universe, seeking out new life and new civilizations. This must be why they explore. Not for any logical reason that Pavel can articulate, but for the emotion it stirs in them, the joy, the fear, the apprehension of adventure. Everyone brings their own understanding to their mission. I wonder what Mr. Spock would say, if you asked him?

The turbolift door opens. Pavel glances back to see Spock and Dr. McCoy stepping onto the bridge. Spock crosses to his station, while McCoy walks up behind the captain’s chair with a hypospray and jabs it into Kirk’s neck.

“Ow! Bones, what the hell?”

“That was an antihistamine,” McCoy growls.

“I wasn’t having an allergic reaction!”

“And I’m keeping it that way. Now get your ass down to sickbay so I can fix those ribs.”

Kirk turns to give Spock a withering glare. “Traitor.”

“I was unaware that ensuring you obtain proper medical care qualifies as a mutinous action.”

“Jim, I’m not kidding,” McCoy says. “Sickbay. Now.”

The captain grumbles under his breath and stands up, shuffling toward the turbolift with McCoy right on his heels. Spock watches them leave, one eyebrow raised. When the lift doors shut behind them, he takes a seat in the captain’s chair.

Sulu clears his throat. “So,” he says. “How did the mission go?”

“It was unremarkable,” Spock says.

“That’s one word for it,” Uhura says. Lieutenant Palamas coughs. Sulu smiles, a wry expression that makes the corners of his eyes crinkle.

Pavel smiles, too. He doesn’t mind the quiet, but this is how the bridge should be, active and full of life. It’s what they have all come to expect, a little over a year into their five-year mission. It’s not how he thought life in Starfleet would be, but he can’t say he dislikes it.

He taps the button to open his star charts. “Mr. Spock,” he says.

“Yes, Ensign?”

“Why did you join Starfleet?”

Spock raises one eyebrow. He seems to think it over for a moment, and then says, “In defiance of the Vulcan Science Academy and my father, who expected me to remain on Vulcan and to follow in his footsteps.”

Uhura laughs. Pavel’s surprise must show on his face. All he can think to say in response to that is, “Oh.”

“Any further questions, Mr. Chekov?” Spock’s face is impassive as ever, but there might be a hint of amusement in the curve of his mouth. Pavel shakes his head.

“No, sir.” He turns back to his console. Sulu laughs quietly next to him.

“Maybe space exploration is about spite,” he says.

“Дa. Maybe so.”

⁂