TITLE:
Recruitment
AUTHOR:
Brenda Shaffer-Shiring
FEEDBACK
TO: shafshir@microconnect.net
RATING:
G
PART:
1/1
CODES:
C & T
ARCHIVE:
Sure, why not? Just let me know.
DISCLAIMER:
Paramount owns everything – but you already knew that. <g>
SUMMARY: Another look at how B'Elanna might
have come to join the Maquis. Originally published in Delta Quadrant 2,
edited by Marge Robles and Elizabeth Knauel.
Recruitment
by Brenda Shaffer-Shiring
So what if she'd been fired? She hadn't
wanted the damned job anyway. It was an insult to her ability and intelligence
to put her in the position of picking up after a half-witted crew of mechanical
morons who wouldn't have half as much trouble with their equipment if they
would only madre de Dios remember to see if the triple-damned power
toggle was in the "on" position before they screamed for maintenance!
Torres
slammed her mug back, throwing a challenging look around the dark, tiny bar.
She had no particular friends here, but she was a regular enough customer that
the other patrons knew what to anticipate when she was in a foul mood. Nobody
met her eye.
Almost
nobody. One man looked back calmly, directly.
Him
again.
He
was a human of perhaps thirty-five or forty, a broad-shouldered,
powerful-looking man with dark, close-cropped hair and a complexion swarthy as
a Klingon's (a resemblance that did nothing to endear him to Torres). She'd
seen him in this bar several times in the past couple of weeks. Invariably
dressed in a plain workman's coverall, he always sat alone, nursing one or two
drinks as he looked out from a small table, studying the crowd with observant
brown eyes.
More
often than not, she realized, studying her, exactly as he was doing now.
Torres
swore under her breath. If she'd wanted to be watched like a microbe on a
slide, she would have stayed at Starfleet Academy. At least there she'd have
had a shot at a better job than factory mech. And better liquor than this!
Her
glare did nothing to make the watcher avert his gaze. Getting up, she shoved
her chair back with enough force to tip it, and stalked over to him. Slapping
her mug down on his table, she snarled, "All right, buddy -- what the hell
do you want?"
He
seemed startled, but not alarmed. "As it happens, Ms. Torres," he
said calmly, "I'd like to speak to you." He toed a chair back from
the table, gesturing toward the seat with one big hand.
She
ignored the offer. "I'll just bet you would." Out of work she might
be, but damned if she was reduced to keeping company with anyone who had the
price of a drink.
His expression was more composed than anyone's who drank in this dive had a
right to be. "About a job, Ms. Torres." The words were so perfectly
level, so free of any hint of lasciviousness or double entendre, that try as
she might Torres couldn't find anything more to offend her. "One a little
more worthy of your skills. Now – I'd rather not draw any more attention than
we've already gotten, so I'd appreciate it if you'd sit down."
Almost
to her own surprise, she obeyed. Against her will, something about this man
drew Torres; she hadn't seen anyone with such self-control since – since her
days at the Academy. Resisting the tug of attraction as well as the tug of
memory, she snapped mutinously, "Why? You afraid of attention?"
She had the satisfaction of seeing a brief flash of what might have been
annoyance or frustration in his eyes. "Not afraid," he answered, the
tiniest hint of an edge to his quiet voice. "But some things aren't –
wise."
"Really?"
So he did have some reason to be wary. Well, good; that was an edge she
held over him, one she could use if he provoked her. Feeling more comfortable,
she pulled the chair in. "Why is that?"
"Would you rather needle me, or hear about the job?"
Again she had that pull of almost-instinctive respect she might have felt
toward some particularly worthy officer at the Academy; again, she wanted to
resist it but couldn't. "I'm listening," she said grudgingly.
He regarded her with steady eyes. "I hear you're something of a rebel, Ms.
Torres. Is that true?"
The seeming change of subject startled her a bit. "Who told you – I
mean," she tried to recover, "I hear the same thing." She added,
defensively, "What's it to you?"
"Not much." The humor was as dark as the color of his eyes. "Actually,
I'm something of a rebel myself."
"Are you?" That was a new concept, that someone who acted so much the
model of propriety could possibly be classified in the same category as Torres
herself. Yet there was the contrast between the man's proud bearing and his
plain workman's clothes, and there was his wish to avoid attention....Even in
the dim light, she could see that the coloring at one of his temples was flat
and uneven, an imperfect match for his swarthy complexion. It looked almost as
if someone had smeared makeup there, trying to hide some distinguishing mark –
"I am indeed," he answered gravely.
Is he on the run? she wondered. From who? He doesn't look like
a smuggler or a pirate.
His voice pulled her attention from her
thoughts. "The only reason whether you're a rebel concerns me, Ms. Torres,
is that right now I'm looking for rebels. I and – some of my associates – are
very much in the market for people who aren't happy with the status quo,
especially skilled people like you."
Maybe he was a pirate. "To do what?" she asked, curiously. She
couldn't get along with officers or bureaucrats, but most pirates (even if this
man was an exception) were notoriously volatile types. She might be able to get
along with pirates....
"That depends on their skills." He locked his eyes with hers.
"In your case, maintaining starships."
"What?" Speculation vanished in a burst of hope mingled with
fear. Torres had always wanted to work on starships. She'd gone to Starfleet
Academy in hopes of winning a place on a starship, had realized when she left
the academy that the prospect was forever closed to her. The Klingon navy
wouldn't have her because of her father's blood, and private shipbuilders and
spacelines wouldn't consider her because of her lack of education. And so she'd
gone to work, in a series of jobs too much like the one she'd just lost,
meaningless low-level mechanic's jobs for dead-end little companies in the
middle of nowhere. After she'd lost her dream of starships, no other dream seemed
worth the bother....If this is a real offer, she told herself, I can't
refuse.
If it's a joke, I'll kill him.
"How is that possible?" she asked tensely, eyes fixed on the man as
if he might try to get away, and take his offer with him. "Who are you?"
He hesitated. "My name isn't important."
"Who are you?" She was raising her voice, attracting exactly
the kind of attention he'd said he didn't want. She didn't care.
"They call me Shadow Hunter," he said hastily, in an obvious attempt
to quiet her.
She lowered her voice. "They who? Who do you know that you can sit there
and offer me starships?"
"They –" He appeared to be engaging in some kind of silent struggle
with himself before he spoke again. "Ms. Torres," he asked finally,
"what do you know about politics in this sector of space?"
"I know things are pretty heated." The volatility of the region was
one of the things that had attracted Torres to it – that and the sense of being
as much on the frontier as most civilians were likely to get. "Since the
peace treaty shifted the Cardassian border in this direction, anyway."
"You mean, since it handed dozens of Federation colony planets over to the
tender mercies of the Cardassians." For the first time, Torres saw anger
in the calm man, as his full lips thinned and his dark eyes narrowed.
"Since it left millions of colonists with the choice between exile and
slavery, sometimes between exile and death. And some of those colonists old
men, and children – " He cut himself off, and she thought, suddenly, that
the rage he seemed to be suppressing might burn as white-hot as any of her own,
if he would only unleash it. "Oh, yes," he said finally, heavily,
bitterly, "that's made things pretty heated." His big hands had
tightened to fists on the tabletop. "And they'll be a lot hotter before
we're done, I promise you that."
"We?" she said, almost involuntarily. Then she realized what he must
be: one of the borderworld renegades she'd begun hearing about.
"Maquis," she murmured, remembering the name. "You're Maquis,
aren't you?"
"That's what we call ourselves, yes." He held her gaze with his own
dark, compelling one. "Join us, Ms. Torres. It's a fight worth a warrior –
and work worth an engineer." His hand closed tightly over hers, as warm as
a human's but almost stronger than a human's should be. "The ships –
they're small, Ms. Torres, and they're old, but they're starships all right.
They're yours to work on, yours to fly on, if you want –"
He broke off abruptly, his eyes moving from her face to a spot over her
shoulder. The emotion vanished from his face as quickly as if he'd donned a
mask. "Excuse me."
Torres turned, and saw two men in the black-and-gold of Starfleet security
standing in the doorway. Both of them held phasers, the weapons trained in her
general direction. She turned back to her companion, and saw that he'd risen,
balancing lightly on the balls of his feet like a dancer, like a fighter.
At the presence of the unfamiliar, and in this locale somewhat dreaded,
uniforms, the bar was suddenly, hideously, inappropriately quiet. One officer's
voice rang through the silence as he said, politely but firmly, "Commander
Chakotay."
"If you know who I am," Torres' companion said, very calm, "then
you know that I resigned my commission months ago. If a private citizen can't
share a drink with a attractive woman –"
The officer overrode him. "It's my duty to inform you, sir, that you've
been charged with treason and terroristic activity. You'll have to come with
us."
When
the big man – Chakotay, Torres told herself – did not move immediately,
the two Fleeters took a few steps into the room. Torres saw him wave them to
stillness, still perfectly composed. "No sense damaging the bar,
gentlemen, even such as it is. I'm coming." He walked toward the security
men –
And several things happened very quickly. Chakotay's arm came up in a powerful
forearm smash, neatly dropping one opponent, even as his leg swept out to knock
the other to the floor. Conscious and still holding his phaser, the second one
raised his hand to fire – but Chakotay's boot found his wrist, pinning his arm
to the floor.
Torres never knew what caught her attention,
a flash of movement or a sound or maybe just battle instincts, but she turned
her head to one side and saw that a woman had risen, dressed in the bland
coverall of a factory tech but holding a small Starfleet-issue phaser. The
weapon was aimed at Chakotay.
Torres didn't know if it was the image of the promised starship in her mind, or
only the image of the big Maquis stunned and helpless, but she acted from
instinct. Snatching up her heavy clay mug, she hurled it across the room. It
made contact with a loud crack, and the phaser-wielding woman went down with a
howl, clutching at her arm.
Meanwhile, Chakotay had dispensed with his remaining opponent, and was plucking
the man's weapon from slack fingers. "Good reflexes, Torres. Thanks."
With a sudden grin, he tossed her the phaser; with a matching one, she snatched
it out of the air. "Come on." He walked out quickly.
She followed him out then, to his starships and his rebellion. And she never
looked back.
END