Chapter Text
Nile is out among the stars when the new dream begins.
It was a stressful day. Well, inasmuch as she can quantify "day" versus "night" on a spaceship, but old habits die hard. Anyway. The replicator has been on the fritz for longer than she cares to admit, and though Booker can hack damn near any system, he still hasn't gotten the knack of artificially constructed foodstuffs. Which means they've been eating a grayish sort of oatmeal for the past few days. It doesn't taste bad, exactly, but it's not her mom's famous mac and cheese, either.
Also, Starfleet has been cracking down hard on independent vessels lately, what with the whole incident a few years back where the planet Vulcan was completely obliterated. Their ship is small and insignificant enough to fly under the radar, but it's been getting...complicated. Some days, Nile's about ready to throw in the towel and head back to Earth for good.
She misses Nicky's cooking something fierce, too.
Point is, she's already in a mood when she settles into her bunk, and it takes forever for sleep to finally claim her, and then:
Hot wind against her face, arid as the desert in Afghanistan, but somehow comforting, though the air doesn't smell quite like home—
The sterile blankness of a laboratory, sharp acrid chemical scent, the glimpse of a reflection in a curious glass dome—
An alert shrilling, tamping down her mild irritation at being interrupted, not another false alarm again—
Heat, sudden and explosive, a concussive blast of it, the world on fire, and she hears herself screaming for just one distorted instant before—
Nile gasps awake in a cold sweat, and the chill of it is disorienting after that all-encompassing heat. It takes her long minutes of just sucking in the cool, slightly-artificial recycled air before her heart rate returns to something resembling normal, and she can string two thoughts together.
"Oh, fuck me," she says aloud to the empty cabin. "There's a new one."
She finds Booker in their galley, a steaming mug of coffee in his hands. He pushes it toward her without asking, and stands to get himself a fresh cup. None of that replicated shit; for some things, they go old school. They get the beans shipped directly from Earth.
"You too, huh," he says, his back still to her. It's not a question.
"Yeah." She takes a few bracing gulps. "Now I know how you must've felt, when I showed up. Like it's too damn soon."
He tosses her a faint smile over his shoulder. "Congratulations, you're not the baby anymore. Want something stronger in there?"
She pulls a face. He cut way back on drinking around when they lost Andy, but he still keeps a flask handy in case of emergency. Nile likes to joke that it's his security blanket. "Never did like Irish coffee."
"It's not about liking it," he retorts, but doesn't push. "So. I saw a desert, reddish sand. And then a whole lot of fire. You know, I've never actually burned to death before."
Nile tucks her hands around the mug, more interested in the warmth than the caffeine. "She was in a lab, that's where the explosion happened. Sterile, lots of black and white and chrome. Hard to figure what kind of combustible materials they even had in the place."
"Oxygen," Booker says quietly. "Sometimes all you need is gas and air."
She swallows hard, but nods. "Yeah, I guess. Not a soldier, this time."
He shrugs, a restless lift of one shoulder. "Can't assume from flashes. But maybe we were due for a change. We should call the others, compare notes. I'll open the comm link to the bridge."
"Wonder what the time difference is," Nile mutters. She's not even sure what continent the others are on at the moment. Funny how small one planet feels after the vastness of the galaxy. It's hard to remember, sometimes, that it's not all one thing. Not just one city, one stretch of landscape; all of Earth, reduced to a single movie set. "But if they'd had the dream already, they would have commed us first, so even odds they're not asleep yet." She shakes her head, refocusing on Booker's face, trying on a smile. "Think it's time to get the band back together?"
"As if Nicky or Joe would let us collect the new kid without them." Booker regards her steadily. "Think it'll be enough to get Quỳnh back on a ship?"
Nile doesn't know for sure. She and Quỳnh get along fine, but they've never exactly been close. Some part of Nile has always recoiled from the awful reality of Quỳnh's trauma, leaving her feeling awkward and wrong-footed. Quỳnh has never shied away from spaceflight, but she still prefers to avoid it when possible, and Nile can hardly blame her for that.
"Guess we'll find out," is all she says. "Because…"
She hesitates, as though saying it aloud will make it too real. So Booker says it for her.
"Because that desert was nowhere on Earth," he finishes. "And the woman in our dreams wasn't human."
"Vulcan," Quỳnh says with heavy certainty, her face only slightly distorted over the viewscreen. "She's Vulcan."
Nile had been fairly sure already, but it's good to get confirmation. While they've all encountered Vulcans before, there aren't many in Starfleet, and none of the immortals have spent much time hobnobbing in diplomatic circles. Except Quỳnh, who spent two full decades on the Vulcan home planet, studying the practice of Kolinahr. She hadn't completed the ritual herself—not that a human would have been permitted to do so—but the meditative aspect has brought her a degree of tranquility that would have been unimaginable when she'd first emerged from the sea.
Frankly, the concept of purging all emotions and giving oneself over to pure logic sounds horrific to Nile, but hey, to each their own. And from what she can tell, it's not that Quỳnh has rid herself of emotions. She's simply made her peace with them.
"Okay," Nile says. "So before we start talking retrieval, we're gonna need to think through the ramifications of this. And I don't just mean the fact that apparently this gig extends to other species now."
Joe leans forward to be more clearly visible. He and Nicky sit flanking Quỳnh on what looks like a very comfortable sofa. Nile is trying not to be jealous. Her bunk is nowhere near that soft. "I'm fascinated by the question of whether there have always been more of us out there. What if it simply took first contact to open up that...connection?"
Behind him, Nicky murmurs something low enough that the audio feed doesn't pick it up, and Joe flashes a grin back at him before turning back to the call, sobering. "But you're right, Nile," he goes on. "This will not be your standard retrieval."
"Like there's any such thing as standard," Booker mutters. Nile swats at him without looking away from the viewscreen.
"Vulcan society was already insular even before the destruction of their home planet," Nicky says, expression somber. "They will not look kindly on interlopers. And I think we must assume that she died on New Vulcan, though it's possible she was a member of an exploratory mission…"
Quỳnh shakes her head. "That wasn't a Starfleet uniform, she was Vulcan Science Academy. And they currently have no research vessels deployed. Any in progress at the time of the cataclysm were immediately recalled to help establish the colony on New Vulcan."
"Which is probably how our girl survived the genocide herself," Joe points out grimly. "Can you imagine? Going through an experience like that, and then…" His mouth twists, and he exchanges a look with Nicky and Quỳnh. "As if your first death isn't traumatizing enough on its own. She must be reeling."
Booker clears his throat. "That's the thing, though. She's Vulcan. All her life, she would've been taught to restrain her emotions, to repress them—"
"It's not quite repression," Quỳnh says. "But you're not wrong, either. Their whole society has undergone a massive upheaval, and they're still figuring out how to cope with that. Throw a sudden case of immortality into the mix…"
Nile grimaces. "They're scientists. She's one herself, specifically, if she's VSA. And whatever else you can say about our gifts, logic sure as hell doesn't apply. They won't know what to do with her."
"Yes, they will," Booker says quietly. When Nile glances over her shoulder at him, his expression is grim. "It'll be Merrick and that doctor of his all over again. They'll cut her apart to figure out what makes her tick."
It's the bleakest possible assessment, but unfortunately, Nile can't discount it as a possibility. On the screen, she can see Joe and Nicky's hands clasped tightly where they rest on Quỳnh's knee.
"Okay," she says, taking a deep breath. "So now we just need to sneak a ship full of humans onto the universe's most tightly guarded planet."
"It could be worse," Nicky says drily. "She could have been Romulan."
"If she were Romulan, at least we could fight our way in," Joe retorts. "Or Klingon. Actually, if she were Klingon, they would definitely be worshiping her as a god by now, can you imagine an immortal warrior Klingon?"
"Focus, love." Nicky gives Joe a quick smile, then turns back to look at Nile. "So will you come fetch us, or do we need to hitch a ride out to wherever you are?"
Nile's heart gives a happy little thump. She'd hoped, but she hadn't been sure. "Y'all gonna join us?"
The three eldest immortals exchange a complicated series of looks. It's Quỳnh who says, firmly, "We wouldn't miss it for the world."
It happened like this: about five years ago, the planet Vulcan was destroyed by a grief-mad Romulan, and Joe and Nicky had a fight.
Okay. That's an oversimplification.
Maybe she needs to go back further to find the root cause. How about this: forty-odd years after Nile gained her immortality, Andromache the Scythian passed away peacefully in her sleep, and humans made first contact with extraterrestrial beings when a Vulcan survey ship touched down in Bozeman, Montana.
Those two events will always be indelibly linked, for Nile. For all of them. A clear defining moment in history, dividing time neatly into a before and an after.
The decades immediately following First Contact on Earth were...interesting. The team certainly kept busy, that's for sure. But eventually the planet settled into something like peace, more or less, as humanity raced to catch up with its new friends out in far flung galaxies. When Starfleet was established, Nile, Joe, and Nicky were all part of the fledgling Academy's first graduating class, and Booker and Quỳnh weren't too far behind them.
The first time she broke atmo on a starship and looked out into the vast expanse of the stars, Nile thought: oh, Andy would love this.
Earth was stable. Earth was at peace. Humanity was exploring new frontiers, so the immortals followed suit.
They couldn't serve in Starfleet for too long, of course. Human life expectancy is higher than it was when Nile was born, and modern medicine slows the physical signs of aging to a certain degree, enabling them to blend in for longer, but they still have to move on after a few decades. For the first century, they cycled back into Starfleet every now and then, taking it in turns, posing as their own descendents; Nicky did his first track in Medical partly so that he could corrupt their biodata in the database. But they'd since gone independent, flying their own vessel and dodging the main Federation trade routes, keeping as low a profile as possible in an ever-expanding universe.
Then the home planet of Earth's closest allies disappeared into a black hole, killing billions, and Earth itself nearly suffered the same fate. All while Nile and her team were on the other side of the galaxy, traveling from one distant outpost to another in their dinky little ship, out of the loop and utterly powerless to help in any way.
That was not a good day for them.
"What are we even doing out here?" Nicky demanded, voice rougher than Nile had ever heard it. "Lightyears away from our home, from the Earth that bore us, that gave us this eternal life. We've lost our way. Perhaps this was never where we were meant to be."
Joe shook his head. "We are doing what we have always done, striving for a better world, in our own small ways. That fight is no longer confined to one single planet, so we follow it as we always have. Or would you like to draw your line in the sand outside of Jerusalem and relitigate the same single battle for another millennium?"
The debate raged for hours, dragging all five of them in as they struggled through their collective shock and grief and exhaustion, until Quỳnh finally put a stop to it. "I cannot abide another day in this metal box," she told them, worn thin. "Take us home, Nile. I need to walk the earth where Andromache and Lykon are buried."
When Quỳnh decided to remain on Earth indefinitely, Nicky joined her, and of course that meant Joe followed as well. Nile isn't sure if they ever resolved their argument, or what conclusions they reached together. All she knows is that it's just been her and Booker on this ship ever since. They make a good team, the two of them; she doesn't regret that part of it. But every single day she wonders if she made the right choice to continue traveling between different star systems, instead of planting her own feet solidly on her home planet and doing the work there.
It's just that space is so large, and it's so easy for a single colony's needs to get lost in the vast bureaucracy of the Federation. Starfleet is there for the big battles, the galactic threats, but who fights back against the smaller-scale injustices?
Nile can't do much, but she can do something. She has to keep trying.
She just wishes she had her whole family at her back again.