Entry tags:
The Satchel (1/1, all ages)
Title: The Satchel
Fandom: Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Characters/Pairing(s): Jett Reno, Pelia
Rating: All ages
Word count: 1,998
Spoilers: None
Summary: "Truth is, I used to move hard-to-find folios for a shady antiquarian archivist."
Author's notes: Written for the Accidental Baby Acquisition square on my Keep Fandom Weird bingo card. Hey, it didn't say that had to be a human baby!
Thanks to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lizbee for both the beta and the idea that Jett Reno and Pelia needed to have shenanigans together. I would honestly watch six seasons and a movie of these two.
“Strange weather out there. Like a storm coming.”
The signal, but not from Reno’s expected contact. This one was a frizzy blonde, slim and pale, with hair bursting from a silver clip pushed well beyond its limits. She had a quaver in her voice and an accent – what was that, Astaria colony? Maybe Delphi IV? It couldn’t be Lanthanite, could it?
“It’s always strange,” Reno replied. She scanned the spaceport. No one obviously watching her, but that was the point of people watching her, wasn’t it? Not being obvious about it. “Wait five minutes, it’ll change.”
“Good. I like a bright, sunny day.” The correct response to the challenge phrase. Okay, whoever this woman was, she’d been in touch with Benny. Either that, or Benny was late on his monthly payment to the spaceport pigs and they’d decided to run a sting on Reno, haul her in for smuggling. Fine, they’d have to prove it first. They’d have better luck proving she was a poker cheat, but you play with pigs, you use whatever edge you can.
“We’re cleared for departure at 16:04,” Reno said. “How many crates?”
“No crates. Just this satchel. Climate-controlled so the book stays perfectly safe.” The woman patted a teardrop-shaped leather case that looked even older than she was. “Any chance we can leave sooner? This is precious cargo.”
“Not likely, but meet me in 20 minutes at Bay 16. If my buddy’s got a traffic shift, he owes me one.”
The woman saluted – actually saluted with proper military discipline. “Aye, Captain,” she said. “Be there with bells on. Well, not literally. But maybe, who knows?”
* * *
Tarrik came through, reluctantly: “There’s an Andorian freighter running behind. I can slip you in, but you have to go now, right this instant, okay? Good, NANX 2301-7, you are clear for launch. Reno, you fly safe in that rustbucket, you hear?”
“Slim, I’ll be back to beat your butt at beer pong before you know it.”
When they were well outside the spaceport, which had required a flight plan even if bore no actual resemblance to reality, Reno set a course for Silona, the passenger’s stated destination. Silona was a quiet world: few buyers, but the ones there were discerning.
Benny was always clear about destinations up front: no Neutral Zone, no Klingon territory, stay away from Federation homeworlds and stick to the outer colonies. All well within the No Ship, Sherlock’s range; all relatively safe bets for the kind of merchandise they moved, which was ideally rare books but often material that was less rare but equally challenging to transport. Reno never asked. The pigs couldn’t get you for information you genuinely didn’t have.
“You’ll need to reset the course,” the passenger said, handing over a data chip with Benny’s insignia. “It’s preapproved.”
Reno spun the chip in her hands, briefly tasted it to confirm the insignia was real. Benny had somehow acquired an overstock lot of strawberry-flavored chips, and it was the only way to be sure the passenger wasn’t trying to send her directly to some prison world. Artificial berry on her tongue. She wiped the chip clean and inserted it into the navigation system.
“Delgar City,” said the woman. “It’s on Vellat, north continent. You know it?”
“Vellat? You mean, the Klingon colony?”
“Former Klingon colony. Officially neutral now.”
“Blondie, Klingon worlds are absolute no-gos. Benny should have told you that.”
“Yes, well, Benny says lots of things. We’ve known each other forever, Benny and me. Who do you think sold him those first editions of The Tortoiseshell Tyranny? Vellat hasn’t been under Klingon control for years. It’s perfectly safe.”
“Hello, I’m the pilot. I’m the one getting blasted out of the sky by Klingon patrols who don’t take kindly to smugglers.”
“And I’d be blasted out of the sky with you. Trust me, it’ll be fine. Look, you need more latinum? I have more latinum. Just a little. Enough to sweeten the deal.” She dug into the satchel and slapped two metallic strips on the dashboard.
Blondie was surely bluffing about having only two strips of latinum, but it was a start. They could always renegotiate if the Klingons actually showed up, and Reno laid even odds that they would. But she slid the latinum into a pocket and set course to Vellat anyway.
* * *
Three hours later, two of which Blondie had spent snoring loud enough to vibrate the dusty, duct-taped metallic trim on the ship’s dash, and the third of which she’d spent decimating the snack box, she suddenly sat up straight, cocked her head as if hearing a distant whine, started drumming her fingers on her satchel.
“We have a problem,” she said.
“What kind of problem? I’m gonna need you to be more precise. Like, a ‘we’re out of BBQ chips in the snack bin’ kind of problem, or a ‘the Klingons are coming to kill us’ problem?”
“The second one.” A pause, after which a red light on Reno’s console started a fast blink. “Specifically, the second one.”
“Is that ...”
“A Klingon shuttlecraft, yes.”
“Fuck. FUCK. Okay. I’m fine. Oh, look, they’re hailing us. Which is also fine.”
“I’ve got this,” Blondie said with a confidence Reno was certain was fully unearned. “K’Teq, you old dog. It’s been a while.”
“We are past time for pleasantries, Lanthanite,” the Klingon snarled. “Return the D'k tahg of Suqua now, and perhaps I will let you keep most of your limbs.”
“What makes you think I stole it? You’ve always been surprisingly forgetful. Your mother once told me you would lose your own – well, never mind. Lovely woman. When was the last time you called her?”
“Speak not of my mother, insolent woman! For that, you lose another limb.”
“Well, if you’re going to be like that, I’m certainly not returning the d’k tahg. Which I didn’t steal. It was just lying there. How was I supposed to know it belonged to you?”
“It was on my desk. In a special case. Marked ‘Property of K’Teq.’”
“Pft. Look, we’ve got places to be. Go home, K’Teq. We’ll catch up later, yes? Yes, okay, good.” Turning to Reno: “You can end the transmission now.”
“I –” Reno began – and the ship lurched, rolled 45° clockwise, shuddered and groaned as it restabilized with a rattle of the metallic trim she’d forgotten to duct tape. Blondie, knocked to the floor, lost control of the satchel, which skidded below Reno’s chair.
“That was your warning shot,” K’Teq said. “I was merciful to even give you that, and there will not be another. Return the d’k tahg to me immediately, or you will learn exactly how outgunned you are.”
“Blondie. Hey, Blondie. Listen up,” Reno said. “We’re gonna give the nice man what he wants, or I’ll shove you in an EV suit and let you float over to his ship to figure this out on your own.”
But the woman was scrambling on the floor, cursing, reaching for the satchel, which was ... peeping? Chirping? Shit, had this lunatic snuck a bomb onto the ship?
“Blondie.”
“Fine, fine, I hear you. I need a minute. My other cargo is –”
“We don’t have a minute.”
Blondie rummaged deep inside the satchel and extracted a Klingon dagger, a ragged copy of The Flowers in the Attic Omnibus, and a damp and aggravated chick. “Dammit!” she said, and flipped open the book, hollowed out to cradle a half-dozen eggs – or what had been a half-dozen eggs, and was now in the process of becoming five more baby chickens.
Livestock. The lunatic had brought livestock aboard, livestock that was currently tripping over each other and peeping nonstop as their bodies learned how to use their new limbs, while the aforementioned lunatic was flat on the floor, waving her arms along the ratty carpet to scoop the chicks towards her. In the meantime, at least the carpet would supply the chicks’ recommended daily allowance of potato chip crumbs.
Right. Okay. This was Reno’s problem now, and if there was one thing Reno was good at, it was solving urgent and extremely stupid problems.
Spin chair, lift legs to avoid Blondie and the chicks, feet down just outside her grasp, grab dagger while pushing off to a run to the airlock. Ignore Blondie’s “No!” and “Get back here,” equally likely to be directed at the chicks. Set airlock timer to eject in ten seconds, sprint back to chair, thump the console in the exact correct spot to release the questionably legal warp signature scrambler, flick it on.
She glared at K’Teq, still glowering onscreen. “Dagger’s yours, Slick,” Reno said. “Now eat my ass.”
Full throttle. It wasn’t much, especially for a smuggler’s ship, but it was enough.
* * *
Blondie sulked for the first fifteen minutes of warp, then spent the remainder of the trip cooing over the chicks, safely tucked away in Reno’s former snack bin, jury-rigged to include the heating element formerly hidden in the chunky book. The chicks, now dry and fluffy, alternated peeping, pooping, colliding with each other, and collapsing in exhausted heaps.
The little interlopers were actually cute, much as Reno hated to admit it. But they and their chaos demon owner would be gone soon enough, and then Reno had solid plans for setting the No Ship, Sherlock on autopilot back to the spaceport and drinking the better part of the whiskey bottle accessible via a thump on a different part of the control panel. She might even still have a bag of stale pretzels stashed in that same compartment, but hell if she was going to check until Blondie and her cargo were safely on Vellat.
“All right,” Blondie said with a sigh, “I should probably apologize for sneaking the chickens onboard. My friend Della loves them. I promised I’d bring them. And Benny owed me a favor, so he cut me a big discount on the transport.”
Reno added “punch employer in the face” to her mental to-do list following “drink heavily” and “sober up, I guess.”
“What I’m trying to say is, you did good. You saved us both. And don’t think I haven’t noticed that little warp signature scrambler of yours, or the way you’re keeping this, let’s be honest, literal hunk of junk in the air.”
“You can thank me with more latinum.”
“That I don’t have. Let’s say I owe you one, okay? And a favor from me? It’s actually worth something. I’m a Lanthanite; I’ll be around for you to collect later.”
“Sure. Fine. Assuming I can find you before the Klingons put your head on a stick.”
“Aw, K’Teq’s a pussycat, really. Nothing to worry about there.” Blondie dug in the satchel again, removed ... was that yellow paper? Actual paper? She scribbled on it, then removed a small square sheet and slapped it on the console. Pelia, it read. Starfleet Academy. “Seriously, call me. Starfleet needs good engineers. And it’s a stable career – no more hustling for latinum with Benny. Bless his heart, it’s a miracle he’s not in an Orion prison by now.
“But later, yeah? We got twenty more minutes to Vellat. Just enough time for me and the girls to grab a little shuteye.”
The chicks quieted and clumped in a fuzzy heap. Pelia snored louder than the port nacelle during pre-launch checks.
Starfleet. It was laughable. On the one hand, the Federation: the squarest, most earnest, least self-aware galactic empire. On the other, long-term freedom working for Benny and any other odd job Reno could get her hands on, scraping together latinum strip by strip, skulking below the pigs’ radar ...
On the third hand, the Federation probably offered a retirement plan that didn’t involve busting rocks or eating whatever pet food her dwindling cash reserves would buy her.
Well. Maybe Blondie could make up for this trouble after all.
Reno added one last item to that mental list. See if this is still a good idea after you sober up. But it probably is.
Fandom: Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Characters/Pairing(s): Jett Reno, Pelia
Rating: All ages
Word count: 1,998
Spoilers: None
Summary: "Truth is, I used to move hard-to-find folios for a shady antiquarian archivist."
Author's notes: Written for the Accidental Baby Acquisition square on my Keep Fandom Weird bingo card. Hey, it didn't say that had to be a human baby!
Thanks to
lizbee for both the beta and the idea that Jett Reno and Pelia needed to have shenanigans together. I would honestly watch six seasons and a movie of these two.“Strange weather out there. Like a storm coming.”
The signal, but not from Reno’s expected contact. This one was a frizzy blonde, slim and pale, with hair bursting from a silver clip pushed well beyond its limits. She had a quaver in her voice and an accent – what was that, Astaria colony? Maybe Delphi IV? It couldn’t be Lanthanite, could it?
“It’s always strange,” Reno replied. She scanned the spaceport. No one obviously watching her, but that was the point of people watching her, wasn’t it? Not being obvious about it. “Wait five minutes, it’ll change.”
“Good. I like a bright, sunny day.” The correct response to the challenge phrase. Okay, whoever this woman was, she’d been in touch with Benny. Either that, or Benny was late on his monthly payment to the spaceport pigs and they’d decided to run a sting on Reno, haul her in for smuggling. Fine, they’d have to prove it first. They’d have better luck proving she was a poker cheat, but you play with pigs, you use whatever edge you can.
“We’re cleared for departure at 16:04,” Reno said. “How many crates?”
“No crates. Just this satchel. Climate-controlled so the book stays perfectly safe.” The woman patted a teardrop-shaped leather case that looked even older than she was. “Any chance we can leave sooner? This is precious cargo.”
“Not likely, but meet me in 20 minutes at Bay 16. If my buddy’s got a traffic shift, he owes me one.”
The woman saluted – actually saluted with proper military discipline. “Aye, Captain,” she said. “Be there with bells on. Well, not literally. But maybe, who knows?”
Tarrik came through, reluctantly: “There’s an Andorian freighter running behind. I can slip you in, but you have to go now, right this instant, okay? Good, NANX 2301-7, you are clear for launch. Reno, you fly safe in that rustbucket, you hear?”
“Slim, I’ll be back to beat your butt at beer pong before you know it.”
When they were well outside the spaceport, which had required a flight plan even if bore no actual resemblance to reality, Reno set a course for Silona, the passenger’s stated destination. Silona was a quiet world: few buyers, but the ones there were discerning.
Benny was always clear about destinations up front: no Neutral Zone, no Klingon territory, stay away from Federation homeworlds and stick to the outer colonies. All well within the No Ship, Sherlock’s range; all relatively safe bets for the kind of merchandise they moved, which was ideally rare books but often material that was less rare but equally challenging to transport. Reno never asked. The pigs couldn’t get you for information you genuinely didn’t have.
“You’ll need to reset the course,” the passenger said, handing over a data chip with Benny’s insignia. “It’s preapproved.”
Reno spun the chip in her hands, briefly tasted it to confirm the insignia was real. Benny had somehow acquired an overstock lot of strawberry-flavored chips, and it was the only way to be sure the passenger wasn’t trying to send her directly to some prison world. Artificial berry on her tongue. She wiped the chip clean and inserted it into the navigation system.
“Delgar City,” said the woman. “It’s on Vellat, north continent. You know it?”
“Vellat? You mean, the Klingon colony?”
“Former Klingon colony. Officially neutral now.”
“Blondie, Klingon worlds are absolute no-gos. Benny should have told you that.”
“Yes, well, Benny says lots of things. We’ve known each other forever, Benny and me. Who do you think sold him those first editions of The Tortoiseshell Tyranny? Vellat hasn’t been under Klingon control for years. It’s perfectly safe.”
“Hello, I’m the pilot. I’m the one getting blasted out of the sky by Klingon patrols who don’t take kindly to smugglers.”
“And I’d be blasted out of the sky with you. Trust me, it’ll be fine. Look, you need more latinum? I have more latinum. Just a little. Enough to sweeten the deal.” She dug into the satchel and slapped two metallic strips on the dashboard.
Blondie was surely bluffing about having only two strips of latinum, but it was a start. They could always renegotiate if the Klingons actually showed up, and Reno laid even odds that they would. But she slid the latinum into a pocket and set course to Vellat anyway.
Three hours later, two of which Blondie had spent snoring loud enough to vibrate the dusty, duct-taped metallic trim on the ship’s dash, and the third of which she’d spent decimating the snack box, she suddenly sat up straight, cocked her head as if hearing a distant whine, started drumming her fingers on her satchel.
“We have a problem,” she said.
“What kind of problem? I’m gonna need you to be more precise. Like, a ‘we’re out of BBQ chips in the snack bin’ kind of problem, or a ‘the Klingons are coming to kill us’ problem?”
“The second one.” A pause, after which a red light on Reno’s console started a fast blink. “Specifically, the second one.”
“Is that ...”
“A Klingon shuttlecraft, yes.”
“Fuck. FUCK. Okay. I’m fine. Oh, look, they’re hailing us. Which is also fine.”
“I’ve got this,” Blondie said with a confidence Reno was certain was fully unearned. “K’Teq, you old dog. It’s been a while.”
“We are past time for pleasantries, Lanthanite,” the Klingon snarled. “Return the D'k tahg of Suqua now, and perhaps I will let you keep most of your limbs.”
“What makes you think I stole it? You’ve always been surprisingly forgetful. Your mother once told me you would lose your own – well, never mind. Lovely woman. When was the last time you called her?”
“Speak not of my mother, insolent woman! For that, you lose another limb.”
“Well, if you’re going to be like that, I’m certainly not returning the d’k tahg. Which I didn’t steal. It was just lying there. How was I supposed to know it belonged to you?”
“It was on my desk. In a special case. Marked ‘Property of K’Teq.’”
“Pft. Look, we’ve got places to be. Go home, K’Teq. We’ll catch up later, yes? Yes, okay, good.” Turning to Reno: “You can end the transmission now.”
“I –” Reno began – and the ship lurched, rolled 45° clockwise, shuddered and groaned as it restabilized with a rattle of the metallic trim she’d forgotten to duct tape. Blondie, knocked to the floor, lost control of the satchel, which skidded below Reno’s chair.
“That was your warning shot,” K’Teq said. “I was merciful to even give you that, and there will not be another. Return the d’k tahg to me immediately, or you will learn exactly how outgunned you are.”
“Blondie. Hey, Blondie. Listen up,” Reno said. “We’re gonna give the nice man what he wants, or I’ll shove you in an EV suit and let you float over to his ship to figure this out on your own.”
But the woman was scrambling on the floor, cursing, reaching for the satchel, which was ... peeping? Chirping? Shit, had this lunatic snuck a bomb onto the ship?
“Blondie.”
“Fine, fine, I hear you. I need a minute. My other cargo is –”
“We don’t have a minute.”
Blondie rummaged deep inside the satchel and extracted a Klingon dagger, a ragged copy of The Flowers in the Attic Omnibus, and a damp and aggravated chick. “Dammit!” she said, and flipped open the book, hollowed out to cradle a half-dozen eggs – or what had been a half-dozen eggs, and was now in the process of becoming five more baby chickens.
Livestock. The lunatic had brought livestock aboard, livestock that was currently tripping over each other and peeping nonstop as their bodies learned how to use their new limbs, while the aforementioned lunatic was flat on the floor, waving her arms along the ratty carpet to scoop the chicks towards her. In the meantime, at least the carpet would supply the chicks’ recommended daily allowance of potato chip crumbs.
Right. Okay. This was Reno’s problem now, and if there was one thing Reno was good at, it was solving urgent and extremely stupid problems.
Spin chair, lift legs to avoid Blondie and the chicks, feet down just outside her grasp, grab dagger while pushing off to a run to the airlock. Ignore Blondie’s “No!” and “Get back here,” equally likely to be directed at the chicks. Set airlock timer to eject in ten seconds, sprint back to chair, thump the console in the exact correct spot to release the questionably legal warp signature scrambler, flick it on.
She glared at K’Teq, still glowering onscreen. “Dagger’s yours, Slick,” Reno said. “Now eat my ass.”
Full throttle. It wasn’t much, especially for a smuggler’s ship, but it was enough.
Blondie sulked for the first fifteen minutes of warp, then spent the remainder of the trip cooing over the chicks, safely tucked away in Reno’s former snack bin, jury-rigged to include the heating element formerly hidden in the chunky book. The chicks, now dry and fluffy, alternated peeping, pooping, colliding with each other, and collapsing in exhausted heaps.
The little interlopers were actually cute, much as Reno hated to admit it. But they and their chaos demon owner would be gone soon enough, and then Reno had solid plans for setting the No Ship, Sherlock on autopilot back to the spaceport and drinking the better part of the whiskey bottle accessible via a thump on a different part of the control panel. She might even still have a bag of stale pretzels stashed in that same compartment, but hell if she was going to check until Blondie and her cargo were safely on Vellat.
“All right,” Blondie said with a sigh, “I should probably apologize for sneaking the chickens onboard. My friend Della loves them. I promised I’d bring them. And Benny owed me a favor, so he cut me a big discount on the transport.”
Reno added “punch employer in the face” to her mental to-do list following “drink heavily” and “sober up, I guess.”
“What I’m trying to say is, you did good. You saved us both. And don’t think I haven’t noticed that little warp signature scrambler of yours, or the way you’re keeping this, let’s be honest, literal hunk of junk in the air.”
“You can thank me with more latinum.”
“That I don’t have. Let’s say I owe you one, okay? And a favor from me? It’s actually worth something. I’m a Lanthanite; I’ll be around for you to collect later.”
“Sure. Fine. Assuming I can find you before the Klingons put your head on a stick.”
“Aw, K’Teq’s a pussycat, really. Nothing to worry about there.” Blondie dug in the satchel again, removed ... was that yellow paper? Actual paper? She scribbled on it, then removed a small square sheet and slapped it on the console. Pelia, it read. Starfleet Academy. “Seriously, call me. Starfleet needs good engineers. And it’s a stable career – no more hustling for latinum with Benny. Bless his heart, it’s a miracle he’s not in an Orion prison by now.
“But later, yeah? We got twenty more minutes to Vellat. Just enough time for me and the girls to grab a little shuteye.”
The chicks quieted and clumped in a fuzzy heap. Pelia snored louder than the port nacelle during pre-launch checks.
Starfleet. It was laughable. On the one hand, the Federation: the squarest, most earnest, least self-aware galactic empire. On the other, long-term freedom working for Benny and any other odd job Reno could get her hands on, scraping together latinum strip by strip, skulking below the pigs’ radar ...
On the third hand, the Federation probably offered a retirement plan that didn’t involve busting rocks or eating whatever pet food her dwindling cash reserves would buy her.
Well. Maybe Blondie could make up for this trouble after all.
Reno added one last item to that mental list. See if this is still a good idea after you sober up. But it probably is.