Non-Stop

Posted on Jun 03, 2016 @ 10:13pm by Lieutenant James Barton
Edited on on Jun 03, 2016 @ 10:13pm

Mission: Fortress: Earth

“Non-Stop”

(Continued from ' The Scientific Process')


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“Louis, this looks like...”

-Humphrey Bogart (Rick), “Casablanca”


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“Are you absolutely SURE that all your genetic tinkering didn't give you some kind of super bouncing ability? I mean, have you ever tested?”


It was the middle of ship's night aboard the PHOENIX, and her Chief of Engineering was entering his twenty-third hour of wakefulness, and was finishing his thirteenth cup of coffee. Crichton had dismissed Maynell a few hours ago with strict orders to not pass out before he got to his quarters. Crichton had fully intended to follow him after double-checking just one more set of calculations, but had somehow never managed to make it out of engineering, where they'd moved after it had become apparent that they couldn't be away from their core duties long enough to solve the problem. He didn't know if it was being so close to Earth, or maybe just feeling like he was close to the end of this Neo-Essentialist nightmare, but he was gripped with a need to work that bordered on maniacal, and that had been even before Kane had dropped by Engineering with Jake's own suicide mission. Crichton had demanded of himself that he focus on one problem at a time, and he didn't mind dealing with the one that didn't end with a tough conversation with Dahlia, but that hadn't kept him from getting punchy. After all, he felt like he'd doused his candle in midnight oil before taking a blowtorch to both ends.


“I've fallen several times since it happened, so, yeah...” Barton had stayed at first with some grousing about supervising so that Barton and Maynell wouldn't wind up killing him, then progressed to brainstorming along, drawing on his brief time as Chief Engineer of the Farragut. He'd felt wildly outclassed at first, though if the two engineers felt the same they had the class not to show it. However, when everything the professionals tried wound up killing his simulated avatar just as dead as his own ideas, his trepidation had vanished. Finally, he'd run out of ideas himself and had simply...stayed, keeping an unspoken vigil with the other officer.


Jake looked up from the numbers he'd been crunching. “Maybe those times you just didn't fall from high enough for them to kick in.” He started inputting commands into his console. “I want to try the dual transport again.”


Barton nodded and shifted to look at where the simulation would run. “Not high enough. Hmm. No, I feel pretty sure.”


The holographic display showed Barton entering the atmosphere before vanishing in the familiar blue wake of the transporter, then reappearing, then disappearing a moment later. The moment stretched, and the simulacrum Barton didn't reappear.


Jake sighed, and turned to the larger man. “But not absolutely?”


Barton leveled a cold stare at him. “I'm absolutely sure that I don't have super bouncing abilities.”


Crichton nodded, and managed a smile, but it didn't reach his tired eyes. “That's too bad. Because that would make this whole thing a lot easier.”


“Easier, or possible? Because I'm still willing to go talk to Kane-” Jim Barton was already half on his feet.


Jake stopped him with a raised hand. “Oh, it's definitely possible. There's no question in my mind about that. It's just a matter of addressing the variables. We can deal with the heat by increasing the shielding, we can deal with the maneuvering issues by giving you stronger thrusters,” he stepped away from his console and began to prowl like a caged animal, holding up a finger for each fatal issue he could name. He could hear the frustration rising in his voice but found himself unable to tamp it down or even to silence himself. “We can give you redundant chutes to make up for the fact that no one's ever designed a single one that's proven reliable at standing up to the speed and atmospheric conditions you'll be in...and then all we have to do to keep from your velocity firing you into the ground like a bullet is to take all that stuff away! Damn it!” He couldn't stop his voice from evolving into a shout, and before he knew that he was going to do it, he reached out and slapped a pile of PADDs off of the table and across the room. The late shift crew pretended not to notice.


A long moment passed before Jim spoke. “You okay, Crichton?”


“I'm fine,” Jake huffed, both embarrassed and embarrassed about how little he was embarrassed. “I'm...I'm fine.”


Barton's own tone was level, not conciliatory, but also not unkind. “I just ask because I kind of feel like the explosion of temper is sort of my gimmick.”


Some part of Jake appreciated the attempt at humor, but it wasn't enough to break his numb shell of exhaustion. He decided it was time to name the elephant in the room. “I don't know if I can do it, Jim. I feel like it's got to be staring me in the face, but I don't see it.” He'd gone from a shout to a whisper, but there was still an uncharacteristic desperation in his eyes.


“You're tired. If you get some rest-”


“Then we lose another night, Edgerton burrows in deeper, and I'll come back in the morning to be in exactly the same place,” Jake cut in. He sliced his open hand through the air in dismissal. “No. A nap's not the solution.”


Barton spread his hands, realizing that Jake was thinking out loud. “So, what is?”


“I need some help.” The ego that Jake tried so hard to pretend he didn't have cringed at the admission.


The Security Chief looked over each of his shoulders at people who weren't there, then gestured to himself with a faux-hurt scowl and a shrug. “No, no offense taken.”


Crichton waved him off. “You know what I mean.”


Jim nodded. “Maynell will be back on shift in two hours, and he'll be rested. I'm sure you'll figure it out.”


“I'm not. You, me, Maynell...we've been at this for a day and we're not getting anywhere. I need someone with a different approach.” With a start, Jake realized that he'd been keeping the secret of who he wanted assistance from from himself, and immediately he knew why. It was obvious, but the idea repulsed him nonetheless.


“You okay? You've gone a little green around the gills.”


Jake knew his next statement would be received enthusiastically. “I think we should run the numbers past Varn.”


Barton's eyes flashed cold fire, but he forced himself to mimic the same good humor of a moment earlier. His success was limited. “Well, I wouldn't have a problem with that idea, except Varn's dead, so that makes it tough.”


Jake prepared to lay out his case. “I'm not saying-”


“No.”


“I'm not saying I love the idea. Varn's got another assignment, on top of everything-”


Jim's voice dropped to the menacing growl that Jake was more familiar with, and there was no room to interpret what he said as a request. “Stop calling it, 'Varn.'”


Again, Jake waved him off and began to pace. “Hear me out. Whether or not he's actually Thomas Varn, if he's got even a little bit of Varn's mind then that makes him a brilliant, unconventional problem-solver. It'd be stupid to refuse to utilize that just because we don't know where he came from.”


“Is that right?” To describe Barton as looking unconvinced would be generous.


“Don't you think? I mean, look at where we are. Climactic showdown, Earth held in the grip of a suicidal madman. Pretty much the definition of 'desperate circumstances,' if I've ever seen it and I wasn't exactly stationed on Risa during the Second Dominion War, y'know? If there's a job we need done, and we have a tool that can do it, what does it matter where that tool came from?” He turned back to Barton, who was giving him an inscrutable stare.


“Go on,”


“Plus, it's not like he's the only person aboard with an awkward 'so-how-did-you-get-here' story. Kane's got Byss in his logbook, Kass has got Barbarosa.”


Barton didn't sit straighter, instead his slouch seemed to cement, though the effect was no less nakedly hostile. “And I've got Vulcan, is that it?”


Jake reddened, but pressed on. “No. Well...yes. That's not what I was driving at, but you're not wrong, either. We've got blood on our hands. And I mean even me. I stood by while we fired on the DISCOVERY and killed everyone aboard. Sure, the ship was infested with Neo-Essentialists, but most of the people aboard were loyal officers who would've been the first to stand with us against Edgerton here, and that's something I feel we'll all have to answer for someday. Or at least we should.”


“Maybe,” Barton said with every ounce of ambivalence the word could bear.


But Jake was on a roll now. The words were pouring from him and he suspected he couldn't stop them if he tried, which he didn't. “And, you know what the difference is? We all chose to do those things. Sure, maybe we didn't like the choices, but we made them. Thomas didn't make any choice but one. He threw himself into a dangerous situation to save the woman he loved and his unborn child, got himself roasted alive by something that probably wasn't even aware he *existed,* and, far as he can tell, the next moment he's waking up in a vat in the middle of that nightmare.” Jake felt his heart break a little, and not for the first time, for his brilliant, troubled friend. “It's been nothing but posted guards and locked doors for him since. He didn't ask Conniston to make him his twisted show-and-tell trophy. In fact, I'll bet you every strip of latinum on Ferengenar that if you'd said, 'Hey Thomas, whatdoya say you violate every law of physics and metaphysics? Just one quick dip in this here abomination and you can make sure that the friends and colleagues who've served beside you for years instantly hate and fear you,' he'd have told you where you could stick that idea. I know you didn't know him, but I did, and trust me when I tell you that Thomas had already had it rough enough. If anyone ever has, that guy *earned* his rest and it's damned unfair what's happened to him since.”


Barton was unmoved. “And yet...”


Jim frowned. “'And yet,' what?”


“And yet, you're still not reaching for your communicator, are you, Jake? Those are some good points, and you make them pretty well. I imagine you've been thinking about this for awhile, haven't you?”


Jake's response came both too quickly, too quietly, and too nakedly vulnerable for his own taste. “Yes.”


“But you haven't called him yet, and you're not calling him now. Have you been to see him since we got back?” Barton paused, allowing Jake to answer, but Crichton didn't take the opportunity. “I didn't think so. Why not?”


“I don't know.”


Jim wasn't having it. “Sure you do.”


“I've been busy.” Crichton, exhausted as he was, tried to scan back over the last minute of conversation to identify at what point this whole thing had been turned around on him, but he couldn't see it. He could hear how off-balance he sounded, and he hated it.


Barton sounded gallingly sure of his own stance, however. “That's not it.”


Abandoning the goal of explanation, Jake found himself fumbling instead for extrication. “We should get back to work.”


“Say it, Jake.”


“I don't know what you're getting at.”


Barton's eyes gazed at him sadly, but the larger man's voice remained gently insistent, like a steel rod wrapped in velvet. “Yes, you do. Say it. You'll feel bad, at first, but it'll feel better after you let yourself admit it.”


“Admit what?” He tried not to admit to himself how appealing the prospect of shedding some of the weight of his guilt was.


“The 'But' to all of your points. He's a great problem-solver, BUT... He didn't choose any of this, BUT... It's not fair what happened to him, BUT...”


Jake threw up his hands in frustration. “You've obviously got something you want me to say. Why don't you just do it yourself and save us the time.” He turned and began to pace away.


Suddenly, Barton was on his feet and stalking after him. “Because I'm done being the bad guy for being willing to admit what most of us are thinking. I'm willing to come right out and say that I don't trust that thing calling itself Thomas Varn. I want you to admit it, too.”


Willing to compromise if it ended this damning conversation, Jake answered. “I've got my reservations.”


“No. You don't trust it.” Jim Barton was having no compromise.


“I-”


Abandoning even a pretense of decorum, Barton shouted at the superior officer. “Say it!”


A door that he was trying to keep shut cracked open within Jake Crichton. “Fine! I don't trust him! Is that what you're looking for?”


“Why not?”


“BECAUSE I WATCHED WHAT HAPPENED TO SAM PERRY!” He felt the door within him burst open, and a host of humiliating, shameful sentiments that Crichton desperately wanted to deny having filed in to introduce themselves. “I looked in her eyes and she...she was so afraid. She didn't know what was happening to her, but you could see that she...she knew what it meant. And I could also tell that it hurt. I don't think I've ever seen someone so afraid or in so much pain.”


Jim answered softly. “Not even on Risa during the Dominion War?”


Jake frowned at him for just a moment, then began to chuckle, though there was little humor in the sound. “No. Not even then.” He paused, waiting to see if he was going to vomit up more concern or contempt for the resurrected Thomas Varn, but none came. He wouldn't admit it to Barton, but he did already feel a little better. Just a little. “So that's it...that's why I haven't been to see my friend. Maybe I'm the monster, but I just can't believe that something clean comes out of something so ugly.”


“He said it aboard the Lament. He said it over and over again, and one thing I learned in all those years on LIMBO, when someone bothers to show you who they really are, you believe them. He said it. 'I'm not me.' And he's not.”


“How can you be so sure?”


Barton spread his hands. “Maybe for you, it's all about Sam Perry. I get that. I wouldn't want to have seen what you saw. But, see, for me, it's even simpler than all of that. Varn died. Dead things stay dead, and no amount of wishing otherwise can change that. And that's not even taking into account that it was Conniston who supposedly put Humpty back together again, and anything with that psycho's fingerprints on it is gonna be nothing but trouble.”


Jake paused. He knew that no one had told Barton what Conniston had told them deep in the bowels of Lavenza: that the insane doctor had been one of the architects of the once new and genetically-improved James Barton. At first, there were more pressing concerns. Then, it was hard to find the words to broach the subject, and finally enough days had passed that there would be a question about why he'd waited so long, a question he just wasn't ready to have to defend himself against. So he silently apologized again and continued to not say anything.


“Still...I could use the help. I could double check any numbers he comes-”


Barton held up his hand. “Point blank, Jake: I'm not trying to be a dick, but either Varn's on this project or I am, but it's not going to be both. Pull your rank until it snaps, but I don't trust him not to turn me into some kind of tool or weapon to hurt others and I won't run the risk. I'll take that seat in the brig before I take that chance.”


Jake frowned at him, and considered calling his bluff, but thought better of it. He told himself that he was doing so because this wasn't a hill he was willing to die on, and not because part of him thought Barton was right. “Doesn't change the fact that we're stalemated here.”


For several long moments, they mused in near silence, the only accompanying sound being the low and steady thrum of the warp engine.


“Why haven't you asked Byte,” Barton offered, after minutes had passed.


“Eh?”


“I said, 'why haven't you asked Byte?' To help?”


That particular can of worms, while undeniably open, was one that Jake was happy to avoid contemplating for the moment. “It hadn't occurred to me, I guess,” he said, hoping that accuracy would do in place of honesty.


Barton's eyes narrowed, almost imperceptibly. “I'm sure he'd be willing to lend a hand. For a construct with no emotions, he sure seems eager to please.”


“He's got bridge duties.” *Jesus,* Jake thought, *did that sound as weak to him as it did to me?*


Evidently, it did. “So do you, Mr. Second Officer, and yet, here we are. What's going on?”


“I don't know what you mean.”


“Jake, I'm not exactly new at this. I know what it looks like when someone's not telling me the truth. You're holding onto something. What's your problem with the android? You catch him getting diddling the warp core?”


“No, it's not like that.” Inwardly, Jake cringed as he realized he had just confirmed Barton's suspicions. He had to admit, Barton had a knack for eliciting unwilling confessions.


Like rotating the handle on a vise, Jim steadily increased the pressure on the Chief Engineer. “So, what's it like?”


Jake switched tactics, abandoning denial and giving obfuscation a shot. “I just...have some concerns. It's been a long time since he's had a proper diagnostic done by someone who knows his systems.”


Jim didn't look convinced. “Has he been...what would you call it...malfunctioning?”


“I don't know.”


“Have you talked to Kane about it?”


Jake felt a chill run down his spine and the lie was already across his lips before he knew it was coming. “No.”


“Don't you think you should?”


“No.”


“So,” Barton began, in a conversational tone that didn't soften the harsh, appraising stare in his eyes, “Byte hasn't been malfunctioning or acting strangely, but you're worried that he might. Not worried enough to talk to Kane about the possibility that one of his bridge crew is compromised, not worried enough to mention it even though Byte's hip-deep in the efforts to get past that doomsday shield out there, but worried enough that you're not willing to bring him in on this project and worried enough that you turn white when the subject of talking to Kane about it comes up.”


“Let it go, Jim.”


“Yeah...no. I don't know if you're just tired or if your poker face is actually this worthless, but either way, I'm not buying it. We've moved past 'just chatting,' and now we're squarely into 'you've got me wondering about the security of this ship' territory, and I may not have your rank...but I am still the Chief of Security on this bird, and if there's something threatening this crew, I'm fully within my rights to compel answers from anyone I need to in order to keep this crew safe. In case I'm not being clear, this is me compelling you, Commander. So we can either gossip friendly-like, or I can call the Captain and Byte and we can make this something a little more official.”


“You know, you don't have to be such an asshole.”


“Yes, I-”


“No, you don't. You really, really don't, Jim.” Crichton had reached his limit. “It's just unnecessary. Yes, I've got some things I'd like to work out regarding Byte, and honestly, I wouldn't mind some help, but unless you can knock off this self-righteous 'I'm the guy keeping everybody safe,' routine, I'd rather go without. Hell, man, you act like you're Kane's silent jury, you're crawling up Kass' ass every time I turn around, and now you're gonna pull this on me? Have you forgotten that we were here, doing our jobs and keeping this ship running, before you blindly wandered in here?”


“I'm sorry.”


“You get on me for-” Crichton had thought himself prepared for every defense or deflection that Barton would try, so *of course* the big, hairy ape would have to go in a different direction. Jake blinked twice. “I'm sorry, what?”


Jim Barton sighed deeply and seemed to deflate. When he looked up at Jake, his eyes looked both younger and older, as well as so...sad. “You're right. That was...a dick move. I've made a lot of those. I keep making them.”


Jake smelled a trap. “Did you just say you're-”


Jim nodded. “I'm sorry.”


There was a long moment of near-silence in Engineering. “Holy shit.”


Barton's eyes cleared, and narrowed. “You can knock it off now.”


Crichton felt his face split into a wide, not-exactly-kind grin. “Kass is gonna be so pissed when she hears that I got the apology instead of her”


If a person didn't know Kassandra Thytos, they could be forgiven for thinking that the terror that crossed the Chief of Security's face was comical. “Come on, please don't. You can't tell her.”


Now it was Jake's turn to shake his head sadly. “Oh, I have to, Jim. You know I have to. Would it help if I promise not to enjoy it as much as I'm gonna make it look like I am when I tell her?”


Barton's shoulders slumped in defeat. “Not really. She's gonna kill me anyway.”


“Okay. Well, good. Because I really am going to enjoy it a lot.”


Jim looked up with a desperate hope on his face. “I take it ba-”


Jake held up a warning finger, cutting him off. “Don't even try it, Haystacks. That apology is mine. That's my apology.”


“Fine. You ugly prick. Fine. I paid for it now. So either you tell me what's up with the tin man, or I am going to, and I'm not going to exaggerate at all here, start punching you and I won't stop punching you until you are dead. Fair?”


Jake shrugged and nodded. “Fair. So, a few days ago, Byte comes into Engineering looking for me. Says he's got a problem with his memory functions. There's a single database he can't access, and he says he doesn't have any clue why. Wasn't there before, no reason he can give for it being there now.”


Barton frowned. “That's a little...spooky.”


“That's what I thought,” Crichton agreed. “So, I opened him up and went looking. I spent more than two hours digging around in his brain and didn't find anything wrong. No carbonization, no pathway degradation, not a loose plug anywhere.”


“So it's not a mechanical issue, then. Programming?”


His suspicions seconded, Jake began to grow animated. “That's what it has to be, right? So, now I'm getting nervous. Byte was one of Edgerton's transfers back when this whole thing got started. I can't help but wonder, and I can clearly see how paranoid this is, but I can't help but wonder if Byte's some kind of sleeper.” Having said it out loud, Jake found himself feeling an odd mixture of embarrassment and justification. He searched Barton's face for a response.


The Security Chief's response was almost exactly what Jake expected. The big guy's sense of righteous indignation was becoming overly predictable. “Why didn't you come to me with this?”


“Because I went over your head. When I said I hadn't talked to the captain before, that was...sort of...I went with Byte and we took it straight to Kane.”


Barton opened his mouth to respond, then nodded in concession. “And what did he have to say about it?”


Remembering, Jake frowned. “That's the damnedest part.” He shook his head and corrected himself. “No, scratch that. Second damnedest. He shrugged it off.”


He was gratified by the surprise on Barton's face. “Shrugged it off?”


“Completely disregarded it. Acted like he couldn't have cared less...right up to the moment when he ordered me out of the room...and ordered Byte to stay behind with him.”


“You left them alone?”


“No one else was in the room where it happened.”


Barton scowled. “That's...troubling. So what's the damnedest part?”


“The next day, I report for my shift on the bridge and Byte's there at his post. I pull him aside and I tell him I want to know what's going on. First, he tries to play it off like he didn't even know what I was talking about. Then, when that doesn't work, he tells me that he's solved the problem. Radiation damage to his pathways after what happened in Hyperion.”


“I thought you said there wasn't-”


Jake shook his head once, definitively. “There wasn't.”


Jim took a breath, weighing what Jake was saying. “How sure are you?”


The question was nakedly loaded, but Crichton took no offense. “Jim, no BS, I'm pretty good at this whole 'engineering' thing. I admit, I'm having a hell of a time essentially designing a parachute right now, but usually...pretty good. I know machines, and like I said, I was elbow deep in his thinkbox for hours. Add in that the entire time, I'm terrified I'm going to snap the wrong connection and he's going to die in front of me, so believe me when I tell you that I was paying some seriously close attention.” Barton nodded in agreement. “It wasn't there,” Jake concluded flatly.


“So, where does that leave us,” Barton asked, though the answer was painfully apparent.


“It leaves us with I'd rather not have Byte wandering around here. I don't trust i- him.”


Jim's eyes cut to Jake. “I caught that.”


The engineer looked chagrined, then sad. “You know, three days ago, I didn't have the slightest difficulty thinking of Byte as a person. Even when I pulled off the top of his skull and he walked me through accessing his brain...not the slightest difficulty. Now... Well, now he's...”


“A tool.”


Jake cut his eyes at the other man, and wondered just for a moment, why he didn't seem to feel the same shame that Jake did. He nodded. “And I don't know for who.”


Barton was incredulous. “What do you mean you don't know for who? It's Kane. You don't have to be a detective to solve this one, Crichton. The question we need to get an answer for is: what is he up to?”


“No.” The statement fell like a stone gavel and reverberated silently through the room.


“What?”


“I'm not digging for that answer.”


Barton's jaw dropped. “Why?”


Jake swallowed. “Because I...trust Kane.”


Barton crossed towards him. “Do you hear yourself? You can see this situation is messed up, and you're worried about Byte, but somehow Kane gets a free pass when you know he's the one who's giving the orders? How does that work?”


Jake set his jaw and looked the larger man squarely in his eye. “It works because I say it does. It works because it has to, because I need it to.”


Jim shook his head. “That's insane.”


Crichton nodded, he saw where the other man was coming from. “Jim, I don't know if I can make you understand. This thing with the Neo-Essentialists, this has been going on for years now. Years of this. Years of secrets, betrayals, running. They essentially wrote the Federation out of existence. We've been- I've been fighting this fight so long and there were times...lots of times, frankly...when I didn't think we'd ever be able to put things right again. But we're here now. The Earth is right out there,” he pointed at the bulkhead, “and if we can just figure out a way around that damn shield, we can finally end this fight. Not just end it – win it, and I mean in more than the military sense. We are this close to showing them exactly what a *United* Federation of Planets is capable of. And we got here because of Kane. I'm not blind and I'm not stupid – I see the mistakes that he's made, and I know there's blood on his hands – but the facts are still the facts: we should never have made it this far, but we did and a big part of the reason for that is Michael Kane.”


“Hell, even I won't try to argue that point, but-”


“No. No 'buts.' Not now. Maybe there'll be a time for that later, but for right now, I trust Kane. I trust him because I have actively *decided* that I will trust him, because that's what keeps my legs under me right now. If I lose that now, if I have to base my faith on how above board or forthcoming Kane is, then I'm going to fall apart. So instead, I trust that whatever the hell he's up to, Kane's got his eye on the greater good.”


“And Byte?”


Jake made a deliberate shrug. “Byte's not Kane.”


“No, he's not. You're worried about the knife and blindly putting your faith in the guy holding it. Yesterday, you catch him lying to you. Today, you fight to trust him. Have you thought about what you'll do tomorrow, Jake?”


“Probably whatever I need when the time comes, Jim. I...” He trailed off. *Noooooo...* Was that it? It couldn't be that simple, but... He whipped around and snapped back to his console.


Barton stood stunned, looking around for explanation from no one. “What?”


Jake was inputting commands into his console and reading the output with wild-eyed excitement. “Whatever I need...when I need it...”


“Jake,”


“Get Maynell,” Crichton said without turning around.


“He's still got a couple of hours.”


Jake looked up for just a moment. “Wake him up. I know how we're gonna get you to Earth.” Barton paused, searching his face, then turned toward the door. “And get me some coffee, would you? We're going to be at this for awhile.”


=[/\]=


NRPG: I'll get started on Barton's goodbyes and then his suicidal leap to his doom.

SHAWN – Thanks for the guidance along the way. Hope Jake came off okay.


=[/\]=


Dale I, Rasmussen

~writing for~

Lt. James Prophecy Barton

Sec/Tac USS PHOENIX