Chapter Text
The shuttlecraft shuddered as they entered the atmosphere, Cangse Sanren turning to read the monitor, making a few small adjustments to their trajectory and easing them into a flight path that would allow them to approach in a descending spiral orbit, dropping slowly towards the planet below.
“Approaching planet’s surface, estimated landing in 40 minutes,” she announced, twisting in her seat to smile back at Wei Changze where he was busy running a final check on the latches in preparation for atmospheric turbulence. “Are you ready to go exploring, Zhangfu?”
Wei Changze finished his check, tightening one final strap over their supply crate, then walked toward her, dropping a kiss to her forehead before taking his seat in the co-pilot’s chair. “Buckle in,” he said, moving his own straps into place over his chest.
“Worrywart,” Cangse Sanren teased, poking her tongue out at him, but doing as instructed.
Excitement churned through her, like the convective heat of a low M-class star. They were finally doing it; she and Changze were finally doing it. They were going to explore an unknown planet and observe an alien race. It was the sort of adventure she yearned for, and that Sanren had desired across many lifetimes.
It was what had made Cangse and Sanren such a good match: their twin desires for exploration and adventure. When Liu Cangse first met Baoshan Sanren, she felt certain that she and the symbiont Sanren were destined for each other. Baoshan Sanren had looked at her, and where others saw risk and danger, she saw opportunity. “They’ll try to tether you,” she’d warned Liu Cangse in that first meeting. “The council doesn’t approve of risky hosts.”
But Liu Cangse had only tilted her chin up in defiance, and said, with the confidence of a teenager who saw the world around her and felt that she understood it to its core, “Let them try. I won’t let them.”
She had expected derision or disappointment. It was the response she was used to. All her short life she had been met with doubt. But Baoshan Sanren had smiled at her, wide and glittering, and instead had said, “Good.”
It was a struggle to get approved as a host. Time and again they attempted to disqualify her for “poor temperament,” but Baoshan Sanren spoke on her behalf and, in the end, they couldn’t deny a symbiont’s desires.
On Liu Cangse’s 20th birthday, Baoshan Sanren reached across the void between their operating tables, taking Liu Cangse’s hand in her thin, nobbly one, and, in a voice like dust, whispered, “Thank you for being brave.”
It was the last thing Liu Cangse remembered.
When she awoke, she was Cangse Sanren.
A week after Liu Cangse’s 20th birthday, a week after Cangse Sanren entered the world, she enlisted in Starfleet.
Which was what brought her here: to the edge of the beta quadrant, the lead science officer of the USS Raven, one of only a small handful of joined Trill to ever enlist in Starfleet, and certainly the only of her kind to make it this deep into space. It was thrilling, and memories of past lives, lives that both were and were not her own, flickered through her mind in a slow trek forward towards adventure.
The shuttle jolted around them, and Wei Changze’s hand shot out to grasp her fingers, clutching at her a little. Cangse Sanren laughed and squeezed back. “Really, Zhangfu! How can you be a member of the security team and be such a baby?”
“Because I know how to shoot a phaser,” Wei Changze answered easily, despite how tightly he was gripping her hand, “but I hate flying.”
Cangse Sanren didn’t have the heart to tease him further—after all, it was her fault they had to take the shuttlecraft instead of just beaming down. So she held his hand, keeping a firm grip on it even after he tried to pull away, returning his small, grateful smile with one of her own.
The craft lurched again as they entered the high band of clouds that encapsulated the majority of the planet. Cangse Sanren checked the command panel readings and confirmed that the cloud was composed primarily of water vapor, as they had expected. That was good. The cloud had been thick enough that it had been challenging to get a good read on the planet from orbit. They’d sent a few probes down, of course, but she’d heard enough stories back at the Academy to know better than to explicitly trust anything she wasn’t seeing with her own eyes. And even that was far from foolproof.
“Qin ai de,” Wei Changze said, drawing her attention up as the viewing screen pulled back and revealed the windshield beneath it. “Look.”
Rivulets of water streaked across the glass as they sliced through the cloud layer at high speed. One moment there was nothing but white. Then, they burst through and a whole world opened beneath them.
Cangse Sanren gasped. The clouds were thick, but the light of the star was bright enough to shine through them. Below was a tableau of blues and greens, a world made almost entirely of water, so crystalline and clear that she could make out the peaks and valleys beneath the surface. Entire mountain ranges, fields of emerald water plants, deep, almost black pockets where the ocean floor was too deep for light to reach.
As they dropped closer, she could make out the slivers of land; small islands, with orange tipped mountains and high plateaus that crested over the level surface of the water.
The water itself was almost eerily still. There was no moon here to pull the oceans into tides, no large land masses to whip up wind and waves. There was only a gentle breeze lapping across the surface of the planet as it rotated, the sun licking warmth over its face as it spun.
“We’ve cleared the cloud layer,” Cangse Sanren reported, speaking into her communicator as she took in the view. “Continuing our descent. On trajectory to land at 18°54'55.2"N 70°51'32.0"W. Contact with surface estimated in 22 minutes.”
The shuttlecraft shuddered again, this time shaking hard enough that Cangse Sanren nearly dropped her communicator. Then, another lurch, this time accompanied by a loud creak. “What was that?” Wei Changze asked as Cangse Sanren frowned and tried to make sense of the sensor output.
“I’m not sure,” she answered, as the shuttlecraft suddenly plummeted a few hundred feet before stabilizing again only to bank hard to the right. “Something’s wrong with the thrusters. I need to check—”
“Cangse, don’t—!” Wei Changze grabbed at her as she reached for her harness, but before she could unbuckle the craft began to tremor, violently enough that her hands slipped over her harness, unable to grip the clasp.
Shit, Cangse thought, as the shuttle went dark, and her stomach swept upward into her throat.
They were freefalling.
“Shit!” she said again, aloud this time, jabbing at the dead panel in front of her in a desperate attempt to pull up the auxiliary controls. Then, when that failed, she tried to take over the controls manually.
It was no use.
“Mayday, mayday!” she shouted into her communicator, brain flipping through every emergency protocol and dismissing it almost immediately as useless. “Requesting emergency transport! We’re going down! I repeat, we’re going down!” But there was no response. In horror, she looked at the communicator in her hand. It, like the computer, was dead.
They were out of options.
“Cangse!”
Wei Changze’s hand reached for her. She took it, knitting their fingers together as they plummeted uncontrollably toward the alien planet, the surface growing closer and closer over the long minutes of freefall that she was powerless to stop. Without any power to their shields, the shuttle grew hotter and hotter, the atmospheric friction growing coal hot as they streaked towards the surface. It roared in her ears, it screeched, swallowing all other sounds.
Before impact, she turned toward Wei Changze and found him already looking at her, heartbreak written across his face. She smiled as the g-forces pressed her back into her seat, tears in her eyes as she mouthed to him the words she had only ever spoken in this lifetime, words that Sanren had been too scared to speak across a dozen lives before this one.
“I love you,” Wei Changze mouthed back to her.
And then, they crashed.
* * *
“We’re on the surface. Bearing 14° NNW. Over.”
“Understood, Captain. We’re locked onto your signals, ready to transport at the first sign of trouble.”
“Good. Everybody, spread out and search. I want updates every 10 minutes on your progress. Failure to check-in will result in immediate transport back to the Raven, and a write-up unless you have good cause.”
“Yes, Captain,” chorused the landing crew, already buddied up and ready to start their search. Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren had been popular amongst the crew. It was no surprise that there were so many volunteers to join the rescue party. Jiang Fengmian hoped it was not for nothing.
They’d lost contact with the shuttle two days ago. Jiang Fengmian had been ready to transport down after them immediately, but a powerful solar storm was generating enough magnetic interference to disrupt the transporter waves, to a degree that the 2nd science officer had refused to clear the request to beam down a landing party. It was within Jiang Fengmian’s authority as captain to overrule them with the threat of a court martial, but Admiral Yu had caught wind of the plan and intervened before any such threats could be made.
“If you insist, I will declare you unfit for duty,” she’d said coldly. There’d been nothing for it, then, but to wait. To wait, and to hope that they weren’t too late.
The wait had cost them daylight, though, as the face of the planet had slowly rotated away from the star, plunging into darkness that would last a week. Now, the rescue mission had to be carried out in nearly complete blackness and bitter cold. Wading through the thick, miasmic fog that clung dark and rotten to the planet’s surface, it was difficult to hope.
Jiang Fengmian held the tricorder out in front of him, flashlight in one hand illuminating the way, his phaser tucked away at his hip, flanked by two security officers, a lieutenant and an ensign, with their weapons at the ready.
It was difficult terrain to make any headway in, and the dark made it nearly impossible to keep track of the passage of time beyond the occasional messages to and from the ship providing status updates on all parties, and the desolate blip of the tricorder as it failed to return any signs of life other than their own.
Six hours later, and they were coming up on a rotation change. Soon, the landing parties would need to return to the ship, swapping out for a fresh batch of eyes and minds. Jiang Fengmian could hardly even regret it. As much as he wanted to continue looking, determined to find his people, he couldn’t deny that the wet and the cold was beginning to get to him. Not to mention the mental toll of peering into darkness for hours on end. It could play tricks on the mind. Make it appear as though the shadows were moving.
Wait.
Jiang Fengmian spun his tricorder suddenly to the left towards a darting shadow, the screen lighting up, the sound of static drowning out the heavy breathing of his officers as something registered on the screen.
Humanoid.
Smallish, about 4 feet tall.
It was hard to get more than that, from the brevity of the scan.
“Who’s out there?” he called to the dark, eyes scanning for any signs of movement. “Come out. We mean you no harm.”
“Captain, the prime directive—” the ensign began, but Jiang Fengmian shushed him.
“Lower your phasers, but keep them ready. On stun.” He whispered the orders, the officers scrambling to obey. “We’re looking for somebody,” he called out again to the shadow, spinning slowly with the tricorder extended. “A man and a woman. Members of my crew. They crashed here. We’re worried they’re hurt. Have you seen—ah!”
He jumped backward in alarm as a figure emerged suddenly from the darkness, dangling at eye level from a tree.
“Crew?” it asked, head tilted to the side curiously. “What is ‘crew’?”
“Crew is…they’re my people. Like. Like a family.”
“Family?” The figure dropped down from the branch, landing on two feet.
Jiang Fengmian trained his flashlight on it, long enough to see that it was a young boy, almost indistinguishable from a human child. He had the same number of limbs, the same bilateral symmetry, the same general facial structure, with the addition of a ridge over either eyebrow that connected at the middle in a shallow vee. It was hard to see much more than that, as he was covered in thick black mud that seemed almost to serve as a substitute for clothing. As soon as the light passed over him, the boy hissed, throwing a hand over his eyes and taking several hasty steps backward before toppling onto his rear.
“Sorry!” Jiang Fengmian apologized, quickly pivoting the beam away. The boy rubbed his eyes, blinking up at Jiang Fengmian warily. In that moment, Jiang Fengmian was reminded forcibly of his own children, back on Earth, warm and clean and clothed.
Kneeling down at the boy’s level, Jiang Fengmian said, in a gentle voice. “My name is Captain Jiang. What is your name?”
The boy blinked at him and was silent for a long moment. Long enough, that Jiang Fengmian thought he wasn’t going to answer. But before he could ask another question, the boy pushed himself into a kneeling positioned that mirrored Jiang Fengmian’s own, and said, “My name is Ying.”
“ lYing. It’s good to meet you. Are there others here? Parents, perhaps?”
This was met with the same curious head tilt as before. “Parents?”
“Other…people. Older people. Who take care of you?”
“People who…oh!” Ying leapt to his feet, his face excited and bright with understanding. “People! I know people!”
“Can you take us to them?”
“Yes! Yes, I can take you! Follow me!”
“Captain.” The lieutenant grabbed Jiang Fengmian’s shoulder before he could run off after Ying. “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
“Then go back to the ship,” Jiang Fengmian ordered, shaking himself free and following Ying into the dark.
The boy moved nimbly through mist-clogged paths between the trees and shrub-like vegetation, stopping several times to allow Jiang Fengmian to catch up as he stumbled along after him.
“Here,” Ying said, and then Jiang Fengmian saw it; the shuttlecraft, half submerged in the swampy ground, a nearly indiscernible glow of soft from faint starlight reflected off the metal panels where the canopy had been torn open overhead.
Jiang Fengmian rushed forward, his security officers not far behind him. The door to the shuttlecraft was open, fog spilling inside. “Commander Wei, Commander Cangse, can you hear me?” He called, stepping inside, his flashlight sweeping through the darkness, before resting on the pilot seats.
”Changze!”
The Commander was strapped into the seat, his face bloody and still. Jiang Fengmian grabbed at his hands, then dropped them quickly. They were cold.
“We’ve located the shuttlecraft,” reported one of the officers back to the ship. Jiang Fengmian couldn’t tell which of them it was, his head and stomach spinning, “and both of the bodies.”
Bodies.
Bodies.
It echoed through his head until Jiang Fengmian had no choice but to push past his officers and be sick alone in the dark.
Bodies.
They’d grown up together. Done everything together. Spent more days together than apart, as children, at the Academy. They’d been together for every assignment, following one another from post to post. When Jiang Fengmian had been offered captaincy of the Raven, there had been only one person he’d even considered as his first officer. By that point, Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren, who had met at the Academy, were already engaged. Jiang Fengmian had married them on the Raven. They’d celebrated together, raised toasts together, imagined a future where their children would be raised as family.
Bodies.
The bodies.
He heaved again, though there was nothing left to come up.
“Are you sick?” Ying asked, crouching at his side. “Will you sleep like them too?”
Eyes squeezed tight, Jiang Fengmian swallowed. He had to get it together. He was the captain. This was part of the job. Losing people …it was part of it. Exploration was dangerous. They all knew the risks. He had to get it together.
“Landing crew to med bay! Landing crew to med bay! We’re getting a life sign! Are you seeing this?”
Outside, Jiang Fengmian spun, slipping to his knees in the mud before scrambling back to his feet and running into the shuttle.
“Changze?” He asked, heart clawing at his throat as it leapt in hope. Then dropping as the officer shook his head, waving his tricorder over Commander Cangse’s body.
“Sanren.”
“Cangse’s alive?” Jiang Fengmian demanded, hurrying over to look at the readings.
“No, not Cangse,” the officer answered. “But Sanren is. Her symbiont.”
“Shit,” came a swear from the communicator. Dr. Wen. “It won’t be for long. Not without a host.”
“What’s wrong?” Ying pushed his way between Jiang Fengmian and Cangse, looking down at the body. “Is she sick too?”
The tricorder lit up as Ying passed in front of it. Jiang Fengmian read the output, his eyebrows drawing tight together at what he saw. He wasn’t a doctor, nor a science officer. Maybe he was misunderstanding.
Or, maybe, this was their last shred of hope.
“Beam us up,” Jiang Fengmian ordered, grabbing Ying by the arm. “All of us. Beam myself and the…the bodies straight to the medical bay.”
“There’s an extra life sign, Captain. I can’t get a clean lock—”
“All of us,” he repeated, Ying yelping as his grip tightened. “Do it. Now.”
“Aye, captain,” came the answer, and a moment later the familiar static of the transporter shimmered over him and the others.
He opened his eyes in the sterile brightness of the medical bay, with the bodies of his best friend, his science officer, and a young boy writhing in his grip as he shrieked away from the lights.
“Captain, what—?” Dr. Wen stopped mid step as Jiang Fengmian drew his phaser and leveled it on him.
“Sanren is alive,” he said in a shaking voice. “And the boy is compatible.”
“...Captain.”
“Do it,” Jiang Fengmian said, stepping towards the doctor with the phaser aimed directly at his heart. “That’s an order.”
For a horrible, long moment, he thought Dr. Wen would refuse. The man’s eyes flitted to the boy, who was whimpering, his free arm flung over his eyes, legs sprawled limply beneath him. If he refused, Jiang Fengmian would kill him. He’d call in the medical assistant, the nurses, whoever it took. Changze was dead, Cangse was dead. But Sanren, this small piece of them, was alive. He wouldn’t let them die.
Perhaps it was something about the look in his eyes, the certainty and the desperation they contained. Perhaps it was the innate curiosity of all deep space explorers to venture into the unknown, to try things previously untried, to blaze new paths forward through a treacherous frontier.
Whatever it was, Dr. Wen’s nod made Jiang Fengmian’s knees shake with relief as he slumped to the ground, releasing his grip on the boy.
“Come here,” Dr. Wen said, reaching out an arm to Ying. “Let me take a look at you.”
“Computer, seal the med bay doors, authorization Jiang-5-7-phi-mu-5.”
“Confirmed,” said the robotic voice, followed by a hiss as the doors locked themselves tight.
“Get her onto the table,” Dr. Wen ordered as he continued to scan Ying, taking notes with a furrowed brow as he did so. “We need to move quickly. Wait here,” he directed this last part to the boy, guiding him to lie back on the table and placing a heavy cloth over his eyes, eliciting a quiet whimper.
“It’s not a perfect match,” Dr. Wen said in a low voice to Jiang Fengmian as he helped him lift Cangse’s body onto a table. She was lighter than Jiang Fengmian expected, a discovery that made his heart ache. How many times had they sparred together, as Changze watched from nearby, providing encouragement and tips to them both? How many times had he been thrown by a body this small, only for Cangse to traipse over to her husband afterward, teasing him for the betrayal of cheering for her enemy? “He’s my captain. I have to give him tips,” Changze had said after one particularly challenging match that had ended in Cangse’s defeat. “But I always cheer for you.”
“His biology is similar to that of the Trill humanoids. Astonishingly similar. If we weren’t a whole quadrant away from Trill, I’d say his race had to share a common ancestor.”
“So you can do it?” Jiang Fengmian interrupted. “You can save Sanren?”
Dr. Wen hesitated, eyes darting back to the boy who lay whimpering on the table. “It’s risky,” he said, shaking his head at last. “There are differences. And, obviously, it’s never been done. I can’t guarantee success.”
“I don’t care. If there’s a chance—”
“He’s weak. Malnourished. This could kill him.” Dr. Wen leveled a grave look on Jiang Fengmian. “And Sanren as well.”
The words soaked into Jiang Fengmian’s skin like cold water. It made sense, of course. This path was insanity, the chance of success so slim that it hardly warranted consideration. Jiang Fengmian looked at Ying now; at the webbing between his fingers and toes, the fin-like structures protruding from his forearms and calves, the fluttering gills along his sides. He looked at how small he was, at the thinness of him, the definition of his ribs beneath his skin. He was smaller than A-Cheng.
“It’s the only chance,” Jiang Fengmian said, tearing his gaze from the boy, lifting his phaser again.
Dr. Wen closed his eyes, shoulder lifting in either a deep breath or a sigh. “Scrub in,” he said after a long moment. “I’ll need an assistant.”
* * *
“Court is now in session, Admiral Yu Ziyuan and Rear Admiral Zhao Ailin presiding.
“Lieutenant Commander Dr. Wen Mao is formally charged with violating Starfleet regulation 151-159, prohibiting the enactment of unsanctioned, experimental medical procedures, regulation 57-932b, prohibiting the medical modification of an individual from a pre-warp civilization, regulation 981-99 prohibiting the practice of non-consensual medical procedures on a sentient being against the cultural guidelines outline in section 478.2a of the Treatise of Federation Allied Planets, and for violation of the Prime Directive. This case is brought against Dr. Wen by the Federation.”
“Commander,” Admiral Yu spoke in a cold, hard voice as she glared down her nose at the man standing before her. There was no pity in her black eyes, only conviction. “How do you plead?”
Behind Dr. Wen, Captain Fengmian stood with uncharacteristic rigidity, his chin tilted high and shoulders square and strong. He didn’t look at his wife, nor at the doctor or anyone else in the room. Beside him sat a boy, wearing dark protective lenses as his head moved on a pivot, taking in his surroundings.
Behind the lenses, his eyes were wide with wonder, blazing with intensity as he took in this room, these people, this world. All of it new and strange and unknown.
Almost as unknown as himself.
“Not guilty, Admiral.”
The boy’s head swiveled back to the doctor, an unpleasant sensation in his stomach, a faint unease. He said nothing, not knowing what it or any of this meant, not even knowing why he was here.
“A-Xian. A-Xian. Wuxian.” The boy turned his attention to the two women sitting behind him. They were nice women, with pockets full of sweets that they sometimes shared with him, when he was good. “You’re doing it again.”
Sure enough, Wuxian could hear it, now. The high-pitched whistle that had sprung up in his throat against his will. Quickly, he clamped a hand over his throat, the sound stopping at once.
“Good boy,” said one of the women, pulling a candy from her pocket and handing it to him. He quickly unwrapped it and popped it into his mouth, smiling as he did so.
They liked it when he smiled.
It was the first of many lessons he had learned in his short life.
Seven weeks ago, an alien boy named Ying had laid on a table in the medical bay of the USS Raven.
Two days later, the boy was gone. His eyes had opened, and he was new to the world, and knew nothing.
Four weeks ago, he had remembered his name.
“Sanren?” Captain Fengmian had asked him over a meal that made his belly ache as it stretched.
“No,” he’d told Captain Fengmian, shaking his head slowly. “I think I am Wuxian.”
That had made Captain Fengmian look at him strangely. His face was sad, but he usually looked sad. But Ying didn’t know what else that look could mean, so he’d just taken another clumsy forkful of food from the plate before him.
“Very well,” Captain Fengmian has said after a long stretch. “Wuxian, then.”
Two days ago, Dr. Wen was taken away.
One day ago, Wuxian had sat down with Captain Fengmian and a stern woman named Admiral Yu who made Wuxian tremble. They had told him that Dr. Wen had done something very bad to him. They had asked him if he remembered. He didn’t. They told him Dr. Wen had hurt him. They made him say it back to them.
Today, Wuxian heard his own voice in the too-bright room, surrounded by strangers with serious expressions. The scary woman sat above all of them, and Wuxian was glad that she was not looking at him anymore. For some reason, she did not like it when he smiled.
Three hours later, everybody stood to leave. Two guards came forward and took Dr. Wen by the arms, leading him away.
“Good job today, A-Xian,” said one of the nice women. “You did well.”
Each of the women took one of his hands and took him away from the bright room.
Three months later, Wuxian landed on a planet he’d never seen before. He was introduced to a boy and a girl, Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli, and was told they would be like his family.
Six months later, Wuxian raced Jiang Cheng as they dived from the docks into the ponds behind the house, as Jiang Yanli watched and cheered them on.
One year later, Wuxian was named again. Not a Jiang—never a Jiang—but "as good as family," Jiang Fengmian told him as Admiral Yu frowned across the table.
Five years later, Wei Wuxian enrolled in the Academy alongside Jiang Cheng. He hid the letter he’d received from Jiang Fengmian congratulating him on his acceptance. Jiang Cheng had not received a letter.
Fifteen years later, Lieutenant Wei arrived on Deep Space Nine.