For Piotr's Sake

Author note: This story takes place five years after the Five Year Mission, before the adventure with V'ger and Mr. Bester and before Pavel acquired telepathic ability from the Babylon Five universe.

Pavel Chekov emerged from the safe-like transporter on twentieth century Earth as Seven operated its controls from the large interactive computer. Pavel was now a Lieutenant Commander, the first officer of a starship called the Reliant. Seven had informed his new captain, a Black man named Terrell, of his other job as an intergalactic agent. Terrell, of course, knew that such a job required secrecy, so whenever Mr. Seven contacted him, the crew was told simply that Chekov was on a special assignment. Chekov looked at Mr. Seven with curiosity.

"You wanted to see me, sir?"

"Yes, Pavel. Have a seat. You have a new assignment, and this time it's personal. I thought I would tell you about this in advance. It's about your brother."

"My brother?" Pavel asked with a puzzled frown, seating himself at Seven's large ebony office desk with the blinking green sensor cube. "I don't have a brother!" His eyes narrowed. "Are you teasing me, sir? That was a very embarrassing incident in my life, you know. I carried on so about a non-existent brother and almost forced myself on that smelly Klingon skank."

Seven gave him a frown of slight disapproval, noticing that Chekov felt the same way about Klingons as some people in Seven's era felt about certain human ethnic groups. He sighed, thinking that some things never change.

"Actually, Pavel, you do have a brother. He's your twin and is living in that alternate universe that your former captain happened upon. The false memory of your brother's demise during a Klingon raid on the planet Arcanus came from your psych test when you were recruited to work for me. I felt it necessary to implant it so you would not have any desire to try and contact him. It was somewhat unfortunate that the non-corporeal entity dragged the false memory out of you and intensified your hatred of the Klingons."

Pavel stared at him in astonishment and disbelief.

"But…why did you implant a false memory? He's my brother!"

"He's also very dangerous. He's worse than anyone you are likely to encounter. He was raised differently than you were and he's moved up in rank faster than you have. The starship crews in that other universe move up in rank by assassination of their superiors. In fact, he was the one who attempted to assassinate your version of Captain Kirk after he refused to annihilate the Halkans. I didn't want you to get hurt or killed."

Chekov smiled at the compliment.

"I'm hardly his superior, sir."

Seven returned the smile.

"You are older by one minute, Pavel. According to their way of thinking that makes you his superior. You are a better person than he is too. You see…you were separated at birth. Your parents, who were quite unusual in that universe, felt that they could not afford to care for two sickly infants, and they hadn't the hearts to kill the two of you, so they took you and your brother into a weakened area in space, tenuously bridging the two universes. When they discovered that they were in your current universe, they decided to keep your brother to care for and raise and to beam you onto the nearest Federation outpost where you were adopted by your parents on this side, who just happened to be stationed there and were doubles of the ones from that other universe."

"Then, logically, I should have another twin brother in this universe, right?"

"No, Pavel. Believe it or not you were both stillborn on this side, which is the reason your grieving parents on this side took you from their counterparts, nursed you back to health and raised you. You never knew your sibling."

"Well…That's quite a story, sir. So what you are saying is that I was born in that other universe?" Seven nodded. "That was a wild coincidence about my true birth parents finding their counterparts in this universe and giving me to them…." He paused for a moment in wonder and astonishment. "So what's my new assignment?"

"You are going to meet him, Pavel. He will be returning the starship Defiant to Federation space. It recently emerged on that side after four years of floating in the black void between universes in the Tholian sector. Your job is to make sure Captain Piotr or Commander Loskene does not make trouble for the people on your side. I think it's time for you to return to your century, Lieutenant, before you are missed. By the way, I'm glad the Tholians were not successful at destroying the Enterprise with their energy web."

"Thank you, sir. I am too." He gave Seven a crooked little smile. "Otherwise, if they had been, I would not have been recruited as an agent. On another subject, Isis told me a little bit about Miss Lincoln's last excursion. Is she all right?"

Seven nodded in the affirmative. The young lady he had recently recruited as an intergalactic secret agent had been transported onto the twenty-third century Enterprise by the Q named Quinn in a time before Chekov had been assigned to the starship. In this twentieth century time frame, she had developed quite a crush on the younger Pavel, and he liked her too and was flattered. She had been asked by the Q to help an officer named Fisher retain some of his sanity after he was diagnosed with transporter psychosis. Fisher had beamed himself down to the planet Alpha 175 and Roberta had volunteered to rescue him. Roberta had had a bad scare when she realized that a leg of a giant hairy ugly tarantula was not a tree trunk. Seven had given her another week off to recuperate after she was returned to the twentieth century by her alien friend, the Q.