Chapter 1
No time for thought.
That was one of the reasons Jim Kirk enjoyed handball: during most of his waking hours (and even, it seemed, during most of his sleeping hours) he was faced with making one decision after another. Nothing aboard the Enterprise could be accomplished without input from him. Input from others turned into thought, weighing of possibilities, measuring the possibilities against past experience, all evolving into decisions, thousands of them, one after another, all day and all night long. Twenty-three years after receiving his first command, he had begun to feel the oppressive burden of so many decisions, so much thinking, so much responsibility. But here, in the handball court, with the reduced-gravity field in effect, the only decisions to be made were the most elemental. There was no time to think out the possibilities. No time for anything but watching the ball. And for watching his opponent.
He had scratched his memory a few days ago, trying to remember the first time he'd played reduced-grav handball. Back in high school, he'd decided, a year or so before he'd entered the Academy. That amounted to...what? Thirty-seven years of handball. In all that time, among all those opponents (of skill so widely varying it was ridiculous), he had never seen anyone so singular minded on the court as Gretchen Jaeger. She played the game with a vengeance that was almost chilling, as if nothing in life mattered except winning.
Sometimes, leaving the court, Kirk wondered if she remembered that it was all just a game.
He turned his head a little to the left, and the ball streaked past him like a torpedo. Flinching, he pulled his head in out of harm's way, an automatic response to the threat that was already past. He felt himself smiling nervously, but Jaeger didn't respond--not that he expected her to. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of the observation window connecting the court with the corridor. McCoy and Chekov were there watching, Chekov wearing a mild expression of pride in his champion, McCoy grinning smugly. Twisting so he could propel himself away from the wall, Kirk returned his attention to the ball and caught it on its rebound, scooping it up and sending it back to the wall, noting unconsciously that he hadn't given the push even half Jaeger's power. She didn't hesitate. Bouncing gently up from the floor, she drifted slightly, and, in the same instant, she twisted, thrusting both feet out to connect with the wall and shoot her halfway into the court so that she could meet the ball barely into its rebound. The ball struck the opposite wall so hard that Kirk half-expected it to keep going, leaving a perfect round hole in its wake-like phaser fire. It seemed to lose none of its momentum on its return, and when Kirk connected with it and sent it flying back to the wall, the impact made his hand throb even inside the leather glove.
The volley continued for several minutes, until one of Kirk's returns slid off the edge of Jaeger's glove and she was unable to recover it. He found himself smiling at the hard-won victory.
"Twenty-twelve," Jaeger said, bobbing lightly off the floor on the ball of one sneakered foot.
"Really?" Kirk asked. "I didn't think..."
She seemed puzzled and nearly apologetic. "I'm pretty sure," she said hesitantly. "Did I miss a point for you, sir?"
"Oh, I doubt it," said Kirk, unsure that he'd scored anything near twelve points, although the amount of effort he'd expended made it seem that his score must be something near a thousand. He let his mind drift for a moment, taking advantage of the brief respite and making a mental note to remind McCoy that he could get all the way through a match now without feeling as if he'd taken part in an Iron Man relay. The first time he'd played Jaeger, he'd managed to finish the match maintaining a careful facade of physical fitness, and some ten minutes later had collapsed on the bunk in his cabin, certain that he must be dying. His heart had throbbed fitfully, and another ten minutes had gone by before he could pull himself up to the intercom to send for McCoy. The doctor had been perversely amused, and Kirk infuriated at his lack of concern.
"You're not dying," McCoy had pronounced. "You're just in lousy shape for someone your age. Which is why I suggested you play some handball in the first place." He'd stood back a step, folding his arms across his chest. "It was your idea to take on the intramural champion."
Kirk had scowled blackly. "She's a little girl, Bones."
"Exactly. She's twenty-one years younger than you are, and in excellent physical condition." McCoy half-turned to head for the door, stopped and said over his shoulder, "Chauvinism ill becomes you, Captain." He ducked through the door as Kirk pitched a sneaker in his wake.
The "little girl" bounced again and shot off another rocketing serve. Waiting for Kirk to return the volley, she pushed off with one foot and drifted up near the ceiling, turning a smooth, gentle somersault so that she was hanging upside down when she reached out to crack the ball. Kirk avoided reacting; he was used to her playing style now, used to the brief acrobatics she indulged in to waste time while the ball cruised back and forth. He'd tried it once or twice himself (although there weren't many occasions when he had time to waste during a match) and knew the reasoning behind it: a bit of extra showing off, of proving herself in front of her captain. He knew she meant no harm by it, probably wasn't even aware of what she was doing, other than that every movement contributed to the match. He had to strain to reach the ball this time. She returned it without difficulty, and when he vaulted to catch the shot, it sailed by so near to him that he could feel the wind.
"Game point?" Kirk asked.
Jaeger hesitated. "Yes, sir."
"Well, Lieutenant," Kirk smiled, "either I'm improving, or you're slacking off. You didn't trash me quite as thoroughly as usual." He dropped one foot, pushed himself away from the floor, and retrieved the ball. "You're not throwing the game, are you?" Her eyes crossed, and Kirk laughed heartily. "I didn't think so. I must be improving."
She reached for the gravity control switch and slid it down so that the court's gravity would return to normal. "You're not a bad player, Captain."
Kirk laughed again. "Thanks for the generous compliment."
"That's not..." she stammered. "I didn't mean..."
He remembered the day she'd joined the Enterprise's crew, just over a year ago. She'd reported to the bridge, orders in hand, uniform crisp, head erect, possessed by utter and complete nervous terror. Two months had gone by before Kirk could speak to her without feeling like a school principal rebuking an unruly student. Now, a year later, while they were still not friends (and Kirk resisted the possibility), they could at least speak to each other normally. He remembered, too, the day the change had occurred: the first time they'd played handball together. She'd beaten him that day, and on every occasion since. He was irked at first (though with himself for having lost, and not with her for having beaten him), until he realized that the winning gave her some solid ground to stand on. She'd bested him, and he could feel the satisfaction that gave her. He knew she still stood in awe of him, but she was no longer afraid, and that was fine. While Jim Kirk insisted on respect from his crew, he had no use whatsoever for fear.
The normal gravity took hold, and Kirk and Jaeger both paced the court reaccustoming themselves. Kirk grabbed up the towel he'd left looped around the ring near the door, tossed Jaeger's towel to her, and mopped at the mist of sweat at the nape of his neck. Towel in hand, she seemed to forget he was there. She leaned against the bulkhead for a minute, closed her eyes, and took a series of long, deep breaths. He said nothing to disturb her silence, just went on mopping trickles of perspiration from his arms and legs. He caught sight again of McCoy and Chekov at the window, and beyond them, someone approaching from the direction of the turbolift. McCoy's grin had faded; he was waiting for Kirk to come out, no doubt so he could offer his usual sage advice on the values of handball. Chekov's eyes were on Jaeger. Idly, Kirk wondered if she made love as vigorously as she played handball.
The sound of approaching footsteps made McCoy turn from the window in the direction of the turbolift. He was immediately sorry--given the choice, he preferred not to acknowledge the existence of the young man who'd come out of the lift. Wearing his usual self-absorbed look, Peter Kirk stopped arm's length from McCoy and gazed through the window into the handball court. McCoy began counting silently; the young Kirk never took longer than ten seconds to offer a comment.
"Who won?" Peter Kirk asked mildly. "Not my uncle."
"Gretchen won," Chekov replied, struggling to keep his voice even.
The young Kirk smiled. "Naturally," he murmured, and cocked his head a little.
Chekov echoed, "Naturally," though in a totally different tone of voice. "She is...invincible." He hated the word as soon as he'd spoken it. He hadn't spent more than a month all told in his native Russia in the last fourteen years, but bits of the accent stuck with him. His compliment to Jaeger came out sounding more like "inwinceeble": another reason for Peter to offer comment.
To Chekov's surprise, the young Kirk let it go by. "Nobody labors under that delusion for very long," he laughed softly, with a sound that didn't quite succeed at being a sigh. "Spiritual fulfillment through sweat," he observed, though more to himself than to the other two men, and without waiting for any kind of response, pivoted and strode off down the corridor.
"Are we sure he's the captain's nephew?" Chekov asked McCoy.
McCoy wagged his head, watching Peter Kirk disappear around a corner. The young man had inspired the usual response in both the doctor and Chekov: the urge to punch him. He'd known that, and yet the knowledge meant nothing to him. At this point in his life, at the age of twenty-seven, Peter had gotten a rise out of so many victims on so many occasions that he seldom noticed any more. "I don't know," McCoy said. "But every time I see him, it reminds me of one thing: how ungodly long one month can be."
The door to the handball court hummed open. James T. Kirk ushered Jaeger out ahead of him with a sweeping gesture of one hand, and she moved to accept a hug and a lingering kiss from Chekov. McCoy and Kirk exchanged small smiles, sharing the same amusement at the effects of the younger officers' love affair: Chekov had turned forty-two some three days before, and Jaeger was thirty-three, but their being in love seemed to spark in them an amazing child-like ability to forget they were in anyone else's company. Until the glow wore off, no one but the two of them lived in their private little universe. Moments ticked by, and the two senior officers shared another thought: nostalgia for the time they had each felt the rich, warm glow of being in love. For each of them, that had been ages ago.
Finally, Kirk cleared his throat. Jaeger and Chekov both turned to him, both straightening unconsciously. He held back a smile, made a shooing gesture with his right hand, and said mildly, "Dismissed."
"Thank you, sir," Chekov beamed.
Jaeger nodded slightly. "Thank you, Captain."
Kirk draped his towel around his neck as Chekov and Jaeger walked off arm-in-arm down the corridor. McCoy was grinning again. Kirk frowned. "Want to let me in on the joke, Bones?" he inquired.
"What are you dismissing them from? Neither one of them is on duty. And what exactly are you dismissing them to?" The doctor shook his head again. "I should do some sort of psychological study on those two. They change direction like a scout ship changing course. Five minutes ago, she was on the court with you, and she was so fixed on that game that the ship could have blown up around her and she'd never have noticed. Now neither one of them seems to know that they're on a ship. They're walking around in a pleasant little fog. In two hours, they'll both be on duty, and..."
"And they're two of the best officers I have," Kirk filled in.
"Exactly. I want to know how they can pop in and out of consciousness like that."
"Young love, Doctor."
"Young, my eye. Chekov's forty-two years old."
Kirk sighed heavily--a bit more heavily than he intended. How long had it been since he'd walked around in that "pleasant little fog"? Edith! If he closed his eyes, he could still see her face, though he'd begun to think the memory had been colored by time more than a little. Had she really been as beautiful as he seemed to remember? Or was it that wonderfully brilliant smile and the gently musical laugh that made her beautiful? Edith. She'd died so long ago. Died in front of him, in front of McCoy. A pang of anguish shot up from somewhere inside of him. "I think it's been too long, Bones," he said after a minute. "We're both having too hard a time remembering what it was like." He fought off the nostalgia, traded it for a smile. "So tell me: has the McCoy Physical Fitness Plan been successful?"
"Has what...?" Realizing, McCoy nodded. "Well, you've lost the twenty pounds. How do you feel?"
"Fine. I feel fine."
"That's all? Just 'fine'?"
"How do you want me to feel? That little girl beats the hell out of me every time we play. That doesn't exactly put me on top of the world."
McCoy took stock of his captain, decidedly unmilitary in shorts, tee shirt, sneakers and thick white socks, blotched with sweat. "But you feel better than you did."
"When?"
"Two and a half years ago. When they gave you this brand new Enterprise."
Frowning again, Kirk asked, "What do you mean?"
"You were a mess. Don't tell me you weren't." Kirk opened his mouth to respond, but McCoy waved him into silence. You spent ten years wandering around Starfleet Headquarters...."
Kirk said quietly, "Seven. And a half. Off and on."
"Seven and a half, then," McCoy shrugged. "Spock died. You got back your son, then lost him and the Enterprise. Spock comes back, but not in one piece. And then we were all on Vulcan for three months with nothing to do but eat and drink, while Sarek tried ironing out legal problems and the Vulcan techs took apart the Bird of Prey and put it back together." Memories popped into his head of those months: David's death, the Enterprise, waiting for Spock to regain his memory, waiting for orders from Starfleet. Vulcan's heavy gravity, thin air and oppressive heat precluded any kind of exercise--for anyone not extraordinarily fit, merely walking around was exhausting after a couple of hours. So Kirk, McCoy, Scott, Sulu and Chekov had spent most of their evenings indulging in the only sort of exercise they found agreeable: imbibing. McCoy had quickly lost count of the number of raised eyebrows they'd caused among the Vulcan population. "We got back to Earth in about the lousiest condition the bunch of us has ever been in. And you, my friend, were the worst." He gestured Kirk into silence again so that he could continue. "Blood pressure too high, blood lipids too high, chronic insomnia..."
"Enough!" Kirk said. "I remember." Now it was his turn to gesture McCoy into silence. "Like I said...I feel fine now. You ran all the tests last week. Tell me how I should feel."
McCoy was silent, studying Kirk's expression. True, the biomedical tests he'd run on the captain were excellent. Kirk was in better shape, his endurance better than it had been in years. Everything that had been out of balance was now back in balance, mostly due to a carefully regulated diet (McCoy recalled snatching a plate of scrambled eggs out of Kirk's hands just a few days ago) and the bi-weekly thrashings on the handball court with Jaeger. But there was still something about Kirk's condition that McCoy didn't like. Something was lingering below the surface. Something like the depression he'd suffered when he'd lost his command status and had been stranded behind a desk in San Francisco. Something like that...but different. McCoy couldn't quite put a finger on it, but it was there, and it had irked at him for weeks.
"I don't know, Jim," McCoy said finally.
Smiling, Kirk reached out and gripped McCoy's shoulder in one hand. "I'm fine, Bones. I feel great. You've got nearly five hundred other people on board to worry about, too. Give one of them a turn, okay? Now, I've got a date with a jacuzzi."
*****
Jaeger tied the belt of her robe around her waist and shook her head vigorously to loosen the curls that had kinked up from the steam of the jacuzzi. Her face was flushed, both from the workout and from the whirlpool. "Better?" she asked.
Chekov shrugged. "I like you better with the robe off."
"We go on duty in an hour, Commander."
"Who needs an hour? We've accomplished a lot of things in a lot less than an hour."
Teasing, she slipped out of his embrace and shut down the controls for the jacuzzi. The water would drain out now, be recycled and purified in the ship's storage tanks, and remain ready for use again. Jaeger had wondered on occasion how many times the ship's relatively small supply of water had been used, purified, and reused. She didn't bother to wonder about the myriad of things the water had been used for. Chekov followed her into their shared sleeping room, tapping the control panel that would shut off the bathroom lights as he passed through the doorway. Jaeger stopped halfway to the bed and frowned at herself in the mirror. "Pavel," she said solemnly, "do you think it bothers him?"
"Do I think what bothers who?"
"The captain. Do you think it bothers him that I always win?"
Chekov sat on the side of the bed, his hands resting palm down on the bed frame. "Nobody likes to lose all the time. On the other hand, if he wants to win, he knows better than to play with you. You're..." he hesitated, then repeated his compliment, careful with his fluttering accent so that the "v" came through. "...invincible."
She moved to stand in front of him, resting her hands on his shoulders. Chekov slid his arms around her waist. "I feel...I don't know, guilty sometimes. As if I shouldn't win."
"Do you think he'd feel any better if you let him win?"
"Well, no. But he is the captain."
"And you are the best handball player in Starfleet." He reached up to chuck her under the chin. "It's allowed."
Wagging her head, Jaeger moved away again, wandering around the room with her hands in the deep pockets of the heavy cotton robe. "I still feel funny about it, Pavel. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to act around him. I'm not scared any more, not really, but it seems like..." She paced distractedly, breathing so deeply that Chekov could hear each breath. "They told me at the Academy that if you were extremely intelligent, and extremely brave, and willing to give a hundred percent a hundred percent of the time, that where you wanted to be was serving under Jim Kirk. So that's what I put in for." She wheeled. "They told me that..." She had to pause, because the phrase still sounded a little ridiculous. Dave McClennan had been more than a little drunk the first time he'd quoted it to her. "That everybody on this ship was willing to walk straight into the jaws of hell for Jim Kirk."
"We have," Chekov replied. "And more than once."
"And that he would do the same."
"He has."
"I didn't figure I could do that for Captain Styles." She stopped pacing to look at Chekov. "And I didn't think he'd do it for us." Chekov nodded. He'd never met Styles, but had heard enough tales about him that he believed Jaeger instantly. She'd served under Styles for nearly a year aboard the Excelsior, the pride of Starfleet, the first ship equipped with the revolutionary (if somewhat disappointing) transwarp drive; she'd been chief navigator, a position to be proud of, but somehow Jaeger had never felt any pride, either on her own part or on that of most of the other crew members. Working with Styles didn't foster pride--didn't foster much of anything except frustration. The man gloried in being master of the Excelsior, wielded the captaincy like an egotistical child, delighted with himself because the best ship in the fleet was under his control. The trouble was (and Styles failed to understand) that he'd won the Excelsior by default. Hikaru Sulu, the Enterprise's former chief helmsman (and now a captain in his own right on the U.S.S. Cooper), had been first in line to command the glorious new ship. Then had come the Genesis fiasco. Starfleet, true to form, had protected itself from any possible embarrassment by snatching Sulu's command from him before he'd even assumed the captain's chair, and had dumped the prize into the lap of the runner-up: Styles.
Jaeger rubbed at her head, as if the very thought of Styles had given her a headache. "The captain is supposed to be...up there somewhere." She gestured toward the ceiling. "Someone you look up to. When he gives you an order, you don't question it, you just obey it. Nobody ever wanted to follow orders from Styles. He's a nincompoop."
"I would have used another word," Chekov smiled.
"No," Jaeger replied. "I think 'nincompoop' suits him. I could never see him putting himself in danger for any of us. Or for the ship. Or even for himself. That's why I couldn't stay with the Excelsior." She turned to him. "What about you? Are you where you want to be?"
"Yes." He got up from the bed and crossed the room to join Jaeger. "I belong here. And I have a prettier roommate now." He gathered her into his arms, half expecting her to move away and begin pacing again, but this time she didn't stray. Content, Chekov pulled her closer. She was still warm and damp from the jacuzzi. She looked up at him, but something in her eyes was distracted. He'd grown used to that; it happened every time they discussed the Excelsior, or her service there, or her sudden transfer to the Enterprise. He'd resigned himself to never being satisfied with her explanations, and that distant look remained. Ignoring it, he said with a small smile, "As your superior officer..."
"Yes, Commander?"
"I order you to stay right here."
"Yes, sir."
"And you're going to show me how much you can accomplish in forty-five minutes."
Jaeger chuckled softly, and moved to help him untie the belt to her robe. "You know one thing about handball, Commander?"
"What's that?" Chekov murmured.
"It teaches you to move very fast."
*****
*****
"Message coming in from Council Chambers on Dianas, Captain," Uhura announced as Kirk tapped the "off" button on his console. "They acknowledge our transmission. Awaiting our arrival as scheduled." She smiled as she concluded, "They're preparing a reception for you and the other 'most welcome Federation representatives'."
Kirk nodded. "Reply, 'Message received. Looking forward to meeting with the Council.'"
"Aye, sir. Sending now."
The bridge fell silent again. Kirk glanced around, taking stock of his crew, all bent to work at their stations, quietly absorbed in individual tasks. For several minutes, once Uhura had finished transmitting the message to Dianas, there was no sound on the bridge but the humming and chirping of the computer consoles and the distant, almost unnoticeable throb of the engines. The crew's backs were all to Kirk, giving him a view of the backs of some dozen-odd very young heads. Save Uhura, Spock, and Kirk himself, no one on the bridge at the moment was over thirty-five years old. Kids, he thought, I'm commanding another boatload of kids. His eyes strayed to the helm, and he found himself wishing Sulu were there. Hennessy was good, extremely good, but nonetheless Kirk held onto the feeling that no one could guide the Enterprise quite like Hikaru Sulu. Not until Hennessy turned to give him a questioning look did Kirk realize he had sighed.
"Sir?" Hennessy said.
"Nothing," Kirk replied, shaking his head. Hennessy nodded and returned his attention to his console. Kirk watched him for a moment, wistfully aware of how much (from the back, at least) the young lieutenant resembled his son, David. Hennessy was three years younger than David had been when he'd died. Twenty-six, Kirk believed--he'd checked on Hennessy's age when assigning him to the helm. Twenty-six? Kirk held back the expression of disbelief he felt creeping into his face. I've been a commanding officer since this kid was three years old?
Uhura's voice broke his reverie. "Captain?"
He swiveled the command chair to face her. "What is it?"
She was touching her earphone. "I'm getting something, sir. Very faint. There's a great deal of interference...but it sounds like the universal distress code."
"Source?"
Spock was bent over the science station, working in conjunction with Uhura's communications board to clarify the signal and identify its origin. A moment went by while Spock's long, thin fingers moved over the buttons keyed into the ship's main computers. Finally, information began to appear on the main screen. "Source is in the Alpha Reticuli system, Captain. The interference is coming from an ion storm in that system. No identification yet on the vessel transmitting the signal."
"Alpha Reticuli? Can you pinpoint the location?"
"Yes, Captain," Spock said somberly. "On the surface of Duncan's Planetoid."
Kirk sank back in his chair and rubbed at his temples. "That's not what I wanted to hear, Spock."
"Unfortunately, Captain, the fact remains."
"You're sure."
"Quite sure." Spock glanced at the screen again.
"Somebody mining for malium crystals, no doubt," Kirk said heavily. "If I had a malium crystal for every time somebody's crash-landed on Duncan's Planetoid trying to find malium crystals, I'd be hopelessly rich." He turned to Uhura. "Signal on speakers." Uhura nodded, keyed the instructions into the board, and winced a bit as the subspace static erupted through the bridge speakers. Fingers moving swiftly, she augmented the signal, washing out most of the static and leaving the thin, regular beep of the universal distress code: two short, two long, two short. "Damnation," Kirk murmured. "Any identification yet, Spock?"
His first officer responded, "Negative, Captain. We do have an approximate location on the surface of the planetoid, however."
"Alter course, Mister Tenaka," Kirk told the navigator on duty. "Take us to Duncan's Planetoid."
"Aye, sir. Changing course to...one five five mark one six."
"Mister Hennessy, take us to warp six."
"Warp six, aye, sir," Hennessy replied.
"Captain?" Tenaka said over his shoulder, his eyes still on the board. "Has there ever been a successful mining expedition to Duncan's Rock? All you hear about are the crashes." The round-faced Polynesian shot a glance at Kirk; the captain's mood was painfully easy to read. He was drumming his fingers on the arm of the command chair, though softly enough that it made no sound.
Spock replied for Kirk. "Two hundred-thirteen known crashes. Two known successful landings. If I recall correctly, the actual number of malium crystals that have been taken off Duncan's Planetoid..."
"Seven," Kirk said. "There are seven."
"Two hundred crash landings? To get seven stones?" Tenaka let out a long, low whistle. "Why do it, sir? I mean, it seems so crazy, to take that kind of a chance. Come all the way out here, risk your ship and your crew, when the odds are so bad."
Kirk examined the navigator's face for a moment. If anything, given his age, Tenaka should have been far more possessed of the "spirit of adventure" than Kirk could hope of being. Nothing in Tenaka's background hinted at his being unusually cautious. Yet he seemed truly mystified by the history of "Duncan's Rock". "Human nature, Mister Tenaka," Kirk said finally. "I can't speak for any of the other races in the galaxy, but as far as human beings go, the possibility of winning--no matter how remote--outweighs the risk. Even when you're risking your neck, and the necks of your crew. How's your American history?"
"Rusty, sir," Tenaka admitted.
"Do you remember anything about the great gold rushes of the eighteen hundreds? Men murdered each other over stakes in a gold deposit. Thought nothing of it."
"Yes, sir, but for only seven crystals..."
"Seven have been taken off the planetoid," Kirk reminded him. "Each one of extremely high value. Everyone assumes that that's only a sample of what's left to be found. Anyone who could successfully set up a camp long enough to tap into a large vein of the crystals and take them back to a trading post would be rich beyond his wildest dreams." Even as he spoke, Kirk found himself echoing Tenaka's thoughts. Rich enough to justify over two hundred crashes? he wondered. All those small ships, almost a hundred people killed, hundreds more injured. All for the chance of finding a vein of the hypnotically beautiful blue gemstones on a planetoid claimed by no civilized race in the galaxy. Find it, and it's all yours. So they keep trying! Kirk thought. And crashing. And sending out distress signals so that we can go and pick them up. Keep at it, boys; the Federation will come and save your skins if you get into trouble. Even if we have to risk our own lives to do it. Grumbling to himself, Kirk tapped the intercom. "Scotty?"
"Scott here, Captain."
"Is the transporter operational?"
"Aye, Captain," the chief engineer's voice came back.
"Mister Spock tells me that we're headed into an ion storm. We've got to rescue some fortune-seekers from Duncan's Rock."
There was a long, pregnant pause from the other end. "Aye?"
"What are our chances of transporting anyone in?"
"In an ion storm, sir? I wouldna try it."
"Shuttle?"
Another pause. "The shuttle's your best bet, Captain, but it's still risky. If that ion storm is up to Alpha Reticuli's usual standards, they'll be going in there blind."
"Opinion noted, Mister Scott. Kirk out."
"I concur with Mister Scott's judgment, Captain," Spock said, straightening up from the science console. His screens had begun to register the interference from the storm, though the Enterprise was still a considerable distance from it. The main screen was offering a wide-angle scan of the planetoid's surface: inhospitable to say the least. Rocky, mountainous, few native life forms, thin atmosphere torn by high winds. "If I might volunteer to command the landing party," Spock suggested. "I have done considerable research on the history and conditions of this particular system. With the proper pilot for the shuttle, I believe we have an acceptable chance of landing safely. And returning safely to the Enterprise."
Kirk gnawed his lower lip. "Your opinion as to 'the proper pilot'?"
"Lieutenant Jaeger."
"I see. Any particular reason?"
Spock paused for a moment. "As I understand it, Captain, during her senior year at the Academy, Lieutenant Jaeger was rather fond of flying the shuttle simulator blindfolded."
"Blindfolded?" Kirk blinked.
"Yes, sir. And if I am correct, she had an acceptable success rate." Spock waited for Kirk to respond. He did not bother to define "acceptable" or "success", and Kirk did not ask. "Of course," Spock went on, "that was under simulated conditions, with no actual danger present. However, being blindfolded would be somewhat analogous to..."
"To flying in an ion storm," Kirk finished for him. "All right, Mister Spock. I trust your judgment. Assemble your crew." Spock nodded acknowledgment and moved toward the turbolift. The lift doors sighed open as he approached. Blindfolded! Kirk thought with a shudder, recalling the one time he had tried that stunt himself-- and had most definitely not been successful. "And Spock?" he concluded. The Vulcan turned. "I'd like a word with whomever you bring back from Duncan's Rock."
*****
"Commencing planetfall, sir. Hull temperature seven hundred degrees and rising. Course, bearing point seven seven. Altitude..." Under Spock's coolly watchful gaze, Jaeger resisted banging on the panel to make the digital readout reflect their descent. The number had not changed in some seconds. "Estimate altitude at ninety-one point four kilometers."
Spock nodded. "Adjust course to point seven five."
"Point seven five, aye, sir."
"Surface temperature, minus eighteen degrees Celsius," Spock read from the sensors. "Sensors show an atmospheric content of four percent cyanoalisitate."
"Cyanoalisitate?" That was Will Hollis, strapped in with the rest of the landing party in the row of seats behind the pilot's and co-pilot's chairs. "That stuff smells like burning rotten eggs!"
Spock's left eyebrow slid up under his bangs. "A reasonably accurate comparison, Lieutenant. And cyanoalisitate in this percentage is rather hostile to the human respiratory and nervous systems. I would exercise caution against inhaling even minute quantities of the atmosphere." He flipped a couple of switches and touched a toggle on the control panel, but the adjustments did nothing to steady the flashing readouts from the shuttle's systems. They had lost contact with the Enterprise several minutes ago, almost from the time the shuttle had left the protection of the landing bay, and now the ion storm was making increasing havoc of all the Galileo's electrical systems. There were readings, yes, but none of them seemed correct. Jaeger glanced intermittently at Spock, beside her at the controls, his lack of expression belying their situation. The only information being received with regularity was the rhythmic bleep of the distress signal.
"Altitude eighty kilometers," Jaeger said. "Hull temperature...eight hundred degrees and stabilizing."
The Galileo hit a sudden pocket of turbulence as solid as rock. Harry Gibbs' head jerked backward, connecting with the padded headrest behind him with a teeth-jarring thump. "Jeeesus, Jaeger!" he howled. "Watch those bumps, willya?"
She checked the panels, waiting for a reaction from Spock that never came. A small voice inside her wanted to suggest turning the controls over to Gibbs if he thought he could do better, but she resisted saying anything to the security officer. "Thermal inversion," she said quietly to Spock.
The Vulcan agreed. "Hold course, Lieutenant."
"Aye, sir. Holding course at..." As Jaeger bent to check the readout, the panel flashed and went dark. Jaeger's eyes went automatically to the viewport in front of her. They were descending rapidly through a heavy layer of clouds, thick trailing things that obscured visibility beyond a few meters outside the shuttle. Spock began working on the console, flipping switches, crossing circuits. After a moment, the panel lit again, but half the indicators would do nothing more than flash like tiny strobe lights. The altimeter read a persistent, flashing "0.00".
Spock seemed almost amused. "According to our instruments, Lieutenant, we have crashed."
"No instruments. No visual. Guess I get to fly by the seat of my pants, Mister Spock," Jaeger replied, with a vague attempt to keep her voice level.
"On instinct, Lieutenant?" Spock translated.
"Yes, sir."
"God help us," Harry Gibbs murmured.
"I trust your instincts," Spock said. "Continue present course and set us down."
Jaeger's hands had gone cold. Marveling at the fact that she could still move her fingers to make the minute corrections in their course, she forced a small smile and remarked, "Did they ever tell you that at the Academy I was pretty good at flying the simulator blindfolded?"
Spock had abandoned the shuttle's on-board computer and was running a series of computations on his tricorder, glancing intermittently at the viewport. They had passed out of the worst of the cloud layer, continuing to descend, visibility now extended to what McCoy would refer to as "a stone's throw". "I am aware of that, yes."
"The last half-dozen times I didn't have a single crash landing."
"One might observe, Lieutenant," Spock replied, his eyes still on the tricorder, "that statistically speaking, you are perhaps overdue."
Her mouth gaped. "I..."
"I trust your instincts," Spock repeated. "If I did not, you would not be flying this craft."
Jaeger closed her mouth. "Understood, sir."
The landing party began to fidget in their seats as much as the restraining straps would allow. All three young men--Gibbs, Hollis and Cooper--wore the same expression of tightly controlled panic. They had all heard the stories about Duncan's Rock and the abysmal results of the hundreds of attempted landings in small craft. Most of the stories now entered the realm of the fantastic, but they were still realistic enough to inspire fear aboard the Galileo. Gibbs, Hollis and Cooper were all security officers, all highly trained and selected for their ability to remain calm in the worst of situations, but now, with the conditions of their own landing on Duncan's Rock deteriorating rapidly, even they were not highly trained enough to ignore reality.
Tom Cooper began to search his memory for the words to the Lord's Prayer. Will Hollis's palms had sweated so much that the knees of his flight suit were soaked through. Harry Gibbs wondered why in the name of all that was logical, their commander was leaving their lives in the hands of "Roadrunner" Jaeger. Given the choice, Gibbs was quite ready to forget the distress beacon and hightail it back to the warmth and safety of the Enterprise. Instinct? Gibbs thought with a silent, hysterical laugh. In an ion storm? Flying on instinct, trying to land on a gigantic orbiting rock famous for the number of people who were now a part of the landscape. Gibbs wanted badly to be sick. Grimacing greenly, he looked at each of his companions in turn, and found some shred of satisfaction in discovering that each of them was fighting nausea. At least Jaeger has something to do, he thought.
"Maintaining rate of descent," Jaeger announced. "Commencing landing procedures."
Spock glanced up from the tricorder. "Very well."
She squinted furiously at the viewport, as if that would help clear the forward visibility. The clouds had thinned out a bit more, but the shuttle was still too high up for Jaeger to pick out anything solid on the ground. She began to wonder how to go about finding a landing site without being able to see. Spock still seemed completely at ease, though she knew (mostly from Chekov's many anecdotes) that he was probably no less worried than she, just immeasurably better at disguising the worry. Shuddering, Jaeger tried to steal a look at what he was computing on the tricorder, hoping that he knew enough about the planetoid to find open ground by the seat of his own pants. She had never lost sight of the fact that flying a simulator blindfolded was a lark, the kind of stunt that was practically expected of all Academy seniors, in spite of all the realism she'd attempted to give it both in her own mind and in the stories she'd told afterwards. She also knew that all the larks had stopped the minute she graduated from the Academy and received her commission as a Starfleet ensign. A joke was a joke. And no matter how good she had been at guiding the simulator to a smooth landing half a dozen times (seven, if you counted the time the simulated shuttle had bounced off a simulated tree before landing softly on the simulated ground), this was no joke. This time there would be no cartoonish readout announcing "YOU HAVE CRASHED," no simulator doors sliding open to reveal a group of her fellow cadets clustered outside.
Concentrating, she moved her hand gently on the throttle controls. The shuttle bounced spastically. Jaeger shivered again.
"Steady," Spock said quietly.
She felt a sudden need for the comfort of the jacuzzi and a good strong belt of Chekov's cherished ice-cold vodka. "Firing braking thrusters."
A dozen nervous minutes later they were on the ground. The Galileo rested in the closest thing to an open field to be found within a hundred kilometers, a twenty-meter wide space in the midst of a peppering of enormous rocks and the planetoid's largest indigenous life form, skeletal things much like petrified trees. The wind, driven on by the relentless ion storm that tore the planetoid's slight atmosphere into miniature hurricanes, howled around the shuttle as its crew of five released themselves from their safety harnesses. Jaeger took another long look out the viewscreen. The panorama ahead of the shuttle, with its skeletal trees and swirling, misty atmosphere, had the look of Scottish moors.
Spock was already slipping into cold weather gear. The three security men followed his cue and also reached for breathing apparatus. "Heads up, Jaeger," Hollis said brightly, tossing a set of gear to Jaeger.
"You don't need an airpack, sir?" Cooper asked Spock.
The Vulcan shook his head. "Cyanoalisitate has no effect on the Vulcan respiratory system. However, I would caution you again, Ensign, not to inhale any of the atmosphere here." He accepted the communicator and phaser Gibbs handed him and buckled them in place on the belt of his coat alongside his tricorder. "Our sensor readings are somewhat inaccurate at best," he informed his crew. "The distress signal is apparently coming from a point roughly three kilometers away, in that direction." He nodded at the port side of the shuttle. "We will spread out, covering as much of the area as possible but remaining within minimum communicator range of each other and the shuttle. If any of you lose contact with the others, maintain your position and we will find you."
"Excuse me, sir," Hollis said, "but do you really think the communicators are going to function under conditions like this?"
"Perhaps not, Ensign."
"Well, then, sir, if the communicators don't work..."
"Then use your voice, Ensign."
"Sir?" Hollis frowned.
"I believe it is an old Terran phrase, Mister Hollis. 'If you need help, yell.'" The four Humans stared at him. Spock ignored the looks and shut down most of the shuttle's systems, putting the rest on standby. That done, he waited for the crew to finish fastening on the thermal coats, pulling up hoods, sliding on gloves, buckling on the breathing apparatus, clipping on phasers and communicators. When they were done, all he could see were their eyes, which seemed preternaturally bright. He knew they were all nervous and afraid (he would have thought them to be mentally deficient if they had not been), but they were all ready to follow his lead, out into the hostile surroundings of the planetoid. They had made it here safely, if a little bruised, but none of them knew whether they'd be returning safely to the Enterprise. Spock considered them for a moment. "Phasers on stun," he said finally. "We have no idea who is sending the distress call, or what condition they are in. We shall maintain caution."
Without waiting for a response, he released the lock on the shuttle's main hatch, pressed the control, and stepped back as the hatch slid open. The little craft was immediately filled with the keening wail of the wind.
"Welcome to Duncan's Rock," Harry Gibbs said.
The four Humans followed Spock out of the Galileo like ducklings trailing their mother. When they had gone about fifty meters, he stopped and pulled his communicator from his belt. A series of quick tests assured him that all five communicators were working acceptably...at the moment. Returning the device to its clip, he motioned for the others to spread out.
"We'll find 'em, Mister Spock," Will Hollis assured him, his voice sounding eerily tinny through the speaker of the breathing apparatus. "Let's just hope they're still alive."
"Indeed," Spock replied. "Carry on."
Bending against the wind, the landing party and its commander spread out across the landscape. For the first five or six hundred meters they were within sight of each other, though none of them really bothered looking. They were all (except for Spock) shaking, but none of them could have answered whether that came from the cold, or fear, or just the heavy buffeting of the wind--or all three. Moments later, as they moved on ahead, the clustering of rock formations increased, giving the four Humans the impression that they were moving into deep gullies rather than across a nearly flat surface. The light gravity of the planetoid combined with the push of the wind made forward progress difficult. At the end of another hundred meters they could no longer see each other, or anything else except the rocks and the weird, skeletal trees.
Hollis' words came back to Jaeger as she plodded ahead through the wind. Still alive? she wondered. Spock had not mentioned the possibility that the distress beacon might be an automatic one coming from the computers of the crashed ship. Though, come to think of it, neither had he said anything about receiving life form readings. The ship's occupants might have been dead for some time, and the computer would nonetheless continue broadcasting distress until the ship's batteries had been totally drained. Some swell field trip, Jaeger thought. Poking around this place looking for somebody who might have been killed months ago! She stumbled, caught herself, and cursed under her breath. It was a habit she'd learned from her father at so young an age he hadn't been aware she was learning: fighting fear by cursing as vehemently as possible, in as many languages as possible. Normally it worked, and it seemed to be working now.
Then she heard Hollis scream.
She grabbed for her communicator with her left hand and the phaser with her right. They had fanned out like the fingers of a spread hand, Hollis the closest to her, probably no more than a couple hundred meters away on the other side of the long rock formation to her right. "Hollis? What's wrong? Hollis?" There was no response, just the eternal crackle of static. She flipped through the communicator codes for the others and had no better luck. Thrusting the communicator back onto its clip on her belt, she began scrambling up the rocks to close the distance between herself and Hollis. It took her several minutes to scale the rocks and come down the other side, fighting the wind every step of the way. Once she had reached the crest, she slowed her pace a little so that she could keep a tighter hold on the phaser. The wind covered the sound of her movements. When she had reached level ground again and began moving in the direction Hollis had taken, she had reason to be grateful for the cover of the wind.
Hollis was some twenty meters away, flat on his back on the ground, unmoving. Standing over him, showing little effect from the biting cold and the foul atmosphere were the three stranded explorers the landing party had come to rescue, each armed with a disruptor and a ceremonial blade.
Klingon warriors.
"Oh, shit," Jaeger said.
*****
"Helm, report."
Hennessy glanced at the readouts and said over his shoulder to Kirk, "Maintaining stable orbit, sir. Altitude one thousand kilometers."
Kirk nodded. "Uhura, anything from the shuttle?"
"Nothing, Captain. Just static." Uhura tapped out a medley on the buttons on her console. "Still receiving the distress beacon, sir. It's grown a bit fainter from the interference, but still maintaining one complete signal every ten seconds."
"Keep tracking," Kirk said. "Keep trying to find the shuttle; I don't want to lose them."
"Yes, Captain."
Kirk's hands tightened rhythmically on the armrests of the command chair. Twenty-three years? he thought. Have I been doing this for twenty-three years? A sour taste began to rise in his mouth, and he reached for the cup of coffee he'd brought up with him from the officer's mess some hours ago. It was long since cold, but he gulped some of it down anyway, grimacing at the taste. He'd forgotten when he'd had his last solid meal--it seemed like days ago. He looked around the bridge, frustrated by the lack of something constructive for him to do, and thumbed the "record" button on his console. "Captain's Log, Stardate 8771.9," he dictated quietly. "We still have not regained contact with the shuttle Galileo..."
At the weapons board, Pavel Chekov turned a little. His expression was a dour reminder to Kirk of Chekov's vested interest in the safe return of the landing party. "Sir?" Chekov said. "Permission to take the science station?" The captain had barely nodded his assent when Chekov rose from the weapons station and crossed the bridge to Spock's chair in a half-dozen steps. Sliding into the seat, Chekov began activating sensor probes. Most of the readouts were gibberish, fouled by the interference of the ion storm. He muttered a breathy Russian curse, tapped some more buttons, tried an alternate system. On the other side of the bridge, Uhura flinched from the increasing pitch of static in her earphone. She and Chekov exchanged mutually frustrated looks.
"Anything?" Kirk asked.
"Garbage, sir," Chekov replied. He tried cutting into another computer circuit and got a shower of flashing lights on the board. "The storm is interfering with computer circuits, Captain."
Kirk's grip tightened on the armrests. "Communications?"
"Nothing, sir," Uhura murmured.
The bridge seemed too silent again, in spite of the faintly audible crackle from Uhura's phones and the whispered sound of continued Russian oaths from Chekov. The main viewer displayed the same picture for over half an hour: the churning clouds covering the surface of Duncan's Rock, an occasional flicker of lightning that from this altitude looked like a Terran firefly. Somewhere down there, Kirk thought frustratedly, was his shuttle. His people: Spock, Jaeger, Gibbs, Hollis, Cooper. He'd no choice but to send them; he was painfully aware of the long-standing Starfleet regulation that no distress signal was ever to be ignored. So the shuttle had gone, half an hour ago, down into that ion-charged soup. Sensors fouled, visuals almost non-existent. Twenty-three years of this, Kirk thought.
"Sir!" Chekov erupted.
Kirk shot upright in his chair and swiveled to face Chekov. "What is it?"
"Klingons, sir!" Chekov shouted. "The computer has identified the source of the distress beacon. It's a Klingon scout ship down there."
"Damn," Kirk spat. "The shuttle? Where's the shuttle?"
Uhura's shoulders sagged. "Can't find them, Captain. Nothing on any frequency."
"Find them!" Kirk shot to his feet, although he had nothing to do either sitting or standing. All systems were being capably manned, all frequencies being monitored, everything being done that could be done. His fists were clenched so tightly that his fingernails bit deep ridges into his palms. His people were out there somewhere, heading right into a Klingon trap. Spock and four kids. "Find them!" Kirk snapped. "And get them back here!"
*****
If she had been aware of how little time actually passed while she was huddled in the shelter of the rocks, Jaeger would have been amazed at how much had gone through her mind. Starfleet regulations, the captain's standing orders, war games, practice drills, training sessions, classes at the Academy. Textbooks, rulebooks, training manuals, library tapes, long hours of instruction from everyone in authority who had ever crossed her path. What was in front of her now seemed to boil down into what her teachers liked to call a scenario.
And the question is, Jaeger, she thought, what do you do now?
The three in the clearing were arguing among themselves. Over what, she was unable to determine; the howling wind and her rusty memory of Klingonese allowed her to translate only bits of what was being shouted out in the open. It had something to do with Hollis and "the other one" (Gibbs? she wondered). Carefully, Jaeger brought the phaser up in front of her and considered her options. If she remained hidden, she was unable to take a clear shot at any one of the Klingons with the phaser on narrow beam. On wide field, she was likely to get Hollis along with the Klingons. All three of them were armed, and if she moved out of cover, they were likely to target her with disruptor fire before she had eliminated more than one of them-- leaving Hollis still vulnerable.
It occurred to her that the reason she and Hollis and the others were here was to rescue whoever had sent the distress call. Certainly that had been the Klingons. Rescue? she thought. The regulations called for immediate response to distress calls, but she was unable to remember any subsection dealing with rescue of the enemy.
The enemy...
In fact, a handful of Kh'myr Klingons had murdered James Kirk's son on the Genesis planet simply to exercise their own sense of superiority. Chekov had described the incident for her one night in the dark, and in her mind's eye she could see Kirk sliding out of the command chair onto the floor, stricken with rage, and grief, and pain. Someone in the mire of Starfleet records-keeping still maintained a list of casualties caused by encounters with the Klingon Empire; it went on to the point of being numbing, in spite of the much-heralded Organian Peace Treaty. There was no declared war between the Federation and the Klingons, but that was not to say that there were no battles. They were a people driven by hate, it seemed. Loving nothing so much as the victory, the kill, the destruction of the enemy.
And Klingons have no mercy no mercy no mercy.
Abruptly, one of the Klingons reached down and hauled Hollis to his feet. Hollis seemed to be regaining consciousness, and struggled feebly against the much stronger grip of the Klingon. The three warriors exchanged more heated words. The one holding Hollis dangled him easily from one hand, studying the young man as he might some sort of biological specimen. He tossed his head, laughed loudly and raucously, and then, in a movement so swift that Jaeger never saw it happen, brought his ceremonial blade up, thrust it in, and brought it back down. He dropped Hollis to the ground and withdrew the blade easily, wiped it on the sleeve of his uniform, threw back his head, and resumed laughing.
Jaeger's mouth lolled open. Her stomach rolled over slowly, and she was forced to swallow hard several times to keep anything from coming up.
"Evaluate," she heard one of her Academy instructors droning inside her head. Johnson? Yes. He'd been fond of comparing battle to football games. "Evaluate. Size up your situation. Then take the ball and run with it."
If nothing else, Gretchen Jaeger had been an excellent student. In the space of a few seconds, she sized up her situation, seized the ball, and ran like hell with it.
The three Klingon warriors barely knew what was happening. In the midst of quarreling over what to do with their captive (a moot question now that his entrails were spilling out onto the ground), they had made the mistake of assuming that there were no more Federation people nearby. Now, seemingly from out of nowhere, another of the puny Starfleet people had exploded into their midst. They were scrambling for cover and drawing disruptors when phaser fire cut down one of them. The other two dove behind rocks and shouted to each other. Jaeger, coming out of the furious roll with which she had thrown herself across the clearing, took shelter a short distance away.
Something was wrong with her phaser; despite its "heavy stun" setting, which should have done no more than jolt the Klingon off his feet, the single shot had blasted him into infinity--and with more intensity than Jaeger had ever seen come from a hand phaser. Heart throbbing furiously, she brought the phaser closer to her face to examine the settings, and her eyes widened in horror. Almost inaudibly because of the shrill of the wind, the phaser was bleeping rhythmically in sync with the tiny amber "OVERLOAD" light set into the grip. More instructions popped into her head from the week-long training session intended to make the cadets as familiar with phasers as they were with their own hands. Jammed with safety features, the little phasers didn't often malfunction, but when they did, and the "OVERLOAD" warning appeared, there was only one option open to the weapon's owner: get rid of it, and do it fast.
Rolling onto her side, Jaeger curled her arm and gave the phaser a beautiful, powerful toss out and away. Three seconds later, it plopped to the ground alongside the Klingon who had murdered Will Hollis. Frowning, the Klingon reached out, seized the tiny weapon and drew it closer to examine it. He had no time to notice the bleeping of the flashing amber light. Twelve seconds after Jaeger had jettisoned the phaser, it reached critical overload and exploded. Two seconds after that, all that remained of the phaser were needle-sized shards of metal. Not much more remained of the Klingon.
The last of the Klingons bellowed a horrible, echoing curse in his guttural native dialect. Nothing answered him but the howl of the wind. Furious, but struggling to maintain what was left of his warrior's dignity, he shifted into a squat behind his pile of rocks and abandoned his Klingonese for a heavily accented version of English.
"Come out!" he yelled across the clearing.
Only one word came back. "Bastard!"
The Klingon rocked onto his heels. Female? The cause of all this trouble was a female? Never mind, he told himself; she would be unarmed now...or so he hoped. Creeping slowly to one side to allow himself somewhat of a clear shot, he brought his disruptor up to shoulder level and fired toward the mound of rocks behind which Jaeger had taken shelter. Chunks of rock exploded into the air, flickering with sparks. There was no movement visible. The Klingon began to smile as he drew himself to his feet and strode across the clearing, rounded the rockpile and pointed the disruptor at Jaeger. As he had suspected, she had no other weapon. It was just like the simple-minded Starfleet people to depend on a single phaser! "Come out of there," he said, consumed with amusement.
Jaeger glared up at him. "You murdering Klingon son of a bitch."
He knew more than enough colloquial English to understand the meaning of her words. One female, he thought, and such a small one at that. "I said come out of there."
She climbed to her feet just slowly enough to demonstrate that she was not pleased with the situation. "Murderer," she snapped.
He was a full half meter taller than she, and was at least double her weight, but he could tell he had a job on his hands convincing her who was now in charge here. There was rage in her eyes when he reached out, took hold of her thermal coat just below her chin, and hoisted her into the air so that they were face to face.
Her face drained of color. "We came here to help you."
The Klingon began to laugh.
She wanted to struggle, try to set herself free, but knew that was what he expected, so she hung limp and weighty from the end of his arm. "You had no reason to kill him."
"You are the enemy. That was all the reason we needed."
"We came to help you!" she snapped into his face.
"Unfortunate." The Klingon glanced around. "Your ship is nearby, and in good condition, or you would not bother coming to find us, in spite of your...good intentions. So, little one, I have no need of you or your comrades. I'm sure I will be quite capable of piloting your craft out of here without your help. I would rather have had Kragan and Kurlon to accompany me, but," he shrugged, "fate seems to have had other plans for them." He grinned again. She was fuming so hard behind the breathing mask that it had begun to fog up. "Rest assured that when I reach home, I will let everyone know that the Federation came to rescue us from this lovely place. I'm sure my friends will find that most amusing." He moved his hand slightly, letting her sway back and forth like a child's toy. "I hate to dispose of you," he mused. "You would make a most interesting captive."
Her eyebrows came down so low that they sank into the top rim of the breathing mask. "I'd rather die."
"Fine," said the Klingon.
"I thought you people don't take prisoners."
"Most of the time, no. It's not worth the trouble. But in certain cases..." He chuckled softly. "You could serve to amuse me during the journey home. But since you're not interested, I'll send you to join your two comrades."
"Two?" Jaeger murmured.
"Yes. That one," he jerked his head in the direction of Hollis's corpse, "and the one who argued with Kurlon's disruptor." He studied her expression. "You didn't know about him? He's gone, little one."
She was beginning to quiver involuntarily in his grip, though it was half because his clench on her coat collar was squeezing her windpipe. They spent a long moment examining each other across the narrow space between their faces. She felt oddly detached, as if this were yet another Academy scenario (they had acted out dozens of them, with other students dressed as Klingons), somehow unconvinced that her life would end here, as Hollis's had, yet unsure why she was not afraid.
Several seconds had ticked by when she caught sight of movement over the Klingon's left shoulder. "Let me go," she croaked. He frowned but said nothing. "I said let me go!" she sputtered. He grinned widely, unaware of what had caught her attention behind him.
Before he could react, in a move to rival anything she had ever accomplished on the handball court, she brought her legs up and in, slammed the soles of her feet against the Klingon's midriff, and tucked herself into a roll as his grip on her coat was snapped loose.
As she hit the ground a couple of meters away, she heard the whine of a phaser and the Klingon's abbreviated scream of protest. Her vision blurred for an instant; when it had cleared, Spock was bending over her moving silently and rapidly.
Until she felt his touch, she had been unaware that in pulling away from the Klingon, she had broken the strap on the breathing apparatus. She lay still, holding her breath as much as possible while Spock finished repairing the damage. She remembered Hollis's comparison: the air did smell something like a bonfire of rotten eggs, and her stomach churned from the sharp lungful she had inhaled when she hit the ground.
"Are you all right, Lieutenant?" Spock asked finally.
She coughed spastically. The fresh air coming through the breathing mask didn't seem to do much to clear her offended lungs. "I think so," she wheezed.
With a firm hand on her upper arm, Spock hoisted her to her feet, keeping hold of her until he was sure she wasn't likely to topple over. Tom Cooper stood a few feet away, alternately watching his shipmates and the tortured figure of the Klingon. The enemy warrior's body was convulsing, surrounded by a flickering, sparking aura of eerie greenish light. He was obviously dead, yet continued jerking on the ground like a beached fish. Jaeger peered down at him, then looked curiously at Spock. "His molecular structure has begun to dissolve," the Vulcan said dispassionately.
"But your phaser was set on stun," Cooper pointed out.
"Indeed," Spock replied. "The ionization in the atmosphere caused the phaser to malfunction."
"Mine overloaded," Jaeger told him. "Took two of them with it."
Spock examined his phaser briefly, checking for signs of overload. Clipping the weapon back onto the belt of his jacket, he asked Jaeger, "Then this was the last of them?"
"Yes, sir. There were just the three--that I know of."
Cooper was looking around, frowning. "We'd better find Gibbs."
"They got him," Jaeger said quietly.
"When?"
"Before they..." Her eyes went to Hollis. Some of the blood soaking his coat had dried in the wind. His right fist was clenched in a final, futile protest. Jaeger's vision misted over. "Before they...oh, God, Hollis." She looked plaintively at Cooper, then at Spock. "I was too late, Mister Spock."
He nodded solemnly. "We were all too late, Lieutenant. But we have all done everything we can do. I believe we should try to return to the Enterprise."
*****
"Sensors picking up something, sir," Chekov said. "Unidentified."
"Hailing frequencies open, Captain. No contact with the vessel." Uhura tapped on her keyboard, the fingers of her other hand resting lightly on her earphone. She had been listening to static for so long that the sound began to seem natural.
Kirk's fist clenched and opened. "Go to yellow alert."
"Yellow alert, sir," Uhura confirmed.
Chekov went on urgently tapping instructions into the computer relay. His reaction to the relentless static in his ears and flickering through the computer screens was opposite that of Uhura; it was more than he could stand, and he felt a wicked urge to pull up the board and begin ripping out circuitry modules and fiber optics just to silence the noise. He tried feeding the shuttle's specifications into the computer and asking it to verify whether the approaching blip met the same specs, but the computer insisted in its inscrutable green on black readout, "INSUFFICIENT DATA".
"Come on, come on," Chekov muttered, switching tacks and scanning the planetoid's surface for large metallic objects. "Don't tell me 'insufficient data', machine. Tell me where the shuttle is, and tell me now."
Kirk was watching his lack of progress. "Visual on the vessel, Mister Hennessy."
"Aye, Captain." Hennessy set the main viewer to pick up visual scan of the area around the blip, filling the screen with the gray-brown image of the planetoid peppered with static. "Nothing yet, sir," Hennessy said quietly, adjusting the controls to augment the image slightly. An interminable couple of minutes went by, then, at last, a tiny, wobbling object appeared near the center of the screen. "There, sir!" Hennessy exclaimed.
"Full magnification," Kirk told him.
Hennessy touched the zoom controls. Approaching the Enterprise on an increasingly ragged course was the Galileo. "Sir?" Hennessy said. "It doesn't look like they know where they're going."
"It may not be the landing party," Kirk said through his teeth. "Uhura, keep trying to raise them."
"Galileo, this is Enterprise," Uhura said softly but urgently into the mike. "Galileo, this is the Enterprise, do you read? What is your status, Galileo? Come in."
Chekov stopped playing with the computer and alternated watching Uhura and the main viewer. Most of the color had drained from his face. Kirk's words had stricken him; was it possible the Klingons had overcome the landing party and taken the shuttlecraft for their own? He doubted they'd be stupid enough to take on the full crew of the Enterprise, even if they were heavily armed. On the other hand, the shuttle had insufficient power for them to head anywhere else.
"Collision course, Captain," announced Hennessy.
"Homing beacon," Kirk instructed. "Full power. Turn on all the docking lights. Whatever you can do to guide them in."
Uhura said soberly, "No answer from the shuttle, sir."
"Keep trying."
They watched for another urgent moment while the Galileo bobbed closer, looking like nothing so much as an amusement park ride. The tiny shuttle's stabilizers seemed to be gone; that, or it was being driven by a very drunken pilot. "Gretchen?" Chekov whispered. His thoughts bounced between wanting it to be her (and not hostile aliens) and wanting it not to be her (for on her worst days she would never pilot the shuttle so badly). He began to rise from the science station seat, moving unconsciously closer to the viewscreen. "Sir," he said sickly, "they're out of control. We've got to do something. They're going to hit us."
"Tractor beam," Kirk said to Hennessy. "Haul them in here."
Hennessy programmed the information into his board and touched controls. "Tractor beam locked on, sir."
Kirk was out of his seat now, too, moving toward the turbolift doors. Over his shoulder, he said to Uhura, "Full security detail to the shuttle bay. Phasers on stun. Go to red alert... until we find out who's on that shuttle. And have Doctor McCoy meet me outside the landing bay. On the double."
*****
Surrounding the shuttle were six security officers, all crouched with phasers aimed at the doorway of the shuttlecraft. When Spock stepped into the doorway, brows hiked in surprise, they held their position, but all looked to Kirk for instructions. Kirk said nothing for a long, heavy moment: he was staring at the front of Spock's thermal coat, which was soaked through with blood: red, not green.
"What happened, Spock?" Kirk asked tersely.
"The distress signal was from a Klingon scout vessel." Stepping off the ramp, Spock beckoned McCoy to go inside. "I believe that Lieutenant Jaeger needs your attention, Doctor. Her breathing apparatus was torn off briefly." To Kirk, he added somberly, "Gibbs and Hollis are dead, Captain."
"How?"
"Gibbs from disruptor fire, I believe. Hollis is inside."
McCoy--with Chekov two steps ahead of him--had already gone into the shuttle. He had glanced at Hollis's body just long enough to assure himself that the young man was beyond any help he could offer, then had joined Chekov at Jaeger's side. Chekov was holding Jaeger's hand, talking to her softly, enormously relieved although her pasty expression should have done little to reassure him that she was all right. With one eye on the doorway as Kirk entered the shuttle, McCoy ran his mediscanner in front of Jaeger and made mental notes of the readings it produced. Chekov looked at him hopefully.
"She'll be all right," McCoy said, straightening up. "Lieutenant, can you walk on your own?"
Jaeger nodded, stood up, and swayed alarmingly. Chekov seized her by the arm. "I guess not," she said to McCoy, trying for a smile.
"Take her to Sickbay," the doctor told Chekov.
Spock had placed Hollis's body stretched out in the rear of the shuttle, where it occupied most of the available empty floor space between the bulkhead and the crew seats. The security officer's eyes were closed, but even so his face left little doubt as to what kind of pain he had been in when he died. His jaw was contorted; his fair, whiskerless cheeks were drawn back as if he had been trying to scream. The thermal coat bulged open from the slice the Klingon dagger had made, although Spock had tried to press it closed to cover the enormous wound underneath. Kirk stood over the boy, wedged between the crew seats, gazing down at the body with something unreadable spread across his face. The air in the shuttle was tangy with traces of cyanoalisitate and the smell of Hollis's blood.
"Jim?" McCoy ventured quietly.
The captain turned to him, his expression still enigmatic but with a severity in his eyes that startled McCoy. His glance went past McCoy to Spock and to Cooper, standing near the front of the shuttle, waiting for orders. Kirk's fingers moved a little, then, abruptly, he snapped, "Report at oh-eight-hundred hours for debriefing," and strode out of the shuttle.
Cooper turned to Spock, his eyes full of questions. "Sir..."
"Dismissed, Ensign," was Spock's only response.
Chapter 2
McCoy shoved aside the stack of medical record tapes he had been working from, thumbed the intercom button and punched in the code for the bridge with a force that threatened to send the button through the console to the underside of his desk.
"Bridge. Commander Uhura."
"Uhura, where's the captain?" McCoy asked sharply.
The chief communications officer's voice had a strong thread of stress in it, too. "I don't know, Doctor. He hasn't been on the bridge for some time. Would you like me to --"
"No." McCoy thumbed the button again and tried the code for Kirk's quarters. This time there was no reply. Gritting his teeth, McCoy got up from his chair, and smacked his knee hard on the edge of the desk. The pain brought a couple of involuntary tears to his eyes. "God damn," he muttered, directing the oath at the wall beacon which had been flashing red alert for the last two hours. Favoring the injured knee, McCoy strode to the wall and examined the intercom with a rising fury, trying to decide if dismantling the unit was more than a five-minute project. Zapping the infernal thing with a phaser would be a lot faster, he thought.
The door to the main corridor hummed open, and Spock stepped into McCoy's office, frowning when he noticed the doctor moving toward the wall speaker with a slender medical instrument in his hand. "Are you planning to stab it to death, Doctor?" he inquired.
McCoy wheeled. "Damn it, Spock," he began. Over the last half hour he had perfected the art of talking through clenched teeth, and had to make a conscious effort now to unclench them. "Jim canceled the alert almost two hours ago. We got out of the ion storm almost that long ago. How long is it going to take to silence this thing? Or are they testing me? They want to find out how much of this it takes to drive me into a homicidal frenzy."
"I doubt that anyone has you singled out, Doctor," Spock replied mildly. "The alarm goes to every part of the ship."
"I know. I checked."
"The maintenance team is working as quickly as possible."
"That's what they always tell you," McCoy hissed. "They're 'working on it'."
"Do you have reason to doubt them?"
McCoy opened his mouth to reply, then thought better of it. Twenty-one years of practice had taught him that volleying with Spock was usually pointless, and, at the moment, his nervous system was far too frayed for him to enjoy the effort. "No," he sighed. "I don't."
The Vulcan nodded. "How is Lieutenant Jaeger?"
"I released her into Chekov's care. He was driving me crazy, too, with his hovering." McCoy sank into his chair and rubbed gingerly at his knee. "She seems to be recovering. I don't think she got enough cyanoalisitate to do any permanent damage, although she's going to have a hell of a headache for a while." He nodded at the empty bed. "I told her to rest--although how anyone could rest in all this racket is beyond me."
Hands clasped behind his back, Spock leaned toward the desk to scan the information on the viewer. It was a report on the effects of cyanoalisitate on Human life forms. "Interesting. If you don't mind, Doctor, I should like to review this information later myself."
"Do it now, if you want. I can't concentrate."
"Later will be fine." Spock paused, straightened up and moved away from the desk a pace or two. McCoy peered at him curiously. "I am concerned about the captain."
"Join the club."
"He seems to be taking Hollis and Gibbs's deaths much too seriously."
McCoy switched off the viewer and sat back in his chair. "I know."
"I haven't seen him quite this...preoccupied in some time."
"You're not going to quote me a precise number of months, days and hours?" McCoy asked perversely. Spock lifted a brow in response but said nothing. The doctor went on, "He's been...all right, 'preoccupied' for a few weeks. I don't see any reason for it. Nothing's changed. It's been over three years since the trouble on Nimbus Three. He's gotten over his problem with you--fine. Now, he seems to be getting worse. When I ask him about it, he either ignores me or laughs it off. I don't like it, Spock. I don't like it a damn bit. We're supposed to meet with the Citizen's High Council of Dianas tomorrow, and he isn't...well, let's say he doesn't represent Starfleet in its best light."
Spock asked, "There's nothing medically wrong with him?"
"Not a thing. Those handball matches with Jaeger have whipped him into shape. Physically, he's fine."
"I believe we should talk with him."
McCoy considered the suggestion for a long moment. He didn't begin to think they'd have any sort of success; his attempts in the past to get Kirk to discuss an emotional problem had usually resulted in arguments, denials and bad feelings on both sides. But, he reminded himself, it was his duty to supervise Kirk's emotional health, no matter how difficult that might be or how much Kirk resisted it. Nodding, he got up from the desk. "All we have to do is find him. Nobody's seen him for over an hour."
"I know where to find him," Spock said.
"Oh, you do?"
"Of course, Doctor. The captain would not leave the bridge without informing someone of his whereabouts. He is depressed, not irresponsible."
McCoy countered, "Well, it was nice of you to share the information."
"He wished to be alone. I respected that wish. Informing the crew of his whereabouts would not have served to accomplish anything, in either event."
Why can't I ever win an argument? McCoy wondered, ushering Spock toward the door, then amended the thought, No, I don't want to win. Don't care if I win. I just want to come out of one of these discussions feeling like what I've said makes some sense.
*****
*****
Jim Kirk sat alone in the officers' lounge, two levels below the bridge in the Enterprise's eleven deck saucer section. He was slouched in one of the softly cushioned chairs, his legs stretched out straight in front of him, his arms folded over his midriff. In front of him, just out of reach, was the fifteen-meter-wide viewing port, and beyond the glass, the glittering blackness of space. He watched star trails stream by for a long time, his mind largely empty though there was an aching heaviness inside him. All the artificial lights in the room were out, leaving the lounge in almost total darkness.
His eyelids began to feel heavy after a while, but he resisted giving himself up to sleep. Every time he closed his eyes he could see Hollis's face floating in front of him. Light brown, fuzzy hair, bright blue eyes, a crooked scar over his left eyebrow that he'd never bothered to have removed. He was a gregarious kid, funny, the first one to liven up a gathering on the rec deck. Kirk remembered seeing him one evening not long ago, loudly leading an off-key rendition of "Happy Birthday" for some fellow crew member around an obviously hand-fashioned birthday cake. That faded into the memory of two hours ago. The look on the boy's face--he had died in inconceivable pain. Soon Kirk would have to perform that least pleasant of all commander's duties: sitting at the BellComm terminal in his quarters and sending a commpic to be forwarded to the boy's family. A few words about how brave their son had been, how he had died gallantly protecting the galaxy from...what? A handful of stranded Klingons? Kirk rubbed fiercely at his temples.
Things could have been different, he thought. I could have saved Edith. Could have stayed back there with her. He shut his eyes and tried conjuring up her face instead of Hollis'. They'd had such a short time together, just a few days--but there had been so much caring, so much emotion in that little time. She didn't have to die! he thought. So what if it changed the future? There are so many alternate futures. One lost wouldn't make that much difference.
He used that argument with himself more often lately: that he could have made a life back there, with Edith. A home, children, a solid, regular existence that didn't involve sending someone else's children to their deaths. Occasionally, it occurred to him that even when he had had a home on Earth, he had not been happy, but he ignored that train of thought. At one point, he even wondered how it had happened that he had fallen so completely in love with Edith Keeler over the course of a few weeks--love enough that she had haunted his memory for twenty years. What do I want? he asked himself. He sat forward in the chair, leaning his elbows on his knees and resting his chin on his fists. Her? Do I really want her back? Want to be back there with her? Something Spock had said when they were battling the entity that called itself V'Ger came back to him: "It knows only that it needs. And like most of us, it does not know what." Pain throbbed at the back of Kirk's head. So tell me, James T. Kirk, he thought. What is it that you want? What do you need?
Something, he thought. Something more than this.
"Damn," he murmured.
He'd had high hopes a month ago, when they'd picked up a passenger at the Prothos colony, a Starfleet specialist bound for a year's tour of duty on Dianas. Peter, his nephew, the only surviving son of his brother Sam and Aurelan Kirk, one of the few living relatives Kirk had left. The captain, barely restraining a broad grin, had dashed from the bridge down to the hangar deck to greet his guest, anticipating a month of good times before Peter's service on Dianas began...and was met by a stranger. The young man who stepped out of the Federation shuttle and faced James Kirk was most decidedly not the child Sam and Aurelan had borne. He was stiff, unfriendly and unwilling to acknowledge his uncle in any way that was not demanded by the elder Kirk's rank. Dislike emanated from every square inch of him. Jim Kirk had been startled, then puzzled, then hurt, then angry, and, after a single day of trying to penetrate his nephew's defenses, had walked away from the boy and left him in the hands of the science department. McCoy had questioned both Peter's coldness and Kirk's reaction, but neither offered the doctor any explanations. In the ensuing month, uncle and nephew had not spoken a single word to each other.
Something more than that, Kirk thought. I need something more than that. Someone more. Someone I don't need to leave behind.
He stared out the viewport at the flickering vista of stars. This is what I chose! No home, no family. This. He'd lamented once, long ago, about not having a beach to walk on. Beach? he thought. No solid ground at all. And I picked it. A sigh welled up inside him, and he didn't try to hold it back. Swell choice, Jim! You'll be old and doddering, and there you'll be, on the bridge, till they have to haul you out of there because you can't handle it any more. Unless you reach the point where you can't handle it anymore before you get old and doddering. He smiled wryly to himself. Then what would you have? he thought. Less than what you have now...
The lounge door opened, but Kirk avoided turning his head.
"Private party?" McCoy asked.
Kirk said stiffly, "Yes."
Spock and McCoy crossed the room to stand near Kirk's chair. He could barely hear their footsteps, cushioned by the heavy pile carpet. A minute ticked by, weighty with silence.
"Spock," McCoy said finally. "It's quiet in here."
"Yes," Spock agreed.
The doctor persisted, "I mean, you can't hear the damn klaxon in here."
"Of course not. I disconnected the circuit to this room."
"Why?"
Another beat of silence. Kirk could imagine the look Spock was giving the medical officer: that same look he had every time he felt himself wasting time giving obvious information to the unenlightened.
"So that it would be quiet in here," Spock replied evenly.
McCoy shot back, "Well, thanks a lot. That was thoughtful of you."
"You're quite welcome, Doctor."
"Gentlemen," Kirk said softly.
"Captain?" Spock inquired.
"Get out."
"We came here to talk," McCoy said.
"I don't want to talk. If you two want to talk, be my guest, but do it somewhere else. This is a big ship."
McCoy looked around as his eyes became accustomed to the dim light. He could hear nothing save the sound of their breathing. Funny, he mused, I never noticed it could be this quiet in here. He rested his hands on the back of an empty chair. Kirk was still staring out the viewport.
"Jim," McCoy said, "that boy's death wasn't your fault." Kirk said nothing, didn't even stir, so McCoy plunged gamely ahead. "Or Spock's, or anybody else's. It just happened." He waited. Still no reply. "It was a risky mission, Jim. He knew that. They all know it. This is no church picnic we're on. You don't sign on with Starfleet if you enjoy being safe and cozy. It's a risk--every day, every minute." He glanced at Spock.
The Vulcan was watching him curiously, not contributing, not interfering, just listening.
Somehow McCoy found that annoying. "We've lost personnel before. God knows, we'll probably lose more. But you can't blame yourself for it. That's not realistic, Jim."
"Are you through?" Kirk asked.
"No, damn it, I'm not through. Take this for what it is, Jim. It's the same thing every commander has gone through for thousands of years. You have to make the decisions. Sometimes you don't like the results. But there was no other way. You had to respond to that distress call, no matter who sent it, or where it came from. That's your duty."
Kirk stiffened a little in the chair. "Don't tell me what my duty is. I know what my duty is."
"Then either live with it, or resign. Those are your options."
There was another long moment of silence. Then Kirk got up from the chair, moving slowly, and stood with his back to the viewport so that his face was practically invisible to Spock and McCoy. "If you want to remove me from command," he said stonily, "then do so. Otherwise, keep the lectures to yourself. I don't need any lectures. I know what my job is, and I'm trying to do it. Now get out of here, and leave me alone."
I knew it, McCoy thought. "All right...Captain."
McCoy stalked out of the lounge, not looking to see whether Spock would follow. The door hummed open to allow him to pass and hummed shut behind him. Spock stayed where he was, his face impassive, his arms hanging easily at his sides.
"Well?" Kirk said hotly.
"I did not come here to talk. Only to listen."
Kirk studied his friend briefly, his face chiseled with a furious frown that gradually slid away and left nothing in its place. Then he began to pace back and forth in front of the viewport, his hands clenched, his shoulders so stiff that they would ache for hours afterward, his breath coming in and out startlingly loud in the hush of the dark lounge. He stopped pacing intermittently to look at Spock. The Vulcan changed neither posture nor expression as the minutes passed; if need be, he could stand frozen for several hours, though he seldom found occasion to try. He just waited until James Kirk was ready to unleash the emotion building up inside him.
Fully twenty minutes passed before Kirk finally spoke. "How would you feel, Spock, if you went through your life and after fifty-four years all you had left of your family was my nephew, Peter?"
"I'm afraid I don't see your point," Spock replied.
"I've lost both parents, my brother and sister-in-law. My son. I have no wife, no children left. My uncle passed away last year. My cousins don't speak to me, neither do Georgie or Marcus. All I really have left is Peter."
"You find that to be a problem?"
"He hates me."
"Your nephew," Spock pointed out, "hates every living being he has encountered in this galaxy. Including, I might add, himself." He shifted position slightly, moving to gaze out the viewport at the retreating stars. "There is some fault in your logic, though. Unless you refer specifically to blood relations, I believe you tend to regard Doctor McCoy and myself as family. You have expressed that opinion on several occasions." He turned to the captain. "You are not alone, Jim."
Kirk sighed. "I'm not so sure."
"In a sense, the entire crew of the Enterprise is your family," Spock went on. "Perhaps that is what is causing the difficulty? You feel too strongly about..."
"How many have I lost, Spock? Since I got command of the Enterprise-A?"
"Seventeen," Spock replied.
"Seventeen? Seventeen people in three years? Jesus!"
"Actually, Captain, that is an extremely low ratio. Not even including the Kelvan War, there are several current ranking officers in Starfleet who have lost a majority of the people under their command. Of course, it would depend upon the particular circumstances. Captain Esteban of the Grissom lost his entire crew--and himself--but I doubt anyone in the fleet claims that it was his fault."
Kirk began pacing again. "I owe them something, Spock. These kids look to me for...to do the right thing, make the right decision. They depend on me. Why is it my right to sit on the bridge like some king on a throne, and send these kids out into God knows what?"
Spock cut him off. "I have not found it your habit to 'just sit on the bridge'. In fact, over the years, I believe you have stepped into far more dangerous situations that you should have." He moved in front of Kirk so that the captain would be forced to stop pacing. "To follow your present line of thought--is it your opinion that when the need for a landing party arises, we should choose that landing party only from among those senior officers who volunteer to take part? And leave the young people here on the ship? If the landing party were killed, the crew would have no leadership. As I believe Doctor McCoy would express it, they would be 'afloat without a paddle'. As unfair as it may seem, this crew, any crew, needs a commander. And as the doctor attempted to point out, they are not children. They are highly trained military personnel. They all knew what was involved when they received their commissions. They do not expect this to be a 'church picnic'."
"I know, Spock. I know."
"There is a burden, Jim," Spock acknowledged quietly. "But do not let it overwhelm you."
A smile grew in Kirk's face. "I thought you didn't come here to talk."
"The opportunity presented itself."
"Indeed."
If Spock had been more than half Human, he would have smiled in return. As it was, he felt the gentle impulse inside him and, as usual, pushed it aside. He considered Kirk briefly and came to the conclusion that their conversation was over and that he had accomplished a good deal more than McCoy had. Knowing that Kirk would not be distressed by the Vulcan habit of walking away without a good-bye once a conversation was over (after so many years, he was still infinitely puzzled by the Human need for punctuation of situations that had resolved themselves), he simply turned then and left the room.
Kirk watched him go. "There is a burden," he said softly. "The question is, Spock, how long am I supposed to carry it?"
*****
Chekov took a final critical look at the contents of the cafeteria tray as he approached the door to his and Jaeger's cabin. Medical orders be damned; he'd take the things he knew she couldn't resist: French toast with plenty of syrup, scrambled eggs, bacon, melon and hot, sweet coffee. The mixed aromas had beguiled him all the way from the mess hall even though he'd already had his own breakfast. He'd gone up to the mess hall for his usual spartan bowl of hot cereal so that she could sleep a while longer rather than hear him clanking around the in-room food processor unit. Halfway through his meal, it had occurred to him that nothing was as likely to cheer her up as the most enormous, non-nutritious, smelly tray full he could create. He'd even considered trying to cook some of it himself in the galley, without the aid of the computer, but decided that would have taken far too long...and might have produced a disaster. A very blackened disaster.
"Gretchen?" he said when the cabin door slid open. "I've brought you some breakfast." He moved into the room far enough to catch sight of her, and stopped. When he'd left half an hour ago, she'd been sound asleep (or at least seemed to be), huddled under the bedcovers with her pillow balled under her head. Now she was standing in front of the dresser, in full uniform, brushing her hair. Smiling brightly, she turned to him, saw the tray, and sniffed at the air.
"Thanks!" she chirped. "Smells great."
"What are you doing?" he asked dourly.
She put the brush down, took the tray from him and set it on the desktop. "I have to go to the debriefing."
"And then what?"
"I'm going on duty. It's my watch."
"Not until Doctor McCoy says you're fit."
"I'm fit. I talked to him." She went on talking as she cut into the French toast and nibbled at slices of bacon, half her words coming out around large mouthfuls of food. "He can't find any reason to find me not fit. He went through record tapes all night, and there's nothing to indicate that there should be anything wrong with me. I just have a wicked headache; that's all."
Chekov's dour look degenerated into a scowl. "He said the cyanoalisitate is a toxic substance which interferes with--"
"God, you sound like a textbook." Jaeger scooped up the rounded, brightly colored stone they used as a paperweight. It was a sample of a native mineral something like chalk, so that while it was nearly the size of a baseball, it was closer in weight to that baseball than a rock. "Here," she went on, tossing it lightly to Chekov. "Pitch it to me. Any time you're ready." He began to protest, but she waved him off. "Just throw it, and I'll see if I can catch it. No fumbles allowed." Chekov frowned at her, let a few seconds tick by, then tossed her the stone in a creditable underhand pitch. Jaeger's right hand shot out and she caught the paperweight easily in her palm. "See?" She put the stone back on the pile of reports it had been securing. "Now what would you like me to do? Walk a straight line?"
"Don't make fun of me, Gretchen."
"I'm not, baby, I'm not." She got up from the desk and went to him. He resisted her embrace for a moment, then softened. "I'm okay, Pav, really."
"I worry about you," he said, trying to sound angry.
"I know. I appreciate it. But I can't sit around here any more. It makes me think too much. I have to get back to work. There's no reason for me to stay in here, if there's nothing wrong with me." She kissed him soundly but quickly and went back to her breakfast. "This is great." He sat on the edge of the desk. She held out a slice of bacon. "Did you eat?"
"Yes." Even though it wasn't kosher, he took the bacon anyway. "It'll go away, you know."
"What will?"
"The nightmares."
Jaeger lowered her eyes but went on eating. "Nightmares?"
"Now you're going to lie to me and tell me you didn't have nightmares last night? You woke up three times."
"I didn't think you knew," she murmured.
"Of course I knew."
Head still low, she began prodding at the remains of the French toast with her fork. Chekov reached out and rested a gentle hand on her shoulder, surprised at the tension that had come into her muscles. "I can still see it, Pavel," she whispered. "Especially when I close my eyes. What they did to Hollis. And the Klingon--the look on his face while he was holding me." It hadn't occurred to her at the time, but once safely back on board the Enterprise, she had remembered some of the gossip about what happened to Klingon prisoners. Back at the Academy, during long summer nights around a bar table, the stories of Serenidad and Stradia had been spookily involving. Now they seemed closer to real nightmares. The Klingon had talked about taking her prisoner. In her dreams, her mind had conjured up scene after scene of what might have happened if he had done so. Shuddering, she raised her face so she could see Chekov's. "He wanted to...he wanted..."
"It didn't happen," Chekov said firmly. "And what did happen is over now."
"I don't know if I can forget it."
"You will."
"But you haven't..." she hesitated. "You still have dreams about the Ceti eel. You don't talk about it, but I know about your dreams, too."
He shrank back from her, repulsed by the memory. "Not as often," he muttered. The aroma from Jaeger's breakfast was beginning to turn his stomach.
The haunted look in his eyes made her forget the Klingon. She didn't know the entire story of the torture he'd endured at the hands of Khan Noonien Singh, but she had coaxed enough of the details out of the ship's computer to know Pavel Chekov had reason to be haunted. The idea of a tiny, larval creature crawling around inside your skull, seeking to curl itself into your brain... Jaeger was sorry she'd spoken. "Pavel," she said quietly. "I shouldn't have said anything. It was stupid and mean."
"It's all right," he said, but it was a lie.
She embraced him again, held him close and waited until his tension began to loosen. "I love you, Pavel. I love you so much."
"I love you, too."
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't...sometimes I talk without thinking."
"Everybody has their own bad memories," Chekov said. He forced a smile that almost succeeded at being genuine. "Are you done eating? We'd better go down to the briefing room."
"I'm done," she nodded. "I think I spoiled my own appetite."
He slid an arm around her shoulders and steered her out of the cabin. Neither of them spoke during the short walk down the corridor to the turbolift. "Level, please?" the computer voice said when they stepped into the lift. Chekov rolled his eyes a little; although he'd been around talking non-living things since he was a small boy, the computer voice in the lift still disoriented him, especially when he was preoccupied. "G Level," he said, feeling the familiar pang of embarrassment at talking to a wall. "Main Briefing Room." The car slid into motion, gliding rapidly sideways then down, depositing Chekov and Jaeger on G Deck within a matter of seconds. Jaeger stopped outside the door to the briefing room and carefully straightened her tunic. Chekov grinned widely. "Practicing to be a Vulcan?"
"What?" Jaeger frowned.
He shook his head. "Nothing."
He remembered the first time he'd seen her. It had been inside this room, over a year ago, on the occasion of her first briefing as a new member of the crew. Kirk had come down to give the seven women and four men his usual orientation speech; later would come the one-on-one getting-acquainted chat. None of them had met the captain before, and he inspired the same terror-stricken awe in all of them. For some reason he was still not certain of, Chekov, sitting across the table from her, had particularly noticed Jaeger. She was paying diligent attention to Kirk's every word as if she were trying to memorize the whole speech, her hands tightly clenched together on the tabletop, her face painfully expressionless. Chekov recalled feeling much the same way during his first orientation, but Kirk had been a lot younger then and much more of a hardass, demanding nothing less than the best from his crew and from himself. Relax! he wanted to tell the attractive, curly-haired lieutenant. This is easy! He won't bite you--tell him a joke, and he might even laugh.
But the lieutenant hadn't noticed him. The eyes of all eleven neos had never strayed from the captain's face. If Kirk hadn't been used to that, it might have made him flinch. He tried his damnedest to get the little group to relax, lightening his tone a bit, using a few subtle jokes of his own, but they had listened to too many epic sagas concerning Jim Kirk. They would all do their jobs, and do them well, but it would take them months to learn the meaning of the two simple words "at ease".
And she's still nervous, Chekov noted as Jaeger fussed with her uniform. After a minute, he prodded her in the shoulder. "Let's go, Lieutenant."
She started. "Sorry."
They went on into the briefing room. Spock was already there, sitting placidly at the long table, his hands folded. He nodded in acknowledgment when Chekov and Jaeger entered and sat together across the table from him. The captain's yeoman had come and gone ahead of Spock, leaving an urn of coffee and a plate of sweet pastries, both of which Spock had ignored. Under his even gaze, Jaeger ran herself a cup of coffee and seized one of the pastries and disposed of both with a speed that made Spock blink. Nervousness, he observed, made her eat even faster than normal--even though her usual pace would have caused rampant indigestion in anyone else. Spock had once heard McCoy observe that the young lieutenant could eat more and eat it faster than anyone he'd ever seen, and despite McCoy's love of hyperbole, this particular time Spock believed there was no exaggeration involved.
"Lieutenant," Spock said as Jaeger self-consciously and surreptitiously licked powdered sugar off her fingers, "you are not here to be punished."
"Sir?"
"This is merely a debriefing. I assume you know what that means."
"Yes, Mister Spock. We each tell the captain our version of what happened."
"Do you have some reason for believing you are at fault?"
Jaeger looked searchingly at Chekov, then at the tray of pastries, then at her fingers (there were still traces of sugar, but she resisted the urge to aim her fingers at her mouth again), then finally back at Spock. "Well, sir, I..." She sighed. "Yes, sir, I think I do."
"Why is that?"
"I didn't act quickly enough. To save Hollis."
"I see."
She shoved her hands under the table, holding them aloft so that the powdered sugar wouldn't rub off onto the lap of her uniform. Spock reached over to the small pile of napkins beside the coffee urn and handed one to Jaeger. Eyes down, she wiped her hands, than made a quick swipe around her mouth. If Spock thought there was anything wrong with the entire performance, he made no sign of it. When she was finished, she held the napkin crumpled in both hands. Spock seemed to be waiting for her to proceed with her explanation, so she continued, "If I had acted faster, I could have done something...stopped the Klingons. I just sat there, trying to figure out what to do. I waited too long. I should have known...should have done something." She looked to Spock for a response, some sign of approval or disapproval, but found none. He merely considered her for a long moment without expression. Jaeger let her eyes drop again and played nervously with her napkin, wondering how long it would be before Spock's intense gaze made her blush.
"There is a concept in Vulcan philosophy," Spock said at last, steepling his fingers. "It is called Kaiidth. There is no exact English translation, but you might call it 'what is, is'. I believe Mister Chekov is familiar with it."
Chekov nodded. In his mind he could hear the words not in Spock's voice but in the gentle, musical voice of Amanda Grayson, Spock's mother. During those painful months after the struggle with Khan, when Chekov had often believed that he could never drive the memories from his mind in spite of lengthy bouts of elbow-bending with Scott (when he had downed enough vodka to float the Enterprise on an eighty-proof sea) and in spite of the hypnotherapy treatments with McCoy, Spock's mother had sat with him on an ornately carved bench in her garden and explained Kaiidth in terms he might hope to understand. The Lady Amanda had studied Vulcan philosophy since her marriage to Sarek, Spock's father, some sixty years ago, and, while many of its concepts were still beyond even her patient understanding, she had grasped this particular one when the death of Sarek's brother had made it necessary. She had sympathized in her own unique way--as mother, as