* * *
Lieutenant Uhura fell in step alongside Kirk as he made his way toward the bridge. Around them, commotion was turning to order as more and more of the crew reached their stations and settled into departure mode.
“Captain, I’m so sorry about Admiral Pike.” She was eyeing him intently. He did not return her stare.
“Thank you for your concern, Lieutenant. We all are.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m fine, thank you, Lieutenant. Just a lot on my mind. The usual pre-departure concerns.”
He increased his pace, and she had to walk faster to keep from being left behind as they stepped into the turbolift.
Once he was sequestered in the lift with his chief communications officer, something prompted Kirk to unburden himself.
“Actually, Scotty just quit. As if that wasn’t bad enough, your boyfriend is second-guessing me every chance he gets.” At the look on her face, he was sufficiently abashed to add, “I’m sorry, that was inappropriate. But he’s so damn cold and removed and above it all. He’s as affected as anyone else by what happens, but he doesn’t bat an eye. Just occasionally raises a brow. Sometimes I just want to rip the bangs off his head. Sometimes I think our minds are on exactly the same track, and then when I look around, I’m heading one way and he’s going the other. I can’t have a first officer who’s always second-guessing me.”
“Isn’t that part of his job? Isn’t that the reason there are first officers? If all he has to do is say ‘yes’ to every one of your decisions, you don’t need an intelligent second-in-command for that. A small machine with an endlessly repeating verbal loop will work just as well and won’t argue with you.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Kirk snapped. “What I mean is— Oh hell, maybe it’s not Spock at all. Maybe it’s me. I’m still new at this. I mean, I doubt it’s me, but maybe it’s me.”
“As long as it doesn’t affect your usual unshakable confidence.” When he didn’t respond to her gentle dig, she added tiredly, “It’s not you.”
“It’s not?” Her tone moved him to think of something besides himself. “Wait— Are you guys in a fight?”
Turning away from him, she focused her attention on the turbolift wall. “I’d rather not talk about it.”
“Do you guys fight? How does that work? Do you take a swing at him and he responds with five minutes of logical disquisition on why your primitive physical reaction was irrational and unproductive? Or do—?”
Before he could finish, the doors opened to reveal none other than the first officer of the Enterprise.
“Ears burning?” Kirk ventured pleasantly.
In response, the science officer eyed the captain uncertainly, but said nothing.
* * *
Time, Kirk told himself as he crossed the bridge to Chekov’s station. He was always running out of time.
“Mr. Chekov. I know that you’ve made it a project of yours to shadow Mr. Scott and his work.” He smiled encouragingly. “A genius like yourself gets bored easily.”
The young navigator looked pleased, but a tad bewildered. “Uh, thank you, Keptin.”
“Admiral Pike himself once called you a whiz kid.” Kirk turned momentarily nostalgic. “I had to look up what that meant. Anyway,” he continued brightly, “I gather that it means you’re familiar with the engineering systems of this ship.”
“Affirmative, sir.” Chekov indicated his station and its abundance of readouts. “It’s not that Navigation isn’t fulfilling all by itself; it’s only that in my spare time—”
“Your spare time has been put to good use. You’re my new chief engineer. Go put on a red shirt.”
Chekov hesitated. “Keptin, when I said that in my spare time I—”
“Are you reasonably familiar with the Enterprise’s engineering and drive systems or not?”
“Reasonably familiar.” Chekov murmured something to himself, then rose. “I suppose I have to answer in the affirmative, Keptin. But before I move to Engineering, may I ask what happened to Mr. Sco—”
“No, you may not.” Kirk’s response was quick and unyielding. “Report to your new duty station, Mr. Chekov. If anyone in Engineering has any questions about your move, you may refer them directly to me.”
“Aye, Keptin.”
“And Mr. Chekov, one more thing.” The ensign paused expectantly. “On your way to Engineering, I need you to stop in the cargo bay. There’s a load of new torpedoes there that needs to be signed aboard. As acting chief engineer, you’ll need to take care of that. Inform me as soon as this has been done and the delivery team has disembarked.”
“Certainly, Keptin. I’ll attend to it immediately.”
Chekov was as good as his word. It was mere minutes later that Kirk received the notification for which he had been waiting and that had caused him so much grief. If only Scotty had . . . He put all thoughts of the disheartening confrontation out of his mind. Too much else demanded his attention. He turned to face the helm station.
“Retract all moorings, Mr. Sulu. Inform Dock Command that we’re getting under way and transmit the usual exit information. We’ve been cleared for departure for over an hour, and we’ve spent enough time sitting here.”
“Working, Captain,” Sulu told him.
“Mr. Chekov, how are things looking down there?”
Chekov’s reply was encouraging, if not entirely confident. “All systems normal, Keptin.”
“Copy that.”
“Warp available at your command,” Chekov added.
“Thank you, Mr. Chekov.” Kirk addressed his helmsman without looking at him. “All right, let’s ride.”
“Yes, sir,” Sulu replied.
Instruments shunted commands. Monitors reported conditions. Matter was annihilated, and the Enterprise vanished from the vicinity of Earth.
Kirk continued dispensing commands. “Uhura, give me shipwide.”
“Channel open, sir,” she replied after complying.
Feeling much more confident now that he was dealing with straightforward matters of command instead of the far more complex business of interpersonal relations and individual introspection, Kirk leaned forward just enough for the command chair to recognize his voice and separate it from the rest of the softer-voiced conversation on the bridge.
“Attention, crew of the Enterprise. This is the captain speaking. As most of you know by now, through official channels or otherwise, Christopher Pike, the former captain of this ship and our friend, is dead.” For those who had not yet heard, he paused a moment to let that sink in. “The man who killed him has fled our system and is hiding on the Klingon homeworld—somewhere he believes we are unwilling to go. We’re on our way there now.”
If some of the crew had been listening nonchalantly to the captain’s departure address, to a man and woman and off-worlder, they now ceased what they were doing and turned their full attention to the words that seemed directed at each and every one of them individually.
“Per Admiral Marcus, it is essential that our presence go undetected,” Kirk continued. “Tensions between the Federation and the Klingon Empire have been high from the time of first contact and have in no way subsided since. Any direct provocation could lead to all-out war. Each of us should strive to see that does not happen. We will carry out our mission in secret and as swiftly as possible, before our presence can be noted and our ship identified.” He started to sit back, paused, and added, “These are our orders.”
As he started to recline, he caught sight of Spock. From his position at the Science station, the first officer was eyeing him with as blatant a look of disapproval as a Vulcan could manage. Kirk’s first instinct was to ignore it entirely. That was when some recent words of Uhura’s came back to him. No harm, he told himself, in admitting to uncertainty—as long as the admission was made to oneself.
“All right. Let’s go get this sonuvabitch.”
* * *
Throughout the Enterprise, expressions hard
ened and activity quickened. There were even a few spontaneous cheers. Nothing of the kind emanated from sickbay, however, as McCoy finished running the last pre-departure checkouts of personnel and equipment.
“Great,” he grumbled to no one in particular. “I’m told Qo’noS is delightful this time of year. And the Klingons are famous for their hospitality.”
* * *
The biography Spock was perusing as he sat at his station was not especially long. This was understandable, given the age of its subject. Despite its brevity, it was impressive. Certain details he noted and committed to memory with particular interest. They were not, however, the ones that would normally have attracted the attention of the casual browser. With a slight frown, he dismissed the readout as soon as he had finished it, rose, and headed for the turbolift.
From the other side of the bridge, Uhura watched him leave. Ever since they had left Earth, the science officer had been more than usually preoccupied. Which for Spock meant that he was essentially noncommunicative. Whatever was on his mind was evidently not for sharing, since he hadn’t mentioned the subject of his new preoccupation to her or, as far as she could tell, anyone else.
That included McCoy, whom in passing Spock acknowledged with a cursory, “Doctor.” He did not look up from whatever unknown held his attention, not even when McCoy responded curiously.
“Where are you running off to?” The older man gestured toward the now-unoccupied Science station. “We’re hardly under way and . . . ”
But the first officer was gone, swallowed up by the turbolift and whatever was preying upon his mind. McCoy stared after him. It wasn’t like the Vulcan not to react to a direct query without at least a minimal reply, even if only an acerbic one. The doctor considered going after him, then shrugged. If it were something Spock wanted to talk about, he would broach the subject when it suited him. If it were something to be kept private, neither McCoy nor Kirk nor a small thermonuclear device would be able to pry it out of him.
No one questioned Spock’s presence in the lower levels, where senior bridge officers were rarely encountered when a starship was in warp. A few glanced his way as he passed, but the Vulcan’s stolid countenance was intimidating even to older crewmembers. If he needed help, they knew he would ask for it—even though Spock had never done so.
Having not yet been transferred to the weapons bay, the load of new torpedoes rested where they had been placed immediately following delivery. At present, they were being scanned by a science tricorder wielded by a lone officer. The expression on her face suggested that she was not comfortable with the uninformative readouts her instrument was generating. There was much here that required explanation, she had soon realized. She turned to leave. Proper inspection would require . . .
“Mr. Spock—you startled me!”
The Vulcan had come up quietly behind his counterpart. His gaze flicked tellingly from Carol Wallace to the load of torpedoes and back again, eventually settling on the device in her hand.
“What are you doing, Doctor?”
She mustered a reassuring smile. “Verifying that the new weapons’ internal guidance systems are online and updated with the latest celestial mapping coordinates. That’s critical if there’s a chance they might be utilized in non-Federation space, because—”
Spock cut her off. “I am quite familiar with the navigational properties and functions of all classes of photon torpedoes, Doctor. You misunderstand. What are you doing aboard this ship?”
She blinked at him, the smile fading. “You’re right, Mr. Spock—I do misunderstand your question.”
“Then I shall endeavor to elucidate. There is no record in the official personnel files of your being assigned to the Enterprise.”
A half-laugh rose from her throat. “Of all the ridiculous . . . I believe there must be some sort of mistake.”
Polite but relentless, her interrogator nodded in agreement. “My conclusion as well, Dr. Marcus. In addition, it would appear that you have lied about your identity. A serious charge, unless one discounts the source—and possibly as-yet-unrevealed reasons. Wallace is the surname of your mother. I have done some research, and I believe I can only assume that the admiral is your father.”
Hand and identity caught in the proverbial cookie jar, she dropped all pretense at deception. “I’d heard that you were the most persistent science officer in the fleet.”
“My interests are not dissuaded by oblique attempts at flattery, if that is your intention. Aside from the fact of your assignment to this ship via other-than-normal channels, what is the point of this subterfuge?”
She shrugged, sounding tired. “I didn’t want any special treatment.”
“Ironic, considering you are receiving precisely that. Your mere presence on this ship smacks of special treatment. I still fail to understand why.”
She opened up to him as much as she felt that she could. “Mr. Spock, my relationship with my father is . . . complicated. I know I have no right to ask this, especially since my presence here probably comprises a list of procedural violations as long as your arm, but please—he can’t know I’m here.”
An eyebrow lifted. “It was my assumption that he would have been the one to ‘pull strings’ in order to place you on the ship without going through the usual procedures. You are telling me that is not the case?”
“No. I—”
“Why are you here, Lieutenant?”
She started to explain and might have succeeded had the ship not slammed to a stop.
VIII
The Enterprise had not “stopped” in the usual sense, of course—it was not as if she had run into some vast interstellar wall or into anything else. She had simply performed a normal maneuver in a decidedly abnormal fashion . . . the physical effect of which had mimicked a body in motion coming to a complete halt. The actual physics were rather more complicated.
In contrast, Kirk’s reaction was refreshingly simple.
“What the hell was that?”
No alarms were sounding, which was a relief not only to him but to everyone else on the bridge. In the alerts’ absence, everyone hurriedly referenced their individual specialties in search of another possible explanation.
It was Sulu who was able to respond almost immediately: “Engineering manually dropped us out of warp, sir.” Unnecessarily, he added, “Without the usual interstitial planning.”
“No kidding.” Puzzled as well as angry, Kirk addressed the chair’s pickup. “Mr. Chekov, did you break my ship?”
* * *
In Engineering, there was confusion but no panic. Something had definitely gone wrong, but insofar as any of the techs could tell, nothing was broken . . . at least, nothing that had produced any obviously deleterious side effects. Technicians scrambled to identify the problem and find a solution. As one of them hastily informed Chekov, finding the former might take as long as preparing the latter. It was with that unhelpful preliminary report in mind that the acting chief engineer rushed to respond to the query from the bridge.
“Sorry . . . sorry, sir! I don’t know what happened! Nobody does . . . yet.” He glanced over a shoulder. With a minimum of talk, the full engineering team was smothering the area with instruments and equipment. “There is . . . was . . . apparently a problem with the core. The usual fail-safes responded with an emergency shutdown—we don’t know the cause yet. But we can’t manually override the automatics—at least not until we identify the problem. Impulse only until then.”
* * *
What James Kirk muttered under his breath would have gotten him thrown out of any formal Starfleet meeting of senior officers and a censure placed in his record to boot. However, the circumstances were anything but formal. Besides which, he was the senior officer present. Having verbally expressed his feelings in no uncertain terms, he rose from the command chair.
“Mr. Sulu, remaining time to our destination?”
The helmsman studied his readouts. “Twenty minutes, sir.” His mien dead serious,
he turned in his seat. “But that’s twenty minutes in hostile space we weren’t counting on, until we can settle in behind the moonlet we’ve chosen in our final coordinates. We’re through the Neutral Zone and well inside the Klingon sphere of influence.”
“All right, we’d better hop to it.” A quick scan of the bridge revealed an unmanned Science station and its usual occupant missing. “Where’s Spock?”
“I am here, Captain,” the first officer announced as he stepped clear of the lift.
“You’re coming with me to Qo’noS. Change of plans. We’re gonna go down there and get him ourselves.”
“Captain,” Sulu began, “I feel it my duty to point out that depriving the ship of its two most senior officers while in hostile territory contravenes all recommended Starfleet and traditional military procedure going back to the beginning of warfare.”
“And probably not for the last time, Mr. Sulu. In the absence of myself and Mr. Spock, you will be in command. Unless, of course, by making your observation you are indirectly disparaging your own competency?”
Taken aback, the helmsman sat a little straighter in his chair. “No, sir.”
“I didn’t think so.” Looking across the bridge, Kirk next addressed his chief communications officer. “Lieutenant, how’s your Klingon?”
“It’s rusty, but it’s good. toHq, a’ Niq?” She smiled thinly. “That’s colloquial. You want formal?”
Kirk nodded appreciatively. “If we have to deal with any Klingons in person, I don’t think it’ll be very formal. You’re coming, too.” A sudden thought made him pause. “That won’t—be a problem, is it? You two, working together . . . ?”
“Absolutely not.” Favoring Spock with a stern sideways glance, she headed for the turbolift. For his part, the science officer sounded mildly perplexed.
“Unclear.”
Voice and expression exquisitely neutral, Kirk regarded his first officer. “What is unclear, Mr. Spock?”
The Vulcan started to reply, hesitated, got caught up in more than one interpretational conundrum, and finally responded. “A great deal, Captain.”