STAR TREK: TOS - The Janus Gate, Book Three - Past Prologue

by L. A. Graf

  Just when he thought the worst of it was over, that cold artifact of his own voice suggested, very close to his ear, “Vuey mogli vcegda tyanytch nebolshouye karti vashei rukye ...” You could always draw a little map on your hand.

  A sharp thump told him that Sulu had cuffed his first officer on the shoulder, apparently with the prosthetic hand McCoy had fitted him with not an hour before. “Pavel, stop harassing the boy.”

  The elder Chekov didn’t seem terribly concerned by his commanding officer’s reprimand. “If we left it up to him, we’d be wandering in the desert for forty years.”

  Sulu snorted. “Do I have to remind you that you were him just twenty-five years ago?”

  “No,” the other man snarled curtly. “It’s bad enough that he reminds me.”

  No one said anything after that on the short turbo-lift ride up to deck six, not even Kirk, who occupied himself by peering into every maintenance panel he had time to flip open during the trip. Inspired perhaps by his own mortification and his willingness to be [54] done with this unpleasant duty, Chekov found the empty billet described in Spock’s directions almost as though he actually knew where they were going. He keyed in the access code, then stepped back to clear the entrance as the door slid obediently open.

  “I’m afraid nothing’s been removed from the previous occupant,” he explained, remembering that, too, from the orders spelled out on Spock’s padd. “Lieutenant Tormolen died only a few days ago, and with everything that’s happened ...”

  An expression he wasn’t sure how to interpret moved wistfully across Sulu’s face, as though he’d just been reminded of something he hadn’t thought about for many years. “We understand. Thank you.”

  Chekov stole a glance at his older self’s back as the man shouldered past him into the room without bothering to excuse himself or say good-bye. What did you expect? Chekov chided himself, feeling embarrassed and angry all over again. Some kindly pearls of wisdom about which future girlfriend to watch out for?

  No, of course not ... But he wouldn’t have minded at least some indication that he could stand to look at himself without being disgusted.

  Chekov realized he’d lingered a moment longer than necessary when Sulu smiled at him gently and tossed a nod back over one shoulder. “Don’t mind him. He’s just sulking because we didn’t let him kill himself.” A snort from the room behind him was the only indication he’d been overheard. If anything, the captain’s smile softened with even greater fondness. [55] “Thank you for everything, Ensign. I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again later.” Then he stepped back into the dead crewman’s quarters and let the door slide shut behind him.

  The moment they were alone, Kirk remarked conversationally, “My future’s better than yours.”

  My future’s just scary. Chekov turned to look at him, abruptly remembering the instructions McCoy had given him and the other members of the landing party after Spock had left. “We should get some sleep ourselves.”

  Kirk tossed him a puckish grin. “Can you find your quarters from here?”

  Even depressed and half-exhausted, Chekov managed to dignify the boy’s remark with a satisfactorily offended glower. “Yes, I can find my quarters. Most of the time.”

  “Okay.” Kirk’s grin widened conspiratorially. “Can you find my quarters?”

  Chekov brought them to a halt in the middle of the corridor. “I am not taking you to the captain’s cabin.”

  “Just for a minute!”

  “I don’t even have the codes to get in.”

  “I bet I could figure them out.” Kirk slid around in front of him, looking smugly pleased with himself and for all the world like the kind of boy who could go anywhere he wanted. “It’s probably something stupid, like the birthday of my favorite dog.”

  Chekov didn’t even know that Captain Kirk had owned a favorite dog. “No.”

  [56] “But it’s my room,” Kirk protested. “Can’t I order you or something?”

  “Not for another twenty years.”

  Although he heaved a dramatic sigh of resignation, Kirk’s smile remained undimmed, and he fell into step beside Chekov again as though he hadn’t really expected a different answer. “Can we at least go see some other part of the ship? I’m hungry—we could go to the mess hall.” When Chekov rolled his eyes at the suggestion, Kirk caught at his arm and dragged him to a stop with a little laugh. “Oh, come on! I’ve barely eaten since I got here, and I can’t believe you’re not going to show me the whole ship, and besides I’m way too excited to sleep.”

  The mention of food—no matter how fleeting—reminded Chekov’s stomach that he hadn’t eaten since their arrival at Tlaoli, either, and now the empty cramping was giving his fatigue a run for its money. Since they’d all been ordered by McCoy to get a good meal in addition to as much sleep as possible, he supposed it didn’t really matter in what order those events occurred. He motioned Kirk back toward the turbolift with a sigh. “Lucky for you, I know how to find the rec hall.”

  Heads turned with the usual casual interest when they entered, but a few crew members looked a little longer than Chekov was used to. He found himself wondering how far word had spread about what had happened planetside, and how many of the people staring knew who the boy with him was, and how [57] many others couldn’t even guess. They were in the middle of a shift, which meant only a handful of crew were actually present. Still, Chekov tried to hold himself erect and unself-conscious as he led Kirk over to the banks of food slots. Whatever gossip might spring up from this public glimpse of the boy who would be their commander, at least no one could say that Chekov was embarrassed to be saddled with him.

  Tapping Kirk’s shoulder to retrieve his attention from where it had strayed toward a three-dimensional chess game going on nearby, Chekov explained the food ordering system by keying up his own dinner as an example. Kirk watched the steps keenly, then stepped up to the menu screen with all the delight of a boy given his first 3-D entertainment set. He was still scrolling through the choices when Chekov’s food arrived, but seemed to interrupt himself abruptly by pointing to one particular entry and asking, “What’s this?”

  Chekov glanced at the screen. It was part of the Northern Africa menu, and he couldn’t even begin to pronounce the name. “I have no idea.”

  As though that were precisely the answer he’d hoped for, Kirk promptly punched in that selection and stepped back to wait with a self-satisfied grin on his face. Chekov could only shake his head in wonder. “I cannot believe you’re intending to eat something when you have no idea what it is.”

  “Are you kidding?” Kirk looked honestly surprised at his companion’s diffidence. “It’ll be fun!”

  [58] Whether or not it was fun, it was certainly colorful. A riotous patchwork of bright reds, greens, and yellows decorated a plate that had been draped with what Chekov initially took as a sheet of linen napkin. Closer inspection revealed it to be some sort of pale, clothlike bread. A second piece of the same spongy material had been neatly folded on a smaller plate beside the first. Chekov had to admit that it all smelled very rich and wonderful, but he was still skeptical of anything that didn’t come out of the machine in the company of a fork and knife.

  “See?” Kirk said as he slid into an empty seat as though already accustomed to doing it every day. “Your food is all just sort of white and sitting there. Mine is interesting and brightly colored.”

  Chekov took the seat across from him. “Venomous animals are also brightly colored,” he pointed out.

  Kirk made a disapproving face. “Don’t be such a hen. It’s on the menu—” He tore off a section of the separate napkin-that-wasn’t and used it to scoop up a handful of food. “—so it’s not like it can kill me.”

  Chekov watched the boy dive into his food with a fascination bordering on amazement. It wasn’t necessarily the flavor of the food Kirk enjoyed, he realized, it was the experience—the opportunity to do something he’d never done before, even if it was something as
simple as eating a North African meal with his hands. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. After all, if the man who commanded a starship on the very edges of the frontier didn’t derive [59] excitement from all things new and different, what was he doing on the frontier at all?

  Chekov glanced down at his own considerably less adventuresome meal. Am I sure I have what it takes to be a starship commander?

  Coughing once, Kirk abruptly dropped his bread-napkin into the center of his plate and clapped both hands to his mouth. Chekov looked up at him in alarm as the boy’s eyebrows climbed toward his hairline and his face darkened to an appalling shade of red. “Are you all right?”

  Nodding vigorously, Kirk groped for the glass of milk he’d ordered with his dinner, and finally managed to squeak, “Hot!” just before gulping down a series of desperate mouthfuls.

  Chekov laughed. “I warned you.”

  “No, no—it’s good!” But even that assurance collapsed into a strangled little cough before it could sound too convincing, and Kirk emptied the rest of his milk in a couple of quick swallows. Still laughing, Chekov pushed his own water across the table and into Kirk’s reaching hand.

  Finishing only half of the water, Kirk sat back with a loud exhalation of relief, then cocked his head at Chekov as though only just putting a finger on something that had been bothering him for a while. “He never smiles.”

  “Who?” Chekov asked.

  “You.” An impatient scowl wrinkled his young face, and he waved his hand in frustration at not [60] having the pronouns to easily discuss what they were all in the midst of. “The other you. Him.” He leaned forward to replace the half-empty water glass on Chekov’s side of the table. “Even when he says something funny, it’s like he knows it’s funny, but he doesn’t really care.”

  Chekov felt his own smile evaporate, and struggled not to let it sink into a frown as he toyed with the suddenly unappetizing food on his plate.

  “Does it bug you?” Kirk asked, blunt in his youthful sincerity. “Knowing you might end up being ...” Words failed him again, and he shrugged. “... somebody you feel like you aren’t?”

  Chekov returned the shrug. “A little.” But that wasn’t really true, and he still felt awkward lying to the boy. “A lot,” he finally admitted. He dropped his fork onto his plate and pushed it off to one side. “But maybe knowing it’s a possibility will help me prevent it from happening.” It didn’t sound any more convincing now than when he said it to himself.

  Kirk gathered another more cautious mouthful of food, and chewed it carefully while he thought. “Maybe it’s not good for us to know too much about who we’re going to be. I mean, I keep wondering if I’m gonna be me for the next twenty years, or if I’m always going to be thinking I ought to be doing this thing or that thing not because I want to, but because it’s what a guy who’s supposed to be a great starship commander would do.”

  It hadn’t occurred to Chekov until just then that [61] seeing a brilliant future for yourself could be just as intimidating as seeing one you didn’t like. “Captain Kirk became a great starship commander without knowing anything about his future. You’ll become him just by being who you are.”

  Kirk looked at him frankly. “So does that mean you have to become Mr. Sunshine?”

  “I don’t know ... I don’t think so.” Chekov said it more because he needed to believe it than because he honestly felt it was true.

  “You know what I think?” Down to the bread-napkin lining of his dinner, Kirk began tearing it into individual colorful strips that he could roll up and pop in his mouth. “I think if we can fix the timeline so that the Gorn don’t take over the Federation—I think you’ll stay a nice guy because the world won’t have gotten so crappy.”

  Chekov studied this young man with all his nascent greatness, and asked, in as neutral a tone as he could muster, “You’re not afraid of going back?”

  Kirk thought about that long enough to give an honest answer. “A little.” Then, with that same quicksilver smile, “A lot. But if I don’t go back, there’s so much bad stuff that will happen, and so much good stuff that never will.” He waved expansively around the now nearly empty rec hall. “I won’t get to have this great ship, and you guys won’t get to be my minions.”

  Grinning, Chekov lifted his eyebrow in mock dismay. “Minions?”

  [62] “Sorry. I meant my brave and loyal crew,” Kirk said with patently false sincerity. “I wouldn’t want you guys to end up with some other crummy captain like the one who screwed things up with the Gorn. Besides—” He leaned forward on his elbows with a smile so wicked it made his eyes twinkle. “I can’t wait to find out how me as a great starship commander is getting along with my dad.”

  She had actually escaped Tlaoli.

  The reality of having finally left the planet where she had spent so many frantic and helpless hours took a long time to sink into Uhura’s consciousness. She found herself reaching up to where her helmet carbide used to be whenever she needed to turn on the light in her quarters, and when she put her normal uniform on, the first thing she thought was that it wasn’t going to do much good if that alien chill swept through the caves again. Even after two hours of getting cleaned up and debriefed and taking an all-too-brief nap, Uhura found herself wondering what the next crisis in the ice caverns would be.

  Her subconscious fear that she hadn’t really left the alien planet worried Uhura enough that she mentioned it to Dr. McCoy when she went to get his medical clearance for the early return to duty that Spock had requested. In response, she got a long lecture on the relationship of sleep to residual post-stress tension, as well as a restorative dose of melatonin, [63] time-released glucose, electrolytes, and fluids. Even as he prepared the nutritional supplement, Dr. McCoy grumbled about the order that had woken her early and summoned her back to bridge duty.

  “It’s those damned Vulcan chromosomes of his,” he declared. “Spock thinks because he can go for days without sleep, so can everyone else aboard this ship.”

  Uhura took the glass the doctor handed her, wrinkling her nose at its chalky look and sterile chemical smell. She refrained from pointing out that McCoy himself hadn’t gotten any sleep yet, knowing that would only get her an irritated look and a harumph. Instead, she gulped down as much of her medicine as she could manage in one determined pull, then handed it back to him with a grimace.

  “Couldn’t you at least put some vanilla flavor into it?”

  “I’m a doctor, not a bartender!” McCoy told her tartly. “And you need to finish all of that, Lieutenant, or I’m not going to clear you for duty.”

  “I think coffee would have worked just as well to keep me awake. And tasted a whole lot better.” Uhura pinched her fingers on her nose and swallowed the rest of the nutritional supplement. Despite her protests, she could already feel her body responding to McCoy’s concoction with a reassuring burst of energy. “Am I allowed to get a real breakfast on my way up to the bridge?”

  “Only if you think Spock won’t mind waiting another half hour for you to get there.” McCoy’s lips [64] quirked at the face she made. “That’s what I thought. Here.”

  Uhura took the tray he handed her and discovered it was a portable meal from the sickbay food dispensers, complete with a capped mug of steaming coffee. The fried-egg sandwich wouldn’t have been her first choice for breakfast, but unlike Belgian waffles it had the benefit of being able to be consumed inside a turbolift. And after nearly two days of dry emergency rations and meager base camp meals, the chocolate croissant McCoy had added to the tray looked like heavenly ambrosia.

  “Bless you, Doctor!” Uhura gave McCoy’s cheek a peck as she slid off the examining table. The physician stepped back and muttered something indistinct, a tinge of red creeping up along his cheekbones. “Did you order a breakfast like this for Mr. Spock, too?”

  “Spock!” That got her the harumph she’d avoided earlier. “He’s just as bad as that grumpy version of Chekov. He wouldn’t even let me check
to make sure he wasn’t exhausted. If he’s eaten anything, mark my words ... it was probably either an emergency ration bar or some Vulcan version of gruel.”

  Uhura left sickbay chuckling between hurried bites of biscuit and gulps of coffee. At the last minute, she remembered to make the turbolift stop at the sub-bridge ready deck, so she could dispose of the tray and swipe the crumbs off her red uniform before she reported for duty. The smell of coffee and chocolate must have clung to her strongly enough, [65] though, to earn her a twinkling look from Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, who was waiting for the turbolift on the back deck of the bridge.

  “It’s good to see someone taking the time to eat around here,” Scott said, his voice booming loudly enough to carry back to the captain’s chair. Uhura could see Spock standing beside the empty console, as he usually did when he was left in command of the bridge, but the Vulcan didn’t appear to have noticed that Scotty’s comment was intended for him instead of Uhura. The chief engineer snorted and rolled his eyes at Uhura, then stepped past her into the turbolift and told it, “Engineering.”

  Uhura paused as the turbolift doors hissed shut behind her, scanning the crewmen at the bridge stations. She recognized some of the faces from the night-shift: Lieutenant Tora Rhada at the helm and Sean DePaul at navigations, Elizabeth Palmer at communications and Richard Washburn at engineering. But the ship’s chief astrobiologist, Lieutenant Commander Ann Mulhall, was manning the science station in place of the usual second-shift Science Officer Boma, and the security desk was occupied by the chief of security himself, Antonio Giotto. Unsure of whether Spock wanted her to relieve Palmer in the midst of her shift or carry out some other work detail, Uhura stepped forward and cleared her throat.