Constellations

by Marco Palmieri

  McCoy strolled to them, a slight smile turning his lips. Kirk noticed there no longer were soot smudges from the shuttle “landing” and realized he must have taken the time to clean up. The captain wanted to do the same.

  “These folk are in fairly good health, considering. It doesn’t take long for natural selection to take over when you remove man’s medicines and technologies. After fifty years here, the strongest are surviving.” He crooked his thumb toward Alexandria, who was now tending to one of the children’s scrapes, though Kirk couldn’t see any damage from where he was. It may have been more psychological care than physical.

  “She’s amazing,” McCoy said. “Trained by one of the doctors who eventually passed away. She’s as good as any I’ve seen.”

  “You sound ready to buy a plot of land and settle down,” Kirk said mischievously. “If you put out your shingle here, you’d ruin her business.”

  “I could do worse than live here,” McCoy said. “A bit of a chill in the air, but it gets the blood going.”

  “Yeah.” Blood. The word alone forced Kirk to think of the Klingons. He turned to Sulu. “Find Kerby. We’re going to set up a watch, scanning with the tricorders.”

  “How long do you think we have?” McCoy asked as Sulu walked off to where they’d last seen Kerby, who had been ordered to rest.

  “Before the Klingons are here?” Kirk replied. “Or Spock?”

  “Both.”

  Rubbing his chin with his right thumb, Kirk’s brows lifted and he gave a slight shrug. “Within a day. It’s not when, but who arrives first that’s the gamble.”

  “Michael!” Anders stopped the younger man as he was trotting across the settlement grounds. “Have you seen Alexandria?”

  Skidding to a stop, Michael turned and caught his breath in a huff before replying. “Yes, Captain. She was near the infirmary with Dr. McCoy.”

  “She was?” Anders furrowed his brow. “We were to meet here to discuss Beth Anne’s heart trouble. Did she ask you to inform me she’d be late?”

  Michael shook his head and shrugged innocently. “No, I don’t believe she mentioned it. But I think they were talking about Beth Anne.”

  “I see.” Pressing his lips together, Anders wondered if the total distraction of his people over the last day was temporary or permanent. The buzz of new faces had to wear off soon, did it not? Dr. McCoy was surely a skilled physician, but he didn’t have a grasp of Beth Anne’s case. Alexandria and Anders did.

  “Do you need me further, Captain?” Michael asked, obviously anxious to be on his way.

  Anders studied him a long moment, making sure he stood there and waited for a response. “Is there something pressing you must do?”

  “I wanted to chat with Mr. Sulu, sir. He was going to show me how his tricorder worked.”

  “You’ve always been cautious with technical equipment—afraid you’d break it.” Anders shook his head. Michael just wasn’t acting himself. It was most unnerving.

  “Well, Mr. Sulu said they have four with them and more than a hundred more on their ship.”

  Chewing his lower lip, Anders wasn’t sure what to make of that. Was Michael suddenly planning to go with them? Now? Today or tomorrow or whenever their ship arrived?

  “Michael, you told me you had no interest in leaving the Frontier.” The Frontier, an ironic joke at first, had been what the survivors ended up calling their new home, saying they were like frontiersmen of old, starting with nothing.

  “Well, I don’t, Captain.” Michael shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Not forever. But they’ll take anyone to their starbase for training and—It is a chance of a lifetime, isn’t it, Captain?”

  “I suppose it is.” Anders nodded with understanding, but a sense of foreboding slithered across him. “Michael, does everyone feel this way?”

  “No, no…I think just that…well, options are so open now.” Michael was in his thirties, but suddenly his eyes were as wide as a toddler’s. Yesterday life had been simple, linear. Now it could blast into so many directions that he must have been quite confused about his choices. Confused and exhilarated.

  “Indeed,” Anders said finally.

  “May I go?”

  With a hand, Anders waved him off. “Of course.”

  If frustration were corporeal, D’kar would have gutted it by now and made its skin into a sheath for his knife. Tracking Kirk to the small moon had been a child’s task, but now he found the Earther in the bosom of his own kind. What kind of defenses did this colony have? Were they part of Kirk’s clan? Would they die for him? If so, D’kar could be killed and his prey would escape. It soon would not matter that he was able to jam Kirk’s message to his ship, as they would come looking for him and they would track his shuttle just as D’kar had. It infuriated him that what little time he did have left needed to be wasted with watching and waiting and forming yet another plan that would put Kirk within his grasp.

  They were crafty. One of the Starfleeters was always using their scanner. What they didn’t know was that D’kar had been a little more prepared than they, and he’d left passive reception cones scattered around their camp’s perimeter. His hand scanner could now tell him the pattern of their scans, and it was—no matter who held their tricorder—sickeningly predictable. Did all of Starfleet learn the same grid pattern?

  It was when the red-shirted one was scanning that things were most unsurprising, so that was when D’kar decided to venture closest to Kirk. He could hear him and see him with proper passive scanning and distance, and didn’t dare actively scan for fear of being revealed.

  If this were an assassination, D’kar could have his prey by now. A single phaser shot, or even a primitive projectile blast, and Kirk could be dead. He could smell the Earther from where he hid. He could smell them all, and the foul stench that was Terran blood.

  But he’d rather give Kirk to his father as a prize. That was what D’kar had planned for so long, had fantasized about, and fallen to slumber with the thought of in his mind, and awakened with the same. It wasn’t about self-aggrandizement, he told himself, but about his father’s disgrace at Organia. All of Qo’noS spoke of the treaty, and few outwardly blamed Kor for the disaster, but unspoken censure laced every greeting. And to D’kar it was no surprise that his first assignment to the finest cruiser in the fleet had fallen away. He would not let his life fall into a pit because of the dishonor brought on his house because of Kirk. And so long as no one knew it was D’kar who brought the Earther to justice, and in fact believed it was Kor, honor would be restored.

  It was supposed to have been done by now, D’kar lamented. This Kirk was a trickster, certainly. But ultimately weak. There are no Organians to save him this time. Now the odds are more even.

  Kirk sat in a chair, using a tree stump as a workbench. He fiddled endlessly with several pieces of almost-random technology. There were only a few people around him—they were not very near—and D’kar thought he might choose this moment to make his move. As he was deciding, an older man approached Kirk, and his body language was not like that of the others who’d previously been near Kirk. It was not toadying or submissive, but that of an equal.

  “A word, Captain?”

  There was an interesting aspect to his demeanor that piqued D’kar’s keen interest. His scanner, however, told him that the other Starfleeter’s scans would be proceeding his way, and he must now move his position.

  This Earther, however, was one to be watched. By Kirk if no one else, for the look in the new man’s eyes was one D’kar had seen before: jealousy.

  “Can you explain why you’ve torn apart one of our few working computers?” Anders demanded. Something in his tone was a bit more than confrontational. It was almost hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” Kirk began. “I didn’t tear it apart. I just needed to see if it had parts we could use to boost our communicators. It doesn’t, and I’m putting it back together.”

  “And it will function?” Anders sneered and looke
d at the computer’s various parts spread across a cloth on the bench.

  “If I say it will function,” Kirk said, “it will function.”

  The older man drew a breath as if to respond, but he swallowed whatever he planned to say. He studied Kirk a long moment, then nodded and motioned at him. “You have a ship,” he said. “Let me ask you a hypothetical question.”

  Kirk nodded.

  “Say I come aboard,” Anders said, as McCoy approached from the door to one of the greenhouses. He had two native apple-looking things in his hands.

  Kirk shook his head lightly, making sure the doctor wouldn’t interrupt.

  “Because my ship was damaged, you provide me and my crew transport,” Anders continued. “What would you say if—having given me your hospitality—I began disassembling your vessel for my needs and ends?”

  “I might have thrown you in the brig,” Kirk said. “If I couldn’t understand why you did it.”

  Anders’s head swayed from side to side. “I understand what you’re doing, Captain. And even if I had a brig I wouldn’t be so disagreeable as to cage you like an animal.” Lips screwed into a frown, Anders sighed. “But I did think you might have a little more courtesy than to take what is not yours without asking.”

  Eyes wide in his best apologetic look of innocence, Kirk accepted that with a slight bow of his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Anders. I should have asked.”

  “Captain Anders.” He didn’t quite bark his own name, but it came close. With that he turned his back on Kirk and McCoy. “Please see that that unit is working within the hour,” he snapped, and left the two Starfleeters alone.

  “What was that all about?” McCoy asked, offering Kirk the alien apple.

  “I don’t know, Bones.” Kirk took the fruit, tasted it, and was surprised that it tasted very much like a normal apple. “He’s probably worried about the Klingons. He decided to tell the others and some of them are nervous. I’m sure he is, too.”

  “I wonder,” McCoy said, and bit loudly into his apple. “To my view, there went a man annoyed with you, not the Klingons.”

  It had taken Anders some time to calm himself. There was a grotto made by overgrowing plants to which he would sometimes escape, where it was peaceful and quiet, even in the off-season when most of the green plants had turned brown. Going there had always stilled his temper, and he hoped it would now.

  He wasn’t quite sure why Kirk’s disrespect annoyed him so, but it had—deeply. Perhaps it was because the respect he’d earned over years and years from his people was so soon and so freely given to Kirk. Anders had always led his people with determination and charisma, skills taught him by his adopted father. But Kirk had all those skills, seemingly naturally, and his were stronger. He was more charismatic, more determined, and Anders felt that Kirk was leading the survivors into danger without a thought about their well-being. That was the reason for his disdain, he told himself. It was.

  On his way back to the main community building, Anders saw the Kesslers’ son coming out of the storage shed and he stopped to supervise the lad. He was only twelve and sometimes was quite sloppy in his chores.

  Captain Anders opened the door to the shed wide and let the daylight in.

  “Jacob,” Anders called. “Come here, son.”

  The boy walked over. “Captain?”

  “This isn’t like you, Jacob.” Anders motioned to the way the grains were stacked and the contents of the shed were organized. It was all wrong, all disordered. “This isn’t how we store our grains now, is it?”

  Jacob squirmed a bit and looked away. “No, sir, but Captain Kirk suggested that if we keep—”

  “Captain Kirk suggested?” The back of Anders’s neck tensed, and he felt his cheeks flush.

  “Yes, sir,” Jacob replied earnestly. “He said—”

  “I don’t care what he said, Jacob.” Anders willed himself not to yell at the boy. It wasn’t his fault. “Do it the way we’ve always done it.”

  “But—”

  “Jacob! Mind me!”

  Looking defeated and more disappointed than Anders had wished to make him, Jacob turned somberly back into the shed. “Yes, Captain.”

  Anders was annoyed—more with himself for losing his temper than with Kirk. Well, probably more with Kirk. Or with the situation. He sulked around his grotto, ripping dried leaves off the “walls” and throwing them to the ground. He’d found this little recess of plants against a craggy hill soon after the crash all those years ago. It was cool and protected by old trees and in the summer smelled of rain even if it had not rained in days. Rarely had he brought anyone to it, and not of late, so few knew it even existed.

  He tried desperately to gather peace from the setting, but it was taking longer than he’d have liked, and every moment he was away was a moment Kirk corrupted his people. Finally he thrust himself onto the bench he’d once made and lowered his head into his hands. Long moments passed until he was jarred from sullen meditation by a sharp pressure against the base of his skull.

  “Do not cry out,” a voice said. “My blade is at your spine.”

  Anders didn’t move. The words were in heavily accented English, and the individual, logic told him, natively spoke Klingonese.

  “What do you want?” Anders asked. Asking who he was seemed a silly question. He was the person with a knife at his neck.

  “I want to speak on you,” the voice said, and it was clear that his English was not the best. “I learn you are a leader of men and I come to join in respect. To make you learn of my goals.”

  Anders’s brow knitted in confusion, and he needed to decode the poor English. But most of the meaning was evident. “You come to me in respect, threatening to injure me?”

  Suddenly the knife point was gone. “Of course,” the Klingon said matter-of-factly, as if threatening Anders had been intended as a standard greeting. “Stay sitting.”

  “What do you want?” Captain Anders repeated. He was beginning to see real differences between himself and Kirk, whereas before he thought they were much the same. Anders had to deal with people and problems, but on his small planetoid there were no aliens with agendas. There were no knives at throats and there were no threats. Anders and his people battled the elements, struggled to survive the seasons, not enemies from other worlds.

  Coming around to stand in front of Anders, the Klingon man—boy, really, as he could only have been in his late teens or early twenties—showed Anders that he was sheathing his knife. “I want,” he said slowly, perhaps making sure his English was clear, “Captain James T. Kirk, for crimes against my House. Do you understand?”

  Anders nodded slowly, but he’d known that yesterday. “No, I mean, what do you want from me?”

  “Do you trust Kirk?” the Klingon asked.

  “He’s a Starfleet captain.”

  “I know who he is! That was not my question.” The boy’s hand was never off his knife, Anders noticed.

  “So it wasn’t,” he replied. “Yes. I trust him.”

  “You should not.” The alien motioned for Anders to rise. “Stand.”

  Anders slowly shook his head. “No.”

  “You will not?” The look of confusion on the young Klingon’s face was almost amusing, except that his knife was now a centimeter out of its sheath.

  “This is my home,” Anders said, enunciating every word so he was clear. “I am in charge here. You need to leave.”

  “I’m the one with the weapon.”

  Suddenly, swiftly, the knife was out and the blade was before Anders’s eyes.

  Anders looked past it and into the Klingon’s gaze. “And I am not James Kirk.”

  “You are brave.” The Klingon’s laugh sounded truly mirthful. “I like you.” He turned and walked away from Anders, and just before he was invisible against the tree line he twisted back. “Good-bye, Captain. Remember—I am not the threat to you or your people.”

  Anders walked evenly back to camp, keeping himself from anything but a norma
l pace in case the Klingon was watching. It was a far more interesting and less-threatening encounter than he would have imagined.

  Once back at the settlement, as the sun was beginning to set against the high hills, it didn’t take Anders long to find Kirk. He was with Dr. McCoy in the storage room they’d given the newcomers as quarters. Crates that had survived the crash supplied the makeshift chairs and table, and bedrolls were provided for sleeping. Other than that, the room was bare. Kirk sat at the “table,” fiddling with one of his small handheld scanners. McCoy was standing to one side, inoculating one of the children. Anders waited until the child left, then strode directly to Kirk.

  “How long before your ship finds you, Captain?”

  “Knowing Spock, within a day.” Kirk didn’t bother with a shrug. He made it sound like the solution to a calculation.

  “I don’t know this Spock person,” Anders said, his gut tight with the annoyance he was trying to keep under control. “He must be extraordinary to earn such confidence.”

  Kirk stood. Perhaps he sensed something in Anders’s demeanor, something more than submissive. “He’s the finest first officer in the fleet,” he said.

  Joining them around the table, McCoy chimed in, very obviously trying to lighten the atmosphere. “For most things, not all.”

  Deciding to get to the point, Anders turned away a moment, composed himself, then turned back to Kirk. “You’ve been a bit of a disruption, Captain, I’m sorry to say.”

  “A disruption?” Kirk looked directly into Anders’s eyes in a way that was disturbingly confrontational on a level Anders hadn’t expected. “We’re in a race for our lives,” Kirk said.

  “Every day here is such a race,” Anders countered. “And not one we all win. I—” About to lose his composure, Anders tightened his fists at his sides and ground his next words out as calmly as possible. “Did I tell you why Captain Mendez chose me to be his successor?”

  Kirk shook his head once. “You didn’t.”