Constellations

by Marco Palmieri

  “We just assumed it was the way you had with people,” McCoy said, again sensing the mood and attempting to smooth feathers. “These folks look up to you a great deal, Captain Anders.”

  “He told me I had the charisma to be the glue that held these people together.” Anders looked back at Kirk, trying hard to counter that steely glare with his own. “Not charm, not likability, though certainly that—but the magnetism.”

  Kirk didn’t seem impressed. “Your point, Anders.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I see that it’s true, so long as there isn’t a more magnetic, more charismatic figure outshining my ability.”

  “I have no desire to lead these people,” Kirk said.

  “You don’t need the desire,” Anders spat. “You have the natural ability. Had you been stranded with us, I have no doubt I’d be a farmer or a gatherer. Or perhaps I’d be chief digger in charge of latrines—”

  “Captain—” McCoy tried to interrupt.

  “Quiet, Doctor. This is between us.” Anders gestured to Kirk and struggled to keep his voice from quaking with anger for fear it may be misunderstood as nerves. “My authority has been challenged before, and such insurrection has been rebuffed, as surely as Captain Kirk would do on his ship.”

  “We’re not going to be here long enough to rebel against you,” Kirk said, his tone even and his expression tight.

  Anders didn’t know what to say. He was challenging Kirk but wasn’t sure what the outcome should be. Finally he turned on his heel toward the door. “I wouldn’t put myself against your mettle, anyway, Captain. You’d win.”

  The door didn’t slam shut.

  McCoy searched Kirk for some reaction. “You have a hell of a way with people, Jim.”

  “He’ll get over it as soon as we’re gone,” Kirk said, and sat down again.

  “Can’t you see what’s happening here?” McCoy sat next to him, the plastiform crate as uncomfortable as the beds.

  “I see it, Bones.”

  Kirk continued to work on boosting the tricorder’s broadcast range, and McCoy wanted to tear the scanner away from him to get his full attention, but he refrained. “No, I don’t think you do. You’re turning this man’s crew against him.”

  “This isn’t a ship—”

  “It might as well be,” McCoy said pointedly. “The stakes are the same: survival.”

  Kirk sighed and closed the tricorder’s circuit panel. “I’m not here to usurp his authority.”

  “He doesn’t rule by command, Jim. He rules by respect. So does a starship captain. People obey a captain out of respect for the chain of command at first, and with time and the right captain they come to obey out of respect for the man.” McCoy stood, following Kirk as he walked outside to find Sulu and exchange the modified tricorder for one that needed to be worked on.

  “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know, Doctor,” Kirk said.

  “How would you react if another captain came onto your ship and suddenly the respect of your crew shifted to him?”

  “I’d be annoyed,” Kirk admitted.

  “And you’d have the chain of command and orders to fall back on. What does Anders have?” McCoy saw a flicker in Kirk’s eye that told him he’d made his point. So he moved on to his next one. “And don’t forget there’s a shuttle chock-full of Klingons who want you, for whatever reason, and woe to any of these innocents who get in their way. And by now they’re here, and waiting for their chance to make a move.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Exactly. I’m ri—What?” Stunned by the admission, McCoy was caught off guard. “Did you just say I was right?”

  “Do you expect me to say it twice, Doctor?” Kirk had suddenly changed direction, and McCoy wasn’t certain where they were now going.

  “What’re we gonna do?” he asked.

  “You’re going to stay here and wait for Spock to arrive.” Kirk handed him the tricorder.

  “And you?”

  “I’m going to find Ensign Kerby. He and I will locate the Klingons’ shuttle and secure it from them.”

  “Now wait just a minute. I wasn’t suggesting—”

  “I wasn’t taking suggestions.” The captain continued to march forward, leaving McCoy where he stood, sputtering. “I’m going to act,” Kirk said, “and wait for the Klingons to react.” He crooked a thumb toward the sky. “While I still have light.”

  “And what if they react by deciding you’re too much trouble to keep alive?” McCoy called after him.

  “Then I better have a damn good re-reaction.”

  When Anders heard of Kirk’s plan, he wasn’t quite sure why he went right back to the grotto. He told himself it was for peace and introspection. He’d meant to tell Kirk about the Klingon. He was going to until he saw him, and then only defensive thoughts entered his mind.

  Had Anders expected the Klingon to still be near the grotto? Part of him was certain of it. Part doubted it and really did want time to think and plan and…None of that was going to happen as soon as the young man appeared again.

  “You didn’t tell Kirk I was here, did you?” This time the voice was that of a universal translator. It masked the Klingon’s own voice so well one might have thought there was no conversion tool in use, except for the now-perfect, unaccented English where before there had been awkward speech.

  “How do you know if I did or did not?” Anders asked, his eyes flicking from one of the Klingon’s hands to his other. He saw no weapon, but there was some kind of phaser or disruptor on his hip, and of course, his knife was there as well, sheathed.

  “Because he didn’t come to this place,” the Klingon said. “I was watching.”

  “This…this is my place to think.” In Anders’s head it sounded like a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why he’d not told Kirk about the grotto. Given voice it sounded childish and the words felt heavy rolling off his tongue.

  “Where is Kirk now?”

  Anders shook his head and his chest tightened. “Kirk’s affairs and yours are not my own.”

  The Klingon drew closer, his boots squishing on the moss-covered ground. He tilted his head, examining Anders. “You don’t like him.”

  There was no question there, so Anders said nothing.

  The young man bit his lower lip. “They’ve stopped the scanning around your camp. Why? Where is Kirk?”

  The Klingon came closer, until Anders felt the man’s breath on his face.

  “I—I’m…” Would the Klingon kill him if he didn’t say? Isn’t this what he wanted—to be threatened into revealing what he knew? He wanted Kirk to be gone and the Klingon to be gone, and wasn’t the fastest way to do that to have them take care of each other?

  It would mean blood. It would mean death.

  And Michael and the others—they might see that they were safe here when people stayed away. Options might look less favorable, doors might close…. And wouldn’t the Klingon kill him if he didn’t tell him what he wanted to know? He had weapons, where Anders had none.

  “They…”

  “Where?” the Klingon whispered. “Tell me where.”

  “I…” Anders’s voice was thick, each word a chunk of iron that fell to the ground with a clang. “They went to your ship.”

  As close as he was, Anders could tell that the Klingon’s entire body tensed instantly. “Why?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know for certain.” Now that he’d begun such a treacherous dialogue, the words came easier. “To use it against you. To find you. To make you react.”

  “Fools,” the Klingon barked. He twisted away and in three large running paces left Anders alone again in the grotto.

  It was cool there, and it gave Anders peace to think. It always had. But now the only thought he could find was not one of serenity, but horror. “What have I done?” he murmured. “Good Lord, what have I done?”

  “Broadest possible scan, Ensign.” Kirk knew that would limit the distance they’d be able to cover in one sweep,
but he didn’t know how many Klingons would be waiting for them. There could have been three or four, or even one. That was something to consider. At first Kirk had believed his opponent to be skilled, experienced, but nothing besides the initial tactic of hiding in his impulse wake had really pointed to that. Everything since then pointed to greenness.

  Why not make some move on the settlement? Other Klingons Kirk had been up against would have. They’d have sought to breed terror among the innocents between them to force Kirk’s hand. Unless there was but a lone Klingon, and he was injured and waiting for them in his shuttle.

  Kerby struggled somewhat to both hold his phaser pistol and adjust his tricorder. He managed it, but only awkwardly. “May I ask a question, sir?”

  “You’re wondering why I chose this direction for the possible location of the Klingons’ shuttle.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where would you hide a shuttle if you didn’t want it to be seen?”

  “A canyon, maybe? Some place with a deep crevice or—”

  “They weren’t worried about being seen from the air. And there’s no canyon nearby.” Kirk pointed up the ridge with the business end of his phaser, indicating the next place Kerby should scan. “They’d want the high ground, and they’d come in under cloak of night, then camouflage their shuttle as best they could.”

  “Huh.” Kerby chuckled, and his lanky arm stretched out to point to his left. “Large metallic object. Bearing twelve degrees, two hundred and nineteen meters, sir.”

  While the Klingons had done their best—an excellent best—to cover the ship with brush and dirt, the tricorder could not be easily fooled.

  “Life-signs?” Kirk asked in a whisper as he gestured for Kerby to take cover behind a craggy outcropping.

  The Klingon shuttle, still visually distant, was nose-close to sensors. If someone was on board, watching a scanner, Kerby and Kirk had been made.

  “No one on board,” Kerby said.

  Kirk swatted away a spring gnat that was buzzing about his eyes. “We need to get on board and—”

  “Ugh!” Kerby grunted loudly.

  Kirk spun tightly toward his crewman. Kerby fell, collapsing into a puddle of limbs. Blood soaked his tunic where a long dagger broke through his torso.

  “Aaaaarrghhh!” The guttural battle cry of a Klingon crashed down as Kirk pivoted and fired his phaser. The beam sliced forward at the wrong angle and missed the single Klingon broadly as he leapt for Kirk and knocked the weapon from the captain’s hand.

  Kirk felt his entire body tense into a fighting stance. The smell of Kerby’s blood jabbed the air as Kirk sized up his opponent. He was young—younger than Kirk expected. Darting his glance from the phaser, which now lay several meters away, to Kerby, who lay gurgling his last breaths, and back to the Klingon boy before him, Kirk thought, How old is he? Seventeen? Nineteen?

  “You want me, why not take just me?” Kirk asked, trying to elicit some response, some distraction. “Why do you want me so badly?”

  “I am D’kar, son of Kor, and I mean to avenge his dishonor at your hand.”

  Kor. The Klingon commander Kirk almost battled at Organia. Before the Organians pushed their highly evolved godlike noses into Federation-Klingon matters and compelled both truce and treaty.

  “I don’t want to kill you, Kirk.” When D’kar said Kirk’s name, it sounded almost Klingon. “Not yet.” The young man holstered his disrupter and pulled out a shorter dagger, all in one very fluid, practiced movement. He may not have wanted Kirk dead, but he obviously didn’t care if he was badly injured. “And this time there is no one to help you,” D’kar said. “Not your crewmen, not your ship, not the Organians, and not your closest ally, who hates you almost as much as I.”

  Kirk’s brows narrowed. Who here hated him? Anders. Had it gotten to that level? Would he sell Kirk out to the Klingons?

  “You don’t believe it?” D’kar taunted. “He told me where you were. He wants me to kill you, but we will save that honor for my father.”

  “Your father,” Kirk said with a huff as he avoided a slash at his arm from D’kar’s blade, “had no special quarrel with me.” He grabbed a handful of dirt and twigs and launched a cloud at the boy as he rolled one way, and then zigged back toward Kerby to see if he could still hear the ensign breathing. He also wanted the man’s phaser, but Kerby had collapsed onto it and so Kirk remained weaponless. His eyes flicked a moment at the dagger stuck in Kerby’s back. He heard the ensign continue to slosh blood and air out of his mouth, and so Kirk at least knew his crewman was still alive. That was something, and it was likely because the dagger had been thrown from a distance rather than thrust in by hand and then removed. Had the ensign been dead, Kirk might have taken the knife and used it to defend himself, but he wouldn’t save his own life at the risk of another’s.

  What Kirk needed even more than a weapon was for McCoy to attend to Kerby. Or he needed Sulu for backup. He’d decided two of them should look for the Klingon shuttle and two should stay to protect the settlement because he didn’t know how many Klingons had come looking for them. Now it was clear to Kirk that D’kar was his lone pursuer.

  All these pinpoints of thought prickled against the back of his neck as he focused quickly between D’kar’s eyes and his dagger hand.

  “The Organians stopped that fight, D’kar. If you’re looking for your father’s lost honor, they have it—not me.”

  With Kerby’s body between them, D’kar was blocked from a clean shot at Kirk, but Kerby was now in harm’s way. If D’kar should knock into the crewman, shifting the position of the dagger in his chest…

  Young, but hardly stupid, D’kar must have noticed the flash of concern in Kirk’s expression. He slid a boot toward Kerby menacingly. “He lives still. If you want to save him, remove your communicator and drop it to the ground.”

  When Kirk didn’t instantly move, D’kar inched closer still.

  “I am serious, Kirk. I will end him.”

  “All right.” Left hand raised in assent, Kirk nonchalantly reached behind his back with his right hand and brought his communicator forward and then dropped it to the ground in such a way that it opened as it fell. D’kar’s eyes followed it down and Kirk took his moment.

  He sprang forward, one hand crashing into D’kar’s throat, the other wrapping around the wrist of his dagger hand.

  Up close, D’kar seemed even younger and the thought that Kirk might actually have to kill him caused a momentary hesitation that the Klingon took advantage of. He kneed Kirk hard in the ribs, then butted his head forward and hit Kirk’s chin.

  Grunting out a held breath, Kirk slammed D’kar’s hand against the hard dirt until his fingers lost their grip on the knife and it fell away. Keeping his left hand on the Klingon’s wrist, Kirk pulled up one knee and pinned it into D’kar’s chest. He used his right hand to grab for the dagger, but the shift in Kirk’s center of gravity allowed D’kar to roll out and over. Unable to get the knife in a firm grasp, Kirk pushed it as far away as he could. If he couldn’t have it, neither of them would.

  D’kar scrambled for it, but Kirk grabbed hold of his leg and twisted him around. The Klingon howled in angry pain and spat at Kirk’s face, then used his own limb to pull Kirk toward him—just enough to connect a swinging fist. Kirk felt his teeth grind against his cheek and his jaw stab into his left ear. He tasted blood, spat into the dirt with a huff, and felt a trickle drip down his bruised chin.

  That much delay gave D’kar enough time to find the dagger and slice side to side. Kirk backed out of the way of each swing, arching his back until he was clear of the blade’s tip.

  In D’kar’s eyes was such frustration, such rage and anger, that Kirk sensed he’d just won. D’kar had lost himself in the fight—lost his sense of purpose and goal and given himself over, completely, to base instinct.

  Base instinct isn’t why his father won battles. Training was. Cunning was. Experience was.

  D’kar lunged, thrusting his kni
fe wildly at Kirk’s midsection. Kirk dodged, grabbed the boy’s wrist with both hands, and twisted hard until he heard bone crack and the Klingon yelp.

  A human would have been finished there. D’kar caught the dagger with his left hand as it slid from his broken right. Rage still blinding him, he tried to hit Kirk’s arm with the blunt end of the handle, then plunge the blade into his stomach.

  Quickly, Kirk twisted behind D’kar, bringing his broken wrist back as well, turning and lifting it until Kirk felt the Klingon’s arm snap in two. A murderous scream cracked the sky. When Kirk heard the dagger fall, he knew D’kar had lost lucidity. Kirk pushed him to the dirt, rolled to the phaser he’d kept a bead on, and fired, stunning D’kar where he lay.

  In two steps he was back to Kerby. The ensign groaned as Kirk touched his neck to feel his pulse strength. Blood aspirated from his nose and mouth. Kirk reached for the open communicator.

  Before his fingers could make contact, the familiar hum of a transporter beam bounced around like a million insects. Three columns of sparkle coalesced, and Spock materialized before him, flanked by two security guards.

  Relief washed over Kirk as he scooped up the communicator and exchanged a grateful glance with his first officer. Instead of calling McCoy and having the doctor rush to Kerby’s side, now the Enterprise was once again at Kirk’s disposal.

  He held the communicator near his chin with one hand and adjusted the channel with the other, despite the phaser still clenched within it. “Kirk to Enterprise.”

  “Enterprise. Captain, it’s good to hear your voice, sir.” Uhura’s voice—crisp, clear, and angelic.

  “Uhura, emergency medical team to the transporter room. Ensign Kerby needs immediate attention. These coordinates.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Kirk stepped away and watched silently as Kerby’s body was beamed away.

  “Your timing, Mr. Spock,” Kirk began as he allowed himself a moment to breathe again, “hopefully just saved Ensign Kerby’s life.” The captain smiled a bit, noticed the feel of dried blood at the corner of his mouth, and thumbed it clean, glancing at the deep red smear before brushing it against his filthy tunic.