by David Stern
“That’s enough,” Pike snapped, slapping the table with the palm of his hand, so hard that half the people in the room started.
Boyce wasn’t one of them.
The doctor glared at him; Pike glared right back.
“Doctor,” he said, keeping his voice perfectly steady. “You will prepare sickbay to serve as a potential triage center. You will also choose a secondary triage location and prepare that as well. And you will remember, as I hope you all will remember—”
His eyes went around the room, gazing at each of his officers in turn.
“—that we have proof of nothing yet. We are gathering information. We are not at war, people. Is that understood?”
There were nods all around the table, from everyone, including the doctor. He sat quietly, with his hands steepled on the table in front of him, a smile tugging at the edges of his lips. A totally false smile, Pike knew. Put on, the same way the doctor’s anger was really a put-on as well, a cover for what he was really feeling this morning, the same thing he’d been feeling every day for the past week, since they’d first heard the news about Starbase 18. Pain. Heartache. A misery so deep that Pike was willing to forgive him almost anything at this point. The key word there being almost.
“Good. Dismissed.” Everyone stood then, and started heading for the door.
“No, Doctor,” he said to Boyce. “Not you.”
TWO
Boyce sat at the table, watching the others leave. Pike waited till they were all gone before turning back to him.
“You want me to apologize?” Boyce said. “Fine. I’m sorry. But you saw that tape. It’s the Klingons. The cloaking device. You know it, I know it—”
“We don’t know anything for certain at this point. Besides which, an apology wasn’t what I was after.”
“No?”
“No. What I was going to say …”
The captain, still standing, put his hands on the table and leaned forward. “Maybe you should think about taking some time off, Phil.”
Boyce shook his head. Time off was the last thing he needed right now. “Thanks for the offer,” he said. “But I’m fine.”
“I don’t think you are,” Pike said. “I think you need to give yourself a chance to process what happened. Even if it’s just a couple of days—”
“Who’s going to run sickbay in the meantime?”
“Yang.”
“Yang.” Boyce shook his head. “No. He’s a competent physician, but … no. Maybe when Tambor gets out of regen, I’ll take some time.”
“How long till then?”
“I’m not sure. I want to err on the side of caution.”
“Ballpark?”
“A week … ten days.”
“I don’t know.” Pike frowned. “I’m no psychologist—”
“That’s right,” Boyce snapped. “So let me do my job.”
Pike’s eyes flashed. The captain was in danger of losing his temper. Boyce wanted him to. He wanted Pike to scream at him so he could scream back. Let the captain know how this pretending that the Klingons hadn’t butchered every soul on Starbase 18 was stupid, that what they really ought to be doing was going out and finding the nearest Klingon ship— Hexar would certainly do; he didn’t find that Captain Kritos anywhere near as engaging as Pike did—and blowing them to Kingdom Come.
Pike, however, got control of himself.
“I don’t,” the captain said slowly, “want you to interrupt me again. Are we clear on that?”
Boyce forced himself to nod. “Yes. We’re clear.”
“Yes, sir, is what I want to hear from you.”
“Yes,” Boyce said. “Sir.”
“Thank you.”
The two of them glared at each other a moment.
“I have the greatest sympathy for your loss, Doctor,” Pike said. “I’ve been cutting you slack all week because of it. But I cannot allow your attitude to jeopardize our mission.”
“It won’t,” Boyce said. “Speaking of which … I’d better get going. Sir. Prepare sickbay.”
“Yes,” Pike said. “You’d better.”
Boyce thought about snapping off a sarcastic salute but decided he’d better get out the door before he made things even worse.
So he did.
Halfway to sickbay, Boyce changed his mind.
He decided to head for the mess instead. For one thing, the coffee there was fresh-brewed, as opposed to the synthesized crap the machine in his office spit out. For another, at this time of day, the mess would be quiet.
And what he needed right this second, more than anything else, was a place to calm down. Gather his thoughts. See if he could get himself together to do as ordered, or …
Or what, he didn’t know.
He grabbed his coffee and headed for a table farthest from the door.
The Klingons. How could Pike think after viewing that tape that they weren’t involved in all this? The captain was either delusional, or he knew more than he was saying—more than he was telling Boyce, anyway. No surprise there; Pike and he had yet to truly bond. The only real friends Boyce had made to date were Tuval and Pitcairn. Ben and Glenn. The closest things he had to contemporaries aboard the ship. Most of the 273-person crew was much younger, like the two junior engineering officers in the corner, the only other people in the room, whom Boyce recognized but couldn’t quite put names to yet. He nodded hello to them anyway; they nodded back, sympathy in their expressions.
Boyce was tired of sympathy; hell, he was tired of pretty much everything at this point—the captain, the mission, Starfleet …
Maybe this had all been a bad idea, done for the wrong reasons. An attempt to make up for lost time, lost opportunities. Or maybe he’d just had too much to drink last night. Another reason he needed the coffee. He took a long swig of it and looked up.
The mess was crammed in the interior ring of Deck 3, primary hull, the ship’s saucer section. Instead of a view of space, the crew got holographs to look at while they ate. Right now, Boyce was staring at one of Enterprise in spacedock, under construction. As he stared, it started to change, morphed into a shot of the outdoors, someplace on Earth or one of the colonies. Blue water. Blue sky. Bright yellow sun. Boyce took another sip of coffee and could almost feel it beating down on his skin.
“You fixed me.”
Jaya’s voice.
Jaya stepping out of the regen chamber on Mobile 7, and looking down at her arms, and then up at him, with wonder in her eyes.
Twelve-year-old Jaya. Skinny little Jaya, stepping forward and throwing her arms around him.
“Dr. Boyce?”
He looked up and saw a young woman standing over him. His heart, for a second, skipped a beat.
The woman had red hair. Pale white skin. But her eyes—
Blue. Not Green.
It wasn’t Jaya, of course. How could it be?
It was Hardin, Tuval’s new second.
“Sorry for the interruption, sir,” she said. “I just wanted to say, I’m sorry for your loss.”
Hardin was Australian. She had a thick accent that at times—to him, at least—bordered on unintelligible.
“I appreciate that, Lieutenant Hardin.” He managed a smile. “Thank you.”
“Yes, sir.” Her expression changed, from sympathetic to serious. “And I just want you to know—we’ll get those bastards. I promise you that.”
“Those bastards …”
“The Klingons, sir.” Hardin lowered her voice. “Commander Tuval briefed the department on that piece of vid we recovered. From the data buffers.”
“I see.”
“Yes, sir.” A little smile crossed her face. “About time we taught them a lesson, you want my opinion. They’ve been getting away with things like this for too long. If it’s war they want, well, we’re ready.”
The word gave him pause. War? The Federation and the Empire had been dancing around it for years, a skirmish here, a skirmish there. But it had never escalated much beyo
nd that, except for Gorengar, and after the treaty signed in the wake of that nightmare …
He looked into Hardin’s eyes, at the smooth, unlined skin on her face and her arms, at the sheen of her hair, and realized just how young she was. Just a kid, really. With a kid’s definitive views on right and wrong, a kid’s ignorance of shades of gray and the way the world really worked. A kid’s certainty about war as the best way to achieve your ends—and a kid’s ignorance of what war really meant.
He was about to do his best to convey some of his hard-earned knowledge when a shadow fell across the table.
Hardin’s face changed. She straightened up and saluted. “Sir.”
The size and shape of the shadow told Boyce who was standing behind him without the need to turn around.
“Ben,” he said.
“Doctor.”
Tuval came around the front of the table.
“At ease, Lieutenant,” the commander said. “I need a word here with Dr. Boyce.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and saluted both Tuval and Boyce before backing away.
Tuval took a seat. The little plastiform chair groaned under his weight. Ben was the biggest man—biggest human, anyway—aboard Enterprise . Two meters, close to 110 kilos of solid muscle. Built like a tank. Indestructible. Or so he liked to think. Boyce knew better, of course.
No one was indestructible.
“You all right?” the commander asked.
“Me?” Boyce downed the last of his coffee. “I’m fine.”
“Captain wasn’t too hard on you? Still got a job here?”
Tuval said it with a smile. Boyce knew the man was giving him a chance to unload, to talk about what had happened, not just at the meeting but over the last few days. On the one hand, Boyce appreciated the gesture.
On the other, he just wanted to be left alone.
“Yeah. I’ve still got a job. Such as it is.”
Tuval nodded. “Good. Because I have a bone to pick with you.”
“Oh?”
“Uh-huh.” The commander pulled something off his belt and slapped it down on the table. A square metal box about the size of a communicator. Boyce recognized it immediately.
“A bronchial shunt.”
“Yang gave it to me. Says I have to wear it all the time, or he won’t certify me for duty.”
“And?”
“And it’s ridiculous. I feel fine.”
“You need it, Ben. Your lung capacity is down to sixty percent, remember?”
“My sixty percent is better than most people’s hundred percent. I got a big mouth, remember?”
“I remember. You sound a little out of breath to me.”
“That’s because I just came from giving a speech to the department. About the Klingons.”
“No.” Boyce shook his head. “That’s because we had to pull you out of regen early, before the gel finished its job. Which is why you need this thing.”
He held up the shunt. The device worked by inserting synthetic microcapillaries through the skin, directly accessing the alveoli in the lungs, measuring the oxygen-transfer rate, pumping in more as necessary, reaching the bronchioles directly. Working at maximum capacity, the shunt contained a single day’s supply of oxygen.
“Doc.” Tuval’s expression grew serious. “You cannot expect my people—much less anybody else—to take me seriously if that thing is stuck to my chest.”
“Wear something over it, then. One of the landing-party jackets. A loose-fitting tunic—”
“I tried that. It looks like I’m wearing a power converter under my shirt.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Ben. You have a serious injury. On top of which, we’re talking about going to war—”
“You’re being a nervous Nellie, Doc.”
“That’s my job,” Boyce said.
Tuval glared. Boyce had gotten to know him well enough over the last few months that he knew exactly what was on his mind. The man did not want to show weakness of any kind; the word was just not in his vocabulary.
Boyce sympathized. Under normal conditions, he’d try to find some sort of compromise. But these were not normal conditions.
“Like Yang said, we can’t certify you fit for duty without it, Commander. I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” Tuval said, and ripped the shunt from Boyce’s hand.
He got to his feet and slapped it on his chest. A pale blue light emanated from the device’s underside.
“Thank you,” Boyce said.
Tuval grunted an acknowledgment and then was out the door without another word.
Boyce watched him go. Bronchial shunt or not, the man cut a pretty imposing figure. Boyce doubted anyone would take him less seriously because of the device; Tuval would ignore it entirely from this point onward, Boyce was certain. That was part of what made him a good security officer, Boyce supposed. An ability to adjust to changing conditions. To roll with the punches, as it were.
Boyce envied that capability. He wished, not for the first time, he had more of it himself.
After bawling out Boyce, Pike summoned Number One back to the briefing room. He’d asked her for a readiness profile from all departments even before they’d arrived in the Hamilton system but hadn’t had a chance to review it until now. They were finishing up the material when the comm beeped. Pike was closest to the controls; he activated the circuit.
“Briefing room.”
“Bridge. Garrison here, sir. I have Admiral Noguchi.”
Noguchi. That was quick.
His first officer, who was standing over by the wall monitor, cleared her throat. “I’ll wait outside, sir.”
“No. It’s all right. Stay.” He turned his attention back to the comm. “Pipe it down here, Specialist. Scrambled.”
“Aye, sir.”
Pike activated the room monitor. The screen came up red, filled with first the UFP insignia and then Starfleet’s. And then Admiral Noguchi’s face.
“Sir,” Pike said, straightening in his seat.
“At ease, Chris.” Noguchi was in full dress; Pike wasn’t surprised. He guessed meetings had been going on all morning.
“I’ll get right to the point,” Noguchi said. “We have a divergence of opinion here. Command thinks the recording is proof of Klingon involvement; the Federation Council wants more hard evidence.”
“So my orders …”
“For the moment, resume sector patrol. Excalibur and Hood are on their way to you. It’ll be another few days before they reach you. We’re sending them the long way around, avoiding the border entirely.”
“Sir?”
“We’re assembling a fleet,” Noguchi said. “You’ll be in command. A temporary field promotion to commodore, effective immediately.”
Pike couldn’t keep the surprise—and, he supposed, the dismay—off his face.
This was not how things were supposed to be.
The month after Gorengar, two weeks after Pike had offered up his resignation, the admiral had called Pike into his office and shut the door. He’d offered him a promotion and a command of his own.
Enterprise.
“Not interested,” Pike had said, refusing to take a seat.
Noguchi ignored him. “This isn’t a warship, Chris. This isn’t about guarding supply routes or showing the flag. This is different. A five-year mission. Exploration. You’ll be like Magellan. Go beyond where we’ve been before. Make contact with races we’ve only read about and find others whose existence we never even dreamed of. No more fighting. No more wars. No more kill-or-be-killed.”
“Not what you signed up for,” Noguchi—present-day Noguchi, on the viewscreen—said. “Not what I signed up for, either, believe me. Comes with the job.”
Pike forced himself to nod. “Yes, sir. I understand.”
“Good. You’ll receive a coded burst transmission in the next few minutes with new security protocols, which are to govern all future Starfleet communications. In the meantime, you’re to resume sector patro
l. Stay within three travel hours of your current position.”
“And Kritos? Hexar ?” Pike had spoken to Noguchi already that morning, relaying to him the facts he hadn’t yet shared with his crew. The reason he thought the situation was shaded grayer than it looked, why the Klingons’ guilt was less black-and-white. “Do you want me to try to find them, see if I can get more information on—”
“We’re reaching out through the Vulcans,” Noguchi said. “They’ll handle any sort of negotiations. If there are going to be negotiations.”
“Understood, sir.”
“A little bit of reaching out you could do, if the opportunity presents itself … the Orions.”
“You want me to go looking for pirates?”
“Not at all. Though if you run into any, you might want to remind them that we take protection of our civilian traffic seriously.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The Orions I’m talking about are members of the Trade Confederacy.”
“The Trade Confederacy?” That was what passed for a government among the Orions; not much of a government, in Pike’s experience. “Aren’t they pretty much useless? A formality?”
“They have been in the past, certainly. Over the last few years, though, things have been changing.”
“Is that so?”
“Apparently. Their leader seems to be taking a more active hand in things. Someone called the tallith.” He pronounced it “taleeth.” “If we actually had a negotiating partner, someone who could help keep the Klingons in check in this part of space …”
“I’ll keep my eyes open.”
“Good. We’ll keep you informed of developments. And Chris, I meant to say, my sympathies on the accident.”
“Thank you.”
“How’s Ben doing?”
Ben meaning Commander Tuval, whom Noguchi had served with.
“Pretty much as you’d expect. Angry at himself for not being more careful. Angrier at the doctor for keeping him in sickbay. Angriest at whoever did it.”
“Sounds like Ben. You’ll tell him I said hello—and to take it easy. Do what the doctor says.”
“I’ll tell him. Doubt he’ll listen to you any more than he listens to me.”
