Crucible: McCoy

by David R. George III

  “Deck fifteen,” Sulu said, “section fifteen alpha.” Kirk couldn’t tell whether she’d brought up the systems chart that quickly or she’d pulled the information from her memory.

  “I’ll go,” Harriman said at once. Looking up at Kirk, he said, “You have the bridge.” He started immediately for the turbolift.

  Kirk lowered himself into the command chair. How many years, how much of his life, how much of his soul, had he given to this position? He’d retired from Starfleet, but this…this felt right.

  And wrong, he admitted to himself. Not wrong for him, but wrong for this ship and crew. “Wait,” he said as he heard the turbolift doors whisper open. “Your place is on the bridge of your ship. I’ll take care of it.” He stood and wasted no time in changing places with Harriman. As he passed the younger captain, he saw a look of determination on his face. Kirk couldn’t tell for sure, but he thought that, if they survived this situation, Harriman would be all right.

  Turning back toward the bridge at the threshold of the lift, he said, “Scotty, keep things together till I get back.”

  “I always do,” the engineer said.

  Kirk stepped back and let the doors slide closed, a smile sneaking onto his face at Scotty’s easy self-assurance. He specified his destination and the lift began to descend. As it did, Kirk regarded the schematic in the rear bulkhead of the car. He saw where the turbolift would stop and the route he would have to take from there to get to the deflector relays. He would have to open the main deflector control assembly, then access the override panel and reprogram it to allow the resonance burst. The safety, he remembered, thinking back both to his classes at the academy and to the many briefings he’d received over the years about starship systems design. He would have to remove the safety component from the deflector relays and plug it into the override housing in order to authenticate his intentions.

  The lift eased to a stop, then began gliding horizontally through the ship, toward the port side. Kirk could sense the strain of the engines as they struggled against the gravimetric distortions caused by the energy vortex. The ship still shuddered in the clutches of the tremendous forces.

  Kirk raised a hand to the ship’s schematic and traced a finger along the unfamiliar lines of this Enterprise. This doesn’t feel right, he told himself, just as he had on the bridge, but now he added, Not even for me. He supposed that if he took command of this vessel and ventured out into the galaxy, it would one day become his ship, but right now, it didn’t feel like that. Not like the first day he had set foot aboard the Constitution-class Enterprise twenty-eight years ago, not like the times he had returned to that ship after its refits, and not even like when he’d initially reported to NCC-1701-A, the former Yorktown renamed as a reward to Kirk and his crew for their service after the destruction of their original Enterprise. He would be content to leave this ship to Captain Harriman. As much as he loved command, Kirk needed to explore more than space; he needed to explore his own life.

  The lift eased to a halt and when the doors parted, Kirk shot from them like the beam from a phaser. He quickly oriented himself and found the ladder leading down into the maintenance corridor. He descended into the bowels of the ship and hurried forward, striving to keep his footing as the Enterprise continued to quake. Coolant leaks hissed in the enclosed space, sending vapor erupting intermittently from rents in the bulkhead. Kirk raced through the clouds, feeling their cold touch.

  Reaching the primary deflector control center, Kirk entered through its wide doors. Here too a fog of coolant blurred the air. Just a glance down into the compartment showed him where he needed to go. He climbed down a ladder to a walkway and removed the grating that covered the access to the main deflector relays. The ship reeled again, and the grate slipped from his hands and fell at least ten meters, rattling along the bulkheads as it did. Down another ladder, and at last he reached the main deflector control assembly. He opened the access plate and the relay emerged from behind it, automatically rising to situate itself beside the override panel. Kirk pulled himself back up the ladder and moved to the housing for the override. He opened the plate there to expose a series of optical chips utilized to program the main deflector. As quickly as he could, he chose the two that would allow him to do what he needed to do, and started to reseat them in the circuit accordingly.

  “Bridge to Captain Kirk,” he suddenly heard Scotty’s voice.

  “Kirk here,” he called as he slid the second chip into the appropriate slot. He jabbed at the override controls, reprogramming the relay to permit the resonance burst.

  “I don’t know how much longer I can hold her together,” Scotty said, a familiar plaint. In other, less serious circumstances, Kirk would’ve laughed.

  He finished working at the control panel, then hastily backed up and bent down to the deflector control assembly. With both hands, he grabbed the safety and pulled it free. Stepping back to the override panel, he bent and rammed the mechanism into place.

  “That’s it!” he called. “Let’s go!”

  “Activate main deflector,” he heard Harriman order, his voice strong.

  In the control center around Kirk, none of the equipment seemed to change, but he heard a loud whine that he knew must be the resonance burst. Even as the ship shook, he could feel it steadying by degrees, the feel of the drive becoming less labored.

  “We’re breakin’ free,” Scotty said.

  The drone of the resonance burst ceased and the control center quieted dramatically. Kirk detected a change in the movement of the ship. He could never have described the sensation, but he had spent enough time aboard starships to recognize the change in attitude. He knew at that moment that this Enterprise and this crew would be safe.

  Kirk started away from the deflector equipment, moving back along the walkway toward the ladder up. He reached it and began to climb, but then stopped. In the relative calm of the primary deflector control center, Kirk suddenly heard a familiar sound, its presence here and now making no sense to him.

  And then he vanished.

  A gentle breeze wafted across the veranda, bearing with it the warm, slightly fruity scent of peach blossom. Ahead, in the front yard, the leaves of a quartet of century-old trees rustled softly, trees from which the house took its name: White Oaks. As the sky colored in the last throes of dusk, McCoy leaned back in his wicker chair, his feet up on the railing, and thought that perhaps Jim and Scotty had made the wisest choices after all.

  When Starfleet Command had decided earlier this year to decommission the Enterprise after its decades of operation, the senior command crew had resolved to stand down as a unit. Though they had served for many years together, they each had other aspirations as well. Sulu exemplified that, having assumed the captaincy of the Excelsior three years ago. So when the Enterprise had been removed from service three months ago, after the Khitomer affair, its command staff had gone their separate ways. Spock had been offered an opportunity to train cadets once more, but later had chosen to accept an ambassadorial post. Uhura had opted to accept a position with Starfleet Intelligence, and Chekov had agreed to a ground assignment while waiting for a shipboard exec position to open up. Jim and Scotty, on the other hand, had both elected to retire.

  Today, as McCoy enjoyed the late-summer Georgia evening on one of the final days of his leave, just ahead of his scheduled return to Starfleet Medical, he wondered if maybe the captain and the engineer had gotten it right. While McCoy looked forward to pursuing several avenues of study when he resumed his research career, he also had to admit to the allure of simply relaxing around the house, taking strolls in the park, puttering around in the garden. He’d found his time away from Starfleet and medicine far more restorative than he had imagined it would be.

  As night fell and the sky began to darken, McCoy spied an airpod in the distance, approaching the property. He hadn’t been expecting any visitors, and so he thought that perhaps somebody had simply lost their way. But when the pod alit at the end of the lan
e, he immediately recognized the silhouette of the diminutive figure who emerged from within the small craft: Uhura.

  McCoy waved as the commander strode up the front walk. “Well, hello,” he called to her. She said nothing, but lifted a hand in response, less a greeting than mere perfunctory acknowledgment. The simple gesture seemed out of character for Uhura, who lived life with great zest and sported a normally ebullient personality. McCoy wondered if she felt comfortable with whatever reason she had for visiting him. He recalled the last time that somebody had dropped in on him unannounced in Georgia: twenty years ago, Admiral Nogura had shown up at his research lab and coerced him into rejoining Starfleet. He doubted that Uhura had come for any such dubious purposes, though—particularly since he hadn’t left the Fleet this time.

  As she approached the house, McCoy saw that she wore her uniform, a crimson tunic with a black skirt. He pulled his feet from the railing and walked over to the front steps. When Uhura reached him and climbed up onto the veranda, she said, “Hello, Leonard,” and hugged him. He could tell that she had come for some reason other than simply making a social call.

  “So what brings you to this neck of the woods?” he asked when she stepped back from him.

  “May we go inside?” Uhura asked. She tried a smile, but it convinced McCoy of nothing.

  “Sure,” he said, remaining casual. He knew that she would tell him whatever she needed to when she felt ready. He moved to the front door of the restored nineteenth-century plantation house and held it open for her. He followed her inside, through the foyer and into the corridor that split the house in two, with a staircase along the right-hand wall that led to the second floor. He touched a plate on the wall and the glass chandelier hanging from the upper story lighted up. “Let’s go in here,” he said, motioning toward a doorway on the left.

  Again, he touched a plate as they went into the house’s great room, which McCoy had furnished in period detail. The overhead lighting fixture came to life to reveal a pair of ornate, burgundy davenports, which sat perpendicular to the hearth on the far wall and faced each other across a low oak table. “Make yourself comfortable,” McCoy said, and he walked over to the bar cabinet set diagonally in the far corner. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  As Uhura sat, she asked, “Have you got any bourbon?”

  McCoy peered back across the room at her. “What do you think?” he asked, and Uhura laughed, the first moment of buoyancy she’d yet shown.

  “Water?” he asked. “Ice?”

  “Neat,” Uhura said.

  “A purist,” McCoy pronounced appreciatively. He opened the cabinet and pulled out a pair of snifters, then selected a bottle of Silver Moon Single-Barrel. He poured out two fingers of the amber liquid into the bowls of each stemmed glass, then carried them over to the sitting area, where he handed one to Uhura.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “You’re welcome,” he replied, and he offered his snifter in salute. Uhura tapped her glass against his, then sipped at her drink. McCoy swirled his bourbon for just a moment, then drank. The sophisticated alcohol presented a soft bouquet of honey and spice, and a foundation mixed of caramel and vanilla flavors, finishing smoothly.

  He sat opposite Uhura on the other davenport, setting his glass down on the table between them. Uhura took her snifter in both hands and held it at her knees, staring down into it. McCoy could tell that something troubled her greatly. The silence began to stretch out, but he chose not to try to fill it, not wanting to add to whatever burden Uhura bore.

  Finally, she said, “I’m afraid I’ve brought terrible news.” She lifted her gaze to meet his, and he could see the effort it cost her. “The new Excelsior-class Enterprise launched today on a…well, on a publicity tour of the solar system, really.”

  “Jim mentioned that to me last week,” McCoy said. “He said Starfleet had invited him for the christening and first voyage.”

  Uhura nodded and looked down. “He was aboard today, along with Scotty and Pavel,” she said. “It was supposed to be just a quick trip around the solar system for some journalists, but…” Uhura looked up again, and McCoy could see that she had come to tell him something far worse than he’d imagined.

  “What happened?” he asked flatly.

  “They had to mount a rescue mission,” Uhura said. “Two transports caught in some sort of bizzare energy phenomenon. Captain Kirk helped recover passengers from those vessels before they were destroyed, and then when the Enterprise became trapped too, he saved the ship.” Uhura stopped again, obviously upset, but McCoy could not prevent himself from asking the obvious question.

  “Is he all right?”

  “Leonard,” she said, her voice laced with sadness, “he’s dead.”

  McCoy felt as though a blistering gale struck him full in the face. He could not accept the words that he’d heard. He knew in an instant that there must be some mistake. “Are you sure?” he asked, and he understood in the next second the foolishness of his query. Of course Jim was dead. Uhura would not have come here to give him this news otherwise.

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you,” she said, “but I thought you should hear it from a friend.”

  “No, I’m glad you did,” McCoy said, his emotion driving him to his feet. “I mean, I’m not glad, it’s that…I just…” He tried to gather his thoughts and stop babbling. “Thank you, Uhura.” He moved around the table to her, and she put down her glass and stood up to embrace him.

  After a few minutes, they sat back down, together this time, on the same davenport. It seemed impossible that Jim was gone. McCoy had always thought of him as a force of nature—flawed, sometimes tortured, but always vibrant and vigorous. The death of Jim Kirk felt as likely as the death of gravity.

  Uhura told him what she knew of the incident aboard the Enterprise today, which Scotty had related to her just a short time ago. “Starfleet Command’s holding the news back from the comnets until they’ve notified the captain’s nephews. That’ll probably take a couple of days, at least.”

  “What about Spock?” McCoy asked. “Does he know?”

  “No,” Uhura said. “Scotty and Pavel and I were talking about how we should tell him. He’s on a diplomatic mission right now on Alonis. We thought we should inform him immediately, but we didn’t want to tell him over subspace.”

  “No,” McCoy agreed. “I’ll go. I’ll tell him.”

  “We all think that would be best,” Uhura said. “If you don’t want to make the trip alone—”

  “That’s all right,” McCoy said. “Thank you, but I’ll go by myself.” He did not look forward to delivering the news to Spock, but really, he had no choice in the matter; Spock and McCoy had been Jim’s closest friends for nearly three decades.

  “I just can’t believe that he’s gone,” Uhura said.

  “I know,” McCoy agreed. “It seems appropriate that it happened aboard a starship, though.”

  “Yes,” Uhura said. “I knew he’d retired and all, but I just always assumed he’d end up back in command of a starship one day. It was as though he’d been born for the position.”

  “That’s true,” McCoy said. “I know he talked about the over-politicization of Starfleet these days, but I never thought that would keep him away from space forever. I would’ve been surprised if his retirement lasted a year.”

  They sat quietly for a few seconds, and then Uhura said, “Do you remember the time on Platonius, when the inhabitants wanted to keep you there because they had no doctors of their own?

  “How can I forget?” McCoy said, recalling the small population who had developed telekinetic abilities as a result of ingesting the native foods. “Jim wouldn’t let me stay, even if it meant sparing the ship and the crew.”

  “He always looked out for us,” Uhura said, her words thankful, admiring, and wistful.

  They talked about Jim for a while. Uhura offered to spend the night in the guest room, just so that McCoy wouldn’t wake up to an empty house. He appr
eciated the gesture, but just before midnight, he sent her on her way back home, knowing that she had a long day ahead of her tomorrow; she and Pavel intended to travel to Starbase 13, where the Excelsior had just put in for shore leave, so that they could tell Sulu personally about Jim’s death.

  Before he went to bed himself, McCoy contacted Starfleet and arranged for the fastest possible journey to Alonis. In the morning, before dawn, after a night of tempestuous dreams rooted not in Jim’s death, but in his own, he made his way to Starfleet’s military operations facility in Atlanta. From there, he beamed up to the transport vessel S.S. Shras.

  As the ship broke orbit, he still had no idea how he was going to tell Spock.

  Fifty-Two

  1954/1955

  In the midst of a war that had already killed millions, that had stolen children from parents, parents from children, husbands from wives, the people of Hayden gathered together to rejoice. The townsfolk, as remote from the rest of the world as they often felt, had not been unaffected by the hostilities raging around the world. Ray Peavey and Jefferson Donner had been killed on the battlefields of Europe, Henry Palmer and Randy Denton had been lost in the waters of the Pacific. Justin Palmer had returned home with his right leg missing below the knee. Billy Fuster and Bo Bartell had both been labeled as missing in action, and everybody assumed that they too had died. On top of all that, nearly everybody in town had known or been related to somebody in the now-decimated city of Atlanta.

  And of course Lynn had lost her husband.

  Despite the death and the destruction, though, despite the uncertainty of tomorrow, everybody in Hayden had come together today, not for another funeral, but for an affirmation of life, a convocation of God’s love, and of love itself. In all her three decades in Hayden, Lynn had never seen the church this filled, not even for the many memorial services conducted here in recent years. Every pew held an unbroken chain of people, while many other men and women stood along the side and rear walls of the nave. As she walked down the aisle, Lynn wondered if a single resident of Hayden had failed to show up today.