McCoy took another look at his hypospray. Noting that it was ready to deliver the dosage of corophizine he’d prescribed, he brought the injection nozzle up to Naheer’s neck.
“Doctor!” The voice directly behind him startled him into dropping the hypospray only a split second before it would have reached its mark. Annoyed, he turned toward his unwelcome visitor.
“Doctor Wieland?” he said, surprised all over again. “What are you doing here?”
The untended brazier’s wan light only accentuated the older officer’s disapproving scowl. “That’s a question I’d like to hear you answer, Leonard.”
McCoy retrieved his hypospray and held it up for Wieland’s inspection. “Isn’t it obvious? I was about to put my thumb on one side of Skyfather Gaar’s scale.”
“Oh, that’s a relief,” Wieland said. “For a moment there I thought you might have completely lost your sense of objectivity. What a relief to discover that you’ve only decided to throw your entire career away.”
McCoy grinned humorlessly. “I’m afraid you’re way too late to talk me out of that, Rigby.”
Wieland’s gaze flicked down to the instrument in McCoy’s hand. “Not unless you’ve already emptied that hypo into your patient’s bloodstream. What’s in it, by the way?”
“It’s an antibiotic that’s already tested out as effective against most of the local bacteria, at least in the lab. If it clears out his infection and gets his fever down, then maybe he’ll have a shot at surviving surgery.”
“But Keer isn’t going to let you perform surgery. And neither will Efeer. And neither will I. You know that.”
McCoy shrugged, neither lowering the hypo nor bringing it into contact with Naheer. “True. But even without surgery, Naheer still might recover on his own—you know how tough these people are—but he won’t have even that chance if I don’t knock down his fever and his infection first.”
Squinting through the semidarkness at the hypo, Wieland said, “So you haven’t treated him yet.”
“Your timing was impeccable,” McCoy conceded.
Wieland approached him so that they stood face-to-face, close enough to touch each other. “Then it’s not too late, Doctor. You can still back away from the edge.”
“The edge of what? Doing right by the Hippocratic Oath?”
Wieland sighed. “ ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ ”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” McCoy said, lowering the hypo, though without deactivating it or putting it away.
“It means that you have considerations other than the oath you swore, that we both swore,” Wieland said. “You took an oath as an officer of Starfleet.”
“I have a patient who’s hanging between life and death. That is where my duty lies! What else should take priority over that?”
“Topaline, Doctor. This planet contains enough of it to fill the Federation’s demand for several centuries. That’s why the mining agreement we’ve been working toward is so important.”
“I’ve shared a drink or two with the Yegorov’s geology people during the trip out here,” McCoy said. “I already know more than I ever wanted to know about topaline. Not to mention the settlements that can’t keep their life-support systems running without it.”
“Good,” Wieland said, looking impressed. “Then you must also be familiar with Altimara.”
At length, he said, “No.”
“Altimara is a planet that supports dozens of extensive mining operations,” Wieland said. “For more than a hundred years, it’s been the main topaline source for Federation colony worlds that otherwise wouldn’t be able to support life. During the last few decades, virtually all of the Federation’s topaline has come from the Altimaran mines. But those mines are rapidly playing out. Over the next few years—years, mind you, not decades or centuries—they’re expected to run out entirely.”
“Right now I’m concerned with the welfare of only one person,” McCoy said, gesturing toward Naheer.
Doctor Wieland raised his hands in a gesture of concession. “All right. But how does a single individual’s life stack up against the lives of countless millions of Federation citizens?”
“I don’t make those kinds of decisions!”
“Leonard, you are about to make precisely that kind of decision,” Wieland offered quietly. “By deciding to throw out the Prime Directive, and disobeying your oath as a Starfleet officer, you are deciding the fate of all those millions of topaline-dependent Federation colonists. Only you can decide whether or not to throw your career away. But take a moment and think: How do you suppose the people closest to you will take the news that you’ve been demoted for insubordination? Or even cashiered?”
McCoy lowered his gaze and took a moment to ponder both of Wieland’s aftermath scenarios. Jocelyn would no doubt see a dishonorable discharge as more evidence of his unreliability as a father. Further proof of his inability to follow through on his commitments. He was bitterly aware that he’d already given her ample evidence of those failings over the past several years.
And Joanna will probably believe whatever her mother tells her to believe, he thought glumly.
McCoy looked Wieland directly in the eye. “How can I just let this boy die?”
“Doctor, you can’t force these people to adopt practices for which they’re not yet prepared,” Wieland said. “And there’s no telling when they might finally be ready to accept what we’ve been offering them. You certainly can’t force it.
“Whether they come around a thousand years from now or next week, this boy’s death won’t be your responsibility—it’ll be theirs. They’ve made their choice, as is their right, and they’ll have to live with it. Now it’s time for you to do the same.”
“You outrank me, Doctor,” McCoy said. “Are you ordering me to violate my oath—to stop trying to save Naheer’s life?”
“No,” Wieland said. “I don’t think I’ll have to. You have a promising Starfleet career ahead of you, Leonard.” He extended his right hand toward McCoy.
McCoy studied the older man’s hand.
Ignoring the still, silent voice that warned him not to do it, he deactivated his hypo and placed it in Wieland’s outstretched palm.
Interlude
STARFLEET HEADQUARTERS, SAN FRANCISCO
Stardate 8130.5 (March 22, 2285)
“The course of action you chose was undoubtedly the correct one, Doctor,” Spock said, though he seriously doubted that his friend and colleague was in any condition to process his judgment.
“Think so, do you?” McCoy slurred. He sloshed the Romulan ale bottle’s depleted contents until it became a whirling gyre. “It’s only true from the perspective of the Starfleet hierarchy.”
Studying the drunken doctor sprawled out on his couch, Spock said, “Both of us constitute parts of that hierarchy.”
“But I’m a doctor, Spock. Granted, I was a hell of a lot less experienced then than I am now, but I was certainly no green kid. I was old enough to know I’d just used the Prime Directive and Starfleet protocol to justify the worst decision any doctor could have made.
“And because of my choice, a patient I could have saved died.”
Spock decided that the logic behind the Federation’s prohibition against Romulan ale was utterly unassailable. “That choice may have saved countless other lives. Surely you must know that.”
“But we’ll never know for certain, will we? If I had disobeyed orders and saved Naheer’s life, who’s to say the Capellans wouldn’t have chalked the kid’s survival up to one of their capricious gods? Who’s to say the topaline deal we cut with Regent Eleen thirteen years later wouldn’t have come about either way?”
Spock had always found it illogical to pursue such counterfactual speculations. It was a notably human predilection.
“Short of engaging in extensive chronohistorical research,” the Vulcan said at length, “I know of no reliable means of answe
ring those questions.”
“So we’ll never know,” McCoy said. “Those kinds of questions make a man doubt himself all the way down to his core.”
“I would not number excessive self-doubt among your flaws, Doctor.”
“Why, thank you, Spock. That’s the nicest thing anybody’s said to me all day. But you’re wrong. My decision to let Naheer die became an itch I couldn’t scratch. It made me angry and sullen. It drove everybody I cared about even farther away from me, starting with my ex-wife and daughter. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the divorce became irreversible the moment I handed that hypospray over to Doctor Wieland.
“Now, Nancy was more patient. We reunited for a while after my time on Capella IV. She put up with me for a year, but eventually even she couldn’t take me anymore. And I just got more bitter and more angry, locking myself into a vicious cycle that damned near killed me I don’t know how many times. And my career as a Starfleet medical officer was on life support.”
“Clearly, something interceded,” Spock said.
“Not something,” McCoy said, grinning. “Someone.”
Thirteen
STARBASE 7
Stardate 1013.9 (May 13, 2264)
Leonard McCoy smiled across the table at the deceptively youthful-looking officer in the new gold uniform.
“So Starfleet Command has finally come to its senses and given you a command of your own. It’s about damned time. Congratulations, Jim.”
“Thanks, Bones.”
The two men had become fast friends after the U.S.S. Farragut’s encounter with half a dozen pirate vessels nine years earlier. A wounded Ensign James T. Kirk, barely alive, was carried into Starbase 7’s infirmary, where he said later on that he’d been impressed with McCoy’s no-whining approach.
“To Starfleet’s newest captain,” McCoy said, before pausing to take a swallow of his mint julep. “And the grand adventure that lies ahead of him.”
Kirk took a long draw on his drink, an Andorian ale of some kind. “And ahead of his first chief medical officer.”
In the midst of a second swallow, McCoy barely avoided spitting his drink across the table. “If I didn’t know better, Jim, I’d swear you just offered me a job.”
“Mark Piper turned in his resignation, effective immediately,” Kirk said. “The Enterprise is Starfleet’s flagship, Bones.” The young captain turned on the barstool and gestured toward one of the broad observation windows that ringed the periphery of the nearly empty lounge.
An immaculate white shape hovered silently in the darkness beyond. The doctor read the pride and love in Jim Kirk’s face. “She deserves the best officers. And the best doctor.”
McCoy studied the mighty starship as he considered Kirk’s offer. He contemplated living out among the stars once again. Unlike the stints he’d already served aboard the Republic, the Yegorov, and the Constitution—all three of which had started him, at best, somewhere near the middle of the sickbay totem pole—he’d hit the ground running as the head of a starship’s medical department.
“It’s tempting, Jim. It really is.”
“So why do I hear a ‘but’ sneaking up on me?”
“Because I’m thinking about retiring from Starfleet.”
“Retiring? Come on, Bones, the surgeon general is at least twice your age.”
McCoy shook his head. “It’s not about age, and you know it. It’s about being hamstrung by the damned bureaucracy. It happened during the Capellan mission ten years ago. And it’s happened to me at every posting where Starfleet deigned to put me in charge of anything.”
Kirk’s brow crumpled into a concerned frown. “Bones, what the devil are you talking about?”
McCoy raised his hands and gesticulated, taking care not to knock over either of the drinks. “I’m talking about hierarchy over Hippocrates, Jim. I will never do that ever again.”
Then, over a second and third round of drinks, McCoy told Kirk the story of the months he spent on Capella IV.
Kirk listened attentively. After McCoy finished, the young captain sat in silence, processing what his friend had just confessed about matters of life and death, divided loyalties, and oaths in collision.
“Bones,” Kirk said, “you patched me up after my dustup with those Epsiloni pirates. I don’t think anybody else could have done quite what you did. I need you aboard the Enterprise.”
McCoy nodded. But he needed to hear something more.
“I know the Capella mission put you in an impossible situation,” Kirk continued. “You were forced to choose between that boy and your oath as a Starfleet officer.”
“Yes,” McCoy said.
Kirk’s sharp hazel eyes locked on his. “Doctor McCoy, you have my word as a Starfleet officer that I will never do that.”
A broad smile crossed McCoy’s face before he could do anything about it.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m in.”
Epilogue
STARFLEET HEADQUARTERS, SAN FRANCISCO
Stardate 8130.6 (March 23, 2285)
“Despite your overly harsh self-evaluation,” Spock said, “you must admit that your actions on Capella IV—both as part of the Yegorov expedition and also some thirteen years later, when you took part in the Enterprise’s Capella mission—laid the groundwork for the mutually beneficial relationship the Federation now enjoys with the Capellan people.”
“Maybe,” McCoy said. He felt much more comfortable trading barbs with the Vulcan than he did receiving either praise or solace from him. “Still, when that Capellan boy died, a part of me did as well. And it’s all because I let myself forget that I’m a healer first and a Starfleet officer second. I swore from that day on to question any order that just doesn’t smell right.”
“Interesting, Doctor,” Spock said, nodding sagely. “I find it difficult, if not impossible, to imagine you behaving any other way.”
A collegial silence stretched between the two old friends as McCoy wondered whether to take Spock’s comment as an insult or a compliment.
Ultimately, it didn’t really matter. In fact, the story with which he’d regaled Spock over the past few hours had only been a prologue to the real purpose of his visit. A quick downward glance at the empty Romulan ale bottle in his hand—the remains of one of Jim Kirk’s birthday gifts—reminded him of what he had yet to accomplish.
“Spock, a man can spend most of his life realizing who he really is,” the doctor said. “Becoming whoever he’s going to become, and then hanging on to that. It took me years to figure that out. But along the way I somehow cut myself off from the people closest to me.
“That cost me whatever chance I might still have had to patch up the wreckage of my marriage. And it left me with a teenage daughter who wouldn’t even speak to me.”
Spock rose from his place on the low sofa and slowly paced the width of the unadorned living room. Despite his vaunted Vulcan reserve, he was obviously uncomfortable with the conversation’s intense emotional content.
Tough, McCoy thought. He’s half human. Hell, he’s half Irish. He ought to be used to this kind of thing by now.
Spock came to a stop in the center of the room, his hands clasped behind his back. “Doctor, I presume you have made this revelation because you believe it to be especially relevant to the admiral’s present emotional state.”
“Damn it, Spock, I don’t want what happened to me to happen to Jim as well,” McCoy said, gesticulating with the spent bottle as he leaned forward. “Right now he’s facing the same crisis I did after my first mission to Capella. He’s refusing to be true to what is his best destiny—commanding a starship.”
Spock nodded. “May I assume that you have already had this conversation with the admiral?” he asked.
“I tried,” McCoy said with a shrug, though he knew he’d spilled a good deal more of his proverbial guts tonight for Spock just so the Vulcan could understand the emotional toll. “He wouldn’t listen. He’s entombed himself in that office and that museum that he calls
a home. Which is why I’m gonna need your help.”
“My help doing precisely what?”
“Saving Jim from himself.”
With that, McCoy got to his feet, weaving slightly in the process but quickly regaining his balance. He wasn’t sure whether or not Spock had noticed.
The Vulcan raised his right eyebrow in his characteristically inquisitive fashion. “Precisely what course of action do you have in mind, Doctor?”
Grinning conspiratorially, McCoy said, “Couldn’t be easier, Spock. All we have to do is convince Jim that he needs to sit down in the big chair again.
“We have to find a way to get him back his command.”
U.S.S. ENTERPRISE, SICKBAY
Stardate 8131.0 (March 23, 2285)
Leonard McCoy read the report again, exasperated that yet another medical supply delivery had been misplaced somewhere in one of the cargo holds. He handed the data slate back to the young nurse. “Don’t worry, Amy, we won’t need it. The worst thing we’re likely to face on this cruise is a cadet hyperventilating. Just pick—”
The boson’s whistle sounded. “An emergency situation has arisen. By order of Starfleet Command, as of now, eighteen hundred hours, I am assuming command of this vessel. Duty officer so note in the ship’s log. Plot a new course, for Space Laboratory Regula I.”
The intership cut off. McCoy assumed the new commander of the Enterprise was giving orders to the bridge crew.
“What does it mean, Doctor?” asked the nurse.
“Wonderful stuff, that Romulan ale,” McCoy mumbled.
“Doctor?”
He grinned. “Get sickbay ready. Find those drugs. Computer, make a note in the medical log that Admiral James T. Kirk is currently commanding Enterprise.”
Acknowledgments
In getting this book from its initial concept phase all the way to a finished product for your e-reading device, the author owes recognition and thanks to a veritable multitude, including (but not necessarily limited to): Ed Schlesinger and Margaret Clark, for offering me this gig, and for the patience they both exhibited during its execution; Dorothy Fontana, who wrote the Original Series episode “Friday’s Child”; Russell Bates and David Wise, for giving us the Capellan power-cat (aka “the lightningbeast”) in the animated Star Trek episode “How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth”; Fred Bronson, who sowed the seeds of the Capellan flowers (aka “quickblossoms”) seen in the animated Star Trek “The Counter-Clock Incident”; Boris Borisovich Yegorov (1937–1994), the first medical doctor to fly in space; James Blish, whose “Friday’s Child” adaptation referenced the planet Altimara and its dwindling topaline supplies; Dr. Philip Plait (world-class skeptic, critical thinker, author, blogger, and proprietor of www.badastronomy.com), who graciously furnished a trove of useful information, both of the real-world and speculative varieties, concerning Capellan orbital mechanics and stellar characteristics, and who inspired some of the mythology I placed in Capella IV’s cultural backdrop; Brad Ferguson, whose Crisis on Centaurus established Leonard McCoy’s stint at Starbase 7 and James Kirk’s history with the pirates of Epsilon Canaris III; Dorothy Fontana (again), whose Original Series episode “This Side of Paradise” established the fact that Spock had another name—one that humans tend to find unpronounceable; Barbara Hambly, whose novel Ishmael revealed what Spock’s unpronounceable other name was; the kind and indulgent folks at the New Deal Café, where much of this e-book was written and revised; Jack B. Sowards, Harve Bennett, and Nicholas Meyer for bringing Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan into being; William Shatner, not only for his portrayal of James T. Kirk, but also for sharing a birthdate (March 22) with the legendary starship captain; Leonard Nimoy, for breathing life into Spock, one of the most enduring fictional personae in television history; the late DeForest Kelley (1920–1999), who imbued Dr. Leonard H. McCoy with so much of his own dignity and humanity; the late Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991), for originating the universe in which I am sometimes privileged to play; and finally my wife, Jenny, and our sons, James and William, for their long-suffering patience and unending inspiration.
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