Lieutenant Carolyn Palamas was an expert in archaeology, anthropology, and ancient civilizations. She was stunning, intelligent, and had fallen head over heels in love with a guy in a toga. He’d “magically” put her in a pink dress before taking her off alone. She had been a consummate professional for the year or so she’d been on the ship, but now she was willing to give it all up. And it was making me ill. Not because I looked down on it, but because I understood it.
The double tragedy of the deaths of both Edith and Sam in my own life forced me to retreat from the emotional world. I avoided connection with others, and I was critical of it in my crew. So now, I’d asked her to spurn him. My hope was that if he lost her, he’d be weakened and vulnerable. She initially refused. She’d forgotten her duty for love. I had to remind her.
“Give me your hand,” I said. She gave it to me and I grasped it firmly. I appealed to her sense of loyalty. I gave her a long speech about how we were tied together beyond any untying, that all we had was humanity. She said she understood, and stood up. I wasn’t sure I’d gotten through. I could tell her that I was speaking from experience, that I’d given up my love for duty. But I didn’t want to. I wanted her to give me what I wanted without question.
She would. She walked off, and soon after, the storm clouds brewed, lightning cracked, and in the distance Carolyn screamed. Apollo had shown us that he had powers that conceivably could control the weather on this planet, and I had assumed this meant she’d done what I asked. Spock, still on the Enterprise, had figured out a way to penetrate the force field holding the ship, and fired phasers at Apollo’s temple. The god alien returned, but too late; we’d destroyed the source of his power. We found Palamas bruised and beaten. He’d attacked her. Apollo, devastated, weakened, literally faded away. We’d won. But it didn’t feel like a win.
Back on the ship a few days later, I was on the bridge. McCoy walked in. He told me that Carolyn Palamas had come to see him, not feeling well. I asked if she brought some kind of infection back from the planet. McCoy smiled, ruefully.
“You could say that,” McCoy said. “She’s pregnant.” I was stunned. I saw Spock turn from his scanner. It seemed impossible; they were different species.
“Interesting,” Spock said. “There are many ramifications about having an infant born on the Enterprise who may have inherited some or all of his father’s abilities.” I was determined that this child was not going to be born on my ship. I told Chekov and Sulu to set course for Starbase 12 at our maximum safe speed, and then left the bridge for sickbay.
Palamas was in a diagnostic bed. Scotty stood by her; before Apollo had come into the picture, he had been pursuing a relationship with her, albeit unsuccessfully. He looked affectionate and concerned, and she seemed comforted by his presence.
“Mr. Scott, I believe it’s still your shift,” I said.
“Yes, Captain, I was just looking in on Carolyn.”
“I believe the medical staff is well equipped for that,” I said. Scotty nodded and repressed his annoyance before turning to Palamas.
“I’ll stop in later,” he said, then left us. She looked at me with a smile that I could only describe as chilly. I asked her how she was feeling, and she said she was experiencing a little nausea. I told her we were on our way to Starbase 12, which would have the necessary facilities to deal with the birth of a child with both human and alien blood, and that I would happily grant her the traditional two-year leave of absence.
“That won’t be necessary,” she said. “I’ll be resigning my commission.”
“You don’t have to decide that now—”
“It had nothing to do with the pregnancy,” she said. “I decided on Pollux IV.” She didn’t elaborate, and she didn’t have to. I’d pushed her too hard. At the time, I didn’t think I had a choice; in retrospect, however, once I found out Spock could destroy the temple, I probably didn’t need her to spurn Apollo for the mission. Maybe just for myself.
“If you’ll excuse me, Captain, I’m very tired,” she said, as she turned away from me on the bed.
“Of course,” I said. “Let me know if there’s anything you need.” She wouldn’t; I lost touch with her as soon as she left the ship.*
During this period, the only personal connections I relied on were with Spock and McCoy. McCoy and I went back far enough that our friendship was like old leather. Spock’s friendship was different; because of his devotion to Vulcan principles, it never felt close, and he never required emotional support from me. But I could always count on him to be there. So the one time he was in emotional distress, I knew I had to be there for him.
Spock was the one member of the crew that I never had to worry about losing to romance. He didn’t seem the least bit interested in women (despite the many romantic overtures made by the ship’s head nurse, Christine Chapel). Which is why the events that transpired involving Spock’s wedding came as a complete shock.
It began with Spock throwing a bowl of soup against a wall and heatedly asking for a shore leave to his home planet.
I had no idea what the hell was going on. I soon found out that if I didn’t get Spock to Vulcan, he would die.
I learned something that, at that time, few other non-Vulcans knew. Spock was going through the “Pon farr,” a kind of crazed sexual fever that men on his planet went through every seven years. The Vulcans were barbarians in the ancient past, and though they were among the most civilized races in the Galaxy now, their people had to let their inner barbarian out once in a while to allow them to mate. This mating rage was caused by a biochemical imbalance that, if not heeded, would eventually kill him. It explained a lot, and though in the last 20 years, the Vulcans have become more open about their mating practices, at the time, this was a well-guarded secret.
So I had to get him to Vulcan, and I violated orders to do it. I wasn’t going to let my friend die.
When we arrived, Spock asked me and McCoy to join him on the surface for a ceremony. I’d never been to Vulcan before; the sky was red, the breeze was hot, and the air was thin.
The ceremony was very primitive, held in an ancient outdoor stone arena with a gong in the center. It was astounding to find out how important Spock’s family was. The wedding was officiated by T’Pau, who’d been a leader on Vulcan for over a century.
Spock’s betrothed was a beautiful woman named T’Pring. The ceremony began; it was, to use Spock’s favorite term, “fascinating.”
And then everything went to hell. T’Pring referenced an ancient law that allowed her to choose a champion to fight for her. Spock was going to have to engage in a battle to win his bride. And no one, especially me, expected that the champion T’Pring chose would be me.
I would find out later that T’Pring had devised a strategy to get out of marrying Spock, as she had her eye on another Vulcan. By choosing me, she all but guaranteed that neither Spock nor her “champion” would want to marry her, thereby leaving her available.
I agreed to fight Spock, but I hadn’t read the fine print; the battle was to the death. We were handed lirpas, ancient staffs with a blade on one end and a weighted cudgel on the other. Spock, lost in his fevered stupor, was clearly out to kill me, and he knew how to use the weapon. He sliced open my chest, knocked me on the ground. I was able to get a few shots in, but I was losing.
McCoy stepped in, told the Vulcans that the air was too thin for me, and said I needed a shot to help me breathe. He gave it to me, but it didn’t feel like it was helping that much. We were given new weapons: ahn woon, similar to bolos. Spock had me on the ground right away; his ahn woon bands were tightly wrapped around my neck, and Spock wasn’t letting up. Everything went black.
“How do you feel?” It was McCoy. He was standing over me in sickbay.
“My throat,” I said. And then I remembered Spock choking me with the ahn woon. I put it all together. “That shot you gave me—”
“Neural paralyzer,” McCoy said. “Very low dosage, so it took a minute to knock yo
u out.” I sat up in the bed.
“What about Spock?”
“He’ll be beaming up soon,” McCoy said. “His fever seemed to have broken. I think he wanted to say goodbye to everybody. So, am I going to get a thank-you?”
I told him it might have been simpler to let me die. He was confused, until I pointed out that it was a “battle to the death,” and that we’d just committed fraud on Vulcan’s most revered leader. Something that I didn’t think the Vulcan government was going to appreciate.
“I have a solution,” McCoy said. “Don’t tell them.”
“Bones, this isn’t a joke—”
“I’m not joking,” he said. “T’Pau’s never going to see you again, and I don’t think she’s following the comings and goings of Starfleet captains.” He made a fair point. It did seem unlikely that T’Pau would ever run into me again. At least at that moment. And there really wasn’t anything I could do about it anyway.
Shortly, Spock came back aboard and couldn’t control his emotions upon seeing me. He burst out with a big smile and bellowed “Jim!” as he grabbed me. He then immediately went back to his normal controlled self. It was a rare moment of affection that I will always remember.
I watched Matt Decker die.
His murderer was a robot planet killer. It was several miles long, constructed of neutronium, with an anti-proton beam that allowed it to destroy planets and use the debris for fuel. It was an ancient machine from another galaxy, perhaps millions of years old. It had already destroyed three solar systems and was working on the fourth when Matt Decker’s ship, the Constellation, tried to stop it. The result was a wrecked ship and a dead crew.
We found the Constellation, drifting, burnt, and broken. It was like looking at the Enterprise in a cracked mirror. Matt was the only one aboard; he had tried to save his crew by beaming them down to a planet, which the planet killer quickly destroyed. He was catatonic, weak, unshaven, on the verge of hysteria. He in no way resembled the confident, hardscrabble shipmaster I’d come to know. He was overcome with his failure. That would lead him to escape and commit suicide by taking a shuttlecraft into the maw of the machine.
His death was not completely in vain. The shuttle’s explosion caused minor damage inside the planet killer, which I took advantage of and aimed the wrecked Constellation inside the giant construct. Once it entered the machine, I blew its engines up. The planet killer was defeated.
From the bridge of the Enterprise, I looked at the dead hulk of neutronium on the viewscreen. And I thought about the first time I’d met Matt Decker; he was with his son. When Matt decided to commit suicide, had he forgotten about him? But perhaps he didn’t want to face his child after the disgrace of losing his ship. His son must now be serving on a starship somewhere. It made me think of my son, whom I hadn’t spoken to in so many years. I hoped if he knew about me, I had been painted favorably. With that in mind, later that night I recorded my log.
“Captain’s log, 4229.7, we have successfully deactivated the planet killer that destroyed the solar systems previously reported. Commodore Matt Decker was in the Enterprise’s shuttlecraft Columbus making his way back to the Constellation to lend me assistance when he was caught in the planet killer’s tractor beam. Knowing he couldn’t escape, he set his engines to overload. This selfless act provided necessary data on the possible weaknesses of the device that allowed me to use the Constellation’s engines in a similar way to deactivate the machine. Recommend highest posthumous honors for Commodore Decker.”
It was the truth, with a sprinkling of fiction, for his son.*
Dilithium crystals are a necessary component of warp engines. The unique properties of the crystals allow for precise control of the matter/antimatter reactions that propel starships faster than light. Unfortunately, the crystals don’t exist everywhere, so when sensors detected them on the planet Halkan, the Federation dispatched the Enterprise to try to make a mining treaty.
The Halkans were a race that had already been to space and decided it wasn’t for them. They had a peaceful, thriving society, and they greeted us with friendship. But they weren’t interested in letting us mine dilithium on their planet. They had a dogmatic code and would prefer to die as a race than let their dilithium be used in the taking of one life. McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, and I did our best to make the case for the peacefulness of the Federation, but to no avail. And while we were on the planet, an ion storm moved in, engulfing the Enterprise as well. Since my ship was getting damaged, and I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere with the Halkans, I called a temporary end to negotiations and had my landing party beamed up.
Like a hundred transports I’d been on, I started to see the Enterprise’s transporter fade in around me, but then it faded out again. I felt dizzy, and when we finally materialized, everything was different.
The room was darker. Spock and Transporter Chief Kyle gave us a strange salute. Their uniforms were more ornate.
And Spock had a beard.
I instinctively knew that we were in danger. I decided to play things close to my vest. (And I looked down and saw I was actually wearing a vest, a gold one.) I soon discovered that “standard procedure” was to destroy the Halkans if they didn’t give us the dilithium crystals. I then watched as Spock tortured Lieutenant Kyle for some minor mistake during our beam-up with a small device called an agonizer. This was an insane world, and I had to get some time alone with the landing party to try to figure this out.
I made an excuse, and the four of us went to McCoy’s lab for some privacy. I theorized that beaming up in an ion storm had disrupted the transporter circuits, and we were beamed to a parallel universe, transposing with our counterparts in this alternate reality. Another Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and Uhura were now on our Enterprise. And where my mission had been to arrange a mining treaty with the Halkans, I now had to figure out how to save them, while also arranging to get back where we belonged.
We were in for quite an experience. The Chekov in this reality tried to kill me so he could move up in rank. I also discovered that the Captain Kirk on this ship had a “kept woman.” She was a lieutenant, but it was clear that her duties on the ship weren’t just in the service of Starfleet. (Since the woman’s parallel counterpart in our universe is still a member of Starfleet, I have decided not to include her name.) This was a universe of ids, and since I’d previously seen my “id” in the flesh, I knew how to pass as one of them.
The parallel Spock was as clever as our own; he figured out who we were, and eventually helped us to return to our universe. He was also the only person on the ship with an ounce of integrity. I knew that as soon as I left, the Halkans would die. It seemed like such a waste, so I took a shot. I made a plea to Spock to get rid of the “me” in that universe, and save the Halkans, to change his world. As we beamed away, it sounded like he was going to try. I’ve never gone back, and I never want to, but my hope is that he made a difference.
“I want more of these,” Tyree said. He was holding a flintlock rifle. He was enraged, frightening. “Many more!”
I hadn’t seen Tyree in thirteen years, and two days before, when I came back to his world on a routine survey, he had seemed the peaceful, friendly man who’d taken such good care of me when we were both much younger. But the Villagers, who’d lived in peace with the Hill People, now had weapons far too advanced for the technology of this world. I had discovered that the Klingons were providing these flintlock rifles to the Villagers in exchange for their obedience and access to the riches of the planet. They wanted to make it part of their empire, and the way they seduced the Villagers into being their slaves was by giving them their own slaves, in this case the Hill People.
Now, standing in a clearing, I was with Tyree as he saw his wife brutally attacked and killed in front of us by a group of Villagers. It changed him.
“I will kill them,” he said to me, regarding the men who’d done it.
I couldn’t let Tyree’s people become slaves, so I’d decided to give them flintl
ocks as well with the idea that as the Klingons gave the Villagers improved weapons, the Federation would do the same for the Hill People, creating a balance of power. I went back to the ship, and contacted Admiral Nogura at Starfleet Headquarters. He didn’t like my plan.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Nogura said. “For it to work, we’d have to know exactly what improvements the Klingons are giving the Villagers, and exactly when they were giving them.” I suggested a Starfleet adviser be permanently posted on the planet to relay that information, to which Nogura laughed. That would be a flagrant violation of the Prime Directive.
“Admiral, if we don’t do something, the Hill People will become subservient to the Villagers. And once the Hill People become conquered, there will be one government that will happily join the Klingon Empire. This will follow the letter of the Organian Peace Treaty, and the Klingons will have a planet well inside our borders.” I could see this worried Nogura.
“You say you have the proof that the Klingons were providing the weapons? We will present it to the Klingons,” Nogura said. “Under the terms of the treaty, they will have no choice but to withdraw.” That had been my thinking when I acquired the proof, but now it wasn’t what I wanted.
“But sir,” I said, “the damage has been done. The Villagers will still have flintlocks.”
“The damage was not done by us,” Nogura said. “In fact, you may have violated the Prime Directive by getting us into this situation.”
“The Klingons had already interfered,” I said.
“They can’t break the Prime Directive because they don’t have one,” he said, mockingly. “We do, so no matter what they’ve done, it’s no excuse.” Nogura felt with the evidence I’d gathered, the Klingons would no longer be providing upgrades and new materials. The cost to the planet would be temporary, and it would eventually find its own path again.
The Autobiography of James T. Kirk Page 20
