Captain James Kirk moaned, but didn’t regain consciousness. She carefully eased his head into her lap and used her sleeve to stop the blood flow from the gash on his head. She had reached an understanding with this man. They had communicated one leader to another. He had helped her. She would be able to move forward because of him.
He couldn’t die.
Not here, not now.
Not after they’d been through so much.
Mister Sulu dropped down beside them with what appeared to be a device similar to the one Dr. Leonard McCoy used. Mister Sulu ran it quickly over Captain James Kirk, then used another setting on the device to stop the blood flow. The cut stopped bleeding and then closed as if by miracle.
Then Mister Sulu turned to Spock. “He’s got a slight concussion. I don’t know how serious it is, but he’ll live.” Then Mister Sulu smiled. “I’m just glad I’m not going to have the headache.”
Prescott felt relief run through her. These people were like magicians. Their technology was so advanced that it was beyond her. Everything they did was a miracle.
Including saving their leader as if his injury were routine instead of life-threatening. A Tauteean who had suffered that much blood loss away from a medical facility would probably have died.
“Return to your posts,” Spock said. “I need a ship’s status report, since Mister Scott is not responding.”
Just then the comm line buzzed. “Scott to bridge.”
“Go ahead, Mister Scott,” Spock said. Prescott marveled at the man’s calm even in the face of this disaster. Didn’t he have any emotions?
“The old girl took quite a pounding, Mister Spock,” Mister Scott said. Mister Scott’s voice sounded excited and he seemed winded. “All engines are off-line and will be for some time. She’s suffered so much damage, I doubt I can fix her in a week. But she made it, Mister Spock. She survived just fine. She’s a marvelous lassie, she is.”
“Yes, she is,” Spock said dryly, as if he were humoring Mister Scott. “What is the status of life-support? Our bridge lights are still dim.”
“Well, sir, the bridge lights and life-support are two separate systems, even though they’re part of the environmental controls.”
“I realize this, Mister Scott,” Spock said. “That is why I specifically asked about life-support.”
“All decks have full life-support,” Mister Scott said, as if it were obvious. Prescott grinned, and put her head down so that no one could see her. “And structurally the Enterprise is fine. We’re just stuck here for a while.”
“Thank you, Mister Scott,” Spock said. He punched the intercom button as if it had annoyed him.
That was the first hint of emotion that Prescott had seen him display.
“It seems,” Spock said, turning and glancing down at Captain James Kirk in Prescott’s arms, “that we beat the odds again.”
Prescott looked up at Spock. “I think beating the odds would be an understatement for me and my people.”
Spock’s eyebrow lifted, as he were actually calculating the odds she had just mentioned. For all she knew, he was.
She didn’t want to know what they were.
And she wasn’t sure she ever wanted to.
Chapter Thirty-four
THE BLACKNESS SLOWLY EASED, replaced by light and a stabbing pain in the side of his head.
Kirk moaned, then blinked—or attempted to. His eyes felt gummed shut.
His ribs ached. He was still sprawled on the deck—he recognized its hardness against his back—but someone was holding his head. Cradling it, in fact. The fingers on the side of his face were as light as feathers.
He wanted to stay in the darkness, but he couldn’t. He had things to do. He couldn’t quite remember what, but he knew he would when he opened his eyes.
He moaned again, and blinked. This time his eyelids fluttered.
Blurry faces hovered above him, and behind them light. Painful light.
He blinked again and his eyes focused on Prescott’s tiny features. She smiled. “Welcome back, Captain James Kirk.”
“About time you woke up.” McCoy’s loud, grating voice seemed to echo around the pain inside his head.
“Ow,” Kirk said.
McCoy laughed. That sound was even more unpleasant than his voice. Why hadn’t Kirk noticed that before?
“The headache will go away shortly,” McCoy said.
“Could you please lower your voice, Doctor?” Kirk asked.
Above him Prescott laughed. Maybe the doctor hadn’t really been talking that loud.
The headache receded a bit. The rest of his memory gathered together. He remembered the subspace wave. “Am I the only one who was injured?” he asked.
“I wish,” McCoy said.
Kirk pushed himself into a sitting position with the help of Prescott. “The wave. Did it damage the ship?”
He barely got the words out before the room spun and he had to close his eyes against the pain. Then, after a moment it eased and he opened them again. Now the room was only spinning slowly. And as he focused, it stopped.
He had been lying on the floor near the navigation station. Prescott was sitting beside him, and McCoy knelt above him.
“We survived the wave, Captain,” Spock said from somewhere beyond Kirk’s range of vision.
“Well, if he’s asking about the ship, he’s fine,” McCoy said. He peered at Kirk. “I have about five hundred patients who need me and it’s clear you don’t anymore.” He stood and headed for the lift door. He stopped just inside and stuck his head back out. “Captain, I’d tell you to report to sickbay, but I don’t have room for you. And I’d tell you to rest in your quarters, but we don’t have room for you there either. So against doctor’s best judgment, you can stay on duty.”
McCoy stepped back and the turbolift doors whooshed closed over the sound of light laughter.
Prescott and Sulu both helped Kirk to his feet and to his command chair. Sitting on the hard padding hurt even worse this time. He had to have bruises over half his body.
“How long was I out?” he asked, bringing a hand to his forehead. A lump had grown there.
“About an hour, sir,” Sulu said. “It took Dr. McCoy that long to reach the bridge.”
Kirk raised his head gingerly. He remembered the tossing and bucking.
Barely.
“Is it that bad below?”
Sulu nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Kirk forced himself to take two deep breaths, then swiveled slowly to face Spock. Might as well get back to work.
Doctor’s orders.
“What’s our status, Mister Spock?”
Spock nodded at him, and Kirk thought he saw the ghost of a smile flit across Spock’s lips. Then Spock clasped his hands behind his back and looked as serious as ever. “Life-support is fully functional, Captain. The hull came through the event without major damage. All shields are at forty percent. Both the warp engines and impulse power are off-line.”
“For how long?”
“To quote Chief Engineer Scott, sir, ‘We ain’t going nowhere fast.’ I believe those were his exact words.”
For a moment Kirk couldn’t believe what he had just heard. Then he started laughing. “I would hope so, Mr. Spock.”
And the rest of the bridge crew laughed too. Their laughter made Kirk laugh harder. And the more he laughed, the more his head hurt. But it was a good hurt this time.
Captain’s log, supplemental
The Enterprise has remained in this position for almost two days while Chief Engineer Scott and his crew effect repairs. The ship was damaged in a huge subspace wave created when the Enterprise, the Farragut, and two Klingon vessels destroyed the rift in the Tautee system.
The Klingons, led by KerDaq, rescued survivors of the Tautee disaster and, following the suggestion of Captain Kelly Bogle of the U.S.S. Farragut, took them to Starbase 11. Then the Klingon ships and the Farragut, now empty, returned to the Enterprise. Bogle tells me this was KerDaq’s idea.
If I had heard that from anyone but Bogle, I would think it hyperbole. But Bogle does not exaggerate, especially when it comes to Klingons.
I do not expect a friendly interaction with KerDaq, but I am surprised at the amount of courtesy the Klingons have shown so far. If this incident is any indication of the future, the Federation and the Klingons may well be able to work together someday.
The damage sustained during that last wave affected the warp engines most severely. Chief Engineer Scott is working to bring the warp drive back up on-line. The Farragut’s science officer, Richard Lee, is assisting in the final stages of getting the warp drive on-line. I am also transferring half the Tauteean refugees to the Farragut to give us more room on the return to Starbase 11.
Between the four ships, we managed to rescue over two thousand survivors. Most of those beamed up to the Enterprise were wounded. Several more were injured in the impact with the final subspace wave. It should be noted that Dr. Leonard McCoy and his staff have done an outstanding job over the last forty-eight hours. Working in primitive conditions, with limited resources, McCoy and his team saved almost every life in their care. I recommend that a special commendation be attached to McCoy’s file.
Prescott, the leader of one group of Tauteean survivors, was instrumental in helping us close the rift in space. She and the remaining Tautee survivors will be treated on Starbase 11 and then will be sent with supplies and Federation personnel to settle a new world. I expect in a few hundred years the Tauteeans will be full and proud members of the Federation.
“Captain.” Uhura’s voice broke through Kirk’s concentration on his log. He punched the Off button and turned to her.
She sat in her usual position, hand to her ear, legs tucked behind her chair. Her eyes were wide, as if the message had startled her. “KerDaq is hailing you.”
“Put it on screen,” Kirk said. He swiveled his chair so that he faced the screen directly.
KerDaq sat in his own command chair, arms crossed, steel bracelets glinting in the odd green light. “Kirk, I see you have found a way to survive yet again.”
Kirk laughed. “I do my best.” Then he let the smile ease off his face. He had to handle this next carefully. But he had to say it, even if he did not know the Klingon way. “I am glad that you returned to help us. Thank you.”
KerDaq spit in disgust on the floor. “You saved my crew when the subspace wave destroyed our ship. I did not return out of kindness. I owed you, Kirk. Now the debt is paid.” He smiled “Besides, I would not give you the honor of dying to save thousands. Only a Klingon deserves such honor.”
“Understood,” Kirk said, smiling.
KerDaq smiled, too.
Prescott stepped forward beside Kirk and looked up for permission to speak. He glanced at her and nodded.
“KerDaq,” Prescott said, “my people thank you, too.”
KerDaq leaned forward until his face filled the screen. “You are sentimental fools. You will fit well with the Federation. It too is full of sentimental fools.”
Then the screen went dark.
“He cut off communication, sir,” Uhura said.
“I gathered that, Lieutenant.”
The screen flickered back to life to show the two Klingon cruisers turning and jumping to warp.
“What did I say wrong?” Prescott said. “I hope I didn’t—”
Kirk laughed and touched her thin, frail shoulder. “You did nothing wrong. It was just the Klingon way of saying, ‘You’re welcome.’”
Prescott shook her head. “This is a strange universe we live in. It will take some getting used to it.”
“Yes,” Kirk said, dropping down into his chair. “Yes, it will.”
Epilogue
THE CARGO HOLD would never be the same for McCoy and he half wished he’d never have to return to it. The Tauteean survivors had been off the Enterprise now for three days and the ship had been undergoing repairs at Starbase Eleven. And he had been spending most of the last three days working on the Starbase with the medical staff, tending to what seemed to be thousands of wounded survivors. He hadn’t realized he could be so tired and still move. Somehow his body wasn’t quite ready to rest yet.
As he approached the cargo bay he could hear laughing. The last time he’d been in this corridor it had been littered with the injured survivors. He tried to force that picture out of his mind, but didn’t have much luck.
That picture would be with him for a long, long time.
The door to the cargo bay were locked open in front of him and he stepped inside. Since the survivors had left, the bay had been cleaned and he couldn’t even tell it had been used for a huge sickbay just a few short days before. There was no blood and no smell of rotting flesh.
No injured bodies.
No ruined legs.
No gangrene.
The cargo bay as it had been before McCoy had even heard of Tautee.
A large monitor was in place between two huge machines again and an ensign wore the helmet. Scotty had his projectors working again. And it looked as if, even with all the time spent getting the Enterprise back in shape, he’d also managed to find the time to get his projectors working right. How that man did it, McCoy would never know.
“Come in, Doctor,” Kirk yelled from across the bay, smiling and motioning for McCoy to join the party. “We’re celebrating a mission well-completed.”
“Actually, Captain,” Spock said from a position halfway between Kirk and McCoy, “there are still many items of business that must be attended to.”
Kirk waved Spock’s statement away. “Mister Spock, there must always be a point where a mission is declared finished.”
Spock frowned, obviously from the illogic of Kirk’s statement and McCoy found his spirits suddenly starting to lift. Anything that would annoy Mister Spock and break through that stone-like exterior was fine by him.
About twenty people filled the area where the cargo deck left off and Scotty’s huge machines took up. Sulu and Chekov were laughing about something with two women ensigns from the starbase. Scotty was complaining about a table someone had set too close to one of his machines. On the table sat a large cake and a vast supply of wine. Someone had spared no expense for this party, that was for sure.
Kirk was standing near the table. He laughed at Spock’s reaction, then turned back to a discussion he had obviously been having with Captain Bogle of the Farragut. McCoy was amazed Bogle was even speaking to Kirk after Kirk dumped all those extra survivors on him. Kirk and Bogle had exchanged harsh words about gambling with lives and being too caught up in rules. But Admiral Hoffman had pointed out that both sides were important.
And had to work together.
Then she had settled it all by siding with Kirk on the Prime Directive issue, but giving Bogle a commendation for staying within Starfleet guidelines.
So both men shook hands, buried the hatchet and participated in all other clichés. Then they had played an all-night game of poker, with Kirk bluffing and Bogle playing strictly by the rules.
Then, from what McCoy understood, Bogle had gone in the next day and asked to be assigned to the vacant seat on Starfleet’s Plans and Policy commission. If his transfer was accepted, McCoy knew Bogle would work hard to tighten up the Prime Directive. In fact, McCoy bet that after this incident, it would be Bogle’s main focus. Who knew how tight the rule would be in eighty or so years.
But, for the moment, Kirk and Bogle seemed to be friends again. As much as those two very different men could be friends.
McCoy had heard all of this while he had been working with the survivors. If he never saw an infected wound again he would be extremely happy. He was glad that the starbases had more medical personnel than a starship, or else he would never have gotten any sleep.
But the most important thing was that the Tauteean race survived with enough people to start over on a new planet.
McCoy took a drink offered by the science officer of the Farragut, Mister Lee.
“Miste
r Spock,” Scotty said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “How would you like to be the very first to try my new course?”
“Golf is not a logical game, Mister Scott,” Spock said.
“It is if you’re from Scotland, laddy,” Scott said and everyone laughed.
For a moment the buzz of conversation filled the cargo deck. McCoy moved over to where Chief Engineer Scott stood beside one of his machines like a father watching over a young child.
“Doctor,” Scotty said. “What do ya think now?” He waved his hand at the beautiful green showing on the monitor. There were even a few white clouds floating in the deep blue sky.
“Wonderful,” McCoy said, really meaning it. “But how’d you get it to work?”
Scotty pointed to a brown-haired man standing twenty feet away beside the other projector. “Mister Projeff Ellis, the chief engineer of the Farragut, helped me. With him on one machine and me on the other, we got the lassies to finally balance. And ya know, he agrees that someday this might be possible without a helmet.”
“Great,” McCoy said, staring at the monitor full of an expanse of green grass and trees and blue sky. Maybe Scotty had a point. Maybe this new invention would be good to have around. As long as people didn’t take it too seriously.
“And you know, Doctor,” Scott went on. “Projeff loves golf as much as I do. Says he plays every time he gets a chance. He must have Scotsman in his blood.”
“That he must, Scotty,” McCoy said.
“All right, everyone,” Kirk’s voice drowned out the background buzz of talking and laughing. “It’s time for a toast.” He held up his glass and waited until everyone found one and was quiet.
Lieutenant Uhura handed McCoy a fresh glass of wine and McCoy held it aloft, waiting for the toast.
“To Captain Bogle and his fine crew,” Kirk said, his voice ringing through the room. “To my wonderful crew. To the Klingons for helping. And most of all to the Tauteean survivors. May they flourish in their new home.”
With that he and Captain Bogle touched glasses and drank.
“Hear! Hear!” the crowd shouted, raising their glasses together in toast.
The Rings Of Tautee Page 16
