"This is an honor," the lieutenant said. "You're the best known Starship commander in the history of the Fleet. You captained the Enterprise on a five year mission, didn't you?"
"I did. I had the honor of captaining her after Commanders Robert April and Christopher Pike. She was a sweet ship."
"When you came back, I was part of a team that promoted your image to the public. I used to do advance work for your lectures around the system."
"So you're responsible for all that hype surrounding my reputation. I don't know whether to thank you or not."
"I hope you don't mind too much. Starfleet Command wanted a hero, and ordered us to make you a star."
"Frankly, I'm a little uncomfortable with all that malarkey. The Enterprise was a great assignment, and I'm grateful, but I'm not a hero. I had some great adventures, and thanks mostly to an outstanding crew, I lived through them. Not everybody did. If there are any heroes, they're the ones we left behind."
"A drink to fallen comrades." Caius lifted his glass toward the center of the table. Kirk looked at it, and a rush of memories flooded into his mind. He raised his tankard and touched the admiral's glass. The lieutenant, a little startled by the sudden, sobering theme, hurriedly joined them. They drank in silence for a moment.
"Speaking of heroes," Kirk said quietly, hoping to introduce the subject as unobtrusively as possible, "one member of my crew is still out there. And I understand that he's in a hell of a predicament. His name is Hikaru Sulu. He commands his own starship now, the Excelsior. And apparently he and some members of his crew have been taken hostage by a bunch of pirates from a bizarre out-of-the-way planet. I hope he's all right."
"We don't know," Marasco said somberly. "The Beta Prometheans captured our officers from the Excelsior, claiming they were spying, and invading Promethean star space. The Excelsior was able to get the two female officers back, but nine males are still missing, including their captain."
"Spying?" Kirk said. "That's absurd. The Federation doesn't engage in spying. Unless I'm misinformed"—Kirk left the opening for Caius and the lieutenant as gracefully as he could—"the mission of the Excelsior is the same as every other Starship's. Exploration."
Neither of the two men contradicted him.
"Anyway," he went on, "haven't we been trading with Prometheans for years? What is it they want?"
"Don't know yet," Caius said. "The fact is, we haven't even been able to communicate with the bastards."
"The Promethean civilization is—in spite of all our technical information—quite a mystery to us," Marasco said. The lieutenant was happy to talk with Kirk. For the last hour he had been listening to the admiral's complaints about Starfleet politics, about his wife. His principal theme seemed to be that he was only getting from the former what he should have been getting, but wasn't, from the latter.
"They are deeply religious for one thing," Marasco continued. "I mean in a political way. Their government is not as powerful as their clergy, or whatever they call themselves. So, for one thing, if you can imagine this, their belief system dictates their policies, both domestic and foreign. They consider most members of the Federation to be the enemy because our societies operate independent of religious beliefs, specifically theirs."
"But that's absurd," Kirk said. "The Federation alone contains some tens of thousands of belief systems for spiritual strength and guidance. If these organizations were political in any way, we'd be divided into hundreds and hundreds of splinter groups clashing with each other all the time."
"It is absurd to us, but not to Prometheans. I can assure you they take themselves very seriously. And as a consequence of their opinions of outsiders as the moral, spiritual, and physical enemy, trading with them has been a headache, I can tell you. It's the reason we don't have facilities on their inhabited planet. For just one thing, they wouldn't allow either women, or many of our races, equal access, and the Federation, as you know, refuses to create crews or staff Starships based on physical or spiritual identities, even to bow to local conditions. We've been trading either in space, on our own starbases, or through other planets, but never on their terrain, ever since they have been offering dilithium on the intergalactic market."
"In other words," Caius broke in, "we've brought the bastards out of their stinking, primitive, undeveloped past and into the future. We've given them resources beyond their wildest dreams, just because their primitive planets happen to be sitting on dilithium-crystal mines. And still we've had to kowtow to their demands, and play patty-cake with their leaders. When what we really ought to do is fly up with a shitload of Federation Starships and take the pious bastards over."
"That's not the official position of the Federation, of course," the lieutenant appended. "We have invited them to become members of the Federation, but so far they have declined."
"I see," Kirk said thoughtfully. "But we've dealt with primitive, belligerent societies before. Shouldn't we retrieve Sulu and his crew at once?"
"At this point, we don't know exactly where they are," Marasco said, again lowering his voice.
Kirk was chilled by the admission. In order to appear nonchalant, he interrupted himself, waved to a passing waitress, and ordered another brandy. Then he pretended an interest in the Deltan Duo, who had entered the club clothed and were sitting at a table near them. He winked at the aging admiral.
"You know, Caius, interspecies marriage is the latest thing. I wonder what it would be like, married to a Deltan female."
"Oh, you think you're in love, and it's only those Deltan pheromones. Causes all kinds of trouble among the younger officers."
Kirk laughed in spite of himself. Then he said to the lieutenant, "Sorry, what were we talking about?"
"The situation on Beta Prometheus," Marasco went on, lowering his voice. "We're putting Starships in the area now, and creating contingency plans for going in. That's highly classified, I'm sure you know. But, frankly, I doubt if this is going to be a Starfleet operation. The Federation president has sent a special envoy, and the politicians will try to effect a release of the hostages. Until then it's a stand-off, I'm afraid, and Captain Sulu and his crew are stuck dead in the middle."
"Let's hope that's not literal," Caius intoned.
"Damn," Kirk said, and took a drink of his brandy to disguise his feelings.
"Did you—sorry, do you—know this Sulu well?" Marasco asked.
"Hmmm?—Oh, fairly well." Kirk shrugged. "He is a good officer."
Like family, Kirk thought. He is the best helmsman and one of the most loyal men I have ever known. And I'll be Goddamned if Federation politics and Starfleet bureaucracies are going to let him rot in a Beta Promethean prison.
Two hours later the population of the bar had thinned out, closing time was approaching, and Kirk hadn't really learned much more.
Admiral Caius Fesidas pushed off in a sluggish state, ably supported by Lieutenant Eugene Marasco, whose job, he hinted to Kirk privately, was to see that the admiral got home to bed safely, without causing himself or Starfleet Command any embarrassment. Kirk watched them weave through the room and disappear into the turbolift. He didn't think he was going to learn anything more useful. Most of the Starfleet executive officers he had spotted earlier were gone and the bar was only inhabited by nocturnal aliens and some younger cadets. But he didn't feel like going home either. He spotted the table of Academy graduates he had spoken to earlier, and walked over to them.
"Mind if I join you?"
"Captain Kirk," his protégé said. "Sit down, please." The young men and one woman at the table stood to salute.
"I'm retired," Kirk said, and waved them down. "Please. In fact, though loath I am to admit it, I'm a civilian pure and simple. Call me Jim."
"That," the young woman with pale blue eyes said, "will be very hard to do. You will be Captain Kirk forever."
"I don't know that I'm going to like that." Kirk smiled. He was used to being treated deferentially in the halls of Starfleet Headquarters owing t
o his rank, but this was something new altogether. He found himself in the role of Grand Old Man, and it made him feel old. He thought about Caius, who years ago had given up a Starship command in favor of steady promotions within the Starfleet bureaucracy, and had risen steadily in the ranks since. And now look at him: a boozy, bemedaled, overweight ghost of an officer.
"You seem preoccupied, Captain," a voice called him back.
"Oh, sorry. A Starfleet crew has been taken hostage beyond Federation airspace. Have you heard? I knew one of the men."
"I'm sorry," the girl said.
"I heard about that late this afternoon," the Latin officer said. "I guess I've always known that a Starship assignment is dangerous, but this really brings it home. I don't know if I want to serve on the frontier."
"If you have to think about it, you probably don't," the girl said. "There are going to be too many sacrifices for anyone with second thoughts. Isn't that right, Captain?"
"Well, I'm not the best one to give advice about career moves, as you know." He shrugged in his civilian jacket. "But, yes, I'd say that getting posted to a Starship that serves at the frontier is a special calling. If you want a family, for instance, you won't see them for years at a time. You won't have any regular home except your cabin, and if you want to rise in Starfleet, your record is going to have to reflect more prestigious—need I say political?—assignments than drudging around in deep space. Not to mention that it is dangerous. And disorienting."
"What do you mean?" the girl asked.
"When you've been away that long, things change. You come home—if you even have a home—and there are a lot of things to get used to. I don't know how to define that better, and maybe this is only me, but I've never been really comfortable on the ground. Too many years aboard Starships, I suppose."
"What about the adventure? The excitement?" the girl pressed. "Isn't it worth it?"
"Oh yes, for me it was. But then, I never had much attachment to terra firma anyway. Couldn't wait to finish up at the Academy and get out into deep space. I was glad to get away from the theories and statistics and management side of Starfleet Operations. Where are you headed?" He looked at the girl.
"I'm in Biological Records right now. It's a bore. But I've requested a Starship assignment. I'm hoping for deep-space exploration. I'm a helmswoman by study, and I've taken a second in navigation in the hopes of getting an outward-bound assignment."
"How about you?" Kirk said to the Latin officer.
"Frankly, I didn't put in a request. There were so many things to think about. I've been assigned to a facility port, but it's just here off Jupiter. In fact, I leave in the morning. That's what this little gathering is all about."
"Well, congratulations and bon voyage." Kirk toasted him with his remaining ale and the others chimed in with some "here, heres."
"Your first time in space?"
"Yes. I was born on Earth."
"Good luck. And how about you?" Kirk said to another cadet at the table.
"I'm a little embarrassed to admit this," the boy said, "with all this talk about the glories of space, but I was raised on an asteroid colony and traveled around a lot with my parents, who were teachers. I was looking for something really steady, and I've applied to the Political Liaison section. I suppose I'll be assigned some diplomatic post, and I'm hoping it's an advanced civilization filled with humanoids, rec decks, and all the comforts of home. Sorry."
"Don't apologize. Get what you want out of life while you can. There's a lot of paradise in the galaxy; why freeze your butt off on a subzero planet or risk your life in a Starship? Maybe I gave up too many good years of my life … or maybe I'm just getting old and regretting some of the things I missed." Or maybe I'm getting maudlin about this boring retirement, he thought. Because I've had too much Saurian brandy tonight.
The table was quiet. So, they all noticed, was the bar now. There was a final round of good-luck wishes to the officer who was shuttling to Jupiter in the morning, and then the little party broke up.
Kirk went down in the turbolift with the young people, then shook hands all around, and watched them climb into a tram for the trip back to the Starfleet dormitory. When they were gone, he zipped up his jacket and turned to start his walk back toward his apartment. It was then that he realized the girl with shiny black hair and pale blue eyes had not gotten into the tram with the others.
"Can I get you a shuttle? You're not living at the Academy?" Kirk said politely.
"I am. I just didn't feel like going home right away." She didn't move. Kirk suddenly thought she must be trying to tell him something. Don't, he thought to himself, misinterpret this young woman's actions. You could be her father.
"We could get a bite somewhere, if you like," he offered, equally reluctant to go to bed with so much on his mind.
"There won't be anything decent open at this hour."
"No, I suppose not. Well …"
"I just wanted to talk to you some more. You really are a hero to a lot of young people at the Academy. Including me."
"And here I am, tired and slightly inebriated, and even a little overweight. So much for heroes. Feet of clay." Kirk smiled.
"You're very concerned about the Excelsior, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"There is a special camaraderie among the Starfleet officers who have served in deep space, isn't there?"
"You're very perceptive. Yes, I think there is." The two of them began walking slowly along the deserted space dock streets. "It's not something that's easy to explain. You couldn't tell a civilian, and I've found a lot of Starfleet officers who have never served in the frontier who don't get it either. You just have to have been there. You'll get your chance, don't worry. Then you'll feel it too. It's a little like a private club. There's nothing like it in the solar system. And nothing like the men and women who work out there. I'll tell you the truth, this Captain Sulu is a very close friend. We were aboard the Enterprise together for twenty-five years. That's why I'm so concerned. He served under me."
They walked along the fog-shrouded streets in silence for a while. Then the girl stopped and turned her face up to his. It was, he realized, a very pretty face. Smooth young skin and rich lips. Soft hair, eager eyes. She pulled a scarf around her neck in the damp air, and in spite of himself he saw her breasts push against her form-fitting uniform. I don't know, he thought. It can't be. I've been in space too long. Is she really trying to tell me something?
"I'd like to serve under you," she said, her face breaking into a wide smile as she took a step closer.
Son of a gun, Kirk thought. I guess I got that right.
Day Four
KIRK HAD BEEN too preoccupied the night before to turn the large windows in his bedroom opaque, and the morning sun flooded in and woke him up much too early. He blinked and groaned. His head felt heavy and stuffy. His tongue tasted of Saurian brandy, which had a lingering aftertaste he had forgotten. Pulling himself up onto one elbow, he looked out the window. The sight of the blue-green San Francisco Bay always cheered him. There was no fog this morning, and the sun shone brightly just above the East Bay hills. He peered around his bedroom to the glowing display set in the wall. It read 0600. Damn. He slumped back down and tried to relax his neck and head. Then he felt her move beside him.
Kirk looked over and saw the girl sprawled across the middle of the big bed. For a moment he was almost startled.
Of course I remember, he thought. We met at the Flag and Grog last night. I wasn't that drunk. She's a recent graduate of the Academy and works at Headquarters while she's awaiting a deep-space posting. Her name is … her name is … Uh-oh.
He pulled himself up on one elbow again, this time with his back to the big windows, facing the center of the bed, where the girl lay peacefully. He glanced around the room. Her clothes were scattered along with his across the floor. He looked back at the girl. She was entirely naked, only a thin translucent sheet thrown loosely over her. Her body was muscled, pale, attractiv
e.
And I must look like hell, he thought. I think I'll take a sonic shower before she wakes up. And a face steam. But first her name. He spotted her cadet purse on the other side of the bed. He reached across slowly. She breathed easily, her pale skin unwrinkled from the night's sleep.
His fingers were within an inch of the purse when she opened her eyes. She smiled up at him and he froze.
"Good morning," she said.
"Good morning."
She looked at his arm. He smiled.
He moved his hand a few inches and set the fingers down lightly on her exposed breast. Now he remembered a good deal more of the previous night.
"You are … very beautiful," he said as he stroked her breast. "In case I didn't tell you last night."
"You didn't. But actions speak louder than words. You were wonderful. Thank you."
"Thank you. I hope you don't think … that is, I mean, I didn't mean to take advantage of you."
"We took advantage of each other. By my invitation. I was only afraid you wouldn't accept. But don't worry, I don't expect a proposal. It was a pleasure serving under you, Captain." Her smile was broad and genuine and infectious.
She reached out and stroked his face. She pulled his head down and kissed him. Then she pushed on his chest and rolled him onto his back. She rose up to her knees and straddled him. She leaned forward slightly and her black hair dangled on his bare chest.
"Then again, you're not the only officer here, even if you do outrank me. You can serve under me this time."
He looked up at her face, which she was lowering toward him. Just before her pretty face disappeared behind a wave of flesh, he thought, How did I get so lucky?
Two hours later she had showered, eaten a huge breakfast of ground-grown food foraged from his refrigerator, and was going out the door in her Starfleet uniform. He wore a Vulcan robe that had been a retirement gift from his science officer.
The Fearful Summons Page 9
