The Captain's Oath

by Christopher L. Bennett

  The Xarantines finally reacted to Kirk’s demand. “Their impulse engines are warming up,” Lieutenant Yu reported. “I think they’re going to try to make a break for it.”

  “They know they can’t outrun us,” answered Lieutenant Commander Mehran Egdor. The Rigelian first officer frowned, wrinkling the dark vertical lines tattooed on his pale, craggy forehead and cheeks. “But they’ll probably try to find an opening to jettison or destroy their cargo before we can search them. They’ll probably—”

  “Release the ice to give themselves cover,” Kirk finished for him, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. Egdor was eight years older than Kirk but two steps below him in rank, and he never seemed able to forget it. Kirk was glad to have a first officer whose experience he could draw on and learn from, but Egdor’s manner consistently made him feel more lectured to than mentored. The commander insisted on offering his advice even when Kirk did not seek it, as if he doubted Kirk’s ability to figure things out for himself.

  But that was a matter to sort out later. “Khorasani,” Kirk told the statuesque lieutenant at the helm, “lock phasers on the ice boulders. Stand by to fire at full power, wide dispersal on my command.”

  “Yes, sir,” Azadeh Khorasani replied, her brow furrowing in confusion. But she programmed the target lock efficiently, her bionic left hand working the targeting scope controls as easily as living fingers would, if not more so.

  On the viewscreen, explosive bolts flashed and the lashed-on ice boulders flew free from the Xarantine ship. “Standing by, sir,” Khorasani said.

  But the Xarantines beat her to it. Their particle cannon banks opened up on the ice boulders, beginning to blow them apart. “As I thought, they’re trying to blind our sensors,” Egdor cautioned. “I recomm—”

  But Kirk was already raising his hand. “Khorasani, fire!”

  The Sacagawea’s powerful phasers lashed out, having a far more potent and immediate effect on the comet chunks than the Xarantines’ weaker particle cannons. In seconds, the masses of dirty ice had been largely sublimated to vapor, with the remainder blown well out of range by the explosive force of the expanding gases.

  Egdor blinked, staring at the screen. “You . . . dispersed the debris cloud before they could use it for cover,” he said.

  “Plus he gave them a pretty good warning shot in the process, Commander,” Mitchell added with a grin. “They’re powering down, Captain. Looks like they’re surrendering.”

  Kirk rose from the command chair. “Then let’s go see what they were so determined to hide from us. Lieutenant Mitchell, Ensign Khorasani, with me.”

  Egdor took a step forward to delay him. “I’m curious, Captain. How did you know they’d attempt that maneuver?”

  Kirk shrugged. “It’s what I would’ve done.”

  Xarantine freighter

  Even after their captain surrendered, the Xarantine crew resisted opening their cargo hold to the Starfleet boarding party. “Please, Captain Kirk,” the hairless, yellow-skinned merchant insisted, “our cargo facilities are shielded for purposes of security. Not only must we honor our clients’ confidences, but to expose the cargo to the radiations of space in uncontrolled conditions could damage sensitive data . . .”

  But that was why Kirk had brought Azadeh Khorasani. The Klingon raid that had cost the lieutenant her left arm on her first cadet training cruise had also damaged her ribs and spine; the resulting prosthetic replacements had the necessary anchoring to exert more than twice human strength without damaging the rest of her body. Khorasani took pride in her artificial limb, refusing to sheathe it in synthetic skin. And at times like this, Kirk could see why. Her bionic hand made short work of the cargo hold’s locking mechanism.

  What lay within the hold was stunning in more ways than one. They were Orions—nearly two dozen, some three-quarters of them female, and all mostly or completely nude. After a long moment, Kirk forced himself to look away. His gaze fell on the Xarantine captain, who quailed from its intensity.

  “Please, Captain,” the portly merchant attempted, “this is not what it appears. These are refugees, fleeing enslavement in Orion space. As you can see, they lacked the means to immigrate legally, and sometimes one must place mercy and decency over the strict letter of—”

  Kirk seized the trafficker by the front of his ornate robes. “Is that the best lie you can come up with? You know Federation law doesn’t restrict immigration. Everyone is welcome!” He shoved the Xarantine away. “Although I’d make an exception for you.”

  He wiped his hands of the imagined slime and turned back toward the open hold. The slaves’ accommodations were reasonably clean and sanitary, and a protein resequencer and lavatory facilities were in evidence; no doubt they would bring their sellers less profit if they were malnourished or unclean. Still, they were packed closely together, given barely enough light to see by. They gazed up at him languidly, appearing sedated, probably by something in their food or water. Even so, he could see the hopelessness in their eyes. A comfortable cage was still a cage.

  “Get them all to sickbay right away,” he ordered the security team. “Notify Commander Egdor to prepare guest accommodations. And get them some clothes.”

  Gary Mitchell was still staring. “Can we skip that part?” the navigator whispered. “I mean, my God. Even the men look amazing.”

  “Gary!” Kirk yanked his friend away from the door. “Get a hold of yourself. They’re slaves!”

  Mitchell shrugged, spreading his hands. “Not anymore!”

  “They don’t know that yet. Show some consideration.” He threw a glance toward Khorasani and the security team. “Don’t forget, I specifically requested you as my navigator. Your actions and attitude reflect on me.”

  The other man visibly shook himself. “Right. Sorry. I do appreciate it, Jim. And the last thing I want is to screw up your first command.” He sighed, looking over his shoulder. “It’s just . . . I’ve never seen so much gorgeous green skin in one place before. I tell you, Jim, you’re the most disciplined man I know. I’m amazed you can resist all that beauty.”

  Kirk didn’t let on how hard he was struggling to do just that. A captain couldn’t show weakness to his crew, even when one was his best friend. So he shrugged it off. “My duty comes first, Gary, you know that.” He smirked. “Besides, I’ve got a girl back at the starbase.”

  Mitchell nodded. “Ah, yes, the charming Doctor Miller.” He chuckled. “I gotta say, Jim . . . you’ve always had a type, I know, but if you think another blond lady scientist can take Carol’s place—”

  Kirk stiffened. “That’s enough, mister.”

  Mitchell winced at the sharpness of his tone, but snapped to attention. “Aye, aye, sir. Understood. Sorry, Captain. I guess my brain’s still addled from the Orion pheromones, but it’s no excuse.”

  After a moment, Kirk softened. “I didn’t mean to bite your head off. It’s just . . .” He looked around, thinking about the weeks that the Orion captives must have spent in these cramped conditions while the ship coasted past the border at sublight. Thinking about the ways the freighter captain might have destroyed the “evidence” if he hadn’t acted quickly enough. “They were being smuggled in, Gary. Slaves. Being taken to customers somewhere in Federation space.” He fumed in silence, not trusting himself to say more.

  “I hear you, Jim. But that’s the frontier for you. We draw a plane in space, call it a border, and pretend we control what’s inside it, but a lot of it’s still the Wild West.”

  “Then what are we defending?”

  Mitchell smiled. “We’re giving the colonies room to grow. Keeping them safe so someday they’ll be as nice and civilized as the core worlds.”

  “And then the border will move farther out, and the cycle will start all over.” Kirk sighed. “I want to be part of expanding those borders, Gary. I want to improve our knowledge and understanding of our neighbors, bring us closer, not just maintain the barriers that make it easier to exploit or fear outside
rs. The Sacagawea was designed as a scout, not a patrol ship. She doesn’t deserve to be stuck here on the border any more than we do.”

  “Everybody’s gotta start somewhere, Jim. And you scored a big win today. Be glad of that. And be glad you’re based at a starbase so you can go back and celebrate with your lovely doctor friend.”

  Starbase 24

  Jim Kirk had been waiting in the Moonbeam Club for over twenty minutes by the time Janet Miller finally showed up. He was embarrassed to realize he’d barely noticed the passage of time, for his table afforded a clear view of the Sacagawea at her docking port. Even after nearly two months in command of the Hermes-class starship, he still couldn’t help staring at the sleek lines of her saucer and single nacelle and feeling a sense of awe that she and the 195 people aboard her were his to command.

  Even so, he felt an equal thrill at the sight of Janet’s girl-next-door features and her apologetic smile as she hurried up to the table and kissed him on the cheek. “I’m so sorry I’m late, Jim.”

  “It’s all right, Jan.”

  “I just lost track of time again,” the pale-haired biophysicist said as she lowered her lean figure into the seat across from his. “I’ve been having the most fascinating correspondence with Doctor Theodore Wallace of the Aldebaran III colony. He’s a truly brilliant man, Jim. He’s discovered a spatial anomaly connecting with a four-dimensional subspace domain, and he thinks he’s found evidence of organic molecules within it. We’ve been collaborating on a simulation of how protein folding and translation would occur in a higher-dimensional space. I mean, we’ve had higher-dimensional protein folding models for centuries, but as abstract computational aids, not as something with real physical existence, with the binding forces between particles going as inverse cubes instead of inverse squares . . .” She trailed off. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to babble.”

  Kirk smiled. “Not at all, Jan. I love your enthusiasm about your work. It’s something we both have in common.”

  “Yes, but we only have a few more days before I have to leave for that terraforming conference on Minori IV. I want to make the most of them.”

  Minori IV? It took Kirk a moment to place the name. Her impending conference had completely slipped his mind. Smiling in an attempt to cover for it, he slid his arm around her shoulders. “Well, in that case, maybe we could just skip dinner.”

  Janet chuckled. “Jim, not that I don’t appreciate how insatiable you’ve been since you got that whiff of Orion pheromones last week . . . but I would appreciate the chance just to sit and talk more. To have a nice, quiet, friendly dinner conversation before we get back to the really friendly stuff.”

  Kirk nodded, taking her point. He and Janet were both committed professionals, and they recognized the limitations that placed on their relationship. Kirk was determined not to repeat the mistakes that had driven Carol Marcus away—that had made her forbid him from seeing David, the son he’d only recently discovered he had. He still struggled with his ambivalent feelings about fatherhood, but he refused to hurt Jan or insult her intelligence by making the same kind of false promises he’d impulsively offered Carol about his readiness for a commitment. If there was a way to make a relationship with a dedicated career woman work, perhaps it was to keep things comfortably loose and casual—to approach it more as an intimate, abiding friendship than a grand, poignant romance. That way, the necessity of frequent separation would be easier to cope with, and perhaps they could find a stable balance allowing the relationship to last indefinitely, without the need for painful choices between conflicting commitments. (Being more careful with contraception this time was a good idea as well.)

  Unfortunately, their friendly dinner conversation had barely gotten started when a gray-haired, craggy-faced man in a captain’s uniform approached the table. “Bob, hi!” Janet said. “Good to see you. I hope you’re here to grace us with some jazz.”

  “Not tonight, Jan,” Robert Wesley said, throwing a wistful glance at the Moonbeam Club’s piano. “I’m afraid I have to take Jim away from you.”

  “Oh, no, Bob.”

  But Kirk was already rising from the table, shifting back into officer mode. Robert Wesley was the senior captain of Starbase 24’s border task force, a forty-five-year-old Earthman who’d commanded the U.S.S. Beowulf for nearly a decade. In the two months they’d served together, Kirk had learned a great deal from the older man, whom he saw as a natural leader. If Captain Wesley needed him, he was there. “What is it, sir?”

  “The Klingons again, Jim. A raiding party’s been detected crossing the border. Looks like a big one this time. We’re going to need all hands.”

  Kirk turned back to Janet. “I’m sorry, Jan.”

  She took it with calm resignation. “Like you said—we have this in common.” She rose, put her arms around his neck, and kissed him. “In case you don’t get back before my trip. And for luck.”

  U.S.S. Sacagawea

  Starbase 24 was one of the closest Federation bases to the Klingon border, proximate to the sector containing the Klingons’ primary prison planet, Rura Penthe. The high security around the planet known far and wide as “the Aliens’ Graveyard,” as well as the Empire’s heavy demand for the dilithium mined there, made for a large and active Klingon military presence along that portion of the border. As such, Starbase 24 maintained a fair-sized border patrol fleet, led by Captain Wesley’s Beowulf. That ship currently led three others in defense of the human colony on Shinohara’s World: James Kirk’s Sacagawea, the Sau Lan Wu under Captain Vishakha Gupta, and the Hannibal under Captain Jaulas nd’Omeshef.

  Shinohara’s World was a small, unremarkable colony on the fourth planet of UFC 620, a tiny M dwarf whose six planets were packed so tightly around it that their “years” were measured in days or weeks. It had no great strategic or astropolitical importance in itself. But Klingon raiders often targeted such young, remote colonies because they were relatively undefended, and although the Klingon High Council nominally abided by the tenuous peace between the two powers, it tacitly encouraged such raids in the hope of deterring further Federation expansion into territories the Empire hoped to claim.

  None of that mattered to James Kirk at the moment, for none of it would matter to the few hundred families who had made Shinohara’s World their home. He had seen the impact of violence and loss on a small frontier community during his youth on Tarsus IV, when Kodos the Executioner had slaughtered half the population in the name of his deranged theories of eugenics. Ever since that dark day, Kirk had resolved never to stand by and let sentient lives be discarded by those who dismissed them as mere collateral damage in the pursuit of some abstract strategy or cause. In the years since, he had often had occasion to see how fundamentally the Klingon Empire’s guiding philosophy toward life and death conflicted with his own. He had lost friends in battles against the Klingons during his time on the Farragut. Later on, he had led a Starfleet contingent defending the planet Shad’s world government against an insurrection backed and armed by the Klingons, and had seen firsthand the brutality the Empire encouraged in others. As second officer of the Constitution, he had spent weeks assisting in the detoxification and reconstruction of a Federation colony devastated by a Klingon attack; even two years after the fact, there had still been remains that needed to be exhumed from the rubble, identified, and delivered home to their families in hopes of bringing them some closure. Kirk was determined to make sure the same would not happen here.

  He let that determination fill his voice as he hailed his rival commander to give challenge. The Klingon raiders had broken up, following multiple courses through UFC 620’s close-packed planetary system and forcing the Starfleet squadron to split up as well. Mitchell and Khorasani had managed to intercept their designated ship, positioning the Sacagawea to block its approach to the colony world. While the ships themselves were dust motes on the scale of even this compact system, their weapons ranges were considerably larger, making the Sacagawea’s sphere of influence
an effective obstacle to the Klingon ship’s progress.

  “Attention, Klingon vessel,” Kirk intoned to underline that fact. “This is Captain James Kirk of the U.S.S. Sacagawea. If you do not cease this unprovoked attack, we will be forced to destroy you. Please respond so we can discuss this like honorable men.”

  That did it. A snarling Klingon face, eyes flashing fiercely beneath bony forehead ridges, appeared on the viewer. “I am Grnar, commander of the Vrot. You speak of honor, boy? Then do not begin with the lie of claiming manhood. I see the intelligence reports are true—Starfleet has assigned a mere child to guard its border.”

  Kirk smiled. “The human warlord Alexander of Macedon had built an empire across three continents by my age. Maybe Klingons are just late bloomers.”

  “Then show me your empire, boy. You are but a whelp! Starfleet has lost so many of its best captains to my valiant brothers that they must now give their ships to babies still wet with the blood of their mothers’ wombs.”

  Kirk stepped forward alongside Khorasani’s station to look the Klingon in the eye. “I did not . . . just hear you talk about my mother.”

  What Grnar went on to say about Kirk’s mother was unrepeatable. What Kirk said in return about Grnar’s mother was inadvisable. The upshot was that the Sacagawea was under heavy fire moments later and Khorasani was firing back with full phasers.

  Lieutenant Commander Egdor sidled up to Kirk as the latter studied the enemy ship’s trajectory on the viewscreen. “It was unwise to make him angry, Captain.”

  Kirk stared. “Make him angry? Isn’t that a Klingon’s default state?”

  “Even so, it’s a bad idea to make it worse.”

  The first officer’s continued condescension troubled Kirk. If he didn’t find a way to establish mutual trust with Egdor, then something would have to be done.

  For now, though, he kept his calm. The real battle was still outside. “I don’t know about that, Commander. There’s nothing like a predictable enemy.”