The communications officer’s brow furrowed as he remembered. “But I’m here to tell you Kelso stood his ground, scared or not. He stayed there with me, and he just kept firing and firing, and I kept firing too—and after what seemed like an impossibly long time, the captain and Mr. Spock arrived with a squad’s worth of reinforcements.”
The assemblage was quiet, but all eyes were on Dezago.
“I wish I had been there on Delta Vega when Kelso was killed,” declared the communications officer. He bit his lip. “I wish … I had had a chance to do for Kelso what he did for me.”
As the audience maintained its respectful silence, Dezago sat down and was patted on the back by his neighbors. A moment later, Scotty came to stand behind the lectern again.
“That was our Lieutenant Kelso,” the engineer said. “Was it nae? The lad was always plungin’ ahead, always hellishly determined t’ do his duty, nae matter the difficulties involved or the danger.”
His breath caught in his throat for just a second. Then he thrust out his chin and went on.
“I believe Ensign Beltre would like t’ say a few words as well.” Scotty turned to the woman. “Ensign?”
Beltre, a darkly attractive security officer with a long, black ponytail and light green eyes, came around to the lectern. Scotty stood aside to make room for her.
“As most of you know,” Beltre said a little tentatively, her eyes flicking from one face to the other, “I’m still pretty new on the ship. I didn’t know Lieutenant Kelso as long or as well as some of you. Still, I knew him well enough to have some idea of how much we’ve lost.
“Not so long ago—a couple of weeks, I guess—I was sitting by myself in the rec lounge, having a cup of coffee and reading a monograph on phaser failures. I probably would’ve been happier sitting with other people,” Beltre noted, “but I didn’t really know anyone at the time, and I’m not the type to go around introducing myself.
“Then Lieutenant Kelso walked in. I didn’t take any particular notice of him at the time. After all, he was a face like any other. But a moment later, I looked up and saw him standing there with a steaming cup of something hot in each hand.
“He didn’t tell me his name. He didn’t ask me mine. He just put one of the cups down in front of me, smiled and told me it was his special blend. Then he walked away and sat down elsewhere.
“Instantly, I saw the genius of what the man had done. He had invited me to join him if I liked, but he hadn’t placed any obligation on me to do so. So if I really wanted to keep on reading that monograph, I could have done it without any problem. And on the other hand, if I really wanted company, I could have had that, too.
“Preferring the company to the monograph,” said Beltre, “I picked up my new cup of coffee and joined him. We had a great conversation. In a matter of minutes, the lieutenant became one of my favorite people. After a while, I even became comfortable enough to tell him how clever he was to have offered me that cup.”
She sighed. “He told me he had spent some time in an orphanage, and he had experienced enough loneliness there to last him a lifetime. When he got out, he said, he had promised himself he would never let anyone else feel lonely if he could help it, and he hadn’t gone back on that promise yet.”
The ensign looked around. “As I said before, I may not have known Lieutenant Kelso as well as some of you. But I can tell you this … no one’s going to miss him more than I will.”
And so it went.
One crewman after another stood up to pay tribute to Kelso, regaling the tightly packed assemblage with anecdote after anecdote, until almost everyone present had said a word or two. Kirk listened to description after description of the dead man’s bravery, of his kindness, of his dedication and his antic sense of humor.
Then it was his turn.
“Sir?” said Scotty.
Kirk nodded and got up from his seat. Advancing to the lectern, he took hold of it in both hands—the injured one as well as the uninjured—and surveyed the faces of his audience. It was plain that his people were looking to him for solace and inspiration in their time of travail. After all, he was their commanding officer.
He hoped he wouldn’t disappoint them.
“You’ve all done Lieutenant Kelso proud,” the captain began, “with your stories about what he meant to you. Clearly, he touched each of us in a profound way, a way someone else might not have been aware of. I could tell you a couple of stories of my own, I suppose … about how I relied on Lee Kelso and was never disappointed by him, about how I came to admire his uncommon blend of gentleness and ferocious determination.
“But those tales have already been told, for the most part, and I could never match the eloquence and devotion with which you told them. So,” he said, “let me tell you a different kind of story.”
Scotty smiled a wistful smile. After all, he had organized this service and already had an idea of what Kirk was going to say.
“About a year and a half ago,” the captain noted, “I was reviewing personnel records, putting together a crew for my first command as a starship captain. No easy task, I can tell you that. In any case, about halfway through the process, I came across an ensign named Lee Kelso who had applied for a transfer from the Potemkin.
“Looking over the man’s file, I saw a number of items that interested me. He had posted excellent grades at the Academy. His service record on the Lexington and then on the Potemkin was spotless, and he was acknowledged as one of the most proficient helmsmen in the Fleet.”
There were murmurs of agreement from several crewmen in the audience. After all, they knew the truth of the matter. They had seen the lieutenant’s work at the helm for themselves.
“But according to a notation at the bottom of the screen,” Kirk went on, “Lee Kelso didn’t have much of a future as an officer in Starfleet. No future? I repeated to myself. I wondered about that. It didn’t seem to make any sense in light of all his credentials. Unfortunately, his file didn’t tell me why that notation had been made.
“Curious, I contacted Kelso’s captain on the Potemkin, whose acquaintance I’d made at a Starfleet cocktail party a couple of years earlier. After exchanging a few pleasantries, I asked him why he had cast doubt on Kelso’s potential as an officer.
“I remember the captain sighing, smiling sympathetically, and saying five short words: He cares too damned much. I asked him to elaborate. The captain was kind enough to comply.
“‘Kelso’s neurotic, Jim,’ he told me. ‘He feels compelled to go over and over every last detail of his work until he feels he’s gotten it perfect. Someday, he’s just going to explode.’
“I thanked the captain for his time,” Kirk said, “and signed off. Then, as fast as I possibly could, I contacted Starfleet Command and put in a request. I told them I didn’t care who else they gave me—at all costs, I wanted a man named Lee Kelso.”
A few heads bobbed approvingly, telling him that was the Kelso they had known, too. Then someone in the audience started clapping, and someone else joined him, and before long the entire chapel was resounding with approval for Kirk’s words.
No, thought the captain—not the words. What they’re clapping for is who the words were about. Kelso meant that much to them.
The applause went on for a long time—more than a minute, Kirk estimated. As it began to die down, the captain walked over to the intercom panel in the wall behind him.
“Kirk to transporter room,” he said.
“Kyle here, sir,” came the response.
“Ready?” asked the captain.
“Ready,” the transporter operator assured him.
Kirk considered the metal container that held his helmsman’s body. Then he spoke again, his voice thick with emotion. “I commend the mortal remains of Lee Kelso to the stars he loved so dearly. May he always rest peacefully in their midst.”
Everyone in the chapel joined him in the sentiment, bidding their colleague farewell in their own words.
�
�Bye, Lee,” one declared.
“We’ll miss you,” another promised.
“Good voyage,” said a third.
The captain tried to ignore the tightening in his throat. “Energize, Mr. Kyle.”
The air around Kelso’s coffin began to shimmer with iridescent light. Slowly, gradually, the duranium container began to fade from view. Then both the light and the coffin were gone.
A thousand meters from the ship, Kirk told himself, there was something new floating in the endless void of space, glinting in the light of distant stars. In life, Lee Kelso hadn’t asked for any special honors, nor would he have asked for any in death. Nonetheless, the captain was pleased that the man had at last gotten the recognition he deserved.
Kirk remembered the others who had perished on Delta Vega and felt the weight of regret. His friend Gary would never have his remains beamed into space. Neither would Elizabeth Dehner, who had given her young life to save his. Both of them had been buried on the planetoid—Gary in a grave of his own making, Dehner in one the captain had hollowed out of the rock with the last of his phaser charge.
Certainly, Kirk would have liked to bring their bodies back to Earth, where both of them had spent their childhoods. Their loved ones deserved that much, at least.
But considering what Gary and Dehner had become, considering the incredibly dangerous power they had wielded, the captain couldn’t take the chance that there might be some spark of life left in them—a spark, perhaps, that Federation technology wasn’t sophisticated enough to detect.
So he had left them there in the wilderness near the dilithium-cracking plant, in a place which would soon be designated off-limits to anyone but the most highly trained security teams. He had abandoned his best friend and the woman who had saved the universe from a burgeoning god, and in doing so had left behind a piece of his soul as well.
As the chapel began to fill with the piped-in strains of “Amazing Grace,” Kirk saw a tear collect in the corner of Scotty’s eye. He put his good hand on the engineer’s shoulder and squeezed it.
Scotty looked at him and managed a sad, wistful smile. He seemed to say, We sent the wee lad off right, did we nae, sir? And the captain couldn’t help but agree.
Kelso’s service was all but over, he reflected. But Gary Mitchell’s still loomed ahead of him, back on Earth—and, for Kirk at least, Gary’s would be the tougher one by far.
Chapter Two
AS KIRK wound his way along the stark, metal corridor, headed for the Enterprise’s briefing room, he still felt the solemn atmosphere of Lee Kelso’s funeral service hovering around him like a tenacious wisp of fog. He still heard the haunting cadences of “Amazing Grace” and saw the burden of sadness in the haggard faces of his crewmen.
Then the door to the briefing room slid aside and he saw Spock waiting for him within. His first officer was already seated at the long, oval table that dominated the compartment. Bent over a data padd that he held in his hand, Spock’s features were thrown into relief by its faint, green glow.
The captain studied the severe lines of the Vulcan’s profile, wondering which Spock he would find there—the one who had remained aloof from his comrades’ emotional exchanges for the first year of their mission together, or the one who had attempted to reach out to Kirk in his moment of grief over Gary Mitchell’s death.
Slowly, the first officer turned from his data padd to face him. His dark eyes were alert, probing, his brow wrinkled ever so slightly.
“Captain,” he said.
Kirk nodded. “Spock.”
“I trust the funeral went well,” the Vulcan speculated.
It wasn’t so much what Spock said as the way he said it—a nuance of inflection, a subtle difference in his tone. The Vulcan wasn’t just being polite, the captain noted. He seemed genuinely interested in what had transpired in the ship’s chapel.
So it was that Spock, Kirk thought—the one who had expressed a desire to comfort him in his extremity. The captain was glad. After all, that was the Spock he had come to prefer.
“It went very well,” Kirk replied. “I’d venture to say there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.”
The Vulcan’s brow wrinkled. “A dry eye … ?” Then understanding dawned. “You’re referring to the practice of shedding tears on behalf of the deceased. Another human custom.”
The captain smiled a sad smile. “Not just a custom, Spock. We don’t weep at will. It’s a reflex.”
The first officer absorbed the information as if it were the boiling point of molybdenum—that is, with great interest. “Intriguing,” he said. And then he added, with just the vaguest hint of an apology, “As you know, Vulcans do not weep.”
“I’m aware of that,” Kirk assured him. “But don’t worry, Commander. I won’t hold it against you.”
The Vulcan tilted his head quizzically and arched an eyebrow. “Was that an attempt at humor, sir?”
The captain sighed. “An attempt,” he conceded. Then he noted the information displayed on the three-sided monitor in the center of the table. “Shall we get started?”
“By all means,” said Spock.
Using his padd as a remote control, he brought up a list on the monitor. A personnel list, Kirk thought, with all proposed changes in the composition of the crew.
The first officer had scheduled this meeting a long time ago—well before they had probed the energy barrier at the galaxy’s perimeter or seen the captain’s friend turn into a superhuman terror. Spock had offered to postpone the session in light of all that had happened, but Kirk had insisted they go through with it.
There was still an Enterprise, after all, and it still carried upward of four hundred sentient beings through the vastness of space. They hadn’t all perished on Delta Vega.
The captain took a seat on the opposite side of the table. “Fire away,” he told the Vulcan.
Impassively, Spock turned to the monitor and read the first name on the list. “Lieutenant Daniel Alden.”
“Alden,” Kirk acknowledged.
“The lieutenant has requested a transfer to the Federation research colony on Delanos Six,” said the first officer. “Apparently, his fiancée was appointed chief administrator of the colony two days ago, though Alden received the news only last night.”
Kirk nodded approvingly. Alden had warned him that his fiancée was in line for such a post, though he wasn’t in a position to predict when it might come through.
“Good for her,” said the captain. Then he amended his remark. “Good for both of them.”
He had met Alden’s fiancée the last time the crew had taken shore leave on Earth. The woman was bright, capable … everything the Federation looked for in a colony administrator.
Beautiful, too. Alden was a lucky man.
“Transfer granted,” Kirk noted. “I’ll congratulate the lieutenant personally first chance I get. Who’s next?”
Spock consulted his padd. “Yeoman Barbara Smith.”
The captain grunted. “She’s requested a transfer as well?”
“She has, sir.”
“To what ship?” Kirk inquired.
“To any ship,” the Vulcan replied.
The captain winced. He didn’t suppose it helped that he had gotten the woman’s name wrong on several occasions. As recently as the day they had tried to pierce the energy barrier at the limits of the galaxy, he had referred to her as “Jones.”
But, of course, that wasn’t the main reason Smith was leaving. The yeoman simply hadn’t been comfortable from the day she set foot on the Enterprise. Kirk couldn’t begin to say why, nor could she or anyone else. It just worked out that way sometimes.
Being a trooper, Smith had stuck it out for nearly a year. There was no point in her sticking it out any longer.
“Transfer granted,” said Kirk. “Let the rest of the Fleet know the yeoman is available … and that she’s got my highest endorsement. That should help her out a bit.”
“Aye, sir,” Spock replied, makin
g the appropriate entry on his data padd. “Shall I go on?”
“Please,” the captain told him.
The first officer hesitated for a moment before reading the next name out loud. “Dr. Mark Piper,” he said at last, “requests a discharge from active service, effective at your earliest convenience.”
“Piper?” said Kirk.
The name caught the captain off guard—but only for a moment. After all, he reflected, his chief medical officer had been talking about retirement more and more lately.
And come to think of it, hadn’t Piper mentioned a half-dozen standing invitations from children and grandchildren to come live with them? Maybe he had finally accepted one of them.
Well, Kirk told himself, if that was what the old boy wanted, more power to him. Piper had been a capable and compassionate physician for more than fifty years, his career stretching back even before the Federation’s first contact with the Klingons. The man deserved to spend the rest of his life any damned way he wanted.
The only problem was replacing him. There just weren’t that many Mark Pipers in the universe. Having gotten lucky once, Kirk didn’t have much faith in it happening again.
With mixed feelings, he said, “Discharge granted. Note for the record that Dr. Piper has enjoyed a long and prestigious career in Starfleet. All of us who have served alongside him on the Enterprise for the last year tender the doctor our gratitude and respect for a job well done … and our best wishes for a fruitful retirement.”
“Duly noted,” Spock assured him, entering the sentiment into the record for posterity. Then he consulted his list again.
The Vulcan didn’t go on immediately, however. Studying him, the captain wondered about that.
“Don’t tell me we’re done already,” he said at last.
Spock shook his head. “No, sir. There is one more transfer request.” He looked up at Kirk. “From Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu.”
The captain felt as if he had been blindsided by a rampaging bull. Sulu was one of his most dedicated and trusted officers, and had been since the Enterprise set out from Earth’s solar system more than a year earlier. Kirk had always believed the astrophysics chief was happy and fulfilled doing his job on the ship.
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