Hedford turned to Tarses, who wore an expression of confusion and concern that she imagined mirrored her own. “Are you all right, ma’am?” she asked, turning back again.
“I…would ask for a moment of privacy,” T’Pol answered, turning back toward the windows. Hedford could see the Vulcan’s sand-brown robe and sun-darkened face reflecting in the transparency, and though she couldn’t see details from her angle, she got the impression that the older woman had her bottom lip between her teeth, biting down in an effort to keep herself from crying.
Hedford and Tarses looked again at one another, and then did as T’Pol asked, stepping out into the corridor. “Vulcans aren’t supposed to act like that, are they?” Hedford whispered, while making sure no Starfleet crew members were eavesdropping nearby. “Is she having some kind of breakdown?”
“I wouldn’t call it a breakdown,” Tarses answered. “I think she was just caught unaware by the degree of nostalgic feelings being back in space called up inside her.” Tarses was the closest thing United Earth had to a Vulcan expert, and he tried to sound confident and reassuring as he told Hedford, “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
However, Hedford was aware that, for all his academic knowledge, his actual firsthand contact with the aliens was limited. “How can you be sure?”
To which Tarses simply said, “Because she’s Vulcan.”
Hedford drew a deep breath as she considered the situation. “You’d better be right,” Hedford said, as she let her breath out in a sigh. “Because we’re gambling a lot on this mission. If things don’t go right, it could well be another century before we get another chance.”
5
“I wish I could have been there to see you off, Daddy.”
Leonard McCoy smiled at his daughter’s image on the small desktop screen and shook his head. “I know, darling. But frankly, you being there probably would have made it hard for me to leave. Besides, you shouldn’t be skipping classes for foolishness like that, not in your first semester, anyhow.”
“Still,” Joanna said, scrunching her face up in disappointment like a small child—which McCoy still had trouble believing she wasn’t anymore. “It must have been terrible for you, all those other families there to say good-bye, and you going aboard all alone.”
McCoy chuckled. “Actually, it turns out that’s more an invention of movies and holoplays, that crowd-at-the-boarding-pier scene. It was just like using any other transporter terminal.”
“Except you weren’t just beaming from one city to another,” Joanna said, her voice rising a bit as her eyes started to mist. “You were leaving! You’re going to be gone—”
“Hey, hey, hey,” McCoy tried to calm her from across billions of kilometers. “Come on, darling, you said you were going to be okay with this.”
“I am, Daddy, I swear I am,” Joanna said, gripping the cuff of the Ole Miss sweatshirt she wore and wiping the sleeve over each eye. “I’m just being stupid…”
“No, you’re not…” McCoy’s heart was breaking for his daughter. It had been just the two of them for eighteen years, since her mother Jocelyn died only a month after giving birth. It had been tough on McCoy, losing a wife and becoming a single parent, and at the same time establishing himself as a newly minted doctor. It had meant a lot of sacrifices, but it had all been worth it, and he and Joanna had been as close as any father and daughter could be. Though, being the father, he couldn’t bring himself to tell her he also had gotten misty-eyed as he left Earth and his daughter behind.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get over it,” she said, as if reading his mind. She forced an indulgent smile and said, “I know how much you’ve wanted to do this, and how long.”
McCoy couldn’t help but smile at that. He had indeed dreamt of traveling the galaxy since he was a boy, reading the junior adventure books about Zefram Cochrane and the early space boomers with a flashlight under the covers long after bedtime. With his daughter leaving the nest, now seemed the perfect opportunity to start living his dream.
“Besides, we can still talk to each other live like this. I just need to convince myself that you’re really still home in Atlanta, and I’ll be fine,” she said with a giggle.
“That sounds like a good plan,” McCoy told her, smiling as she seemed to get past her dark mood. Of course, he couldn’t tell her that this would be the last live conversation they’d have for at least a week, until the Enterprise returned from Coalition space. He couldn’t even tell her they were headed for the Coalition border in the first place; the first officer had made sure to impress upon him and the two dozen other fresh recruits joining the Enterprise the seriousness of sharing mission information with civilians, and the penalties for doing so.
They continued talking for several more minutes about nothing in particular, avoiding verboten topics, until McCoy was assured Joanna’s stiff upper lip would hold. They eventually exchanged their last “love you’s” and both signed off. McCoy checked the chronometer on his desk, and was confused for a moment before he remembered to subtract twelve from its military time readout. He realized it was well past his usual dinnertime, and his stomach, thus reminded, began to gurgle at him. He cast a brief glance at the unpacked cases stacked against the wall of his new office and, convinced that they weren’t going anywhere, set off in search of the nearest mess hall.
After only a couple of wrong turns, McCoy found one of the ship’s large communal rooms which served as mess, recreation room, and lounge. Only half the tables were occupied, and at one of them McCoy recognized the first officer, Commander Kirk. He was sitting with a group of three other officers, playing a game of chess with one as the other two watched. McCoy went over to the food slots on the far wall, ordered a fried chicken platter and milk, and took his tray over to Kirk’s table. “Excuse me, Commander, mind if I join you?”
“Doctor!” Kirk looked up from the board and gave him a broad friendly grin. “By all means.” As he took one of the empty chairs, the commander made introductions. “This is Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott, Lieutenant Lee Kelso, and Lieutenant John Stiles. Gentlemen, our new chief medical officer, Doctor Leonard McCoy.”
Each of them smiled as they shook hands with McCoy, though Kelso’s smile was fleeting; he was sitting across the chessboard from Kirk, and looked to be on his way to a thorough drubbing. McCoy gave him a sympathetic grin as he dug into his meal—which wasn’t bad for resequenced protein, but sure wouldn’t keep him from missing the genuine article—and fell into conversation with his new crewmates. They were all lifers, it turned out, with nearly fifty years combined service among them. Longer, if one took into account the fact that Stiles grew up a Starfleet brat, the latest in a long line of officers going back for generations.
Before long, Kelso gave a pitiful whine and tipped his king onto its side. “Someday, Jim, I’m going to be smart enough, when you challenge me to a game, to just say no.”
Kirk smirked and turned to the rest of the table as he started resetting the white and black pieces into their starting positions. “Who’s next? How about you, Doc? You play?”
McCoy lowered the nearly clean drumstick from his mouth. “I know how to play. I doubt I’d give you much of a game, though.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Kirk answered as he gestured to Kelso to give up his seat, and for McCoy to take his place across the board from him. Figuring it wouldn’t do to flat-out refuse such a request on his first day aboard, McCoy stood up, wiping his greasy fingers with a napkin as he moved to face the first officer.
It took all of five moves for Kirk to make his judgment. “You weren’t just being modest, were you?” he observed as he captured a second of McCoy’s black pieces.
“Afraid not,” McCoy said, cautiously sliding one of his pawns forward. Kirk’s hand darted out the second McCoy’s fingers left the piece, moving one of his knights in position to take out the black queen. McCoy stared with all his might, but saw no way to change her majesty’s fate.
“I’
ll have you checkmated in ten moves,” Kirk declared after McCoy made his ineffectual move and the queen was snatched away. “Correction,” he added, following McCoy’s subsequent turn, “make that six.”
McCoy shot a cross look at his tormentor, but managed to bite back the scathing comment that was on the tip of his tongue. He instead tried to maintain as much dignity as possible until Kirk finally announced, “Check and mate,” and flashed him a cocky, utterly self-pleased grin.
McCoy turned to the three other officers watching. He was somewhat mollified when he noted their expressions seemed to be ones of sympathy toward him. “Does he always play such an irritating game of chess?” he asked, hiding his very real annoyance underneath a teasing tone.
Fortunately, Kirk took it as a good-humored jibe, which went a long way toward softening McCoy’s current feelings toward him. “Sorry, Doctor,” he said. “I know I tend to get a little caught up in the game. You’d just think, on a ship of four hundred and thirty crewmen, there’d be at least one other person to offer a challenge.”
“Well, if a challenging chess opponent is what you want, maybe you could invite our honored guest to play a game or two.”
Kirk’s good-humored façade suddenly collapsed. “You’re not suggesting what I think you are,” he said in a low, cold tone.
McCoy was taken aback by this change in the first officer’s demeanor. A smarter man might have resolved to extradite himself from that conversation right then and there. But not Leonard H. McCoy. “I don’t know. What do you think I’m suggesting?”
“You’re talking about the Vulcan.”
McCoy nodded. “That’s right.”
“Hey, Doc,” Stiles interrupted, putting a hand on McCoy’s arm, “you might want to just drop it, okay?”
McCoy looked from one man to the other. “Well, now you’ve got me curious. What’s so terrible about inviting Lady T’Pol to a friendly game of chess?”
“Friendly, my eye,” Kirk spat. “Friendliness is an emotion. And if the last two hundred years have taught us anything, it’s that trying to be friendly with Vulcans is a sucker’s game.”
“Really? Any Vulcan?” McCoy challenged. “Even one who left the High Command to join Starfleet in the wake of the Xindi attack? One who for years helped work for peace between Earth and the rest of the galaxy? One who, hell, married a human man…”
“That appeals to you, does it, Doc?” Stiles asked, with an expression close to disgust. “Sharing your bed with a cold-blooded, pointy-eared hobgoblin?”
“Actually, have you ever seen the old pictures of T’Pol from back in the day?” Kelso interjected, waggling his eyebrows and flashing a wolfish grin.
McCoy ignored that adolescent comment, and instead glared at Stiles. “You take a lot of pride in your family and your heritage, don’t you, Mister Stiles? Well, I do too,” he continued before the other man could do more than nod. “My family is from Georgia, going back at least twenty generations. I grew up in Atlanta, just a stone’s throw from where Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his first sermon. Every schoolchild there learned about the history of that part of the world, warts and all, and how we finally learned to move beyond the attitudes that had been passed down from generation to generation—”
“Doctor,” Kirk interrupted, “please. I understand where you’re going with this, but you are making a specious analogy.”
“Am I?” McCoy snapped. Again, a part of his brain warned that he should perhaps be a bit more judicious in how he spoke to a superior officer. But he knew he couldn’t be, not on this particular topic. “What’s the difference between judging a whole group of people because of the color of their skin, and judging them because of the planet they come from?”
“The difference is, Vulcans are not humans.”
“Which is the same thing the Europeans said about Africans six hundred years ago to justify their actions.”
“And they were wrong. But that doesn’t change the fact that Vulcans and humans are completely different species.”
McCoy cocked an eyebrow at Kirk. “Completely, huh? ’Cept for the ears, they look just like us. Their DNA is ninety-some percent the same as ours. They’re intelligent, communicative, sentient. They have history, culture, philosophy, even a concept of a kind of soul and an afterlife. Exactly how much more similar would they need to be in order for you to regard them with something other than utter contempt?”
“You are out of line, Doctor,” Commander Kirk snarled at him.
“Apologies, sir,” McCoy growled back. He stood up, and considered the four faces around the table looking up at him. Stiles glared at him through nasty narrowed eyes. Kelso seemed somewhat shocked that someone had stood up the way he did to the first officer, as did Scott, though McCoy thought he detected a bit of admiration from him for doing so.
And Kirk…well, he wasn’t pleased with McCoy, by any means. But behind the aggravation that was plain on his face, the doctor thought he caught a flash of thoughtfulness in the younger man’s eyes. “Thanks for the game,” McCoy said as he made his exit, hoping his lecturing had had at least some small positive effect.
If not, well, it was going to be a long tour, that was for sure…
Garrett Tarses had not been happy when he was first informed that he would be playing only a supporting role in the mission to Babel, and less so when he had learned that the person he’d be supporting was Ambassador Nancy Hedford, Girl Diplomat.
Tarses had spent nineteen years in Starfleet Intelligence, ten of those at a covert listening post gathering and translating coded Vulcan communications, after which he then served another eleven years with the Foreign Office, establishing himself as United Earth’s foremost expert on the Coalition, the Vulcans in particular. In contrast, Hedford had made her reputation in diplomatic circles early on, with an unconventional solution to the conflict then brewing between opposing factions on Epsilon Canaris III. Though most of the old guard within the Foreign Office dismissed her and her reckless use of “cowboy diplomacy,” a number of observers—not least of all, philanthropist-cum-politician Carter Winston—recognized that she brought a new perspective to the old problems that had dogged United Earth and its Commonwealth Colonies for generations.
In the days since he first started working with Hedford, though—in particular, these intensive days on the Enterprise in preparation for the Babel Summit—Tarses found himself coming to admire the younger woman, not only for her intelligence and her understanding of interplanetary and interspecies politics, but also for her enthusiasm in the face of the challenges before them, her idealism, and her optimism about the eventual results of their efforts.
No matter how naïve that optimism was.
“What about Rigel?” Tarses asked her, as the last hours before their arrival at Babel started ticking down.
Hedford raised her heavy-lidded eyes from the three data slates that lay on the conference table, and blinked slowly at Tarses. “Rigel? What about Rigel?”
“You don’t think the Coalition delegates are going to bring up the way we’ve dealt with the natives of the Rigel system?” he asked. For decades, Earth had supported the Rigelians of Rigel V in their efforts to dominate the turtle-like Chelons of Rigel IV for control of the system as a whole, in the name of security for the human mining interests that had been established on the system’s outer worlds. This followed close to thirty years in which Earth had backed the Chelon government, until their citizens began to protest that humans were exerting too much influence in their affairs. In most recent years, the Rigelians and Chelons had decided to make peace and reassert their control over their shared system. Around that same time, United Earth had suddenly discovered the poor, oppressed Kaylar of Rigel VII, and threw their support behind their strikes against the two dominant Rigelian species. And all the while, dilithium continued to ship regularly from the Rigel mines back to Earth.
“Let them bring it up,” Hedford said, as she lifted her coffee cup, frowned at the empty bottom, th
en got up to go to the food slots. “But this conference is about the future, not the past. Once we’re a part of the I.C., with trading access to Coridan, Janus V, and the rest, we can afford to step back from the Rigel system and allow the Rigelians to step up. Besides, the Compact allows member worlds to deal with their own internal matters without outside interference.”
“‘Internal’ meaning on their own homeworlds,” Tarses countered. “Not other conquered planets.”
Hedford looked up at him questioningly. “Conquered planets?”
“Just anticipating what they’re likely to say. Hell, you look at some of the precedents, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Coalition decided Mars was an oppressed world!” Tarses’s grandfather had been one of the Human Loyalists back in ’05 who had stood up to and eventually helped beat back the Declarationists who had wanted to make the Martian Colonies a free and sovereign world. He’d be damned if he’d let his sacrifice, and the sacrifices of so many like him, go for naught.
“You’re getting ridiculous now,” Hedford told him. “The Coalition won’t interfere with our administration of any of our colonies, or any of our conquered worlds, end quote.”
“And how can you sound so sure of that?” Tarses asked, as he silently debated how much more caffeine his system could handle. He finally decided to join Hedford in refilling his own cup. “Look at every other planet to have joined the I.C. over the last seventy years. Look at how thoroughly they’ve been integrated, to the point where they don’t even have control of their own space forces anymore. All their authorities have been absorbed into Coalition Space Command.”
Hedford shook her head as she took her seat again. “The majority of those new member worlds had only recently even achieved warp flight. By the time they got beyond their star systems, they found themselves already surrounded by the Coalition, and had little practical choice but to allow themselves to be assimilated.
“Your mistake, Garrett,” Hedford continued as she sipped her coffee, “is that you’re focused on the most recent precedents for newly joined worlds. If I thought Earth would be treated like another Rhaandaran or Grazer, I would have no part of this. No, the precedents I’m looking at are Vulcan, Andoria, and Tellar.”
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