Kirk shook his head. He knew Spock was right, that turning over control of his ship would be a risk. Hell, even turning the ship over to an ally was a potential risk, as their experience with Doctor Richard Daystrom and his M5 computer just a few months earlier had demonstrated.
And yet . . . “If the shoe were on the other foot, Spock . . . if we were to discover an unknown alien ship that had been attacked by Klingons along the Neutral Zone, wouldn’t we offer to help them however we could?”
“Yes,” Spock allowed, “but while there do appear to be parallels and similarities between the Goeg Domain and the Federation, it does not follow logically that they would behave the same way as the Federation would.”
“Isn’t that a bit arrogant, though, Spock?” Kirk challenged. “For us to assume that we’re the only truly noble and selfless ones in this galaxy?”
“I make no such assumption, Captain,” Spock answered. “Commander Laspas may indeed be totally genuine in his offer of help. But even taking our limited interactions thus far into account, there is no way of knowing.”
“So, logic says to distrust them?”
Spock hesitated an oddly long moment before making his reply. “Logic is dependent on facts. The concept of trust only comes into play where there are uncertainties.”
Kirk gave him a bemused smile. “We’re Starfleet officers, Spock. We deal with uncertainties every single day.”
“Yes, sir,” Spock answered. “And those prior experiences inform the things we choose to trust in moments of uncertainty.” Spock’s eyes fixed on Kirk’s as he added, “Such as one’s own judgment, or the judgment of one’s closest associates.”
Kirk gave his friend a smile. “And I appreciate your trust, Spock. You have the conn,” he said as he turned to the turbolift, slowing just long enough to take another look at the graphic of his damaged ship above the engineering station.
I hope that trust can be justified, he thought as he left the bridge.
* * *
“Thanks for the hospitality, Nurse,” Crewperson Chao told Christine Chapel as the two walked together out of the recovery ward, heading for the medical section’s main doors. “I hope we don’t do it again anytime soon.”
“Likewise,” Chapel said with a small laugh. “But remember, if you have any discomfort or any other problems, you come back, whether you want to or not.” Kaylee Chao had been in a warp monitoring station during the Taarpi attack, and had been hit by an electroplasma discharge, suffering second-degree burns across her chest and abdomen. She was the last of the injured crew members to be discharged, with the exception of one. As Chapel bade her farewell and the corridor doors slid shut, the nurse turned back into the ward to check on her sole remaining patient.
Joe D’Abruzzo was asleep, as he had been since coming out of surgery. His entire torso was wrapped in a metallic-hued electrosensor bandage, binding his left arm to his side, from shoulder to wrist, immobilizing it. The bandage provided microelectric stimulation to the damaged muscle and nerves. With the rest of the patients gone, Chapel pulled a chair over to the lieutenant’s bedside and sat silently with him.
“Christine?”
Her head jerked up as she heard her name and felt the touch on her shoulder. She twisted in her seat, and was mortified to discover it was Captain Kirk who had caught her napping on duty. “Sir, I’m sorry,” Chapel said as she got to her feet. “I only closed my eyes for a second, and . . .”
“At ease, at ease,” the captain whispered, favoring her with an indulgent grin. “I know full well how hard you work yourself. Is McCoy around, or has he gone off duty?”
“He’s off duty now, yes, sir.”
“Oh, well.” Kirk’s smile faded then as he gestured with his chin to the man in the biobed. “How is he doing?”
Quickly composing herself, Chapel said, “He’s recovering well. Far better than could have been expected. Doctor Deeshal saved his life.”
“Don’t let your boss hear you giving all the credit to someone else,” the captain teased.
Chapel smiled at the captain’s joke, but told him, “Actually, those were Doctor McCoy’s exact words.”
Kirk shook his head slowly back and forth. “Saved by a Goeg, after nearly being killed by them. Which is the more representative act?”
“I’m sorry, sir?” Chapel asked.
“No, nothing,” he told her. “Just thinking out loud.”
“Oh,” Chapel said. She studied the captain’s face as he looked at D’Abruzzo, taking note of his furrowed brow and his mouth drawn tight in thought. “Though if you wanted my opinion . . .”
Kirk looked up as she trailed off. “Yes?”
Seeing the captain was genuinely interested in her thoughts, she answered, “From the way Deeshal described the melee down on the planet, that was sparked by a knee-jerk reaction, with no real thought or real intention behind it. But his choice to help Lieutenant D’Abruzzo, to come aboard and to spend the time he did in surgery to save his life and try to save his arm . . . there was a purposeful effort behind that. That seems to be the truer measure of a person to me.”
Kirk considered her words for a long moment, then said, “Thank you, Christine,” before turning to go.
“You’re welcome, sir,” she said, and then asked, “Did you want me to tell Doctor McCoy you were looking for him?”
Kirk flashed a broad smile over his shoulder. “That won’t be necessary. I think I got what I came here looking for.”
* * *
Main engineering was abuzz with activity, with Scott and his staff exchanging high-level engineering lingo at a clipped and rapid-fire pace. As Kirk entered, he saw one group standing before the main diagnostic schematic along the wall, pointing out and arguing over simulations of system interactions, while others manned the row of computer stations that ran down the length of the room, running a variety of analyses. Scotty moved from one group to another, quickly picking up the thread of each conversation and adding his own contribution to whatever piece of the technical puzzle each was trying to hammer out. “With subspace field tolerance at that level,” he said to one of his junior engineers, “the system response time has to be much faster.” He turned away then, and finally noticed Captain Kirk, who had been standing back, watching with admiration the way the man managed his team. “Captain. Sorry, I didn’t see you there. It hasn’t been an hour already, has it?”
“Not quite,” Kirk reassured him, “but it seems you’ve really hit the ground running here.”
“Aye, sir. My preliminary review of the 814’s engine schematics looked promising, so Chief N’Mi and I bounced a few ideas off each other, came up with a basic plan. Now, we’re seeing if it all holds together once we get down to the fine details.”
“And the verdict?”
“There are still a few things I want to double-and triple-check,” Scotty answered. “We would need to join the two ships together via a system of supports and run a pair of umbilical warp plasma lines from our engine to their nacelles. It’d put a serious physical strain on both vessels, and if anything goes wrong anywhere along the way, we could end up with two marooned ships instead of one.”
“But . . . ?” Kirk prompted.
“But,” Scotty continued, “if all works out, we could be at Wezonvu in about ten days. And from what N’Mi tells me, it sounds like the facility there could give the San Francisco Fleet Yards a run for their money.”
The grin now pulling at the corners of the engineer’s lips telegraphed the answer to the next question Kirk asked. “As of right now, your professional opinion about accepting the Domain’s offer?”
Scotty’s smile dimmed by a degree as he said, “Well, sir, I know there are other considerations ye have to take into account . . . but, ten days sure beats sixteen weeks.”
“Yes, it does, doesn’t it?” Kirk was forced to concede. “Get me your final, detailed recommendations as soon as possible.” The captain turned and made his way back out of engineering.
/> There had been a part of him that had hoped Scotty would tell him the Liruq engineer’s scheme was unworkable, and that he could simply refuse Laspas’s offer on that basis. But the decision now remained his, and his alone, to make. Even discounting the possibility of more attacks in this unfamiliar star system, a grueling six-week schedule of EVA repair work was more of a risk than he cared to subject his crew to. But did that make entrusting his vulnerable ship to the mercies of these strangers a better course of action?
Kirk entered the open turbolift at the end of the corridor, took hold of the control throttle, and ordered it to his quarters. He absently watched the indicator lights slide across the pane of the motion indicator panel as his mind wandered. All through his career, the one thing that Kirk considered to be his most vital talent was his ability to read people. The Goeg commander did seem to be sincere with his entreaties of friendship, and Kirk had gotten the sense from the first that he and Laspas were very much of a kind—fellow ship’s captains and leaders of men, fully embracing the adventure of space exploration.
Regardless, the thought of giving up control of his ship rankled him. It wasn’t that long ago that the Enterprise had been seized by Rojan and his advance scouts from the Kelvan Empire, who had incapacitated the majority of the crew and taken the Enterprise out beyond the galactic barrier toward the distant Andromeda Galaxy, before he’d managed to wrest control back from them. And before that, the fugitive con man Harry Mudd had hijacked the ship and diverted it to his private planet.
But was Laspas another Mudd? Kirk actually laughed out loud in the privacy of the turbolift car at that thought—no, Harcourt Fenton Mudd was most certainly a one-of-a-kind individual. Nor did he believe that the Goeg Domain was another Kelvan Empire.
As soon as the car stopped and the doors opened, Kirk walked to his quarters and punched the comm button on his desktop. “Kirk to Uhura,” he said as he slipped into the chair, “patch me through to Commander Laspas on the 814.”
Uhura acknowledged, and moments later, the alien captain’s face appeared on his computer monitor. “Yes, Captain Kirk?”
“Commander Laspas,” Kirk said, “I would like to accept your gracious offer of assistance.”
Laspas gave Kirk an appraising look from the small screen. “I imagine that couldn’t have been an easy decision,” he said. “I know I would be hard-pressed to ask the help of a stranger.”
Kirk didn’t deny that, but what he told the Goeg commander in reply was, “I’d prefer to think of it as the first joint venture between new allies.”
A low, rumbling chuckle escaped Laspas’s throat. “Yes, that does sound preferable,” he agreed. “I will arrange for a briefing by Chief N’Mi for you and your key personnel.”
“Very good,” Kirk answered.
Laspas reached below the frame, presumably to end the transmission, but paused before doing so. “I have to admit, I’m glad our association is not ending here,” he said, “and that we will have this opportunity to build upon the foundation of friendship we’ve created here, James.”
“As am I, Laspas,” Kirk answered, smiling. “As am I.”
Four
The bridge of the 814 reminded Chekov of old twentieth-century photographs he had seen of the Baikonur Cosmodrome mission control center, during the early “space race.” The crew stations were arranged in three tiered rows of six each, with a set of steps on either end leading down to a small open deck where Second Commander Satrav, the officer at the conn, paced back and forth. Rather than a single viewscreen mounted against the forward bulkhead, there was one large screen ringed by eighteen smaller screens, each showing the data or video feeds from each of the individual technicians’ posts. On the dominant middle viewer right now, Chekov saw the gleaming white underside of the Enterprise’s engineering hull, growing slowly but perceptibly closer. Computer-generated overlays outlined in bright pink the ship’s primary and secondary ventral airlocks, while all around him, Domain technicians were calling out figures and numerical coded instruction.
“Code 2-32, negative fifteen,” Satrav ordered, keeping his back to the rest of the crew as he focused on the numbers on the big screen. Chekov noticed the muscles of his broad shoulders tense under his plain gray uniform shirt as he directed the manual docking of the two ships.
“Copy, negative fifteen,” replied the technician seated to the left of where Chekov stood in the second row of data stations, observing the operation of the Domain vessel. He would be spending a good deal of his on-duty time over the next week and a half aboard this ship, providing some small degree of oversight during the upcoming Starfleet-Domain joint mission, and would need to become as familiar with this ship as he could before getting under way.
“Status 2-12,” reported another crew member in the forwardmost row of stations, where Sulu had been posted, taking his own crash course in Domain shipboard procedures.
“Code 2-30, oh-two-oh-seven mark nine-eight-nine-four.”
“Copy, oh-two-oh-seven mark nine-eight-nine-four.”
“Status 2-33, plus seven.”
The ensign was feeling more than overwhelmed by the quick fire and overlapping exchange of shorthand being used to adjust the 814’s velocity and relative orientation. A quick glance to Sulu told him that his fellow Starfleet officer was feeling the same way. He then stole a quick glance back over his shoulder to the third Enterprise officer assigned to study the operation of the Domain ship’s command center. Contrary to the reactions he and Sulu had to what they’d been witnessing, Uhura’s expression was one of obvious excitement and exhilaration. Rarely given the opportunity to get away from her regular post to take part in landing parties, Uhura was clearly relishing the chance to experience a new culture and its methods of communication.
“Code 2-30, oh-one-nine-two mark oh-oh-nine-oh.”
“Copy, oh-one-nine-two mark oh-oh-nine-oh.”
Chekov felt he was starting to pick up a little bit on what the numbers being tossed back and forth meant. The two four-digit figures, he assumed, were three-dimensional positional coordinates, just like the ones Starfleet used, though in fractions of degrees. “Code 2” was apparently a kind of prefix for a navigational command or status report, with negative and positive figures indicating a change in velocity. He supposed the abbreviated commands were intended to make things run more efficiently, though it seemed to him it was drawing the current docking process out longer than it really ought to have taken.
Sulu seemed to notice the same thing, and moved down his row to peer over the shoulder of the helm control operator, a male Liruq with a patch of jet-black hair on the top of his head, between his ears. “Copy, negative six,” the Liruq said as he made the latest in a series of corrections to the ship’s velocity.
“It looks like thruster number two is about half a second out of sync with the others,” Sulu observed, pointing to one of the readouts on the monitor bank in front of him. The Liruq turned his head slightly to look at the data Sulu was calling to his attention, but gave no further acknowledgment. “See, we’re drifting out of alignment again,” Sulu said, this time pointing forward to the main viewscreen, where the bright colored ring that had been positioned around the Enterprise exterior airlock had drifted, and turned a dark, bruise-like shade of purple. “You’ll need to—”
“We know how to run our own ship, human!” the Liruq hissed at Sulu.
“I wasn’t saying you don’t,” Sulu answered quickly, trying to placate his annoyed fellow helmsman. “I’m just pointing it out, so you could compensate.”
The Domain officer twisted around in his seat and fixed Sulu with a look of incredulity. “Are you mad?”
Before Sulu could make any response, Second Commander Satrav turned and fixed the two of them with a fierce glare. “B’Gof!” he addressed the technician. B’Gof snapped back around, facing forward as Satrav moved toward him. “Is this human distracting you, Crewhand?” he asked.
“Yes, Second Commander,” B’Gof answered, sit
ting up straight in his seat.
Satrav looked up at Sulu, an unreadable look on his face. Then he looked down again at B’Gof. “Code 10.”
The Liruq gaped at his superior. “Sir?”
“We are now partners with the Federation humans,” he told B’Gof, but speaking at a volume that was clearly meant to be heard by everyone in the command center. “If you are going to be distracted by them, you cannot properly perform your duties. Code 10.”
A wounded expression flashed across B’Gof’s face, which was quickly replaced by one of indignation as he vacated his chair. His shoulder clipped Sulu’s, hard enough to send the smaller human back half a step, as he left his post. Chekov watched him stalk out the door, while his seat was immediately filled by one of the relief crew members who stood stationed by the bulkheads.
“And you.”
Chekov turned back to see Satrav leaning against the long gunmetal-gray console and glaring at Sulu. Even though the workstation was slightly elevated from the forward deck, the Goeg still managed to loom over the lieutenant. “We are in the middle of a very delicate and complex maneuver,” he said in a low rasp. “So unless you want us to put a big dent—or worse—in your pretty white ship, I suggest you make an effort to minimize your disruption of my crew.” For this last, Satrav made eye contact with Chekov and Uhura as well, making sure he impressed upon them that he found each of them equal distractions.
Satrav then turned his back on them again, returning his attention to the master display wall and issuing orders again. The three humans exchanged silent looks, but said nothing, and continued to say nothing as they watched the docking maneuver proceed, the new helm officer struggling with the balky number two thruster.
* * *
It was one thing to look at the asteroid damage done to the exterior hull on a screen on the bridge. It was another thing entirely to stand on the ship and get to look at it up close.
Star Trek: The Original Series: The Shocks of Adversity Page 7