“Your followers have personally intervened in matters of life and death, but your own hands”—which she clasped now—“are not fatally tainted yet. You still have a chance to cleanse your soul. All you must do is tell me where to find the rest of your kind and the potions they create.”
“There are no others,” he told her. “We were the only survivors.”
“Please do not waste your remaining breath on lies. These supplies in such abundance must come from somewhere. There are more of you in hiding, making these blasphemous substances. You can save your soul—and your life—if you tell me where they are.” She squeezed his hands and leaned closer. “And there will be . . . other rewards . . . as well.”
She kissed him, and he didn’t fight it. He’d seduced female adversaries or let them seduce him to gain advantage in the past, and there were certainly pleasurable aspects to such an approach. But despite Palchelle’s beauty and seductive manner, Kirk found little appeal in the idea of playing this game with her. She was a genocidal fanatic, a petty hypocrite who would damn her species to extinction in the name of a cause she didn’t even believe in. She thought her small core of loyalists could wait out this plague, keeping themselves alive with hoarded food and medicine denied to the rest. But the remaining population base would be inadequate to recover from the disaster, particularly if it consisted only of pampered nobles with no skills in agriculture or industry. Palchelle and her inner circle would only delay their extinction by a few years at best.
Besides, he’d found himself tiring of these brief dalliances lately. He’d never wanted to become the kind of spacefarer who left a trail of broken hearts behind him, and his own heart too often yearned for something deeper than casual distractions or hollow seductions for the sake of the mission. Even as he pressured Starfleet to extend the tour another year, he found himself thinking that if he did go home, maybe he could finally find a beach to walk on and someone to share it with. Maybe he was growing up. Maybe he was just tired after five years in deep space.
So he pushed himself away from Palchelle’s alluring form. “And what about their lives?” he asked. “You expect me just to throw them away?”
“Those who do not surrender to the Originators’ will are doomed already, Kirk. At least I can make their end quick and merciful.”
Kirk spread his arms. “Your Highness, I can tell you with complete honesty that there are no more of my people anywhere on this world. But even if there were, I wouldn’t tell you where to find them. I have no interest in anything you’re offering.”
Her sensual manner dropped like the flimsy facade it was. “Then you will die with your friends.”
“Better that than help you destroy this world with your petty hypocrisy.”
“Throw him in with the others!” she told the guards. He sized them up as they advanced. There were three of them, big men forced to wear little clothing to indulge Palchelle’s appetites, but they were not as healthy or well-fed as the nobles.
He let them lead him into the tunnel beyond, one grasping each arm, the third ahead. He played along meekly until they’d lowered their guard, then feigned tripping. He broke the guards’ grip and drove his elbows into their guts, then whirled and took down the right-hand guard with a spinning kick to the head. The second guard was reaching for his sword, but Kirk delivered a haymaker to his jaw and the sword went flying. Glancing over his shoulder, Kirk saw the forward guard charging him, so he spun to intercept, rolled, and sent the man flying over his head. The other guards’ bodies broke his fall, though, and he clambered to his feet. Kirk beat him there and launched into a flying kick that took him down.
Unfortunately, the drawback to the flying kick was that it left Kirk flat on his back once gravity had its say. Which was fine if you managed to knock out your last opponent before you fell . . . but not so fine if, say, a half-dozen other guards had come running in response to the commotion and were now converging around you with swords drawn while you were still lying on your sore backside. As six pieces of extremely sharp steel converged around his throat and chest, Kirk decided it was high time he reevaluated his fondness for the flying kick.
“Hurry up, Spock! It’s getting hotter!”
“I am aware of that, Doctor,” Spock replied. “And I assure you I have not been dilatory in my efforts until now.” Indeed, McCoy’s observation was atypically understated. The landing party and their rebel associates were currently incarcerated within a natural lava tube connecting to an active volcano near Queen Palchelle’s capital. Iron bars on either side prevented their escape. This was Palchelle’s preferred method of execution: since her prisoners’ lives would be ended either by flowing lava, toxic gases, or lethal levels of heat, and on an unpredictable schedule, she could claim that their death was technically the work of the gods rather than the result of direct Pelosian action. Spock’s attempts to persuade her guards of the flaws in her logic had proved ineffectual.
Luckily, Nurse Chapel had possessed the good judgment to hide her communicator in her medical kit upon their capture. The Pelosians’ superstitions had made them reluctant to search the kit, and so the communicator had gone overlooked when the rest of the landing party’s equipment was confiscated and when the medicines had subsequently been placed here to burn along with the prisoners. By itself, the communicator lacked the power to penetrate the layers of basaltic rock above them, but Spock was attempting to wire in the landing party’s subcutaneous transponders, which McCoy and Chapel had extracted from all of their arms, to boost the communicator’s power.
“Doctor,” Chapel called. “Manti has lost consciousness.”
“Damn,” McCoy barked, followed by several harsh coughs. “Do what you can for her. I can’t leave Lyban right now.” Despite their willingness to use medicine, the Pelosian dissidents were still weak from malnutrition and were succumbing to the increasing heat and toxicity more swiftly than the Enterprise personnel.
“Captain,” Spock said, “the communicator is ready. Insufficient bandwidth for voice, but an emergency beam-out signal should penetrate.”
“Do it, Spock. And modulate the signal to let Scotty know it’s nine to beam up, not just four.”
Spock’s brow rose. “Commodore Griswold will no doubt challenge that decision,” he said, though he was already complying.
“Commodore Griswold is used to thinking of aliens as statistics. I’d like to think if she were here, seeing these people struggling for breath, she wouldn’t just save herself and leave them here.” He broke off, choking.
“I suggest you save your breath for when you see her, Jim.” Spock’s gentle words made the captain smile.
Spock monitored the emergency signal, aware that there was no way to be certain the Enterprise was in range to receive it, or could return to Pelos in time if it were. McCoy was right that the temperature was rising swiftly, as was the noise level. At best, with tri-ox from the medkits, the prisoners might endure a few more hours before suffocating. At worst, they would be consumed by lava rather sooner.
After a time, Nurse Chapel came alongside Spock to administer a tri-ox booster. “No, thank you, Nurse,” he said. “I can get by with considerably less oxygen than the others.”
“Don’t go Vulcan stoic on me, Mister Spock,” she said. “We need you at your peak if you’re to keep that communicator working. Basic triage: first save the person who can do the most to save others.”
Spock nodded. “Logical.”
Chapel administered the dose, then sighed and leaned against the wall. “Was there something else?” Spock asked.
“I just need to catch my breath.”
Spock grunted in acknowledgment and resumed fine-tuning the communicator, ensuring the tenuous connections remained viable. But after a few moments, Chapel gave a wry smile. “Suddenly, going home doesn’t sound like such a bad idea,” she said. Since no reply seemed required from him, Spock said nothing. But Chapel continued. “I’ve decided . . . once we do go home, whether it’s now or a
year from now, I’m going to complete my M.D. training. I thought I was just going to postpone it until I found Roger, but then . . .” She trailed off. Spock recalled that she had given up a promising bioresearch career to search for her lost fiancé, Roger Korby. “Once I knew he was gone, I had no more reason to stay in Starfleet, but I . . . didn’t think I had anywhere else to go. But now . . . it’s time to move forward.”
Spock hesitated. He and Chapel had only infrequently spoken beyond the demands of duty since the embarrassing incident with Harry Mudd’s alleged love potion, but lately it seemed she had resolved to put it, and her unfortunate infatuation with him, behind her. Now it seemed she was reaching out and attempting to establish a new, more appropriate working relationship with him. That was something to be encouraged. “That is a commendable attitude, Nurse. I consider it likely that you will excel as a physician—provided,” he could not resist adding, “that you do not follow Doctor McCoy’s example too closely.”
“I heard that!” McCoy wheezed, and Chapel stifled a laugh.
“What are your plans for once the mission ends?” Chapel asked Spock.
He pondered how to reply. He was not ready to voice his plans just yet. He had become increasingly convinced that returning to Vulcan for the Kolinahr was necessary. Too often these past few years, his inability to resist emotional compromise had jeopardized the safety of his ship and his crewmates. Despite all his training, he had succumbed to the virus at Psi 2000, the spores on Omicron Ceti III, the effects of the atavachron on Sarpeidon, the siren song of the Taurean females, and other such disruptive influences over and over. Unless he could master his own mind, he would continue to be a liability to Kirk or any other commanding officer he might be assigned to serve. Thus, the only logical course of action, once his current duties aboard the Enterprise had been discharged, was to return to Vulcan and seek seclusion with the Masters of Gol to purge his emotions completely. But he knew that Kirk and McCoy would not understand this decision and would protest it fiercely. Now was hardly the time for that conversation.
That was the least of the reasons why it was fortunate that Spock began to feel the paresthetic effect of a transporter beam in operation upon his person. Moments later, he, Kirk, McCoy, and Chapel were in the Enterprise’s main transporter room. “Clear the platform, please, sirs,” said Lieutenant Kyle in his crisp British accent, “so I can materialize the rest.” Spock hastened to comply, assisting the weakened Chapel down the steps while Kirk did the same for McCoy. As soon as the five Pelosian dissidents materialized, McCoy and Chapel hastened to their aid. Seeing their condition, Kyle summoned further medical assistance.
But before a medical team could arrive, Commodore Griswold did, her reaction conforming closely to Spock’s prediction. “Captain Kirk! Beaming pre-warp natives aboard the Enterprise? You’ve gone too far this time!”
“They were minutes from death,” Kirk protested. “Look at them! What would you have me do?”
“People die all the time on primitive planets, Captain. We can’t save all of them.”
“But we could save these. And without violating the Prime Directive. They’re barely conscious at best. They’ll need to be sedated for treatment anyway. We can fix them up and beam them down to some remote part of the planet, far from Palchelle’s reach. She’ll never know they didn’t get burned up in the lava with the rest of us.”
“And how will you explain to them how they got there?”
Kirk shrugged. “I think they’ll just be happy to be alive. These are pragmatic people, Commodore. They know how to keep a secret, and a low profile.”
Griswold shook her head. “Do you even know how many regulations you’ve violated, Captain?”
“I probably know the regulations better than you, Commodore Griswold, because I have to interpret them in practice on a constant basis. Out here, regulations can’t just be inert words on a screen. They have to be adapted, finessed to fit the unpredictable.”
“That’s not for you to say, Captain Kirk.”
“If not me, then who? I’m the one Starfleet sent out here to make just those decisions.”
Griswold stared up at him smugly. “If I have anything to say about it, mister, you won’t be out here much longer.”
Starfleet Headquarters, San Francisco
Stardate 6985.4
December 2270
Rear Admiral Antonio Delgado was pleased with the outcome of his maneuvers. After his first salvo, a DTI investigation by Arthur Manners, had failed to find cause for filing charges against Kirk in the Skagway incident, Delgado had persuaded the Starfleet Inspector General (during a fact-finding junket to Argelius, where they’d found any number of intriguing facts about the local women) to assign Harriet Griswold to review the Enterprise’s performance, knowing that she was a stickler for regulations who’d jump on any excuse to deny Kirk his mission extension. But he hadn’t expected the captain to make it so easy the second time around. After the events at Pelos, Griswold had charged Kirk with violating the Prime Directive, and the Enterprise had been ordered back to Earth. Now, all Delgado had to do was convince Admiral Nogura to let him have the ship.
He found Nogura in the observation gallery of the courtroom hosting Kirk’s preliminary hearing. Per Starfleet convention, the investigation was conducted by two command-level officers, Commodores William Smillie and T’Vran. The hearing was open to the public, and the press had turned it into a circus. Kirk was already notorious as the first Starfleet captain ever court-martialed, back when he’d been accused of negligence in the death of Lieutenant Commander Ben Finney. He’d been cleared when Finney had been found alive, of course, but the notoriety remained. Now that Kirk was on the verge of a second court-martial, the press and the public were obsessed with the case, examining all of Kirk’s nonclassified actions over the past five years and harping on anything that seemed like a questionable command decision or a breach of regulations. Griswold had played to that appetite for scandal in her testimony, reporting on her own in-depth investigation of Kirk’s record and attempting to demonstrate a pattern of contempt for the Prime Directive. In the wake of the debates that had led to the creation of the DTI, the Federation Council was still gazing on Starfleet Command with a wary eye, ready to pounce at the first sign of impropriety; so the brass was under pressure to examine all the doubts that Griswold raised.
But now it was Kirk’s turn to testify before the panel, and the captain was defending his record with his usual eloquence. “Have I bent the letter of the Prime Directive on occasion?” he said. “I have. But always in service to its spirit. When I have intervened, it’s been to cancel out interference from other sources. On Beta III and Gamma Trianguli VI, I neutralized ancient computers that had held their civilizations in unnatural stasis for thousands of years. On Capella IV, Neural, and Omega IV, I removed interference from outside forces serving their own agendas, whether the enemy’s or our own.”
“What about Eminiar VII and Vendikar?” Smillie asked. “There was no external source of interference there. Everything they did was by their own choice.”
“Yes, and that included marking the Enterprise as a casualty of their war and attempting to cause the death of its crew. That was a direct act of hostility against Starfleet personnel, effectively a declaration of war against the Federation. At that point, the Prime Directive ceased to apply. I acted in defense of my ship and its crew, and I did what was necessary to neutralize the Eminians’ ability to take the lives of Starfleet officers.”
Smillie didn’t press the point further, but T’Vran asked, “And what of your intervention on Capella IV? The Ten Tribes’ own customs called for the death of the High Teer’s wife and heir following his own execution. The wife herself was ready to accept death under those customs. Yet you rescued her over her own protest.”
Kirk thought for a moment. “Yes, I did. I saw a pregnant woman and her unborn child in mortal danger in front of me and I refused to accept it. Did I show disrespect for her people�
��s customs? Probably. But I did what I felt I had to do in that moment. Given the choice between bending the rules to save an innocent life or obeying the rules and letting someone helpless be murdered right in front of me, I felt there was no choice.
“And that’s why Starfleet sends men and women out there instead of machines. Because doing the right thing isn’t about blind, robotic obedience to a programmed set of rules. It’s about making choices. Choices informed by laws and regulations but tempered by wisdom and compassion, adapted to the unique right and wrong of every situation.
“Are those choices always right, always free from bias or impulse? No. We’re fallible beings. We make mistakes. That’s why we need a Prime Directive in the first place—to warn us against getting too sure of our own rightness, to stop us before we make well-intentioned mistakes that can devastate a culture we don’t fully understand. The Prime Directive isn’t about protecting other cultures from their weaknesses, but from ours. But they can make mistakes too. They aren’t always right about what’s best for them any more than we are. So we need the latitude to make choices of our own. It’s a latitude that needs to be used sparingly and with careful thought. Believe me, I’ve seen what can happen when it’s abused.
“But our laws were made by beings just as imperfect as we are, and they have their limits. We can’t trust in them blindly, any more than we can trust blindly in ourselves. We need our laws and our individual judgments to balance each other, so that, hopefully, they can cancel out the worst of each other’s imperfections.”
The hearing soon took a recess for lunch, and Delgado caught up with Nogura in the HQ commissary. After arranging for an associate to call away Nogura’s aide, Vice Admiral Lori Ciana, Delgado approached the commanding admiral and asked to join him. Nogura, a lean, grizzled man with heavy-lidded eyes, nodded serenely as he blew on his jasmine tea. “I think Kirk is making his case very well, sir,” Delgado said.
“Mmm.” Nogura’s gravelly voice was untroubled. “Smillie and T’Vran have both been out there themselves. They know that Kirk’s done no worse than any good captain before him.”
Star Trek: DTI: Forgotten History Page 10