The forward viewscreen showed a swirl of stars as Tyler and Number One put the Enterprise on course and engaged the warp engines. When the familiar white streaks of comets and space debris began their march across the screen, Pike leaned back in his chair and picked up the progress report. It was grim enough to distract him from the note-taking alien in his peripheral vision. The observation deck was still open to space, shuttlebay doors one and two were jammed in the down position, and a power failure in ship’s stores had reduced the supply of fresh produce to apples and potatoes.
Pike punched the intercom button for engineering. “Burnie, what the hell happened in stores? We’ve got a couple tons of compost there because the power was out for seventeen hours.”
Burnie sounded no happier than Pike. “You wanted warp 7 when the antimatter injectors were still out of alignment. The power had to come from somewhere.”
“But my god, man, not the food supply!”
“We’re going to Gamma Gemini, aren’t we? Where do you think vegetables come from in this sector? We can restock there.”
“That’s my decision, not yours, mister.”
“Right, Captain. Uh … request retroactive permission to sacrifice the food supply for motive power.”
“Granted,” Pike said. “But next time cut the running lights.”
“Already did that, Sir.”
“I see.” Pike looked at the report again. Sure enough. It looked like Burnie had squeezed power from every system possible.
“Is that all, Captain?” Burnie asked.
“Yes. Good work.” Pike switched off the intercom.
“Amazing,” said the Eremoid.
Pike turned to see him scribbling on his datapad with a claw. “What?” he asked.
“How you averted that confrontation with both his honor and yours intact. I would never have believed it if I hadn’t witnessed it myself.”
“It wasn’t a confrontation,” Pike said. At the edge of his vision he saw Colt roll her eyes upward. “Was it?” he asked.
“Maybe not to you,” she said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If I were Bumie, I’d have gotten a little … excited by your tone of voice.”
“Burnie? He and I—I mean—he’s from New York! You have to talk like that to get his attention.”
“Oh. Do they teach you that in officer’s school, or is that something you picked up on board?”
“It’s my astute interpersonal communications skills, Yeoman.”
She leaned back against the handrail. “And how do you get my attention, Sir? Since I’m from Oregon, I mean.”
Number One whispered something to Tyler, whose cheeks puffed out with the effort not to laugh.
“Do you have something to share, Number One?” Pike said.
“No, Sir.” She stared straight ahead.
Pike glared at the back of her head. She knew he permitted a bit of informality among the crew, but this was ridiculous. So was Colt’s question. What had gotten into everyone? He heard the scritching of claw on datapad. Ah. Nerves. Everyone was trying to keep from upsetting the Eremoid, so they were overcompensating with silliness. On top of that, it had been a trying week. Maybe it was time to blow off a little tension the good old-fashioned way.
“Why don’t we have a little welcoming party for Verka on the recreation deck tonight?” he asked.
“No,” Verka said quickly. “I couldn’t possibly.”
“You sure? That would be the quickest way to learn how we interact. With humans it’s not all orders and duty, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know.” Verka gritted his pointy teeth, then nodded. “I will attempt it, but please don’t be offended if I must flee in the midst of the party. I am not used to groups.”
“Understood. No problem.” Pike leaned back in his chair, then turned to Colt and said, “Look, sunlight!”
Startled, Colt looked up through the clear observation dome, but there were only the white streaks of hyperspace. “Sir?”
“That’s how I get an Oregonian’s attention.” To the Eremoid, he said, “I spent a winter in Portland once. Rain, rain, rain, for six months at a stretch.”
“I see,” he said, but it was clear he didn’t.
The party started out well. There was plenty of Saurian brandy, and the chief of stores declared a keg of genuine Earth Guinness to be in danger of spoilage due to the power failure. The Eremoid stayed on the periphery with Spock, taking copious notes while people came by to tell him jokes, refill his drink, or answer questions. Number One began a discussion of music, which led to dancing, which Verka predictably refused to try. Pike wasn’t exactly comfortable with the idea, either, but when Number One asked him to help her demonstrate for their guest, he couldn’t very well say no.
Then of course she chose a slow waltz. Pike felt clumsy as a targ on ice, and Number One felt entirely too warm and soft in his arms, but he ignored the shouts of “Woo, woo, Captain!” from the sidelines and concentrated on not stepping on her feet.
Doctor Boyce was dancing with Yeoman Colt, which looked to Pike like Father Time standing beside the New Year on January 1, but they both seemed to be enjoying themselves. When the music ended, Boyce thanked Colt for the dance and then turned to Number One. “Mind if I cut in?” he asked Pike. “It’s not every day an old geezer like me gets to dance with pretty women.” Number One blushed, and Pike said, “Watch out. He’ll put his hands anywhere, then claim Marinthian muscle twitches made him do it.”
Colt was still standing alone when the next song started. She caught him looking at her and cocked her head slightly. Hesitantly. Pike looked away, instinctively checking for an escape path, but stopped that motion in mid-glance. Why couldn’t he dance with his yeoman? Why not indeed? He smiled and held out his arm just as she began to turn away; she did a double take and stepped toward him instead. Let the Eremoid try to figure out what that meant, Pike thought as he took her in his arms and they began to sway back and forth to the music.
The fistfight, when it came, didn’t even involve Verka. Pike didn’t see how it started; he had his eyes closed and was resting his cheek on the top of Colt’s head as the song wound down. There was an angry shout from the back of the room, then a crash as something fell over. A second later, the room descended into bedlam, as everyone cleared away from Tyler and one of the engineers, who had each other in a headlock and were punching merrily at one another.
“Hold it!” Pike yelled, rushing toward them, just as Burnie waded into the fray from the other side, shouting “Hey! Hey, hey, hey!” Burnie grabbed the engineer and Pike grabbed Tyler, and they pulled the two apart.
“Calm down!” Pike said. “I said calm….” Tyler flailed out with his left hand, accidentally clipping Pike on the shoulder.
“Attennnn-tion!” Pike yelled at the top of his lungs.
Everything stopped except the music, which continued to play softly as Pike said, “What the hell is going on here?”
“He said I couldn’t plot a standard orbit around Venus,” Tyler said.
“He was braggin’ about how hot a pilot he was,” the engineer said.
“So I made a joke. Nobody can plot a standard orbit around Venus; it rotates retrograde. Period of one-hundred seventeen days. A standard orbit would drop you right into the Sun.”
“Oh,” said Tyler.
Colt, only a step behind Pike, laughed.
Pike turned to her. “You think that’s funny? An officer strikes a crew member because he thought he was being insulted, and you think that’s funny?”
She sobered right up. “No, Sir.”
“What’s the matter with this crew?” he demanded. “You’re a disgrace to Starfleet. You…” he pointed at Tyler, resisting the sudden urge to make a fist and continue the motion straight into his chest “—are confined to—”
“Wheres Verka?” Number One suddenly asked.
Oh, bother. He’d forgotten the alien. Watching, taking notes, and no d
oubt deciding it would be a cold day in hell before he would let these irrational humans have a mining claim on his planet. Pike looked over at the corner where the Eremoid had been playing wallflower, but he wasn’t there.
“Verka?” he asked.
“Here,” came a weak voice from down low. Pike pushed his way through the crowd toward the source of it and found the alien huddled beneath the buffet table.
“Are you all right?”
“Aside from being terrified, you mean?”
“Terrified?” Pike stood up. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Tyler, now see what you’ve done?”
“I’m sorry, Sir.”
“Well you ought to be.” Pike bent down again. “It’s all right. Nobody’s going to hurt you. My navigator just got a little twitchy, that’s all. It’s over.”
“It’s over?” Verka asked. “You mean you aren’t going to start killing one another?”
“Over a stupid misunderstanding like that? Of course not.”
The Eremoid peeked his head out from under the table. “I meant you. You called everyone a disgrace.”
“They are. And in a minute I’m going to read them the riot act. But nobody’s going to kill anybody. Come on out of there.”
He helped his guest to his feet again. Verka looked at the stunned crowd, still standing at attention, and said, “This is unbelievable. On my world, such a statement would have resulted in a massacre.”
“You’re kidding.”
“You doubt my…” he clapped his hands over his mouth again.
“It’s all right,” Pike said. “No, I don’t doubt your word. It just sounds pretty incredible.”
Verka lowered his hands. “Your ability to survive so much conflict is equally incredible to me. My people have to avoid one another if we don’t wish to fight. That’s our only way.”
“How do you breed?” Colt asked.
“Yeoman!” Pike said, but Verka grinned.
“Briefly,” he said. “And seldom.”
“Well, that explains a lot,” said Doctor Boyce.
“Indeed it does,” said Verka. “Occasionally a couple will bond closely enough that they can live together, but it happens so rarely that songs are sung about it when it does. I thought perhaps I would be one of the fortunate few, but my childhood lover had a brief liaison with another of my friends, and now none of us can speak to one another for fear of starting an argument that would kill us all.”
“That’s rough,” Colt said.
“Yes, it is. I find that I still love her, but I can’t risk going to her for fear of growing angry. I had heard that humans could actually survive such slights, so I came to see how it was possible. But now that I have seen it in action I am still no wiser than before. Why don’t you kill one another?”
Pike frowned. Verka had come here for personal reasons? Starfleet had diverted the Enterprise to give him the VIP tour, hoping it would lead to mining rights on his homeworld, and what he was most interested in was learning how to get his girl back?
Spock had been standing quietly in the comer all this time. Now he said, “Perhaps I can provide a unique insight here. Vulcans suppress all emotion, but that doesn’t eliminate conflict. In my own observations of humans, I have discovered that they often use aggression and anger as a way to say what they need to say to one another without actually fighting. Their relations are often better after such an outburst.”
“Then these two who were fighting will continue to work together?”
“They’d better, or they’ll be swabbing the decks together,” Pike said menacingly.
“And you and Yeoman Colt will continue your courtship rituals?”
“Courtship rituals?” Pike asked, blushing from head to toe. “We were just dancing.”
“On the bridge? I have observed countless instances there where you exhibited what I would consider…”
Of all the people to come to his rescue, he would never have expected it to be Spock, but the Vulcan held out his hand for silence and said, “There have been many inappropriate displays of emotion on board this ship since your arrival. Some can no doubt be attributed to fatigue, but I believe the frequency of these outbursts is beyond the norm even for a time of extreme duress.” He held his hand closer to the alien’s face. “If you would permit me…?”
“Permit you to what?”
“I have limited telepathic ability. I believe you do as well. May I examine you to be sure?”
“Telepathic ability?” Verka said. “What? Are you insinuating that I’m somehow causing your bad behavior?”
“Yes,” Spock said.
They stared at one another for a moment, the Eremoid with open hostility while Spock stood as impassive as ever, but Pike saw the Vulcan’s nostrils flare and realized that he was fighting his own emotions as well. He was just better at it than the rest of the crew.
That was all the proof Pike needed, which was a good thing because the alarm klaxon wailed before he could order the Eremoid to let Spock examine him. “Red Alert,” the computer said. “Red Alert. Colony vessel under attack dead ahead.”
“Battle stations!” Pike said. “Let’s go!” To the Eremoid he said, “Come with us, but stay out of the way.”
Number One said, “Is that smart? If he’s…”
“I want him where I can keep an eye on him,” Pike replied. And stun him unconscious if necessary, he thought, but he prudently left that unspoken.
He led the charge for the turbolifts. When they reached the bridge, people rushed for their stations and the night crew scooted aside to let the more experienced officers take over. Dabisch put a tactical grid on the viewscreen, on which they could see half a dozen colony ships drawn into a tight ball, letting their shields overlap for extra strength, while a single Klingon warship swooped around and around them, firing its phasers in search of a weak spot.
“Photon torpedoes,” Pike said. “Full spread. Target him as he makes a turn so he’ll be at maximum distance from the colony ships.”
“I’m on it,” said Number One.
“Range, Mr. Tyler?”
“We’ll be there in fifteen seconds.”
“The colony ships are readying their own weapons,” Spock said. “They can’t shoot through each other’s shields; they will have to drop them to fire.”
Pike had hoped to catch the Klingon by surprise, but he couldn’t let the colonists drop their shields. “Dabisch, warn them not to,” he said. “Uncoded transmission. Tell them we’ll be there in sixty seconds.”
“Uncoded … Sixty seconds. Aye, Sir.” Dabisch’s hands flew over the communication keys; then he echoed Pike’s words into his microphone.
Pike said to no one in particular, “We may have had to blow our cover, but with any luck, we didn’t blow the surprise. How long now?”
“Seven seconds,” Tyler replied.
“Ready on those torpedoes.”
“Ready,” Number One said.
“Colony ships are holding position,” Spock reported. “Klingon cruiser is arming photon torpedoes.”
“Too late,” Pike said, grinning savagely. This was one Klingon who wouldn’t harass any more colonists.
“In range,” Tyler said.
“Fire!”
Number One stabbed at the control with her forefinger. The viewscreen flared with six brilliant points of light as they reached out to the Klingon ship. The first four impacted their shields, but the fifth scored a direct hit on the bulbous control pod in front, and the sixth penetrated the cruiser’s wing-shaped body before exploding, turning the entire ship into an expanding cloud of plasma. Normally Pike would have felt at least a little dismayed at the loss of life, but not this time. The Klingons had asked for it.
“Check the colonists,” he said. “Are they all right?”
Dabisch queried the ships. “No damage,” he reported. “I have a Mister Hampton on the channel. He wishes to speak to you personally.”
“Put him on.”
On the viewscreen
the remains of the Klingon ship gave way to an image of equal chaos: a young man sat at a control panel, a baby in his arms, while two toddlers ran shrieking across the frame behind him, pursued by a harried woman in a bathrobe. A small black dog barked at them all, but the man didn’t seem to notice. “Thank you, Captain!” he said.
“Just doing our job,” Pike replied.
“We appreciate it.” The baby waved its arms and gurgled happily, banging its closed fist against the control console.
“Careful!” Pike warned.
The man glanced down, then back at Pike. “It’s okay, he can’t hit anything vital.” An alarm beeped on his console, and he turned to the woman. “Honey, can you get that? I think the forward shield generators are overheating.”
Pike squirmed in his seat at the sight of such a sloppy bridge, but amazingly enough, things seemed to get done. The woman—Mrs. Hampton, Pike assumed—slid into a control station behind her husband and shut down the shields one-handed, all the while struggling to hold her two- or three-year-old girl by the back of her shirt. Mr. Hampton piloted the ship away from the others so she could activate the aft shields and radiate the waste heat through their generators instead. When they finished, he looked back at Pike. “Are you going on to Gamma Gemini?”
“That’s our plan,” Pike said.
“Good. Mind if our expedition tags along?”
“Not at all.”
“Thank you. Give us a few minutes to catch our breath and we’ll be ready to go.”
Pike would have doubted that a ship run in such a sloppy fashion could be ready to fly in a week, but he was pleasantly surprised when only five minutes passed and Dabisch said, “They’re ready any time we are.”
“Then let’s go,” said Pike.
Tyler engaged the engines, and they were on their way again.
“That was incredible,” said Verka.
“What was? The battle?”
“No, the way you handled it. You were practically at each other’s throats below, and here you worked together like protons and electrons. And that family! The stress level in their ship must have been incredible, yet they worked together as smoothly as you. I had heard that humans could function in groups, but I never imagined you could do so despite such powerful emotions. Anger, frustration, attraction, and jealousy—none of it seems to matter.” He looked from Pike to Colt and Number One as he said that.
Star Trek: Enterprise Logs Page 10