Rising to the Occasion
Chapter 1
When Spock was growing up, the Vulcan Science Academy was celebrated as the pinnacle of scientific endeavor and achievement. And well deserved, for it produced the peaceful deterrent measures used on all Vulcan Defense Force ships, as well as the foundational research behind the advanced hyperdrives that allowed Federation vessels to break past Warp 3. The institution was renowned in the Federation for its scientific achievements in nearly every discipline, a fact which had led to VSA applicants from other Federation worlds-much to the school's initial dismay. His mother had been one of the first offworlders to enter the VSA at any level, and in her first years she was both a student and a professor. By the time he was a young child attending school outside of his home and personal tutors she had become a professor and researcher, and helped the VSA adapt and open to other offworld students and researchers.
Nineteen years worth of living on Vulcan had led Spock to the assumption that, on some level, he would never again get access to the technology and resources for scientific exploration that the VSA had once offered him. When Captain Pike gave him the chance to help design the Science Deck on The Enterprise, Spock determined that he would ensure that the Starfleet personnel that served on this ship would have all the resources he once had. And after a thorough breakdown of the available space, that was exactly what the Enterprise delivered.
There were short term project labs, long term project labs, Chem labs, Bio labs, medical research labs, Physics labs, the Propulsion lab, the Astrometrics lab, the Stellar Cartography lab, the hydroponics labs that led into the crew gardens, the Robotics labs, the Animal Science labs, the language labs... so many labs that they did not all quite fit on the Science Deck itself. That said, if one traversed the long corridor that bisected the Science Deck, after walking past doors bearing the name of almost every type of science one could imagine, they would end their journey in the Science Officer's private office.
It was this office that Spock had yielded to Dr. Carol Marcus, part of the incentive package he had created to convince her to stay after the events with Khan Noonien Singh. Her credentials had indeed been excellent, but her Starfleet career up to that point had been pigeonholed into weapons research and design. Specialization was a human inclination, but to a scientist like Spock, such study in one scientific discipline to the exclusion of all others was a disservice to both the intellect and the larger community.
When she arrived, she had focused exclusively on weapons R&D. When he thought her focus had been confined for long enough, he informed her that as Science Officer, her purview included all of the Science section. Her response had been to quickly and efficiently adapt to this clarification in orders, and he found that working with her was surprisingly refreshing.
He hoped that this new encounter would come to the same satisfactory conclusion. Now Dr. Marcus had projects running in almost every scientific discipline. Spock found himself surprised at the imaginative flexibility in her work, particularly after been tracking into one specialty for so long. Perhaps this was a hallmark of human scientific thinking.
The only downside was that she was now too devoted to the Science Department's functioning. She rarely attended briefings representing the Science section-though this all by itself did not rise to the level that merited even an unofficial conversation, as it was another term she had negotiated when she signed on to the Enterprise. Spock and Dr. Marcus shared the larger title of Science Officer, which meant that Spock could represent the Science section in any briefing Dr. Marcus chose not to attend.
What did rise to the level of an unofficial conversation was her conduct on the last mission, when she had been called to consult on a landing party action. The benefit of having two Science Officers on record is that one could be on an away team while the other still worked on ship. Spock readily took on that responsibility after Dr. McCoy explained to him that being allowed to stay on ship, in a smaller, confined, more predictable work environment might benefit Dr. Marcus as she worked through her grief over the loss of her father.
He understood grief, even as a Vulcan. Perhaps especially as a Vulcan.
He had of course called ahead to schedule with her, both to give her notice and just because he would not have thought to do otherwise. On Vulcan he had grown up with the custom that no one visited another without calling before and asking if that would be appropriate. Vulcan privacy was pervasive and it was reflected in all of their customs.
So Dr. Marcus was in her office, sitting at the small table meant for in-office meetings. Her desk was a shocking mess of rolled blueprints, flimpasts, padds, and styli all between a three monitor setup that she had wired into her desk computer herself. Normally this would phase Spock, and any Vulcan, but he was more than accustomed to human controlled chaos. Even before his roommate at the Academy and nearly every other Terran student he worked closely with, there was his mother. And the example he had growing up of how a Vulcan handled human clutter was his father's. Sarek tacitly ignored Amanda's office, the front hallway, and sometimes even the entire kitchen.
Spock walked past her desk and joined her at the table. She seemed composed, and had a padd and stylus as if to keep notes.
"Thank you for finding an opening so quickly to see me, Doctor." He nodded in her direction.
"Of course, Mr. Spock."
"I am here to speak to you about your performance on our last away mission." Her eyes widened ever so slightly, one of the many facial marker movements Lt. Uhura had once taught him indicated surprise. This was not what she had initially expected. She quickly recovered her composure.
"Are you referring to the classified mission on Organia?"
"Yes."
They sat in silence for a few moments.
It was one of the many times he found himself thinking on Lt. Uhura. If they were still together, he could comm her on the way to his quarters and she would be there. He would explain what happened and she would ask something about Dr. Marcus's tone of voice or her facial musculature. And then she would explain the Doctor's reaction.
It was thoughts like these that meant a visit to the Healer.
Every fiber in his being resented the Healer for her intrusions. And then he reminded himself to be grateful. The Healer was helping the Lieutenant to be safe. Helping him assure that safety.
He forced his thoughts back to the present moment. The silence had gone on for too long. He needed to forward the conversation.
"The Enterprise has two Science Officers. And on away missions, for the most part, I do not mind being the Science officer present. But the value of having two means there is always one on the ship, and with access to the ship's resources, should the away team need them. If circumstances warrant that I call on you, you are expected to be present and at your best."
"You didn't call on me," the Doctor responded suddenly, and even after did not seem to understand that her statement was somewhat unusual.
Think through the situation, he thought, hearing the Lieutenant's voice in his head. It was not as he first assumed. She was not overwhelmed trying to involve herself in every discipline. If he had called, there would have been no unexpected reaction on her part. Then what might have made her uncomfortable with the call.
Oh.
The Captain made the call. On his own comm, which he often preferred on away missions to the standard issue that other personnel took. And she was the Captain's type and before he offered her the position, her place here had been temporary at best. And now that the Captain was in a position of authority over every member of the crew, making sex too likely to get unethical for comfort, temporary visitors often ended up spending additional time with the Captain.
"I understand. While I can try to keep the lines of communication clear, that might not always be the case. It is the Captain's prerogative to call on any member of the crew for aid, no matter what his history with that particular person..."
"Are you implying that I must have slept with the Captain, Mr. Spock?" she asked abruptly, interrupting him and in a tone he had no trouble interpreting. Obviously the opposite was true.
Spock incorporated this new information into his reasoning through this encounter. She was the Captain's type, and at the time was here temporarily (though now her place on this ship was more permanent), and she was uncomfortable with him calling her on his comm, but she did not engage in sexual relations with him.
He straightened. Having been the Lieutenant's partner while she spurred Kirk's advances without revealing their relationship had taken quite a toll on both their nerves. He sympathized.
"Is there something I should be reporting? Please believe me when I say I have no problem making any such report, or supporting a person in doing so." Her eyes widened and she shook her head.
"No, no. It is fine. Besides, I know the men you'd be reporting this to and I don't think they would make it worth my time." Spock did not respond to this. He knew some of the remaining Admirals too and had heard them make comments around him, or in his hearing, that assumed that he shared their unfavorable assumptions about female cadets and crewmen.
He nodded and rose. She nodded back and he left the office, the meeting terminating abruptly. He admitted to not knowing how he was supposed to behave in a situation like this, beyond supporting her right to make a report. He did not even know how the humans involved were supposed to behave, and he was not human.
He knew he had a long night of meditation ahead of him.
[How did it go?]
The text was just sitting on her padd waiting for a response. Carol was back in Uhura's quarters, where she spent most of her off-duty time now. She was almost done eliminating weapons signatures from the star charts-there were a finite number of blocks of space around Vulcan and she was almost finished going through all of the charts from that day. She knew that once she was finished a domino effect would begin. After she had eliminated all of the weapons signals, Martine would finish eliminating the escape pods that could not have made it out, leaving only the ones that had a fighting chance. Then Palmers would work through the last of the viable escape pods from Martine's list and Hannity would match the last of those escape pods to Starfleet's bank of stored transmissions.
Carol had already resolved that when she was done with her part, she would volunteer (or demand, depending on Uhura's reception) to join her listening to transmissions. In truth, she was a little worried about what being done with this work meant for her. While she was busy working the rescue mission that Starfleet Command refused to continue on its own she was occupied. Every shift she left work emboldened with the sense of purpose this task gave her. When it was over she would leave work the way she had been her first few weeks here, dreading the time alone in her quarters. She'd been depressed then, the grief of the loss of her father-multiple losses, since she'd both lost her chance to speak to him alive and her ability to remember him as a good man-and the way she'd been coping with it was a bit destructive. She'd gone on a tear researching Khan and the Augments, determined that what she found would bear out that he was a bad person.
As with all history, what she found was complicated.
If she just looked at the Eugenics Wars, and especially the end, then yes, Khan Noonien Singh was a bad person. He ordered the creation of the virus that set off the Zombie Apocalypse, though it had originally been intended to set off a cascade of genetic reactions in non-modified humans that would leave everyone on the planet "augmented". He knew the risks of its failure were high, and in many documented conversations with fellow Augments he discussed reclaiming the world should the bio-attack turn non-modified humans into enraged killing machines. And when he saw the true consequences of his gamble-including the raising of the long-dead and the turning of even the Augmented upon death, consequences he had not anticipated-he ordered that Augments seize the space program facilities in each nation that had them and flee the planet.
And while the standoff between fleeing Augments and surviving humans at the U.S Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama was often considered the turning point in the conflict that had triggered the Zombie Apocalypse, Khan himself was proof that her people's assumption that they'd captured and killed all the remaining Augments was wishful thinking at best.
But if she looked before that, hating him got more difficult. He'd been created in a genetics research facility in Jaipur, India, using mostly British and Anglo DNA, and as a child had been educated in both public schools (for social skills) and with private tutors (who could actually keep up with his intellectual progress and document his development). He wasn't one of the first Augments, but he was one of the first of the last, best batch, and was surrounded by scientists, educators, and politicians whose constant obsession was over how advanced he was.
In that environment, who wouldn't go insane?
His first radical action was to free his fellow Augments from the very scientists and politicians that had created and coddled him, which he did when he was nine and his fellow Augments were between the ages of six and ten. From there he led his group to take Jaipur at the age of ten, and then everything north of the Godavari River at twelve. By the time he was fifteen, and should have been binge watching reality television and obsessing over Snapchat with his 21st century peers, he and his group had conquered India, and were using it as a base to negotiate the rest of the world.
Most of the communication from that time was done online, and while a lot of it was lost in the Eugenics Wars and the Zombie Apocalypse that followed, there was still enough for her to get a picture of his motives. He was driven by the belief that all Augments were prisoners of their creators and needed to be liberated. This drove him beyond India, and it was only as a nineteen year old in his communications with the other Augments-who had at this point set up bases of power in other parts of the globe-did he start to espouse the belief that as a superior race, they should rule.
Being objective about Khan did not help her grief, and she was grateful when Christine came to her with what sounded like a crazy plan. She knew her friend was a little over-the-top at times, and she might have brushed the whole thing off-assuming it was her friend's grief over the loss of her fiancée, since the assumption that Starfleet would not continue a viable rescue mission for its own was at that time unfathomable-if Christine hadn't already gotten Uhura to sign on somehow.
Carol was glad she'd signed on. This project had changed her, and Christine, and probably all of the rest of them too.
[It went weird.]
[What do you mean?]
[Spock assumed I'd had sex with Kirk.]
[Ugh, and now you're all emo and he's moved on? After the rumors that's what some people here thought.]
[Like it was just normal.]
[I'm sure Spock knows how often the Captain goes for women on board temporarily, or ambassadors, or assistants, or natives...]
[Exactly.]
[How did that even come up?]
[He reprimanded me for not being at the alert for a call from an away team.]
[This was when Kirk called you?]
[Yes]
[OMG what did you say? You obviously left things out when you told me about it.]
[It was my tone of voice. Mr. Spock could tell I was uncomfortable, and he thought it was because I was unprepared.]
[You unprepared? LOL like that ever happens.]
[Ikr? When he understood, he offered to assist me in making a report.]
There were several moments of silence, and she could see her friend start and stop typing over and over. She distracted herself by clearing the chart she was working on, sending the results to Martine, and opening the next chart. She set the padd parameters, using a program she'd designed explicitly for this purpose, and started the scan.
[You didn't file a report. If you had you'd have called me.]
Say what you want about Christine, but she was perceptive. It was what made her a fantastic nurse-and now, having transferred from Enterprise to work on the Outer Frontier as a field nurse, a fantastic Doctor. Truly, it had been the best career move her friend could have made, and now she was the Federation's foremost expert on First Contact alien psychology. She knew her friend had no regrets.
[You didn't do anything wrong.]
Carol looked at the text. Her reply wasn't fast enough, and her friend was worrying.
[I know that. I just thought I'd want that, and when it was offered to me I realized I didn't.]
[Moving on is a good thing, trust me.]
Carol let out a sigh she hadn't realized she'd been holding. Some part of her was worried her friend would be mad, or even that she'd be mad at herself, but it was fine. They were fine.
"Hey! Hey hey hey!" Martine was up, calling to the others and waving her arms.
[brb]
Carol hurriedly typed the quick squirt and jumped up. In moments she, Uhura, Palmers, and Hannity were all at the couch crowding around Martine, who'd been using the wall as a screen, sorting through the escape pods on a large projected map. The short Italian woman had a padd in her hand, and it was open to a subspace message from Ensign Pol'takko, who was working on the next layer of the rescue mission from The Maria.
The Maria was one of the first ships out of the shipyard after the Fall of Vulcan, and the group of fleet officers and crew in on this volunteer rescue mission were working the legal angle-crafting briefs to Starfleet Command requesting that specific sectors of space be searched for escape pods and survivors. They compiled all of the evidence from The Enterprise volunteers and those of other ships to make their case, and they had already submitted twenty-one briefs.
"I just got a message. The Maria folks are starting a brief on Farragut pod 591." Carol looked over at Uhura, whose back was now ramrod straight. That was the escape pod they'd tracked Engineer Vro to over three months ago. Carol had thought the Orion might be the reason Uhura had agreed to be a part of this in the first place, and now she was sure.
"Where was the pod last seen?" Uhura asked, and Martine scrolled down her padd.
"The projections-based on the last transmission, the report of the condition of the pod, and its trajectory place it near the Akaali system," Martine read. This was both good and bad news.
"That's not far from the Orion Syndicate," Uhura murmured, "They can't stay there. How long will writing the brief take?" Martine was ready for this answer.
"They are working double shifts on this, and they've already submitted a preliminary briefing with a recommendation to rush a search party. They say that Command has enough to order the sector searched any time, but they…"
"…can't be more specific." Uhura finished the smaller woman's sentence, and Martine's doe eyes got even wider.
"Is there something we can do to make it more likely they'll move on this?" Palmers jumped in, asking the question that what on everyone's mind.
"We could start an Internal Petition." Hannity said, though her voice sounded flat, almost resigned. She pulled up a template petition and projected it on part of the screen with the map. "And with the five of us pushing it, there isn't anyone on the Enterprise we couldn't convince to sign it." Even though she was right, she was focusing on what they could control. But even with the petition, Command still might not rush, or even move at all. Even so, the others were nodding, and Uhura looked a little better with something to keep her busy working on Vro's case.
Carol wondered if she was the only one who wasn't completely caught up in the hopeful moment. As a weapons expert she was often surrounded by pessimists, and the moment this project left their group of volunteers and went back into the hands of Starfleet Command she lost the feeling that people were actively working on it.
"You're thinking it too." Uhura was next to her, and abruptly Carol was brought out of her own thoughts by the Lieutenant's words.
"Thinking what?" she asked, all proper British innocence. The exchange had caught everyone else's attention, and Uhura moved to her side. When she spoke again, her voice was slightly louder, a subtle signal to the others that she was talking to everyone.
"There's an elephant in the room that I think we need to talk about. Know that it is not breaking any regulation to talk about fleet Command negatively. We can talk to each other without sowing the seeds of sedition, and no one here is suspected of anything." Uhura looked around as she spoke, and no one seemed willing to meet her eyes. Carol drew a breath, ready to begin, before Hannity surprised her.
"I just feel like we shouldn't have to do this. I know hard choices have to be made, but these are Starfleet crewmen lost in the line of duty." Uhura moved over to the replicator and dialed a pot of tea. Carol pushed her hip up onto the small work table and got comfortable.
It was going to be a long night.