Any Port in a Storm
Part One
"You're my new yeoman?" Kirk asked. "Excellent, I'm sure we'll get along very well."
"Of course, Captain." He looked even younger than she'd expected. In fact, she knew, he was three years older than she was. He looked tired, she thought, looking closer, and not nearly as heroic as he'd appeared in the holovids. His eyes were red and he was a little pale—had he been staying up too late at night? His smile was friendly, if guarded. She smiled back shyly, hand reaching up automatically to smooth back her hair.
"So, actually, you probably know that you're the first personal yeoman I've had. I didn't request one when we began our mission and to tell you the truth, I'm not sure I need one now, it's just that…" He sighed. "Well, I've been getting a few complaints from the Admiralty about my reports."
"What kind of complaints, sir?"She hadn't been told about any of this. Maybe he was dyslexic and needed an administrative assistant, but was too embarrassed to admit it?
"Look…" he seemed uncomfortable. "Uh, the truth is, I'm a little behind. On the reports and logs, that is. We've been out for three months on a shakedown cruise, and I've been a little busy. Maybe that's why Starfleet insisted I take on a yeoman…"
"I'm sure that I can help you get organized, Captain." Maybe that was why he looked so tired. Drowned in paperwork?
"It's not only that. There's apparently something wrong with my writing style." He chuckled and made a little face. "I don't follow standard format, or something of that nature."
Janice was getting a little concerned. It sounded as if he had a bit of an attitude problem regarding official procedure, at the very least.
"I have a lot of correspondence. You wouldn't believe the number of reports I'm supposed to file on a daily basis, not to mention the reports I have to sign off on, transfers, requisitions, the captain's log, my personal log…" She wasn't sure how to respond. Was he looking for sympathy? This was part of his job, didn't he know that?
"I'm here to help you keep up with the paperwork, Captain." She beamed at him reassuringly.
"Fantastic. Welcome aboard."
She quickly realized, however, that he was grossly understating the problem. He wasn't just "a little behind," he was busy creating a bureaucratic nightmare. Reports were completed haphazardly if at all, he hadn't updated his logs in 44 days, and official interdepartmental memos were worded with a casual informality that boggled the mind.
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From: Kirk, James T., Captain
To: All engineering personnel
Subject: You know what I'm referring to
Let me make it quite clear that I know where you've been hiding the you know what and if I catch you at it, you're all going to find yourselves in BIG trouble, trust me. And Scotty, I'll expect to see you in my quarters at 2100 with a peace offering, if you know what I mean.
JTK
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Unbelievable! And what was she supposed to make of this:
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From: Kirk, James T., Captain
To: Uhura, N., Chief Communications Officer
Subject: Translation clarification
Uhura, your offense is totally misplaced. I never meant to imply anything about the ambassador's appearance. I was making a completely tactful diplomatic comment. It's not my fault that the vowel sequences in their language are so closely entwined that erætro, which means landscape, sounds almost exactly like erȅtra, which means—well, you know what it means. It was a reasonable mistake. Give a guy a break.
JTK
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"Captain," she told him the next day, "don't you understand that your memos can be read by the Admiralty? And eventually by Starfleet historians? Were you aware that you have requisition forms pending that haven't been processed for three weeks? Some of them are labeled urgent. And you'll have to update your logs retroactively, starting today." She tried to keep the scolding note out of her voice, but really, she was appalled.
"Look, Ensign, I'm sure you're right about the logs, but the memos are just the way I express myself. My crew knows my management style and it works." He grinned devilishly up at her. "I'm sure Admiral Nogura and Admiral Archer don't need to read my memos to form an adverse opinion about me, since they express it to me frequently enough. They're real sticklers for the regulations."
"The regulations keep Starfleet functioning," she retorted. "They're there for a reason." He rolled his eyes. Immature jerk, she thought. "When can we meet about the log updates? And the requisitions?"
"I'll make time later," he promised. She was not surprised to receive the memo (properly worded, at least) on her PADD later that morning:
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From: Kirk, James T., Captain
To: Rand, Janice L., Captain's yeoman
Subject: Unavoidable delay
My apologies, Ensign, but the CMO's called an urgent meeting with senior staff at 1800 hours. We'll reschedule.
JTK
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He did meet with her later in the week to discuss the logs, but she took the hint. Kirk had authority issues, and obviously, he'd decided that she was an incarnation of the Admiralty and their insistence on following the rules. Kirk was one of those "rules are made to be broken" types. Well, Janice knew all about those kinds of people.
This posting wasn't going to go well at all.
Janice was nothing if not professional about her duties. She didn't gossip and she didn't spread rumors. It was part of the ethical code of her job, something she'd had drilled into her from the moment she began the specified training course that had led to her current position: "Everything is confidential, and it is never appropriate to discuss your work outside work hours."
She loved having a work ethic.
She'd spent the formative years of her life living in Wind and Water, a "creative lifestyle community," part of the Modern Utopia movement that had had a brief spurt of popularity at the turn of the century. By the time her parents—although they disliked the term, preferring "adult advisers" or "family guides"—had joined the commune, the ideological fervor there had mostly fizzled out, to be replaced by a set of loose rules about shared income and mutual responsibilities. The younger generation, those who had been born into the community and raised by its original idealistic founders, were leaving in droves just as her parents decided that they'd found what they were looking for.
"It takes a village to raise a child," the commune's motto, had been given a rough translation by her parents as "let somebody else do it, so we can devote ourselves to a pursuit of our own pleasures." As she grew older and began to think for herself, she began to question the rightness of a lifestyle that seemed to allow the adults to shirk their duties (because all income was shared, so if they earned a little less, they'd still share in the other members' profits, right?), waste endless hours listening to music and imbibing hallucinogens ("centering themselves"), and ignoring their children ("letting them develop their own free spirits"). The older kids were homeschooled or not, as they chose; they put in a few hours a day of service to the community, but most of their time was their own to spend as they saw fit.
Out of boredom, they often took a transport to the nearest town and hung out there, mixing with the regular town kids who went to public school and had real parents. But she and her friends had bonded instinctively with a group of young working-class kids, leaning on a shared sense of dispossession and resentment. It had been a natural link, between the derelict kids of the commune and the rebellious townies.
Not far from the commune, there was a small Amish community. They still lived, worshipped, and dressed as their ancestors had, centuries ago, refusing modern conveniences in favor of old-fashioned farming and strict discipline. Occasionally, she and her friends would run into the Amish adults at the town center, buying supplies. The men were severe-looking and serious with their long beards and dark suits, and the women chattered among themselves in funny accents.
The commune kids thought they were strange and a little scary. Janice loved their colorful dresses, though, and found that she couldn't tear her eyes away from them. She was fascinated by the way they seemed so purposeful and content, secure in their separateness. But their townie gang loved to torment the Amish visitors, teasing them and trying to provoke them into an aggressive reaction. It was mostly harmless, but Janice felt uncomfortable, and in the end, she stopped going into town.
She had no interest in living without high-speed sonic boosters and computerized environmental controls like the Amish, but she longed for order and discipline. By the age of seventeen, she had come to the conclusion that she desperately needed to get away, but she felt trapped, limited by her sketchy home education and her nonexistent financial resources. She had no marketable skills, nothing but a desperate desire for something other than what she'd known and a burning ambition to prove her own worth.
So she enlisted in Starfleet. It seemed like the perfect short-term solution: she'd receive an education, learn new skills, see new worlds, and become part of a respected military tradition. The first time she put on a uniform, she'd felt that she'd finally come home. The garish red fabric reminded her pleasantly of the pastel-colored Amish dresses.
She loved every bit of basic training: the highly-structured schedule, the inspections, the coursework and the tests. Some of her fellow enlistees had bristled under the unaccustomed discipline and the arbitrary rules, but not Janice. She flourished in her first experience of authority and obedience. She was happy, for the first time in her life, as a lowly cadet.
She knew, though, that a military career wasn't for her. It was a means to an end. She'd signed on for the standard five-year contract, with a three-year renewal option; but she never saw herself as a career officer. Her dreams were simple: marriage, a family, lots of children who she'd raise with care and devotion. Racing around the Academy campus, between her intro courses on xenocultures and Starfleet history and self-defense, Janice fantasized about reading bedtime stories and baking cookies.
She was shy. Her background and lack of education embarrassed her. She felt that she was different from her classmates—less sophisticated, but also more mature. So much of her adolescence had been spent deciding what she didn't want to be that she was late in coming to an understanding of what she really liked. She drank occasionally, mostly to fit in with her girlfriends when they were allowed a night out. She didn't do recreational drugs—she'd had enough of that to last a lifetime, thank you, and with her parents' tacit approval.
One of the first things she discovered, to her own surprise, was that she was vain about her appearance. At the commune, all the kids had worn their hair long and flowing, but now she had a choice. She loved her long, straight blond hair, and spent hours before the mirror each morning, experimenting with elaborate twists and braids. She might not be charismatic or a daredevil, she thought, but her hair said something about her. She was quiet, but her hair expressed her need to be different, to be special, to be recognized. OK, it was pathetic, she admitted to herself, but it was a step toward self-actualization.
Her instructors recognized both her talents and her limitations, and after basic training, she was put on the non-academic track the cadets laughingly called Paperwork Plus: she would be a yeoman. Despite the non-glamorous job description, Janice was pleased. Her work would be basically administrative, but essential: it would involve handling communications and correspondence, maintaining records, and coordinating the interdepartmental flow of information on a starbase or starship. She'd be responsible for making sure that rules and regulations were strictly followed, that reports were written promptly and worded appropriately, that memos and logs were maintained accurately. Her instructors provided their classes with countless examples of how lax or imprecise reports could result in loss of life or even armed conflict.
Her first posting was at Deep Space Outpost Six, where she learned the ropes quickly. She was pleasant and helpful, and the commander's office ran smoothly for the eighteen months of her term. It was a little lonely, though. She didn't make friends easily and often felt tongue-tied among the flamboyant and eccentric Outposters.
Her commander's parting words to her, upon learning of her new assignment, were, "Kirk, huh? Well, good luck, Rand. Hope you don't run into any stormy weather!" That was a joke, she knew, although she didn't really understand what was so funny. The STORM, the Starfleet Offical Regulations Manual, was the cornerstone of their training. "The bureaucrat's bible," they'd called it jokingly among themselves. But among her colleagues, being a bureaucrat wasn't an insult; it was a way of life, a belief that order and structure that made things run smoothly.
From: Rand, Janice L.
To: Kirk, James T., Captain
Subject: Captain's Log stardate 2258.86
Captain, I would suggest that you make the following changes in word choice in your log in order to promote clarity:
Change "badass" to "stylistically provocative"
Replace "awesome" with "successful"
Substitute "engaged us in an unprovoked physical assault" for "blindsided us and tried to whip our butts"
Respectfully, I think you should reserve slang and informal language for your personal log. That's what it's for, sir.
JRand
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From: Kirk, James T.
To: Rand, Janice L., Captain's Yeoman
Subject: Re: Changes
FYI Rand, I took an informal survey of the Bridge crew during alpha shift, and they unanimously agreed that "made me gag" was accepted usage, and better conveyed the typical human reaction to the Altair Five cuisine than your suggestion of "was unpalatable." And no, before you ask, Spock wasn't on the Bridge at the time, but he doesn't count as a slang expert for obvious reasons, and anyway he actually liked the food.
JTK
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"The Captain hates me," she said glumly to Lt. Uhura, who as Communications Officer was responsible for supervising her work.
"Is he flirting with you?" Uhura asked, eyes glittering dangerously. "Because he flirts with everything that moves and he doesn't mean anything by it, but if he's being inappropriate I'll be happy to cut him down to size."
"You're not listening to me. I said that he can't stand me, which is basically the opposite of flirting."
Uhura gave her a knowing glance. "How much you have to learn, sweetie."
"Uhura!" Janice hissed at her. "This isn't helping."
"Alright," she said, straightening her face with an effort. "Tell me again what the problem is."
"He avoids me. He breaks every appointment I make with excuses that seem legitimate, but we're reduced to communicating by intraship messaging."
"I don't know…" Uhura said slowly. "The Captain's usually like a puppy dog that wants everybody to like him, so I'm not sure what's going on here. Dr. McCoy is his best friend. Why don't you talk to him? Maybe he can give you some insight."
"I've become the Captain's high school English teacher," she complained to the doctor, sitting across from him in his MedBay office.. He grinned and leaned his chair back, lacing his fingers together and resting his head back against them. He seemed thoroughly amused by her predicament.
"Well, maybe he's having a corrective experience," he suggested. "I'm pretty sure he never finished high school."
"What?" she blinked. "Are you serious? Why not?"
The doctor didn't answer, but just looked at her thoughtfully. Then he changed the subject and began asking her about herself: her family, where she'd grown up, why she'd enlisted in Starfleet.
He was easy to talk to. She found herself opening up, telling him about Wind and Water in nowhere Pennsylvania, with her lackadaisical "family guides" and the benign (and not so benign) neglect that had formed the core of their parenting philosophy. He raised an eyebrow when she talked about her parents' seeming lack of interest in her and the comms that went unanswered, and nodded knowingly when she explained how she had felt at home at Starfleet for the first time in her life.
She was a little embarrassed at how much she'd revealed of herself, but he brushed it off lightly—"Comes with the job description, you'd be surprised at what people will confide in their doctor"—and smiled kindly at her. "Look, Jim's reaction to you makes a lot of sense, given what you've just told me. The two of you have more in common than you'd think at first glance. I can't really tell you any more than that," he said quickly, "but I'd recommend that you get to know him a little better before you give up on him."
So she made a project of it. She didn't have anything better to do in the evenings, and he was easy to observe; he was always in the midst of things, leading the action in the Rec Hall and the Mess, and he was an enthusiastic participant in the evening entertainment and morale boosters. Besides, she told herself, she was new on board and didn't really have any friends. She needed to get over this shyness thing.
Perched innocently at a side table, she watched him studying Vulcan and Orion with Uhura in the ship's Linguistics Club meetings, and noted that he seemed to learn the languages with ease. In fact, she overheard him mentioning at one point that he'd "picked up" Spanish during one summer he'd spent working his way through Central and South America, and then listened to him conduct what sounded like a fluent conversation in Spanish with Lt. Ortega to prove his point. Definitely not suffering from excess modesty, she thought.
A few days later, with McCoy at his side, he took part in the debating finals. The topic was "Resolved: Starfleet uniforms are sexist and unflattering," and Kirk and McCoy had taken the negative. They held their own admirably against the combined oratory skills of Spock and Uhura—Kirk argued energetically that the high, modest necklines promoted health by protecting the crew against dangerous ultraviolent rays and overactive air conditioning units—although the rival team won on points.
She watched him unobtrusively in less entertaining moments, such as when he caught an irresponsible young botanist attempting to dispose of a biohazard without taking the proper precautionary measures. She'd cringed inwardly at the sharp-tongued, uncomfortably long reprimand, but afterwards, she suddenly realized that what she'd seen had simply confirmed what she'd suspected for quite a while. And then two days later, when she'd listened to Kirk's impromptu address to the crew regarding the sudden demise of their beloved ship's cook (of natural causes, for once), she'd received more proof.
Kirk was not linguistically challenged at all.
He was, if anything, remarkably fluent in Standard English (and various other languages), and he was completely capable of expressing himself appropriately.
He was doing it on purpose. He was making her life miserable and wasting her time correcting his ridiculous reports and memos written in surferboy California slang when he was perfectly able to do it right.
It galled her to realize that Kirk seemed to regard her as a joke, to be marginalized and shunted aside like some kind of unwanted houseguest. She was a yeoman, a problem-solver and specialist in organization and administration. These were necessary skills which he obviously didn't possess. And despite McCoy's hints, she still had no idea why Kirk was so resistant to her.
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From: Rand, Janice L.
To: Kirk, James T., Captain
Subject: I've got your number
It has come to my attention that you have all the language skills you need to conduct your correspondence professionally and appropriately.
As a yeoman, I am trained as an office manager and a human resources specialist. If you insist on using me as your personal stylistic punching bag, I respectfully would like to request a transfer. Sir.
JRand
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That evening—Games Night, which she'd reluctantly agreed to participate in when Uhura invited her, despite the fact that she was a complete novice at backgammon, had never played poker, and lacked the hand-eye coordination to make a good partner in Simulated Soccer—she officially gave up her CaptainWatch project and decided to ignore him.
Get a life, Jan, she told herself disgustedly. Get out of your comfort zone. She made an effort to join in instead of staying on the periphery as usual. She found that she was good (Surprise!) at Mandrino, an Andorian board game that required learning lots of rules that changed frequently, according to various conditions. She caught on quickly and found herself playing the role of referee, which suited her fine and also drew her more into the foreground of the action than she was used to.
She was so busy—not having fun, since she was too anxious and self-conscious, but mostly enjoying herself—that she was taken by surprise when she looked up at one point to find the Captain staring at her and grinning.
He was playing pool with McCoy as his partner—of course—and they seemed relaxed and comfortable with each other. Out of uniform, dressed casually in jeans and a black shirt, he seemed suddenly younger and less imposing than he did during the day. He handled the cue with the ease born of experience, and she suddenly wondered where and when he'd learned to shoot. The old-fashioned game had remained popular through the years, particularly in bars and seedy hangouts. She recalled McCoy's odd comment about his not finishing high school, and for a moment she could almost see him as a wayward kid, like the troublemakers she'd known in town, who drifted aimlessly through their days, looking for some stimulation that would make their lives seem less meaningless.
She shook her head. Where had that image come from? Maybe something in his stance—less like a commander, more like a juvenile delinquent. She'd known plenty of those.
The message from Kirk came in late that night. The soft "beep" from the PADD roused her just as she was dozing off, and answered it instinctively, thinking that it might be urgent. Idiot – what could be so urgent from the Captain, the results of a new questionnaire about crew colloquialisms? A six-week-old requisition form that he'd suddenly remembered to file?
From: Kirk, James T.
To: Rand, Janice L., Captain's Yeoman
Subject: Re: I've got your number
Yeoman Rand, I humbly concede your point and beg your pardon for the linguistic harassment. No offense intended.
Fine, I'll leave the slang out of the Captain's Log. Now, can we please discuss your plan to simplify my administrative needs and reduce the red tape to a maximum of two hours a day?
JTK
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Janice didn't understand him at all.