"Check," said Commander Spock, thoughtfully.
James T Kirk came rapidly back from a place far away and stared at the board with consternation written all over his face. He studied the pieces, then looked up into his First Officer's face.
"I wasn't expecting that," he muttered. And then, accusingly, "You did that on purpose."
Spock's eyebrows arched.
"I admit to having moved my knight deliberately and with forethought," he said, drily. "You would hardly welcome a chess opponent who moved pieces at random."
Kirk bit back a grin.
"I might welcome a chess opponent who didn't put me in check in order to interrupt my train of thought."
"If that is the case I must, of course, apologise, Captain. Unaccountably, I had not realised that this was the purpose of our match this evening. Otherwise, I would naturally have postponed my move in order to accommodate your deliberations."
Kirk allowed the grin to surface. He stood, stretched and wandered over to the sideboard.
"Want a drink?" he threw over his shoulder. "I might need one to figure my way out of this one."
"No, thank you, Captain," came the expected reply. Kirk came back to the desk with two glasses and a bottle of brandy. They had been playing this particular routine for months now. On this occasion, Spock barely gave the glasses a glance. He said:
"May I ask what is on your mind, Captain?"
Kirk smiled, that full-on dazzle for which Spock would never admit, even to himself, to waiting, even to deliberately courting. He said, gently
"You could have simply asked, Spock, instead of putting your knight in jeopardy."
"My knight...?" Dark eyebrows shot up and Spock's eyes swung back to the board. He glanced up at Kirk, manifestly uncertain as to whether or not this was a bluff, and Kirk laughed out loud.
He reached out and poured two generous glasses, pushing one over to his friend.
"You may have to lead this mission on your own, Spock, and without any back-up, I'm afraid."
Spock said nothing but waited for clarification. He had known since Kirk laid out the chessboard earlier that evening that his captain was preoccupied, that the game would allow Kirk time and space to make a decision, that he would communicate it to Spock only when he wanted Spock's views and share it with the rest of the senior officers only after that. It was not the first time Kirk had used a game of chess for this purpose and Spock would put the odds very high – probably in the region of 97.88% - against it being the last. He held the glass in his hand, enjoying the swirl of cool gold liquid, and cocked an eye at his Commanding Officer.
Kirk smiled back, across his own glass, but he looked worried.
"I've had another report of kidnappings in the sector," he said bluntly.
"That report from HQ at 1400 hours today," Spock surmised.
"Yup. A team of scientists on Polus 7. Starfleet are really worried, though pretending not to be. And the Polus Governor's office is going demented, as you might imagine. The Republic has been dealing with it, but I think Ray Marsh is rather out of his depth. I don't want to tread on his toes, but – well, I think I'm going to have to go over there."
"You would like me to lead the mission to Dolganin," offered Spock. "I have already assembled a team and this will cause no difficulty."
Kirk sighed.
"Yes, I'm going to have to take the ship to Polus and, no, the Dolganin survey won't wait. Which is ridiculous, because you and I both know it's about as urgent as writing to my grandmother, and my grandmother has been dead twenty five years. But that's how it is. And it needs a command-ranking team leader – again, not because it does, because that's how it is. You know." Spock knew. The Dolganin system, small and remote but rich in dilithium deposits, had agreed after years of careful negotiation to join the Federation, and the request for a Starfleet team to carry out a survey of their most distant moon was the equivalent of asking a Nobel prize-winning scientist to prescribe painkiller for a child with a cold (Kirk had said). Starfleet, surprisingly (or not surprisingly, Kirk had also said, depending on your point of view) had been quite clear on the need to deploy their flagship vessel for this purpose. Oddly (or, there again, not oddly, depending again on your point of view), Kirk had not been vociferously opposed to the idea.
The planet was, by all accounts and according to the Enterprise's initial remote findings, a paradise. Kirk and Spock had each visited enough deadly paradises not to take this for granted, but nevertheless, the signs were promising. Kirk had come up with a mission plan which involved the ship's two commanding officers, a small team of scientists, a shuttle, a temporary base station and a week planetside.
"A week, Captain?" Spock had asked, eyebrows climbing. "I find it very unlikely that the survey will take a week to complete. While it is commendable to build into the schedule a margin of additional time on a contingency basis to allow for error and for the unexpected, optimal planning for the remainder of our current mission suggests that –"
"- that the Captain and First Officer aren't always rushing at warp 8 to complete everything," Kirk had finished smoothly. "C'mon, Spock. Give. Loosen up. We'll finish the survey in five days, I agree. And then, if it checks out, we'll have two days' leave, and so will the rest of the crew. Let it happen."
Kirk's plans had involved more than those two days of leave. The captain of the Enterprise would always put the mission first, that was without question. At the same time, if Starfleet wanted to waste the valuable time of an extremely efficient command team on diplomatic candy, Kirk wasn't above balancing the boredom of the mission with some fringe benefits. Both he and Spock would be somewhat superfluous to mission needs. Which meant that a week on Dolganin, carefully planned and implemented, would allow him some serious time alone with Spock.
There was, of course, not the slightest need to devise complicated schemes to spend time with Spock, given that the Fleet's largest ship contained ample facilities designed specifically for the optimal functioning of its command team. And it was not as though Kirk loved his First Officer, nor as though that love were returned. Strictly speaking, in fact, Kirk had no empirical evidence of Spock's feelings either way. But there was empirical evidence and empirical evidence. And the fact of the matter was that only four months remained of the five year mission and time for many things, including chess games, shore leave and declarations of love, was running out.
It could be argued, of course, that chess games were empirical evidence. It could be argued that the lift of an eyebrow, in a particular context, was empirical evidence. Kirk's private dossier of empirical evidence also included the following: a broad smile and a near embrace on a memorable occasion in Sickbay; a moment's support in a turbolift en route to Starbase 4 from Triacus; and a delay of incomprehensible duration in Tholian space – plus a rather large number of offers of promotion, which Kirk happened to know Spock had turned down and which Spock (Kirk believed) was unaware that Kirk knew he had received, thereby avoiding the necessity to discuss Spock's motivation for declining them.
At the time, hearing about Kirk's plans for Dolganin, Spock had opened his mouth, met Kirk's eyes and closed it again, which came close to constituting a further item in Kirk's dossier, especially given subsequent discussions – admittedly instigated enthusiastically by Kirk but not ruled out of hand by Spock – of camping equipment for two, trekking routes and nutrition compatible with old fashioned camp fires . Now, Kirk set down his glass with unnecessary force and pulled a PADD towards him.
Spock watched him.
"Captain," he said levelly, "I am more than qualified, both in scientific and diplomatic terms, to lead this mission. The mission to Polus is of much greater significance, not least in terms of the risk involved to a considerable number of lives, and your deployment on that basis is the most logical and efficient use of resources at this point in time."
Kirk glanced up sharply and met the dark eyes. Something illogical and indefinable clashed between them – resentment and accusation from the human, refusal from the Vulcan. The air was suddenly heavier than it had been before the Vulcan's chess move.
Kirk said, tasting the words, neither quite stating nor quite asking:
"You are not sorry to be missing the opportunity to spend some time with your Commanding Officer before the end of the mission."
Spock said, very carefully
"I was not aware that we were having a personal conversation, nor making personal arrangements in the context of an emerging political and humanitarian emergency."
Kirk laughed, shortly.
"Clearly not. I had thought, though, that this was precisely what we were doing before the emergency arose."
It was further than he had ever ventured into their No Man's Land of non-admission. But it was too late, now, the words were out.
Into the silence, Spock said, blandly
"You give neither of us sufficient credit, Captain. That would have been entirely inappropriate behaviour under any circumstances within the context of a command-led mission."
Nothing much for the dossier there, then. Kirk swallowed. He had his answer. At least, for now.
And, being Kirk, he turned immediately into Starship Captain.
"We'll break orbit at 0800 hours," he said, playing the numbers in his head. "That means, by the time we've got to Polus and back, you'll have had five and a bit days to play with on Dolganin. Is it too much to ask, Commander, that you could manage to stay out of trouble for that long?"
Vulcan eyebrows rose, predictably.
"Five point three two days, sir. And Vulcans do not – "
"- get into trouble. Sure. Better get an early night, just in case," Kirk said, affectionately, and Spock rose and nodded.
"Goodnight, Jim."
Kirk watched his First Officer walk across the room and waited till the doors had opened to say, casually
"Oh, and Spock?"
The First Officer of the Enterprise turned.
"I nearly forgot. Checkmate."
The first watch the next day was uneventful, giving Kirk's thoughts time to wander back over the conversation the night before. Walking down to the shuttle bay that morning to see Spock and the team off, he had studied his friend covertly for any signs of discomfort or retreat and found none. True to his word, Spock's team had already been carefully selected and briefed and Kirk's chagrin at missing the time he had promised himself with Spock was ameliorated by pride in his crew and the efficiency with which the unexpected was accommodated and converted into faultless delivery. There was little for Kirk to do beyond saying a few words to each member of the team and drawing Spock to one side for a final farewell.
"I apologise for last night, Mr Spock," he said, smiling into his friend's eyes and knowing Spock would be aware of the double-entendre. "It was underhand of me to win the game using that particular strategy and I am honour bound to offer a rematch at the first possible opportunity."
Spock nodded slowly.
"I will look forward to that, sir."
"Well, good luck, Commander," Kirk said, lightly. "And I do hope it is, indeed, a paradise, but take care, all the same." He reached out and clasped Spock's shoulder; Spock saluted and the moment was gone.
Chekov reported a slight course change to maximise speed to Polus and a Yeoman brought him the report he had requested from the first kidnapping, a middle-ranking Starfleet officer on leave in Alorus 5. Something nagged at Kirk around the details of the kidnap, something which rang a bell. He knew himself well enough that it would come to him if he distracted himself, so he did both what he wanted to do and what the strategic situation called for – asked for a coffee and disengaged his mind , which took about 7.45 seconds to return to his Science Officer.
For the majority of the five year mission, Kirk had been content to let his friendship with his First Officer develop without any sort of steer from his part. Any form of deliberate or contrived framework would have been inconceivable for a relationship which, developing organically of its own accord, in the most unlikely of circumstances and between the most unlikely of participants, had come to be the most important of Kirk's life. He had never looked for it or anything like it. Whilst enjoying friendly relationships as a junior officer, he had been all too aware of their fragility, vulnerable as they were not only to mission casualties but more mundanely to transfers and promotions, without notice and without consultation. Signing on in his first command, he had additionally in mind the need for fairness, the regulations against fraternalisation, the importance of developing a command rapport which could be capsized by strong feelings of any kind for one crewmember over another. So he had expected his five year mission to be professionally satisfying without the nourishment of human warmth, punctuated nonetheless by sessions in McCoy's office fuelled by Romulan ale and Georgian folk wisdom. But then he had met Spock.
Kirk had no real idea about what life after the mission would look like; he only knew that, tough as losing the Enterprise was going to be, if the future didn't involve chess games with Spock it might, just might, not actually be tolerable. He had moved beyond the idea of an open, frank conversation where they explored their feelings for each other – nice, but at this point and given Spock's current demeanour, somewhere between impossible and stupid – and had recently conceived the idea of proposing to the Vulcan that they took out a temporary lease on an apartment together. Kirk didn't feel this had any particular overtones attached – not least because he was unsure of what he himself wanted from Spock, beyond guaranteed physical proximity, the smile in dark eyes that Kirk knew was only for him, that hand on his arm, that voice in his head and the chance to let it grow naturally towards wherever it was going. Sometimes, he woke at night in imaginary warmer-than-human arms; sometimes, he paused in the middle of shore leave liaisons and wondered what on earth he thought he needed from Spock; sometimes, he was glad Spock was unaware of where his thoughts ran at night – and hoped that this was, in fact, true; sometimes, he caught Spock's eye across a briefing room and knew, empirical evidence or not, that he'd been right all along. Naturally, there would be a number of bedrooms in this apartment and the arrangement could be presented as a financial and administrative solution to two single people not wanting to board in barracks indefinitely. He had not the slightest idea of how Spock would react to the suggestion, having entirely lacked, to date, the courage to put it to him.
The trouble was that, as the mission drew to an end, he knew himself, against his own inclination, to be anxious about what this friendship would look like, outside the confines of the ship, subject to the scrutiny of others and where, above all, they were suddenly presented with choices – not to work together, not to live together, not to sit together on a bridge which encapsulated neatly all that Kirk wanted from life – command decisions (taken with Spock) and off duty relaxation (taken with Spock). As five years became three – two - one year and now four months, he found himself increasingly uncertain of what Spock's choices might have been. And what they would be.
And just as Kirk was aware that he was beginning to push the Vulcan for responses which he was clearly unwilling to give – resulting in tense and, frankly, unedifying exchanges such as the one the night before – so Spock was, unless Kirk was utterly paranoid, beginning to withdraw. A year into the mission, and therefore nine months after they had started playing chess and eight and a half months after Kirk's dizzying realisation that the tall, slim figure in Science blues whose normal discourse was a mathematical formula to seven decimal points had become his friend, Kirk had discovered that Spock had been keeping score. At that point, Kirk was narrowly ahead by a margin of six games. Swallowing back an inner tidal wave of warmth – less at the score, more at the fact that it was being kept – Kirk proposed that at the end of the five year mission, both commanding officers would go on shore leave together, at the expense of the loser and the choice of the victor for the number of days equivalent to the winning margin of matches. Spock had said:
"I have no objection to such an arrangement, Captain. My intention has always been that at the end of our mission, after prolonged engagement with the Terran majority on the Enterprise, in order to redress to what extent possible the balance in my life and prior to any other posting, I would seek leave temporarily to enter a mediation faculty on Vulcan to improve my techniques and re-acclimatise myself to the desert climate." And, most unusually, had turned away rather suddenly from the expression on Kirk's face, leaving Kirk almost sure that the Vulcan controls had slipped and that a full frontal exposure would have shown a smile reaching well beyond those black eyes.
However, when Kirk had made a recent allusion to the arrangement, the First Officer had said, remotely
"In fact, Captain, whilst I initially felt concern that I might be an inadequate opponent for you, given your prowess in the game, we have appeared to have acquired a degree of understanding of each other's board strategies and the margin by which you are ahead is currently insignificant and certainly insufficient to allow for travel anywhere very removed from Starfleet HQ where you are likely to be based."
The only factor in that speech coming close to empirical evidence was Spock's admission that the two now lived in each other's heads. Which was something, if Kirk were feeling optimistic.
Sometimes, Kirk mused that there would come a time when Spock would be prepared to give his perspective on the games they had played for most of the five year mission – not on the chess games, but on what this evasion, that denial meant – what lay behind that particular expression or that particular silence. Sometimes, though, he thought that it wouldn't be necessary, that when they were able to come together he would simply know that he had been right all along, that everything had been as he had seen it, all those years.
There were also times, of course, when he thought that perhaps that time would never come and he would never be able to ask and would never know. But he would not be James T Kirk if these times came very often.
And it was because he was James T Kirk that it was at precisely this point in his thoughts that he realised what had snagged his attention in the report on Alorus 5. A sensation with which he was familiar – a combination of anxiety and a surge of adrenalin that said "I can do this" – swept over him and he leaned forward sharply in his chair.
"Mr Chekhov, increase speed to warp 9, please. And Uhura, get me Starfleet Command, please, on a secure channel."
Out here, in a remote sector, only four months from the end of the mission and without Spock. It would have to be Klingons.
Kirk had met junior ensigns with more strategic grasp than the Governor of Polus.
"A military solution," he said patiently for the sixth time that morning, "may or may not be viable. Starfleet will not back away from one where it would be appropriate. However, at this point we simply have insufficient knowledge of where the hostages are being held."
"I thought, Captain, that this sort of thing was your job," the Governor said, heavily. "Are you telling me Starfleet has no idea where these people are? They've been gone for days, man!"
Kirk did not like being called "man", nor did he like the Governor's choice of clothes, food or diplomatic advisors, but he reminded himself that these things were unimportant in the scale of things – also that the Governor, for all that he wore dayglo pink clothing, smelled of sour milk, made preposterously unfunny and tasteless jokes which were lapped up by his sycophantic secretariat - and clearly thought Kirk was a particularly moronic second lieutenant, was legitimately and justifiably concerned about the lives of individuals seized on his territory.
"We have ascertained," he said, carefully, "that the three scientists taken from Polus are being held by a division of the Klingon intelligence service under an individual called Commander Kron, with whom we have established contact. The Klingons have rather spuriously claimed a section of this quadrant and on that basis are justifying their actions on the basis that Starfleet officials in the area can be randomly accused of espionage. Our experience of the Klingons suggests that it is unprofitable to spend too much time unpicking their professed rationale – the truth is more likely to be that they will fabricate whatever excuses they need to target particular personnel . It would be profitable instead to consider the profiles of the known victims to try to understand why they have been singled out – and who might be next."
"Next? Good God, man, you mean you're contemplating letting them take more hostages instead of trying to save the ones we've already lost! I didn't realise you lot were so defeatist." There were murmurs of consent around the table and the young civil servant nearest the Governor said "Hear, hear, sir."
Kirk drew a deep breath, and at that point his communicator went off.
"Forgive me, gentlemen," he said, briefly, and stepped away from the table.
"Kirk here," he said, facing the window and scanning the view automatically. A scene not unlike Earth – trees, a grassy area, some kids playing with what looked like an old tyre. Uhura's voice came through the comm. Looking back on it, he might have detected a strained note, but that would have been hindsight. At the time, it was simply his Communications Officer relaying a message.
"Captain, we have received another message from Kron, sir."
"Another? Good, at least he's still in communication. Can you pipe it down to the conference?"
"Yes, sir," and this was the point at which the hesitation in her voice was unmistakable. "You might want to be aware of its contents first, though, Captain."
Kirk frowned.
"Why? Give me the headline news, Uhura, what does he want?"
"Sir – sir, he says that the team we left on Dolganim are now in his hands, sir. Captain, he is giving you three days to surrender the ship or he will execute Mr Spock."
There was a burst of laughter from the children outside. Inside, Kirk heard further chuckles, doubtless in response to a further sally by the governor.
"Is it too much to ask, Commander, that you could manage to stay out of trouble for that long?"
He put his hand up to his face, rubbed his forehead, and shook his head slightly, as though not understanding something. He felt horribly cold, suddenly, chilled to the bone. And then the moment passed, and he turned back to the briefing table.