I do not own Supernatural or Star Trek 2009.
I believe I mentioned in the first chapter of Diplomatic Conflict Resolution that Kirk got his first official command reprimand and the idea just wouldn't let me go. This is the first story I've written that takes place before The Tamir Incident, so there are no Winchesters. Sadly. But it's still a good story!
Note: mentions of cannibalism. Nothing graphic, just the discussion of the practice and someone from the Enterprise is threatened. We, of course, know Kirk won't allow his crew members to come to harm...
Four months into his captaincy, Jim Kirk was pretty sure the only order he would ever dread more than a diplomatic mission would be the one that ordered him to return the Enterprise to space dock for decommissioning.
However, that day (if it ever came - Kirk had vague plans involving the slightly illegal acquisition of a rather large starship with the moniker Enterprise stamped all across her pretty saucer) was very, very far away.
In the meantime, he could hate diplomatic missions with a passion.
So he was very tempted to have the Enterprise drag her heels all the way to P3-3B34. Diplomatic mission #3 would send Enterprise to a planet with very little information about the natives provided and two 'negotiators' would be picked up from the Mackenzie en route.
It turned out that the negotiators were very arrogant, very educated and very unimpressed with the Enterprise and her crew. Still, Kirk could suck it up and work with Dr. Adams and Dr. Neus, despite the fact that Dr. Adams looked like a skinny, sharp fish bone and Dr. Neus was an oily butterball.
The planet in question had a decently high level of infrastructure and wanted access to the Federation's assistance program as they were suffering from a foreign beetle introduced by the Klingons. Said bug was eating all their grain crops and the planet was petitioning for assistance and membership within the Federation.
The doctors did their sleazing, sliming and negotiating as Kirk and his people fidgeted in space, ordered to stay out of the way. There seemed to be slow progress and eventually Kirk and his bridge crew were invited down to the planet for a feast. Cabin fever was starting to set in and the idea of a fun night got everyone into good spirits.
None of the Enterprise's crew was exactly what you could call old, but Kirk was definitely feeling all the weight of his 25 of his years watching 19 year old Chekov bounce happily down the hall, excited as all get out at the idea of examining some fascinating numerical conundrum down on the planet. Of course, Kirk would be sitting and listening to some self-important geezer drone on and on ad nauseam about how the Federation was lucky to add their planet's august skills, wealth, wisdom and stunning good looks to their rosters.
Joy and happiness all around. It sounded like so much fun, Kirk almost broke out the party favours.
He was dutifully gnawing on some planetary seafood delicacy that kind of tasted like a weirdo cross between calamari and venison (not so tasty, but Kirk had a great poker face) and listening to the leader's mantra of awesomeness when there was a roar down at the far end of the table.
Poking his head up, he spotted a bewildered Chekov setting down the abacus he had been using to happily confer with the planet's nerds. His new friend was glaring at him and starting to wave his eight-fingered hands in Chekov's face.
Stepping forward and smoothly inserting himself between the very angry, very tall alien and his navigator, Kirk held up his hands with a disarming smile. "Problem, gents? Uhura, translate if you'd be so kind."
The talented lieutenant-commander warbled away, frowning as the conversation continued. When dark looks began to settle on surrounding natives' faces, Kirk discreetly motioned for everyone to prepare for an emergency beam-up.
When Uhura subtly flashed him the signal for "Get us the hell out of here now," Kirk wasted no time in tapping the comm. "Time to not be here Scotty," he murmured and relaxed as the crew, negotiators included materialized on the platform of the Enterprise.
"Uhura?" he asked before the very temperamental doctors could tear him a new one. She was shaking with a mix of disgust and anger.
"Sir, they're cannibals."
Everyone in the room stared. "I beg your pardon?" Kirk asked dubiously.
"That's what I said. I explained that the translator device had malfunctioned and it was in no way Ensign Chekov's fault, so could they please perhaps just allow the mistake to slide. They listened very nicely, as you saw. And then they replied that the only way for them to forgive the insult was if they could consume the individual who offered the insult in the first place. They only resolve conflicts by…eating the person who was insulting."
"V-vhat did I say?" poor Chekov stammered.
"Nothing," Uhura huffed. "Nothing at all. The stupid translator you were wearing malfunctioned and translated 'would' as 'your mother sleeps with dogs.'"
Kirk tried to swallow a chuckle, biting his lip. Good insult. Uhura glared at him. "They were going to eat Chekov and you think it's funny?"
Kirk sobered. "No, I don't think it's funny at all. But how did the translator get that from 'would?'"
"I don't know, sir" Uhura snipped, still in a bit of a huff and miffed that one of her precious translators had dared to defy her awesome rule.
"Uhura, check out the translator. Spock, could you draft an apology to the natives and run it through a working translator? Everyone else, as you were."
The room had finally emptied and Kirk was trying to figure out how exactly to phrase this little incident in a report so Chekov didn't look like an idiot when Dr. Adams finally broke through. "Captain, I insist."
Kirk spread his hands. "Insist what, exactly?"
"That Ensign Chekov commit himself to the gravity of his mistake and return to the planet."
Kirk started to laugh until he realized they were serious.
"Sir, the reply from the planetary natives came back." Spock's very stiff posture was not encouraging.
"Yes?"
"They were quite rude and demanded to speak to the doctors, who the natives assured me would see their point of view. Evidently, Mr. Chekov looks very appetizing. They are stating that if Mr. Chekov does not join them, they will call off their treaty with the Federation."
"Oh really? Hmm." A quick tap of the comm. "Uhura? I need your considerable talents."
"You kicked the evil negotiating doctors from hell off the ship?" McCoy demanded roughly.
As per Kirk's orders, Scotty and Cupcake had happily assigned a very big, very scary security officer to pilot an Enterprise shuttle to the closest shipping channel and then reportedly dropped the negotiators on a smelly Starfleet ore transport. Served the dicks right.
"Yep. Gave them five minutes to pack and booted their nasty asses off my ship."
"You'll be lucky if all you get is a reprimand."
"Do I look like I care?" Kirk was storming through his ship, gathering up his bridge crew one by one so that he would have time to calm down instead of calling them all at once and declaring war on the idiot negotiators.
"You don't, but Chekov sure as hell does."
"What?" Kirk swivelled around to walk backwards. Sure enough, a wide-eyed Chekov stared in abject dismay at his captain.
"K…keptin," he managed to wobble before Kirk gave him a blinding grin.
"Mr. Chekov. It is my duty to protect the members of this crew. I honestly don't give a damn what the Admiralty thinks. And if I don't give a damn, you don't get to either. I am not going to lose my best and brightest navigator because some negotiators neglected to inform us that the 'friendly' natives we were associating with happened to have a taste for human flesh."
The young Russian shuddered at the thought and Kirk nodded emphatically before stopping and clapping the ensign on the shoulders to stare him in the eye. "What kind of a captain, friend or even man would I be if I sent you off to die? Come on. We're going to talk to Uhura, find out what happened and sort this mess out."
Uhura was still pissed as hell at her translator (apparently translator malfunction was a personal insult), but gave her report with admirable restraint and professionalism.
Unfortunately, Chekov took the report the wrong way.
"Zhis all heppened because I hev accent?" Chekov's thin shoulders straightened even as his English deteriorated. "Ser-sir, it v-v-will not hep-happen again."
Kirk took a look at the ensign, looked really closely.
Poor kid's self-confidence was in tatters. He got enough flack for being the only teenager aboard and a genius to boot. Most of the ribbing was good-natured, but enough teasing and it would still smart. On top of that, Chekov was already hyper-aware of his accent despite the fact that pretty much everyone liked his vills, wessels, sers, and keptins. The accent was friendly, burred of enthusiasm, Russia and vodka, told you all you wanted to know about the kid's emotional state and now Russian (even spoken by strangers) reminded Kirk of Chekov himself.
Chekov speaking unaccented English?
Perish the thought.
"Chekov, it won't happen again."
The poor Russian drooped further.
"Uhura, you wouldn't mind writing a patch into the Enterprise's systems for accented English?"
Uhura thought hard for a minute. "It can be done. Actually, it should be done, given the number of non-English speakers we encounter. Pavel's English is pretty good, not every ambassador we get has the same skill."
Chekov looked a little stunned.
"Ensign, you are proud of your heritage and Starfleet respects that. Keep your accent as long as you like. You've made a meaningful contribution to the Federation today by giving rise to a situation where Uhura was given a good idea that will probably aid important negotiations in the future." Kirk grinned and dropped the captain persona.
"Dude, your accent rocks."
Pike stared at an unrepentant Captain Kirk. "Do you have any idea what kind of a stink those two idiots are kicking up?"
Kirk shrugged carelessly, but his eyes were hard and cold. "They wanted me to turn over one of my senior bridge crew to be eaten because they didn't see why it was relevant to mention that the planet liked to solve their issues by roasting each other. Literally. Pardon me for being irritated at the fact that one – important information was omitted from a report, two – we were rushed into this mission, giving us no room to confer with third parties regarding said report and then three – they wanted my officer to pay for their idiocy, omission and unprofessional conduct."
Pike sighed and rubbed his temples. Of course Kirk was right. He was rarely wrong. But jeez, the boy-captain (yes, boy-captain. Most Starfleet captains were in their late thirties or older) just didn't have the patience or experience to care much about tact. Pike could honestly say (having been in a rather similar situation in his captaincy) that a twenty-five-year old version of himself would have handled it as Kirk did. In contrast, by the time Pike was captain, that same situation had been handled far more tactfully. Acting in a just fashion didn't always have to involve beating the problem with an Enterprise-sized sledgehammer.
Of course, Kirk was well within his rights to refuse the doctors' request. Absolutely. If Kirk had gone through with it, Pike would have had him court-martialled for first-degree murder.
But did Kirk have to 'accidentally' send the 'draft' message down to the planet in a language Starfleet knew Kirk didn't speak fluently at all? Suggesting that the insult was nullified because every shit-eating native on the plant had a mother who slept with dogs was not diplomatic at all. Nor was telling the natives that they should roll on their own spears before jumping into the salt-water sea on their doorsteps. Nor was telling them that the Enterprise's captain would rather sleep with a dog himself before turning any crew member over to the natives. It had ended with a neat, universal "go to hell and don't come back." The perfectly worded message reeked of Uhura's skills but no one could prove anything without launching an internal investigation and as Kirk pointed out, nothing criminal had transpired. Thus no investigation.
And now he had two pissed negotiators and a pleased admiral looking for Kirk's head.
"Damn it Jim. I'll talk Cartwright down to a reprimand, but you're going to have to accept the dress-down with nothing less than perfect humility or those snakes will take your ship. And I'm not exaggerating. Cartwright has three Enterprise-hungry captains on hand, just waiting for you to trip up."
Kirk relaxed, taking a real look at the tired admiral for a minute. He could stand a simple lecture if it meant life was easier for Pike. Hell, Kirk would endure a great deal more for his mentor. The man had done a great deal for both Kirk and the Enterprise. Quite frankly, Kirk was rapidly coming to the conclusion that if he was ever half as good a man as Christopher Pike, he'd have done a good job with life.
So, yeah, Kirk would take a lecture from a man he detested and he would be a very model of decorum.
Admiral Cartwright, a furious Jim Kirk fumed two hours later, was a decrepit hulk of rule-bound, mouldy green cheese that should have retired centuries ago. An hour and a half of listening to the old man expound on his theories of captaincy and drivel on and on about how Kirk was an upstart who didn't deserve his position after slamming Pike for ever giving him the Enterprise in the first place – Kirk was ready to send the old man down to the planet as Chekov's replacement.
Cartwright never would have believed it, but yes, Jim Kirk's indomitable personality took work sometimes and enough verbal acid spewed over it would leave burns. Kirk spent the evening re-evaluating his decision making paradigm until Spock and Bones yanked him out of his quarters and smacked some sense into him. A brief "well-done" from Pike didn't hurt either.
Then the official reprimand was waiting for Kirk at the next Starbase and he was told he had to keep it for his records, to be produced when a superior might ask for it.
It was a very nice, heavy piece of plasti-parchment, with nasty black embossing and big sharp letters that stabbed out one's faults in marked writing. The idea that he had acted in a manner unbecoming to Starfleet, his ship and his people burned. The detested thing haunted him for days.
Kirk was glowering at it in the rec room between writing reports and considering lighting the cursed thing on fire, admirals and superiors be damned when a certain ensign bounded by at warp 9, Russian accent thicker than molasses. Sulu was listening intently, the only person on the ship who could understand Chekov when he was that excited. Even Uhura had given up after the kid warbled on at length to her for ten minutes and she hadn't understood more than one word in three.
Chekov was so excited, Kirk only caught the words "adwanced nawigational trans-varp calcuwations, you zee, it is wery interestink" between Russian/English gibberish, bouncing on his toes as he chattered with Sulu.
Suddenly the reprimand looked quite nice.
"Jim, what the hell are you doing?"
"Framing my reprimand and hanging it in the rec room." The 'duh' tone of voice was very irritating, McCoy realized.
"Why, exactly?"
"Because I'm proud of it."
McCoy stopped, thought about what Jim had just said and shook his head with a quick grin.
Captain James T. Kirk was one of a kind.