Jim's a horrible devil, isn't he? Poor Spock! You can hold your threats for now as well - this part is pretty much angst free. What is the world coming to?!
And for the record, my laugh as I sit here plotting is more devious and malevolent, though it does at time border on wicked.
"Kirk?"
Jim sat at the desk in the office he had been given, elbow deep in the 3D schematics for the new warp core Scotty had sent him over that morning. In previous models the couplings had been crafted out of solid steel, designed to withstand the brute pressure created by the core when it was active. Together, Jim and Scott had proposed a new design which made use of an alloy based material and though strong enough to do the job of its predecessor, allowed for nine degrees more flexibility. The design should, they had postulated, decrease the likelihood of the two couplings falling out of alignment. It wasn't a surety, but as Jim had put it, the worst that could happen was it made kicking the damn thing back into place a little easier on the poor bastard who did the job.
Starfleet Engineering had been running the design for the last four weeks, subjecting it to every category of control measures they could before the approval had come in that morning. The progress had been uncharacteristically quick, something Jim attributed to the urgency of getting the Enterprise active again, and a long, tedious evening where he and Scotty had plied the head of the department with whiskey and strippers. Underhanded, him? It was Scotty's idea, actually, he just suggested the bar.
"Kirk!" Jim jumped in surprise, not having seen the arrival of the Admiral who now stood in the doorway. Then it was a case of trying not to grimace.
"Admiral Archer. What bring you out on this fine-"
"Save it, Kirk." Archer had been dealing with Winona's bullshit long before he'd had to deal with Jim's and as such possessed an uncanny ability to cut right through it. There weren't many people that gave Jim the instant urge to snap his heels and salute, but Jonathan Archer was one. "According to various faculty members," Archer's expression made it clear what he though of them, "you've locked your entire senior class in a room and turned off life support."
"Is that a problem?" Jim frowned, failing to see why that would require someone of Archer's standing to descend on Jim's tiny office space.
"Some might say it is." Archer said. As old as he was, Jim had no delusions about the Admiral's ability to make his life difficult. It was Archer's fault Jim was teaching in the first place.
"Oh." Jim frowned. "That's unfortunate because they're in the middle of a class."
"A class you're supposed to be teaching."
"I am teaching it." Jim protested. "I'm also doing the workload of four people," he pointed out with a glance at the piles of work that were literally surrounding his desk and spilling over onto the floor. Starfleet might be paperless but it sure as hell did not know how to utilize space. "So I'm multitasking."
Archer took a seat opposite Jim's desk without being offered. "I see. And do you plan on letting them out before they suffocate?"
Jim shrugged. "They'll be fine."
"They'll be dead." Archer argued.
"It's the first class. Even I wouldn't kill a student in the first class." That sounded much more reassuring in Jim's head. He tried again. "No fatalities, I promise."
"I'll hold you to that, Kirk." Archer warned. "Just because Barnett convinced me to let you run your little experiment-"
"Training exercise, sir." Jim protested.
"Experiment," Archer repeated, glaring at Jim from beneath heavy gray eyebrows. "It does not give you carte blanche to just kill off your students. Recruitment's down as it is and we've already invested three years in this bunch."
"You're all heart, Admiral." Jim chuckled. Archer looked at him pointedly. "They're perfectly safe, I assure you."
"I've heard that from you before." Archer pointed out. He reached out for the holo Jim was working on and began to inspect the specs. "I seem to recall it ended in Chris having to lock both you and McCoy in the brig."
Jim cringed. That hadn't been one of his finer moments. In fairness, it had been mostly Gaila's fault, though Uhura had unwittingly played a hand in it. Bones had just been along for the ride and still had the tattoo.
"No incarceration will be necessary." Jim stressed. "It's just something easy to break them in. Worst case scenarios and all that."
Archer set the holo down without comment, which was as close to praise as Jim was ever going to get from the man who had once threatened to have his mother shot on sight. In Archer's defense, she'd probably deserved it. "All the shit you've pulled over the years and the worst you can do to them is lock them in a room together?"
"Without life support." Jim protested again, this time grinning.
"I'm still failing to see the lesson here."
"It's Thursday." Jim explained. Archer frowned questioningly. The old bastard had been out of the loop for too long. "Thursday morning." Jim prompted. "First class of the day… which is followed by the same eleven am lecture it has been for the last thirty years…"
Realization dawned on Archer's face, along with something that might have been reluctant admiration. "That's cruel, Kirk, even for you."
"Hey," Jim held up his hands, "Worst case scenario."
In honesty he'd struggled for a while with how best to break the cadets into the class he'd convinced the head of the Academy to let him lead. Intuition and spontaneity were two attributed not actively taught on the syllabus for any major and Jim strongly felt they should be. `Shit Creek 101 was, in essence, designed to force cadets into breaking some of the carefully crafted rules they were bound by.
So yes, Jim had locked them all in the classroom, and yes, he'd turned off life support. That was only a mild concern, as they had more than enough air to last them the entire morning even without the extra generator. Right now, they'd be a little freaked out, a little confused.
The shit of Shit Creek would be dawning in roughly ten minutes when the more astute of them realized that Jim had no intention of returning to let them out in time for their next class.
Then…then there would be mass panic.
Thursday's eleven hundred slot had been given over to Interspecies Diplomacy thirty years ago and taught by the same instructor ever since. Jim had always found the class slightly surreal as it was taught by a woman who had no patience, no tact and no sense of humor. Supposedly, being late didn't get you a demerit; it got you kicked off the course. Since it was a requirement for all Command students, even Jim hadn't dared test the validity of the rumor.
"Will they make it?" Archer queried.
Jim shrugged. "The override to the door is easy enough." He'd tested it on Chekov, who'd cracked it in fifty seconds, and then Bones, who'd thrown the PADD at his head. Somewhere in there was a middle ground, he was certain. "Their best bet is to just take the door off."
"You want them to cheat?" Archer laughed, leaning back in the chair.
"God yes." Jim huffed, seizing back his holo. He really did have too much work to do. "What else am I supposed to teach them?"
"Kirk!" Jim threw the holo down onto his desk and gave up. Clearly he wasn't going to get anything done that morning if people kept interrupting him.
"Lieutenant, what can I do for you?" Jim asked, smiling when he saw Uhura standing in the doorway. She was in uniform, so he used her rank.
She, however, did not seem inclined to use his. "What the hell did you do to my boyfriend?" She snapped, taking Jim back to a time in the Academy where he'd genuinely feared for his balls every time they crossed paths.
"Er…" Jim stalled, "he was fine when I left him this morning." He said hastily. Granted, fine was a relative term, but Spock had been functioning, if not entirely steady on his feet.
"Bullshit! Do you have any idea what you've done?"
Jim rose from his chair and held up his hands. "We had cookies. So there might have been a little chocolate involved and really, am I just supposed to know that cocoa is intoxicating to Vulcans?" So he had known, and maybe he'd been a bit unfair, but the look of complete bewilderment on Spock's face when his equilibrium had abandoned him had been priceless. And at least Jim escorted him home and put him to bed. Bones had a tendency to just dump him in the shower and turn on the spray, the sadistic bastard.
"Save it, Kirk.' Uhura glared at him. "We both know you're never as dumb and pretty as you pretend to be."
"Hey, I'm always pretty." Jim protested with a pout. "And technically he started it." Jim was apparently on the same mental wave length as a five year old these days. Though it was true, Spock had been the one who made the damn cookies in the first place, which was a weird enough thought as it was. He's gotten a holo to send to Jo – she'd be thrilled.
Uhura rolled her eyes at him and advanced threateningly. It wasn't cowardly to hide behind his chair, Jim told himself as he did exactly that. "I don't care who started it." She growled. "I don't even care that it happened in the first place. What I do care about is the complete lack of warning you gave me before I woke up to a hung-over Vulcan."
Oh. Oh shit. Jim cringed. "I owe you something shiny, don't I?" He said apologetically.
"You bought me new shoes." Uhura said grumpily. That was when Jim saw the bag by her feet. The large bag from what looked like a designer boutique. "They are very fierce and very expensive."
"I'm generous that way." Jim nodded quickly; glad to see she'd at least give him enough rope to hang himself with. "And did I happen to get you a bag to go with them?"
"No," She said, her anger cracking as a smile touched her lips. "But you are taking me out for lunch and how much you eat will determine how many stores I drag you around in search of a dress to go with them."
"I've created a monster, haven't I?" Jim sighed, obligingly reaching for his uniform jacket. When did he think it was okay to teach his crew the fine art of blackmail and coercion?
All traces of Uhura's ire had complete bled away as she looped her arm though his and made him carry her bag. "You did." She agreed.
"Sorry about Spock." Jim tried giving her his best woeful expression. It had only had a thirty percent success rate in the past and didn't look likely to improve on those odds if her laugh was anything to go by.
"It's okay." She chuckled, bumping Jim's arm with her shoulder. "But next time send him straight to work. Let Scotty deal with him."
"That seems kinda harsh…" Jim mused, trying to imagine just how miserable Spock must be making everyone right about now and was exceedingly pleased that he was on a different planet. Uhura raised an eyebrow and looked meaningfully at the bag in Jim's hand. He quickly backtracked, "but fair, totally fair."
Uhura continued to drag him out of the building. Jim shot Janice Rand a desperate look as he was dragged past her desk, but she ignored him in favor of filing her nails to scarily sharp points.
"You know," he pouted, "I'm starting to think these bars on my sleeve are just for decoration."
"Pretty much." Uhura nodded wickedly. "Now move your ass, Captain, or I'll have McCoy meet us for lunch."
Jim was going, going. Gone.