Chapter 7: The Middle of Difficulty

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. ~ Albert Einstein

xxx

The visor plexi-glass jig-sawed, fragments spinning away, and his suit belched forth all the air sustaining him, moist air crystallising in the endless night. He reared upward, gasping for breath, arms flailing, and heard a voice drawl, "Easy, there, Kirk. Easy. You're safe, Ensign."

He surfaced from his nightmare and registered several things: his ass wasn't floating in space, but anchored firmly to a biobed; a pair of kindly, blue eyes, which regarded him with an authoritative calm; the sound of someone's stentorian breathing. It took him longer than it should to realise it was he who was the source of those loud, gasping breaths. He shuddered and drew a hand over his face, discovering in the process that he was attired in one of those embarrassing medical gowns, of the draughty in the back variety.

The other man glanced at his vitals on the panel overhead. "Well, we may have beamed you aboard ship in the nick of time, but after what you've been through, bad dreams are a given." He produced a medical scanner. "It's just as well you had the sense not to hold your breath. If you had, the damage to your lungs would have been irreparable."

Sense? All he remembered was a wordless scream of terror swallowed into silence and nothingness. "What ship?" His voice sounded hoarse to his ears.

"Scorpion. You're in my Sickbay. I'm McCoy, the CMO."

"On the transporter platform… you gave me a shot," he said, auditing his memory and ordering events in his mind. He remembered little after that.

"Yes, I did. It knocked you out for a while."

Now that his breathing had slowed, he gave the other man a closer look, startled to realise he knew him. "Leonard McCoy."

A fleeting grin. "Well don't sound so accusatory about it. I wasn't sure you'd remember me, Ensign."

"Accusatory? Why ever not? You cleaned me out in under an hour back at Starbase 11. I don't think poker is my game."

"Yeah, I remember. Had me a nice Malbec, and the best rib-eye in years on my winnings."

The doctor turned all business again. "Happy to see your memory seems to be in good fettle. Looks promising for an unimpaired cognitive function. So, how are you feeling?"

"I'm alive." To his surprise he did feel well. "I'm alright. A little woozy."

"You're full of drugs to aid breathing and you're breathing in more." McCoy pointed to the shimmer that betrayed the existence of a medical forcefield shrouding his biobed. A slight heaviness in the air and an indefinable tinge of something, a taste on his tongue he could not identify, presumably whatever medication McCoy referred to. "Also O2," said McCoy. "You'll be here through the graveyard shift for observation. Our transporter team got to you quick, but your body's taken a lot of abuse."

He opened his mouth.

McCoy butted in. "Scorpion's overloaded. She's transferring crew to Starbase 15 and crew quarters are over run. Believe me, you're much better off getting some shut eye here."

"The Pasherin ship that attacked Apollo took out another ship that came to our aid. Were there no…?" He trailed off, when he saw the bleak look in the other man's eye. Evidently, there were not.

"That was Gauntlet. With the losses on Apollo, it makes for a pretty steep butcher's bill. Would have been worse, I understand, if some genius hadn't come up with a nifty idea for the escape pods."

"Apollo's survivors were picked up?"

"All of them, Jim. Captain Garrovick approved," said a lounging presence in Sickbay's doorway.

"Gary!"

"Although, it has to be said, spinning out of control is not a good way to travel. The first Scorpion team to crack a pod's hatch seal nearly fainted from the ordure."

"Better than the alternative!" said McCoy at his most trenchant. "You up for visitors?" he asked, and threw a nod toward Gary, still standing in the doorway. "Someone's been asking about you."

"Did Doctor McCoy tell you that your little plan snagged a Pasherin heavy cruiser that Excelsior and Intrepid finished off?"

"I was getting to it, Mitchell." McCoy bestowed his patented CMO scowl on Gary. "Don't tire him out and don't make him talk too much," he scowled some more and then made himself scarce.

Once the doctor left, Gary gave him an ear to ear grin. His old friend's presence here, standing before him large as life, startled him, primarily because he had thought him to have been assigned to Earth. The second source of surprise was that Gary sported the brand new braid of a lieutenant commander on the regular full black uniform of Security and Intelligence. Jealousy stabbed at him and he crushed the impulse. No reason to punish his friend because Gary hadn't served under a captain like Goodborne for the last four years.

Much back slapping later, Gary asked after his health. He said he was fine, but his friend's mouth tightened into an unhappy line. "Jim, next time please listen. I said you needed to get off Apollo."

Time to change the subject. "New braid, I see. Since when?"

"I heard just before arriving at Vulcan."

Vulcan? He hid his surprise. While there Gary had worn a lieutenant's rank on his uniform and nothing had been said of an imminent promotion. Apparently he was doing a poor job of concealing a reaction to surprising news. Gary was apologetic. "I'm sorry, Jim, I wasn't at liberty to tell you."

"Happy? You've changed duties?" As Doctor McCoy's well savoured dinner would readily attest, he had no poker face, but he maintained a largely genuine expression of pleasure at his friend's success, while wondering. Not at liberty to tell him? Secrecy over a promotion? Gary trying to impress? If so, he felt a pang that his friend needed the boost to his ego.

Gary beamed at him. "Jim, you should follow me. There's a better route to earlier advancement—"

"I'm a tactical officer."

"A good one. S & I needs tactical officers, too. Don't try to tell me that you're not ambitious. I know that you are. I don't wish to speak ill of the dead, but Goodbore loathed you — bedding the Federation Liaison, the woman your captain had set his heart on, was the last straw as far as Goodbore's insecurities were concerned. That would have been good going by the way. Wasn't she twice your age?"

"Hardly." His breath hitched. "Gary, where the hell is this bitchiness coming from?" He tried not to think about the accusation Goodborne had levelled at him: that he was trying to climb his way to a promotion by cultivating powerful friends. Goodborne left hanging the less than subtle insinuation that he was sleeping his way to the top. He hadn't known whether to be furious or hysterically amused.

Gary sighed. "I'm sorry. I think I am angry with her because she was using you."

"Please don't talk about Zeinab like that; she was a dear friend and Goodborne's notions were unfounded. You and I know she was involved with another."

"Mr Kirk, ever the gentleman. Jim, you turned a blind eye while she retrieved Starfleet records with your access codes!"

Ah. He stared at Gary, said nothing.

"Do you even know what she accessed?"

A streak of contrariness made him remain silent. If Gary had asked nicely… His security clearance accorded with his lowly rank and was subject to tight restrictions, which was why he had helped. As it happened, he did know what Zeinab had been about: accessing the intended flightpath of a Starfleet issue shuttlecraft on Vulcan and on the very day the Pasherini had taken it into their heads to attack. Zeinab hadn't bothered to clear her search terms after she was done.

"Oh, Jim."

"Oh, Gary." He disliked giving Gary a door onto the subject of transfers, because his friend was like a dog with a bone and was loath to let the subject drop, but if it served to distract. "I'm all for promotion, but working Security really does not appeal." An understatement. He was not about to say any such thing to Gary's face; he would not dampen his friend's evident joy in his recent advancement, but those of a military intelligence stripe, who now made up most of the S & I department, were not his sort of people. Soulless types, who left an absence of warmth wherever they went and he was not a little appalled about what it said about his friend that Gary, either could not see that, or did not mind. Another pang.

For once, however, Gary seemed not up for persuasion. He let out a sustained breath. "Jim, your trouble is you're not the sort of person to send people out on a mission, you always want to lead the mission from the front. You've got this ingrained conviction that you're necessary to keeping a crew alive."

There was little he could say to refute that, since he understood the compunctions of his own personality and his ego well enough. Academy training and psychological debriefing had seen to it. But he stubbornly clung to the notion that no Starfleet officer worth the uniform would not share that outlook. Yet another pang.

Gary's eyebrows rose. "What?"

"Ah, here ye are, Ensign." Mr Scott poked his head through the doorway and beamed at him, spared a polite nod without a shred of warmth for the other man. "Mr Mitchell." The engineer was not alone, a gaggle of his people piled into the ward with him.

A diminutive figure pushed though the crush. Gregory. "How are you feeling, Mr Kirk?"

He grinned at her, happy to see she was alive and well and ignored the look on Gary's face, who was annoyed at the interruption, for once completely out of sorts with his friend. "I'm feeling fine. I think Doctor McCoy has me here under false pretences." He inventoried his visitors, over a dozen of them and all of whom would have taken to the pods. He caught Mr Scott's eye. "Did we lose anybody?"

The engineers, who had been getting boisterous, quietened.

"We lost Mr Leslie," Scott said.

"What happened?"

"Head injury. Too much bleeding in the brain. Well, that's what we think. I'm no doctor. He died aboard Apollo. Since he was beyond help, we were obliged to leave him there."

"I am very sorry to hear that."

"He was a fine engineer," Gregory said, "and a patient teacher."

"Aye, lass, that he was."

"How did you get off Apollo, Mr Kirk?" Gregory asked.

"Through the shuttle bay; I was still wearing my thruster harness."

One of the engineers, Nogano, nudged Gregory. "Told you," he said. "Only reasonable explanation."

"Yes," he agreed. "I was outside the ship, close enough that I could watch the pods go live and you all head off for the class M. Made me very happy."

"Scorpion," said Scott, "intercepted them before they made the surface.

Gregory made a face. "Everyone who got to a pod survived. Your plan worked like a charm, sir, but the first part of that journey was no way to travel."

An engineer he knew as Copeland nodded. "That's not the half of it. Sick as dogs, we were!"

"Wild ride," said Nogano.

"There were wilder," Scott said, and the rest of them sobered, staring at him. They must all know about his blown suit, that he'd nearly died.

Well, he would not have anyone feel sorry for him. "So, vomit? We're talking projectile here or what?" Did the trick. They stopped staring and started a game of who could out gross who, while Nogano turned greener and greener, to the mirth of the others. They continued like this for the next few minutes, swapping stories. When it became obvious the engineers were in no hurry to leave, Gary threw him a curt nod and stalked off. New promotion gone to his head? Eventually, they were making so much noise that McCoy came in and chased the visitors out, but not before Scott had expressed his disgust that Ensign Kirk was a single malt virgin and declared his intent to introduce him to its joys and subtleties at Starbase 15, where Scorpion was headed.

xxx

AN: Garrovick is the captain referred to in the TOS episode, Obsession, the captain Kirk thought highly of and was devoted to. In my own personal canon, I think of Garrovick as Kirk's Christopher Pike

xxx

Fish out of water.

For Kirk it was a little strange to be aboard a ship with no duties to perform, but the little time Apollo's survivors would remain on Scorpion made it impractical to incorporate them into the ship's duty rosters. So he suffered the same enforced downtime as the rest of the personnel in transit and attempted to mostly stay out of the way. He did introduce himself to Scorpion's Tactical Department and found them an agreeable lot. There followed a less agreeable encounter with the chief tactical officer, who thoroughly grilled him on Apollo's engagement with the Pasherin ship.

Lieutenant Commander Kate Seaton, six feet of walking scowl. He knew the type: no nonsense, from the neat cap of blonde hair trimmed close to her skull, down to her boots with their perfect regulation shine. She seemed well informed, until he kicked himself at the realisation that Apollo's logs must have been recovered.

She said nothing about how Goodborne had comported himself during the battle, but disapproval had radiated off her. Few it seemed had time for his hapless late Captain. She had concentrated her enquiries on Jerome's actions, which, in her own role, was understandable, but it worried him that her line of questioning suggested some fault with how Jerome had handled himself and the ship during Apollo's engagement. He took a dim view of this; his defence of his mentor was probably more combative than was wise for his career. He finally completed his report and thereafter stood at attention, a politic silence maintained. Seaton spared him a final searching stare, before sending him on his way.

He was missing something.

An hour later, when he was summoned to present himself before Scorpion's captain, it was an individual altogether warier in allowing his temper too much latitude, who showed up. By now he had long since swapped Sickbay attire for a clean uniform, albeit one without a ship insignia; its absence made him feel curiously naked and bereft.

Garrovick was a tall man; spare of frame; hair just starting to pepper with grey; the weight of responsibility etching his features; blue eyes that gave away nothing. The captain's gaze immediately flicked to the bare patch on his chest, but whether in approval or not, he could not tell. An insignia was missing, because he considered it an imposition to adopt Scorpion's without a proper reassignment.

It transpired that Garrovick was disposed to be informal. The captain waved a hand at the chair opposite his desk. "Take a seat, Ensign."

He sat. The desk screen was lit and his personnel file displayed. As ever, his heart sank.

"You'll forgive me if I multi-task."

"Of course, sir."

"And if I don't share."

"Yes, sir."

What he proposed to not sharing was evidently his supper. Garrovick sat back down at his desk with a plate of sandwiches and a mug of coffee. The captain chomped a mighty hunk out of one sandwich, scrolled through his file, while munching his way through what lay on his plate. At the pace he was going, he must be starving. He took the time to discretely look around Garrovick's quarters, froze at the painted portrait of a young woman, a small boy on her lap, in pride of place above the captain's bunk. The captain had been married, had had a child. No more. Garrovick's family had perished with the rest, when the Pasherini attacked and took Starbase 31.

Garrovick, at length, pushed his plate away from him and nursed his coffee mug. "You were training to be a navigator at the Academy, before you switched to Tactical."

He wasn't sure that was a question, but he answered anyway. "Yes, sir."

"A week after your parents died in an attack on their transport."

This time he took it as a statement and did stay silent.

"You lost seniority when you moved, but despite the loss in status you still finished in the top percentile of your class, which is apparently why Goodborne handpicked you from the Academy."

"Yes, sir." How happy he had been on receiving his first posting, happiness that turned to bleak drudgery.

"After being selected by Captain Goodborne, there was a general expectation you would be quickly promoted to lieutenant." He ground his teeth. The promotion had been earned, but Goodborne hadn't made good on it. Garrovick continued, "I see there are numerous demerits on your record for insubordination, numerous reprimands recorded. Let's see. Censure, rebuke, admonish — looks like your late captain hit the thesaurus."

"Yes, sir." Well what could he say? It was there in each petty pixel of his captain's disfavour.

"Quite the bad boy, Ensign."

He stilled his anger, understanding Garrovick was trying to provoke and not inclined to oblige him.

Garrovick continued, "A formal request for transfer made by Ensign Kirk on six separate occasions." Garrovick's eyebrows flew upward.

He stifled a grimace. Six official requests, but all he offered was another, "Yes, sir." There was nothing he might say that could not be interpreted as a criticism of his late captain. His intent was to watch his step — captains could be a cliquey lot."

"Yet you remained aboard Apollo?"

"My requests for transfer were denied, as you see, sir." Anger built again and he tamped it down. All the demerits Goodborne later put on his record made other captains recoil from taking him anyway.

Garrovick silently mouthed 'six', marvelling at the ridiculousness of it all. "Even one to Mars, I see." Garrovick looked at him, perplexed, if not outright disbelieving. As a posting, Mars was a byword for mind-numbing tedium, mostly occupied by communications personnel, since Mars was a major hub for comm traffic, but even for communications people invested in their craft, it was a humdrum assignment. Any tactical officer suffering the misfortune of being assigned there would solicit heartfelt condolences from his, her or its peers.

Better set the record straight. "Although, sir," he said. "Something screwy occurred with that last one. That transfer was certainly not at my request."

"Request routed through Security and Intelligence," Garrovick said, scrolling through the file. "Well, it's a moot point, since your captain stopped that one in its tracks, too." Garrovick folded his arms across his chest and sat back in his seat. "If a crewmember is deeply unhappy aboard ship, I cannot understand the merit in keeping that crewmember as part of your crew, when he or she might find a posting better suited to their temperament. An unhappy crewmember is ultimately an unproductive crewmember." Amen to that. Demented laughter would probably do his cause no good. Garrovick stared. "Did Captain Goodborne deign to give you a reason for refusing you a transfer?"

"Commander Goodborne condemned," he swallowed, even now Goodborne's words stung, much as he might tell himself they were the pronouncements of an officer with ham-fisted command skills, my how they still stung, "he condemned my irresolution of will to see a posting through to its conclusion. He advised me a serving Starfleet officer must do better; Starfleet deserved better."

Garrovick's jaw dropped. "I see." The captain scrubbed a hand over his face, regarding him with equal parts consternation and compassion. "And you had four years of this?"

He laughed. He couldn't help it, it bubbled up and wanted out, but to his distress, he felt the prickle of tears behind his eyes, which was ridiculous. All those years of Goodborne's criticisms, years he had borne with composure, and now one drop of sympathy from someone of command rank and he became maudlin and wont to weep like a child?

Garrovick spared his blushes by rising to his feet and searching out more coffee, only to find the flask empty. He flipped open a channel on the comm panel on the other side of the room and ordered up more. Someone — captain's yeoman? — answered with an acerbic, "You weren't planning on sleeping tonight then, sir?"

"Don't think I don't know it's that horrible decaff you've been palming off on me. I could probably put away some more sandwiches like the last lot and if there is the merest chance there is anything remotely like fresh fruit still in stores, I'll have some, whatever it is." While over the other side of his quarters, Garrovick checked in with the Bridge. The captain's meal arrived and was placed upon the desk, the crewman in and out of his captain's quarters in moments.

By which time, he had recovered his equilibrium.

"Where were we?" Garrovick said, rump dropping back into his seat, face falling as he spotted the shrivelled looking apple on the new tray. "Ah, yes, I see Jerome did not share Captain Goodborne's opinion of you. Seaton, Scorpion's own tactical officer, served with Jerome and thought very highly of him."

"I thought him a fine officer, too, sir. Mr Jerome taught me a lot, taught me to never ignore what your gut might be telling you, and to never trade your rooks cheaply."

"He liked chess."

"He loved chess, was frankly obsessed with it. Had one hell of a game. I think it was that which made him so crafty in combat terms. He loved trying to pass that guile on to us." He swallowed. Hard to believe there would be no more epic chess battles in Apollo's Main Rec. "Apollo was outclassed, her fate determined as soon as we engaged the enemy. No one could have done any better with the pieces on the board. I'll not forget him."

Garrovick gave him a moment, in case the emotionalism of moments ago was about to return; when it didn't he continued, "Before I move on, Ensign, I just need to know one thing: did Captain Goodborne ever make inappropriate sexual advances toward you?"

His jaw dropped and his eyes almost flew out on stalks.

"Well, I think that priceless expression tells its own story, for which I am very glad."

He cleared his throat, cleared it some more. "Regardless of sexual orientation, Captain Goodborne would never have done anything like that."

Garrovick was giving him a hard stare. He offered a pained smile, shook his head. "I think its a simpler story of two people rubbing each other up the wrong way, sir. I also think that Captain Goodborne considered me a project — one I would dearly love not to have been the subject of, but that bird has long since flown — where he could set me on the right path to becoming an officer fit to serve in any capacity. It seems he just had some curious notions of how to go about it and how he defined a fit officer."

"Curious indeed. I've read through your personnel file and I think you're being far too charitable, but we'll close the subject on Captain Goodborne"

He kept his expression neutral.

"My final observation is that I am impressed that after Goodborne seemed to have done his damnedest to knock the initiative out of you, you still challenged Montgomery Scott. He tells me you are the one who came up with the plan to save Apollo's survivors."

"Yes, sir." He was not one for false modesty. "I thought it would give our shipmates a chance."

"Whereas you considered Mr Scott's notion doomed to failure?"

"Mr Scott's plan was a suicide mission, a bid to make Apollo go out in a blaze of glory. In that respect I have no doubt he would have attained his objective and been completely successful. What was less likely was that we would have taken any Pasherini with us." He gave Garrovick an earnest look. "I may have expressed myself a little forcefully to Mr Scott at the time, Captain; I deeply respect him, but he's an engineer. I'm in Tactical, trained to think of alternative solutions. If I am honest, sir, I didn't think it would work quite as well as it did."

"That it would work at all, you mean." Garrovick went on to press him about how he and the engineers set up the warp engines, where he stumbled on the finer points of engineering technicalities, about whose decision it was to evacuate the others and remain to engage the warp drive. Garrovick's suggestion that Bhatterjee, as the trained engineer, would have been the better choice to remain annoyed him.

"I could not place Chief Bhatterjee in that position. He is not a commissioned officer!" he said, then added a politic. "Sir."

Garrovick returned his annoyance with mild agreement. "No, he's not. Bhatterjee sends his regards by the way. Intrepid called first dibs and spirited him away, before I had a chance to get my mitts on him." Explains. He'd wondered if Bhatterjee was pissed at him. All of Apollo's people had dropped by Sickbay to catch up.

"I got lucky with the hangar deck."

"You certainly did, Ensign. So Apollo's lower hull hauled her ass up to warp speed, noisily broadcasting a subspace distress call. The Pasherini obligingly took the bait and then were far too close, when the subspace field collapsed and the warp core breached. Neat that you used a telemetry probe." Garrovick smirked into his coffee. "Well, all that fuss was bound to make us come and and see what was going on for ourselves. The Pasherin ship was unable to scarper with the damage they sustained and self-destructed once they caught a glimpse of Excelsior bearing down on them. Your idea to deploy the escape pods without power, too?"

"Yes, sir."

"Clever idea."

Unused to praise, he blushed like a green kid. "Needs must, sir. We saw the Pasherini finish off escape pods from Gauntlet. Didn't want to go the same way."

"Did you know Intrepid recovered a few survivors from Gauntlet?"

"No, I didn't, Captain. That's good news."

"They survived because the pod they were in malfunctioned — up and died on them, in fact. Of course, they were lucky Intrepid found them when she did. Any longer and they would have suffocated.

"Well whatever made you come up with the idea, I am glad for it. One of those deceptively simple notions that everyone wonders why it didn't occur to them. I'm submitting a report to Starfleet, recommending our pods be modified for future use. First thing to tackle is the automatic distress call. We've been at war seven years now; you would think it might have occurred to someone that continuing that practice was probably not a good idea when in the field of battle. Second task is to do something about the attitude control on launching. Cracking open those pods after we recovered them was nasty."

"So everyone seems to be at pains to tell me, sir." He recollected the feeling he'd been missing something, while Seaton debriefed him. "Did you want to ask me anything about Apollo's engagement with the enemy, Captain? The Pasherin cloaking device?"

"I have a pretty solid picture, Ensign; Seaton turned in her report and an abstract from Apollo's logs. We pretty much knew the Pasherini had some sort of cloaking technology, now we have the proof."

"I see, sir." He chewed his lip and pondered whether he should mention it, since it was information that at his rank and clearance level, he was probably not supposed to have. In the end Jerome's loss decided it. "There was one thing that didn't come up in my meeting with Lieutenant Commander Seaton."

Eloquent eyebrows invited him to continue.

"I know we were in that sector of space looking for a Pasherin dissident."

The eloquent eyebrows flew higher and then lowered ominously.

"It's just that from the patterns of searches Mr Jerome had me undertake and the data we retrieved — we found no debris consistent with a destroyed vessel, for instance — I think you ought to know he suspected the Pasherin didn't exist, Captain."

"Have you mentioned this to anyone else?"

"No, sir. I know it was classified information. I only put two and two together because I helped Mr Jerome analyse the data and I inadvertently overheard something Commander Goodborne said to him. I mention it now only because if our intelligence was faulty, had somehow been compromised, then Starfleet should be apprised."

Garrovick cast a harsh, calculating stare at him that made him uncomfortable. "I shall address it with Starfleet. Hear me, Ensign. Since it is classified information, you would do well to be silent on the subject, no showing off to fellow crewmates, because you have inside information they don't."

The hell? "I would not do that, sir!" There was that stare again, but the captain seemed to be satisfied and that was the end of the matter. Something of a surprise. He would have expected Garrovick to make more of it than this, but no.

"Starfleet will likely decorate you for what you did aboard Apollo. I suspect you may not be as interested in that as to learn my recommendation to Starfleet Command is that you be promoted to lieutenant."

It was what he had wanted for the past four years. Why then was it that all he felt was numbness instead of joy? He was expected to say something. "Thank you, sir."

"Dismissed, Ensign."

xxx

No sooner had Kirk made his exit, debriefing complete, than Garrovick hit the comm panel on his desk and passed the word for Seaton to join him.

"Well?" she said, once she had taken the seat Ensign Kirk had just vacated. "Do you think he knows? I'd say not a chance!" Seaton paused, crossed her arms. "Judging by that pensive expression, you think otherwise, Captain."

"I think I'm not convinced of your premise — seems a little far-fetched to me. Not to mention that in the heat of battle Jerome should have had the presence of mind, let alone mental resources, to hatch something like what you're suggesting."

"Fewer mental resources required, when you know the game is lost." There was a far away look on his tactical officer's face. "I served with him and this is just the sort of thing he would do. Kirk was the youngest officer on the Bridge, Jerome the next at thirty eight. Between them, helm and the navigator had a combined age in excess of a hundred."

He shook his head. "You want me to believe that Jerome thought Kirk too young to die? The problem with your argument is that the whole ship was taking heavy fire, he couldn't possibly know Kirk would survive very much longer after him."

"No, but he gave Kirk a chance. Those on the Bridge had scant minutes to live. I saw Apollo's tactical log. The Pasherini were targeting the Bridge and fancy escape manoeuvres with minimal shields can only get you so far. More pertinently, Phaser Control was obliterated by the time Kirk was sent off the Bridge. What convinces me is the notation Jerome troubled to put in his tactical log. My old friend always did think of the long game, and if Ensign Kirk did indeed get himself off the ship, he wouldn't find any nasty questions hanging over his head as to why he apparently deserted the Bridge in the middle of a fire-fight."

Well, maybe then. He sat back in his chair, chin propped on steepled hands. "I'm not convinced, but if you're right, his faith in Kirk seems well founded. Ensign Kirk's resourcefulness got the survivors off Apollo. So, what do you think of him?"

"I have to own up to being a little leery. There was all that gossip in fleet about Kirk bedding the Federation Liaison. What was her name? Baumann?"

He nodded. "He was almost half her age. What did she see in the boy?"

Seaton snorted. "How about the ability to roger a girl senseless?" Snorted again at what must have been an appalled look. "Well, you did ask, sir."

"Kate, do you always have to be so literal?"

"We tactical people are uncomplicated types."

"And terrible old gossips."

"Yes, all too true." Seaton got back on course. "So, Mr Kirk. His personnel file is a nightmare, then I remembered who it was who placed all those demerits there." Seaton shuddered. "Did I ever tell you that Goodbore approached me to transfer aboard Apollo two years ago. He had some stupid notion of replacing Jerome — with me! Jerome was the best, taught me everything I know, so whether there was some friction between the two…?"

"Very possibly."

"I turned him down, very politely."

His turn to snort.

"I can do polite. But I have never been so glad I had received notice of my posting to Scorpion, a full two hours before Goodborne graced me with his presence. Anyway, to get back to the point. It's hard to tell the potential of an officer from just one debriefing session. I did like that he was feisty when he thought I was unfairly criticising Jerome; he didn't back down either."

"Kirk didn't break under the sort of abuse Goodborne dished out — most would have buckled — which is encouraging." He scratched an eyebrow. "I asked Kirk if Goodborne gave him a rationalisation for his behaviour. Do you know what Mr Kirk recounted?"

"What, pray, piece of wisdom did the good captain have for the admiring multitude."

"Admiring multitude? You been at the Austen again, Katerinella Marie?"

"Don't diss the blessed Jane. She's what keeps me sane. What did Kirk say?"

"He said, and I quote: 'Commander Goodborne condemned my irresolution and advised me a serving Starfleet officer must do better; Starfleet deserved better.'"

Seaton's jaw dropped. "Straight from the horse's ass! I know one should not speak ill of the dead, but in his case I'll make an exception." She let out a mirthless laugh. "So far I've spoken to some of the engineers and to Kirk and I noticed they all referred to Goodbore as 'Commander', never an honorary 'Captain' among them. The crew's way of getting back at him. All perfectly above board, but enough to show their disapproval. I bet it drove him up the wall.

"I bet." A sick sense of helpless anger made him consider throwing things, except that would do nothing for perceptions of his command style. "It's the waste of a crew I mourn for. I do think we can stop feeling sorry for Mr Kirk; his life is about to turn around. He'll get his promotion now, and a decoration."

"Or two," said Seaton. "Brave of him to see the engineers to safety and perform the start up sequence himself. Close run thing that he made it."

"So my next question is whether you're thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Captain for Sting? Maybe. Probably a definite maybe." Seaton grinned at him. "As I said, that he was loyal to Jerome didn't harm his case with me. There's certainly no one suitable left aboard Scorpion after Komack swept in and stole away my best people. Tactical is reduced to me, Lieutenant Stone, and a bunch of frightened children. You sure Goodborne hasn't damaged him too much, Captain?"

"I've asked McCoy if he can get to know him, give me an informal idea about his mental fitness. He's had a ship shot out from under him; sometimes that leaves wounds that can't be healed."

Seaton looked askance. "We've not much time before we put in at Starbase 15, sir."

"Yes, I know. I shall be interested to see how he handles the memorial service for Apollo's fallen. I expect Apollo's survivors to be pretty upset, since some of those engineers he rescued are barely out of their teens."

"And Kirk's barely out of the nursery himself."

Garrovick nodded. "If he engages with what's left of the crew, if he steps up and looks after them, then I'll feel more confident he's what we're looking for. Ultimately, there's only one real way to find out and that's to give him Sting and see how he handles himself, but we may be getting ahead of ourselves. Command will have to approve, and with his record they might not."

xxx

AN: Please review. Even if you didn't think it works, constructive criticism helps me to improve.