Chapter Five: Sweat
x
Jim clapped his free hand against his thigh and raised his voice so that the entire exolinguistics laboratory could hear him clearly. "C'mon, people, a little more down to Earth – so to speak – with your programming! Where's your common sense? I don't want a rescue team to barge in on me in flagrante delicto-"
The rest of his complaint was drowned out by the titters of the cadet contingent and a slew of animal sounds from the regular crewmembers, which just went to show that (with a few exceptions like Johnson and Shanks) service on the Enterprise eroded what little culture Starfleet officers brought onboard with them.
Jim pointed his finger at the lounging group of medical personnel. "Good thinking with the body temperature, Brent, but make it more discerning." He turned to the mixed group of people from command and physicists. "Mad'Kov, are Andorians hotter or cooler than the rest of us?"
"Uh?" the young Andorian expressed, antennae turning to Jim in bewilderment.
"Their body temperature is higher than humans'," Brent mused, "but they are capable of adapting to a wider range-"
"Awesome," Jim cut him off, and glanced at the IT specialists. "Adjust the code to reflect that." There was a flurry of motion while the programmers split the tasks between them. "That's why we have the doctors here, people. I know they are easy on the eyes, but their primary function is to keep us alive."
Darnell came in with a tray of finger food and glared at Jaeger. "We could have got the same from the Starfleet Medical Reference Manual-"
"Nope," Jim cut in again, making a mental note to review Darnell's performance in a leading role on the team later. Some people were not suited for leadership – that was nothing to be ashamed of, but it should be mentioned in the crewman's file. Better to see him underperform now than later on under real fire.
And since the people descended upon the food like a swarm of locusts and the last vestiges of order were thus effectively shot to Hell, Jim said: "Hey, impertinent question. How hot does a healthy Andorian male get in the middle of really good sex?"
He could read the reference to Starfleet Code of Conduct in the scandalized expressions of several of the younger crewmembers. Right, the rules about fraternization.
…who were they kidding? Jim was as good as married to two people on board. Sex was a part of his daily life. Or it used to be, at least.
"Starfleet Medical Reference Manual has nothing, Captain," Sanchez reported gleefully, fortunately pulling Jim out of the rumination before he had had the chance to really sink into it.
"Color me unsurprised," Jim muttered. Even in the twenty-third century, there were still limits on the information Starfleet considered 'proper' enough to be officially distributed among its members. The prudes. "Hey, people practicing medicine! An educated guess?"
"Up to forty-seven degrees Celsius in room temperature…?" attempted Cadet Brent.
Jim, who had oodles of personal experience that he wasn't going to rehash, but which he was perfectly willing to use to show up his subordinates, grinned. "Wrong. They'd denature their proteins – and die horribly." Not that it hadn't happened to not-healthy Andorians. And Jim wasn't exactly glad that he knew that, because people joked about it being the best way to go, but it really wasn't. So much post mortem embarrassment. "Anyone else wanna try?"
"Captain?" Uhura's voice rose above the din of mumbled speculation.
Jim found her standing in the door, shadowed by 'her' cadet – the one that was not a member of the VCE and despite being apparently a prodigy in her chosen field had nothing to contribute to the project.
"You, Lieutenant?" Jim teased. "Wouldn't have pegged you for-"
"There is a problem, Captain," the Cadet spoke before Uhura had the chance to try and verbally eviscerate him in front of his subordinates.
With some difficulty Jim rapidly switched tracks. He absently handed his PADD to the nearest person – Cadet Loqui – and stood to listen to the Bajoran girl's report. "Lay it on me, Rum."
"She means you have a problem, Jim," Uhura said seriously. She must have been genuinely concerned, since there was not an iota of gleefulness in her tone.
Jim frowned. "Is this the kind of discussion we should be taking somewhere private?"
Uhura took a short glance around the room, then at the girl by her side, and finally shrugged. "On any other ship."
Jim nodded. He moved, leading the two women out of the room, while trying to hide his sense of apprehension behind a roguish smirk. "Then lay it on me, Rum."
The Bajoran put her hands together in a simulacrum of a thinking pose, and gave Jim a look that raised his hackles – no one that young and innocent had any business attempting to sympathize with him. "It's the two Cadets you have reprimanded and transferred, Captain. Not Chester; Chester's a nobody, but Blonsky. His Aunt is Commander Ester Cavanaugh. She's on the budget committee for the big upcoming terraforming project on Virgo Omicron Four and-" She fell silent, all of sudden, but there was no way to back out now; everyone within earshot had heard her allude to nepotism. "-he'll obviously have a nice posting on the project, but she didn't want him… underfoot."
Jim understood that. Chester and Blonsky were two aggregates of an explosive, and it took but an excuse to detonate them. He had had it up to his teeth with them, and in his teeth was where they would (figuratively) end up, if everything went according to plan.
Hendorff's people were on board, and so was Administrator Olson, it appeared.
Jim would just have to strut around and be his obnoxious self. That was something he could do without even thinking about it. Altogether too many people were occasionally struck by the urge to slap him on the head – or have him assassinated.
"She's ticked off…" Jim guessed, "…at me."
Cadet Rum cringed. She stared at him soulfully and tried to convey sincere apologies, as though he was going to shoot the messenger for bringing him ill but valuable news.
Uhura snorted. Her eyes laughed for a moment, before amusement was outweighed by concern again, and she remembered that she had actually intended to give him the cold shoulder for the way he had ostensibly relegated Spock to the periphery of his interests. "The scary thing is, now I know you don't do it on purpose."
Jim waited until the turbo-lift doors closed before he asked, genuinely disconcerted: "What can she do?"
The Bajoran opened her mouth and then shut it again, realizing the question hadn't been addressed to her.
Jim didn't believe that Uhura had a better feel for 'fleet politics than he did, but she had always been ambitious and made an effort to make friends in high places (speaking of which, making friends was a talent obviously shared by Cadet Rum) and to keep her ear to the very, very figurative ground. Uhura would have a better idea about who were Cavanaugh's cohorts, and how far they would support her against Jim, who was the darling of the media and an officially confirmed hero.
Uhura deliberated so long that they arrived at the Bridge by the time she spoke: "Have some of your crewmen reassigned. Stall your promotion, if such a thing would ever happen, and let's hope it won't."
Jim strode out onto the Bridge, but unexpectedly came to a halt in the middle of it.
The Earth was displayed on the main screen. The planet was blue and grey, rich in water and heart-clenchingly familiar. There was such a sense of familiarity in the sight that he spent a moment just staring at it. Of course, there were thousands of recordings available, were he inclined to watch them, anytime at all, at his leisure, but Jim wasn't. He was more interested in the unknown, in strange planets and alien races.
Only, this was not a recording. It was for real.
He hated and loved this planet in equal measure – he would die to save it, but he wished to spend his life as far away from it as possible.
"Jim?" Uhura ripped him out of the reverie.
No time for sentimentality. He had actual problems that he had to attend to.
"What?" He smirked and rolled his shoulders in a faux-casual stretch. "I like being Captain."
"You're good at it, too," came in an undertone from the pilot's seat.
"Thanks, Sulu," Jim muttered back. He shouldn't have, but he and Sulu went back to the Academy, and their epic friendship had kicked off with a suicidal mission to destroy a drill, so the working relationship between them was mostly… lax. Until and unless Sulu would try to join an ecoterrorist organization.
"So, they can't take the Enterprise from me?"
"You would have to piss off a much bigger school of fish to land in a hole that deep."
"The Commodore could influence the future assignments of the Enterprise," Spock commented.
Of course Uhura had alerted Spock first. Even if they weren't the weirdest variation on the theme of best friends, Spock would have been present when Rum found the information and related it to Uhura… oh, damn it. There was absolutely no ground for Jim to feel slighted.
He scratched the edge of his chin and considered what kind of missions could be given to the flagship to make the crew regret crossing some bigwig. "More milk runs?" he hazarded. "More school-kids to trip over? No offence, Rum."
"None taken, Captain," the Bajoran replied equanimously.
"So, what's the battle plan?" Sulu asked, mock-threateningly cracking his knuckles.
Jim forced out a chuckle, which did help to dissolve the general atmosphere of anxiety, despite being less than heartfelt. "Hmm… let me think on it for a while. What's our ETA?"
"Four hours and eighteen minutes until docking, Captain," Spock informed him dutifully from the science station.
And there went the anxiety, ratcheting up again.
Jim smiled and nodded. "Should be more than enough time. Mr Spock, unless there are any pressing issues, I'd like to have a planning session. Also, someone find Chekov and Scotty." He turned to look at Uhura and Rum. "I need the two of you to do me a favor. I'll send the details to your PADDs."
He walked away contacting Bones through the comm. A strategy meeting with Spock and Bones was often like watching a storm happen all around him, clouds colliding, electrical discharges every which way and so much thunder. Jim couldn't imagine his life without either of these two men, but then, he knew the ramifications of letting matter and antimatter touch.
x
"I know that face," Bones grumbled a split-second after crossing the threshold. His scowl was a thing of terrible magnificence. "I hate that face. Goddamnit, Jim."
He sank into a chair with a sigh, leant back, closed his eyes and with one boot propped against the table swiveled left-to-right and right-to-left, like a big, man-shaped pendulum.
Spock's infinitesimal expression shifted to evidence his disapproval of the display of slovenliness before him, and Jim wished he could just set his elbows on the desk and cover his smile behind his hands the way he usually would. He found himself robbed of his natural humor, in between the tension between him and Spock, the looming threat of political contention, the homophobic-prick-trap he had set, and the upcoming battle against the brass.
It was the latter he needed to discuss with the proverbial angel and devil sitting on his shoulders (he could never decide which friend was which supernatural advisor, and suspected that they switched up all the time to drive him yet crazier).
"The kids-" Jim started, and cut himself off. He shook his head and tried again. "I want to discuss the Cadets we have on board."
Bones straightened up as fast as if someone had stuck him with a cattle prod. "Tell me this isn't about the pair of limpdicks sitting in the brig-"
"No," Jim cut him off before Spock had the opportunity to remark on Bones' vocabulary choices. "I'm talking about the rest of them. Pugacheva, Sanchez, Rum, Mad'Kov." He paused, and out of the corner of his eye looked at Spock. "Fitzpatrick."
Spock didn't even blink. He definitely did not jump up to demand Fitzpatrick's continued assignment to the Enterprise – not even the Vulcan equivalent thereof. Instead, he watched Jim with that almost-reptilian gaze facilitated by his first set of eyelids.
Jim wished that weren't so arousing, and then resolutely squashed the very idea.
"If you can get them, I'd keep both Brent and Sanchez," Bones replied, trying so very hard for nonchalance that Jim let him think he succeeded, because he deserved it for the effort.
Jim made an educated guess that Bones would be happy to share the duty of autopsy with Sanchez, and Brent's qualification was somewhere in between Bones and Scotty, in that odd field of machines that made people continue breathing. He would be useful on a deep space exploration, should the Enterprise ever actually be sent on one.
"Excellent," Jim said coolly, and tapped his PADD. "I've got a blanket 'yes' from Scotty. Chekov's opinion is biased; Sulu gave me the equivalent of 'whatever' and Uhura oscillates between wanting to keep her Cadet as a pet and being jealous of Rum's exceptional aural sensitivity-"
That got him a blink from Spock – the Vulcan even joined his hands together. That practically rated as expressive.
"Your opinion, Mr Spock?" Jim inquired, hoping it didn't come out facetious.
Spock inclined his head. "Barring any misconduct or poor performance by the Cadets within the next four hours, I have no objection to welcoming either of them as a permanent member of the crew. The exceptions being, obviously, Cadets Blonsky and Chester."
Jim had actually thought that was obvious even without saying, but Spock's specificity was one of the things that made them such a great command team.
Bones couldn't quite see it yet, which was why he scoffed and snapped: "Don't need logic to solve that one, Commander. Some of us can tell when someone's too much of an asshole to work with."
Jim glanced to the side, expecting Spock to side-step the frankly offensive insinuation with a query on the relative size of the anal orifice in adult humans, keeping a straight face and pretending that he believed that was a perfectly viable topic of conversation – he knew how Spock thought, and there was poetry to his ability to diffuse or redirect offensiveness.
Spock, however, was merely looking at Jim, waiting for the next topic of discussion.
He had caught onto Jim's mood, and was trying to figure out the reasons for it, Jim was fairly certain. He was also pretty sure that it would take Spock at least half a day, but probably more, before he would come to any useful conclusions. By that time it would be too late.
Jim kicked the hornets' nest: "The disciplinary issues in their past don't concern you, then?"
"What issues?!" Bones demanded, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
Jim only saw him peripherally, because his attention – and the question – was directed at Spock.
Spock's eyebrows remained aligned. His face might as well have been hewn of marble. "I am familiar with the disciplinary issues in our past, Captain," he said calmly, practically stabbing Jim's torso with every word, "and at this point any such concern would be highly hypocritical."
Jim acknowledged that he was the last person who could throw a stone, but he was a Captain, and there were all sorts of accommodations made for the people wily enough for such a post. He hadn't quite considered that Spock had hardly been a model student before he had relocated to Earth and started at the Starfleet Academy.
"Jesus Lord," Bones muttered and rolled his eyes.
Jim was so very glad for Bones' presence. At least one of them could think straight.
"In that case," Jim said, "write a recommendation and personnel request for each of the Cadets you've worked with closely enough for the paperwork to look viable. Mr Spock, I rely on you to put the documentation together – I've given the same instructions to the entire Command Crew, so they should have their forms ready."
"Aye, Captain," Spock replied, betraying nothing.
Bones said something unflattering about Jim's intelligence and morals, but he spoke so quietly that Jim could pretend he didn't hear it.
Spock pretended he hadn't heard it, either, which… wasn't exactly usual, but fair enough. "With your permission, Captain-"
"By your leave, Commander," Jim replied readily.
The instance the door snicked shut behind Spock, Bones was on his feet, looming over Jim and scowling. "What the Hell did you do to that goblin, kid? He looks about ready to start cutting from all the angst."
Jim would have liked being able to laugh it off or roll his eyes in response, but the insinuation hit too close to home – while the idea of Spock self-harming in such an uncouth human fashion was quite absurd, the man had other ways of hurting himself or risking his own well-being. It was still too soon after the anaphylactic-shock scare, and Jim wasn't ready to venture into that discussion. Not without copious amounts of Bones' alcohol.
"You know, Vulcans are right," Jim faux mused. "Feelings are really very inconvenient."
Bones incredulously stared at him for a prolonged while, then groaned and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. This time his mutterings weren't intelligible, for the good of all.
x
Jim's comm unit buzzed. He checked the message.
'Done what you asked for,' Uhura wrote. 'For the record, this is a shit plan, and you deserve any punishment McCoy inflicts upon you. Captain.' And by 'Captain' she meant 'idiot'.
Jim ignored the blatant disrespect of superior officer happening here. He off-handedly smoothed his gold command shirt and checked himself in the mirror.
Spock's cabin on the other side of the bathroom door was quiet, but it was the industrious quiet of a Vulcan hard at work. He would be there for at least another hour, missing the first wave of transport shuttles. He would have to wait at least until noon.
'Have a little faith,' Jim typed in response to his Communications Officer. 'It worked the last four times.'
The cabin was moderately tidy; his paperwork had been submitted, and Uhura had personally manhandled Bones onto the first departing shuttle and was keeping an eye on him. Cupcake was coming down with Jim, but his best guys led by Lieutenant Nored were on surreptitious Spock-watch, just in case.
Jim was ready to depart when the comm buzzed again.
'Don't give me the opportunity to say I told you so.'
x
Jim spent the flight to the surface chatting with Cupcake and the officer Cupcake had picked for Jim-sitting duty: Ensign Marie Brettschneider, who looked like she was pushing forty and had been through at least two wars. She was one of those experienced crewmembers transferred from other ships – in her case from the USS Wellington.
She was attractive and a little frightening, and managed to distract Jim enough that he didn't look nervous when he strode into Pike's office past a PA that smiled too widely, winked too much and didn't even try to stop him.
Pike had expected Jim, and showed no surprise at the unannounced entrance.
Jim saluted.
Pike gave him a sardonic look and waved his hand in the direction of a free chair.
That chair had been there for the past five years, and probably a lot longer. It was well-known to cadets and young officers, and it was unanimously despised.
"I'll stand," Jim said, and gestured Cupcake to wait outside.
Pike didn't bother hiding his snort.
In the political game of two technically senior officers standing off, Jim had just given a free victory in the first round to his erstwhile recruiter. It was good practice – it felt sort of backhandedly polite. Besides, today it truly was just a game.
And Pike did take an inordinate amount of pleasure from watching people either squirm in that chair of doom, or refuse to sit at all. What kind of person would Jim be if he refused an old, partly invalided man his one little delight over the course of his workday?
"How's Spock?" Pike opened with the second salvo, and he hit true.
Jim grimaced. "Back on duty, no lingering effects." Except the arctic zone that had sprung up between them, but that was neither here nor there.
"Glad to hear that." The Admiral sounded sincere; admittedly, Spock was once supposed to be his First Officer, so it was to be expected that he was at least vaguely concerned for his health. "Heard you've had a spot of trouble with the Cadets Komack had foisted off on you."
Jim shrugged. He couldn't afford to discuss that yet. "Most of them fit in fine, and are ready for real service. In fact, speaking of Spock, he forwarded you their paperwork." Spock hadn't actually confirmed that, but Jim hadn't lived this long by not trusting his better half implicitly.
Pike checked his datapad. He nodded. Frowned. "I'll deal with that later. Right now I'm more curious about what it is you want from me."
"I'm reporting as ordered, sir," Jim replied primly. For an instance he was the very picture of discipline.
Pike's incredulous face made Jim regret he couldn't take a photo.
"I'm told your Communications Officer was forceful about setting up this appointment."
"Lieutenant Uhura has a very dynamic personality," Jim replied nonchalantly. Then he met Pike's eye. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"
Pike's incredulous face made a comeback. "Yeah, like you ever needed that."
Jim shrugged. He was beginning to sweat – the morning in San Francisco wasn't exactly balmy, but Pike was a crafty bastard, and even though Jim's surname had granted him a few get-out-of-jail-free cards with the man, those had long since run out. "I've got a ship to run, sir. No time for a court martial this spring."
Pike scoffed, exasperated. "Speak, Captain."
"I'm getting the vibe here that you didn't want me to bring the cadets back."
Pike did not even pretend to be surprised.
Jim squared his shoulders. "If so, sir, then my orders should have been more specific. Was I supposed to discreetly 'lose them' somewhere along the way? Because, one or two of them, I'd get that… but the rest aren't so bad."
"Jim…" The Admiral ran his hand through his grey hair and looked up through a pair of eerily blue eyes, makind the hair on Jim's arms stand on end. "The unofficial hope was that you'd integrate them into your crew and refuse to give them back."
"Any particular reason?" Jim inquired faux-pleasantly.
"They're…"
"Unwanted?" he offered.
Pike didn't let the insinuation throw him off. He was full of plausibly-sounding excuses: "Some are wild. Reckless. Rebellious. Straining under authority. Apathetically genius. Scary with a pair of chopsticks." He spread his hands. "Each case is different."
And that was a lie, only Jim didn't know who was its originator and who was its intended recipient. Pike might have legitimately not known about the hunt on the VCE, or he might have actually thought Jim had not found out about the Effort.
"Why me?"
"You're known for harboring several hopeless cases – yourself, for instance. Your Doctor friend, for another. Lieutenant Commander Scott."
Jim chuckled mirthlessly. "Yeah, we're the cream of the crop. Too brilliant to be stifled by the oppression of the Admiralty, apparently." But the hamsters inside his head had started running at a breakneck speed, the wheels were turning, the axles squealing, the dynamos producing power and the light-bulb went fiat lux.
It was a shock, even though it really shouldn't have been. Jim was momentarily glad that he was used to all sorts of unpleasant surprises being sprung on him, else he might have been forced to sit down after all.
"That's why they upheld my field promotion," he stated, past the need to ask. "That's why they gave me the Enterprise – and are about to send me off into deep space. Not because I deserved it. Because I scare them, and they want me as far away from them as possible."
Pike was still looking up at him, still waiting for some resolution or backlash from Jim's side. Another time Jim might have played ball with him, but today he just didn't have the time.
"So, we're a crew of rejects."
Too awesome for the 'fleet, apparently. Their extraordinariness intimidated the brass. Jim decided to take it as a compliment.
"Except Spock," Pike qualified serenely – and that was wrong, because Spock was one of the most extraordinary people on the Enterprise, and he should have intimidated the brass a whole lot. The impression he did when he appeared to be obedient and controllable was a huge hoax, as many people had found out to their detriment, humiliation and, occasionally, severe maiming. "Nobody wanted you to get him. Not even I – don't try that, Jim. You and I both know he's wasted where he is."
"Bullshit," Jim pressed out through gritted teeth. Alright. So the Admirals were collectively half in love with Spock. Too bad for them. Spock was where he belonged, and he enjoyed himself plenty – he definitely wouldn't have found a hundredth as much joie de vivre in some musty dirt-bound basement.
Pike leant back in his comfortable padded office chair, laced his fingers together and settled them on his knee. "The thing with Spock is, if he wants something, you can bet your irrational ass he's going to go after it hard. And, for whatever perfectly logical reason, the son of a gun decided he wanted to be your ex-oh."
Jim stopped himself from reacting to the sarcasm. Spock had had a slew of logical and sentimental reasons for taking a chance on Jim. And on the Enterprise.
Pike smirked. "He practically stowed away on the Enterprise, too – he was one strongly worded comm to the brass away from getting grounded for life in the SanFran labs."
Now that would have been a loss – for the Starfleet, for Spock, and for Jim. The scope would have been tragic. Spock alone had saved the Enterprise on good half a dozen occasions; he and Jim together had done it about a dozen times, and then there were those cases when Spock's help had been invaluable, even if the final 'save count' went to someone else. In fact, Jim was pretty sure that the boys from Security were keeping an actual score, and that Spock was the uncontested leader… if only because Jim was the one who let himself be taken hostage so he could cool his heels in captivity and wait for his First Officer to save the day. They had the routine down to art now.
One of these days they would have to finally file the official partnership documentation – they had put it off as inconsequential, but if the brass was on the verge of trying to take Spock away by force, they had better get to it post haste.
Jim forced his mind back onto the matter at hand after barely a blip of inattention, which Pike had caught – of course he did, he had deserved his stripes fair and square – and most likely ascribed to Jim still being a little goofy about his Captaincy of the Constitution class vessel currently in orbit and trying to hide it in a professional setting.
Whatever helped him sleep at night.
"He's a rebel at heart, sir," Jim said, because that was what Pike expected to hear, and he grinned, because impertinence was his call-sign.
The Admiral didn't quite write him off as an infatuated moron – unfortunately for the political hopscotch Jim decided to hop through here, he had showed too many of his cards, and his mental faculties weren't generally being questioned anymore. Pity.
"He's a Vulcan," Pike said instead.
Jim didn't laugh into his face. That would have been unprofessional. Also, he really didn't have the time for court martial.
Half-Vulcan. People always forgot that, for whatever reason. After having met a few Vulcans, Jim got it. Spock was only just learning to relax his Vulcans-outVulcanning straitjacket.
"Whatever helps you sleep at night, Admiral," Jim spoke his earlier thought out loud, going for the well-worn mask of perpetual insolence. He was all too aware that Spock was tied for the second hardest head on his ship. Jim's, of course, was non pareil, but Bones and Spock were equal in ways that ensured Jim a daily dose of hilarity – if they weren't currently too busy joining forces to save everyone.
"I sleep like a baby, thank you for asking, Captain."
There was a distant noise of a squadron of shuttles lifting off of the Starfleet Academy port; they could be seen out of the office window, rising above the terminal, the city's skyline, the roof of the adjacent Academy building. They fell into formation just below the clouds and there they disappeared up, en route for the second wave of the Enterprise crew.
The window of opportunity was beginning to close.
"How about you tell me what's the point of keeping me from my early lunch, Jim?" Pike asked, sliding into that particular mixture of droll humor and dead seriousness he used when he wanted Jim to be straightforward with him. He never overused it, and Jim found that it still, years later, worked on him.
"You'll find out in a couple of hours, Chris," he replied. "I just needed to be seen attending a private meeting with an Admiral. My thanks for being so accommodating."
"If you incriminated me in anything, I'll have your stripes," the other man threatened.
Jim nodded and gestured toward Pike's PADD. "If you find the time, have a look at those forms. We do need them processed before the Enterprise takes off."
Pike reached for the device instantly, as though he had not just been complaining about having to postpone his meal.
Jim resolved to leave him to it; he managed to almost get out of the office before Pike addressed him, proving that his exit wasn't nearly as inconspicuous as he had hoped it would be.
"Does it matter, Jim? Why you retained the Captaincy."
"No."
Jim turned back to look at the very picture of hero worship and survivor guilt hopelessly mixed together and transferred to the son of their erstwhile object. Jim knew who his friends were, and he wasn't about to hold his dad's friend to any unspoken promises. He figured he knew what Spock would think, even if he would not say it.
'I told you so.'
'I knew from the start.'
'It never mattered to me.'
'It was worth it.'
"Admiral, I am Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise." That, he rather thought, encompassed everything important he might have wished to discuss with Pike. Because whatever else Pike wasn't, he was the guy who had scraped Jim off of the spit- and alcohol-covered floor of a dive bar in Riverside, dusted him off, and waved a carrot in front of his nose to set him on this course.
"I," Pike replied with no small amount of sarcasm, "am relieved."
x
Jim took the scenic route – right across the T'Plana-Hath Park – to the accommodations that have been provided for the otherwise homeless crewmembers. He had been assigned a dormitory room to share with Bones – as per their current paperwork – and it was already nearly five minutes past T-time.
He was beginning to feel anxious. If he had miscalculated, he would have to let two sociopaths into the 'fleet, and might end up with them on his roster, too.
And this wasn't the right time to consider that Spock might have had relevant input about the mission… had Jim asked him.
The park stretched across the Starfleet Academy campus and was walled off with a line of thuja trees to achieve the illusion of separating the Academy campus from the wider world. There was a fence behind the trees, easy to climb over if you knew where and when, and shielded from the security cameras by the thujas. Out there, in the land of the civilians, towered a construction of steel that bore a flickering billboard the size of a tennis court, and informed all those civilians that 'they' wanted 'you' for their new recruit. That would have been absurd enough by itself, except that the background was a familiar picture: the panorama of the Enterprise Bridge – complete with the Alpha shift Crew. Billboard-Jim himself laughed at something billboard-Sulu said and turned to give the camera his flirty eyes which, granted, were just shy of bedroom eyes, so it appeared as if he truly wanted that new recruit.
It made him a little uncomfortable-
"Confirmed!" snapped a voice at the edge of his hearing.
Jim spun to face that direction.
Everyone in sight except his own people was wearing the Academy reds. More than half of them were talking into their comms.
"Hostiles," Marie hissed, covering the shiny side of her phaser with her palm while keeping the weapon at the ready.
"Three- four- six sighted," Cupcake replied, and his voice jumped.
Jim crouched and did another sweep of the surroundings. Six was already more than they had expected. Perhaps he truly hadn't thought this through enough.
"More," Marie corrected.
There, on the other side of the park, fortunately out of the kill zone, was Bones.
Jim needed to have Bones close by, just in case, but he hadn't expected the stubborn jackass to be quite that close. Much less with Christine Chapel hovering at his shoulder, because she was the human equivalent of a bloodhound and could sniff out blood before it was even shed.
A single look in Cupcake's direction was enough to conclude that the Lieutenant was not going to be pried away from Jim without a crowbar and a pair of oxen.
Marie took in the scene and moved into position between the two medical personnel and the battlefield, raising her phaser the moment a red uniform appeared within striking distance of her CO.
The attack came swiftly, as if the boors still hoped to bank on the moment of surprise.
The first two were big and dumb, typical Security grunts; the third one was sinewy, with a glint of crazy in his eyes and a blade in each hand. There were a few others staying back and playing at providing cover. There was a Tellarite – what even?
"Boys, haven't you heard?" Jim panted, ducking under a phaser beam. "The universe is one big, fat cock – you either learn to suck it, or it will fuck you up the ass."
That got them mad.