First Meeting
A/N: [[Spoken Klingon]]
(_)(_)(_)
The viewscreen flickered briefly before the visual steadied. Jim found himself looking at a large stone room that was fairly dimly lit. On a sort of dais was what could only be described as a throne - a big, heavy, high-backed chair. The Klingon sitting in it was more sprawled out than sitting up straight, much as Borik had been in the initial moments of their first contact. There were about a dozen other Klingons in the room, more or less equally split and standing to either side of the center chair. All of them were wearing heavy leather-and-metal armor, a number of visible weapons, and quite a few accoutrements that Jim was sure held some importance, though he had no idea what those might be. It wasn't as if the Federation had a comprehensive knowledge of Klingons, after all.
It was fairly clear to Jim that the Klingons were at least attempting to intimidate himself and his crew. The fierce-looking display might even have worked on another captain and crew. With Jim and company, not so much.
Better, it was clear Jim had managed to surprise them somehow, as several of the Klingons twitched slightly when visuals were established. It was probably the weapons some of the crew were wearing. The Klingons couldn't have been expecting that.
One of the guys to the left of the guy on the throne stepped forward and started talking. Jim gave a purely mental snort, and immediately cut across the guy, completely ignoring him and whatever canned speech he was selling. What little they did have on Klingons, and what Jim had read in the past suggested that if he wanted to be respected at all, he couldn't let some toady of the leader do the negotiating. He had to go straight to the top.
[[Greetings, High Councilor Maktor. I am James, of the House of Kirk, Captain of the Starfleet ship USS Enterprise, Ambassador to the Klingon Empire for the United Federation of Planets.]] Jim barked out, doing his best to not look like he was reciting the greeting by rote, nor look like speaking Klingon was scouring his throat raw. Klingon did not do good things to human throats. The faintest hum behind him from Uhura's direction indicated that he'd gotten the words pronounced correctly
There was a moment of total silence from the Klingons, just long enough to make Jim sweat a little, worried that he had miscalculated and put his foot in it. Then Maktor sat up straighter and barked a laugh.
[[Greetings, Captain.]] Maktor barked in return. [[You and your crew are welcome. We feast at the ninth hour]] And the screen went blank.
Jim blinked at the screen. "That is going to take some getting used to." He said, then let out a sigh. "What the hell did he say? I understood 'greetings', 'captain', and I think I heard 'feast' in there somewhere but that was it."
"No kidding." Uhura said. "He said 'you and your crew are welcome, we feast at the ninth hour'."
"So it definitely went well." Jim decided. "Now ... what the heck time is it down there, and how much time do we have to get ready?"
Spock spoke up. "It is currently 19:35 local time in the capital city, Captain."
"Otherwise known as just past seven thirty in the evening ... the seventh hour?" Jim said. "So going by that, an hour and a half. And somehow, I think arriving early would be a good idea."
"Agreed." Spock said.
"All right, for this initial foray - Uhura, Spock, you're with me. If things go well, we'll add the rest of the gang next time." Jim said, then punched the comm button on his command chair. "Scotty!" He called. "Quit playing with your engines. You have the bridge."
"Aye aye, Captain. Be up there in a moment." Scotty responded.
Jim turned his attention back to Spock and Uhura. "I also think I spotted what might be a common 'tell'."
"The slouching." Uhura agreed. "Hard to tell with only having seen two Klingons do it, but that those two were a ship captain and the High Chancellor is ... significant. It's either an indicator of a species-wide habit, or a habit of high-ranking officials. Which of those it is, or if it's something different, will only be revealed if we see more of them doing it."
Scotty arrived before they could talk any more, and the three of them left the bridge to go get ready. On the turbolift, Jim glanced at the other two. "Armed." He told them. "Regular uniforms, but any combat-related awards you've earned displayed on them."
Since the Klingons hadn't seemed to be shy about having what was probably their version of medals on display, Jim was going to follow suit. It was just too bad that having them both display their non-combat related awards wouldn't be a good idea, because Jim knew that would effectively quadruple the number of medals and ribbons the two of them would have been wearing.
Jim himself wasn't going to have any of his combat-related ribbons on display. It was a hunch he was playing. From everything he'd read, Klingons in leadership positions were the strongest, both physically and by other measures. It therefore followed that if Jim's people were utter badasses, he would (at least if he were a Klingon, anyway) have to be that much bigger a badass in comparison. Someone *that* badass had absolutely no reason whatever to display their prowess for all to see - that he controlled his crew spoke for him. He was fairly sure his hunch was right, too - he'd noticed Maktor hadn't had anywhere near the unknown bits and bobbles as the others had. He'd had a few, but Jim figured those were his rank insignia, or something similar.
(_)(_)(_)
Maktor was ... well pleased. Very well pleased.
Pinning his hopes on Jim Kirk had been something of a gamble. The man had shown what looked to be like very Klingon-esque behavior, but there had always been the chance that it had been a fluke. If the reports from Borik and what he had seen with his own eyes were any indication ... his hope had not been in vain.
Whether or not Jim Kirk had a Klingon soul, he was definitely clever enough to have altered what Maktor understood to be standard Starfleet procedure at least for these negotiations. Maktor was well aware that Starfleet crews did not lounge about on their ships carrying weapons. Yet according to Borik, some of Kirk's crew had weapons strapped to waists, thighs or backs when they'd talked.
Not only that, the man had either known or intuited that he needed to ignore the low-ranked Councilor that Maktor had caused to speak for him, and address Maktor himself as if the other Councilor didn't even exist. The first negotiators from the Federation had failed those tests rather spectacularly, even after the very first encounter, when they ought to have noticed and changed their approach.
In Klingon society, if you were a warrior or leader of sufficient strength, you did not treat with the followers of your opponents, whether those opponents were on the battlefield or merely political. You spoke to the leader - in the old days, almost always the Head of the Family - as the only one with the power to make and enforce any sort of agreement. It was an old and well-worn insult to make the leader of an opposing force meet with a subordinate, suggesting they were not powerful enough to warrant a leader's immediate attention. It was also tradition for leaders to force speaking to their opposite number when such a stunt was pulled, either by killing or maiming the subordinate, if the two met face-to-face, or by doing as Kirk had done and ignoring the subordinate entirely if the initial meeting was taking place over comms.
Hells, the man had even spoken their tongue. Maktor hadn't missed the fact that Kirk seemed to be speaking the words by rote, rather than as a fluent speaker, but that he had made the effort at all spoke well of him. Better still, by the murmurs of the Council, most if not all of them had seen what Maktor had seen, and approved at the very least. Some even sounded impressed.
Maktor very nearly laughed in delight when Kirk and two of his crew were announced as having arrived a full hour before the scheduled feast. Meeting with, and drinking/eating with an opponent before a battle (whether physical or otherwise) was a long, much-loved tradition for Klingons. So much so that Maktor had arranged things accordingly, scheduling a feast tonight before the negotiations began in the morning. Such revelries actually tended to begin and end at fairly loose times, so the fact that Kirk and company hadn't shown up 'precisely on time' was yet another good sign.
When Kirk and his compatriots walked in, Maktor had to stare for a moment, before wondering a little wildly if Kirk had any idea of the implications behind how the three of them walked in. Kirk was in the lead, at the center. The Vulcan was at his right shoulder and a half-step behind. The woman was at his left shoulder and a step behind.
Borik had been quick to report on his spontaneous, if brief, chat with Kirk during the trip to the Homeworld. The entire Council had buzzed about the implications behind Kirk's avowal that 'he'd match that woman against any female Klingon in the Empire.'.
In Klingon society, females who possessed the proper training and acted as agents of a particular leader always stood at that leader's left shoulder when meeting with other leaders. By the same token, a leader's second-in-command, the second-strongest Klingon available, stood at the leader's right shoulder. The Council was arranged in such a manner around Maktor himself. The politically second-strongest at his immediate right, a gap at his immediate left. Even if he'd *had* an appropriately-trained woman, they were forbidden in the Council and she would not have been allowed to stand by him - and no one would take that place.
Whether or not it was true, the formation the triad used said to Klingons 'This is the woman that will poison your drink or slip the knife in your ribs as you sleep if you cross me. And this is the man who will take my place and avenge my death if you kill me'. The choice of a Vulcan as second in command rather confounded Maktor and probably most of the rest of the Council. Everything they'd heard about this crew though said that this particular Vulcan deviated from the pacifistic, cowardly norm for Vulcans. This one had, by all reports, been instrumental in blowing the Narada into atoms, something every other Vulcan that Klingons had encountered would have had no part of.
[[Greetings, Captain Kirk.]] Martok said, then indicated the man to his immediate right. [[This is KaiTan of the House of Korath]] Martok then went on to name the other Councilors.
The woman murmured quietly as he spoke, obviously translating what he was saying. Martok could tell that Kirk understood a few words here and there on his own, though. The Vulcan, as was typical of his race, was all but impossible to read.
(_)(_)(_)
Mentally, Jim was crowing in pleasure when the guy who had tried to start talking to him back on the bridge was one of the last people Martok introduced. It was pretty easy to tell Martok was introducing the other Councilors in order of their rank in the Council. Interestingly, it looked like the three of them had accidentally managed to arrange themselves in a way that was significant to the Klingons, if the fact that the first guy Martok introduced was the first guy on his right was anything to go by. If it was, the guy was Maktor's successor/second-in-command or the like. The next person Martok had introduced had been on his left.
Jim also didn't need the quiet pleasure in Uhura's voice as she translated to know that thus far, things were going incredibly well. He wasn't fool enough to think they'd stay going that well, but they were doing better so far than the other attempts at dealing with the Klingons had.
Once Martok's introductions were over, Jim started his, this time in Standard. He'd been able to memorize the brief greeting mostly because the Klingon language had a tendency to compact damn near entire complex sentences into one or two words. It made memorizing what had been a fairly brief greeting pretty easy. Memorizing enough to cover more than the greeting in less than four days, though, was beyond his abilities, at least when he had a ship to run at the same time.
"Greetings, High Chancellor Martok." Jim said, then indicated Spock. "This is Commander Spock, of the House of Surak." Then he indicated Uhura. "And this is Lieutenant-Commander Nyota, of the House of Uhura."
The three of them had discussed how they'd be introduced, hence his introducing himself the way he had over the comm earlier. Obviously, the Klingons knew (now) that humans at least didn't have Houses the way Klingons did. Jim, though, had been of the opinion that doing things the Klingon way as much as was possible would make the negotiations easier. Hence both using 'Houses' ... and not announcing that Uhura and Spock were his communications and Science Officers respectively. Neither were career paths that Klingons respected. Though Uhura, as a woman, would get a whole hell of a lot less shit for it than Spock would. Klingon women weren't warriors, and largely manned the non-warrior jobs their menfolk disdained.
Martok seemed almost disappointed that Jim wasn't using his language. Unfortunately, while Jim could understand more than he could speak, and could read a bit more than he could understand of the spoken language, he was in no case fluent enough to get by on his own in the Klingon language.
Whether he was actually disappointed or not, Martok shook it off and pushed to his feet. "Come. We feast."
The entirety of the Council, which had already been standing, moved to join Martok. Jim eyeballed the lot of them, then gambled. He pushed through the group, aware of Spock and Uhura in his wake, until he was roughly abreast of Martok.
Who let out a barking laugh, sounding thoroughly pleased.
Jim had known, halfway to Martok, that he'd made the right call in not following tamely after the entire Council. None of the Councilors tried to attack him or Spock - he wasn't sure a Klingon male would attack a female, so he didn't count them not going for Uhura. If there'd been a problem, they'd have said or done something. Klingons were *not* known for tolerating insults in silence.
[[I begin to think there is hope that not all humans are cowards]] Martok growled. Uhura murmured the translation to Jim a second later, along with a quiet opinion that the words were meant more for the other Councilors than for Jim.
Still, Jim wasn't going to let Martok get away with insulting all of humankind. "If you think all humans are cowards, you know nothing of our history." He fairly snapped. "Our history is as red with blood as is that of your people. We value honor and courage as do you. We just express it differently."
"And what, pray tell, do you know of our history?" Martok demanded. "Federation propaganda?"
Jim snorted. "If I knew only that, I wouldn't be here, their orders be damned, because I am not fool enough to treat with an untrustworthy opponent." He said. "I won't pretend an encyclopedic knowledge of your history, but I have read a number of articles from Klingon sources. Translated into Standard, I'll grant, but originally written by Klingons." Then, with a toothy grin. "One of them was a treatise written by Kahless."
Well, that got a rumble of approval from more than one source, as Jim had fully expected it to. The Klingons venerated Kahless almost to the point of his being a deity. Jim had made an effort to hunt down anything written by the man after he'd read one or two other things that had gotten him interested in Klingon philosophy. Of course, getting his hands on a copy of that treatise at all - let alone in Standard (this had been before he'd met Uhura) had not been easy.
That seemed to settle things for the moment, as Martok turned and continued towards wherever the feast was going to be held. When they got there, Jim could only stare.
The room could have been ripped straight out of Earth's medieval period. It was an enormous stone room, with a vaulted ceiling and numerous stone column supports. There were tapestries on the walls. Given that each bore a different symbol, Jim assumed they represented the Klingon Houses. Torches and braziers - literal, I-shit-you-not torches and braziers - dimly illuminated the room, assisted by a few very discreet, hidden modern lights here and there. There was an enormous stone table down the center of the room, with equally big throne-chairs down its length and at each end. Each chair had one of the emblems from the wall tapestries on it. The tableware was all thick and durable, made of a silver-colored metal. There were tankards instead of 'normal' glasses at each setting. Down the center of the table was an admittedly stunning variety of meats, sauces, big pitchers of who-knew-what sort of drink, and a few covered dishes - the nearest of which Jim could see contained something that was moving.
Still working on the theories that had got him this far, Jim immediately moved to the chair closest to the door, subtly indicating for Spock to take the seat on his right. Uhura, who Jim knew had to have picked up on even more than he had, didn't need the cue to move to the seat to his left.
Interestingly, while Martok did indeed take the seat at the far end, and the first guy he'd introduced had taken the seat to Martok's right, the rest of the seating arrangement didn't follow suit, with the last introduced being closest to Jim's seat. Instead, the various Councilmen were mixed together. Jim suspected the seats were arranged to keep those with grievances with each other as separate as possible in order to reduce fighting - or worse.
(_)(_)(_)
Martok was practically cackling as he took his seat. Kirk was even better than Martok had hoped. Even he had not dared to dream that Kirk would know more about Klingons than whatever propaganda the Federation was selling. That Kirk had, at some point, read Klingon-written anything was stunning. And unless Martok much missed his guess, Kirk had not read those papers in the last couple of days or even months. No, the reading had taken place long before they had been driven to sue for true peace.
Kirk's seemingly instinctive understanding of how to act was now explained at least in part. Possibly in whole, depending on what papers Kirk had read, especially considering one had been by none other than Kahless.
Had Martok needed any further proof he'd made the right decision, it was put to rest incredibly swiftly. Kirk threw himself into both the energetic, loud atmosphere and the cuisine with apparent relish. This was the complete opposite of previous Federation emissaries, who had all looked less than happy. Martok had been given to understand that one emissary from the very first batch had actually gotten sick just looking at the food on offer.
What surprised him was that the female was as quick to copy Klingon mannerisms, though she did not look to be enjoying it quite as much as Kirk, and was not eating the still-living dishes. She was, though, making the effort. The Vulcan was the sole holdout, and Martok had expected no less from that quarter. But even the Vulcan, while quiet and picking at the vegetation rather than the real food, wasn't actively disdaining the meal or speaking out against them.
(_)(_)(_)
Nyota kept a very careful ear out from the moment they walked into the High Council building. She knew that Jim would be depending on her to catch stuff he'd miss due to not knowing the language. That and her ability to parse nonverbal cues. Not that Jim seemed to be missing a trick yet.
Jim was one of the rare people that Nyota'd had difficulty figuring out at first. Granted, some of her initial confusion had been generated by the fact he'd been falling-over drunk when they met. Afterwards, though, when he'd joined Starfleet, it'd taken a while for her to figure him out.
The thing about Jim was that he had, at some point, gone to a lot of trouble to hide who and what he truly was under a hell raiser front. The fact he didn't seem to process information like most people had probably helped him hide just how smart he was. Jim had the rather rare ability to take seemingly disparate pieces of information, put them together, and come up with both what was going on, and a way to fix it or work with it. To the unsuspecting eye, it tended to look like Jim was pulling stuff out of his ass.
The whole Narada thing was a case in point. The Kelvin Incident was required study in the Academy. Captain Pike had done a dissertation on it, and he had hardly been the first - or last - to do so. As a result, everyone in Starfleet had heard at least once how the Kelvin survivors had described the initial event that had drawn them to where the Narada had entered their universe/reality/whatever. Everyone on board the Enterprise had heard Chekov's 'lightning storm in space' comment. Hell, she herself had had all the same information that Jim had possessed, which included the loss of the Klingon fleet that the other cadets probably hadn't known about. Yet Jim had been the only one to make the connection and realize what the hell was going on. Worse, he'd been drugged up and suffering from allergic reactions when he'd figured it out, which meant his mind hadn't been working on all thrusters.
Today was another case in point. Jim knew as much as any of the rest of them did about Klingons. Maybe a bit more - Nyota knew he'd read some papers that not everyone went to the trouble of looking at. But whatever he'd read in addition to the standard Academy material couldn't have been all that much, simply because there wasn't much more known about the Klingons than what was in the Academy classes. Yet Jim was doing and saying things that previous ambassadors hadn't ... and it was working. But it still looked like Jim was pulling things out of his ass.
After the Narada thing, Nyota had made the decision to follow Jim's lead, leap where he lept, etc. He'd proven rather conclusively that even when he was making stuff up as he went (which he had to have been doing after they'd actually made contact with the Narada), his instincts were incredibly solid and reliable. So Uhura was doing her best to imitate their Klingon hosts, both in table manners and volume. She couldn't bring herself to eat the still-living dishes, especially not the one that looked like worms, but she could and did eat the others. Some of it was even pretty tasty, if a little heavier on the spices than even her mother's cooking could be.
The proof in how well Jim's gambits were paying off lay in the comments she was hearing. Most of the chatter had to do with non-Starfleet related things - House rivalries and the like. But the comments she did hear that had something to do with Starfleet or the Federation were mostly neutral. Some comments sounded quite pleased/impressed with Jim and herself, and at least not insulting about Spock, which given the Klingon antipathy towards Vulcans, was quite a concession. Only one or two of the Councilors sounded like they would much rather put a knife in one of the three of them than accept a true peace or joining the Federation.
The whole feast goes off without much of a hitch. There was a bit of a wrestling match up near Maktor near the end, between two of the Councilors, but it seemed to be a good-natured bout between allies or friends, rather than two enemies duking it out. It had probably been driven by the copious amounts of booze the Klingons were drinking. Thankfully, not even Jim had wanted to pickle his liver keeping up. He'd given every indication that he *was*, but Nyota had seen him discretely emptying his tankard whenever no one was paying particular attention to him. Thankfully, Klingons were not the neatest of eaters, so the 'spills' under and around Jim's chair wouldn't be notable. And for all it looked like he was drinking deeply when the tankard actually went to his lips, she knew he was barely sipping.
Jim could and did drink, but his reputation as a party animal was ... well in excess of the reality. He'd deliberately cultivated that reputation his first year, when he'd been making a point of stomping all over the rules and regs. So while Jim did have a good alcohol tolerance, it wasn't spectacular even for a human, and Nyota didn't think that most humans would be able to handle the Klingon drinks, especially not at the sheer volume the Klingons were drinking them. They packed a hell of a punch, as Nyota's own first cautious sip had revealed. Between that and the fact Jim refused to be compromised when he needed his brain working at full capacity, he wouldn't be drinking much, despite appearances. Nyota wasn't quite as deft at ditching her drink as Jim was, but it was rather apparent that none of the Klingons expected her to keep up with a man when it came to drinking.
She was going to enjoy shattering their delusions of female inadequacy when she got the chance, but now was not the time. Later, she'd deal with it later. And knowing Jim, he'd not only let her, but would engineer an opportunity for her to do so if one didn't occur naturally, then cheer her on while she beat sense into someone.
(_)(_)(_)
Spock had, when he had accepted the position of First Officer, made the decision to give Jim the benefit of the doubt. To watch, and to wait, and to, where necessary, inquire in private as to Jim's thought process as regarded a decision.
He had not expected to have to bring that decision to bear so swiftly after they'd embarked on their mission. Jim had barely let them get out of orbit before he'd started making decisions that seemed, on the surface, to be highly illogical. Yet, when he had inquired, there had been some sort of logic to Jim's decisions - he just seemed to derive that logic through highly illogical means.
Spock was beginning to think that he could - that he had in another reality, if his elder-self was any indication - study Jim for a lifetime and still not truly understand him or be able to predict Jim's actions. There was something rather alluring about the idea of never quite knowing what would happen next, no matter his applications of logic to whatever circumstances were before them. Spock was, in short, beginning to perceive a glimmer of what his elder self had meant, when he'd spoken of 'a friendship that will define you both', if he pursued such.
Spock picked through the available foods in search of items he could eat while he watched both Nyota and Jim plying their trades while simultaneously keeping an eye and ear on the Klingons. He knew his own observances would likely be of limited use, but there was always the chance, however small, that he would observe or hear something the others did not or could not, due to their more limited ranges of hearing and sight.
Jim did not make their excuses to Maktor until after six Councilors had left the table. This, Spock knew Jim had done on Spock's advice. It had been one of the pieces of advice Spock had given Jim from his observations of his father at work. It was important to give the right impression, and a difficult balance to meet. Jim did not want to make it look like he'd only been waiting for an excuse to get out of there, which leaving before anyone else had left, or after the first Councilor to leave would do. At the same time, remaining until almost everyone had left would engender accusations of favoritism at the very least in the upcoming negotiations. With half the Councilors and Maktor still at the table, there would still be plenty of witnesses to the fact that no negotiations had begun, nor deals struck in the absence of the others.
It was not until they had been beamed back onto the Enterprise, and Jim visibly sagged against the wall of the turbolift, that Spock realized how much the evening had taken out of Jim. It did not reflect poorly on Jim at all. Jim was not a trained negotiator of any stripe. That he had performed so successfully thus far was to his credit. Unfortunately, Jim was having to learn, as the humans said, 'on the fly', and make things up as he went along in his effort to engender a successful negotiation, and such extemporaneous decision making over a prolonged period could be quite taxing.
After a few moments, Jim straightened up and glanced at Spock and Nyota. "We need to go over how things went, before we crash for the night. I want to make sure we have as good a plan of action figured out for tomorrow as we can manage."
"Agreed." Spock said. Nyota gave her agreement half a moment behind him.
"My quarters again. There's more room." Jim said, and they all got out on his level and followed him to his quarters.
Once inside, Jim flopped down on the couch as though he had gone abruptly boneless. Spock took his seat in one of the chairs far more circumspectly. Nyota took the far end of the couch Jim had flopped down on. After another few moments, Jim sat up and pinned them both with an intense look.
"Right. Let's go through this from the top."
(_)(_)(_)
Jim was tired, but he knew they had to go over what had happened. They were still largely flying blind when it came to working with the Klingons, so they needed all the help they could parse from what had happened.
"Maktor looked like he was half a second away from yelping, or some other verbal shocked reaction, when we walked in." Uhura said. "I'm as certain as I can be that we accidentally stumbled across something that has significance in Klingon culture."
"Agreed." Jim said. "I noticed that too, especially when the first guy he introduced was on his right, and the next was on his left. It looked like, from there, they were arranged by rank, right and left."
"I find it both curious and significant that there was a gap in the ranks, on Maktor's left." Spock admitted. "If what you two are surmising is true."
Uhura got a thoughtful look on her face. "It just might be significant. Remember when I commented on the fact that assassinations were pretty much par for the course in Klingon politics? But we know that Klingon men think things like assassinations are dishonorable."
Jim nodded, and then realized where she was going with that thought. "So ... their womenfolk do the assassinating. And if a guy has a woman like that on tap, she ... stands to his left? But there wasn't one in the Council lineup. Maybe because all of them having those women with them would make for a crowded room. So the traditional place for such a woman to stand at the Chancellor's left was kept open for whatever reason."
"A reasonable conclusion, given the information we possess." Spock agreed. "You were also quite correct as regarded their reactions to violence and threats."
Jim grinned. Spock hadn't been any too happy with Jim's insistence on meeting the Klingons' aggressiveness with more of the same. It sort of went against the grain for normal ambassadorial/negotiation tactics, where the idea was to remain calm and neutral and not piss people off.
"You were definitely making the right calls." Uhura agreed. "I only heard one or two of them making negative remarks about us in particular, though there were more who were derogatory of the Federation and Starfleet in general. Several of them actually seemed impressed."
Spock nodded. "While I am not as conversant in the Klingon language as Uhura is, I too was able to ascertain that most of them were if not in favor, then at least not opposed to the idea of peace with the Federation. And many were impressed with what they know of our actions in the defeat of the Narada."
Jim grinned. "Well, that is definitely good news. I thought things were going well, but it's nice to know I wasn't imagining things." He huffed. "So. Plan for tomorrow. We use the same formation. Right and left. I'm thinking Sulu behind you, Spock - he's not next in rank, but he's next when it comes to ass-kicking skills, which is what the Klingons care about. Bones behind Uhura, because while he's a doctor and doesn't approve of ass kicking, he is not exactly passive, and will dish out the pain if he has to." Jim hesitated for a moment, considering the remaining two crewmen that would be attending the negotiations.
"Scotty behind Sulu." Uhura recommended. "I've seen his file. He can handle himself well enough when it comes to defense, and he's nearly as canny an operator as you are, for all he has a reputation as a scatterbrain. And Chekov behind McCoy."
Jim thought about it, and nodded. "Works for me. It'll make them underestimate Chekov, too, which can only work to our advantage when things get sticky. Which they will. Chekov's young, and he's got the baby-face down pat, but he's a devious little shit, and when you're that smart that young, you learn to be able to defend yourself." Jim knew that one from experience. "He'll be the first one they try to push, and they'll be in for a surprise. Ramming into Scotty will just reinforce the lesson."
Uhura laughed. "And if they keep pushing, well ... we all know how fond McCoy is of hypos. And Sulu is just crazy enough to go toe-to-toe with one of them in a 'fair' fight. Spock of course won't have a problem if it comes to that, and they won't challenge me, at least not that way. Not with me being a girl, and even if they did, I'm not exactly helpless." That made Jim outright giggle - something he generally didn't do unless he was really tired - as it brought to mind her thrashing of Cupcake. "So really, they're going to get knocked back no matter who they pick on." Uhura finished, speaking over his giggling, though she was smiling, clearly aware of what her comment would have brought to mind.
"Right. And we call them on the carpet whenever they start the 'you are wimps' thing." Jim said. "Though I'm still rather at a loss for what to do beyond that. We're going to still be having to make up a lot as we go along. Though I'm willing to bet they're going to want to hear about how we kicked the Narada's ass at some point."
"Agreed. There were quite a few comments to that effect at the feast." Uhura said. "So you'd better polish your storytelling skills."
Jim tried to think if there was anything else they had to go over, but he was tired enough that if there was, it wasn't coming to mind. "Ok, my brain has officially gone to mush. Meeting adjourned and if you think of anything before we leave tomorrow morning, send a message."
Spock and Uhura both agreed, and soon left. Jim huffed another breath, then heaved himself out of the couch and got some low-cal cinnamon candies from the replicator. He needed something that would wash the taste of the Klingon food out of his mouth. It hadn't been the worst thing he'd ever eaten, but it had been uncomfortably close in a couple of cases. He popped the candies in his mouth and headed for the bathroom and a shower before he collapsed for the night.