"You have to use the traditional oak casks," Scotty was telling him. "Age it properly. The distillery's been in my family for generations."
It was late. Both Jim and the new engineer were sitting on the edge of their bunks in the small room, shot glasses in hand. "I thought you were stuck without provisions on that ice rock," Jim said, taking a sip of the whiskey. "Nothing but protein bars, you said."
"I didn't have much to eat," he said with a grin, "but I couldn't go off on a long voyage without some personal effects, now could I?" He gestured at two battered pieces of luggage on the floor, one of which clearly contained a number of unlabeled bottles.
"At least you had some company," Jim said. "That little green guy that liked to climb on the equipment."
"Ah, Keenser? Aye, he's a good fellow, but not much of a drinking companion, if you take my meaning."
Jim nodded, even though he didn't really understand what Scott meant. He was finding it hard to concentrate. His head pounded, and he couldn't lay back comfortably because of his back injury. He took another sip, hoping to get enough of a buzz to relieve the headache.
Scotty was clearly savoring the taste of the liquor as he educated Jim on the basics of the fermentation and maturation process, which had changed little in the past five centuries. "You have to have the proper mix of grains," Scotty said, as if he were explaining a philosophical point. "This batch is our family secret."
"Right," Jim agreed. He swirled the shot glass slowly, watching the thick, amber liquid as it clung to the sides of the glass. The smell of the whiskey was pungent, and stronger than he was used to.
"That's the way," Scott told him, watching his glass. "You tilt the glass to coat the sides with the drink. Better aroma. Course, these little glasses aren't really the best if you really want to appreciate good Scotch."
"It's okay," he said. "It's good."
Scott gave him an appraising look. "You okay, there, Captain? You look a little beat."
Jim laughed. "Man, that's the understatement of the year."
------------------
His heartbeat had finally returned to something resembling a normal rate, and he was no longer gasping for breath. But the experience of being nearly mauled and eaten by an alien predator had left him shaking and filled with a sense of existential horror. What if no one ever knew what happened to him? Would anybody care?
Bones, at least, would feel a certain sense of guilt—and rightly so, he thought—for not coming to his defense on the Bridge. But Spock would most likely consider his tragic demise as an expected and acceptable risk, taken into account in advance as a probable outcome.
What did it really matter? The Enterprise was hurtling through space to the Laurentian system. They had no chance. Nero would destroy both the remains of the fleet and the Earth, and it would make no difference to anyone if he was eaten alive or if he starved to death. No one knew that he was here, and no one would ever find out.
Except that he wasn't alone.
He knelt by the fire in the small cave, ostensibly warming his hands. Truth be known, after the mad dash across the ice and the strange revelation that the elderly Vulcan in front of him knew his name, he was sweating.
He stretched his shoulders, and the movement sent a shooting pain crackling across his lower back. He vaguely recalled his back catching on the jagged edge of a rock as he rolled and fell down the steep slope, but he'd been too panicked at the time to worry about trivialities like that.
The man who called himself Spock was saying amiably, "It is remarkably pleasing to see you again, old friend"—Why did he keep saying that? Could he be senile?—"especially after the events of today."
His childhood teachers had drilled into him a respect for his elders, so he bit back the sarcastic comment that he wanted to make. He stood up and spread his hands apart in a placating gesture and said, "Sir, I appreciate what you did for me today, but if you were Spock, you'd know…We're not friends. At all. You hate me. You marooned me here for mutiny."
"Mutiny?" The aged man seemed less shocked than amused, making Jim wonder again whether the Vulcan was losing his faculties.
"Yes," he said, a little uncertainly. Hearing his own actions stated in such stark terms, he began to suspect that he had really and truly screwed up his Starfleet service. He recalled that on sailing ships, mutiny had been punishable by death. Perhaps Spock had read those history books, too, and sending Jim to be eaten by wild animals or freeze to death was all part of his plan.
"You are not the Captain?" Spock persisted.
He laughed for a minute to himself, struck by the fantasy: James T. Kirk, Captain of the Starship Enterprise… That would really drive Uhura up a wall… "No, no, you're the captain. Pike was taken hostage." Despite his obvious confusion, the Vulcan seemed to be familiar with Nero, which didn't make sense at all.
"Please, allow me…" Spock said suddenly, standing up and walking toward him with his hand outstretched, fingers spread in an odd position. "It will be easier."
"Whoa, whoa…" Jim recoiled, taking a step back and shaking his head. What the hell did this guy want from him? He didn't like to be touched in the face.
Spock didn't wait for his permission. Regarding him with a look of compassion, he ignored Jim's apparent aversion and placed his fingers on the side of his face. "Our minds. One, and together."
Jim's eyes closed and his muscles tensed involuntarily. But he couldn't move or speak.
----------------------------
Jim felt very warm, and had to concentrate in order not to spill the drink as he poured himself another shot. His head was swimming, and he felt his focus drifting in and out.
"Those cadets are next to useless. The whole lot of 'em are a bunch of half-witted idiots who run off to read the repair manual before they can replace a burned-out plug," Scott said, waving his hand disparagingly.
"Hey, careful there, Scotty. You can't go around bad-mouthing my crew."
Scott ignored him. "She's a beautiful ship. They need to treat her with the respect she deserves, not go around scratching the consoles and dropping the heavy equipment and denting her sides."
"Uh huh."
Scott didn't seem to notice how distracted he was, prattling on contentedly about the ship and the blunders of the engineering crew. Jim slowly eased himself down on his side, stretching his legs out on the bed and closing his eyes.
What followed next was a sense of falling, of dizziness and lack of balance. There was a feeling of intrusion in his mind, and Jim was helpless to withdraw or object.
Spock seemed to be aware of his terror, but didn't pull back. Instead, he waited, letting Jim adjust to the sensation, calmly projecting a sense of security and safety that allowed him to begin to accept Spock's presence.
Spock directed the communication between them. Words were unnecessary; in pictures and blocks of thought, Jim simply became conscious of the new information. It was surprisingly easy.
He was aware, intermittently, of other images, which weren't directly related to Nero. Faces both familiar and unfamiliar. Places that he didn't recognize. Snippets of conversation. It came to him in glimpses, in brief fragments. A mental picture of himself, grinning and brimming with confidence, sitting in the Captain's chair on the Bridge… A quick glance between them that conveyed understanding and humor…A flash of joy at his magical reappearance in the cave…But he had no time to process the images—memories?—as Spock led him through the sequence of events.
There was something important he needed to know, not about Nero, but about Spock. Spock and him. He could sense that Spock was holding something back from him, but he couldn't figure out how to control what was happening.
Wait, he tried to say. Let me understand!
But the images rolled on, with a sort of Spock-voice droning in his mind, narrating the story which he was projecting. "The star went supernova…I promised the Romulans that I would save their planet…Using red matter, I would create a black hole…"
Slow down, he called out, but either he wasn't able to project his thoughts clearly enough, or Spock was too intent on telling his story to listen to him.
A wave of anxiety began to grow inside him, both from the flood of images which were overwhelming him, and from the one-sided nature of the exchange. The feeling of powerlessness, of being forced, became the focus of his thoughts.
A face from his own past began to surface in his mind, reminding him of another time when he'd lost control and been forced to—
"Romulus was destroyed…In my attempt to escape, both of us were pulled into the black hole…He held me responsible for the loss of his world..."
He found it harder and harder to make sense of the images running through his mind as he gave way to panic.
The images stopped suddenly, and he could feel Spock's uncertainty in his mind. Spock was surprised and concerned. Jim could sense him considering the situation, comparing it to something known and familiar, and then drawing tentative conclusions.
But it all happened wordlessly and very fast, and Jim wasn't sure, in the end, what Spock understood about him.
I must show you one more thing, Spock told him through the meld, and then I will disengage. Prepare yourself.
He saw the final interaction between Spock and Nero, as Spock was transported down to the icy planet. A vision of the planet Vulcan, beginning to disintegrate, was suddenly placed in his thoughts.
He was overwhelmed by a feeling of agonized horror. It came over him like an unending wave of pain, and he was drowning in it. He felt like he couldn't breathe. In his mind, he—or was it Spock?—was screaming endlessly as he watched the planet implode. He was wracked with a sense of loneliness, guilt, and failure.
There was a small echo inside him of disgust, self-loathing, and shame.
The meld broke.
Jim found himself staggering back from Spock, stomach churning, head reeling. Gasping, he braced his hands against the icy wall of the cave to keep himself upright, and then threw up.
----------------------------------
He had missed whatever Scott was saying, and as he came back to himself, he saw the man looking at him expectantly. "Sorry, what were you saying?" he said. He pushed himself up into a sitting position again, and wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.
"They think we're a bunch o' wee robots," Scott said. "Starfleet. Can't handle genius."
"That's what Pike told me when he recruited me," Jim said, pushing thoughts of the meld out of his mind. He took a long, deep breath and refilled his glass. "He thinks the Fleet's losing the edge. It doesn't want officers who can think for themselves."
"Exactly. And when you don't follow the path they've laid for you, bam! Stuck on an iceberg with dehydrated rations until further notice," he complained. "It's all about putting you in your place."
"I hear you," Jim said. "No room for individuality."
"Well, that's not so in your case, I'd say. Look at you, with your instant field promotion. Didn't you say you were a cadet just a few days ago?"
Jim laughed. The whiskey burned his throat a little, but it steadied him. "Naw, I'm a case in point. They put me on academic suspension for passing a test that they wanted me to fail." Scott gave him a questioning glance. "The Kobayashi Maru," Jim said. "I, uh, changed the parameters of the program."
"Come again?"
"I reprogrammed the simulator so that it was possible to win."
"You hacked into the Kobayashi program?" Scott burst out laughing. "That's brilliant, laddie!"
"Well, they didn't seem to think so. They convened a hearing in front of the entire student body just to call me a cheat."
"Aye, that's what I'm talking about! Nae respect for ingenuity…" Kirk began to relax. Scott's accent struck him as inordinately funny.
They sat in companionable silence in the dim light, sipping their drinks.
Like Kirk, McCoy was an essentially private man, with a natural reluctance to share a room with two other bright-eyed cadets. Luckily, being CMO provided him with a small office with a couch and a lock on the door, which, he decided, was definitely preferable to the quarters he had been officially assigned.
Despite the long day he'd been through, he was unable to sleep. His mind seemed restless and agitated, unwilling to relax.
Damn.
His conversation with Jim, while more or less therapeutically successful, had left one sentence ringing in his ears: "I may be running from my past, but so are you!" Jim had yelled, obviously intending to wound him. For someone so rooted in denial about his own issues, Jim could be annoyingly shrewd about other people.
"You promised to come home early today," his wife was saying angrily. "Len, you said that we could go out tonight."
He had forgotten, and eating out was the last thing he wanted, anyway. "I'm too tired, Jocelyn. I'm a doctor, not a—"
"I know what you are!" she cut in. "It's a job, Len, not your whole life! When are you not too tired for me?" she asked bitterly. "You're never around. Even when you don't have any surgeries, you stay in that hospital. It's like you don't even want to come home. Don't you care? I'm your wife!"
He was apathetic by now to her hysterical outbursts. He'd heard them too often. "What's the matter?" he asked wearily. "You're always out with your friends anyway, spending my money…"
"Maybe I want something more. Maybe I want some attention from my own husband."
"Jocelyn, I don't have the energy for this."
The pregnancy had been her idea. He had cooperated at first, thinking that she had a point—she was lonely and needy, and he was occupied with his work day in and day out. She had tried to persuade him for months, pleading and cajoling and nagging, and he had finally given in, hoping for peace and quiet. At times, he had even entertained fantasies of himself as a loving father, proudly taking his child for a walk in the local park. Too late, he had realized what a mistake he'd made. He couldn't bear the thought of being tied down to her anymore. He didn't want a baby; he wanted, more than anything, to start over, to leave, to get away from her mood swings and her endless demands for his time and attention.
The divorce had been easy enough, since he didn't put up a fight. He gave her everything. As for the child, he hadn't seen Joanna since she was an infant. It was better, he told himself repeatedly, that she didn't have to deal with his ambivalence or witness their endless bickering. He supported his ex-wife and daughter financially, as generously as he could; he felt that was the least that he could do.
It was ironic, if not downright hypocritical, he thought. Here he was, poking at Jim to talk about his painful history of parental abandonment and rejection. What would Jim say, if he knew what kind of father McCoy was? Jim didn't even know that he had a daughter. He was ashamed to admit to being so irresponsible and self-centered; as a doctor and a man, he held higher expectations for himself. But in this area, he considered himself a failure.
What would Joanna say, if she were asked about her father? And for that matter what was Jocelyn telling her about him?
Ordinarily, on a sleepless night, McCoy would find Jim Kirk and coax him into going out for a drink—not that Jim ever really objected. But that was obviously out of the question tonight.