Scotty's very particular way of referring to the ship's engines was such a part of life on the Enterprise that Kirk occasionally found himself thinking in terms which would otherwise sit somewhere between incomprehensible and embarrassing. The truth was that sitting in the companionable silence of a shift on the Polaris he would think of the engines behind him with a mental picture of the harnessed strength of a tireless animal, making for the Romulan homeworld with relentless, even strides, eyes unblinking and fixed on the stars ahead.
Which was why, the day after the encounter with the stone monument, when the engine tone changed, abruptly, the image which flashed into Kirk's mind was the snarl of a wounded big cat.
Spock was on his feet immediately, bent over the monitor at the rear of the cabin, fingers dancing over buttons, eyes no less rapid in their search for answers.
"Report, Spock," Kirk ordered, hoping the wound would not need major surgery, waiting to read the Vulcan's face before he heard the words. He wondered, then, whether Spock's face would be as transparent to him in times of crisis as it had been before Mount Seleya, and then found out that it was.
"Captain, the dilithium crystal supply is unsustainably low. We have only two days of power remaining even without warp speed. We will need immediately to change speed to impulse."
"Do it," Kirk said automatically, while his mind processed the implications. "How on earth did that happen? We had enough to get to Romulus and back twice over."
"Unknown," the Vulcan said. He was bent over the front console, adjusting the speed of the shuttle, and his voice betrayed about the same degree of reaction as back of his chair. "I have set course for orbit around the nearest planet. At impulse power, it will take three point two hours."
"What do we have on the planet?"
"Class M, J rating. Long range scanner shows widespread signs of a technologically advanced society. There should be no difficulty in accessing dilithium supplies."
"Absolutely none," Kirk agreed, "provided we remember to say please."
Spock, who had been half turned towards the console, studying readings, looked up and straightened.
"Captain," he said, carefully, "am I to assume that your suggestion is a figure of speech?"
"No, Spock. I was planning on beaming down in full uniform, finding the guy in charge and making sure I asked nicely," Kirk said irritably. "What on earth did you think I meant?" If this was Spock's idea of reverting to form, post Mount Seleya, he could do without it, especially as he was going to have to do without dilithium crystals at the same time.
"You misunderstand me," Spock said. "I was referring to your use of the first person plural."
"Oh." Kirk said. He let out a small exhalation, glanced at the chronometer, and smiled cheerfully at his First. "I was assuming you were coming along with me."
"Captain, this matter was the subject of extensive briefing. I am able to pass for a Romulan and the shuttle carries appropriate uniform for this purpose. You do not have that facility without cosmetic surgery." Briefly, a ghost passed between them, the end of another mission, a long time ago, a younger Spock's comment – Somehow, they do not look aesthetically agreeable – and then the Vulcan continued: "It was understood that I would be better placed to undertake any missions to the surface where there were Romulans in the vicinity."
"All true," Kirk agreed, affably. "I'll just come along to help."
"I may not be able to afford effective protection." It was the wrong thing to say, and Spock knew it, as Kirk looked coolly back and the two exchanged level looks. An ancient conversation, a conflict as old as their friendship, a battle Spock had always lost. Every single time. Spock was not entirely sure of the logic of attempting it on this occasion and Kirk was not entirely sure how the topic sat within didactic memory. He was reasonably sure of the views of the Vulcan Masters on the subject, assuming they had any. He was also quite sure that he couldn't work with a First Officer who wasn't going to accept the human perspective on this one.
"That's a landing party of two, then," the shuttle's Commanding Officer said. "I'll brief McCoy while you break out the landing gear, Commander."
"Sir –"
"That's an order, Mr Spock." Which meant that Spock had bowed his head and gone to the rear of the cabin to retrieve clothing, communicators and phasers, contemplating both the need to ensure that their disguise was seasonally appropriate and the nature of the disconnect between the orders Kirk received and those he bestowed.
Rocky terrain, a grey sky and a nearby steel formation materialised around them as they left the Polaris for the Romulan world below. Kirk nodded towards the building.
"There's your dilithium, Commander. We'll go on foot to avoid triggering their sensors, and we can be in and out in half an hour."
"It is likely, however, that the need for speed will necessitate departure via transporter," Spock said. "Once we are back on the shuttle behind the cloaking device, they will be unable to track us."
Kirk nodded.
"Let's go."
He began to pick his way across the stony ground, glad that the clothing provided for this purpose had included a good pair of boots. As he walked, he stole a glance at Spock, walking silently at his side, opened his mouth and then closed it again. A number of comments had occurred to him, varying from Just like old times, then to Romulan command green definitely does something for you, to It's called the chain of command, Spock. And yes, sometimes, you have to make decisions in the field. It didn't do you any harm when we went to get you back from Genesis. But in fact he said none of these things (the last being by a long measure the easiest to forego) and simply enjoyed the rediscovery of a silent, old companionship, walking towards the challenge of the unknown.
In this instance, the unknown turned out to be highly foreseeable.
"My name is Decius," Spock said to the guard, in a manner which did not court conversation. "This is my human slave. Our shuttle is in need of assistance. I wish to be directed to the engineering department."
There was a brief conference, a hard look at Spock, and then a nod.
"She's in her office, Commander. Fourth door on your right, once you are through the main entrance. She'll process your request and decide."
Spock bowed again and set off as directed, Kirk following behind.
"That seemed a little easy," the human slave said, softly.
"Records indicate that this planet, like many other Romulan societies, is highly matriarchal," Spock replied. "We have not passed any challenge till we meet the engineering commander." There was a brief pause, and then, still more quietly so that Kirk wondered if he had heard correctly, Spock added, "It would be appropriate for you to comport yourself appropriately, look downwards and stay behind me at all times."
Was that a joke? Or an attempt to ensure that he could, after all, offer effective protection? Or a deliberate ambiguity? He looked hard at his friend's back, and said dangerously,
"Don't overplay the part, Spock." Spock made no reply. They were at the door; Spock glanced back once, an unreadable warning in his eyes, and then he was through into the room, Kirk at his heels.
She was beautiful. Even as the words filtered into Kirk's brain, he thought of Scotty again, because Scott would have used them of the gleaming, sleek engines, tall and purring into the distance of the facility, and also of the evidence, everywhere, of the dilithium they sought. On this occasion, though, Kirk's words were not following his Chief Engineer's appetites but a more predictable direction.
She was as tall as he was. Dark pooled eyes, fierce nose, jutting chin but a keen intelligence rescuing what might otherwise have been sheer belligerence. She ignored Kirk and said directly to the Vulcan,
"Who are you and who is this?"
"I am Decius and this is my human slave. Our shuttle has run into difficulties. I am seeking dilithium crystal supplies. I have credits."
"There is no shuttle outside."
"We have left it at some small distance. Your facility is impressive."
"It is the product of many years' hard work by many hands."
"And not just hands," Spock said, gently. "It will also have merited strong and talented leadership."
Pools narrowed, and there was a small rush of air as she stepped very close to him.
"Are you trying to flatter me? Because your credits are enough. I do not need anything more."
"You do not appear to me," he said, "to be in need of any flattery."
There was a beat of silence, and she turned, as if ceding the conversation strand, and said,
"And who is the human?"
"Taken in the Neutral Zone," Spock said. "My intention is to train him."
She laughed, then, genuine amusement mixed with something glassy, something sharper.
"You are either optimistic or poorly informed, Commander Decius. Neutral Zone humans do not train well. Now, this one…" Kirk looked up, unguarded and instinctively as she drew near to him, and had a nanosecond's warning of a gloved fist drawn back and released at his jaw as though shot from a bow.
He had forgotten about looking downwards.
He had forgotten about Romulan strength.
He remembered, a lifetime ago, dodging Spock's fists in the Enterprise, in orbit around Psi 2000. One blow had sent him crashing across the table. This was harder; he felt something crack, fought with everything he had to stay on his feet, to keep silent and to keep his eyes down – and in doing so, just caught sight of Spock. His face was utterly expressionless.
As though he had witnessed the Romulan pouring a cup of tea or remarking on the weather.
His eyes met Kirk's glancingly, as though they were bare acquaintances, and then the moment was over.
She gave a dry laugh, and turned back to the Vulcan.
"Good luck with that one. He's not slave material. Which rather makes me wonder about your sense of judgement, Commander. That – or whether there is something you are not telling me."
"All I have told you so far," Spock said, with quiet assurance, "is that I am in need of dilithium crystals. There is a great deal else which remains unsaid."
The two locked eyes, a shuttlecraft, a mission and three lives seemed to hang in the balance, and then she said,
"So what do I get in return for the crystals, Commander? I find I am not only interested in credits after all. Are you leaving immediately?"
"That," Spock said carefully, "could be open to negotiation."
She smiled, then, naturally, perhaps for the first time.
"Wait here," she said, and was gone.
Into the silence which followed, Kirk touched his face. It felt, a little, as though it belonged to someone else. He could feel swelling on his cheekbone, wiped away a damp trickle, brought his hand down and looked at it. Red human blood. He was the alien here.
He stole a covert look at Spock, who did not look as though he was about to ask if Kirk were all right. On the other hand, being Spock, he was unlikely to say I told you so. Kirk smiled to himself, and then winced. He opened his mouth and Spock surprised him with a sharp, cutting-off gesture.
"Walk with me," he said, without inflexion, and led the way to a small alcove to one side, where seating protruded into a bay window. Kirk looked around and thought command dignity would survive if he sat down, and subsided into a chair rather more quickly than he would ideally have liked. He opened his mouth, but Spock was there first, with an apologetic air.
"We were directly in sight of a monitor. Captain, are you all right?"
Kirk met his eyes and felt a wave of regret, almost of shame. The truth was, it was so easy to let Mount Seleya tower over everything. Spock had moved so far, the past few days, back down the road towards I have been and always shall be… Could it be that the remaining obstacle was Kirk's own memory, his assumptions about where the Vulcan was? At no point in their joint history could he recall a Spock capable of the sort of pettiness that meant, proved correct in his advice not to embark on a dangerous mission, he would fail to manifest loyalty and concern to a hurt comrade-in-arms – Kirk, least of all. He managed a grin.
"Only damage, Mr Spock, is to my pride. I'll keep my eyes down, from here on in."
Spock moved one step further down that road by reading Kirk's thoughts, without any obvious resort to telepathy.
"In fact, Captain, I suspect that your company on this mission, while regrettably at some cost to you, will prove advantageous. In retrospect, the appearance of a ranking officer on a mission such as this without any accompaniment might have appeared unusual. The more complex dynamic of a Romulan and a captured slave is likely to have diverted attention from the true anomaly."
The feeling of shame deepened.
"You have a generous spirit, Commander."
"Sir?"
"Never mind. If your friend is to be disappointed in her plans for later tonight, I'll need to contact McCoy to ensure he is standing by to beam us out of here." His mind stayed on the Romulan engineering chief, however, as he spoke to the Polaris, and old memories surfaced as he put the communicator away and said,
"I think I owe you an apology, Spock."
"For which offence, Captain?"
Kirk laughed aloud, and then remembered and checked himself, with another quick hand to his cheek.
"Fair enough. I guess you were a bit spoilt for choice. I think I may have cultivated a habit of putting you in difficult situations."
"Captain, this is an endeavour to replenish stocks of dilithium crystal, not a difficult situation." Perhaps when you had faced Khan and Genesis and Mount Seleya, difficult situation acquired a different nuance.
"Of course. Nevertheless, I wonder if I trespass too much, sometimes, beyond what you might reasonably feel you owe to Starfleet."
"You are speaking of the opportunities for subterfuge which are presented by the fact of my being Vulcan."
"And you wouldn't call that a difficult situation? Spock – " Kirk hesitated, and then went on, "You never signed up for it, did you? You could have gone to the Vulcan Science Academy but instead you chose Starfleet and you ended up exploring the unknown and charting new galaxies, but you also ended up in an espionage mission, tricking a woman, wrecking her career in all likelihood – a woman who might have been one of yours, who might have spoken your language. Literally, as well as metaphorically."
Neither of them pretended to be speaking about the engineering chief in the complex behind them.
"Captain – we were acting under orders. I was fully cognisant when I signed up to Starfleet. I have no regrets."
"Some orders," Kirk said, "are less murky than others." She had said, Our forebears had the same roots and origins. Something you wouldn't understand, Captain. We can appreciate the Vulcans, our distant brothers. And he had acted his part and left Spock to seduce her out of honour and out of cloaking device, and he had yet once more achieved the impossible (because that was what James T Kirk did) and the memory of few missions had left him quite so uncomfortable.
"Is your concern, Captain, that you believed I was unwilling or that you believed I was too willing?"
Kirk looked over at him, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth in acknowledgement of Spock's ready understanding.
"I thought it was something beyond the call of duty. I didn't see it as quite your style, what you were asked to do."
"More your own, perhaps?"
The smile grew bigger, with a hint of self-mockery.
"Perhaps."
"Is that due to a lack of credence in the sophistication of my dealings with others?"
Kirk's head moved more sharply than he intended and he raised his hand to his cheekbone once more.
"Hardly, Spock. I don't see you as naïve, if that's what you are asking. I thought you might have too much integrity for a situation like that."
"Arguably," the Vulcan said, without inflexion, "a distinction without a difference. Neither on that occasion, however, nor on this, were my loyalties ever in question."
Kirk frowned.
"Of course not. Your loyalty is one of the eternal truths of the galaxy, Spock. Up there with gravity, sub-dimensional physics and McCoy's choice of metaphors. I might question your stubbornness on occasion, your inability to round up, round down or make a wild guess – but your loyalty? Where did that come from?"
"Your expression when our recent interlocutor conducted an experiment on your suitability for enslavement."
Kirk smiled ruefully. "I didn't think you'd jumped ship, Spock. I did think you might, quite reasonably, think that I'd deserved everything I got. You didn't really think I believed you capable of reneging, did you? That time before? Don't tell me again that you're a sophisticated being and you're capable of carrying it off. I always knew that. The truth, Commander."
Spock was silent. The truth was that didactic memory attached a number of aspects of significance to the memory of an evening on a Romulan ship with a woman in a black and white dress, shoulder bared and, across the deck, under guard, a prototype cloaking device. He had not been part of the conversation with HQ; it was Kirk, of course, who had accepted the orders, Kirk who had worked out the detail, aided by answers from Spock about the ancient relationship between Vulcans and Romulans. The Vulcan death-grip had been Kirk's idea and Spock, who had not known he was going to object before he heard the words coming out of his mouth, had said "There is no such thing as a Vulcan death grip," and Kirk had clapped him on the shoulder, and said cheerfully, "Excellent, I will sleep better for knowing it, but the Romulans won't know either," and had continued rifling through 'Fleet encoded files on bird of prey crews, which was the point at which they had first identified Sub-Commander Tal and worked out that his CO was a woman.
Kirk had always been mistaken about her, although Spock had never taken the time to disabuse his captain. (Why not? He put the question away, let his thoughts follow the memory.) He had felt nothing for her beyond admiration for her courage and a certain satisfaction in the duel of wits over the drink she had poured him, neither of them prepared to trust or to admit to a lack of trust, every word several unspoken half-truths. The truth was that he had been so focused on Kirk – had he given him enough time? was he out of surgery? had he beamed over safely? – that it would have been impossible for the moment to have become more than it had been. It was a fantasy that he had ever had a role in those years which had not been, on some level, to back Kirk up, to provide the balance and counter-weight to every escapade and every venture.
And yet it was not a good memory, the triumphant acquisition of the cloaking device. And looking at Kirk's face, the imprint of a Romulan fist now clear in the swollen flesh, he knew why.
The only Vulcan member of the crew, he had been very accustomed to his alien status on board the Enterprise. Kirk, like Pike before him, had only ever seen him as Spock, and not as a Vulcan or a half Vulcan, and whilst the logic of admitting it would escape Spock for the entirety of his service in Starfleet, he had learned very quickly to appreciate also the acceptance which lay beneath McCoy's jibes. This being the case, he had never been troubled by the occasional comment from crewmen who underestimated the acuity of Vulcan hearing. But then, until the incident of the cloaking device, he had never seen his connection to an alien species as a secret weapon. Worse, he had never heard an entirely mythological lethal faculty dreamed up as though it were plausibly a vicious natural partner to the subtle and gentle strength of the Vulcan mind-meld. And worst of all, he had never seen his commanding officer and closest friend after having plastic surgery in order to resemble a being native to Romulus – or Vulcan – essentially, as though Spock were someone you could imitate, in the custom of children on Kirk's planet at Hallowe'en. As it happened, Spock had once visited his cousins on Earth in the Earth month of October and had watched with incomprehension the exaggerated costumes and caricatured masks depicting sentient beings from other planets and concluded that the law relating to incitement to racial hatred must differ considerably between the respective jurisdictions of Earth and Vulcan.
There would have been not the slightest point in telling Kirk any of this, not least because he knew that his connection to the Romulan species was, indeed, a secret weapon, that everything Kirk had done that day had simply been one more chapter in the legend that was James T Kirk achieving the impossible and, lastly, that Spock did not doubt his own value to Kirk.
He looked now at Kirk, frowning slightly either in anticipation of the answer or in discomfort, and realised why he had never disabused Kirk of his belief as to the importance to Spock of the Romulan Commander.
It had been the least important part of the day, and at the same time, much easier than acknowledging the true source of Spock's ambivalence towards that particular memory. And if he nurtured regrets, it would have been impossible to describe them to Kirk. It was true that she had not deserved it, true that seduction in the line of duty was more Kirk's style than his but also true that he was uncomfortable with the sensation that Kirk had ever suspected him of divided loyalties. If possible, the idea of Spock as somehow lacking in the emotional sophistry to carry off the occasion was even less attractive.
He said now, very carefully,
"Sir, the Romulan people are fierce, warlike and brutal. No reasonable person would doubt the need to protect Federation space from their military incursion. I swore an oath to Starfleet and you are and were my commanding officer. Whatever abilities I had were at your service without question. I do not believe my performance, on that occasion, failed to give satisfaction. It is not entirely clear to me that there would have appeared any cause to believe my sympathies to have been anything but uncomplicated and undivided."
Spock was right, of course. And Kirk had never doubted his loyalty but he had wondered about the woman, about what she might have meant to him – was that the same thing? How much had that stung the Vulcan? Kirk wondered, then, how it felt to have only didactic and not experiential memory, to be walked back through those memories by an insistent human friend but still to have to relate to the rest of the known universe. He wondered how this impacted on Spock's ability to reach out to those who would, before Mount Seleya, have demanded their own emotional connection or resonance with the figure in front of him, wearing the green cloak of Romulan command. McCoy – how was the old dynamic reasserting itself? Slowly, Kirk thought, but not without progress. The Romulan chief engineer, though, and others who would cross Spock's path – he wondered how he saw them, and how they saw him, this person who was walking steadily back to the stricken engineering room of the Enterprise, to experiential memory, to I have been and always shall be. To being Spock.
He said, without knowing he was going to say it.
"Spock, I always knew you were at my shoulder. I hope the knowledge of that survived the fal-tor-pan. There were times when I trusted you more with me than I trusted myself. You and you only."
"That," Spock said, with great emphasis and even greater predictability," is not logical, Captain."
"When it comes down to it," Kirk said, remembering very keenly precisely when it had come down to it, and wondering whether Spock would too, without being told, "when it comes down to it, I would take your perspective, your evidence, over the physical laws of the Universe, regardless of how many impossible things you asked me to believe before breakfast."
For once, Spock did not challenge the language, made not so much as a glancing reference to illogical early morning feats of the imagination. Instead, it was the voice from the past, from the five year mission, which said, very gently,
"Captain, there was no contradiction. It is in fact gravity, one of the physical laws of the Universe, which dictates that once you let it go, a hammer must fall."
Kirk glanced up, and met a look of support unchanged from the court room on Starbase Eleven. He let the moment wash over him, held on to it as long as he needed to, and then said, quietly,
"It wasn't just that business with Finney. There were a hundred other court martials, even when they weren't in court. The toughest? Probably that Daystrom device – M5. You knew, then, better than I, where the battlelines were drawn, what was missing, what needed to be given in evidence."
He was mixing metaphors horribly, he knew – thought, with a spurt of humour, of McCoy – but it was his chance to thank Spock, years after the fact and after the darkness that had followed Genesis when he had thought he'd lost the chance forever. He remembered his own doubts. Am I afraid of losing the prestige and the power that goes with being a starship captain? Not Spock. The Vulcan had entertained no doubts at all. It had taken the ship's logical science officer to define loyalty as the only sine qua non, to claim that the thing which made a starship fly was what bound the crew to the captain and not the warp engines, not the dilithium crystals, not the ship's computer. Some part of the value he had found in Spock's friendship had always been the surprising comfort of being so transparent to another being. Kirk had discovered that when you have to ensure a command distance from four hundred and thirty people, it can be oddly relaxing to be known by just one of them rather better than you know yourself. And for all Spock's creed of non-emotion, he had known his First Officer shrug off his Vulcan cloak at warp 10 in two circumstances – when Kirk's own safety was threatened, and when loyalty demanded it. On the Melkotian planet, when they had thought Chekhov dead, McCoy and Scott had worked off the immediate pain by taking pot shots at Spock's unemotional response. Kirk had come close to intervening, despite knowing that Spock understood the dynamic perfectly, was allowing them the space to hurt in their own way, but it was at the point that Scotty reminded Spock of the Vulcan's own personal loyalty to Chekhov, whose mentor and head of section the ship's First Officer had been for three years, that Spock had broken with his own tradition and for once taken refuge in his mother's blood. They forget that I am half human.
"Truth is, I got rather too accustomed to it," he said, "perhaps I even got too comfortable," and then thought that he would say it, he would say the word now, instead of dancing around it for the rest of the mission or the rest of his life – he would say it just to see the look on Spock's face, to see his expression. "It was why I never understood – why I found it hard – when you left for Gol."
There was a noise behind them and Spock turned, rising. Eyes down, Kirk thought, his moment lost, and he kept them there as the transaction was undertaken.
He wondered whether she was playing a game, whether she really expected Spock to return. She was offering a time, together with a straight look of invitation, and Kirk smiled to himself, remembering a string of other women, not just the other Romulan commander, but Leila Kalomi, Droxine of Ardana, Zarabeth, whom he had never met. T'Pring, he thought, and shied away again from the memory. Another conversation yet to come. Soon, he told himself, following his First out of the room.
At the last minute, Spock turned back to the Romulan. Kirk fought to keep eyes down, expression blank. They had sixty seconds left till beam up. What was Spock doing?
"I am curious, Commander. In the last system, we encountered an automated signal and beamed down to an uninhabited planet, where we discovered the source of the beacon attached to a memorial. Are you able to provide further information?"
She was already turning back to her work, and her reply was brief, factual and dismissive, brooking no further conversation.
"The memorial was established many years ago in tribute to the fallen in a battle. There was no beacon, last time I visited."
"Are you able to specify the battle?"
"The battle?" She gave him a slightly mocking look over her shoulder. "You of all people should know about the battle, Commander. It is your heritage. We can discuss it later."
Eyes down, Kirk nevertheless could not supress a slight frown as he followed Spock out of the doorway to a discreet distance down the corridor, where the dazzle took them. As they materialised on the shuttle, he said,
"What was all that about? Do you think she knew who you were?"
"I do not believe in that event she would have allowed us to leave," Spock said, his own expression tuned inwardly as though he were thinking rapidly, and then the opportunity for conversation was lost as McCoy caught sight of Kirk's face and his captain, casting a meaningful look at the Vulcan, submitted to the inevitable ministrations.
