Chapter 11

Day 11

Rayan Grale was paying close attention to Kirk. He had kept an eye on him since the negotiations at Camp, but the crash had thrown the Captain into much sharper contrast. He was strong, that one, and he had spun his crew into a tight-knit fabric that would be hard to wear out.

Grale had tested it, at that first general meeting. The grenade he had thrown into the circle had been disarmed almost instantly. It had been genius to let the little Meteorologist take up the challenge, to let the two youngest of the crew bring the bad news in their transparent, almost lighthearted ways.

The miner suspected that in ten years' time the Captain would grow into the leadership style of a Davis. Right now he wasn't old enough to be a father figure, but he already built his authority on the basis of accessibility, fairness, self-sacrifice, praise for his men and encouragement in case of failure, and that terribly easy, almost physical charm.

Grale had never had charm. Grale hated charm. He didn't make the mistake of thinking that that was all that Kirk was about. He did recognize the characteristics they had in common: a keen intuition, great strength of will and physical endurance, insight in people and how to manipulate them, courage. But he hated James Kirk, the golden boy in his blood-stained, golden command shirt.

And he hated the way Kirk's men were devoted to their Captain. They reveled in demonstrating that they were worthy of his commendation. Even slop duty, the rotten task of drying out the gear, checking its state, mending it if necessary, and storing it after its use, which involved ice and sweat-encrusted, rough fabric, the sharp edges of goggles coming apart, and stinky boots and socks, was taken up with verve. Not for profit, but for the reward of a job well done and their Captain's gentle gratitude.

But how long could that last?

Grale knew that they were in for a long wait. For now they were still relatively comfortable and the promise of rescue was as yet untainted by grimmer realities. No doubt Kirk had been grappling with those realities since the very beginning of this crisis, even as he was deftly holding them off for his men.

And therein lay Kirk's vulnerability, and thus that of his crew.

For, though Kirk welcomed his crew's initiative, he in fact made himself solely responsible for every decision. He took care to be present to every act. He was always there to shore up spirits, comfort, joke around. He hardly slept, often ran two shifts. He was out with the snow shoveling crew more than anyone else. The men would come in hot and tired after the hard work, but they would be laughing. The Captain's smile grew progressively more strained.

There was more to it than his physical difficulty – he had been injured, Grale knew that, and knew also that he was one of two or three who knew it. No, it was that everything was always on the brink of falling apart and that everything depended on Kirk. That Kirk stood alone. His crew may have thought the exact opposite, that he was close to them, but therein most of them were skillfully deceived.

Only the older Engineer seemed to grasp this and was doing what he could – what Kirk allowed him to do - to support the Captain. But Grale could see that Scott was not sufficient. He could spot it each time Kirk emerged from Sick Bay.

It was the two men in that room who should have been Kirk's mainstay, and weren't.

The Vulcan was no doubt Kirk's first compass, but he was in a coma and thus, like a compass, useless here at the very pole of the planet.

Then there was McCoy. Grale hadn't quite figured it out yet, but he had the feeling that all was not well between the Captain and the CMO and that their strained relationship was a drain on the Captain's strength.

So, ironically, it was Kirk's exceptional leadership that made him the weak spot in the group.

Kirk knew it too, of course, and he was always guarded, especially when Grale was present. But his strength was wavering. Soon Grale would hit home, where it would hurt. Not yet, but soon.

Now, did Grale want that? He knew he and his men depended on this group, on this man, to survive. But something had snapped in him when the others at Camp had deserted him, when Davis banished him like a common criminal and stole his hard-earned future profits. He simply could not bring himself to pull the strong fabric of this crew around him like a mantle.

Also, all would not be lost if he grasped the fraying part and, starting there, tore it to shreds. On the contrary, perhaps...

They were eleven days into the crash. Grale knew he would not have to wait for very long.