A/N: Thanks again to Saharra Shadow for her unflagging support and willingness to bounce around ideas. Thanks to her this fic is getting longer...and longer...

23.

"Tarsus was a struggling agricultural colony," Pike began, "that fell victim to a famine. A fungus destroyed their crops and there wasn't enough food."

Leonard waited for more, but Pike paused, looking uncharacteristically uncertain. "This is…harder than I thought it would be." He sighed. "I've been telling this story in my head for so long that I've started to believe it myself."

Leonard narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean?"

"Tarsus was a farming community. That part is true."

"Then what—"

"There was no fungus. No famine. That's what the colonists were told, but there was plenty of food, certainly enough to last until the supply ships arrived." Pike seemed angry, but there was also an element of reluctance in his tone, as if he didn't really want to say anything more.

Guilt, Leonard thought. Or shame. "I don't understand, sir."

"Let me start again." He was silent for a moment, gathering his thoughts. "Tarsus was founded by anti-tech idealists. They took with them only the most basic terraforming and agricultural implements. They wanted to work with their hands, live in harmony with nature, build a lifestyle that could no longer be found anywhere on earth."

Leonard wasn't surprised. It was a common dream, an ideal that he felt a certain sympathy for, although he felt no inclination to give up the comforts of his world.

"They attracted a few waves of like-minded settlers in the early years," Pike went on, "but they ran into trouble with some of their crops, and had some problems coping with the harsh weather on Tarsus. They tried to be self-sufficient, but they were still dependent on Federation support for a lot of their basic needs. They were isolated and they lacked a lot of basic commodities. The children were growing up, and there weren't many educational opportunities. Even after twenty years, things were still pretty primitive. Some of the colonists had left, looking for a more viable place to live, and Tarsus had a hard time finding people who were willing to join them."

Small wonder, he thought. "What the hell was Jim doing there, then?"

"From what I understood from his mother, she had relatives there. She'd just gotten divorced and was heading out again on a long-term assignment. Jim was thirteen or so. She said he'd become unmanageable, and her parents couldn't handle him. I don't know, I guess she thought that he'd do well with some fresh air and hard work."

I'll bet no one asked him what he wanted. "Fine, so he was shipped off to the middle of nowhere. What happened?"

"Tarsus was running into debt. Supplies were getting low. There was talk of abandoning the colony and asking for an evacuation, but then they discovered that the original survey parties had overlooked Tarsus's main natural resource." He leaned forward and looked Leonard in the eye. "Dilithium."

"Dilithium!" Leonard's jaw dropped in shock. "Crystallized dilithium?" Dilithium was the power source used in the warp drive, extremely rare and valuable in its pure crystallized form. "But there are only three planets where that's been found—"

"Four, doctor. There are four known planets in the Federation that have natural dilithium mines. Troyius, Coridan, Elas…and Tarsus." His face quirked into a wry smile. "As far as we've been able to piece the story together, the discovery was completely by accident. Some colonists stumbled over the entrance to the mine, which was hidden by a rock formation. They crawled in as far as they could, removed a small crystal, and went back to tell the colony leaders."

"Sounds too good to be true," he said incredulously. "Like finding a diamond mine in your back yard."

"Well," Pike considered, "in this case, it was more like, 'Be careful what you wish for…' I don't know if you have any idea how much money is involved in the crystal di trade, but it's… Well, let's just say that their financial worries were over."

"So much for the idealistic farmers."

"Well, keep in mind that a generation had gone by since the original settlers arrived. Their children were now in their twenties and thirties, and some of them, I guess, were pretty bitter about being stuck on a backwater planet. They didn't necessarily accept their parents' ideals, and they knew what they were missing. They wanted a more normal life, more access to technology, more commercial goods."

"You're saying that there were two factions?" Leonard rubbed his eyes, feeling his exhaustion in the sore muscles of his calves and in the tension between his shoulder blades. Get on with the story, he thought in annoyance. What does this have to do with Jim?

"Apparently, there were pretty severe social problems in the colony long before they found the crystals. Vandalism, arson, drinking, that sort of thing. The younger generation didn't necessarily believe in their parents' values of hard work and frugal living. They wanted more of a say in governing the colony. They were greedy, ambitious, and resentful…and then," he paused dramatically, "they found riches beyond their wildest dreams."

"Starfleet must have been ecstatic."

"They didn't tell Starfleet. Not yet." Pike's expression sobered. "Once the younger leaders realized they were literally sitting on top of a dilithium mine, they wanted to contact Starfleet and negotiate. I think some of them legitimately wanted to help the colony, although others clearly wanted to take the money and run. But the older council members objected, saying it would completely change the character of the community. Starfleet would take over and they thought they'd lose control. The contractors would arrive, bringing their technology with them… They were worried about the influence on the children. There were some pretty bitter arguments, I was told, and then they took a vote and decided to keep to their agricultural values."

"I suppose it didn't end there." Pike seemed to be leading up to something, but Leonard wished he would get there faster.

Pike gave him a wry look. "No, it didn't, but I know you want to hear about Jim, doctor, so I'll just say that over the next few months, there were some violent incidents. Some of the councilmen found themselves the victims of 'accidents,' or became mysteriously ill. A new council was elected, headed by a man named Kodos, but the survivors were quite clear: there was no colonist by that name."

"An assumed name?"

"More like a code. I did some research, doctor. The word kodos is the Coridan word for 'crystal.'"

There was a short silence as Leonard digested that. Kodos. The harsh, guttural sound of the word seemed to carry an ominous connotation.

Pike cleared his throat. "Not long afterwards," he said, "the colonists were told that a fast-acting fungus was attacking their food supply, and large quantities of food had already been destroyed literally overnight. The council ordered them to stop eating the food in their homes, which was supposedly infected, effective immediately. After three days, Kodos announced that the colony's food stores were safe from the fungus and would be fairly distributed among all the colonists."

Leonard frowned. "Didn't anyone try to check the information? Surely there were scientists among them, people who'd be skeptical of an announcement like that!"

"It's not hard to cause panic, doctor, when you're withholding information. There had already been cases of mysterious illness among the council members… People were scared, and Kodos seemed to be in control of the situation. They listened to him."

"And they were hungry," he said softly. After a few days without food, the colonists would have been confused, irritable, lethargic, and prone to poor judgment. As they weakened, they would become progressively more desperate…and willing to cooperate with any authority that promised to help.

"The food was given out in their main assembly hall once a week. The distribution was organized and efficient. All adults in the community—everyone aged sixteen or older—came at a pre-appointed time and were given a sack of food and provisions. This happened three times, over three weeks, and the colonists accepted the procedure."

Pike fixed him with a steady gaze. "The fourth time the adults came to the assembly hall, the doors were locked and they were massacred. Over four thousand of them."

Leonard felt his heart clench. "Oh, my God."

"I don't know much about what happened next. I do know that the remaining adults, a few hundred men and women, herded up the kids who were left into a primitive camp, and began mining for the dilithium crystals."

"With children!" Leonard was horrified. "They'd just lost their parents, and they were terrified! What kind of monsters—"

"Tarsus didn't have any mining equipment," Pike interrupted him tightly, "and the tunnels were narrow and twisting. They needed the children because they could fit in the tunnels." Leonard closed his eyes briefly, envisioning dozens of small children crawling along tight, muddy passages, cold and miserable and frightened.

"In the meantime, Tarsus contacted Starfleet and notified the Office of Colony Development that the colony had 'disbanded.' They claimed that most of the colonists had left on private transport, but the few that remained had found a natural dilithium deposit. At the time, I was a lieutenant on a survey ship, the Hercules. We had specialized equipment; we thought we'd be helping establish the mining production." He shook his head. "We were completely unprepared…"

"And Jim?" he asked, steeling himself. "Was he in the camp too?"

"Jim was one of the older children, and he'd managed to avoid the original sweep of children into the mining camp. He took a group of kids up into the hills above the mining camp, where they could watch everything. They stayed hidden, but he came down to steal food for them and was caught."

"I suppose that was the first offense."

"Yes. They took him into the camp." Pike's voice wavered, and he swallowed. "Things were pretty brutal there. The adults only cared about the crystals. The mines were dangerous and the tunnels collapsed more than once, but the colonists were desperate to dig out as many crystals as they could before they left. They kept the kids half-starved, and they punished them viciously for any disobedience. I think Jim was beaten that first time, and warned. He knew what would happen if he stole again."

"He didn't stop, though."

"He was caught a second time, smuggling food out to his friends outside the camp. And yes," Pike said grimly, "he was whipped for that. The third time…well, I think you know what they did to his hand."

Jim's voice, wretched and hopeless, echoed in his mind. They'll break my hand this time. But I'm not sorry. It was worth it.

"So he couldn't steal anymore." It came out as a whisper.

"Exactly. That wasn't too long before the first ships arrived, maybe a few days. By the time we got to the camp, most of the colonists and the surviving children had already left. What we saw…" He took a shuddering breath, and then another. "It's hard to describe. There were signs of what had happened everywhere. They'd burned the assembly hall, but it was obvious what they'd done. The camp…" He shook his head.

"Where was Jim when you found him?"

"He was lying in the grass in the hills above the camp, exhausted and starved, very weak. I think he'd gone looking for his friends, after the mine was abandoned. It seemed like he'd given up. He wasn't happy to be found, to say the least."

With an effort, Leonard found his voice. "What was he like then?"

"Like you'd expect. Angry. Mistrustful. Very, very guarded. He wouldn't tell us what happened to him. Hell, he wouldn't even tell me his last name. He claimed that he was an orphan. I think he felt abandoned by his mother, and he didn't want to depend on anyone else."

"Poor kid," Leonard breathed. "But how did you find out…"

"After a few weeks, I showed him the list of survivors, and he saw the names of some of the kids he'd been hiding. They were on different ships, and he hadn't known that they made it. It turned out that they'd been talking about a boy named 'Jimmy' who'd risked everything to keep them alive and protected, but they hadn't known his last name. We put two and two together."

Jimmy. Oh, damn. He'd used the childhood nickname so naively, hoping to calm Jim down, but maybe he'd inadvertently triggered some of Jim's memories himself.

He stood up and took a few steps in the tiny office, feeling a strong impulse to distance himself from Pike, to turn away from him until he could process some of what he had learned.

Tarsus explained so much: Jim's independence and tough demeanor, masking a vulnerability that he rarely showed. His resentment of Finnegan's swaggering authority. His strange acceptance of Finnegan's abuse, as if he expected his dorm officer to be capricious and cruel.

People in positions of authority don't always make the right decisions. Sometimes people shouldn't follow orders blindly. Jim had learned that lesson well, and much too early in life.

He remembered Jim showing up at his door at the beginning of the year, explaining why he didn't want to hang out with the other first-year cadets. They're a little young, he'd said. They're just out of high school. What, really, did he have in common with them? He'd survived forced labor and starvation while they were working on their homework and playing football.

Well, he thought wryly, Jim was right about one thing. Leonard recalled the way he'd insisted that he wasn't allergic to trichloridine; at the time, he'd thought Jim was simply refusing to face facts. But he'd been talking from experience…though he couldn't admit it.

He froze. That was the real question here, wasn't it? We were sworn to secrecy, Pike had said.

"Captain Pike," he said slowly, turning around again to face him, "why hasn't this information been made public?"

"That decision was made by Starfleet Intelligence," Pike said, meeting his gaze unflinchingly. "For security reasons."

"For financial reasons, you mean," he snarled, biting back a curse. "Tarsus is still being mined, isn't it?" He took Pike's tight-lipped silence as assent. "Well, Starfleet needs its precious crystals, I guess."

"What happened on the colony doesn't change the fact that there's a hugely valuable natural resource on the planet."

"Oh, come off it, sir!" he said, exasperated. "Starfleet turned a blind eye. If you know so much about Jim, who was just a kid there, don't tell me Starfleet Intel doesn't know exactly who the council members were and what each one of them did. You may not know who Kodos was, but I'm sure they do!"

Pike nodded, looking away. "You're probably right."

"It was a win-win situation, wasn't it?" he said sarcastically. "Starfleet avoids a media circus and gets all the dilithium it needs, and the criminals avoid a trial! They probably sold their pretty little crystals on the black market and are far, far away by now. And the victims—"

"The victims get some peace and quiet," Pike said, meeting his eyes at last. "They get to live their lives without being hounded by the media and without having to relive their story on the news vids."

"They should have been given a choice," Leonard said, disgusted. "Maybe some of them wanted their story told."

"Look, Dr. McCoy, I'm a soldier. I believe in Starfleet and I did my duty. I took an oath to support the principles of Starfleet and the Federation, and I did nothing that runs counter to those words." After a moment's silence, he continued, "I hated what I was asked to do, but at the time, I thought it was right."

"Well," Leonard said with a sigh, "I guess that's something."

Pike pointed to the chair across from him. "Sit down, doctor. Please." Leonard complied, sitting down with a huff, still scowling.

"A few weeks after we got back to San Francisco," Pike said quietly, "I was asked to make a visit to the Kirk farm in Iowa. Winona and I were in the same class at the Academy, and I'd met George. I knew Jim pretty well, too, by then."

"I thought he wouldn't talk to you."

"True," Pike said, with a small laugh, "but we'd gotten used to each other on the Hercules. He couldn't stand anyone who tried to treat him with sympathy or pity. I never did that." He sighed. "Anyway, Winona understood. She knew what the media would do with a story like Tarsus, and when they figured out that the son of the Kelvin hero George Kirk had been there too… They'd never let that go. She knew her boy needed to be left alone, to heal."

Leonard cocked an eyebrow. "From what he's told me, he didn't heal all that well. He never finished school, got into some trouble with the law, drifted around for a few years…"

"I know," Pike said, pained. "When I saw him again in Riverside, after all those years, I couldn't believe it was him. He was drunk and he'd been brawling with my cadets, but…I couldn't leave him there. I saw a moment when I could really make a difference to him, help him. Not with sympathy, but with a dare."

Leonard nodded. "Well, that's one thing I'll say for Jim, he throws himself right at the nearest challenge."

"I'll tell you something else, doctor. Jim doesn't know it, but there were quite a few people who objected to my admitting him to the Academy, with that kind of record, no questions asked. He didn't even fill out a regular application. But I wanted him here, and I fought for him."

"Then do it again, sir," Leonard said flatly. "Fight for him now. He needs your help."

"What did he tell you about the attack?" Pike seemed relieved to change the subject.

Leonard repeated the bits of information Jim had given him: the party at the bar, the nearby building where he'd been held, the demand that he quit. "They were cadets," he said. "I'm sure of it."

"Do you know who?" Pike asked. "Does someone have a grudge against him?"

Leonard hesitated. "Look, Captain, I'll tell you what I know, which isn't much. But first, I'd like your word that you'll make Jim tell you everything. You need to get the information from him, and he needs to see you as someone who's there for him. Like you said, he's guarded. He doesn't like to ask for help, and after what you've told me, I can see why."

"Doctor," Pike said, looking almost apologetic, "I'm Jim's advisor, and believe me, I know how little he trusts me. I'm going to have words with him, don't worry, but I won't be able to do that for several hours yet. If you can point me in the right direction in the meantime, I can start my investigation this morning. And as for Jim learning to confide in me," he smiled grimly, "I'll drag the information out of him with my bare hands, if I have to."

Despite everything, Leonard found himself smiling back.