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CHAPTER 19
McCoy sat in the briefing room with Scotty, listening to Kirk complete his log entry. Usually it was something the captain did in private and then others would listen to it later, providing supplemental information from their department if needed, but Scotty had been curious about what they had discovered on Origin. Sulu and Chekov would have been there also—Aggie was dear to them both—but the oncoming storm kept them on the bridge. The ship was currently at warp six which would get them just beyond the edge of the roiling, purple cloud that would render their communication and most of their sensors useless.
Kirk hit a button to pause the recording and looked at McCoy. "Did I miss anything?"
"No," McCoy said, rubbing at his eyes in exhaustion. "I think you got it all, Jim."
"Bloody hell," Scotty said, looking back and forth between them, bug-eyed. "Seventeen augmented clones? Ah cannae believe it!"
"Believe it," Kirk said and punched a key on the monitor. Uhura's face appeared.
"Yes, Captain?"
"Lieutenant, can you dispatch my log to Star Fleet immediately?"
"The magnetic storm is already causing interference," Uhura replied. "But if I send it in a repetitive burst, it should get through with only a minor delay."
Kirk nodded. "Thanks, Uhura."
The monitor went blank and Kirk leaned back in the chair, groaning as he rubbed his face. It was nearly the end to a long shift and everyone was looking a little less than stellar—even Scotty looked tense and a little worn at the edges. The magnetic storm obviously had him worried.
"Jim, after the storm passes," McCoy began, hesitant to bring the subject up. "We'll be returning to Origin, right?"
"Have to, Bones," Kirk said. "Cloning humans was banned in the 90's just before the Eugenics Wars, and it wasn't long before eugenics was, too. We have to confiscate all of Moreau's data, notes, logs, and such. I certainly don't want anyone else getting their hands on them."
"And the . . . the clones?" McCoy asked tentatively. He didn't want them lumped together as just more "data" to be collected.
Kirk shot him a compassionate look. "Rand is already on that. We'll have sixteen burial pods by the time we return."
McCoy nodded, the act of speaking had suddenly become too much of an effort. He wanted to tell Aggie so that there would be one less horror to confront, but he had left her sleeping in her quarters. No sedative had been needed this time, she'd passed out before her head hit the pillow. McCoy had had to roll her over to remove the parka. He'd tossed his jacket on the floor and settled into the only chair in the room, unable to sleep himself. Jim had tracked him down an hour later, saying that he wanted the doctor to listen to his entry before it was sent to Star Fleet. After the incident with the Romulans, Star Fleet had asked to be kept up-to-date on Aggie's situation, and this was definitely a development that they would want to know about.
"Ye know," Scotty said, interrupting McCoy's thoughts. "Ah've still got all that paint we received from Star Base 10 sitting in one of the storage compartments."
Kirk frowned, obviously confused by the change of topic. "Wasn't there a mix-up? Didn't they send us the wrong color?"
"Aye," Scotty agreed. "The loveliest shade o' pink. I was just thinkin', the burial pods—" Scotty hesitated—"Well, it might be nice if they were somethin' other than white, and t'be honest, capt'n, the crew has grown mighty fond of the lass. It'd give 'em a way to show their support, y'ken? To help out with the painting and such?"
"Remind me to put you ahead of morale, Mr. Scott," the captain said in approval. He turned to look at McCoy. "What do you think, Bones?"
"That'd be nice," he said but his tone was flat, lifeless. He struggled to give the engineer a smile—Scotty and Aggie had become good friends, and he was obviously grieving for her. "Truly, Scotty, I think it's a wonderful idea. I think Aggie will really appreciate the gesture. I know I do."
"Aye," the chief engineer said sadly before pushed himself away from the briefing room table. "If'n you gentlemen will excuse me, I hafta return to Engineering. I don't like to be away for too long, especially with a magnetic storm on our tail."
"Keep our girl humming, Scotty," the captain said absentmindedly before the doors closed behind the engineer.
McCoy let out a long sigh that turned into a groan halfway through.
"You're exhausted, Bones. You need to get some rest."
"No shit, Jim, really?" McCoy sighed again. "I'd say I was 'dead tired' but that reminds me too much of the other Dr. Bones on Origin. God, I wish Moreau were still alive."
"So you could get your hands around his throat?" Kirk asked.
"Abso-freakin'-lutely."
Kirk huffed. "You'd have to get in line." The captain's tone was droll, but McCoy saw his hands twitch where they rested against his stomach.
They fell silent for awhile, both lost in their own thoughts. McCoy knew that he needed to rest but his body felt too heavy to lift from the chair. Before joining Jim in the briefing room, he had used the fresher unit down the hall, and he'd been startled to see his father staring back at him from the mirror. It'd taken him several seconds to realize that he was looking at himself. The eye bags, which had nearly disappeared over the past month, had returned with the addition of dark circles. His skin looked ashen while his blue eyes had faded to dull gray.
Perhaps it was good that the magnetic storm had driven the Enterprise away from Origin, McCoy thought. It would take two days to reach the edge of the storm, nearly a day for it to pass, and another two days to return to the water planet. Five days just might be enough time to start getting a handle on what he'd seen. Maybe then he could supervise the removal of the sixteen bodies and their subsequent placement in the burial pods. (He had no intention of supervising anything to do with Moreau's body). But in truth, McCoy knew he would never be ready for such a gruesome task. There was no preparing oneself to seeing sixteen dead and deformed versions of a loved one.
He already knew that he would ask Christine Chapel to supervise the process; she would handle the clones with the professionalism and dignity that any life form deserved. Besides, once she learned of what they'd found on Origin, she'd probably body block him from returning to the planet. Christine knew him well enough by now, about what he could and couldn't handle, and was one of the few crewmembers that could match him in temperament and stubbornness.
"You know, I think it would be good for Aggie to focus on the future," Kirk said abruptly, sounding as though his thoughts had been more positive than his own. "I'll have Rand go through the Citizenship Verification forms with her. It's a pain in the ass, lots of paperwork, but she's been through it before with Miri and the other Onlies. She'll know what to put down as a birthdate. Although," Kirk added, in an exhaustion-induced ramble. "Aggie'll have to come up with her own last name."
McCoy lifted his shoulders and then let them drop in a clumsy shrug. "That isn't a problem; she'll have one by that time." His words hung in the air for several seconds, their implication making the captain's eyebrows shoot up into his hairline.
"Bones?" He said, looking suddenly awake. There was a tentative smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as he leaned forward onto the briefing room table. "Did you just say what I think you said? Did you ask Aggie to—"
"Not yet," McCoy interrupted, smiling awkwardly. "I had planned on doing it a few days ago, but I was waiting for the dust to settle after the Romulans. But before I knew it, the code had been broken and we were sailing for Origin. I thought it'd be best to wait until Aggie had less on her mind." McCoy shook his head sadly. "Guess that idea didn't turn out so well, huh?"
Incredulous, Kirk said, "I didn't even know you had a ring." McCoy tapped the silver one on his pinky. "Your mother's, wasn't it?" he asked, but before the doctor could answer, he shot him a cheeky look. "So who's going to be the best man?"
McCoy bit his lip to keep from grinning. He knew that Kirk was forgetting a key aspect of the marriage ceremony, so he drawled, "Well, now. I s'pose . . . yes, I s'pose it'll have to be that green-blooded hobgoblin."
"What?" The look of hurt surprise on Kirk's face made McCoy laugh out loud.
"Damn it, if you aren't vain, Jim!" he said, slapping his thigh. "Who the hell ya think is gonna marry us? Commander Spock or the captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise?"
Kirk looked sheepish and then chuckled along good-naturedly. "I forgot," he admitted then added sincerely. "I'm happy for you, Bones."
McCoy shrugged but continued to smile. "The lady hasn't said 'yes' yet, Jim."
Kirk gave him a patronizing look, then asked seriously, "We've got a little less than a year left to our mission, Bones. Will you stay or request a transfer to Earth?"
McCoy heard the undercurrent of sadness in the question and knew that it was his friend, James T. Kirk, asking and not the captain of the Enterprise. "I'm staying, Jim," he said warmly. "With Scotty's advancements on trans-warp beaming, I'm sure it'll be no problem to get Aggie an independent consultant position onboard for a year. It'll give Aggie time to adjust, too. Besides, this," he motioned at the briefing room but implied the whole ship in the gesture. "Is a world onto itself, isn't it? Out of all the places we've visited, it's the one I'll miss the most, I think. I wonder who'll get her when we get back?"
"This here is my lady, Bones," Kirk said firmly. "And I'll fight for her every step of the way."
McCoy pretended to raise a glass. "Let the best man win as long as it's you, Jim."
Snorting, Kirk gave him a mock glare. "I thought Spock was the best man?"
"No, he's the best alien. You'll always be the best man."
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