Disclaimer: Me? Own Star Trek? Nope, absolutely not. And if you don't know that by NOW…I worry.
Blynedda: Ramblings are so fun to read. I'll see what I can do with the monkeys. Have you gotten to the one about the geese yet?
Catlover: I'll try to use Surak, I love cats myself.
Ael: A Trill? Cool! I'd have been a Vulcan, 'cept I'd never have heard the end of it from my friends. They already bug me about being Trek-obsessed. [shrug]
Keridwen: Funny, sounds a lot like what my lit class concluded. Good luck with the stress, Latin midterm done yet? And if so, how about this devious stuff?
Emp: Things really aren't looking up for Kirk either. Contrary to first paragraph…well, read on everyone, you'll see.
Rihannsu: I love when people love my stuff…
Okay, off we go, another fun-filled chap!
Chapter Twenty-Six:
Out of the Brig—By a Spoon
The next morning, on the bridge:
Kirk sat in his command chair, well content. The raven had been pretty strange, but there didn't seem to be any reoccurrences of that little incident. And things in general were looking up. For one, they'd left off the pineapples on Rhenium VI a couple hours ago. Now if they could just get rid of Harry, maybe they could do some real work. Patrolling near the Romulan Neutral Zone sounded about right. Maybe Starfleet would need another cloaking device stolen…
These pleasant musings were interrupted by Uhura. "Captain, we're receiving a transmission from Rhenium VI."
Kirk sighed. He had a suspicion they weren't calling to congratulate them on the delivery. People don't congratulate you for delivering fruit. "Do you have any idea what they want? Because if they're complaining about rotten pineapples, it's not my problem."
She frowned. "Well, they did say there was a problem with the delivery, sir…"
Kirk grimaced. "Great. Well, put it on the main screen."
"Aye, sir. Hailing frequencies open."
After a moment the image of Rhenium VI's governor appeared on the viewscreen, a rather young and nervous fellow named Carter. At the moment, he looked even more nervous than was normal for him.
"Mr. Carter, can I do something for you?" Kirk asked politely. "Was there a problem with the pineapples?"
"Well…we're not quite sure," Carter admitted.
How can you not know if there's a problem with pineapples? Kirk wondered. Romulans they're not. "Perhaps you could elaborate, governor," he hinted.
"Yes, well, we opened a crate, and…well, can you imagine what we found?" Carter asked.
"Pineapples?" Kirk guessed.
"Well, yes, pineapples. But we also found…a person."
"A…person? Someone stowed away in the pineapples?" Kirk asked, pretty much as a rhetorical question based on his own surprise.
Carter shrugged. "Well, if you didn't mean to send him, I suppose he stowed away."
"Yes, I would suppose. Now who…" Kirk had a very bad feeling of a sudden. "Did he, by any chance, give you his name?"
"Yeah, he identified himself as Harcourt Fenton Mudd. We have him under custody, until we can figure out what to do with him." Carter scratched his head, frowning. "He claims he's a galaxy-renowned pineapple supplier, who was checking his goods when he was accidentally sealed into the crate. He's been shouting something about suing you."
"Pineapple supplier," Kirk muttered. "Figures. He's a criminal, we had him under custody. Hold onto him until…" A wild thought occurred to him. Why not let them keep Harry? Heavens knew, Kirk didn't want him. But no, what would Admiral Stufshertt say? "…until we get back. We'll take him from you then."
"Certainly, Captain." With a clear plan and someone else in charge of it, Carter became much more confident. (How the man ever become governor of a colony is a mystery and will have to remain as one, as this story isn't about Carter.) "Rhenium out."
Kirk waited for the screen to return to the usual view of the stars before he started muttering a few choice Rigelian curses. Aimed at Harry, naturally. He almost regretted he hadn't tossed him out an airlock the moment he first caught sight of him four days ago.
* * *
First order of business, naturally, was figuring out how Harry had managed to get from a cell on the Enterprise to a pineapple crate on Rhenium VI. As a preliminary, Kirk called Security, and was informed that there was no possible way Harry could be on Rhenium VI, as he was still in the brig, under guard. Kirk decided he better go down to the brig and investigate this himself.
Kirk discovered that there was a security guard in the brig. Quite literally in the brig. There was no sign of Harry, but an ensign in a red shirt could be seen behind the flickering forcefield, sitting on a bench and holding his head. He looked up as Kirk's footsteps echoed through the hall.
"Well it's about time someone thought to check on—" Jones' eyes bulged as he realized just who had come to check on him. "Captain Kirk!" He leaped to his feet and snapped off a salute.
"At ease," Kirk ordered, keying in the commands to drop the forcefield.
Jones exited gratefully, rubbing the back of his head. Jones was having a very bad day. First the raven last night, now an escaped prisoner this morning.
"Now perhaps you can explain to me, Ensign, why you were in the cell while Harry Mudd is on Rhenium VI?"
Jones scowled, and for a normally mild person he looked surprisingly murderous. "Harry Mudd. That low-down, dirty-rotten, scoundrel of a—"
"Ensign! Just give me the story!"
"He hit me over the head!" Jones thundered. "With a spoon!"
Kirk blinked. "He hit you with a spoon?"
"A spoon!"
"Explain."
Jones took a deep breath, and this seemed to steady him somewhat. "Well sir, Harry wanted chicken for dinner yesterday, but if we gave him chicken we'd have to give him a knife, and that would be a security risk, so we gave him chicken noodle soup instead. With a spoon."
"Reasonable," Kirk acknowledged.
"Well, sir, he must have kept the spoon. And this morning he claimed he didn't feel well. I was going to call Sickbay, but figured I should investigate a little first, so I dropped the forcefield and went in. And he sure sounded sick, so I turned around to leave and use the comm unit, and he hit me. With the spoon. You know, sir, you don't realize how heavy a spoon is until someone hits you with one," Jones said thoughtfully. "Knocked me clean out."
To his credit, Kirk did not make any comments regarding soft heads. He simply told Jones to go to Sickbay and have his skull examined, and made mental notes to, first, make sure from now on there were always at least two guards in the brig, and second, to check the actual weight of a standard sized spoon.
* * *
Two hours later:
Kirk, Spock, and McCoy were in the transporter room. The Enterprise had arrived back at Rhenium VI, traveling there at Warp 5. (Kirk had briefly toyed with the idea of traveling at sublight, but concluded postponing the inevitable would only make matters worse.) As such, they were preparing to beam down.
"This is going to look pretty bad on the record, isn't it?" McCoy commented.
"It'll look worse on Harry's," Kirk said grimly. "I'll make certain of that."
"Speaking of which, Captain, what precisely are you planning to do with Harry?" Spock asked.
"What am I going to do? I am going to kill him," Kirk said quietly. "And then, I am going to kill him again. And after that, I will sell him to the Klingon Empire, and let them kill him. And then I will recommend they give him a life's sentence to Rura Penthe. And if they disagree, I will sell him to the Romulans and they can—"
"Captain," Spock interrupted, "so far in the course of your plans Harry Mudd has died three times. That is, quite literally, impossible. Barring time travel, alternate universes, unexplained stellar phenomena, and a very few other special cases."
Kirk gave him a withering look. Spock went on regardless.
"Also, I doubt Starfleet would be amenable to the idea of selling a Federation citizen, criminal or no, to the Romulan or Klingon empires. And in any case, agreeing upon the price, arranging the transfer, and handling any number of other details would be a substantial diplomatic difficulty, as we are not currently on good terms with either—"
"Tell you what, Jim," McCoy said. "You kill Harry, I'll kill Spock."
Kirk nodded. "Agreed."
Spock looked from one to the other, and seemed to reach a conclusion. "I see. You do not mean 'kill' in the literal sense of the word, nor do you have any particular intention of acting upon your words. You are merely speaking in an effort to vent emotions." His next sentence was faintly tinged with disapproval. "A most unproductive way to do so."
"You can help kill him if you want, Jim," McCoy offered.
"Thanks, but no. I'll need him to explain how I can use time travel to kill Harry three times. Maybe later."
Spock's expression clearly indicated he did not find any of this amusing. "And you are continuing to do more of the same."
"Gee, Spock, what ever tipped you off?" McCoy asked.
"Maybe he thinks you wouldn't really kill him," Kirk suggested.
"I think he couldn't," Spock said blandly.
"Hey! If I ever wanted to, I—"
"I don't know about you, but I want to beam down," Kirk interjected. Joking about killing Spock was all fun and games, but the last thing he needed was McCoy challenging Spock to a duel.
They beamed down.
* * *
On the planet, they located the building containing Carter's office, intended as a preliminary step towards finding Harry. Turns out they didn't need to go anywhere else though.
Carter, in a rare moment of conscientiousness, had decided to keep Harry in his office, and personally watch him. He didn't seem very dangerous. And that was true enough. The most dangerous things about Harry are, one, he'll swindle his own mother if he thinks he can get away with it, and two, when the mood strikes him he never stops talking.
"I tell you, Governor, I was attacked, hurled into the pineapple crate, and sealed in against my will!" Harry thundered.
Carter rested his chin on his hand. "An hour ago you said you were accidentally sealed in."
"You misheard me," Harry said, without batting an eye.
Carter shrugged. He wasn't the type to be able to stand up against Harry's double-talk, and had given up over an hour ago, except for the occasional objection to clear contradictions.
"I tell you, keeping a man such as myself in custody is an outrage! An outrage, sir, an outrage!" Harry emphasized his point by slamming a fist down on Carter's desk. "When my company hears about this, we will cease supplying fruit to you! And then what will you do?!"
"You still haven't shown me any proof that you're a pineapple supplier," Carter pointed out, rather feebly truth to tell. "And Captain Kirk said you were a criminal…"
"Kirk?! Hah! That charlatan! The high and mighty James Kirk! Hah, I tell you, HAH! Publicity, all publicity! I don't believe a word of it! Fighting Klingons one week, Romulans the next, Andromeda galaxy aliens the week after that? Impossible I say! You know what Kirk's got?! An excellent press agent! And that, I assure you, is all there is to it!"
"Gee, Harry. Nice to know you think so highly of me," Kirk said from the doorway, having just arrived on the scene.
Harry swallowed. The number of times senior officers came up behind him was becoming absolutely unreasonable! He recovered quickly though, smoothing down his jacket front with at least an air of confidence. "Ah. Kirk. We were just discussing you."
"So we heard," Kirk said, entering the room, a wry expression on his face. Spock and McCoy entered behind him. It had taken a few minutes to find Carter's office, and Kirk really wouldn't have minded arriving a few minutes later even.
"Captain Kirk, good to see you," Carter said politely.
Kirk nodded to Carter. "Governor." He gestured back to Spock and McCoy. "My first officer and chief medical officer."
General pleasantries went around. Though they didn't last long.
"You'll be taking Harry Mudd?" Carter asked, getting to directly to the point. As far as he was concerned, the sooner Harry was off the planet the better.
"I suppose I have to, don't I?" Kirk agreed, not very diplomatically but honestly.
"I guess one of us has to keep him," Carter admitted.
"On the contrary," Harry interjected, "I'd be happy to just walk out that door and never come back. You ignore me, I ignore you…"
They'd ignored him. But as Spock and McCoy were standing between him and the door, it's doubtful they would have ignored an attempt to actually walk out. He didn't bother trying.
"If you could sign a few papers here…" Carter told Kirk, who commenced adding his signature to several legal things regarding the custody of one Mudd, Harcourt Fenton.
McCoy took advantage of the fact that Kirk was clearly not currently listening to him to comment to Spock in a low voice, "You know, I think we just learned something valuable."
Spock looked at him, raising an eyebrow. "Oh?" He clearly did not see what McCoy was getting at.
McCoy beamed. "If we ever catch Jim on that site again. We'll just remind him of all that nonsense about press agents. Better yet, we'll make him talk to Harry for awhile."
Spock considered. "That…may have practical applications."
McCoy grinned. "Gee, Spock, I'm touched."
"Yes," Spock said.
This left McCoy to puzzle out whether Spock was simply agreeing with him, or whether he was making a subtle comment about McCoy's sanity levels. He didn't puzzle for long though (which is just as well, as it could have led to violence, if brought back to the earlier topic), since there really weren't many things for Kirk to sign. And Carter was rushing things along.
"I think that covers everything then," Kirk said.
"Yes," Carter agreed, relieved. As of now, Harry Mudd was not his problem. He was Kirk's, and Kirk well knew it.
Kirk glared at Harry. "All right, Harry, back to the brig for you."
"Are you sure we can't discuss this?" Harry asked.
"No. We can't." Kirk flipped out his communicator. "Kirk to Enterprise. Three to beam up."
* * *
Kirk hauled Harry back to the brig, and called in over half the security department for instructions. Spock went back to the bridge. McCoy stuck around, for entertainment's sake. Or, as he put it, to 'watch Jim's petty dictator side surface.' The security guards were standing in a very orderly line along one wall, Kirk pacing back and forth in front of them, giving directions. And he did look rather like the dictator of a small country. Or a large one, for that matter.
"I want three guards in here, at all times. No more than one guard in the cell at a time. If anything—anything—out of the ordinary happens, you call for reinforcements. Immediately!" Kirk turned, and paced back up the length of the line. "Further, from now on he gets bread and water. No butter, no butter knives. Every plate and cup that goes in must come out. Is—that—clear?!"
There was a definitive chorus of "Yes, sir!" But there was one question.
"Say Kirk, this bread I'm getting, what kind? White, wheat…?"
Kirk turned towards Harry, and snapped, "Which do you prefer?"
"I think I'll go with white bread."
Kirk turned back to the guards. "He gets wheat." He started to resume pacing, but was sidetracked again.
"Now wait a minute, Kirk, that's not very fair!"
Kirk turned and approached the cell. "Fair, Harry? Fair? You lost your chance at fair a long time ago. You assaulted two—" Kirk paused to think for half a moment. "Actually, you attacked the same member of my crew twice, broke out of the brig, and interfered with important cargo. There's fair, and then there's fair, and you are going to get the full penalty of the law."
Kirk stepped closer until he was just an inch away from the forcefield. Much closer and the flickering field probably would have made him sneeze and ruin the moment, but fortunately he wasn't quite that close. Just close enough to be rather intimidating. "And one more thing, Harry," he said, in a low voice that did not bode well for Harry. "I don't even have a press agent!"
See, I didn't forget ol' Harry down in the brig. Or poor Jones. I really must center a chap on him…though I don't think he'd enjoy it much. Mwahahah! Next chap up soon, weather permitting!