Disclaimers bore me.
I realized I forgot something important. Well, actually, I remembered it but at the time we were busy fighting Romulans, and then shore leave was promised, and then anniversaries came along, and, well…anyway, this should rectify the problem.
Chapter Forty-Four:
Some Date or Other in July
Kirk was back on the Enterprise on the twelfth day of shore leave. He was in his quarters, trying to sleep in. He hadn't overslept in months. He wasn't going to today either.
He was woken out of a sound sleep and a very good dream by a buzzing comm unit. He groaned, rolled over, and slapped the comm. "Yeah?" he mumbled.
"You awake yet, Jim?" McCoy's voice came.
"No. I'm not."
McCoy ignored that and forged ahead. "Sure. I just realized, do you know what we've done?"
Kirk stifled a yawn. "Lately? Fought Klingons. Fought Romulans. Fought tribbles. Went to Disneyland. Dealt with an invisible ensign. Celebrated Easter. Better ask what we haven't done. Sleeping, for example."
"Exactly. What we haven't done. We forgot something."
Kirk was in no mood for games. "Can we keep forgetting it for awhile, and deal with it later?"
"Jim, this is important!"
"Unless it's an issue of forgetting to put away the antimatter, please go away and let me sleep."
"It's eight-thirty!"
"Right. I'm on shore leave. Call me back at noon."
"If you wanted shore leave you should've stayed by the shore."
Kirk sighed. "I am going to turn off the comm very, very soon."
"Fine. I'll tell you. We forgot the Fourth of July."
Kirk was sorry that this conversation wasn't in person. It seemed a pity to waste such a perfect expression of pure exasperation. "Well that's not exactly an issue of national importance, is it?!"
"Actually, I think it is. We forgot our country's most important national holiday."
"So celebrate the 30th of July instead, and let me go back to sleep."
There was a pause as McCoy considered. "Actually…they did have important things happening all the way up till August 2nd, something happened then, I forget what. Anyway, something must've happened on the 30th. Maybe that's not such a bad idea. Think the crew would go in for it?"
"Uh-huh. I'm sure. Everyone loves a party. Good night."
"It's morning."
"Whatever."
Kirk turned over and went back to sleep.
McCoy called again an hour later. Kirk slapped the comm without opening his eyes. "What?"
"Sorry to bother you, but do you mind if we set off some fireworks in the shuttlebay?"
When Kirk woke up for good two hours later, he couldn't for the life of him remember what he had said in response. He threw on some clothes, pulled his shirt on walking down the corridor, and went down to Sickbay.
McCoy greeted him with, "Sleeping beauty awakes."
"Funny," Kirk said without a trace of humor, and went right to the heart of the matter. "Listen, I was more or less asleep last time you called…I didn't tell you that you could set off fireworks, did I?"
"I think your exact words were 'Do anything you want, just don't wake me up again.' I took it as a yes."
"I wasn't in my right mind!"
"But you did say yes," McCoy countered.
"I was asleep!"
"So your subconscious said yes. That's very telling."
Kirk was giving him a look. "Don't psychoanalyze me. I don't care if my subconscious wants to watch you set the shuttlebay on fire, I'm awake now and I'm saying no."
McCoy frowned disapprovingly at him. "No wonder you're stressed all the time. You don't let yourself have any fun."
"I'm serious! It's a fire hazard! And if anything does catch on fire, Scotty'll never speak to either of us again!"
"All right, all right." McCoy shrugged. "It was a long shot anyway. I'll just go with hot dogs and hamburgers and put on 1776 in a rec room."
"Now that's a better idea."
* * *
Kirk thought that was the end of it. Well, aside from possibly dropping past for a hamburger and the song about how Adams can't write the Declaration of Independence because he's obnoxious and disliked.
Things were not going to be so simple. Which Kirk realized within a matter of hours. Which sent him back down to Sickbay in something less than a good mood.
"Doctor McCoy!"
Surak fled. McCoy remained calm "You hollered?"
"What is this?" Kirk demanded, shaking a sign at him.
McCoy took the sign, considered it. It was plain enough. White poster on a wooden post, with black lettering reading 'Captain Kirk Unpatriotic.' "Looks like a picket sign."
"Explain," Kirk ordered.
"Explain? I never saw it before."
Kirk continued glaring at him.
Realization dawned. "Hey wait a minute! I didn't have anything to do with this. Sure, I was pushing fireworks, but I wasn't organizing a picket line!"
Kirk frowned, but accepted it. "Well someone is."
"I suppose I did mention the idea to a few people," McCoy admitted. "They seemed enthusiastic…maybe a little too enthusiastic, as it turns out…"
Kirk sighed, leaned against a counter, rubbed his forehead. "It's going to be one of those days, isn't it?"
"Oh, I don't know. You've already slept through half of it."
Kirk ignored that. "What am I suppose to do about a picket line? They don't teach things like this at the Academy!"
"Well…you could always agree to fireworks."
Kirk gave him a look. "Oh that's helpful. I'm going back to the bridge."
* * *
Things weren't any better on the bridge. Spock was oblivious, buried in something at his own station. The rest of the bridge crew, however, were giving Kirk dirty looks.
Kirk snapped long about midafternoon, breaking a twenty-minute silence with a loud, "What is the big deal about fireworks?"
Spock looked up with a faint expression of surprise. The rest of the bridge crew understood though.
"Fireworks are important. It's tradition," Spock said.
"Exactly," Chekov agreed.
Kirk turned a puzzled look on Chekov. "Why do you care? You're not even American."
Chekov shrugged. "I just like fireworks. They were a Russian inwention, you know."
"I don't care who invented them, we can't go setting them off in the shuttlebay!"
"I don't see why not. It's a very good tradition," Uhura said.
"It's a fire hazard!"
"I quite agree," Spock put in.
"Thank you," Kirk said gratefully.
Spock blinked. "It is simply not logical to light large and explosive fires in enclosed places."
"There, you see?" Kirk said triumphantly. "It's illogical."
He received three dirty looks from three directions, and then everyone returned to their consoles, a tense silence falling.
Kirk fled after another thirty minutes of silence. He had tried to make conversation twice and had failed to talk to anyone but Spock. It wasn't that they spent all their time talking when on the bridge; it was just that the atmosphere was usually much better. A comfortable silence is considerably different from an uncomfortable one. So Kirk fled.
Things weren't any better in the corridors. Kirk was a popular captain. He wasn't use to getting dirty looks from every direction. At least on the bridge there were only three of them. He almost retreated to his quarters but saw the picket line from a distance. He could have dispersed it. He turned around instead. His usual retreat, Sickbay, didn't seem like a good idea, and he wasn't sure about engineering. He finally ended up back on the bridge, where conditions hadn't improved.
Kirk could hold out against Klingons for a long, long time. This was different. He'd had enough by six o'clock.
"What about a compromise?' Kirk asked the bridge crew in general.
They turned away from their consoles. "What sort of compromise, Captain?" Uhura asked.
Kirk sighed. "How about…sparklers? But that's it! And only if Mr. Scott agrees that the shuttlebay probably won't go up in smoke."
Sulu, Chekov and Uhura considered. "It sounds reasonable to us," Sulu said. "We'll have to see about everyone else."
It sounded reasonable to everyone else too, even Scotty. So at nine o'clock (even in space, who ever heard of fireworks starting earlier than nine or so?) a large portion of the crew, American and not, gathered in the shuttlebay for sparklers, hamburgers, and a showing of 1776 next door. It was an effort, but McCoy even dragged Kirk and Spock to it, and all of Spock's protests that this was a holiday he didn't celebrate based on a date on a calendar he didn't use were to no avail. But once they got there, they paled in interest to something happening elsewhere in the shuttlebay.
"Sparkler, Sam?" Denise asked.
"No…no, I don't think so," Jones said uncomfortably.
"Oh come on. They're fun!"
"No, I'm not good with fire."
"Little kids play with sparklers!"
"We-ell…"
"Good," Denise said firmly, handing the unlit sparkler to him.
"Are you sure about this?" Jones asked uncertainly.
"I'm positive," Sandra said, lighting the sparkler.
It sparked, flared and caught flame. Jones looked at it nervously, and twitched his wrist a little.
"Come on, wave it around," Denise encouraged. She had lit her own and was waving it through the air in arcs and twirls, leaving a golden trail behind it.
Jones waved a little more. When nothing immediately burst into flames, he grew a little more confident. "Hey, that's kind of fun!"
"See? What'd I tell you?"
Two sparklers later, Jones had grown more enthusiastic. A sparkler after that, disaster struck, as it usually does when Jones is involved. Jones waved a sparkler just a little too close to a sensor pad. The computer noticed.
"Warning, warning. Fire detected in shuttlebay. Initiating standard fire prevention methods."
"Oops," Jones said unhappily.
Kirk was on the other side of the shuttlebay, but there was no doubt in his mind what had happened. "All right, who gave Jones a sparkler?" he asked in a resigned tone.
Scotty was hammering on the nearest computer console. "No, Computer, it's a false alarm, there's no fire!"
The computer didn't believe him. "Fire has been detected. Fire prevention initiating.
And it began to rain. Great torrents of water pouring out of the ceiling, drenching the crew, streaming across the walls, puddling on the floor.
"Now ye've done it," Scotty said, probably to the computer.
"Is this part of the tradition?" Spock asked, managing to look dignified with water dripping off his nose.
"Not exactly," McCoy said, looking dubiously at the jets of water coming off the ceiling. Every square inch of everything in the shuttlebay was soaked, but the computer didn't seem inclined to stop the rain.
Kirk hadn't said a word since his comment about Jones and the sparkler. Hadn't moved either. He just stood, arms crossed, water dripping onto him.
McCoy eyed him warily. "Ah, Jim, are you going to kill someone? Because if so, I'm leaving."
Kirk blinked, and the corner of his mouth twitched. He strived to suppress it but it did it again, and half a snicker got out. He bit his lower lip, and, despite his best efforts, a full snicker escaped. He inhaled sharply, and then lost control entirely. In moments he was clutching his side, howling with laughter.
"Where's the…harm in…fireworks?" Kirk gasped. "Never mind that they're—ha ha—fire hazards! But of course—ha!—we can't have normal problems! No burned ham, we get…live pigs! Forget bad…stuffing, it's a…flapping goose! And no fire, just—snicker—rain!"
Kirk shook his head, chuckling, pushed soggy hair out of his eyes, and looked around at the wet crewmembers. And then in an eye blink the amusement vanished and he turned a stern look on McCoy. "Never again," he warned.
"Never," McCoy agreed quickly. "Next July, I won't even light a match."
Kirk nodded firmly. "Good." He held the serious expression a heartbeat longer, and then it dissolved again. "Rain, on the fourth. Except that it's the 30th. And in space!"
Kirk shook his head again and walked towards the door, threading his way between dripping crewmembers, laughing the entire way.
Spock and McCoy watched him go. (Scotty was too busy arguing with the computer about whether or not there was a fire.)
"He took it rather well," McCoy said, faintly surprised.
"Indeed."
"Maybe Disneyland did him some good."
"It does seem to be a possibility."
McCoy nodded. "Never underestimate the power of the Mouse."
~~~~****~~~~
If anyone's curious, I spent my Fourth of July watching 1776. It's quite funny. Weird. But quite funny. I recommend it.
Tucker: I don't know anything else about the mango, Jones keeps that pretty quiet. And the remarkable thing is, I've actually heard of Schroedinger's cat. Thank you, Blynneda. And I'll think about Wes; haven't anticipated another crossover, but I'm always open to new ideas.
Whatshername: I still don't understand about Fish Skin Suit. But as to the rest of your review, go BBK! One of these days I'll write my own resurrection story for Kirk. One of these days…
PhilosopherCat: Glad you like! 43 chapters isn't enough? You want more? Well, okay then!
Wedge Antilles: Don't bug me about Xanth. Please. I'm writing three novels for heaven's sake, plus an original one not posted anywhere. So…don't bug me. I'll get to Xanth. On the other hand, I'm glad you want me to post. And I don't need ego boosting, really. Feel free to do it anyway, of course…
Alania: Thank you! I finally have a good abbreviation for this. I've been calling it Soup…Trekkie Soul is better. Kahn's a fun villain, and Harry is delightfully funny. I just watched I, Mudd again today…I'm corrupting the kids I'm baby-sitting and getting them into Star Trek. : )
Unrealistic: Good for you! Whack the disrespectful Spork person! Not to promote sibling fighting or anything…
PearlGirl: I'm not fond of haunted houses myself. But I've got it all solved for the future. Just look at it the way Spock would! I actually wrote that scene in my head while riding the ride, so everything is absolutely accurate.
Beedrill: I'm glad someone else likes Smallworld! I always thought it was darling. Everyone else apparently finds it annoying. Oh well. And it's good to know I'm doing something good and fighting obesity through laughter, lol! And I will keep that conversation somewhere in the back of my mind. We'll see. And regarding Uhura, I couldn't have said it better. I don't know her nearly as well as Kirk, Spock and McCoy, so it's much more difficult to write her into the plot.
Ael: you know, I think you've given me an idea about crossovers…see below. And yes, do post the rest of Star Trekkies! Really, stopping right in the middle is unpardonable. And as for writer's block, I'm sure I would have too except that, for the most part, I've been starting a new story every chapter.
Grace: Glad to know you're still out there and still enjoying this!
RadarPLO: A new reader! Or new reviewer. Either way, welcome. I dunno if I'm better than the show but…thanks!
Okay, ATTENTION ALL! Anybody want in on a CAMEO, let me know, preferably by e-mail! I've got an idea for one in a chapter or two that should be…interesting, to say the least.
Meanwhile, review!