Disclaimers are overrated.
Another chapter! I'm happy, I hope you are too. And it's fairly long too… : )
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Considering how most of them had spent the evening, it seemed very unlikely that the pirates would be up early the next morning. Which is why Spock called a meeting at six a.m. As should be obvious, the ship was in a lot of trouble. As should also be obvious, something needed to be done. Hence the meeting.
At the early hour of six, in the somewhat cramped and dim lit storeroom on deck seven—aesthetics aside, the need for security made it a better place to meet than the briefing room—the bridge crew and department heads were gathered. The bridge crew were natural ones to invite; from the looks of things, they'd be spending the most time around Mr. Kirk. Lt. Commander Gray was necessarily present as chief of security, and Mr. Scott was needed to report on the progress of repairs. Spock privately would have preferred to leave the group at that number. There was, however, one more person. Dr. McCoy was the final member of the senior crew, and, in addition, it seemed that Kirk might be drifting through Sickbay on occasion. Therefore, whether Spock was pleased by it or not, it was logical to include Dr. McCoy.
The trouble was, as the entire ship knew, putting Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy together was never wise.
The meeting began calmly, if abruptly. Spock felt no need for social pleasantries or small talk or even an opening statement to ease into the business at hand, and dispensed with all of them. As soon as the last member arrived, he began. "The situation, as we all know, is, at the least, dire. However, hysteria and disorder will accomplish nothing, and therefore I would prefer to proceed in orderly fashion as though this were a routine meeting. First, let us begin with status reports form each department. Communications?"
"I'm still locked out of intership communications," Uhura said unhappily from her position seated on a box opposite Spock. "The intercom is open, but contacting Command or another ship isn't an option right now."
"That is unfortunate, but cannot be helped right now. Engineering: how are the repairs progressing? I believe the estimate was for 36 hours to completion, counting from 1500 hours yesterday."
"Aye, it was, but the new estimate is for this afternoon." Scott frowned. "That is, if we want engines repaired. No tellin' where our fine Mr. Kirk will decide to go."
Spock steepled his hands. "That is a matter to consider, which gives us two alternatives: To repair, or not to. If you repair the engines, Mr. Kirk will indeed become mobile. If you refuse to make the repairs, I have no doubt that he will threaten and rail and possibly kill large sections of the engineering crew, at which point we will still have the same alternatives. If you continue refusing to repair, he will most probably bring in his own crew, who I believe would be just as likely to blow up the engines as to repair them. If they do succeed, Mr. Kirk will, again, become mobile. Therefore there is no practical advantage and great disadvantage in not continuing with repairs."
"You couldn't find a shorter way to say all that?" McCoy asked.
"Doctor, I have not yet requested a report from Medical, please restrain yourself until I do," Spock said icily, in a tone not dissimilar to the one he had used towards Chekov in the shuttlebay the previous day. He turned towards Lt. Cmdr. Gray. "Security report, please."
Gray sighed, looking harried. The shadows may have accounted for some of the hollows under his eyes, but not all of them. "It's a mess, to put it simply. Lots to secure, no way to secure it. We're completely unarmed. Haven't got so much as a phaser hidden under a mattress, and every armory is sealed up tight. We're not bad at hand-to-hand combat, but hand-to-phaser is usually somewhat ineffective."
"Understood. Medical?"
McCoy was still smarting from the earlier dismissal he had received. "You're sure you want me to talk?" he asked sarcastically.
Spock's eyebrow rose. "I have requested a report from the medical department. You are the chief medical officer. Therefore it follows—"
"All right, all right," McCoy grumbled. "Of the twenty injured, we've got twelve back at their posts, six more should be in a few days. Of the twelve critical, we've been able to move four off that list, though they'll be recovering for quite a while. Regrettably, we lost three, which brings the death count up to nineteen."
"I see. And how is Captain Lowell?"
McCoy searched into his memory the way he might search through a database to find the required file. "Coma. He's suffering from an injury to the lower cranium, and I don't have the right equipment to treat it. I need a—well, never mind what I need, it's complicated, but it's big and bulky and starbases have them and starships don't. Once we pull into a starbase I can have him up and about in a matter of days. In the meantime, though, he's not going to be much help in the present problem."
"And there we come to the matter at hand," Spock observed.
Things became less organized, more heated, and far more protracted from there, but far less definite conclusions were reached. In the end, they were just about in the same spot as they were in the beginning. It would not be easy but certainly not impossible to retake the ship. The trouble was, what then? The computer was still answering Kirk's codes, and still required Kirk to tell it not to blow up. If they had those codes…then it would be a different story.
"He must have a pattern," Spock said thoughtfully.
"Why?" McCoy asked dourly. "I don't think he worries much about what he must and mustn't do."
"He must, for the simple limitation of memory. There are multiple functions of the ship he is keeping in control, and we know that he has been changing his codes. Therefore he must be keeping track of potentially dozens of codes," Spock said patiently. "It is highly unlikely that a human could keep in order dozens of unrelated words and numbers."
Only McCoy read anything into Spock's phrasing that a human couldn't. "But a Vulcan could."
"Yes. But Mr. Kirk is not Vulcan, and therefore that issue becomes irrelevant. Therefore searching for a pattern becomes logical. What codes have we heard him use?"
"Erickson1002 locked bridge controls," Sulu offered. "He's changed it by now though."
"It still may be instrumental in determining a pattern," Spock said. "Comments, anyone?"
Chekov shrugged. "A name and a number."
"Indeed. Other codes?"
"I heard him lock the armory," Gray volunteered. "Not very useful since we want to unlock it, but the code was Polo1275."
Chekov shrugged again. "A sport and a number. It is a Russian sport," he explained. The others present were doubtful about that, but didn't argue.
"Any others?" Spock asked.
"Yeah…" McCoy said slowly, thinking. "I was in the turbolift yesterday. The doors opened and right about then I remembered that I needed something in Sickbay. Anyway, Kirk was in the corridor. He was locking a door or something. This was after he breezed through my Sickbay, so I knew I didn't want to talk to him, so I shut the door and kept going. I did hear the code though…or most of it. Lewis18…" He frowned. "18-something. I missed the last bit."
Had Spock been human, this would have been the moment when he became angry and yelled, scowled, glowered, etc. But of course, Spock is not human and consequently he did none of these things. Instead it was merely a look of mild irritation that crossed his face. "That 'something' may be important, Doctor," he said sharply.
"Look, I'm sorry, if I'd known it was important I'd have tried to hear it," McCoy snapped.
Everyone else settled back in grim resignation. Usually Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy treated each other with bare civility when necessary and avoided each other whenever possible, but every so often they started off on something like this, and no one had yet had any luck stopping them once they started.
"As the source of Mr. Kirk's control of this ship is those codes, you should have deduced that the code was important."
"I was thinking of other things," McCoy said defensively.
Spock's eyebrow rose. "Surely you are capable of thinking of multiple things at one time." Something very understated but present in his tone suggested that perhaps, after all, the Doctor couldn't.
That's certainly what McCoy heard anyway, and he came back with fire. "I wasn't exactly going to stand there and work out logically all the detailed reasons of why I should care how Kirk locks his doors! No one thinks that way. No one but Vulcans, and I'm not Vulcan! I'm just a poor unfortunate human!"
"Thank you, Doctor," Spock said coldly, "I am aware of your species."
"You could have fooled me," McCoy flared, "you hold everyone to your blasted Vulcan standards!"
Spock's tone was subtly but undeniably mocking. "Would you prefer that I treat you as irrational, unstable, incapable of reasonable judgment?"
"I—no—" McCoy's mouth snapped shut and he glared at Spock with an expression of unmitigated dislike. "Oh why don't you shut up?" he asked sourly.
"That would be a dereliction of duty, as I am attempting to conduct a meeting," Spock said flatly.
"And I'm impeding your attempt? My humblest apologies. By all means, continue, it's FAScinating," McCoy said with biting sarcasm.
Spock ignored his tone and continued. The rest of the meeting was in fact relatively uneventful. They concluded that "Lewis18-something" was another name, another number, and other than that, no further conclusions. The only pattern was that every code had numbers, which wasn't much of a pattern.
Which put them in about the same position Spock had taken up in the Mess Hall. Drastic action was not yet called for, and therefore there was nothing to do but wait and watch, and see what information they could get out of the pirates in the meantime.
* * *
The rest of the day passed under a flag of uneasy peace. Kirk arrived on the bridge at nine with no sign of a hangover and took up residence in the center chair. With the exception of a short period around noon, he didn't move for the rest of the day. None of the bridge crew could understand what was so interesting about staring at the bridge and the viewscreen, apparently deep in thought, for hours on end, but Kirk seemed content. Bridge controls had been unlocked sometime yesterday, and the bridge crew occupied themselves at their own stations. Spock spent the time on matters of scientific research at his console. He did not run a search on Erickson, Polo or Lewis; he would not be at all surprised to find that Kirk was keeping an eye on computer searches of that nature, and he was unwilling to…well, the only phrase for it is "tip his hand," though that isn't a phrase Spock would use. Chekov and Sulu employed their old tactic of sending messages. For a while in the early afternoon, the atmosphere on the bridge wasn't very different from when Lowell sat in the chair.
At two-thirty, the comm unit buzzed. "Scott to bridge."
Kirk flipped the comm switch on the arm of the chair. "Kirk here. How are the engines, Mr. Scott?"
"Operational," Scott said shortly. "Ready when ye want 'em."
"Thought the estimate was for later tonight."
"Aye it was," Scott agreed, "but it's a poor engineer who can't work faster than his own estimate."
"I can definitely say that I have a new appreciation for Starfleet engineers," Kirk said sincerely. "Bridge out." He thought for a moment, then said, "Mr. Chekov, plot a course."
"Heading?" Chekov said promptly and automatically. He regretted it immediately after, but for the split second it had taken for his mind to connect and his mouth to speak, it had seemed the most natural thing in the galaxy to respond just as though Kirk had some legitimate authority.
"5.91 mark 7," Kirk said briskly.
Chekov started to lay the heading, then hesitated as he realized where that would take them. "But that vill put us in the Romulan Empire!"
"Thank you, I knew that. Plot the course, please."
"I vill not!"
Kirk sighed. "If you cooperated, Mr. Chekov, things would be much easier for both of us."
"I vill not plot a course for Romulus!"
"You won't so I will, and somewhere in between I'll stun you. Now what will that accomplish for either of us?" Kirk shrugged. "Unless you count some benefit to your honor."
Chekov blinked. "You say that as though you think honor is inconsequential."
Kirk leaned forward in the chair. "I'll let you in on a little secret. I say that as though I think honor is inconsequential because I think honor is inconsequential. Now are we setting the course or aren't we?"
"Ve aren't," Chekov said stubbornly.
Kirk shrugged again, and swiveled the chair a bit towards the back. "You want to talk to him?" he asked Spock. "He's not being logical."
"No," Spock acknowledged, "he is not."
Chekov glared at him. At both of them.
"He is also not acting unpredictably, or even unreasonably, though also not logically. At this point in time I see no advantage in a resistance movement. As it will take approximately 7.246 days at warp six to reach the border of the Romulan Empire, now is clearly not the time to object, as it will accomplish nothing and there is sufficient time in the future for objections. Therefore cooperating is the logical step." His piece said, Spock turned back to his console.
Kirk gave Chekov a look that very clearly said "your move."
Chekov glared at him, but turned to his board. "Course laid in," he said grudgingly.
"Very good," Kirk said. "Mr. Sulu…" He paused. "Are we going to have another argument?"
"No," Sulu said, and shrugged. "No advantage."
"Excellent. Mr. Sulu, warp factor six."
"Warp six, aye."
"Engage."
And why are we going to the Romulan Empire? That's something that you (and McCoy, incidentally) will be finding out next chapter. Which should be up fairly soon.
Jend: Captain Kirk, mixed with Captain Sparrow…honestly had not looked at it that way. Especially as I started this story months before seeing POTC…though I do see the resemblance now that you point it out.
Emp: Had FF paid yet, lol?
Solidchristian-88: Yay! I've achieved believable! That's the hardest part about this…changing the characters yet keeping them as the real characters.
Vest-Button: [falls over] Wow! Someone who actually isn't going to bug me about updating! Thank you for your understanding. [kicks history book]
Bug: Well…here is (was) the next chapter…which I suppose leaves you to wait for the next. Vicious cycle, isn't it?
Njong: Finnegan is actually canon. He's from "Shore Leave," a somewhat random Star Trek episode. Very good. And as for "Kirk casually splattering that freak's atoms all over the walls," that is a much more violent image than I ever pictured for that scene…although, come to think of it, my mental camera angle doesn't even show Finnegan, it's exclusively centered on Kirk. Hmm.
Mzsnaz: Gah! You haven't seen Pirates! DVD comes out tomorrow (December 2nd)! Go! Rent!
Whatshername: I love character development too. And plot development has its points…though this chapter was pretty much all the plot advancement that will be happening for a while…
Silverfang: Boo yaka. Gotcha. Thanks, me and my friend were wondering. : ) And I can definitely report your'e not the only one to occasionally say "boo yaka" anymore.
Ael: Not having seen Indiana Jones, I'd have to say it was coincidence. [shrug]
RadarPLO: Yep. They're disgusting.
Wedge: You too! You must go see Pirates! Go! Well…review. Then go!
'Tis all. More soon!