Chapter 27 - Incident, Part 3
"You sure about this joining Starfleet idea?" Dr. McCoy stood with one foot up on the bed's lower brace, his arms crookedly crossed.
"Yes."
"You ever even been on a Starfleet vessel?"
Spock narrowed his eyes, then returned to expressionless, which hurt his head less. "You are in Starfleet."
"That's why I'm asking."
"Your regrets are not mine," Spock said.
"They can be."
"I wish to make my home there." The monitor's many tones shifted as his emotions did. "I do not like that device."
McCoy reached up and muted the monitor above Spock's head. The many other noises seemed to grow louder to fill in.
Spock looked over McCoy's shiny tunic. "Starfleet allows me to learn a great deal, to explore and observe phenomenon I could not otherwise."
McCoy wrinkled his nose. "Yeah?"
Spock wondered how long his father would be gone. He'd hoped to use this time to find a discipline that would combat the slipperiness of his controls. "Why did you join?"
"I needed to run away from earth. Fast."
"You are still on earth."
"I wanted to get away, as far away as possible. But then I found I wanted to stall actually putting myself in a dented tin can a thousand light years from naturally breathable air. And I'm still stalling. Which they won't let me do indefinitely. But as long as clumsy oafs like you with a bright and promising future keep getting hurt, they'll see fit to keep putting me to use planetside."
"You wish to leave earth, but you do not wish to be on a ship. That is not logical."
The corner of McCoy's mouth twitched. "I'm glad you can spot that. Don't think I haven't." He patted the insignia on his shirt. "But I'm stuck for the duration. You don't know what you're getting into."
"Nothing else would please me as much as Starfleet."
"Now you're not being logical."
The curtain parted and Sarek and Amanda stepped inside.
"Mother." Spock spoke as normally as he could.
Amanda smiled painfully and lowered herself onto the stool on Spock's right. She reached out a hand toward his arm.
"My wife," Sarek said.
Amanda sat straight, clasped her hands in her lap.
"You know," McCoy said. "I think we could use just one visitor at a time in here for a bit."
He and Sarek stared at each other.
Amanda spoke in her most gentle voice. "Doctor, it is quite all right."
McCoy rocked up on his toes, twisted his mouth to the side. "If you insist, Ma'am."
She turned her aching gaze on Spock. "I am unspeakably pleased you are awake, Spock."
McCoy came close on Spock's other side, shifted the cords around him and dressed them neater, tucked the extra slack under his mattress pad. "He was only out as long as the stun was in effect. Which is a very good sign."
Amanda traced with her eyes the cables and tubes around Spock's head and it required many seconds for her face to soften again.
McCoy said, "We've got the swelling well in hand. Just have to keep it down until it stays down on its own."
Spock straightened his left hand and watched it retract. It seemed to retract only slightly more than normal. McCoy watched this, studied his face. Spock looked away.
"Couple more hours I think we'll try for a bit of sleep," McCoy said. "Healing happens best in sleep."
"Can a Vulcan healer assist?" Sarek asked.
"I know they can't do much with a head injury. But I can see if we've got one on call."
"We have one to provide," Sarek said, unnecessarily unyielding.
McCoy pulled back. "If you insist."
"I do."
Spock closed his eyes, wished them all away.
The doctor rapped Spock's left shoulder. He again felt the strange internal compassion of McCoy's that contrasted with his exterior. "You aren't sleeping yet, my boy."
Spock rode the wave of stabbing sensation behind his eyes from focussing his eyes. "May I have my assigned padd?"
"For what, astrophysical navigational plotting or some such? No. I don't want you straining your gray matter. You need to avoid sleep, but you do need to rest." McCoy sat on a stool and rolled back, adjusted a panel to show a 3D model of energy seething along pathways. Spock wondered if it was his thought patterns.
"You can read a book if you want. If it's something easy."
"I am assigned the Martian Chronicles by my tutor." Spock turned to his father. "I will miss my session with Shutan."
"It will be seen to," Sarek said. "You were, I am quite certain, instructed already to put such concerns aside. Do try and do as you are told."
Spock rested his head back onto the gel pad. Felt the device screwed to his skull sink in and soften.
"May I meditate?"
McCoy rolled in close, waved a scanner over him, read it for a long time. "Yes."
With eyes open, Spock meditated lightly, tried to let the minutes slip away without impacting them or anything in his life.
Zienn arrived with Overlander, who waved with a painful smile from outside the curtain and moved on when hurrying staff slowed to go around her. Zienn's gaze took in every computer panel, every millimeter of cord and tube, before coming to rest on Spock. Only then did he step closer.
"Perhaps a much needed break, my wife," Sarek said. "Spock will be asleep and it is a logical opportunity for you to rest."
Amanda stood up, put a hand down on the bed beside Spock's arm and stepped away. Sarek escorted her out. Zienn slid down into her place and put a hand on Spock's forehead and let it rest there.
Spock gratefully closed his eyes, but felt no telepathic connection. He badly wanted to sink into the heavy gravity of sleep that had weighted him down for so many tedious hours. Zienn held him back from sleep, held him static and relaxed.
"What's this?" Dr. McCoy had returned, replacing the neurologist. He looked Zienn up and down from across the bed. "I didn't realize Vulcan had hermits."
Zienn tilted his head, glanced down at himself. He raised a brow which Spock knew was for effect. "I did not realize humans still engaged in ritual sorcery."
McCoy put his hands on his hips. "Well, at least the hermit speaks a civil language. Small miracles." He had a scanner in his hand. He used it on Spock, looked at it.
"Do you worship your machines?" Zienn said.
"By no means do I worship these bloody things."
Zienn took in the arc of equipment. "Your extensive altar here belies you."
"Now listen here, you scruffy elf. Sometimes a machine is the best tool." He pointed at his chest. "I do what's best for my patients. Not what I prefer, personally. Got it?" He gestured at Spock. "Just because you can reach into his head and change how he's thinking, change his pulse and respiration and, and, blood pressure. That's not medicine. Magically changing someone's thoughts and body with your hands, that's sorcery, or voodoo more like it. Thank you very much."
There was a pause.
"Exalted High Priest?" Spock said quietly.
Zienn looked down at him.
"Is that what he is," McCoy muttered.
Spock silently wished for him to put the argument aside. Zienn looked up at McCoy, said nothing.
McCoy bounced on his toes. "Well. Then. Let's get you ready for a nap, all right?" He arranged things around the head of the bed. "Roll on your side a bit for me."
Spock turned part way toward Zienn and flinched from the disconcertingly numb tugging on the back of his skull bone.
"All right, there," McCoy said. "Just a second. . ."
"You have put a machine in his brain."
"Just a drain and stim to keep the pressure down mechanically. He's not exactly well covered for contraindications in the master drug catalog. Okay, you can roll back."
"I do not like that thing," Spock said.
"I'd be more worried if you did like it." McCoy leaned heavily on the bed. "Need anything?"
"No. Thank you."
"Someone's mother raised 'em right." McCoy returned to his stool and rolled back. "Go on then, Mr. Mumbo Jumbo. Keep him in slow wave sleep as much as you can, as long as you can."
Zienn considered McCoy for a time before steepling his fingers. Spock gratefully closed his eyes, let his neck go lax, waited there at the gateway to sleep. The space around him flowed with the sounds of living machines. Fingers invaded that space, pressed against Spock's left temple. A rigorous mind laid itself over his own, but remained well on the periphery. He was urged to fall inward.
Spock had fought too long, fought sleep, his classmates, his hopeless controls.
"Sleep, Spock," a voice said in Vulcan. "Everything is cared for, including you. Sleep."
A well formed in Spock's mind, dropped away beneath him, drew him down, down into insentience. He gave up and slid into it, and blackness.
Kirk woke to a green-hazed morning sky domed over gray ground and curled his aching body to sit up. He slithered out of his sack and shook his bruised limbs, forcing the aches into the background of his mind. He stretched again so he wouldn't stumble and walked to the perimeter to check in with the scouts. Everything was quiet, had been for hours.
He stepped into the shadow of a spire of rock and retrieved his padd from his belt. There were still no messages from Spock. Neither comm lag nor Spock's courses could explain this length of a delay. Spock's last message stated he was visiting the Antaras Lab on the moon, had been invited to a second demo hosted late to allow for travel time, that he would be accompanied by the classmate Kirk had met. That was a day ago. It wasn't that long, but it was a hard break in pattern, and those set the hairs on Kirk's neck on end.
The comm link engaged, messages scrolled in, status updates, feed items. In the middle of the new list was a message tagged from Amanda. Kirk stared at it, at the unusual orange outline on the message.
"Sir, scout bravo is back."
Kirk raised his head, found himself surprised by the landscape he was in, the trampled plants, the spires of rock, the rapidly brightening sky. He jammed the padd into its pouch and approached the returning crew. He focused hard on their words. Signs of encampment in the last month, but nothing newer. Signs of heavy equipment moving around. Signs of bots. The words carried a halo that burned into Kirk's mind, threatening to be there forever. He looked away, put the information into place with normal significance. It still glowed deep in him. He feared he'd forever associate this moment with something personally significant.
"Should we move, sir?"
Kirk turned back to scout bravo. "Did you check our blocking?"
"We didn't risking scanning, sir." A nervous bite of dark lips. "You ordered a visual check, sir." Everything about Uirik was pink and red, as though his blood was too close to the surface of his skin.
Kirk nodded. "I'd prefer to stay if we're hidden. Moving is harder to hide. Ideas?"
"We can sacrifice a drone. Have it run a wide scanning course, transmitting encrypted in all directions. See if we show up."
"How many drones do we have?"
"Four and a half."
Kirk had learned this meant engineering could likely cobble together a fifth, but they would bitch about it.
"Have engineering strip one of everything it doesn't need to have on it. Make its course imply we're elsewhere, just to play with them. Maybe we can make THEM move."
Uirik's face relaxed. "Right, sir."
"If we can't see ourselves, we'll stay put."
Kirk continued walking around camp as the day warmed. With a slow methodical plodding, he checked everything. Began checking ER gear, which he found wasn't as ill treated as he'd feared.
"Want me to do that, sir?" a crewmember asked.
Kirk was restowing med kits a second time in a way that made the pictorial labels easier to see. He was remembering Spock straddling Hully with a trache punch that he'd grabbed in a hurry without knowledge of sickbay's stores. He was thinking a lot about Spock in various moments of high stress. He'd left his padd firmly latched to his belt and remembered random things.
Kirk took too long replying. "Go ahead, crewmember. Thanks."
A long lingering look. He needed to snap out of it.
When Uirik asked to see him about the drone, Kirk was inexpressibly relieved. He helped with the programming, watched the data blast, watched the power drop from the crazed route, the high powered broadcast data. They might as well have set off a set of fireworks. But the route had given the enemy a three thousand square kilometer area to choose from. He wished to the depths of him that he better understood how this enemy thought.
The haze of the day slid by. The high stress laziness of the others felt alien. Kirk returned to the center of their now confirmed invisible camp after checking in with engineering about routine maintenance.
"No one sleeps rough tonight. Everyone in the scuttles. And someone qualified at pilot at all times."
Eyes came around, came up, nods and mutters of ascent. Gazes remained on Kirk as if expecting more.
Kirk retreated to the transport scuttle. As if guessing his order but more likely just taking advantage of the comfortable chair, Hummer sat at pilot, displays on low active.
Kirk slid into the copilot's seat and pulled out his padd with normal motions. There was a second message from Amanda. Kirk deliberated a full minute which to read first. He pulled up the newer one. Amanda, ever the wife of a diplomat, had written this message as if the first had not been received. Kirk felt warm and heartsick at the care taken in the words.
"In an incident that Spock insists was partly his own fault, he suffered a head injury at the hands of senior class members at Starfleet Academy and is currently in ICU at Med One. They have just returned from running a deeper scan and found less damage than feared. So we are quite relieved. Spock has a rather skilled but acerbic xeno specialist surgeon by the name of McCoy looking after him very nearly full time. He credit's Spock's human aspects for his resiliency with an injury that would be harrowing for a fully bred Vulcan. The intracranial bleeding was limited and the swelling brought under control as rapidly as possible given the difficulty Spock's hybridity poses with treatment. They will keep him medicated and under observation for several more days, using the risk profile of a pure Vulcan, just in case.
"The Academy Superintendent came by again this afternoon after hearing the surgeon wanted to keep Spock in ICU. Spock still refuses to name anyone involved on the grounds that he is not one hundred precent positive of the identification. I don't know whether you are willing to argue he should speak of this. So I'll state the current situation and leave it at that.
"At the moment Spock is in medicated sleep with Zienn assisting him in remaining in the deepest part of healing sleep. They conduct this three times a day, alternating with peripheral stimulation. Even a skilled Healer cannot help a Vulcan heal a significant head wound as the necessary deep meld hobbles the Healer in the same manner as it does the patient. Some may still attempt it, but there is risk to it and it's been deemed not worth pursuing in Spock's case.
"It's quiet right now. Zienn keeps his eyes closed rather than risk the glare of McCoy. When Spock is awake, they are rather amusingly at each other. Which, I think, keeps Spock well distracted from his situation and the requirement to leave off his studies for the duration of his stay. He's only allowed his books for his earth literature tutor and his Ethics through Galactic Literature class, to, as you can imagine, his unbridled dismay. But his dismay is reassuring to me and I find it as beautiful as he is right now in repose."
Kirk stared beyond the padd screen. He considered reading the first message, which would likely contain more uncertainty and more emotional strain for himself.
"Bad news, sir?" Hummer kept his gaze locked on the heads-up display.
Kirk shut the padd's lid. "It's nothing I can do anything about."
A gap of a minute. "That just makes it much harder."
Kirk frowned, nodded.
"You should tell the team you've got a spoiler, sir."
"I've never heard that term."
"Just means you've got something spoiling the fun. Issues at home that you can't take care of from here. They'll understand. Not like everyone doesn't, at least part of the time."
"Right. Rather than skulking about and reorganizing everything for the hell of it."
"It's natural to try and do what you can even if it doesn't help the problem back home."
Kirk didn't know what race Hummer was. His hair started far back on his head and his scalp was faceted leading into his hair like a geodesic dome. There seemed to be a much higher percentage of non-earth extraction on these missions than on starship assignments.
"In a ship command I'd never let on to anything personal," Kirk said. "I appreciate you pointing out I should."
"They'll think it's them and get antsy. Otherwise."
"Crew on a ship don't think that way. They have a station to maintain. Ship crew know right away because of the computer and sensors if they're maintaining their station well or not. The commander is just an irritant in an otherwise orderly shift. I guess out here we change everything every few days and we won't know until shit goes wrong if something wasn't right."
Hummer looked over at Kirk. His gray irises were oddly deep and large and flat behind the lens. "Interesting, sir. I never wanted to be on a ship. Sounds boring as hell."
"It's not when you're in command of it."
Hummer's brows slid outward rather than angle upward. "Right."
Kirk flipped open the padd and pulled up the first message from Amanda.
"James, I regret to give you difficult news in what I know is an already difficult situation for you, but I cannot have you remain uninformed. Early this morning, Spock was injured in a hazing incident at Starfleet Academy. He was brought to Med One and is being treated for a head injury, something far more significant for a Vulcan than a human, I'm afraid. They assure me that because he was not unconscious long that the long-term damage should be minimal, but they won't know for certain for a few more hours.
"He is awake and talking right now and making things as difficult as possible for the xeno specialist in charge of his care. He doesn't want me to worry you, so I do not have a message from him directly. But I have decided that you have every right to know what's happened."
Kirk considered his reply. He wondered what the hazing incident entailed. He didn't see Spock going down easy, or being caught unaware. Perhaps the difficulty of getting an advantage over him was how he'd been injured. Kirk wanted to tell Amanda to hug Spock for him, but knew she would not and that made him burn inside in ways he couldn't afford. He replied, "Thank you. Message Received."
"If I may, sir?"
"Yes?"
"Why are you here? Rather than in a ship command."
Kirk looked at the granite of Hummer's irises. "Maybe I was bored."
Hummer laughed.
Kirk wished Hummer was a lieutenant rather than crew. He could use a lieutenant this comfortable. Kirk pulled up the maps and feed point overlays. Tried to figure out what the enemy was thinking.
