McCoy was absolutely right, of course. Jim wasn't good with free time.

The first hour or so into his four hour wait for the supply drop, he entertained himself by trying his hand at spear fishing. While the berries – which, thanks to Miram, he knew were safe to eat – made for a delicious snack, he longed for something more substantial. So he delved into the depths of the pool, spear poised in one hand, and hung suspended in the fractured shafts of light beneath the surface in a patient bid to capture one of the shimmering purple bodies that darted by.

It took several dives and many failures, but eventually Jim was able to bring one of the oblong creatures ashore. He completed his food tests with a small sliver of its flesh, and placed the rest in a small reed-woven basket, which he anchored in the shadowed waters near the mountainside in an effort to keep the meat fresh and cool.

Jim then hiked back up to his cave, where he spent a portion of his time improving the camouflage over its entrance. He also sharpened a few staves and sunk them into the ground around the opening to act as a crude, and hopefully unnecessary, defence.

With just over two hours to go until the drop, Jim finally resorted to doing a series of circular sweeps through the surrounding forest in an effort to expand and improve the rough map he held in his head.

It was during this process of mapping the surrounding area that Jim noticed something odd.

Even before his time at Starfleet Academy – wherein he had completed a number of advanced courses in survival and tracking – Jim had been fairly adept at identifying and following trails. The same circumstances that had made him sensitive to the expressions and body language of others had honed his ability to see the evidence of prior passage where others would see only uniform foliage. It quickly became clear to him that someone – someone heavy and flat-footed and definitely not a child – had been wandering all over the woods in ever expanding loops, as if in search of something.

After stumbling across several trails of varying ages, Jim finally stumbled on one that had been created as recently as that very morning. By this time, he had determined that the only person who could possibly be making these trails was the man Miram had spoken of – the one that had stolen their food and supplies while they slept.

Jim knelt down and examined the trail with a practiced eye. The foot prints spoke of hefty man with a broad-shouldered gait, who tended to roll his weight slightly to the outside of his foot as he stepped. The mess of broken branches and disturbed ground that littered the trail suggested a man who had little experience in traipsing through the forest, and no interest in covering his tracks

Jim sat back on his haunches slowly and thought things through carefully. It was clear from the criss-crossing tracks he had been encountering all morning that the man was looking for something. Since food was more plentiful nearer to the slopes, and the man had no idea of Jim's existence, he could only deduce that what the man was searching for was Miram and her diminutive tribe.

Now, Jim would have loved to think that the man's intentions in his efforts were to make amends for the wrong he had done the children – perhaps by checking on their well-being or returning some of the stolen food. But in his experience, men who stole from children were not the type to have a change of heart, and so he was forced to consider what other motives the man might have in seeking out the youngsters.

He scowled.

If Bones were there, he would tell Jim to head back to the pool and cool his heals until he found another option. If Spock were present he might caution Jim to ensure that he had a plan, a back-up plan and an emergency contingency before he went any further. But neither of them were there, and Jim had limited time and no real alternatives. If he did not do something about it now, he would soon be too sick to do anything at all, and Miram and her brood would be left alone with a potential threat.

He thought of the tremor in Miram's hands and the poorly-hidden fear in her eyes when she had spoken of the man.

"Sorry Bones," he muttered, and headed off down the trail.

It took far less time than he would have thought to reach the end of the trail. He couldn't have been more than thirty minutes' walk from his own cave. He was thankful for the fact that the path lead him away from the pool and the direction in which he believed the children were hiding.

The man's area, when it came under Jim's gaze, was a sty. He was inhabiting a slight hollow in the mountainside, located at base level. Empty cans and torn packages – from Miram's stolen food, no doubt – were strewn across the ground, along with the rotting remnants of half-eaten fruit. The smell of stale sweat and piss and – Jim sniffed, and curled his lip – excrement hung heavily in the air.

The man was crouched with his back to Jim, apparently rooting through the empty cans on the ground. There were large sweat stains marking his back and underarms. Looking at him, even while hunkered down, Jim could tell that he was a large man. Half a head taller than Jim at least, and broad in the shoulders. But it was also immediately clear that his arms and waist had softened and gone to flab at some point, and he had the general air of a man who did not take very good care of himself.

As he approached, Jim could hear him muttering under his breath.

"…fucking kids, where the fuck are they when you need 'em…"

Jim did his best to tamp down on his anger.

"Even animals know to shit downwind, you know."

Eh, so tamping down wasn't his thing.

The man spun around, greasy hair whipping about his face like an oily fan.

"The hell are you?"

Jim breathed in through his nose – ugh, Gods, mistake – and smiled brightly.

"Names Jim Kirk. I serve aboard the Starship U.S.S. Enterprise. And you are?"

The man ignored Jim's question.

"Thought yore lot had left."

"Evidently not."

The man sneered – he had the right face for it, lips thick and twisted. "Whatcha all hanging about for, then? S'not like there's much of a carcass 'round here for you vultures to pick off."

"The Enterprise was originally here to collect research and samples, it's true," said Jim calmly, nodding as if the other had made a good point. "But with people getting sick on the planet's surface, of course we would remain to provide assistance where we can. The crewmembers on board-"

"I don't give a fuck about yore fucking Starfleet friends," exploded the man harshly, interrupting Jim's explanation. "Alien freaks and blood traitors, the whole lotta them. Swanning 'round the stars like they own every-fuckin'-thing."

Jim's smile never faltered. He had heard similar tirades about Starfleet countless times across numerous planets. His own uncle had been particularly fond of the subject.

Instead, he continued, "You know, you don't really strike me as the scientific type…"

"That's 'cause I'm not a bloody scientist." The man's eyes flickered up and down Jim's figure, settling briefly on his newly-cleaned uniform shirt and flicking to the spear in his belt, before he smiled inexplicably. It wasn't a pleasant smile. "My wife was, up until a few days ago."

"I'm sorry. Is she still up at the compound with the infected?"

"Manner of speaking," hummed the man, still smiling oddly. "When things got really nasty, and she started coming at me with those snappers of hers, I bashed her head in myself."

Jim stilled. "Why would you do that?" he asked calmly, even as the cold flush of rage caused the outer walls of his control to tremble. He thought about this man being anywhere near Miram or Ro, and his hands trembled minutely.

"Her or me. Didn't have a choice." The man shrugged and shook his head in a parody of sadness. "Tole her way back that coming to this godforsaken rock was a mistake. She shoulda listened."

Jim pressed his hands to the seams of his pants until he could be sure that they were steady. "You don't sound too torn up about having to kill her."

"Doesn't really matter now, does it? What with everybody gone," the man said thoughtfully. "I only tole you so that you'd know if I could go bashing her head in, I'd have no trouble with yours."

Jim raised his eyebrows, genuinely taken aback by the blatant threat.

"Seems a bit hasty," he responded honestly. "I'm not planning on harming you, or taking what's yours." Not a lie per se – Jim was not really one to plan in these sorts of situations. "There's no need for threats."

The man's smile grew to a grin. "I want yore spear," he said genially. "And that yellow top o' yores." He shifted, and Jim noted that he had drawn a sharp shard of rock from the back of his belt. "Please."

Jim was swiftly becoming aware that he had anticipated this situation incorrectly. He had expected, when he followed the trail, to encounter a man warped by horrific circumstance. An innately shitty person, maybe, but one who's harmful choices had been driven more by fear and desperation than cruelty and calculated greed.

He had been wrong. The creature in front of him was an entirely different breed of being - one who had been looking at other people as mindless and disposable long before they started slavering. Jim had little doubt that a few explicit threats and a pithy show of force would do nothing to dissuade such a man from pursuing what he wanted. Only a proper demonstration of violence was going to make the necessary difference.

Bones was going to kill him.

He shifted minutely into a defensible stance, but kept his arms loose at his sides.

"I am a Starfleet Officer," he intoned carefully. "If you attack me, others will come for you. You will face punishment."

"Nah," responded the man, expression still thoughtful. "I don't think I will. See, there's only one of you, right? I ain't seen no ships or other Starfleet scum wandering around. An' you're all scuffed up and carrying that spear-thing."

The man tilted his head and a light went on behind his eyes.

"I reckon…I reckon you're infected. And they left you down here to die."

His eyes skittered over Jim, and settled almost hungrily on his left forearm, where the gold fabric was torn and still faintly stained with red.

"You are," he breathed, and his grin then was all teeth and bloodthirsty anticipation. "You're fucking sick like the rest and those rats sore it and just left you down here, didn't they?"

"I-"

"Fucking Starfleet dogs," the man spoke over Jim, chuckling. "All talk an' flash, but they're the first off planet when the walls start falling in." He hawked and spat viciously at Jim's feet.

Jim waited until he was sure the man was done. Then he said, very calmly, "I would ask you not to speak ill of my crew."

The man snorted. "Fuckers left you down here to for me – don't reckon they belong to you no more."

He took a menacing step forward, and his head tilted curiously. "Didn't you have one of those Vulcan-types with you when you waltzed inta our base the other day?"

Jim stood his ground, never taking his eyes off those of his aggressor.

"My First Officer-"

"Yore First Officer?" scoffed the man. "Well, no wonder then. Bet the cold bastard barely flinched at cutting you loose. Pointy-eared freaks wouldn't know loyalty if it fucked 'em in the arse."

Somewhere beneath the cold fury that had settled like a layer of frost over his thoughts, Jim was aware of the irony of such a statement coming from a man who had killed his own wife.

He was also aware that he had gone from being in absolute control of the situation to being irreversibly, dangerously angry. He was less worried about what that meant for him than for the creature before him.

When Jim's anger burned hot, he tended to get himself hurt.

When Jim's anger burned cold, he tended to hurt other people.

His voice could have rivalled Spock's for composure when he stated, "I have already warned you against insulting my crew."

"Dunno how you can call a thing like that part of yore crew. It's not right, not even human. I'd say it should go back where it came from but," and the man grinned slowly, within touching distance now, "that can't happen, can it? What with it blowing up 'n all. Heard it took a lotta green blood with it." Their boots brushed. "Good riddance."

Jim's control was so delicate now, frozen to the point of shattering, that he could barely move his lips as he said, "This is you final warning. The assault of a Starfleet Officer-"

When the fisted rock came swinging towards Jim's temple, he was expecting it, and so by the time it passed through the air where his head had been, he was already swinging out of his crouch to bring his elbow up in a neatly-angled strike just below the man's diaphragm. And all Jim could feel – beyond the sing of adrenaline in his veins - was relief. Because he had not thrown the first blow. And now he could hit back.

The momentum of his body brought him to his feet just as the man's spasming chest crumpled inwards, allowing Jim to bring his fisted hands down at the base of his aggressors bent back. The man arched with a cry of agony, but managed a wild swing that caught the side of Jim's face, bloodying his nose. Jim caught the offending limb and twisted, spinning the man to collide harshly with the mountain face.

The man surprised Jim briefly by kicking off the rock face and sending them both stumbling backwards. He slammed his shoulder into Jim's chest and sent them tumbling into the dirt. The smack of his head against the hard ground left Jim momentarily stunned, but he still felt the exact moment in which the sharp tool in the man's hand caught and tore into the muscle of his upper thigh.

He used his opponent's moment of perceived victory to his advantage, twisting his leg sharply so that the makeshift blade was torn from the man's grip, while simultaneously slamming his elbow up into the soft tissue of the other's throat. He followed through on that strike with three more directly to the man's face.

His aggressor fell backwards, choking and stunned, and Jim was on him in a second, slamming his head into the dirt once, twice, before flipping him over and pinning his arms to the small of his back. He then drew his makeshift spear for the first time, and laid it against the man's neck.

"Now I know it's going to be a moment before your throat remembers how to breathe, let alone talk," he told the choking and wheezing man beneath him, voice breathless but conversational. "So I'm going to take this opportunity for me to talk and you to listen."

He leaned his weight forward, grinding the man's forehead into the dirt and bringing his lips down so that they practically brushed the man's ear.

"We. Don't. Make. Jokes. About. Genocide."

The man writhed beneath him, and Jim dug the edge of the spear into his neck almost absentmindedly. The pinned body froze in terror, and he continued in even tones.

"We don't glorify it. We don't dismiss it. We don't trivialise it. Because regardless of the planet it occurs on, or the race it impacts, it remains a blemish on the souls of all those who fail to stop it. It remains wrong. And if you ever again speak of either it or my crew in the same disrespectful manner, I swear to whatever fucking deity owns your sorry excuse for a soul, I will slice out your tongue and make you eat it."

The man whimpered beneath him, quivering, and Jim smiled. It was a smile that was all glass shards, brittle and sharp.

"Good. Now, on to the real reason I'm here."

Jim shifted slightly, and flipped his spearhead upwards so that it was pressing against the soft flesh under the man's chin.

"Why were you looking for the kids?"

The man groaned and drew shallow breaths through his teeth. "I wasn'!"

"Don't lie to me! It's not about food, you took that already, and it's certainly not conscience, you left them before, so what's changed?"He pressed a bit harder, and a trickle of blood rolled down the man's throat. He whined desperately.

"Didn't need them then, did I?"

"But you do now? Why?"

"Cause they're mine!" hissed the man, and suddenly he was writhing again, furious and quite mad. "S'been days, the others are gone, Starfleet's gone, and that means this world is mine. They're mine, and I can have them if I want to!"

"Have them?" queried Jim icily. The man did not answer, but Jim could see the flicker of hollow hunger in his gaze, and his worst suspicions regarding the man's intentions for Miram and the others were confirmed. He was sickened.

"Starfleet's not gone while I'm here, asshole," he snarled, and punched the man sharply in the face again. "Starfleet's right fucking here." He punched him again. "And you will have those children over my cold," punch, "dead," punch, "body."

He stripped his belt and looped it around the man's wrists in one deft movement, pulling tight, before he rose and flipped him over. He then began dragging him over to a spot where he could brace one of his straightened legs against a rock. He paused to swipe the sluggish flow of blood from his own nose.

"You gonna kill me?" whimpered the man, through his bloody daze.

"No, I'm not gonna kill you," growled Jim, disgusted. "I'm not an executioner. But we both know I can't just let you go – you'll slit my throat the first chance you get. And as you pointed out, I'm a sick man – I can't keep you. So…"

He braced the leg, and the man - realising what he was about to do – began whimpering and struggling wildly.

"Relax," said Jim with mock reassurance. "My best friend's a doctor."

Then he brought his foot down twice sharply.

The cracks were muffled, but no less nauseating for that, and Jim shuddered. He was finding it difficult to compartmentalise the part of him that knew he had to do this from the part that was sickened by his actions, and he knew that at some point he would suffer for this encounter. No doubt the next time he closed his eyes in pursuit of a peaceful night's sleep.

The man howled. His voice rose up through the dirt and trees, and bounced off the blue black stones of the mountains to form an echoing cacophony. It went on and on, and then dropped abruptly into a series of pitiful whimpers.

Jim dragged the man back to his hollow, none to gently, and lay him on his back. His right leg – the one the man had succeeded in stabbing during their struggle – trembled beneath him, but he forced himself to ignore it until he completed his task.

He pulled three of the man's stolen blankets from a nook. One, he folded up and placed beneath the thrashing head. Another, he wrapped around a flattish slab of stone, which he then propped beneath the man's legs. The last, he laid over the man's body.

As he settled the last blanket, the man's head rose slightly, and he croaked, "What're you doing?"

"Treating you for shock," replied Jim shortly. "But believe me when I tell you that it's more than you deserve."

Jim pried open one of the full cans amid the detritus on the floor, and placed it near the man's right side. He filled another empty one from a nearby water catchment, and did the same. Then he stood, arms crossed, staring down at the pitiful figure until his eyes were met.

"Your leg is broken in two places. Moving at anything faster than a crawl is going to be agony. You've got one good leg and a pair of functional arms, so you should have no problem subsisting off the food and water you have immediately available to you. What you should have a problem doing is running after any little girls."

Jim blinked, and attempted to pass a brief wave of vertigo off as a considering pause.

"Starfleet is working on developing a cure for the disease afflicting the base. If you are still alive at the time when they succeed and return to the surface, you will be tried for your crimes against a Federation officer, and generally judged for being a nasty piece of shit."

He turned away and scooped his spear from out of the dust. He tucked it in his belt, dusted himself off, and took two steps towards the trees before halting abruptly.

His voice, when he spoke again, was incredibly soft, but the wide-eyed man behind him caught every word.

"My First Officer," he murmured, "is around ten time the being you, or I, could ever be. And you are not fit to lick his damn boots."

Then he limped into the shadow of the trees, and out of sight.