Thank you for the reviews! Thanks Borimamiss, I like characterizations too.
Just a Trekkie - I agree with your assessment of the fight between Kahn and Spock. It was Tal Shaya but I wasn't sure what it was, so I stretched a bit. It was clear the Vulcan neck pinch didn't work but the second thing; what was that? Was it a mind meld? If so, what went on. Kahn reacted to it.
Dr. Leonard McCoy stopped. Beside the door, the illuminated panel gave details of the patient inside;Patient - Captain James T Kirk, Status - Isolation.
He hesitated before he punched in the security code. From inside the room, he could hear a steady two-step thump against the wall. Bump, bump (pause) bump, bump (pause) and so on. He cocked his head to one side, trying to identify the source of the noise. What was that silly-assed moron up to now? He sighed and using the PADD, turned on the noise cancellation software for the corridor outside of Room 3307. If the man was going to be an infant, at least he wouldn't hear complaints about it from the nurses.
He turned off the quarantine field and opened the door. Dressed in scrubs, Jim was sitting on the floor, back against the wall. His right hand was throwing a baseball which bounced first on the floor, then to over to the opposite wall then popped up and back to the baseball glove on Jim's hand. Bump, bump (pause), bump, bump (pause). There was a certain precision in the angle of the throw that brought the ball straight back to the glove. He sensed Jim had been doing this for a while.
Jim acknowledged his presence without breaking the rhythm. "Bones."
Bones took out the scanner in his pocket and squatted beside him. "So, I take it you looked over my library of historical movies from the 20th century?" He waved the scanner in the general direction of Jim's liver.
"Yes, I did. The title "The Great Escape" caught my eye," said Jim.
"I gathered that." McCoy refused to smile. The man was relentless. Get over it, you impatient bugger. It is just a few more days. The scanner was updating his PADD. Graphical representations of Jim's current health filled the screen.
"If you lose concentration, the ball gets caught in the matrix of the quarantine field or hits a window. Or takes out a scanner." Jim caught the ball and put the glove down. He turned to McCoy. "Why have you got me in isolation?"
"The World Health Organization guys are still here. They have a 300 year history of hysteria surrounding genetic engineering. "
"Am I contagious?"
"Don't be silly. It doesn't work that way. I'm doing it to keep it to keep people away from you. Not you from people. Besides the WHO, there's a lot of interest in Kahn and the (ahem) restorative properties of his blood. You can thank me later."
"Jesus, I'm a lab rat." Jim threw the ball hard against the wall. It smacked firmly back into the glove. "Tell me I'm okay."
"Its under control," said McCoy.
"What kind of stupid-assed answer is that?"
"It means that your remaining issues have to do with recovery and not Kahn's mutant fluids."
"I fed up to here with this. I could bust out of here. You know that, right? It would be quite easy to do."
Jim could be exhausting at times. "Well I really don't think you could but then again this is you we are talking about." Two more days, he repeated to himself. Just two more days. Three tops.
Jim stood up and flopped on to the bed. "God, I want to get out of here."
"Yeah, I got that." McCoy looked around the room for a means to change the subject. "What are you watching?" He gestured to the screen.
Kirk turned off the mute button. "The proceedings of the Star Fleet Over Sight Board."
"Sounds utterly boring." Now this wasn't just idle curiosity. Since Jim had awoken from his extended coma, he had spent much of his time watching various feeds from organizations closely associated with Star Fleet
McCoy narrowed his eyes. There was definitely something here. He watched as his friend's face went serious. Jim switched off the screen, sat up and walked to the window. He stared out over the city of San Francisco.
"Have you taken a good look at the view from here?" Jim finally broke the silence. "I can actually see half of the saucer section of Vengeance sticking up out of that crater. What a massive ship it was."
McCoy looked. Kahn has missed Star Fleet Headquarters but taken out many of the buildings in the downtown core.
"A year ago Earth was almost destroyed by a single madman - Nero. But this is worse, or could have been worse. The Vengeance is a Star Fleet commissioned ship not an enemy half a galaxy away. We did this to ourselves."
Jim was pretty much an 'in the moment' kind of guy who did the minimum of introspection. McCoy wasn't surprised when the team of doctors responsible for the psychological profile on Kirk after the Kahn affair became frustrated at his lack of cooperation. As a kid, Kirk had never found much help from a psychiatrist's couch. Rather, he had found it in bars usually after consuming significant amounts of alcohol.
To catch his friend in a moment of soul searching was something rare. Bones shut his PADD down.
"You know the story that Captain Pike talked me into enlisting in Star Fleet after a bar fight? I can still remember the words he used. That Star Fleet was a peace keeping and humanitarian armada. There I was, knuckles raw and my shirt soaked in blood thinking how I wanted to do that. Peace keeping and humanitarian. How did we go from that to this in five short years?" He pointed to Vengeance.
Jim paused. McCoy stood beside the him looking out the window.
"Every day, I wake up and think about the Enterprise. 231 missing and dead."
Bones reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver flask and handed it his friend. "I think about them too. Hard not to."
Kirk removed the lid and took a gulp. "Yeah, well. Some days I just can't seem to get beyond the fact that they died under my watch. I was brought up on the story that my Dad saved 800 people. My record on the other hand, seems to be inked in red blood."
"You don't think that. Not really. They did die under your command but also a lot of people were saved. If Kahn had succeeded, we would be at war with the Klingons. Two hundred and thirty one people dead seems trivial in that respect. War could mean millions dead. Worlds destroyed. Over time you will put it into perspective. It'll fade." Bones leaned against the window and folded his arms.
"I don't want to it to fade. In fact, I want to do the opposite of forgetting. I want to know who did this." Jim took another swig and handed it back to Bones.
"Kahn did this. What more do you need to know?"
"Kahn was only a tool. Did you see Vengeance? The systems, the construction, the weapons. Kahn was only awake for what a year or so? That magnitude of a ship took years to build. Kahn may have had strength and intelligence but that took more than that. There was long term planning."
"Admiral Marcus is dead." Bones drank and handed the flask back.
"He wasn't working alone. This rogue admiral theory has me cold. You've been in Star Fleet long enough to know Marcus wasn't the only one who thought that way. Or thinks that way now."
"There is a senate committee investigation looking into this. Interpol, CIA - agencies around the world. If there is something to find, they will find it."
Kirk studied the flask . "I haven't seen this since Riverside Ship yards." He tipped it back. "What is in it, anyways?"
"Bourbon, 160 proof." Bones took a minute to formulate his next words. "Maybe Marcus was right. I was there when Vulcan was destroyed. I still can't get over how fucking easy it was to destroy a whole planet. How close we came to losing Earth."
"You think we can justify Vengeance because of what happened last year?"
"Personally, I don't spend much time thinking about this at all." Bones shook the flask. It was empty.
Jim pick up his mitt and ball. Sat back down in his position on the floor. He threw the ball. bump, bump (pause). bump, bump (pause).
McCoy picked up his PADD and made his way to the exit. As he was opening the door, he heard Kirk say one last thing.
"Bones, I think we need to take back Star Fleet. Right the ship, so to speak."
McCoy closed his eyes and winced. "Get some sleep, Jim."