STAR TREK:

THE HEIRS OF PROTEUS

By Darrin Colbourne

Wendy Flores held the small, reinforced vial up for Isabel Montoya to see. "Doctor Boyce extracted this from Ben and Private Mehti." she said. "It only looks like clear water. It's actually filled nearly drop for drop with micro-organisms so complex that they can communicate with each other, work together, and even change color. It's a colony of symbiotic life-forms, like a man-o-war, only much smarter and more versatile."

Montoya sat up - carefully - to get a better look. She was recovering well enough from her wounds for Doctor Boyce to release her from Sick Bay, but it would be a while before she would be at a hundred percent, so she was on light duty and spending most of her days in her quarters in bed. "And you think that's how they managed to take so many different shapes?"

Flores nodded. "I'm sure of it. The water is just their living and working space. It's how they get around, but other, much bigger animals drink water, so to avoid ending up in something's stomach, they found a way to work together to turn themselves into anything but water. There are trillions of them in it. Dump enough of them together and they can act as the cells for any kind of animal they wish, like a bug, a bird, a big dog…"

"…or a humanoid shuttle pilot." Montoya finished. She looked more closely at the vial. "Didn't you tell me it broke out of the vials you put the shape-shifter's blood in?"

Flores smiled and tapped on the vial with a finger. "Commander Adams made this for me. The clear plastic this is made of is as strong as steel, and this cap is steel, and the whole thing is air- and water-tight. If they want to get out of here they have to either learn how to turn into a diamond or ask me nicely."

"Or, they could just be fruitful and keep multiplying until there's too many for even that vial to contain them."

Flores's smile disappeared as she looked at the vial. "Oops…" she said, "forgot about that."

"You may end up having to destroy that sample after all."

"I'm not sure it can be destroyed. I mean, you can evaporate the water with heat, but even the heat of our handheld particle weapons wasn't enough to completely destroy the little beasts that attacked us, and they didn't even slow Faux Kryczyk down at all."

"Extreme heat isn't much better for micro-organisms than it is for water."

"Yeah, but most micro-organisms can't turn themselves into more robust animals that can take the heat. I suppose I could freeze it. That would at least render it inert…"

Just then the doorchime sounded. "Come in!" Montoya called out.

The door slid open to admit Captain Pike. "Evening, Commander, Lieutenant. Flores, would you give us a few minutes alone?"

Flores looked at him for a second, then sighed and turned back to Montoya and squeezed her hand. "I'm going to see what I can do about freezing this stuff. You take care of yourself, okay?"

Montoya smiled. "I will, and thank you for showing that to me."

Flores shrugged. "Everybody else has seen it. Number One nearly had kittens when she found out I wanted to keep it." They chuckled at that, then Flores kissed Montoya's forehead, got up and started out of the room.

"How's the wing, Lieutenant?" Pike asked as she passed him.

Flores worked her right elbow a couple of times. "It's still a little stiff, but it's healing okay. I'll need some physical therapy to get it back to a normal range of motion. Gives me an excuse to spend more time in the gym."

Pike smiled and nodded. "Carry on."

"Yes, Sir." Flores said. She was out of the room a second later.

When they were alone, Pike sat in the chair that Flores had been sitting in by Montoya's bed. "I'm adding a Letter of Commendation to her file," he said. "There's also a service award that I think she should get. I'm going to add the application to our final report on the Ceres system. It'd be good to have her immediate superior's signature on it along with mine."

"I'd be happy to sign it," Montoya said. "From what I heard about the situation she deserves a promotion."

"I'd like to give her one," Pike said, "but unfortunately I don't have any room on the crew roster for another Lieutenant Commander right now, so the only way I could do it is if I promote or throw someone out of the ship."

Montoya recognized his tone all too well. "I'm surprised it didn't occur to you to throw me out," she said sarcastically.

Pike hesitated, then he got real close to her ear and hissed, "What makes you think it didn't?" He continued when he had her attention. "I even went so far as to ask Admiral Jellico about replacing you with Flores. You want to know what his reply was? It was, verbatim: 'Chris, I know you're having a rough time out there right now, but grow up, start acting like a Captain and learn how to work with the people I assign you!'"

"Just say the word and I'll be more than happy to resign and solve both our problems!" Montoya shot back.

"If you really wanted to leave you wouldn't need to wait for me to give the word, so until either you or Jellico has a change of heart, we're stuck with each other!" With that Pike pulled away and settled back in the chair. "So I'll just have to be satisfied with adding a Letter of Reprimand to your file for the time being."

Montoya was perplexed. "Reprimand?? For what? For almost getting stabbed to death?"

"Are you kidding? How about for putting yourself in a position to be almost stabbed to death? Or for putting Flores in a position where she had to clean up the mess you created?!"

"I didn't intend to cause any problems for Wendy…"

"Oh, really? Is that why you made her complicit in withholding information from your crew that they could have used when the stuff hit the fan?"

"You mean about Independence? What good would telling them about that have done?"

"You mean what good would telling your crew that their home base might be out of reach and out of contact for a significant amount of time have done?? Do I actually have to explain that to you? How are you that dense and still allowed to call yourself a scientist??"

The hurt/pissed look on Montoya's face indicated that Pike might have gone one too far, but he knew they had to have this out, so he simply stopped and forced himself to calm down. When she saw the opening, Montoya said, "I thought it would be easier for them to continue working if they didn't know about the loss."

"Why," Pike said, "because it would have been easier for you? Get over yourself, Montoya. I didn't send you the information to make your job harder. I sent it because you and the others needed to know that your shipmates were lost, and that your own ship would be out of reach for at least a day while the bodies were recovered and the Indy was scuttled. I think it's damned fortunate that you decided to share the information with Flores, and that she had the presence of mind to act accordingly. I wish you'd had the same presence of mind. Then maybe you wouldn't have been so eager to fly off and get your only means of interstellar transportation trashed."

The look on Montoya's face shifted over completely to "pissed." it was enough to make her force herself up to sitting position on the edge of the bed so she could look Pike in the eye. "If I'd had the hiking and spelunking equipment necessary to hike 26 kilometers and climb the mountain to the cave by myself I would have done it! Believe me, the last thing I wanted was for anyone to get hurt or for the shuttle to be trashed!"

"Well, here's a radical idea! How about you wait until the ship is back in orbit before you try to get to the inaccessible mountain, so that you'd at least have adequate back-up in case something goes horribly wrong? Y'know, like it usually does?"

Montoya shook her head. "Look…how many of your crew do you want me to kill? Honestly, give me a number! How many of these people do you want to end up like Ensign Kryczyk or the crew of the Independence just because I had to send them to do things I could easily do myself or with a small group of dedicated researchers?"

"You want a number? Zero. Ideally, I'd like to return to port with the exact same complement I launched with, but there's no way I can guarantee that can happen, and neither can you. The only thing we can do is make sure our people know what they need to know to do their jobs while we make sure we don't take any unnecessary risks that will complicate matters…in other words, the exact opposite of what you did down on Ceres Two!"

Montoya opened her mouth to speak, but couldn't think of anything, so she turned away and stared at the bulkhead. After a beat she turned back and said, "Weren't you the one who told me I shouldn't second-guess my decisions?"

"I was," Pike said, then he tapped his rank patch and added, "but the big silver eagle on my shoulder says I get to second-guess them for you."

Montoya didn't have an answer for that either, so instead she lay back in her bed and stared up at the ceiling. "So we're stuck with each other?"

"Pretty much," Pike said, "but it doesn't have to be torture. I worked with one of your colleagues on the search. Janice Lester?"

Montoya smiled. "Ahhh, Janice. She leaves an interesting first impression, doesn't she?"

"She does indeed…and it's going to be that first impression that maybe helps out of our current situation." When she looked at him, he added, "When you get out of that bed, there are going to be some changes in how we do things around here."

Pike spent the next five minutes explaining his intentions, and then they spent the five minutes after that in calm discussion concerning them, each listening as much as talking. It was the closest they'd come to a successful working relationship since they left Earth.