Er, worst author ever? I know it's been something ungodly like 2 yrs since I've updated this story, and I everyone a monstrous apology :(. I relocated 3 times in the past 2 yrs for new jobs, and then, when I finally seemed to find a good, permanent one, I of course became a workaholic, at the expense of my muse. I REALLY REALLY appreciate all the reviews, and you should all know that they were successfully a not so silent prod to get my act in gear-like a never vanishing, accusing finger . . .or a crying kid that won't stop staring at you . . . effective, not gonna lie. I can't promise quick updates, but I don't plan to abandon. Cheers!

Chapter 4: Friday

Last class. Last class. Last class. The mantra was the only thing that prevented Jim from ditching the fifth and final day of Tarsus lectures. Apparently there were, indeed, other disasters that deserved the concerted attention of 120 cadets each year . . . or at least the 30 in Gevertz's class. There must be.

There was a women standing next to Gevertz when he passed the threshold of the lecture hall. Tall, with dark hair and hints of euro-asia ancestry. She looked . . . vaguely familiar, and he struggled to dredge a memory up out of his foggy brain. By her pips and uniform she was a captain, but that just made him think of Pike, who had been a captain for over 10 years now.

"Surprised to see you here, kid. I gave up hope when I saw the slobber on your pillow starting to pool." Bones rudely interrupted his thoughts, taking a seat next to him. McCoy must have been up early to snatch breakfast while Jim slept to his fullest. "Who's the extra?" the doctor asked, gesturing to the female captain in their midst.

"You tell me." Kirk mumbled.

"No clue." Bones paused. "So . . . we can assume she's not so famous we would recognize her if we didn't both live in a backwater for the last 10 years?"

Kirk half smiled, probably for the first time that week. His eyes finally turned all the way to his friend as he rejoined, "Speak for yourself, Georgia boy; I grew up in a very respectable corn field."

"Right; and when you were in your diapers shucking ears, I was already a first-class expert in the delicacy they call fried chicken. You really think you're going to win an argument against a real southern gentleman, Mr. Iowa?"

"You really think a taste for fried chicken constitutes a pedigree in anything other than ass-licking of the chicken variety?"

"Watch it, kid, that's my Mom's chicken y-"

"Good morning, Cadets!" Gevertz drew all attention to the front, even as McCoy finished "-you're talking about!" Kirk rolled his eyes and they mutually grinned at the joking cut short.

"As you've hopefully all noticed, we have a guest with us today." He gestured to the woman beside him, "This is Captain Leanne Carter, the commanding officer of the USS Trafalgar-Starfleet's 8th Constitution class starship," his eyes swept the eager young faces looking for recognition. It was easy to see who had done the most thorough reading. "As you should remember from your reading, Captain Carter was 1st Officer under Pike when their ship, the Yorktown, responded to the distress signal on Tarsus IV, and she's offered to tell us a little more about her experiences."

The foggy memories that had begun to whisper in Jim's head as soon as he caught sight of the woman suddenly crystalized. Leanne. She had been a young 1st officer - in her early 30s at the time of the Tarsus rescue - but she had been competent, and she had been kind. Kind to all of the children, and to him in particular. He had never told her his name (she was still an adult in a position of power, after all) but he had thought about telling her, and that was more than he could say about most of the Starfleet rescue team.

"Captain Carter was in charge of orchestrating the evacuation of Tarsus and generating a record of who survived and who had died. That record is the official accounting even today, and I understand it was quite difficult to produce, as it was almost entirely based on word of mouth." His eyes had turned to Leanne as he said this, and he gestured for her to take the conversation away.

"Thank you, Sam," She gave him a wry smile. "This isn't exactly the topic of anyone's choice, even all these years later, but Dr. Gevertz thinks, and I agree, that it's through tragedies like the Tarsus Massacre that we learn the most about the human spirit, both the good and the bad. From a more mundane perspective, learning more about the Starfleet response to this event may give you greater perspective on how process, training, and regulations can help you cope with any situation, but also where those rules and training fall short."

Her eyes roamed the room, lightly resting on each cadet's face, and Jim did his best to look bored, instead of scared shit-less that she might recognize him. He must have succeeded, because she gave his face no more consideration than McCoy's.

"The Yorktown was green when we answered the distress call. As a crew we'd been together less than 6 months, and I had only just been promoted to Commander. I often say Captain Pike was the only one who knew what he was doing." She smiled to prove this was a joke. "When we picked up the distress message we were 30 light years away, which at warp 5 was a 22 day journey. The stardate on the message indicated it was already 17 days old, so by the time we reached Tarsus 38 days would have elapsed since the message was sent. Captain Pike locked in a course and immediately contacted the Potemkin, the next closest Starfleet vessel, and forwarded the message to Starfleet Command to organize a larger relief effort."

"If you're wondering at that communication gap-that a message can sit for 17 days and not reach anyone, when all ships these days have trans-stellar communications, just remember that Tarsus was an agrarian, isolationist colony. They intentionally brought only primitive communication equipment because they wanted to force themselves to cope with problems locally rather than be reliant on outside support."

"If I can interject," Gevertz took a step away from the back wall he'd been leaning on ,"that philosophy has since been revisited, and Starfleet now requires any colonies with Earth citizens to carry emergency long-beam communication equipment."

Leanne nodded, "That's right. And we also require a 6 months supply of air-sealed emergency rations for all members of the colony. Be that as it may, the fact is we had no idea when we first set course for Tarsus just how far the situation there had degraded. The distress message simply said they had lost their food supplies due to bad weather and needed re-supply or evacuation. It wasn't until we were en-route that we received a more alarming second message, clearly from a different sender. I still remember it: '2000 massacred, rest starving, please help'." Captain Carter shivered ever so slightly, still disturbed by the missive after all this time.

"We wanted to get there faster, but we couldn't. The Yorktown couldn't be pushed past warp 5 without severely draining our power reserves and unduly stressing the engines-it's something we would only do if we had Klingon's on our tail, if you catch my drift-and we needed to preserve that power for the heavy transporter and replicator activity we knew this mission would require. We'd be less than useless if we arrived on the scene and could only replicate food for a handful of colonists. So we clenched our teeth, organized relief crews, and began sustainably replicating a large supply of dense rations for dispersal planet-side."

"No one answered our hail when we finally came out of warp, so Captain Pike took an away team down to what our sensors indicated was the most densely populated area. That's when, through conversation with a mass of colonists, we learned what had happened. Not a pretty picture." Her eyes glazed over slightly in memory before continuing. "From a procedural perspective, our next steps were pretty clear - we needed to organize feeding lines and begin IDing which colonists had survived and which had not; we needed to organize medical assistance; we needed to make our presence known to all survivors in case any were in hiding; we needed to separate out the militia and government officials and begin taking written accounts to assess whether criminal charges were warranted. Finally we needed to begin planning mass evacuation, since it was immediately clear that no-one would be staying. It was a lot to do, but we were honestly all grateful for the work-the distraction."

"I was in charge of leading the evacuation, which was a straight up logistics problem. The Yorktown and Potemkin had room for only about 400 evacuees total, when stuffed to the bulkheads, which meant the remaining 800 or so colonists would need to wait another 3 weeks for Starfleet's cargo ships to arrive. When you have a limited space scenario like that you prioritize by medical and mental needs. For example, ailing elderly colonists, any children who no longer had families, any colonists who had been personally assaulted by the militia needed to be returned to a medically supervised, friendly, safe, stable environment as soon as possible . . . you know what I mean."

"This went hand in hand with my other duty, which was classification of all these colonists. Name, species, age, family contact information, medical status, extenuating circumstances . . . the most difficult part was getting anyone to stand still long enough to relate the information. They all had a habit of grabbing the food we provided and quickly disappearing. We had to institute a process where in order to be given food they must provide their basic specs. Even then we had to seek out hidden pockets of colonists who were still avoiding all contact or who were ignorant of our arrival. The constant addition of people who may be at the top or bottom of the priorities list meant that creating a final evacuation plan allotting colonists to one ship or the other was hopeless until close to the last minute, and inconsistencies in the priority reporting by the various officers who were doing this logging, myself among them, caused further delays." She smiled self-deprecatingly, "A little bit of a nightmare for an OCD Starfleet officer who likes everything ordered and planned . . . but we got it done."

Jim paid more attention to this monologue than he cared to admit. He had been in one of Kodos' improvised prison cells at the time that Starfleet had arrived, and he was only discovered because Pike demanded a room by room sweep by Starfleet teams to ensure that no one was missed by negligence on his part. As a result he knew very little about the Yorktown's initial arrival and activity. He remembered very little, in fact, of that whole rescue until he started to recover aboard-ship. His memories of Leanne on Tarsus, for example, were just a face hovering above his own as he was carried out of the prison, and most of his memories were of being questioned in sick bay, and scoldings for getting in trouble on various decks after. That unexpectedly made him smile slightly. Strange that some of those memories could be fond.

Leanne looked to Gevertz to indicate she was done even as she said, "That's the high level summary. I think Dr. Gevertz wanted to save the rest of our hour for questions. Is that right?"

Gevertz nodded. "Yes, that's right, thank you Captain. I'd like to start the Q&A with one of my own and then we'll open the floor. You mentioned assessing whether criminal charges were warranted. At which point did it become apparent that they were indeed warranted, and how did that process proceed?"

Leanne looked grave, "That they were warranted was first indicated by the second transmission we received: '2000 massacred'; and it was reinforced by the interviews Captain Pike had with the colonists on his first away mission. I suppose it was never really in question that something criminal had been done, but with something that big, involving so many possible convictions, you want to make sure you have all the evidence before taking action, otherwise you might end up letting people go who should be tried, or falsely accusing someone who is innocent.

"On Tarsus we needed to find proof of the massacre - bodies or records . . . indications of a much larger population than now lived. And, much more difficult, we needed to assess the culpability of each guard and militiaman, and we needed to determine who in the chain of leadership had made which decision." She sighed, "There were a lot of . . . rumors, at that time. Some of the colonists actually believed Kodos was just a figure head who had been murdered in a coup by the guards, or was a puppet controlled by his lieutenant governor. I've only had cursory legal training, so I'm sure there were more reasons, but I for one wanted to be sure we got our man and got him good."

One of the cadets in the front row made a cat call and cheered "Here Here!" which inspired several of the others to clap. Even Uhura, with a roll of her eyes, smiled and clapped.

Kirk used the opportunity to raise his hand to ask the next question. It caught Captain Carter's eye and she looked him over in brief examination. Kirk sensed no recognition, and for that he thanked his uniform and age. Taking the look as tacit permission to proceed, he did so, "What became of the guards who were successfully convicted, and under what circumstances did guards escape conviction?"

Pike had told him once that it was healthy to be angry. He was pretty sure that the Captain wouldn't say quite the same about revenge, but it galled him to think of any of those men walking around scot free, maybe even in this very city.

Leanne gave him a considering look, more for the careful control in his voice than for the question, "Good question, Cadet…?"

"Kirk, Ma'am."

"Cadet Kirk. The guards who escaped conviction fell into two camps: there were those who could make a convincing legal case that they were acting in direct peril of their lives and were therefore acting in self defense; then there were those who, against orders, directly assisted colonists and in many cases saved lives, which was corroborated with testimony from multiple colonists. These guards were either fully exonerated or given reduced sentences. All convicted guards were ultimately sent to a penal colony for life. I wasn't involved in most of the trials, but I have faith that our justice system did it's job."

"You mean some of those monsters went free?" Uhura couldn't contain her disdain.

Leanne raised an eyebrow, "Not all of them were monsters and that was up to the courts to decide."

"But-"

"Cadet Uhura," Gevertz cut in, "We'll be exploring the ethics in these kind of court rulings later in the semester if you can contain your enthusiasm until then."

"Yes, sir," only Uhura could look condescending, disappointed, and chagrinned at the same time.

Akmeed couldn't help continue the thread, "Are there any former guards now on Earth?"

Gevertz all but glared, stepping forward, and Leanne tightened her lips, "Very likely. Most were as much a victim of Kodos and the Tarsus famine as any of the colonists. Let's move on, shall we?"

"Yes, indeed," Gevertz stole the floor, "You said you were in charge of evacuation logistics - were you also responsible for shipboard logistics of housing and board for the evacuees, and family notifications and reunions for victims who had living relatives? I understand that would have been a pretty substantial task."

The room shuffled at the change in topic, but they were no less interested. Leanne took a deep breath and let it out. "Indeed. Many of the colonists, the children in particular, refused to give their true names." Leanne grimaced in remembered frustration and disquietude. "Some just didn't trust us, and others may have come from troubled homes they didn't want to return to. Even some of the adults wanted to remain anonymous, though they had a harder time of it, because their flight and medical records were more complete. To this day there are still a handful of survivors who we never IDed." There were some raised eyebrows in the crowd at this. In an age like theirs, it was almost inconceivable that a digital paper trail didn't exist for everyone in the universe. Leanne continued, "It's a shame, too, both for them and for Starfleet. The central Earth government did its best to provide medical and financial support to all survivors who needed it for several years after they returned to Earth, and we couldn't do that without a name to go on. Worse still, some of those colonists could have provided valuable testimony to make sure that no guards were making false claims of innocence. Without a witness, many of the crimes on Tarsus couldn't be confirmed or tied to one man."

Kirk felt a shiver work its way up his spine. He was never called in for any trials as a kid - hadn't even known they were happening. He had always assumed that since Pike knew who he was, Starfleet knew who he was. Of course Starfleet would keep all that confidential, so the press wouldn't know that JT and James T. Kirk were one in the same, but nonetheless, the people who needed to know would know. It had never occurred to him that Pike wouldn't tell anyone. I mean, Jim hadn't wanted him to tell anyone-had begged him not to in fact, but Pike was an adult and Jim was a kid, and so he had never truly believed that when Pike told him his secret was safe, he was telling the truth.

Bones had been telling him for the past 5 months that he had trust issues. Damn him.

"What's the statute of limitations on genocide?" Uhura asked.

"There is none, but most guards were charged with lesser crimes, from assault to manslaughter, and the statute varies by crime. One exception is for current and former Starfleet officers, which can be sentenced by tribunal for crimes of any age." Carter smiled, "It may have been 10 years ago, but I say better late than never."

The questions continued for some time after than, but Kirk tuned it out. He couldn't get past the thought that even one of those bastards was out there, living free and clear, as if they'd done nothing wrong. It was a haunting and galling thought-he didn't know whether to be pissed off or irrationally frightened. Both, of course, inevitably lingered in his mind.

He only tuned back in when he heard a few backpacks rustle and notebooks close. The old man looked to be tying up the conversation. Good. 5 more minutes . . .

" . . . and that concludes our discussion of the Tarsus massacre." Gevertz said, Captain Carter now standing back from the podium. "But before any of you run off, we need to discuss something." No. "As a summary project for this section, you'll be writing an essay, to be turned in next Friday-that's one week from today-on the topic of the Tarsus disaster" The room visibly deflated, and Gevertz smiled knowingly. "I will send out a hard copy of the prompt after class, but I'll tell you now, I want you to examine the Tarsus situation in greater depth, with particular focus on moral quandaries. For example-assess whether Governor Kodos was in any way justified in his actions, and defend your position. Or look at the culpability of the colonial soldiers in carrying out those orders, and in resorting to cannibalism and petty crimes. Or look at the children who lived in the woods off their own ingenuity. Was their killing of soldiers an ethical imperative? What would you have done if you were the Governor? Your papers need to clearly demonstrate that you've done some research, that you've thought on the subject, and that you can communicate those ideas. I know you think I'm pounding this particular example a little hard, but it was a landmark case in human rights, and holds many important lessons we could all learn from." He gave them all a stern look. "Now if you'll please join me in thanking Captain Carter for taking the time to speak with us, it was incredibly enlightening." He began clapping, and the cadets joined in with genuine appreciation, despite the underlying group desire to skip out of class as fast as possible.

Kirk brought his hands together numbly in an automatic copy of Bones, but avoided his roommate's eyes as he fled from the classroom as soon as the bell tolled.

#####

"Jim!" "Jim!" A slightly shrill contralto voice reached him from across the quad as he resolutely made his way toward the first year dorms.

"Jim! Goddamnit wait a minute, will you!?" Marlene snaked through the crowd to reach his side, clearly having sprinted from another class. When she finally caught up with him she raised an eyebrow at him and glared.

He avoided her gaze.

There was an awkward, tense silence between them as he led them along his pre-set course, in the general direction of Old Fulton Street.

"Well?" Marlene prompted.

He fought to avoid biting his lip.

She huffed, then capitulated in the face of his continued silence, "What the hell is up with you this week? Did something happen I don't know about? I know I can run my mouth off sometimes, but that's never bothered you before . . ."

The thought needled its way into Jim's brain that Marlene thought she'd done something wrong, which couldn't be further from the truth. But he'd never liked dwelling on emotions.

"No, I'm just not in a good place right now. I need some time alone."

She looked hurt, her eyes widening in consternation. "Time alone? Do you mean now, or this week, or forever?"

He'd only been thinking of his immediate future when he said it, but given the opportunity -

"I'm no good to anybody right now."

"That's not an answer."

"I think it is."

She stopped walking, but he didn't.

"Jim!" She tried one last time. "Jim!"

"Gaddamnit Jim Kirk!" He could hear her angry footsteps as she turned away and marched the opposite direction.

At least he'd be ready for space jumping by the time his Combat Training class rolled around-jumping off anything taller than a townhouse was looking appealing right now.

Something tickled his memory. Shit. Shit shit shit. That would be the Combat training class that started 5 minutes ago. Shit! He kicked the sidewalk angrily, feeling very much like kicking someone. It had certainly been his solution in the past, one he'd been trying to restrain since joining Starfleet. He sure as shit wasn't going to class late, and without his gear – he couldn't really if they were space jumping. Transporter access was strictly regulated, and they would have beamed up to the training station in one group.

Fuck Delahoy and her combat training.

His feet had been carrying him to his dorm, and that's where he was going to go.

Bones wasn't in their room when he arrived, for which he was thankful. Or at least he was pretty sure he was thankful. He fell backwards onto his bunk and laid prone for a span, his mind going nowhere and yet somehow still running a mile a minute. Without thought he reached an arm beneath his bed and pulled out a bottle of cheap brandy, took a swig, capped it, and returned the bottle to its hiding place. The burning sensation was a nice distraction and he felt himself relax marginally. 15 minutes passed. Twenty. After 30 minutes the stillness became too much, and he rolled over onto his stomach, wrenched his bag open and pulled out his PAD.

He would never admit it to anyone, least of all himself, but beneath his anger, fear and frustration, Gevertz's class had left him deeply curious. He had pushed his memories of Tarsus so far back in his mind for so many years that thoughts of his friends there, of the events that followed, of his enemies and Kodos, had long been smothered beneath a haze of ignorance.

What had happened to them? There had been 23 kids in the woods with him. That damn book said 28 children total survived, so there must have been more in the town, or hidden elsewhere. Where were they now? Had they been dragged into the trials?

He started with some simple queries over Stelnet. "tarsus survivors" "tarsus children" "tarsus interviews" "tarsus memorial" "tarsus journal|'first person account'". There were thousands of listings in the results, but the top links were on the whole pretty fruitful. The identity of each child had been kept classified or wiped completely for their safety and privacy, but several had voluntarily spoken out when they reached the age of 18 and became legally able to make their own privacy decisions. Five he recognized Three others who spoke out must have survived by other means. Some had just granted single interviews, several had written short accounts of their experiences, and three had written books. He didn't quite feel brave enough to read through those stories at the moment, but he had no compunctions against looking up contact information for the kids he recognized. He hadn't known all of their last names, but he doubted there could be two Tom's, or Russel's, or Jenna's or T'kan's on Tarsus in his age range.

Thomas Leighton - Lt. I, Medical Division / Earth-San Francisco-Starfleet Academy-Lily Sloane Hospital

Russel Lesrado - Student Grade 10 / Earth-Mumbai-Mumbai South-Central Ecole

Jenna Richardson - Writer / Moon (Earth)-Armstrong Colony-Private Address

T'kan (House Kl'skwup) - unknown / Vulcan-Raal Province-Private Address

Tom lives right here in the City! All he had to do was hack into the Starfleet personnel database . . . and by hack he meant use Chris's access codes . . . and . . . there! he had a stelnet address . . . his starfleet housing address, and . . . yep, there was his schedule!

Looked like he was a fresh graduate, staying on to continue research in . . Interplanetary Biology and Psychology. Does that make him a doctor, a scientist, or a shrink? Best not to wander down that road. He pulled up a headshot. He was almost unrecognizable from the boy Jim had known. If it weren't for the scar running across his left eye he would hardly have believed that this was indeed his friend Tom. But once his mind accepted what was before his eyes, he felt a welling of emotion stir in him.

Kodos had left his mark on all of them one way or another, and the last time he had seen Tom, Jim had been leaving the older boy in charge while he left for another food-foraging mission into Kodos' encampment. They had been too desperate to waste time on worries and thanks, but they had each wished the other good luck, and that had been enough. To see that face again, now healthy and grown, and very much alive, filled Jim with a confusing blend of pride, anger, happiness, sorrow, and self-doubt. It was so good to see his friend so healthy, and yet who was he to judge? He who had ignored all of his brothers and sisters in arms since the day he left Tarsus? He who had been unable to provide for them in the last week? Who had directly led to some of their deaths?

He cleared the PADD with a tap.

It was time for another walk.

####

AUTHOR'S NOTE: a bit much exposition in this chapter, but the devil's in the details, right?