The Once & Future Captain

Part 3

The terrain around them was dead. A sturdy wind was blowing, shuffling around dirt and leaves that had been dead for over a decade. Everything that had once been green and vibrant and alive was now a dark and deathly brown. Yet as the party approached the main city, they could see that this now forgotten world had once been immaculately cared for.

They passed through the main gates to the city and only Jim and Riley appeared unsurprised and un-startled when a computerized feminine voice sounded from speakers at the tops of the pillared gates.

"Welcome, travelers, to Tarsus IV, a Federation sanctioned Earth Colony focused on the full realization of individual and societal potential."

"Now that's just wrong," Bones said, looking disturbed. "After all this time and it still works?"

"Solar powered," Riley answered. "The planet may be dead, but the sun still rises and sets. And the protective coverings that went into the speaker systems here were labored over for months, to ensure they'd not be damaged."

"How wonderful," Bones muttered sarcastically. "What's the plan, Jim?"

"Spock and Uhura are going to comb the east end of the city. You, Scotty and Chekov are going to take the west end of the city. Riley and I know this place best, so we'll tackle the north and south sections. Keep your comms open at all times, understood?" Jim said. They all nodded. "Now, Scotty, just what is that thing you're carrying?"

"It's a detector, Captain," Scotty said eagerly. "If there's any device still with a power source that has higher than a delta three circuit interface, it'll detect it. I figured it'd save us some trouble."

"Report back here at 1500 hours standard time," Jim ordered.

The group split up and as Riley and Jim headed north, they shared a look. "You sent them off on a useless errand, Jimmy," Riley said as soon as the others, Spock and his excellent ears included, were out of range.

"I know," Jim said. "But the last thing I want is them tailing my ass the entire time I'm here."

"So you do know where Hoshi's work was hidden?" Riley pressed. "I remember you used to go on and on about that damned thing. You were so proud that she'd asked you to help her build it."

"Of course I know," Jim said. "I was the one who hid it for her, when she started growing worried about the colony."

"Except for the lack of smoke and the dead grass, nothing here has changed."

"Strange, isn't it?" Jim commented. "Ever since we were rescued, I always imagined that if I ever had to come back, it would look like hell. You know, fire and brimstone and lots of red demons wanting to stick my ass with pitchforks."

"I guess I don't know what I was expecting," Riley said. "I tried so hard to block it out after I was sent to my grandparents. And they encouraged it, you know? They wanted me to forget." He stopped and looked at Jim. "I never meant to abandon you, Jimmy. You have to know that. I tried to get back in touch with you so many times."

Jim nodded and motioned for them to keep walking. "I know," he said. "I managed to get a hold of your grandmother one day and she told me to piss off, the sweet old thing."

"They thought it was best that I just cut ties with everything to do with what had happened. But I couldn't let it go. They were so angry when I enlisted."

"You had as much cause to hate Starfleet as I did," Jim said. "Why did you enlist?"

"Because I hoped that maybe if Starfleet had better officers, something like this wouldn't happen again. I wanted to be one of those better officers. It was the only drive I had, this pressing need to keep all this from happening again. If I could be better, more competent at my job than those officers were at theirs, than maybe, just maybe, I could have some peace."

"Well, that certainly puts my reasons for enlisting to shame," Jim said. "You're a better man than I am, Riley."

Riley snorted. "That's not possible, Jimmy. You saved us."

Jim didn't say anything but just kept walking, taking them north of the main city and then veering off to the west, towards what used to be a grand forest.

"Why did you enlist, Jimmy? You never did say what lit the fire under your ass."

Jim looked at Riley. "The then-Captain Pike dared me to enlist." He grinned widely and it was as if the two of them were teenagers together again. "When have you ever known me to turn down a dare?"

Riley laughed. After a moment, so did Jim. And they laughed well-into the trip to their destination.

Chekov and Scotty kept up an annoying chatter as they explored their designated section of the city. Bones supposed he couldn't blame them; he was half tempted to join in himself. Everything around them was eerily silent and still, with only the occasional gusts of wind to break up the uneasiness.

This city had been remarkably well built. It was far more advanced than any colony Bones had ever visited. The buildings were made of the highest quality materials. Were it not for the years of neglect and the wind whipping dust and dirt into the outsides, he was fairly sure the entire city would be gleaming. He recognized everything as the most advanced technology for its time. What had gone so wrong?

Surely it hadn't just been the contamination to the ecosystem that was responsible? There had to have been other factors for something of this sort of magnitude to come to fruition. There had to be. By all accounts, this place had been the realization of a perfect and stable colony. For only being in place for ten years, it had progressed rapidly, overcoming hurdles that plagued most other colonies for decades.

"Doctor!" Bones looked up from the public subspace channel station (still functioning) on the street corner to see Chekov waving him over frantically. Scotty was looking ill.

He rushed over to the pair of them and immediately started scanning Scotty with his tricorder. "I'm fine," Scotty said, looking faintly green. "It's just," he inclined his head to the building in front of them, whose facade was made up of enormous glass panels.

One of them had wiped into the dirt, with the intent of peering inside. Bones took a look and his heart dropped. So this was how Kodos had managed to kill most of the colonists he'd marked for death. This was how Kodos had nearly perfectly executed his mass-murder of half of the Tarsus IV colonists.

Inside the building, a bank from the looks of it, were perhaps forty people, all dead and nearly perfectly preserved. Some were slumped over the tellers' counters. Others had fallen to the floor. A little girl, who couldn't have been more than five, was curled up in a corner, still clutching her straw-brimmed hat in stiff, lifeless hands.

"They're all just there," Chekov said weakly. "It's like they didn't even put up a fight. They just died."

"Looks like standard Rochman period business architecture," Bones said, walking over to another building. He wiped what grime he could off of the glass and peered inside. It was nearly identical. "Get access to the heating and cooling systems and you can control the oxygen and such to the entire structure. If Kodos used the right concentration of toxins and had the all the exits locked, they wouldn't have stood a chance."

"How are they so well preserved though?" Chekov asked. "After ten years…"

"The buildings," Scotty said, still looking ill. "If some of the circuits shorted out in the confusion or after time, the buildings would have sealed themselves, creating an airlock."

"I'm just trying to figure out how he managed to separate them," Bones said. "All the right people in all the right places at the right time?" He shook his head. "There's more to it, there has to be."

"Device so far is reading nothing," Scotty said.

"Let's press on," Bones said.

"How do you know so much about the buildings, Doctor?" Chekov asked.

Bones shrugged. "One of my good friends at Ole Miss was a brilliant architect and she persuaded me to take a few classes as extra-curriculars. Besides, it was standard for medical students to learn about the life systems in buildings, particularly during the civil wars when bio-terrorism was at an all-time high. Knowing the life systems and how to work them could mean the difference between life and death for an under-attack building."

They walked further into the city, passing the same lifeless buildings and seeing first-hand the desolation that had destroyed the colony. They came into what had to have been a lively area of the colony when the speakers announced,

"You are now entering the school district of Tarsus IV. Please do not swear."

Scotty and Chekov threw sly looks at Bones, who just muttered, "Unbelievable."

Spock and Uhura were walking through the main residential area of the colony. The houses were modest and neat, and it was easy to tell that the dead lawns had once been meticulously maintained. The picket fences were in near mint condition and Uhura imagined that this had been a relatively happy place to live.

"I am not familiar with this style of housing developments," Spock noted. "It appears to be very uniform."

"It looks to me like it was modeled after the suburbia style that was popular on Earth in the 1950s and in the late 2070's," Uhura said. "In the United States of America, housing was mass produced and was therefore nearly uniform in design. It was fast, easy, and cheap to do."

"I find it," Spock paused as if searching for the right word. "Unsettling."

Uhura snorted. "I would have guessed that you would like it. It's uniform. Logical. But you're right, there is something creepy about the suburbs," she agreed. "Especially when they're dead like this."

"This colony appears to have been exceedingly well-developed despite the limited number of years it was in operation," Spock said, looking down the paved road and taking in the neatly poured sidewalks.

"Admiral Pike did say that it was organized ahead of time like no other colony before it," Uhura considered. "From what I understood in the reports this colony should have succeeded brilliantly. There were some of Earth's top architects and technicians here, as well as top medical practitioners and teachers."

"Which obviously allowed them to construct a fully functional colony in a minimal amount of time," Spock concluded. With the right people in power and the right talent to work, as well as knowledge of what had caused other colonies to falter or fail, it would indeed promote the rapid development of a colony such as Tarsus IV.

Each house had a stainless steel pole in the front of its yard's picket fence to the left of its sidewalk path leading up to the front door. Attached to the steel pole was a stainless steel sign engraved with a family name. Spock and Uhura passed Kelley, Surresh, Stanislav, Reynolds, Gregor, and M'Yregzki's. On the opposite of the road the signs read Berkley, Mullet, Hunter, Sato, Davis, and Kirk. Uhura stopped and flung out an arm to stop Spock as well.

"Kirk. This has to be his old house," she said. Before Spock could stop her, she'd raced up the sidewalk and threw open the gate.

"I do not believe this will aid us in our mission to find Hoshi Sato's translation device," Spock protested, though he followed her. He was, he found, inexplicably curious.

The door was unlocked and Uhura automatically pulled out her phaser per standard protocol. "Lights?" she asked tentatively, unsure if they'd even work after the planet being abandoned for so long. Slowly, the lights flickered on, creating a sickly glow in the house.

It was decorated simply, but the atmosphere was friendly (or it would have been had the occupants not been dead for over ten years). To the left was what had to have been a family room. Several hand-knit blankets were displayed on a quilt rack and a few more were thrown over a couch and a chaise. There was an electric fireplace topped with a stunning hand-carved mantle of what looked like oak. It was the sole bit of wood in the house that had not been painted white. On the mantle were several photographs in simple gold-painted frames. A man and a woman, both in their early thirties were displayed in one. Another frame held the same couple along with a young teenage boy - Jim Kirk. And a last photo was Jim Kirk himself, no more than thirteen years old and crouched beside a beautiful looking golden retriever.

"This is definitely Kirk's old house," Uhura confirmed, looking for Spock and seeing him studying a chess set that had been set on a small table in a back corner of the room. "Spock?" He caught her look and she bit back a smirk, as Spock had to force himself not to make a move on the board. "It appears one of the players was going to attempt a Maróczy Bind," he said.

She motioned for him to follow her as she left the family room to enter a simple hallway painted an attractive sage green. The hallway led to a modest, once-modern kitchen. The table in the breakfast nook was neatly set for three. Off the kitchen was a set of stairs leading up to the second story of the house. She started up the stairs, Spock right behind her.

There were three bedrooms, one that had obviously been for Kirk's guardians, since it was the largest and had it's own bathroom attached. Another was set up as an office and the computers inside still flickered to life as they detected life signs. And finally, down the hall of the upstairs, was a simple white door with a sign on it that read Jimmy's Room.

Uhura looked back at Spock, who, even to her trained eyes, was wearing an unreadable expression.

"Uhura to Doctor McCoy," she said, pulling out and flipping open her communicator.

"McCoy here," came his rough voice. "Did you find it?" he asked.

"No, but I did find something else," Uhura said shakily, opening the door to Jim's old room and walking inside. "I think you're going to want to see this," she finished.

"We have your location, we'll be right there. McCoy out."

Uhura looked around the room that had once belonged to their captain. "Oh, Jim." she said sadly.

Riley and Jim turned quiet as they traipsed further up the rocky terrain far north of the forest. It was exactly like they had left it, bleak and desolate. Everything about this place was stirring up old memories that had long since been forced back. Riley could remember perfectly the first time he'd followed Jim this way, running for shelter because their very lives depended on it.

"Come on! We've got to keep running," Jimmy said, panting harshly and sweat running down his dirty face. "We can't take the chance that they'll find us!"

"What's going on?" Riley managed, wanting so very much to stop for just a minute to catch his breath. His lungs felt as though they were on fire and his tired legs were screaming at him to stop, to not go any further. "Why's everyone gone mad back there?"

"Keep going!" Jimmy pulled at his arm, tugging him along. "I'll explain when we're away from here. We have to keep going, we have to find a safe place."

They kept running, only stopping every half an hour or so to catch their breath and listen for anyone who might have followed them.

Finally the two of them were at least two hours out of the city, and staring at a mountain facade. "Come on," Jimmy said, pushing past Riley. He motioned for Riley to follow him and Riley, tired and sore, clambered after Jimmy as he disappeared into a small crevice in the mountain. "Jimmy?" he called.

"Come on!" came Jimmy's voice.

Riley followed his voice and walked a long patch to find Jimmy inside a large cavern. Jimmy had obviously been here before; there were assorted pillows and blankets strewn about. Jimmy collapsed on a pile of cushions. "I was turning it into a fort for us, before this all started," he'd explained, pushing his blonde hair out of his face.

"What's going on, Jimmy? Why were all those people screaming? Why were they leading people to separate buildings?" Riley was so confused. He'd never been more scared in his life, and he'd spent the past two years being best friends with Jimmy, who was known amongst their peers to be fearless.

"Kodos is killing them, Riley," Jimmy said. "Those people he'd had rounded up, he was taking them to certain buildings in the city to kill them."

"That's crazy talk, Jimmy!" Riley insisted. "He wouldn't do that! He's been trying to save us!"

"I'm not crazy!" Jimmy shouted. "I hacked into his computer and I saw his plans. Starfleet never got our distress call. They're not even on their way to help us. Food's on short supply and he thinks that killing half the colony will keep the other half alive until he can get a hold of Starfleet."

"How did he decide which half?" Truth was starting to sink in on him and he wanted to be sick. "I was in the dead half, wasn't I?"

Jimmy nodded. "I couldn't let him kill you, Kevin." He stood up and started pacing. "Kodos had two lists drawn up: the colonists who would live and the colonists who wouldn't. He had all sorts of factors figured in, like number of children a family had or what job a person was capable of doing. Age was another factor," he said, and Riley was shocked to see tears in Jimmy's eyes.

"Hoshi's on the dead list," he confirmed, feeling lost at Jimmy's nod.

"I don't know if she's still alive or not," Jimmy said. "But we've got to go back and get the other kids. I'm not sure how many of them are still alive, but we've got to try and save them."

"And we'll bring them back here?" Riley confirmed.

"Yes. And then I don't know what we'll do, but the city's not safe for anyone. Once the colonists realize what's happening, if they haven't already, even those on the list to stay alive aren't going to fare well. There's going to be a bloodbath."

Tired and aching as he was, Riley drew himself up. "Who do we get first?"

"It's a shame we never got to have this place as somewhere to play," Riley said to Jim, as they stood inside the cavern for the first time in over ten years. There were still blankets and old protein bar wrappers lying about. "It would have made an awesome fort."

Jim smiled sadly. "That was always the idea, but it ended up serving a greater purpose, I think." He crouched down and picked up a small stuffed baby chick. It was coated in dirt. "Haylie loved this thing," he mused. "She's in high school now, Haylie," he imparted to Riley.

"Good for her," Riley said sincerely. Haylie had only been four when he and Jim had pulled her out of her burning house, stuffed baby chick clutched in her hands. "Did you ever hear about Khalid?"

Jim shook his head. "I tried to get a hold of him and I never could."

"Died in a car crash back on Earth when he was seventeen," Riley said. "Grandma wouldn't let me go the funeral. I was so angry with her."

"So then that leaves you, me, Haylie, Jenny, Percy, Tia," he paused and started ticking off fingers, something Riley hadn't seen him do since, well, here. "Tyrell, Parvati, Eton, Dexter, the Morgan twins-" "Shiloh and Shiela," Riley cut in. "Randall, Thomas, Louise, Markus, and Lisa."

"That's seventeen," Riley totaled. "What about the other nine? I know about Khalid."

Jim frowned. "I don't know. Not even the information Pike gave us had anything on the others. Hopefully they're doing all right." He looked as if he wouldn't be able to bear it, otherwise. He sat down on one of the rocks protruding from the cavern wall, much like he'd done when they'd been hiding. "Sometimes I still can't believe we managed to stay alive here," he said. "As many of us as there were."

"He's back!" Jimmy heard Markus yell. "Captain Jimmy's back."

He carefully started holding out what supplies he'd managed to round up and the others passed them down the line and into the cavern. When the meager offering had been stored away, Jimmy went over to where Percy was sitting with a very sick Ella. Ella was ten and she'd had a fever for the past two days. Jimmy was struck by the unfairness of the situation - children taking care of children. Percy, who was the oldest out of all of them, was only seventeen.

"How is she?" he asked, though it was painfully easy to see that Ella was in a bad way.

"Completely out," Percy said quietly, brushing Ella's sweat-soaked hair out of her face. "She doesn't have long."

"I managed to find some ibuprofen but I'm not sure how much good it will do," Jimmy said. "She needs a doctor."

"We can't take her into the city, Captain," Percy said bleakly. "Her family was on that list, they'll let her die. And we've already lost Trevor and Ginny."

Jimmy looked around at the faces in the cavern. They were all just as thin and gaunt as his. There was a deadness in their eyes that echoed his own. All of them were just children. They needed to find help; they couldn't continue to exist like this.

"What are we going to do, Jimmy?" Little Haylie asked, clutching a stuffed chick in her tiny little hands.

He'd only managed to find five protein bars and a few bottles of water. That not-nearly-enough bit of sustenance would be split amongst the children 10 years of age or younger. Jimmy took a deep breath. "I'm going back," he decided. "I'm going back and I'm going to call for help."

"You kept us all alive, Jimmy," Riley insisted. "I don't think there's a soul of us who would still be alive if it weren't for you. You did the quick thinking and you got us the hell out of the city."

"You helped," Jim said stubbornly. "You, Percy, and Jenny. It was up to the four of us to keep everyone together and alive."

"But you planned it all. You found this cavern, you were the one who made the trips back into the city to scavenge for food and water and medical supplies, and you are the reason those of us who are still alive, are still alive." Riley's tone booked no room for argument.

Except Riley's non-argumentative tone was no match for Jim, and never had been.

"I should have been able to stop it," Jim said tiredly. "I was in that government building all the time, learning about diplomacy and government from Kodos. He had me over for dinner on Thursday nights and he was always taking me under his wing, giving me advice. He taught me how to play chess and he praised me for my grades in school. I was around Kodos all the time, Riley, all the time, and I should have seen sooner what a twisted old fuck he was. Maybe if I had, I'd have been able to warn more people, save more of you."

"It wasn't your job to save the world. No one, let alone a fifteen-year-old boy, should ever have that sort of a burden put on their shoulders. But you did figure it out and you saved a lot of people." He sat on the rock bench next to Jim. "I had my pick of assignments, you know."

Jim looked over at. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. I could have gone to any ship I wanted, but I wanted yours. You're the best captain I've ever served under and that hasn't changed since we were teenagers here."

Jim looked oddly touched, and then smirked. "That's not going to help you to earn a promotion."

Riley laughed. "See? Who else would see through my cunning brown-nosing up the ladder scheme?"

"You were the best brown-nose in school," Jim said fondly. "I swear Mrs. Dunham would have taken you home and adopted you if your parents would have let her. She was always cooing over how sweet and polite you were. I suppose it's a good thing she never found that notebook of comics you drew about her. What were they called again?"

Riley grinned wickedly. "Dunham and the Devil: The Satanic Exploits of One Althea Mae Dunham. I wonder if they're still under my bed. I don't think anyone would have bothered them. At least, I hope they wouldn't. I'm sure the last thing anyone needs to see is my comic featuring Mrs. Dunham torching a bunch of kittens."

"You're a sick man, Riley," Jim said with a grin, getting up to leave the cavern. "A sick, sick man."