4/11/2258
Enterprise Bridge
"Oh my God…"
"Fascinating…"
The rest of what remained of the Senior staff was hunched together around Uhura's console – Uhura, Spock,
Chekov, Sulu, and Scotty, whom they had called from Engineering.
After the shocking departure of Captain Kirk, the Enterprise had continued on to Outpost 59, both to drop
off supplies and receive reports from the scientists stationed there. The following day they had been ordered
to return to Earth.
During the entire three point fifteen day trip, the entire crew had only one question on their minds.
What had happened!?
Today, twenty four hours before their scheduled arrival at Earth Spacedock they had received their answer.
Six words flashed on the console. Six words that turned their universe upside down
'HERO COMES OUT – I WAS RAPED.'
The news articles didn't go into a lot of details – they just stated that famous Starfleet Captain, James T. Kirk,
was drugged and raped by two men while on shore leave.
Every single one of the Senior staff replayed the days following the Captain's shore leave.
"Well, looks like someone had a wee of a night, eh?"
"Can't you at least keep these things off duty, Captain?"
"I believe that your personal affairs should remain exactly that – personal."
"Sorry, Captain, but I'm a wee bit busy here…"
"Sorry, sir – but there's this experiment we have running at the botany labs…"
"Excuse me, Keptin, but I have several things to do at ze astrolabs…"
"My God," Uhura breathed. "What have we done?"
After a few days, Kirk decided to press charges and the rapists were brought to trial. The rapists apparently
got some very good lawyers and decided to make the trial a world-wide affair. Only intervention by Starfleet
Command kept the proceedings private and not public. The rapists had ultimately been found guilty and
sentenced to prison.
Afterwards Starfleet tried to apply an information embargo on the whole thing, but newspaper articles had still
appeared and now everyone and their mother was talking about what had happened.
There was a video feed of the resulting press conference. Captain Kirk spent about ninety minutes (Eighty-seven
point nine minutes to be precise) answering questions by reporters, obviously uncomfortable at being there.
And then the final question and answer came. "I didn't ask to be raped," he said quietly. "I didn't want to report it.
If my friends, Doctor McCoy and Admiral Pike, hadn't stood by me, I wouldn't have."
My friends, Doctor McCoy and Admiral Pike…
The horrible realization.
In Kirk's eyes they were no longer friends and never had been.
"But there's one thing that bothers me – how many other people are out there, hiding that they've been hurt,
because no one around them is willing to take the time to listen to them? Because no one's willing to get down
off of their high horse and help them?"
That question hung in the air, even after the video feed ended.
They all immediately attempted to call the Captain to tell him how sorry they were.
None of their calls were received or returned. When they tried to call again, a computer voice informed:
'You do not have permission to call this number.'
They had each blocked Kirk and he had now blocked all of them in return.
And all of them were now trapped in a nightmare.