Chapter 18- Payback

As McCoy had indicated, we arrived at the Starbase in the early evening just past dinner time. He had convinced me not to go to 10 forward for food since I had never been down to a Starbase. He said he was tired of replicated food, but warned me not to expect too much. It seemed these Starbases that were scattered around the known sectors of the Federation were nothing more than glorified truck stops, but I was excited to experience it nonetheless.

"Thank God this one has shuttle service." McCoy growled as we left the sickbay together at the end of our shifts so I could collect my meager belongings from his quarters. "Not all of them do. Some of them you can dock directly to the port and others you have to beam down to. Progress they call it. I don't see anything wrong with the old fashioned method of walking, but if physics and flying particles aren't somehow involved then it is an archaic form of transportation." He scoffed. "Well to hell with progress. No one ever ended up in two places at once by walking."

I gently smiled at him. For whatever reason he had remained cranky since he told me about Jim's plans and he couldn't seem to shake it. I had resolved to cheer him up by night's end or at the very least distract him for awhile so it wouldn't feel like dinner with Darth Vader sulking in a corner. I had to admit that I too was a little edgy about participating in an away group, but I had to trust that Jim would never intentionally put me in danger. But therein lie the rub, McCoy pointed out. Wherever Jim was trouble seemed to follow, so technically he never meant harm to anyone; it just seemed to naturally befall any living being within arm's reach of Jim at ground zero. It besieged everyone indiscriminately like a hailstorm he told me, and it was usually just as unpleasant.

When we got on the lift, Chekov was already there. His shift had ended as well and he was most likely heading to his quarters before spending some time on the base. He politely moved to the side to make room for us and greeted with a nod, "Dr. Collins. Sir."

"Chekov." McCoy nodded in return. "Going down to the base tonight?" He asked making idle chatter.

"Yes, Sir." Chekov responded. "I am going to dinner vith Sulu and Uhura and then maybe some shopping. My little sister loves the little souvenir trinkets from the gift shops, so I collect them for her and send them home vhen I can." He explained.

"That's a nice thing to do." McCoy grumbled. He was running out of pleasantries and Chekov began to rock back and forth on his heels nervously. I tried not to stare, but I kept noticing Chekov glancing out of the corner of his eye at McCoy and his face was flushed. Something wasn't right….

The lift opened on 3 and McCoy stepped out, but looked back when I remained. "Go ahead," I encouraged, "I will be back in a minute." He squinted at me, but thankfully the doors closed before he could figure me out. "So, Pavel." I stated with a knowing look. "What is going on?"

He feigned his best innocent look which didn't fool me for a second. "Vhat do you mean, Doctor?"

He was up to something, but he didn't want to tell me. "How was work today?" I asked breezily.

"Deck 8." He told the computer before returning to me. "It vas fine. Kind of boring because I had plotted the course to the Starbase a few days ago and no changes were needed. I spent most of my day doing Navier-Stokes Equations. They deal vith turbulence, hydrodynamics and fluid flow, and if I can solve them it could help build better ships for the Federation." His eyes lit up at the possibility. I had no idea what kind of advanced mathematics solving them would require, but if anyone had a shot at cracking them, it would be Pavel.

"Sounds challenging." I mused. "Do you get some kind of prize for that?"

His wide blue eyes regarded me with amusement. "Maybe promotion, but that is not vhy I try." The doors opened on 8 and he bid me farewell. I silently cursed as the doors slid shut and ascended back to deck 3. He wasn't budging one inch and I thought he would be so easy…

McCoy let me in and I gathered my pajamas and placed them back in the box while he rifled through his closet for something to wear other than his uniform. He settled on a comfortable looking pair of jeans that were well worn and a dark blue button up. "It's getting late," he observed heading for the bathroom to change, "why don't you pick up your things after dinner so we can get moving?" He suggested.

"Ok." I agreed taking a seat on his neatly made bed. It seemed a lot more springy and soft than mine, and I found myself being just a little jealous.

Well, you had your chance.

He emerged from the bathroom a changed man. He looked very different in rugged everyday wear, but his hair was styled in a slightly messy fashion- not the usual neat part and I smiled in surprise. He hesitated briefly with his hand still on the bathroom door when he caught my expression. "No!" I exclaimed when he started back. "It suits you well, it was just unexpected." He looked at the floor and smiled and I laughed.

"You can't wear your blue shirt down there." He stated returning to his closet to remove a white button up which he tossed in my direction. "I will get my ass chewed if any of the brass sees you in that. Just put that on and let's go." I pulled the blue tunic off over my head and slid my arms into his shirt. Black and white would never go out of style.

McCoy and I made our way to the shuttle bay through the engine rooms where we saw Scotty perched atop what looked like a transformer box, drinking. I had never before seen the engine rooms and they were remarkably clean and sterile compared to what I envisioned them to be. "Bones! How are ya' mon?" He called raising his bottle. "Ah haven't seen your likes down 'ere since my little 'uns got into a rammy and ya had to come break it up!"

"Yeah, that was a barrel of monkeys." He said dryly. "I never would have imagined swinging a three pound crescent wrench at someone would do so much damage. It is like the goddamn wild west down here, Scotty. You don't see people in fistfights in the sickbay for Christ sake."

"Nah, let 'em scuff it up and get on, I say." He waved dismissively. "Goin' to dinner, then? Ya look fair smashing, the both of ya." He commented with a warm smile. "Ah'm just waiting myself." He seemed to be looking directly at me and I grinned. I bet I knew who he was waiting on…

We said our goodbyes and entered the shuttle bay. It was a vast room that was divided into what looked like a cargo area where small craft could park separated by a control room behind a massive pane of glass. At the far end, the wall was open to the vastness of space, but it was covered by a shimmering blue substance of what I wasn't sure. It seemed to be maintaining the pressure in the room as there were several people gathered in the cargo area waiting for the shuttle and no one was being sucked out into space.

As promised, the Starbase was nothing special and I was somewhat disappointed. Sadly, the Enterprise was much nicer as far as amenities went. I sat at a table in the mostly empty base lounge with McCoy over a round of drinks and waxed philosophical. "Why are we here?" I sighed rhetorically. "Do you ever get tired of this?"

He regarded me over a mint julep, which he said was poorly concocted, and snorted, "All the time. What's on your mind?"

I stared at nothing in particular on the table and smiled. "It just doesn't seem real that I am sitting in a bar on a manmade space station orbiting some unknown planet somewhere very far from Earth. My 21rst century brain just cannot accept that as fact and yet here I am."

"Here you are." He echoed, stirring his drink with the tiny straw that came with it.

"It seems like the world I came from is so very different from the one I am in now that it just seems impossible, like some fairy tale."

"Whadda mean?" He asked squinting.

"You told me earlier today that a lot of the diseases that we just lived with have now been eradicated. HIV/AIDS was a world pandemic when I left that infected millions without a cure and now it is just gone?" I asked incredulously. "It seems like the very fabric of society has changed. Take for instance poverty. My family was very poor growing up, but that is something that you can't even relate to anymore because everyone has equal access to food and resources. Ending world hunger was a joke in my time, a line used by beauty queens to win pageants." He listened intently, his scowl deepening. "And equality? I was lucky enough to have been born after the civil rights movements of the 60's, but even then true equality was an ideal that fell well short of everyday experience. People may have smiled in your face, but God help you if you were a woman, black, Jewish, gay, an immigrant, disabled in some way, or any other number of other things because that meant that you had to work twice as hard to prove your worth. But now it is as if all of those things have been rendered irrelevant. While I am very happy to see some measure of social justice for all, these problems were so entrenched and systemic that I can't believe they have possibly been solved."

"Do you miss it?" He asked in a low voice. "Do you miss all of the poverty, disease, and inequality?"

I reflected on it before shrugging. "No, of course not; but it was all I knew."

"All of those things are still here, it just isn't as visible." He said lightly. "We probably have more disease than ever before, it is just not as often fatal. Inequalities between people are still alive and well. Otherwise, why would we bother making contact with other species to join the Federation so they can enjoy a stable food source and equitable economy? If everyone were equal and all was rosy, why do we spend so much time damn fighting the Klingons, Romulans, and god knows what else may be out there? Because an imbalance of power still exists and I am not sure it can ever be fully corrected, but we have to try." He lamented.

I smiled at him over his drink. "Why did you become a doctor?" I asked him. "Of all the things you could have possible done with your life, why that?"

He chuckled and his eyes lightened. "Tradition, I guess. Everyone in my family is a doctor of some sort, so I guess it just seemed natural. Reunions are absolute nightmares when you have a house full of doctors all arguing over what should be done for a paper cut. I always advocate for amputation, but…"

I squinted at him and shook my head disapprovingly. "That's not the whole story." He looked at me surprised and I continued, "I remember you told me that people like us all have a drive. So what is driving you?"

He tossed his hands up and sighed. "That's a good question. Probably at first I just wanted to fit in and be a doctor like everyone else because it was expected of me. Then I really wanted to change the world by maybe inventing a new technique that would save lives. But now?" He asked raising his eyebrows. "Now I just want to go to sleep at night knowing that I snatched one young soul from the mouth of death. They are all just kids these days." He grumbled sitting back in his chair. "Every one of them too young to die and way too damn eager to try."

"As the other member of the geriatric contingent of the ship, I agree." I smiled. "I am guessing you are somewhere in your mid to late 30's?" I queried.

He placed his hands behind his head and smirked. "A little south of that, but close."

Thankfully men didn't get so offended when you guessed they were older than they really were. "It is funny how we are not that far from them chronologically, yet I feel so old sometimes." I laughed.

"Well then," he said standing up, "we should get to bed. Old folks need their rest."

We took the next shuttle back to the ship and when we arrived, all hell broke loose. In the dock, McCoy angrily ripped down a flyer that had been posted on the control room door and grit his teeth. "Chekov!" I looked as he held it in his trembling hands and put my hand to my mouth in shock. It was the picture Pavel took of us going to dinner, but I had been removed from it and replaced with a blue, very busty and scantily clad alien with tentacles for arms that wrapped all around McCoy. One tentacle in particular rested perilously close to a delicate position and I bit my lip so I wouldn't laugh. We found another in the lift and several more in the hallways of deck 3.

Perhaps the most humiliating moment came when McCoy approached his door to see Spock standing a little further down the hall, staring thoughtfully at one of the flyers. When Spock looked up, McCoy pointed at him and growled, "Not a goddamn word out of your mouth about this. God so help me I will sneak into your room and skin you alive before you even wake up."

Spock made no acknowledgement of the threat, his expression never changed. He simply looked down at the photograph and back to McCoy with a slightly raised eyebrow before neatly turning on his heel to return to his room, the corner of his mouth twitched ever so slightly.

I had never before seen McCoy so livid and I feared for Pavel's safety. He waited a long time to get his revenge, but it is said that revenge is a dish best served cold and no one does cold better than a Russian.