Author's note: Starfleet is very utopian – but does have some darker sides. One of them is, I think, an almost paranoid fear of mental enhancement. I have assumed that that fear makes other kinds of bodily enhancement a matter of grey area. We know that a century after TOS, Julian Bashir was in danger of being kicked out of Starfleet because he had been mentally enhanced as a child (his IQ raised to genius level) by his father on Adigeon (DS9 5x16: "Dr Bashir, I presume").
Another darker side is what happens when Starfleet officers, or others, use their considerable powers for bad purposes. This story references Garth of Izar, a brilliant Starfleet captain who went mad and almost caused an ethnic cleansing. Garth appeared in the TOS episode "Whom Gods Destroy." I have invented an earlier controversy in his career. I also mention the sect leader Dr. Sevrin and his follower, Irina Galliulin. Irina is an idealistic, opinionated former Academy cadet and love interest of Chekov. They both appear in the episode "The Way to Eden." There are also references to Spock's brother, Sybok, who, like Dr. Severin in that episode, is also a charismatic, manipulating sect leader on a galactic quest for enlightenment (he appears in the The Final Frontier movie).
Chekov's Story
Chekov groaned. "Alright, alright - enough! You all be quiet, and I will tell you a story. Blackmail, is what this is. But I'm going to need something stronger than this," he waved at the whiskey. "I think this is a story, that cannot be told without proper vodka."
Sulu laughed and went up to rummage through the liquor cabinet. A small fleet of various glasses already littered the table, testament to the humans' sampling of the household's various offerings. Spock noted that detox tablets were also used regularly, by everyone except Scotty who had many and loud opinions on the subject - he considered it cheating. Sulu returned with a transparent bottle of vodka, and Kirk went to get several smaller glasses out of a cupboard. As usual, there was a symbolic glass for Spock as well. As usual, he declined with a small shake of his head.
After fortifying himself with the vodka, Chekov sighed and started to ponder which story to tell. It was dark outside - or, as dark as the sky-high glittering cityscape of San Francisco ever really got. The rain had let up, and a faint waft of cherry blossoms seemed to come in through a half-open window. They were too far up for it to come from the actual cherry trees, though: the smell had to have been manufactured by the building's climate control.
Artificial… but no less sweet...
"If I have to tell a story about demerits, I'll tell you about the one reprimand in my file that I am actually proud of. Subversive activities leading to general unrest, I believe it says. The Autumn Revolution of the Academy Graduation was what we called it."
"Or, to give credit where credit is due, it was what Irina called it. She had, and has, a way with words, and knew how appearances can change substance. There is a Russian saying: the dough follows the pan. Content is shaped by the way it is presented…" Chekov looked a bit lost in thought for a moment, but then looked up and gave them a weak smile. "I think it will be hard for you, who only met Irina once, and under rather bad circumstances, to understand what a brilliant person she can be. She scored higher than me on the entrance exam to the Academy. And she got in even though she spent most of her interview ranting about the fascist rise of militarism in Starfleet! You do not have to agree with Irina, to feel the power behind her words and her convictions…"
He looked around the room. The others looked sympathetic - Sulu squeezed his shoulder - but of course they couldn't truly understand. The one time they'd met Irina Galliulin, she had been a member of a anarchistic political sect, seeking an Eden untainted by technology and Federation rules. The group had managed to temporarily take over the Enterprise, and used it to reach their Eden only to find it beautiful but deadly. Some had died immediately from the poisons. Irina had survived, her world in tatters in more ways than one…
A fleeting expression on Spock's face caught Chekov's notice. Ever since the Vulcan had returned to them after V'Ger, Spock had been more liberal with when he choose to lower his controls and show expressions, at least among his human friends. Now a haunted look of recognition passed over his face before it was replaced with the unreadable professional mask that only Kirk, and sometimes the doctor, could seem to interpret. Chekov saw the admiral glance sharply up at the Vulcan, and for a moment he looked like he was going to say something, but in the end he subsided.
Maybe it was the way the sect members had died... Spock had demonstrated a surprisingly affinity with their leader: the charismatic, almost hypnotic, Dr. Sevrin, with his impossible quest. Almost as if he had known him - or at least someone very much like him - before.
But no, he did not want to dwell more on that fateful episode. Tonight he wanted to remember Irina like she had been back at the Academy, all fire and brilliance. He forced lightness into his tone.
"Well, at the time of this story, we were second-year cadets - no longer the little kids who didn't know the difference between a fabricator and a synthesizer! No curfews! Actual training scenarios away from campus! Me, Irina and Hyp, a gender-fluid human from Mars, shared some rooms in the Archer building, and life was exhausting but sweet."
"Irina and I were still a couple, though it's quite apparent in hindsight that we were growing apart. When we first entered the Academy, we'd been so synced, it sometimes felt like we were one mind in two bodies! I guess that's what hormones do to you. We could talk for hours about the galaxy, about how exploration was the birthright of all sentients, about all the planets we were going to walk on. About how we were going to be a new brand of Starfleet officers - reforming the service from the inside. Yes, we were very much a part of the 'exploration not exploitation' wave, very worried about what we saw as the growing militarization of Starfleet. The Romulans had been quiet for decades, and the Klingons were busy on their outward frontier, after all… Were planets pressured, openly or secretly intimidated, by Starfleet to joining the Federation? There were all those rumors, and then New Luna happened... "
There were wry grimaces and sighs among the others. Every Starfleet officer had an opinion on New Luna, and captain Garth's intervention there. Had he helped the government strike down a budding, violent revolution, with just a few well-aimed, threatening phaser blasts to the surface? Or had he interfered in local politics, used military force against what was a peaceful, if very angry, opposition movement?
"Well, that led to some epic arguments between us. I supported Garth, Irina thought he was a homicidal nutcase... She said I was being seduced by the Starfleet narrative, buying the propaganda, becoming all stiff and regulation loving. I asked what she was doing at the Academy at all, with those views… Bah, no matter. We argued, da."
"But one thing that we still agreed on was that the Federation in general, and Starfleet in particular, was bigoted against gene-modded humans. The laws are outdated - old leftovers from the panic after the Eugenics Wars, centuries ago. And they're so vague! Give a deaf child a cochlea implant, change the sex of someone, do peptide reprogramming of the amygdala to remove clinical depression - no one thinks that is strange. But if someone goes to Adigeon to be enhanced with higher intelligence or perfect pitch, they're looked at like they are freaks, and Starfleet would never accept them."
"Well, I agree with you, at least partly, " said Uhura. "But there's a lot of unease about mentally enhanced people, Pavel. It might not always be fair, but resequencing of the human brain often leads to very bad things. We seem to be very corruptible, once we have more power than other humans around us. We've seen it again and again."
Kirk felt a chill go through him, and remembered with perfect clarity the power-hungry madness in Gary's eyes, after contact with the barrier had enhanced him. Spock, seated in a chair to his right, was rocked out of his own remembrances (Sybok, brilliant, charming and deadly, that last day before he was exiled from Vulcan and set out to find his own Eden) and gave the admiral a concerned glance.
"Is your story specifically about mental enhancement?" Spock asked Chekov.
"Ah, no. No, izvinite. A discussion for some other time. There's a slippery slope, I admit. But I, for one, was quite convinced then, and still am, that it is right to put pressure on the 'Fleet to be more welcoming of bodily modifications, at least." The others nodded: on this they agreed.
"Back when I was at the Academy, it was even harder than it is now. No cyborgs. It didn't say so in writing, of course, but that was how the rules were generally interpreted. And what was a cyborg, and what was a necessary health modification - well, that was all a case-to-case issue, but it was clear that there was plenty of pressure from the powers that be to keep the campus 'natural.'"
"Now, up until the end of our second year, just weeks before graduation, all our talk about the discriminatory Academy policies had been very idealistic and theoretical. But then something happened that changed all that in an instant."
"We'd been on Luna, on a two-day exhausting training scenario on Olympus Mons, when I slipped and fell from a high cliff. I was clumsy, and enjoying the lighter gravity a little too much. Maybe, just maybe, showing off a bit for Irina, as well. It might have been the end of me, but Hyp caught me by the finger tips, and hauled me up in one single motion all the way to safety. No one had missed what had happened, and once it became clear that I was stupid and alive, and not stupid and dead, everyone turned to Hyp, who had gone very quiet."
"The truth came out fairly quickly. Xe had carefully hidden cybernetic implants all through xir arms and legs. Like the exo-skeleton that you talked about, Nyota, but far more sophisticated, implanted in the muscles themselves. It wasn't a life-saving thing - xir mother was from Mars, a Federation citizen, but xir father had come from Adigeon, and on Adigeon they think that enhancements are a natural thing to give their children, a sign of love."
"Xe'd lied about it on xir entrance forms, which might be technical grounds enough to expel xem, even if it hadn't been for the no-genetic modifications-paranoia. But xe'd also saved another cadet's life. And Adigeon might not be a Federation member, but they were, and are, quite important. Half of our med tech comes from there, right Doctor?"
McCoy nodded, "They're devilishly clever."
"Da, ya soglasyen. Hyp was the first one with Adigeon blood to enter Starfleet, and the Adigeans were quite aware of xem. So things got political. Someone somewhere clearly didn't want to offend Adigeon by expelling their first Starfleet cadet because xe had an augmentation that was considered natural on that planet. But it was equally clear that other someones really didn't like having enhanced people at the Academy. Sure, xe promised that he'd not had any resequencing and brain upgrades, but could they trust xem? Was xe programmable by enemies? Just how unnatural was xe?"
Scotty shook his head in disgust, "That's such a daft argument. Unnatural. What's natural, I ask. It often seems that anything that we like is natural, and anything we dislike, we think of as unnatural."
Chekov nodded, "But even if you know that, well, xorosho, but it's still pretty hard to be faced with all that condemnation. Hyp wasn't exactly placed on temporary suspension, but xe had a number of visits from bureaucrats and brass that xe couldn't, or wouldn't, talk about. After every such meeting, xe looked grimmer... "
"When the graduation ceremony for the last-year cadets came up, we decided to finally corner Hyp. And it was just in time - we found xem with packed bags. After some shouting, we found out that xe had been pressured to solve the problem for Starfleet by simply quitting, preferably before the holo-sent graduation ceremony, where we, and the rest of the second-years, would be in the background. Xe had decided not to go to the ceremony, and didn't want any more help or intervention from us. We could tell that xe was sad and angry, but xe didn't want to cause problems for the service. Xe more or less threw us out of xir room."
"Bolshie idioti... The whole situation made me so angry that I wanted to hit someone, but luckily Irina was all cold, calculating rage."
"The Academy is quite good at shutting down protesting cadets," mused Sulu.
"Most of the time it's for the greater good," Kirk felt compelled to argue. "We're not a civilian organization; there is a reason that we have proper channels for complaints. We should be open for external criticism, regulation and control, but we can't have open internal dissension."
Even as he said it, he wondered on how much the Admiralty had changed him. He'd always believed in the discipline of the service, but was he really arguing, however circumspectly, for censorship and cover-ups? Did he want to be in that corner? When he'd been out in the field, the inflexible, intimidating, official Starfleet organization back at HQ had seemed like a straitjacket more often than not. How often had he argued with superiors, sometimes even on the bridge, frequently in tones that earned him harsh, though usually unofficial, reprimands from Nogura or Komack later? Now, when he was trapped in that organization himself, he regularly thought that protesting junior officers simply lacked a holistic understanding of the complexities of strategy and politics… He couldn't reconcile the two parts of himself, and for the first time that evening he felt the old, familiar blanket of faint bitterness descend on him. He ignored Bones' and Spock's looks and forced a charming smile on his face, a twinkle in his eyes: "But there are always ways to steer around that, right Pavel? Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission?"
Chekov smiled and nodded enthusiastically. "Hyp was well liked, and even if xe hadn't been, I'd like to think that the others would have stood by a fellow cadet. Da, we knew we could get the support of a lot of others, and we were reasonably sure that we could make a plan that wouldn't leak to the officers. That's something you figure out how to pull off pretty early on, right Hikaru, or there'd never have been those secret parties in the old fusion reactor hall?"
Sulu coughed, "Actually, I'm not so sure we were as clever as we would have liked to think we were. I don't know for sure if we got away with it, but I know that my cadets are 'secretly' converting the engine room of the old, derelict Sanger into an unsupervised holo-deck right this minute. As long as it's not, you know, actively dangerous, we tend to just let them go along with it. Wonderful security training," he said, grinning.
Scotty nodded, "Oh, we had secret parties in the fusion reactor hall in my Academy days too, lad. Wouldn't surprise me if all your instructors had been there themselves, in secret, once upon a time." Kirk and Uhura nodded in recognition as well.
The doctor gave Spock a look,
"What about you Spock? Any illicit Academy parties in your sordid past?"
"Of course not, Doctor," said Spock, with a disapproving glance. Honesty compelled him to add, however, "Though I did participate in acoustic experiments in the reactor ante-chambers, the official status of which I am not, I regret to say, entirely aware of."
"Acoustic… you mean you took part in music jam sessions with that lyre of yours?"
"Pereteon-reinforced echo chambers make harmonious sine waves revert…"
"Oh, I'm sure it was very important research, Spock," said the doctor magnanimously. "And if people danced and had fun, those were merely irritating side-effects."
Chekov gave them all a sheepish look, "I guess I never thought about it like that, before… Ah, well, I'm pretty sure that this particular plan remained secret, or we'd have had the disciplinary committee come down on us like a ton of transparent aluminum."
"We spread the word, or rather, Irina did. She made it sound like a moral absolute, an epic and noble stance that no right-thinking being could refuse: a revolution against oppressing norms and institutionalized discrimination! And when the day came for the rehearsal for the graduation ceremony, we had over a hundred cadets signed on. We had, ah, borrowed a lot of exo-skeletons from the training arenas, bright silvery ones that ended in big gloves that were hard to miss. Most of the others merely wore them, using haptic control to let the skeletons enhance their natural movements, but a few of us – who just happened to be on the honors list - injected ourselves with nanobots that let us control them subconsciously. By strict definition, we were all cyborgs! We figured that if they wanted to pressure Hyp into leaving, they'd have to get rid of us too!"
"Our little flock made it as far as the entrance to the auditorium before a very angry lieutenant - do you remember Belen, Hikaru, Nyota? - stopped us. He didn't know what was going on, and didn't care - the only thing that mattered to him was, understandably, that we were turning the rehearsal into some kind of spectacle. We tried to explain, politely, about this being a protest for the treatment of Hyp - not the easiest thing when a three-meter Andorian is shouting at you! He indicated very forcefully that we were not to bring politics into the service, and I remember Irina, oh she was spectacular, looking up at him with this calm yet fierce look in her eyes even as all the rest of us were starting to tremble. She said 'Politics are already in the service, Sir. We're just adding some old-fashioned integrity!'" Chekov grinned at the memory. "God, how I loved her back then."
"But Belen certainly didn't, and I don't know what would have happened to our little protest if Director Ahyoka herself hadn't shown up, alerted by all the noise, and wondering what was happening to her ceremony. She sorted everything out quickly - it took her about a minute to determine that we were the ring leaders and she told us to wait in her office and then, to our surprise, let the rest of the people into the auditorium, exo-skeletons and all."
"It was a pretty nervous wait for us. Slightly over four hours. As the minutes ticked by, I started to wonder if our plan had been all that good, to start with. And I started to think about how Hyp would react - xe hadn't known anything about it, had asked us to stay out of the issue. I think Irina got more and more certain, and I more and more unsure, as the time dragged on. Belen had given us very clear orders, when he escorted us to the director's office, to wait in silence, so we couldn't really talk about it either…"
"When the director finally showed up, I'd started to imagine all of us faced with dishonorable expulsion, and, which felt even worse, that Hyp would never ever talk to us again and leave Starfleet in disgrace. Even Irina looked a little unsettled, but that usually just made her double down on her opinions."
"The director gave us a long look, sat down behind her big oak desk and asked us to tell us the whole story from the beginning."
"Once we'd done so, she said, clearly and directly, that she agreed with us about the politics of the situation. They stank. She hadn't known about the extent of the pressure put on Hyp by others, and she'd spent a good deal of the previous hours figuring that out. She seemed very angry about it - she said that the interpretation of regulations on campus was up to her to decide, and she wouldn't accept that people, no matter their rank, used them to bully and threaten her cadets on her campus. She said that Hyp was excellent officer material, that she didn't care if xe had augmentations to xir body. Because xe had lied about the presence of the exo-skeleton on the forms, Ahyota had made it a requirement for further enrollment that Hyp to undergo a short medical examination to rule out that xe didn't have any mental resequencings that might turn out to be a security risk or could cause sudden personality changes later on. Hyp had agreed, and it was being taken care of right then, so that it'd be out of the way and xe'd be able to join the rest of the cadets for the ceremony the day after."
"Now, as to us… She was very clear that she wouldn't tolerate political activism on the Academy campus. If we wanted to do that, there were hundreds of civilian universities to go to. She said that if we didn't trust in the Starfleet process, we were welcome to leave, but if we wanted to stay in the service we would have to trust that we could go to our superior officers with our concerns - and that we could go to their senior officers, if we didn't feel that we were heard. She was going to add an official reprimand to our files, but with a long note explaining exactly why we had done what we had done. And she said that if she knew us right, she figured we'd wear those demerits like badges of honor."
"I was ecstatic! I didn't even care that we had to spend five weeks manually breaking down, cleaning and refitting over a hundred exoskeletons. Irina seemed almost… disappointed. Later I figured out that a part of her must have wanted to be kicked out, to go out in a blaze of glory. She managed that, eventually, about a year later when she organized protests against the Five Year Missions. She was saying it gave too much power to Starfleet officers to act for the Federation, including using deadly force, far away from oversight and control. I disagreed. We argued. She went to the media, and the Academy kicked her out, which of course gave her more publicity, so she was quite pleased."
He toyed with his drink, "I still think she would have made a great officer."
"I disagree," said Kirk. "No, hear me out before you protest. Where is she now?"
"She's, ah, she's the leader of an paleo-anarcho-liberal group on Mars. She seems to spend most of her time pressuring the government about Starfleet overreach, and how we're far too dependent on technical tools, and how power is too centralized and, oh, about a thousand other things. But she is very good at it. Right now she's in Paris, lobbying the council about the budget - too much money spent on tech, especially weapons tech. She really doesn't like the new stations along the Romulan border."
"She seems driven and competent. Is she happy?"
"...Yes. Yes I think so."
"Then I think that's where she needs to be. And where we need her to be. Starfleet is not the end-all of the Federation, Pavel. We need civilian counterparts to watch us, pressure us, make us better, keep us honest. With her temperament, she can be of more use to Starfleet outside than she could ever be on the inside. And you carry some of that fire, too - you'd never stand for abuse of power, Pavel. One day you'll have your own command, and we'll all be better off for that part of your personality."
Chekov felt like he wanted to argue, but he admitted to himself that he wasn't quite certain about what, and the more he thought about it, the more sense the admiral seemed to make when it came to Irina. He settled for nodding and muttering a "spacibo."
"If she's in Paris right now," Kirk continued, "ask her to come over to San Francisco and look me up. I'm pretty deep in those budget discussions myself. She can tell me her arguments about those outposts along the neutral zone, and I can tell her mine. The bottom line is that they're not a good idea - but unfortunately, right now they're a necessary one."
Chekov brightened. "Thank you, sir! That'd be great. Though, I'm sure it'd be very hard to convince her..."
"Oh, it'll be good practice for when I have to have the same discussion with the Vulcan ambassador in two weeks…" he shared a look with Spock.
"What happened to Hyp?" Asked Uhura.
"Xe was really angry with us, but really moved at the same time. No one had stood up for xem like that before. There were some long discussions, and I felt like an idiot that I hadn't included xem in the plans… But xe forgave us. And xe got a commendation for saving my life on Luna at the graduation ceremony! I hear it was a great occasion, I wouldn't know since I was knee deep in exo-skeleton parts at the time..."
"Hyp's head of security out at Deep Space 3 - spouse and three kids and the whole package. At least one of the kids has two extra cybernetic arms, and looks like a little miniature Kali goddess! I hope she decides to apply to the Academy one day; I'll back her application to the hilt."
The others raised a toast to him. Then Scotty said that he didn't get the Kali reference, and Uhura pulled up some pictures on a pad to show him, and Sulu started reciting what an Indian friend of his had told him about the goddess. Chekov leaned in to take a look at the pictures, when his eyes were caught by the antique clock by the wall.
It was just past 1 a.m. More relevantly, it was T minus three hours, four minutes, forty-five seconds, if the old piece could be trusted.
Forty-four seconds.
Forty-three seconds.
Suddenly, the nerves that he'd been so successful at keeping down, started acting up, and he felt his heartbeat increase. It was stupid. There was really nothing more he could do, just now. Still, he felt the restlessness returning, and he got out of his chair and wandered over to the open window, letting his fingers tap a staccato rhythm on the window sill.
Spock observed him go. It was not difficult discerning the cause of his distress. He looked at Kirk and McCoy, thinking that they would no doubt intercede, but found the latter giving him a firm nod towards the Russian. He was somewhat surprised by this, but agreed, on reflection, that he was the most logical choice, though he generally found it more comfortable trusting these things to the more sensitive humans.
He joined the younger man by the window, observing the cityscape spreading out beneath and around them. A velvet darkness full of little twinkling neo-neon lights all the way to the bay and then continuing in Marin County on the other side of the water. At some indiscernible point, the land lights started to compete with the lights on the crafts that filled the night sky even at these hours. Further up were a few artificial stars – Spacedock 1, Mir 43, ten thousand satellites and the orbiting crafts of hundreds of worlds.
One of those lights up there was the Reliant.
"When do you leave?" Spock asked.
"The shuttle leaves from over at HQ at 0412. It'll be me and Dak, the Sulamid Chief Engineer, that go aboard first. We made a deal with the refit crew. The rest of the senior crew come aboard at 0800. The captain's official welcoming is at 1415, though I wouldn't be surprised if he sneaks aboard before that."
The last few weeks had been daunting, non-stop work. 17.5 hours on duty, then a sleeping pill and 6.5 hours sleep, because he knew he wouldn't be able to keep going for long without it. Then up for another 17.5 hours. He'd worked side by side with Captain Terrell, learning his superiors officer's strengths (many, Chekov was impressed) and weaknesses (he wasn't as imaginative as Kirk, and it was imperative to keep coffee at hand at all times), as they staffed the Reliant and oversaw the customary upgrades that all ships had whenever they had any longer time in spacedock. Right now the ship was 'getting an airing', which was a strange term since it involved shutting down every system, including life support, and letting it fill with vacuum. Then, system by system was engaged and turned on, the progress carefully monitored by two independent groups, one in Spacedock, one in southern Pakistan. Slowly the ship would come to life, and be declared fit to fly and entrusted to carry the lives of 220 sentient life forms into the darkness of space.
Any mistakes that could have been made with the upgrades, should really already have been detected. Really.
Spock was a well of calm beside him, and without really meaning to, Chekov found himself talking again. "Everything should be fine. It's just that... there are still so many things to do. I don't have a final recommendation for the captain for the computer and power allocations. I've run thousands of simulations, but each department wants more. I have four scenarios that all work, but I don't know which one it best – they all have different strength and weaknesses. And every hour I spend on that, more things keep piling up." He took a deep breath, and cracked an uncertain smile, "Well, I guess it can only get better."
"It will not," was Spock's laconic reply. That really got Chekov's attention, and he looked uncertainly at the Vulcan. "Your workload will average at approximately this level for the foreseeable future, with both increases and decreases. It will, however, be easier to handle once you have more practice."
"It is an important part of your job as first officer to reduce the complexity of command decisions for your captain. It is not necessarily your job to make those command decisions. There are many ways to structure a command team, but I believe that the most fruitful one works akin to a funnel. You do not have four scenarios for computer and power allocations – you have thousands. You have whittled it down to four, and that is as far as you can take it. Leave the rest to the captain. You do not have time – you have to move on to the next problem. That will also present thousands of possibilities – reduce them to a manageable number, give them to the captain to decide, and focus on to the next task."
He tilted his head and focused all of his attention on Chekov. "You will find your balance."
Chekov took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. He let Spock's confidence seep through him, chasing away the tumbling thoughts and doubts. They would be fine. They had trained for this, they had Starfleet's best and brightest, and whatever challenges the universe held, they'd find a way through them.
Spock considered him for a moment, and then nodded once, decisively. "Shall we rejoin the others? Mr. Sulu seems to be in some difficulty."
They turned back to the chairs and sofas by the holographic fire, and Chekov saw that Sulu was doing his best to fend off the combined onslaught of Scotty and Uhura, who demanded a story. Spock reflected that the commander's reluctance seemed to form part of a social ritual that had formed during the evening, whereby a series of protests had to be made before the next person would finally agree to share a narrative. Chekov, spirits lifted, joined the effort.
"I've paid for my supper - now it's your time, Hikaru!"
The Japanese man slung out his arms. "How am I supposed to have a reprimand story to compete with yours, you being all heroic and noble?"
"That would be a familiar problem for you, yes?" teased Chekov. "One would think that you would have come up with some strategies by now."
Hikaru laughed, and made a show of looking around the apartment. "Well, I usually try to find something that I can drive around at impressive speeds; that tends to distract people. Weren't you talking about getting an old-style motorcycle, Jim?"
He directed the last to Kirk's back. He and Uhura were on their way out to the kitchen to look for something to eat, but he paused in the doorway and made a wistful face.
"One of many dreams crushed underneath the red tape of Starfleet Command. There's a small cleaning bot hiding under the bed, if you're really desperate. It whirs along quite fast."
"I think I'll pass... Well, I'll have to settle for a story about something fast then, maybe... I guess there's always the time I, ah, borrowed a Starfleet airplane. And by borrowed, I mean stole. And by airplane, I mean a Cerberus A3 Hoverer."
Kirk's head popped back out from the kitchen, suddenly alert.
"Did you say something about a Cerberus A3?"
Sulu nodded and grinned.
Kirk continued, a little too fast. "We're talking an old Eugenics War, four-engine, inter-atmo fighter plane?"
"That's the one. But a replica."
"With or without the grav-field addition?"
"Without, but with a modern graviton-stabilizer addition to make it comply with safety standards and flight control protocols."
Kirk wrinkled his nose. It was a long time since he'd been a helmsman, and nowadays they barely let him fly shuttles. But he still fancied himself a capable pilot, both within and outside atmospheres. "You wouldn't need that, that just destroys the whole idea of the original design. God, I would do anything to get my hands on one of those! Ah... I missed the story, what did you do?"
"He stole it." Explained Spock, dryly.
"Oh. Well. Obviously, I would not... steal a plane. Being a Starfleet admiral, and such." Kirk did not sound terribly convincing, and it made the humans laugh and Spock raise an amused eyebrow.
"I find myself doubting your sincerity, Jim."
"Oh, are you really one to talk about stealing ships, Spock?" countered the doctor. "Isn't that a specialty of yours?"
"Spock always returns them in good form, Bones, that's more like... illicit borrowing," said Kirk, defending the Vulcan and making light of old incidents that he knew Spock would never take lightly. "I take it that that wasn't what happened here?"
"No," said Sulu, and made a face. "I wrecked it pretty good. The smoke did quite a trick on the engine, but at least it got its moment of fame on the six o'clock news..."
Author's note: Next up is Sulu (and the Cerberus, a dare, and a forest fire...), and then Spock ("How to train your AI.")
Oh, "the dough follows the pan" is not, to my knowledge, a Russian saying, but then who am I or you to ever contradict Chekov on these issues? :-)
Maybe I should reveal a guilty pleasure: I've always kinda liked the reviled episode Way to Eden - but maybe only because I choose to see it as the hippies reminding Spock of his brother and his exile and quest, and then I choose to think of the episode being all about Spock missing Sybok...
This chapter is a lot better for the loving attention that my beta readers DelJewell and WeirdLittleStories has given to it.
I love every review – consider leaving a word or two. I hear reviewing has an anti-aging effect. :)