Kirk stares at the screen for a long moment, while several distinct strands of thought clamor for attention.
The first is a kind of horrified vindication, because he knew - he knew - there was more to 19 than met the eye. He knew it, and he let himself be convinced he was jumping at shadows. Hard on the heels of that is a sickly self-doubt: five light years is kind of a long way - maybe it's too far to be significant? The Starbase is 4.5 light years off course for a ship en route to Draconis II: not exactly a major detour at warp 4 or 5, but still… It's as far as Earth to Alpha Centauri. And, behind all of these things, there's the abiding question of why. If this is an epic Klingon odyssey, what's the endgame? They're warriors, not explorers. They haven't just blindly headed out into the black in the hope of bumping into something that takes their fancy; they've got plenty of scope for that closer to home. And they sure as hell haven't just upped and stolen a Federation cortex for shits and giggles. He knows from the Enterprise's sojourn on K-7 that there's considerable scope for semantic wiggle-room in the application of the Organian treaty, but he's still reasonably certain that a direct attack - even one in which nobody was injured - is more than the High Council is likely to be willing to risk unless there's a clear rationale behind it.
This doesn't exactly make him feel better.
They learned about Ajillon Prime and Archanis by accident - the former was a news story dug up by a New Human-affiliated holo network investigating instances of lawlessness on non-Federal planets in the years following First Contact; the latter came to light after a mission-critical mining shipment from the system was delayed and eventually cancelled, and a proposed Federal colony had to be indefinitely shelved as a result. And then there's Draconis. They say they tracked seven vessels in geosynchronous orbit around the planet, and the numbers fit with reported losses in the previous raids, but these are just the attacks they know about. What if there were more? What if the seven sthusa-shaped starships were just the raiding party, broken off from the main battalion? How would anyone know?
He glances up at the chronometer: four minutes off midnight. Well. This can't wait. He lifts his communicator.
"Kirk, this has to be you," she says, voice thick with sleep. "It's you, right?"
"Yes, Ma'am," he says. There's no need to bother with an apology; she won't expect one. "I have something on the Draconis situation."
"Uh-huh." A badly-stifled yawn. "And I guess it's urgent or you wouldn't be waking me up to talk about it when you know I've had four hours sleep since Wednesday night."
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Okay." She draws a deep breath. "You still at the office? What am I saying, of course you're still at the office. It's midnight on a Friday; where else would you be?"
Despite himself, he feels the edges of his lips curl upwards. "I guess… I got sidetracked."
"I guess you did." He can hear the answering grin in the sudden warmth of her tone. "You need me to come in or can you come to me?"
"I can be with you in ten minutes, Ma'am," he says.
She laughs. "How about you give me fifteen, Kirk? I just woke up."
"Fifteen, then," he says, though he doubts it will take her that long to kick her brain out of sleep mode.
"Okay, I'll message you the address. But let's not make a habit of this, Kirk, huh?"
"No, Ma'am," he says, and signs off.
-o-o-o-
He's never been to her apartment and never given much thought as to where it might be or what it might look like; if he's considered it at all, he's assumed that she's billeted in some slightly higher-spec version of his own quarters. But, of course, she's not temporarily grounded between deep space missions; her life is in San Francisco and has been for many years. She has a completely different frame of reference for what "home" is supposed to look like, and it's nothing like his.
He's vaguely aware of Gough Street as an affluent, 'Fleet-heavy neighborhood of Pacific Heights, though it's not an area he knows well. The wide road is quiet as he exits the aircar outside her apartment block, a turn-of-the-century brownstone overlooking Lafayette Park, and the air is cool and still, heavily perfumed with the scent of freshly-mown grass. He breathes deeply as he buzzes at the main door and waits for entry; it feels like he's been cocooned in an office half his life, and the night air smells like release.
Ciana's apartment occupies a substantial portion of the fifth floor. She's waiting for him as he steps out of the elevator, front door ajar behind her, and, through it, he can see directly into the spacious living room, where huge bay windows open on a panoramic view of the Marin Headlands and the moonlight-frosted bay.
"Hey," she says. Her hair hangs freely about her shoulders, and she's wearing a loose-fitting, filmy dress that contrives to make her look smaller than she is. Her face is drawn with tiredness, but she offers a warm smile. "You look like hell, Kirk. Come in, I'll get you a drink."
"Thank you, Ma'am," he says, and he's prepared for her rejoinder, delivered over her shoulder as he follows her inside.
"Lori," she says. "You wake me up in the small hours of Saturday morning, you don't get to stand on ceremony, Kirk. Jim, I guess."
He smiles tightly and nods as she turns, gestures to him to take a seat in one of the large, overstuffed armchairs arranged in a semi-circle in front of the windows. Kirk lowers himself into one set close to the glass, glancing around the room as she busies herself at a drinks cabinet behind him. Bookshelves cover two of the walls, filled edge to edge with neatly-stacked volumes, reaching up towards the high ceilings. A potted rubber plant of inordinate size stretches lazily in the shadows beside a replica fireplace, dormant for now, but stacked high with imitation logs and framed by a hardwood mantlepiece, on which she's arranged a series of framed photographs. At least two of them feature Ciana herself, fresh-faced and grinning, uninhibited, into the camera: in one, she is flanked by a man and a woman who might be her parents; in the other, she's squeezed between a young man and a teenage girl, one arm wrapped around either, while snow falls behind and around them.
"Scotch, right?" she says, reaching a squat tumbler into his line of sight. Ice clinks gently against the glass as he accepts it from her, and she lowers herself into a nearby chair, folding her legs beneath her and nursing her own drink against her chest.
"Thank you," he says, raising the glass to her and to his lips. It's a good quality malt, of course, but it has the effect of reminding him how long it's been since he ate. A large, oak coffee table stretches between the nest of chairs, blanketed with a Peruvian throw and scattered with granite coasters; he leans forward with a questioning glance up at his CO, and sets his glass down when she nods.
"So," she says. "Shoot. Why am I drinking Laphroaig with my deputy instead of sleeping off the week from hell?"
Kirk straightens, sucks in a breath. He says, "I think Q'onoS is behind the attack on Draconis."
An eyebrow arches, but if she's surprised, it's the only sign. She says, "Huh." A beat. "I know you have more than absent speculation, Jim. So - tell me."
He turns his head, scanning the room. "It's easier if I show you," he says. "Where's your terminal?"
"Sure." She sets down her drink, unfolds her legs, rises to her feet in one lithe, elegant motion. "Come through to the office."
He levers himself out of the enveloping cushions and follows her across the room to a door set into the wall behind his chair. It opens onto a large, well-appointed study, crowned by an expansive desk beneath a huge, framed star chart showing the constellations of Alpha Quadrant.
"Computer," she says quietly, moving around the table and gesturing to the single chair behind it, "Authorize access to Kirk, James T, serial SC937…" She, trails off, glancing up at him.
"0176CEC," he finishes.
"…0176CEC."
The screen flashes. "Access authorized."
She nods again at the chair. "She's all yours, Jim."
He doesn't need the seat, and his mother would be horrified if she saw him, but it's easier than making a scene, and Ciana won't appreciate the gesture in any case. He slides reluctantly into the chair and calls up his data pocket, feeling her hand close around the top of the headrest as she leans in to peer at the screen.
"What am I looking at?" she says.
His finger hovers over the surface, tracing the red stripe that cuts across the black. "It occurred to me that the attack on Draconis shares several characteristics with the attacks on Ajillon Prime and Archanis IV," he says. "This line represents a hypothetical route from Q'onoS…"
"…Through Archanis." She exhales a soft puff of air. "That's a pretty direct route," she says.
This is why he can work with her. A half-dozen other superiors would click their tongue and shower him with yes, buts; Ciana takes hold of Occam's Razor and slices through their cautious objections.
"That's what I thought," he says.
"And this?" Her hand reaches over his shoulder to follow the off-shot incline that leads to Draconis, and he can feel her breath close to his ear. "Kind of spoils the effect, doesn't it?"
He clears his throat. "I wondered about that," he says. "Computer, magnify 44-1382-75; ratio 16:1." The screen distorts, like a ship entering warp, and reforms on a distant image of Starbase 19, floodlights glistening against the void. He turns his head slightly and finds hers directly alongside, eyebrows raised, eyes widened. It's as close as he's ever seen her manifest shock. "It's a detour of 4.5 light years," says Kirk quietly. "At warp 6, a Bird of Prey could cover it in less than a day."
"It's a hell of a detour."
"Not if there was something there that they needed."
"Like what? Nineteen doesn't fit the pattern, Jim; no-one died, it wasn't raided…"
"Not for supplies," he says.
"You think the cortex?" she says. "Jim - no. No, I know what I said, but… No. Nineteen wasn't Q'onoS. You think we didn't check? You think we didn't scan that place a hundred times, looking for the faintest hint of a Klingon signature? No, we'd know. We'd know."
That particular fact didn't make it into the version of the report Kirk read. He finds this interesting.
"Ma'am…" he begins, and corrects himself: "Lori. Nineteen was careful. Meticulous. Someone went to a lot of trouble to make sure that the cortex disappeared with the minimum of fuss. There are plenty of races who want the information held in Federal archives, and there are plenty of races with a vested interest in not shedding Federal blood. How many fit into both categories?"
"Maybe more than you'd think," she says stubbornly, but she sounds less than certain. "Okay, say you're right. Maybe they did something we don't know they can do. Maybe they used an agent, I don't know. So they have a Federal cortex now. So what? Those things don't just give up the goods to anyone that asks, Jim. I don't think they even work outside of the Federation mainframe…"
Kirk shakes his head. "If it's possible to connect a defunct cortex to the archives outside of the mainframe, I'm sure the Klingons are not the ones to make it happen," he says. "But they have a window - a small window - where they might be able to hack into the databanks after a full-scale power shut-off."
"But it would still have to be connected to the mainframe. The system would have a record…"
"The system is offline. It can't transmit."
"Oh…" It's a breath, a half-word, spoken in a kind of horrified awe. "So they remove the evidence."
He nods. "They would have to know exactly what they were looking for. Core support re-routes all auxiliary functions to life support after five minutes of complete power-down; it can't be overridden. And it would have to be something recent enough to be held in the cache folders, which also means it was something with a classification level of 2 or lower."
Ciana sighs, straightening, and he turns to follow her movement as she crosses to the far side of the room, leaning backwards against the wall, pillowed against her hands. "That doesn't exactly narrow it down," she says.
"No." He takes a deep breath, raises his eyebrows in surrender. "I know."
A beat. Then she says, "Damn it. Where the hell did I put my drink?"
She pushes off the wall and slips out the door, and he sits in the half-light for a moment, wondering if he should follow. But she's back within a minute, glass in hand, sipping from it as she walks, and carrying his discarded tumbler, which she reaches out to Kirk as she settles on the desk beside him.
She stares at him for a long moment, taking a lengthy sip from her drink, wincing as the alcohol hits the back of her throat. "Whatever they found," she says, "It set them on course for Draconis."
Kirk considers, rolling his glass against his chest. Ice jangles against the edge, loud in the quiet room. "Federation starcharts," he says.
Ciana nods slowly. "I guess so," she says. Then, "They need deuterium. What are the chances they just stumble across the only deuterium-producing planet in a seven light-year radius?"
"Small," says Kirk. "But you don't think Draconis is their endgame…?"
"No. Nu-uh." She shakes her head. "But it's somewhere we know. It's somewhere they can only get to with our maps."
"That could be…" How many hundreds, thousands of worlds? Federal expansionist policy, when you get right down to it, is not so different from Klingon; it's only that they tend to ask permission before they start taking what they need. Half the worlds he visited with Enterprise, he was there to make sure the folks in charge signed some kind of trade agreement or mining treaty. All of the recommendations he's made in Xeno have been based on what their new interplanetary friends can bring to the Federal table. The point is, there are a number of systems marked up in the Federal cortex that might be of interest to the Klingon Empire, and a limited window in which to narrow that down to a manageable list. "There are a lot of variables to consider," he finishes.
Ciana raises her eyebrows as she lifts her glass to her lips and sips. "The attack on Draconis gives us a ballpark," she says. A beat. "It's not much, I get that…"
Kirk purses his lips. "I could work up some potential targets, based on their trajectory," he says. "But it will be guesswork…"
She closes her eyes, shakes her head. "You're right," she says. "Jim. This is… this is a whole lot of hunch and not a hell of a lot of evidence. You know that, right?"
He waits until her eyes are open again; meets and holds her gaze. "It fits."
"Yeah." A deep breath. "I think it does, too." A beat. "I'll take it to the admiralty tomorrow. You have my word on that."
Kirk nods. "I'll get started on some possible destinations right away," he says, and his hands are already moving, setting down his glass, reaching for his communicator, even as Ciana laughs incredulously.
"Jim, are you kidding me?" she says. "It's one am. Go home, for Christ's sakes. Sleep. We'll look at this again tomorrow."
He feels a flash-flood of irritation pool in his belly, prickling beneath his skin, and he closes his hands around the arms of the chair, tightening his fingers until his knuckles turn white.
"With respect," he says carefully, "We have no idea how time-sensitive this might be."
Ciana levels a stare at him, holds it. The edges of her lips curl faintly, but the laughter is gone from her eyes.
"You're right," she says at last. "But there are two things that doesn't change. One: no matter what happens, I don't get to wake the admiralty before 0600 hours unless there's an actual goddamn attack taking place on Federal territory, and I'm damn sure I would have heard about that by now. And two: Jesus, Jim, when did you last sleep? You look like a reanimated corpse."
Kirk purses his lips, sucks in a terse breath. "I was a starship captain for five years," he says, and the was ties a knot in his chest that wakes up the angry ache. "This is not the first time that I've…"
"No, I guess not," she says, shaking her head impatiently. "Maybe when you're under attack, Jim, when the ship's in trouble… But this? This is not that. 'Fleet will suck the blood from your veins and the marrow from your bones if you let it, but I know you're too smart for that. I know you know the difference between 'Fleet urgent and urgent urgent. There's nothing we can do tonight. So, what is it? Seriously, I'm asking. What is so important that you have to kill yourself behind a computer screen right now - not just right now, but every single goddamn night?"
He purses his lips, feeling his face tighten into a mask of silent anger, knowing there's nothing he can do about it. He says, "I take my work seriously, Ma'am. I always have."
"No. Uh-uh." She shakes her head. "I want a real answer."
It's on his lips to snap that she wouldn't understand; that the sublimation of the body's diurnal requirements is one of the first things he learned as Captain, that it's something he couldn't have survived without. That command, true command, is something that only happens far away from familiar shores, where it's one man and his crew against a thousand ways to die; that she can't possibly know what this means. He wants to say something bruising, something to make her feel inadequate, something that will shut down the fire behind her eyes and make her retreat to that dark-faced place he goes to when the world isn't operating the way it damn well ought to. The words rise in his throat, curl his lips, but he forces them back inside, stands instead, paces to the other side of the room.
She slides off the table, folds her arms across her chest, fixes her stare on him and dares him to look away.
She says, "I'm asking as your friend, Jim."
That chokes a snort of bitter laughter out of his chest, and he half turns, facing out of her gaze, angled towards the door.
"What, you don't believe me? You think I hand out Laphroaig like orange juice?"
His eyes slide upwards at the abrupt change of tone, and he finds that the corners of her mouth have edged upwards, coloring her stare in warmer tones.
"I should hope not," he says.
"Damn right," says Ciana. "You know how much that stuff costs? I save it for the people that irritate me least." A beat. "I'm considering rescinding yours on those grounds."
Laughter - minimal, but genuine - agitates his chest. He glances meaningfully at his barely-touched glass, still nestled by the terminal screen, and she grins and lifts it, extending her hand towards him so that he's obliged to take a couple of steps forward to take it from her.
"Okay, I'm sorry," she says quietly. "It's none of my business. I just… You're a good guy, Kirk. You're one of the better ones. This" - a vague, circular gesture towards his face, presumably intended to indicate his air of general fatigue - "This… I don't like this. I wish… I wish there was something I could do, is all."
He drops his eyes to the ground so that he doesn't have to see himself reflected in hers, to feel that vertiginous sense of being known far too easily. Her glass is sitting, disregarded, on the table behind her, and he leans in to retrieve it, shoulder brushing her arm and releasing the faint scent of faded perfume. When he stands upright, glass proffered, he finds that she's watching him carefully, sadly, like a mother might watch someone else's unhappy child. She accepts the glass from his hand, raises it to answer his gesture, clinks it gently against his. Sips.
"There's no need," he says quietly, but she grins ruefully and shakes her head.
"Sure," she says. "Whatever you say, Jim."
What can he say? Give me back my ship? It's out of her control. Fix the friendship that I've broken? So that he can keep on destroying it? What he means, what he wants to say, is, Cut out this piece of me that will not stop wanting him; make it possible to be satisfied with never touching him, or else burn away the love until there's nothing left but equanimity so that I can survive it if he leaves. There it is, right there: the essence of the darkness that follows him, that breaks over him in the small hours of the morning, until it's easier just to get up and work, or run, or swing an ax at firewood, or drink unspeakable green liquor with an unpronounceable name. And he's tired of pretending that he doesn't know it. He's tired of the angry ache just below his ribs, sucking the breath from his lungs with every vicious twist of the knife. He's tired of the constant, numb fear in the pit of his belly and the sense that he's standing on the edge of the abyss, waiting for the ground beneath him to crumble. He's so damn tired.
"I just…" she says quietly, words soft as silk in the shadowed silence, "…I wish I could make it better."
He looks up to find her eyes still fixed on his, and he thinks he sees, somewhere in the depths, a tiny flicker of kindred spirit. Whatever this is, he thinks, Lori knows it. She knows it because she sees herself in him: broken and badly mended, something vital cut away. Her eyes are liquid in the half-light, dark, hollow pools, and the golden glow of the lamp behind her haloes her hair, casting her face in shadow. She is beautiful. She is not Spock, but she knows him, and she wants to make things better.
What would happen? Would the world fall apart if he just let go? If he gave in and did what he damn well wanted to for once?
So he reaches up with his free hand, slowly, towards her face. Halfway through the trajectory, it's impossible to deny where it's going, but, though she drops her eyes to watch its ascent, she says nothing, and, when his uncertain fingers connect with the soft skin of her cheek, she exhales gently and leans into it, laying her head against his hand. Her eyes close as he twists his wrist, stroking his knuckles along the ridge of her cheekbone, down her hairline, across her jaw; her lips part as his fingertips trace the outline of the pliant, swollen flesh.
"Jim," she says softly, a whisper, and it turns out that this is as much as he's wanted: to hear his name spoken by a lover who doesn't want him to stop.
It's not like it was with Spock. There is no hesitation, no equivocation, no questioning hands or uncertain gaze. He lowers his lips to hers and she meets them with conviction, hands snaking around his shoulder and fisting in his uniform tunic, glass falling to the floor with an audible thump that makes him break away to look.
"Leave it," she hisses, and closes her mouth on his.
They stagger backwards, striking the edge of the desk at an awkward angle, and he grips her narrow waist, lifting her onto the surface. Her body is wrong - all rounded curves and delicate flesh - but she wraps her legs around his hips and pulls him close, drawing him down on top of her, curling her fingers around his neck as he trails ungentle kisses across her throat, her collar bone, the thin fabric that covers her breasts.
She is not Spock. But she is beautiful, and she wants him. Maybe she can teach him how to let go.