Setting up the chess board gave Kirk a feeling of order restored, more even than seeing the five shapes materialise in the transporter room.
Spock sat in his usual chair, at his usual time, and Kirk could tell,
without looking, that his First Officer wore his usual non-expression.
Kirk had heard Spock's mission log, and Larssen's, while McCoy had them both in sickbay making his usual hrmphing noises over biochemical and physiological readings that were still, despite a week's rest, a long way from normal. Spock had submitted to the doctor's ministrations with an air of imperturbability which (to those who knew him well) concealed the patient tolerance of a brain-surgeon required to accept medical care from a witch-doctor.
'Although," McCoy had confided in Kirk later, "he may be sicker than I thought. He was more than half-way polite to me and Christine, which is a sign of serious instability in that unfeeling machine-hearted fiend of irrational rationality!" Which, Kirk supposed, meant that Bones was feeling better too.
As Kirk made the first moves in an opening he had been carefully planning since Iyen had confirmed the storm was abating, he avoided mentioning the mission. Spock's log had been, as was usual for him, a dry recitation of relevant dates and events, but Larssen's had been unusually uninformative as well. No-one became a starship captain without learning to read between the lines, and for that matter to write between the lines as well, as Kirk had the authority to call Larssen in and ask her, directly, for a more detailed account: but Spock had heard that mission log as well, and if Spock didn't think it needed elaboration, a wise captain would find out the answers before he asked any questions that might need to go on record somewhere. But this was Spock. If he asked him straight out what had happened on Ser Etta Five, he would get a bland look and a referral to the mission logs.
So Jim played chess, and waited.
He got his opening at the same time Spock found the gap in Kirk's chess strategy and neatly took out a knight, leaving his bishop in control of the Kirk's queen's file. A casual question, one which might come up between friends: what was Kirk's recollection of his first landing party command?
"It was boring." Kirk admitted. "The first ten or so were routine,
friendly contact, a bit of scientific sampling, handshakes all round and an invitation to drop in for the local equivalent of coffee next time we were in the neighbourhood. I suppose I got cocky. Then came the mission to Ninivar Two."
Still talking carefully, casually, he went through the details of the mission as Spock captured a bishop, then the other, and pinned Kirk's queen in an elegant rook knight fork. The routine appearance, the sudden hostility of the inhabitants, the crossfire that left two crew dead and more injured, pinned down with almost no cover.
"At that point," Kirk said, "I doubted I should ever have been promoted. I doubted I would ever have the nerve to command a landing party again. And I doubted every decision I had to make to get us out of there, turning round and round in my mind what my captain would have done, what other officers would have done."
"I had doubts," Spock admitted, turning the captured knight between his fingers. "I found myself frequently aware that I did not, and could not, respond in the way I thought you would do. I have spent some time in contemplating the possibility that the outcome would have been better if that had not been the case."
"And what did you resolve?" Kirk asked softly. Spock looked up, and met his eyes.
"I am - not certain." he said. "And yet - I am certain that I, Spock,
could not have acted other than I did."
"Ensign Grenwood?" Kirk guessed. Spock nodded slightly.
"Ensign Grenwood's death is in some part my responsibility." he said.
"Had I chosen the composition of the expedition part differently, it might not have occurred."
"You can't spend too much time dwelling on might have beens."
"That is true. However, some examination of past actions is necessary to avoid the needless repetition of mistakes."
"What mistake did you make?"
Spock was silent a long moment, and then set the knight down and moved one of his own pieces. "Checkmate in five." he said, and Kirk laughed.
"Teach me to feel sorry for you," he said ruefully. "But that's not enough of a distraction. Answer the question."
Spock steepled his hands, eyes still on the board. "I was insufficiently aware of the effects of psychology on human performance and efficiency," he said at length. "In consequence, when I became aware of the importance of this factor, I relied more heavily on Lieutenant Larssen than, perhaps, I should have." He hesitated. "In truth, I have been less occupied in considering Ensign Grenwood than Lieutenant Larssen. My reliance on her required her to bear a heavier responsibility than would have otherwise been necessary."
"And how did she do?"
"You have my report." Spock said austerely. 'I would not have recommended her for a commendation if she had not performed creditably."
"Then what concerns you?" McCoy would have been impatient with the Science Officer's circuitous route to the heart of his unease.
Kirk knew better. It was hard enough for the Vulcan to lower his reserve enough to discuss the subject at all. Nevertheless, neither his duty as captain nor his affection for Spock would allow Kirk to let the matter lie.
"What concerns me is the fact that the situation should have arisen at all." Spock said now, and Kirk shook his head.
"I've heard it said that Vulcans don't lie, but they are past masters at evading the question. This is me, Spock. Your captain." Your friend.
Laying his long hands flat on the table, Spock met Kirk's gaze. "She suffered greatly, Jim." he said softly. "I could not aid her as you could have. Would that not concern you?"
Kirk reached out a hand instinctively, stopped himself short. "Yes."
he said simply. "Yes." Then, gently, "Did you - aid - her as you could?"
"I tried to advise her." Spock said, and then confessed, his voice low, "I do not know to what effect."
"You don't know what I could have done for her either." Kirk told him,
thinking: and I certainly don't, since there are great spaces in that mission log that are remarkable uninformative. "We are, each of us,
different. As such, we each can only do what is in us to do. I recall you saying once that it is illogical to protest against one's nature."
"That is true." Spock said. "As I reminded Ensign Grenwood, all that can be done is one's best." He said it as if hoping repetition would make it more convincing, and Kirk smiled.
"Oh, I know that one."
They looked at each other with perfect understanding.
"It does get better, Spock." Then, after a moment's pause, "Glad to have you back."
"I should hope so." Spock said with a raised eyebrow, and Kirk laughed aloud. Spock turned to setting up the chessboard again, but Kirk would not let him get away that easily.
"There's a response you're supposed to make to that."
"Indeed, captain?" Spock said at his most intimidating formal best.
"I am afraid my grasp of obscure Terran idiom fails to provide it."
"You great Vulcan fraud." Kirk said, holding his gaze.
"Your move, captain." And then, as Kirk gave up and leaned forward to move a chess piece, his first officer and friend, in what was neither the first nor the last ambush of their long association, said in a most un-Vulcan tone:
"Glad to be back, Jim."
"I was wondering if you could use your influence to hurry this up,
Jim." Ann was holding a datachip.
"I'm not sure how far my influence extends," Kirk said, "but I'll do my best."
She made no move to put this chip in his outstretched hand, however,
and he let his hand drop back to his side.
"It should be sufficient for this," Ann said, turning the chip over between her fingers.
'Sit down." Kirk indicated a chair in the ready room, and took a seat himself. "What's got you upset?"
"What makes you think I'm upset?"
"You always fidget when you're nervous."
She laughed, then bit her lip. "Am I so easy to read?"
"Do you really want me to answer that?"
"I think I may surprise you yet, Jim." she said quietly. "This is a request for assignment to the Enterprise."
Kirk was, indeed, surprised, and groped for the words he wanted.
Seeing his hesitation, she rushed on:
"If you'll have me aboard. I don't mean to - to presume anything, but I was thinking - I was thinking about what I said. About there not being very much time. And it occurred to me that I'd like there to be MORE time. And you're not about to take a shore assignment, are you?
So I filled out the form for assignment as a specialist scientist,
civilian grade..." Her voice trailed away.
"Of course I'll have you aboard!" Kirk said. "Ann, I can't think of anything I'd like more, as a captain, than to have a galaxy class microbiologist to add to the crew. And, as a man, I can't think of any microbiologist I'd prefer. But - Ann, I thought all you wanted was to get off this ship and get home. Get somewhere safe."
"That's what I thought, too." she admitted softly. "And I'm terrified.
And I'll be terrified every time something dangerous happens, and I'll probably cause Ensign Regna to go into fits of over-responsibility on a regular basis. But - maybe I'll get used to it. Maybe you'll get tired of me. Maybe I'll decide to go home. Not just yet, though."
She met his eyes, tried a smile. "If you'll have me."
"I said that," Kirk said, reaching out to take her hands in his, and drawing her close. "I'll use all my influence to punch that request straight up the chain of command. Welcome aboard, Professor Ridley."
Taking her in his arms, he showed her just how welcome she was.
"Spock." McCoy popped out of the doorway like a jack-in-the-box.
"Got a minute?"
"I have precisely seven point two minutes before I will be late for duty, doctor. Will that suffice?"
"It'll have to." McCoy said. "Seven point two, eh?"
"Six point nine, now."
McCoy had the sense to know when he was being teased, and he simply snorted and beckoned Spock into the sickbay, then into his office, and shut the door.
"Lieutenant Larssen." he said. "Grenwood requested the string quartet play at his memorial service, and she's bowed out. Says her hands are giving her gyp. Is that the reason?"
"You would know better than I." Spock said.
"Oh, really - and PUT THAT EYEBROW DOWN, dammit!"
"I am hardly qualified to comment on the Lieutenant's medical condition." Spock pointed out.
"Well, I WOULD be qualified to comment on the Lieutenant's psychological condition, if I didn't have this sneaking feeling that the bare bones in those mission logs could be fleshed out to make a much more interesting story." McCoy said irritably. "I don't like it when crew members die, Spock, and I don't like it for more than just that fact that it's a horrible damn waste. I don't like it when their friends and associates start behaving differently afterwards, and I don't like trying to pin point what's eating at one of my patients when I have what I suspect to be less than one tenth of the relevant information - it's like trying to take out an appendix by candlelight with a hacksaw."
"Am I to presume from this simile you have experience in performing appendectomies in such circumstances?"
McCoy gave the Vulcan a long, shrewd look. "Misdirection isn't going to work this time, Spock. Neither is irritation. I'm responsible for the health of the crew, and if there's something I need to know about what happened down there and you don't tell me you're derelict in your duty - and don't even THINK about correcting my grammar at the moment!"
"It is difficult to effectively obey a proscription on certain trains of thought." Spock said. "I believe the terran reference is 'not thinking of horse's tails.'" Then he relented, as it seemed possible that the doctor's heroic attempt to control his temper might actually cause physical injury. "I cannot tell you anything which would violate Lieutenant Larssen's right to privacy, but I can tell you that she found some aspects of the mission psychologically difficult. It is my judgement that this will not effect her efficiency. You may be certain that I would immediately report any matter affecting the efficiency of the crew, doctor." He stood up. "I am now due on the bridge. Please excuse me."
He left McCoy mouthing 'right to privacy ... right to privacy...' to himself, and had barely reached the turbolift when the doctor barrelled out into the otherwise empty corridor again. "You read her mind!" McCoy said. "Didn't you? You read her mind, you-"
The turbolift doors closed. McCoy cursed, with considerable imagination and precision, Vulcans in general and Spock in particular,
who thought they were fit judges of human capacity based on their god-
damn cockeyed so-called logical interpretation of half-understood information drawn from unverifiable psychic experiences and then invoked high-falutin' privacy considerations to keep qualified human practitioners from forming their own far more qualified judgements.
He stopped when he ran out of breath, and went in search of Kirk.
"Doctor McCoy is concerned about your fitness to return to duty,
Lieutenant." Kirk pointedly examined a PADD which in fact held a report from the Enterprise's quartermaster. "Something about playing a fiddle?"
"Cello, captain." Larssen said. "I appreciate the doctor's concern-"
"Well, I don't." Kirk said. "I appreciate the doctor not having anything to concern himself WITH. I also appreciate an absence of paperwork, which is why I refused his request to make your return to active duty conditional on the results of a full psychological examination. The paperwork, and of course Commander Spock's assurance that an examination of that nature was not necessary." He paused.
"IS it necessary, Lieutenant?"
"No, captain."
"But you don't want to play the cello at Ensign Grenwood's service."
"No, captain."
"Do you have a reason which will allay the doctor's concerns?"
Larssen considered sticking with the excuse of her hands, but that had already been proved not to wash. Saying, I can't bear to, Captain,
did not seem a particularly viable alternative. She compromised. "I don't want to cry on the strings, sir. It isn't good for them."
She couldn't read any expression on his face except mild irritation at the problem she was causing him. All the crew dreamt of one day coming to the personal attention of the captain, but not as a problem.
She ventured:
"I could explain that to Dr McCoy, sir."
"I suggest you be sure that salt water does damage cello strings before you do, Ms Larssen. He's likely to look it up, and you're likely to find yourself back in here."
"Yes, sir. What should I say, sir?"
"Try telling me what the problem is." he suggested. "I WILL put up with the paperwork if that's what's necessary to make sure my officers are fit for duty. Lacking other information, it's beginning to look necessary."
She was silent for such a long time, gazing down at her hands, that Kirk thought he'd misjudged the tack to take. When she did speak, her voice was so low he had to strain to hear.
"I lost it, sir."
"I thought it might be something like that," he said, and she looked up, startled by the sudden change in his voice, from busy starship captain to a gentle sympathy tinged with amusement.
"Lieutenant," he said, "Do you know what Admiral Bantry said when I submitted my mission log yesterday? He said," and Kirk managed a reasonable imitation of the Admiral's Delurian rasp: "Don't you people EVER have a normal day?"
Larssen bit her lip to keep from smiling, but Kirk could see she hadn't quite grasped his meaning.
"I don't know exactly what went on, either down there or in your head,
Lieutenant, and - " his upraised hand stopped her before she spoke, "I don't want to know. I do know that every good command officer I've ever served with came to some point, some time, when they faced the wall, and went beyond it. And I'll tell you, Ms Larssen, that's the easy part of it. You wanted to lie down and die, I'll bet, and you didn't."
"I nearly did." she said soberly. "I would have, but Commander Spock - he never gave up. That's the way of the Enterprise, captain, and I don't - I don't measure up."
"Trying to measure up to Mr Spock is a good way for anyone to end up in sickbay, Larssen. He's an exceptional officer. You can't judge yourself, or the rest of the crew, against his standards. He certainly doesn't. And what Admiral Bantry was saying was that you can't judge the rest of Starfleet by the standards of this crew. On any other ship, you'd be the hero of the hour. On the Enterprise, you get a pat on the back for a job well done and next week somebody will be asking you to do the impossible again. You can't exceed the expectations on this crew, Lieutenant, because the bar keeps going up.
Be satisfied that this time you MET them.
"Now you know how bad it can get out here. Bad enough to make you give up and stop trying. The hard part comes now. What are you going to do with the knowledge of your limits? I'll bet you didn't even know you had them before Ser Etta, and now you're scared of coming up against them again. Well, Lieutenant, between you and me and my personal log, I know exactly how that feels. You have a choice to make now, a choice that will affect the rest of your career, the rest of your life. Now you know you can fail, will you make sure you never fail again, by avoiding situations you might not be able to cope with?
Or will you pick yourself up and do your duty as you see it,
regardless of the risk?"
He noticed sudden tears in her eyes at the word 'duty'.
Larssen said, hesitantly, "Captain, if I - fail - again, in Starfleet, it's not me, just me, that's I'm risking when I risk failing again. I keep thinking - I should have done something for Grenwood, something more. I didn't know what it was, and he died.
Next time - I might not know what to do again, next time, or I might not be able to do it."
"It's easy to risk yourself." Kirk told her softly. "The heartbreaking part is having the confidence in yourself to risk others on your own strength. That's what an officer does."
"Yes, sir." she said softly.
"You know your strength now. You think you've discovered your weakness, but I suggest you turn that on its head." He watched her for a moment.
"Lieutenant, I'm not going to process any request for reassignment or discharge from you unless you come back in here and personally tell me your reasons. And I won't even read any application from you until you're been back on active duty for a month."
"Yes, sir." She straightened her shoulders. "Thank you, captain."
"Go on," he said gently, with a slight gesture of his head to the doors.
She was almost at them when he added, timing it deliberately,
"Commander Spock speaks highly of you, Larssen. Don't make him a liar. You know how Vulcans hate that."
Her shoulders twitched as if he'd physically struck her, but when she looked back there was a new resolution in her face, something Kirk recognised and rejoiced to see. "No, sir, never." she said firmly,
smiling slightly.
Kirk leaned back in his chair as she went out, satisfied. Larssen would be fine. He'd sometimes wondered if she was introspective enough to make a good officer, but she seemed to have discovered an imagination without letting it run too far riot, somewhere down in the storm. He glanced at the chronometer, and reached for his comm unit.
"Bones," he said. "Got a minute?"
"That depends on what the minute's for, Jim." the doctor responded warily. He was ten minutes from going off duty.
"I'm due a game of chess with Spock in my quarters at the end of the shift. Care to kibitz?"
There was a silence, and Kirk imagined McCoy squinting at the comm in suspicion.
"You always say that kibitzing is putting my nose in where it doesn't belong." the doctor said at last.
"That's why I thought this would be a special treat," Kirk said,
starting to laugh. "I've just had a talk with Ms Larssen, and I thought you and Spock might be interested, that's one. And two is,
you've got the best whiskey."
"The truth will out." McCoy grumbled as he set the bottle on Kirk's table twenty minutes later. "I always suspected it was my whiskey that kept you interested in my conversation."
"The truth will set you free, Bones." Kirk teased, and saw Spock's expression flicker in what might almost have been a double-take. When he turned to his first officer, however, Spock was deadpan once more.
"Indeed, Captain." he said, setting up the chess pieces. "Was this the burden of your conversation with Lieutenant Larssen?"
Kirk considered, watching Spock and McCoy with open affection.
"Why, yes, Mr Spock." he said at last, as the Enterprise raced onwards to new missions, new dangers, new discoveries. "Yes, I suppose it was."
THE END