Half my heart is in the stars

the world was ours

and every day she brought me something new

the world's gone dark

forget what's left

the stars can have it all...

-"Half My Heart" copyright 2258 D. Wanders/J. Grayson

Combat Medicine 101, Introduction to Hell

Fan-tor. Fan-wilat. Fan-wat.

Anything. Anyplace. Anytime.

-Air Galactica motto

Training for the mission began that evening in the big chamber that had served as a Eugenics War shelter and was now the Carbon Creek community room. A plaque on the wall recalled the 1958 mine explosion in which Nick Mestral had been a hero; another recorded the mine's life as a shelter and all the people who survived because of it. If the whitewashed, sealed walls and supported ceiling made it safe, the memory of unlikely days of salvation made it feel that way.

They needed peace. Any illusions about T'Khasi's ancient warfare left within the first minute and Kirk was lucky his lunch didn't go with them. The full-motion holovid from the Guardians of Forever let the seminar start on the battlefield as night fell. Worse yet, Ko'ku Lia was the mistress of ceremonies, and her acceptance of things others couldn't look at without barfing wasn't always as helpful as she thought. She surveyed the queasy roomful with a faintly distressed expression as she leaned back against the main table in her haze-gray fatigues with the sleeves rolled. "A little much?"

No one else was talking, so Spock did. "Yes."

"Uh, yeah, ko'kuk," he agreed. He wasn't sure when she had become Aunt Lia, any more than he could remember calling Sarek sa'mi for the first time; it happened as seamlessly as if it were natural.

Her expression hadn't been hard, but it softened a bit even so. "It's going to look like that. It's going to be like that. We weren't nice people back then and we did some rotten things to one another. On that side of the Zone, it's still everyday stuff. I'm going to pause the vid and let fa'sa Solkar do our introduction instead."

The Council of Elders had named their public relations campaign the Gathering of the Remnant. The outcast community was quick to come up with The Scraping of the Barrel, The Rounding Up Of The Mavericks and All Is Forgiven If You Have A Working Uterus, but even they agreed on the need for genetic diversity. "The most logical method," Solkar intoned in his deep velvet voice, "is to slingshot back to when thousands died in two major battles within a three-day span. We can safely retrieve anyone who had no children and is known not to have returned from the war. For those who can survive with modern treatment but could not live in their own time, we offer a chance at a new life. Bodies were cremated on the battlefield, so their absence is highly unlikely to be felt."

The still pictures were easier to look at. Continual warfare had come to a head at the Battle of Mount Seleya and a day later the Battle of the Salt Marsh. Three warring nations' capital cities made the corners of a triangle, Gol in the mountains, Kir far northeast on the old seashore and ShiKahr at the foot of Seleya, with smaller cities like Shanai and Low Springs scattered around. The nations had been at relative peace until, one day with no warning, the army of Gol jumped ShiKahr from the south while the Kiri armies charged across the desert through, and over, the suburb of Shanai.

Spaceflight was in its infancy, with a few unmanned probes to what would be Romulus, a landing on nearby T'Kuht and a lot of ill-informed people believing they could build rockets to escape the perpetual shooting. As the worst battle in Vulcan history raged, many rushed to leave with results as disastrous as the fighting. At the end of seven days, the city of Gol was flattened, half of ShiKahr and most of Kir had been destroyed and nearly half a million people were dead or missing.

Most field medics were men, which worked out nicely for the female-short Remnant. Trios were the norm, healer, aide and slave to haul burdens. Not long ago, no one would have been allowed to look at the pre-Reform records, but those who had barred access were gone, so the committee had quickly assembled everything from correct uniforms to field rations in proper wrappers. Experienced time travelers, including Nick, got up to share what they had learned, from how to speak properly to how to swear improperly should the need arise, and after that, reluctantly, they tackled the vid again and were not quite so stunned. At long last, Lia steepled her fingers and inclined her head slightly. "That's all for today. Your study materials for morning should be on your padds."

When most of the crowd made for the door, he sat for a bit, staring down at his notes. If any of them made sense in the morning, he decided, he'd be shocked. Spock put a hand to his back, between the shoulderblades, in a spot that somehow brought instant comfort. "Bear in mind that most of us have already studied this extensively...not by choice...in school."

"Or came around a corner and saw it live and in color," Lia said. "My mother-in-law had a place downtown near the Senate. We were staying there between missions, I took the girls out for a walk and we happened on a Tal Shiar visit that had gone into the street."

"In front of little kids."

"Most wars happen in front of children," she grimaced. "Mine included. I hope this new little one never has to look at what the others have seen."

In the Carbon Creek Veterans of Foreign Wars, Sarek and Spock went to the pool room with Nick while Kirk jarred some of the chest wound protocol loose from the tangle in his head. He was on his second beer when a big bony hand on the back of his neck uncrumpled most of the tension. "We stuffed your head too full."

"Yes." There was no use lying to John Solkar; he already knew with skin to skin contact.

"Hmm, that's not all, either. Why don't we sit over there in the corner?" The invitation was by no means an order, but he wouldn't excuse himself. They took their drinks to the corner table with their backs to the wall and a view of the door; Kirk wondered whether he had the same need or knew Kirk's. "So, you didn't expect that shore leave out of yourself...?"

He was a healer of minds as well as bodies, and good at both. Kirk wondered whether he'd have survived his nightmares had Solkar not come to take care of him on that just out of the hospital night. Call me John. People need a name, and Solkar is too much for some bad situations. This was one of those. "Dumb stunt. I wouldn't think twice if one of my friends...I'd make fun of them, but they were on leave, half in the bag, he got paid, why not? Okay, so the antibiotics worked and I only have two more weeks to, er, wait. But it's me, it didn't feel right and I don't know why I did it."

"I had a bad case of broken bond syndrome from my first wife, and in that desperation I did a lot I'm not proud of. I've been around your mind and so do you. Where your father tore away has edges that can't be smoothed. They saved your life twice, dealing with that monster of a stepfather and again on Tarsus 4, but that's why you do things you don't understand."

"Seven psychiatrists and therapists so far, and you're the first one who put it that bluntly."

John made a Well? gesture with his drink. "They didn't have the access I do. Or possibly the sexual orientation. No point in lying, is there? There's also no point in my lying about what you know I do under great stress: drink too much, drive too fast and use any other intoxicant I find. I don't think you have that last problem, but you have the first two. Evidently we also both resort to self-destructive sex." He had a sip of his bourbon. "Why are you with us?"

"I want to help."

"Yes. You do, with great sincerity. Because?"

"Because you're my friends." He took a deep breath. "Because with Spock it's more than that, he's...I know he's not interested in me that way-"

"Neither is Nick interested in me like that, so I get it. You were about to say 'but.' So?"

"There's some...connection...? I've never felt anywhere else. You know what kind of crew I have. Bones can be a terrified old lady, but he's there every time I need him and I'd do anything for him. That's huge, that gut-deep human friendship I never expected. But Spock. I didn't even like him and he tried to kill me twice and still...and still. By the time we got on Nero's ship it was right that I'd offer to cover him and he'd trust me with his life."

"Believe me." John smiled, unguarded. "I get it. Friend. Brother. If sexual preferences are compatible, lover. Beyond the bond itself, which can be all but unbreakable, some fundamental pull of the universe always seems to bring t'hy'la together. Like the stronger version of the old Vulcan saying: we may try to avoid family, but family always finds us."

"I hope most of mine won't bother. I do wonder about my grandparents I barely knew, whether they'd have been all right or not when they took me in, whether...aah, I'm a grown man."

"And I'm a grown bisexual k'turr, and I still want most of my family around. And that nut case of a Syrannite in-law," he raised his voice as Nick approached.

That got him lovingly (Kirk couldn't call it anything else) rapped on the head with a pool cue. "So Janko, we getting ready for morning or what here?"

"Or what. Have you shown him the cemetery?"

"You're right. Give him a good case of the creeps." Nick motioned him along. "Come and see."

Much to his surprise, Sarek's mother walked up with them. The graveyard on the outskirts of town had once served a church, destroyed like most in the wars. "By the way, I felt you wondering. Janko, Jhan'kam, Serbian, Golic, both Johnny, same words, so many places. This was all overgrown," Nick waved at the graveyard. "I came back to help clean up the radiation after contact." Everblooming roses spilled over a wall of rough sandstone around the old graves, their markers a mix of new and old survivors. The wall itself had a lot of brass plaques, which he realized hid urns. "During all the trouble, people built the wall to stash the urns and remembered which rocks were theirs. Soon as the fighting was over, they went back and marked. The gravestones didn't all do so well, but ours was safe under a bunch of berry canes." Nick knelt to brush away grass clippings and make a small prayerful gesture. The stone read Mestral at the top, under it Maria Magdalena 1918-2023 and Nicholas George Sr. 1918-2024. Nick patted Maggie's name. "Hi, sweetheart." A third small panel caught Kirk's eye: Zorana Elisabeta 1962. "I built her a stasis box in case her heart could be fixed someday. Shows you how sentimental Vulcans can get with exposure to humans. Not a bad thing, only so you know."

T'Rana bent down to touch the small stone. "Did you name me for her, sa'mi?"

"Sort of." Was there more Nick wanted to say? "This mission is going to put us all through the wringer. Try not to get hurt, okay, kid?"

Lying upstairs at Nick's house, he tried to remember the last time he had willingly and happily spent a night at a private home on Earth. Nick's wife's ship was in town, and they were in the kitchen talking over their days, discussing his mission and her next trip. It was nothing like his mother's rare visits with Frank. The first minutes' overblown endearments always turned into bitter whispers, then screaming and worse. He couldn't imagine Nick screaming at anyone, let alone trying to hit her. As they went by to their room, he sensed a friendly passion as comfortable as an old sweatshirt.

He was welcome, that was what was different. He wasn't in the way; he happened to be there and no one minded. The couple kept double bunkbeds in the room for grandchildren, and instead of feeling juvenile, it felt safe to slide into the bottom bunk. Spock had been in the top bunk talking to Nyota earlier, then had been looking over the class materials, laid them aside to meditate and fell asleep instead. He looked much less dangerous when he slept, and it was clear from the warm hum of his aura that he, too, felt safe and wanted here. Even Sarek seemed to be more settled among most of his remaining family. "My home may be in the stars," Kirk said to himself, "but here isn't bad." He, too, fell asleep with the next day's notes on his mind.

Kirk had always been one of the brightest students in any class. After too much need to patch himself up after Frank, the crazies on the colony, or ill-advised lovers and bar fight opponents had pummeled him, he had taken all of the Starfleet cross-training short of medical school because it was interesting, useful, easy for him and most of all a diversion.

Being the slow kid in class was a revelation. The amount of information he was expected to absorb in that fourteen-hour day might have been impossible had he not been through hell on New Vulcan. From time spent with Spock's father and John Solkar, he knew healers worked with their minds as much as with instruments, with their sensitive hands as much as with electronic sensors. The ambassadors had all learned the hard way to train as ulen-hassu, paramedics, before going out, because minor emergencies could become major when no one on a mission could treat Vulcans. The further brutally concentrated training Sarek had undertaken after va'Pak made him roughly a nurse-practitioner, capable of managing most physical emergencies and ordinary mental injuries for his large and woebegone, mostly orphaned young embassy staff. Even offworlders had undertaken the same rapid learning in honor of Vulcan friends or family.

The current rapid training was going to take all of them, including returned Romulan, camouflaged human and Betazoid-hybrid volunteers, to the level of elite combat medics, provided they could sip knowledge from a fire hose. The combination of mind and body in relation to illness and injury was daunting. Halfway through the third hour the current presenter asked "How many are psi-null or consider themselves impaired?" To his amazement, his wasn't the only hand that went up. "Have your team's primary healer meld with you before your mission for access to their psi controls. We estimate that will enable you to perform mental first aid and shield you from the inevitable harmful exposures."

"I hadn't thought of that," he murmured to Spock beside him.

"Nor had I considered it. I should pay more attention."

"Yes," said the healer without a trace of a smile, though they could feel it hanging over them. Even Spock thought ?! "What those of you who were not born Vulcan are doing is commendable, but not without risk. There is an eighty-six percent chance that your team will have at least one casualty. We will attempt to retrieve our killed or injured, but be aware that if it is unsafe for the other team members, the body must be destroyed and it is uncertain whether an unlinked katra can be saved. Meld, people. Strongly."

That was only the first jarring moment. The details he would need in order to help a battlefield healer grew hourly, and he had the horrible suspicion that Spock already knew most of them. Twice he bailed Kirk out by laying a hand on his arm to give him some emergency bit of knowledge a Vulcan schoolchild would have had. During a pause he muttered "Jim, you're keeping up. Others are starting from much further back."

"Thinking this hard is a new experience," he sighed, "and like a lot of mine, unpleasant."

Mestral (Kirk reminded himself don't call him Nick when we're on the planet, he's Mestral there) was sitting next to them. "Coming up against our limitations seldom is, but it has to happen to make us grow. If every door opened easily, we'd never learn to pick locks."

He searched for the source of the quote. The usual fall-back guess was "Surak?"

"Bob Hravat, guy I used to work with at the coal mine," Nick said, patting his back. "You'll get this. I don't make stupid kids and they don't have stupid friends."

When he staggered out of the seminar room with his head overfilled again, Spock nearly made him melt down when he said "Tomorrow should be easier. It's only twelve hours."

"My brain may not literally explode, but it feels as if facts are oozing from my ears. We'll be dealing with critical injuries. If I get this wrong I'll kill someone."

Spock's dark eyes were downcast. "Many of our decisions can kill multiple people at once. After my killing six and a half billion by mistake, one life at a time is very nearly a relief."

"You're not still..." Yes, he was blaming himself, and not mildly. "You do not get to take the blame for that. Not having information you need does not amount to fault. You're why there's anything left at all."

"And why we're doing this," Sarek said, drifting up behind them. "It was his idea."

"You will need to take care of the meld," Spock said.

Kirk looked him over uneasily. "You sure you're okay?"

Yes, he heard, and felt the gratitude behind it. "I'm going to call Nyota for the results of the communications test." I want to hear her voice. I need it as much as yours. You understand. Thank you for understanding. Prime is right. I need to be beside you. "You need to meld with Sarek."