"Has the Vulcan's Fury departed Deep Space Nine?"
The shadowy, distorted voice on the other end of the communications line spoke the words with such a lack of urgency. It was merely a question to them, in the same vein as 'More tea, sir?' and 'Do you have the time?'. Such innocuous things. The tone didn't do justice to what they were doing.
Gul Darmak, of the Seventh Order, answered anyways.
"Indeed, our spies report they left just a few hours ago," He swiveled his chair away from the window to face his partner, exchanging a beautiful veranda's view of his native Cardassia for the shadowed man on the other end, "I can't say I'm too pleased with your attitude."
The figure tilted his head to the side, not understanding the question. Knowing their true identity, Darmak surmised they probably didn't care either. Ah well, he would enlighten them nonetheless.
"Truly this is a momentous moment for the entire Alpha Quadrant," Darmak spread his arms wide, a bombastic showman's smile on his face, "Deep Space Nine has been left utterly undefended, that devil of a man they call Kirk has fled for the wormhole, and the Earth Star Fleet will soon be engaged in too many offensives to stop us."
Silence from the other end.
Darmak's smile vanished. He, too, was unamused by this now. Still, that didn't stop him from enjoying the moment. He stood and poured himself a glass of kanar, a native drink to the Cardassians that many other aliens described as a thick, sloppy fish oil. Darmak couldn't care less for their opinion: Kanar, the brand only a Gul could afford, was the richest drink in taste and price on his world.
"I admit, my dreams of returning to Bajor were beginning to dim. Yet, your intervention will allow all of our dreams to be reignited like the brightest supernova," Darmak held the glass up the light, examining it, "It is truly an event you should be excited for. Are you incapable of emotion or simply choosing to dampen the mood?"
"The extermination of the Federation will be underway soon, Darmak. We need you at your best, not inebriated by intoxicants."
So droll.
Darmak downed the contents of the glass in one go, enjoying the sensation as it passed down his throat. Any true Cardassian patriot enjoyed Kanar. Any true ally of Cardassia would be toasting to inevitable victory, not droning on about such idiosyncrasies as sobriety.
"I have never felt more attuned to the righteousness of a moment," Darmak said, the usual vibrato and grandeur of his voice sounding ever more melodic to him the closer to his goal he became, "Believe me when I say I have never been nearer to my peak."
"Indeed, Darmak. We will reconvene at the pre-arranged time."
The communication abruptly ended, the seal of the United Federation's Starfleet emblazoned across the screen for a few moments before it vanished- replaced by the symbol of the Cardassian Union. The scramblers would have encoded, scrambled, and erased every millisecond of their conversation, leaving no trace it ever occurred. Still, even if someone did catch wind, their report would be meaningless.
Darmak looked to his desk, the place he spent less and less time at the closer Cardassia's ultimate victory came. At once he had loathed it, but the Cardassian had come to enjoy the power it brought him. He set down his glass next to the bottle and strode over to his desk, picking up a piece of scrap metal from its place of honour on the corner.
Turning it over in his fingers, he admired the trinket.
"Ah, the first Starfleet ship destroyed by the Union, but not the last. Still, the honour of first blood shall always remain with Darmak."
He smiled to himself, set the trinket back down, and left his office. He had much work to do.
It was much later than when they'd departed. The Vulcan's Fury had adopted a dimmer lighting for its hallways and rooms alike, a subtle method of continuing the circadian rhythms of its crew and maintaining the illusion of passable time. The polished white interiors and grey carpeting gave the ship all the true airs of a 'diplomatic' vessel, and it had nearly as many luxuries to boot. Though designed to be a weapon of war, even now the best ships of the line still couldn't escape the true goals of Starfleet and the Federation.
James T. Kirk sat alone in his cabin. Spock had furnished it with Old-Earth paperbooks of all varieties: Histories, adventure novels, dramas, war strategies, and even a particularly thick copy of a book covering the advent of personal computers. It was incomparable to Kirk's personal collection he had begun cultivating on Earth, but the thought was there.
He was not reading any of them at this time, however. The lights were dimmed in his cabin to an unreasonable darkness, leaving only his computer and the lighting that ran along the trim for illumination, and he sat hunched over at the desk. A small drinking glass of Romulan ale was next to him, mostly drained and now forgotten about. His attention was enraptured by the screen.
A picture of him and his brother Samuel, both adorned in their Starfleet best.
Kirk understood now, better than he did as a child, why his brother had run away from home. Things were horrible. Their mother had been so depressed by the loss of their father aboard the Kelvin and she'd never truly recovered. A lackluster attempt by Starfleet to actually provide her compensation or care worsened things. She'd fallen in with a man who, in another life, drowned in a gutter.
Not fallen in love, Kirk noted to himself. She'd fallen into him and never escaped.
Sam stopped taking the abuse and run off. That had scared his stepfather half to death and he took his insecurities out on Kirk and his mother to cope. The loss of control, challenge of authority, it had undone the man. Kirk's rebellious attitude had only grown since Sam ran away, and that rebellion had driven his stepfather into half a dozen rages, all of which should have put him in the ground for good, but maybe the alcohol kept his heart slow enough that it couldn't give out. Sam was out illegally enlisting in Starfleet early, Kirk was at home raising hell.
It had been years before they'd even gotten to speak to each other again.
Sam had been chosen to serve aboard Captain Pike's Enterprise and had done so with distinguished service. He never even knew his kid brother was still alive, he had just plunged himself headlong into his work. Kirk understood to a degree, but his inner-child still struggled with the pain.
When Kirk made headlines by defeating Nero, the crazed Romulan madman from the future, Sam had sought him out personally. Brief flashes of the memory crossed Kirk's mind as he continued to stare at the picture.
Samuel Kirk, dressed in Starfleet blue, charging his kid-brother and sweeping him up in a hug. He'd grown a mustache and tousled his hair, but he was undeniably Kirk's brother. They'd laughed and talked for hours, but not before Bones had snapped a photo of the two reunited, decked out in their Starfleet best for an awards ceremony.
Kirk clicked on to the next photo.
Samuel Kirk's funeral service. All the Enterprise command crew had attended, in addition to all those who had the fortune of knowing the elder Kirk over the years. It was meant to be a private affair, but over a hundred people crowded into a little abbey in Iowa certainly made that difficult.
Kirk pulled up the image of the man, the monster, who had killed his brother. He hadn't intended to, but something pulled him to gaze upon the visage once more.
The computer read out his name involuntarily.
Honoured Captain Kor, Klingon Empire.
Kor was a smart-looking Klingon, with a cunning brow and inescapable charisma. He was a man who spoke and engaged everyone's attention, commanded vast Imperial fleets with vigor, and yet could converse with and drink like a commoner. In many ways, he reminded Kirk of an old flatvid villain from the 20th Century.
His typical Klingon beard, perfectly maintained into three points, not dissimilar to their dahk'tar daggers, complimented arched brows. While he honeyed his words, Kor's eyes were constantly analyzing and dissecting his opponent. If honourable could be applied to a Klingon, and had he not known him, Kirk would have described Kor as such.
Yet nothing could be further from the truth. That golden-sashed psycho had stabbed his brother in cold blood with a wicked smile and then pretended as though nothing had happened. Indeed, nothing did happen. He was never extradited for trial and the Klingons hailed him as a hero.
Kirk had nearly strangled him, but Spock, damnable though he was, restrained him.
Kirk's eyes burned as he read the sentence from Sam's obituary.
"… was murdered during an attempted peace conference between the Federation and the Klingon Empire."
They had gone to negotiate, to find peace. Instead the Klingons had gutted Sam like a fish, rejected the offer, and Kirk had been forced to fight his way out of neutral space that had erupted into a warzone.
It had been four years since his death and yet each time James Kirk thought of the moment it was as if his brother had been ripped from him all over again. His hatred of the Klingons knew no bounds and his few acts of mercy towards them in the intervening time had only been at the behest of others, and knowing the price for revenge would never fix the hole in his heart or honour Sam's memory. Making it worse was that ever-present reminder that holding onto his anger like this just brought him closer to his stepfather, a man who could never move on from one bad day, could never let go for a second, could never just be a good man when nobody but ten year old Jim was asking and-
Kirk suddenly took a breath and unclenched his fist. He hadn't even realized he'd been so wound up.
The door alert chimed and Kirk whirled around, his tension forcing him into a hyperalert state. A gasp of air filled his lungs as he briefly let go of all tension, but the panic of being intruded on soon set in to replace it. Kirk thumbed the off switch for his computer and slid the glass behind a model globe. Straightening out his casual clothes, Kirk opened the door.
"Jesus Christ Jim, would it kill you to turn on a light?"
Leonard "Bones" McCoy, the galaxy's grouchiest doctor, stepped in without invitation, an unexpected surprise cradled in his arms.
"Computer, lights half level," He ordered.
Immediately, the room illuminated itself to a dim but reasonable level.
"What's the occasion, Doctor?" Kirk demanded, still trying to catch his breath, as the door closed with a hiss.
McCoy smiled at his old friend and held his gifts out to show: A bottle of Kentucky whiskey and two drinking glasses.
"I figured we'd catch up on old times, if you're not busy in the dungeon."
Kirk's face was still flush as his body tried to catch up and regulate itself. He forced a smile at McCoy, who returned it with a 'I got you, you grumpy son of a gun' look.
"Well, in that case, by all means, Doctor," Kirk said.
The words sounded hollow, but Kirk hoped McCoy didn't hear them that way.
McCoy suddenly paused. When Kirk followed the direction of his eyes, he saw that he had not successfully turned his computer off. There, still, was the ghost of his brother, staring back at him with a smile that would never shine again.
It was a touchy subject for them both.
McCoy had been there the day Sam had died, but he hadn't been there most of the days since. Sam's murder was one of the last times the Enterprise and her crew had mostly been together. It wasn't more than two weeks later that the ship was crippled by the Romulans and the crew split up. Spock had already been at the Academy for a month and would only return briefly for the aforementioned Romulan mission, Kirk and Scotty went to Deep Space Nine, Sulu and Uhura off on their own, and McCoy had settled into country living on a colony deep in the Federation's southern territories as a plain, simple doctor.
Even before the breakup, McCoy could see the change in Jim. Chekov's death had hit all of them impossibly hard. For years, no matter the danger, it seemed like they were all invulnerable, like they'd always make it out no matter what. The Cardassians changed that, and it had hit Jim Kirk hardest of all. The man who never lost took a series of defeats and lost his family more and more with each one.
He was reserved, lost in thought, and often quick to his emotions.
The Jim Kirk he knew wasn't gone, just buried under a mountain of heartache. Maybe the whiskey could cause a little avalanche, burn away some of the crust. Maybe not.
"That was a rough day, wasn't it," McCoy said simply. Not a question, a statement of fact.
Kirk quickly thumbed the monitor off properly and gestured to the couch.
"Please, Bones."
McCoy relented and sat down, Kirk sat in a plush chair next to him. McCoy filled the glasses halfway and handed one to Kirk, who took it with a nod of thanks.
McCoy downed his in one, throat-scorchingly hot, pull and poured himself another.
Kirk fidgeted with his glass, tapping his fingers along the side while he stared into the viscous liquid. His heartrate was coming back under control, but he was indignant at having been intruded on. Quelling that frustration took more work than he cared to admit.
"So, how's Deep Space Nine treating you?" McCoy asked innocuously, adding a little flair to the title of his command.
"It's fine, Bones," Kirk answered curtly.
"Fine? Just fine?"
"Fine," Kirk shot back.
"Solving the problems of famine, genocide, and interstellar travel are that mundane to you?"
Kirk shot him a look and gritted his teeth, "Yes, Bones, it's all… Fine."
McCoy made a face as if to say 'don't blame me' and took another pull from his drink, this time slower, simply staring out at the stars.
Kirk looked a mess. He was disheveled, sweaty, and nowhere near as composed as he wanted to appear. Post traumatic stress was no easy thing to handle as the victim, it could be even harder to handle as the friend, or doctor.
"So," McCoy set his glass down on the table, the clink echoed into the void, "Spock tells me you're having visions."
Kirk abruptly stood up, still clutching the glass tightly, and walked around behind his chair before whirling on McCoy.
"What do you want from me, Doctor?" He inquired, "What satisfaction do you get from these innane questions?"
Again, McCoy played innocent.
"Just figured we could have a chat. We haven't seen each other in over a year, figured we might try and catch up."
Kirk licked his lips, bounced his brows, and tapped the glass rapidly. He turned away from McCoy. There was no reason to get angry at an explanation like that. McCoy was his friend, wasn't he? They hadn't talked in over a year, but Kirk didn't make himself available either.
"Y'know, they say the Vulcan's Fury is going to make this galaxy a lot safer. Big artillery ship like this could put anyone in their place," McCoy commented.
Kirk laughed, a single, short, depressing laugh.
"Safe, now there's a good one, Doctor," He said, "Safety is nothing more than an illusion of time and age. Neither of which we have much of anymore."
McCoy stood up and strode to the window, putting deliberate distance between himself and Kirk. An unspoken chess match if ever there was one. Except this was not between enemies or opponents but between two old friends, each one playing for something different.
"That so? You know, I seem to recall us being pretty death-proof on the Enterprise. Sentient satellites, Romulans from the future, half-crazed mutants from the past, none of it ever seemed to stop us."
Kirk scoffed, "Just leave it to all the damned enemies of our present to do the real damage," He remarked, "All the threats are easy to handle when they're far off. Stick a man in the present and suddenly he's as helpless as a woodlouse."
"Woodlouse, huh? Bringing out the fancy words when we start getting close to that touchy subject of death."
McCoy was deliberately challenging him. A risk in its own right, and with anyone else he might never play the card, but Kirk was never the kind of man who could take that deeply emotional jab well. Hide it, perhaps, but handling it well was impossible.
Kirk cleared his throat and downed his glass to steady his nerves. The pain of the drink could distract him from the moment, could steel himself to McCoy's prodding.
"Death's never an easy subject. It's the last frontier we'll never understand." Kirk said simply, his voice detached from emotions.
McCoy agreed, making his way towards Kirk, "But we can't hide from it forever."
"What gives you the right, Doctor McCoy?" Kirk spun on a heel to face him, and he continued angrily before McCoy could speak, "To intrude on my quarters? My life? We haven't seen each other in a year and you think you can waltz in, Doctor?"
Without missing a beat McCoy cooly answered back, "You opened the door, Admiral."
Kirk stewed for a moment, just glaring at the old Southern doctor staring back at him.
When he didn't have anything to say, McCoy continued, "You can't keep blaming yourself for their deaths, Jim."
"Why can't I, hm?" Kirk jabbed at him with the empty glass, "Is there some medical code that says I can't be held responsible for the deaths of a brother and a son?"
McCoy kept his tone level, but the hard-edged tone was there to match Kirk's indignation.
"Only code I have is the moral responsibility I owe to you, as your friend and your doctor, to tell you that it's damn foolish to keep going on this way."
"I've tried other ways and they didn't do a damn thing for me," Kirk shot back, "I can't dream, I can't enjoy myself, I can't do a damn thing knowing that Chekov and Sam's deaths are my fault. You can't live with that kind of guilt, Doctor, because you've never had to. You've never lost a patient because of your actions, in fact, the only thing you keep losing is marriages."
The heat in Kirk's voice was palpable and, were it any other man, McCoy wouldn't have stood the insult for a second before walloping the man to the ground. Kirk had earned the special privilege to not be busted on his butt over years of friendship. So McCoy simply stared back at him, twisted his face in modest confusion about where Kirk went so wrong, and turned and went back to his bottle and glass.
The silence and distance had the intended affect.
"Bones, I'm," Kirk's voice lost the heat, and he took a deep breath, rubbing his forehead and tugging at his shirt, "I'm sorry. That was uncalled for."
McCoy poured a new glass and brought the bottle back over, refilling Kirk's as well.
"It was," McCoy agreed, "And if you make the comment again you'll be on your ass before you can blink, Admiral."
McCoy took a stiff drink, swirling it around his mouth before swallowing.
"You keep pushing me back because of what? You're scared? Don't want the help? Guilty, maybe? What in the sam hell have you to feel guilty about, Jim?"
"There are deaths on my conscience, Bones."
"There are deaths on everyone's conscience," McCoy said in disbelief, "You were a Starfleet captain for god's sakes so don't start on me with that. Chekov and Sam weren't the first, not by a mile, so why in the hell are you elevating them so high?"
Kirk set his drink down angrily.
"You want to know why?"
"I think I darn well deserve to."
Their voices raised in response to each other, and McCoy slammed the bottle down on Kirk's desk as he finished. He was determined to break through these damn walls Kirk kept setting up, force his way through while Kirk kept pushing back.
"Because it should have been me!" Kirk nearly shouted at him, losing that tenuous grip[ on his anger again, "There wasn't a reason to take out Chekov, there was no reason to stab Sam! Yet here I am while they're six feet under!"
"Why should it have been you, Admiral?" McCoy shouted back, challenging him, "What makes you so god damn special?!"
This time Kirk was the first to break off, but only for a moment before he turned back to McCoy. No words came though, and McCoy stepped up to him, again challenging his notion.
"Why should James T. Kirk have kicked the bucket in their place? Answer me that, Admiral! Why did you deserve to die in their place?"
"Because-" Kirk choked on his own words, but McCoy didn't interrupt, just let him gather the strength, "Because a good man named George Kirk lived seven less years than I did, okay? Because it seems like, no matter where I go, no matter what I do, people live shorter lives than me!"
Kirk's breathing was ragged, heavy. He was sweating again and his cheeks flushed.
"Chekov, Sam, Dad, Pike- everybody dies when they're around me, Bones," Kirk choked back the tears and slammed his fist on the table once, then repeatedly, jerking his bloodshot, tear-stained eyes back up at McCoy, "Because I keep living while everyone else suffers the consequences. I grew up on a dirt farm in Iowa with a miserable excuse of a father and a mom who drank her troubles away and leaned on me, a child, for her problems! I should have died when Spock stranded me on Delta Vega, or when that Cardassian maniac Darmak attacked Bajor, or when that Klingon bastard Kor stabbed Sam when it should have been me!"
Kirk coughed, choking on his own held-back sobs, and wiped his nose with his sleeve.
"God damn it, Bones, I ask you, what right does James Kirk have to keep existing? I've begged and pleaded to every god damn deity or fate I know of and none of them give a damn, they'd rather keep me alive instead and I just can't handle that anymore."
Kirk grabbed a padd off his desk and shoved it at McCoy, who nearly fumbled the thing in his hands.
"I send more kids off to die every day and I'm supposed to just watch their names fill up the casualty reports and file for replacements," Kirk's rage slurred his next words, the venom spilling out of his mouth, "The Klingons, those animals, could stab us in the back at any moment while we're facing off against these Cardies. And the Cardassians, hm? Sociopathic killers one and all, just grinding us down, and all I can do is send more kids off to hold them back. What the hell am I supposed to say, Bones? That I'm fine? That I can't go on? What the hell-"
Kirk made a move like he was going to grab McCoy by the collar and throttle him, but his fists just clenched in the air. Finally, he collapsed back into his chair and buried his head in his hands. The strength to rage finally left him, with only the grief remaining.
"I can't do it anymore," He said softly, "I just can't. Chekov and Sam hurt, but it's just gotten worse every day. The galaxy is filled with animals, monsters, and I can't stop them. It's just me out here, Bones, and I can't do anything."
There was a long moment of silence. McCoy simply standing there, looking down at Kirk. The adrenaline of the confrontation was still leaving the doctor and he couldn't quite decide on a feeling yet, but his heart hurt for his friend. It had been over a year since they'd seen each other, but that year away didn't erase the near decade together.
Finally, McCoy patted Kirk on the shoulder and leaned on the desk, hanging his own head. Kirk wasn't the only one exhausted from the fight. Kirk didn't even have the energy to cry, he just sat, head in hands, staring at the floor. It was a long time before either of them spoke.
"You were meant to be a Starfleet captain, Jim," McCoy said, "And you're a brilliant man. Unfortunately, that means you've outlived a lot of people, not because there's some cosmic scale of luck out there, balancing in your favour all the time, but because that's the galaxy's most dangerous combination of traits."
McCoy took a breath and looked around the room.
"If you want to get all spiritual on me, though, then I'll say that being brilliant and selfless is the cosmic equivalent of painting a target on your back. Universe loves to kick the crap out of the good guys."
That brought a muffled chuckle out of Kirk despite himself, and McCoy smirked at his own comment.
"I'm sorry, Jim," He patted Kirk's shoulder once more, his tone losing that sardonic trademark in favour of genuine empathy, "But nobody joins Starfleet because it's easy. Chekov would have laid down his life for all of us any number of times. Your brother and father signed up to protect others from dangerous men like the Klingons and Cardassians. It's just part of the life we lead. But don't think for a second that you being alive now meant they were doomed to die."
"The universe is a cruel place, Doctor," Kirk replied, to which McCoy grunted an agreement, "Why the hell do we keep coming back out here?"
"Because you and I both know it's a better place than it looks, and because we need to keep looking over that next star, trekking off to that next horizon," McCoy waved into the distance, "It's this damnable human trait called optimism."
Kirk mulled on that.
"I wish I could share it with you, Doctor," Kirk stood up slowly, "But right now I don't think I'm capable of that."
McCoy shrugged, "It takes time."
Kirk slapped him on the shoulder and gestured to the couch, "But I'll share that drink with you now."
McCoy picked up the bottle with a sly grin and joined his friend. Things weren't alright, he could tell Kirk was still fighting with himself inside, but for the moment the tempest had subsided. They could talk about this later when they weren't cramped inside a starship. At least Kirk was willing to smile and talk to him. Breaking through that barrier wasn't easy, and he knew his old friend was already putting that safety defense back in place to hide the wound of trauma, but he had broken through it nonetheless.
Trust, time, and whiskey could solve damn near all problems, and they still had plenty of the bottle to go.