Dave Galanter

Dave Galanter has authored various Star Trek projects, among these the Voyager book Battle Lines, the Next Generation duology Maximum Warp, the S.C.E. titles Ambush and Bitter Medicine, and a short story in the Tales of the Dominion War anthology entitled “Eleven Hours Out.”

His not-so-secret Fortress of Solitude is in Michigan, from where he pretends to have a hand in managing the message board websites he co-owns: ComicBoards.com, a comic book discussion site, and TVShowBoards.com, a similar site dedicated to television and movies. He also edits and is the main contributor to his own blogsite, SnarkBait.com, on which he babbles about philosophy and politics.

Dave spends his non-day-job time with family and friends, or burying himself in other writing projects. He enjoys feedback on his writing, positive or negative, and would appreciate seeing any comments you have on his work. Feel free to e-mail him at dave@comicboards.com.

“Mr. Sulu, could you look at this?” Ensign Sam Kerby’s request wasn’t too far above a whisper, but the Copernicus was a small shuttle and the words reverberated loudly enough for all to hear. Lieutenant Sulu rose instantly from his chair and slid himself easily into the copilot’s station.

As Sulu and Kerby began some discussion or another, Dr. Leonard McCoy found himself speaking at his captain rather than to him. James Kirk’s eyes flicked toward the helm and his ear cocked forward to listen. McCoy knew there was little he could say to win back the captain’s attention.

When Kirk finally swiveled himself half away and pushed himself up toward Sulu and their pilot, McCoy protested.

“We were having a discussion.”

“You were psychoanalyzing, Doctor,” Kirk said as he turned away. “I was politely pretending to listen.”

“There’s a difference?” McCoy muttered.

How big was the shuttlecraft anyway? Fifty cubic meters? Did it really take an ensign, a lieutenant, and a starship captain to pilot her? Of course not. McCoy had known Kirk too long and too well not to recognize when the captain was battening down his emotional hatches. Captain James T. Kirk: no man more passionate, and yet on the subject of death none more psychologically cloistered west of his half-Vulcan first officer. Maybe that was it-Kirk had been taking repression lessons from Spock during their chess games.

McCoy frowned and twisted the ring on his little finger. He wasn’t sure which was more harrowing: that they’d lost a crewman on their last mission, or that he, Kirk, and Sulu all had to testify at the required hearing. The young woman’s family had come to the starbase to attend-traveled all that way from New Cairo. Some people need to put a period and move on, and that was one of the ways. Kirk didn’t have such a method. In every crewman’s face he’d see that of not only the last person lost under his command, but every person who had died on his watch. And he’d rarely talk about any of it.

“What do you see, Ensign?” Kirk was leaning down toward Kerby’s console, and Sulu had been bending in from the copilot seat, so now all three were huddling over what was probably a nonexistent problem. Other than Kerby now being overly nervous, with both his captain and Sulu checking his work.

“Um, I’m not sure, sir.”

Which is why the young man asked Sulu to look, McCoy thought. Kirk didn’t need to insinuate himself into the problem unless Sulu brought it to him; he was just trying to avoid the pointed questions of his doctor.

Kirk didn’t dawdle with Kerby. “Mr. Sulu?”

“Kerby made a minor course correction, Captain. When he did”- Sulu gestured toward a replay of the sensor readings- “there was a brief disruption in our ion trail.”

McCoy saw the muscles in Jim Kirk’s back tighten just slightly.

“What would cause that?” the doctor asked, and as Kerby looked at Sulu, and Sulu at Kirk, and Kirk at the console, no one actually answered McCoy’s question.

Now McCoy rose and took a step toward the already crowded fore of the shuttle. “Jim?”

“Probably nothing, Doctor.” Kirk tapped at the navigation console and nodded to Kerby. “Steady as she goes, Ensign.”

“Aye, sir.” That order given, Kerby was now more at ease and had obviously decided that if it didn’t bother the captain, it wasn’t going to bother him. McCoy wasn’t as easily placated. He hadn’t imagined that change in Kirk’s tension level, and he wasn’t now imagining the slight concern in Sulu’s expression.

“‘Nothing’ doesn’t usually have everyone up and out of their seats,” McCoy said, and with that Kirk went back to his chair in the aft cabin. Sulu, however, remained at the console. Kirk hadn’t asked him to stay there, but there was an unspoken language between captain and bridge crew, and Sulu obviously knew that Kirk wanted him to look over Kerby’s shoulder.

“What could it mean?” McCoy asked, hovering over his chair but refusing to sit. He looked down at Kirk, trying to pull the captain’s attention from a small computer screen that was probably replaying a sensor sweep recording.

Kirk almost shrugged, but not quite. “Among other things, an ion trail can be disrupted by another ion trail crossing its path.”

McCoy played with that idea a moment, then finally sat. “Wouldn’t another ship show on our sensors?”

“This isn’t the Enterprise. Scanners are more limited on a shuttlecraft. Power is shifted mostly into deflectors when at warp speed. We tend to trust transponder beacons to alert us to vessels behind us.”

“So a ship without a beacon could hide itself behind us.”

“Enough to hope we wouldn’t notice. Kerby’s inexperience could be what revealed this-whatever it is.”

McCoy shook his head. “I don’t follow.”

“It was a maneuver that Sulu would have left for a while, until it was necessary to make. Kerby’s a bit overeager. As the”- Kirk paused a moment, looked up at neither McCoy nor Kerby, just into his own thoughts- “young often are.”

The look in Kirk’s eyes was one with which McCoy had too much familiarity: regret. And he knew it wasn’t about anything other than the death of the crewman they’d recently lost.

Despite having wanted Kirk to open up about his feelings on the matter, suddenly McCoy felt like changing the subject. “So why is it a problem if our ion trail was disrupted?”

“Because for us to notice it means that the trail was still tight. That means someone crossed it recently, Doctor. And they don’t have a transponder beacon running, which means they don’t want to be seen.”

“We’re being followed,” McCoy concluded.

Kirk pushed out a heavy breath and punched at the computer’s console. “No record of any inhabited planets in this area, but no ship has visited either. There’s a Class-M moon in a nearby system. Long-range scans from the starbase haven’t recorded signs of civilization.”

“We’re pretty far out,” McCoy said. “What about a new, unknown civilization?”

“Somehow I’m more concerned it would be a known one.”

McCoy chewed his lower lip. “Maybe it was a-I don’t know-don’t we come across anomalies or space oddities all the time? How do we know for certain it was another ship?”

“We find out.” Kirk twisted toward the helm. “Ensign, plot a new course.”

Kerby kept his hands on the console but turned his head slightly back to the captain. “Sir?”

Kirk glanced only a moment at the navigational computer for a reference. “Two-four-one, mark seventeen.”

“Where exactly does this get us?” McCoy asked.

“Toward that nearby system.” Kirk motioned toward the side computer screen near his seat.

“There’s more to navigate around in a star system,” Sulu said, partly for McCoy’s benefit, and partly for Kerby’s. “We can maneuver more, and if a ship is following, they’ll have to compensate.”

“They might give themselves away,” Kirk said.

Kerby chuckled. “That’s pretty smart.”

Sulu leaned toward the ensign, a slight smile playing at his lips. “That’s why he gets the big credits.”

“Mr. Sulu, signal the Enterprise. Say we’re going to make a quick survey of the system at the coordinates listed, but should still make our rendezvous time.”

Poking at the comm for a few moments, Sulu finally replied, “Message sent, sir.”

McCoy didn’t fully understand why they couldn’t just turn their full scanners aft and learn who was following, so he asked just that question as he anxiously rose again and watched over Kerby’s shoulder.

“Good question, Bones,” Kirk said. “Mr. Kerby, why don’t you answer the doctor?”

McCoy glanced back at Kirk a moment and found him half smiling-a bemused little look he got when “teaching class.”

Hesitating awkwardly, Kerby wasn’t quick with the answer. But he tried. “Well… we’re moving… which makes them move…” McCoy could almost see the gears clicking in the young man’s head. “And that will, um, force them to move in a way that, uh… tells us something?” In the end it was far less a statement than a question.

“If he’s reacting to us, we get information,” Kirk said. “If we’re reacting to him, all we’re doing is giving up information.”

McCoy rolled his eyes. “Is everything chess to you?”

Kirk shook his head. “This isn’t chess-it’s poker. I’m looking for a tell. To know what’s in his hand without giving away my own.”

“I should’ve asked if everything was a game,” McCoy said under his breath.

Schra-boooom! An explosion kicked McCoy against Sulu’s copilot seat and then onto the deck.

Kirk was pulling him up a millisecond later. “This is no game, Doctor.” He maneuvered McCoy to his seat and pivoted back to Sulu. “Concussive blast from a photon torpedo?”

“Negative.” Sulu shook his dark head, and a strand of hair fell across his brow. “Internal explosion aft section, toward the outer hull. Thrusters and internal sensors are off-line.”

“Full scanners,” Kirk ordered Kerby, and with the flip of a switch he swapped the controls of Sulu’s console for the ensign’s. “Sulu, evasive action.”

“Captain, navigation is sluggish. Impossible to determine why with internal sensors off-line.”

“Scanners indicate a small vessel,” Kerby said, just a hint of adrenaline fracturing his voice. “Bearing: zero-two-eight, mark three.”

Kirk leaned toward the readout. “Identification?”

“I’ve never seen it before, sir.”

“Klingon design,” Sulu said with a quick glance to Kerby’s sensor screen.

Kirk concurred. “But not imperial-maybe clan, maybe private.”

“Power signature suggests standard disruptors and maybe a photon sling.” Kerby was getting into the rhythm of battle that had become almost second nature to Kirk and Sulu.

“We’re outgunned,” Sulu said, and looked to Kirk.

“What about the Organian Peace Treaty?” Kerby asked, and another explosion pitched the ship forward with a sharp jolt.

Kirk gripped Sulu’s chair tightly until the course was almost smooth again. “I’d say whoever’s behind us didn’t sign it.”

“We’re losing warp power,” Sulu said. “Temps are rising. Could be a coolant leak.”

“What about the Enterprise?” McCoy asked.

Lips pressed into a thin line, Kirk was disenchanted with the prospects. “If the Klingons let the last message out, they won’t let the next one go, and she’s otherwise hours away.”

Another explosion sliced into Copernicus, this time from without rather than within.

“Disruptor blast,” Sulu reported almost matter-of-factly. Spock was rubbing off on that boy, too, McCoy thought. “We’ve dropped out of warp.”

“Damage?”

“Port nacelle.” Sulu’s nimble digits danced their waltz across the console. “There’s a power surge in the intermix assembly.”

“We’re going to lose antimatter containment,” Kerby said with a gasp, and was probably expressing himself more emotionally than he wished.

“Hold it together, Ensign.” Kirk wasn’t just talking about the ship, but the growing panic in Kerby’s voice.

Turning on a heel, Kirk pushed himself aft and grabbed McCoy’s arm as he went. “Gimme a hand, Bones.”

“What’re we doing?”

“Hand me that kit.” Kirk pointed to a sealed box of tools that protruded from the small engineering bulkhead of the shuttle as he revealed an access panel with his fingertips.

“Here.” McCoy set the case to Kirk’s side and opened it for him, figuring he’d be assisting with this operation, not performing it.

“We’re going to have to jettison the engines,” Kirk said as he grabbed a magnetic probe from the kit and took readings from near the protected core.

The doctor frowned. “Isn’t that done with some push of a button or flip of a switch?”

“It will be, but then containment could last longer than I want.” Kirk rose, stepped over to the ordnance cabinet and pulled out one of four phaser pistols.

Removing the hand phaser from the larger pistol and power pack housing, the captain took a magnetic coupler and attached the small phaser to what looked to McCoy like the outer intermix assembly housing.

“We do this,” Kirk said, “and we’re stranded here.”

He set the phaser building up an overload, then quickly withdrew his hand and put the access panel cover back in place.

“What exactly are we doing?” McCoy asked as Kirk stood and pulled the doctor up with him.

Kirk brushed off his pant legs and motioned for McCoy to have a seat. “Get a strong grip, Bones.” Which is just what Kirk did once he’d lowered himself into the seat next to him. “Sulu?”

“Ready, sir.”

“Best speed toward the interior of the star system,” Kirk ordered. “Head for the M-Class planetoid.”

“Plotted.”

“Full aft shields, Mr. Kerby.” Kirk waited just a moment, pausing to be sure there was no last-moment change in status. “Jettison the intermix chamber on my mark, Mr. Sulu.”

“Ready, sir.”

Kirk nodded once, firmly, determined, as if he could will the outcome he wanted into being. “Now!”

Not even a full moment after the proximity alert shrieked, space bubbled forward with white-hot, blistering energy. D’kar pitched the ship starboard as fast as possible. Engines strained and dampeners struggled to tighten his vessel’s seams. Overloads crackled circuits across his control board and power dimmed as if it were now dusk where before it was midday noon.

“Tera’ngan Ha’DI bah!”

Backup systems came online slowly, but sensors did not. Wherever Kirk was now, be it sitting on top of his ship or twenty parsecs away, there was nothing D’kar could do until he could see again.

Had it been an overcast day, as it often was this time of season, he would never have seen anything behind the low-hanging clouds that usually plastered the sky with a mugging gray. Today the sun shone brightly on the morning frost, and Simon Anders first mistook the movement in the sky for one of the large native predator birds. But binder hawks didn’t vent smoky trails across the horizon.

“A ship.” He wasn’t sure if he’d whispered the words or if they were an internal thought. For all he knew, he might have screamed them. If anyone heard, they didn’t indicate it. They were too mesmerized by the sight as well. It was midmorning and most people were about the camp, tending to the animals or to the greenhouse crops, or just gathering the plants from which they would harvest oil for the lamps.

“Captain?” They weren’t calling his attention to the vessel, which everyone knew it must be by now. Even without assistance from binoculars they knew it not to be a meteor. Meteors don’t make thirty-degree turns.

There was no expected crunch of vessel against rock. It may not have looked much like a powered descent, but perhaps it was enough of one to avoid a crash. From the looks of it, about six kilometers east of the second turn in the river, where the best pastures usually were in the spring.

“Gather a party,” Anders said to no one in particular, but he knew that Michael would be close and listening. “Bring the doctor, just in case. Tell her to bring remedies.”

Michael may have nodded, but Anders heard nothing. He turned, finally, and Michael was slowly backing up, still looking at the now-expanding plume of smoke as it dissipated, evening itself across the sky. “Michael, go. Find Alexandra. I will gather the others we need.”

“Y-yes, sir.” Michael had never seen another ship, certainly not flying through the air. Or crashing. Anders had. He remembered their own ship’s crash in vivid detail. As he and those he’d gathered made their way toward the plume of smoke that rose from the grasslands where the ship looked to have landed, Anders wondered if there would be dead. He didn’t want there to be dead. He’d had to live through seeing such horrors of twisted and mangled bodies. Michael and some of the others with them who’d been born since the crash shouldn’t have to. Had the older men not needed the strength of those younger, Anders would have had them stay behind.

“Who could they be?” Alexandra asked. She, too, had been born long after the crash, and her cures for cuts and scrapes and whatever she knew about the mending of bones would assist little if there were radiation burns and cases of plasma-lung awaiting them.

“I don’t know,” Anders said to her. “We are farther out than our maps extended. Who knows how far man has come, hm? We’ll think good thoughts.”

There was silence between them and the others until finally the smoke was large in the sky and they all knew they were close. First to make it to the top of the last hill, Anders stopped the others from continuing on. He called for Alexandra, gesturing her forward.

“Do you have the instruments?”

The doctor nodded and handed him a sack.

“And they work?” Anders asked.

She shrugged just a bit. “Last I checked, Captain.”

Anders frowned. Why would she not check before bringing them? So few bits of equipment still worked, the ones that did were cherished to the point that people were afraid to use them when they were needed. They had one hand scanner, three computer terminals, and two medical scanners-one portable, one stationary. In the sack were the hand scanner, the smaller medical scanner, and a bag of curatives that once held traditional medicines but now had “local” remedies and bits and bobs they’d managed to synthesize from base chemicals.

“I don’t want us to go in blind,” Anders told those around him. “Who doesn’t know how to use the scanner yet?”

Michael was the only one who’d really used it before, though a few others had seen its operation. Those that never had, gathered closest.

“We’re going to scan for radiation first, to see if it’s safe for us to approach. Then we’re going to scan for life-signs.” Captain Anders pulled in a deep breath and already smelled the acrid sting of the ship’s plume. “And let’s pray to God there are some.”

“Sulu?” Kirk stifled a cough and pulled on the stunned helmsman’s arm, straightening him in the copilot seat. “Steady?”

Nodding that he was, but also choking on the smoke, Sulu held a fist over his mouth and kept his eyes tightly shut.

Kirk didn’t hear the automatic venting fans that were supposed to have come on, and only emergency lights and the sparks from exposed circuits were flashing into the acrid smoke. With power out, he wasn’t going to waste time seeing if the backup battery would open the doors. Half through sight, half by memory, Kirk’s hand found the protected plunger that blew a hatch in the bulkhead. Half the cabin’s soot-caked air was blown out with the hatchway, and a shaft of light now sliced in to reveal Kerby down under the conn. “Sulu, help him,” Kirk ordered as he moved toward McCoy.

Hacking harshly as Kirk pulled him out into the fresh air, McCoy clutched at his medkit, grasping for a hypospray. He was fumbling with one of the medicinal cartridges as Kirk turned away to help Sulu drag Kerby from the shuttle and over toward where Kirk had brought McCoy.

Hypospray ready, McCoy awkwardly reached for Kirk’s arm. “Triox,” he rasped.

Kirk shook his head and snatched the hypo away. “You first.” He kneeled down, held the hypo against McCoy’s shoulder, and pressed, probably harder than a nurse would have. It hissed softly, and Kirk twisted around, repeating the treatment on Kerby, then Sulu-who immediately sounded better and looked more relaxed. Finally, Kirk hypoed himself.

Though Kirk’s throat still felt rough and razor scraped, the nagging need to cough was gone and the cool air felt good in his lungs. He heaved large gulps as he shifted his knees from underneath himself and sat tiredly on the dry grass.

“Earth… normal… atmos- ” McCoy was still gasping a bit. He’d taken in a lot of smoke.

“Close enough to it,” Kirk said, nodding tiredly, and noticed that McCoy had a medical scanner in his palm and was already inching toward Kerby. Not giving himself a moment to recuperate, McCoy had done the triage through eyes squinted closed by the bright sun and was moving to treat the injured, himself excluded. “Bones- “

The doctor was familiar with Kirk’s admonishing tone but, as usual, was going to ignore it. “I’m fine. I’m fine.” And with every passing moment he was sounding better. Kirk let it go. He did want to know how Kerby was. Sulu was close to the ensign, propping up his head. The young man’s breathing sounded shallow, his chest not moving quickly as were Kirk’s own and those of the others.

After McCoy had been kneeling by him a moment, Kirk asked how Kerby was doing.

“Carbonatious sputum, which is expected. But his O

2

levels are rising.” McCoy turned the scanner on himself a moment, then on Sulu. “Better than ours, actually. He banged his head on the console. Slight concussion put him out and metered his breathing so he actually has less”- McCoy had to huff in a breath and as he did he choked on it- “lung damage.” He looked at Sulu. “Feel up to getting the larger medkit?”

Sulu nodded and rose slowly, steadying himself a moment before heading for the shuttle. When Kirk pushed himself up, he understood why Sulu hesitated-a wave of light-headedness crashed down on him and he had to grope for balance as if on a tightrope.

Kirk too headed for the shuttle. He wanted the three remaining phasers aboard, and assuming the vessel was a total loss-it seemed likely since black smoke was still gushing from the impulse drive-he’d help Sulu pull out any supplies as well.

And he also wanted another look at the damage. Several systems had broken down after they were well out of range of the Klingon vessel. Internal sensors were knocked out first, and that was not a system open to failure before several others. There was sabotage at work here, and when the immediate crisis was over, and the whys figured out, the “how” and the “who” could be a much bigger problem for Starfleet.

One question nagged at Kirk the most: Why, if you can sabotage an Enterprise shuttle, do you disable only certain systems and not simply destroy the whole vessel-or use it to damage the Enterprise herself?

Someone wanted them alive. Klingons. They had at least a little time to consider their options: Chances were that their pursuers were going to have to take some time for ship repairs as well.

Tracking the trail of Earthers was little different than tracking wild Qaj. Both were sloppy animals whose idea of stealth was to hide their head behind a large tree in ignorance of whether the body could be seen. For that D’kar was grateful because the sabotage for which he’d so handsomely paid had not been well timed. Kirk’s shuttle was supposed to lose propulsion at the flip of a switch. Instead, the enemy had time to turn his warp engine into a weapon. Had Kirk not shifted course, had he allowed D’kar to follow him to an area not within range of a star system, he could have worn down the Starfleet shuttle’s defenses and demanded the others turn Kirk over. No, it had not gone as planned. Kirk’s ability to force D’kar to change his plans to fit the Earther’s tactics was more than frustrating, and he wished he could simply kill Kirk outright. While that might be easier, it would not satisfy the debt he wished paid.

D’kar rubbed his shoulder and studied circuit schematics. He needed to rewire a ship that was not his own and with which he wasn’t very familiar, all with a shoulder dislocated when he was tossed into the bulkhead by the shockwave from Kirk’s warp core. He cursed Kirk and he cursed his tools and for good measure he cursed scanners and deck plating and the blood that spilled from the finger he had accidentally sliced open two minutes ago.

Kirk’s attack had done serious damage, but he could repair it, and he would. And he would find Kirk, and he would find him alive, or he would not go home again.

“yIntaH qIrq ‘e’ vIneH,” D’kar whispered to himself. “DaSwIj bIngDaq latlhpu’ vItap.”

A solitary figure appeared in silhouette against the ridge of the hill, shuffling down through the tall grasses toward them. Kirk instinctively tensed, and his right hand dropped toward his sidearm. “Sulu.” The captain motioned his head in the direction he was looking. “Tricorder,” he whispered.

Leaving McCoy to tend to Kerby, Sulu came up along Kirk’s side, his tricorder open.

“I see one,” Kirk said.

Sulu looked up to the ridge. “Our Klingon friend? Impossible.”

“I didn’t see another ship come in.”

“We didn’t make the most discreet of landings,” Sulu said, fussing with the dials on his tricorder. “No energy weapons. Readings are…” He paused, and Kirk glanced down at the tricorder as Sulu ran the scan again. “Human. More than one.”

When Kirk looked back up the hill, there were now seven forms heading toward them, six distinctly behind the first, who now waved on the others.

“Humans!” called the first man, who suddenly ran toward Kirk and Sulu. “From Earth?”

Kirk was now holding his phaser, but pointing it down. The lead man stopped four meters in front of them, somewhat out of breath. “Does anyone need care?” He looked around hastily, touching his gaze on each face. “We have some medicines- “

“Shipwreck?” Sulu murmured, probably noticing the homemade textiles, as Kirk had. The captain nodded slightly, taking note of each person, then focusing on the apparent leader. He was in his sixties or more, or perhaps just life-weathered. There was a certain dignity about him, despite his obvious glee at having met other people. He held his hand out to Kirk.

Taking it, Kirk placed his phaser back against his hip and crooked a thumb over his shoulder. “We have a doctor,” Kirk said. “Who- “

“Yes, of course. Forgive me,” the older man said. “I am in shock at seeing you all. I am Captain Anders, and these are-we are-the survivors of a vessel that crashed here, much as yours. Is anyone injured?”

Kirk smiled and let out a soft chuckle. Captain Anders wasn’t really listening; he was more gawking than anything else. His exuberance was contagious.

“Not anymore,” McCoy said as he rose, pulling Kerby slowly to his feet as well. “Just a concussion.”

“How’re you feeling, Kerby?” Kirk asked.

“Fine now, sir.” The young man rubbed his forehead and ran his hand through his hair, pushing it out of the way of his eyes. “Slight headache, though.”

Anders moved to Kerby and shook his hand, then Sulu’s and McCoy’s. The other six, two women and four men, followed suit.

“Do you have food?” Anders asked. “I mean, do you need food?” He shook his head, seemingly to shake mental cobwebs loose. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said, turning back to Kirk. “I didn’t even allow you an introduction.”

“Captain James T. Kirk, of the Starship Enterprise.” He nodded a salute. “How long- “

Anders smiled widely as if some witty joke amused him. “Forty-two years, Captain. It has been forty-two years since any of us has seen a face not our own or born to us.” He took Kirk’s hand again and squeezed it tightly. “And now, Captain Kirk, here you are.”

Walking back to Anders’s settlement was an experience-Anders rarely asked a question but answered each of Kirk’s inquiries with a pages-long monologue. In the time it took to trek across the wilderness-if rolling hills of what looked like some native peat could be called such-Anders described the seasons and local geology. Apparently this area had just come out of their mild winter. The nights still got near freezing and the buds had not yet appeared on the sparse lowland trees; they wouldn’t for another few weeks, and for the mountain trees, from which much of their wood came, it would be another two months before life touched them again.

“All this ground is very fertile,” Anders said, “just not for most of the seeds we brought with us.” He stooped down as they walked along the path and picked a stalk of dry, tall grass. “The root of this plant is all over our camp. We cultivate it for its oil, which is usable for both cooking and lighting. Even heating in the coldest months. It has been a godsend.”

As a starship captain Kirk had many skills. One of them was to listen to someone and collect the details of the conversation while also reflecting on other matters. He was calculating the possible damage to the Klingon shuttle and the time it might take to make repairs. He added to it the time needed to make way for this planetoid, and then the time it would take to find them. What bothered Kirk was how long he’d estimated the Enterprise might take in finding them. The Klingons could very well find them first. He had to be ready for that, and he couldn’t endanger these people.

They entered the camp, and immediately people gathered round, pouring out of the rather sturdy-looking structures they’d built from the remains of their ship. There must have been about seventy or so, all smiling, most talking among themselves. Some were old-older than Anders. Many were obviously much younger, and there were some children. One little girl ran to Kirk as he stood next to Anders. Kirk leaned down and said hello. She meekly responded, then ran back to her mother. The crowd laughed and then began asking questions about Earth, about the Federation, about some other planets that others must have come from, old Earth colonies.

“Please, everyone be silent a moment,” Anders begged. “Please. Please, everyone.” Some quieted down, others did not. “Jonathan, please.” Anders leaned toward Kirk. “Jonathan is very talkative.” His voice rose again and he pointed toward the back of the gathering. “Missy, control your children.”

“And my husband,” Missy replied. Everyone laughed again, even Kirk. Like Anders, everyone’s excitement was infectious.

“If Captain Kirk would be good enough,” Anders bellowed to regain attention, “I see you all have questions. But we cannot all mob our guests.”

Questions flooded forth.

“How many people on your ship?”

“Can we see it?”

“Are others coming?”

“Do you have movies?”

Kirk and the others answered as best they could, and after a short time the little girl who’d greeted him and then returned to her mother found her courage and her way into Kirk’s arms. As Sulu, McCoy, and Kerby, each with a group of people around him, continued, Kirk smiled and handed the child back to her mother and pulled Anders aside.

“Let’s talk.”

Anders nodded and motioned toward the back of one of their community buildings. The din of people talking was much softer here, and Kirk looked again at some of the buildings of Anders’s settlement. One couldn’t call them shacks or huts-they looked too strong for that.

“You’ve done a lot in forty-two years,” Kirk said.

“Thank you, Captain.” Anders smiled graciously. There was a charm about him, Kirk thought; a certain charisma made it clear why he led his band of crash survivors. “But I think you flatter us. We’ve had some good years, and some hard years. We had some livestock that survived the crash, and managed to domesticate some native birds, and we hunt some game. Most of the crops we had for the Beta Aurigae colony were for a much drier environment. This place is too humid in the summer months for much of it. We modified a few that had the best chances, and we do have a drier greenhouse. The first winter was most hard, as you can imagine. I think even more so because any radio we had was dead and there was little chance of rescue. The dread was colder than any wind.”

“You were the captain then?” Kirk asked.

“I? No, no.” Anders chuckled, then looked a bit past Kirk, perhaps searching for what seemed distant memories. “My father was captain. Adoptive father, when my own parents passed in the crash. I was sixteen when I lost everything. Captain Mendez took me under his wing. Taught me how he did what he did. And then when he died some years later, I took up his role. His cause-his calling-became mine.”

“Beta Aurigae is quite a distance from this moon. How did…” Kirk shrugged and let his question trail off as Anders took in a breath to answer.

“An engine imbalance created a wormhole. I’m afraid I don’t know the technical details well, but we were unable to pull out from it until we found ourselves in this system. I was told it took selectively dismantling the warp engine while at warp to do it.”

“Your engineer- “

“Brilliant,” Anders said. “Died saving us.”

“How many survived?”

“Most survived the crash itself, but many died from their injuries or radiation burns we could not treat.” The older man shook his head, the lines on his face tracing an expression of deep regret. “I’ve seen a lot of death, Captain.” He seemed to snap himself out of whatever dark thought he’d had. “But I’ve also seen a fair number of births, and for that miracle I am grateful.”

Kirk instantly liked Anders and had some empathy for his difficult life. Which was why he didn’t like the fact that he might be complicating it even more. “I have a problem,” Kirk told him. “And you need to know about it.”

And he told him: about the sabotage to the shuttle, the Klingon pursuers, and the possibility that while his first officer would surely find them soon, the Klingons might find them first.

“I’ve heard of the Klingons, of course,” Anders said soberly and pinched the bridge of his nose between his eyes. “Rather fierce, if I remember.”

Fierce was an understatement, Kirk thought, remembering the hundreds and eventually thousands that would have died on Organia under Commander Kor’s Klingon occupation… had any humanoids actually been on Organia.

“Are my people in danger, Captain?” Anders asked.

In a tone that Kirk hoped would bolster Anders’s confidence that the situation wasn’t as dire as Kirk had made it sound, he said, “Not if I can help it.”

Anders’s brows knitted with concern. “That’s not a direct answer.”

“They could be in danger,” Kirk admitted. “But it will take the Klingons some time to find us. We’ve shut down all power on the shuttle, and unless they have the scanners of a starship, they won’t be able to find it unless they do low-altitude flyovers.”

Unconvinced, Anders’s demeanor suddenly turned very captainlike. “I won’t pretend to know the technology of your civilization, Captain, but I assume it’s better than I remember that of my youth.”

“Somewhat.”

“Were I looking for someone who landed on a seemingly uninhabited planet, I’d scan for life-form readings,” Anders said pointedly.

Kirk nodded. “So would I.”

A frown deepened the lines on Anders’s face. “And so will your Klingons.”

If Kirk had wanted to build a fort, the settlement he and Sulu had spent an hour surveying wasn’t the place to do it. It was in an open area, near a large freshwater stream, and high ground flanked it on two sides.

“We can’t defend this ground,” Sulu said as he and Kirk approached McCoy, who had been talking with Alexandria, the camp’s doctor.

“But this is where the Klingons will come,” Kirk said. “Whether we’re here or not.” Hand raised, motioning McCoy to them, the captain called for his doctor’s report. “What do you think, Bones?”

McCoy strolled to them, a slight smile turning his lips. Kirk noticed there no longer were soot smudges from the shuttle “landing” and realized he must have taken the time to clean up. The captain wanted to do the same.

“These folk are in fairly good health, considering. It doesn’t take long for natural selection to take over when you remove man’s medicines and technologies. After fifty years here, the strongest are surviving.” He crooked his thumb toward Alexandria, who was now tending to one of the children’s scrapes, though Kirk couldn’t see any damage from where he was. It may have been more psychological care than physical.

“She’s amazing,” McCoy said. “Trained by one of the doctors who eventually passed away. She’s as good as any I’ve seen.”

“You sound ready to buy a plot of land and settle down,” Kirk said mischievously. “If you put out your shingle here, you’d ruin her business.”

“I could do worse than live here,” McCoy said. “A bit of a chill in the air, but it gets the blood going.”

“Yeah.” Blood. The word alone forced Kirk to think of the Klingons. He turned to Sulu. “Find Kerby. We’re going to set up a watch, scanning with the tricorders.”

“How long do you think we have?” McCoy asked as Sulu walked off to where they’d last seen Kerby, who had been ordered to rest.

“Before the Klingons are here?” Kirk replied. “Or Spock?”

“Both.”

Rubbing his chin with his right thumb, Kirk’s brows lifted and he gave a slight shrug. “Within a day. It’s not when, but who arrives first that’s the gamble.”

“Michael!” Anders stopped the younger man as he was trotting across the settlement grounds. “Have you seen Alexandria?”

Skidding to a stop, Michael turned and caught his breath in a huff before replying. “Yes, Captain. She was near the infirmary with Dr. McCoy.”

“She was?” Anders furrowed his brow. “We were to meet here to discuss Beth Anne’s heart trouble. Did she ask you to inform me she’d be late?”

Michael shook his head and shrugged innocently. “No, I don’t believe she mentioned it. But I think they were talking about Beth Anne.”

“I see.” Pressing his lips together, Anders wondered if the total distraction of his people over the last day was temporary or permanent. The buzz of new faces had to wear off soon, did it not? Dr. McCoy was surely a skilled physician, but he didn’t have a grasp of Beth Anne’s case. Alexandria and Anders did.

“Do you need me further, Captain?” Michael asked, obviously anxious to be on his way.

Anders studied him a long moment, making sure he stood there and waited for a response. “Is there something pressing you must do?”

“I wanted to chat with Mr. Sulu, sir. He was going to show me how his tricorder worked.”

“You’ve always been cautious with technical equipment-afraid you’d break it.” Anders shook his head. Michael just wasn’t acting himself. It was most unnerving.

“Well, Mr. Sulu said they have four with them and more than a hundred more on their ship.”

Chewing his lower lip, Anders wasn’t sure what to make of that. Was Michael suddenly planning to go with them? Now? Today or tomorrow or whenever their ship arrived?

“Michael, you told me you had no interest in leaving the Frontier.” The Frontier, an ironic joke at first, had been what the survivors ended up calling their new home, saying they were like frontiersmen of old, starting with nothing.

“Well, I don’t, Captain.” Michael shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Not forever. But they’ll take anyone to their starbase for training and-It is a chance of a lifetime, isn’t it, Captain?”

“I suppose it is.” Anders nodded with understanding, but a sense of foreboding slithered across him. “Michael, does everyone feel this way?”

“No, no… I think just that… well, options are so open now.” Michael was in his thirties, but suddenly his eyes were as wide as a toddler’s. Yesterday life had been simple, linear. Now it could blast into so many directions that he must have been quite confused about his choices. Confused and exhilarated.

“Indeed,” Anders said finally.

“May I go?”

With a hand, Anders waved him off. “Of course.”

If frustration were corporeal, D’kar would have gutted it by now and made its skin into a sheath for his knife. Tracking Kirk to the small moon had been a child’s task, but now he found the Earther in the bosom of his own kind. What kind of defenses did this colony have? Were they part of Kirk’s clan? Would they die for him? If so, D’kar could be killed and his prey would escape. It soon would not matter that he was able to jam Kirk’s message to his ship, as they would come looking for him and they would track his shuttle just as D’kar had. It infuriated him that what little time he did have left needed to be wasted with watching and waiting and forming yet another plan that would put Kirk within his grasp.

They were crafty. One of the Starfleeters was always using their scanner. What they didn’t know was that D’kar had been a little more prepared than they, and he’d left passive reception cones scattered around their camp’s perimeter. His hand scanner could now tell him the pattern of their scans, and it was-no matter who held their tricorder-sickeningly predictable. Did all of Starfleet learn the same grid pattern?

It was when the red-shirted one was scanning that things were most unsurprising, so that was when D’kar decided to venture closest to Kirk. He could hear him and see him with proper passive scanning and distance, and didn’t dare actively scan for fear of being revealed.

If this were an assassination, D’kar could have his prey by now. A single phaser shot, or even a primitive projectile blast, and Kirk could be dead. He could smell the Earther from where he hid. He could smell them all, and the foul stench that was Terran blood.

But he’d rather give Kirk to his father as a prize. That was what D’kar had planned for so long, had fantasized about, and fallen to slumber with the thought of in his mind, and awakened with the same. It wasn’t about self-aggrandizement, he told himself, but about his father’s disgrace at Organia. All of Qo’noS spoke of the treaty, and few outwardly blamed Kor for the disaster, but unspoken censure laced every greeting. And to D’kar it was no surprise that his first assignment to the finest cruiser in the fleet had fallen away. He would not let his life fall into a pit because of the dishonor brought on his house because of Kirk. And so long as no one knew it was D’kar who brought the Earther to justice, and in fact believed it was Kor, honor would be restored.

It was supposed to have been done by now, D’kar lamented. This Kirk was a trickster, certainly. But ultimately weak. There are no Organians to save him this time. Now the odds are more even.

Kirk sat in a chair, using a tree stump as a workbench. He fiddled endlessly with several pieces of almost-random technology. There were only a few people around him-they were not very near-and D’kar thought he might choose this moment to make his move. As he was deciding, an older man approached Kirk, and his body language was not like that of the others who’d previously been near Kirk. It was not toadying or submissive, but that of an equal.

“A word, Captain?”

There was an interesting aspect to his demeanor that piqued D’kar’s keen interest. His scanner, however, told him that the other Starfleeter’s scans would be proceeding his way, and he must now move his position.

This Earther, however, was one to be watched. By Kirk if no one else, for the look in the new man’s eyes was one D’kar had seen before: jealousy.

“Can you explain why you’ve torn apart one of our few working computers?” Anders demanded. Something in his tone was a bit more than confrontational. It was almost hurt.

“I’m sorry,” Kirk began. “I didn’t tear it apart. I just needed to see if it had parts we could use to boost our communicators. It doesn’t, and I’m putting it back together.”

“And it will function?” Anders sneered and looked at the computer’s various parts spread across a cloth on the bench.

“If I say it will function,” Kirk said, “it will function.”

The older man drew a breath as if to respond, but he swallowed whatever he planned to say. He studied Kirk a long moment, then nodded and motioned at him. “You have a ship,” he said. “Let me ask you a hypothetical question.”

Kirk nodded.

“Say I come aboard,” Anders said, as McCoy approached from the door to one of the greenhouses. He had two native apple-looking things in his hands.

Kirk shook his head lightly, making sure the doctor wouldn’t interrupt.

“Because my ship was damaged, you provide me and my crew transport,” Anders continued. “What would you say if-having given me your hospitality-I began disassembling your vessel for my needs and ends?”

“I might have thrown you in the brig,” Kirk said. “If I couldn’t understand why you did it.”

Anders’s head swayed from side to side. “I understand what you’re doing, Captain. And even if I had a brig I wouldn’t be so disagreeable as to cage you like an animal.” Lips screwed into a frown, Anders sighed. “But I did think you might have a little more courtesy than to take what is not yours without asking.”

Eyes wide in his best apologetic look of innocence, Kirk accepted that with a slight bow of his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Anders. I should have asked.”

“Captain Anders.” He didn’t quite bark his own name, but it came close. With that he turned his back on Kirk and McCoy. “Please see that that unit is working within the hour,” he snapped, and left the two Starfleeters alone.

“What was that all about?” McCoy asked, offering Kirk the alien apple.

“I don’t know, Bones.” Kirk took the fruit, tasted it, and was surprised that it tasted very much like a normal apple. “He’s probably worried about the Klingons. He decided to tell the others and some of them are nervous. I’m sure he is, too.”

“I wonder,” McCoy said, and bit loudly into his apple. “To my view, there went a man annoyed with you, not the Klingons.”

It had taken Anders some time to calm himself. There was a grotto made by overgrowing plants to which he would sometimes escape, where it was peaceful and quiet, even in the off-season when most of the green plants had turned brown. Going there had always stilled his temper, and he hoped it would now.

He wasn’t quite sure why Kirk’s disrespect annoyed him so, but it had-deeply. Perhaps it was because the respect he’d earned over years and years from his people was so soon and so freely given to Kirk. Anders had always led his people with determination and charisma, skills taught him by his adopted father. But Kirk had all those skills, seemingly naturally, and his were stronger. He was more charismatic, more determined, and Anders felt that Kirk was leading the survivors into danger without a thought about their well-being. That was the reason for his disdain, he told himself. It was.

On his way back to the main community building, Anders saw the Kesslers’ son coming out of the storage shed and he stopped to supervise the lad. He was only twelve and sometimes was quite sloppy in his chores.

Captain Anders opened the door to the shed wide and let the daylight in.

“Jacob,” Anders called. “Come here, son.”

The boy walked over. “Captain?”

“This isn’t like you, Jacob.” Anders motioned to the way the grains were stacked and the contents of the shed were organized. It was all wrong, all disordered. “This isn’t how we store our grains now, is it?”

Jacob squirmed a bit and looked away. “No, sir, but Captain Kirk suggested that if we keep- “

“Captain Kirk suggested?” The back of Anders’s neck tensed, and he felt his cheeks flush.

“Yes, sir,” Jacob replied earnestly. “He said- “

“I don’t care what he said, Jacob.” Anders willed himself not to yell at the boy. It wasn’t his fault. “Do it the way we’ve always done it.”

“But- “

“Jacob! Mind me!”

Looking defeated and more disappointed than Anders had wished to make him, Jacob turned somberly back into the shed. “Yes, Captain.”

Anders was annoyed-more with himself for losing his temper than with Kirk. Well, probably more with Kirk. Or with the situation. He sulked around his grotto, ripping dried leaves off the “walls” and throwing them to the ground. He’d found this little recess of plants against a craggy hill soon after the crash all those years ago. It was cool and protected by old trees and in the summer smelled of rain even if it had not rained in days. Rarely had he brought anyone to it, and not of late, so few knew it even existed.

He tried desperately to gather peace from the setting, but it was taking longer than he’d have liked, and every moment he was away was a moment Kirk corrupted his people. Finally he thrust himself onto the bench he’d once made and lowered his head into his hands. Long moments passed until he was jarred from sullen meditation by a sharp pressure against the base of his skull.

“Do not cry out,” a voice said. “My blade is at your spine.”

Anders didn’t move. The words were in heavily accented English, and the individual, logic told him, natively spoke Klingonese.

“What do you want?” Anders asked. Asking who he was seemed a silly question. He was the person with a knife at his neck.

“I want to speak on you,” the voice said, and it was clear that his English was not the best. “I learn you are a leader of men and I come to join in respect. To make you learn of my goals.”

Anders’s brow knitted in confusion, and he needed to decode the poor English. But most of the meaning was evident. “You come to me in respect, threatening to injure me?”

Suddenly the knife point was gone. “Of course,” the Klingon said matter-of-factly, as if threatening Anders had been intended as a standard greeting. “Stay sitting.”

“What do you want?” Captain Anders repeated. He was beginning to see real differences between himself and Kirk, whereas before he thought they were much the same. Anders had to deal with people and problems, but on his small planetoid there were no aliens with agendas. There were no knives at throats and there were no threats. Anders and his people battled the elements, struggled to survive the seasons, not enemies from other worlds.

Coming around to stand in front of Anders, the Klingon man-boy, really, as he could only have been in his late teens or early twenties-showed Anders that he was sheathing his knife. “I want,” he said slowly, perhaps making sure his English was clear, “Captain James T. Kirk, for crimes against my House. Do you understand?”

Anders nodded slowly, but he’d known that yesterday. “No, I mean, what do you want from me?”

“Do you trust Kirk?” the Klingon asked.

“He’s a Starfleet captain.”

“I know who he is! That was not my question.” The boy’s hand was never off his knife, Anders noticed.

“So it wasn’t,” he replied. “Yes. I trust him.”

“You should not.” The alien motioned for Anders to rise. “Stand.”

Anders slowly shook his head. “No.”

“You will not?” The look of confusion on the young Klingon’s face was almost amusing, except that his knife was now a centimeter out of its sheath.

“This is my home,” Anders said, enunciating every word so he was clear. “I am in charge here. You need to leave.”

“I’m the one with the weapon.”

Suddenly, swiftly, the knife was out and the blade was before Anders’s eyes.

Anders looked past it and into the Klingon’s gaze. “And I am not James Kirk.”

“You are brave.” The Klingon’s laugh sounded truly mirthful. “I like you.” He turned and walked away from Anders, and just before he was invisible against the tree line he twisted back. “Good-bye, Captain. RememberI am not the threat to you or your people.”

Anders walked evenly back to camp, keeping himself from anything but a normal pace in case the Klingon was watching. It was a far more interesting and less-threatening encounter than he would have imagined.

Once back at the settlement, as the sun was beginning to set against the high hills, it didn’t take Anders long to find Kirk. He was with Dr. McCoy in the storage room they’d given the newcomers as quarters. Crates that had survived the crash supplied the makeshift chairs and table, and bedrolls were provided for sleeping. Other than that, the room was bare. Kirk sat at the “table,” fiddling with one of his small handheld scanners. McCoy was standing to one side, inoculating one of the children. Anders waited until the child left, then strode directly to Kirk.

“How long before your ship finds you, Captain?”

“Knowing Spock, within a day.” Kirk didn’t bother with a shrug. He made it sound like the solution to a calculation.

“I don’t know this Spock person,” Anders said, his gut tight with the annoyance he was trying to keep under control. “He must be extraordinary to earn such confidence.”

Kirk stood. Perhaps he sensed something in Anders’s demeanor, something more than submissive. “He’s the finest first officer in the fleet,” he said.

Joining them around the table, McCoy chimed in, very obviously trying to lighten the atmosphere. “For most things, not all.”

Deciding to get to the point, Anders turned away a moment, composed himself, then turned back to Kirk. “You’ve been a bit of a disruption, Captain, I’m sorry to say.”

“A disruption?” Kirk looked directly into Anders’s eyes in a way that was disturbingly confrontational on a level Anders hadn’t expected. “We’re in a race for our lives,” Kirk said.

“Every day here is such a race,” Anders countered. “And not one we all win. I- ” About to lose his composure, Anders tightened his fists at his sides and ground his next words out as calmly as possible. “Did I tell you why Captain Mendez chose me to be his successor?”

Kirk shook his head once. “You didn’t.”

“We just assumed it was the way you had with people,” McCoy said, again sensing the mood and attempting to smooth feathers. “These folks look up to you a great deal, Captain Anders.”

“He told me I had the charisma to be the glue that held these people together.” Anders looked back at Kirk, trying hard to counter that steely glare with his own. “Not charm, not likability, though certainly that-but the magnetism.”

Kirk didn’t seem impressed. “Your point, Anders.” It wasn’t a question.

“I see that it’s true, so long as there isn’t a more magnetic, more charismatic figure outshining my ability.”

“I have no desire to lead these people,” Kirk said.

“You don’t need the desire,” Anders spat. “You have the natural ability. Had you been stranded with us, I have no doubt I’d be a farmer or a gatherer. Or perhaps I’d be chief digger in charge of latrines- “

“Captain- ” McCoy tried to interrupt.

“Quiet, Doctor. This is between us.” Anders gestured to Kirk and struggled to keep his voice from quaking with anger for fear it may be misunderstood as nerves. “My authority has been challenged before, and such insurrection has been rebuffed, as surely as Captain Kirk would do on his ship.”

“We’re not going to be here long enough to rebel against you,” Kirk said, his tone even and his expression tight.

Anders didn’t know what to say. He was challenging Kirk but wasn’t sure what the outcome should be. Finally he turned on his heel toward the door. “I wouldn’t put myself against your mettle, anyway, Captain. You’d win.”

The door didn’t slam shut.

McCoy searched Kirk for some reaction. “You have a hell of a way with people, Jim.”

“He’ll get over it as soon as we’re gone,” Kirk said, and sat down again.

“Can’t you see what’s happening here?” McCoy sat next to him, the plastiform crate as uncomfortable as the beds.

“I see it, Bones.”

Kirk continued to work on boosting the tricorder’s broadcast range, and McCoy wanted to tear the scanner away from him to get his full attention, but he refrained. “No, I don’t think you do. You’re turning this man’s crew against him.”

“This isn’t a ship- “

“It might as well be,” McCoy said pointedly. “The stakes are the same: survival.”

Kirk sighed and closed the tricorder’s circuit panel. “I’m not here to usurp his authority.”

“He doesn’t rule by command, Jim. He rules by respect. So does a starship captain. People obey a captain out of respect for the chain of command at first, and with time and the right captain they come to obey out of respect for the man.” McCoy stood, following Kirk as he walked outside to find Sulu and exchange the modified tricorder for one that needed to be worked on.

“You’re not telling me anything I don’t know, Doctor,” Kirk said.

“How would you react if another captain came onto your ship and suddenly the respect of your crew shifted to him?”

“I’d be annoyed,” Kirk admitted.

“And you’d have the chain of command and orders to fall back on. What does Anders have?” McCoy saw a flicker in Kirk’s eye that told him he’d made his point. So he moved on to his next one. “And don’t forget there’s a shuttle chock-full of Klingons who want you, for whatever reason, and woe to any of these innocents who get in their way. And by now they’re here, and waiting for their chance to make a move.”

“You’re right.”

“Exactly. I’m ri-What?” Stunned by the admission, McCoy was caught off guard. “Did you just say I was right?”

“Do you expect me to say it twice, Doctor?” Kirk had suddenly changed direction, and McCoy wasn’t certain where they were now going.

“What’re we gonna do?” he asked.

“You’re going to stay here and wait for Spock to arrive.” Kirk handed him the tricorder.

“And you?”

“I’m going to find Ensign Kerby. He and I will locate the Klingons’ shuttle and secure it from them.”

“Now wait just a minute. I wasn’t suggesting- “

“I wasn’t taking suggestions.” The captain continued to march forward, leaving McCoy where he stood, sputtering. “I’m going to act,” Kirk said, “and wait for the Klingons to react.” He crooked a thumb toward the sky. “While I still have light.”

“And what if they react by deciding you’re too much trouble to keep alive?” McCoy called after him.

“Then I better have a damn good re-reaction.”

When Anders heard of Kirk’s plan, he wasn’t quite sure why he went right back to the grotto. He told himself it was for peace and introspection. He’d meant to tell Kirk about the Klingon. He was going to until he saw him, and then only defensive thoughts entered his mind.

Had Anders expected the Klingon to still be near the grotto? Part of him was certain of it. Part doubted it and really did want time to think and plan and… None of that was going to happen as soon as the young man appeared again.

“You didn’t tell Kirk I was here, did you?” This time the voice was that of a universal translator. It masked the Klingon’s own voice so well one might have thought there was no conversion tool in use, except for the now-perfect, unaccented English where before there had been awkward speech.

“How do you know if I did or did not?” Anders asked, his eyes flicking from one of the Klingon’s hands to his other. He saw no weapon, but there was some kind of phaser or disruptor on his hip, and of course, his knife was there as well, sheathed.

“Because he didn’t come to this place,” the Klingon said. “I was watching.”

“This… this is my place to think.” In Anders’s head it sounded like a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why he’d not told Kirk about the grotto. Given voice it sounded childish and the words felt heavy rolling off his tongue.

“Where is Kirk now?”

Anders shook his head and his chest tightened. “Kirk’s affairs and yours are not my own.”

The Klingon drew closer, his boots squishing on the moss-covered ground. He tilted his head, examining Anders. “You don’t like him.”

There was no question there, so Anders said nothing.

The young man bit his lower lip. “They’ve stopped the scanning around your camp. Why? Where is Kirk?”

The Klingon came closer, until Anders felt the man’s breath on his face.

“I-I’m…” Would the Klingon kill him if he didn’t say? Isn’t this what he wanted-to be threatened into revealing what he knew? He wanted Kirk to be gone and the Klingon to be gone, and wasn’t the fastest way to do that to have them take care of each other?

It would mean blood. It would mean death.

And Michael and the others-they might see that they were safe here when people stayed away. Options might look less favorable, doors might close…. And wouldn’t the Klingon kill him if he didn’t tell him what he wanted to know? He had weapons, where Anders had none.

“They…”

“Where?” the Klingon whispered. “Tell me where.”

“I…” Anders’s voice was thick, each word a chunk of iron that fell to the ground with a clang. “They went to your ship.”

As close as he was, Anders could tell that the Klingon’s entire body tensed instantly. “Why?” he demanded.

“I don’t know for certain.” Now that he’d begun such a treacherous dialogue, the words came easier. “To use it against you. To find you. To make you react.”

“Fools,” the Klingon barked. He twisted away and in three large running paces left Anders alone again in the grotto.

It was cool there, and it gave Anders peace to think. It always had. But now the only thought he could find was not one of serenity, but horror. “What have I done?” he murmured. “Good Lord, what have I done?”

“Broadest possible scan, Ensign.” Kirk knew that would limit the distance they’d be able to cover in one sweep, but he didn’t know how many Klingons would be waiting for them. There could have been three or four, or even one. That was something to consider. At first Kirk had believed his opponent to be skilled, experienced, but nothing besides the initial tactic of hiding in his impulse wake had really pointed to that. Everything since then pointed to greenness.

Why not make some move on the settlement? Other Klingons Kirk had been up against would have. They’d have sought to breed terror among the innocents between them to force Kirk’s hand. Unless there was but a lone Klingon, and he was injured and waiting for them in his shuttle.

Kerby struggled somewhat to both hold his phaser pistol and adjust his tricorder. He managed it, but only awkwardly. “May I ask a question, sir?”

“You’re wondering why I chose this direction for the possible location of the Klingons’ shuttle.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where would you hide a shuttle if you didn’t want it to be seen?”

“A canyon, maybe? Some place with a deep crevice or- “

“They weren’t worried about being seen from the air. And there’s no canyon nearby.” Kirk pointed up the ridge with the business end of his phaser, indicating the next place Kerby should scan. “They’d want the high ground, and they’d come in under cloak of night, then camouflage their shuttle as best they could.”

“Huh.” Kerby chuckled, and his lanky arm stretched out to point to his left. “Large metallic object. Bearing twelve degrees, two hundred and nineteen meters, sir.”

While the Klingons had done their best-an excellent best-to cover the ship with brush and dirt, the tricorder could not be easily fooled.

“Life-signs?” Kirk asked in a whisper as he gestured for Kerby to take cover behind a craggy outcropping.

The Klingon shuttle, still visually distant, was nose-close to sensors. If someone was on board, watching a scanner, Kerby and Kirk had been made.

“No one on board,” Kerby said.

Kirk swatted away a spring gnat that was buzzing about his eyes. “We need to get on board and- “

“Ugh!” Kerby grunted loudly.

Kirk spun tightly toward his crewman. Kerby fell, collapsing into a puddle of limbs. Blood soaked his tunic where a long dagger broke through his torso.

“Aaaaarrghhh!” The guttural battle cry of a Klingon crashed down as Kirk pivoted and fired his phaser. The beam sliced forward at the wrong angle and missed the single Klingon broadly as he leapt for Kirk and knocked the weapon from the captain’s hand.

Kirk felt his entire body tense into a fighting stance. The smell of Kerby’s blood jabbed the air as Kirk sized up his opponent. He was young-younger than Kirk expected. Darting his glance from the phaser, which now lay several meters away, to Kerby, who lay gurgling his last breaths, and back to the Klingon boy before him, Kirk thought, How old is he? Seventeen? Nineteen?

“You want me, why not take just me?” Kirk asked, trying to elicit some response, some distraction. “Why do you want me so badly?”

“I am D’kar, son of Kor, and I mean to avenge his dishonor at your hand.”

Kor. The Klingon commander Kirk almost battled at Organia. Before the Organians pushed their highly evolved godlike noses into Federation-Klingon matters and compelled both truce and treaty.

“I don’t want to kill you, Kirk.” When D’kar said Kirk’s name, it sounded almost Klingon. “Not yet.” The young man holstered his disrupter and pulled out a shorter dagger, all in one very fluid, practiced movement. He may not have wanted Kirk dead, but he obviously didn’t care if he was badly injured. “And this time there is no one to help you,” D’kar said. “Not your crewmen, not your ship, not the Organians, and not your closest ally, who hates you almost as much as I.”

Kirk’s brows narrowed. Who here hated him? Anders. Had it gotten to that level? Would he sell Kirk out to the Klingons?

“You don’t believe it?” D’kar taunted. “He told me where you were. He wants me to kill you, but we will save that honor for my father.”

“Your father,” Kirk said with a huff as he avoided a slash at his arm from D’kar’s blade, “had no special quarrel with me.” He grabbed a handful of dirt and twigs and launched a cloud at the boy as he rolled one way, and then zigged back toward Kerby to see if he could still hear the ensign breathing. He also wanted the man’s phaser, but Kerby had collapsed onto it and so Kirk remained weaponless. His eyes flicked a moment at the dagger stuck in Kerby’s back. He heard the ensign continue to slosh blood and air out of his mouth, and so Kirk at least knew his crewman was still alive. That was something, and it was likely because the dagger had been thrown from a distance rather than thrust in by hand and then removed. Had the ensign been dead, Kirk might have taken the knife and used it to defend himself, but he wouldn’t save his own life at the risk of another’s.

What Kirk needed even more than a weapon was for McCoy to attend to Kerby. Or he needed Sulu for backup. He’d decided two of them should look for the Klingon shuttle and two should stay to protect the settlement because he didn’t know how many Klingons had come looking for them. Now it was clear to Kirk that D’kar was his lone pursuer.

All these pinpoints of thought prickled against the back of his neck as he focused quickly between D’kar’s eyes and his dagger hand.

“The Organians stopped that fight, D’kar. If you’re looking for your father’s lost honor, they have it-not me.”

With Kerby’s body between them, D’kar was blocked from a clean shot at Kirk, but Kerby was now in harm’s way. If D’kar should knock into the crewman, shifting the position of the dagger in his chest…

Young, but hardly stupid, D’kar must have noticed the flash of concern in Kirk’s expression. He slid a boot toward Kerby menacingly. “He lives still. If you want to save him, remove your communicator and drop it to the ground.”

When Kirk didn’t instantly move, D’kar inched closer still.

“I am serious, Kirk. I will end him.”

“All right.” Left hand raised in assent, Kirk nonchalantly reached behind his back with his right hand and brought his communicator forward and then dropped it to the ground in such a way that it opened as it fell. D’kar’s eyes followed it down and Kirk took his moment.

He sprang forward, one hand crashing into D’kar’s throat, the other wrapping around the wrist of his dagger hand.

Up close, D’kar seemed even younger and the thought that Kirk might actually have to kill him caused a momentary hesitation that the Klingon took advantage of. He kneed Kirk hard in the ribs, then butted his head forward and hit Kirk’s chin.

Grunting out a held breath, Kirk slammed D’kar’s hand against the hard dirt until his fingers lost their grip on the knife and it fell away. Keeping his left hand on the Klingon’s wrist, Kirk pulled up one knee and pinned it into D’kar’s chest. He used his right hand to grab for the dagger, but the shift in Kirk’s center of gravity allowed D’kar to roll out and over. Unable to get the knife in a firm grasp, Kirk pushed it as far away as he could. If he couldn’t have it, neither of them would.

D’kar scrambled for it, but Kirk grabbed hold of his leg and twisted him around. The Klingon howled in angry pain and spat at Kirk’s face, then used his own limb to pull Kirk toward him-just enough to connect a swinging fist. Kirk felt his teeth grind against his cheek and his jaw stab into his left ear. He tasted blood, spat into the dirt with a huff, and felt a trickle drip down his bruised chin.

That much delay gave D’kar enough time to find the dagger and slice side to side. Kirk backed out of the way of each swing, arching his back until he was clear of the blade’s tip.

In D’kar’s eyes was such frustration, such rage and anger, that Kirk sensed he’d just won. D’kar had lost himself in the fight-lost his sense of purpose and goal and given himself over, completely, to base instinct.

Base instinct isn’t why his father won battles. Training was. Cunning was. Experience was.

D’kar lunged, thrusting his knife wildly at Kirk’s midsection. Kirk dodged, grabbed the boy’s wrist with both hands, and twisted hard until he heard bone crack and the Klingon yelp.

A human would have been finished there. D’kar caught the dagger with his left hand as it slid from his broken right. Rage still blinding him, he tried to hit Kirk’s arm with the blunt end of the handle, then plunge the blade into his stomach.

Quickly, Kirk twisted behind D’kar, bringing his broken wrist back as well, turning and lifting it until Kirk felt the Klingon’s arm snap in two. A murderous scream cracked the sky. When Kirk heard the dagger fall, he knew D’kar had lost lucidity. Kirk pushed him to the dirt, rolled to the phaser he’d kept a bead on, and fired, stunning D’kar where he lay.

In two steps he was back to Kerby. The ensign groaned as Kirk touched his neck to feel his pulse strength. Blood aspirated from his nose and mouth. Kirk reached for the open communicator.

Before his fingers could make contact, the familiar hum of a transporter beam bounced around like a million insects. Three columns of sparkle coalesced, and Spock materialized before him, flanked by two security guards.

Relief washed over Kirk as he scooped up the communicator and exchanged a grateful glance with his first officer. Instead of calling McCoy and having the doctor rush to Kerby’s side, now the Enterprise was once again at Kirk’s disposal.

He held the communicator near his chin with one hand and adjusted the channel with the other, despite the phaser still clenched within it. “Kirk to Enterprise.”

“Enterprise. Captain, it’s good to hear your voice, sir.” Uhura’s voice-crisp, clear, and angelic.

“Uhura, emergency medical team to the transporter room. Ensign Kerby needs immediate attention. These coordinates.”

“Aye, sir.”

Kirk stepped away and watched silently as Kerby’s body was beamed away.

“Your timing, Mr. Spock,” Kirk began as he allowed himself a moment to breathe again, “hopefully just saved Ensign Kerby’s life.” The captain smiled a bit, noticed the feel of dried blood at the corner of his mouth, and thumbed it clean, glancing at the deep red smear before brushing it against his filthy tunic.

“Your open communicator signal in combination with your inability or unwillingness to respond to hails suggested you might be having difficulty.” Spock motioned to D’kar, who lay prostrate a few meters away. “A Klingon?”

Kirk nodded. “One source of my difficulty.”

One of Spock’s brows rose in curiosity. “There is another?”

“Get this one to the brig. I’ll have a word with the other.”

They found Anders just where Michael and Alexandria had said he would be: on a crude, handmade bench in the middle of a cave formed by thicket, draped by what in the spring would be hanging vines plush with leaves and pillared with tall, old trees. Anders said nothing as they approached, and Alexandria kneeled on the mossy carpet so she could look into his eyes.

“Captain?” When he did not respond she whispered his name. “Simon?”

“Bones.” Kirk nodded his head toward Anders, and McCoy used a small hand medical scanner for a moment, then glanced at his tricorder.

“He’s in shock, Jim.”

“Shock from what?” Michael asked, looking from McCoy to Kirk. “I thought you said we were safe now. What did the Klingon do to him?”

“Nothing,” Kirk said. “It’s what I did to him.” Some people had a natural ability to lead. The signs could be seen at an early age. Starfleet took Kirk’s leadership instincts and trained them, honed them, and molded Kirk into the captain he was. Without the training working in conjunction with his innate abilities, he wouldn’t be that captain. Simon Anders had the same abilities. And the man who trained him for leadership, Captain Mendez, had molded Anders into the perfect man to be the leader of these stranded people.

But just as Kirk had not been trained to lead a corporation or a nation, or even a colonial settlement, Anders had not been trained to deal with interstellar politics and alien invasions. That’s what Kirk and D’kar had been to him-an alien invasion. Anders was a leader who could secure his people from a bad winter or a lover’s quarrel, but he’d not been trained to deal with the crisis Kirk had thrust on him.

Anders looked up at Kirk, his expression a mixture of self-loathing, relief, and fear. “I-I told him where to find you. He made me. I- ” He began to sob. “I wanted to tell him and wanted him to persuade me.” It was a cathartic admission. Michael looked at Anders with doubt and Alexandra held him in a way that she had probably never done before-as a patient.

Captain’s Log, Supplemental:

Satisfied that we have gotten what information we can from D’kar about the sabotage to the shuttle Copernicus, and because Ensign Kerby is recovering well from his wounds, we have-at the request of Starfleet Command-rendezvoused with Commander Kor’s battle cruiser, to which we have been ordered to deliver our prisoner in accordance with the Organian Peace Treaty.

Kirk thumbed a button on the transporter console, activating the comm. “Kirk to bridge.” D’kar was being escorted from his security cell, and just in case, Kirk had ordered the corridors cleared along the way.

“Uhura here. We have the coordinates, Captain.”

“Transmit them to Mr. Scott, Lieutenant.” Kirk nodded at Scotty, who stood to his left, ready at the controls. McCoy stood by, for reasons Kirk was not sure of, but he was glad to have him close, and Spock was at the auxiliary scanner that linked to the bridge. The science officer kept a tight eye on the energy output of the Klingon cruiser. There might be a treaty that obliged adherence to certain regulations, but no accord could compel trust. Only time would do that.

“Ready, Mr. Scott?”

“Aye, Captain,” the engineer said. “Ready as I can be, beaming Klingons aboard.”

Kirk nodded. He understood the feeling and glanced at the single security guard near the doorway. The crewman had his phaser at the ready.

“Energize.”

The transporter dais came to life; lights flashed and energy hummed through circuitous veins. A mast of sparkle appeared and congealed into flesh, bringing Commander Kor aboard the Enterprise.

Kirk stepped around the main console but only that far. Kor wouldn’t be treated like a visiting dignitary.

“Commander,” he greeted.

Smiling that slithery grin that Kirk couldn’t quite decipher, Kor took two steps down to the main deck and nodded a cordial salute to Kirk. “We meet again, Captain,” he said almost cheerfully, then looked about and found Spock standing across the room. “Ah, Mr. Spock.” Kor bowed respectfully.

“Commander Kor,” Spock responded dryly with a slight nod.

“How is the kevas trade this season?” Kor asked the Vulcan, mocking his cover story from their joint Organian adventure.

“Up an average of one point seven-six-five Federation credits in the major trade markets,” Spock said, and Kirk couldn’t help but allow himself a smirk.

Turning back to Kirk, Kor kept his positive facade. “You have D’kar.”

“Security is bringing him here directly,” Kirk said.

“If my blood has been mistreated,” Kor said, “I will see to it your ship is dismantled by my disruptor banks, treaty or no.” Even when he threatened your life, Kor maintained some semblance of a smile under his Fu Manchu mustache.

“Your blood engaged in terrorist acts against a Federation vessel,” Kirk said. “That treaty is the only thing keeping him out of a Starfleet brig.”

McCoy took one step forward. “He wouldn’t allow me to treat him,” he said. “He has a temporary cast for a number of broken bones in his right arm.”

Kor had turned, listened, then looked back to Kirk. “His arm was broken in interrogation or battle?”

“Battle.”

As Kor nodded his acceptance of that fact, the doors to the transporter room parted and D’kar entered, flanked by two security guards.

Immediately, D’kar’s expression changed from prisoner to champion.

“qab yon Da’agh. QablIj yon yI’aghHa’ ‘aghHa’pa’ ‘etlhwIj.” Kor snapped. Without the universal translator, Kirk made out the words “satisfied face” and “blade,” and considering the smug look that had evaporated off D’kar so quickly, Kirk imagined there was something in there about Kor scraping it off with his knife.

D’kar began to respond but Kor cut him off. “BIjatlh ‘e’ yImev, DI’qar! You will speak when spoken to.”

Kirk hadn’t had a great deal of interaction with Kor, but that was the first flash of genuine anger he’d ever seen.

“It was to restore your honor- ” D’kar spoke in Klingon, but Kirk understood that much.

“chobelHa’moH, DI’qar. SajlIj ‘oHbe’ quvwIj’e’.” Kirk mostly understood that as well. Kor had said he was displeased, and that his honor was not D’kar’s plaything.

The Klingon commander pointed to one of the transporter pads, and D’kar sullenly marched to that exact position. The Klingon family was an interesting dynamic, to be sure. On Organia, when Kor mandated the wanton slaughter of hundreds, Kirk had tried to imagine the kind of man who could give such an order. He’d wondered what such a person would do if his own child were about to be murdered. Still, seeing father and son together, Kirk wasn’t sure.

“My son’s actions were not known to me, Kirk,” Kor said.

“I know that.”

“Good.” No apology. That would have been too human. And what he had said was as close as a Klingon would get to such a thing.

Kor nodded once, and with Scotty’s facilitation he and his son were on the Klingon vessel.

Kirk nodded once at his engineer, who relinquished the transporter console to the normal duty crewman. Scotty exchanged some comment with McCoy-Kirk didn’t hear what exactly-then exited toward engineering.

McCoy waited for Kirk and Spock, and they entered the corridor together. “Well,” McCoy began, “it’s small consolation, but at least it looks like Kor will exact some punishment for D’kar’s actions. I wonder what ‘grounded’ translates to for Klingons.”

“I suspect there is more shame involved,” Spock said. “Klingon culture is concerned with particular honor rites and taboos that D’kar seems to have misunderstood, and therefore broken.”

McCoy nodded thoughtfully rather than replying, and in silence they gathered into the turbolift. Kirk grasped the control handle and manually selected the bridge.

“You seem awfully quiet, Jim,” McCoy finally prodded gently.

“I’m thinking about Captain Anders,” Kirk said. As the lift doors parted, he led the others onto the bridge. “That’s who’s been truly punished in all this. He had the respect of those people, and now they doubt him, and he doubts himself.” The captain stepped down to the command deck and swiveled the center seat around. He slid down easily into what had become his most familiar home.

“I sympathize with his dilemma, Captain,” Spock said, falling into place to the captain’s right as McCoy joined them on Kirk’s left. “But he chose his path based on the subjective feeling that he was losing his ‘command’ to you. You did not threaten his authority, if I read your report correctly.”

Kirk tilted his head a moment and half shrugged. “I didn’t threaten his authority, but it was threatened, Spock. Those people needed him to lead them because they depended on his skills for their survival. Our presence negated that need. In a week’s time that planetoid will have advisors, engineers, maybe even new settlers-all there to help build up the accidental colony they began. And transports will come to take offworld those who wish to go.”

“We changed his world.” McCoy understood.

“For the better, in many ways,” Spock added.

“Except for Anders.” Kirk let his hand touch the leather arm of his command chair and he ran his hand along its length. “He’s lost his purpose, his self-respect, and… he’s a good man who felt helpless as everything he had-everything he was-collapsed around him.” The captain shrugged and realized he might be sounding a bit too sentimental, a bit too maudlin, for the bridge of a starship. To his mind, however, he looked at Anders and felt “there but for the grace of God go I.”

“Interesting,” Spock said after a moment of almost awkward silence. “Both Captain Anders and D’kar made certain subjective presumptions that led to vast misunderstandings on which they chose improper courses.”

“Here it comes,” McCoy murmured to Kirk.

“Here what comes, Doctor?” Spock asked coyly.

McCoy took the bait. “Here’s where you lecture us that logic is the only way to make moral choices, and if only we were all pointy-eared Vulcans, then the universe would be filled with the muted joy of countless unemotional, cookie-cutter, stone-faced, walking computer banks.”

One brow jutting above the other, which Kirk often believed was the Vulcan’s version of an ironic smirk, Spock was deadpan: “On the contrary, Doctor. Nothing gives me more ‘muted joy’ than knowing you and I are so radically different.”

Kirk smiled, McCoy fumed, and Spock lithely turned and strode to the science station.

Unlike Simon Anders, Jim Kirk’s command-his world-was very intact. In that there was great comfort. All things change eventually, and while that fact brought tacit and minute anxiety, it was greatly calmed by the familiarity of duty and purpose he had for the foreseeable future.

The captain leaned back comfortably in his command chair. “Mr. Sulu,” he said. “Ahead, warp factor one.”