FIC: Speak Of Me In The Present Tense - 2/5
Part One
“Poem codes are perhaps the most useful codes you will learn here,” Spock begins, then pauses, wishing he’d thought to write down this introductory speech last time he delivered it, because Kirk’s eyes are full of such obvious disbelief that it is hard to concentrate. He straightens the small pile of books on his desk before continuing: “Their strength lies in the fact that the correct sequence of words is easy to recall and it is therefore unnecessary to commit any extra detail to writing.”
“Their weakness,” Kirk interrupts, “is that Himmler might just possibly be able to get his hands on a copy of The Lady of Shalott, in which case we are comprehensively fucked.”
Spock raises an eyebrow at his phrasing, but has to concede the point.
“You’ve got something better, haven’t you?” Kirk demands. “I mean, you’ve worked with Turing, for God’s sake, so please tell me there’s better than this?”
“We could attempt to obtain a supply of one-time pads,” Spock says. “They are, in theory, impossible to decrypt, as long as their production is truly random.”
“So let’s do it then.”
“I have already suggested the idea to Colonel Pike. He does not believe it is practical.”
This is a source of some frustration to Spock. He knows OTPs are the best practicable method of coding for agents in the field, but whoever is responsible for SOE’s supplies refuses to countenance the idea. It is, apparently, a waste of resources.
Kirk seems to share his sentiments. “Of all the ridiculous-Let’s see, unbreakable codes versus nursery rhymes, what shall we pick? Little Bo Peep, every fucking time.”
“The latest idea is to use original compositions--”
“Damn it all, Spock!” McCoy bursts out. “I’m a doctor, not a saboteur, and definitely not, no way in hell, a poet.”
“Perhaps you’re a poet and you just don’t know it?” Kirk suggests.
McCoy leaps up from his chair in order to beat his head softly against a wall. Spock can hear him chanting under his breath, “Why, oh dear God, why?”
“Doctor, please,” Spock tries, but any pretence that they’re actually having a lesson here vanishes as Kirk, too, jumps up and heads for the door.
“We’re getting those one-time pads,” he says grimly, “if I have to make them myself.”
Spock would point out the sheer impossibility of such a course of action, but Kirk has already gone, leaving the door to bang shut behind him.
~
At dinner that night, Kirk frowns at his potatoes and only looks up to answer direct questions. Spock extrapolates from this that his efforts have been unsuccessful, but if he reads Kirk correctly - and he thinks he does, for all they’ve only known each other three days - that won’t be enough to stop him trying again.
“If you wait, I will come with you next time,” Spock says, voice mildly reproving.
“Huh?”
“To request the one-time pads. I can offer the benefit of my experiences at Bletchley and do, in fact, know what I am talking about.” The unlike you is unspoken, but Kirk seems to hear it and is not offended. He smiles slightly and says, “Suppose it can’t hurt. Bones, you in?”
“Sure, why not? I’m sure my vast experience of codes will just blow Pike away.”
~
Lessons with Professor Uhura continue apace. Kirk’s Québécois accent is gradually replaced with one more in keeping with his new identity’s upbringing, McCoy speaks with greater confidence each day, and Spock is now willing to let the occasional idiom creep into his speech.
Whenever he speaks English, though, he notices his accent shifting towards that of his father. Kirk has noticed it too - every time Spock speaks, he looks at him as though he is a puzzle to solve - but he doesn’t say anything until a week after their first meeting.
They have returned from a night spent in the hides they have built in the woods. All three are streaked with mud and aching from the cold ground, but pleased that none of the instructors they heard prowling around last night managed to find them.
Once they’ve had a chance to make themselves presentable (Spock has never appreciated the luxury of a clean, pressed shirt so much before), they congregate, as is their habit these days, in the library. They are talking about the war - they are always talking about the war, given that McCoy is the only one of them happy to discuss his life pre-SOE - when Kirk says, “Your accent’s changed.”
“Indeed. I attribute it to the presence of so many Americans.”
“Huh.” Kirk squints at him doubtfully. “Not sure it suits you.”
McCoy snorts at this. Spock says dryly, “My father is from Boston, though I myself grew up in Paris and London; arguably, this is my ‘true’ voice. No doubt you will become accustomed to it in time.”
“Now that sounded like Spock,” McCoy says.
~
“Up, up, get up now!”
Spock opens his eyes to the bright light of a torch shone in his face. His instinctive reaction is to knock it away, but before he can do so, someone seizes his arms and cuffs the wrists roughly together. The man behind him pulls hard on the cuffs so that Spock has to struggle upright or risk his shoulders dislocating.
“Move it.”
Something heavy slams into his side and it takes Spock’s sleep-fuzzed brain a few seconds to realise he’s just been kicked. He can feel the pain of the blow hovering round the edges of his consciousness, but he ignores it.
Beaulieu, he’s still at Beaulieu, which means the people hauling him away must be training staff, not Gestapo officers. Training exercise, he thinks, somewhat blearily. Though what they’re training him in, other than an ability to stagger down stairs in his pyjamas, he doesn’t know. He’s dragged out the back door and half-lifted, half-thrown into the back of yet another of those covered vans. On his knees on the coarse wood flooring of the van, Spock pitches and rolls as they bump down country roads.
At the other end, hands grab at his pyjama shirt and compel him after them into a dingy Nissen hut. In the middle of the hut, a bare electric bulb spills its light over a table and chair. Interrogation, supplies his brain.
There are people in the hut, though it is too dark around the edges to be sure of their numbers. Spock has never seen any of them before. The man in the chair appears to be in charge of the operation; it is he that gives the flat order, “Clothes. Off.”
Ignoring the part of his brain still bothering to protest the insanity of this, Spock draws himself up as straight as he can manage and says, “Naturally, I would be happy to oblige, but I fear it would be impossible at present.” It is only after he has spoken that he realises the order was given in French and he has just replied in the same language.
The man in the chair snaps, “Get the cuffs off, Lamaison.” Spock wonders if the name is part of the act.
The spring air is warm against his skin, for which Spock is grateful. He refuses to let himself feel the humiliation of his situation, instead letting his mind play over the possible turns this mock-interrogation could take. He also wonders, briefly, what has happened to Kirk and McCoy.
“Name?” demands his interrogator.
“Raymond Moreau.” It’s the name all his false papers now bear, and Spock has had to memorise M. Moreau’s painstakingly constructed life story over the last week.
“Occupation?”
“Student.”
“At your age?”
“I’m writing a doctoral thesis on certain aspects of probability mathematics. As you can imagine, the research is quite time-consuming.” He smiles, playing the part of confused-but-helpful innocent.
“And what about your friends? They students too?”
“My friends?”
“The ones you were with last night, when you blew up the Grand Pont at Samoëns.”
Spock shrugs. “We did not leave the village last night. M. Gérard will attest that we stayed at his establishment until perhaps two in the morning.”
“Will he?”
“He will,” Spock says firmly.
His interrogator asks several more superficial questions concerning his cover story, then sucks in a deep breath and smiles. “All right, Mr Spock,” he says, switching abruptly to English. “Interview’s over. You can collect your clothes on the way out, and there’ll be a car waiting to take you back to your house. Thank you for your time.”
“Au revoir,” Spock says, unsure whether or not this is some further test to make him break character. The man’s smile widens.
The car outside is considerably more luxurious than the van he arrived in, but the wind whipping in through the open windows makes Spock shiver in his pyjamas. He’s missing a button, he notices, but that can be fixed.
He makes his way upstairs and along the corridor of bedrooms. All the doors are hanging open, all the bedclothes crumpled and, in McCoy’s room, dragged halfway out into the corridor. There’s no sound apart from the soft creak of floorboards under his feet. Spock must be the first to return from their ordeal. He doesn’t yet know if this is a good or a bad thing.
Sleep, he decides, is quite useless. His watch on the bedside table reads 4.30am. He heads first to he kitchen and then to the library. When Kirk stumbles in having seen the light under the door, Spock looks up from a copy of Russell and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica and says, “There is tea in the kitchen, though I imagine it is cold by now.”
Kirk nods gratefully and departs. When he returns, the cup in his hands emits the bitter smell of coffee. He shrugs apologetically. “It was cold. And I’ve never been much of a tea-drinker. Blasphemy, I know. So. Sleep well?”
Spock lays the book aside, careful not to crease the pages. “Until perhaps three o’clock.”
“Lucky you, getting a lie-in. They dragged me up at half past two. Then we spent God knows how long driving God knows where, only to find that orders had changed, so we had to go haring off someplace else. A-plus in General Incompetence, Beaulieu.” He is angry, Spock can see, fingertips gone white against the porcelain cup. “I mean, it’s ridiculous that we’re signing up to go and die horribly in France - yeah, all right, that’s not technically meant to happen, but it’s still a distinct possibility, right? - and they go and fuck up something as trivial as this. It’s just so stupid.”
“I agree that SOE can behave with a remarkable lack of foresight.” (He is thinking of the one-time pads. Pike seems convinced of their use now, and a Mr Marks has lent his support, but those that control SOE are immovable on the issue.) “However, you must remember that it is only a fledgling organisation and can only do as well as resources allow.”
“And resources could allow a damn sight more if the people distributing them had brains in their heads instead of order forms. Dammit, Spock, do you have to be so fair-minded? Would it kill you to get angry about something once in a while? Or would it upset that perfectly balanced brain of yours too much? I shouldn’t have called you a robot before - robots have more humanity in them than you can manage.”
“Have you finished?” Spock says quietly. It’s taking more control than he thinks he has just to keep from lashing out at Kirk, and he feels himself to be standing on the edge of something dangerous.
“Damn right, I’ve finished,” Kirk snarls. His footsteps fall heavy on the parquet flooring and the door jumps in its frame as he goes.
Spock sits there, breathing deeply and trying to repair the rents Kirk has torn in his control. He thinks McCoy comes in, maybe even speaks to him, but he doesn’t move or respond and eventually he is left alone. In the end he sleeps, knees drawn up to his chest in the sagging armchair.
~
Breakfast is - not exactly strained, but silent. No one speaks, and if Spock didn’t know better, he could take it for a companionable quiet, but it is not, and all three of them know it.
Later they stand shivering in shirtsleeves as Instructor Olsen teaches them the rudiments of hand-to-hand combat. His demonstrations are quite painful - though Spock does not let such things interfere with his concentration - and interspersed with frequent exhortations to ‘kick him in the bollocks’. This, according to Olsen, is the solution to all life’s ills.
Though he is trying to avoid speaking to Kirk, or even looking at him too often, Spock cannot help noticing how at home he appears with the techniques they are being shown. Of course, Spock reflects, he has probably already learnt these things in his army training.
After lunch, Olsen announces, with perhaps too much enthusiasm, that he is going to teach them three different methods of killing a man silently. Spock feels himself tense up and forces his muscles to relax. Just what did you think ‘sabotage and subversion’ would entail? he demands of himself.
Olsen is telling them something about the knives, but Spock is barely listening. The handle feels alien and wrong in his hand. He tries switching sides - perhaps he will prove to be a left-handed murderer - but to no avail.
Olsen demonstrates the cuts they will make on a dummy. Stuffing leaks from its wounds. Then he lines them up and counts them down.
McCoy tries to protest: “I’m a doctor, damn it. I’m supposed to preserve life, not - not this.”
“And when we’re starvin’ and dyin’ in the Nazi work camps, I’m sure we’ll all be very grateful for your principles,” Olsen tells him. “You can either give up now, and we’ll ship you back to the States at no extra cost - though I don’t fancy your chances across the Atlantic - or you can shut up and get on with it. Your choice.”
Grumbling to himself, McCoy tightens his grip on the knife and looks Olsen square in the eye. “For future reference? The carotid artery’s about an inch further to the left than you seem to think.”
Olsen grins wolfishly. “I’ll bear that in mind, Doctor McCoy. In your own time now.”
McCoy makes the cuts with a surgeon’s precision that Spock supposes is only to be expected. Kirk follows him without a word.
Spock steps forward, trying not to notice how life-like the dummy is from behind. As the knife snicks across the dummy’s wooden throat, Spock thinks hard about carpentry and woodcarving and not at all about how one day this could be a human being gasping his last in Spock’s hands. Then it’s over and he stands there dumbly for a moment, the knife held loose by his side.
“That was terrible,” Olsen tells him cheerfully. “Everyone line up and I’ll show you how it’s done again.”
Spock doesn’t know whether to cling to the sick feeling of disgust he has for this whole exercise, or to push it away. In the end, he is not sure he can do either, but the feeling remains, pushing at his rather tenuous sense of control.
Finally the lesson ends. Spock would like nothing better than to disappear, to get away from here and find a place to let go, but to run would shatter any illusion he has of control and would certainly cause Kirk and McCoy to follow. So he walks, long strides and steady gaze shrouding him in a confidence he doesn’t feel.
He hears Kirk’s voice behind him, calling for him to wait up, but he ignores it. Kirk says, “I’m going after him.” Spock speeds up his pace.
“Take a hint and leave it, Jim.”
“Uh, yeah, he’s a vegetarian who’s just been taught to kill with his bare hands. I’m going after him.”
“Jim!”
Kirk catches up with Spock as he reaches the back door. For a fleeting moment, Spock considers breaking left and heading out towards the woods and fields - he has a height advantage, he could outrun Kirk easily - but decides against it. Kirk can be amazingly persistent when he chooses.
They pass through the house in silence, side by side. The only words they exchange are at the top of the servants’ staircase. “Why are you following me?” Spock spits out, every word an exercise in restraint.
Kirk stands his ground. “Because you need me to.”
“That is absurd.”
Spock turns and strides on down the corridor. At the far end is a set of steps up to the roof, black paint peeling from the ironwork. He takes them two at a time, ignoring the clangs of Kirk ascending just behind him.
The air up here smells of rain, and the bricks of the main chimney are damp through Spock’s shirt as he leans against it. Kirk slumps beside him, not touching, not talking, a careful two inches of air between their shoulders.
Spock shuts his eyes, aware that his breath is still coming in ragged clumps. “Go away,” he says.
Kirk snorts softly. “Yeah, that’s happening.”
Spock digs his fingertips into the brickwork. “Why must you persist in--”
“In not doing as I’m told? Perhaps you haven’t heard, but I wasn’t a very good soldier.”
“Better than I,” Spock says, letting his head fall back against the chimney.
“Not true, actually. I’m only here because it was this or get thrown out on my ear.”
“As am I.”
“You managed to fuck up badly enough to get thrown out of code school?”
“Not precisely.” Kirk waits for him to continue. Spock swallows. How has he been manoeuvred into this particular corner? “There were rumours of an… indiscretion between myself and a colleague,” he says reluctantly. “One of my supervisors thought he could use the information for his own advantage. It came to a point where my only options were to report his behaviour or seek new employment, and I chose the latter.”
“But why?”
Kirk, Spock thinks, has never understood the concept of cutting one’s losses. He doubts whether Kirk has ever walked away from a fight in his life. Perhaps this is bravery, or a form of stupidity that comes very close.
“It seemed the logical course of action,” he says.
“The hell it was.”
“I do not regret my choice.”
“Even after today?”
Spock shakes his head.
“Well… good,” Kirk mutters. “Just… you know. I don’t regret it either.”
It’s the closest thing to an overture of friendship either of them has expressed, and Spock feels himself flushing slightly. Fortunately, Kirk is staring straight ahead, unwilling to meet his eyes, and the uncomfortable moment passes. For at least the next three seconds, at which point Kirk draws in a deep breath and says, “About last night - I was wrong and… Look. I could give you excuses, but I was out of line and I’m sorry.”
“And I am sorry that you believe I do not care,” Spock says, looking away.
“Spock.” Kirk reaches out tentatively to touch his shoulder, and Spock has to force himself not to flinch away. “I don’t think you don’t care. Hell, after today, I’d say you probably care more than the rest of us put together. So, yes, I’m sorry I was an asshole and… don’t hate me?”
Spock looks at him in surprise. “I do not hate you. That would suggest a degree of emotional investment I do not feel. If you will excuse me, I should like to return to my room now.”
He disengages himself carefully from Kirk’s grip and walks back towards the staircase. For a moment, it looks as though Kirk will follow him, but then he falls back against the chimney, letting out a harsh breath of laughter. “‘Emotional investment I do not feel’? Bullshit.”
His words are almost swallowed by the space between them, and since Spock cannot think of any response, he pretends not to hear.
~
“Gentlemen, I bring glad tidings.”
Free time these days is precious, but none of them can resent Pike for cutting into it, especially when he waves a sheaf of paper in Spock’s direction and announces, “Order forms, Mr Spock. The powers that be have seen fit to grant your request for one-time pads, and I get to write the requisition forms.”
“Head Office finally had the stick removed from its collective ass?” Kirk asks.
“Let the record state that I don’t approve of your phrasing,” Pike says, grinning. “But yes, the surgery was a great success.”
“Nicely done, gentlemen, nicely done.” Kirk shakes everyone’s hand with much ceremony. There is an almost frightening gleam of triumph in his eyes, and Spock wonders if there is anything Kirk cannot do once he sets his mind to it.
“And just in time, too,” Pike adds. “You’ve been kept in the dark with your timetable, I know, but let’s just say that you’ll have to have gotten the hang of these things by, oh, next Wednesday sounds about right.”
From the blank looks of the other two, they hadn’t expected it to be so soon either. It seems the sort of news that should be delivered in a speech about expectations and hopes for the future, but Pike just smiles at them kindly and says, “Enjoy the rest of your stay, gentlemen.”
Once he has gone, McCoy lets out a low whistle. “Way to spring it on us.”
~
It turns out that they have even less time than they thought to prepare: their last two days will be spent learning parachute jumping with the RAF. Lessons take on a new urgency. Mastering the one-time pads is the easy part; aside from that, they attend a disconcerting number of last-minute lectures that seem designed to impress on them all the ways their mission could possibly go wrong, and pass an unsettling couple of hours in what Pike euphemistically dubs ‘Research and Development’. Here, an enthusiastic young man with a strong Scottish accent shows them ‘a couple of wee nasties I’ve rigged up for you’. Spock is particularly impressed with the exploding rat corpses, though they are not issued with any of these.
Their French lessons no longer cover the language itself. Instead, Professor Uhura gives them a detailed history of the Occupation, until new orders come in saying that they’re to be sent to the Savoy region, occupied by the Italians not the Germans, and much of what they have been taught proves inaccurate.
They acquire codenames and clothes - the former from Pike, the latter from a tailor who is apparently an expert in French styles. When the clothes arrive, they have already passed through SOE’s team of scientists and look at least three years old. Their cover stories are checked and double-checked for inconsistencies that could give them away to the Milice.
Somewhere in the last two weeks, Spock has lost the ability to sleep the whole night through. It hasn’t bothered him until now, when he lies awake and cannot keep from calculating the probability that he will die, that McCoy will die, that Kirk will die, or worse, that they will make some tiny slip that will plunge the world further into this grey morass it is drowning in.
Or perhaps they will make no difference at all - and this is what scares him the most.
~
There is a party their final night at Beaulieu, which Spock considers in dubious taste until he notices that many of the female attendees are making woefully unsubtle attempts to charm state secrets out of the agents-to-be. At this point it becomes clear that the evening is actually one of SOE’s more practical ideas. In any case, he has observed that many people are foolishly attached to the idea of a ‘last hoorah’.
Kirk likens it to a condemned man’s final meal, then announces that they may as well enjoy it while it lasts and vanishes into a knot of people. McCoy shrugs and follows him.
At some point amidst the smoke and light and noise, Spock finds himself kissing Kirk. Afterwards, he can’t quite trace the path of actions that led up to this moment - there was, he suspects, a lot of champagne involved - but he remembers the event itself in awful clarity.
Strictly speaking, since Spock is the one pressed up against the dark wall of the terrace, Kirk is kissing him, which is confusing enough on its own. There is simply no accounting for the fact that Spock is kissing him back, hands coming up to hold Kirk’s shoulders and pull him closer.
It shouldn’t be happening; the small part of Spock’s brain that sits apart and analyses everything knows that much, at least. Kirk is arrogant and antagonistic and bewildering, and Spock is not sure he even likes him, let alone… He cuts that thought off and struggles to disentangle himself.
“You are drunk,” he says firmly when Kirk protests. This seems to have no effect, so he adds, “As am I.”
Kirk retreats a few steps and looks down at his shoes, then back to Spock. “If I wasn’t and you weren’t, would you…?”
“The point is moot,” Spock says, “since we both are.” The response is glib, instinctive, and considerably easier than a truthful answer. He is not even sure what a truthful answer would be.
He takes Kirk’s shoulder and propels him bodily back through the French windows into the ballroom. Once they have located McCoy at one of the flimsy card tables, the night passes easily - Spock concentrates his whole attention on the conversation and avoids looking at Kirk. Perhaps ‘easily’ is not the right word, but at least the night passes.
~
Spock is perhaps the only one of the three grateful for the early start next morning. It means he only has to spend half an hour lying awake not thinking about the previous night before he can legitimately get up and find more useful methods of distraction, like packing his battered new suitcase.
At breakfast, McCoy drinks copious amounts of coffee and mocks Kirk’s unscientific hangover cure of powdered egg, pepper and Worcester sauce. Spock agrees, but takes care to mention the placebo effect, which allows him to get drawn in to one of McCoy’s enthusiastic arguments on the subject.
Then they’re packed off in a van for an RAF base, location kept secret. They’re given a few minutes to store their cases in the bunkroom before being escorted out into a large field of uncut grass. Their instructor is built along the same lines as Olsen: around six foot in height, solidly built but not overly so, with the short-clipped hair that marks him as a soldier. An airman, Spock reminds himself, though perhaps it amounts to the same thing these days.
He tosses parachute packs towards them, eyes gleaming in approval when none of them fumble the catch. For silk, the parachutes are surprisingly heavy. He shows them how to strap them on and leads them to a barn on the edge of the field. They are already standing in the hayloft before McCoy seems to realise what comes next.
“When you jump, keep your legs together and your arms tucked in,” the instructor says. “I’ve seen more people break things because they just don’t listen than from anything going wrong.”
This is not altogether reassuring, and McCoy obviously thinks the same, because he scowls at the instructor in the way that means, ‘I’d like to call you ten kinds of idiot, but am resisting heroically’.
With deft, practised movements, the instructor fixes a length of rope to Spock’s parachute pack. The rope loops over a pulley; at the other end is a large sandbag. “To fake the parachute drag,” Spock is told. “On three, now.” The drop is, Spock estimates, about twelve feet. He tries to remember how high one has to be to reach terminal velocity.
“Three.”
Spock does not recall actually jumping, only the drag of the harness against his shoulders and the thump that shakes through him when he lands. He has not fallen over, and the landing is not painful. He hopes this is an accurate simulation of reality.
McCoy goes next. As he approaches the edge of the loft he shuts his eyes, and when he reaches the bottom, a heartfelt, “Hell,” floats back up. Kirk and the instructor grin.
They continue to practice the static jumps until the instructor is convinced they will survive the next level of training.
“No point in sending you up with the balloon now,” he says. “There’ll be food in the mess hall ‘til seven-ish - the mess hall’s the building on your right once you go out of here - and lights out is at ten. I’ll send one of the lads round to wake you up tomorrow.”
“Ready for another day of fun and adventure,” McCoy mutters. “I can’t wait.”
~
In the mess hall, Kirk pokes suspiciously at his stew, whistling Run, Rabbit, Run under his breath. McCoy nudges him sharply. “Knock it off, Jim. People are staring.”
“Oh, like they care about us. We’re just here for the day-trip and they know it.”
“Well, aren’t you a little ray of sunshine today?” His eyes take in the portion of stew still on Spock’s plate; the way Kirk hasn’t just taken it, as is his habit these days. “Don’t tell me, you’ve been at it again.”
“I beg your pardon, Doctor?”
“Fighting. Angels and ministers of grace defend me, but I thought you’d gotten over that. You have, haven’t you? Jittery as June bugs round each other.”
Kirk says, “We haven’t been fighting, Bones,” just as Spock says, “You are incorrect, Doctor. Furthermore, I fail to see how it is any of your business.”
McCoy looks between the two of them in exasperation. “Fine. Don’t tell me - see if I care. Just patch up whatever it is you’re not fighting about before we ship out. For the sake of my sanity, if nothing else.”
He pushes back his chair and stomps off to join the line for coffee. The second he’s out of hearing range, Kirk looks up from his food and says, “So, about last night.”
“Please, don’t.”
“No, I wanted to apologise.” Kirk looks determined, and much as Spock would like to avoid this conversation that doesn’t look possible, so he says, “I do not see why.”
“Because if we were in Iowa, your daddy would’ve come round with a shotgun by now.”
There is so much that is ridiculous about this sentence that Spock clings to the one thing he is sure of. “My father does not own a shotgun.”
Kirk’s lips twitch in a smile. “No, but me throwing myself on you when you were too drunk to protest - makes me feel like the cad in a bad romance novel.”
“I take issue with your claim that I was ‘too drunk to protest’,” Spock tells him. “I did, if you recall. Additionally, there is a disturbing lack of logic to your argument that I am not responsible for my actions when drunk, but you are.”
Kirk doesn’t bother to refute this. He is studying Spock now, searching for a trace of - Spock is unsure what, but he schools his face into the blankest expression he can. Eventually Kirk leans back, shaking his head. “Okay, I have no clue what you’re thinking here, so can you… talk to me? Preferably before Bones gets back?”
“I do not know what I think,” Spock says, trying to keep a check on the frustration he can hear spilling into his voice.
“Um. Okay.”
Spock would very much like to shake him - he thinks one of them should have some idea what to do now, and since Kirk opened proceedings, it’s his responsibility - but the silence spins itself out and neither of them move.
Eventually, Spock says, “I do not think it-wise to embark on a venture of this sort,” and he knows he’s a coward for the way he edges round the words like they might explode.
Kirk shrugs one shoulder. “Try telling that to all the girls with their soldier boys. We’d at least be better off than them.”
Spock has at least three counterarguments to this, but before he can deploy them, McCoy returns. “Got you coffee,” he says to Kirk, passing him the mug. “And tea for you,” he adds, carefully putting the cup down in front of Spock and unhooking his fingers from its handle.
“Lifesaver, Bones,” Kirk says, taking a sip and tilting his head back in rapture.
~
Spock lies awake on his bunk that night and wonders why he cannot find any of the certainties other people seem to be blessed with. He is fully prepared to admit that he is not as expert in emotions as he is in, say, differential equations, but most people (normal people) seem so sure in what they feel. Why can’t he be?
He wonders how Kirk can be so certain, or if it’s all merely an act. He wonders if his own careful concealments count as an act, and if perhaps everyone is acting. He wonders whether maybe, if one kept up the act for long enough, it would become reality.
Then he decides his brain is becoming locked in circular loops of pointless conjecture. He rolls over and forces his minds into the narrow tracks of multiplication tables.
~
McCoy darts another look over the edge of the balloon and promptly turns white. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“That’s what they all say. There’s really nothing to be scared of if you follow instructions. Legs together, as the curate said to the chorus-girl.” Sergeant Darnell, the instructor from yesterday, slaps McCoy on the back, inviting him to share the joke. McCoy glowers at him.
“Don’t pander to me, kid. You know what a shattered femur looks like? Or how it feels to hit the ground at a hundred miles an hour? Think about that and tell me there’s nothing to be scared of.”
McCoy’s breathing is audible even over the roar of the balloon’s burner. Spock steps towards him - the balloon shifts perilously under his weight - and says quietly, “Apprehension is perfectly logical, Doctor.”
McCoy turns his glare on Spock. “I’m not apprehensive, I’d just rather not end my days splattered across England’s green and pleasant land.”
“You’ll be fine,” Kirk says firmly.
Darnell turns back from checking the altimeter. “Reckon we’re at the drop height now. Don’t worry about pulling the cord, there’s a static line attached to the balloon and you’ll get the same on your actual drop.” He smiles grimly. “You’ll have more important things to worry about than that.”
“Oh, joy. Well, let’s get it over with then.”
Kirk exchanges a quick glance with Spock. “You sure you want to go first, Bones? Spock or I could--”
“Jim, I’m a grown man. Don’t need you tryin’ to babysit me.” McCoy’s Southern accent has thickened noticeably, a clear sign of stress. Spock raises his eyebrows at Kirk and nods his head towards the edge of the basket. Kirk grimaces.
“If you’re sure…”
“Yeah.”
But McCoy curses fluently under his breath all the time Darnell is checking the straps on his harness, and at the very last second he turns to Kirk and grits out between clenched teeth, “Jim, I can’t.”
Spock sees Darnell make a sudden movement towards McCoy and grabs the sergeant’s elbow without pausing to think. The man is too well trained to do more than hiss at the pain, but he stops moving. Low and quiet, so McCoy won’t hear, Spock says, “Pushing my friend out of the balloon would not be a wise move at this juncture, Sergeant.”
Darnell swears under his breath and mutters something that might be, “Bloody amateurs.” Spock adjusts his grip.
Kirk is standing close to McCoy, both hands on the other man’s shoulder, speaking in soft, soothing cadences. McCoy looks mutinous, but this is at least an improvement on blank fear. A second later Kirk straightens up and announces, “There’s been a change of plan. I’ll be jumping first after all.”
“Fantastic,” Darnell growls. “Tell your friend to let go of my arm and we might actually get somewhere.”
“I apologise, Sergeant,” Spock says, releasing him so that he can tend to Kirk’s parachute.
“A bientôt, mes amis,” Kirk says with a grin, stepping out of the basket. In the brief moment before his chute opens, Spock sees him waving, though whether at them or at the ground below, he is not entirely sure.
He watches the white circle diminishing against the green of the field; sees it crumple and lose its symmetry as Kirk hits the ground.
Darnell is already hustling McCoy into position. “Don’t think about it,” he advises, squeezing McCoy’s shoulder. “It’ll be over before you know it.”
McCoy nods tightly. Then he jumps. Darnell watches critically. “Think he’s going to yell like that every time?”
“Does it matter?”
“Nah.” Darnell tugs hard on Spock’s shoulder straps - payback for his arm, Spock thinks. “Just some of the pilots would pay good money to see that. Joking,” he adds hastily. “Christ, why’re you lot always so touchy? Something up with SOE’s recruiting procedure, I’d say.”
“Perhaps,” Spock observes, “‘touchiness’ is the preferred state for a spy?”
“Maybe, maybe. Now, keep your legs together - I’ve already done the one about the chorus-girl, haven’t I?”
“You have,” Spock agrees, and jumps.
Time stretches in ways that bear no relation to relativity. For endless seconds, Spock is in freefall, feeling himself gently supported on some invisible cushion. The ground is approaching very fast, individual trees beginning to stand out along the field’s perimeter, then their branches. Then the line goes and Spock’s harness hauls him roughly upwards before beginning a more gentle descent. Soon he can make out the patches of bare earth where dozens of other trainees have landed.
Though the parachute has slowed him, Spock feels he is moving very fast relative to the ground. Too fast? He tries in vain to find some fixed point to measure his velocity against, and when he looks down he can see clover amid the grass stalks. He bends his knees and prepares for impact.
The landing is considerably harder than jumping from the hayloft. Spock staggers slightly, nearly falls over, and the parachute settles over him in swathes of white silk. Hands reach out to disentangle him, and he emerges to find Kirk and McCoy holding armfuls of silk and grinning at him. If McCoy’s smile is still somewhat queasy, Spock doesn’t think it his place to remark on it.
“Nice of you to drop by,” Kirk quips, and McCoy groans.
“I suspect that telling you it is only a flying visit would be more apt had we jumped from an aeroplane.”
Kirk’s eyebrows leap alarmingly. “Did you just… make a joke?”
“It’s you, you’ve infected him with your godawful puns,” McCoy says, throwing his armful of parachute silk over Kirk’s head.
“Well, I’m just in awe of your mature sense of humour, Bones,” Kirk tells him once he’s untangled himself.
“You are both as insufferable as each other.” Spock relieves them of his parachute and begins to fold it up. He feels quite illogically pleased when he recalls Kirk’s look of stupefaction.
Up above, the balloon dips and bobs as Darnell begins its slow descent. Kirk throws himself down on the grass and tugs his discarded parachute pack over to serve as a pillow.
“Those grass-stains will never come out,” McCoy warns him. “Oh, what the hell.” Eight seconds later, he too is lying flat on his back, one arm flung across his eyes. “Spock, you coming? Got a long wait for that balloon, else.”
Spock acknowledges the truth of this. He puts his pack carefully on the ground and settles himself cross-legged beside it. McCoy lifts his arm enough to spare him a brief eyeroll.
“Yeah, real relaxed there, Spock.”
Spock raises an eyebrow at him, but McCoy has already let his arm fall back. Spock does not mind. In this field, in the sunlight, it is hard to mind about anything. There is a rightness about the scene that is almost tangible. Beside him, Kirk shifts slightly, crossing one ankle over the other. He is smiling faintly, and Spock wonders if he has fallen asleep already.
Spock shuts his eyes, unprepared for the rush of fondness brought on by the sight. The feeling is unfamiliar and discomfiting, and he tries to bury it in calculations - the terminal velocity of their bodies as they fell, the drag co-efficient of the air - but the number of assumptions he must make to do the sums in his head is too great.
The current state of affairs between himself and Kirk is unsatisfactory, and only likely to worsen until he works out a suitable plan of action. To do as Kirk suggests and embark on a romantic relationship with him is clearly impossible. (Is that what Kirk is suggesting, or is he merely offering what Spock has heard crudely referred to as ‘soldier’s solace’?) SOE expects only half of its operatives to survive - intellectually, Spock knows that it is quite likely one or more of them will die. What he has not considered is the effect on those who survive. Now he knows, with deep, aching certainty, that he will not be unaffected by the death of either of his teammates. His friends. Any emotional distance he might have hoped for has long since been swept away. Perhaps it is too late for such considerations, but in Spock’s experience, caring about people only leads to pain, and he will not go further down that road than he already has.
As soon as they have privacy, he will explain this to Kirk and so resolve matters.
Privacy, though, is kept in short supply as they are hurried through the last stage of training - a jump from a real plane. McCoy has found a flask of something pungently alcoholic, which seems to be more than capable of patching any holes in his confidence, and everything goes smoothly.
This done, Sergeant Darnell seems disinclined to let them leave his sight - apparently the weather conditions tonight are optimal and he doesn’t want to postpone the drop because one of them has gone missing. Under his watchful eye, they pack their suitcases in complete silence. Then a man none of them have seen before on the base orders them to follow him into a deserted Nissen hut, where he unpacks their cases onto trestle tables, goes through the contents with great thoroughness, and does the same for the clothes they are wearing. Only when he is satisfied they’re carrying nothing that could link them to England and SOE are they allowed to take their cases back.
They sit in the bunkroom, waiting for darkness to fall. McCoy is clearly suffering from anticipatory nerves, but he’s hiding them as best he can from Sergeant Darnell.
Finally another airman arrives to escort them out to the aeroplane. As he straps them in, he talks constantly, a steady stream of reminders and helpful tips: “Remember to let the supplies drop first - they’ll survive if you land on them, but I wouldn’t like to say the same for the other way round. I hope you’ve got your thermals on - ‘s bloody freezing up there, for all it’s supposedly June. Don’t worry about anything except keeping your knees together and not breaking your legs. Us and the boys on the ground can take care of everything else.”
Then the engines are rattling into life, they’re bouncing down the tarmac and suddenly there’s nothing except wind to support them. The airman’s eyes are bright. He turns to them, grinning, and bellows over the noise of the engines, “I love this bit!”
McCoy mutters, “Oh do you now?” but Spock thinks he’s the only person to hear it.
Half an hour passes and Spock finally concedes that the airman may have had a point - whatever the temperature earlier in the day, or even at ground level, up here it is rapidly approaching sub-zero. His hands in the pockets of his greatcoat are already numb, and an insistent draught is threatening to do the same to his nose. He hunches his shoulders and tries his best to sink into the warm woollen folds of his coat.
Beside him, Kirk is doing likewise. He calls to the airman, “How long does this normally take?”
“Depends. Couple of hours usually, but we’ve got a good wind behind us, should make things a bit easier. Not so much fun for us coming back, but you don’t need to worry about that.”
Kirk nods and goes back to trying to control his shivers. Somewhere during the flight, he has ended up pressed to Spock’s side, and on Spock’s right, McCoy has done the same, sharing the scant amount of body heat each of them generates.
Spock wakes to find his head bumping gently against the side of the plane. The pilot is shouting something, but he can’t hear what. The airman has vanished. He looks to his left.
“Turbulence.” Kirk answers the unspoken question with a grimace. “Hit some sort of mountain storm, I think.”
“‘Mountain storm’? Then we are nearly there?”
“I guess.”
At this moment, the airman reappears, crawling down the gangway from the cockpit.
“Just been talking to the pilot - we’ll be coming in to the drop zone in five minutes, give or take.” He digs inside his fleece-lined flight jacket and produces a flask. “Bit of Dutch courage to speed you on your way, lads?”
The alcohol burns on the way down - the sole reason Spock will drink it - but otherwise has no appreciable effect.
At the back of the plane, a hatch opens. The airman unbuckles them and motions them to help in pushing the large bundles stacked against the walls through the hatch. Spock follows their descent, parachutes white and ghostly in the moonlight. The airman nods and waves Kirk forwards.
“Be seeing you,” Kirk says, and steps into space. A scant second after he’s gone, the plane bucks violently in the air. The airman swears. “Quick, go quickly, damn it.”
McCoy shuts his eyes, opens them again and steps through the hatch. Spock is about to follow him when the airman grabs hold of his harness. Spock turns to stare at him.
“Can’t go now,” the man explains. “We’ve gone too far into the valley - too much chance of you being spotted if you jump now. Give us a few minutes to circle round and we’ll give it another go.”
Spock edges back from the hole and is just in time to catch hold of one of the straps on the wall as the plane banks in a tight corner.
“On my signal,” the airman shouts. “Go, go, go!”
Reacting on instinct to the tone of command, Spock throws himself out the hatch and is immediately snatched up by a fierce wind. There are lights wheeling dizzyingly below him, but he’s too disoriented to know whether they are stars or the torches that are meant to be guiding him down. Then his parachute deploys with a violent jerk and things begin to settle.
As he gets closer, he can see dim figures moving in the torchlight, and catches the gleam of parachute silk. Then a terrific gust of wind catches him, swings him sickeningly around, and when he looks back down the glints of torchlight seem very distant.
He refuses to panic - it can only worsen his predicament - but the wind seems to be carrying him even further away. He tugs on the parachute cords, trying to encourage the great unwieldy canopy above him to turn back towards the lights. It’s partially successful, and he continues to hang on, even as the cords cut into his fingers. He stares at the ground below him, fixing it in his memory. He doubts he will make it back to the main drop zone before he lands and he has no other means of navigation.
He hits the black ground below far too fast, tucking into the smallest ball he can and simply rolling until he comes to a natural halt. When he picks himself up, the wind is still grabbing at his parachute. It takes all his strength to gather it back into its pack.
Ignoring the ache in his shoulders, he begins to pick his way over the ridge, back towards the drop zone. It is only now that Spock notices it is raining, making his boots skid over the grass. Once he gets to the scree immediately below the ridge, it only gets worse: stones skitter away under his feet and at every step he risks falling and sliding back to the bottom.
The ridge is sheer, but there’s a chimney in the rock, sheltered from the rain by overhanging bushes. Spock is not inclined to believe in luck, but he is nonetheless grateful for the respite. Once at the top, he can see that it is only a short stretch of grass to the torches. He sets off at a brisk jog.
As he draws near, he hears a voice raised in angry French and realises it’s Kirk’s.
“I don’t care what your orders are, we’re waiting here until my friend shows up. And if he doesn’t show up, we’re going looking for him.”
Spock thinks that some sort of intervention may be needed to keep Kirk from striking their contact. He’s near enough by now to call out and he does so, taking care to use Kirk’s codename. The look of absolute delight on Kirk’s face is worth any discomfort Spock has suffered to get here.
“Sp- Sébastien! What in God’s name happened to you?”
Any reply is made difficult by the fierce hug he gives Spock. At the contact, Spock stiffens instinctively, but there is such genuine relief in Kirk’s face that he forces himself to relax into it, bringing his hands up to hold Kirk’s shoulders.
At length Kirk steps back, looking a little embarrassed. “So, where have you been?”
“The wind blew me off course, though fortunately not more than a kilometre or so.”
“Quite far enough,” McCoy declares, gripping Spock’s shoulder briefly.
Their contact clears her throat. “If you’ve quite finished, perhaps you could lend a hand lifting the crates onto the wagons?"
Part Three
“Poem codes are perhaps the most useful codes you will learn here,” Spock begins, then pauses, wishing he’d thought to write down this introductory speech last time he delivered it, because Kirk’s eyes are full of such obvious disbelief that it is hard to concentrate. He straightens the small pile of books on his desk before continuing: “Their strength lies in the fact that the correct sequence of words is easy to recall and it is therefore unnecessary to commit any extra detail to writing.”
“Their weakness,” Kirk interrupts, “is that Himmler might just possibly be able to get his hands on a copy of The Lady of Shalott, in which case we are comprehensively fucked.”
Spock raises an eyebrow at his phrasing, but has to concede the point.
“You’ve got something better, haven’t you?” Kirk demands. “I mean, you’ve worked with Turing, for God’s sake, so please tell me there’s better than this?”
“We could attempt to obtain a supply of one-time pads,” Spock says. “They are, in theory, impossible to decrypt, as long as their production is truly random.”
“So let’s do it then.”
“I have already suggested the idea to Colonel Pike. He does not believe it is practical.”
This is a source of some frustration to Spock. He knows OTPs are the best practicable method of coding for agents in the field, but whoever is responsible for SOE’s supplies refuses to countenance the idea. It is, apparently, a waste of resources.
Kirk seems to share his sentiments. “Of all the ridiculous-Let’s see, unbreakable codes versus nursery rhymes, what shall we pick? Little Bo Peep, every fucking time.”
“The latest idea is to use original compositions--”
“Damn it all, Spock!” McCoy bursts out. “I’m a doctor, not a saboteur, and definitely not, no way in hell, a poet.”
“Perhaps you’re a poet and you just don’t know it?” Kirk suggests.
McCoy leaps up from his chair in order to beat his head softly against a wall. Spock can hear him chanting under his breath, “Why, oh dear God, why?”
“Doctor, please,” Spock tries, but any pretence that they’re actually having a lesson here vanishes as Kirk, too, jumps up and heads for the door.
“We’re getting those one-time pads,” he says grimly, “if I have to make them myself.”
Spock would point out the sheer impossibility of such a course of action, but Kirk has already gone, leaving the door to bang shut behind him.
~
At dinner that night, Kirk frowns at his potatoes and only looks up to answer direct questions. Spock extrapolates from this that his efforts have been unsuccessful, but if he reads Kirk correctly - and he thinks he does, for all they’ve only known each other three days - that won’t be enough to stop him trying again.
“If you wait, I will come with you next time,” Spock says, voice mildly reproving.
“Huh?”
“To request the one-time pads. I can offer the benefit of my experiences at Bletchley and do, in fact, know what I am talking about.” The unlike you is unspoken, but Kirk seems to hear it and is not offended. He smiles slightly and says, “Suppose it can’t hurt. Bones, you in?”
“Sure, why not? I’m sure my vast experience of codes will just blow Pike away.”
~
Lessons with Professor Uhura continue apace. Kirk’s Québécois accent is gradually replaced with one more in keeping with his new identity’s upbringing, McCoy speaks with greater confidence each day, and Spock is now willing to let the occasional idiom creep into his speech.
Whenever he speaks English, though, he notices his accent shifting towards that of his father. Kirk has noticed it too - every time Spock speaks, he looks at him as though he is a puzzle to solve - but he doesn’t say anything until a week after their first meeting.
They have returned from a night spent in the hides they have built in the woods. All three are streaked with mud and aching from the cold ground, but pleased that none of the instructors they heard prowling around last night managed to find them.
Once they’ve had a chance to make themselves presentable (Spock has never appreciated the luxury of a clean, pressed shirt so much before), they congregate, as is their habit these days, in the library. They are talking about the war - they are always talking about the war, given that McCoy is the only one of them happy to discuss his life pre-SOE - when Kirk says, “Your accent’s changed.”
“Indeed. I attribute it to the presence of so many Americans.”
“Huh.” Kirk squints at him doubtfully. “Not sure it suits you.”
McCoy snorts at this. Spock says dryly, “My father is from Boston, though I myself grew up in Paris and London; arguably, this is my ‘true’ voice. No doubt you will become accustomed to it in time.”
“Now that sounded like Spock,” McCoy says.
~
“Up, up, get up now!”
Spock opens his eyes to the bright light of a torch shone in his face. His instinctive reaction is to knock it away, but before he can do so, someone seizes his arms and cuffs the wrists roughly together. The man behind him pulls hard on the cuffs so that Spock has to struggle upright or risk his shoulders dislocating.
“Move it.”
Something heavy slams into his side and it takes Spock’s sleep-fuzzed brain a few seconds to realise he’s just been kicked. He can feel the pain of the blow hovering round the edges of his consciousness, but he ignores it.
Beaulieu, he’s still at Beaulieu, which means the people hauling him away must be training staff, not Gestapo officers. Training exercise, he thinks, somewhat blearily. Though what they’re training him in, other than an ability to stagger down stairs in his pyjamas, he doesn’t know. He’s dragged out the back door and half-lifted, half-thrown into the back of yet another of those covered vans. On his knees on the coarse wood flooring of the van, Spock pitches and rolls as they bump down country roads.
At the other end, hands grab at his pyjama shirt and compel him after them into a dingy Nissen hut. In the middle of the hut, a bare electric bulb spills its light over a table and chair. Interrogation, supplies his brain.
There are people in the hut, though it is too dark around the edges to be sure of their numbers. Spock has never seen any of them before. The man in the chair appears to be in charge of the operation; it is he that gives the flat order, “Clothes. Off.”
Ignoring the part of his brain still bothering to protest the insanity of this, Spock draws himself up as straight as he can manage and says, “Naturally, I would be happy to oblige, but I fear it would be impossible at present.” It is only after he has spoken that he realises the order was given in French and he has just replied in the same language.
The man in the chair snaps, “Get the cuffs off, Lamaison.” Spock wonders if the name is part of the act.
The spring air is warm against his skin, for which Spock is grateful. He refuses to let himself feel the humiliation of his situation, instead letting his mind play over the possible turns this mock-interrogation could take. He also wonders, briefly, what has happened to Kirk and McCoy.
“Name?” demands his interrogator.
“Raymond Moreau.” It’s the name all his false papers now bear, and Spock has had to memorise M. Moreau’s painstakingly constructed life story over the last week.
“Occupation?”
“Student.”
“At your age?”
“I’m writing a doctoral thesis on certain aspects of probability mathematics. As you can imagine, the research is quite time-consuming.” He smiles, playing the part of confused-but-helpful innocent.
“And what about your friends? They students too?”
“My friends?”
“The ones you were with last night, when you blew up the Grand Pont at Samoëns.”
Spock shrugs. “We did not leave the village last night. M. Gérard will attest that we stayed at his establishment until perhaps two in the morning.”
“Will he?”
“He will,” Spock says firmly.
His interrogator asks several more superficial questions concerning his cover story, then sucks in a deep breath and smiles. “All right, Mr Spock,” he says, switching abruptly to English. “Interview’s over. You can collect your clothes on the way out, and there’ll be a car waiting to take you back to your house. Thank you for your time.”
“Au revoir,” Spock says, unsure whether or not this is some further test to make him break character. The man’s smile widens.
The car outside is considerably more luxurious than the van he arrived in, but the wind whipping in through the open windows makes Spock shiver in his pyjamas. He’s missing a button, he notices, but that can be fixed.
He makes his way upstairs and along the corridor of bedrooms. All the doors are hanging open, all the bedclothes crumpled and, in McCoy’s room, dragged halfway out into the corridor. There’s no sound apart from the soft creak of floorboards under his feet. Spock must be the first to return from their ordeal. He doesn’t yet know if this is a good or a bad thing.
Sleep, he decides, is quite useless. His watch on the bedside table reads 4.30am. He heads first to he kitchen and then to the library. When Kirk stumbles in having seen the light under the door, Spock looks up from a copy of Russell and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica and says, “There is tea in the kitchen, though I imagine it is cold by now.”
Kirk nods gratefully and departs. When he returns, the cup in his hands emits the bitter smell of coffee. He shrugs apologetically. “It was cold. And I’ve never been much of a tea-drinker. Blasphemy, I know. So. Sleep well?”
Spock lays the book aside, careful not to crease the pages. “Until perhaps three o’clock.”
“Lucky you, getting a lie-in. They dragged me up at half past two. Then we spent God knows how long driving God knows where, only to find that orders had changed, so we had to go haring off someplace else. A-plus in General Incompetence, Beaulieu.” He is angry, Spock can see, fingertips gone white against the porcelain cup. “I mean, it’s ridiculous that we’re signing up to go and die horribly in France - yeah, all right, that’s not technically meant to happen, but it’s still a distinct possibility, right? - and they go and fuck up something as trivial as this. It’s just so stupid.”
“I agree that SOE can behave with a remarkable lack of foresight.” (He is thinking of the one-time pads. Pike seems convinced of their use now, and a Mr Marks has lent his support, but those that control SOE are immovable on the issue.) “However, you must remember that it is only a fledgling organisation and can only do as well as resources allow.”
“And resources could allow a damn sight more if the people distributing them had brains in their heads instead of order forms. Dammit, Spock, do you have to be so fair-minded? Would it kill you to get angry about something once in a while? Or would it upset that perfectly balanced brain of yours too much? I shouldn’t have called you a robot before - robots have more humanity in them than you can manage.”
“Have you finished?” Spock says quietly. It’s taking more control than he thinks he has just to keep from lashing out at Kirk, and he feels himself to be standing on the edge of something dangerous.
“Damn right, I’ve finished,” Kirk snarls. His footsteps fall heavy on the parquet flooring and the door jumps in its frame as he goes.
Spock sits there, breathing deeply and trying to repair the rents Kirk has torn in his control. He thinks McCoy comes in, maybe even speaks to him, but he doesn’t move or respond and eventually he is left alone. In the end he sleeps, knees drawn up to his chest in the sagging armchair.
~
Breakfast is - not exactly strained, but silent. No one speaks, and if Spock didn’t know better, he could take it for a companionable quiet, but it is not, and all three of them know it.
Later they stand shivering in shirtsleeves as Instructor Olsen teaches them the rudiments of hand-to-hand combat. His demonstrations are quite painful - though Spock does not let such things interfere with his concentration - and interspersed with frequent exhortations to ‘kick him in the bollocks’. This, according to Olsen, is the solution to all life’s ills.
Though he is trying to avoid speaking to Kirk, or even looking at him too often, Spock cannot help noticing how at home he appears with the techniques they are being shown. Of course, Spock reflects, he has probably already learnt these things in his army training.
After lunch, Olsen announces, with perhaps too much enthusiasm, that he is going to teach them three different methods of killing a man silently. Spock feels himself tense up and forces his muscles to relax. Just what did you think ‘sabotage and subversion’ would entail? he demands of himself.
Olsen is telling them something about the knives, but Spock is barely listening. The handle feels alien and wrong in his hand. He tries switching sides - perhaps he will prove to be a left-handed murderer - but to no avail.
Olsen demonstrates the cuts they will make on a dummy. Stuffing leaks from its wounds. Then he lines them up and counts them down.
McCoy tries to protest: “I’m a doctor, damn it. I’m supposed to preserve life, not - not this.”
“And when we’re starvin’ and dyin’ in the Nazi work camps, I’m sure we’ll all be very grateful for your principles,” Olsen tells him. “You can either give up now, and we’ll ship you back to the States at no extra cost - though I don’t fancy your chances across the Atlantic - or you can shut up and get on with it. Your choice.”
Grumbling to himself, McCoy tightens his grip on the knife and looks Olsen square in the eye. “For future reference? The carotid artery’s about an inch further to the left than you seem to think.”
Olsen grins wolfishly. “I’ll bear that in mind, Doctor McCoy. In your own time now.”
McCoy makes the cuts with a surgeon’s precision that Spock supposes is only to be expected. Kirk follows him without a word.
Spock steps forward, trying not to notice how life-like the dummy is from behind. As the knife snicks across the dummy’s wooden throat, Spock thinks hard about carpentry and woodcarving and not at all about how one day this could be a human being gasping his last in Spock’s hands. Then it’s over and he stands there dumbly for a moment, the knife held loose by his side.
“That was terrible,” Olsen tells him cheerfully. “Everyone line up and I’ll show you how it’s done again.”
Spock doesn’t know whether to cling to the sick feeling of disgust he has for this whole exercise, or to push it away. In the end, he is not sure he can do either, but the feeling remains, pushing at his rather tenuous sense of control.
Finally the lesson ends. Spock would like nothing better than to disappear, to get away from here and find a place to let go, but to run would shatter any illusion he has of control and would certainly cause Kirk and McCoy to follow. So he walks, long strides and steady gaze shrouding him in a confidence he doesn’t feel.
He hears Kirk’s voice behind him, calling for him to wait up, but he ignores it. Kirk says, “I’m going after him.” Spock speeds up his pace.
“Take a hint and leave it, Jim.”
“Uh, yeah, he’s a vegetarian who’s just been taught to kill with his bare hands. I’m going after him.”
“Jim!”
Kirk catches up with Spock as he reaches the back door. For a fleeting moment, Spock considers breaking left and heading out towards the woods and fields - he has a height advantage, he could outrun Kirk easily - but decides against it. Kirk can be amazingly persistent when he chooses.
They pass through the house in silence, side by side. The only words they exchange are at the top of the servants’ staircase. “Why are you following me?” Spock spits out, every word an exercise in restraint.
Kirk stands his ground. “Because you need me to.”
“That is absurd.”
Spock turns and strides on down the corridor. At the far end is a set of steps up to the roof, black paint peeling from the ironwork. He takes them two at a time, ignoring the clangs of Kirk ascending just behind him.
The air up here smells of rain, and the bricks of the main chimney are damp through Spock’s shirt as he leans against it. Kirk slumps beside him, not touching, not talking, a careful two inches of air between their shoulders.
Spock shuts his eyes, aware that his breath is still coming in ragged clumps. “Go away,” he says.
Kirk snorts softly. “Yeah, that’s happening.”
Spock digs his fingertips into the brickwork. “Why must you persist in--”
“In not doing as I’m told? Perhaps you haven’t heard, but I wasn’t a very good soldier.”
“Better than I,” Spock says, letting his head fall back against the chimney.
“Not true, actually. I’m only here because it was this or get thrown out on my ear.”
“As am I.”
“You managed to fuck up badly enough to get thrown out of code school?”
“Not precisely.” Kirk waits for him to continue. Spock swallows. How has he been manoeuvred into this particular corner? “There were rumours of an… indiscretion between myself and a colleague,” he says reluctantly. “One of my supervisors thought he could use the information for his own advantage. It came to a point where my only options were to report his behaviour or seek new employment, and I chose the latter.”
“But why?”
Kirk, Spock thinks, has never understood the concept of cutting one’s losses. He doubts whether Kirk has ever walked away from a fight in his life. Perhaps this is bravery, or a form of stupidity that comes very close.
“It seemed the logical course of action,” he says.
“The hell it was.”
“I do not regret my choice.”
“Even after today?”
Spock shakes his head.
“Well… good,” Kirk mutters. “Just… you know. I don’t regret it either.”
It’s the closest thing to an overture of friendship either of them has expressed, and Spock feels himself flushing slightly. Fortunately, Kirk is staring straight ahead, unwilling to meet his eyes, and the uncomfortable moment passes. For at least the next three seconds, at which point Kirk draws in a deep breath and says, “About last night - I was wrong and… Look. I could give you excuses, but I was out of line and I’m sorry.”
“And I am sorry that you believe I do not care,” Spock says, looking away.
“Spock.” Kirk reaches out tentatively to touch his shoulder, and Spock has to force himself not to flinch away. “I don’t think you don’t care. Hell, after today, I’d say you probably care more than the rest of us put together. So, yes, I’m sorry I was an asshole and… don’t hate me?”
Spock looks at him in surprise. “I do not hate you. That would suggest a degree of emotional investment I do not feel. If you will excuse me, I should like to return to my room now.”
He disengages himself carefully from Kirk’s grip and walks back towards the staircase. For a moment, it looks as though Kirk will follow him, but then he falls back against the chimney, letting out a harsh breath of laughter. “‘Emotional investment I do not feel’? Bullshit.”
His words are almost swallowed by the space between them, and since Spock cannot think of any response, he pretends not to hear.
~
“Gentlemen, I bring glad tidings.”
Free time these days is precious, but none of them can resent Pike for cutting into it, especially when he waves a sheaf of paper in Spock’s direction and announces, “Order forms, Mr Spock. The powers that be have seen fit to grant your request for one-time pads, and I get to write the requisition forms.”
“Head Office finally had the stick removed from its collective ass?” Kirk asks.
“Let the record state that I don’t approve of your phrasing,” Pike says, grinning. “But yes, the surgery was a great success.”
“Nicely done, gentlemen, nicely done.” Kirk shakes everyone’s hand with much ceremony. There is an almost frightening gleam of triumph in his eyes, and Spock wonders if there is anything Kirk cannot do once he sets his mind to it.
“And just in time, too,” Pike adds. “You’ve been kept in the dark with your timetable, I know, but let’s just say that you’ll have to have gotten the hang of these things by, oh, next Wednesday sounds about right.”
From the blank looks of the other two, they hadn’t expected it to be so soon either. It seems the sort of news that should be delivered in a speech about expectations and hopes for the future, but Pike just smiles at them kindly and says, “Enjoy the rest of your stay, gentlemen.”
Once he has gone, McCoy lets out a low whistle. “Way to spring it on us.”
~
It turns out that they have even less time than they thought to prepare: their last two days will be spent learning parachute jumping with the RAF. Lessons take on a new urgency. Mastering the one-time pads is the easy part; aside from that, they attend a disconcerting number of last-minute lectures that seem designed to impress on them all the ways their mission could possibly go wrong, and pass an unsettling couple of hours in what Pike euphemistically dubs ‘Research and Development’. Here, an enthusiastic young man with a strong Scottish accent shows them ‘a couple of wee nasties I’ve rigged up for you’. Spock is particularly impressed with the exploding rat corpses, though they are not issued with any of these.
Their French lessons no longer cover the language itself. Instead, Professor Uhura gives them a detailed history of the Occupation, until new orders come in saying that they’re to be sent to the Savoy region, occupied by the Italians not the Germans, and much of what they have been taught proves inaccurate.
They acquire codenames and clothes - the former from Pike, the latter from a tailor who is apparently an expert in French styles. When the clothes arrive, they have already passed through SOE’s team of scientists and look at least three years old. Their cover stories are checked and double-checked for inconsistencies that could give them away to the Milice.
Somewhere in the last two weeks, Spock has lost the ability to sleep the whole night through. It hasn’t bothered him until now, when he lies awake and cannot keep from calculating the probability that he will die, that McCoy will die, that Kirk will die, or worse, that they will make some tiny slip that will plunge the world further into this grey morass it is drowning in.
Or perhaps they will make no difference at all - and this is what scares him the most.
~
There is a party their final night at Beaulieu, which Spock considers in dubious taste until he notices that many of the female attendees are making woefully unsubtle attempts to charm state secrets out of the agents-to-be. At this point it becomes clear that the evening is actually one of SOE’s more practical ideas. In any case, he has observed that many people are foolishly attached to the idea of a ‘last hoorah’.
Kirk likens it to a condemned man’s final meal, then announces that they may as well enjoy it while it lasts and vanishes into a knot of people. McCoy shrugs and follows him.
At some point amidst the smoke and light and noise, Spock finds himself kissing Kirk. Afterwards, he can’t quite trace the path of actions that led up to this moment - there was, he suspects, a lot of champagne involved - but he remembers the event itself in awful clarity.
Strictly speaking, since Spock is the one pressed up against the dark wall of the terrace, Kirk is kissing him, which is confusing enough on its own. There is simply no accounting for the fact that Spock is kissing him back, hands coming up to hold Kirk’s shoulders and pull him closer.
It shouldn’t be happening; the small part of Spock’s brain that sits apart and analyses everything knows that much, at least. Kirk is arrogant and antagonistic and bewildering, and Spock is not sure he even likes him, let alone… He cuts that thought off and struggles to disentangle himself.
“You are drunk,” he says firmly when Kirk protests. This seems to have no effect, so he adds, “As am I.”
Kirk retreats a few steps and looks down at his shoes, then back to Spock. “If I wasn’t and you weren’t, would you…?”
“The point is moot,” Spock says, “since we both are.” The response is glib, instinctive, and considerably easier than a truthful answer. He is not even sure what a truthful answer would be.
He takes Kirk’s shoulder and propels him bodily back through the French windows into the ballroom. Once they have located McCoy at one of the flimsy card tables, the night passes easily - Spock concentrates his whole attention on the conversation and avoids looking at Kirk. Perhaps ‘easily’ is not the right word, but at least the night passes.
~
Spock is perhaps the only one of the three grateful for the early start next morning. It means he only has to spend half an hour lying awake not thinking about the previous night before he can legitimately get up and find more useful methods of distraction, like packing his battered new suitcase.
At breakfast, McCoy drinks copious amounts of coffee and mocks Kirk’s unscientific hangover cure of powdered egg, pepper and Worcester sauce. Spock agrees, but takes care to mention the placebo effect, which allows him to get drawn in to one of McCoy’s enthusiastic arguments on the subject.
Then they’re packed off in a van for an RAF base, location kept secret. They’re given a few minutes to store their cases in the bunkroom before being escorted out into a large field of uncut grass. Their instructor is built along the same lines as Olsen: around six foot in height, solidly built but not overly so, with the short-clipped hair that marks him as a soldier. An airman, Spock reminds himself, though perhaps it amounts to the same thing these days.
He tosses parachute packs towards them, eyes gleaming in approval when none of them fumble the catch. For silk, the parachutes are surprisingly heavy. He shows them how to strap them on and leads them to a barn on the edge of the field. They are already standing in the hayloft before McCoy seems to realise what comes next.
“When you jump, keep your legs together and your arms tucked in,” the instructor says. “I’ve seen more people break things because they just don’t listen than from anything going wrong.”
This is not altogether reassuring, and McCoy obviously thinks the same, because he scowls at the instructor in the way that means, ‘I’d like to call you ten kinds of idiot, but am resisting heroically’.
With deft, practised movements, the instructor fixes a length of rope to Spock’s parachute pack. The rope loops over a pulley; at the other end is a large sandbag. “To fake the parachute drag,” Spock is told. “On three, now.” The drop is, Spock estimates, about twelve feet. He tries to remember how high one has to be to reach terminal velocity.
“Three.”
Spock does not recall actually jumping, only the drag of the harness against his shoulders and the thump that shakes through him when he lands. He has not fallen over, and the landing is not painful. He hopes this is an accurate simulation of reality.
McCoy goes next. As he approaches the edge of the loft he shuts his eyes, and when he reaches the bottom, a heartfelt, “Hell,” floats back up. Kirk and the instructor grin.
They continue to practice the static jumps until the instructor is convinced they will survive the next level of training.
“No point in sending you up with the balloon now,” he says. “There’ll be food in the mess hall ‘til seven-ish - the mess hall’s the building on your right once you go out of here - and lights out is at ten. I’ll send one of the lads round to wake you up tomorrow.”
“Ready for another day of fun and adventure,” McCoy mutters. “I can’t wait.”
~
In the mess hall, Kirk pokes suspiciously at his stew, whistling Run, Rabbit, Run under his breath. McCoy nudges him sharply. “Knock it off, Jim. People are staring.”
“Oh, like they care about us. We’re just here for the day-trip and they know it.”
“Well, aren’t you a little ray of sunshine today?” His eyes take in the portion of stew still on Spock’s plate; the way Kirk hasn’t just taken it, as is his habit these days. “Don’t tell me, you’ve been at it again.”
“I beg your pardon, Doctor?”
“Fighting. Angels and ministers of grace defend me, but I thought you’d gotten over that. You have, haven’t you? Jittery as June bugs round each other.”
Kirk says, “We haven’t been fighting, Bones,” just as Spock says, “You are incorrect, Doctor. Furthermore, I fail to see how it is any of your business.”
McCoy looks between the two of them in exasperation. “Fine. Don’t tell me - see if I care. Just patch up whatever it is you’re not fighting about before we ship out. For the sake of my sanity, if nothing else.”
He pushes back his chair and stomps off to join the line for coffee. The second he’s out of hearing range, Kirk looks up from his food and says, “So, about last night.”
“Please, don’t.”
“No, I wanted to apologise.” Kirk looks determined, and much as Spock would like to avoid this conversation that doesn’t look possible, so he says, “I do not see why.”
“Because if we were in Iowa, your daddy would’ve come round with a shotgun by now.”
There is so much that is ridiculous about this sentence that Spock clings to the one thing he is sure of. “My father does not own a shotgun.”
Kirk’s lips twitch in a smile. “No, but me throwing myself on you when you were too drunk to protest - makes me feel like the cad in a bad romance novel.”
“I take issue with your claim that I was ‘too drunk to protest’,” Spock tells him. “I did, if you recall. Additionally, there is a disturbing lack of logic to your argument that I am not responsible for my actions when drunk, but you are.”
Kirk doesn’t bother to refute this. He is studying Spock now, searching for a trace of - Spock is unsure what, but he schools his face into the blankest expression he can. Eventually Kirk leans back, shaking his head. “Okay, I have no clue what you’re thinking here, so can you… talk to me? Preferably before Bones gets back?”
“I do not know what I think,” Spock says, trying to keep a check on the frustration he can hear spilling into his voice.
“Um. Okay.”
Spock would very much like to shake him - he thinks one of them should have some idea what to do now, and since Kirk opened proceedings, it’s his responsibility - but the silence spins itself out and neither of them move.
Eventually, Spock says, “I do not think it-wise to embark on a venture of this sort,” and he knows he’s a coward for the way he edges round the words like they might explode.
Kirk shrugs one shoulder. “Try telling that to all the girls with their soldier boys. We’d at least be better off than them.”
Spock has at least three counterarguments to this, but before he can deploy them, McCoy returns. “Got you coffee,” he says to Kirk, passing him the mug. “And tea for you,” he adds, carefully putting the cup down in front of Spock and unhooking his fingers from its handle.
“Lifesaver, Bones,” Kirk says, taking a sip and tilting his head back in rapture.
~
Spock lies awake on his bunk that night and wonders why he cannot find any of the certainties other people seem to be blessed with. He is fully prepared to admit that he is not as expert in emotions as he is in, say, differential equations, but most people (normal people) seem so sure in what they feel. Why can’t he be?
He wonders how Kirk can be so certain, or if it’s all merely an act. He wonders if his own careful concealments count as an act, and if perhaps everyone is acting. He wonders whether maybe, if one kept up the act for long enough, it would become reality.
Then he decides his brain is becoming locked in circular loops of pointless conjecture. He rolls over and forces his minds into the narrow tracks of multiplication tables.
~
McCoy darts another look over the edge of the balloon and promptly turns white. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“That’s what they all say. There’s really nothing to be scared of if you follow instructions. Legs together, as the curate said to the chorus-girl.” Sergeant Darnell, the instructor from yesterday, slaps McCoy on the back, inviting him to share the joke. McCoy glowers at him.
“Don’t pander to me, kid. You know what a shattered femur looks like? Or how it feels to hit the ground at a hundred miles an hour? Think about that and tell me there’s nothing to be scared of.”
McCoy’s breathing is audible even over the roar of the balloon’s burner. Spock steps towards him - the balloon shifts perilously under his weight - and says quietly, “Apprehension is perfectly logical, Doctor.”
McCoy turns his glare on Spock. “I’m not apprehensive, I’d just rather not end my days splattered across England’s green and pleasant land.”
“You’ll be fine,” Kirk says firmly.
Darnell turns back from checking the altimeter. “Reckon we’re at the drop height now. Don’t worry about pulling the cord, there’s a static line attached to the balloon and you’ll get the same on your actual drop.” He smiles grimly. “You’ll have more important things to worry about than that.”
“Oh, joy. Well, let’s get it over with then.”
Kirk exchanges a quick glance with Spock. “You sure you want to go first, Bones? Spock or I could--”
“Jim, I’m a grown man. Don’t need you tryin’ to babysit me.” McCoy’s Southern accent has thickened noticeably, a clear sign of stress. Spock raises his eyebrows at Kirk and nods his head towards the edge of the basket. Kirk grimaces.
“If you’re sure…”
“Yeah.”
But McCoy curses fluently under his breath all the time Darnell is checking the straps on his harness, and at the very last second he turns to Kirk and grits out between clenched teeth, “Jim, I can’t.”
Spock sees Darnell make a sudden movement towards McCoy and grabs the sergeant’s elbow without pausing to think. The man is too well trained to do more than hiss at the pain, but he stops moving. Low and quiet, so McCoy won’t hear, Spock says, “Pushing my friend out of the balloon would not be a wise move at this juncture, Sergeant.”
Darnell swears under his breath and mutters something that might be, “Bloody amateurs.” Spock adjusts his grip.
Kirk is standing close to McCoy, both hands on the other man’s shoulder, speaking in soft, soothing cadences. McCoy looks mutinous, but this is at least an improvement on blank fear. A second later Kirk straightens up and announces, “There’s been a change of plan. I’ll be jumping first after all.”
“Fantastic,” Darnell growls. “Tell your friend to let go of my arm and we might actually get somewhere.”
“I apologise, Sergeant,” Spock says, releasing him so that he can tend to Kirk’s parachute.
“A bientôt, mes amis,” Kirk says with a grin, stepping out of the basket. In the brief moment before his chute opens, Spock sees him waving, though whether at them or at the ground below, he is not entirely sure.
He watches the white circle diminishing against the green of the field; sees it crumple and lose its symmetry as Kirk hits the ground.
Darnell is already hustling McCoy into position. “Don’t think about it,” he advises, squeezing McCoy’s shoulder. “It’ll be over before you know it.”
McCoy nods tightly. Then he jumps. Darnell watches critically. “Think he’s going to yell like that every time?”
“Does it matter?”
“Nah.” Darnell tugs hard on Spock’s shoulder straps - payback for his arm, Spock thinks. “Just some of the pilots would pay good money to see that. Joking,” he adds hastily. “Christ, why’re you lot always so touchy? Something up with SOE’s recruiting procedure, I’d say.”
“Perhaps,” Spock observes, “‘touchiness’ is the preferred state for a spy?”
“Maybe, maybe. Now, keep your legs together - I’ve already done the one about the chorus-girl, haven’t I?”
“You have,” Spock agrees, and jumps.
Time stretches in ways that bear no relation to relativity. For endless seconds, Spock is in freefall, feeling himself gently supported on some invisible cushion. The ground is approaching very fast, individual trees beginning to stand out along the field’s perimeter, then their branches. Then the line goes and Spock’s harness hauls him roughly upwards before beginning a more gentle descent. Soon he can make out the patches of bare earth where dozens of other trainees have landed.
Though the parachute has slowed him, Spock feels he is moving very fast relative to the ground. Too fast? He tries in vain to find some fixed point to measure his velocity against, and when he looks down he can see clover amid the grass stalks. He bends his knees and prepares for impact.
The landing is considerably harder than jumping from the hayloft. Spock staggers slightly, nearly falls over, and the parachute settles over him in swathes of white silk. Hands reach out to disentangle him, and he emerges to find Kirk and McCoy holding armfuls of silk and grinning at him. If McCoy’s smile is still somewhat queasy, Spock doesn’t think it his place to remark on it.
“Nice of you to drop by,” Kirk quips, and McCoy groans.
“I suspect that telling you it is only a flying visit would be more apt had we jumped from an aeroplane.”
Kirk’s eyebrows leap alarmingly. “Did you just… make a joke?”
“It’s you, you’ve infected him with your godawful puns,” McCoy says, throwing his armful of parachute silk over Kirk’s head.
“Well, I’m just in awe of your mature sense of humour, Bones,” Kirk tells him once he’s untangled himself.
“You are both as insufferable as each other.” Spock relieves them of his parachute and begins to fold it up. He feels quite illogically pleased when he recalls Kirk’s look of stupefaction.
Up above, the balloon dips and bobs as Darnell begins its slow descent. Kirk throws himself down on the grass and tugs his discarded parachute pack over to serve as a pillow.
“Those grass-stains will never come out,” McCoy warns him. “Oh, what the hell.” Eight seconds later, he too is lying flat on his back, one arm flung across his eyes. “Spock, you coming? Got a long wait for that balloon, else.”
Spock acknowledges the truth of this. He puts his pack carefully on the ground and settles himself cross-legged beside it. McCoy lifts his arm enough to spare him a brief eyeroll.
“Yeah, real relaxed there, Spock.”
Spock raises an eyebrow at him, but McCoy has already let his arm fall back. Spock does not mind. In this field, in the sunlight, it is hard to mind about anything. There is a rightness about the scene that is almost tangible. Beside him, Kirk shifts slightly, crossing one ankle over the other. He is smiling faintly, and Spock wonders if he has fallen asleep already.
Spock shuts his eyes, unprepared for the rush of fondness brought on by the sight. The feeling is unfamiliar and discomfiting, and he tries to bury it in calculations - the terminal velocity of their bodies as they fell, the drag co-efficient of the air - but the number of assumptions he must make to do the sums in his head is too great.
The current state of affairs between himself and Kirk is unsatisfactory, and only likely to worsen until he works out a suitable plan of action. To do as Kirk suggests and embark on a romantic relationship with him is clearly impossible. (Is that what Kirk is suggesting, or is he merely offering what Spock has heard crudely referred to as ‘soldier’s solace’?) SOE expects only half of its operatives to survive - intellectually, Spock knows that it is quite likely one or more of them will die. What he has not considered is the effect on those who survive. Now he knows, with deep, aching certainty, that he will not be unaffected by the death of either of his teammates. His friends. Any emotional distance he might have hoped for has long since been swept away. Perhaps it is too late for such considerations, but in Spock’s experience, caring about people only leads to pain, and he will not go further down that road than he already has.
As soon as they have privacy, he will explain this to Kirk and so resolve matters.
Privacy, though, is kept in short supply as they are hurried through the last stage of training - a jump from a real plane. McCoy has found a flask of something pungently alcoholic, which seems to be more than capable of patching any holes in his confidence, and everything goes smoothly.
This done, Sergeant Darnell seems disinclined to let them leave his sight - apparently the weather conditions tonight are optimal and he doesn’t want to postpone the drop because one of them has gone missing. Under his watchful eye, they pack their suitcases in complete silence. Then a man none of them have seen before on the base orders them to follow him into a deserted Nissen hut, where he unpacks their cases onto trestle tables, goes through the contents with great thoroughness, and does the same for the clothes they are wearing. Only when he is satisfied they’re carrying nothing that could link them to England and SOE are they allowed to take their cases back.
They sit in the bunkroom, waiting for darkness to fall. McCoy is clearly suffering from anticipatory nerves, but he’s hiding them as best he can from Sergeant Darnell.
Finally another airman arrives to escort them out to the aeroplane. As he straps them in, he talks constantly, a steady stream of reminders and helpful tips: “Remember to let the supplies drop first - they’ll survive if you land on them, but I wouldn’t like to say the same for the other way round. I hope you’ve got your thermals on - ‘s bloody freezing up there, for all it’s supposedly June. Don’t worry about anything except keeping your knees together and not breaking your legs. Us and the boys on the ground can take care of everything else.”
Then the engines are rattling into life, they’re bouncing down the tarmac and suddenly there’s nothing except wind to support them. The airman’s eyes are bright. He turns to them, grinning, and bellows over the noise of the engines, “I love this bit!”
McCoy mutters, “Oh do you now?” but Spock thinks he’s the only person to hear it.
Half an hour passes and Spock finally concedes that the airman may have had a point - whatever the temperature earlier in the day, or even at ground level, up here it is rapidly approaching sub-zero. His hands in the pockets of his greatcoat are already numb, and an insistent draught is threatening to do the same to his nose. He hunches his shoulders and tries his best to sink into the warm woollen folds of his coat.
Beside him, Kirk is doing likewise. He calls to the airman, “How long does this normally take?”
“Depends. Couple of hours usually, but we’ve got a good wind behind us, should make things a bit easier. Not so much fun for us coming back, but you don’t need to worry about that.”
Kirk nods and goes back to trying to control his shivers. Somewhere during the flight, he has ended up pressed to Spock’s side, and on Spock’s right, McCoy has done the same, sharing the scant amount of body heat each of them generates.
Spock wakes to find his head bumping gently against the side of the plane. The pilot is shouting something, but he can’t hear what. The airman has vanished. He looks to his left.
“Turbulence.” Kirk answers the unspoken question with a grimace. “Hit some sort of mountain storm, I think.”
“‘Mountain storm’? Then we are nearly there?”
“I guess.”
At this moment, the airman reappears, crawling down the gangway from the cockpit.
“Just been talking to the pilot - we’ll be coming in to the drop zone in five minutes, give or take.” He digs inside his fleece-lined flight jacket and produces a flask. “Bit of Dutch courage to speed you on your way, lads?”
The alcohol burns on the way down - the sole reason Spock will drink it - but otherwise has no appreciable effect.
At the back of the plane, a hatch opens. The airman unbuckles them and motions them to help in pushing the large bundles stacked against the walls through the hatch. Spock follows their descent, parachutes white and ghostly in the moonlight. The airman nods and waves Kirk forwards.
“Be seeing you,” Kirk says, and steps into space. A scant second after he’s gone, the plane bucks violently in the air. The airman swears. “Quick, go quickly, damn it.”
McCoy shuts his eyes, opens them again and steps through the hatch. Spock is about to follow him when the airman grabs hold of his harness. Spock turns to stare at him.
“Can’t go now,” the man explains. “We’ve gone too far into the valley - too much chance of you being spotted if you jump now. Give us a few minutes to circle round and we’ll give it another go.”
Spock edges back from the hole and is just in time to catch hold of one of the straps on the wall as the plane banks in a tight corner.
“On my signal,” the airman shouts. “Go, go, go!”
Reacting on instinct to the tone of command, Spock throws himself out the hatch and is immediately snatched up by a fierce wind. There are lights wheeling dizzyingly below him, but he’s too disoriented to know whether they are stars or the torches that are meant to be guiding him down. Then his parachute deploys with a violent jerk and things begin to settle.
As he gets closer, he can see dim figures moving in the torchlight, and catches the gleam of parachute silk. Then a terrific gust of wind catches him, swings him sickeningly around, and when he looks back down the glints of torchlight seem very distant.
He refuses to panic - it can only worsen his predicament - but the wind seems to be carrying him even further away. He tugs on the parachute cords, trying to encourage the great unwieldy canopy above him to turn back towards the lights. It’s partially successful, and he continues to hang on, even as the cords cut into his fingers. He stares at the ground below him, fixing it in his memory. He doubts he will make it back to the main drop zone before he lands and he has no other means of navigation.
He hits the black ground below far too fast, tucking into the smallest ball he can and simply rolling until he comes to a natural halt. When he picks himself up, the wind is still grabbing at his parachute. It takes all his strength to gather it back into its pack.
Ignoring the ache in his shoulders, he begins to pick his way over the ridge, back towards the drop zone. It is only now that Spock notices it is raining, making his boots skid over the grass. Once he gets to the scree immediately below the ridge, it only gets worse: stones skitter away under his feet and at every step he risks falling and sliding back to the bottom.
The ridge is sheer, but there’s a chimney in the rock, sheltered from the rain by overhanging bushes. Spock is not inclined to believe in luck, but he is nonetheless grateful for the respite. Once at the top, he can see that it is only a short stretch of grass to the torches. He sets off at a brisk jog.
As he draws near, he hears a voice raised in angry French and realises it’s Kirk’s.
“I don’t care what your orders are, we’re waiting here until my friend shows up. And if he doesn’t show up, we’re going looking for him.”
Spock thinks that some sort of intervention may be needed to keep Kirk from striking their contact. He’s near enough by now to call out and he does so, taking care to use Kirk’s codename. The look of absolute delight on Kirk’s face is worth any discomfort Spock has suffered to get here.
“Sp- Sébastien! What in God’s name happened to you?”
Any reply is made difficult by the fierce hug he gives Spock. At the contact, Spock stiffens instinctively, but there is such genuine relief in Kirk’s face that he forces himself to relax into it, bringing his hands up to hold Kirk’s shoulders.
At length Kirk steps back, looking a little embarrassed. “So, where have you been?”
“The wind blew me off course, though fortunately not more than a kilometre or so.”
“Quite far enough,” McCoy declares, gripping Spock’s shoulder briefly.
Their contact clears her throat. “If you’ve quite finished, perhaps you could lend a hand lifting the crates onto the wagons?"
Part Three