A Tide Taken at the Flood (Pike, PG-13) 1/3
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The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. It’s a respectable old joke, and one Pike repeats to himself often as a kind of talisman when he has to rise in the cold, grey pre-dawn. On the floor beside him, Darcy raises her yellow head and lifts her tail, readier for the day than Pike will ever be. She’s been here a few weeks, and his resentment at her presence has segued first into tolerance and eventually grudging enjoyment. It’s nice to wake up to another living being, even if he wishes the golden-haired companion were human and in bed next to him. At his command, Darcy pulls his chair level with the bed, helps him balance as he transfers to the shower, brings him his towel, and helps tug his pants up. He’s getting to the point where he could do most of these things without her, but she enjoys doing what she was trained for. Pike knows the feeling. He also remembers those early days when he stubbornly attacked each task and wrestled it into submission, only to feel completely exhausted and demoralized by 1600 hours. Everything Darcy does for him is a little bit in the bank against later.
By the time Pike wheels to the table with his coffee and egg and miso soup balanced precariously in his lap, the pale excuse for dawn has broken over the city. Rivers of fog pour through the Golden Gate, cascading over the Bay, completely shrouding the older, lower buildings. If Pike were in his own condo, the 21st Century low-rise in Mission Bay he’d waited five years for, he’d be looking up at a fog ceiling that would erase three centuries of downtown development. As it is, he’s temporarily on the 124th floor of a posh apartment building that’s something of a ghetto for Starfleet senior officers. The turbolift is rife with them, and there are days when he can’t get out of the building without getting sucked into a conversation about the budget or promotions or the Romulan Matter.
This morning, he’s lucky enough to make the ride alone, or alone except for Darcy. The dog recognizes the number 124 and can push the button, a feat that shocked Pike the first time. She’s a jukebox of such tricks, a genetically engineered prodigy so perfectly suited for her job that Pike has seen two of her clones in this neighborhood alone. He has, at times, only half-jokingly accused her of being a spy, of telling Admiral Nogura when Pike spends his evenings reading Patrick O'Brian novels instead of situation briefs.
The street is close to deserted; the city seems to have made the sensible decision to sleep in. The exception is Li-Wen, owner of the corner bakery, who gives Pike a nod and a wink as he goes by. She has a lovely smile and the best sourdough boules in town, and Pike has thought about doing something about it more than once, but the prospect is, as so many things are these days, fraught with implications. Pike is famous, something he never wanted, and in the absolute last possible way he ever wanted to be: he is not a hero, but a martyr. He doesn’t want pretty Li-Wen or anyone else for that matter to sleep with him as if she were throwing a wreath into the water.
He halts at the corner while a gaggle of bicycles go by. A man is waiting beside him, juggling a couple of grocery bags, distracted enough that the double take comes almost a moment too late. Pike knows the sequence all to well-the flicking sideways glance, the surprised re-check, the eyebrows lifting and mouth opening before the brain has a chance to engage.
“Captain Pike! I mean, Admiral Pike!” He plunks the bags down, blocking Pike’s way. Darcy looks at him disapprovingly. “I’ll only take a minute of your time, sir, but I just want to say-thank you for your sacrifices for this planet. I hope when it comes time to give the Romulans what’s coming to them, there’ll be a photon torpedo with your name on it.”
“It wasn’t the Romulans, you know,” Pike says mildly. “Just one particularly deluded Romulan.”
The man is already shaking his head before Pike has finished. “I’m sorry, sir, with all due respect, I’ve read a lot on the nets, and it’s pretty clear that the whole Nero thing was just a cover for a Romulan plot to destroy Vulcan. There’s no way a bunch of miners could have built that ship on their own. And the Enterprise? That kid Kirk? It all goes back to the Kelvin. You see, Starfleet sent it on a secret mission to-“
“Well!” Pike says with false brightness, interrupting. “It seems you know more about it than I do. If Starfleet wants to debrief you, I’ll tell them they can find you at Fulton Market in the produce aisle.” And with that, he executes a tight turn with his chair and leaves the man behind, mouth still agape.
As usual, the fog clears halfway across the Bridge as if it’s getting kickbacks from the Marin County Tourism Board. The sun feels wonderful, and Pike can measure his procrastination in tenths of kilometers per hour. Just before the gates to Starfleet Headquarters, Pike stops at a coffee cart. Between meetings and physical therapy, he’s looking at another 12-hour day, and he figures that caffeine, like pain meds, is best taken ahead of need. He stops there almost every morning, and appreciates the fact that the proprietor never refuses to take his credits, although this morning, as he often does, he pulls a stale cruller from inside the cart and gives it to Pike to give to Darcy. Pike lets the dog gingerly give the man the credit strip and receive it back so that the doughnut can be her reward. He thinks about making her show off a few of her tricks, but it seems like an insult to her professional integrity. Instead, he tears the cruller into bits and tosses them in the air. She leaps, yipping softly, golden hair streaming out behind her. A beautiful animal, pure joy in motion. Pike thinks, not for the first time, that he should take her down to Presidio Park and let her run around for a while and just be a dog. But of course Darcy isn’t just a dog, any more than Pike is just a man. They both have a purpose, if not a destiny, and neither of them will be free to run on green grass for quite a while.
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It’s Day 3 when Kirk comes to visit, or so they tell him. Pike has been sedated, asleep, or floating on painkillers on and off for so long that he’s completely lost track of time. The white lights of the ICU tell him nothing and neither do the doctors and nurses, whose response to his raspy questions is uniformly a vague smile and another hypo. He hasn’t been in any pain and he supposes he should be grateful, but without it his brain is having a hard time making sense of what’s happening with his body. He can move his head and arms but nothing else. He supposes it’s some kind of chemical restraint so that he doesn’t thrash around and compound the spinal cord damage.
Kirk has McCoy in tow as usual, and they’re both back in their cadet uniforms. It looks strange now, like grown men in short pants. McCoy’s dark eyes slide inexorably toward the bank of displays above the biobed. Kirk pulls up a chair so he’s level with Pike’s head and sits down. After a moment, Pike sees McCoy’s gaze shift to the two Enterprise captains, and he mumbles that he’ll wait outside, and hastily retreats.
“Don’t go far,” Pike calls after him, hearing his own voice hoarse and weak. “I want to talk to you.
Kirk wordlessly fills Pike’s cup of water and hands it to him, holding it steady so he can sip from the straw. It’s humiliating to be so weak and dependent, but Kirk makes it easier by treating it matter-of-factly. He has come empty handed, not adding to the shrine of flowers and cards that has bloomed at the foot of Pike’s bed, and which in a less lucid moment he has mistaken for a grave. Nor does he ask how Pike is feeling. Instead, he brings the thing Pike has been missing most: information.
“I would have come sooner but they’ve been interrogating us for three days straight,” Kirk says. The cuts and bruises on his face are gone, but his blue eyes are more bloodshot than usual. Pike wonders if they’ve let him get any sleep. “Especially about Nero, and the Nerada, since you, me and Spock were the only ones who saw it. They actually brought in an artist to make a drawing of the bridge. I told them they should ask Spock; he’s the one with the fucking eidetic memory.”
“Language, cadet,” Pike says because he can.
“Sorry, sir.” Kirk gives him a lopsided, unrepentant smile. “Of course, they asked about you, too. Why you left the ship, why you made me first officer, what condition you were in when we pulled you out. Some of the questions are way too specific, and they keep asking them again and again. My best guess is that they had some intelligence on Nero, maybe a Klingon agent, maybe from the Vulcans. Now they’re trying to convince themselves they couldn’t possibly have anticipated the attack, when you and I both know they started looking the other way after the Kelvin. Nobody wanted the Romulans to be a threat and so they weren’t, and we made them the Vulcans' problem. Well, we sure as hell have to deal with them now.”
Pike is considering this when his vision blurs a little. The word Romulans, which no one has said around him before now, reverberates in his head, bringing with it a flash of blue, a whiff of fetid air.
“Sir?” Kirk sounds uncertain. “Shall I get the doctor?”
“No,” Pike says, running a hand over his face. “Just pass me that water again.” Kirk does, watching him a little more closely than before. Pike takes a pull from the straw and tries to regroup. “Did they say anything else about me?” It’s a ridiculously egotistical question and not near enough to the one he really wants to ask, the one that’s haunted him during his few waking hours, but he has a foolish desire not to seem weak in front of Kirk. As if he could seem anything else, flat on his back with a half dozen tubes running in and out of him.
“No, sir. Everyone seems to agree that your actions were heroic.” Only Kirk could use that word in such a specific and unfreighted way.
“Don’t know about that,” Pike says, though it’s too late to be self deprecating. He feels half-nauseated with relief. “What about you? Is there a bronze statue in the Quad yet?” It’s a bit obnoxious, but Kirk has done him the courtesy of treating him like a normal person, so Pike thinks he should return the favor.
“Well, they dropped the disciplinary charges against me. It looks like I’ll graduate next month.” He leans back in the chair, folding his arms and stretching his long legs out in front of him.
“That should come as a relief to your instructors.” Kirk laughs, getting the joke on at least one level. Kirk’s tenure at the Academy has been a relentless three-year barrage of charisma, talent and brains that has half his teachers framing his term papers and the other half marking bottles of aged Scotch with his graduation date.
“They’re also talking about a retroactive commission, to lieutenant. It’ll make writing the reports easier, plus they won’t have the embarrassment of admitting they had a cadet at the helm of their biggest boat.”
“That’s it? That hardly seems like an adequate reward for saving the planet.” Pike feels both annoyance on Kirk’s behalf and something like a reprieve. It’s an ungenerous impulse, fed on depression and self-pity, and Pike gives himself a little mental kick in the pants for it. Of course the Federation is getting the greatest possible mileage out of its handsome young savior, Kirk’s considerable merit notwithstanding. The fact that Pike, isolated in his own body and thoughts, hasn’t had to witness the swooning news coverage doesn’t make it any less vivid in his mind.
“Well, sir, you know the Admiralty hates surprises.” Kirk picks at a loose thread on his crimson trousers, looking glum. “I think they want to understand everything fully before they make any definitive public statements, and recognizing me would be a pretty definitive statement. Or maybe it’ll just be more fun to court-martial me instead of expel me. Right now, between the Vulcans and the Romulans and the time travel and the second Spock, they’re confused as shit. Excuse me, ‘confused as heck.’”
It’s at this moment that Pike belatedly realizes that Kirk has been treating him all along as a first officer would, respecting the chain of command but watching his captain’s back, giving him the frank assessments needed to make an informed decision. Given that Pike’s decision-making is currently limited to apple juice or green tea, he isn’t sure whether Kirk is humoring him, soliciting advice, or just taking the opportunity to vent after having his tubes purged by Starfleet Command. It doesn’t matter in any case, since Dr. Otenga is bearing down on them, tapping her watch and making Kirk mutter “I better go” without trying so much as a smile on her.
“Is there anything I can do for you, sir?” he says, rising to his full, limber height.
Pike shrugs. “Come back if there’s news. These SOBs won’t even tell me who won the game last night. Oh, and send in McCoy, if he’s still out there.”
Kirk puts his heels together and nods, waiting for Pike to nod back, as if he’s being dismissed. It’s a nice gesture and a surprising evolution in sensitivity for a man who in the past has been about as restrained and subtle as a full-grown Newfoundland. Pike realizes he let him go without thanking him for saving his life, but then he isn’t sure he feels the proper gratitude for that yet.
As Kirk leaves, Dr. Otenga swoops in to check the displays that annotate Pike’s state of being, as if suspecting Kirk of moving the readouts in the wrong direction by his mere presence. McCoy enters moments later and hovers uncertainly on the periphery until Otenga waves him over. The two of them stare at the screens and talk quietly about cortisol levels and cerebrospinal fluid, and since Pike doesn’t understand two words out of three, he sees what he can learn from their interaction.
Before Dr. Puri started talking up McCoy for a medical staff position on the Enterprise, Pike had only known him as Kirk’s friend, a good-looking thirtyish guy perpetually bobbing in Kirk’s wake. They make an odd pair, as McCoy is older, quieter, and more stubbornly intense. The thought that McCoy has been a steadying influence is a bit frightening in light of what Kirk has become in any case.
McCoy is deferential to Otenga, as he should be to one of Starfleet Medical’s senior staff physicians, and Otenga is just shy of collegial in return. McCoy is the de facto CMO of the Enterprise and, it seems from the way he’s being treated, likely to keep that position. It’s a career path that holds out the hope of being remembered as something other than the guy who smuggled Kirk on board. Otenga excuses herself to McCoy with a little pat on his shoulder, drifting away without acknowledging Pike. He supposes that with all that telemetry, there’s nothing much that he or his actual, physical body can add in any case. McCoy sits down in the chair Kirk vacated and asks, “What do you want to know, captain?”
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They materialize in a Transporter Room as noisily chaotic as the ship they left behind. There’s too much to process: pain and relief and bright light and shouting. Out of the tumult McCoy appears and smoothly transfers Pike’s weight from Kirk’s shoulder to his own. Kirk glances at Spock, who materialized beside them, and the two bolt from the room without a backward glance. McCoy is scanning Pike with his free hand, barking orders to the medics, including the one who’s supporting Pike’s other arm. Pike wants to ask about the state of the ship, the plan of battle, but his brain seems to be slowing down as quickly as his legs.
They burst into the Medical Bay and Pike is shocked at what he sees: scorched walls, dangling wires, unhygienic dust being kicked up any time someone takes a step. The beds are full, as are the chairs. Pike isn’t sure if it’s still the fallout from the initial attack or if the ship has incurred fresh damage. McCoy and his team hustle Pike toward a vacant biobed and all Pike can think of is Kirk and Spock on the bridge, of the magnitude of the mission that he unknowingly left them: save Earth, save the ship, save the captain. If they’ve gotten to the last one on the list, he hopes it’s because the first two, impossibly, have been accomplished. Pike had made Robau’s choice, to buy time, that most precious of commodities, with his life. He hadn’t meant to leave Kirk to his father’s fate, had actually gotten him off the ship partly for that reason, but it seems Kirk has other ideas anyway. He has found some added dimension to the equations of risk where he is unbound by the expected outcomes. Pike wonders if Spock is finding it any easier to deal with him on the bridge than he did in the Simulation Training Room.
The ship groans and brings Pike’s focus back into the room. Around the biobed, the displays have come alive and Pike’s being prepped for surgery-stripped, scrubbed, shot up. At the next doom-filled, rasping shudder that makes the lights flicker, McCoy mutters, “Is it too much to ask to be able do my goddamned job?” Pike is having trouble focusing. His gaze drifts past McCoy to one of the displays, where he sees, in beautiful three-dimensional color, the image of a human skull and spine with something oval and banded wrapped, like a hideous ornament, around the cervical vertebra. McCoy follows his gaze and then looks back at Pike, frowning, dark eyes intense, almost Vulcan except for their expression.
“You’re going to be fine, sir,” he says fiercely, and Pike can tell that he’s angry. And Pike believes him, and trusts him from that point forward. It isn’t just a doctorly platitude; it’s McCoy’s mission, and its own form of revenge.
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It’s another hazy, dreamy sunset after another humid, sun-drenched day. In Toubab Dialaw, the succession of perfect days passes unremarked as no more than its due, along with the blue water, the pinkish sand, and the occasional giraffe that wanders into the grounds of the bungalow where they’re staying. It’s their third visit here, and as he walks hand-in-hand with Fatou across the beach, Pike feels the curious anticipatory nostalgia of knowing he will never come here again. Theirs will be an amicable parting, and one that’s been planned for a long time, but Pike feels sweet regret every time he looks into Fatou’s expressive face. There is so much to miss: her good-natured wit, the feel of her hand combing through his hair, the way she-a hydraulic engineer of some repute-fixed the beverage maker that morning by giving it a good, hard whack.
“You’ll never survive in Helsinki,” he teases gently, squeezing her hand. “You’ve probably never even owned a winter coat.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! I love snow. It’s skiing I hate. And I think the problem was only that I had a bad teacher.” She wrinkles her nose at him, something else to add to the list.
“You were the one who decided to come down the hill on your rear end instead of your skis.” She shoots him a look. She knows what he’s evading, but it’s their second-to-last day, and the temptation to pull the ripcord is strong. “Helsinki isn’t so far from San Francisco,” he says, giving in as much as he allows himself. Their relationship has been an enjoyably chaotic tumble of time zones and locales, but from here out his shore leaves, when he has them, will hardly permit that.
“But it’s very far from space. Chris, be good; we’re not children. We owe it to one another, and besides, you have another lady waiting.” She peeks from beneath her long, black lashes, up to where the first stars have started to come out.
“I hate it when people compare ships to women,” he says pettishly. “It’s insulting.”
“To women, or to ships?”
“Both. And it was never about choosing one over the other; you know that.”
“Yes. But you’re going to be happy.” She rises on her bare toes to give him a kiss, final as a period on the end of a sentence. “When you make sacrifices for someone, it makes you love them more. I think that must be true of starships, even if they’re not people.”
It is true, he thinks, as he clasps her hand tighter and pulls her ankle-deep into the warm ocean. For the Enterprise, he’s put his career on hold for six long years, foregone the rush of space for logistics and budget tables and waiting and waiting and waiting. A week ago, the ship made her rocket-boosted ascent into orbit; in less than a month they’ll fire her engines for the first time. If everything goes according to schedule, she’ll be ready for a shakedown cruise by Spring. The bird has flown, and Pike’s thoughts fly with her, even when his feet are buried in the sand.
Part 2 >>
The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. It’s a respectable old joke, and one Pike repeats to himself often as a kind of talisman when he has to rise in the cold, grey pre-dawn. On the floor beside him, Darcy raises her yellow head and lifts her tail, readier for the day than Pike will ever be. She’s been here a few weeks, and his resentment at her presence has segued first into tolerance and eventually grudging enjoyment. It’s nice to wake up to another living being, even if he wishes the golden-haired companion were human and in bed next to him. At his command, Darcy pulls his chair level with the bed, helps him balance as he transfers to the shower, brings him his towel, and helps tug his pants up. He’s getting to the point where he could do most of these things without her, but she enjoys doing what she was trained for. Pike knows the feeling. He also remembers those early days when he stubbornly attacked each task and wrestled it into submission, only to feel completely exhausted and demoralized by 1600 hours. Everything Darcy does for him is a little bit in the bank against later.
By the time Pike wheels to the table with his coffee and egg and miso soup balanced precariously in his lap, the pale excuse for dawn has broken over the city. Rivers of fog pour through the Golden Gate, cascading over the Bay, completely shrouding the older, lower buildings. If Pike were in his own condo, the 21st Century low-rise in Mission Bay he’d waited five years for, he’d be looking up at a fog ceiling that would erase three centuries of downtown development. As it is, he’s temporarily on the 124th floor of a posh apartment building that’s something of a ghetto for Starfleet senior officers. The turbolift is rife with them, and there are days when he can’t get out of the building without getting sucked into a conversation about the budget or promotions or the Romulan Matter.
This morning, he’s lucky enough to make the ride alone, or alone except for Darcy. The dog recognizes the number 124 and can push the button, a feat that shocked Pike the first time. She’s a jukebox of such tricks, a genetically engineered prodigy so perfectly suited for her job that Pike has seen two of her clones in this neighborhood alone. He has, at times, only half-jokingly accused her of being a spy, of telling Admiral Nogura when Pike spends his evenings reading Patrick O'Brian novels instead of situation briefs.
The street is close to deserted; the city seems to have made the sensible decision to sleep in. The exception is Li-Wen, owner of the corner bakery, who gives Pike a nod and a wink as he goes by. She has a lovely smile and the best sourdough boules in town, and Pike has thought about doing something about it more than once, but the prospect is, as so many things are these days, fraught with implications. Pike is famous, something he never wanted, and in the absolute last possible way he ever wanted to be: he is not a hero, but a martyr. He doesn’t want pretty Li-Wen or anyone else for that matter to sleep with him as if she were throwing a wreath into the water.
He halts at the corner while a gaggle of bicycles go by. A man is waiting beside him, juggling a couple of grocery bags, distracted enough that the double take comes almost a moment too late. Pike knows the sequence all to well-the flicking sideways glance, the surprised re-check, the eyebrows lifting and mouth opening before the brain has a chance to engage.
“Captain Pike! I mean, Admiral Pike!” He plunks the bags down, blocking Pike’s way. Darcy looks at him disapprovingly. “I’ll only take a minute of your time, sir, but I just want to say-thank you for your sacrifices for this planet. I hope when it comes time to give the Romulans what’s coming to them, there’ll be a photon torpedo with your name on it.”
“It wasn’t the Romulans, you know,” Pike says mildly. “Just one particularly deluded Romulan.”
The man is already shaking his head before Pike has finished. “I’m sorry, sir, with all due respect, I’ve read a lot on the nets, and it’s pretty clear that the whole Nero thing was just a cover for a Romulan plot to destroy Vulcan. There’s no way a bunch of miners could have built that ship on their own. And the Enterprise? That kid Kirk? It all goes back to the Kelvin. You see, Starfleet sent it on a secret mission to-“
“Well!” Pike says with false brightness, interrupting. “It seems you know more about it than I do. If Starfleet wants to debrief you, I’ll tell them they can find you at Fulton Market in the produce aisle.” And with that, he executes a tight turn with his chair and leaves the man behind, mouth still agape.
As usual, the fog clears halfway across the Bridge as if it’s getting kickbacks from the Marin County Tourism Board. The sun feels wonderful, and Pike can measure his procrastination in tenths of kilometers per hour. Just before the gates to Starfleet Headquarters, Pike stops at a coffee cart. Between meetings and physical therapy, he’s looking at another 12-hour day, and he figures that caffeine, like pain meds, is best taken ahead of need. He stops there almost every morning, and appreciates the fact that the proprietor never refuses to take his credits, although this morning, as he often does, he pulls a stale cruller from inside the cart and gives it to Pike to give to Darcy. Pike lets the dog gingerly give the man the credit strip and receive it back so that the doughnut can be her reward. He thinks about making her show off a few of her tricks, but it seems like an insult to her professional integrity. Instead, he tears the cruller into bits and tosses them in the air. She leaps, yipping softly, golden hair streaming out behind her. A beautiful animal, pure joy in motion. Pike thinks, not for the first time, that he should take her down to Presidio Park and let her run around for a while and just be a dog. But of course Darcy isn’t just a dog, any more than Pike is just a man. They both have a purpose, if not a destiny, and neither of them will be free to run on green grass for quite a while.
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It’s Day 3 when Kirk comes to visit, or so they tell him. Pike has been sedated, asleep, or floating on painkillers on and off for so long that he’s completely lost track of time. The white lights of the ICU tell him nothing and neither do the doctors and nurses, whose response to his raspy questions is uniformly a vague smile and another hypo. He hasn’t been in any pain and he supposes he should be grateful, but without it his brain is having a hard time making sense of what’s happening with his body. He can move his head and arms but nothing else. He supposes it’s some kind of chemical restraint so that he doesn’t thrash around and compound the spinal cord damage.
Kirk has McCoy in tow as usual, and they’re both back in their cadet uniforms. It looks strange now, like grown men in short pants. McCoy’s dark eyes slide inexorably toward the bank of displays above the biobed. Kirk pulls up a chair so he’s level with Pike’s head and sits down. After a moment, Pike sees McCoy’s gaze shift to the two Enterprise captains, and he mumbles that he’ll wait outside, and hastily retreats.
“Don’t go far,” Pike calls after him, hearing his own voice hoarse and weak. “I want to talk to you.
Kirk wordlessly fills Pike’s cup of water and hands it to him, holding it steady so he can sip from the straw. It’s humiliating to be so weak and dependent, but Kirk makes it easier by treating it matter-of-factly. He has come empty handed, not adding to the shrine of flowers and cards that has bloomed at the foot of Pike’s bed, and which in a less lucid moment he has mistaken for a grave. Nor does he ask how Pike is feeling. Instead, he brings the thing Pike has been missing most: information.
“I would have come sooner but they’ve been interrogating us for three days straight,” Kirk says. The cuts and bruises on his face are gone, but his blue eyes are more bloodshot than usual. Pike wonders if they’ve let him get any sleep. “Especially about Nero, and the Nerada, since you, me and Spock were the only ones who saw it. They actually brought in an artist to make a drawing of the bridge. I told them they should ask Spock; he’s the one with the fucking eidetic memory.”
“Language, cadet,” Pike says because he can.
“Sorry, sir.” Kirk gives him a lopsided, unrepentant smile. “Of course, they asked about you, too. Why you left the ship, why you made me first officer, what condition you were in when we pulled you out. Some of the questions are way too specific, and they keep asking them again and again. My best guess is that they had some intelligence on Nero, maybe a Klingon agent, maybe from the Vulcans. Now they’re trying to convince themselves they couldn’t possibly have anticipated the attack, when you and I both know they started looking the other way after the Kelvin. Nobody wanted the Romulans to be a threat and so they weren’t, and we made them the Vulcans' problem. Well, we sure as hell have to deal with them now.”
Pike is considering this when his vision blurs a little. The word Romulans, which no one has said around him before now, reverberates in his head, bringing with it a flash of blue, a whiff of fetid air.
“Sir?” Kirk sounds uncertain. “Shall I get the doctor?”
“No,” Pike says, running a hand over his face. “Just pass me that water again.” Kirk does, watching him a little more closely than before. Pike takes a pull from the straw and tries to regroup. “Did they say anything else about me?” It’s a ridiculously egotistical question and not near enough to the one he really wants to ask, the one that’s haunted him during his few waking hours, but he has a foolish desire not to seem weak in front of Kirk. As if he could seem anything else, flat on his back with a half dozen tubes running in and out of him.
“No, sir. Everyone seems to agree that your actions were heroic.” Only Kirk could use that word in such a specific and unfreighted way.
“Don’t know about that,” Pike says, though it’s too late to be self deprecating. He feels half-nauseated with relief. “What about you? Is there a bronze statue in the Quad yet?” It’s a bit obnoxious, but Kirk has done him the courtesy of treating him like a normal person, so Pike thinks he should return the favor.
“Well, they dropped the disciplinary charges against me. It looks like I’ll graduate next month.” He leans back in the chair, folding his arms and stretching his long legs out in front of him.
“That should come as a relief to your instructors.” Kirk laughs, getting the joke on at least one level. Kirk’s tenure at the Academy has been a relentless three-year barrage of charisma, talent and brains that has half his teachers framing his term papers and the other half marking bottles of aged Scotch with his graduation date.
“They’re also talking about a retroactive commission, to lieutenant. It’ll make writing the reports easier, plus they won’t have the embarrassment of admitting they had a cadet at the helm of their biggest boat.”
“That’s it? That hardly seems like an adequate reward for saving the planet.” Pike feels both annoyance on Kirk’s behalf and something like a reprieve. It’s an ungenerous impulse, fed on depression and self-pity, and Pike gives himself a little mental kick in the pants for it. Of course the Federation is getting the greatest possible mileage out of its handsome young savior, Kirk’s considerable merit notwithstanding. The fact that Pike, isolated in his own body and thoughts, hasn’t had to witness the swooning news coverage doesn’t make it any less vivid in his mind.
“Well, sir, you know the Admiralty hates surprises.” Kirk picks at a loose thread on his crimson trousers, looking glum. “I think they want to understand everything fully before they make any definitive public statements, and recognizing me would be a pretty definitive statement. Or maybe it’ll just be more fun to court-martial me instead of expel me. Right now, between the Vulcans and the Romulans and the time travel and the second Spock, they’re confused as shit. Excuse me, ‘confused as heck.’”
It’s at this moment that Pike belatedly realizes that Kirk has been treating him all along as a first officer would, respecting the chain of command but watching his captain’s back, giving him the frank assessments needed to make an informed decision. Given that Pike’s decision-making is currently limited to apple juice or green tea, he isn’t sure whether Kirk is humoring him, soliciting advice, or just taking the opportunity to vent after having his tubes purged by Starfleet Command. It doesn’t matter in any case, since Dr. Otenga is bearing down on them, tapping her watch and making Kirk mutter “I better go” without trying so much as a smile on her.
“Is there anything I can do for you, sir?” he says, rising to his full, limber height.
Pike shrugs. “Come back if there’s news. These SOBs won’t even tell me who won the game last night. Oh, and send in McCoy, if he’s still out there.”
Kirk puts his heels together and nods, waiting for Pike to nod back, as if he’s being dismissed. It’s a nice gesture and a surprising evolution in sensitivity for a man who in the past has been about as restrained and subtle as a full-grown Newfoundland. Pike realizes he let him go without thanking him for saving his life, but then he isn’t sure he feels the proper gratitude for that yet.
As Kirk leaves, Dr. Otenga swoops in to check the displays that annotate Pike’s state of being, as if suspecting Kirk of moving the readouts in the wrong direction by his mere presence. McCoy enters moments later and hovers uncertainly on the periphery until Otenga waves him over. The two of them stare at the screens and talk quietly about cortisol levels and cerebrospinal fluid, and since Pike doesn’t understand two words out of three, he sees what he can learn from their interaction.
Before Dr. Puri started talking up McCoy for a medical staff position on the Enterprise, Pike had only known him as Kirk’s friend, a good-looking thirtyish guy perpetually bobbing in Kirk’s wake. They make an odd pair, as McCoy is older, quieter, and more stubbornly intense. The thought that McCoy has been a steadying influence is a bit frightening in light of what Kirk has become in any case.
McCoy is deferential to Otenga, as he should be to one of Starfleet Medical’s senior staff physicians, and Otenga is just shy of collegial in return. McCoy is the de facto CMO of the Enterprise and, it seems from the way he’s being treated, likely to keep that position. It’s a career path that holds out the hope of being remembered as something other than the guy who smuggled Kirk on board. Otenga excuses herself to McCoy with a little pat on his shoulder, drifting away without acknowledging Pike. He supposes that with all that telemetry, there’s nothing much that he or his actual, physical body can add in any case. McCoy sits down in the chair Kirk vacated and asks, “What do you want to know, captain?”
+++++
They materialize in a Transporter Room as noisily chaotic as the ship they left behind. There’s too much to process: pain and relief and bright light and shouting. Out of the tumult McCoy appears and smoothly transfers Pike’s weight from Kirk’s shoulder to his own. Kirk glances at Spock, who materialized beside them, and the two bolt from the room without a backward glance. McCoy is scanning Pike with his free hand, barking orders to the medics, including the one who’s supporting Pike’s other arm. Pike wants to ask about the state of the ship, the plan of battle, but his brain seems to be slowing down as quickly as his legs.
They burst into the Medical Bay and Pike is shocked at what he sees: scorched walls, dangling wires, unhygienic dust being kicked up any time someone takes a step. The beds are full, as are the chairs. Pike isn’t sure if it’s still the fallout from the initial attack or if the ship has incurred fresh damage. McCoy and his team hustle Pike toward a vacant biobed and all Pike can think of is Kirk and Spock on the bridge, of the magnitude of the mission that he unknowingly left them: save Earth, save the ship, save the captain. If they’ve gotten to the last one on the list, he hopes it’s because the first two, impossibly, have been accomplished. Pike had made Robau’s choice, to buy time, that most precious of commodities, with his life. He hadn’t meant to leave Kirk to his father’s fate, had actually gotten him off the ship partly for that reason, but it seems Kirk has other ideas anyway. He has found some added dimension to the equations of risk where he is unbound by the expected outcomes. Pike wonders if Spock is finding it any easier to deal with him on the bridge than he did in the Simulation Training Room.
The ship groans and brings Pike’s focus back into the room. Around the biobed, the displays have come alive and Pike’s being prepped for surgery-stripped, scrubbed, shot up. At the next doom-filled, rasping shudder that makes the lights flicker, McCoy mutters, “Is it too much to ask to be able do my goddamned job?” Pike is having trouble focusing. His gaze drifts past McCoy to one of the displays, where he sees, in beautiful three-dimensional color, the image of a human skull and spine with something oval and banded wrapped, like a hideous ornament, around the cervical vertebra. McCoy follows his gaze and then looks back at Pike, frowning, dark eyes intense, almost Vulcan except for their expression.
“You’re going to be fine, sir,” he says fiercely, and Pike can tell that he’s angry. And Pike believes him, and trusts him from that point forward. It isn’t just a doctorly platitude; it’s McCoy’s mission, and its own form of revenge.
+++++
It’s another hazy, dreamy sunset after another humid, sun-drenched day. In Toubab Dialaw, the succession of perfect days passes unremarked as no more than its due, along with the blue water, the pinkish sand, and the occasional giraffe that wanders into the grounds of the bungalow where they’re staying. It’s their third visit here, and as he walks hand-in-hand with Fatou across the beach, Pike feels the curious anticipatory nostalgia of knowing he will never come here again. Theirs will be an amicable parting, and one that’s been planned for a long time, but Pike feels sweet regret every time he looks into Fatou’s expressive face. There is so much to miss: her good-natured wit, the feel of her hand combing through his hair, the way she-a hydraulic engineer of some repute-fixed the beverage maker that morning by giving it a good, hard whack.
“You’ll never survive in Helsinki,” he teases gently, squeezing her hand. “You’ve probably never even owned a winter coat.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! I love snow. It’s skiing I hate. And I think the problem was only that I had a bad teacher.” She wrinkles her nose at him, something else to add to the list.
“You were the one who decided to come down the hill on your rear end instead of your skis.” She shoots him a look. She knows what he’s evading, but it’s their second-to-last day, and the temptation to pull the ripcord is strong. “Helsinki isn’t so far from San Francisco,” he says, giving in as much as he allows himself. Their relationship has been an enjoyably chaotic tumble of time zones and locales, but from here out his shore leaves, when he has them, will hardly permit that.
“But it’s very far from space. Chris, be good; we’re not children. We owe it to one another, and besides, you have another lady waiting.” She peeks from beneath her long, black lashes, up to where the first stars have started to come out.
“I hate it when people compare ships to women,” he says pettishly. “It’s insulting.”
“To women, or to ships?”
“Both. And it was never about choosing one over the other; you know that.”
“Yes. But you’re going to be happy.” She rises on her bare toes to give him a kiss, final as a period on the end of a sentence. “When you make sacrifices for someone, it makes you love them more. I think that must be true of starships, even if they’re not people.”
It is true, he thinks, as he clasps her hand tighter and pulls her ankle-deep into the warm ocean. For the Enterprise, he’s put his career on hold for six long years, foregone the rush of space for logistics and budget tables and waiting and waiting and waiting. A week ago, the ship made her rocket-boosted ascent into orbit; in less than a month they’ll fire her engines for the first time. If everything goes according to schedule, she’ll be ready for a shakedown cruise by Spring. The bird has flown, and Pike’s thoughts fly with her, even when his feet are buried in the sand.
Part 2 >>