Fic: "The Needs of the Few" (7/23)
Title: "The Needs of the Few"
Canon characters/Pairing(s): Kirk & McCoy, Pike, Finney
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 6,562 for chapter 7
Warnings: Foul language, political situations, military stuff.
Summary: As cadets on a summer internship, Kirk and McCoy are supposed to keep their eyes open and their mouths shut. As far as Bones is concerned, that’s just plain wrong on Jim Kirk, but Jim seems determined to follow orders and fall in line for a change. After all, they’ve both seen enough trouble in two years at the Academy, and this is the Peace Mission of Axanar. However, when a mystery starts to weave itself around the mission, and the senior officers don’t seem interested in investigating, how far can Kirk and McCoy let it go?
Previous chapters: One, Two, Three, Four(A), Four(B), Five, Six
Chapter 7
There was no evidence of physical injury.
Leonard dragged himself out of the conference room, where he’d spent the past hour being grilled by the Captain, First Officer, and the familiar face of Doctor Swerdlow, Chief of Neurology at Starfleet Medical, conferencing via subspace. And before that meeting, he’d spent the day running back and forth between sickbay and conference rooms. He was exhausted. His head hurt, his back hurt, and he was pretty sure even his hair hurt.
There were no foreign substances, chemicals, or objects in Doctor Brex’s body.
There was nothing to say that wasn’t already in his report, but he had been asked to repeat it, over and over again, as if repeating the information would somehow change it. It felt like an interrogation. It was too close to the feeling of being put on trial when someone close to him had been injured... a horrible feeling which he’d experienced all too recently. Those scars really hadn’t healed yet, and now, this.
The only abnormalities that could be detected were the unusual electrical activity in the temporal lobe and the associated imbalance of neurotransmitters.
The artificial lights of the hallway seemed too bright, and Leonard squinted against them. He was too tired, and it was hard to focus. He’d been battered mentally and emotionally, and he wanted to go to his quarters, take a headache pill, turn off his lights, and go to sleep. However, he knew that sleep would be hard-won. No, he’d just lay there, awake, staring through the darkness and wondering what the hell had happened.
At the moment, Tavin Brex is perfectly stable. His level of consciousness has not increased or decreased appreciably since the first complete scan taken less than ten minutes after he lost consciousness, but his vital signs are good and show no signs of deterioration.
Brex had been in perfect health when the USS Athena had left spacedock. He’d used himself to calibrate a tricorder and a full-body scanner earlier that week, and there hadn’t been a single thing that could have precipitated a collapse like that. But to hell with it, there wasn’t anything he could find now that could be causing this!
All standard techniques for reviving comatose patients have failed. We will continue with standard protocols until we discuss the matter further with the Betazoid Healers.
They’d already contacted the Betazoid authorities asking for medical references and advice that might not be common knowledge. The Healers were going to contact them again once they’d thoroughly reviewed the scans and other data, but there really wasn’t much they could do from a distance. In the meantime, Leonard had spent the entire morning and most of the afternoon working shoulder-to-shoulder with Doctor Singh, running detailed scans and trying every technique in the Federation’s vast medical databanks to get Brex to regain consciousness. Nothing had helped.
They were at a medical impasse, but Leonard didn’t want to believe that medical intervention was the only thing he could do for Brex. What remained, however, was both the source of the controversy and of Leonard’s rapidly intensifying headache.
Apparently, the eve of one of the biggest diplomatic events in decades of Federation history was not the time and place to level any sort of accusation against one of the main parties involved in those diplomatic dealings. Captain Porter seemed to have a normally calm and jovial personality, and the buzz around the ship was that he was an unusually good commanding officer with an open-door policy and an open mind to match, but when Leonard stated that he suspected foul play on the part of the Axanar, his eyes widened and the veins on his temples bulged.
There was no evidence! No tangible sign of foul play! No way to connect Brex’s collapse to the Axanar, who had been in their quarters all night! Not on my ship!
Leonard McCoy didn’t give a flying fuck.
Something smelled funny about this whole damned mess. There was a man lying unconscious in sickbay with no mechanism of injury or underlying cause of illness, and Leonard did not feel like leaving this alone. Didn’t much matter, though. When he’d tried to push his theory and his flimsy - nonexistent, dammit - evidence, reiterating his discussion with Brex before the Axanar physicals, the missing communique, and Brex’s odd mutterings just before he’d lost consciousness, he’d been slapped down. Okay, so maybe he’d pushed it a bit too far, but what could they expect of him? Porter’s voice was still ringing in his ears.
“Drop it, Cadet! We have our security teams investigating, and they’ll deal with any matters of foul play. You are not a commissioned officer, despite your medical degree, and your involvement ends at the doors of sickbay. Do I make myself clear?”
Yeah, he’d made himself pretty damned clear. And if Leonard was any good at reading people - which he was, dammit - he didn’t think Porter was actually going to investigate the Axanar.
And why should he? Sure, Leonard wasn’t exactly privy to the official reports outside of what he’d witnessed himself, but people were talking, and his hearing was excellent. The Axanar schedule had been packed with meetings, some of which were unplanned. Their first day onboard, Araxian leaders had requested a meeting via subspace with the Axanar and some of the other Ambassadors, and had then held the Axanar for further discussions. That’s why the Axanar had missed their appointments. Nothing sinister at all - just diplomatic horse shit. Beyond that, the Axanar had been the most cordial and cooperative guests possible. At least, that’s what Leonard had overheard.
Sure, it made sense not to start a diplomatic incident with an investigation. Plenty of sense. Leonard couldn’t actually begrudge Captain Porter for not wanting to level accusations against the Axanar. With their historical background? Their species’ psych profile, overwhelming hospitality, and innate courtesy didn’t fit with their involvement in something underhanded. Besides, there was no physical evidence whatsoever to indicate any sort of foul play in Brex’s condition. Everything that made Leonard suspect the Axanar was circumstantial at best, and even the circumstances were weak. At this particular moment in history, when the Axanar were on the cusp of joining the Federation, there was no comprehensible reason for them to do something like this.
That still didn’t mean Leonard could switch off his gut instinct, which was starting to add nausea to his damned headache.
To top it all off, although it felt like a trivial and self-centered concern at the moment, the medical staff was now short-handed. The Athena wasn’t a big ship, and only carried a staff of three regular doctors, five nurses, and five techs. Despite being a cadet, Leonard was going to have to function as a full member of the regular staff in order to fully cover sickbay. Aside from the nurses, there were only Doctor Singh, Doctor Ankewicz, and himself. Which, naturally, meant he’d have to divert time away from his research.
Goddammit.
He rounded the curve of the corridor to his quarters and... he should have been surprised to see Jim Kirk leaning against his door, but he wasn’t.
Jim looked up at the sound of footsteps, unfolded his arms from across his chest, and stepped away from the wall. He didn’t smile, and didn’t offer a sarcastic quip about how Leonard looked like he’d just come off a three-day bender. Instead, Jim gave a solemn nod that told Leonard he understood, and something that had been knotted tightly in Leonard’s chest loosened a little bit.
“Jim,” Leonard said softly as he approached.
“I heard.” Jim rested a warm hand on Leonard’s shoulder and gave a squeeze, and the gesture felt familiar and comfortable. “You’re not okay.” It wasn’t even a question. Jim knew. And Jim knew that as exhausted as he was, there was no way he was going to be able to fall asleep right now, and he didn’t want to be alone. So Jim wasn’t going to let him be alone.
Leonard inclined his head towards the door, giving Jim the unspoken and unnecessary invitation, then turned and tabbed in his passcode. The door slid open, and Jim followed him into the room.
Without a word, Leonard unzipped his boots and kicked them aside. Jim lined them up by the door, the way Leonard liked them. Leonard stumbled further into his room as he yanked off his uniform top, undershirt, and pants and tossed them into the sonic cleaning unit. He turned towards the bathroom to get his bathrobe, only to find Jim handing it to him.
Leonard nodded appreciatively and wrapped his bathrobe around himself. For a moment, he looked longingly at his bed, but instead, he collapsed into one of the two armchairs with a groan, rubbing his temples and trying to get the ache from the day to disappear. A moment later, a hand unfurled in front of his eyes, presenting him with a small white pill that Leonard recognized. Another hand offered a glass of water.
Leonard looked up at Jim, hoping his expression conveyed at least a pathetic echo of the gratitude he felt as he took the headache pill and tossed it back. Jim gave him a faint smile before he settled himself on the other armchair and put his feet up on the coffee table between them. A few minutes later, when the headache began to ease away, Leonard sighed in physical relief, and put his feet up on the coffee table to match Jim’s.
He looked up at Jim, who merely responded with an expression of acceptance, waiting for Leonard to say... whatever he needed to say.
“Jim... I can’t... it’s not just what happened to Brex... but the way the Captain... he just dismissed it -”
“It’s okay, Bones,” Jim said softly. “You don’t have to say a word. I caught enough of the scuttlebutt around the ship. You can tell me the real story tomorrow. For now... I’m here.”
Leonard nodded once, then closed his eyes and leaned his head against the back of the armchair. “Thanks, Jim.”
“You’re welcome, Bones.”
And for now, that was good enough.
*********
The atmosphere aboard the USS Athena had gained a distinctly unpleasant edge to it. It was a small ship, and even with the recent turnover of almost a quarter of the personnel, the crew was fairly tight, and everyone knew the CMO. The celebratory vibe that had been infectious since their first arrival at Axanar was gone. A cloud of suspicion hovered over everything, but there was nothing for it to stick to. So it just hovered.
As far as Jim was concerned, it fucking sucked.
Instinctively, he wanted to dive into the guts of this mystery. He’d spent years not being able to leave things alone. He wanted and needed to dig his fingers into everything, pull back the layers, and see what was hiding beneath. However, he’d sworn to himself that he wouldn’t. It was frustrating and infuriating and he hated himself a little bit for it, but he wasn’t about to overstep his rank and position. Not this time. It was his first time serving aboard a starship, and he couldn’t fuck this up. His career depended on it.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t keeping his ears open while keeping his mouth shut.
The frustrating part of that plan, however, was that nobody was really talking about it. Jim wasn’t sure what he thought about that. After the first day of scuttlebutt and rumors, the theorizing had stopped as if someone had flipped a switch. Finney had told the cadets not to get into the rumor mill on this one, and similar talks had probably happened in every department on the ship. Still, even with Starfleet discipline, Jim had never seen people just stop talking about a mystery so quickly.
Everyone was concerned about the good doctor, of course, but the word around the ship was that it was nothing more than a medical problem. People seemed to have accepted it at face value. And why shouldn’t they? Strange things that can’t be explained happen when you’re exploring deep space, and medical mysteries happen all the time, so there was no reason they could be sure it was foul play. At worst, some people were worried that the ship had picked up an unknown pathogen from Axanar or one of the other delegates that had come aboard, and Betazoids were susceptible.
Nobody had suggested that the Axanar had attacked the man.
Except Bones.
Jim had barely seen Bones since the night after Doctor Brex had fallen into the inexplicable coma. Sure, it had only been a day and a half since then, but after Bones had settled down and let the headache pill do its work, he’d let loose a rant that could have burned the fur off the back of a targ. Jim had listened in near-silence, absorbing every detail, and finally helping Bones to bed when the guy started repeating himself and stumbling from exhaustion.
Since then, Bones’ words had buzzed around in his head, spinning and stewing with no outlet or input. He was churning his own theories around the whole mess, and it was driving him crazy, but he kept telling himself to ignore it. To be honest, he had no idea what to think. Bones’ suspicions could easily be nothing more than reaction to a colleague being injured, and he was looking for someone to blame. Everything else on this mission seemed to be running like clockwork. Jim could only hope that what felt like the start of something big was actually just a fluke, and it was all going to right itself. Nothing sinister. Not at all.
If he kept repeating that to himself enough times, maybe he’d stop smelling his own bullshit. Probably not.
Not for the first time, Jim wondered why the hell it seemed like he and Bones were always stuck in the middle of whatever crazy thing was happening. Then, he told himself that it was Starfleet, and there was always something crazy going on no matter who you were or where you were. Still, it didn’t help stop the feeling that he and Bones just kept getting wrapped up in bigger things than they could handle. For that matter, it wasn’t their job to handle it.
Damn, he wanted to talk to Bones right now. The man had been on evening and night shifts, and Jim had been stuck in the commo lab with his hands full.
And yeah, it really fucking sucked.
“Cadet Kirk, have you run the morning system diagnostics yet?” That was Lieutenant Rahman.
Jim blinked and realized he was nodding off, and he quickly covered himself as he repositioned his hands on the controls. “Sorry sir, almost done.” And he was almost done, really. He pulled up the next set of parameters at his control station as Lieutenant Rahman leaned over his shoulder and looked at him sideways.
“Getting enough sleep, Cadet?” The words were firm, but there was a trace of concern in her expression. She was downright minuscule in stature, and outwardly soft-spoken, but she knew her department inside and out, and was very good at keeping the whole communications array in perfect working order. Jim had liked her from the start, and he respected her even a bit more for noticing that he wasn’t all there. She gave him a searching look. “I know you’ve been distracted for the past couple of days, like we all have, and I understand that. But still, we’ve got a job to do, right?”
“Yes, sir.” Jim’s cheeks burned slightly. Of course, everyone was a tiny bit off their game, and he had no excuse for letting his distractions impact his performance when others were expected to do their jobs. “I’m sorry. And... I admit, I haven’t been sleeping right. But you’re right, everyone is working under the same conditions.”
She patted his shoulder gently. “Good,” she said, and the note of approval buzzed pleasantly in the back of Jim’s mind. “So, today, we do our weekly review of the whole message cache for the commo system. How would you like to run the whole thing?”
“Any chance to learn something new, sir,” he said with a grin that didn’t feel completely fake.
“Good answer.” The computer pinged, and she tapped the display on Jim’s control station, bringing up the results of the basic diagnostic cycle. “Looks like everything is good to go, so come on over to the main computer station with me, and I’ll show you how we run the weekly review.” Her tone softened slightly. “It might help keep your mind occupied.”
“I think I’d like that.” Jim swiveled his chair and stood, following Lieutenant Rahman over to the imposing set of displays and control panels of the primary control station for the entire communications computer node.
An hour and a half later, Jim was thoroughly engrossed in what seemed to be the most complex data cache he’d ever seen. The data streams included received subspace transmissions, sent subspace transmissions, and intra-ship communications. With almost 300 souls aboard, including ambassadors, diplomats, and their aides, it shouldn’t have surprised Jim to see how many communiques had been sent and received, but it did anyway.
And Lieutenant Rahman had been right; it was certainly keeping his mind occupied. He hadn’t even looked up from his station almost the entire time, until he heard the sound of voices at the door. There was the familiar and boisterous sound of a Tellarite, and Jim had to grin. He turned around in his chair to see the same delegate he’d spoken to on Axanar.
Rahman was indicating parts of the communications lab and talking quietly, and Jim guessed that the Ambassador had requested a tour of the ship’s facilities. Noticing that Jim was looking their way, she smiled and led the Tellarite over. “Cadet Kirk, this is Ambassador Skavrin, the Tellarite representative for the Araxian branch of the mission. He requested a tour of the ship.”
Skavrin. Jim filed away the name, glad he didn’t have to ask. Remembering his Tellarite courtesies, he got to his feet, folded his arms across his chest, and stuck his chin out. “Well met again, sir.”
“Aaah, Cadet! Well met again, indeed!” He stuck out his own chin. “I see that we’ll have the chance to debate after all! For I believe that you are misinformed regarding the politics of the Axanar and the Zhitorans, and aren’t fit for this mission in your ignorance.”
“I welcome the challenge, sir, and I’ll be happy to show you that you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”
At the next station over, Ensign Latkis gasped. Jim cast him a glance, noting that the Ensign looked absolutely scandalized.
Jim stifled a grin, and looked back at the Ambassador. “That is, of course, unless you’re too cowardly to debate a mere cadet,” he threw down for good measure.
Skavrin locked eyes with him for a moment, then threw his head back and let out a raucous laugh. “You might offer debate that isn’t utterly pathetic, for a Terran. When you are released from your duties, before we arrive at Araxis, I expect you to join me for debate!”
“I’ll see your challenge, sir. I will send notice when I am available, and we’ll cross words.”
Skavrin turned a glance at a very pleased-looking Lieutenant Rahman. “Your cadet would almost make a half-decent Tellarite.”
“He does have a few useful skills,” she said. “But for now, he’s got to get back to work. Right, Kirk?”
“Yes, sir.”
Grinning broadly, he sat back down at his station and returned to his work with renewed enthusiasm. A chance to debate with a Tellarite of Skavrin’s status? Now that would be an experience to take his mind off things!
Then he noticed he was being stared at. “Sir?” he said, turning towards Ensign Latkis.
The Ensign was giving him a look somewhere between confused and pissed off. “You just called an Ambassador a coward!” he said under his breath.
It was all Jim could do to keep his jaw from dropping. How the hell did this Ensign get his commission without realizing that Jim had been using the best possible manners towards a Tellarite? They were one of the Founding Races of the Federation! Annoyed, but determined not to show it, Jim painted a smug grin on his face and said, “I know. I would have insulted his mother, but I want to save that for debating him later.”
Leaving the ensign to figure it out for himself, Jim refocused on his task. With the data-processing of the subspace communiques underway, Jim turned his attention to intra-ship commo.
The data flowed like a river of time stamps and authenticity codes. Every time stamp came with an authenticity code, and cross-referenced to a data bundle. Every data bundle had an origin, a destination, and a unique reference number, assigned sequentially. Ship-wide, every communique had a way to be tracked, completing a data stream that matched up beautifully, all to be archived once the record was verified. It wasn’t as exciting and challenging as working a tactics station, which he hoped he’d be doing on his next duty rotation, but given how tense everything had been lately, it was almost soothing to watch the data fall into place under his fingertips.
Until it didn’t.
Shrugging, Jim cross-checked the glitch. There was a missing data packet. One of the sequential reference numbers had a null data set. Rahman had told him that it happened at least a few times each week. An empty memo would be sent as a hiccup piggybacked on a real memo. She’d instructed him to file those aside to be cross-checked when he was done going through the whole message cache.
He flagged the reference number, then pressed onwards... and came to another glitch almost immediately. Same thing - null data packet for an assigned reference number.
“Lieutenant Rahman?”
“Yes, Kirk?” She walked over and stood next to him.
It was probably normal, routine glitches, but he had to ask. “How often do you get reference numbers with a null data set?”
“A dozen or more each week is pretty normal. We don’t worry until we get at least fifty of them in a week, and then we need to recalibrate our data processors.” She leaned against the wall by his console. “It’s one of the things we all learn pretty quickly once we leave the Academy. All of the theory and ideal conditions and lessons about how things are supposed to work? Those fly out the airlock as soon as we put them into practice.”
Jim narrowly refrained from snorting in amusement. “Don’t worry, sir. I’ve already figured that out.” He tapped his control screen. “I just wanted to be sure this was normal.”
“Never hurts to ask. Yes, they’re perfectly normal. When we cross-check them at the end of the day, you’ll be able to see where each of them came from. Keep up the good work.”
Again, Jim was alone with his data sets. The glitches popped up randomly throughout the record, and Jim understood why they had to check this weekly. Ensuring that the communications central array was working, that it was interfacing with the mainframe, and that data wasn’t being lost was essential to ship operations. There were so many tasks all over the ship to make sure everything was running smoothly. Once he became a Captain - if he ever became a Captain - he’d never take any of the small tasks for granted. It occurred to him that this was the point of learning everything from the ground up.
The morning wore on, and Jim was finding himself oddly grateful for the piles of mindless data. The ship hummed around him, and the data flowed on his screen. A quick lunch left him wishing Bones was on the same shift because damn, he wanted to talk, but instead, he sat with the other cadets and compared notes about the different departments around the ship.
By mid-afternoon, Jim was ready to analyze the glitches for his final report. It was actually a bit exciting, for being an utterly monotonous task. This was one of the reports that went directly to the Captain, and his name would be on it. Not bad, for a cadet.
One by one, the null-set reference numbers matched up to other messages sent. The proverbial hiccups. There were a couple of them that he tracked down to processor malfunctions in the central cache, and he found the original messages by back-tracking to the source. Sleuth-work. It wasn’t terribly boring, really. And then...
“Lieutenant Rahman?”
“Kirk, you look like someone hit you with a stun-gun. What’s up?”
He glanced up at Lieutenant Rahman. “How often do we get null-set glitches that can’t be tracked at all? When there’s no data for a reference number, and it’s not a hiccup from the computer?”
She frowned. “Almost never. Why?”
“We’ve got two of them. What could cause it?”
Instead of answering, she waved him out of his seat, took over the controls, and started digging. “It’s a matter of experience, Kirk,” she said smoothly, and Jim thought she might make an excellent instructor. “Your focus isn’t communications, and it does take time to learn every sort of glitch. Over time, you learn to recognize the patterns behind each problem the same way children learn to recognize letter patterns that form words.” She worked in silence for a moment as Jim watched the screen.
Data flew by. Although she was much quicker than he was, she was doing exactly what he’d already done, so there was nothing new to be seen. Finally, she leaned back in her chair, staring at the screen, a look of annoyance on her face. “True null sets,” she said, her tone matching her expression. “Both of them.”
“What does that mean?”
She looked at him. “It means you get to take off early for the day, and I need to do some investigating.” She glanced at the chrono. “It’s almost the end of your shift anyway.”
“I... I’m sorry I didn’t figure it out, sir.”
Her expression softened. “It’s not your fault, cadet. Actually, you did an excellent job. I didn’t really expect you to finish during the shift anyway, so you’re ahead of the game as far as I’m concerned. You finished everything else. Not bad at all. I’ll tell Finney that you did a stellar job, and that I’m going to try to sway you into becoming a commo officer.”
He felt a flush of heat up his neck. “Thank you, sir, but I’m quite happy in the command track.”
She gave him a slight smirk. “Figured as much. Now get out of here and go enjoy your free time by studying the subspace physics of the transmitter array. You’re doing the routine maintenance on the array with Latkis tomorrow.”
Jim kept the smile on his face as he thanked her and left. As soon as he got out into the corridor, however, he let the smile drop away from his expression.
Before he’d called the Lieutenant over, he’d followed the trail of breadcrumbs as far as he possibly could, trying to track down the null reference numbers. Even though the messages were completely empty, the search had produced authenticity codes. It wasn’t much, but the codes were enough to identify the sender.
They had both been sent by Tavin Brex.
*********
Leonard groaned as he rolled over in his bunk. His comm unit was beeping.
“Kirk to McCoy.”
He glared at his comm. The light on it was flashing.
“Kirk to McCoy,” came Jim’s voice again. “Come on, Bones. Pick up the comm.”
Growling, Leonard reached over to the small table by his bunk, grabbed the comm unit, and flipped it open. “McCoy here. What do you want, you pathological pest?”
“Nice to talk to you, too, buddy-ol'-pal. I know you were almost ready to get out of bed anyway, and... I’ve got something you need to know.”
Something in Jim’s voice had Leonard sitting starkly upright. “What?”
“Meet me in the mess hall. You need breakfast, I want dinner, and... just meet me there, okay?”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Leonard said in a rush. “McCoy out.”
Jim could be a pest, but when it was something serious, he made it absolutely clear, and Leonard had learned not to brush it off. He threw himself out of bed, hurriedly straightened his bunk, tossed his night-clothes into the cleaning unit, and ran himself through his hygiene routine in record time. Ten minutes later, his stubble was gone, his hair was neatly combed, and he was in his uniform striding down the corridor to the mess hall.
It was 1545 hours - too early for alpha-shift supper, too late for for lunch, and he easily spotted Jim sitting at a table in the far corner. He grabbed a bowl of oatmeal, and a minute later he had dropped himself heavily into the chair facing Jim. “This had better be good. I lost a whole ten minutes of sleep because of you.” He knocked back a sip of coffee, letting the almost-too-hot burn help to wake him up.
Jim gave him a tired grin, pushing his own plate to the side. “I know the night shift has completely messed up your sleep cycle, but yeah, this is good.”
“Nice to hear it,” Leonard grumbled around a mouthful of oatmeal. He swallowed and gave Jim a sharp look. “And speaking of sleep cycles and shifts, your shift isn’t supposed to be over yet, is it?”
“I was let out early.” His grin turned slightly conspiratorial. “I think I was dismissed because of what I found... even though they don’t know how much of it I did find.”
Suddenly nervous, Leonard leaned over the table and spoke in a harsh whisper. “Wait a minute, Jim... you’re working commo. There’s a ton of classified stuff down there. You’re not about to violate some sort of privacy regulation, are you?
Jim shook his head emphatically. “Come on, Bones, don’t you trust me?”
“As far as I can throw you.”
“Bones.” Jim’s face took on a stark look of sincerity. It perfectly matched the tone in his voice that had dragged Leonard willingly from his bed, and he remembered why he was down here early.
“I trust you, Jim. You know that.”
Jim nodded. “Good. Because I studied the regulations on restricted information. None of this is classified. And they haven’t even unofficially told me not to say anything because they don’t know I was able to track the problem as far as I did.”
“Track what?”
Jim leaned forward and spoke in an undertone. “The message Brex sent you.”
In an instant, Leonard was more awake than any amount of coffee could have made him. “I thought it was gone!” He breathed.
Jim’s expression was grim. “It is.”
“Then how...?”
“I got assigned to the weekly data review in commo. I found a few glitches that couldn’t be explained, and I tracked them. Two of them had Doctor Brex’s authenticity code, and they were both sent the night before he went into the coma. I couldn’t track who they were sent to, but one of the experts in the department has to be able to dig up something - who deleted the messages, who the messages were sent to... something. But even if they can’t, there’s your evidence, Bones.” His eyes were glinting with excitement. “Real evidence that someone deleted messages sent by Doctor Brex, and that you weren’t imagining it.”
“I wasn’t imagining anything,” Leonard shot at him, but he could already feel the relief in knowing that there was something that confirmed his story, no matter how tenuous.
Jim gave him a sympathetic look. “I know that. I just wanted you to know... well....” His expression shifted to uncertainty. “I just wanted you to know.”
Leonard stared at him for a minute, trying to translate the subtleties of Jim’s body language before deciding to go for broke. “Wait a minute... you just wanted me to know? What did you want me to do with this little nugget of information?”
“I...” Jim hesitated. “I had to tell you, Bones. I had to tell someone, and it had to be you.” He shook his head in frustration. “Fuck, you deserve to know, and I just wanted to make sure you had the chance to know. But....”
With a heavy sigh, Leonard leaned on the table. “But I can’t say anything about this, can I?”
Jim frowned. He even looked a bit embarrassed. “I didn’t even tell Lieutenant Rahman that I saw it.”
Leonard growled softly and jabbed his spoon into his oatmeal. “Right. Yeah. So if you or I try to report this now, they’ll jump on you because you should have reported it to the lieutenant.” He shook his head. “Dammit.”
“We can’t report it. But Bones? She’ll find the same thing I did.” His expression perked up a bit. “I mean, hell, if I could find that information, I’m sure the officer who does this for a career will find it in no time.”
“And she’ll report it to the captain,” Leonard said flatly.
“Exactly,” Jim said with the worst farce at reassurance Bones had ever seen from the guy. “She’ll probably find a lot more information than I did, too. And then the senior staff can investigate, and if it is the Axanar... or whoever else... they’ll have enough evidence to go after them.”
“Will they?” Leonard asked, bleeding cynicism into his tone.
“They have to.”
Leonard stared at him. He leaned over the table, and then dropped his voice even more, just to be sure nobody else could hear him. “You didn’t see the way the Captain just about busted an artery when I tried to tell him that I suspected the Axanar. I don’t think he has any intent of investigating.”
Jim leaned away slightly, looking a bit stung. “Maybe it isn’t the Axanar, but whatever the evidence shows - whatever they find - they can’t just ignore it. They’ll get to the bottom of it.”
Leonard blinked. Hard. “Jim... I don’t know what to say, kid, but this isn’t you. Don’t you want to know? Don’t you want to investigate? I mean... goddammit,” he hissed through gritted teeth, mentally apologizing for what he was about to say, “I think we learned pretty well last year how far we can trust people to investigate shit.”
In a snap, Jim’s face went stony. “That was low, Bones. Really fucking low.”
“I’m sorry, kid, but I just can’t believe you’d be willing to let this slide.”
Jim quickly looked around him, then hunched over the table so he was almost nose to nose with Leonard. “Shit, Bones, I’m not willing to let it slide! But I don’t think I’ve got much of a choice here! Look around us. Look at our uniforms. At least you’ve got a branch insignia, but we’re both wearing gray. You’re already practicing medicine, but neither of us has a scrap of actual authority. Well, not unless every commissioned officer aboard dies, and if that were to happen, I think we’d be toast, too.” He reached over and stabbed his fork into the small pile of pasta salad on his plate and studied the sad-looking cherry tomato he’d speared. “Internship. More than a crewman, less than an officer, in the middle of everything, and yet completely shut out of all the important shit. And if you step outside of anything beyond your assigned duties as a doctor, they’ll shut you down in a heartbeat.”
Leonard felt his breath catch hard in his throat. Jim was right - the instant he’d tried to assert himself beyond the scope of his practice - he’d been very directly reminded of his place. He was a doctor, but he was still a cadet.
Jim nodded at him, and not without sympathy. “You know it, too. We keep our eyes open and observe, learn a few things about how it really works out here, and let the real officers call the shots. Learn to take orders, and not to get ahead of ourselves... because what do we know, right?” He stuffed the tomato into his mouth.
Leonard watched him as he chewed, realizing he didn’t have much of an appetite anymore himself. He felt as though he should have been pleased that Jim was taking the advice he’d been given and not diving headlong into things that weren’t his business, but he wasn’t. When Jim had talked about it the other night, he’d been pretty fixated on the idea of holding himself back, but despite everything he’d said, Leonard hadn’t really thought he’d do it. It hadn’t seemed right for the kid, but maybe it was part of the maturity that Jim had needed. Now that the kid was following through, Leonard wasn’t so sure he liked it.
What do we know? Leonard thought bitterly. As much as any of these other clowns, that’s for damned sure.
He considered Jim - the brightest person he’d probably ever met. Clever as hell. A walking encyclopedia with a ferocious sense of purpose and a propensity to leap without looking. Undeniably capable, in almost every capacity. Despite Jim’s lowly rank of cadet, Leonard couldn’t quash the notion that Jim would be just as good at getting to the bottom of this than anyone else. Maybe better.
But it wasn’t their place.
Leonard merely nodded. “Yeah. What do we know?” He reached for his coffee and took a sip, then another, wondering how he was going to be able to ignore the mystery around him, and how long Jim would be able to do the same.
“So, how’s your research going?” Jim asked, bringing Leonard out of his thoughts.
Leonard offered a thin smile. “Not too bad at all.”
They spent the rest of the meal talking over the most basic things they’d been working on, and when Leonard finally pulled himself from the table to get down to Sickbay, he felt like he hadn’t even spoken to Jim. Not really.
Two years ago, if Jim had a mystery or puzzle on his mind, nothing would have kept him from pursuing it with complete abandon. Not even Leonard’s adamant warnings about not getting involved. Now, he was holding back. It was something Leonard had hoped to see one day, but actually seeing it? It didn’t feel the way he’d thought it would.
Yeah, Jim Kirk had changed. Right now, Leonard wasn’t quite sure what he thought of that.
*********
To Chapter 8
Canon characters/Pairing(s): Kirk & McCoy, Pike, Finney
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 6,562 for chapter 7
Warnings: Foul language, political situations, military stuff.
Summary: As cadets on a summer internship, Kirk and McCoy are supposed to keep their eyes open and their mouths shut. As far as Bones is concerned, that’s just plain wrong on Jim Kirk, but Jim seems determined to follow orders and fall in line for a change. After all, they’ve both seen enough trouble in two years at the Academy, and this is the Peace Mission of Axanar. However, when a mystery starts to weave itself around the mission, and the senior officers don’t seem interested in investigating, how far can Kirk and McCoy let it go?
Previous chapters: One, Two, Three, Four(A), Four(B), Five, Six
Chapter 7
There was no evidence of physical injury.
Leonard dragged himself out of the conference room, where he’d spent the past hour being grilled by the Captain, First Officer, and the familiar face of Doctor Swerdlow, Chief of Neurology at Starfleet Medical, conferencing via subspace. And before that meeting, he’d spent the day running back and forth between sickbay and conference rooms. He was exhausted. His head hurt, his back hurt, and he was pretty sure even his hair hurt.
There were no foreign substances, chemicals, or objects in Doctor Brex’s body.
There was nothing to say that wasn’t already in his report, but he had been asked to repeat it, over and over again, as if repeating the information would somehow change it. It felt like an interrogation. It was too close to the feeling of being put on trial when someone close to him had been injured... a horrible feeling which he’d experienced all too recently. Those scars really hadn’t healed yet, and now, this.
The only abnormalities that could be detected were the unusual electrical activity in the temporal lobe and the associated imbalance of neurotransmitters.
The artificial lights of the hallway seemed too bright, and Leonard squinted against them. He was too tired, and it was hard to focus. He’d been battered mentally and emotionally, and he wanted to go to his quarters, take a headache pill, turn off his lights, and go to sleep. However, he knew that sleep would be hard-won. No, he’d just lay there, awake, staring through the darkness and wondering what the hell had happened.
At the moment, Tavin Brex is perfectly stable. His level of consciousness has not increased or decreased appreciably since the first complete scan taken less than ten minutes after he lost consciousness, but his vital signs are good and show no signs of deterioration.
Brex had been in perfect health when the USS Athena had left spacedock. He’d used himself to calibrate a tricorder and a full-body scanner earlier that week, and there hadn’t been a single thing that could have precipitated a collapse like that. But to hell with it, there wasn’t anything he could find now that could be causing this!
All standard techniques for reviving comatose patients have failed. We will continue with standard protocols until we discuss the matter further with the Betazoid Healers.
They’d already contacted the Betazoid authorities asking for medical references and advice that might not be common knowledge. The Healers were going to contact them again once they’d thoroughly reviewed the scans and other data, but there really wasn’t much they could do from a distance. In the meantime, Leonard had spent the entire morning and most of the afternoon working shoulder-to-shoulder with Doctor Singh, running detailed scans and trying every technique in the Federation’s vast medical databanks to get Brex to regain consciousness. Nothing had helped.
They were at a medical impasse, but Leonard didn’t want to believe that medical intervention was the only thing he could do for Brex. What remained, however, was both the source of the controversy and of Leonard’s rapidly intensifying headache.
Apparently, the eve of one of the biggest diplomatic events in decades of Federation history was not the time and place to level any sort of accusation against one of the main parties involved in those diplomatic dealings. Captain Porter seemed to have a normally calm and jovial personality, and the buzz around the ship was that he was an unusually good commanding officer with an open-door policy and an open mind to match, but when Leonard stated that he suspected foul play on the part of the Axanar, his eyes widened and the veins on his temples bulged.
There was no evidence! No tangible sign of foul play! No way to connect Brex’s collapse to the Axanar, who had been in their quarters all night! Not on my ship!
Leonard McCoy didn’t give a flying fuck.
Something smelled funny about this whole damned mess. There was a man lying unconscious in sickbay with no mechanism of injury or underlying cause of illness, and Leonard did not feel like leaving this alone. Didn’t much matter, though. When he’d tried to push his theory and his flimsy - nonexistent, dammit - evidence, reiterating his discussion with Brex before the Axanar physicals, the missing communique, and Brex’s odd mutterings just before he’d lost consciousness, he’d been slapped down. Okay, so maybe he’d pushed it a bit too far, but what could they expect of him? Porter’s voice was still ringing in his ears.
“Drop it, Cadet! We have our security teams investigating, and they’ll deal with any matters of foul play. You are not a commissioned officer, despite your medical degree, and your involvement ends at the doors of sickbay. Do I make myself clear?”
Yeah, he’d made himself pretty damned clear. And if Leonard was any good at reading people - which he was, dammit - he didn’t think Porter was actually going to investigate the Axanar.
And why should he? Sure, Leonard wasn’t exactly privy to the official reports outside of what he’d witnessed himself, but people were talking, and his hearing was excellent. The Axanar schedule had been packed with meetings, some of which were unplanned. Their first day onboard, Araxian leaders had requested a meeting via subspace with the Axanar and some of the other Ambassadors, and had then held the Axanar for further discussions. That’s why the Axanar had missed their appointments. Nothing sinister at all - just diplomatic horse shit. Beyond that, the Axanar had been the most cordial and cooperative guests possible. At least, that’s what Leonard had overheard.
Sure, it made sense not to start a diplomatic incident with an investigation. Plenty of sense. Leonard couldn’t actually begrudge Captain Porter for not wanting to level accusations against the Axanar. With their historical background? Their species’ psych profile, overwhelming hospitality, and innate courtesy didn’t fit with their involvement in something underhanded. Besides, there was no physical evidence whatsoever to indicate any sort of foul play in Brex’s condition. Everything that made Leonard suspect the Axanar was circumstantial at best, and even the circumstances were weak. At this particular moment in history, when the Axanar were on the cusp of joining the Federation, there was no comprehensible reason for them to do something like this.
That still didn’t mean Leonard could switch off his gut instinct, which was starting to add nausea to his damned headache.
To top it all off, although it felt like a trivial and self-centered concern at the moment, the medical staff was now short-handed. The Athena wasn’t a big ship, and only carried a staff of three regular doctors, five nurses, and five techs. Despite being a cadet, Leonard was going to have to function as a full member of the regular staff in order to fully cover sickbay. Aside from the nurses, there were only Doctor Singh, Doctor Ankewicz, and himself. Which, naturally, meant he’d have to divert time away from his research.
Goddammit.
He rounded the curve of the corridor to his quarters and... he should have been surprised to see Jim Kirk leaning against his door, but he wasn’t.
Jim looked up at the sound of footsteps, unfolded his arms from across his chest, and stepped away from the wall. He didn’t smile, and didn’t offer a sarcastic quip about how Leonard looked like he’d just come off a three-day bender. Instead, Jim gave a solemn nod that told Leonard he understood, and something that had been knotted tightly in Leonard’s chest loosened a little bit.
“Jim,” Leonard said softly as he approached.
“I heard.” Jim rested a warm hand on Leonard’s shoulder and gave a squeeze, and the gesture felt familiar and comfortable. “You’re not okay.” It wasn’t even a question. Jim knew. And Jim knew that as exhausted as he was, there was no way he was going to be able to fall asleep right now, and he didn’t want to be alone. So Jim wasn’t going to let him be alone.
Leonard inclined his head towards the door, giving Jim the unspoken and unnecessary invitation, then turned and tabbed in his passcode. The door slid open, and Jim followed him into the room.
Without a word, Leonard unzipped his boots and kicked them aside. Jim lined them up by the door, the way Leonard liked them. Leonard stumbled further into his room as he yanked off his uniform top, undershirt, and pants and tossed them into the sonic cleaning unit. He turned towards the bathroom to get his bathrobe, only to find Jim handing it to him.
Leonard nodded appreciatively and wrapped his bathrobe around himself. For a moment, he looked longingly at his bed, but instead, he collapsed into one of the two armchairs with a groan, rubbing his temples and trying to get the ache from the day to disappear. A moment later, a hand unfurled in front of his eyes, presenting him with a small white pill that Leonard recognized. Another hand offered a glass of water.
Leonard looked up at Jim, hoping his expression conveyed at least a pathetic echo of the gratitude he felt as he took the headache pill and tossed it back. Jim gave him a faint smile before he settled himself on the other armchair and put his feet up on the coffee table between them. A few minutes later, when the headache began to ease away, Leonard sighed in physical relief, and put his feet up on the coffee table to match Jim’s.
He looked up at Jim, who merely responded with an expression of acceptance, waiting for Leonard to say... whatever he needed to say.
“Jim... I can’t... it’s not just what happened to Brex... but the way the Captain... he just dismissed it -”
“It’s okay, Bones,” Jim said softly. “You don’t have to say a word. I caught enough of the scuttlebutt around the ship. You can tell me the real story tomorrow. For now... I’m here.”
Leonard nodded once, then closed his eyes and leaned his head against the back of the armchair. “Thanks, Jim.”
“You’re welcome, Bones.”
And for now, that was good enough.
*********
The atmosphere aboard the USS Athena had gained a distinctly unpleasant edge to it. It was a small ship, and even with the recent turnover of almost a quarter of the personnel, the crew was fairly tight, and everyone knew the CMO. The celebratory vibe that had been infectious since their first arrival at Axanar was gone. A cloud of suspicion hovered over everything, but there was nothing for it to stick to. So it just hovered.
As far as Jim was concerned, it fucking sucked.
Instinctively, he wanted to dive into the guts of this mystery. He’d spent years not being able to leave things alone. He wanted and needed to dig his fingers into everything, pull back the layers, and see what was hiding beneath. However, he’d sworn to himself that he wouldn’t. It was frustrating and infuriating and he hated himself a little bit for it, but he wasn’t about to overstep his rank and position. Not this time. It was his first time serving aboard a starship, and he couldn’t fuck this up. His career depended on it.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t keeping his ears open while keeping his mouth shut.
The frustrating part of that plan, however, was that nobody was really talking about it. Jim wasn’t sure what he thought about that. After the first day of scuttlebutt and rumors, the theorizing had stopped as if someone had flipped a switch. Finney had told the cadets not to get into the rumor mill on this one, and similar talks had probably happened in every department on the ship. Still, even with Starfleet discipline, Jim had never seen people just stop talking about a mystery so quickly.
Everyone was concerned about the good doctor, of course, but the word around the ship was that it was nothing more than a medical problem. People seemed to have accepted it at face value. And why shouldn’t they? Strange things that can’t be explained happen when you’re exploring deep space, and medical mysteries happen all the time, so there was no reason they could be sure it was foul play. At worst, some people were worried that the ship had picked up an unknown pathogen from Axanar or one of the other delegates that had come aboard, and Betazoids were susceptible.
Nobody had suggested that the Axanar had attacked the man.
Except Bones.
Jim had barely seen Bones since the night after Doctor Brex had fallen into the inexplicable coma. Sure, it had only been a day and a half since then, but after Bones had settled down and let the headache pill do its work, he’d let loose a rant that could have burned the fur off the back of a targ. Jim had listened in near-silence, absorbing every detail, and finally helping Bones to bed when the guy started repeating himself and stumbling from exhaustion.
Since then, Bones’ words had buzzed around in his head, spinning and stewing with no outlet or input. He was churning his own theories around the whole mess, and it was driving him crazy, but he kept telling himself to ignore it. To be honest, he had no idea what to think. Bones’ suspicions could easily be nothing more than reaction to a colleague being injured, and he was looking for someone to blame. Everything else on this mission seemed to be running like clockwork. Jim could only hope that what felt like the start of something big was actually just a fluke, and it was all going to right itself. Nothing sinister. Not at all.
If he kept repeating that to himself enough times, maybe he’d stop smelling his own bullshit. Probably not.
Not for the first time, Jim wondered why the hell it seemed like he and Bones were always stuck in the middle of whatever crazy thing was happening. Then, he told himself that it was Starfleet, and there was always something crazy going on no matter who you were or where you were. Still, it didn’t help stop the feeling that he and Bones just kept getting wrapped up in bigger things than they could handle. For that matter, it wasn’t their job to handle it.
Damn, he wanted to talk to Bones right now. The man had been on evening and night shifts, and Jim had been stuck in the commo lab with his hands full.
And yeah, it really fucking sucked.
“Cadet Kirk, have you run the morning system diagnostics yet?” That was Lieutenant Rahman.
Jim blinked and realized he was nodding off, and he quickly covered himself as he repositioned his hands on the controls. “Sorry sir, almost done.” And he was almost done, really. He pulled up the next set of parameters at his control station as Lieutenant Rahman leaned over his shoulder and looked at him sideways.
“Getting enough sleep, Cadet?” The words were firm, but there was a trace of concern in her expression. She was downright minuscule in stature, and outwardly soft-spoken, but she knew her department inside and out, and was very good at keeping the whole communications array in perfect working order. Jim had liked her from the start, and he respected her even a bit more for noticing that he wasn’t all there. She gave him a searching look. “I know you’ve been distracted for the past couple of days, like we all have, and I understand that. But still, we’ve got a job to do, right?”
“Yes, sir.” Jim’s cheeks burned slightly. Of course, everyone was a tiny bit off their game, and he had no excuse for letting his distractions impact his performance when others were expected to do their jobs. “I’m sorry. And... I admit, I haven’t been sleeping right. But you’re right, everyone is working under the same conditions.”
She patted his shoulder gently. “Good,” she said, and the note of approval buzzed pleasantly in the back of Jim’s mind. “So, today, we do our weekly review of the whole message cache for the commo system. How would you like to run the whole thing?”
“Any chance to learn something new, sir,” he said with a grin that didn’t feel completely fake.
“Good answer.” The computer pinged, and she tapped the display on Jim’s control station, bringing up the results of the basic diagnostic cycle. “Looks like everything is good to go, so come on over to the main computer station with me, and I’ll show you how we run the weekly review.” Her tone softened slightly. “It might help keep your mind occupied.”
“I think I’d like that.” Jim swiveled his chair and stood, following Lieutenant Rahman over to the imposing set of displays and control panels of the primary control station for the entire communications computer node.
An hour and a half later, Jim was thoroughly engrossed in what seemed to be the most complex data cache he’d ever seen. The data streams included received subspace transmissions, sent subspace transmissions, and intra-ship communications. With almost 300 souls aboard, including ambassadors, diplomats, and their aides, it shouldn’t have surprised Jim to see how many communiques had been sent and received, but it did anyway.
And Lieutenant Rahman had been right; it was certainly keeping his mind occupied. He hadn’t even looked up from his station almost the entire time, until he heard the sound of voices at the door. There was the familiar and boisterous sound of a Tellarite, and Jim had to grin. He turned around in his chair to see the same delegate he’d spoken to on Axanar.
Rahman was indicating parts of the communications lab and talking quietly, and Jim guessed that the Ambassador had requested a tour of the ship’s facilities. Noticing that Jim was looking their way, she smiled and led the Tellarite over. “Cadet Kirk, this is Ambassador Skavrin, the Tellarite representative for the Araxian branch of the mission. He requested a tour of the ship.”
Skavrin. Jim filed away the name, glad he didn’t have to ask. Remembering his Tellarite courtesies, he got to his feet, folded his arms across his chest, and stuck his chin out. “Well met again, sir.”
“Aaah, Cadet! Well met again, indeed!” He stuck out his own chin. “I see that we’ll have the chance to debate after all! For I believe that you are misinformed regarding the politics of the Axanar and the Zhitorans, and aren’t fit for this mission in your ignorance.”
“I welcome the challenge, sir, and I’ll be happy to show you that you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”
At the next station over, Ensign Latkis gasped. Jim cast him a glance, noting that the Ensign looked absolutely scandalized.
Jim stifled a grin, and looked back at the Ambassador. “That is, of course, unless you’re too cowardly to debate a mere cadet,” he threw down for good measure.
Skavrin locked eyes with him for a moment, then threw his head back and let out a raucous laugh. “You might offer debate that isn’t utterly pathetic, for a Terran. When you are released from your duties, before we arrive at Araxis, I expect you to join me for debate!”
“I’ll see your challenge, sir. I will send notice when I am available, and we’ll cross words.”
Skavrin turned a glance at a very pleased-looking Lieutenant Rahman. “Your cadet would almost make a half-decent Tellarite.”
“He does have a few useful skills,” she said. “But for now, he’s got to get back to work. Right, Kirk?”
“Yes, sir.”
Grinning broadly, he sat back down at his station and returned to his work with renewed enthusiasm. A chance to debate with a Tellarite of Skavrin’s status? Now that would be an experience to take his mind off things!
Then he noticed he was being stared at. “Sir?” he said, turning towards Ensign Latkis.
The Ensign was giving him a look somewhere between confused and pissed off. “You just called an Ambassador a coward!” he said under his breath.
It was all Jim could do to keep his jaw from dropping. How the hell did this Ensign get his commission without realizing that Jim had been using the best possible manners towards a Tellarite? They were one of the Founding Races of the Federation! Annoyed, but determined not to show it, Jim painted a smug grin on his face and said, “I know. I would have insulted his mother, but I want to save that for debating him later.”
Leaving the ensign to figure it out for himself, Jim refocused on his task. With the data-processing of the subspace communiques underway, Jim turned his attention to intra-ship commo.
The data flowed like a river of time stamps and authenticity codes. Every time stamp came with an authenticity code, and cross-referenced to a data bundle. Every data bundle had an origin, a destination, and a unique reference number, assigned sequentially. Ship-wide, every communique had a way to be tracked, completing a data stream that matched up beautifully, all to be archived once the record was verified. It wasn’t as exciting and challenging as working a tactics station, which he hoped he’d be doing on his next duty rotation, but given how tense everything had been lately, it was almost soothing to watch the data fall into place under his fingertips.
Until it didn’t.
Shrugging, Jim cross-checked the glitch. There was a missing data packet. One of the sequential reference numbers had a null data set. Rahman had told him that it happened at least a few times each week. An empty memo would be sent as a hiccup piggybacked on a real memo. She’d instructed him to file those aside to be cross-checked when he was done going through the whole message cache.
He flagged the reference number, then pressed onwards... and came to another glitch almost immediately. Same thing - null data packet for an assigned reference number.
“Lieutenant Rahman?”
“Yes, Kirk?” She walked over and stood next to him.
It was probably normal, routine glitches, but he had to ask. “How often do you get reference numbers with a null data set?”
“A dozen or more each week is pretty normal. We don’t worry until we get at least fifty of them in a week, and then we need to recalibrate our data processors.” She leaned against the wall by his console. “It’s one of the things we all learn pretty quickly once we leave the Academy. All of the theory and ideal conditions and lessons about how things are supposed to work? Those fly out the airlock as soon as we put them into practice.”
Jim narrowly refrained from snorting in amusement. “Don’t worry, sir. I’ve already figured that out.” He tapped his control screen. “I just wanted to be sure this was normal.”
“Never hurts to ask. Yes, they’re perfectly normal. When we cross-check them at the end of the day, you’ll be able to see where each of them came from. Keep up the good work.”
Again, Jim was alone with his data sets. The glitches popped up randomly throughout the record, and Jim understood why they had to check this weekly. Ensuring that the communications central array was working, that it was interfacing with the mainframe, and that data wasn’t being lost was essential to ship operations. There were so many tasks all over the ship to make sure everything was running smoothly. Once he became a Captain - if he ever became a Captain - he’d never take any of the small tasks for granted. It occurred to him that this was the point of learning everything from the ground up.
The morning wore on, and Jim was finding himself oddly grateful for the piles of mindless data. The ship hummed around him, and the data flowed on his screen. A quick lunch left him wishing Bones was on the same shift because damn, he wanted to talk, but instead, he sat with the other cadets and compared notes about the different departments around the ship.
By mid-afternoon, Jim was ready to analyze the glitches for his final report. It was actually a bit exciting, for being an utterly monotonous task. This was one of the reports that went directly to the Captain, and his name would be on it. Not bad, for a cadet.
One by one, the null-set reference numbers matched up to other messages sent. The proverbial hiccups. There were a couple of them that he tracked down to processor malfunctions in the central cache, and he found the original messages by back-tracking to the source. Sleuth-work. It wasn’t terribly boring, really. And then...
“Lieutenant Rahman?”
“Kirk, you look like someone hit you with a stun-gun. What’s up?”
He glanced up at Lieutenant Rahman. “How often do we get null-set glitches that can’t be tracked at all? When there’s no data for a reference number, and it’s not a hiccup from the computer?”
She frowned. “Almost never. Why?”
“We’ve got two of them. What could cause it?”
Instead of answering, she waved him out of his seat, took over the controls, and started digging. “It’s a matter of experience, Kirk,” she said smoothly, and Jim thought she might make an excellent instructor. “Your focus isn’t communications, and it does take time to learn every sort of glitch. Over time, you learn to recognize the patterns behind each problem the same way children learn to recognize letter patterns that form words.” She worked in silence for a moment as Jim watched the screen.
Data flew by. Although she was much quicker than he was, she was doing exactly what he’d already done, so there was nothing new to be seen. Finally, she leaned back in her chair, staring at the screen, a look of annoyance on her face. “True null sets,” she said, her tone matching her expression. “Both of them.”
“What does that mean?”
She looked at him. “It means you get to take off early for the day, and I need to do some investigating.” She glanced at the chrono. “It’s almost the end of your shift anyway.”
“I... I’m sorry I didn’t figure it out, sir.”
Her expression softened. “It’s not your fault, cadet. Actually, you did an excellent job. I didn’t really expect you to finish during the shift anyway, so you’re ahead of the game as far as I’m concerned. You finished everything else. Not bad at all. I’ll tell Finney that you did a stellar job, and that I’m going to try to sway you into becoming a commo officer.”
He felt a flush of heat up his neck. “Thank you, sir, but I’m quite happy in the command track.”
She gave him a slight smirk. “Figured as much. Now get out of here and go enjoy your free time by studying the subspace physics of the transmitter array. You’re doing the routine maintenance on the array with Latkis tomorrow.”
Jim kept the smile on his face as he thanked her and left. As soon as he got out into the corridor, however, he let the smile drop away from his expression.
Before he’d called the Lieutenant over, he’d followed the trail of breadcrumbs as far as he possibly could, trying to track down the null reference numbers. Even though the messages were completely empty, the search had produced authenticity codes. It wasn’t much, but the codes were enough to identify the sender.
They had both been sent by Tavin Brex.
*********
Leonard groaned as he rolled over in his bunk. His comm unit was beeping.
“Kirk to McCoy.”
He glared at his comm. The light on it was flashing.
“Kirk to McCoy,” came Jim’s voice again. “Come on, Bones. Pick up the comm.”
Growling, Leonard reached over to the small table by his bunk, grabbed the comm unit, and flipped it open. “McCoy here. What do you want, you pathological pest?”
“Nice to talk to you, too, buddy-ol'-pal. I know you were almost ready to get out of bed anyway, and... I’ve got something you need to know.”
Something in Jim’s voice had Leonard sitting starkly upright. “What?”
“Meet me in the mess hall. You need breakfast, I want dinner, and... just meet me there, okay?”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Leonard said in a rush. “McCoy out.”
Jim could be a pest, but when it was something serious, he made it absolutely clear, and Leonard had learned not to brush it off. He threw himself out of bed, hurriedly straightened his bunk, tossed his night-clothes into the cleaning unit, and ran himself through his hygiene routine in record time. Ten minutes later, his stubble was gone, his hair was neatly combed, and he was in his uniform striding down the corridor to the mess hall.
It was 1545 hours - too early for alpha-shift supper, too late for for lunch, and he easily spotted Jim sitting at a table in the far corner. He grabbed a bowl of oatmeal, and a minute later he had dropped himself heavily into the chair facing Jim. “This had better be good. I lost a whole ten minutes of sleep because of you.” He knocked back a sip of coffee, letting the almost-too-hot burn help to wake him up.
Jim gave him a tired grin, pushing his own plate to the side. “I know the night shift has completely messed up your sleep cycle, but yeah, this is good.”
“Nice to hear it,” Leonard grumbled around a mouthful of oatmeal. He swallowed and gave Jim a sharp look. “And speaking of sleep cycles and shifts, your shift isn’t supposed to be over yet, is it?”
“I was let out early.” His grin turned slightly conspiratorial. “I think I was dismissed because of what I found... even though they don’t know how much of it I did find.”
Suddenly nervous, Leonard leaned over the table and spoke in a harsh whisper. “Wait a minute, Jim... you’re working commo. There’s a ton of classified stuff down there. You’re not about to violate some sort of privacy regulation, are you?
Jim shook his head emphatically. “Come on, Bones, don’t you trust me?”
“As far as I can throw you.”
“Bones.” Jim’s face took on a stark look of sincerity. It perfectly matched the tone in his voice that had dragged Leonard willingly from his bed, and he remembered why he was down here early.
“I trust you, Jim. You know that.”
Jim nodded. “Good. Because I studied the regulations on restricted information. None of this is classified. And they haven’t even unofficially told me not to say anything because they don’t know I was able to track the problem as far as I did.”
“Track what?”
Jim leaned forward and spoke in an undertone. “The message Brex sent you.”
In an instant, Leonard was more awake than any amount of coffee could have made him. “I thought it was gone!” He breathed.
Jim’s expression was grim. “It is.”
“Then how...?”
“I got assigned to the weekly data review in commo. I found a few glitches that couldn’t be explained, and I tracked them. Two of them had Doctor Brex’s authenticity code, and they were both sent the night before he went into the coma. I couldn’t track who they were sent to, but one of the experts in the department has to be able to dig up something - who deleted the messages, who the messages were sent to... something. But even if they can’t, there’s your evidence, Bones.” His eyes were glinting with excitement. “Real evidence that someone deleted messages sent by Doctor Brex, and that you weren’t imagining it.”
“I wasn’t imagining anything,” Leonard shot at him, but he could already feel the relief in knowing that there was something that confirmed his story, no matter how tenuous.
Jim gave him a sympathetic look. “I know that. I just wanted you to know... well....” His expression shifted to uncertainty. “I just wanted you to know.”
Leonard stared at him for a minute, trying to translate the subtleties of Jim’s body language before deciding to go for broke. “Wait a minute... you just wanted me to know? What did you want me to do with this little nugget of information?”
“I...” Jim hesitated. “I had to tell you, Bones. I had to tell someone, and it had to be you.” He shook his head in frustration. “Fuck, you deserve to know, and I just wanted to make sure you had the chance to know. But....”
With a heavy sigh, Leonard leaned on the table. “But I can’t say anything about this, can I?”
Jim frowned. He even looked a bit embarrassed. “I didn’t even tell Lieutenant Rahman that I saw it.”
Leonard growled softly and jabbed his spoon into his oatmeal. “Right. Yeah. So if you or I try to report this now, they’ll jump on you because you should have reported it to the lieutenant.” He shook his head. “Dammit.”
“We can’t report it. But Bones? She’ll find the same thing I did.” His expression perked up a bit. “I mean, hell, if I could find that information, I’m sure the officer who does this for a career will find it in no time.”
“And she’ll report it to the captain,” Leonard said flatly.
“Exactly,” Jim said with the worst farce at reassurance Bones had ever seen from the guy. “She’ll probably find a lot more information than I did, too. And then the senior staff can investigate, and if it is the Axanar... or whoever else... they’ll have enough evidence to go after them.”
“Will they?” Leonard asked, bleeding cynicism into his tone.
“They have to.”
Leonard stared at him. He leaned over the table, and then dropped his voice even more, just to be sure nobody else could hear him. “You didn’t see the way the Captain just about busted an artery when I tried to tell him that I suspected the Axanar. I don’t think he has any intent of investigating.”
Jim leaned away slightly, looking a bit stung. “Maybe it isn’t the Axanar, but whatever the evidence shows - whatever they find - they can’t just ignore it. They’ll get to the bottom of it.”
Leonard blinked. Hard. “Jim... I don’t know what to say, kid, but this isn’t you. Don’t you want to know? Don’t you want to investigate? I mean... goddammit,” he hissed through gritted teeth, mentally apologizing for what he was about to say, “I think we learned pretty well last year how far we can trust people to investigate shit.”
In a snap, Jim’s face went stony. “That was low, Bones. Really fucking low.”
“I’m sorry, kid, but I just can’t believe you’d be willing to let this slide.”
Jim quickly looked around him, then hunched over the table so he was almost nose to nose with Leonard. “Shit, Bones, I’m not willing to let it slide! But I don’t think I’ve got much of a choice here! Look around us. Look at our uniforms. At least you’ve got a branch insignia, but we’re both wearing gray. You’re already practicing medicine, but neither of us has a scrap of actual authority. Well, not unless every commissioned officer aboard dies, and if that were to happen, I think we’d be toast, too.” He reached over and stabbed his fork into the small pile of pasta salad on his plate and studied the sad-looking cherry tomato he’d speared. “Internship. More than a crewman, less than an officer, in the middle of everything, and yet completely shut out of all the important shit. And if you step outside of anything beyond your assigned duties as a doctor, they’ll shut you down in a heartbeat.”
Leonard felt his breath catch hard in his throat. Jim was right - the instant he’d tried to assert himself beyond the scope of his practice - he’d been very directly reminded of his place. He was a doctor, but he was still a cadet.
Jim nodded at him, and not without sympathy. “You know it, too. We keep our eyes open and observe, learn a few things about how it really works out here, and let the real officers call the shots. Learn to take orders, and not to get ahead of ourselves... because what do we know, right?” He stuffed the tomato into his mouth.
Leonard watched him as he chewed, realizing he didn’t have much of an appetite anymore himself. He felt as though he should have been pleased that Jim was taking the advice he’d been given and not diving headlong into things that weren’t his business, but he wasn’t. When Jim had talked about it the other night, he’d been pretty fixated on the idea of holding himself back, but despite everything he’d said, Leonard hadn’t really thought he’d do it. It hadn’t seemed right for the kid, but maybe it was part of the maturity that Jim had needed. Now that the kid was following through, Leonard wasn’t so sure he liked it.
What do we know? Leonard thought bitterly. As much as any of these other clowns, that’s for damned sure.
He considered Jim - the brightest person he’d probably ever met. Clever as hell. A walking encyclopedia with a ferocious sense of purpose and a propensity to leap without looking. Undeniably capable, in almost every capacity. Despite Jim’s lowly rank of cadet, Leonard couldn’t quash the notion that Jim would be just as good at getting to the bottom of this than anyone else. Maybe better.
But it wasn’t their place.
Leonard merely nodded. “Yeah. What do we know?” He reached for his coffee and took a sip, then another, wondering how he was going to be able to ignore the mystery around him, and how long Jim would be able to do the same.
“So, how’s your research going?” Jim asked, bringing Leonard out of his thoughts.
Leonard offered a thin smile. “Not too bad at all.”
They spent the rest of the meal talking over the most basic things they’d been working on, and when Leonard finally pulled himself from the table to get down to Sickbay, he felt like he hadn’t even spoken to Jim. Not really.
Two years ago, if Jim had a mystery or puzzle on his mind, nothing would have kept him from pursuing it with complete abandon. Not even Leonard’s adamant warnings about not getting involved. Now, he was holding back. It was something Leonard had hoped to see one day, but actually seeing it? It didn’t feel the way he’d thought it would.
Yeah, Jim Kirk had changed. Right now, Leonard wasn’t quite sure what he thought of that.
*********
To Chapter 8