Trek fic: Pretty Boy (Pike/Boyce)
Title: Pretty Boy
Fandom & Pairing: Star Trek AOS, Pike/Boyce
Rating: R
Warnings: none
Genre: drama
Word Count: Around 4100
Beta: the inestimable random00b. I did some fiddling after getting this back, so any errors that have crept in will be mine!
Summary: When Doctor Boyce first meets cocky cadet Chris Pike he is not impressed.
Author's note:
This is a (very belated) birthday fic for my much-appreciated No. 1 Beta imachar. I hope you like it!
The fic was inspired by the pretty boy pic of a young Bruce Greenwood (see below). Phil Boyce is played by Mark Harmon, and pilot Zainunnisa Gool is played by South African actress Leleti Khumalo.
“So, doc, ready to get close up and personal? I guess it’s your lucky day.”
A tired Boyce looks up from his monitor, startled. He’s processed some twenty cadets already; this is thankfully the last one before they are all signed off as fit and ready for their 180 mile survival race across the barren wastes of Psamathe.
A cadet lounges against the bio-bed, casually removing his shirt. Boyce frowns. You don’t need to strip for a tricorder check-over and the cadet must know that. Momentarily he’s left speechless by just how pretty the young man is - Michelangelo’s David brought to life, but in vivid technicolor, with plump rosy lips, startlingly blue eyes and a shock of thick golden-blond hair curling provocatively over his forehead.
The cadet must have noticed the appreciative look because he offers a seductive smile. “You’re here to look out for my health and welfare, right doc?” Boyce nods slowly, left off-balance by this odd behavior. All the other cadets had been tense bundles of pre-race nerves, eager to be signed off as quickly as possible. Young twinks aren’t Boyce’s thing but he does like handsome, confident men and this demi-god radiating youthful arrogance is hard to ignore.
The youth shifts casually against the bed and runs a long-fingered hand through the blond mop. The raised arm emphasizes the honed biceps and perfect pecs. He is clearly positioned for maximum effect. “I like a fuck before a mission. Takes the edge off. How about it?” Boyce gapes at him. Ignoring the broad chest lightly feathered with golden curls and the full quirked lips, Boyce looks into the blue eyes - eyes flinty with cynicism. Clearly the cadet expects his offer to be accepted, but he will despise Boyce for doing so.
Boyce wonders why, if he hates his pretty that much, he doesn’t just buzz cut the hair. Or would that count as backing down? He shakes himself mentally. He’s not wasting his time playing games with some man-child with issues. His shift is nearly over and there’s a cold beer calling him at the bar. “Get your clothes on,” he snaps, as he runs the tricorder rapidly over the cadet. As he expects the youth is in peak physical condition, the poster child for all the Academy training purports to provide. “You’re clear. Get out.”
The blond is surprised but dresses without comment, Boyce clearly already dismissed from his mind. “Good luck,” says Boyce as the cadet leaves. He’s not sure why he does it, maybe an awkward peace offering to reduce the tension of the encounter. The youth turns gracefully in the doorway, looking back over his shoulder. “I’m Chris Pike. I don’t need luck.” He’s gone before Boyce can muster the energy to roll his eyes.
* * *
In the bar some time later Boyce joins the others standing at the picture window that looks down onto the unforgiving desert. The cadets are lined up below them, receiving last minute instructions. He spots the Pike boy’s shock of blond hair. Of course the cadet has pushed right to the leading edge of the crowd. Once the starting gun has sounded, Pike is immediately out front, running in long loping strides, already opening a lead. Dusk is falling; this close to the equator it won’t last long. The cadets face twelve hours of running in darkness, navigating through twisting canyons, surviving temperatures that will plummet well below freezing within hours. The fastest of them are likely to finish four days from now; the cut-off time for the course is a week. Pike will never finish the race if he doesn’t pace himself better, Boyce thinks.
He can’t stop wondering about his odd encounter with the arrogant youth. Turning to a colleague standing near him he asks: “That Pike boy. Any relation to the Chief of Staff?”
“Son,” she replies. At Boyce’s look of surprise - he’d expected distant cousin or just possibly grand-son - she continues: “A very late May-September marriage, just the one child and the mother dead in an accident before he turned ten. Poor kid!”
Boyce nods sympathetically as he watches the crowd of cadets vanishing into the dusty distance. Admiral Josh Pike is a living legend, second only to the now-retired Admiral Jonathan Archer. But where Archer made his name with a combination of ruthlessness and self-depreciating charm, Pike senior has bulldozed his way to prominence with his absolute refusal to compromise. He’s tough-talking, hard-assed, and brilliant - and he knows it. He has no time for fools or failures. Being his only son can’t be easy.
* * *
Boyce wakes in the morning to find the base engulfed in an unexpected sandstorm. He peers out into a red haze and hears the sand rasping against the windows. The building howls mournfully, every corner and cranny being caught by the wind. Even with the highly processed air inside the base, enough fine dust enters that the air has a peculiar metallic tang. He wonders how young Pike is doing. Still, this is what the cadets train for. Presumably all that gear they were lugging allows them all to hunker down safely and wait out such things.
The storm howls on relentlessly through-out the day and into the night. Talk in the base begins to get tense. Early the next morning the word is out that the exercise is cancelled and the cadets need to be brought back in. Unable to fly in the ongoing storm, heavy duty ground vehicles are dispatched. A slow trickle of cadets return, starting with those who had given up fairly close to the base. Boyce is kept busy with a wide range of minor injuries. He keeps an eye out for a shock of curly blond hair but is not surprised that Pike is not among the first wave.
After the first 40 miles the course disappears into a maze of canyonlands where the vehicles cannot go. They wait out a second night. By dawn the storm has died out, leaving the ground covered in a thick carpet of fine red dust. Boyce is on stand-by in the gloom of pre-dawn, watching out of the windows as the search tiltrotors lift off. The rumor spreads rapidly among the waiting medical staff: the location transmitters that the cadets wear aren’t working. They hadn’t been observable during the storm. With the interference of the sand that hadn’t been surprising. But despite the still air and clear skies, none of the transmitters have come back online, nor is anyone using their emergency comms units.
Further rumors claim that the transmitters were designed for use on Vulcan, not on Psamathe. The sand here is much finer. It clogs up equipment in a way not seen on other Federation planets. Whatever the reason, of the 76 cadets, 32 cannot be located. The tiltrotors search all day, fanning out in concentric circles from where the previous cadets were found. Given the way the wind swirls within the storm, cadets get easily disorientated and many who battled on rather than hunkering down have struggled off in the wrong directions.
All day survivors arrive in ones and twos, suffering from heat stroke, dehydration, and sand burn caused by the fine particles scouring their skins. There are a wide range of trauma injuries too, from walking into boulders or falling down potholes in the canyons or being caught in rockslides. A woman is brought in in a coma from heat exhaustion. Then the first body comes in, a man probably dead from a heart attack. Boyce is relieved to see short dark hair on the corpse.
The hunt continues through the night, the tiltrotors now using powerful search lights. Another body is found smashed to pieces at the foot of a cliff. Boyce works through the night as the survivors’ injuries become increasingly serious. Now he is battling hypothermia rather than heat stroke. As each new casualty arrives, he hopes it will be the cocky boy that has no need of luck, but it never is.
* * *
He sleeps most of the following day. The flood of patients is now down to a trickle. Fewer doctors are needed. When he wakes in the late afternoon, he hears that only one cadet is still missing. Chris Pike has not been found.
Boyce lurks near the search-and-rescue command centre for the next two days, joining the volunteers scanning over satellite photographs. As he looks, his mind lists dozens of different ways the cadet could have died. Or could still be dying. He may be lying out there badly injured, slowly expiring of dehydration, baked by day and frozen by night. He’s now been missing for nearly four days. Starfleet’s Chief of Staff had flown in the previous night from Federation headquarters and even through the closed door Boyce can hear Fleet Admiral Josh Pike berating the search crews.
A slim woman in a pilot’s uniform slips out of the control room, swearing under her breath as she heads for the nearest coffee dispenser. “Bad in there?” asks Boyce.
“As bad as it sounds,” replies the pilot, her dark skin grey with exhaustion. She downs an espresso shot and immediately punches in an order for another. “Fuck, but that man is intimidating. And his righteous wrath is doing nothing to further the search. He’s just destroying what morale remains among the search teams.”
“Where’ve you been searching?” asks Boyce. “I realize it’s none of my business, but I’m the doctor who did the Pike boy’s physical before he went out. Phil Boyce.”
The pilot shakes his hand. “So you’ve had the full effect of our golden boy, have you? I’m Zainunnisa Gool.” She fires up her comm and projects a map simulation across the table. “We’ve been grid-searching in ever wider circles from where the bulk of the cadets were found. He could have wandered off anywhere.”
Boyce stares at the search circles. They reach barely two-thirds of the way along the full length of the survival course. Clearly no sensible person would have kept pushing along the route in the teeth of the storm. And yet…
“I have an idea,” says Boyce slowly.
“Well, that’s more than anyone else does at this point,” replies Gool. “But no one is getting a word in edgeways with the Admiral bellowing like that.”
Boyce takes a deep breath, and then pushes his way into the command room. The Admiral is in the middle of a lengthy rant, demanding the search team go back over the ground they’ve already covered and do it properly this time. The sullen faces watching show little enthusiasm for his leadership.
“Admiral Pike, sir,” Boyce interrupts. “I’m Doctor Boyce. I think we’re all underestimating Cadet Pike. You should refocus the search. Send a team to the end of the course and have them work their way back along it. I think your son may have pushed on through the storm and got far further than anyone has allowed for.”
Boyce finds himself pinned by a laser-like glare. The Admiral has all of young Pike’s arrogance with none of the boy’s beauty. That must have come from his mother. “You know my son,” barks Pike senior.
“Yes sir,” lies Boyce.
“Well, it’s more of an idea that any of these morons have come up with. You,“ he turns on Gool, “get a tiltrotor in the air. Doctor. You’re on board. And I’m leading the search.”
Gool turns frantic eyes on Boyce behind Pike’s back. “Fuck no,” she mouths, “get rid of him!”
Boyce takes yet another deep breath. “Sir, may I have a word?” He takes the Admiral gingerly by the arm and steers him to a corner of the room. “It is not appropriate to have you on the search, sir.” He talks on over the man’s attempt at an indignant rebuttal. “Dammit man, think! You can’t lead this mission. You’re emotionally compromised. And besides, how do you think your son is going to feel about being rescued by daddy?” The Admiral freezes. Bulls eye, thinks Boyce, and wonders when last Chris Pike went home for Christmas. “Let the professionals do their job, sir.” And we don’t need you there if we find a body, Boyce thinks. After a long moment, the Admiral gives him a single curt nod.
Boyce grabs Gool and gets out of the room before Josh Pike rethinks his position. Within the hour, they are flying over a maze of sandstone canyons, rocky mountainsides and shifting sand dunes. The heat is relentless, making the landscape a shimmering haze below them. The air is still filled with fine dust which they strain to peer through. The distance they have to cover to reach the end of the set course is intimidating.
Boyce finds himself second-guessing his hunch when he realizes how far they’ve gone. There is no way the cadet could have got this far. “A needle in a haystack has nothing on this,” mutters Gool. She swings the tiltrotor round the hilltop that is the finish point and begins to trace a way back, flying low along the desert floor following the most direct route a cadet might have taken.
“There! In the shade of the canyon.” Boyce spots the small figure stumbling clumsily along the dry river bed below them. Gool brings the tiltrotor round in a graceful arc and lands it well away from the youth, so as not to suffocate him in sand. Boyce grabs his medical kit and together they walk back towards Pike.
As they approach, Boyce does a visual survey. The young man is coated in sand, his lush blond hair plastered against his head, lank with sweat and dark with dirt. He’s noticeably thinner, as much as fifteen pounds lighter. His golden skin is sallow and crumpled with dehydration. Trickles of dry blood encrusted in sand form a filigree across the side of his face, shoulder and right arm. His uniform is half shredded and he is limping badly. Yet he does not stop, continuing to stagger unsteadily towards them. And he is clearly not pleased to see them.
“What the fuck d’you want? I’m nearly done. Only a few miles to go. I’ll be finished in an hour or two. I don’t need a fucking evacuation. I’m in front. I must be. I can’t stop now.”
Boyce and Gool both gawk at him. “Cadet, have you any idea what’s been going on in the last few days?” asks the pilot.
“Yeah, there was a sand storm. So what? Don’t tell me the cowards have cancelled the exercise?”
“Cowards? Fuck you, Pike,” snaps Boyce. “Two cadets are dead. The exercise was terminated days ago. We’ve been searching for four days and for you alone for the last 48 hours.” The doctor is running a tricorder over Pike as he speaks.
“But I’ve just been following the course,” protests Pike.
“Well yeah, but no one else did. You’re the only one to have got more than 80 miles from the start point,” replies Gool. “We’ve got your dad in headquarters, kicking up a shitstorm.”
“My father?” Pike pales visibly.
“Hell yeah. He’d be out here himself if the doc here hadn’t stood up to him and got him to leave us to do our damned jobs.”
For the first time Pike really focuses on Boyce. “Hey, you’re the doctor from my physical before. You stood up to my father? Really?”
“Yeah, I did. My knees are still knocking. I expect a medal in the next commendations list. Now, you need treatment.”
Pike backs away as Boyce pulls hypos out of his medical sac. “No way. No assistance. That disqualifies me.”
“Have you not been listening, cadet?” demands Boyce. “The exercise was cancelled days ago.”
The news finally seems to sink in. Pike stares forlornly across the scrub desert towards the last distant hill that he needs to climb. “But I’m nearly there,” he mutters wistfully. “I tried so fucking hard.”
Gool casts an exasperated look over at Boyce, but Boyce is caught by the longing in Pike’s voice. He can barely imagine the physical and mental grit that must have kept this young man going through the storm. “How about a compromise?” he offers. “I’ll give you a hypo with a rehydration solution and treat that cut on your face. I’m not letting you go on without that much. And I’ll walk with you to the finish. Gool, can you be persuaded to take the tiltrotor for a spin? Find us again once Pike here has finished the course?”
Gool laughs. “You’re as mad as he is. But yeah, I get it. I can be persuaded to lose you for a little longer.”
Pike is clearly old enough to know that some battles should not be prolonged. He accepts the treatment and even manages a half-smile and a muttered thanks for the pilot as the woman heads back to her tiltrotor. However, he stubbornly refuses to let Boyce take any of the extensive array of equipment he is carrying. That, apparently, would be cheating. Boyce soon finds himself glad of this fact. The dry air, still thick with dust, feels like sandpaper rubbing down his throat with each breath. The mix of soft sand and sliding pebbles underfoot makes every step treacherous. The heat presses down on him like a suffocating blanket. Boyce keeps himself in shape and he’s done basic survival training but just a few hours in this environment is exhausting. He cannot imagine what the storm must have been like. His respect for Pike increases yet again.
They talk a little at first, Boyce filling Pike in on the condition of the other cadets, the rescue search and his own hunch that finally brought them all the way out here. Soon they lapse into silence as the hill that is their final objective approaches agonizingly slowly, shimmering in the heat. Pike watches Boyce out the corner of his eye, frowning, as if he is a puzzle to be figured out.
At last they reach the start of the final ascent and find a spring gushing out of a fissure in the rock and splashing down to fill a large rock pool below. Pike dumps his sack and thrusts his head under the spring. After several minutes he pulls back, shaking water from his hair like a golden retriever. He grins up at Boyce. “Now if you could package that sensation into a hypo, doctor, I’ll be first in line for a shot!”
Boyce stares down at the man kneeling by the stream. All the artifice of his performance in the base is gone. His smile is a beam of pure happiness, his blue eyes ablaze with pleasure. His wet hair, still dark with dirt, clings limply to his skin. Sand lingers in the creases of his face, suggesting where the lines will come in the decades ahead. Age will suit him. In time the pretty will transform into handsome. The insecurity and arrogance will change into confidence and authority. He may be breathtaking now, but he’ll be devastating when he’s older. Boyce hopes he will be around to see it.
Pike rises to his feet, regarding him curiously. “If you look at all your patients like that, doc, you must have quite the waiting list.”
Boyce impulsively drops his medical bag, grabs Pike by the middle and pushes them both into the rock pool. The little shit deserves it for all he’s put Boyce through in the last few days. And if he manages to get his hands under the torn uniform, wrapped firmly round the cadet’s warm skin, well, what of it?
Pike surfaces, spluttering with laughter. “I’d have been in a better state for this back in your consulting room.” Boyce grabs his mouth in a rough kiss. Pike’s mouth tastes sour from dehydration. There is still sand caught between his teeth. Still, Boyce has to disagree. The pretty boy with his petulant poses is of no interest. But this young man, fighting his way towards an extraordinary adulthood, this intrigues him.
He pulls Pike back under, letting the cool fresh water swirl through their joined mouths, washing away the taste of privation and suffering. He relishes the feel of hot skin in cold water, the brilliant burning heat of Pike’s will to succeed. Boyce surfaces once more with the cadet clinging to him, his arms hooked around Boyce’s neck, long legs twisted between Boyce’s. “Damn, doctor, but I like the way you think!”
“Phil,” mutters Boyce, as he mouths his way down the tendons that now stand out so starkly on Pike’s neck. “Name’s Phil Boyce.”
“Hell of an introduction, Phil,” teases Pike as he pulls the sodden fabric of Boyce’s shirt free from his pants and thrust his hands down inside to cup the doctor’s ass. Boyce grinds appreciatively against him, tearing off the last remnants of Pike’s shirt and pushing the boy back against the rocky edge of the pool to admire the broad chest and washboard stomach.
He licks a hot stripe up the thin torso from belly button to sternum before becoming distracted by a rosy nipple lurking in the matted curls of chest hair. The abraded skin of Pike’s fingers rubs up his neck and into his hair. When the youth impertinently tries pushing Boyce’s head down towards his bulging groin, the doctor retaliates by running knowing hands up Pike’s flanks. The cadet turns out to be surprisingly ticklish and they tumble back into the water as Pike squirms laughing within Boyce’s embrace.
Pike finally decides the best defense is to cling tightly to Boyce while sucking sloppily on his neck. Boyce chews appreciatively on an ear while he lets his hands roam over the strong back and tight ass. Pike has pushed a firm thigh between his and Boyce rubs enthusiastically against him. The youth suddenly pulls back with a wicked glint in his eye, sucks in a deep breath and ducks under the surface. Boyce feels his pants being pulled roughly down his thighs and then a hot mouth engulfs his cock. Head dropped back, he lets the amazing sensations ripple through him - the cool water swirling around his balls, the warm tongue licking up his shaft.
Finally reality intrudes into his haze of lust and he begins to worry that Pike might actually drown down there in some bizarre attempt to prove something or other. He pushes a hand into the sodden curls and pulls the youth back to the surface. The cold water washing over his naked prick feels deliciously wicked. He hauls Pike against him, kissing the smug smirk off his face while pushing the cadet’s pants down and squeezing both their cocks together in his hand.
“Oh, fuck yeah!” Pike pants appreciatively into his mouth. Rough fingers dig into Boyce’s back as Pike backs them up against the wall of the pool and then gives himself up to Boyce’s ministrations. From here it is a race to the finish, Pike muttering a stream of cheerful obscenities into Boyce’s ear as he rubs up against him like a wet cat. To Boyce’s satisfaction the cadet comes first, helped by the doctor pushing his fingers hard into the sweaty crack of the boy’s ass. But Pike’s bucking up against him, combined with his hot come spilling over Boyce’s hand in the cool water, quickly pushes the doctor to follow.
After long minutes panting against one another, they climb out of the pool and lie out to dry in a small patch of shade, putting their sopping wet uniforms out to dry in the furnace-like sun. Pike curls up against him, his head on Boyce’s chest, a hand running idly over his stomach. He looks truly relaxed for the first time since Boyce met him.
At last, Boyce gives Pike a shove. “Go on, finish it so we can all go home. Tell Gool she can pick me up here at the bottom.”
“Lazy shit.” Pike grins at him as he dresses and grabs his damned sack, still refusing to compromise the rules, and then begins the steep hot climb up to the summit of the hill. Boyce lounges at the edge of the pool, enjoying the sight of firm ass and long legs moving steadily away from him.
“Hey doc,” shouts Pike, turning to look back down at him. “I’m going to be the youngest captain in ‘Fleet history. See if I’m not! And not just any garbage scow, either. A Constitution-class ship, for deep space exploration. And when that happens, I want you as my CMO.”
“Just get your ass up the hill, kid,” replies Boyce. “One mountain at a time.”
Still, Boyce believes him about the captain thing. And if the kid really does it, and sends Boyce that CMO invitation, the doctor suspects he just might accept.
- THE END -
Fandom & Pairing: Star Trek AOS, Pike/Boyce
Rating: R
Warnings: none
Genre: drama
Word Count: Around 4100
Beta: the inestimable random00b. I did some fiddling after getting this back, so any errors that have crept in will be mine!
Summary: When Doctor Boyce first meets cocky cadet Chris Pike he is not impressed.
Author's note:
This is a (very belated) birthday fic for my much-appreciated No. 1 Beta imachar. I hope you like it!
The fic was inspired by the pretty boy pic of a young Bruce Greenwood (see below). Phil Boyce is played by Mark Harmon, and pilot Zainunnisa Gool is played by South African actress Leleti Khumalo.
“So, doc, ready to get close up and personal? I guess it’s your lucky day.”
A tired Boyce looks up from his monitor, startled. He’s processed some twenty cadets already; this is thankfully the last one before they are all signed off as fit and ready for their 180 mile survival race across the barren wastes of Psamathe.
A cadet lounges against the bio-bed, casually removing his shirt. Boyce frowns. You don’t need to strip for a tricorder check-over and the cadet must know that. Momentarily he’s left speechless by just how pretty the young man is - Michelangelo’s David brought to life, but in vivid technicolor, with plump rosy lips, startlingly blue eyes and a shock of thick golden-blond hair curling provocatively over his forehead.
The cadet must have noticed the appreciative look because he offers a seductive smile. “You’re here to look out for my health and welfare, right doc?” Boyce nods slowly, left off-balance by this odd behavior. All the other cadets had been tense bundles of pre-race nerves, eager to be signed off as quickly as possible. Young twinks aren’t Boyce’s thing but he does like handsome, confident men and this demi-god radiating youthful arrogance is hard to ignore.
The youth shifts casually against the bed and runs a long-fingered hand through the blond mop. The raised arm emphasizes the honed biceps and perfect pecs. He is clearly positioned for maximum effect. “I like a fuck before a mission. Takes the edge off. How about it?” Boyce gapes at him. Ignoring the broad chest lightly feathered with golden curls and the full quirked lips, Boyce looks into the blue eyes - eyes flinty with cynicism. Clearly the cadet expects his offer to be accepted, but he will despise Boyce for doing so.
Boyce wonders why, if he hates his pretty that much, he doesn’t just buzz cut the hair. Or would that count as backing down? He shakes himself mentally. He’s not wasting his time playing games with some man-child with issues. His shift is nearly over and there’s a cold beer calling him at the bar. “Get your clothes on,” he snaps, as he runs the tricorder rapidly over the cadet. As he expects the youth is in peak physical condition, the poster child for all the Academy training purports to provide. “You’re clear. Get out.”
The blond is surprised but dresses without comment, Boyce clearly already dismissed from his mind. “Good luck,” says Boyce as the cadet leaves. He’s not sure why he does it, maybe an awkward peace offering to reduce the tension of the encounter. The youth turns gracefully in the doorway, looking back over his shoulder. “I’m Chris Pike. I don’t need luck.” He’s gone before Boyce can muster the energy to roll his eyes.
* * *
In the bar some time later Boyce joins the others standing at the picture window that looks down onto the unforgiving desert. The cadets are lined up below them, receiving last minute instructions. He spots the Pike boy’s shock of blond hair. Of course the cadet has pushed right to the leading edge of the crowd. Once the starting gun has sounded, Pike is immediately out front, running in long loping strides, already opening a lead. Dusk is falling; this close to the equator it won’t last long. The cadets face twelve hours of running in darkness, navigating through twisting canyons, surviving temperatures that will plummet well below freezing within hours. The fastest of them are likely to finish four days from now; the cut-off time for the course is a week. Pike will never finish the race if he doesn’t pace himself better, Boyce thinks.
He can’t stop wondering about his odd encounter with the arrogant youth. Turning to a colleague standing near him he asks: “That Pike boy. Any relation to the Chief of Staff?”
“Son,” she replies. At Boyce’s look of surprise - he’d expected distant cousin or just possibly grand-son - she continues: “A very late May-September marriage, just the one child and the mother dead in an accident before he turned ten. Poor kid!”
Boyce nods sympathetically as he watches the crowd of cadets vanishing into the dusty distance. Admiral Josh Pike is a living legend, second only to the now-retired Admiral Jonathan Archer. But where Archer made his name with a combination of ruthlessness and self-depreciating charm, Pike senior has bulldozed his way to prominence with his absolute refusal to compromise. He’s tough-talking, hard-assed, and brilliant - and he knows it. He has no time for fools or failures. Being his only son can’t be easy.
* * *
Boyce wakes in the morning to find the base engulfed in an unexpected sandstorm. He peers out into a red haze and hears the sand rasping against the windows. The building howls mournfully, every corner and cranny being caught by the wind. Even with the highly processed air inside the base, enough fine dust enters that the air has a peculiar metallic tang. He wonders how young Pike is doing. Still, this is what the cadets train for. Presumably all that gear they were lugging allows them all to hunker down safely and wait out such things.
The storm howls on relentlessly through-out the day and into the night. Talk in the base begins to get tense. Early the next morning the word is out that the exercise is cancelled and the cadets need to be brought back in. Unable to fly in the ongoing storm, heavy duty ground vehicles are dispatched. A slow trickle of cadets return, starting with those who had given up fairly close to the base. Boyce is kept busy with a wide range of minor injuries. He keeps an eye out for a shock of curly blond hair but is not surprised that Pike is not among the first wave.
After the first 40 miles the course disappears into a maze of canyonlands where the vehicles cannot go. They wait out a second night. By dawn the storm has died out, leaving the ground covered in a thick carpet of fine red dust. Boyce is on stand-by in the gloom of pre-dawn, watching out of the windows as the search tiltrotors lift off. The rumor spreads rapidly among the waiting medical staff: the location transmitters that the cadets wear aren’t working. They hadn’t been observable during the storm. With the interference of the sand that hadn’t been surprising. But despite the still air and clear skies, none of the transmitters have come back online, nor is anyone using their emergency comms units.
Further rumors claim that the transmitters were designed for use on Vulcan, not on Psamathe. The sand here is much finer. It clogs up equipment in a way not seen on other Federation planets. Whatever the reason, of the 76 cadets, 32 cannot be located. The tiltrotors search all day, fanning out in concentric circles from where the previous cadets were found. Given the way the wind swirls within the storm, cadets get easily disorientated and many who battled on rather than hunkering down have struggled off in the wrong directions.
All day survivors arrive in ones and twos, suffering from heat stroke, dehydration, and sand burn caused by the fine particles scouring their skins. There are a wide range of trauma injuries too, from walking into boulders or falling down potholes in the canyons or being caught in rockslides. A woman is brought in in a coma from heat exhaustion. Then the first body comes in, a man probably dead from a heart attack. Boyce is relieved to see short dark hair on the corpse.
The hunt continues through the night, the tiltrotors now using powerful search lights. Another body is found smashed to pieces at the foot of a cliff. Boyce works through the night as the survivors’ injuries become increasingly serious. Now he is battling hypothermia rather than heat stroke. As each new casualty arrives, he hopes it will be the cocky boy that has no need of luck, but it never is.
* * *
He sleeps most of the following day. The flood of patients is now down to a trickle. Fewer doctors are needed. When he wakes in the late afternoon, he hears that only one cadet is still missing. Chris Pike has not been found.
Boyce lurks near the search-and-rescue command centre for the next two days, joining the volunteers scanning over satellite photographs. As he looks, his mind lists dozens of different ways the cadet could have died. Or could still be dying. He may be lying out there badly injured, slowly expiring of dehydration, baked by day and frozen by night. He’s now been missing for nearly four days. Starfleet’s Chief of Staff had flown in the previous night from Federation headquarters and even through the closed door Boyce can hear Fleet Admiral Josh Pike berating the search crews.
A slim woman in a pilot’s uniform slips out of the control room, swearing under her breath as she heads for the nearest coffee dispenser. “Bad in there?” asks Boyce.
“As bad as it sounds,” replies the pilot, her dark skin grey with exhaustion. She downs an espresso shot and immediately punches in an order for another. “Fuck, but that man is intimidating. And his righteous wrath is doing nothing to further the search. He’s just destroying what morale remains among the search teams.”
“Where’ve you been searching?” asks Boyce. “I realize it’s none of my business, but I’m the doctor who did the Pike boy’s physical before he went out. Phil Boyce.”
The pilot shakes his hand. “So you’ve had the full effect of our golden boy, have you? I’m Zainunnisa Gool.” She fires up her comm and projects a map simulation across the table. “We’ve been grid-searching in ever wider circles from where the bulk of the cadets were found. He could have wandered off anywhere.”
Boyce stares at the search circles. They reach barely two-thirds of the way along the full length of the survival course. Clearly no sensible person would have kept pushing along the route in the teeth of the storm. And yet…
“I have an idea,” says Boyce slowly.
“Well, that’s more than anyone else does at this point,” replies Gool. “But no one is getting a word in edgeways with the Admiral bellowing like that.”
Boyce takes a deep breath, and then pushes his way into the command room. The Admiral is in the middle of a lengthy rant, demanding the search team go back over the ground they’ve already covered and do it properly this time. The sullen faces watching show little enthusiasm for his leadership.
“Admiral Pike, sir,” Boyce interrupts. “I’m Doctor Boyce. I think we’re all underestimating Cadet Pike. You should refocus the search. Send a team to the end of the course and have them work their way back along it. I think your son may have pushed on through the storm and got far further than anyone has allowed for.”
Boyce finds himself pinned by a laser-like glare. The Admiral has all of young Pike’s arrogance with none of the boy’s beauty. That must have come from his mother. “You know my son,” barks Pike senior.
“Yes sir,” lies Boyce.
“Well, it’s more of an idea that any of these morons have come up with. You,“ he turns on Gool, “get a tiltrotor in the air. Doctor. You’re on board. And I’m leading the search.”
Gool turns frantic eyes on Boyce behind Pike’s back. “Fuck no,” she mouths, “get rid of him!”
Boyce takes yet another deep breath. “Sir, may I have a word?” He takes the Admiral gingerly by the arm and steers him to a corner of the room. “It is not appropriate to have you on the search, sir.” He talks on over the man’s attempt at an indignant rebuttal. “Dammit man, think! You can’t lead this mission. You’re emotionally compromised. And besides, how do you think your son is going to feel about being rescued by daddy?” The Admiral freezes. Bulls eye, thinks Boyce, and wonders when last Chris Pike went home for Christmas. “Let the professionals do their job, sir.” And we don’t need you there if we find a body, Boyce thinks. After a long moment, the Admiral gives him a single curt nod.
Boyce grabs Gool and gets out of the room before Josh Pike rethinks his position. Within the hour, they are flying over a maze of sandstone canyons, rocky mountainsides and shifting sand dunes. The heat is relentless, making the landscape a shimmering haze below them. The air is still filled with fine dust which they strain to peer through. The distance they have to cover to reach the end of the set course is intimidating.
Boyce finds himself second-guessing his hunch when he realizes how far they’ve gone. There is no way the cadet could have got this far. “A needle in a haystack has nothing on this,” mutters Gool. She swings the tiltrotor round the hilltop that is the finish point and begins to trace a way back, flying low along the desert floor following the most direct route a cadet might have taken.
“There! In the shade of the canyon.” Boyce spots the small figure stumbling clumsily along the dry river bed below them. Gool brings the tiltrotor round in a graceful arc and lands it well away from the youth, so as not to suffocate him in sand. Boyce grabs his medical kit and together they walk back towards Pike.
As they approach, Boyce does a visual survey. The young man is coated in sand, his lush blond hair plastered against his head, lank with sweat and dark with dirt. He’s noticeably thinner, as much as fifteen pounds lighter. His golden skin is sallow and crumpled with dehydration. Trickles of dry blood encrusted in sand form a filigree across the side of his face, shoulder and right arm. His uniform is half shredded and he is limping badly. Yet he does not stop, continuing to stagger unsteadily towards them. And he is clearly not pleased to see them.
“What the fuck d’you want? I’m nearly done. Only a few miles to go. I’ll be finished in an hour or two. I don’t need a fucking evacuation. I’m in front. I must be. I can’t stop now.”
Boyce and Gool both gawk at him. “Cadet, have you any idea what’s been going on in the last few days?” asks the pilot.
“Yeah, there was a sand storm. So what? Don’t tell me the cowards have cancelled the exercise?”
“Cowards? Fuck you, Pike,” snaps Boyce. “Two cadets are dead. The exercise was terminated days ago. We’ve been searching for four days and for you alone for the last 48 hours.” The doctor is running a tricorder over Pike as he speaks.
“But I’ve just been following the course,” protests Pike.
“Well yeah, but no one else did. You’re the only one to have got more than 80 miles from the start point,” replies Gool. “We’ve got your dad in headquarters, kicking up a shitstorm.”
“My father?” Pike pales visibly.
“Hell yeah. He’d be out here himself if the doc here hadn’t stood up to him and got him to leave us to do our damned jobs.”
For the first time Pike really focuses on Boyce. “Hey, you’re the doctor from my physical before. You stood up to my father? Really?”
“Yeah, I did. My knees are still knocking. I expect a medal in the next commendations list. Now, you need treatment.”
Pike backs away as Boyce pulls hypos out of his medical sac. “No way. No assistance. That disqualifies me.”
“Have you not been listening, cadet?” demands Boyce. “The exercise was cancelled days ago.”
The news finally seems to sink in. Pike stares forlornly across the scrub desert towards the last distant hill that he needs to climb. “But I’m nearly there,” he mutters wistfully. “I tried so fucking hard.”
Gool casts an exasperated look over at Boyce, but Boyce is caught by the longing in Pike’s voice. He can barely imagine the physical and mental grit that must have kept this young man going through the storm. “How about a compromise?” he offers. “I’ll give you a hypo with a rehydration solution and treat that cut on your face. I’m not letting you go on without that much. And I’ll walk with you to the finish. Gool, can you be persuaded to take the tiltrotor for a spin? Find us again once Pike here has finished the course?”
Gool laughs. “You’re as mad as he is. But yeah, I get it. I can be persuaded to lose you for a little longer.”
Pike is clearly old enough to know that some battles should not be prolonged. He accepts the treatment and even manages a half-smile and a muttered thanks for the pilot as the woman heads back to her tiltrotor. However, he stubbornly refuses to let Boyce take any of the extensive array of equipment he is carrying. That, apparently, would be cheating. Boyce soon finds himself glad of this fact. The dry air, still thick with dust, feels like sandpaper rubbing down his throat with each breath. The mix of soft sand and sliding pebbles underfoot makes every step treacherous. The heat presses down on him like a suffocating blanket. Boyce keeps himself in shape and he’s done basic survival training but just a few hours in this environment is exhausting. He cannot imagine what the storm must have been like. His respect for Pike increases yet again.
They talk a little at first, Boyce filling Pike in on the condition of the other cadets, the rescue search and his own hunch that finally brought them all the way out here. Soon they lapse into silence as the hill that is their final objective approaches agonizingly slowly, shimmering in the heat. Pike watches Boyce out the corner of his eye, frowning, as if he is a puzzle to be figured out.
At last they reach the start of the final ascent and find a spring gushing out of a fissure in the rock and splashing down to fill a large rock pool below. Pike dumps his sack and thrusts his head under the spring. After several minutes he pulls back, shaking water from his hair like a golden retriever. He grins up at Boyce. “Now if you could package that sensation into a hypo, doctor, I’ll be first in line for a shot!”
Boyce stares down at the man kneeling by the stream. All the artifice of his performance in the base is gone. His smile is a beam of pure happiness, his blue eyes ablaze with pleasure. His wet hair, still dark with dirt, clings limply to his skin. Sand lingers in the creases of his face, suggesting where the lines will come in the decades ahead. Age will suit him. In time the pretty will transform into handsome. The insecurity and arrogance will change into confidence and authority. He may be breathtaking now, but he’ll be devastating when he’s older. Boyce hopes he will be around to see it.
Pike rises to his feet, regarding him curiously. “If you look at all your patients like that, doc, you must have quite the waiting list.”
Boyce impulsively drops his medical bag, grabs Pike by the middle and pushes them both into the rock pool. The little shit deserves it for all he’s put Boyce through in the last few days. And if he manages to get his hands under the torn uniform, wrapped firmly round the cadet’s warm skin, well, what of it?
Pike surfaces, spluttering with laughter. “I’d have been in a better state for this back in your consulting room.” Boyce grabs his mouth in a rough kiss. Pike’s mouth tastes sour from dehydration. There is still sand caught between his teeth. Still, Boyce has to disagree. The pretty boy with his petulant poses is of no interest. But this young man, fighting his way towards an extraordinary adulthood, this intrigues him.
He pulls Pike back under, letting the cool fresh water swirl through their joined mouths, washing away the taste of privation and suffering. He relishes the feel of hot skin in cold water, the brilliant burning heat of Pike’s will to succeed. Boyce surfaces once more with the cadet clinging to him, his arms hooked around Boyce’s neck, long legs twisted between Boyce’s. “Damn, doctor, but I like the way you think!”
“Phil,” mutters Boyce, as he mouths his way down the tendons that now stand out so starkly on Pike’s neck. “Name’s Phil Boyce.”
“Hell of an introduction, Phil,” teases Pike as he pulls the sodden fabric of Boyce’s shirt free from his pants and thrust his hands down inside to cup the doctor’s ass. Boyce grinds appreciatively against him, tearing off the last remnants of Pike’s shirt and pushing the boy back against the rocky edge of the pool to admire the broad chest and washboard stomach.
He licks a hot stripe up the thin torso from belly button to sternum before becoming distracted by a rosy nipple lurking in the matted curls of chest hair. The abraded skin of Pike’s fingers rubs up his neck and into his hair. When the youth impertinently tries pushing Boyce’s head down towards his bulging groin, the doctor retaliates by running knowing hands up Pike’s flanks. The cadet turns out to be surprisingly ticklish and they tumble back into the water as Pike squirms laughing within Boyce’s embrace.
Pike finally decides the best defense is to cling tightly to Boyce while sucking sloppily on his neck. Boyce chews appreciatively on an ear while he lets his hands roam over the strong back and tight ass. Pike has pushed a firm thigh between his and Boyce rubs enthusiastically against him. The youth suddenly pulls back with a wicked glint in his eye, sucks in a deep breath and ducks under the surface. Boyce feels his pants being pulled roughly down his thighs and then a hot mouth engulfs his cock. Head dropped back, he lets the amazing sensations ripple through him - the cool water swirling around his balls, the warm tongue licking up his shaft.
Finally reality intrudes into his haze of lust and he begins to worry that Pike might actually drown down there in some bizarre attempt to prove something or other. He pushes a hand into the sodden curls and pulls the youth back to the surface. The cold water washing over his naked prick feels deliciously wicked. He hauls Pike against him, kissing the smug smirk off his face while pushing the cadet’s pants down and squeezing both their cocks together in his hand.
“Oh, fuck yeah!” Pike pants appreciatively into his mouth. Rough fingers dig into Boyce’s back as Pike backs them up against the wall of the pool and then gives himself up to Boyce’s ministrations. From here it is a race to the finish, Pike muttering a stream of cheerful obscenities into Boyce’s ear as he rubs up against him like a wet cat. To Boyce’s satisfaction the cadet comes first, helped by the doctor pushing his fingers hard into the sweaty crack of the boy’s ass. But Pike’s bucking up against him, combined with his hot come spilling over Boyce’s hand in the cool water, quickly pushes the doctor to follow.
After long minutes panting against one another, they climb out of the pool and lie out to dry in a small patch of shade, putting their sopping wet uniforms out to dry in the furnace-like sun. Pike curls up against him, his head on Boyce’s chest, a hand running idly over his stomach. He looks truly relaxed for the first time since Boyce met him.
At last, Boyce gives Pike a shove. “Go on, finish it so we can all go home. Tell Gool she can pick me up here at the bottom.”
“Lazy shit.” Pike grins at him as he dresses and grabs his damned sack, still refusing to compromise the rules, and then begins the steep hot climb up to the summit of the hill. Boyce lounges at the edge of the pool, enjoying the sight of firm ass and long legs moving steadily away from him.
“Hey doc,” shouts Pike, turning to look back down at him. “I’m going to be the youngest captain in ‘Fleet history. See if I’m not! And not just any garbage scow, either. A Constitution-class ship, for deep space exploration. And when that happens, I want you as my CMO.”
“Just get your ass up the hill, kid,” replies Boyce. “One mountain at a time.”
Still, Boyce believes him about the captain thing. And if the kid really does it, and sends Boyce that CMO invitation, the doctor suspects he just might accept.
- THE END -