SquidgeWorld Archive

Great Sorrows
by Kelthammer

Great sorrows do not speak.
--John Donne

The first time he sees her, she's terrified.

Naturally.

All the newcomers have to submit to a new physical aboard ship--insurance against their previous physician not doing his or her job--and she's the third one. He knows the look in her eyes. Even if you're clean as the driven snow, there are a million ways to mess up someone's readings, make it look like they have an unsavory drug habit, ruin their lives and careers.

Then of course, there's the fact that CMOs are almost an impolite euphemism for manipulation.

He ignores the wary side-glances she slips him as he writes on the stylus. She's expecting him to do something--feel her up or make a coy threat. Little does she know, how god-damn tired he is of those games. He's no white crow, but in an ethically dangerous atmosphere one either collapses and joins the crowd, or they stand apart, bitter and alone.

He wavers between the two, truth to tell. He's nearly always alone, except for his friendship with the captain. And while he doesn't collapse into corruption, his Sickbay is barely controllable. The medics come and go faster than pantry flies. Each new member has to be forcibly put in the proper pecking order. Just demanding respect as the commander of the department is a struggle more often than not. Anymore, he just slumps into a halfway-apathetic attitude. So long as they do their job, he hopes they do it good enough that he won't have to comment.

His medics might plot behind his back; his Head Nurse is promoting out in a few years, and his AMO barely leaves the lab. But at least he takes the time to know the patients the way doctors used to know about them, back in the day when that kind of attention was taken for granted. What can he say? He was trained a civilian physician before he became 'Fleet. Hippocrites himself said that if one needs to know surgery, then go to war. He did. Albeit not for any altruistic desire to polish his surgical skills. He was running away. He's still running away, truth to tell. Bad as the ISS ENTERPRISE can be, its still preferable to the demons waiting for him back home.

No doubt a flaw in his breeding, as Spock has dryly commented so often in the past. But the inability of the Empire to think along his lines is not his problem.

"Your next appointment will be exactly on the second day of the following Standard Month, first Beta shift. Of course, if you follow our captain down to any strange planets, I'll probably see you a lot sooner than that."

She isn't such a newcomer that she doesn't get that gallows-joke. Still, she blanches slightly, and leaves with indecent haste.

Chapel shakes her head at him. "You've got to stop scaring the patients."

"Just being factual."

"Don't I know it. But what's that thing the recruiter tells you--oh, yes. Something about 'never volunteering?'

He chuckles at her rare joke. The sound unnerves the patients left in line.

***

She's considered safe. A Yeoman. The yeoman. A person of some rank--meaning, an appropriate family--worthy enough to wait upon the officer. She'll hit thirty in a month, but she looks older. Half her life was spent on the Arcturian colony and their divergant solar rotation. If you wanted to be medical about it, she was really about six years younger than he was, physcially.

Her true age means she's more mature than she looks. Not that she's particularly experienced. Arcturians are a peaceful lot. It takes nothing less than a volcanic calamity to uproot them enough to send them off-planet. He has a feeling it wasn't that long ago that her classmates sent her all over the docks looking for a left-handed computer, or a "circular filing program."

Her position means she has some slight immunity against the lowest-ranking parasites on ship.

If she wants immunity from the higher ones, she has to earn it.

He watched her, of course. It was survival to pay attention to who was who on the ship. She'd gone through an entire regime of qualifications that meant she was loyal to the captain, but too bad that branded her as potential snitch, rat, and someone no one else could trust. She was young but there was a tough demeanor to her outlook on life. She ate alone, but most people did. She could handle herself; he'd never seen her in Sickbay needing a patchup from a fight or 'debate.' She studied a lot. She and Angela Martine had projects they researched together. Historically-inclined research so they were safe from modern intrigue.

But the isolation is wearing on her, that, and the automatic assumption that she can't be trusted simply because she's the captain's yeoman. That tough edge begins to get rigid. Brittle.

Uhura once showed him a paper she was working on with Angela and Tonia. The Use of Phonic Waves in Modern Technology. They needed a medical viewpoint to check their research on the effects of frequencies on the humanoid body. He looked it over, and agreed with Uhura's assessment: these two women will go far.

She was smart. Extremely so. Her work was exemplery. She hadn't learned to tone down on her accomplishments just yet. He caught on that she was getting wrapped up in a self-absorbed isolation of work. Bookworm. Mole. Mouse. Other names to label her. He was clinically glad of it. Even a hurtful label was better than none. People who didn't fit into others' notions got killed quick. Nobody liked a mystery, and when it was decided she lived only for study and research, people left her alone with a kind of contempt.

Nice and safe, he realized.

Of course, she acted so young.

***

Her hand was hurt soldering her computer. Slow day in Sickbay, of course--nobody really wanted to go there unless they had to. He looked up from the desk to see her standing there, looking like she wasn't going to cry even if the effort made her faint dead away. She wasn't going to faint either. No options.

"Looks ugly," he commented, rising from the desk. Chapel passed by, arms loaded with her latest project. She snorted at him; an unspoken comment about his unswerving gift for understatement. "Bring it over here. Anything else injured?"

"No." She thinks she says it, but no words come out. She shakes her head.

"Let's see..." He gives her a clinical once-over, sends the salt shaker up and over, shakes his head at the change in harmonics. "No painkillers just yet. I need to find which nerves are still functioning."

He mentally smiled. No protest at how much it hurt. Grown men, full of their macho image, are famous for their complaints in his office His reputation as the reigning sadist actually began with those whiners who couldn't understand why a hangnail didn't mean prescribed painkillers. Women tend not to whine as much. Odd, if you believed the bigoted medical texts, but he doesn't.

"Was that all?" Barrows is puzzled as he turns away, putting the sprays on the shelf.

"That's all." He tells her. "Unless there's a medical problem you need addressed now."

The silence lengthens slightly, and it's his turn to be puzzled when she turns beet red.

"No." She mumbles, looks down at her healing hand. "No, sir, that's all."

"Doctor."

"Sir?"

"I was a doctor before I made the stripes. That's still the only rank." He speaks just gently enough that she understands that the matter is important to him. She nods uncertainly.

"I'm logging you off for the rest of the day. Don't use that hand unless you can avoid it; give the cells a chance to re-grow. Whatever you do, don't touch anything warmer than your blood temperature. That'll just confuse your nerves right now."

"Yes s-doctor."

He watches her go, wondering what he said to make her so nervous in such an odd way. It wasn't fear, but it certainly was uncertainty.

He has that effect on people. If he wasn't so tight with the captain, things on ship would be a lot clearer. On the other hand, his friendship with the captain makes people think he'd betray his medical oath and give Kirk confidential information.

Who could blame them that mistaken assumption? He shakes his head as he cleans up. Naivity killed you. Nobody wants to die, but more than anything, they don't want to be killed for stupidity. And the medical field is famous for its level of self-serving corruption.

Things didn't used to be this way, he reminds himself. Its no comfort. The Empire had once been a lot...calmer. People had joined the military because they wanted to, not because they were in it for the mandatory 25-year draft. There had been a time, back in his father's day, that one didn't have to rely on rations to survive part of the year. Of course that had been before the colony worlds had fallen. Before plague swept through an estimated 30% of all three empires--Klingon, Vulcan, and Terran...

There had been a time when merit sent a man through the ranks more than his skill with the dagger.

The tragedy is, he remembers it.

He and Scotty and Spock are old enough to recall those better days. But the younger officers, the rising stars, have no memory of anything more than want and desperation. James Kirk most of all.

Against his will, McCoy conjures the memory of himself on the Pegasus, in the wake of Kodos' Execution. A medic bringing in the civilians. A small, filth-crusted boy with eyes glaring full of hot anger and hate, so bright they gave off light like two lamps.

"You have to learn to feel again," He told the angry young boy.

“Why?” The angry young boy asked.

He had not been much older than the furious child. Looking back, he had been just as young in lack of experience.

He had saved that boy's life.

And what would be the full consequence of that act of mercy? James Tiberius, the survivor of uncounted disasters--cloud vampires, mad genetic counselors, insane commanders...someone who seems to live to survive no matter what the cost to his own sense of identity. So far that boy has grown up to assassinate his way to the captaincy, and 8,000 Vegan revolutionaries. Let's not count the number of his enemies that just up and vanish into thin air, although chances are slim he's stranded them on tropical islands.

Feeling flat and weary, he shuts his office door. Paperwork has to be done. Files need signing. Work work and always work.

And always sequestered in the cloister of the office. No more Pegasus, no more cutting-edge missions searching for plague and invading germs. Like James Kirk, he had risen too high to allow that privilege anymore.

No wonder Kirk's eyes burned.

He did not know his eyes burned as hot as his captain's, nor would he have believed the person who would say so.

He answers Jim's invitation to dinner in Captain's Quarters. The guards part. Farrell, who he just patched up, gives a polite nod. He nods back and steps through the closing doors. Jim Kirk is rising, coolly putting away a plethora of odd-looking tools in a warped trapezoid-shaped box by the wall. A painting hangs facing the captain's bed. Something new. Jim Kirk is not an art lover. If it's not a potential weapon, he usually won't have it in his quarters.

"Right on time, Bones." Jim smiles, and for a moment the fires are banked behind those eyes.

"Did I interrupt anything?"

"No, nothing important."

A slide. McCoy realizes he made a mistake by noticing whatever it was Jim had been working on. He looks around, trying to salvage something. "Just the two of us tonight?"

"Marlena...is working." Just a slight, cool hesitation in words. There'd been rumors that the relationship was on the outs.

Inwardly, McCoy feels badly for the captain. Jim Kirk needs a confiaza; someone he can trust and speak freely with. Somebody, he thinks, besides his ship's surgeon who has a dauncy reputation at best.

"But," Kirk brushes his hands on his pants, "I have a more than capable server tonight."

"Oh?" McCoy sits at his captain's direction, but thinks back to a time when "dinner" meant the two of them getting drunk in a filthy bar and singing off-tune songs about mermaids in front of bewildered Andorians.

"Yes." The captain smiles, proudly. The side door opens, and Yeoman Barrows arrives bearing a tray. All profession, there isn't even a clue that she would ever show fear in his office.

This has to be the first time he's had dinner in the captain's quarters without Marlena since she became the Captain's Woman. McCoy does his best to hide his thoughts as they speak about the food, the lack of quality in rations, and the hopes of Marchen shore leave.

He'd known when Jim was seeing Marlena. His demeanor had improved, and there'd been a youth returned to his step He'd displayed a gentleness nearly dead and buried. But that had been a year ago, and now Jim is returning to that hard outer shell.

Marlena had been good for Jim. Why were things going so sour, so abruptly?

He knows why Jim invited him over. Jim is aiming to prove that he doesn't need Marlena in his life, that he isn't keeping her in any plans. All things are normal, all things are fine.

Too bad McCoy can't believe it. The qualities that makes Kirk a perfect captain also make him a perfect bear outside of the battlefield. Inwardly he regrets the rift that will leave his captain harder and older before his time--another layer of shell over his heart. The harder Jim Kirk gets, the harder it is for his doctor to do his job and look out for his emotional wellbeing.

"Oh, I finally got a report from Ebla," McCoy lifts his hand in sudden recollection. "They've expressed the deepest regrets for what they call that "little misunderstanding." He lifts his eyebrow slowly, conveying heavy irony.

Kirk snorts, just as contemptuous. "You wonder what they'd call a nova--a cartographic inconvenience?"

"That's what Vulcans call them, isn't it?" McCoy winces slightly at bad memories. "I still find it hard to believe."

"What?"

"That a man could die of loneliness."

The captain's face changes. Silently. Terribly.

"I don't find that hard to believe at all, Bones." Kirk tells him softly. "But first, he has to go mad."

McCoy stares at him.

"Just a moment," Kirk rises to go to the back room. The moment drags. McCoy feels awkward in the same room with Barrows. He's never been around her in a non-medical capacity. His turn to feel uneasy. Trying to mask it, he rises and programs a cup of coffee out of the wall dispenser. He coughs at the first taste; the coffee is strong enough for a Tellarite. Even more embarassed, he dumps the cup into the waste dispenser with a weak smile to Barrows. By God, no wonder Jim Kirk is like the way he is, if this is the stuff he drinks.

"Are you all right?" She asks innocently. "You look like it went down the wrong way."

"M'fine," he strangles out, getting more flustered by the second.

The captain emerges, cradling a slender bottle in his hands. "Marlena doesn't know what she's missing," he says with a mean kind of satisfaction; Tonia pretends she didn't hear. McCoy feels like an intruder to be caught witnessing unpleasantries between Jim Kirk and his latest romance.

He pours; the air smells of licorice. Strong licorice. Two fingers' worth, and the tiny amount does nothing for the burning in his stomach. It crosses his mind to ask his captain what the hell he's been programming into his personal food allots--no wonder his diet never seems to go anywhere. All right, he'll broach the topic tomorrow. When they're out of the umbrella of polite hospitality.

Tonia Barrows leans over to clear the table; the low, random-placed lights in the Captain's Berth catches faint hues in the low scoop of her breasts.

He walks to his cabin. A weird euphoria buzzes his head. Probably the drink, he decides. That and the Captain's odd choice of apertif. He feels completely ridiculous. On-ship carnal thoughts were such an impossibly bad idea. They weren't good for your health. They were bad for your health. They epitomized stupidity. Only the captain was somewhat safe from the intrigues of romance. And right now, it didn't look like things were good between him and Moreau anymore.

Stupid...Moreau was the kind of woman who would fight with her man, yes, but she'd also fight for her man. That hot Latin temper she joked about wasn't just her reputation. Moreau was dangerous and you didn't want to be on the wrong side of the dagger with her. Or the wrong side of the test tube for that matter...

He pauses in the hallway, realizing the tangle of his thoughts were getting a little dangerous. He shouldn't be thinking of Jim Kirk's bad relationship, as opposed to his complete lack of one. And why think of Tonia Barrows? Because she got to see him choke over a vile cup of Captain's Caffeine?

He spins on his heels, knowing its useless to go to his cabin. Crazy energy simmering in his blood now. He needs to work it off.

Two of his medics are back to their old tricks, passing bets on another injured crewman. He doesn't break stride on his way to his office. Both men yelp and collapse as their superior's agonizer rakes across the delicate spinal nerves.

McCoy realizes he feels pretty good for such a behind-the-back maneuver.

"Next time it won't be a light dose," he snarls. They gape at him from the floor, unable to believe what they're seeing. "You're off-duty for the rest of the shift. And kiss your day's pay good-bye."

A shame, he thinks, that these ship-doors can't slam. They would end his lecture on a fitting note.

Part 2
"I need a favor, Bones."

"What would that be?"

"I need to work on my food relays. More variety, different stuff outside the standard rations."

He thinks about it and shrugs. "No big deal." He almost says, "I thought you already were," but decides against it; that would be petty. "I can assign you whatever bulk carbon-proteins n' electrolytes you need."

"I also need to take some things out of your stores."

McCoy stares at him over the tops of his eyes. "You're joking." He says levelly. "You've been around Spock too long. He yanked your humors right out of your spleen."

Jim chuckles, sitting on the edge of his desk. "Seriously. I need a few things."

The air shivers, then freezes brittle enough to splinter. He stares at Kirk in silence, wondering who this stranger is, leaning over him. Looks like the captain, talks like the captain--it isn't the captain he knows.

Kirk's amusement drips away as he speaks, and his voice chills ever so slightly. "You're the only one with access to those stores."

"Which means if anything comes up, like a drug audit, I'm the one who takes the fall. Not to mention, I'll also be taking the fall for anything else going on."

"Not hardly, Bones. Three days, tops. I'll have what I need replaced by then."

McCoy wishes devoutly for something to drink. Far secco, the Italians say. Shock that dries your mouth.

"You won't take the fall for anything, Bones. I promise you."

If Jim Kirk is a stranger, then he is too. Because he barely recognizes the words as coming out of his mouth:

"Who will take the fall, Jim?"

And Jim does not answer.

***

Two days later, the ship is dry-docked for the usual Imperial Overhaul done at the turn of each Standard Year. Officially, everyone under tight security clearance is brought in from outside and they scour the ship from top to bottom, replace what's damaged, update what's old, clean up the dregs and make the ship better than ever.

Unofficially, its when the higher members of the Covert Ops infiltrates the system with various forms of spywork. The crew is sent to the planet to cut loose and have fun while their cabins are bugged and their computers tapped.

Kirk has nothing to worry about. Nor does Spock--God help anyone who can figure out his system. Sulu will have his hands full protecting his interests. The more nervous sorts will be getting drunk and imagining terrible things going on with their personal machines. Scott will be furious that invaders are in his machines. After they leave, he'll be pulling double-shifts to make sure thye didn't do irrepairable damage to his "bairns."

McCoy pities the person in charge of deciphering his xenocryptography. Too many times over the course of the year, a CMO has to make up words to fit the description of whatever he's run into. There is the possibility that some medical rival is paying good money to crack into his files, but...(mental shrug) what exactly can he do? He can't afford high-class securities. He's just a friend of the captain, nothing more.

Or, is he?

He stares at himself in the mirror, aware that his eyes can no longer shield the self-doubts. Something is going on between Jim Kirk and Jim Kirk's Woman. Something very, very bad. Somehow when the ship was sleeping, Marlena got the better of her captain. That in itself was a bad enough crime. But it was a lot worse than "bad" if Jim Kirk was planning to use highly illegal means to re-tip the balance.

Access to drug stores are not for the faint hearted. There are many physicians and nurses that simply refuse that reponsibility. They've witnessed too many scenes where someone holding the key to the safes wound up in prison or executed because someone else managed to get in and plunder.

Jim would never ask someone to betray their responsibilities for him. Not only does that go against Jim Kirk's personal code, it also goes against his pride--how often has he said he prefers to take, not steal?

And when did he stop talking like that?

He has no doubt that Kirk can replenish what he takes. But the arrogance to assume he can get away with it...

His hand shakes over the comb and he finally lets it clatter into the sink.

Drug stores. Food relays. How could two incongruous things tie-in with lost power on the ship?

He doesn't want to know.

He has a feeling he will soon enough.

He swallows, feeling dry as dust, and picks up the comb again. Shore leave already feels like a funeral.

Primed to entertain, the natives of Marchen-II are already having a Midseason festival-something like an ancient European Mardi Gras. McCoy gives up trying to make sense of it. It so far seems to be a more light-hearted version of the Archons' Red Hour. Realizing that, he follows that up with the knowledge that the best place to be is up on the balcony overlooking the Main Crossroads of the city, watching the throngs swirl with their colored scarves. A good idea; one Kirk shares.

***

"You look off," Kirk comments. As if he would do something so inefficient as 'comment.'

"Long week." McCoy mutters without volunteering. "Twelve surgeries. I swear you've got to stop accepting these hotbloods. Assassination attempts are higher here than any other warship in the fleet!"

"If I take on older crewmen, yes, the attempts go down." Kirk leans back comfortably in his chair, overlooking the swirling throng of festival-goers. Brilliant rainbow colors blur and blend. The fumes off the drinks are enough to take off the top of your head. "But most people lose their edge once they hit a certain age. I can't afford that."

McCoy lets the silence crawl between himself and his captain. Finally, slowly, he turns his head and looks at the younger man.

Kirk chuckles. "I'm not saying you've lost your edge."

"Maybe I have," he offers. "I'm not the boy who developed the neural grafting technique nineteen years ago."

"No, you've gone on to cure no less than forty-five infectious conditions, including parasites, prion attack, virus and incompatible bacteria, not to mention cross-species pathogens, which happen to be a leading cause of death in any Empire. I'm quite satisfied with the CMO I have."

He hears Kirk, but the words aren't quite processing. He finally exhales and looks away.

"Problem?"

"Things were different back when you were lieutenant. In a way I miss it."

"Back then, you protected me. Now I'm protecting you." Kirk shoots back the answer, For his doctor, things aren't so easily decided.

"I'm not sure you needed protecting," McCoy lets the right amount of doubt seep into his tone, elicting a laugh. "But what I meant was, I liked being involved with the explorations back then. How often does a CMO go to the Bridge anymore? Or down on a planet? Just when it's deemed safe, or when we're to make a good example in a harmless way." Back in the old days, he could have beamed down as much as anybody. But now...now the medics and nurses get more ground-time than he does. And he feels the loss every time there's a landing party without him. He feels stifled. He's felt this way for years, he realizes in a mild shock. What he'd thought was the feeling of growing old was his feeling stale. Stagnant.

"Things are harder now than they used to be. Science and exploration has to take a second place to conquest and battle." Kirk gulps his drink easily, wipes his mouth. "A shame, but needed. Your time will come again. In the mean time, you just re-organize your priorities."

"Oh." He answers dryly.

"I'm serious. You've been on ship far too long. When was the last time you took the stripes off?" Kirk waved his dagger to the empty air. "Take a hike. Leave the uniform behind, go have some fun. Do I have to order you to find a lovely lady?"

Back when Kirk was a rising lieutenant, things had been completely different indeed. It feels odd to be given advice--well, commanded might be a better word--by the Empire's latest version of Alexander.

And, just like one of Alexander's generals, McCoy has no urge to resist him.

***

He wanders without much aim; partygoers are on one side of the streets. On the other, confusiong signs and advertisements. The vids display public executions of convicted criminals, and to his own private horror he finds himself staring at one. A nameless deemed criminal, his children sobbing as they're shipped off. Without exception they will be fostered out to approved schools.

Too many years ago, he had been one of those children. Not that his parents had been criminals, but they had not been wealthy enough to buy protection into a family. And when their institute had collapsed under corruption, the Empire had simply blanketed all staff as responsible. Three years of a government boarding school while his parents were rehabilitated with all the other unlucky workers. The only comfort was knowing that the truly guilty superiors had been included in the generic punishment.

They were different when he was allowed to return. His mother slept more, lost her easy smile. His father had gone obsessive over his work, and just as obsessive to pull his family together and spend the weekends doing mandatory 'fun' things that weren't really. And the least fun of all was getting enrolled in a 'self-defense' course.

Getting trained on how to beat people up is prohibited among the civilian lot. Self defense, however, is permitted. Leave it to David McCoy to find the most offensive of defensive teachers in the whole continent. A former gladiator, his teacher had a philosphy of damage that had a way of ruining one's outlook on life. To this very day, Leonard can't look at a candy wrapper, a broken tape, or even a stylus missing a battery without speculating on its use as a weapon. The more innocuous the object, the more he feels compelled to speculate its use in mayhem.

No wonder his wife had left him. Pledged to heal, to harm none and to protect, he nonetheless has the most un-peaceful outlook on life this side of the Vulcan Empire. (Speaking of Vulcans, Spock chalked his aberrant behavior to his typical inability to be unnecessarily complicated.)

McCoy had passed his "self defense" class--barely--with honors. He'd been too terrified of losing to do otherwise. Losers tended to have a lot of unpleasant things happen to them. There were rumors of what went on to students who were "singled out." And David knew of those punishments and penalties. He had enrolled his son anyway.

David got what he wanted. A son who was harder to hurt. And learning that lesson, Leonard had backed away from him, held him at arms' length for the rest of his life. Even the moment he died, he had to force himself to get close enough to hold the thin, frail body as the last breath passed out.

He shuts his mind off, staring blank-eyed about him. He needs to do something, has got to get away from the threat of his own thoughts. There is a severe lack of variety in entertainment. No wonder Spock hounds libraries. Hounds? His eye catches a sober advertisement on public hunting preserves. He considers this unexpected possibility. Hunting was something he used to do, and he was very good at it. Well, used to be. He hasn't picked up a weapon for that reason in a while.

The forests would be quiet. They wouldn't be anything like what's going on right now...

Take a hike, Jim had told him.

Aye, sir...

***

When he sees Tonia is already at the station, he almost turns around and goes back to the city. No, damn it, he was here to get away from the city, and he sure couldn't get up on the ship. Come to think of it, he was damn near sick and tired of being on the ship anyway.

She's checking her equipment over, and lifts her head as his step falls on the front porch of the hunting-station. He catches her surprise.

"Are you hunting too?" She asks, pleased. "Angela couldn't make it today."

He stares at the number on his card. "Are you #094?"

"Yes."

"I'm #095. It looks like they gave me Angela's number."

"They do that. We're from the same ship, so they stuck us together by proxy." She hesitates. "Do you know how to hunt?"

Well. McCoy lowers the card and manages not to give her a look of deep offense. "I used to not be very bad at it," he growls. "At least with the bow. I don't do rifles."

"Neither do I." She ties her hair back in a quick yank. "I know where the best parts are. D'you want to spot with me?"

Why the hell not? He asks himself. "Depends. What are you hunting for?"

"Whatever comes my way. That's what I paid for."

Well, this idea wasn't all that good to begin with--just the lesser of all potential evils. He shrugs and slings a quiver up. "How long you've been hunting here?"

"All my life." Tonia gives him a look that can only be a silent challenge. "My father was Arcturian Ambassador to the Marchen Governor."

That explains how you got your job, he almost says it, and remembers just in time that cheap shots are as cheap as they come. He swallows his tongue and nods with a smile. "Good."

And she isn't a bad hunter. Once they step into the woods she shuts her mouth and it stays shut as they look around. The first lesson learned, and the hardest one for some people. Keep your mouth shut, move slowly and silently, and master the art of looking around without swiveling your head. Fast movements catch the eye, and they need surprise to catch game.

They stop at an obvious watering-hole on the edge of an open clearing. Tonia is careful not to get her prints in the mud as she checks out the tracks. A lot of different kinds of hooves, and even more fowl and nibblers.

"Red-bucks," Tonia points to a large crescent stamped in the bank. "They're creatures of habit. Every 4 or 5 hours they go to the same spot to drink; watering-holes border their territory with rival males."

"Good enough place to wait then." He offers.

They sit in the shade, neither moving except to slowly re-check their equipment. Tonia has a crossbow that makes him nervous on principle. He catches her stealing looks at his Primitive Longbow, but she never asks him about it. She probably thinks he doesn't really want to kill anything--a lot of people have that misconception about longbows. If she thinks he's just out to take a hike, then he plans on surprising her.

Speaking of surprise...

He moves slowly, tapping her shoulder. She almost glares at him, then follows his gaze straight up. They're sitting almost directly under a long, looping brown vine that isn't a vine. Tonia's brown eyes grow very wide as she takes in the gleaming scales and vestigal limbs.

"Poisonous?" He mouths.

She shakes her head no, but its clear that three-meter predatory lizards that resemble snakes are not her favorite critter.

Chirps and whistles filter through the canopy, and Tonia tenses. She leans foward, ever so slightly--wrong posture, he thinks, but its too late to say anything. Flutterings move the leaves through the thickets, and a bush heavy with half-ripe berries begins moving, swinging back when birds tug fruit off the tender branches.

He doubts his eyes at first; they're so perfectly camoflaged, but he's never seen a Pine-hen in real life. They're mottled like the canopy in greens and browns, but the males have bright yellow spots on their heads the size of Scotty's transponder-disk. The brighter the yellow, the more mature the male. The size is a surprise too. They're big as the ducks back home, which is twice the bird he's gotten on the rare banquet tables when the Empire was feeling generous with its officers.

He's ready with his string, but hesitates. The concentration on Tonia's face has locked her face up like a bad case of lockjaw. Her desire to get a perfect shot has managed to consumer her in only a few seconds. Although he could strike, he doesn't, more interested in what she'll do.

The tree-lizard does it for her. It uncoils like a spring and strikes the ground where a young pullet had been. Feathers explode. The sound of a shuttlecraft engine taking off in heavy atmosphere and Tonia is on her feet, sweating and swearing all kinds of things while the lizard slithers off (without dinner but far luckier than it thinks), and McCoy is gingerly picking his way around the watering-hole to pick up his catch.

Tonia glares at her bolt sunk deep into the tree, and glares even harder at the sight of him collecting two mature male Pines.

"Are you gonna be ok?" He asks, frankly skeptical.

She stops and takes a deep breath, willing herself to calm down.

"Birds scare me," she says frankly. "I'm all ready for them but when they take off like that--whoof. I have a heart attack for each beak that flies up in my face. How do you do it?"

"I don't, really. I just don't think about it."

"How can you act without thinking?"

"Conscious thinking. There's a difference." At her look he explains: "Look, if you ever had to operate on a patient in a zero-gravity shuttlecraft and the patient has unpredictable erupting bulges in their arteries, you'd learn to act without thinking too."

Barrows doesn't blink. She just keeps looking at him.

"All right, I'll admit you have a point." She says at last.

Helpless, he laughs and picks up the bow. "Want to try again?"

"Yes." She says. "I want that deer."

"You want the whole deer?"

"Yes."

"All right, then." He strings the dead birds and returns to his place. Tonia joins him, her crossbow back in place.

He really has no interest in continuing the hunt--but Tonia's proving far more intriguing than anything he's encountered. The way she sticks her lip out when she's thinking hard really makes her look young.

They don't have long to wait--more's the pity because maybe she could have calmed down and not have had such a rotten day. He's sitting in a self-satisfied state, induced by plans of at least one grand future dinner involving Pine hen. There's the possibility he should consider Jim Kirk in that dinner, to prove a) no hard feelings and b) he wants to keep the lines of communication open. Their relationship has to be close to be effective, and Jim seems to have forgotten that his doctor has to ignore improper queries.

All right. He's delusional. He's not the first nor the last person to insist a friendship is on the rocks.

Tonia breathes and freezes, wrenching his mind back to reality.

Her lips are set, fear whitening the skin around her face. He doesn't know who to watch--Tonia, or the deer.

The buck snorts its surprise, large ears twitching. It whirls and runs into the canopy while the arrow that almost pegged it quivers in the tree trunk.

"Oh...damn."

Oh, oh. McCoy looks at Tonia uncertainly. Her eyes are filling up and spilling over. She throws the bow down to the ground.

"Hey, that's a rental."

"I don't care!" She bursts into tears. Total disaster.

"It's not the end of the world."

"I don't care about that either!"

He holds her as she stops shaking. He knows what will happen. She pulls away, pulling her hair back and putting on a cool mask.

"I'm sorry you had to see that."

"A Vulcan would be proud of you." He snaps impatiently. "Good thing I'm not; I know a lot of hooey when I see it."

Her mouth tightens. "Are you going to report me? The captain should know his yeoman is potentially unstable."

"I disclose nothing in medical confidence. You had an emotional moment and asked for help."

"I never did."

"Not with words, you didn't."

"Am I supposed to believe you never talk to the captain?"

"No, I talk to the captain all the time. I just don't talk to him about my work. He's not what you'd call interested in things like surgery and psychology." He smiles. "You really wanted that shot. I know; I've been there. It's hard to remember there will be other shots in your life, and your life doesn't depend on that particular one."

"I know." She ruins her attempt at bravado by sniffing loudly.

She smells sweet. She feels soft. And she kisses very well. It crosses his mind that this is a set-up of Jim Kirk's. Another leverage against him. But she's still kissing, and she isn't letting go, and Jim Kirk is right, it has been too long and his mind just won't let him fight it any more.

***

"I'm worried about him."

He worries about himself, that he could confess his fears to the ceiling while lying in bed with the Captain's Yeoman. God, that's practically going to bed with the Captain's Woman-pro-tem. What if Jim's had sights on Tonia? Is that why he had her serve dinner that night?

Tonia sits up halfway, her long hair spilling down her shoulders. "I worry about him too," she confesses right back. "He's got the most dangerous job on the ship."

"And stressful." Which is putting it mildly, if you consider Jim has obviously chosen crewman with "an edge" over crewmen with skill and a little more maturity. Has Jim become some sort of adrenaline junkie when his back was turned? Why does Jim have to be so complicated anyway?

Tonia pulls him back out of his thoughts of Jim by running a fingernail down his chest. He watches without moving as she studies his skin. She is worried. That Arcturian innocence speaking in her eyes. "I feel like I can't do a proper job."

"I haven't heard any complaints." He points out.

"It's not easy. I give him his reports, but they're all de-classified. He can get them off his computer any time he wants. I give him his padd for signature, but he can do that any time he wants too. I serve him his meals, but I swear, he doesn't eat them. He just dumps them when I'm not looking. He's usually getting a tray in Mess Hall or some other place. I'll pull a cup of coffee out of his own dispenser, and he won't even drink it!"

"He's always on the run," McCoy says automatically, the easy answer. "And considering how he programmed his coffee, I'm not surprised he doesn't drink it."

"I don't think he did. Marlena did it. At least, that's what he mutters when he takes a cup of the stuff."

"Marlena?" McCoy frowns, because although Tonia's fingernails are threatening to become distracting, the image of Marlena is even more so. "Marlena can't stand coffee. She doesn't touch the stuff."

"Well no wonder, if she makes it that way." Tonia tosses her hair over her back and drops the subject. She curls over his torso and he smiles up into her face as he holds her waist.

"Well, he needs to talk with her. Because I think he just takes the coffee to be polite. A tiny sip and he's tossed if back into the recycler when she's not looking."

"So she's still seein' him."

Tonia shrugs. "She has a lot of pride. And whatever you can say, they have a really good working relationship."

"This is true."

She hm's, thinking. "D'you want to hit the woods again?"

"You still want that deer?"

"No--well, maybe. But I'll settle for his cousin."

He laughs, jostling her on his chest. "I like the way you think."

"This is my off-ship brain." She leans over and gives him a not-so-quick kiss on the lips. "If I don't kill something once in a while, I get a little crazy." At his expression she mock-slaps him. "I don't mean it that way, and you know it! I love to hunt...you can tell it's been too long. I got too caught up in it yesterday."

"We have all week." He reminds her.

"Yeah." She props her arm on his stomach. "Oh, well. But I did bag something."

"What?"

"You."

He stops her laughter by grabbing her ribs. She chokes and squeals, and somehow the tickling turns into a wrestle match on a bed that's not quite large enough for long-term gymnastics.

"You win," she gasps. "All right What can I do to make it up to you?"

"How about breakfast?" He teases, because she looks like she has something else in mind.

"Just breakfast?" At his smirk she catches on, smirking back. "You've got it, Commander." Her wrists flick, snapping the blanket over her body and most of his. "It's a good thing you didn't specify what kind..."

***

He finds a scratch on the door-frame to the drug stores. Without a word he turns his head and looks at Chapel. Chapel meets his gaze, her mouth set in a sober red line.

"They couldn't get in, whoever they were." She points out. "Funny. You'd think they'd know a pulse-bar wouldn't work on that grade of aluminum."

"I'm sure they knew, Nurse." He says it wearily, without thinking of the possible repurcussions.

She frowns, shaking her head. "Then why would they do it? There's no sense."

"There's plenty of sense in it." He runs his fingertip over the scratch. Nearly 4,000 kilos of pressure per square centimeter required for that mark. "They're letting me know they were here."

Jim Kirk.

He goes through his paperwork without consciously thinking; all the right reading in all the right places, wondering again what would stem from his refusal to kow-tow to the captain.

Drug access.

Food relays.

Marlena.

The odd points dance around in his mind, loose as random numbers as possibilities present themselves, then are discarded. Drug access/Food relays. Marlena/Drug Access? Marlena/food relays?

Marlena is a biochemist.

Big deal; Jim Kirk earned his Scout Badge on chemistry too. If he wants to learn something, he learns it and not even Spock can top his focus.

Chemistry/Drugs/Food.

Food/Chemistry/drugs.

He stops, frozen in the act of thinking and writing.

Chemistry.
Drugs.
Food.
Marlena.

"Chapel?" He marvels at the disinterest in his voice.

"Yes, doctor?"

"Doesn't Lt. Moreau have a cousin on the Yorktown?"

Chapel shrugs her puzzlement. "Yes. She transferred from the Yorktown, remember?"

"No, I didn't remember--I mean, I didn't know that at all."

"Mn-hmn. It's why she left, I think. Too close quarters." Chapel chuckles.

"Makes sense," he hears himself speak still in the stranger's calm voice. "I was wondering if she knew of anyone over there who could give us some independant feedback on those chemistry studies."

"I'll ask her," Chapel offers.

"You do that. We're stuck if we don't have an impartial proofer on those figures."

He waits for her to leave, stands, then walks like a dead man out Sickbay.

"Why are you doing this?" He asks Jim flat out.

"Doing what?" Jim is acting innocent again.

He swallows hard, feeling a walnut in his throat. "Jim..." He folds his arms over his chest, puts his back against the wall without thinking. "I don't want to know why you want to pin some kind of illegal drug-racket on Marlena. But you'd best leave me out of it."

Jim's eyes had been deceptively soft and naive. Now they're frightening. "You're assuming I'd do something like that?"

"I saw you working at your own food relays. I tried to program a cup of coffee while you were gone and got a cup of pure theobromine--its a wonder I didn't do handsprings all the way to B Deck--Anything you can do, Moreau can do, and you want to make it look like she's the one doing it."

The Jim Kirk he once knew, would have never done this.

What's happening, Jim?

He wishes he had the strength to ask him that in person. He doesn't. The moment is too late. As if he could trust an answer at this point. And why would Jim trust him any more? He's done nothing more than work in his sickbay and conduct research.

He understands now. In order for Jim Kirk to be emotionally equipped to betray his oldest friend...he has to convince himelf his friend had been the first betrayer.

The trap encloses him like a spring. He fights for breath.

"What I do," Jim--not Jim--Captain James Tiberius Kirk--says slowly and clearly, friend no longer, ally no longer, just pure commander, "is my business. My perogative. And if you're going to accuse me of doing anything that would improper with my duties as this ship's captain, I suggest you submit proof before you make a reservation for the Agony Booth." If possible, the eyes grow harder. "Or execution."

He walks to Sickbay, back to work, just moving, just walking. Dead man walking. He's alive now, but unless he can be exceptionally clever, or faster than an opponant who knows him better than anyone, he's just honorarily alive.

Jim has seen him through so much of his life. His work. His marriage. His divorce and the birth of his daughter. He stands in the middle of the Sickbay lobby for a moment, numb beyond thought. His best friend no longer.

"You have to learn to feel again," He hears himself saying to the angry young boy.

“Why?” The angry young boy asks.

Why indeed?

***

Tonia is the next in line for the monthly checkup. All profession. All proper. He makes certain Chapel isn't looking anywhere near their direction and catches her gaze.

Humans can convey so much with only a look. Trust. Faith. A smile. Fear.

Danger.

Warning.

Her eyes sink into his, catching his unspoken message. She'd been about to smile at him. He watches as the smile is suddenly dropped, boxed and stuffed in a corner before it can even emerge.

Thank God.

Chapel watches her go. She shakes her head.

"You've got to stop scaring that girl," she scolds.

He puts the salt shaker back on the shelf, sterlizing his hands for the next one.

"I know," he apologies, watching the blue lights dance over his fingerprints.

The End...