Star Trek: The Original Series: The Shocks of Adversity (11 page)

Fexil shook her head, struggling to wrap her mind around such a thing. “It all seems
so
inefficient.”

“Efficiency is measured by a combination of factors,” Uhura said. “It may be quicker
to issue a series of coded commands rather than to explain a process step-by-step,
and I’m sure it works very well for routine operations. But we deal with so much that
falls outside of the routine. In my experience, it’s usually better to tell people
the result you want, and let them use their particular knowledge and skill sets to
achieve that result. For example, Mister MacNeal’s idea for a warp plasma filter.”

Fexil fixed Uhura with a strangely wounded look. “Then you think his insubordination
was justifiable?”

“The way he voiced his idea was out of line,” Uhura said quickly. “But the idea itself?
You tell me.”

“Tell you?” Fexil asked, confused.

“You’re an engineer; what do you think?” Uhura asked. “Would a filter of some sort
do the job of preventing any cross-contamination between the two ships’ systems?”

Fexil was caught flatfooted by the query. “I . . . well, possibly, I suppose,” she
said tentatively, “if we had the time to consider it and design one . . .” She shook
her head to dismiss the idea. “But we’re under time constraints. . . .”

“Fair enough,” Uhura said. “But in other circumstances, perhaps we could have been
able to make the idea work.” Fexil considered that, while also considering, Uhura
suspected, the practicalities of a plasma filter. “And, if it did work, that would
serve to make Mister MacNeal more positive about his contribution to the solution.”

“And that’s relevant?” Fexil asked. “Whether he’s ‘positive’ while doing his duties?”

“Oh, yes,” Uhura said. “Morale is vital, especially during extended missions like
ours, far from familiar space for months or years at a time. We find morale goes hand-in-hand
with efficiency.”

Fexil gave her a look of skepticism. “Really?”

“Absolutely,” Uhura told her, and gave her an appraising look. “What do you do with
your off-duty time aboard your ship?”

Fexil shrugged. “Sleep. Eat. Study technical manuals and reports.”

Uhura held back a small laugh, and wondered if that was a universal constant among
all engineers. “Once we’re done here and you’re off duty, why not join me on the recreation
deck? I get the feeling it would do you a world of good.”

Blinking, Fexil hesitated, but then she smiled. “If you say it improves productivity,
I suppose I should give it a try.”

*   *   *

The name
Enterprise
had a long and proud history, going all the way back to the early eighteenth century.
The last starship to bear the name was Earth Starfleet’s NX-01, commanded by the legendary
Jonathan Archer. Two centuries earlier, the oceangoing aircraft carrier
U.S.S. Enterprise
was the most honored ship in the United States Navy, and played a vital role in the
Allies’ victory over the Axis powers during World War II. The first space shuttle
was named
Enterprise
, though it had never left Earth’s atmosphere. As the prototype of Earth’s first generation
of reusable orbiter vehicles, it had been used as a testbed.

Kirk was reminded of that shuttle as he looked out the
Galileo
’s forward viewport at his ship, now attached to the
814
. For those early test flights, the space shuttle orbiter
Enterprise
would be carried atop an old-style jet aircraft, which would fly it to an altitude
of some seven kilometers before releasing it
and letting it glide, unpowered, back to earth. Here again, a nearly powerless
Enterprise
was secured to the top of another vessel, which they needed to rely on to convey
them to their destination.

“Is something wrong, James?”

Kirk turned and looked up at Laspas, who was standing just behind him and Lieutenant
Arex, the Triexian shuttle pilot. Lost in his reverie, Kirk had almost forgotten that
his Domain counterpart had accompanied him in his visual survey of their conjoined
vessels. The captain willed away his melancholia and answered, “No, no. Just . . .
thinking.” He turned back forward again as Arex guided the shuttle around underneath
the navigational deflector dish, and the bow of the Domain Starvessel Class III/
814
. “You don’t feel the same kind of connection to your ship I do, I suppose,” he said.
Scotty had related part of his conversation with Chief N’Mi to Kirk earlier.

“I take pride in my vessel just as you do,” Laspas assured him. “I would be just as
wounded if it were to be disabled, and my crew endangered, make no mistake.”

“Oh, I’m sure, Commander,” Kirk said, as Arex brought them in for another close pass
underneath the
Enterprise
to examine the series of braces and tubes sticking out of her like some terminal
hospital patient. “But . . . for me . . . for the
Enterprise
 . . . it’s a little more. Do all of the Defense Corps’s ships go
by numerical designations only?” he asked, turning back to the other man.

Laspas hesitated, and then answered, “Officially, yes. Our assignments to any one
vessel rarely run longer than a cycle or two. I’ve commanded nine different starvessels
since being promoted to commander rank. Giving proper names to inanimate objects,
or forming any kind of attachment to them, is not something the Corps considers to
be appropriate.”

Kirk thought he picked up something more in that answer than what Laspas actually
said. “But unofficially?” he asked.

“Unofficially?” A tiny whisper of a smile curled Laspas’s lips. “When I was a boy,
there was a popular series of historical novels about a fictional hero named Kawhye.
He traveled the wilder regions of old Goega, riding his
gaat
named Windracer, fighting villains and saving the downtrodden.” Laspas shrugged his
shoulders and admitted, “I may have, once or twice, in an occasional flight of whimsy,
employed a literary allusion during one of my missions commanding
814
.”

Kirk held back an amused smile. “But only once or twice.”

“At the very most,” Laspas insisted.

Lieutenant Arex chose then to interrupt, saying, “We’ve completed our circuit, sirs.”

“Thank you, Mister Arex,” Kirk said, and then asked Laspas, “What do you think?”

The Goeg dropped all hint of joviality, all business now. “Looks like all code zeros
to me,” he said, which Kirk understood as the equivalent of “green lights across the
board.”

Kirk nodded in agreement and said to Arex, “Take up position aft, Lieutenant.” The
shuttle pulled away from the ships, moving to a point several hundred meters off their
sterns. As it did, Kirk reached for the comm control on the instrument panel. “
Galileo
to
Enterprise
.”

“Go ahead, Captain,”
Spock answered.

“Initiate transfer of full navigational control from
Enterprise
to the
814
.”

“Acknowledged, Captain,”
Spock answered. Over the open channel, he heard orders and reports being relayed
by his bridge crew, and after a minute, Spock’s voice came back to inform him,
“Navigational transfer complete.”

Laspas then tapped at his own communicator, hooked over his ear, and opened a channel
to his own vessel. “
814
: standby codes 2-1, 2-2, and 2-3.” He paused as his orders were acknowledged, then
said, “Execute.”

The impulse engines of both vessels began to glow, and as the
Galileo
maintained its station-keeping position, the dual starship began to pull away, heading
out of orbit of Nystrom IV.

“Velocity at point-one impulse,”
Spock reported.
“Engine synchronization optimal. Umbilicals and
supports maintaining. Structural integrity holding steady within acceptable parameters.”

“Code 2-3, positive five,” Laspas ordered, watching intently with Kirk through the
forward ports.

“One-half impulse,”
Spock said.
“All systems nominal.”

As the two ships successfully carried out a series of tandem test maneuvers, Kirk
found the dejection he had been feeling over the state of his ship lift. “Giddy-up,
Windracer,” he whispered as he watched the
Enterprise
, riding atop the
814
, gracefully complete its final operational drill.

Arex turned his long head to him. “ ‘Giddy-up’?” But even though the archaic phrase
was no more familiar to Laspas than to Arex, the Goeg picked up on Kirk’s meaning
and smiled broadly.

Kirk returned the smile as he tabbed the transmitter open again. “
Galileo
to
Enterprise
. Prepare the hangar deck for our return. Once we’re secure, signal the
814
: we’re ready to ride.”

In practically every civilization and culture ever encountered, this had been proven
to be a universal constant: Rank has its privileges.

Laspas’s personal cabin aboard the
814
, while far from luxurious by Federation standards, was a marked contrast from the
austere nature of the rest of the starvessel. It was located near the ship’s bow,
with separate living and sleeping quarters, each with an exterior port affording a
direct view of the stars slipping by at warp. A small corner kitchenette allowed for
food storage and simple preparation, and Laspas occupied himself there by filling
two heavy cups with steaming water and spooning a mixture of powdered bark and leaves
into each. “
Heenye,
” he said as he turned back around to Kirk, a mug in each hand, and offered one to
his guest. “Highest quality, grown in the Bliss Mountains on Goega.”

“Thank you.” Kirk accepted the proffered cup and took a careful sip. It tasted like
a strong black tea with cinnamon, steeped in salt water—not
particularly pleasant, but not so terrible that he couldn’t pretend to appreciate
it. “Interesting,” he said as he turned to survey the rest of the living area. His
eye landed on a row of matched antique-looking leather-bound books on a shelf set
into the bulkhead beside the cabin door. He ran his forefinger over the alien text
stamped on the spines, and then pulled one from its slot. On the rear cover—or, if
the Goeg read right to left, then the front cover—was an illustration of a Goeg atop
some sort of four-legged riding animal. “This wouldn’t be Kawhye and Windracer, would
it?”

Laspas moved beside Kirk and gingerly removed the volume from his hands. “Yes. This
was my father’s collection,” he said as he carefully replaced it on the shelf. “He’s
the one who first introduced me to the series.”

“I’m sorry,” Kirk said. “I didn’t realize . . .”

Laspas quickly waved off his apology. “I shouldn’t even have them aboard with me—too
much risk of their being lost should anything happen. But it’s nice to have this reminder
of him. Besides which, I still enjoy the stories. Entertaining adventure tales with
clear contrasts between hero and villain, good and bad.”

“Unlike real life,” Kirk commented.

“Yes, precisely,” Laspas said as he gestured for Kirk to take a cushioned chair in
the center of the room. “You were telling me earlier about that one
mission of yours,” Laspas continued, moving a second chair from his workdesk and sitting
opposite the captain, “about the ancient computer that had enslaved an entire planet,
that you convinced was acting against its own programming and caused its self-destruction?”
Laspas shook his maned head in a gesture of awe. “That sounds like something straight
out of a Kawhye story, if he had a spaceship instead of a
gaat
.”

Kirk laughed at that. “Well, I certainly didn’t feel like some hero riding in on his
white horse at the time,” he said.

“White horse?” Laspas asked.

“An allusion to a human genre of literature similar to your Kawhye tales,” Kirk explained.
“I technically violated Starfleet regulations by interfering with the society on Beta
III. In a real sense, I destroyed that society.”

“The way you described it,” Laspas said, “it sounded like it needed to be destroyed.”

Kirk nodded. “Yes, I know. Landru was standing in the way of any chance of advancement
for the Betan civilization. But it’s far easier to tear something down than to build
up something new. I forced that responsibility on a people who weren’t necessarily
ready to tackle it. To this day, more than a year later, I still question whether
I really did right by them.” The captain paused to take a long draw of his
heenye
, and then said,
“I’ve never actually admitted that aloud.” Kirk wasn’t entirely sure why he was admitting
it now to this alien, either. He couldn’t have told McCoy, who had been “absorbed”
by Landru. And though he considered Spock his closest friend, the Vulcan was also
the one who had raised the question of the Prime Directive to him in the first place.

After a moment, Laspas commented, “When you command a starvessel, you don’t have the
luxury of doubting yourself, much less voicing those doubts to anyone.” Kirk nodded
in agreement, and the two men exchanged a look of mutual understanding. “For instance,
there was one mission of mine, aboard my prior command . . .”

*   *   *

“Doctor,” D’Abruzzo called out as he caught a glimpse of McCoy passing by the recovery
ward doorway. “Hey, Doc!”

“Well, you’re awake,” McCoy said, sauntering into the room. “How are you feeling?”

“My arm itches like crazy,” the lieutenant answered, his right arm across his chest,
grasping his left arm and trying to knead through its tough, inflexible wrap.

“That’s a good sign,” McCoy said, looking up at the bio-readings displayed over the
patient’s head.

“Good for you, maybe,” D’Abruzzo said, wincing.
“It feels like the itch goes all the way through to the bone.”

“I don’t doubt it,” McCoy told him. “Your body is working overtime to heal the damage
done.” The readings from his electrosensor bandage showed the muscle density of his
damaged arm and shoulder steadily increasing, and activity in his nerve receptors
returning as well.