"BAR … FIGHT … TIMELINE … arrested … consequences—"
"Easy there. It's going to be all right."
"How can you say that, Dulmur? For all we know, we could be in an alternate timeline right now!"
Sisko watched the two time guys as near-panic surged and faded, then surged again. Their imaginations were going crazy, and he was enjoying the spectacle. Lucsly was lying on the office couch, pale and weak. Sisko brought him a cup of tea.
"Your men could've avoided that fight, Captain," Dulmur said.
From memory, Lucsly droned, "Regulation one-fifty-seven, section three, paragraph eighteen: Starfleet officers shall take all necessary precautions to minimize any participation in historical events."
"All right," Sisko allowed. "It was a mistake. But there were no lasting repercussions."
"How do you know that?" Dulmur challenged. "For all we know, we could be living in an alternate timeline right now!"
"If my people caused any changes in the timeline, we would've been the first to notice when we got back."
Wasn't that right? That was the way it had always been described to him—that people who went through a timeline change were somehow protected from the alterations. At least, that was the going theory.
"Why do they all have to say that?" Lucsly agonized.
Dulmur turned to Sisko. "So … your men were arrested?"
"I want to know who started it."
The voice cut through the middle of Miles O'Brien's spine, did a double somersault, and vaulted up to the back of his neck. How he could possibly have mistaken Lieutenant Freeman for Captain James Kirk, he had no idea. Especially now, as he stood in a lineup in the captain's office, with James Kirk pacing before them like a drill sergeant.
All faces were forward, all eyes focused flat on the bulkhead. No one dared meet the captain's eyes.
But O'Brien keenly felt the captain's eyes. There was no ducking the blinding glare of reputation.
James Kirk had neither imposing stature nor a Grecian musculature, yet he was compact and tightly strung. He looked strong and quick, and he strode the line of his errant crew like a bully on the street. In contrast to the way his legend had rumbled through history, the reality of James Kirk was a shock. He was no Viking, yet there was voltage in his presence, and this room was charged.
"I'm waiting," Kirk said, as he reversed his pace and came back.
No one said anything. Fate brought the captain to the center of the line, where O'Brien stood stiff as a graveyard cross, with Bashir at his side, both overstaring.
James Kirk's fierce eyes fixed on O'Brien's. "Who started the fight?"
With every fiber of his existence, O'Brien wished he were back in Father Fitzpatrick's parish, facing Sister Mary Asumpta. This was a dream. A mistake. A trick. Halloween. O'Brien was glad he was standing next to a doctor because he wanted very much to have a heart attack.
"I don't know, sir" was all he could think to say.
Never in his life had he been stared at by a man who knew he was lying in quite the degree that James Kirk knew. The captain moved on, but the eyes stayed for an extra second or two.
"All right." The captain went to the next man in the line. The ensign, now with a bruise on his face. "Chekov. I know you. You started it, didn't you?"
"No, sir, I didn't," the young man said truthfully.
"Well, who did?" The words shot like pellets out of a weapon.
Ensign Chekov twitched, then smiled. "I don't know, sir!"
"I don't know, sir," Kirk muttered back mockingly.
They knew, and he knew they knew, and they knew he knew they knew.
"I want to know who threw the first punch," the captain demanded.
He reached the end of the twitching line, turned again, and walked slowly back.
"All right. You're all confined to quarters until I find out who started it. Dismissed."
The line of crewmen turned on a proper heel and marched for the door. As they filed into the corridor, O'Brien felt he was breaking out of prison. Would he remember how to breathe?
"Scotty, not you," the captain's voice broke, and O'Brien almost turned back automatically.
The door gushed closed and the crewmen dissipated without a word.
Bashir pulled him aside. "That was close!"
"Me!" O'Brien heaved, awestruck that he had been singled out and had spoken, in person, to James Kirk! "Out of all the people in the lineup, he asked me who threw the punch!"
With a sorry glower, Bashir deliberately tortured, "And you lied to him."
"I lied to Captain Kirk!" O'Brien agreed happily. "I wish Keiko had been there to see it!"
"Scotty, not you."
Engineer Scott drew up short at the captain's words. Trouble.
It was command-officer-to-command-officer time.
Jim Kirk saw the shame and resignation in his chief engineer's face as Scott hungrily watched the others leave and the door close, then turned reluctantly back to his captain. He'd almost made it.
Kirk squared off before him. "You were supposed to prevent trouble, Mr. Scott."
Miserably, Scott sighed. "Aye, Captain …"
Shifting to a more sympathetic mode—and no more nonsense—Kirk asked, "Who threw the first punch, Scotty?"
Dressing down Montgomery Scott wasn't easy. He had more years' experience than Kirk and could pull the ship apart and put it back together in a week and a half, and he took over command when Kirk and Spock were gone. That was a lot of trust to be scolding.
Scott inhaled, held it, then held it some more. "Umm …"
Surprised at the hesitation, Kirk quietly urged, "Scotty …"
His eyes working with shame, again Scott paused, resisting the question, but there was no getting around an answer. "I did, Captain," he said pathetically.
"You did, Mr. Scott?"
The engineer's eyes flickered with candid embarrassment.
"What caused it, Scotty?" Kirk pressed.
"They insulted us, sir!"
"Must've been some insult—"
"Aye, it was!"
"You threw the first punch …" Kirk pressed his lips and shook his head sadly in mock astonishment.
Scott clarified, "Chekov wanted to, but I held him back."
"You held—why did Chekov want to start a fight?"
"Umm … the Klingons, they … is this off the record, sir?"
"No, this is not off the record!"
"Well, Captain, eh … the Klingons called you a … a tin-plated dictator with delusions of godhood."
"Is that all?"
Suddenly anxious to prove that he'd had cause, Scott said, "No, sir, they also compared you with a Denebian slime devil!"
"I see."
"And then they said that you were—"
"I get the picture, Scotty," Kirk cut off sharply. He worked—hard—at keeping his face stern, avoiding showing the sniggering pride that his crew would brawl with Klingons rather than have their captain insulted.
Realizing he'd gotten carried away, Scott drew a breath and held it again. "Yes, sir."
Kirk battled with his facial muscles. Don't grin, don't grin. "And after they said all this, that's when you hit the Klingons."
"No, sir."
Was that the careless drone of some damned bagpipe in the background?
Kirk frowned. "No?"
Like an errant boy with a slingshot behind his back, Scott said, "No, I didn't … you told us to avoid trouble."
"Oh, yes—"
"And I didn't see that it was worth fighting about. After all, we're big enough to take a few insults … aren't we?"
"What was it they said that started the fight?"
"They called the Enterprise a garbage scow!" the engineer offered, sneering at the taste of the words in his mouth. At the last moment, he added, "Sir!"
Beginning to realize just where he stood, Kirk accepted the sorry attempt to explain. "And that's when you hit the Klingons."
Relieved that the story was out, Scott sighed heavily. "Yes, sir!"
"You hit the Klingons because they insulted the Enterprise, not because they—"
"Well, sir," Scott said, fishing for understanding, "this was a matter o' pride!"
Pride … loyalty … oh, well.
"All right, Scotty. Dismissed. Oh—Scotty, you're …" He shrugged, because they both knew what and why. Kirk shrugged in some kind of mutual acceptance. "You're confined to quarters until further notice."
"Yes, sir," Scott said with obvious relief. They both knew this was only for the sake of the crew, just a token that would prove no one could break an order and receive absolution, but also to show that the brotherhood of officers did not stand together against the crew. A divided ship was no good to anyone.
Scott started to turn away, then broke out in a flashing smile. "Thank you, sir! It'll give me a chance to catch up on my technical journals!"
Damn. The point was just being missed here.
The engineer spun in delight and rounded for the door.
"Scotty—" Kirk called at the last instant.
"Sir?"
"Who were those two crewmen standing next to Chekov? The ensign and the lieutenant? Did they beam down with you?"
"Oh, must've, sir. I sent every detail down with orders—eh, well, I went down in the last bunch from this watch. I think those two went before me."
Strange. "Do you know their names?"
"No, sir. The one's, I think, a doctor, and the other must be in security, because he's not on my staff. We've had some visitors on board lately, sir, Dr. McCoy tells me."
"Mmm … too bad that they come on board and get involved in a fight first thing. Not the best report to show up on a man's record."
Scott took a step or two back toward him. "Well, sir … I'm the one who started the trouble. I'd be willing to take the blame. No need to name the men. They were pretty much sticking up for me, after all."
"Mmm." Kirk sighed.
"And it always takes me a few weeks to put names to faces. I'm sure it's the same for you, sir. Perfectly understandable."
"Yes, well You'd better go, Scotty. Before I become any less understanding."
"Doctor, hello."
"Oh, good afternoon, Doctor. I thought you went down to the station."
"Yes, yes, I did, sir. But there was a … disturbance. Shore leave has been canceled."
Julian Bashir tried to look much more at ease in the sickbay than he actually felt. Ordinarily sickbays, hospitals, infirmaries, and clinics were second home. First home, more like. He'd skimmed trouble more luckily than O'Brien, but now they had to come up with an excuse to beam back down to the station and keep hunting for that Klingon. They knew he wasn't on the ship.
If they beamed out on their own, the ship's sensors would detect it. They had to get clearance. O'Brien dared not show his face after the episode with the Klingons and the captain. He'd already gained far too much attention, and that man they'd thought was a security officer had turned out to be Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, a man whose reputation in his field equaled James Kirk's in his. They'd brushed fate too closely, on two fronts.
Of course, Bashir knew the identity of this easygoing surgeon. Leonard McCoy of the Enterprise had broken many barriers in the medical field, logging thousands of hours of discovery, research, and conclusions about alien metabolisms, viruses, and other new revelations in medicine during the days when the Enterprise was venturing where no man had gone before.
All these men and women had reputations. The senior officers of this ship were famous. Other crewmen who had served any length of time aboard the Enterprise had been known to write books, go on lecture tours, become educators and explorers. As they grew older and became fewer and fewer, they were more in demand. Bashir himself had attended a lecture on deep-space medicine by a former intern aboard the Enterprise during James Kirk's third year as captain. That man had been very old at that lecture.
Today, that man's boss, Leonard McCoy, was in his forties and rosy with good health. His brown hair was thick and his hands strong, his forearms well defined by the short sleeves of the medical smock. He wasn't yet the legend of medical science who had tackled a thousand new things. In fact, at the moment, he was plucking at one of the little furballs.
And there were plenty of tribbles to choose from. There were dozens upon dozens littering the sickbay now, clustered masses of puff balls from white to brown to pink, all purring and trilling in happy chorus with the throbbing of the ship around them.
"Still doing your biotechnics?" McCoy asked, without looking up from taking a sample of blood from a tribble.
"Yes, sir," Bashir lied. "I'll get back to it, if I'm not disturbing you."
"You're not. Funny …" McCoy was distracted by something in his readouts, and he was not very interested in Bashir.
That was good. Best not push.
He retreated to the anteroom with the computer terminal he had been working on before, knowing that this time it would do him no good. He had to pretend to work, then come up with a reason for McCoy to give him clearance to beam back to the station. Not clearance of such import that it would require reporting to the bridge, but enough clearance to override the canceled shore-leave order. And he had to have a reason for an assistant to come along with him, for O'Brien would have to come along. The transporter officer would have to receive clearance for two beamings from the chief surgeon.
Bashir sat down to think, and to appear to be working. Barely had the seat cushion compressed beneath him before the door panel opened in the outer office. He stayed quiet, and listened.
"Anything to report, Doctor?" came a deep voice.
"If I had anything to report, Mr. Spock, I would've reported it. At the moment, the only thing I have to tell the captain that's different from an hour ago is that now I have eighty-two tribbles instead of eleven."
Bashir peeked out into the other room very carefully, then suddenly became even more careful. That was a Vulcan. A Vulcan could hear him moving about in here, even moving softly.
He stood very still and simply listened.
"Yes," Spock said pointlessly. "My computations on them are becoming oppressively high. I have them here for you."
There was a pause, the hum and bleep of medical equipment, and a few moments of silence from the two science specialists.
Then McCoy asked, "What's the matter, Spock?"
Spock's voice was deep, unenchanted. "There's something disquieting about these creatures."
"Oh? Don't tell me you've had a feeling?"
"Don't be insulting, Doctor. They remind me of the lilies of the field … they toil not, neither do they spin. But they seem to eat a great deal. I see no practical use for them."
"Does everything have to have a practical use for you?" the doctor asked with disapproval. "They're nice, they're soft, and they make a pleasant sound."
"So would an ermine violin, Doctor, but I see no advantage in having one."
Pressed against the inner doorframe of the anteroom, Bashir smiled at the sparring.
"It is a human characteristic to love little animals," McCoy told him fiercely, raising his voice, "especially if they're attractive in some way."
"Doctor, I am well aware of human characteristics, I am frequently inundated by them, but I have trained myself to put up with practically anything."
Fielding the insult, McCoy straightened a little. "Spock, I don't know much about these little tribbles yet, but there is one thing that I have discovered."
"What is that, Doctor?"
"I like them. Better than I like you."
Without a beat, Spock parried, "Doctor, they do indeed have one redeeming characteristic."
"What's that?"
"They do not talk too much. If you'll excuse me, sir."
Outside, the door panel gushed open, then closed.
Amazing! They had been teasing each other! A Vulcan—teasing!
Fascinated by the exchange, Bashir almost went through the wall when his communicator chirped—at least Spock was gone. He ducked to the deepest corner and turned his face inward as he snatched for the communicator. Before the thing made any more noise, he flipped the grid open and brought it to his lips.
"Bashir," he whispered.
"Sisko here, Doctor. Odo caught Darvin."
"Where are you, sir?"
"Mess hall, Defiant."
"Can you beam me aboard?"
"Negative. Stay there. Keep a low profile. We may still need you aboard the ship. We'll contact you once we wring Darvin 's plans out of him."
"Understood, sir. Happy wringing."
"Welcome back, Mr. Darvin."
Odo dropped off the Defiant's transporter-bay platform and wrestled Arne Darvin, old or not, roughly down after him. On the other side of the old man, Worf had a grip on Darvin, too, and was even angrier than Odo. He crammed Darvin fiercely against the nearest bulkhead. Neither his nor Odo's mood improved any when they noticed that Darvin seemed completely happy and unconcerned.
"The pleasure's all mine," the disguised Klingon said.
Worf seemed ready to peel the disguise off, surgical or not, so Odo quietly warned, "Worf …"
Reluctantly, Worf turned the old man loose and took a cushioning step back.
Odo stepped into the empty space and faced Darvin. "You realize you're facing some very serious charges when we get back."
Darvin smiled. "You wouldn't dare put one of the greatest heroes of the Klingon Empire in the brig."
"You are no hero to the Empire," Worf thundered.
Looking up with the same smile, Darvin told him, "I will be. I've been thinking about my statue in the Hall of Warriors. I want it to capture my essence. Our statues can be so generic sometimes, don't you think?"
Feeling his own future melt before him, Odo said, "I take it, whatever your plan is, you've already set it in motion."
Darvin leaned back in the chair they'd pushed him into. "I see myself standing with Kirk's head in one hand, and a tribble in the other!"
Blistering, Worf leaned forward with unveiled threat. "What have you done? Did you hire someone to kill him? Did you sabotage the Enterprise?"
"Nothing so mundane," Darvin said. "I've had plenty of time to think about this, about what Kirk did to me and how he should die. Let me just say Kirk's death will have a certain poetic justice to it."
"Sisko here."
"Sir, we have him. His plan is already in the works."
"What's the plan, Odo? Did you get him to tell you?"
"Well, yes, Worf … squeezed it out of him. He intends to inflict poetic justice on James Kirk, by blowing him up with a tribble."
Sisko looked up at Dax. They were both pretending to work again, with the communicator perched inside an open drawer, out of sight of the crewmen crossing behind them. "He put a bomb in a tribble?"
"It's his 'revenge.' Originally, Kirk saw the way a tribble reacted to Darvin and realized he was a Klingon."
Odo sounded doubtful of hope.
"He wouldn't tell us where this tribble is," the constable went on, "but he did say it would go off within the hour."
Glancing out into the corridor, Sisko was confronted with the same hopelessness. There were thousands of tribbles crowding the deck, and crewmen picked through them with dismay on their faces.
"It could be anywhere," he uttered.
"Benjamin," Dax said, "I think we should risk going to the bridge. If we can use the internal sensors, we could scan the entire ship for explosives in a matter of seconds."
Sisko nodded. Into the communicator he said, "Dax and I will take care of the Enterprise. The rest of you beam over to K-Seven and begin searching over there."
"Understood, but I think Mr. Worf should remain here. It seems that he's … allergic to tribbles."
"All right."
"Captain—" It was O'Brien's voice. He must be there, and that meant Bashir probably was, too. "I don't think we'll be able to get to K-Seven's internal sensors."
"Then you'll have to manually scan every tribble on the station."
"There must be thousands of them by now!"
"Hundreds of thousands." Yes, Bashir was there.
Dax nodded as if they could see her. "One million seven hundred and seventy-one thousand five hundred and sixty-one."
The voices on the communicator went silent. It was an audio stare.
Sisko gave her the visual one.
She bobbed her brows. "That's starting with one tribble having an average litter of ten every twelve hours. After three days, you'd—"
"Thank you," Sisko cut off. "You have your orders, people. Sisko out."