UHURA WATCHED DAWN creep across Rakatan, the bright gold terminus washing quietly over the broad ring of volcanic ash that circled the planet. According to Mr. Spock, the eruption of Rakatan Mons had by now hurled over twenty-five cubic kilometers of ash and debris into the planet's atmosphere, ejecting a few more into outer space for good measure. It made Uhura very glad to be sitting at her normal station on the bridge, helping to route communications from what remained of the geologists' seismic network to their new headquarters in the science lab. The task busied her just enough to take her mind off her half-healed burns and the lingering nausea of the antiradiation treatments Dr. McCoy had run her through the night before.
A different signal chimed on her panel, and Uhura recognized the frequency even before she heard the words spilling through her monitor. "Captain." She spun and caught his quick hazel glance. "There's a message coming through from the Elasian warship Esar. The captain says he's ready to beam Her Glory the Dohlman over at her earliest convenience."
Laughter glinted in Kirk's eyes, although his face remained serious. "I hear and obey, Dohlman Uhura." He leaned forward and punched his chair intercom. "Bridge to Dr. McCoy. Is our glorious patient ready to be discharged?"
The doctor's voice was dry. "She's already gone, Jim, along with all those scorched Elasians Scotty beamed up last night. I got the impression she was headed your way."
The turbolift doors hissed open on McCoy's last words and Israi stepped onto the bridge, flanked by Sulu and Chekov and backed by a solid wall of cohort. The helmsman looked acutely aware of the bare-armed Elasian female beside him and mortified by it; the security chief mostly looked pale.
"I want Uhura." Israi subjected the bridge to a scornful stare that made her look strikingly like her sister. Her frown moderated a little when it fell on Captain Kirk, but it wasn't until she found Uhura's station that her almond eyes warmed with a smile.
"My Crown Regent." Israi stepped away from her cohort, keeping them in place with one stern glance. "I have come to bid you farewell."
Uhura saw Kirk's silent nod of permission and left her station to meet the Dohlman halfway, not sure whether or not that was the correct protocol. Israi's flickering smile told her it would do. They clasped hands, the Dohlman's touch alien-cool against Uhura's skin.
"I have bonded my cohort, Uhura, and taken a new kessh. It is time for me to return to Elas." Israi's voice seemed to have cloaked itself in the mantle of regal maturity overnight. Uhura blinked down at the angular golden face, almost missing the unpredictable lash of youthful arrogance she'd grown so used to. "But I owe you thanks and to pay it, I wish to bestow a gift on you before I go."
Uhura's hands tightened on hers. "You don't owe me anything, Your Glory."
"I do!" Now the old Israi was back, stubbornly insistent on what she wanted. "My life was in your hands down on that smoking mountain, and you guarded it like a bondsman." Her voice changed again, taking on a note of quiet amusement that was clearly modeled on Uhura's own. "Not like a Crown Regent."
Uhura matched her smile. "Israi, that was only my duty as a Starfleet officer."
"I know. But I may honor you for it anyway." The Dohlman turned and beckoned peremptorily at Sulu and Chekov. Both men went to her at once, tugged by the invisible chain of her glance. Uhura saw Kirk's eyebrows lift in startled recognition.
"These two of my bondsmen have served me well," Israi told Uhura. "But I think they will be of little use to me back on Elas." She eyed them resignedly. "They will probably pine for their chosen bondings here."
Uhura pretended to give both men a considered stare. "They probably will," she agreed, trying hard not to smile as Sulu squirmed and Chekov scowled at her helplessly. "Perhaps you shouldn't take them with you."
One corner of Israi's mouth quirked up, as if she, too, knew this was just a formal play of words. "Such was my decision. And since I must leave them in any case, I thought I would gift them to you for your own cohort." She leaned forward, heavy amber earrings clinking against Uhura's lighter gold ones as she whispered in her ear. "I know you have none, really, but this will gain you standing as my Crown Regent. It is a mark of great favor to transfer bondsmen voluntarily."
Uhura lowered her own voice to an even softer murmur, trusting the Dohlman's sharp ears to catch it. "You want me to remain Crown Regent?"
"For a while, yes." Israi stepped back, almond eyes glinting this time with a malicious and entirely Elasian amusement. "After all, who will try to overthrow me now that my designated heir is not even an Elasian? With you as my Crown Regent, I will be left in peace until I marry and have heirs of my body to replace you. Depending on how long it takes my council to arrange a marriage for me, I may even become the longest-reigning Dohlman of my line!"
Kirk chuckled behind them, a half-strangled sound as if he'd been trying to hold it in and failed. When the Dohlman turned to glare at him, he spread his hands helplessly. "I—um—am pleased to see that you share your sister's intelligence, Israi."
Israi snorted. "I did not give you permission to use my name, Kirk-insect."
"Oh, right. Sorry."
Mollified now that the captain's smile had been properly tucked into hiding again, the Dohlman turned back to Uhura. "You will accept this gift?"
Uhura nodded. "I will."
"Very well." Israi swung around, bringing Sulu and Chekov to attention with one intent glance. "I release you from your bonds to me and to Elas, males of my cohort. You may go free of your own will to accept the bonds of this, my sister and Crown Regent."
Both men started and blinked muzzily, as if they had just woken from some walking dream. Behind them, Uhura saw Kirk's eyes widen in astonishment.
"That's it?" the captain demanded blankly. "That's all there is?"
"Yes" Israi turned a knowing almond gaze on him. "My tears will linger in their blood, of course. I cannot make that bonding vanish with a word. But if I tell them to act and be as if they were not bonded, they must obey me utterly and do so." She smiled. "Of course, if the bonding had become an attachment, it would be much more difficult. And I believe my sister was very attached to you, Captain Kirk."
"Oh." The captain's face tightened in a wince of rueful embarrassment. "I see."
Israi spared him further discomfiture by turning back to Chekov and Sulu. "Do you accept this new bond?" she asked them sternly.
Her former bondsmen stared down at her, looking dazzled with the freedom of having choices again. Naturally, Sulu recovered first. "We accept it gladly, Your Glory." He elbowed Chekov, and the Russian grunted in pain. "Right?"
"Right," Chekov said between his teeth.
"And you," Israi turned to Uhura. "Do you accept these my bondsmen, sister of my heart?"
Uhura nodded, mind leaping ahead to what must follow. "I accept with great honor and pleasure, Your Glory." With an effort, she forced herself to think of the saddest thing she could: Scott Mutchler's last moments on Rakatan Mons.
Israi nodded and motioned the men forward. Uhura took a deep breath and stepped forward to meet them. Mutchler's last words echoed through her head: Enterprise! Enterprise! This is it—! The geologist hadn't sounded angry or bitter, Uhura thought poignantly. He had sounded—excited.
One tear stung at her lashes, then another. Uhura caught them carefully as they rolled down her cheek, then reached out to brush her wet fingers first against Sulu's cheek, then against Chekov's. "My honor in your hands, bondsmen."
Israi nodded approval. "Now you say, 'My life in your hands, Dohlman Uhura,'" she prompted the men.
Sulu's mouth twitched, but he managed to keep the rest of his face solemn. "My life in your hands, Dohlman Uhura," he repeated. Chekov snorted, but a stern glance from Israi and another nudge from Sulu dug the ritual words out of him.
"That was performed well." The glint in Israi's almond eyes told Uhura what the words truly meant. "I will now permit you to beam me over to my ship, Kirk-insect." She stepped back, her own bonded cohort closing around her like a jealous cloak.
"My pleasure," the captain said smoothly. He flicked a glance up at Scott, who watched in wide-eyed wonder from the engineering station. "If you would do the honors, Scotty?"
"Oh, aye, Captain." The chief engineer hurried forward to escort the Elasians down to the main transporter room, giving Israi a discreet but definite berth as he passed her. Uhura's mouth quivered with amusement.
Israi waved her bondsmen ahead of her into the turbolift, then turned to gaze over her bare shoulder at Uhura. "Rule your underlings in strength and glory, Crown Regent Uhura of the line of Enterprise," she said quietly.
Uhura smiled at her. "Rule your planet in peace and wisdom, Dohlman Israi of the line of Kesmeth."
The turbolift hissed shut on the Elasians' barbaric glitter of gold and jewels, then almost immediately slid open again on the gold-and-black uniforms of the Federation Geological Survey. Uhura skipped out of their way, retreating back to the safety of her station as the excited handful of geologists surged out onto the bridge. All of them seemed to be talking at once, although only one word in three was recognizable as English.
"Ladies and gentlemen—" Kirk's entreaty had no discernible effect on the chaos. Uhura could see Wendy Metcalfe at the center of it, her thin face flushed with excitement and her hands full of crumpled seismic profiles. "Professors, if there's something you want—" That plea didn't get their attention, either. "People!"
The resounding shout—Starfleet's equivalent of a Dohlman's command, Uhura thought in amusement—finally got the geologists' attention. All five fell silent and turned to regard the captain expectantly. Kirk gave them back an exasperated look.
"Was there some reason you brought this argument up to the bridge?" he inquired with chilly politeness.
"We're not arguing about anything." Florence Bascomb detached herself from the group, white hair ruffled and eyes snapping with excitement. "We're here to tell you what we just found."
Kirk's eyes narrowed. "Don't tell me—"
"It's true, Captain!" Wendy Metcalfe pushed forward to the front. "Our computers on the station weren't powerful enough to resolve it, but when we analyzed our data on the Enterprise's processor, the signals jumped right out at us." She turned and waved her papers happily at Spock. "We've catalogued thousands of calls and replies so far, Mr. Spock. By correlating them with our earthquake and eruption records, we've even begun to translate some of their words. For instance, they use a sort of magma reverberation to say—"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Kirk reached out to catch her madly waving hands. "Are you trying to say that there are actually sentient creatures inside Rakatan Mons?"
"An entire society of them!" Metcalfe beamed up at him. "Built on partially coagulated silicate molecules, just like I suspected."
"Designed to propagate as volcanic crystallites, spreading from cone to cone—" added another young geologist.
"Maybe even from planet to planet—" a third chimed in.
Metcalfe nodded vigorously. "And they keep their colonies intact as long as possible by repairing cracks in the magma chamber before eruptions get too big. That's why—"
"—Rakatan Mons got so big to begin with!" Bascomb finished excitedly.
That broke the dam and got the technobabble going again. Kirk stepped back from the din, tossing an inquisitive look across at his science officer. "Is it really possible, Mr. Spock?"
The Vulcan lifted one austere eyebrow. "Theoretically, Captain, quantum theory makes anything possible. The actual likelihood of a given event may be vanishingly low, but—"
Kirk cut him off with a scowl that would have done Israi credit. "Spock, just answer my question. Could there be magma creatures down in that volcano?"
"I see no reason why not."
"Huh." The captain eyed Rakatan's image on the screen. The planet's disk lay in full sunlight now, its immense volcano just coming into view below its canopy of ash and smoke. Kirk stepped back into the scientific fray and silenced it by the simple expedient of hauling Metcalfe out from its center. The graduate student blinked up at him in surprise.
"I suppose you're going to want to stay here and study these creatures for the next few months," Kirk said resignedly.
"Oh, no!" The geologist waved her papers at him. "We'll want to come back eventually, of course, but we have more than enough data from the past year to keep us busy translating for months. Until we know enough to actually talk to them—"
"—it's much more important to tell the rest of the scientific community about our discovery here," Florence Bascomb finished firmly.
Kirk looked from one to another of the geologists, seeing agreement on every flushed face. He quirked an eyebrow and turned back to his helm officers.
"You heard the professor," the captain told them blandly. "Set a course for Starbase Seven and take us there at warp five." He slanted Spock one last amused glance. "After all, we don't want to stand in the way of scientific progress."