"WHAT DO YOU MEAN you can't locate the bodies?"
McCoy stood in the middle of his emergency room, where he had been preparing his diagnostic equipment and biobeds for incoming wounded, and glowered at Spock. First he had the temerity to march in here and announce in his matter-of-fact fashion that Jim was dead, and now this.
"I mean just that," Spock said, standing as stiff-backed and poker-faced as ever. "They appear to have been vaporized by disruptor fire, except in the case of Mr. Scott, who was vaporized by phaser overload while attempting to counteract the energy barrier that prevented us from beaming them to safety."
His emotionless tone of voice while delivering such news was more than McCoy could bear. "Dammit, Spock," he said, "don't you care? Doesn't anything crack that Vulcan calm of yours? We've lost four of our finest officers, including the best friend either of us has ever had, and you stand there and talk about it like it was some kind of simulation that we all failed."
Spock's face grew a shade greener than usual, but that was his only visible reaction to McCoy's words. When he spoke, however, his voice was even softer than normal, and his words shocked McCoy to the core.
"It is a myth, Doctor, that a Vulcan feels nothing. Even were I not half human, I would sense a deep and powerful anger building in me as well. An anger that, if left unchecked, would lead me to pursue the captain's killers and remove them from the universe. Not only the killers themselves, but their offspring and all their relations until I had eradicated their very genetic code. Without the iron self-control that we Vulcans have developed to keep this type of rage in check, I could easily become an avenging monster capable of sterilizing both of the planets in this star system in retaliation for my captain's—my friend's—death. Would you prefer that to my… inhumanly calm reaction?"
McCoy shivered despite himself. "No," he said quietly. "No, that wouldn't help anything."
"I agree. Unfortunately, Vulcans have no middle ground to occupy in such conditions as these. We either accept what has happened and go on with our lives, or we allow our emotions to overwhelm us completely. History has proved the latter option to be unacceptable."
McCoy nodded, grudgingly accepting Spock's statement at face value. "All right, I can understand that, but speaking as a doctor, that's not healthy. Your human half, at least, needs to go through some distinct stages before you can integrate what's happened into your life."
"And what phases are those?" Spock asked.
"Shock. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. And finally, only after you've worked through everything else, acceptance."
"I see." Spock sat down on the end of one of the biobeds. "Since I cannot allow that to happen, especially now that I am captain of the Enterprise, what repercussions can I expect?"
He was serious. He really had no intention of allowing the grief process to proceed normally. Lots of people tried to deny it, but it nearly always happened to them anyway. Spock, on the other hand, would probably succeed in suppressing it—but there would indeed be a cost. "Physically, you'll probably lose stamina," McCoy told him. "Your immune system will become depressed—no pun intended—so you'll probably catch just about any cold or flu that's going around. And you won't sleep normally, which will in turn make you lose stamina and depress your immune system even more."
"And mentally?" asked Spock.
"Your judgment will suffer. A human would get irritable. During the denial phase, you could become delusional. You'll probably—" The silliness of what he was saying suddenly struck him. "Dammit, Spock, this is ridiculous. You've got to grieve properly or before long you'll be unfit for duty."
"I see." Spock stood again, still rigid as a post, and said, "I will take your thoughts under advisement." He took a few steps toward the door, then turned back to McCoy. "What of you?" he asked. "Will you be proceeding through the same phases you outlined for me?"
McCoy felt a flash of unreasonable fury at the mocking tone in Spock's voice, but a second later it faded as he realized the Vulcan had meant no mockery. He really didn't understand human nature.
McCoy's reaction to his innocent question was answer enough. That and the almost crippling regret he felt over all his angry outbursts at Kirk over the years. He knew it was irrational—they had been close friends—but right now the harsh words they had exchanged were all McCoy could remember. "Yes," he said to Spock. "And you'd better get used to it. Everybody on board but you is going to go through the same process."
"I suspected as much." Spock nodded, as if confirming an earlier decision. "Thank you, Doctor. I must go now and make the shipwide announcement. Please take whatever precautionary measures you believe necessary."
He turned away and walked out of sickbay, leaving McCoy standing there in the middle of his emergency room, wondering what precautions he could take. How do you prepare a body for the news that its head has just been cut off?
The bridge seemed like an alien place to Uhura. She had sat in this same chair before the same control board for her entire tour as communications officer, but now with Spock in command and new faces at the navigation, helm, and science stations, the place seemed utterly foreign. She was still reeling from the news that Spock had just broadcast on the intercom, even though she had already known her friends were dead. She had monitored their signals from the moment they beamed down to the moment they had died, wincing as each communicator's homing signal—and each person carrying it—winked out in turn.
Now another signal from the planet caught her attention. A cluster of signals, actually. Tight-beam radio transmissions between moving targets. She wouldn't normally have detected them, but the scanners were still set on maximum sensitivity after their search for the captain. Uhura tuned to the signals' frequency and heard a voice saying, "—two big cylinders in back are probably the engines; orange squadron aim for those. If you can't destroy the engines directly, try to cut them loose—those supports look like a weak point. Yellow squadron, aim for the center of the disk, try to open it to space, and red squad, take the lower cylinder. Watch out for—"
They were talking about the Enterprise!
Uhura swiveled around in her chair and said, "Ca—Spock—I mean, Captain, we're under attack!"
"Shields up," Spock ordered immediately. "Red alert. Lieutenant, visual on screen."
Ensigns Stanley and Brady, the new navigator and helmsman, weren't as fast as Chekov and Sulu, but they got the shields up within moments of Spock's order. Since she hadn't been monitoring on visual to begin with, Uhura took a bit longer to focus on the source of the transmissions and put the image on the viewscreen, but within a few seconds she had that as well.
Something was rising from the planet. Lots of somethings. Small, fast, wedge-shaped ground-to-orbit fighters, by the looks of them. As they drew closer, the ones in the lead began to fire at the warp engine nacelles, then more and more of them arrived and swarmed like angry wasps around the entire ship, firing at every section of it. The deck rocked under the blows.
"Damage report?" Spock asked, his voice as even as if he were asking for the time.
Uhura listened to the intraship channel, where reports were already coming in.
"Minor damage on decks seventeen and twenty," she said.
"Shield integrity deteriorating," Lieutenant Wolfe, the new science officer, said. "Down to eighty-five percent."
"Should we return fire?" Stanley asked, not taking his eyes off the viewscreen.
The tendons in Spock's neck stood out for a moment, as if he were clenching his jaw tightly to keep from speaking. Was he actually thinking about it? Uhura would never know, for a moment later he unclenched his jaw and said, "Negative. It would serve no useful purpose. Helm, take us out of orbit. Warp one. Put some distance between us and the warships."
"Yes, sir."
The Enterprise streaked away from Prastor, leaving the fighters far behind. When the planet was merely a bright disk among the stars, Spock said, "Full stop. Lieutenant, scan for pursuit."
Uhura did so, but after circling around the spot where the Enterprise had been for a few minutes, the warships shot away around the planet. Uhura saw the energy discharge of more disruptor fire, but she couldn't tell what they were shooting at. Whatever it was, it didn't fight back, and soon enough the fighters returned to the ground. "They've gone home," she reported.
Spock nodded. "Stand down to yellow alert. Lower shields. Lieutenant, prepare to send a message to Starfleet Command, code level forty-seven. I will prepare the message in the briefing room."
"Yes, sir." Code 47 was the highest level of encryption, used only for extremely sensitive and urgent communications. Spock was undoubtedly going to make his report on the captain's death, and didn't want the information to get into the wrong hands. Captain Kirk had been a major presence in the Quadrant for so long that news of his passing could destabilize the entire region if it were announced by the wrong people.
Uhura took some pride in that knowledge, but it was small comfort compared with the loss of the captain. And of Chekov and Sulu and Scotty.
She had never told them how much they meant to her. They would have all been embarrassed if she had, but just the same, she regretted never saying anything. She was the communications officer; she could have come up with some way to get the message across if she had tried.
Why did people always wait until it was too late to say the important things?
Simon Nordell removed the android's belly plate and set it carefully beside her on the workbench. It unnerved him to see winking lights and circuit boards inside a woman's body. Women had always seemed mysterious to him, and this only added to the impression.
He had left her clothing in place, not wishing for any more distraction than he already had. Besides, the android had been reluctant to allow even this minor violation of her personal space; Nordell wasn't sure she would allow access to other areas anyway. It had been all he could do to get her to lie down and let him work on her at all. Fortunately her main processing center was in her abdomen, rather than in her head.
He hoped the problem would be something simple to fix. He didn't have high hopes—this was, after all, an alien device—but he figured he could at least look for the obvious. Burned-out circuits or tripped breakers would probably be apparent no matter who had built them. Or it might even fix itself if he gave it enough time. The android's speech had improved considerably just in the last few minutes.
This was the first time he had worked on a machine that could tell him where it hurt. Not directly—her diagnostic and repair circuitry had apparently gone down when she'd overloaded—but she could at least report the results of his actions. It was simultaneously fascinating and terrifying, working on a sentient machine.
He didn't have to do this. Less than two hours after he had learned of his wife's death, no one would have faulted him for staying home and letting someone else cover for him. But the whole engineering department was still reeling from the news of Scotty's death, and besides, Nordell couldn't stand the thought of sitting in his and Leslie's quarters and listening to the silence. He kept replaying their last moments together and wishing he could change them. She had been angry when she left, and rightfully so. He had been a complete ass, sitting there at the table drinking his laliska when he should have been with her in the bedroom, down on his knees apologizing to her. But he had been too proud to apologize, and now he would forever wonder: Had her anger had anything to do with her death?
He needed to keep the android talking so he could tell if his adjustments did any good. And he needed to talk himself, to keep the question from burning up his own mind. So as he used his multiphase tricorder to analyze the circuitry he could reach from the access panel, he said, "So what's it like being an android, anyway?"
Potentials shifted along hundreds of data lines. Nordell watched, fascinated, as his tricorder traced a visual image of her thought processes.
Her answer surprised him, with both its speed and its forcefulness. And her voice took on a much more human—although irritating—timbre. "I am Stella Mudd. Harcourt's wife."
Her programming evidently ran deep. He didn't want to argue with her and throw her into another feedback loop, so he kept a straight face and said, "Yes, of course. How long have you been married?"
"Seven years, eight months, and six days, Terran standard."
Hardly any mental activity required for that one. She must keep a running tally, like some of the people Nordell knew who marked off on a calendar how much longer they had until shore leave. "Is it that bad?" he asked.
"Harcourt is a scoundrel," she answered, her voice taking on even more animation. "He drinks, he chases other women, he keeps unsavory business associates, and worst of all, he doesn't listen to me when I try to correct his behavior."
That struck a bit close to home. And it didn't seem to take any more effort than the previous question. Nordell decided to give her a tougher one, something that would exercise her brain but—he hoped—wouldn't overload anything. "Do you love him?"
Energy danced along the web of her electronic neurons. It took her a few seconds to respond. "I…of course I do. That's why I try to improve him. Or tried to."
Two data lines went into wild oscillation as she said those last three words. Nordell adjusted his tricorder to dampen the traffic along those lines, then said, "Why didn't you just learn to accept him for what he was?" He watched those two data lines closely to see if his use of the past tense would affect her.
"I…that's not what marriage is for," Stella replied. "Marriage is when two people who don't get along try for the rest of their lives to change each other's behavior."
God, I hope not, thought Nordell. He wondered how much the suppression of those two information pathways had affected her cognitive ability. But that statement had sounded pretty lucid to him. Scary, but lucid.
"What about companionship?" he asked. "I always thought marriage was when two people decided to live together because they liked each other."
Stella raised her head and speared him with an eagle-eyed gaze. "What planet do you come from?"
"Mars," Nordell replied. "But that's not why I think that. My wife, Leslie, was from Venus, and she felt the same way. At least I thought she did, despite our last conversation." He added quietly, "I guess I'll never know for sure."
Stella's features softened—at least as much as they could on a face set in a perpetual scowl. "Why? Did she leave you, like that good-for-nothing Harry left me?"
Nordell shook his head. "No, she was killed on Distrel, trying to rescue your good-for-nothing Harry from execution."
The potential in the two data lines tried to rise again, but he kept them suppressed. Stella laid her head back down and said, her voice heavy with exasperation, "I always said he would come to a bad end. If he had listened to me, he—"
Nordell looked at his tricorder. The android appeared to have locked up, but data was flowing at a tremendous rate on every line. He reached for the adjustment on his tricorder to dampen them out, but before he could complete the motion Stella's right hand came up with lightning speed and snatched the tricorder away.
"Hey, what are you doing?" he shouted, startled.
"I must go back to Prastor," she replied. She sat up, took the belly panel from the table beside her, and fitted it into place, hiding the circuitry behind realistic skin and an equally realistic belly button.
"You can't go back there," Nordell said. "The war is still going on."
"All the more reason," Stella told him. "I tracked him there; he may still be—that's strange." She turned her head from side to side, then slid off the table and turned all the way around. "I can't locate him now."
She must have planted a homing device in him, Nordell realized. Apparently powered by his metabolism, if she couldn't pick up its signal now. "You can't locate him because he's dead," he told her. "I suppressed your memory of it, but it's true."
"I'll be the judge of that." She pushed past him toward the door. "That good-for-nothing con man has faked death to get away from me before." Thanks to his suppression of the data lines that led her to believe in his death, her Stella personality was in full control now, and in complete denial.
Nordell grabbed her arm and tried to stop her, but she shrugged him off without even turning around. He watched her stride out the door and turn toward the turbolifts.
He reached out to the intercom and punched the shipwide call. "Security," he called. "Security to engineering." Then the significance of his words struck home and he felt the weight of the entire universe come down on him. Security. Leslie would be answering that call if she were still alive.