Title:  A Woman Struck
Author:  Kelthammer
Series:  MU TOS
Pairing: Uhura/Chapel; Lester/Coleman, situational K/S/Mc
Coding: Seriously adult themes.  Sex doesn't squick me; violence does.
Parts 1-4 out of 7

Feedback: Sure Archive: Sure, just let me know

Disclaimer:  This is not real.  We obviously don't have lives, so tend to your own, Paraborg.

Summary:  After the events of SHE TAKES COMMAND, Kirk goes too far.  Steps have to be taken.
 

Now that you have touched woman,
You have struck a rock
You have dislodged a boulder
You will be crushed
--South African Women's Liberation Song

"When Elephants fight, the grass suffers."
--African proverb
**     **     **
 

ANDROMACHEAN OFFICER'S BAR (IMPERIAL PATRONAGE):

The shellfish was coral-colored and sweet, raw and served on a bed of blue ice.  Christine ate with gusto, tipping the violet-green ovalshells to her lips and tilting back, letting the meat slip between her open lips.  After eating a few, Uhura found herself more interested in watching her dinner companion.  It was a show to enjoy.

It did make you wonder how she wrapped those lips around other things...

"Not bad at all."  The Nurse decided as the last empty shell was neatly stacked with the others.  The waiter pounced and vanished with them. "It reminded me of sugarfish."

"Sugarfish?  What's that?"

"Pacific fish.  They're really sweet, that's how they get their name."

"And do you eat them raw?"

"'course.  Cooking would ruin them."  Chapel said firmly.  "I don't mean to sound like a savage, Ny.  But I question people who claim to be gourmets, and never try their food in an unaltered form."

"Oh, I'm not one to complain."  Nyota hurried to explain she was on the same level as Christine.  "My grandfather ran a cattle farm, and in the dry months we'd take an occasional cup of blood with him."

"Wasn't that illegal for a while?"  Chapel frowned curiously.

"Oh, for a while.  But that was the Empire's way of trying to fix what they thought was a problem.  Poverty and famine's still very common on the continent, and its always going to be cheaper to stick a bull for a bit of blood they can easily regenerate, than it is to get out of the bush and pick up a government ration stamp to go buy vitamins with."

"I think poverty and famine's common just about everywhere."  Chapel admitted (as, all around them, crewmembers gleefully celebrated their monthly pay out of existence).  "I used to live all over the Pacific Rim, and it always was cheaper and easier to go forage for yourself."

"Don't tell the Empire.  They're really worried about taking care of their people."  Nyota chuckled easily.

Chapel laughed as well.  "Ah, well!"

Nyota let pale gold champagne slip out of the slender blue bottle and into their glasses.  "Can you believe this stuff."  She commented.  "We've almost killed the thing and I still don't have a buzz.  I just feel all giggly and bubbly."

"Like the champagne."  Chapel offered, and giggled herself.

"Woa.  Am I interrupting anything?"

A red-clad sleeve with gold stripes rested on the lip of their table, attached to the black-haired Commander DeSalle.  Despite his misadventure, he was now the picture of his usual rugged good health.

"No, not at all."  Chapel led the polite "informal" salute of just swishing the arm forward.  He grinned easily, if a little stiffly.  Not fully recovered, he was still capable of sending a lot of hearts fluttering with his old-fashioned, extremely masculine good looks.

"How are you feeling?"  Christine queried pleasantly.

"Just fine, because of you.  I wasn't able to thank you, lieutenant.  I thought I'd do a proper job of it."

"Why, thank you."  Chapel went a little pink.  "That's kind of you, but you'll have to thank my boss too, you know."

"I heard."  DeSalle smiled ruefully.  "Seeing as how it was Jost and Otto who *put* me in Sickbay to begin with..."  He shrugged his square shoulders. "Is he around anywhere?"  Before they could answer, he snickered cheerfully.  "Oh, my mistake.  You wouldn't be with your ladyfriend if he was around, would you?"

Nyota recognized a longstanding tease and blushed.  The ACEO was apparantly not the hermit she'd believed.

"Now, MIS-ter DeSalle," Chapel said in a firmly soberous tone, "My relationship with Dr. McCoy is completely professional." The effect was ruined when she started giggling again.

Ah, Champagne.  Nyota smiled behind her own glass.

"Oh, sure."  DeSalle answered drolly.  "My mistake, my apologies.  But here, my officially tendered gratitudes to the best Head Nurse in the best starship in the best fleet in the Galaxy."  He pulled a slender gold--green bottle out of the literal nowhere, and set it in front of the champagne. "Don't waste your time on *that* stuff."  He scolded.  "Life is way too short to drink cheap booze."

Chapel and Uhura watched him go, mouths hanging slightly open.

"We've been drinking the cheap stuff?"  Uhura wondered.  She'd been the one to pay for it, and it wasn't in her neighborhood of "budget shopping" in the least sense of the definition.

Chapel shrugged with her lips, opened the lid, and sniffed the tiny opening. She blinked.  "Well.  Comparatively..."  Her voice was meek.  "Honey, take a sniff of this!"

*   *   *

*Do you think I would make an adequate captain?*

For one heartstopping shred of eternity, McCoy wondered if his entire brain had frozen up.  With his body.

Spock was waiting patiently for his answer outside of the little bubble of frozen time the doctor was in.  His hand was still gripping his chin, keeping their gazes on even keel.  McCoy couldn't read a single damn thing in those obsidian eyes.

"You'd make a dandy captain."  McCoy finally kicked back in gear, sarcasm in full working order.

"Mn, that is not precisely what I was asking you."  The fingers tightened just slightly against the skin and bone.  A promise of bruises if provoked.

"Your pardon."  McCoy responded in a voice of ice.  "But I hate to assume anything."

Spock's lips twitched.  Not for the first time, the doctor wondered just what was going on in that IQ-of-412 brain.  There were times when he was convinced the Vulcan was as ambitious as an Orion.  And other times...

Other times he felt a vague thread of surreality, wondering just how real this was.  As if Spock was testing him for something. And if he was, what the hell was he wanting to see?  He didn't understand.

"Answer me this."  Spock commanded, his old, familiar cold self that gave orders from the Bridge.  "How long has the captain displayed his tendencies for sadism?"

McCoy swallowed dryly.  He didn't need to think about that.  "Since he returned from that secret mission."

"Yes...almost a year.  And it is growing worse, is it not?"

McCoy didn't see any point in agreeing.  Spock had taken the field kit to him, for Chrissake.

"How do you think he will be in another year?"  Spock was drilling lasers into him with that question.

"I have no idea."  McCoy spoke very, very quietly.  "But it's the captain's choice, is it not?"

Spock had not expected that.  The fingers almost tightened, then relaxed just slightly.  "One might say."  He agreed softly.  "What hold does he have over you, kefeh, that you tolerate this from him?"

Slave.  Spock used that word as a taunt, a double-edged taunt because humans were valued as "house servants" among Vulcans.  And take that euphemism for whatever meaning you wanted to construe.  Kirk's kefeh.

"I do not completely understand everything."  Spock murmured in a low voice as the lights along the streets slipped by them in a soft whisper.  "And while I could take it from your mind...I would prefer not to.  You would be...incapaciated for days, perhaps weeks, and the captain would be suspicious."

Lucky me, McCoy's sarcasm was an automatic response.  Even in his own brain.

"I know this."  Spock suddenly ceased to "grip" using only his fingertips to press up on the human's chin.  Teasing him with the apparant freedom to move away, but the doctor knew better.  "That you have done something to...anger him.  It happened not long after he returned from Camus.  And somehow, you angered him in a way that he chooses this way to punish you, instead of deal with you as he would his usual enemies."

"Well, that makes two of us who doesn't understand."  McCoy met his eyes hotly.  "Because *I* get the impression that while you don't really *want* to play the captain's games, you'd rather die than refuse him.  On anything."  He paused.  "I wonder why?"

A muscle in Spock's cheek jumped.

"Actually," McCoy continued in a voice he barely recognized, "I wonder why it was *Marlena* who got the phaser the other night.  If Kirk's so dangerous, and you're so het on wearing his sash..."

The whites of the Vulcan's eyes glistened in the dim lighting.  At first, McCoy sincerely believed he had finally pushed too far, and was waiting for the killing blow, but as he watched, Spock's control forcefully asserted itself over his rage.  And with it, McCoy felt a sinking in his chest.

"So we are both actors."  The Vulcan voice was dry, without inflection or emotion.  But he was angry.  "And we will continue to carry on in the roles we are assigned to."  The muscle tic'd under his eye.  "The captain has given me an assignment.  And you are correct.  I would not like to fail him."

It was a truly alarming thing to hear.  But somehow, McCoy felt as though he had just taken a very dangerous test...and passed.

*If that's so, why do I feel so damn miserable?*

"Well."  He spoke thinly, and paused to swallow against the dry clogged feeling in his throat.  "At least I know where I stand."  A quick thought prompted him to beat Spock to the inevitable gibe:  "Or at least, where I kneel."

"Yes."  Spock agreed in a twin voice to his.  His grip tightened on the chain, bending the links.  "Right here."

McCoy was permitted to retreat in his mind at that point, and it was an opportunity he took.  But as he did, he had to wonder.

James Tiberius Kirk wasn't the only one who had changed since that mission on Camus II.  So had Spock.  In ways that were just as inexplicable.

*    *    *

Very slowly, the party was winding down.  Or reaching a calm spot; this was when people stopped, leaned back, and began to pace themselves in the festivities.  Uhura sighed and stretched, twisting on one foot to slip her arms around Christine's waist.  "I can't believe I didn't have any soberalls."  She purred.  "It must be the company."

"Oh, you think?  So I'm a sobering effect?"  Christine laughed, long fingers expertly untying the elaborate copper weave in the other woman's hair. "Now, hold still."  She shaped a copper butterfly out of a length of short wire, and held it up with a grin.  Another wire became a slender dragonfly.

"Mmmn.  Are you my hairdresser now?"

"Lord no.  I'd need to practice much, much more to be at that level." Christine chuckled under her breath as length after length of copper slowly freed itself.  A songbird, a honeybee spun into life.  "But I've been *itching* to comb you out and play with you."

"Me or my hair?"

"Same difference.  Did you know I used to make origami for rich hairdressers to help pay for school?  It was a lot more interesting than putting miniature paintings on their fingernails!"

Above the racket of the bar (which was finally starting to stabilize), Uhura caught the unmistakeable sounds of a drunken tavern-song.  Scottish accent. She peeked out the sides of her eyes.  Yes, DeSalle and Scott, arm in arm, were bellowing out, "Whiskey in a Jar-O."  "Oh have you now?"  Uhura put her hands on her hips with a cocky smile.  "Well, well, well...Can you do both? No offense, sug, but my vanity just suddenly up and asserted itself."

Chapel chuckled softly.  "I--"  Her voice abruptly broke off.  Uhura felt her fingers stiffen.

"What is it?"  Uhura tilted her head up, nearly upside down, to see Chapel staring off into the deepest shadows of the bar.  All Uhura could make out was the old-fashioned manual staircase (made of wood, can you believe it. Must be worth more than the whole structure).

"I just saw the captain leave."  Chapel shivered a bit.  "He must have been right on top of us the whole time.  Ugh.  I'm glad I never said anything about him."

"Honey, that's second nature."  Uhura reached up, her small brown fingers curling inside Chapel's longer white ones.

*    *    *

It was dark in the room.  Moonlight, sharp and white-yellow, burned strongly in the clear black sky and the stars hung so fierce you could almost believe they were adding to the illumination.  Except for the warming brazier in the corner, it was the only light present.

Kirk smelled of sweat.  McCoy knew that odor from his internship, practicing on failed gladiators from the arena.  It was the kind that stank of strong euphoria.  Hormones.  Lusts from different emotions.

While the games were of a very dark nature with the everpresent threat of a sexual ugliness pervading, Kirk rarely employed that on him.  What really got him aroused was the pain of the other man, and sharing that with Spock. All because he couldn't touch the real person he wanted.

And of course, Spock was in the same hang-up.  It was every kind of pathetic you could think of.

*I'm probably the only crewman who loathes shoreleave.*  He thought, unable to resist the ironic humor.  It seemed crazy, but it kept him from going off the deep end for real.

"Spock,"  Kirk was finished for now, turning his attention to--momentarily--other things.  "Were you able to clean the ship's computer banks out?"

Spock merely inclined his head.  "I ran three diagnostics and there was no sign of any of the Professor's "ghosts."  He answered.  "I cannot guarantee we have found a permanent solution..."

"No need."  Kirk interrupted, his eyes glinting.  "We'll work on that."  His gaze slipped back to the doctor, and again, McCoy felt a moment of displacement; like it wasn't Kirk at all who was there, stroking his chest in such a manner.  Kirk was male as they came, and this gesture was...

...very female.

Something McCoy had not thought him capable of, any more than he had believed him able to inflict pain and power as a recreational tool.  The sense of unreality floated over him again.

Who was he kidding?  He didn't know James Tiberius Kirk anymore.  This was a stranger to him, a monster.  Like those sick jokes about alien abductions, cubed and ruled.

"You said your Nurse was...married."  Kirk taunted, still running his hand up and down the other man's back.  McCoy had gone rigid, staring straight forward, blankly.  The captain's lips barely brushed his ears, voice vibrating the skin.  "But that's not what I heard from DeSalle after you left."

McCoy forgot to breathe.  What the hell?  Innuendo and ship's gossip, wrong more often than not.  And it could kill just as easily as accurate slander.

No help from Spock.  The Vulcan was still standing in the shadows, his long face a mask.  A mountain demon's face from feudal Japan; stern and defensive.

He had no idea what to say, and wouldn't until Kirk gave him a better idea. He swallowed dryly, feeling that warm hand continue to stroke his skin.

"So you are sharing Ms. Chapel with the good Uhura."  Kirk's voice had not changed an inch; still soft, suggestive, dangerously hinting to the future. "But you didn't want her to have anything to do with me."

"Are you kidding?  She'd never come back."

Kirk laughed out loud, his fingers digging into his skin.  Just the right kind of lie, just the outrageous flattery, to make the captain more amused than angry.

"You're a smooth talker, aren't you?"  Kirk did not expect an answer.  "But you have a point there.  What if she didn't want to come back to you?  What if she liked me better?"

"Captain's..."  McCoy fought the urge to gulp.  He was suddenly swamped with an ugly sensation: he felt as though he was sweating inside his skin where Kirk couldn't see--only, he knew anyway.  "perogative."  He could say that, because that was the only right way to answer.

"Yes."  Kirk's strong hand, strong enough to make Spock feel the pressure if he so chose, suddenly went tense around McCoy's neck.  "My perogative. Because I am the captain."

*Is he going to finally do it?*  McCoy hadn't been afraid for his life for long with Kirk--this was a new development, but common sense--and the captain's mad eyes--warned him that it eventually would happen.  Unless of course, Spock interferred.

And he wasn't about to so much as communicate the faintest plea to the Vulcan.  Not after that dose of power in the car.  A part of him felt bad for thinking of his own pride when he should be thinking of survival...but apart of him was exhausted of these insane games.

And if he was dead, then the captain would have no further use for Joanna.

Kirk suddenly released his grip from his neck, leaving the air to cool the sweat garnered under the heat of his hand.  That hand had suddenly found his left wrist.

"Do you know what power is?"  The captain asked conversationally.

He didn't know what to say to that.

"It's strength.  Strength of the fittest.  And that is why...only the strongest makes it to be captain."

McCoy felt the snap, felt the pressure of the bones breaking.  He saw (as if through a tunnel) Spock's eyes widen.  *He's surprised!*  He thought, surprised himself that the Vulcan had actually not forseen this.

All this was in the first second.  Then his nerves went nova and a shooting tidal wave shot up his spine, and washed back down to sink white-hot fangs into the severed bones.  In that sharp-toothed moment, the doctor had a choice: scream and stay conscious, or stay silent and go to the darkness.

To hell with consciousness.  He stayed silent.

*    *   *

"Mn?"  Nyota sat up in bed groggily.  Her whole body was exhausted (Never that much champagne, ever again!).  She barely remembered their climbing to their room before folding up on the mattress together to pass out.

Next to her in the dark, Christine's moon-white body was sitting upright, bent over her open communicator.

"Yes, sir."  Chapel was saying quietly.  "Yes, sir.  I'll be right there."

Nyota felt a prickle of dread as her lover silently closed her communicator and bent over to pick her clothing up from the playful scatters on the floor. "Christine?"

"I've...got to go for a while."  Christine's voice in the darkness was tense and tight.  She cursed softly as she searched for her boots.  "That was the captain."

"The captain?"  Uhura breathed faintly.

"A...small medical mishap that needs my attention."  Chapel said thickly, then swallowed with a loud clicking in her throat.  "I've had this call before."

Nyota was afraid she knew what Christine was talking about.  "Is there anything I can do?"

"Coffee."  Chapel raked her long hair through her fingers, snagged it, and took a deep breath.  "Coffee."  She whispered again.

Nyota scrambled out of the covers, her fingers slipping soothingly across the other woman's ridge of backbone.  She lingered where she thought the tattoo might be.  "You have it, honey."

It wasn't her place, and it would be suicide, but she wished with all her heart she could go with her.

*   *   *

"Captain."  Chapel felt naked when the door closed, separating her from his guards.  Not that she'd ever get any help from them.  The very thought was absurd.

She regretted not piling her hair up in its usual prim style.  Kirk was taking in the way it flowed down her shoulders and back, obviously liking the change.

Leonard was lying flat on his back on the bed, one arm ramrod stiff against his side.  Even in the bad light, Chapel could see the wrist was discolored and swelling.  Swollen.  Kirk had let him lie in his injuries.

Again.

"Nurse Chapel."  Kirk was smiling.  "It's good of you to come on such short notice."

"Yes, sir."

"I'm sorry, Lieutenant.  I'm afraid I was a little careless with your...superior officer."

Chapel stared at him numbly, arm frozen in the salute across her insignia. This had to be happening to someone else.  Ridiculous attempt to escape reality, but it at least helped her stay detached from what was happening.

Leonard kept his eyes half shut during the exchange.  He might have simply been too exhausted.  Chapel had no way of knowing.  But his skin was chilled at Kirk's insinuations.

Chapel invoked reserves she didn't know she had as the captain leaned back in his chair and watched her with his hooded eyes.  In the faint candlelight, she thought he didn't look like James Tiberius at all, but someone...or something...else simply using his skin.

Dreadful thought.  She lowered her eyes demurely and got down on one knee as she pulled out her medikit.

Leonard's angry humiliation was a palpable animal in the room, a separate entity from his body.  He would have endured anything if only she hadn't seen him like this.  Chapel knew how he felt; she shared that kind of fierce pride with him.

*Kirk's gone too far this time.*  Chapel wasn't certain how she knew this, but she did.  Whatever the boundaries were that Kirk controlled McCoy on, he had gone over them tonight.

The scanner showed the activity along the dorsal horn; dull and throbbing neospinal pain, as opposed to the sharp and focused paleospinal activity she'd seen the last time this scene was enacted.  Chapel had learned the hard way that her boss didn't complain about serious aches and pains. Rather than humiliate him by asking, she checked the activity of his nervous system to find out.

She found a broad-range opiate and slipped it in with the general analgesic. Injected slowly.  He almost relaxed, but did no more than let some of the tension leave.  Without a word he watched objectively as she re-set his wrist and sprayed Rigidform over the break.  With luck and the usage of the heavy vitasilica shot, he'd be good as new by morning.

"Will you be all right?"  She mouthed.

He read her lips and barely nodded.  Even flickered a tiny smile at her. Damn, but she wished she hadn't seen that.

"Come see me tomorrow."  She lipped.

He closed his eyes in answer, and let sleep take him.

"Always efficient, Nurse."  Kirk had stood, his chest gleaming behind his Captain's Vest.  The eyes were hard, hard as she'd never seen on him before. "I mustn't keep you from enjoying your shore leave."

"I'm on call, sir."  Chapel inclined her head forward just slightly, allowing just a bit of her lips to tilt up in a smile that wasn't at all sincere.  What an actress she was becoming!

"That you are."  Kirk tossed something in the air, and she caught it on reflex.  "Dismissed."

Only when she was safe in the elevator did she look at what her hand had clenched around.  A credit voucher.  And a handsome price on it too.

Bought her time.  Bought her silence.  She felt nausea claw her throat, and forced herself to stuff the thing in her sash (thirty pieces of silver!). She knew that if she didn't spend it, and soon, the captain would want to know why she didn't want his favors.

Chapel was no fool.  Kirk never did anything for just one reason.  He had several good ones in engineering tonight.  Holding the cold reality of the money slip had suuddenly hammered them into the Nurse:  Any medico would have been capable of fixing Leonard up, but Kirk had chosen her to do it.

Rumors that she was the Doctor's Woman had afforded a large umbrella of protection against other officers.  But now the Captain had his eye on her. Having her mend that broken bone was a demonstration of what he was capable of, if he didn't get what he wanted.

And there was no mistaking the gleam of greed in his eyes.

*   *   *

Uhura closed her eyes for a moment, enjoying the warm sunshine that bathed them together in the tangle of bedsheets.  She didn't remember Christine returning to bed, only waking up to find a warm, voluptuous nurse with her soft arms around her.  Long strong fingers stroked the skin of her back, light, feathery, delicate...and Uhura had fallen asleep out of sheer ecstacy of the touch.

"Mmmn."

Chapel's mind was completely elsewhere.  "God.  Poor Len."  She said suddenly.  It was a dampener of the warm mood, but inevitable.

Uhura answered slowly.  "I only just found out what's going on.  I agree."

"It's getting worse, you know."  Christine continued to stare straight up at the ceiling.

"How long has it been going on?"

"Um."  Chapel swallowed and shifted her weight under Nyota.  "Not long after the captain came back from that secret mission.  Len paged me to his cabin one night because he was too messed up to put his uniform on and pretend he could function for work."  She sighed.  "At the time I was horrified.  I was a little naive about that kind of thing.  I imagined that superior officers were immune to that stuff, you know?"

"Me too.  That that's the stuff that only happens to lowly crewmen like ourselves."

Chapel licked her dry lips.  "Len seems to be able to...calm the captain down, mostly.  But sometimes, he gets really bad and then there's nothing anybody can do."  Her face wrenched.  "I've got to do something.  I can't just...sit back and patch him up when they break him!"

Uhura remembered the doctor's soft teasing, the kindness as he gently chided her for not being aware of her own feelings.  "Like what? The captain can have whoever he wants on his ship.  Theoretically, a visting Admiral can usurp him, but that's considered poaching.  And then when the Admiral leaves, things go back to normal."

"Something needs to be done."  Chapel spoke flatly.  Her eyes had gotten a steely glint.  Nyota sat up to look at her better.  "This is getting worse. How bad are we going to let it get before Leonard gets killed...or somebody else?  What if Marlena wasn't killed for trying to kill the captain?  What if it had to do with this?"

Nyota sucked her breath through her lips.  "I hadn't thought of that."  She murmured.  It made her shiver.  "You have a point."  But once raised, the idea was impossible to force down.

Because it was truly frightening  Too frightening not to act upon.

Chapel rolled over and sat up to face her significant other.  "I told Leonard to come see me today.  The three of us are going to have a talk."

"Count me in."  Nyota smiled.  "Do you need anything?"

Chapel thought for a moment.  "Let's just get a table set up.  It's easier to talk when we have silverware to play with, you know?"

Indeed, Nyota did know.

*     *     *

McCoy showed up at planetnoon, still in the sable civilian dress and carrying a bag of coffee.  Yesterday's exposure to the sun had turned him as dark as the Communications Officer.  It made his eyes gleam like icebergs, and startled her greatly.

Nyota looked at what he was offering.

"I can't believe I ever thought you two were lovers."  She shut the door after him as he cocked a wicked eyebrow.  "Because that would be champagne. Who ever heard of romancing with caffeine?"

"It works on Romulans."  McCoy pointed out.  He absently ducked a live vine hanging from the ceiling (the natives tried to make their cities resemble the wilds at every chance).  "Do you know what they'll do for chocolate? It's not a pretty sight.  I once got a theobromine addict to give up valuable information by blowing hot cocoa steam in his face."

"Sounds cruel and unusual."

"Don't worry.  I let him drink it after he gave up the manifold codes."

"Coffee!"  Chapel had come in from the back of their rooms.  "You remembered my favorite too!"

Nyota elevated an eyebrow at Christine's glee.  "Then again, I may have to take that back."  She said dryly.

McCoy grinned at her as he handed the paper package over.  "We're just disciples of the Velvet Roast."

Chapel had snatched the bag and vanished in the kitchen with it.

"Hey, do I get any?"  McCoy called after her.  Under his breath to Nyota he confessed, "I didn't know she HAD a favorite form of the stuff.  Unless she was joking."

"I'll bring it out!"  Chapel called back.  "Let's get to the terrace!"

"You've got a terrace in this..."  McCoy looked around, took in the lush furnishings in the *ridiculously* small space, and struggled to find adequate words.  "four-star roach motel?"  He managed.

"It was only three credits more."  Nyota rolled her eyes.  "Come on, the view's great.  Andromacheans don't like to see the city, but I enjoy this."

He had to agree.  They were high up, almost on the top floor and the sun was almost directly overhead.  The heat was blocked by potted fruit trees the natives grimly employed to try to deny they were inside a world of squares and planes.  Past the foilage, the smooth white stone of the high rises and 'scrapers gleamed clean and cool.  The view stretched for miles, hanging gardens and soft-engined hovercraft.

"Got it."  Chapel strolled out with a tray, a pot, and three cups.  McCoy broke his gaze from outwards to see a beer table had already been set up with breads, cheese, bottles and meat.  "Everybody dig in.  Tomorrow we may be called back to duty."

"Lord, that's not likely."  McCoy sighed as he reached for the first bottle. "Whatever that thing was that was wrong with the security cameras seems to be cleared.  Spock won't say for sure, but Kirk isn't taking no for any answer."

Chapel paused.  "I didn't see Spock last night."  She said, utterly neutral.

He shook his head.  "Kirk sent him back up to make *damn sure* the computers were clean."

"Typical."  Chapel broke a handful of bread savagely.

(Don't push it, honey.) Uhura thought to the other woman.  Chapel barely flickered her eyelashes, but she had caught the message.  (Now isn't the time.  Wait.)  She thought for something to change the subject with.

"I didn't know you could get that dark, doctor.  Are you Black Irish?"  Oh, that was brilliant.  That was like saying, "Isn't this nice weather we're having?" or, "gee that's a white cloud up in the sky."

Leonard nearly choked on his drink.  "I'm part Lumbee."

"Lumbee?  Is that like Cherokee?"

"Black Indians.  Melungeons.  A Southern racial conglomeration of swamp white trash, swamp escaped slave, and swamp Indian."

"And all swamp rat."  Chapel snickered.

"Hey, you ever doubt a swamp rat lacked in coping skills?"

"You have me there, doctor."  The Nurse said drolly.

*    *    *

Spock was supposedly deep in meditation.  Even the sickbay's bioscanners would think so; his abilities ran so deep.  But he was in truth, thinking very hard.

Kirk had gone further than ever last night.  Not in that he inflicted pain, but in the way he had done so.  There had been no warning, and previously he had preferred to build up the tension and anticipation for his victim...

A sour taste was in the Vulcan's mouth.  Why was he aceeding to this?  There was nothing to take pride in, with placing one's will over another--and even less when it was two against one, two superior warriors against a single pacifist, two ranking officers against a lower rank...the list continued indefinitely.

If he could only learn what hold Kirk had over McCoy.  It would explain much.  But...

Spock's outward calm was a mask for the turmoil inside.  He was at odds. Far worse for him to refuse his captain and avoid his company.  The thought was not logical, nor was it bearable.

*You know why.*  His inner self admonished.

Yes.  Illogical as those emotions were, he could not seem to fight them.

Worse, he had once been able to hold his own as a man, and not let anyone else sway him.  Not on anything.  Not even his captain.  But somehow, his desire to serve...to please James Kirk had grown overnight and he all unknowing.  A part of him wanted to avoid this in every way.  But another part of him looked forward to those moments, and relived them when they were apart.

And it was beyond his control.

The sour taste in his mouth was growing bitter.

Marlena had tried to warn him, and he had not listened.  His inaction had cost a brave warrior her life.  And very nearly his own and McCoy's.  At least, he suspected without proof.  McCoy had been unconscious on the floor, Marlena hysterical, white-faced and panicking.  Spock had no idea what had reduced Moreau, of all people, to such a state.  Even at her most fearful of Kirk, she had never lost control.

"I'll kill you, bitch!"  She had screamed at Kirk, Spock's sensitive hearing catching that through the bulkheads before he snapped orders and got through Kirk's bodyguards, stepped through and took in the scene at a glance.  Kirk standing choleric and helpless in front of the phaser sights; Marlena jumping as the door opened, Spock having less than a second to make a decision and fire...

Spock closed his eyes against the firepot beast, and tried to shut the door on his own memory.  He had once prided himself on his instincts.  No longer. Because they were telling him he had made a dreadful error, and the wrong person was dead...

*   *   *

"We're worried."  Uhura spoke hesitantly.  "There was a time when the captain and...Mr. Spock would find these kind of actions unthinkable.  But now its considered common of them."

"And it is getting worse."  Christine added.  "We want to know if there's anything we can do to...prevent that.  Or at least, to keep some sort of damage control."

Leonard listened to all this in silence, taking an occasional sip of beer. When the talking ran out, he failed to fill the sudden silence, and absently traced a line of condensation off the chilled glass.

"It's not as simple a matter as you think."  He said at last.  "The captain and I have always had an odd relationship.  I'll grant you, it's never been like this before Camus II."  He shrugged stiffly.  "It's never been violent, possessive or even remotely sexual.  If anything, it was the *lack* of a sexual nature that cemented our relationship."

"Tell us."  Christine murmured.

Uhura had a strong feeling that Chapel had never asked anything out of her boss in her life.  She saw it in the surprised blink of the blue eyes as he turned to finally face her, head on.

"I first met Ensign Kirk when he and a bunch of other kids were sent to my medical ship for extensive patchup.  Last gasp from the Mutara Retreat. Ugly.  Half of them didn't survive the trip to the CADEUCCUS. Incredibly young.  And he was almost the smallest patient in the sickbays.  Some of the women were more massive.  That was before he gained all that muscle.  Back then he was still growing.  Fourteen years old, he said, but honestly, I think he lied about that.  Wanted to get into space as soon as he could, no matter what the risk."

"How old were you at the time?"  Christine asked.

"Me?  I was all of nineteen.  Back then you had a senior officer for every floor of the medical ships; it kept things decompartmentalized, and things ran a lot smoother when a microstaff grew to think of their floor as "theirs."  For a moment the doctor slid into memory.  "Basic trauma was my floor.  We did get a few mental cases, emotional shock and some denial issues.  But mostly it was broken bones, low-grade illness, aggravated conditions, that kind of thing.  The older senior physicians got the REAL good stuff, like the Burn Ward, Radiation, Xenodisease."

"Lucky them."  Nyota murmured dubiously.  She would never understand the fascination medicos carried with biological puzzles.

McCoy leaned back and draped one arm behind the back of his chair, pushing the empty bottle aside and reaching for another.  "Kirk was quite the heartbreaker, and you can imagine he was worried about the predators that could be running around.  There was a Lt. JG that kept coming around to visit him, Gary Mitchell.  You could tell Mitchell was out for a piece of Kirk, and Kirk had spent a long time fighting him off."  McCoy's face darkened.  "Couldn't fight him off all the time.  You know, in a way, its odd.  You get used to that kind of thing happening to you, but when you see somebody with enough charisma to knock a ship out of orbit, it shakes you up to see they're just as vulnerable as you can be.  When I found out for sure what was going on, I talked to Kirk private.  I said that I didn't tolerate any foolishness in *my* sickbay, and he didn't have to worry about anything. Then I made up some stuff that had him under quarantine for a few weeks. Mitchell might have been a predator, but he was fussy as hell.  Most of 'em are, actually.  Some kind of hangup that makes them avoid anyone that doesn't fit their description.  Ironically, after Kirk got out of my sickbay, he went to Vega and wound up with that meningitis.  So Mitchell *really* stayed away from him after that; he's a carrier for life."

"Was Kirk grateful for what you did?"  Chapel wondered.  Uhura had wanted to ask exactly that.

McCoy was slow in responding.  "Kirk doesn't feel grateful for anything. That's not how he runs.  But he's always defended to the death my refusal to allow sadism in my workplace.  I wish he'd openly encourage disapproval of the kind of things that the Josts and Ottos of the world pull, but I guess in a way that would be going against the Old School way of doing things." McCoy suddenly looked exhausted.  "I wish to god it was otherwise.  I don't know how many times I see good, idealistic kids going into the medical field...and two years later, winding up just another sadistic bully because its easier to be that than to be a white crow."

"But, Leonard..."  Chapel set her lips.  "What he does to you is exactly what he refused from Mitchell.  You protected him!"

"Oh, Lord, Christine.  It's not that simple.  Again.  For one thing, if I ever reminded Kirk what I did for him, I'd be in the Agony Booth for a full week, or until I threw up my lungs.  Whichever came first.  You never ever remind Kirk of anything.  The man doesn't forget.  It would be a huge insult.  Add to that, it would be a remainder of a time when he was small and weak...no, not a good idea.  Damn near suicidal!"

"Then why does he do this to you?"

McCoy sighed.  "Christine...when he came back from Camus II I noticed he seemed different.  But it was nothing I could pin anything down on. Eventually the trademark signs of sadism-addiction crept in.  He was careful to keep it from being seen, but little things started happening.  People were getting hurt.  Vulnerable people.  People who couldn't fight back.  I went to his cabin and spoke to him about it."

McCoy stopped talking for a full ten minutes.  Time enough to quietly kill the second bottle and reach for the third.  The women waited patiently, knowing he would tell the tale in his own time.

"I still don't know what got him royally mad.  All I did was say that his actions were in contraidiction to what I understood of him as my captain. He went completely off.  Flew into the biggest tirade of paranoid ranting I've seen from anybody in years.  Accused me of saying he wasn't James Tiberius Kirk.  All kinds of stuff in that vein.  All I could do was just stand there with my mouth hanging open.

"When he eventually calmed down, I would have preferred him to be still yelling.  A cold gleam of ice...had got in his eyes.  And I wasn't sure at this point that I was even looking at Kirk.  But someone else wearing his skin...Chris?"

"I'm all right."  Christine shook herself all over, ignoring he called her Chris.  "It was just those words you were using, Leonard.  Go on."

"Well, believe me, I was wishing I were anywhere else."  He sighed and tugged at his earlobe, thinking.  "He went for the agonizer, and that's about when things got out of my control.  Let's just say the captain knows enough about me that I'm not going to betray him to anybody.  So let's not discuss that possibility."

Christine glanced down.  "Camus II...do you know what happened to the captain down there?"

"Hah."  McCoy snorted.  "I know damn near everything.  I've heard the whole story more times than I can count.  But it doesn't completely explain the change in his behavior."

"You never saw any display that would hint to this?"  Christine pressed.

McCoy exhaled slowly.  "Sadism doesn't pop up overnight like a mushroom, you know.  There's always a reason for it.  Usually its a case of yesterday's victim becoming tomorrow's predator."

"I know that, Leonard," Christine began impatiently.

He held up his hand.  "Hear me out.  The KIND of sadism Kirk's swimming in, it often starts out in a very specific way."  The doctor appeared to be living with a bad taste in his mouth.  "It can start out very innocuously, don't get me wrong.  A few games in the bedroom; a little threatening, mild tiltation like with a quirt or spanking, bondage...so long as its kept to one level, and *infrequently* enacted, it won't go past a certain level of excitement.  It won't become a boring activity.  But you have an addictive personality involved, then the same thing won't make them happy.  They've got to be constantly moving forward and onward, pushing the envelope, pushing their partner, pushing themselves.  They're striving for an endopmorphic high and they'll go to extremes to get it.  Once they get in *real* deep, just the mild stuff won't do anything for them.  They've got to go as far as its possible.  Safety checks such as rules of behavior and control words that will keep them from going too far with their partner doesn't work.  What's got me confused as hell with James Kirk is, he acts like somebody whose been deep into this stuff for decades, when I know that's not the case."  he shrugged helplessly.  "Boy's a quick learner, I guess.  And how."

"Well.  Tell us about what changed him."  Uhura urged softly.  "Maybe we can help."

He kindly humored her.  "Camus II was a barely-staffed archaeo-research station that had sufficient backing from the Empire so long as they kept investigating the remnant technology the previous inhabitants kept.  From what I hear, it was an ugly place.  Radiation kept leaking through the shields, the atmosphere was rife with poison, water, soil, everything had to be treated so it wouldn't kill them...there was enough fluoride alone to render half the known Galaxy brain dead!"

"Lovely."  Chapel was making a grimace.

"Well, the station was maintained by a former lover of Kirk's, Janice Lester.  Lester seemed to have not liked being dumped.  Had big plans on being the Captain's Woman.  She set things up in an attempt to kill him, using the help of her current lover and research partner, Arthur Coleman. As Kirk describes it, they almost succeeded, but he managed to kill them."

"Ugly."  Uhura frowned.  "But forgive me, things like that happen all the time in the Empire."

"Yeah."  McCoy agreed.  He picked up another beer and unscrewed the cap. "Well, maybe there'd be more to tell ya, but I wasn't the first person to see the captain when he returned.  It was Spock.  And I'm kindly afraid of asking *him* questions."

"How many of those can you take?"  Nyota paused to wonder.

Both medicos grinned at her.

"Indefinitely, so long as its not a wheat-based brew."  He chuckled.

"What's wrong with wheat?"

"I can't metabolize glutins in any shape, size or form."

"He's a Type O, Nyota."  Chapel poked him in the ribs with her elbow--gently--relieved to be able to tease him.  "If you think that's impressive, you should see him in the sugar jar.  Let him buy his own dessert."

"Damn."  He said.

Nyota laughed softly, her earrings chiming as they swung.  "All right."

A few minutes passed while the three of them drank, ate, and absorbed the conversation.

"Kirk's lost a lot of family."  McCoy said suddenly.  "I know he scares a lot of people, but I've never been scared of him.  Not until now."

"I was scared of him when he killed those 9,000 Vegans."  Chapel answered. "And when he leveled all of Deneb to destroy those flying parasites, I was terrified."

"Don't see how he had much choice.  Maybe if we'd had time we could have done something, but the Empire wanted the invasion stopped *flat*.  Frankly, they didn't even give him the option of research."

"He had family on that planet."  Uhura remembered.

"Had.  Yeah.  His only other living relative, a big brother he adored, his sister in law, and three little nephews.  All gone."  McCoy took a long drink from his latest bottle.  "This stuff isn't all that bad, if you keep on drinking it."  He commented.

"Ugh."

"After all that went down, he got really bad.  Closed off.  Wouldn't talk to hardly anybody.  He and Marlena were the closest they'd ever been at that point."  McCoy sighed.  "Poor woman.  I'm still not sure she tried to kill him.  I keep thinking...maybe things got out of hand with *her.*"

"So it all boils down to Camus II."  Uhura began polishing her long nails. "How long was he down there on that planet?"

"I don't know."  McCoy shrugged stiffly.  "Sometimes the way he talks, he was just down there for a few hours.  And sometimes, its like he'd lived there for years.  Especially when he gets on his rants about how miserable it was."

"And that doesn't strike you as odd?"  Chapel wondered.

"It did at first.  But I tried asking him how long he'd been down there, and he'd either get ugly-angry, or ramble off on another tirade.  So I have no idea."

"I wonder if there's any way we could find out about it."  Chapel murmured.

"Sure."  Uhura looked askance.  "All methods employing a little risk on our part, but nothing's impossible."

"Woa."  McCoy set his beer down hard, and lifted his hand.  "Stop.  Halt. Cease.  Desist.  Christine, I know that look in your eye.  D'you think this is an episode of IMPERIAL TRUTHSEEKERS?  You are not going to play Forensic Detective.  Don't even think about it."

Chapel did something amazing.  She looked Leonard flat in the eye from across the table.  "I'm on shore leave."  She said it sweetly, and very, very steel-like.

"CHRIS-tinnne..."

"I really can rationalize this, if you must know."  Chapel folded her arms at rest.  "First of all, the way things are going, I won't have the boss I like for much longer.  Secondly, it seems like its getting dangerous for all of us.  Thirdly, he's starting to cast his attention in my direction."

"And Nyota's."  McCoy whispered.

Nyota felt her heart slam against her ribs.  "Oh, no."  She whispered.

"So what are we going to do?"  Chapel wondered.

"Good God.  You gonna rig a ride to Camus??"  McCoy's eyebrows had vanished into his hairline.  "I hope you've got some savings to empty!"

"I probably could do it."  Chapel murmured.  "Of course, our biggest worry is getting found out."

"Oh, that's simple.  You just find a superior to file you a Class One Empire Waiver."  Uhura waved that off airily.

"What's that?"  The medicos asked at the same time.

"I never heard of it."  McCoy added suspiciously.

"Well, its in the Military Amendments, buried deep between the 97th and 98th Coda, but it says that if any Sword-sworn Officer of the Caesar needs to take a leave of absence, they can do so if they have a superior officer grant petition.  Said Superior must be at least three marks in rank above."

"That might be a little hard to pull off."  Chapel clenched her teeth.  "I don't know too many Admirals."

McCoy sighed wearily.  "I know two.  Kufe-Soma, and Phillip Boyce."

"Phillip?  He's ENTERPRISE!"  Uhura remembered the crusty old man with ice-blue eyes and a beautiful mane of silver hair.  "A sweetheart."

"I know.  He sponsored my admission to the Medical Fleet when I was straight out of diapers."

"You and Kufe don't have a very good history."  Chapel muttered.  "Maybe you'd better talk to Boyce."

"I'd prefer it, honestly.  But I'm only supposed to know Boyce in an professional matter.  Officially, I'm just another kid he invested in."

"Kufe's got the clout."  Uhura pointed out.  "If you want, I could draft your petition.  I can make a demand for your first born child look good!"

McCoy's face went black with rage.  It was an instantaneous reaction and no one expected it.  Uhura blinked and instinctively leaned back in her chair, reminding herself that reaching for her dagger was a bad idea.

Chapel had frozen, her breath harsh in her throat.

McCoy slowly collected himself.  Slowly willed his color to return to normal.

"Let's...not take that direction."  He managed at last.  While his voice was calm enough, his hands shook around his latest bottle.  "I have a private band I can speak to the Admiral on.  What I do need is to go to my quarters and get it."  His face soured.  "Without Kirk finding out."

"One of us could get it for you."  Chapel offered. "Just say where it is."

"Not hard to find.  A red slicer in my top desk drawer.  And you've got my doorlock."

Chapel smiled wryly.  "And no one will think twice, thinking we have a sordid affair anyway."

"When you think of it, all affairs are sordid."  McCoy made a face.

"Too true."  Chapel took a deep breath.  "All right.  I'm going to go now. Does anyone need anything else while I'm onboard?"

*I need my common sense back.*  Uhura thought but didn't say it.  She was still wondering about this crazy notion, and why the other two were so willing to do it.  *But then, its not like we really have a choice...the captain is getting worse.  This is to protect ourselves.  And each other.*

Chapel gave her a quick kiss on the forehead.  "Later."  She murmured.

Behind them, McCoy made a disgusted sound.  "You call that a kiss?  I've seen gladiatrix more romantic than that."

They turned in each others' arms to look at him, a little unbelievingly.  He matched their look with his own.

"You know we're going to get killed."  He pointed out reasonably.  "Do you really want to die with regrets? 'I could have lip-dipped her, but I lost my nerve?'"

"Oh, fine."  Chapel whirled, swept Uhura off her feet, and stuck her tongue halfway down the other woman's throat.  "Better?"  She demanded while Uhura was still swooning in her arms.

"Better."  McCoy offered her thumbs-up.

*    *    *

McCoy simply stretched out on the couch and took a quick nap while Christine was gone.  Uhura busied herself with cleaning up the small room, trying to be as quiet as possible.

*This really is insane.*  She thought.  *Kirk will see this as treason. We'll be executed for certain.*

But a part of her didn't...really..believe it.  The rest of her was whispering that this kind of action was long overdue.

*And if its overdue...I hope we're not too late.*

*   *   *

McCoy emerged from the back room looking like he wanted to take a shower and scrub his experience with Kufe off his skin.  "Done."  He said curtly.

"That quick?"  Chapel looked amazed and exhilarated.  "That didn't take more than ten minutes!"

"Kufe just happened to be Kirk's sponsor.  I pointed out that if we could find a reversible reason for his aberrant behavior, it would be a salvaged investment."  He shivered and glanced away.  "If I couldn't convince her of that, she'd be killing him off like a rat.  I just traded with a human life."  He muttered.

"I happens."  Chapel told him quietly.

"Yeah.  I know...We can pick up authorization papers at the drydock.   I hope I'm not the only one who can fly a Starshuttle."

"I can."  Nyota shrugged.

"I can't."  Christine confessed.

"We'll show you the ropes on the way."  He smiled slightly, the first smile she'd seen on him in two days.  "They're not like the shuttlecrafts in the ENTERPRISE, Nurse."

"Leaner and meaner."  Uhura suggested.  "From here, Camus II is about as far as Earth from Vulcan.  It'll take about a week to get there."

"Could be a long week."  Chapel took a deep, brave breath, hands on her hips.  "I better buy some reading tapes."

McCoy rolled his eyes.  "Reading tapes."  He walked off, muttering to himself.

*   *   *

Kufe's reputation for thinking and acting swiftly was rooted in fact.  Uhura had couried many things in her life, but this was one of the better starshuttles she'd set foot in.  McCoy warned them from the beginning that the Admiral liked all her ships a certain way.  So far Uhura had figured out that meant the finest in technology, as well as the most efficient. Older-model gear such as pressure suits and computer bases seemed to be preferred for their greater ease in maintenance and repair.

It wasn't really small.  It was about four times a standard Imperial Shuttle.  But it was built to the guns.

"Any weapons capability?"  Chapel was a little awed.

"Minimal.  Speed and a cloak protects these things the most."  Uhura murmured.  She noticed the other was rubbing her eyes when she thought no one was looking.  "Honey, why don't you take the Officer's cabin and lie down?  It was a long night for you."

Christine reluctantly agreed.  "Wake me up if anything happens."

"I promise."  Nyota lied flawlessly.

McCoy ignored the exchange as he finished clearing the flight plan.  Once they were out of the Andromachean System Border, the plan was to go into cloak and change the course to Camus.

Alone now, Nyota took a deep breath, and sat down in the co-pilot's chair. He was still ignoring her.  As he had since that odd little exchange.  Nyota had studied him closely, and finally concluded that he was trying not to lose his control on her.

"Im sorry for whatever it was I said earlier."  Nyota busied herself with watching the starfield going by.

McCoy stared straight ahead as he set the backup guides (different spherical co-ordinant program, in case something happened to the first one).

"You didn't know what you were saying, Lieutenant.  The fact is, Kufe already *has* my first born child.  And she doesn't know who I am."

"Oh."  Nyota was very quiet.  "I'm sorry."  Inane.

"Me too."  He said simply.  Shortly.

Silence.  They watched the pale yellow glow of a solar sail slip by, its passenger compartment less than a tenth of the sail's.

"I can't believe people use those things."

"Me neither."

Silence.

"Do you want to talk about it?"  She offered.

"Not much to talk about."  He shrugged in a very male way.  "She decided she wanted a kid; felt anybody who could survive in this Empire with my ridiculous code of honor was smart enough to be the father."  The pain was a raw and open wound, hiding behind his calm voice.

"Why did she kick you out then?"

"So I wouldn't contaminate her daughter with my sanctity of life.  Don't get me wrong; I've known Kufe since we were kids in the same swamp.  But what's considered normal in my family was bad parenting in hers.  What are you staring at?"

"I'm trying to imagine you growing up in a swamp."

"I'm Georgian, Lieutenant.  There's nothing *but* swamp down there since the Eugenics Wars.  Give or take a few mountains and some peacock farms."

"Still...Kufe's another breed of human entirely.  Like...like a crocodile." Nyota remembered which continent.  "Or alligator.  Or a twenty-foot caiman."

He laughed very softly, and looked down at the board as he checked the adjustments.  "Nyota, do you know what a swamp rabbit is?"

"I assume its a rabbit that lives in the swamp."

"Uh, huh.  They're a lot like your average furry cottontails...but they behave differently.  They have to.  Different environment.  Mostly, they jump into the water to escape a predator.  They're good swimmers.  That makes them hard to hunt so you have to watch out for them."  He leaned back to stare straight ahead.  "Just because they're small herbivores, doesn't mean they're cowards.  I've seen those little animals float not three inches away from a 'gator's snout and the 'gator never so much as twitched."

"That's hard to believe.  How can they do that?"

"They do it," he looked at her then, his blue eyes wry and gleaming with...humor?  "Because they know that's an opponant they can't win against."

"So they become invisible?"

"Well, if you were hunting a rabbit, would you think to look in a pond?"

Nyota thought it over.  "Is that where you get a lot of your habits? Watching animals in the swamp?"

"You can learn a lot from nature," he said as he reached into his pocket and began searching for the last of his concentrate bar.  "But I recommend one watch the wild before they start watching people.  Humans contaminate everything, including their own body language."  As Nyota watched, he sprawled backwards, unwrapping his ersatz breakfast.  "You do know that Christine's sound asleep in the back." He told her.

Nyota frowned lightly.  "Yes."  She didn't get it.

McCoy sighed patiently.  "I'm going to be on pilot for at least three more hours.  I'm going to eat this garbage and plug in some kind of music to listen to, no matter how inane or patriotic or boring.  Go spend some time with your girlfriend, Lieutenant.  You're the reason why she's on this crazy scheme."

"She cares about you too."  Nyota felt obligated to say.

"She's not picking out bedsheets to match my irises."  He flipped his eyelashes at her.  "Go. S'an order.  You can spot for me when I take a break, and show her the opening ropes for flying these monsters."

Nyota hesitated although she wanted to get up, and gave him a long look. "If we're going to all be shot for treason, you might as well call me Nyota."

"Nyota."  He nodded with a wry smile.  "Call me whatever you want."

"Don't think I won't if we come into conflict."  She shot back, feeling more confident now that the misunderstanding was clear.

"No doubt."  Seriousness shaded his eyes darker.  "I hope you realize, we're already in big trouble, Nyota."

"Well, I figured that."  Nyota began.  "When the captain finds out we're gone, he--"

"Not just that."  He cut her off very gently.  "Kufe told me some interesting things while I was on the secure band.  She was the one who authorized his secret mission to Camus.  If we come up with nothing, we'll have to answer to her."

Nyota momentarily felt weak.  Then she sighed.  "Do you think all three of us can be wrong on our instincts?"

"No."  He said after a moment's thought.  "But the fact is, Nyota, I know James Kirk better than anyone.  And if anyone can cover their trail and leave no traces behind, its the man we're trying to track now."

**     **     **
"It is a double pleasure to deceive the deceiver."
--Jean de la Fontaine

"People who make no noise are dangerous."
--ibid
**    **    **
 

Christine was *still* asleep.

Nyota frowned, thinking that after twelve hours, she should at least be stirring, or did all of this affect her on some level she wasn't talking about?

She dressed quietly, and stepped into the small open area between the cabin and the pilot's consoles that functioned as a type of open lounge.

The doctor had the ship on auto, and was alternately watching the trivid as he sipped some kind of smoking, molasses-colored drink while pushing the pieces of an old tangram puzzle around the table.  Nyota didn't think he was getting much enjoyment out of the dubious broadcast; live gladiators clipped to a typically annoying commerical for a home security alert:  "What's worth a good night's sleep?"  The announcer asked.

"Don't ask that of an insomniac."  McCoy snapped.  "Oh.  Good evening, Nyota."

Nyota suddenly yawned.  "I'm not quite awake."  She apologized.

"Andromachean alcohol does that to you--mild native opiates in the fruit." He poked at his drink and shoved a triangular piece forward on the puzzle. Nyota had no clue as to what he was trying to assemble.

The Communications Officer sank into the nearest chair and examined the menu code for something familiar.  Kufe, she was gratified to note, had a flavor for North African cuisine.  Eggs malsouka? Khalota?  She settled for hodra mechwva with charmoula.

"You gonna give Christine a few flying tips?"  McCoy had a dish of--good God--cornbread and creasy greens with baked garnet yams.  And people thought Nyota was ethnic?

Nyota picked up a vegetable shish kebob and dipped the end in charmoula. "When she wakes up.  She's still sound asleep.  Dead to the world, actually."

"I don't like the sound of that."  The doctor was serious.  "She tends to work like a dog and then sleep like one when the work's over with.  It's not healthy."

"She does this a lot?"  It was something to consider if she was going to have a long-term relationship with her.  Nyota had expected some clouds behind the silver lining, but she'd already noticed Christine was reluctant to accept help from anyone.

"Um.  Yeah, I'm afraid so.  It's her way of dealing with stress, and its been stressful as all get out lately."  McCoy spoke the obvious with a hopeless sigh. "Well, we got about seven more days until Camus, so maybe then she can lighten up a bit."

"You don't sound at all convincing."

"I'm not, really."  The triscreen had returned to the Collesium.  Two strapping men in helmets and traditional gladiator gear were going at it with the mace and shield.

"Dammit, Pedro!"  McCoy cringed as one clipped the other's helmet.  He went down and a tooth went flying in the blood-spattered sand.  "You're gonna have a migraine for a week, you gloryhound!  Serves you right, too!"  He snorted as the unconscious man (plus his tooth) was cautiously ferried away on a stretcher.  The winner stepped backwards and let the cleanup crew sprinkle fresh sand over the gore.

Nyota stopped chomping on a grilled onion.  "You know that man?"  She asked dubiously.  The idea of the ship's CMO watching deathmatches, voluntarily, was something that needed a lot of internal processing.

"I know all the gladiators in the Iberian troupe."  The doctor said softly, never taking his eyes from the scene.  "I used to be their physician."

Nyota almost forgot to eat.  "You?"  She repeated.  Visions of derelict and washed-up stereotypical addicts treating gladiators because no one else would take them flooded her brain.

He caught her look, and understood it.  "It's not what the layman thinks." He said dryly.  "A lot of interns and EMTs start out at the provincal arenas.  You learn anatomy from the losers, and seeing as how there's a high percentage of non-Terran gladiators, it gives you an edge up on xenobiology."  He nodded to the screen, where the winner was back in the center awaiting his newest opponant.  "You get to know those men and women. You don't have much choice, actually.  You live with them, and you patch them up when they get hurt.  And, you pronounce them dead and pull the sheet over their faces when the luck runs out."

"That sounds pretty awful."  Nyota opined.  "Criminals condemned to fight until they die or their skills grant them a pardon?"

"Can you blame them for choosing the sword over the miner's pick?  That's what you get when you get the condemned status.  The arena or some godawful asteroid mining belt.  Miners get a lot of radiation, malnutrition, dehydration and mutation.  Gladiators, so long as they survive, get good lodgings, good food, and they can keep whatever presents their starstruck fans give them."

"I guess I never thought about it.  Over on my continent, the gladiators usually fight wild animals."

"I know."  He said fervently.  "Brrrr."

They watched as the announcer gave a brief run on current news; results from the fledgling Republican party's votes, and an anti-Klingon spiel that would have made Kang fall out of his chair laughing.  Even Kor would have snickered at the drivel.

"How long did you work with them?"  Now that she was starting to accept this of the doctor, the curiosity wouldn't go away.

"I graduated and had no place to go for a few years.  So until something came up, I figured I would stay with what I knew."  McCoy was leaning back in his chair, sipping his tea and watching every move as Gladiator Maximus feinted and thrust through his warmup-moves.  "Three years the first time. They'd kind of adopted me by then, and the troupe leader, who was Chase Dabn at the time, would make me put on the armor and duke it out with them.  I still go back to the Iberians when I'm between jobs."

That was a little too much.  "Did you ever kill anybody?"

He was appalled.  "You don't kill in practice.  Bad for business.  And I wouldn't kill anyway."

"Oh.  Sorry.  I don't really know much of the sport."

"Sport.  Hah.  More like mandatory way of life!  It--oh, Lord."

The big, husky gladiator's opponant had arrived: a small, wiry man with nothing more than a helmet for protection and a net and trident.

"What the hell?"  McCoy demanded.  "You don't put retiariis with the murmillones!  It's suicide!  He must have really got somebody mad!"

Uhura confessed she was confused.

"Murmillones are the heavyweights."  McCoy grimaced as the big man swung his sword through the air.  "Rets are the lightweights.  Their only technique is to use speed and agility to overpower with the net, and kill with the trident.  This isn't going to take long."  He sighed.  "Not with ol' Silverback Max in charge."

He was right.  In less than forty seconds the newcomer's head was flying across the camera.

"Doctor," Uhura said very slowly and clearly, "I had no idea you were like this."

He looked askance.  "Hey, they're my family, lieutenant."

"I still can't believe it.  Everyone on the ship thinks you're the worst sentimental pacifist.  You might have killed Otto on screen in front of the Bridge crew but your reputation is fixed for life."

"For your information," he said patiently, "I AM a pacifist.  Would you like to go to a doctor who kills people on a regular basis?  I didn't think so. And as to Otto, I had to kill him.  Daystrom's ghost didn't pick up the fact that he was pulling his knife out of his sleeve and getting ready to slice Christine open with it!"

"Oh."  Nyota felt weak.  "Well I'm glad you got to him first."

"Hmph."

Temporarily at a loss for words, she rejoined him in watching the match.

"Let me guess."  She said after a few minutes.  "You were in the retiarii class?"

He grinned at her.  "That's what everyone thinks.  Chase felt that was too much of a given, so he stuck me with the Provos."

"You're joking."  The provos were the total bastards of the arena.  If the retiarii were the nimble dancer, and the murmillones were the armored tank, the provos were the specialized middleweight.  They had heavy, awkward shields, leg and arm guards, helmets, and *very* short gladius swords.  The armor was designed so none of the *nonvital* areas could be struck.

McCoy painted a grim picture: thirty pounds or more of padded armor, and a helmet that hid your face turned anyone into a monster.  Friends and lovers wouldn't recognize who they were fighting, couldn't make eye contact, could make no human reality of the fight, only survival.  And because of the armor's padding, even the best fighters were panting with fatigue and sweat after five or ten minutes.  No fight lasted more than fifteen minutes unless both were masters.  It was almost unheard of.

Two women, two provacatrices, came out with good timing, and Uhura took a close look.  The large shields hid the short swords, and both had to stab and feint, trying to take the other off balance or by surprise.  Their torsos were bare and gleaming with oil that soon mixed with sweat.  She soon realized the provos had to be more aggressive than defensive; defense would just get you killed faster.

When pressed, McCoy admitted he could hold his own "for a while" but lacked the killing edge required for the Arena.  "Most people do, actually.  Chase would always put me up against the hulking monsters, just to throw the fear of god in me.  It was...motivating."  He finished somewhat sarcastically. "Worse because if I didn't do good, they'd give me all kinds of hell until I finally DID good."

"Do they still rent out gladiators from the same troupe?"  Nyota puzzled.

"No, not anymore.  Every once in a while, someone complains that it softens the fighters up, that they need to battle their own comrades to stay hard. But it happens anyway, what with the fighters getting bought or traded from one troupe to the next."

"It sounds like a lot of pain."  Uhura said finally.  She wondered if mining was all that bad in comparison.  Then again, if he thought not...

"Pain?"  He repeated, and took his gaze from the screen  to look at her.  He had the expression he'd donned in  the Andromachean marketplace only three days ago.  "Pain's a way of life."

Nyota thought about his internal motives, to be able to fight among gladiators, and still permit Kirk's depradations without defending himself. She didn't think she would be able to do the same, and she said so.

"Command training, Nyota."  He said soberly.  "If you're going to go any higher in rank, you'll be learning the truth of that.  High Command takes a dim view on ranking officers who crack under torture.  No matter how severe. Kirk, for example, if he was stuck in the Agony Booth, and broke under a week of nonstop input, he'd be executed for being a traitor."

Nyota must have turned white as a sheet; she felt as though a cold wind had brushed her face and he was looking apologetic.

"Didn't mean to scare you like that."  He murmured.

She cleared her throat.  "It's...all right.  Better I learn now than later, right?"  She nibbled on her shish kebob slowly.  "Maybe I should start taking some lessons."

"I can show you the basics."  He offered.  "Then we can take it from there if you're still interested."

"God, yes."  She exhaled.  "I want to know how to do this.  I prefer to avoid pain at every opportunity."

"Ahem."  He cleared his throat.  "Not a good idea, Nyota.  Resisting torture is not about blocking pain with your mind."

"I don't understand.  Why?"

The doctor sighed.  "Pain is a message, Lieutenant.  To shut that off is dangerous.  It can lead to a talent for denial."

Nyota didn't--quite--comprehend what he was trying to tell her, but supposed she would pick it up before long.  "When can we start these lessons?"

McCoy laughed softly.  "Impatient, aren't you?  Now if you want."

*        *           *

The days stretched, nerve-wrackingly, as Camus grew closer.  Naturally, everybody had quirks and perks that irritated the rest, but the effort went on all sides to get along.  Nyota was initially disappointed with the doctor's lessons; they began with the most basic techniques that you were lightly instructed in in school, but McCoy was adamant that she absorb these techniques until they were second nature.  And how she was supposed to do it was up to her.  Chase Dabn, his instructor, had been able to work his own impressions by mentally reciting poetry.  Taking a tip from that, she decided to use music to concentrate with.

No matter how busy they all tried to be (and they wanted to be busy enough not to think about the kind of disaster they were getting into), time could hang heavy and limp.  If real life imitated the adventure shows or cheap novels, Nyota would be using that time to explore life to the fullest with Christine.  Life, sadly, did NOT emulate the overactive imaginations of singleminded writers.  There were few things in the Galaxy as deathly to romance as the notion they could all wind up dead in a very stupid-looking way.  Thoughts of Kirk were chilling, and Kirk with Spock, even worse.  The only workable solution was to keep busy, stay sane, and try not to get on the nerves of one's roommates.  That LAST part was sometimes the hardest; as the days went on, the dimensions of the CAPIL appeared to shrink in proportion.

Nyota knew very well her compulsion to check and recheck and recheck computer diagnostics on the ship drove the medicos half insane.  On the other hand, if she didn't constantly reassure herself that all was well, she might obsessively-compulse herself into the bughouse.  She limited her scans to where they couldn't easily watch her, and made it as unobtrusive as possible.  She even justified her mental state by working on upgrades and redesigned a few board componants until McCoy complained the Internal Scanners were on the verge of becoming telepathic.  It was a half hearted complaint; she was able to ignore it.

At least, McCoy could explain Chapel and Chapel could explain McCoy.   It kept Nyota from going totally ape at their own divergant mannerisms.

Christine's idiosyncrasies were in her demeanor.  Nyota had never a clue the Nurse was so reluctant to accept affection and TLC.  Being the kind of woman who loved to lavish attention on her better half when she had one, it nonplussed her that Christine was always beating her to the cooking, the cleaning, the organization, the...the just about everything that Nyota would be doing anyway. She liked being kissed and hugged, but in the bedroom, she was far more comfortable with being the giver than the receiver.

"Give her time."  McCoy offered this advice with obvious resignation.  "She's always been like this, Ny.  Nothing personal on you. It's just that she's used to being around people who don't exactly express affection.  Frankly, you're the best person she's ever hooked up with.  The last one was a former fiance who didn't bother to tell her the interesting fact that he'd transferred his consciousness into an android."

Nyota exhaled.  Very faintly, she could hear the water-shower as Christine finished her day.  "I don't want to do anything wrong."  She complained.

"Hey, she's not stupid."  The CMO pointed out.  "You don't fit her usual pattern.  If it makes you feel better, you're more like her fantasy come to life."

"Oh, funny."

"Serious as a defilbration."  He lifted his palm solemnly.

"You're not serious?  You ARE serious.  Oh, bother!"  Nyota slammed her hands on her hips and glared down at him (he was sitting down; she certainly couldn't look down at him any other way).  "Leonard, I just want her to be happy with me!"

"She is."  He rolled his eyes.  "But like I said, s'gonna take time for her to realize you like to be the giver too."

At least Christine was basically understandable.  McCoy's particular hangup was like nothing Nyota had ever encountered...or even heard of.

The smart crack he'd made about insomnia to the triscreen commerical didn't even cover his lack of sleep.  Nyota soon began to wonder if he EVER shut his eyes.  Whenever she was awake, so was he.  He proclaimed to rest on his off shift, but she never saw it.  She saw him kick his feet up and poke through a book from the electilibrary (reading on just about any subject you'd think of, with no preference or prejudice), or toy with a few chess games against the computer, or he'd just simply sit and phase mentally out of existence, his eyes open but gaze unfocused, until it was like being around a zombie.  The fact that Christine was used to it, kept Nyota from getting a little freaky.

When she asked Christine about it during a private moment, she wound up regretting it.

"Nightmares."  The taller woman said succintly as she shrugged out of her long dress and into something warmer for the night.  They conserved power, and the enviro-controls was the first to be sacrificed.  McCoy usually stretched out on the lounge couch or the narrow sleeping berths reserved for lowly security guards.  "He has them a lot."

"Can't he take drugs for them?"  Nyota was confused.  The Imperial Pharmacology had plenty of sopophorics and adaptors that changed one's sleeping pattern.  There were even drugs that let you ENJOY your nightmares--admittedly, they were expensive, but if a CMO couldn't get them, who could?

Christine pursed her lips and slowly, sadly shook her head.  "Not," She said quietly, "for the kind of nightmares he has."

That was a truly alarming notion, and Nyota would have soon as remained ignorant of the insight.  There were times when her own fears of their mission, and Kirk's rage kept her wide awake and she would lay in Christine's warm arms, knowing full well the doctor was not only awake as well, but up and functioning.  In a way, it was as if the CAPIL was haunted by his presence.  She could easily believe that if he died his ghost would remain on the ship, leaving stray book-tapes and empty cups lying around.

The few times when he actually did sleep, the CAPIL felt oddly empty, and even eerier.

Day by day, Camus II grew closer.
 

"Do we bother you, Leonard?"  Christine asked hesitantly.  Nyota was in the galley doing a turn with a real meal, ostensively out of range but she had excellent hearing.

"Hardly."  He answered.  Christine must have projected dubiousness, because he kept talking: "Honestly, Christine.  Considering what I've been through for the past six months, I could care less about being left out of you and Nyota's fun and games."  He paused; even then he was unable to repress his famous irony.  "Frankly, I don't think I'll be able to THINK about sex for a long, long time."

(Whew.)  Nyota shook her head and examined the cassoulet she was assembling. (And I thought I had it bad before Christine.)  The memory of his lifting his bruised wrists in the marketplace returned to her, as well as his dry-as-ashes take on the Captain and Mr. Spock's unique relationship: "Roleplaying."

*    *    *

"I'm out."  Nyota tossed her cards after McCoy's in disgust.

Christine snickered nastily and pulled the stack of credit chips and Imperial scrip to her side of the table.  "Not bad.  Anybody for a rematch?"

"Not just no, Christine, but *hell* no!"

McCoy lit up a qatstick and leaned back, exhaling the mild euphorics through his nose without taking the smoke in his lungs.  "So nice to know my Nurse has such a mean streak."  He commented.  "Sorta balances out all that self sacrifice."

Christine threw a card at him.  "You're just jealous."

"Possibly."  He shot back.

Uhura stretched.  They had finally run out of things to do, and cabin fever had kicked in with a vengeance.  She couldn't believe she'd actually suggested a card game.  And now she was broke.  "All right.  Who's for another drink?  Hands lifted; she turned around in her chair and reached for the pitcher of millet beer.

She didn't want to do this, but somebody had to bring the subject up.  "How long until Camus?"

"Twelve hours before we hit the System itself."  McCoy shrugged with a glance at the chrono.  "After that, I'd say at least another twelve or sixteen before we get to hit the orbit.  I'm glad you're the main pilot for this; I HATE planetary landings!"

"Well, that's what I used to do before I transferred off Navigator."  Uhura said modestly.  "I hate to say this, but maybe now is a good time to start talking; go over everything we can think of about this whole business."

Christine grimaced.  "Leonard's pretty much the expert."

"As far as that goes."  He rolled his eyes.  "I don't know if I can tell you all that much."

"Well, we don't know a thing about the night Marlena died."  Christine began.

"I tell you, I'm not that much better than you are.  I was off duty and, as earlier commanded, going to answer my appointment with Kirk in his cabin to review the Special Drugs Re-Q's.  When I mean special, I really mean special.  Compounds and active ingredients that are read eyes-only and requisitioned by the Acting Commander AND the CMO.  The guards were expecting me and let me through."

McCoy paused and puffed smoke for a moment.  "At first I thought I'd stepped into a falling out.  Kirk was standing in front of that little table in the front of his room, all stiff as a board and beet red.  Marlena was on the other side of the table, and there was a phaser on her side of the table, very VERY close to her.  Too close for Kirk to try to lunge for it, but you could tell he sure as hell wanted to.  There was a bottle of that orange-lavored liqour Marlena likes--liked--to drink, but I wasn't paying too much attention to that at the time.  Wish now I had.

"If you can imagine how odd it all was--I was frozen in place with my fist still in salute.  They were aware I had entered but neither of them dared move in any way.  And I knew if I moved, they'd catch it out of the corner of their gaze and BOTH of them might go for that phaser.  Marlena was completely white faced.  At first I thought it was simple terror, but my eyes were adjusting to the dim light and I could see it wasn't terror, it was RAGE."

His audience lifted their eyebrows.

"Yeah, rage."  He insisted.  "Then Marlena grabs the bottle and swings it at me.  Its in my face before I know it, and down I go on the floor.  I can hear her screaming something about how she can't trust me anymore than she can trust Him, and then adds with, "I'll kill you, bitch!"

"That," Christine said levelly, "doesn't make sense even when accounting for simple hysteria."

"No kiddin.  Spock must have heard that last part, because the door flies open, and I see a phaser beam on KILL lance out.  I'm not all that together thanks to the bottle against my skull, but the next thing I know, Spock is bending over me, giving me the light-slap to bring me around.  There's an Officer's Dagger sunk in his upper arm all the way to the hilt, and I think the shock of seeing THAT brought me around more than anything else!"

"I'll kill you, bitch?"  Nyota repeated.  Her expression mirrored Christine's.

McCoy only shrugged, helplessly.  "Sorry.  I'm not a mindreader.  And I don't ever want to be."

Nyota summed it up:  "Weird."

Christine sighed.  "We need more information."

"That's what Camus is for."  McCoy said quietly.  "And for better or worse, I think we're going to get it."

**     **     **
The dead must be protected and given a voice."
--motto of Autopsy.com
 

"In revenge and in love a woman is more barbarous than man."
--Nietzsche
**     **     **
 

"Janice Lester."  Christine said in distaste.  "Boy, do I remember her."

Nyota peered over Christine's shoulder, breathing orchids as she studied the screen.  There was something dreadfully unpleasant about the woman who faced back the camera.  Something between a supercillious smirk, and a gleam of defense.

McCoy favored the image one glance and shuddered.  "He sure can pick'em." He muttered.  "Not that I'm one to talk."

"How did you know her?"  Nyota asked.

"The field.  She was jilted for command when it was clear she was psychologically unstable, so she concentrated on xenoarchaeology." Christine was unable to stop from making a face at the woman.  "Took offense at something Roger said once at an astrophysics Convention, and I thought she would take his face off.  Roger was about as offensive as...as a multidophilus culture."

"Um, that's pretty inoffensive."  McCoy chuckled.  "But I think we've established she was a little on the unstable side."

"Did Kirk ever talk about her?"

"Uh, just the usual stuff.  She wanted to be Captain's Woman, and he didn't want her to when she started acting like she owned him."  McCoy fidgeted as he peeled the wrapper off a candy bar.  "Rumor over in Kufe's Office has it she gave him some kind of weapon to make him invincible, and he dumped her right after he got it."

"Kirk's Secret Spy System?"  Christine queried.

"Fairy Tale."  Nyota dismissed the notion.  "I've heard those rumors. Imperial technology just isn't capable of that kind of thing."

"Imperial technology, no, but what about alien technology?"  McCoy poked her.  "Think of the stuff we've run into, and barely survived from!"

"Ohhh."  Nyota blinked.

"Well there must have been some reason for her to want to kill the captain, and from what it sounds like, she spent a long time planning it out."

"She sounded crazy."  McCoy said between the candy bar.  "Crazy to even think she could kill Kirk, and smart enough that she almost pulled it off. Her and Coleman."

"I couldn't find anything on him."  Christine traded a look with Leonard that Nyota couldn't translate.

"Not a good sign."  McCoy said finally.  "Nobody's invisible in the Empire. Did you pop a search worm in the banks?"

Christine tapped a few keys.  "Done.  Maybe we'll find something on him that way."

"All I know, and that's through Kirk's admittedly prejudiced point of view, he was a colorless individual who had dedicated his life to pleasing Lester."

Christine rubbed her tired eyes.  "Well, what say we leave the banks running on these queries while we check out the station itself?"

"Should we lock up?"  Nyota wondered.

After a moment's thought, everyone shook their heads.  Anybody who'd managed to track them to Camus, wouldn't be stopped by a few voice locks.

*     *      *

The Camus II Station was a *mess* in Chapel's opinion.

Her companions nearly burned up their helmetcomms agreeing with her.

"This place is perfectly awful."  Awe tinged Uhura's voice as she played her personal lightbeam over what had been the main room of the Alien-center-turned Imperial Station.  "It's like being inside a...cave."

She had a point.  Wires and broken fragments of conduit and obscure parts hung from the ceiling like roots would in a real cave; over the breathing of their filters they could hear a slow, steady drip of something that was too sluggish and silvery to be water, and a bluish gray mist curled up from gaping cracks in the floor, twisting in miniscule air currents like slow-dancing wraiths.  Temperature gauges said "normal" meant anywhere from -30F to 214F, and right now, it was on the colder end of things.

Behind her, McCoy cleared his throat.  He was looking the other way, where the narrow hallway split into smaller chambers.  "There must have been a hell of a fight in here."  He nodded at a large black mono-lithic "thing" dominating the main room at the furthest corner.  Odd symbols like nothing Uhura had ever seen was cut all over what was left of it.  "Christine, what do you make of that?"

Christine complied, leaning over her personal tricorder.  She had redesigned some of the specs for archaeoresearch.  "I've never seen anything like this."  She murmured.  "No parallels with any of the old Master Races that went on before us..."

"Doesn't that look like a phaser to you?"  McCoy nodded to two large gaps missing in the stone-like material.  Blasted out once on each side, it was hard to imagine what the thing had looked like before the damage.  He stepped closer and examined the readings on his Standard Tricorder (the one hanging off his belt was Medical).

"My God."  He whistled.  "Blaster-disruptor fire.  Radiations's still hot on the register.  Somebody sure as hell wasn't taking any chances!"

"Anything else?"  Uhura had reached the large, L-shaped computer console that was sitting like a lopsided island in the near-center of the Main Room.

"Well, mostly what we already scanned: flurocarbons, sulphur, fluoride, low and high spectrum deposits of pitchblende underneath the foundations...Can't imagine anybody building here without knowing that, so why did they?"  He shook his head, saving the mystery for later.  "Don't nobody breathe if you get a suit breech." He warned.  "You're better off turning a phaser on yourself.  We're going to have to go through full decontamination when we get back to the ship."

"How long do we want to stay out here?"  Chapel wondered.

"McCoy shrugged.  "So I'm suddenly in command?"

Uhura was standing on her toes to look at the top of the console.  "Until we disagree, Leonard."

"Think of it as a democratic republic."  Chapel offered her boss.

"There's nothing democratic about a republic."  McCoy snapped.  "I say we just scout around and get a feel of the place for a few hours.  Or I can do that, map a diagram of the structure if you want to concentrate on something."

"I do."  Uhura grunted as she lifted the main LCD off the top of the console.  "I'm going to check on memory retrieval."

"On that?"  McCoy echoed Chapel's doubts.  "It looks like somebody danced a mazurka on it!"

"You're probably right.  But short of disintegrating the entire console, there's always SOMETHING we can find."  Uhura puffed her breath out.  "It'll just...take a while."

"Need a hand?"  Christine stepped closer.

"That sounds wonderful."

"Ok, I'll leave you to it."  McCoy shrugged.  "I'm going to take the tour. Keep your comms open, and let's all stay in constant touch."

"Be careful, Leonard."  Christine cautioned.

"You too, you two."

McCoy's magnetized boots slowly clicked away, the sound effect replaced by the clock-like drip of slimy mineral concentration from the ceiling onto a forming stalagmite that gleamed violet-green with fluoride mineral.  The women didn't want to admit they suddenly felt unnerved at his departure; humans were pack animals by nature, and it went against the grain that one of their group was separating for any reason in unfamiliar territory.

"Ooof."  Uhura groped and lifted up a shattered ceiling light that had fallen onto the center of the computer bank when a stray disruptor bolt had knocked it down.  "Well, this is going to take a while.  I wasn't lying about that."

"Can I get you anything?"

"Galactic power?  No, seriously, I might need you to run to the CAPIL.  This looks like a job for a lot of photonic crystals."

"All of them?"  Christine was dismayed.  She had hoarded a crate for her own use, and they had to do with her specially-designed archaeological tricorder.

"Well, maaaaaaybe not all of them..."  Uhura bent and gripped something hard and sharp through her sealed gloves.  "But I'll need at least three of the Industrial-sized ones if I'm to rig up a halfway decent photonic data retrieval AND relay.  And I need a tricorder with completely clean memory banks.  Nothing written on it at all, not even erased clean."

"You'll have to build one then."

"Good thing we've got all we need on the CAPIL."  Uhura mimed dusting her hands off.  "This is going to take a while."

"But you think its not impossible?"  Chapel was ready to be impressed.

Uhura winked at her.  "Honey, this is me you're talking to."

Absurd bravado assured Christine more than any calmly stated facts.  She relaxed and suddenly grinned.

*     *      *

Christine probably had the least interesting job of all; she took a lot of pictures of the "monolith"--the only overtly alien artifact they had found (McCoy reported he had seen nothing else on his trails) and generally hung around the console with Uhura.

Uhura was one of those lucky people who lost all track of time once she got something interesting to work on.  Which was exactly what happened. Christine, who was taller and a bit stronger, played stepnfetch for her, slowly working aside a space large enough for that theoretical clean tricorder she would have to build when they got back to the CAPIL.  After clearing the space in the console, she had to CLEAN it.  Much more tedius with less impressive results.  After a few hours had passed, she got used to hanging half-upside down and reaching in drastic angles with a small power-vacuum, but her ribs would be sore later.

Her comm crackled as she siphoned up a glittering mass of broken quartz.

*Hey, how is it with you two?*  McCoy's voice came in strong, but with an eerie effect in the background.

"Just fine, thanks."  Christine answered.  "Where are you?  The connexion's furry."

*S'the radiation.  I'm in the middle of someone's personal rooms.  Arthur Coleman's, by the looks of it.  Man was a messy slob.*

"Redundant grammer, Leonard."

*Thanks, mom.*

Uhura smiled at their quick bickering.

"Anything interesting?"

*Well, Coleman has a nice looking still in his closet...laundry all over the place...some reading material.  Want me to grab 'em?  I'm sure you've read out all the titles on board.*

"Sarcasm, Leonard?  That's sweet of you."  Christine chuckled evilly.

*Well on a less amusing side, I keep finding human remains.  Three were just smears from close-range disruptor fire.  Other seven...well they didn't die of old age."

Uhura shivered.

"Lovely."  Christine said softly.  "How long are you going to be down there?"

*I'm on my way back up.  We need to get back to the ship for some rest.*

"I feel fine."  Uhura protested.

*Lighter gravity, Nyota.  It'll catch up with you in a big way if you're not careful.*  McCoy reminded her gently, without any attitude.  *Besides, its going to take time to put these suits and what we bring back in full decon. And on a personal note, I'm for a bowl of something hot and spicy with crackers floating on top."

Nyota's mouth watered at the thought.  "OK, you've convinced me."

"And me."  Christine said quickly.  "Meet us up here, Leonard."

*     *      *

Fatigue hit all at once as they closed the CAPIL's doors after them. Decontamination felt like eternity.  Chapel nearly fell asleep on her feet and was nudged awake.

Uhura knew they were all equally tired, but McCoy permitted no arguments; the women sank into the chairs around the small table as he pulled dinner out of the galley.

"Venison burgu?"  Christine sounded resigned.

He glared with one eyebrow.  "I have never complained once at your raw bars, Nurse."

"I thought you liked raw seafood."

"I do.  I just wish you'd eat something else once in a while.  You know, experience life a bit before you get too old to enjoy it..."

Uhura crumbled crackers over her bowl and smiled to see the flakes of red-hot pepper in the gravy.  "So who wants to debrief first?"

"You go."  Christine shrugged.

Nyota sipped delicately, smiled, and gave the dish a thumbs up.  "I won't have much to report until I get the relay program installed.  If I'm lucky, I might accomplish that tomorrow."

"Then what?"  McCoy wondered.  He was drinking buttermilk as if it wasn't the most godawful thing in the world.

"Then I start extrapolating data.  Contrary to what most people think, there's always something in tapes and storage bases.  Even if there's a total erase, I can usually find out what nature the data was."  She leaned back and began enjoying her dinner in earnest.  "Luckily for us, Imperial Standard Time runs on the Crab Nebula Neutron:  30 R's per second.  They'd be using that rule, so I'll use that when I'm searching through the dates of the old files."

"Is there a reason why they wouldn't be using IST?"  Christine asked.

"Not if their project was funded by the Empire."  Nyota said emphatically.

"Huh."

"Anyway, my focus is private logs, official logs, anybody sees anything like diaries or journals, do let me know.  And that's all I have to report for now.  Christine?"

The tall woman reached for her coffee and shook her head.  "Archaeoresearch is a difficult subject.  I'm aware I'm the closest thing to an expert at this table, but all I can say is, I recorded visuals of everything that was of obvious alien origin and I'm hoping there were enough glyphs that my machines can get some language."

"I didn't see anything that even remotely looked alien."  McCoy offered. "So I guess its either in the Computer Room, or outside where we can't see for goose."

"In rare cases, alien artifacts are destroyed after extensive records are made of them."  Christine reported glumly.  "It depends on the current governmental definition of "dangerous"."

"Dandy."  McCoy began digging in his stew.  "My turn, huh?  I've got forensics.  Anybody want to trade?"

"God, no."  Christine said firmly.

"So much for liberated women."  McCoy deliberately bit down on a whole cayenne pod and sucked his breath in appreciatively.  Christine, whose idea of zest was to squirt a lemon on fresh quahogs, grimaced.

"OK, I don't have many working bodies; remember the signs of dissolved remains under the fire?  The corrosive atmosphere is making it even harder to analyze what I got.  Far as I can tell, it was a pretty dangerous place. The ones in labor uniforms, I'm assuming they did most of the physical digging and equipment maintenance?"

Chapel nodded.  "Grunts."

"Well, I caught a lot of healed fractions, and half a huundred signs of other traumas."  He paused and frowned to himself.

"What?"  Nyota wondered.

"Nothing...I just had a thought on something I need to track down."  McCoy spoke vaguely, his expression turned inward.  "Christine, are digs often dangerous?"

Christine blanched.  "Good God, Leonard!  Its one of the reasons why the pay is so high...not that its as bad as being a security guard for a powerful and unpopular leader...but its close."

"Hmn."  McCoy grunted.  The faraway look was still there.  "How long before your little computer can come up with some translations?"

Christine sighed.  "I'm not Mr. Spock.  I can't just  rig up one of these things with a toolbox and spare parts and a few breadsticks.  And its been a while since I had to write that kind of program on anything...but hopefully something will come up in time to give us some breakfast conversation at the table."

He gave her a nod and looked sharply when she yawned.  Of course Nyota yawned too.

"That does it.  Both of you gwan and get some sleep.  I'll stay up a while longer and make a basic record of our day."

Christine was about to protest, but the yawn had started something.  She stood up and looked ruefully at the nearly full cup of coffee.  "I guess if this can't keep me awake, its a sign."

"No kidding."  Nyota got to her feet and stretched, digging her hands in her spine.  "Well I'm very ready to stretch out myself.  Bet I beat you up in the morning, sugar."

"Not taking that bet."  Still, Chapel paused.  "You're sure you don't need any help, Leonard?"

He smiled slightly, shaking his head, the humor not quite reaching his eyes. "It's going to be a light night for me."  He explained obscurely.

Christine made a sign of agreement and led the way to the bedroom cabin.

Nyota was feeling a little fuzzy-brained so she wasn't really processing. She stood in the shower and enjoyed the presence of highly filtered water long enough to feel guilty and came out to find Christine shrugging into soft cotton nightclothes.

"Just helping keep warm as long as we keep the heat down to conserve power." Christine explained.

"I'll keep you warm, sugar."  Nyota leered at her.

The taller woman leered right back.  "If we sleep naked, I will NEVER get out of bed in the morning.  Then Leonard will have to come in here and wake us up, and he'll be mortifed."

"No he won't.  He'll say something appropriately sarcastic about how we're finally making use of our time, as opposed to reading books."

"Ummm, you're right."

Nyota slid into a silk burgundy gown and then slid under the covers. Christine's warm arms enveloped her and they both sighed, relaxing and comfortable.  Nyota told the lights to go out and they did, leaving them in a soothing darkness.

"We've got to help him more."  Nyota finally voiced her guilt.  "I hate that he's doing most of the shifts and watches."

Christine was so long in answering, Nyota wondered if she'd said something wrong again.  "Ny, Leonard's an insomniac, its true, and he has a really rotten sleep disorder; that's also true.  But his condition has its compensations.  When he DOES sleep, its as if he's dead.  If you have to wake him up, he'll get up and do what he has to do, lie back down, and resume that trip to lala land.  He gets more out of half an hour than most of us would in six."

"Yeah, but he didn't look very well.  That thing about having a 'light night.'  He was expecting those nightmares to come back, wasn't he?"

"Leonard's got a respectable PSI rating."  Christine said suddenly.  "How would you feel if you had that, and then had to deal with dead bodies for most of the day?"

Nyota shivered.  "That's enough to give me nightmares."

"Better not.  Len's going to have the nightmares for all three of us."

*    *     *

The starfield under atmosphere was clouded; only a pattern of brightness worked its way through the radiation-laden corona.  Tired as he was, he couldn't stop searching with his eyes.

Planetestimals orbited Camus in a broad necklace.  Some of them, he guessed, would soon be opened for prisoner-miners.  It was only a matter of time. The Empire was a government of greed and the waste that went with it.

His mind was thrown back into another night not so long ago, where the sky had been clear and sharp, the stars and orbiting vessels bright as stars. The night Kirk had finally gone too far and proven complacency would only get his victims killed.

Every night when he was alone, he turned the matter of James Tiberius Kirk over in his mind, and Spock, second.  And every night, he only seemed to get more questions, and no answers.

If Christine was right, there was nothing odd about the injuries he had noted and recorded on his meditric.  But somehow...he didn't think so.

Two men turned sadistic and growing violent despite nothing in their psychological profiles, case histories, even gossips that could indicate they were even capable of such a thing.  A woman with a history of mental instability and violence.  A lover willing to kill for his woman.  Dead workers with *many* injuries that might not have been inflicted in the line of duty.  And somehow, it all tied in to Camus II.

He did not like this place.  They were on their second week of the Waiver Leave.  In other words, they had about 40 days of search to go, 20 more to return to Andromachea.  Kirk might find them easily before then.  He'd never been short on guile, intelligence, or brass.  It was nothing to him to defy High Command, and even Kufe-Soma.

Grateful he was alone, the doctor released his breath in a long, slow sigh. Kirk thought he had him under his thumb too afraid to move.  He'd been too busy congratulating himself for discovering Joanna's existence to look really further.  And why would he?  It was common enough for fathers to hide their identities from their children if they had enough enemies.  And enemies, McCoy had in plentitude.  Only a few people knew who Joanna's father was: Phillip Boyce, his own mother, now frail and aging, Kufe-Soma, Kufe's personal security guard (her twin sister), James Kirk, Christine Chapel, and thanks to his confession, now Nyota Uhura.

Joanna Barstone, a young woman graciously accepted into the ranks of the Imperial Codetalkers Society, being trained to be useful in Gods Knew how many ways, secure that despite her unknown lineage, she would make her way strong and solid in the Galaxy.  She was strong and just enough of a blend of her parents that nothing would say she was obviously his.  He knew the foods she liked, and how her temper could fly when she was frustrated.  When she finished with the ICS, she would use her skills to pay her way through nursing school.  She dated infrequently, and knew how to protect herself. She knew twelve languages, and six martial arts.  She just didn't know who her father was, and she probably didn't want to know by now.  Easier to stay away and get himself killed on the other side of the Galactic Rim than to stay close by and watch at arm's length.

Exactly seven people knew who Joanna's father was.

But, and James Kirk was not one of them, only three knew who Joanna's *mother* was.

It gave him a lot of comfort.

To Parts 5-7

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