Sol Invictus (Kirk/McCoy, R), Part 1
Written for space_wrapped for charming prompt #32.
Summary: A powerful being decides to find out what the Enterprise crew is made of by plunging them into darkness, unaware that it suits a lot of them just fine.
Warnings: Brief but explicit sex, bad language, scientific humanism.
(Cross-posted, after a fashion, to my Dreamwidth account.)
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“Three ships lost in three years,” Sulu intones, staring into the darkness of the viewscreen. “And nothing to explain it. No ion storms, no anomalies, and no life forms.”
Bones folds his arms and grunts, not at all reassured. Jim thinks it serves him right for coming onto the Bridge for no reason other than boredom.
But no sooner than he has that thought, he checks it. Everyone manifests frustration differently: Sulu by making portentous statements; Uhura by scanning subspace until she begins to hear messages in the static; Bones by haunting the Bridge needling people; and Jim, apparently, by resenting him for it.
After a few minutes of Bones’s stewing (which Jim registers just fine even though it’s going on in his peripheral vision) Bones snarls, “Worse than the god-damned Bermuda Triangle!”
“What’s the Bermuda Triangle?” Lt. Ka-Des is filling in for Chekov while he takes a well-deserved shift off after filing a byzantine navigation plan.
“An area of the ocean on Earth that used to be known for a huge number of shipwrecks and aircraft disappearances,” Bones says. “No explanation at all.”
“No explanation,” Spock says without looking up from his console, “other than it being an extremely busy shipping lane and subject to sudden, violent weather.”
“Yeah, it’s a god-damned mystery, all right. I hate mysteries.”
“I’m not too crazy about them myself,” Kirk says, catching Uhura’s eye, both of them more entertained than they should be.
Not that Jim blames Spock for his annoyance, either. They’d found the wreck of the light cruiser Connemara four days before, little more than a diffuse cluster of bolts after getting caught in the Olvion system’s asteroid belt. Their current assignment is vague and maddening: find something, anything, before moving onto their next assignment, which just happens to be shore leave. In the meantime, there’s an unspoken but definite consensus that their main tactic for doing so isn’t active scanning, but acting as bait, which Jim believes has the unspoken but definite effect of creeping people out.
“Lt. Ka-Des, let’s take another pass by Olvion Delta, maybe circumnavigate a couple of times, intensify our scanning, and see if we can pick up anything on the surface.”
“Yes, Captain.” She begins to key in the coordinates while Jim contemplates the effect that tossing out his elaborate navigation plan is going to have on Chekov.
At least it makes for a change of scenery. Within minutes the dusty grey surface of the planet appears, spectacularly backlit by the twin Olvion suns. The radiant light sweeps across the Bridge and, even transmitted second-hand by the ship’s external cameras, it seems to lift everyone’s mood. Jim figures it’s worth whatever reproachful looks Chekov will shoot his way.
“Steady as she goes, Ka-Des. Let’s try a high planetary orbit at three times rotational velocity. I’ll tell the science teams to initiate a Level 4 scan.”
“Are you sure you want to do that, Captain? You may not like what you find.” Startled, Jim leans forward to ask what Ka-Des means, only to find that the person in the navigator’s seat isn’t Ka-Des at all.
The newly arrived being is tall and strong-boned with large, dark eyes, and she’s wearing a white, wide-sleeved robe lined in red. She isn’t the first being to materialize on the Bridge, but she’s certainly the first to do so holding half a pomegranate. She plucks a seed and tosses it in the air. Its parabola sends it a good foot away from her, but at the last moment, it makes a physics-defying swerve right into her mouth, and Jim could swear he hears the crunch as she crushes the seed between her teeth.
“Hello, Captain Kirk.” She holds the fruit out to him. “Want one?”
Jim’s already signaled Security from his console. Though he’s keeping his attention fixed on the intruder, Jim can be sure the crew are all reaching slowly for their phasers. The safest thing to do for now is to keep her busy.
“Who are you and what have you done with Lieutenant Ka-Des?”
The being tosses another seed in her mouth and props heavy, knee-high boots up on the console. “She’s in her quarters, and she’s perfectly fine. Listen,” she says, rising and sauntering over to Jim’s chair, “can we get through this part quickly? It’s so boring. You’re going to try to capture me, and you’ll find that your phasers have disappeared--” Kirk grabs for his, and finds that it’s true--”and then you’re going to sic a bunch of security oafs on me, and I’m going to freeze them or hang them upside down or something, and then you’re going to engage in a series of increasingly ludicrous and ineffective ‘plans’ to get rid of me because you just--won’t--accept--that I’m omnipotent.” She bends over Jim and stroke a hand down the side of his face. It feels preternaturally cool and almost textureless.
“Get over this part so we can get on to what?” Over her shoulder, he can see Uhura’s hands flying over her console, alerting Starfleet according to a protocol for maniacal Bridge intruders which--owing to certain incidents--actually exists.
Her hand is runing down his shoulder and over his chest and is beginning to make Jim seriously uncomfortable. He feels his eyebrows lift and her expression changes to one of exasperation.
“Why do humans always think it’s going to be something sexual?”
“Uh, because you’re touching me?”
“Oh, that.” She pulls away, frowning. “I haven’t been corporeal in a long time, that’s all. But don’t flatter yourself; there’s enough of your DNA spread around the galaxy as it is. Human DNA, I mean, not yours in particular, although I have my suspicions.”
Jim is saved from a reply by Security bursting onto the Bridge, The Bridge crew draw their phasers and move to the flank, and Jim provides a distraction by grabbing the intruder’s wrist and twisting her into a hold.
For about 30 seconds it seems to be a textbook execution--at least, until the intruder bursts out laughing, after which there’s a burst of light and Jim and the security team find themselves flat on their backs, completely naked. In a matter of seconds, Jim registers annoyance, embarrassment, and the feeling of the cool, dry Bridge air wafting across places it was never meant to go.
The being offers him a hand and pulls him to his feet. Jim thinks that he could use his hand for something else, but by the time he’s standing upright his uniform is back on and everyone’s looking anywhere but at him. It’s polite but not exactly helpful.
“You’re still going to tell me it’s nothing sexual?”
“Not at all,” she insists. “But it does slow you people down.”
“All right, so you’re capable of doing--that. Who are you and what do you want?”
“Don’t you recognize me?” She tugs at her robe. “I am the goddess Amaterasu!”
“Not in those boots you’re not,” Bones says from behind him, and Jim doesn’t like it when the dark eyes slide in Bones’ direction.
“Oh, fine,” she says, looking a bit offended but not really hostile. “I can’t keep track of all the ridiculous things you believe, and when you believe them. Who am I? I am Q.” Jim winces and blinks as a very clear image of an ornate letter Q appears in his mind.
"What's a Q? Is Olvion Delta your planet?”
"No, but it's not yours, either, and look at the way you were treating it. Typical Federation, blundering around, probing, demanding answers, expecting everyone to bow down to your mighty human authority. You're the one being probed now, Captain,” she says, with a feral smile. “And it’s not going to be the enjoyable kind of probe."
“It’s called exploring. If you have any claim on this system, go ahead and state it. Otherwise we’re within our rights to be here.”
“You see, that’s exactly the problem.” She points vigorously at him, almost jabbing him in the chest. “You’ve invented the technology to go blundering around the universe, but you’re as small-minded, destructive and backward as ever. You think that because you can do something it means you should, or worse, that you were destined to do it. Well, I’m here to tell you that you’ve gone far enough.”
“And what if we don’t accept your authority?” Jim says. “Are you going to destroy us the way you destroyed the Connemara and the other ships?”
“Figured that out, did you?” At least Jim now seems to have her full attention. “I didn’t really destroy them, Captain. They destroyed themselves. Proving my point, you see. And if I do the same to you, and the one that follows after-- maybe those superstitious minds of yours will begin to get the picture.”
“You’re trying to create a legend, aren’t you?” Uhura says, stepping away from her console over Spock’s mute objection. “If you order us to stay away we might not listen, but if there’s some mystique about it--”
“Your infantile brains might actually get the message. I’m so glad there’s someone on this ship who listens. I’d be happy to send you down to that planet, to save you from the same fate as the rest of these idiots if you’d like, dear.” Uhura looks baffled and shakes her head. “No? All right then, let’s get onto the main order of business.”
“About damned time,” Bones says, folding his arms and making Jim wish he’d followed his impulse and ordered him off the Bridge earlier. “For such a powerful being, you sure do talk a lot.”
A second later, Bones disappears.
“He’s rather rude, don’t you think?” she says, all but filing her nails while Jim tries to keep the panic off his face. “And he’s not doing much to help your chances of survival.”
“Where did you send Dr. McCoy? To his quarters?”
“To your quarters, you mean? Yes, I did.” Her smile is hard-edged. “And I’ve made sure he’ll stay there, so we can finally get on with our business.” She raises her hand, and a scroll appears, already unfurled and dangling in front of her eyes. “Although I could blast you into dust right now, that doesn’t fit the whole goddess theme. So instead, I’m going to set you a test. You have one of this planet’s days to solve it. If you don’t--” She makes a poof gesture. “Like your clothes, but with more exploding.”
“And what,” says Spock, “is the nature of this test?”
“Nature? Not exactly, but close enough.” Before her last syllable is spoken, everything goes dark.
It’s more than just lights-out dark; more than dead-of-night-dark. It’s the all-encompassing darkness of space, without even a dusting of stars to provide depth. It’s so sudden and total that for a gasping moment Jim thinks he might actually be out in space, until he realizes that he’s still warm and breathing, and hears a bang followed by an “Ow!”: Sulu’s voice.
“Everybody still here?” Kirk asks. Eight voices answer yes. “What about Q? Are you still here?” No answer. “Well, that was a pretty weak trick after all that buildup. Computer, restore lights to the Bridge.”
“Bridge lighting is currently at 90%.”
“Okay, then--restore power to the Bridge.”
“Power systems are fully operational.”
“Oh, for--just get the lights back on, all right?” Luckily, he knows exactly where to pound on his chair console to call Engineering. “Scotty, are the lights out shipwide?”
“They certainly are down here, sir; I can’t see a millimeter in front of my face. Supervisory systems say everything’s just fine, though.”
“Then I’d say something’s seriously screwed up. Check to make sure we’re not getting the same false report on life support systems.’
“Aye, sir.”
Kirk hits the console again. “This is the Captain speaking. We have been boarded by an alien entity that apparently has a taste for pranks. Engineering is working on getting the lights back on. In the meantime, non-essential personnel are to secure from general quarters.” He shuts down the shipwide comm link. “Computer, reassign all non-sighted personnel to Engineering and Sickbay, and switch every control console shipwide to audio mode. Uhura, send a subspace message to Starfleet reporting our status.” He lets out the breath he’s been holding, not sure of what else he could be--
“Bones.” He comms his quarters and gets no answer. He waits a few long moments, long enough for Bones to stumble to the comm panel, and then says to no one in particular, “I’m going to check on Dr. McCoy. It should only take a few minutes. Sulu, lock us in a nice, safe planetary orbit. When I come back, I want a status report from Engineering and no concussions.”
“Yes, Captain.” Sulu’s voice is suspended in the darkness, tinged with doubt.
He rises with a sense of weird vertigo, arms stretched out in front of him even though he should know his ship well enough to navigate with his eyes closed. This is different, though; his brain, expecting input, imagines grey shapes that float in the air before him.
It’s a short trip from the Bridge to Deck 14, and the only quarters there are officers’ quarters. Jim gropes his way along the wall, hoping the strange being was telling the truth and deposited Bones in Jim’s quarters, closest to the turbolift.
The biometric lock on his door doesn’t work, of course, so he spends frustrating moments arguing with the computer, trying to remember passphrases and the name of his brother’s pet cat while his suddenly very vulnerable mind tries to imagine what he’ll do if Bones is not, in fact, in his quarters.
The door finally slides open and Jim steps inside, feeling the air change.
“Lights.” Fucking force of habit. “Bones?” There’s no answer, but there’s a thumping and a muffled moan from the direction of the bed. A chill goes down Jim’s spine.
“Bones?” He approaches carefully, hands groping toward the bed, but he bangs his shin on it anyway. “Ow.”
Please be all right, please be all right.
His tentative hand finds a boot-clad foot, and when he grips it, the body it’s attached to gives a reflexive jerk. Jim’s hands make it as far as the knees before he knows, for sure, that it’s Bones.
“It’s me,” he says--unnecessarily, but it seems polite in light of the groping that takes him up Bones’ sides and chest to his his face. There he finds the reason Bones didn’t answer: he’s gagged with what feel like a couple of pairs of Jim’s thermal socks, and his arms are tied above his head.
“--ing son of a bitch,” Bones says, spluttering, as Jim removes the socks. Jim moves on to free his wrists, which are tied with something soft, maybe the belt of his robe. “Mouth full of fuzz, and when was the last time you washed them, anyway?” His voice is equal parts testy and shaky. “Jim. Jim.”
“It’s okay,” Jim says, lowering Bones’ arms carefully and rubbing his wrists. “Well, maybe not okay, because the lights are out on the whole ship and I have no idea who that being is or what she wants.”
“Where are we?” Bones shivers a little, and Jim rubs his arms. His voice is hoarse.
“My quarters.”
“Thank God. I had no idea where I was; one second I was on the Bridge and the next I was tied up God knows where, couldn’t see a thing. I thought maybe she blinded me.” Jim doesn’t have to see him to know he’s got that hangdog look on his face, the one he gets when he admits weakness.
“Yeah. It must have been pretty fucking scary.” He reaches out and finds the side of Bones’ neck with no difficulty. His skin is warm, a little more than normal, but Jim can feel his pulse steady under his hand. “Okay. I’m glad you’re still in our dimension or whatever, but we’ve got a bit of a situation.”
“Sure, sure.” Bones gives himself a little shake. “I should get down to Sickbay anyway.”
“Why? Do you have any patients?”
“No.”
“Then what are you going to do down there except bump into things?” He notices that Bones is sitting next to him, thigh touching Jim’s and not getting up, in any case.
“I dunno--nothing, I suppose. But I guess you’re going back to the Bridge?”
“You know, now that you mention it--it’s not like the ship’s going to be going anywhere. Besides, I’d rather not let you out of my-- Fuck it, no, it’s a metaphor. I’m not going to let you out of my sight.”
“If you insist,” Bones says, laboring to sound testy, when he actually sounds relieved. “Let me comm my staff.” While he does that, Jim feels his way toward his desk, banging his knees at least twice in the process.
“Sulu?”
“Go ahead, sir.”
“I’ve found Dr. McCoy, and he’s fine. I’m switching command functions to the console in my quarters, and I think everyone else should do the same. There’ll be less distraction and less chance of tripping over each other. Report to your quarters and join me on secure channel 7.” Jim hates the idea of retreating from the Bridge, his Bridge, but it’s full of sharp edges and delicate displays and big, empty spaces.
“Yes, sir.”
A few minutes later everyone’s on the comm link including Bones, who’s perched on the edge of Jim’s desk, close enough to touch if Jim should happen to need to.
“Well, Captain,” Scotty says, sounding as back-porch casual as he always does in a crisis. “I’ve figured out what’s causing the darkness, and ye’re not going to believe it.”
“I thought the cause of darkness was a lack of light.” There’s an audible groan from someone on the channel, and Jim’s not sure if Bones’ kick to his shin is accidental or intentional. “I’m serious! Isn’t that the problem?
“Well, not exactly, sir. I wouldn’t have believed such a thing, but when we ran standard diagnostics on the warp drive, Lt. Ben-Simon noticed that ionization in the dilithium recrystalization assembly had dropped to zero, even though the dilithium chamber is functioning at 40%, and I don’t have to tell you what that means, Captain.”
Jim’s shrug is lost in the darkness. “Well, why don’t you tell me anyway, just to make sure that we’re on the same page?”
“No Compton effect; no scattering of X-rays. So we ran a simple experiment to see if the same phenomenon was affecting the photoelectric effect, and Captain--it seems that the nitrogen and oxygen in the ship’s atmosphere are absorbing all visible light instead of scattering it.”
“Meaning that the fundamental laws of our universe do not appear to be operating as expected.” Spock’s sepulchral voice seems, to Jim, to be highly appropriate for this pronouncement.
“That’s what the Q being did as a test? Change the laws of the universe?” Sulu sounds affronted. “How are we supposed to change them back? And what’s happening everywhere else?”
“Let’s try to characterize the problem first before we worry about fixing it,” Jim says. “Spock, wrangle the science teams to do that. Scotty, figure out what the implications are for life support and any other critical ship systems. Chekov, where are you right now?”
“I’m in Sulu’s quarters, sir. It was, um, more convenient.”
Jim tries to keep his smile out of his voice. “Right. Use short- and long-range sensors to see if anything’s changed in our environment. Uhura, should we have heard back from Starfleet by now?”
“Yes, sir, more than fifteen minutes ago, based on the location of the nearest beacon.”
“That’s not good. If you can’t raise San Francisco, try the extrasolar stations and, barring that, anything--colonies, New Vulcan, the Klingons, I don’t care. Just find out if anyone’s out there.”
“I’ll do that, captain.”
“Let’s report back in two hours. Kirk out.” He realizes when the link chirps off that he’s had his hand on McCoy’s knee the whole time. It seems to anchor him, to stop him from floating away into the darkness. “How are things in Sickbay?”
“Empty. I sent everyone home except M’Benga and Tedesco. There’s a blind crewmember helping them out, Dr. Kaminski, but she’s a PhD, an astrochemist, so God knows how that’s going to work out if we have to perform surgery.” He pauses, evidently waiting for Jim to say something reassuring, which he can’t. “Our goose is really cooked this time, isn’t it? I mean, we’ve been in some bad situations, but this one feels different.”
“A powerful, unstable being; a change in the fundamental forces of the universe; and the fact that we’re literally stumbling around in the dark? I’ve seen worse.” There’s a pregnant silence. “I have seriously never noticed how many visual metaphors I use on a given day.” He finds Bones’ hand--wrist bone being connected to the arm bone--and gives it a squeeze. “I’m going to see what I can find out about this Q. Why don’t you give some thought to the physical and psychological issues involved in all of this? We’ve got a bunch of crew confined to quarters in the pitch dark.”
He hears Bones shift and there’s a thud as something’s knocked over on his desk, followed by a gruff “Dammit.”
“Sextant? Commissioning plaque? That naughty paperweight from Tellaron Delta?”
“I don’t know, but it was damned heavy. Assuming we can put the laws of the universe to rights, we’re going to be dealing with a bumper crop of contusions.”
Jim lets Bones grope his way back toward the bed so at least they won’t be running into each other, and spends the next hour searching the shipboard archives for any reference to a Q causing trouble with the Federation. He finds none, except for some cryptic grafitti recorded on the outer shell of Farpoint Station.
“An all-powerful being with a penchant for practical jokes. Seems like a waste.” Bones’ voice materializes near his ear, startling him; he has his bone conduction headphones on.
“Oh, I don’t know. I imagine being all-powerful could get pretty boring. Like the gods of old. I guess you have to fuck with the mortals sometimes for variety.”
“You notice how nobody ever messes with the Klingons? It’s because if anybody did, they’d get their asses handed to them.”
“Or because we’re just more annoying.” Bones has his hands on Jim’s shoulders, and Jim leans back a little, hoping Bones will maybe start a neck rub.
“That being is annoying--de-materializing your clothes on your own Bridge, where does she get off?”
“I just hope nobody who got a look was disappointed.”
“On the Bridge? Doubt it. That’s when you tend to be at your, uh, best.”
“Hey now. You know that’s our little secret.” Bones gives a dry chuckle and does, in fact, begin rubbing Jim’s neck. It feels good, and also like Bones needs to touch him, and Jim understands. The darkness creates intimacy; Jim noticed it long ago, on beer-fueled summer evenings at the quarry with his high school friends, talking to Sam after lights-out in their room. He thinks about his ship and wonders what confidences are being exchanged under the thick blanket of night, when not even the stars are visible. “How’s the crew?”
“I’m having the Mess deliver ready-to-eat meals directly to quarters and workstations. I recommended that junior officers in single cabins join their neighbors for at least a few hours, and I advised everyone to use the open comm channels to keep themselves entertained. One of them’s already turning into a music channel; it seems that most musicians can play their instrument in the dark.” Bones pauses a moment. “Was that okay?”
“Okay? That’s amazing. It’s--” It’s another example of Bones’ extreme competence at his job, which makes Jim feel undeservedly and proprietarily proud. It’s also strangely grounding; an alien being changes the laws of the universe and plunges them all into darkness, and their response is to distribute heat-pack lasagna and play each other violin solos. He catches Bones’ hand, which is resting warm on his shoulder. “Thank you. Thank you for taking care of the crew.”
“They’re taking care of themselves, Jim.” Bones squeezes back. “If I have to be stuck in a tin can on the edge of the galaxy with someone, it might as well be these people.”
There’s an alarm chirp, and Jim rises a bit reluctantly, pulling Bones with him, back to the desk. It’s not so different from being seated around a conference table, the way they all have been more times than he can count since their mission began. He can picture them easily: Spock intent, head slightly tilted and hands steepled; Uhura restless, fidgeting with her stylus or coffee mug; Chekov leaning forward on his elbows, all vibrating eagerness; Sulu alert even though his body is relaxed; Scotty full of good humor even when Jim calls meetings early after a late night before. And Bones...he’s always the least readable to Jim, even these days, when Jim’s so much better at parsing the contradictory layers of defense and fear and conviction and courage.
“So,” Jim says, “What have we got?”
“It’s a bit worse than we first thought, Captain,” Scotty says. Adjusted for Scotty’s optimism,this is not good news.
“Give it to me.”
“I tried to contact someone--anyone,” Uhura says. “And there’s nobody out there. No radio waves, no subspace beacons.”
“I thought I’d continue with the planetary scan, just to see if we could come up with anything that would help identify that being.” Sulu gives a throat-clearing cough. “But there’s no planet.”
“It appeared at first, Captain, that the Q being had put us in some sort of impermeable bubble,” Spock says. “But that does not appear to be the case, as space is stretching out in all directions around us, seemingly without limit. Coupled with the curious changes in elemental laws of physics, it is my conclusion that we are now in our own universe.”
Jim judges it’s going to be easiest of he doesn’t give himself time to think about that. “That’s not good.”
“Indeed not. Any being with the power to make a universe is a dangerous being.”
“Yeah, that too.” Jim runs his hands over his face, grateful that they can’t see him. “I guess the first order of business is getting out of it, then. Any suggestions? This isn’t really my area of expertise.”
“Captain,” Spock says, tone so pedagogical that Jim can imagine his hands clasped behind him, “the theoretical constraints of bubble multiverses--”
“Like I said--not my area of expertise.”
“Very well.” Spock gives a dumbing-it-down huff. “It appears certain laws have not been abrogated: the speed of light, the gravitational constant, the laws of thermodynamics.”
“This means that the energy from light must go somewhere,” Chekov says.
A thrill of panic goes through Jim.
“Precisely,” Spock continues. “Using the cloud chamber--”
“Wait, wait. The lights are out, right?” Jim interrupts. “You turned out all the lights, shipwide?”
“Of course, Captain,” Scotty says. “No sense in wasting power.”
“And you know for a fact that every single light is off, shipwide? That there’s no secondary light coming from displays, or battery-powered sources, or bioluminescence, or anything else?”
“I can’t be sure, sir--”
“Well, we damn well better be. You said it, Chekov--the energy has to go somewhere. Just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. I don’t want us accidentally setting anything off. Sulu, inventory every possible source of light on the ship, and then send out teams with photometers to make sure everything’s off.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” Jim lets out the breath he didn’t know he was holding. “You were saying, Spock?”
“I was saying that it is important that we continue to try to characterize the nature of this new universe in which we find ourselves. I recommend that we continue our experiments to discover, among other things, whether light will contribute to instability, as the Captain suggests.”
“You do that. What do you say, Spock--another two hours?”
“I believe that will be sufficient for preliminary investigation, Captain.”
“Good. Don’t anybody blow anything up between now and then, okay? Kirk out.”
Bones is quiet, and Jim realizes there’ll be no such thing as comfortable silences for a while, at least until he gets used to not being able to exchange glances with Bones. Still, there’s something liberating about not having to school his face into some reassuring expression, when he’s sweating slightly and clutching his knees tightly with his hands.
“Blowing up, huh?” Bones says finally. “That something we have to worry about now, too?”
“Nah, not really.” Jim claps whichever of Bones’ limbs is closest to him. “Hey, let’s go for a walk!”
“A walk? To do what--take in the sights?”
“See how everybody’s doing. Maybe help out with the meal delivery, I don’t know.” Jim wants to see his ship, his crew, even if see doesn’t quite describe it.
“The exact opposite of what you’re telling everyone else to do, in other words.”
“Gee whiz, I’m the Captain. Plus, the top-ranking person in the universe, at least until Q comes back.”
“I stand corrected. The possibility of getting blown up isn’t the worst thing about this situation.”
Jim feels lucky that Bones’ sarcasm is quite translatable, even without the facial expressions, though he can imagine them easily enough. Still, Bones puts his hand on Jim’s shoulder and lets Jim lead the way out into the hall and into the turbolift, making Jim feeling like Orpheus even though they’re only going down to Deck 7, where the computer says crewmen Nadif and Dettweiler are distributing rations.
Jim finds it curious how his eyes are adjusting, even though there’s nothing for them to adjust to. He no longer sees grey lights dancing before his eyes, or strange patterns, the rods and cones and effluvia of his own eyes turned into patterns by his active brain. The brain is adaptable, he knows this; even the least adaptable person in the universe gradually releases the grip on Jim’s shoulder and makes his own way, brushing a hand against the walls of the hallway, whose slightly pebbled surface Jim’s never noticed before.
The darkness is far from silent. Jim can hear snatches of music, someone playing a saxophone, even laughter. A few doors are open, and in short order they bump, almost literally, into Nadif and Detweiler, pushing a cart loaded with ration packs.
“What’ll it be, Captain--redbat or pasta?” Nadif hands a couple of packs to the residents of the crew cabin beside them, with the injunction to “pull the tab and wait for the contents to get lukewarm.”
“I’ll wait until you get up to the command ring.”
“I can guarantee all we’ll have left by then is redbat, sir.”
“Captain?” The resident of the cabin sounds surprised and pleased.
“How are you doing, uh, ensign?” He can name more than 400 of his crew by now, and recognize most, but the best he can do now is speculate that the crewmember is female.
“Just fine, sir. I’m saluting, by the way.”
“Just what kind of salute, I wonder?” She chuckles. “Seriously, if you ever wanted to make a rude gesture, now’s your moment. Dr. McCoy is here, too; maybe he gave you a hypo a little too hard once and you’d like to flip him off?”
“I prefer to be circumspect, sir. I think there’s a pretty good chance we’re going to get out of this.”
“Good plan. Enjoy the lasagna.”
Jim and Bones help Nadif deliver meals to another 20 or so cabins and find that morale is pretty damned good, although Jim knows that such resilience is a common response to unusual circumstances, at least while the situation is still novel.
They approach an open door and Jim hears voices--a half dozen or so, all gathered in one small cabin.
“Ka’de, you go next--”
“No, Ortega has to do one, he said mine wasn’t scary. Make me scream, Ortega.”
“Okay, I’ve got this one--It’s not great but it’s better than yours, I promise.”
“Hey, dinner cart is here.” Jim’s voice causes a sudden silence.
“Captain?”
“Yup. Don’t get up. What are you doing, telling stories?” Jim pulls a couple of meals off the cart with one hand and waves the other in the general direction of the voice until he strikes uniform. “Sorry, was that your shoulder?”
“Not exactly, sir.”
“Oh. Well, here you go.” There’s more groping as the meals are passed round, maybe a little more than is strictly necessary, but Jim doesn’t mind.
“We were telling ghost stories, sir,” says a female voice. “It seemed like the thing to do. But we’re kind of running out. I don’t suppose--”
“I’ve got one! Bones, sit down.” Somehow he knows where Bones’ wrist is, and pulls him down beside him. Jim’s back is against something and his knee is against someone, and he keeps holding onto Bones’ hand because he can.
“The best part about this one,” Jim begins, “is that it’s a true story. I spent a couple of summers in Northern Wisconsin with my cousins. They had a place on the shores of Lake Michigan. Hey, is everybody here from Earth?”
“Not me, sir,” says a low, rumbling voice.
“Okay, so Northern Wisconsin is a remote place with a lot of trees, on the shore of a huge lake. It was very popular for sport fishing, and there was some commercial fishing, too. My cousin’s neighbor fished for yellow perch--that’s a kind of edible fish, very tasty--for a living. His wife was a holo programmer and didn’t have much interest in fish or fishing, but she used to see him off every morning and eat dinner with him when he came home every night.” Jim draws a breath, warming to the story.
“When the moon was full, he used to go night fishing, because the fish would go really crazy and he’d catch a ton. This one particular night in late spring was very strange--he almost didn’t go out because it looked like it was going to rain, but every time the clouds covered the moon a strong wind blew them away. The fisherman’s wife, whose name was Elena, said she didn’t like the looks of it, and she knew that storms could come up fast on the Great Lakes, and she asked her husband not to go out, but when he saw the sky clear he couldn’t resist. The lake was beautiful under the full moon; my cousins and I used to go skinny dipping in the summer. Still cold, but totally fun.”
“What is ‘skinny dipping’?” asks the low voice.
“It’s swimming naked.”
“Humans bathe with their clothes on?”
“They do when they’re outside,” Jim continues. “In mixed company, or under the full moon. But that’s not a problem now, is it? You could run down the halls naked and no one would know. Not that I’m recommending that, of course.” The laughter sounds genuine enough that Jim wonders if any of them have tried it.
“So, anyway. The fisherman went out, and his wife went to bed, but she didn’t sleep well. She had strange dreams, and when she woke she saw the full moon streaked with dark, ominous clouds. Eventually she fell into a heavy sleep, exhausted. When morning came she found that she was still alone in the bed, and went to see if her husband was home, but there was no sign of him. She went down to the dock, and all the fishermen remembered seeing him go out, but his boat was gone and no one had seen him come back. Elena was frantic, looked all over town, called the Coast Guard and had them search for him, but her husband had vanished completely.
“Finally, in despair, Elena went home. She found a bucket on the back porch, and thought for a minute that her husband had come home, but she called all through the house, and there was still no sign of him. Finally, she took the lid off the bucket. There was a huge perch inside, swimming around. It gave her a look like--” Jim’ is so engrossed in telling his story that he forgets the point of it is to make a face and startle the person beside him. “Well, a weird face, anyway,” he finishes weakly.
There’s a long moment of silence, followed by female throat-clearing. “Good story, sir.”
“I don’t understand,” says the bass voice. “Did the husband leave the fish as a sign for his wife, or is he the fish?”
“It’s, you know, enigmatic,” Jim says. “Reflect on it for a while. I think you’ll figure it out.” He gives Bones’ knee a pat. “We need to go, but this was a great idea.”
“Thanks for coming by, sir. Is it...is it okay if we don’t all sleep in our own quarters?” Though Jim can’t see them, he knows they’re young; junior officers, assigned to small single rooms.
“Sure,” Jim says. “No problem. Just make sure you’re back in the right bed when the lights come back on.”
There are a few chuckles. “Good night, Captain.”
Their exit isn’t as smooth as he’d like--he comes close to mashing his nose on the door jam--but he feels a sense of accomplishment, one that Bones tries to relieve him of immediately.
“Just how much of that was true?
“I told you about the summers in Wisconsin--my mom’s cousin Arlene, remember?”
“Not that--the fish story.” Jim waits for Bones to pass him, letting him lead the way this time.
“As true as most fish stories. I read it somewhere.” Jim remembers a collection of folk tales in the bookcase in the spare room in Iowa.
“Well, it was awful. Demoralizing. You shouldn’t be telling stories about people going out to do some job and never coming back.”
“But he did come back. He was the fish--at least, I’m pretty sure he was, and oof--hey, keep walking or I’m going to keep running into you.”
“Coming back as a fish does not count. I don’t want to come back as a god-damned fish. And what was the wife supposed to do with the husband-fish? Keep it in a tank? Eat it?”
“Mm, good point. I never thought about that.”
“Ninety percent of the time you don’t think, period.” By now they’ve made their way back to quarters, and Jim navigates to his desk without incident. Bones hovers somewhere in the darkness, annoyed over what Jim isn’t entirely sure.
Part 2 >>
Summary: A powerful being decides to find out what the Enterprise crew is made of by plunging them into darkness, unaware that it suits a lot of them just fine.
Warnings: Brief but explicit sex, bad language, scientific humanism.
(Cross-posted, after a fashion, to my Dreamwidth account.)
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“Three ships lost in three years,” Sulu intones, staring into the darkness of the viewscreen. “And nothing to explain it. No ion storms, no anomalies, and no life forms.”
Bones folds his arms and grunts, not at all reassured. Jim thinks it serves him right for coming onto the Bridge for no reason other than boredom.
But no sooner than he has that thought, he checks it. Everyone manifests frustration differently: Sulu by making portentous statements; Uhura by scanning subspace until she begins to hear messages in the static; Bones by haunting the Bridge needling people; and Jim, apparently, by resenting him for it.
After a few minutes of Bones’s stewing (which Jim registers just fine even though it’s going on in his peripheral vision) Bones snarls, “Worse than the god-damned Bermuda Triangle!”
“What’s the Bermuda Triangle?” Lt. Ka-Des is filling in for Chekov while he takes a well-deserved shift off after filing a byzantine navigation plan.
“An area of the ocean on Earth that used to be known for a huge number of shipwrecks and aircraft disappearances,” Bones says. “No explanation at all.”
“No explanation,” Spock says without looking up from his console, “other than it being an extremely busy shipping lane and subject to sudden, violent weather.”
“Yeah, it’s a god-damned mystery, all right. I hate mysteries.”
“I’m not too crazy about them myself,” Kirk says, catching Uhura’s eye, both of them more entertained than they should be.
Not that Jim blames Spock for his annoyance, either. They’d found the wreck of the light cruiser Connemara four days before, little more than a diffuse cluster of bolts after getting caught in the Olvion system’s asteroid belt. Their current assignment is vague and maddening: find something, anything, before moving onto their next assignment, which just happens to be shore leave. In the meantime, there’s an unspoken but definite consensus that their main tactic for doing so isn’t active scanning, but acting as bait, which Jim believes has the unspoken but definite effect of creeping people out.
“Lt. Ka-Des, let’s take another pass by Olvion Delta, maybe circumnavigate a couple of times, intensify our scanning, and see if we can pick up anything on the surface.”
“Yes, Captain.” She begins to key in the coordinates while Jim contemplates the effect that tossing out his elaborate navigation plan is going to have on Chekov.
At least it makes for a change of scenery. Within minutes the dusty grey surface of the planet appears, spectacularly backlit by the twin Olvion suns. The radiant light sweeps across the Bridge and, even transmitted second-hand by the ship’s external cameras, it seems to lift everyone’s mood. Jim figures it’s worth whatever reproachful looks Chekov will shoot his way.
“Steady as she goes, Ka-Des. Let’s try a high planetary orbit at three times rotational velocity. I’ll tell the science teams to initiate a Level 4 scan.”
“Are you sure you want to do that, Captain? You may not like what you find.” Startled, Jim leans forward to ask what Ka-Des means, only to find that the person in the navigator’s seat isn’t Ka-Des at all.
The newly arrived being is tall and strong-boned with large, dark eyes, and she’s wearing a white, wide-sleeved robe lined in red. She isn’t the first being to materialize on the Bridge, but she’s certainly the first to do so holding half a pomegranate. She plucks a seed and tosses it in the air. Its parabola sends it a good foot away from her, but at the last moment, it makes a physics-defying swerve right into her mouth, and Jim could swear he hears the crunch as she crushes the seed between her teeth.
“Hello, Captain Kirk.” She holds the fruit out to him. “Want one?”
Jim’s already signaled Security from his console. Though he’s keeping his attention fixed on the intruder, Jim can be sure the crew are all reaching slowly for their phasers. The safest thing to do for now is to keep her busy.
“Who are you and what have you done with Lieutenant Ka-Des?”
The being tosses another seed in her mouth and props heavy, knee-high boots up on the console. “She’s in her quarters, and she’s perfectly fine. Listen,” she says, rising and sauntering over to Jim’s chair, “can we get through this part quickly? It’s so boring. You’re going to try to capture me, and you’ll find that your phasers have disappeared--” Kirk grabs for his, and finds that it’s true--”and then you’re going to sic a bunch of security oafs on me, and I’m going to freeze them or hang them upside down or something, and then you’re going to engage in a series of increasingly ludicrous and ineffective ‘plans’ to get rid of me because you just--won’t--accept--that I’m omnipotent.” She bends over Jim and stroke a hand down the side of his face. It feels preternaturally cool and almost textureless.
“Get over this part so we can get on to what?” Over her shoulder, he can see Uhura’s hands flying over her console, alerting Starfleet according to a protocol for maniacal Bridge intruders which--owing to certain incidents--actually exists.
Her hand is runing down his shoulder and over his chest and is beginning to make Jim seriously uncomfortable. He feels his eyebrows lift and her expression changes to one of exasperation.
“Why do humans always think it’s going to be something sexual?”
“Uh, because you’re touching me?”
“Oh, that.” She pulls away, frowning. “I haven’t been corporeal in a long time, that’s all. But don’t flatter yourself; there’s enough of your DNA spread around the galaxy as it is. Human DNA, I mean, not yours in particular, although I have my suspicions.”
Jim is saved from a reply by Security bursting onto the Bridge, The Bridge crew draw their phasers and move to the flank, and Jim provides a distraction by grabbing the intruder’s wrist and twisting her into a hold.
For about 30 seconds it seems to be a textbook execution--at least, until the intruder bursts out laughing, after which there’s a burst of light and Jim and the security team find themselves flat on their backs, completely naked. In a matter of seconds, Jim registers annoyance, embarrassment, and the feeling of the cool, dry Bridge air wafting across places it was never meant to go.
The being offers him a hand and pulls him to his feet. Jim thinks that he could use his hand for something else, but by the time he’s standing upright his uniform is back on and everyone’s looking anywhere but at him. It’s polite but not exactly helpful.
“You’re still going to tell me it’s nothing sexual?”
“Not at all,” she insists. “But it does slow you people down.”
“All right, so you’re capable of doing--that. Who are you and what do you want?”
“Don’t you recognize me?” She tugs at her robe. “I am the goddess Amaterasu!”
“Not in those boots you’re not,” Bones says from behind him, and Jim doesn’t like it when the dark eyes slide in Bones’ direction.
“Oh, fine,” she says, looking a bit offended but not really hostile. “I can’t keep track of all the ridiculous things you believe, and when you believe them. Who am I? I am Q.” Jim winces and blinks as a very clear image of an ornate letter Q appears in his mind.
"What's a Q? Is Olvion Delta your planet?”
"No, but it's not yours, either, and look at the way you were treating it. Typical Federation, blundering around, probing, demanding answers, expecting everyone to bow down to your mighty human authority. You're the one being probed now, Captain,” she says, with a feral smile. “And it’s not going to be the enjoyable kind of probe."
“It’s called exploring. If you have any claim on this system, go ahead and state it. Otherwise we’re within our rights to be here.”
“You see, that’s exactly the problem.” She points vigorously at him, almost jabbing him in the chest. “You’ve invented the technology to go blundering around the universe, but you’re as small-minded, destructive and backward as ever. You think that because you can do something it means you should, or worse, that you were destined to do it. Well, I’m here to tell you that you’ve gone far enough.”
“And what if we don’t accept your authority?” Jim says. “Are you going to destroy us the way you destroyed the Connemara and the other ships?”
“Figured that out, did you?” At least Jim now seems to have her full attention. “I didn’t really destroy them, Captain. They destroyed themselves. Proving my point, you see. And if I do the same to you, and the one that follows after-- maybe those superstitious minds of yours will begin to get the picture.”
“You’re trying to create a legend, aren’t you?” Uhura says, stepping away from her console over Spock’s mute objection. “If you order us to stay away we might not listen, but if there’s some mystique about it--”
“Your infantile brains might actually get the message. I’m so glad there’s someone on this ship who listens. I’d be happy to send you down to that planet, to save you from the same fate as the rest of these idiots if you’d like, dear.” Uhura looks baffled and shakes her head. “No? All right then, let’s get onto the main order of business.”
“About damned time,” Bones says, folding his arms and making Jim wish he’d followed his impulse and ordered him off the Bridge earlier. “For such a powerful being, you sure do talk a lot.”
A second later, Bones disappears.
“He’s rather rude, don’t you think?” she says, all but filing her nails while Jim tries to keep the panic off his face. “And he’s not doing much to help your chances of survival.”
“Where did you send Dr. McCoy? To his quarters?”
“To your quarters, you mean? Yes, I did.” Her smile is hard-edged. “And I’ve made sure he’ll stay there, so we can finally get on with our business.” She raises her hand, and a scroll appears, already unfurled and dangling in front of her eyes. “Although I could blast you into dust right now, that doesn’t fit the whole goddess theme. So instead, I’m going to set you a test. You have one of this planet’s days to solve it. If you don’t--” She makes a poof gesture. “Like your clothes, but with more exploding.”
“And what,” says Spock, “is the nature of this test?”
“Nature? Not exactly, but close enough.” Before her last syllable is spoken, everything goes dark.
It’s more than just lights-out dark; more than dead-of-night-dark. It’s the all-encompassing darkness of space, without even a dusting of stars to provide depth. It’s so sudden and total that for a gasping moment Jim thinks he might actually be out in space, until he realizes that he’s still warm and breathing, and hears a bang followed by an “Ow!”: Sulu’s voice.
“Everybody still here?” Kirk asks. Eight voices answer yes. “What about Q? Are you still here?” No answer. “Well, that was a pretty weak trick after all that buildup. Computer, restore lights to the Bridge.”
“Bridge lighting is currently at 90%.”
“Okay, then--restore power to the Bridge.”
“Power systems are fully operational.”
“Oh, for--just get the lights back on, all right?” Luckily, he knows exactly where to pound on his chair console to call Engineering. “Scotty, are the lights out shipwide?”
“They certainly are down here, sir; I can’t see a millimeter in front of my face. Supervisory systems say everything’s just fine, though.”
“Then I’d say something’s seriously screwed up. Check to make sure we’re not getting the same false report on life support systems.’
“Aye, sir.”
Kirk hits the console again. “This is the Captain speaking. We have been boarded by an alien entity that apparently has a taste for pranks. Engineering is working on getting the lights back on. In the meantime, non-essential personnel are to secure from general quarters.” He shuts down the shipwide comm link. “Computer, reassign all non-sighted personnel to Engineering and Sickbay, and switch every control console shipwide to audio mode. Uhura, send a subspace message to Starfleet reporting our status.” He lets out the breath he’s been holding, not sure of what else he could be--
“Bones.” He comms his quarters and gets no answer. He waits a few long moments, long enough for Bones to stumble to the comm panel, and then says to no one in particular, “I’m going to check on Dr. McCoy. It should only take a few minutes. Sulu, lock us in a nice, safe planetary orbit. When I come back, I want a status report from Engineering and no concussions.”
“Yes, Captain.” Sulu’s voice is suspended in the darkness, tinged with doubt.
He rises with a sense of weird vertigo, arms stretched out in front of him even though he should know his ship well enough to navigate with his eyes closed. This is different, though; his brain, expecting input, imagines grey shapes that float in the air before him.
It’s a short trip from the Bridge to Deck 14, and the only quarters there are officers’ quarters. Jim gropes his way along the wall, hoping the strange being was telling the truth and deposited Bones in Jim’s quarters, closest to the turbolift.
The biometric lock on his door doesn’t work, of course, so he spends frustrating moments arguing with the computer, trying to remember passphrases and the name of his brother’s pet cat while his suddenly very vulnerable mind tries to imagine what he’ll do if Bones is not, in fact, in his quarters.
The door finally slides open and Jim steps inside, feeling the air change.
“Lights.” Fucking force of habit. “Bones?” There’s no answer, but there’s a thumping and a muffled moan from the direction of the bed. A chill goes down Jim’s spine.
“Bones?” He approaches carefully, hands groping toward the bed, but he bangs his shin on it anyway. “Ow.”
Please be all right, please be all right.
His tentative hand finds a boot-clad foot, and when he grips it, the body it’s attached to gives a reflexive jerk. Jim’s hands make it as far as the knees before he knows, for sure, that it’s Bones.
“It’s me,” he says--unnecessarily, but it seems polite in light of the groping that takes him up Bones’ sides and chest to his his face. There he finds the reason Bones didn’t answer: he’s gagged with what feel like a couple of pairs of Jim’s thermal socks, and his arms are tied above his head.
“--ing son of a bitch,” Bones says, spluttering, as Jim removes the socks. Jim moves on to free his wrists, which are tied with something soft, maybe the belt of his robe. “Mouth full of fuzz, and when was the last time you washed them, anyway?” His voice is equal parts testy and shaky. “Jim. Jim.”
“It’s okay,” Jim says, lowering Bones’ arms carefully and rubbing his wrists. “Well, maybe not okay, because the lights are out on the whole ship and I have no idea who that being is or what she wants.”
“Where are we?” Bones shivers a little, and Jim rubs his arms. His voice is hoarse.
“My quarters.”
“Thank God. I had no idea where I was; one second I was on the Bridge and the next I was tied up God knows where, couldn’t see a thing. I thought maybe she blinded me.” Jim doesn’t have to see him to know he’s got that hangdog look on his face, the one he gets when he admits weakness.
“Yeah. It must have been pretty fucking scary.” He reaches out and finds the side of Bones’ neck with no difficulty. His skin is warm, a little more than normal, but Jim can feel his pulse steady under his hand. “Okay. I’m glad you’re still in our dimension or whatever, but we’ve got a bit of a situation.”
“Sure, sure.” Bones gives himself a little shake. “I should get down to Sickbay anyway.”
“Why? Do you have any patients?”
“No.”
“Then what are you going to do down there except bump into things?” He notices that Bones is sitting next to him, thigh touching Jim’s and not getting up, in any case.
“I dunno--nothing, I suppose. But I guess you’re going back to the Bridge?”
“You know, now that you mention it--it’s not like the ship’s going to be going anywhere. Besides, I’d rather not let you out of my-- Fuck it, no, it’s a metaphor. I’m not going to let you out of my sight.”
“If you insist,” Bones says, laboring to sound testy, when he actually sounds relieved. “Let me comm my staff.” While he does that, Jim feels his way toward his desk, banging his knees at least twice in the process.
“Sulu?”
“Go ahead, sir.”
“I’ve found Dr. McCoy, and he’s fine. I’m switching command functions to the console in my quarters, and I think everyone else should do the same. There’ll be less distraction and less chance of tripping over each other. Report to your quarters and join me on secure channel 7.” Jim hates the idea of retreating from the Bridge, his Bridge, but it’s full of sharp edges and delicate displays and big, empty spaces.
“Yes, sir.”
A few minutes later everyone’s on the comm link including Bones, who’s perched on the edge of Jim’s desk, close enough to touch if Jim should happen to need to.
“Well, Captain,” Scotty says, sounding as back-porch casual as he always does in a crisis. “I’ve figured out what’s causing the darkness, and ye’re not going to believe it.”
“I thought the cause of darkness was a lack of light.” There’s an audible groan from someone on the channel, and Jim’s not sure if Bones’ kick to his shin is accidental or intentional. “I’m serious! Isn’t that the problem?
“Well, not exactly, sir. I wouldn’t have believed such a thing, but when we ran standard diagnostics on the warp drive, Lt. Ben-Simon noticed that ionization in the dilithium recrystalization assembly had dropped to zero, even though the dilithium chamber is functioning at 40%, and I don’t have to tell you what that means, Captain.”
Jim’s shrug is lost in the darkness. “Well, why don’t you tell me anyway, just to make sure that we’re on the same page?”
“No Compton effect; no scattering of X-rays. So we ran a simple experiment to see if the same phenomenon was affecting the photoelectric effect, and Captain--it seems that the nitrogen and oxygen in the ship’s atmosphere are absorbing all visible light instead of scattering it.”
“Meaning that the fundamental laws of our universe do not appear to be operating as expected.” Spock’s sepulchral voice seems, to Jim, to be highly appropriate for this pronouncement.
“That’s what the Q being did as a test? Change the laws of the universe?” Sulu sounds affronted. “How are we supposed to change them back? And what’s happening everywhere else?”
“Let’s try to characterize the problem first before we worry about fixing it,” Jim says. “Spock, wrangle the science teams to do that. Scotty, figure out what the implications are for life support and any other critical ship systems. Chekov, where are you right now?”
“I’m in Sulu’s quarters, sir. It was, um, more convenient.”
Jim tries to keep his smile out of his voice. “Right. Use short- and long-range sensors to see if anything’s changed in our environment. Uhura, should we have heard back from Starfleet by now?”
“Yes, sir, more than fifteen minutes ago, based on the location of the nearest beacon.”
“That’s not good. If you can’t raise San Francisco, try the extrasolar stations and, barring that, anything--colonies, New Vulcan, the Klingons, I don’t care. Just find out if anyone’s out there.”
“I’ll do that, captain.”
“Let’s report back in two hours. Kirk out.” He realizes when the link chirps off that he’s had his hand on McCoy’s knee the whole time. It seems to anchor him, to stop him from floating away into the darkness. “How are things in Sickbay?”
“Empty. I sent everyone home except M’Benga and Tedesco. There’s a blind crewmember helping them out, Dr. Kaminski, but she’s a PhD, an astrochemist, so God knows how that’s going to work out if we have to perform surgery.” He pauses, evidently waiting for Jim to say something reassuring, which he can’t. “Our goose is really cooked this time, isn’t it? I mean, we’ve been in some bad situations, but this one feels different.”
“A powerful, unstable being; a change in the fundamental forces of the universe; and the fact that we’re literally stumbling around in the dark? I’ve seen worse.” There’s a pregnant silence. “I have seriously never noticed how many visual metaphors I use on a given day.” He finds Bones’ hand--wrist bone being connected to the arm bone--and gives it a squeeze. “I’m going to see what I can find out about this Q. Why don’t you give some thought to the physical and psychological issues involved in all of this? We’ve got a bunch of crew confined to quarters in the pitch dark.”
He hears Bones shift and there’s a thud as something’s knocked over on his desk, followed by a gruff “Dammit.”
“Sextant? Commissioning plaque? That naughty paperweight from Tellaron Delta?”
“I don’t know, but it was damned heavy. Assuming we can put the laws of the universe to rights, we’re going to be dealing with a bumper crop of contusions.”
Jim lets Bones grope his way back toward the bed so at least they won’t be running into each other, and spends the next hour searching the shipboard archives for any reference to a Q causing trouble with the Federation. He finds none, except for some cryptic grafitti recorded on the outer shell of Farpoint Station.
“An all-powerful being with a penchant for practical jokes. Seems like a waste.” Bones’ voice materializes near his ear, startling him; he has his bone conduction headphones on.
“Oh, I don’t know. I imagine being all-powerful could get pretty boring. Like the gods of old. I guess you have to fuck with the mortals sometimes for variety.”
“You notice how nobody ever messes with the Klingons? It’s because if anybody did, they’d get their asses handed to them.”
“Or because we’re just more annoying.” Bones has his hands on Jim’s shoulders, and Jim leans back a little, hoping Bones will maybe start a neck rub.
“That being is annoying--de-materializing your clothes on your own Bridge, where does she get off?”
“I just hope nobody who got a look was disappointed.”
“On the Bridge? Doubt it. That’s when you tend to be at your, uh, best.”
“Hey now. You know that’s our little secret.” Bones gives a dry chuckle and does, in fact, begin rubbing Jim’s neck. It feels good, and also like Bones needs to touch him, and Jim understands. The darkness creates intimacy; Jim noticed it long ago, on beer-fueled summer evenings at the quarry with his high school friends, talking to Sam after lights-out in their room. He thinks about his ship and wonders what confidences are being exchanged under the thick blanket of night, when not even the stars are visible. “How’s the crew?”
“I’m having the Mess deliver ready-to-eat meals directly to quarters and workstations. I recommended that junior officers in single cabins join their neighbors for at least a few hours, and I advised everyone to use the open comm channels to keep themselves entertained. One of them’s already turning into a music channel; it seems that most musicians can play their instrument in the dark.” Bones pauses a moment. “Was that okay?”
“Okay? That’s amazing. It’s--” It’s another example of Bones’ extreme competence at his job, which makes Jim feel undeservedly and proprietarily proud. It’s also strangely grounding; an alien being changes the laws of the universe and plunges them all into darkness, and their response is to distribute heat-pack lasagna and play each other violin solos. He catches Bones’ hand, which is resting warm on his shoulder. “Thank you. Thank you for taking care of the crew.”
“They’re taking care of themselves, Jim.” Bones squeezes back. “If I have to be stuck in a tin can on the edge of the galaxy with someone, it might as well be these people.”
There’s an alarm chirp, and Jim rises a bit reluctantly, pulling Bones with him, back to the desk. It’s not so different from being seated around a conference table, the way they all have been more times than he can count since their mission began. He can picture them easily: Spock intent, head slightly tilted and hands steepled; Uhura restless, fidgeting with her stylus or coffee mug; Chekov leaning forward on his elbows, all vibrating eagerness; Sulu alert even though his body is relaxed; Scotty full of good humor even when Jim calls meetings early after a late night before. And Bones...he’s always the least readable to Jim, even these days, when Jim’s so much better at parsing the contradictory layers of defense and fear and conviction and courage.
“So,” Jim says, “What have we got?”
“It’s a bit worse than we first thought, Captain,” Scotty says. Adjusted for Scotty’s optimism,this is not good news.
“Give it to me.”
“I tried to contact someone--anyone,” Uhura says. “And there’s nobody out there. No radio waves, no subspace beacons.”
“I thought I’d continue with the planetary scan, just to see if we could come up with anything that would help identify that being.” Sulu gives a throat-clearing cough. “But there’s no planet.”
“It appeared at first, Captain, that the Q being had put us in some sort of impermeable bubble,” Spock says. “But that does not appear to be the case, as space is stretching out in all directions around us, seemingly without limit. Coupled with the curious changes in elemental laws of physics, it is my conclusion that we are now in our own universe.”
Jim judges it’s going to be easiest of he doesn’t give himself time to think about that. “That’s not good.”
“Indeed not. Any being with the power to make a universe is a dangerous being.”
“Yeah, that too.” Jim runs his hands over his face, grateful that they can’t see him. “I guess the first order of business is getting out of it, then. Any suggestions? This isn’t really my area of expertise.”
“Captain,” Spock says, tone so pedagogical that Jim can imagine his hands clasped behind him, “the theoretical constraints of bubble multiverses--”
“Like I said--not my area of expertise.”
“Very well.” Spock gives a dumbing-it-down huff. “It appears certain laws have not been abrogated: the speed of light, the gravitational constant, the laws of thermodynamics.”
“This means that the energy from light must go somewhere,” Chekov says.
A thrill of panic goes through Jim.
“Precisely,” Spock continues. “Using the cloud chamber--”
“Wait, wait. The lights are out, right?” Jim interrupts. “You turned out all the lights, shipwide?”
“Of course, Captain,” Scotty says. “No sense in wasting power.”
“And you know for a fact that every single light is off, shipwide? That there’s no secondary light coming from displays, or battery-powered sources, or bioluminescence, or anything else?”
“I can’t be sure, sir--”
“Well, we damn well better be. You said it, Chekov--the energy has to go somewhere. Just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. I don’t want us accidentally setting anything off. Sulu, inventory every possible source of light on the ship, and then send out teams with photometers to make sure everything’s off.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” Jim lets out the breath he didn’t know he was holding. “You were saying, Spock?”
“I was saying that it is important that we continue to try to characterize the nature of this new universe in which we find ourselves. I recommend that we continue our experiments to discover, among other things, whether light will contribute to instability, as the Captain suggests.”
“You do that. What do you say, Spock--another two hours?”
“I believe that will be sufficient for preliminary investigation, Captain.”
“Good. Don’t anybody blow anything up between now and then, okay? Kirk out.”
Bones is quiet, and Jim realizes there’ll be no such thing as comfortable silences for a while, at least until he gets used to not being able to exchange glances with Bones. Still, there’s something liberating about not having to school his face into some reassuring expression, when he’s sweating slightly and clutching his knees tightly with his hands.
“Blowing up, huh?” Bones says finally. “That something we have to worry about now, too?”
“Nah, not really.” Jim claps whichever of Bones’ limbs is closest to him. “Hey, let’s go for a walk!”
“A walk? To do what--take in the sights?”
“See how everybody’s doing. Maybe help out with the meal delivery, I don’t know.” Jim wants to see his ship, his crew, even if see doesn’t quite describe it.
“The exact opposite of what you’re telling everyone else to do, in other words.”
“Gee whiz, I’m the Captain. Plus, the top-ranking person in the universe, at least until Q comes back.”
“I stand corrected. The possibility of getting blown up isn’t the worst thing about this situation.”
Jim feels lucky that Bones’ sarcasm is quite translatable, even without the facial expressions, though he can imagine them easily enough. Still, Bones puts his hand on Jim’s shoulder and lets Jim lead the way out into the hall and into the turbolift, making Jim feeling like Orpheus even though they’re only going down to Deck 7, where the computer says crewmen Nadif and Dettweiler are distributing rations.
Jim finds it curious how his eyes are adjusting, even though there’s nothing for them to adjust to. He no longer sees grey lights dancing before his eyes, or strange patterns, the rods and cones and effluvia of his own eyes turned into patterns by his active brain. The brain is adaptable, he knows this; even the least adaptable person in the universe gradually releases the grip on Jim’s shoulder and makes his own way, brushing a hand against the walls of the hallway, whose slightly pebbled surface Jim’s never noticed before.
The darkness is far from silent. Jim can hear snatches of music, someone playing a saxophone, even laughter. A few doors are open, and in short order they bump, almost literally, into Nadif and Detweiler, pushing a cart loaded with ration packs.
“What’ll it be, Captain--redbat or pasta?” Nadif hands a couple of packs to the residents of the crew cabin beside them, with the injunction to “pull the tab and wait for the contents to get lukewarm.”
“I’ll wait until you get up to the command ring.”
“I can guarantee all we’ll have left by then is redbat, sir.”
“Captain?” The resident of the cabin sounds surprised and pleased.
“How are you doing, uh, ensign?” He can name more than 400 of his crew by now, and recognize most, but the best he can do now is speculate that the crewmember is female.
“Just fine, sir. I’m saluting, by the way.”
“Just what kind of salute, I wonder?” She chuckles. “Seriously, if you ever wanted to make a rude gesture, now’s your moment. Dr. McCoy is here, too; maybe he gave you a hypo a little too hard once and you’d like to flip him off?”
“I prefer to be circumspect, sir. I think there’s a pretty good chance we’re going to get out of this.”
“Good plan. Enjoy the lasagna.”
Jim and Bones help Nadif deliver meals to another 20 or so cabins and find that morale is pretty damned good, although Jim knows that such resilience is a common response to unusual circumstances, at least while the situation is still novel.
They approach an open door and Jim hears voices--a half dozen or so, all gathered in one small cabin.
“Ka’de, you go next--”
“No, Ortega has to do one, he said mine wasn’t scary. Make me scream, Ortega.”
“Okay, I’ve got this one--It’s not great but it’s better than yours, I promise.”
“Hey, dinner cart is here.” Jim’s voice causes a sudden silence.
“Captain?”
“Yup. Don’t get up. What are you doing, telling stories?” Jim pulls a couple of meals off the cart with one hand and waves the other in the general direction of the voice until he strikes uniform. “Sorry, was that your shoulder?”
“Not exactly, sir.”
“Oh. Well, here you go.” There’s more groping as the meals are passed round, maybe a little more than is strictly necessary, but Jim doesn’t mind.
“We were telling ghost stories, sir,” says a female voice. “It seemed like the thing to do. But we’re kind of running out. I don’t suppose--”
“I’ve got one! Bones, sit down.” Somehow he knows where Bones’ wrist is, and pulls him down beside him. Jim’s back is against something and his knee is against someone, and he keeps holding onto Bones’ hand because he can.
“The best part about this one,” Jim begins, “is that it’s a true story. I spent a couple of summers in Northern Wisconsin with my cousins. They had a place on the shores of Lake Michigan. Hey, is everybody here from Earth?”
“Not me, sir,” says a low, rumbling voice.
“Okay, so Northern Wisconsin is a remote place with a lot of trees, on the shore of a huge lake. It was very popular for sport fishing, and there was some commercial fishing, too. My cousin’s neighbor fished for yellow perch--that’s a kind of edible fish, very tasty--for a living. His wife was a holo programmer and didn’t have much interest in fish or fishing, but she used to see him off every morning and eat dinner with him when he came home every night.” Jim draws a breath, warming to the story.
“When the moon was full, he used to go night fishing, because the fish would go really crazy and he’d catch a ton. This one particular night in late spring was very strange--he almost didn’t go out because it looked like it was going to rain, but every time the clouds covered the moon a strong wind blew them away. The fisherman’s wife, whose name was Elena, said she didn’t like the looks of it, and she knew that storms could come up fast on the Great Lakes, and she asked her husband not to go out, but when he saw the sky clear he couldn’t resist. The lake was beautiful under the full moon; my cousins and I used to go skinny dipping in the summer. Still cold, but totally fun.”
“What is ‘skinny dipping’?” asks the low voice.
“It’s swimming naked.”
“Humans bathe with their clothes on?”
“They do when they’re outside,” Jim continues. “In mixed company, or under the full moon. But that’s not a problem now, is it? You could run down the halls naked and no one would know. Not that I’m recommending that, of course.” The laughter sounds genuine enough that Jim wonders if any of them have tried it.
“So, anyway. The fisherman went out, and his wife went to bed, but she didn’t sleep well. She had strange dreams, and when she woke she saw the full moon streaked with dark, ominous clouds. Eventually she fell into a heavy sleep, exhausted. When morning came she found that she was still alone in the bed, and went to see if her husband was home, but there was no sign of him. She went down to the dock, and all the fishermen remembered seeing him go out, but his boat was gone and no one had seen him come back. Elena was frantic, looked all over town, called the Coast Guard and had them search for him, but her husband had vanished completely.
“Finally, in despair, Elena went home. She found a bucket on the back porch, and thought for a minute that her husband had come home, but she called all through the house, and there was still no sign of him. Finally, she took the lid off the bucket. There was a huge perch inside, swimming around. It gave her a look like--” Jim’ is so engrossed in telling his story that he forgets the point of it is to make a face and startle the person beside him. “Well, a weird face, anyway,” he finishes weakly.
There’s a long moment of silence, followed by female throat-clearing. “Good story, sir.”
“I don’t understand,” says the bass voice. “Did the husband leave the fish as a sign for his wife, or is he the fish?”
“It’s, you know, enigmatic,” Jim says. “Reflect on it for a while. I think you’ll figure it out.” He gives Bones’ knee a pat. “We need to go, but this was a great idea.”
“Thanks for coming by, sir. Is it...is it okay if we don’t all sleep in our own quarters?” Though Jim can’t see them, he knows they’re young; junior officers, assigned to small single rooms.
“Sure,” Jim says. “No problem. Just make sure you’re back in the right bed when the lights come back on.”
There are a few chuckles. “Good night, Captain.”
Their exit isn’t as smooth as he’d like--he comes close to mashing his nose on the door jam--but he feels a sense of accomplishment, one that Bones tries to relieve him of immediately.
“Just how much of that was true?
“I told you about the summers in Wisconsin--my mom’s cousin Arlene, remember?”
“Not that--the fish story.” Jim waits for Bones to pass him, letting him lead the way this time.
“As true as most fish stories. I read it somewhere.” Jim remembers a collection of folk tales in the bookcase in the spare room in Iowa.
“Well, it was awful. Demoralizing. You shouldn’t be telling stories about people going out to do some job and never coming back.”
“But he did come back. He was the fish--at least, I’m pretty sure he was, and oof--hey, keep walking or I’m going to keep running into you.”
“Coming back as a fish does not count. I don’t want to come back as a god-damned fish. And what was the wife supposed to do with the husband-fish? Keep it in a tank? Eat it?”
“Mm, good point. I never thought about that.”
“Ninety percent of the time you don’t think, period.” By now they’ve made their way back to quarters, and Jim navigates to his desk without incident. Bones hovers somewhere in the darkness, annoyed over what Jim isn’t entirely sure.
Part 2 >>