fic: The Epic Stars
Title: The Epic Stars
Author: Sapphyra
Rating: PG-13
Status: Complete
Summary: When Bones and Uhura are taken captive by Klingons, Kirk and Spock team up to lead the Enterprise in a rescue mission to save their friends. The journey brings the two of them closer than they had ever imagined. Kirk/Spock slash, 2009 movie-verse
There is the stuff for an epic poem -
This magnificent raid at the heart of darkness, this lost battle -
We don't know enough, we'll never know.
Oh happy Homer, taking the stars and the Gods for granted.
- from The Epic Stars by Robinson Jeffers
Captain James Tiberius Kirk had been the leader of the USS Enterprise, the best and most prestigious ship in all of Starfleet, for the past eight months. During his first few hours as captain of the vessel, Kirk had destroyed a Romulan ship and its crew who had wiped out billions of lives and planned on eliminating even more. In the process Kirk saved the entire Earth - and made friends with an icily proper half-Vulcan, a friendship which he considered at least as large an achievement as all the rest put together. Right now, however, Kirk was burying his woes in a sodden, sticky bar in Iowa, and wasn't interested in seeing said friend, or anyone else, until he had gotten too stinking drunk to remember his own name.
Spock showed up anyway.
The smooth black hair atop his head glistened in the bar's fuzzy neon light as Spock stood still in the doorway, his eyes darting around until they found Kirk where he sat, slumped in a dingy corner table and nursing a mostly empty bottle. The pointy-eared alien smoothly navigated through tables and noisy patrons until he reached Kirk's table and sat, with perfect posture, in the chair in front of him.
Kirk sighed. "Hello, Mr. Spock. What are you doing here?"
"I came to tell you that there is no other action you could have taken that would not have resulted in the loss of the entire crew. Your logic was sound. It is pointless to regret your choices now."
Trust a Vulcan to get right to the point. "How did you find me?"
"I had some assistance from Mr. Scott."
"Damn it, Scotty," Kirk muttered. "Should've known he'd have a big mouth."
"How you were located is beside the point, Captain. I am sorry for the loss of Dr. McCoy and Lieutenant Uhura, but the rest of your crew needs you now. Drowning your woes with the use of alcohol aids no one."
"Sure helps me," Kirk retorted. "And they don't need a captain who sends his crewmates out to die."
"The condition of our crewmates is still unknown. There was also every indication that their mission would not be hostile; otherwise the ship's doctor would never have gone out unsupported. Captain, you could not have known," Spock replied gently.
"Bones is my friend! I should have gone after him myself! I'm just a damned selfish coward of a bastard." Kirk dropped his head atop the arm he had stretched across the table and scrubbed his hair - which had grown slightly too long - with his free hand. Grease slicked the tips of his fingers.
"That is untrue. Your parents were wed at the time of your birth. The rest, however, I will not dispute," Spock replied. One corner of his upper lip lifted slightly in what might have passed for a smile, had anyone been looking at the time.
Kirk snorted into his shirtsleeve. "Was that a joke? I guess you really are part human if you can even joke around at inappropriate times."
"My timing is not inappropriate. I sense you are in need of reassurance, which humans often derive from levity."
"You really are a kick in the teeth, Commander," Kirk muttered. He rolled his head to the left until one bleary blue eye peered up at the other's pale, solemn face. "What about Uhura? You should be even more torn up than me. They're both out there suffering, maybe dead, because of what I did and you're chasing after me to comfort me? You should hate me."
"While hate is one of the emotions I have felt most strongly, I could never apply such a feeling to you, Captain." Spock glanced down at the table and inhaled slowly and deeply before meeting Kirk's eyes. "And while I am greatly concerned for the welfare of both Lieutenant Uhura and Dr. McCoy, I am not as troubled as you may think. You see, there is no longer a romantic relationship between Lieutenant Uhura and myself."
Kirk sat up straight in surprise. "You dumped her!" A greasy tendril of hair fell into his wide eyes as he stared at the other, and Kirk swept it aside impatiently.
"Your assumption is incorrect," Spock answered wearily. "It was the Lieutenant's decision to pursue a relationship elsewhere."
"But…why? When? You guys never even seemed upset or anything," the captain pressed.
"Neither the Lieutenant nor I would allow such a thing as fraternization between crew members to emotionally compromise our ability to perform our professional duties."
"No, I guess you wouldn't," Kirk muttered to himself. "I wish you would've told me, though."
"So you could have taken the opportunity to pursue her yourself?" Spock retorted acidly.
"So I could have taken you out drinking." Kirk grinned; but then, remembering himself, dropped his head in the palms of his hands and groaned. "What does it matter, anyway? They're still our crew members and our friends and they're in trouble because of me! Spock, I have to save them!"
"I know." The dark-haired man took a deep breath. "Captain, I would like to explain to you the circumstances in which my relationship with the Lieutenant ended."
"You don't have to do that," Kirk mumbled into his sleeve.
"I believe it is important for you to know," Spock insisted. "As you are aware, I loved my mother a great deal. So did my father, as he claims. However, as much as I am grateful for the time and experiences I had with Lieutenant Uhura, my relationship with her failed to elicit the level of emotional response either I or my father had for my late mother. Uhura slowly became aware of this, and she eventually ended the relationship when no such emotional response ensued."
"In other words, you didn't love her." Curious despite himself, Kirk sat up straight and scratched at his greasy brown hair. His first officer rarely spoke this much about his personal life, and Kirk wondered at the reasons for it now. He wasn't about to stop a good thing though, especially since getting into Spock's head was usually next to impossible.
"No, I suppose I did not. She was wise to end the union. As she commented at the time, even you were able to evoke more emotion from me than she, although those emotions were typically anger and frustration."
Kirk laughed at that. "Sorry, Commander."
Spock gazed at him intently. "No, I do not believe that you are sorry. However, there is no need to apologize. Her assertion that you are the person most able to rouse emotion in me is correct, and I am grateful for that ability. Because of your influence I am better able to maintain the human aspects of myself. I am certain my mother would have wanted that."
Kirk raised an eyebrow, unsure what to make of that. "Uh… You're welcome."
"The truth is, Jim…I consider you my most dear friend. It is you, not Lieutenant Uhura, who is my most important person. I wish you to know that I will help you in every endeavor you undertake, no matter the cost, though I will insist that you consider the logic of your actions beforehand. In short, I know how much you want to rescue the doctor and the lieutenant. I want to help you."
A full-fledged smile finally broke out on Kirk's face. He clapped a hand on Spock's shoulder. "Alright then, friend. Let's go."
Three Days Earlier…
"Captain, we're receiving a transmission from a nearby luxury cruise vessel. It sounds like a distress signal."
Kirk spun slowly in his padded leather chair to face his Communications Officer. "Well, patch it through, then, Lieutenant."
Uhura chewed her bottom lip worriedly before responding. "It's in Klingon, sir."
"Klingon?" Kirk swung the chair back to the left and glanced at the blue-clad officer standing beside him. "What are Klingons doing out here? We're hardly out of the solar system."
"It is unclear to me as well, Captain," Spock answered in his typical too-proper fashion.
"Can you translate it, Uhura?" Kirk asked.
"Of course." She swung her long ponytail back over her shoulder as if offended.
"Go ahead then."
"Yes sir." The sound of fingers clicking across a console was soon replaced by a tinny recording of a woman's voice making noises unintelligible to all but the dark-skinned officer standing behind Kirk. "Please help," Uhura said quietly, after listening for a moment. "Please help my daughter. There has been an outbreak… A virus. Everyone is dead. My daughter… she's so sick. Please help us."
Kirk and Spock glanced at each other. "Lieutenant Sulu, can you bring up a visual?" Spock asked after a moment.
"Yes, Commander." A few seconds later the image of a spaceship appeared on the screen in front of them. "Monitoring ship's condition," Sulu announced. "It appears to be functioning normally. It's fine."
"I'll say," Kirk muttered. The ship, nearly twice the size of the Enterprise, boasted a snow-white hull that practically gleamed and as many windows as were physically possible. Letters he couldn't read announced the vessel's name in a mossy green. This was definitely no warship. "Hail them, Mr. Sulu. Uhura, you translate. Please."
Silence reigned over the bridge for a few minutes as Sulu attempted to hail the other vessel. Kirk leaned back against his seat cushion and glanced over once more at Spock, who stood silent and stoic as ever. He wondered what Spock was thinking; Kirk had a bad feeling lurking in his gut. Klingons, so close to Earth… and a distress signal from a ship that put the Enterprise engineers to shame…
"I've got something, Captain!" Sulu called triumphantly. He tapped a button on his console and the ship's image was replaced by a woman's tear-streaked face. Her black hair hung limp and matted over the dark, ridged forehead of a Klingon. When she saw the Enterprise crew her brown eyes widened and she began babbling at top speed.
Kirk motioned for Uhura to come and stand beside him, which she did, smoothing her short red skirt and glancing under her eyelashes at Spock. "This is Captain Kirk of the Federation starship USS Enterprise. We received a distress signal from this vessel. What is your status?" Kirk addressed the woman slowly, giving Uhura time to translate his words.
Tears streamed down the woman's cheeks as she started babbling again, near hysterics. "She says everyone aboard the ship is dead but her daughter and herself. A few weeks ago a sudden virus broke out… Vomiting, cramps…" Uhura cleared her throat. "…and severe diarrhea. They've been drifting all this time because there's been no one to pilot the ship. She's begging us to send a doctor to help her daughter."
"And they just happened to drift to right outside Earth's solar system?"
Uhura put Kirk's question to the Klingon woman, who seemed confused by it. The lieutenant smiled slightly at the woman's answer. "She says, 'What does it matter where we end up? Do you not have someone who can help my daughter?'"
"Should we beam them aboard, Captain?" Spock asked.
Kirk didn't answer immediately. Instead he studied the woman on the screen in front of him. Tears streaked silently down her face and she wiped them impatiently away, along with the sweat dripping from her forehead into her eyes. Kirk motioned Spock closer and, when the pointy-eared man stood close beside him, gestured to the screen in front of them. "Why isn't she sick?" he questioned quietly, so the rest of the crew couldn't hear. "If the entire ship is wiped out, why is she still here? She's definitely been exposed to something if her daughter is as sick as she claims."
"Her perspiration level would suggest she has a fever," Spock responded.
"That or she's nervous about something." He punched the communicator on his sweater. "Bones! We need your expertise."
"I'll bet you do," came the less than polite reply.
Kirk grinned at the careful lack of expression on Spock's face, though he quickly turned more serious. "Do you know of a disease that can wipe out a whole ship almost at once? From diarrhea and vomiting?"
"Well… Yes, Jim, but…" Dr. McCoy hesitated. "There is one disease I know of that could do something like that… It's called cholera, but it's been extinct on Earth for hundreds of years."
"How about in Klingons?"
"Klingons? What the hell are you doing up there, Jim?"
"Answer the question, Bones."
"I don't know. Klingons are close enough to humans genetically to catch the disease, theoretically, but there hasn't been a case of it in three hundred years."
"Could you treat it?"
"Yes, of course, all they would need are some antibiotics and plenty of fluids, but…"
"Alright then, I'll have Scotty beam a couple of sick aliens into your sick bay. Put your doctor's gloves on, Bones."
"No!" Kirk jumped and the bridge crew spun around in their seat at the vehemence of the reply. "You can't do that, Jim! If it's like you're saying this disease wiped out an entire ship. Cholera is extremely contagious as it is. Even worse, since it's been gone on Earth for hundreds of years, no one here has any immunity to it whatsoever. The ship could be wiped out in a matter of hours!"
Kirk sat quietly for a moment. "Then what are you suggesting we do, Doctor? I'm not about to send a crew out to a Klingon ship, no matter what its condition. However, as a member of the Federation we are obligated to provide assistance where needed. I can't just leave them to die." Even though the bad feeling still lingered somewhere in the pit of his stomach.
"Damn it Jim, I'm a doctor, not a strategist!" Bones retorted. He sighed audibly. "Alright. Send me out there. I can gear up and avoid contact with the bacteria, and it won't be so dangerous for me. No one's going to hurt a doctor on a peaceful mission."
"I'll go, too, Captain," Uhura spoke up. "He'll need a translator."
Kirk studied her, thinking. It seemed like the best option available to him, as much as he hated to send anyone out. He would have preferred to beam the two sick women aboard and get the hell out of there, but if Bones was right he would be risking the whole ship. This felt risky too, though. He didn't trust Klingons, no matter the situation. McCoy was right, however, that if something were to happen a doctor by himself would seem a lot less threatening than an away team armed to the teeth.
"Very well, Lieutenant." Kirk stood and walked toward the elevator, motioning for Spock and Uhura to join him. "Bones, gear up. You and Uhura get in there, give them what they need, and get out. Mr. Sulu, try to contact the closest Federation base. Let them know there's a quarantined Klingon ship floating around out here."
"I'm on it, Captain!"
"I'll have to burn my favorite pair of boxers after this," grumbled McCoy.
"Shut up, Bones."