Captain's Blood

1

QO’NOS, STARDATE 57471.0

The swinging bat’leth blazed in the sun of Qo’noS, as if the Klingon sun itself reached out a fiery arm to strike down James T. Kirk.

Huffing, puffing, drenched in sweat, Kirk instinctively calculated the blade’s killing arc, then threw himself sideways beyond the reach of his opponent.

He pulled in his free arm to hit the unforgiving surface of the combat pit with his shoulder. With his other arm outstretched, holding his own bat’leth as a counterbalance, he sought to stabilize his center of gravity.

For one sweet moment, airborne and in swift action, Kirk knew his form was perfect, his tactic sound.

Then his shoulder struck rock-hard clay and it was as if he’d landed on an agonizer set to level eleven.

Breathless as brilliant fireworks of pain receded from his wide-open eyes, Kirk watched the shadow of his opponent rise over him, to block the searing sun and the yellow Klingon sky. He saw his opponent’s blade lift straight up, preparing to deliver the k’rel tagh—the ritual stroke of major severance.

Flat on his back in the combat pit, Kirk knew he was seconds away from decapitation. And that’s where he saw his chance.

His opponent had underestimated him.

A more experienced bat’Wahl—bat’leth warrior—would have responded to Kirk’s position by performing a series of k’rel meen lunges, first double-slicing across his chest to disable the pectoral muscles he could use to raise his own bat’leth in defense. That preliminary attack would be followed by one, possibly two, a’k’rel tagh attacks—minor severances—to detach one, possibly both of Kirk’s arms. Only then would a true bat’Wahl deliver the k’rel tagh, when his opponent was deserving of a warrior’s death and no longer capable of counterattack.

A perfect counterattack is what Kirk had before him now. One swing of the tip of his blade in a disemboweling meen p’Ral stroke left to right across the fighter’s stomach and the bout would be over.

But even as Kirk instinctively calculated the proper trajectory for his swing, he also saw the exhaustion in his opponent’s eyes.

There was a better way for this fight to end.

Kirk threw his arms up and shrieked in fear!

His opponent’s blade swept through the humid air and struck Kirk’s unprotected neck, and—

—sliced through cleanly, the holographic projection of the deadly tip flickering only once as the circuits in the practice weapon registered the kill.

“Ya got me,” Kirk moaned.

His opponent giggled.

Kirk pushed himself to a sitting position, grimacing as he pulled his opponent close to his chest, ignoring the pulsing pain of his sprained shoulder in the joy of hugging the most precious being in the galaxy.

Joseph Samuel T’Kol T’Lan Kirk, child of James and Teilani.

Their child had been born of love just five years ago. Their child had been born a monster.

Kirk, the father, was human; all too human, he sometimes feared.

Teilani, the mother, was Chalchaj ‘qmey; in the standard Klingon language: a Child of Heaven. Among the second generation of a colony of genetically engineered Klingon/ Romulan hybrids created to survive in a galaxy devastated by an anticipated all-out war with the Federation. But, in the dark times of the hybrids’ creation, in an era when the Klingons and the Romulans were uneasy allies, feared the Federation, and believed war was inevitable, genetic engineering had its limitations.

So Teilani and the others had been further enhanced, with human organs harvested from prisoners of the Empires. The secret, when revealed, forever changed Teilani. Innocents had died so she could live.

Kirk had tried to assuage her guilt. He had told her—and he still believed—no person is responsible for the world in which she was born, only for the world she leaves when she dies. The past must be accepted so we can concentrate on changing the only thing we can—the future.

Kirk knew his words and his love had never removed all the darkness from Teilani’s soul, but he had brought her moments of light and of love, as she had brought the same to him. And now he followed his own counsel, and accepted the past he had shared with her, even as he accepted the tragedy of her death on Halkan.

But part of Teilani remained, in his memories, in his heart, and in the child they had created together.

A child like no other, whose genetic heritage continued to defy McCoy’s attempts to sequence and understand it. A child whose constantly shifting appearance and unpredictable growth spurts continued to make him—or her—unique among the biological histories of every known world in the four quadrants.

But the science of Joseph’s existence, the complexities of his DNA, his ultimate fate or form as an adult…none of those mysteries mattered to Kirk. Just as he had seen beyond Teilani’s virogen scars, without question or struggle he could see into the heart and soul of their child.

Kirk gave love. Kirk gave acceptance. Kirk felt both given to him in return. And Kirk was grateful that he had finally lived long enough to understand that, in the end, nothing else mattered.

Kirk leapt to his feet in the combat pit and rubbed his hand on Joseph’s smooth-skinned skull, as if tousling nonexistent hair, making his son squirm away, laughing.

“Son” was how Kirk thought of Joseph these days. Though, he conceded to himself with undiminished wonder, “daughter” was just as appropriate, which was why Kirk had bestowed upon his child two feminine names from Teilani’s side—T’Kol T’Lan. Someday, when whatever maturation process was locked within Joseph’s genes expressed itself, Kirk hoped that his and Teilani’s child would choose the name and identity that pleased him, or her. If, indeed, a final gender was something that eventually would develop.

But for now his child was simply Joseph. Tall and precocious for a five-year-old, his stature and intellect closer to that of a human child of nine or ten, his once rosy skin now a soft gray-brown striped by the single band of dark, almost Trill-like spots that swept up his spine and over the top of his scalp, fading away just above the diminutive Klingon ridges of his forehead and the already elegant tips of his Romulan ears.

McCoy termed the child’s build as scrawny, and his quickly growing gangly limbs revealed a few odd planes and lines to show that his musculature wasn’t exactly human, nor precisely Klingon, nor Romulan, nor Vulcan. Strictly speaking, those four species were the sum total that had contributed to Joseph’s genetic makeup. But where McCoy could be certain that Kirk’s DNA was one hundred percent human, among the genes that had been artificially blended to create Teilani, the best genetic engineers at Starfleet Medical couldn’t be certain that there were not some whispers of other species hidden within the billions of base pairs of the child’s commingled amino acids.

“Time for lunch,” Kirk said. “Then lessons.”

Joseph held up a hand, three perfect fingers and one perfect thumb. “Two more rounds,” he pleaded.

Kirk smiled ruefully. The past few months, almost every conversation with his son had become a negotiation. The request for two more rounds was obviously meant to provoke a counter of one more round. Which was probably all that Joseph wanted, anyway.

But Kirk knew all about that kind of negotiating tactic. He had been taught by experts, and so, it seemed, had Joseph. “You’ve been spending too much time with your uncle Scotty,” Kirk said.

“Daa-ad.”

Kirk tried not to laugh. Joseph was looking deeply offended that his father would even think such a thing. “Hit the sonics. Then lunch.”

“And then two more rounds?” Joseph persisted.

Kirk smiled at his son, losing his battle but not the war. “Lessons, mister. Scoot!”

This time Joseph acquiesced gracefully—This time, Kirk thought—tossed Kirk his holographic bat’leth projector, then ran like an ungainly stork to the wooden ladder at the far side of the elliptical pit.

Kirk marveled that a child so uncoordinated in running could thrust and parry with his bat’leth so deftly. And his piano playing was already at the level of a skilled adult, though his math—usually a related skill—was lagging behind the average for even a five-year-old human. Joseph still didn’t have the faintest grasp of calculus, and without that rudimentary background, warp mechanics would be forever beyond him.

Kirk frowned even as he reached that dismal conclusion. His child was only five, and already he was placing the ultimate burden of expectation on him—a Starfleet career.

“I say this with respect,” Worf suddenly growled from behind Kirk, “but you should be ashamed of yourself.”

Kirk started. He had been so engrossed in watching Joseph clamber up the two-meter ladder to leave the pit that he hadn’t heard Worf approach.

“I beg your pardon?”

Worf, more imposing than ever in his combat-training garb of sueded burgundy leather, scowled as only a Klingon could. Despite his best effort to show deference to his guest, the disdain in his voice was impossible to disguise. “You let the child beat you.”

Kirk bristled. He, Joseph, and McCoy had been guests of the House of Martok for two weeks, and only now were the subtleties of Klingon etiquette coming into focus. Joseph was even developing a taste for gagh, though whether that was because the living worms actually tasted good to his Klingon taste buds, or because he was playing to his father’s unexpected squeamishness, Kirk could not be sure.

But even given the blunt directness of Klingon hospitality, Worf’s rude accusation surprised Kirk.

“Of course I let Joseph beat me,” Kirk said, trolling for more details.

But Worf only shook his heavy head, as if rendered speechless by disgust.

Kirk tried again. “I take it you don’t approve.”

“It is dishonest,” Worf thundered. “Such behavior gives the child a false sense of security. It teaches him that adults cannot be trusted. When the time comes to face true combat, he will fail.”

Kirk sighed, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and looked past Worf to find McCoy leaning on the wooden railing that surrounded the ceremonial pit. But his old friend paid no attention to Kirk and Worf. He was fiddling with a medical tricorder, no doubt reviewing his latest scans of Joseph. Since McCoy’s full retirement from Starfleet Medical, the study of Kirk’s child seemed to have become his new mission in life.

Still, another human ally was what Kirk needed now, to sort this out with Worf. He was here to help his child explore his Klingon heritage, but his own lessons in understanding Joseph were a challenge to him as well. Kirk started for the ladder closest to McCoy, reasonably certain that Worf would follow. And he did.

“He’s five years old, Worf. He won’t be facing true combat for—”

Worf cut off his explanations. “If you are serious about teaching your son his Klingon heritage, he should have already been blooded.”

Kirk paused with one hand on the ladder. There were some parts of parenting he had no doubts about. “I’ve also got his human, Romulan, and Vulcan heritage to work in there. He’s not going to be blooded. Not at age five.”

Worf growled again. Louder this time.

But Kirk merely handed him the holographic bat’leth projectors. Each unit was the size of a traditional bat’leth’s haft, with its three handgrip openings and leather wrappings. The actual twin batwing blades and spikes on each side were missing, to be created instead by small holoemitters and low-power forcefield generators. The projectors were a clever invention, enabling combatants to feel when an illusory blade had made contact, yet preventing the weapon from inflicting harm. Needless to say, the projectors were not a Klingon invention and Worf did not approve of them, either. But since even the wooden bat’leth s used by Klingon children could cause nasty cuts and bruises, Kirk had opted for safety over cultural purity.

Kirk stepped off the top of the ladder and walked along the railing toward McCoy. At ground level, all around him, the Martok estate was an explosion of dark purple summer-growth vegetation in more subtly differentiated hues than Kirk could identify. Wild targ roamed the forests to the east, in the midst of which stood the ancient ancestral castle of the House of Martok. It had a solid, imposing appearance, almost pyramidal, reminding Kirk strongly of the Great Hall housing the Klingon High Council. Why it was considered an ancestral castle, Kirk wasn’t certain. Less than a century ago, the House of Martok had wrested the castle from the House of Krant, which had wrested it in turn from the House of Fralk, which had rebuilt it after slaughtering the entire House of Tralkar, which originally had defeated the House of Fralk during an imperial inter-regnum four hundred years earlier, following the defeat of…The rest of the endless history was a blur to Kirk, who had tried to follow Worf’s recitation on the occasion of the first dinner held for Joseph. From that evening, he had retained little more than the impression that Klingon realestate transactions were extremely complicated, and often bloody.

“So what’s today’s diagnosis?” Kirk asked McCoy.

The doctor, simply clad in civilian trousers and a loose black shirt that looked suspiciously Vulcan in design, kept making adjustments to his medical tricorder and didn’t bother to look up. “For Joseph, or for you?”

Kirk leaned against the rough-hewn wooden railing that surrounded the combat pit. He heard the ladder creak as Worf climbed up. The sound made him rub his strained shoulder. “I already know what my diagnosis is. What about my son?”

McCoy slipped a thumb-sized, cylindrical plaser from a small pouch on his belt. For all that his snow white hair and narrow build made him look frail, his movements were sure, his hands steady. At one hundred fifty years of age, McCoy was reaching the upper limits of recorded human life spans, aided by internal skeletal actuators, synthetic organs, and his latest implant—an experimental, artificial mitochondrial biogenerator based on one of the remarkable subsystems built into the late Lieutenant Commander Data. In truth, Kirk thought a trifle grudgingly, his old friend looked better than he had in years, and his voice displayed no loss of gruff authority as he ordered Kirk to turn around.

“Joseph’s diagnosis is as close to textbook Romulan perfect as the tricorder can scan. For all that running around you were doing down there, his heart rate barely rose, but his blood-flow pattern went through a massive reconfiguration.”

Kirk flinched as he felt the plaser’s medical forcefields go to work on his shoulder, tightening stretched ligaments and loosening tight muscles. “Explain,” he said. A few years ago, he might have worried at the words “massive reconfiguration” being applied to Joseph, but he was used to it now.

“Blood flow to his muscles increased by twenty-three percent, shifting from less critical areas: intestines, both livers, and the secondary heart. How’s that?”

Kirk stretched his arm over his head, turned back and forth. The pain in his shoulder was gone. He grinned. “Good as new. Thanks, Bones.”

McCoy made a sound halfway between a snort and a laugh. “You, my friend, are held together by spit and baling wire.”

Kirk stiffened. “What kind of bedside manner is that?” He was still in command of his faculties—or at least most of them, he told himself. The last thing he needed was someone else to remind him of his own mortality.

“I save that for patients who at least make an attempt to follow my medical advice.”

Kirk turned back to McCoy. “I make an attempt.”

McCoy rolled his eyes skeptically.

Kirk felt he might as well be having another conversation with his five-year-old. “You were saying about Joseph…” he prompted.

McCoy slapped his tricorder to his belt and the device hung there by molecular adhesion. “Jim, to be blunt, to be medical, your boy…that is, your child…is a hybrid. Genetically, hybrids can often tend to be stronger than their individual parents, their genetic makeup more robust. I can’t say for certain there aren’t more unusual growth spurts in his future, but my instincts tell me that Joseph’s physical development isn’t anything you or I should be worried about anymore.”

Kirk read between the lines, realized what McCoy wasn’t saying. “Then what should we be worried about?”

McCoy nodded to Worf as the Klingon joined them. “That other half of him,” the doctor said. “His mind, his spirit, what makes him human.”

“Or Klingon,” Worf said.

“Or Romulan or Vulcan,” Kirk added. “I know all this, Bones.”

Then McCoy surprised him by saying, “No, Jim, you don’t know.”

Kirk tapped his fingers on the wooden railing. If there was anything he disliked more than an argument, it was an argument he had had before.

“Bones, that’s the point of this exercise,” he said. “I can teach Joseph everything I know about his human heritage. But he’s more than that.” Kirk turned to Worf. “That’s why I’m relying on my friends to help him learn about everything he is. Where he came from. All the possibilities for what he might become.”

“Then you must stop letting him win,” Worf said.

“More important than that,” McCoy added, “you have to give Joseph some structure in his life.”

Worf nodded approvingly. “Discipline. That is the warrior’s way.”

Kirk rubbed at his face, knowing he shouldn’t get caught up in this discussion, but unable to remain silent. “He has structure.”

McCoy shook his head. “Because you make him take sonic showers and study the junior Academy-entrance curriculum? That’s not enough, Jim. Joseph needs a home base. He needs a stable community. A chance to make friends.”

“He has friends,” Kirk argued, defensive. “You, and Worf, and Spock, and Scotty and—”

“His own age,” McCoy said. “Worf’s right. Joseph shouldn’t be sparring with his father in a Klingon combat pit and winning just because he’s your son—or daughter. He should be wrestling with other children, climbing trees, getting dirt under his fingernails, scabs on his knees…being a child, and not…not a recruit in his father’s personal Starfleet Academy.”

Kirk felt anger grow in him as he listened to McCoy’s diatribe, and he could see that his friend saw that anger in his eyes.

“You asked for a diagnosis—there it is.”

A part of Kirk wanted to instantly discount everything McCoy had just said. But because it was McCoy who had said it, Kirk knew he couldn’t. Instead, he fought his resentment, tried to make McCoy truly understand.

“Bones…I don’t want to limit him.”

“Children need limits.” McCoy looked at Worf. “You’re a father. It’s the same for Klingons, isn’t it?”

Kirk felt the heat of Worf’s glare. “Yes. Limits provide security. Security provides confidence. Confidence provides courage. And courage is the key to surmounting all limits.”

Kirk looked up at Worf, unintimidated by his size or attitude. “I thought you didn’t get along with your son.”

Worf’s eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared, a predator about to attack. “We had…differences. Had I known then what I know now, perhaps those differences would not have been as…extreme.”

“Well, Joseph and I don’t have differences.” Kirk had the sudden feeling that if he were not an invited guest of the House of Martok, Worf would have already landed the first punch in a fight for honor.

“Fathers and sons always have differences,” McCoy said flatly.

“Other fathers. Other sons.” As far as Kirk was concerned, the unwanted and unwarranted discussion was over. “I’m going to have a shower. See you both at lunch.”

Worf grunted. McCoy frowned. And then all three men turned as one, Starfleet training to the fore, as they heard the first subtle tone of what could only be the carrier wave of an incoming transport.

The color signature of the familiar shimmer three meters away told Kirk it was a Starfleet beam, though the materialization—two figures, Kirk counted—was faster than he was used to seeing, as if Starfleet had achieved yet another incremental breakthrough in the technology.

Then, even before the effect had dissipated, Kirk recognized the new arrivals, and his first thought was that Worf might soon be in a better mood because of them.

Kirk stepped forward, hand extended. “Commander—” He stopped as he saw the pips on the visitor’s uniform. “Captain Riker.” Kirk shook Will Riker’s hand. “Jean-Luc told me the good news.” He smiled at Deanna Troi at Riker’s side. “All of it. Congratulations to you both. On your marriage, and your new command.”

But even then, Kirk felt a tightness in his chest, because the smiles and words of greeting Riker and his bride returned were forced and grim: the smiles of old friends with bad news.

Kirk glanced at Worf and McCoy, saw they sensed the somber mood of the visit as well.

“Is Captain Picard well?” Worf asked.

Jean-Luc’s well-being was the first thought that had come to Kirk, too.

“The captain is fine,” Riker said. But Deanna’s dark Betazoid eyes fixed intently on Kirk, and in the intensity of her gaze, in the knowledge that it was onto his emotional mood she focused her empathic powers, Kirk tensed, suspecting that Jean-Luc was not the reason for this unexpected visit.

Kirk suddenly knew the worst.

“Spock,” he said quietly.

Riker nodded, and Kirk felt the gravity of Qo’noS shift beneath him, as if all the stars had been wrenched from the heavens.

As if something within him, too, had died.