Captain's Blood

22

S.S. CALYPSO, STARDATE 57487.7

Kirk whirled around to see Joseph charge at him from behind his own desk!

Kirk opened his arms to his son and lifted him up in an unbreakable bear hug. Beyond maintaining any semblance of composure, he kissed his son’s head, his cheek, held him out to look at him, then pulled him close again. The heart-stopping shock of seeing Teilani again hadn’t faded. The moment of recognition had been electric, resonating within him still. Her hair, her skin, her eyes so bright, so full of life, all caught in one exquisite, painfully sharp instant, had left him drained, numb.

There had been too much loss in his life. Teilani. Spock. Only holding his son in his arms once more could renew Kirk’s strength to keep grief at bay.

“Where have you been? Where have you been?” Kirk said.

Joseph’s answer was incredible. He had been close by ever since Kirk had entered the bridge. Very close.

“Right here, Dad!” Joseph squirmed impatiently in his arms, pointed back at Kirk’s desk. “There’s a crawlspace. Uncle Scotty told me. For boxes and old stuff. That’s where I hid when the bad guys came.” Joseph suddenly looked worried. “I wasn’t supposed to talk to anyone until I knew it was safe. Not even you, Dad. That’s okay, right, Dad?”

Kirk squeezed his son one more time. “Perfectly okay.”

Joseph squirmed again, and Kirk reluctantly let him down and unleashed him on the other adults on the bridge.

The child quickly made the rounds, calling out, “Geordi! Uncle Jean-Luc! Uncle Bones!” Then he stopped quietly in front of Norinda, and put on his best manners. “Hello, ma’am.” He stared at her ears. “Are you a Romulan?”

Kirk felt uneasy the way Norinda gazed at Joseph. “Do you like Romulans?” she asked.

Joseph nodded eagerly. “I’m Romulan. Sort of. I’m Reman, too. And Vulcan, and human, and Klingon. Uncle Bones says that makes me pure trouble!” Joseph glanced back at Kirk. “It’s okay to say that, right?”

Kirk nodded, still shaky with relief. “Pure trouble is all right.” He and Joseph had had talks about the concept of species being “pure.” It was an outmoded concept, reeking of past injustices and bigotry. As a Vulcan-human hybrid, Spock had directly experienced such prejudice, and Joseph had been an attentive audience for Spock’s stories of his own childhood.

“Well, I’m not Romulan,” Norinda said. “But I like Romulans.”

Joseph looked at her skeptically. “Then what are you?”

“What would you like me to be?”

Kirk went on alert, looking for any sign that Norinda was reaching into Joseph’s mind, ready to step in if she showed the slightest indication that Teilani was to reappear.

But all that happened in response to her question was that Joseph gave an elaborate shrug and said, “I dunno.”

Norinda stared at Joseph for several silent seconds, then said, “I believe you.” She smiled. “Would you like to see where I live on Remus?”

“Sure,” Joseph said.

That was when Kirk knew it was time to bring this to an end. “There’s no time, son. We have to leave soon.”

“No. You don’t,” Norinda said.

“He’s not going down to Remus.” Kirk wasn’t about to let Joseph out of his sight again. He stood beside his son, put his hand on his shoulder.

Norinda turned her attention from Joseph and Kirk to Picard. “Jean-Luc, you asked for a favor from me, to meet some friends of the Jolan Movement.”

Picard seemed apprehensive. “Yes…” he said cautiously.

“For me to do that favor for you, I need you to do a favor for me. Convince Captain Kirk that his son should visit me on Remus.” She glanced at Kirk, but there was no power to her smile, no subliminal connection. “Just for a day, Captain. Jean-Luc and I will take good care of him.”

Kirk moved to forestall Picard, who clearly was trying to think of something to say to him, as if the favor Norinda mentioned could in any way be as important as his son’s safety.

“I don’t care what favors anyone has promised,” Kirk said. “Joseph is not leaving this ship.”

“Aw, Da-ad,” Joseph said. “I really want to go! Really really! Can I? Please?”

Kirk stared at his son in surprise. Joseph loved to negotiate, but it had been more than a year since he had whined to get something he wanted. Kirk had never responded to that tactic, so Joseph had quickly learned to abandon it.

“Joseph, that’s not—”

But then Joseph did another atypical thing—he interrupted, swinging on Kirk’s hand like a little tree sloth. “I’ll be careful! And I’ll be safe! We can use secret codes, like when you told me to hide in the cabinet when the bad guys came, and then you’d tell everyone that I got beamed up by a Starfleet transporter so the bad guys would think that I was someplace else but all the time I was safe right here, right?”

Kirk’s surprise gave way to a stunning realization.

“And I kept busy up here, like you told me. And I cleaned the recirculators and the walls and—Uncle Bones! Did you like the way I cleaned sickbay?”

Kirk let Joseph’s hand slip from his. His child stood alone on the deck looking up at him.

“I really really want to go, Dad. You really really should let me. Okay?”

It couldn’t be more obvious what was expected of him, so Kirk did what he had to. He shifted gears, looked at Norinda with stern parental concern, and said, “Just one day.”

She nodded in agreement.

Kirk pointed a finger at Joseph. “And you behave yourself, young man.”

“Yes, sir!” Joseph ran at Kirk again, gave him a hug, then ran over to Picard and Norinda. “Let’s go!”

Picard seemed confused. “You’re sure, Jim?”

Kirk shrugged as if his son hadn’t been missing under dire conditions for the past two days. “If I can’t trust you, Jean-Luc…” He waved at Joseph. “Have…fun.”

Joseph waved back. “Thanks, Dad.”

And as simply as that, Kirk said good-bye to his son, and Norinda and Picard and Nran were in the turbolift, on their way back to the cargo bay and Norinda’s transport.

La Forge had stayed behind because of his insistence that the Calypso could fall from orbit at any second, unless he ran his diagnostics at once. But instead of hurrying down to engineering, La Forge remained on the bridge with Kirk and McCoy. “I don’t think Captain Picard was expecting you’d do that,” La Forge said to Kirk, with unconcealed puzzlement. “I mean, I know he’ll appreciate it. It could mean the difference that’ll stop a war, but…well, I’m surprised.”

Kirk enlightened him, grinning. “Commander La Forge, I’m going to take a wild guess that you don’t have children.”

“No, sir, I don’t.”

“Well, I do,” Kirk said. “And trust me, the little boy who just left here with your captain and that shapeshifter isn’t my son. He’s Admiral Janeway’s EMH.”

La Forge whistled in amazement. “You’re kidding!”

Kirk stepped back to the open door of his office. “Joseph, if you’re down there—everyone’s gone! It’s safe!”

Kirk smiled hugely as he heard a scrabbling under his desk, then the clank of a square of decking as it was shoved aside.

He beamed as a familiar little bald head popped up from behind his desk, and as he had the pleasure of being reunited with his son a second time in one day, this time it was for real.

As soon as the cargo-bay status lights indicated that Norinda’s transport had undocked, La Forge was at the communications console on the Calypso’s bridge. He made a halfhearted request for privacy, but Kirk leaned against the console and McCoy sat in the chair beside La Forge’s and neither he nor the doctor gave the engineer any indication they were ever going to move.

So, while Joseph happily went down to the galley to replicate meals for everyone, Kirk and McCoy listened as La Forge reported to Admiral Janeway, repeating everything Norinda had told Picard about the Tal Shiar’s plan to ignite a civil war at the Hour of Opposition.

La Forge did not mention that he was not alone, and neither Kirk nor McCoy made their presence known. Kirk wanted the admiral to feel free of her burden of bureaucratic deception, so she would speak the whole truth.

Kirk greatly appreciated Janeway’s decency as she began by expressing her genuine relief that Joseph was safe, and how she regretted ever allowing the child to be part of the mission, even though she had had no reason to suspect he would ever be in danger. And he was able to deduce from the rest of the conversation exactly what Picard’s third mission had been, and how with Norinda’s help in making contact with the Tal Shiar, the threat of civil war might yet be averted.

By the end of La Forge’s report, Kirk found himself agreeing with Starfleet’s intentions, but taking exception with their plans and tactics. As usual, he thought.

He especially found it galling that even in light of the breakthrough Picard was poised to make with the Tal Shiar, Admiral Janeway refused to order the Titan to Romulus. Somehow, an emergency conference called at a starbase that was little more than a glorified repeating station for subspace radio signals didn’t seem like reason enough to leave a single starship to cover the entire Neutral Zone. Not on what might be the eve of war.

But Kirk decided that Starfleet’s biggest blunder in this matter had been not telling him the truth from the beginning. Had he known the stakes involved, he would have had no objection to accepting the assignment. He certainly would have been willing to investigate Spock’s murder on Romulus as a cover for Picard’s attempts to stop a civil war.

But by not trusting him, by believing that everyone they dealt with had the same compromised standards as the leaders of Starfleet, it was Command that had made the situation worse than it needed to be. At least, that was the way Kirk saw it. Starfleet, it seemed, was no different for Picard today than it had been in his time.

His report over and his subsequent discussion with the admiral at an end, La Forge cut the channel, then leaned back in his chair. “So that’s everything.”

“Somehow, given Starfleet’s track record, I doubt it,” Kirk said. “But thank you for letting us listen in. I take it that was a breach of your orders.”

“Not at all. We have contingency orders and some of them cover the circumstances under which we were authorized to tell you everything. The way I interpret those orders, this was one of those circumstances.”

“Good,” Kirk said. “I’d hate to see the admiral make you walk the plank for insubordination.”

La Forge laughed. Kirk looked at him, waiting for an explanation. “Everyone on Captain Picard’s command staff has walked the plank at one time or another. He has this holodeck program that…well, it’s historical.”

Kirk held up his hands. “Say no more.”

The turbolift opened and Joseph slowly came out, carrying a precarious stack of trays and food containers. Kirk rushed to help him, but not so urgently that Joseph might think he had done anything wrong.

Together they spread out the trays, then reallocated the food packs, so everyone got a version of the same meal. Kirk noticed that Joseph’s tray had four chocolate-chip cookies. The Doctor’s influence hadn’t lasted too long.

They ate on the bridge, sitting on the steps and the upper level. And Joseph finally told them all the story of what had really happened when the “bad guys” came. How he was frightened and backed up against the wall in Picard’s cabin, and then how everything had shimmered with light and he was suddenly in a park and the Doctor was there, telling him he had to play a game where he must stand as still as he could for as long as he could, without making a sound. And if he could do that, then he’d get a big reward.

Kirk was grateful for the lack of trauma in Joseph’s account, knew he would have to thank the Doctor for thinking so quickly to save his child. Then he thought to ask Joseph what his reward had been.

Joseph leaned forward over his tray, and gestured emphatically with his spoon. “Dad,” he said conspiratorially, “he gave me all the ice cream I could eat. All.”

McCoy, La Forge, and Kirk laughed at that, so Joseph did, too. And as their laughter faded, a new sound rose on the bridge—a series of electronic chirps.

“That’s a hail,” La Forge said. He pushed his tray aside to return to the communications console.

“Don’t answer that,” Kirk said, tensing for trouble. “There’s not supposed to be anyone on board this ship.”

But La Forge was already at his console. “That’s a Starfleet code, sir. Set for this ship and this mission. We have our own code to respond with.”

Kirk relaxed, waved La Forge on. “Just stop calling me sir. It’s Jim.”

The next sound to come from the console was even more unexpected.

“Hello, Geordi—it’s Will.”

“Captain Riker…” La Forge answered. “Did you send that approach code?”

“Technically, Worf sent it. He’s in the copilot’s chair.”

“But I just spoke with Admiral Janeway. You’re supposed to stay on station at Latium Four.”

“Another technicality, Geordi. The admiral’s orders refer to the Titan, and the Titan is right where she’s supposed to be.”

Kirk smiled. There was hope for some in Starfleet.

Then another familiar voice joined the circuit. “We are approaching your aft cargo-bay airlock,” Worf brusquely announced. “Request permission to dock.”

Kirk was anxious to give it. Now that he had Joseph back, he could finally think of Spock. And the more people he had on his side in that fight for justice, the better.