CAPTAIN'S BURDEN

Thorne System - FGC88305
USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)
Stardate 2261.30 - Captain's Log

It is twenty eight hours since our departure from the Doppelgänger system. Note commendations for Chief Engineer Scott and Engineer's Mate P'droy Keenser for their timely repairs of the warp drive engines and critical repairs to our outer hull battle damage nearly twelve hours ahead of schedule. Minor repairs continue on damaged pressure hull sections, but vessel status remains fully operational.

We have submitted our final report on the Doppelgänger phenomenon [see attachment] as well as our battle report as far as the Gorn trawler Francium. The final wearabouts of the Romulan vessel or the Klingon ship pursuing it are unknown, but given their respective missions I don't believe this is the last time we'll be seeing them out here. Long-range probes suggest the Cardassian ship Grazine remains in orbit of the inner planet as its surviving crew attempts to restore its damaged warp drives. Mister Spock theorizes that they will probably try to strike a deal with Chellik in exchange for repairs and passage back home, and Chellik will probably dissect them and copy their memories to his files. Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch. Furthermore, it is my assessment that the Romulan infiltrators were unable to transmit any of the information they obtained from the Enterprise back to their mother ship, and it is probable that most of that information was lost during the firefight in the Grazine's shuttlebay. Assuming the Cardassians ever manage to leave that system alive, Starfleet security need not be considered compromised.

My final conclusion is that our brief contact with the First Federation has been as a front-level nature and cannot be interpreted as official communication. Same conclusion regarding the Gorn. Contact with the Cardassian government may be considered official communications, but I an disinclined to interpret the actions of their exploration vessel as sanctioned by the Detapa Republic, and peaceful relations may still be possible. My official recommendation regarding the First Federation as follows: Avoid contact under any and all circumstances.

The crew is showing signs of depressed morale as well as emotional and physical exhaustion, much to my complete lack of surprise. My final investigation faults Doctor Carol Marcus for failing to observe onboard security protocols, but after everything that's happened I've decided not to pursue any further action on this regard beyond the official reprimands I have already entered into the record. Beyond that, the total loss of the Genesis Data is punishment enough. To that end: our planned expedition of the Eagle Nebula requires long-range transit of the Vega Corridor, and I expect a shore leave opportunity to present itself before too long. Enterprise is scheduled to get underway within the next eight hours once we tie up our last loose ends.

.

- 1941 hours -

Airlock Two was preferred for these occasions, being much larger than the other four complexes and much more comfortable even than the otherwise-identical Airlock One. It was another quirky aviation tradition dating back to the first Earth starships, at a time when most ships only had two airlocks suitable to this purpose. Some two hundred officers and crewmen were gathered on the bottom level and the overhanging catwalk, distributed in the open bay amongst parked travel pods and EVA equipment that was permanently pushed further aside than would normally be practical. The center of it all, planted on a launch rail in front of the ten-foot circular airlock hatch was - of course - the pre-programmed recorder marker bearing the names and last messages of the twenty five Enterprise crewmen who could no longer be counted among the living crew of the Enterprise.

The two hundred gathered here were either close friends or family of the deceased. Decades had passed since a burial in space was an affair that necessarily involved the entire ship; seven years of brutal war with the Romulan Empire had brought that particular tradition to an end, and the frugal nature of the so-called "Boomer Brats" that later inherited Starfleet had been remiss to bring it back. But it made the Captain's job that much worse: the people gathered here weren't just shipmates of the deceased, they were necessarily close friends aboard the Enterprise. The loss was felt, not just lamented on principal.

"By command authority granted by Starfleet Command," Kirk announced solemnly, his voice carried by the audio pickup in the all behind him, "and with the remembrance of respect of the officers and crew of the Federation Starship Enterprise, we dedicate this memorial to final voyage of our fallen comrades and friends: Ensign Maximillian Schnieder, Ensign Shin Shui-Tin, Ensign Timothy Buchannon Junior, Ensign Stephen Vargas, Ensign Beth Petrosky, Ensign Orlando Pryor, Ensign Madeline M'bais, Ensign David Barhneisel. Of Lieutenant Dimitri Loganoff, Lieutenant Frank Hayes, Lieutenant Susan Collins. Of Lieutenant Commander Ikemba Taskun, Lieutenant Commander Jessica "Jelly" Lane, Lieutenant Commander Ik'toah, Lieutenant Commander Sani Ebadi, Lieutenant commander John Thirsk. Of Commander Steven Tanner, Commander Will Jordan, Commander Olivia Asakura. Of Doctor Haro Kusenagi, Ensign H. Ayala, Lieutenant Kembi Onise, Doctor Mioh Hr'arku, Lieutenant Commander Sam McCahill, and Doctor Ramsi Ayash."

By the time he was finished reading the list, the room felt like it had been filled to the top with wet cement. Everyone here knew at least two of the faces that belonged to those names, and especially in the case of the last few, everyone knew the circumstances of their deaths. At the reading of Lieutenant Onise's name there were even a few murmurs of disapproval, but even more of sorrow. Less than a day after the incident, there was some controversy still as to whether the Lieutenant was a victim or an enabler of the disaster that singly contributed six of those names to the list.

"To them and to their memory do we now devote our mission, and to the future of mankind and the safety of the Federation. Let this memorial carry their spirit to the final frontier, and beyond."

The launch rail fed the recorder marker into the outer airlock complex and the hatch closed behind it. An alarm sounded on the deck as the airlock began to cycle, then the hiss of air escaping as the outer doors opened, venting the last of the residual air into space. The memorial buoy was pushed into space by a shove from the launch rails, then fired its maneuvering thrusters and pushed away from the ship, heaving itself into a solar orbit and in essence becoming a new planet of this newly-explored solar system.

There was no established procedure for how to carry on from here. It typically depended on the religious background of the deceased, but in cases of multiple deaths like this, the normal flow of events called for the friends and family to step forward to the podium and say a few words about their departed comrades. There were only a handful of speakers now, limiting themselves to about a minute each, expressing feelings of pride, of loss, of fond farewell. And only when Kirk thought the last of the words had been said did a gain the not altogether unpleasant surprise of an eerily familiar Orion officer in an engineering officer's uniform. It took Kirk a few moments to place the face to a name, and a few moments longer to drag up the relationship from Ayala's personnel file, just in time for him to recognize exactly who was speaking. "Ayala and I came to Earth looking for a new life," said Ensign Gaila in a half-subdued whisper, "And though our adoptive homeworld is a thousand times better than Orion, for the longest time we were still singled out by others who didn't know and us and didn't want to know us. People who couldn't look past the color of our skin. We spent most of our lives being treated like... like toys, like little dolls you could rent out when you were bored. When Ayala said she wanted to join Starfleet, I thought she was crazy. I told her we would end up... like... serving coffee in a thong in the officer's lounge or something. And then she finally talked me into it, and year after year, I started to see she was right. I saw that in Starfleet, we were all equals to anyone else. Not just cardboard cutouts, but real people with real rights. Valued members of a team." Gaila turned and fixed her gaze directly on Captain Kirk. A petty officer next to her sensed what was coming, but didn't quite get to her before she could blurt out, "But now I see I was right all along. We really are just disposable parts to you, aren't we Kirk?! You used my sister just like you used m-" three sets of hands hauled her away from the podium as she started to degenerate into hysterics. Somehow, out of respect for the solemnity of the occasion and a conscious effort not to dignify her outburst with too much attention, the next speaker in line began his remarks as if nothing unusual had even happened.

And Kirk received them in kind, even with a pair of tightly clenched fists. By the time the ceremony had finally drawn to a close, both of his palms were dripping blood.

.

- 2250 hours -

The main deflector drew power from the main reactors again, building up energy wave after wave like a miniature warp engine itself. A dozen times before, the same powerup procedure had been used to blast the Enterprise' radio voice halfway across the sector to be heard by the sensitive transceivers in the Starfleet communications relay. Now, Enterprise was using its deflector for an entirely new purpose: once the system reached full power, a titanic blast of gravitic energy tore at the surface of the dwarf planet Lethe, a dusty ball of water ice and noxious hydrocarbons just a few hundred kilometers in diameter that was so unremarkable that its discoverer - USS Constellation - hadn't even bothered to map its surface. Once the deflector beam struck the crust of this little world, the surface layers began to break free from the surface, dragged into space as if by a cosmic vacuum cleaner and funneled directly into the induction units just behind and around the deflector hardware. For several minutes, a stream of pulverized dust and vapors funneled into the Enterprise like an inverted tornado, sucking material right off the face of the planet.

The fuel lab was never busier than at times like this. Ensign Allenby presided over the control room from a science station in the middle of what was for all intents and purposes a secondary bridge, lacking only a helm station and a viewscreen to complete the image. The bussard collector could draw material from a planet or comet at almost a ton per second, but much of that material was useless waste product, and of the stuff that was useful, only a portion of it could be used by the engines. For the massive organism that was a starship, the fuel lab was the "stomach" of the beast, sorting nutrients from fat and fat from poison and pollutants. "This is a dirty son of a bitch," Allenby muttered at the latest set of spectrograph samples. Lots of exotic ammonia compounds, some aromatic hydrocarbons, and something that looked suspiciously like a base-chain amino acid. The water-ice on the surface was abundant, though, and after a few rounds in the turbofilters it could easily be cracked into oxygen for the crew and hydrogen for the engines. And now that he looked at it, those weird amino acids that kept cropping up in the spectrographs looked like they could be reworked into base proteins for the fabricators, not to mention all the C-H and C-O combinations in the hydrocarbons...

"Computer," he tapped the voice command for his science station, "Began permutational analysis, statistical distribution on chemical output verses available reaction catalysts."

"Working..."

"Bridge to fuel lab. What's it taste like down there?"

Ensign Allenby grinned, "Not too bad, Captain. There's a few weird-looking carboxyls we could rework for the food synthesizers, maybe a dozen tons extra board. Fuel status should work out as well."

On the bridge, Captain Kirk looked at the palmcomp Lieutenant Uhura had handed him and read carefully off the note the engineering department had forwarded them, "Mister Scott was wondering about any mineral input from the collectors. Any heavy metals, uranium, polonium..."

"Nothing that heavy, bridge. This rock is more Pluto than Paris."

"Understood. I'll pass it on." Kirk shrugged. Uhura shrugged back. "Shouldn't be a problem either way."

"Scotty likes to keep a full cabinet when he can help it," Uhura decided, and strode back to her communications console. It wasn't as if the Enterprise was short on raw materials anyway; the machine shops had enough duranium ferrite left over to resurface the entire saucer module, and they'd even finished the outer hull damage in record time. There was still some cosmetic repairs completed in the damaged sections - pieces of corridors and bulkheads scarred by Romulan and reaver action - but Enterprise had more than enough spares for all of that. And even if they didn't, Starfleet's Vega 6 probe had reported indications of at least four intelligent, warp-capable species along their current exploration route, any one of which might be willing to trade for supplies.

"Any response from Starfleet on our final report?" Kirk asked, rising slowly from his seat.

Uhura looked back at him tiredly, "Twelve hours overdue, Captain. I suppose that's probably a bad sign."

"Starfleet doesn't like unsolved mysteries. Probably debating whether or not to recall us to give a report in person..." Kirk sighed and made his way to the starboard turbolift. "Uhura, have Mister Scott advance our departure table, I want to be underway for the Eagle Nebula no later than oh seven hundred tomorrow morning."

Uhura looked at him in alarm, "Captain, at that timetable the fuel lab will have to w-"

"Lieutenant," Kirk held up his hand, silencing her objection with an almost chilling glance, "Just do it."

"Aye, Sir."

Kirk punched the turbolift control for Compartment 205 and then rubbed his eyes tiredly. "Just disposable parts..."

.

Interstellar Space
USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)
Stardate 2261.34

- 0330 hours -

The Yellow Alert tone had roused the Captain from a semi-comatose state and catapulted him still half-sleeping into a turbolift to the bridge. He was not quite fully awake until the moment he dropped into his command chair and wrapped himself in the practiced facade of command confidence and ability the crew so completely depended on at times like this. "Report, Spock."

The science officer answered from his display console, "We have intermittent SADAR contact ahead of us, something directly in our path. Evasive action is unsuccessful."

The usual pattern of a gravitic mine, Kirk realized. Judging by the viewscreen display, the Enterprise was still on course for the Eagle Nebula at warp six; that alone told Kirk all he needed to know about the situation at hand. If it was an immediate emergency, Spock would have dropped to impulse and screened with deflectors long before bothering to call the Captain to the bridge. "Can you estimate inertial mass?"

"Not at this distance, but field intensity is immense. Profile is consistent with a Starfleet long-range antiship torpedo..." Spock's sensor beams suddenly flickered a warning on the overhead displays, "Distance, two point six milliparsecs..."

"Take us out of warp," Kirk ordered, "Deflectors up full."

Enterprise slammed back to sublight velocity in the middle of interstellar space, instantly falling into orbit of the galactic core like a miniature solar system itself. The deflector fields powered on now, then extended their reach to create an impassible barrier in space tens of kilometers around the ship. Whatever was heading towards them, it would have much to cope with if it was after a collision.

Now reduced to impulse power, Spock's sensors had a better view of the universe. Subspace radar as well as passive sensor data came streaming through his monitors now, "Definitely something out there, headed this way."

Ensign Tyler reported from the navigator console, "Contact in thirty seconds! Closing at... warp seven, Sir!"

Kirk punched the intercom button, "All decks, upgrade to condition red! Forward phasers, standby to fire!"

The lightning on the bridge changed to deep red, consoles dimmed and displays adjusted their output to preserve the crew's night vision. Alarm claxons and then a series of audible readiness reports announced the transition of Enterprise from an exploration vessel to a deep space battleship capable of engaging any threat in the galaxy.

"Object slowing to warp two, Sir," Tyler reported, "Now warp one..." in the distance there was a slight rippling effect as something collided with the Enterprise's deflector barrier and somehow managed to push through. It was like watching a heat shimmer from a forest fire move closer and closer until, at last, the object came to a dead stop a few kilometers off the Enterprise' bow.

Lieutenant Garrison magnified the image on screen, and recognizing it reported immediately, "It's a courier, Sir. An old-style recorder marker."

Kirk nodded slowly, understanding dawning on him. "From the old Romulan Wars. They were designed to home in on any passing vessel and use their last bit of fuel to make the intercept."

Garrison looked incredulous, "That seems a bit self-defeating, isn't it?"

Kirk smiled, "The old phase cannons weren't accurate enough to hit targets at that range. Anyway, it was a good way to attract attention."

"Indeed they did," Spock said from the science console, "Whoever 'they' are."

Kirk nodded, "Hannity?"

The communications officer was already hard at work interrogating the recorder marker for its identification code. It took a few seconds for her to call up the relevant communications protocols from the ship's memory, and once she did, "I read it as a private charter vessel, leased to the New Horizon Corporation from UESPA public services devision. NAR-02, SS Columbia. Recorder marker reports catastrophic engine failure, atmospheric interface, emergency landing procedures."

"The Columbia?" It was little more than a historical curiosity now, something most people chalked up to the law of averages catching up to a group of plucky civilians with more enthusiasm than brains. The former second vessel of the NX-Class was nearly a hundred years old when it embarked on its final voyage into uncharted space, never to be heard from again. There was no specific theory about to what had doomed the ancient vessel, it was simply old, and had probably failed in a critical way at a critical time along with its crew of homesteaders.

Spock pulled the files from the library computer just moments later, "I have it, Jim. Last known position as of Stardate 2240.8, Sector Thirteen by Four by Seven, M44 quadrant, approaching a formation called the Talos Star Group, one point two light years from our present position."

Kirk did a bit of mental arithmetic and nodded sagely, "That old recorder marker would have taken at least that long to fly towards a major spacelane at impulse speeds... probably launched from inside the system."

Without needing to be asked, Spock called up the ship's records on that system and displayed the subspace telescope data on the overhead screen, "Talos System is a trinary G-S-C formation, multiple superjovian bodies and an unusual abundance of dwarf planets and cometary remnants. Primary system similar to Sol, eleven major planets and forty five dwarf planets. Visited twice by Starfleet, first in 2161 and then 2174 by starships Enterprise and Challenger respectively. Detailed charts by USS Archimedes on Stardate 2209.6. SS Columbia was intended to perform a colonization survey of the fourth planet in the system, thought to be Class-M."

Kirk sighed, "It's a shame they never made it."

Garrison glanced over his shoulder, "They could still be alive. Even after eighteen years."

"If they survived the crash. That recorder marker took this long to get into deep space, they probably launched it as a last will and testament."

Spock looked up from his science console in puzzlement, "We're not going to go? To confirm one way or the other?"

The image of Lieutenant Janice Rand, slumped on the transporter pad with a Klingon war saber driven though her chest, flashed through his mind. Kirk shook his head, "Not without any indication of survivors, no. Even at trans-warp, it's three weeks to the Eagle Nebula... I'd prefer not to get sidetracked unnecessarily." Kirk punched the intercom on his chair and announced, "All sections, stand down from Red Alert, set condition green throughout the ship." And closing the intercom, he lurched to his feet and started back for the turbolift, "You have the Conn., Spock. Bring that courier aboard and start downloading the Columbia's last transmissions."

"Aye, Sir..." Spock watched him go with increasing puzzlement, as if watching a shuttlecraft engine going into a stall. Even a Vulcan with little experience with emotion could tell by now, Captain Kirk's personality was growing more sour by the minute.

The turbolift deposited him back in Compartment 205, down the corridor and one deck down from his cabin. He made his way there by way of a ladder and a stretch of corridor that still wasn't completely repaired from battle damage (the overhead lights hadn't worked in a week), slipped into his cabin and hurled himself onto his bed like an old piece of clothing. A text letter from the Daystrom Institute - apparently from The Man Himself with more pointed questions about what had gone wrong in the last mission - was still flickering on the computer terminal. Kirk ignored it, rolled over on his side and prayed for sleep.

And perhaps thirty seconds later, his prayer was answered a resounding "no" as the door to his cabin hissed open and a brooding southerner strolled into the room with a large bottle of amber liquid, two glasses, and a small plastic container filled with something that looked like modeling clay. "Beware Romulans bearing gifts," said Doctor McCoy as he set both items on the table next to the bed. "Happy birthday, Jim."

Kirk rolled over and glowed, "Crazy old man..." then he sat up a little, "Birthday? What birthday?"

"You were born, weren't you? You didn't just congeal out of antisocial quirks and bad moods?"

"Get outa here, Bones..."

McCoy snapped open the plastic container and offered it to him like a precious gift. "Sweet potato pie. My mother's recipe. Goes good with a bit a Tennessee whisky. And if you don't quit feeling sorry for yourself and enjoy one of these things, I'm gonna stick both of them straight up your ass."

In spite of himself, Kirk actually laughed. "I didn't think they still made suppositories."

McCoy poured a glass for Kirk, then another for himself. "My size twelve boot can cure all kinds of ailments when administered in the proper orifice."

"I'll drink to that." Kirk half-heartedly toasted, then sipped the whisky. And when it didn't kick in fast enough, he gulped the entire glass in one sitting, coughed through the afterburn, and rolled back over on his bed feeling perfectly miserable.

"Aw, what the hell..." McCoy sighed, "Truth is, Spock and Nyota told me to come check on you."

Kirk rolled slightly back towards him.

"We may be your junior officers, but we're also your friends. We're gettin' worried about you."

"About me?" Kirk rolled all the way over and scowled at the thought of it, "I'm the Captain of this ship. You don't get to worry about me."

"Oh? Is that Starfleet regulations or what?"

Kirk rolled his eyes. "Get to the point, Bones."

"You already know the point, don't be a child." McCoy grabbed his shoulder and rolled him back to face him, "You've been all in a funk ever since we left Doppelgänger, you've been sitting here sulking like a bitter old man..."

"Sulking?" Kirk looked at McCoy and almost laughed, "What should I be doing? Tapdancing on the recreation deck?"

"It's a start."

"Aw hell... you know what it is? Here I am, rookie Captain Greenhorn on his first deep space assignment with only his ego to guide him. A simple research mission is all it was, and what happens? Watch the Greenhorn make a judgement call and twenty five people wind up in the morgue."

"It could have been worse, you know that."

"Yeah. The other sixty eight crewmen in sickbay could have died sooner rather than later."

McCoy sighed, "Perfectionist asshole! Jim, you set standards for yourself no one could meet. You think anyone else in this fleet could have handled that situation as well as you could?"

"I took three fire teams into an alien battleship with no recon scans, no sensor coverage, no beamout point. I lead our people right into a kill box and the goddamn Klingons had us for breakfast."

"Jim-!"

"That should be me lying there half dead in the ICU," Kirk sputtered sourly, "Not Janice. Not Loganoff. Damn... I appointed her to head of security two days before I lead her into a suicide mission! And let's not forget, the only reason we were in that situation is because I let the Enterprise get boarded in the first place."

McCoy poured him another glass, then opened the plastic container and helped himself to a pinch of the sweet potato pie. "As Spock would say, this is all just illogical emotional nonsense. What do you plan to do about it?"

Kirk rubbed his knees as if his legs had started hurting from walking through a maze of his own remorse. "I dunno... I should probably resign before I get court-marshaled."

"And do what? Crawl into a bottle in some hayseed bar in Iowa? You and I both know this is the only job you've ever been good at."

"Not good enough. But there are other options."

"Like?"

Kirk shrugged, "I don't know... knock up some blonde, start a family..."

McCoy laughed, "Yeah, right. You being personally responsible for a completely helpless human life that depends on you for its emotional, educational and nutritional needs... yeah, that's much easier than commanding a starship."

"The point is I've got options! As it is, I'm responsible for the lives of seven hundred men and women on a hundred and forty thousand ton flying city with four and quarter billion moving parts. People live or die depending on whether or not I make the right decision at a moment's notice... well Bones, what if I'm wrong?"

"Then people die. We burry the dead, we learn from our mistakes, and we move on."

Kirk stared at his feet, "How many Janice Rands are worth Jim Kirk's experience?"

"That all depends on what you do with that experience, doesn't it?" McCoy sipped his whisky and frowned, "You've got alot of nerve sitting here feeling sorry for yourself when there's a whole shipload of people depending on you for leadership. Maybe it was a mistake, who knows? But like it or not, you're in command, and this ship needs its Captain."

"Bones, I ha-"

"Bridge to Captain Kirk," Spock's voice echoed through the loudspeaker, paging all sections of the ship.

Kirk fumbled for the intercom switch on the computer terminal and answered tiredly, "Kirk here."

"Recorder maker contains remote-access log entry. There are survivors on Talos Four."

Or at least, there were. Eighteen years is a long time to be marooned on an alien planet, M-Class or not. Even so... "From our present position, what's our ETA on the Talos Star Group?"

"Fourteen minutes at present speed."

Only a small deviation from their course. If there were any survivors, it shouldn't take more than a day or two to find them. "Alter course for Talos Prime. I'll be there shortly." Kirk stood up like a rusty mechanism, paused briefly over the sweet potato pie, and with three switch movements of a fork, shoveled the entire concoction into his mouth. "Bones, I haven't felt this lost since... Well, since Pike died. I can't shake this feeling like I'm into something way too big for me."

"Fortunately, your crew doesn't care about your feelings, and between Doppelgänger and the Black Ship Affair, most of them look up to you like God Almighty. If nothing else, that means you're in, it means you've earned their respect and their loyalty. This isn't the end for you, Jim, it's just the beginning. Don't you dare throw it away because you're too busy feeling sorry for yourself!"

Kirk shot him a jaunty wave and then strode out of his quarters, wearing the best facade of whisky-fueled confidence he could muster on short notice.