Vonda McIntyre - The Entropy Effect

Uhura shivered. Spiderweb was little more than a rumor to her; she was from Earth, where there had been no terrorism in decades. She knew what spiderweb was supposed to do; still, she assumed the reports were exaggerated. Captain Kirk and Mandala Flynn were both down in sick bay, perhaps seriously hurt, but they would recover. Uhura was certain of it. After all, Mandala had walked out of here under her own power, so she could hardly be critically wounded.

Pavel hit a particularly off-key note and Uhura glared down at him in annoyance.

The turbo lift doors opened. Pavel stopped whistling.

Mr. Spock walked onto the bridge, and Uhura knew immediately, with an overwhelming wave of despair, that everything had gone terribly wrong.

Without a word, Spock stepped down to the lower level of the bridge. He stopped for a moment, and then he sat in the captain’s seat.

Uhura clenched her long fingers. She had an irrational urge to leap up and run from her post, to a place where she would not have to hear what Mr. Spock was about to say.

But Spock had opened the emergency paging circuits: when he spoke, everyone on the Enterprise would hear him. There was nowhere to run. Pavel had turned around: he too sensed disaster and his face had paled to a sickly shade.

The silence and the tension increased.

Spock closed his hooded eyes, opened them again, and gazed straight ahead.

“This is Commander Spock.”

He hardly ever refers to himself by his rank, Uhura thought, only by his position, science officer, first officer—

“It is my duty to tell you that a few minutes ago, James T. Kirk, captain of the U.S.S.Enterprise , died. He was injured beyond hope. He did not regain consciousness after he was taken from the bridge. He experienced no further pain.”

Uhura withdrew as far as she could into her own mind, letting the words slide over her consciousness and skid across the slick shiny surface she put up to protect her from the hurt. The realization would have to sink in slowly; for now, she could not accept it.

“In attempting to defend the captain, Commander of Security Mandala Flynn was mortally wounded.

She died in the performance of her duty.

“The suspect in the murders is in custody. No concrete evidence of an accomplice has been discovered.”

Spock paused, as if searching for some unfamiliar word of comfort to offer to the crew. He failed to find any. He shut off the circuits; the switch made a decisive snap.

“The captain—is dead?” Pavel Chekov spoke in a low and unbelieving tone.

“Yes, Mr. Chekov.”

“But—what will we do?”

“We will proceed with our mission,” Spock said. “Lieutenant Uhura—”

She looked at him blankly, and replied, finally, as if she had to travel a very long distance just to hear him. “Yes, Mr. Spock?”

“Notify Starfleet of what has happened ... and the civilian authorities. Mr. al Auriga will undoubtedly wish to take all our statements within the next few hours. We must all do our best to report accurately

what occurred.”

“Yes, sir,” Uhura said dully.

Sulu crept quietly into the minuscule cabin he shared with the senior weapons officer, Ilya Nikolaievich. The cabin was half the size of his private quarters in the Enterprise . Perhaps eventually he would find sharing a room unpleasant, but right now his excitement at being on Aerfen was impenetrable. Besides, during normal times, when they were on patrol, he and Ilya Nikolaievich would be on watch at different hours and each would have the room to himself for at least a while each day.

Sulu had not felt so good, nor so tired, in years. He had worked for eighteen hours with hardly a break, refamiliarizing himself with the weaponry carried by Aerfen and its sibling ships, weapons that depended on precision and finesse rather than brute force, as did those of the Enterprise . He was pleased with his first set of practice scores, but nowhere near satisfied, and he would not be happy till he met or exceeded the scores of the ship’s two other weapons officers. The rivalry was a friendly one, but it was rivalry nonetheless.

Ilya slept as peacefully as a child. When he was awake his square-jawed sculptured face held hints of suspicion, watchfulness, and even cruelty. He demonstrated procedures to Sulu efficiently, straightforwardly, and neutrally, showing neither resentment of his new colleague nor enthusiasm for him. Other members of the crew called him Ilyushka, but as he did not invite Sulu to use the diminutive of his name, Sulu stayed carefully with the formal first name and patronymic. Sulu knew he would have to prove himself to everyone: to Hunter, of course, and maybe particularly to Ilya Nikolaievich.

Ilya was shorter than Sulu, but similar in build: compact and well-proportioned, slender but muscular.

His heavy straight blond hair fell across his forehead, nearly to his eyebrows, and below his collar in back. He reminded Sulu of Spock, he held himself in such tight control. He was no less somber now, asleep, then he had been earlier, but the tension had gone from his face. He was a human being: the only Vulcan in him, he had put deliberately into his character.

Sulu took off his shirt, then sat down to pull off his boots. They were rather tight and as the left one slid off, his hand slipped. The boot spiralled out of his grasp. He lunged forward to catch it knowing he could not, and winced as the clatter broke the silence of the ship.

Ilya leaped from his bunk, crouching, a knife glinting in his hand. Sulu froze, leaning down with one hand still stretched out toward his boot.

“Sorry,” he said, embarrassed, feeling the blood rise to his cheeks.

Ilya straightened up, scowling, and lowered the knife.

“Never mind,” he said. “I should have warned you. I spent two years behind the lines during the Orion border skirmish.” He slipped his knife back under his pillow. “But please do not touch me when I am asleep, or come up behind me without warning. Do you understand? I react by reflex and I might hurt you.”

“I’ll remember,” Sulu said.

Ilya nodded. The high-collared thigh-length Russian tunic he wore gaped open above its loose sash, revealing a livid scar that ran down his chest and across his abdomen. Sulu could not help staring, and

Ilya noticed his gaze. He shrugged.

“A souvenir,” he said, got back into bed, and fell asleep without another word.

Sulu finished undressing and climbed into his own cramped bunk as quietly as he could. He stretched, and rubbed the back of his neck, and closed his eyes for a few moments. But he did not want to go to sleep yet. He pulled the reader away from the wall so it hung suspended over his lap. He had not even had time to program it to his voice, and besides it was bad manners to talk to a computer when someone else was trying to sleep in the same room. He used the keyboard to pull up the schematics for Aerfen .

He studied for several hours, memorizing the plans and making note of the differences between this ship and the others in the squadron.

While he read, he pushed Mandala’s ruby ring around and around on his finger, around and around. He missed her. He did not miss the Enterprise yet, and that astonished him. But, oh, he did miss Mandala Flynn. Things kept happening that he wanted to tell her about, he kept thinking, At her fencing lesson, or At my judo lesson, or When I see her later. .. and then remembering that at least for now those times, their times together, were over.

Finally, nearly twenty-four hours after he had come on board Captain Hunter’s ship, he fell deeply asleep, with the pale light of the reading screen shining in his face.

Commander Spock walked down the wide corridor of the ship that was, now, his. He was not an unambitious being, but his ambitions lay in other directions than commanding a ship crewed primarily by often incomprehensible human beings. McCoy was right: he was, in fact if not in name, the captain of the Enterprise . He would do the job as best he could for as long as he was forced to; he would transfer, as science officer, to another ship as soon as possible. It never entered his mind that he could stay on the Enterprise ; it did not even occur to him that staying on the Enterprise under another captain would be the most logical course of action. With the death of Jim Kirk, this part of Spock’s life as well had come to an end, and he saw no point in struggling to prolong it.