Star Trek_ A Choice of Catastrophes - Michael Schuster [2]
McCoy could see Kirk’s surprise. Giotto was the Enterprise’s chief of security, but he rarely served in landing parties. “Any reason, Commander? Can’t your people handle it?”
“Of course they can,” said Giotto, “but under normal circumstances I can beam down if things get hairy. That won’t be an option on this mission—I want to be there from the start.”
Kirk nodded. “Understood. I want two security personnel per shuttle; send Mister Spock your picks for the other three.” He looked around at the crew. “If that’s all, dismissed.”
McCoy couldn’t remember a mission in which Giotto had participated and he hadn’t. The doctor just wanted to be busy. Today was his third anniversary as chief medical officer of the Enterprise, and he needed to get his mind off that fact. He’d gone into space to get away from his thoughts, and now he was being left alone with them. Since joining Starfleet, he had never held a post this long, and it unsettled him. He needed to be moving, otherwise he began thinking, began wallowing.
As the others filed out of the briefing room, Kirk and McCoy remained seated. The doors closed behind Sulu, the last to leave. Immediately, Kirk leaned forward and rested his arms on the tabletop. “What’s gotten into you, Bones? You’re tearing into me for something I can’t do anything about. It’s not like you. What’s going on?”
The doctor thought about it for a moment. But would Jim understand? This was a man for whom space was a passion—for McCoy it was an escape. How could Kirk understand that McCoy felt he didn’t belong here and never had? “Nothing,” he said.
“Stop being so pigheaded,” Kirk said. “You always get me to tell you what’s eating me. Let me do the same for you.”
“Jim, I’m fine. Stop projecting.”
“Bones.” Kirk shook his head. “Whenever you’re this prickly, there’s something gnawing at you. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.”
McCoy opened his mouth to reply but found he didn’t know what to say. He just wanted to go, to plunge into the depths of space and leave everything behind. But that wasn’t healthy.
So he said nothing, but stood up and walked toward the door. He was out of the room before Jim had a chance to add anything further.
The last time McCoy had felt like this, he’d signed up for a six-month survey mission on a primitive planet near the Klingon border to get his mind off things. Where would he have to go this time?
Ten Days Later
Stardate 4757.2 (0452 hours, ship time)
James Kirk loved the first sight of a new world. No matter how many planets he’d seen, each one was different from the one before it. There was no substitute for that moment when the ship came out of warp and there, suspended before him in the infinite darkness, was a small bastion of life.
The feeling was more intimate right now in a shuttlecraft—just him, the six others, and the unknown. With a crew this small, the captain took the controls.
“ETA to Mu Arigulon, Ensign?” Kirk asked the woman sitting next to him at the navigation controls of the shuttle-craft Columbus.
“Two minutes, Captain.” Karen Seven Deers was older than Kirk, having elected to join Starfleet after a successful career as a mechanical engineer on Centaurus. She had only recently completed training and been posted to the Enterprise. Kirk remembered being a green ensign nervously following Captain Bannock’s orders on his first landing party. Seven Deers, by contrast, was positively blasé.
“Stand by for warp deceleration.” Kirk’s hands ran across the console in front of him, setting the engines. He could feel the power of the craft humming beneath his hands. “Signal the Hofstadter for verification.”
Seven Deers tapped a control. “Hofstadter signals ready, Captain.”
Not wanting to miss his first sight of Mu Arigulon, Kirk looked up to check that all three of the viewport covers at the front of the Columbus were open.
“Is everyone ready?” Kirk spun his chair around to take a quick look at the remainder of the Columbus’s crew. Lieutenant Commander Giotto was sitting right behind his captain,