Archive of Our Own ^beta

"Cakewalk," says Jim. "It's going to be a cakewalk. The only thing that's going to be even a little bit difficult will be not dying of boredom."

Pike's mouth twitches on the screen, and his expression hovers somewhere in the dangerous territory between condescending amusement and polite interest. "Bold words to start a mission with. Not quite as bad as 'what could possibly go wrong?', but – "

"We're circling a Type II supernova to take astronomical observations for the next month," says Jim. "At a distance of four hundred lightyears, for that matter. A whole month of going at a constant speed, without stopping at any planets or interacting with any other ships at all, and passively taking data. So yeah, what could possibly go wrong?"

Pike rubs his hand over his mouth. "One month from now, at the end of the mission, I'd just like you to remember that you said that."

"And one month from now, at the end of the mission, I'd like you to remember that you doubted me," says Jim.

"If you wanted cakewalks," Pike says, looking directly into the feed, "Starfleet was probably a mistake. Taking a captaincy even moreso."

The slight shift in tone makes Jim's shoulders straighten, but he meets Pike's gaze head-on. "I'll be fine, sir."

The corners of Pike's mouth tighten. "And your crew?"

"We made it through Nero. I think we can take whatever gets thrown at us next."

Pike smiles crookedly, pulling his chin to the side in a rueful tilt of his head. "There's no need to worry about anything being thrown at you. I'm sure you'll all make your own trouble. Starships are remarkably...productive, that way."

"I have no doubt. But if you don't mind, Admiral, right now I have to find someone to give a tour to a very enthusiastic astrophysicist."

"You know, real captains always give their own tours."

Jim hesitates, his hand hovering over the viewscreen controls. Pike's face is an innocent mask, betraying nothing, and Jim succumbs to doubt long enough to ask, "Really?"

"Of course not," says Pike. "Delegation. It's your new favorite word, Captain. Pike out."

The viewscreen goes dark, and Jim rolls his eyes.

"You just wanted the last word," he says to no one, and then sighs, looking around his ready room. It's...very empty. The Enterprise has loitering outside of spacedock for a grand total of six hours, and the rest of the bridge crew had been working hard enough that he'd excused himself from the bridge to take Pike's transmission. Jim's always traveled light, and he hasn't had time yet to unpack his personal possessions – not that there are many. It's less noticeable here than in his quarters, but Jim already prefers this room. He's never been good at sleeping in his own bed, but the restlessness that's so often left him staring at his bedroom ceiling is absent when he's sitting at a desk. Even in spacedock, there were reports to read, forms to sign off on, background reading to reacquaint himself with, and a physical impossibility of barfights due to lack of bars. This has been much less of a problem than Jim would've anticipated.

The thought strikes him that he's going to be spending a lot of time within these four walls – doing paperwork, reading reports, having conversations like that one. Probably arguing with Spock and complaining to Bones, for that matter. He wouldn't be surprised if there ends up being a lot of drinking.

He sure hopes there is, actually.

Spock is in the captain's chair when he gets back to the bridge, but stands as soon as Jim enters.

"Captain," he says.

"Mr. Spock, you are relieved," Jim replies. "Anything exciting happen?"

"Doctor Sayavong's shuttle is expected to dock in approximately twenty-seven minutes," says Spock, "at which time we have received approval from Starfleet Command to depart spacedock and proceed in our mission."

"So pretty much no," says Jim, as they meet at the bottom of the steps separating the two sections of the bridge.

"Our status is unchanged," Spock concedes.

"You read Sayavong's mission proposal, right?" says Jim. "The fifty-page one, with the diagrams?"

Spock turns his head minutely, so that he's looking at Jim from an ever-so-slight angle. Jim isn't entirely sure why he does it, but he's guessing that it rates somewhere between a completely blank expression and an eyebrow-raise on the Certified Scale of Vulcan Emotional Expression. "As Science Officer, I rated the proposal and recommended it for selection."

"Perfect," says Jim, "then you can also give her the welcome-to-the-Enterprise tour when her shuttle arrives. Since you're already familiar with her work."

"Understood, Captain," says Spock. Jim doesn't know how to read his tone, so he gives Uhura a quick glance as a barometer, but she isn't paying attention to their conversation.

"Take Chekov, too," Jim adds. Chekov whips around in his seat, his eyes wide, and Sulu turns his head too, frowning.

"Additional personnel would be unnecessary," says Spock, ignoring both of them.

A wince passes over Chekov's face, and Jim forcibly turns his attention back to Spock, trying not to frown.

"He's going to be talking to Sayavong at least every day, with the precision navigation the data-taking is going to require," says Jim. "They might as well start getting to know each other now."

Spock's eyebrow comes out in full force, but he backs down. "Very well. Ensign, with me."

"I – " Chekov starts, looking between Jim and Spock. Then he slumps, just a little, in his chair. "Aye, sir," he says, standing up. Ensign Irodikromo takes his place, and as Jim takes his own seat, he sees her catch Sulu's eye and jerk her head towards Chekov and Spock. Sulu pulls his mouth sideways with uncertainty, and gives her a quick shrug.

Huh, Jim thinks, filing the entire situation away for closer examination later. "Lieutenant Uhura, how are the comms looking?"

Uhura looks over her shoulder at him. "All diagnostics on the repaired systems are returning normal, sir. All sections except one have reported ready for warp."

"Which one hasn't reported?"

"Engineering."

"Right." He turns back to the viewscreen. "Kirk to Engineering."

After a moment, the reply comes. "Scott here. Anything I can help you with, Captain?"

"We're planning to leave spacedock in about twenty minutes. What's your status?"

"Well, the mission is to go barely above Warp 1 in a giant circle at a perfectly safe distance from what I'm sure is otherwise a very interesting astronomical event, which means ninety percent of my people will be working on plumbing and computer repair for the next month. I'm not going to rule out a mutiny."

Jim rubs his forehead. "I didn't mean the status of your morale, but thanks for the heads-up. Are we ready for warp?"

"Oh, aye," says Scotty. "That we are, sure."

"Good," says Jim. "Kirk out."

He manages a few minutes in his chair with his PADD before Uhura mercifully distracts him.

"Captain, Doctor McCoy wants you in Sickbay."

Jim turns the chair around, reveling in the motion maybe a little more than he should. "Did he say why?"

Uhura looks over her shoulder again, and Jim resolves to get her to turn her seat entirely around for him at some point. "No, sir."

"Right. Mr. Sulu, you have the conn."

The path from the bridge to Sickbay steers clear of most of the main components of the engines, meaning that Jim mostly passes through closed, walled corridors instead of the expanses and platforms of other parts of the ship. There's still something about the clean white of the pitted walls and the familiar unfolding of the network of corridors that appeals to him. He spent enough time on the ship while it was under repair from the encounter with Nero that the turns are second nature by now. It was never quiet, even when he was one of only a few hundred on it – the ship has a constant background white noise of humming engines and chirping consoles that Jim mostly tunes out now, but every now and then he registers it again, like hearing his own breathing in a quiet room.

It feels like never being alone.

There are no patients in Sickbay, which is a relief. Several nurses and medical engineers look up from their equipment checks when he comes in, but Bones sticks his head out of his one of the doors on the other end of the room when Jim enters.

"There you are," he says. "C'mon."

Jim follows him into a small storage room with extra equipment and medicines filling the shelves, where Bones gestures to an open storage crate on the floor.

"We've got a problem."

Jim takes a closer look at the contents, then turns back to Bones. "Condoms are a problem now?"

"They are when the wrappers aren't properly sealed," says Bones, pulling out a strip of condoms in their wrappers. "Take a look."

He hands Jim the strip, and Jim looks. The plastic edges on the right of the wrapper aren't consistently sealed, leaving small gaps.

"That's not good," Jim says.

"No, it's not. As CMO, while I'm required to provide prophylactic equipment to the crew as a matter of public safety, I can't distribute any equipment that's potentially been contaminated. Any broken seals - or wrappers - have to be considered contaminated. Once we dispose of those, we've got less than a quarter of the supply we're supposed to have. We're lucky that Nurse Diaz Cruz noticed at all, or they might've been distributed."

Jim rubs his face with one hand. "Okay, so we're short on condoms. Shockingly, the Resources and Supply course in the Command track actually dealt with a scenario like this."

"So did Public Health," Bones says. "Might even have been the same case study. Was it the port at Regix V and the krventra outbreak - ?"

"That's the one. I don't suppose any of the other ships in spacedock – "

Bones shakes his head. "We're the closest to deployment – none of the other ships are outfitted. And we checked lot numbers, serial numbers – there's no pattern to the faulty condoms, meaning that now everything from the supplier has to be double-checked."

That sounds...time-consuming, especially since anything will have to find a spot on a shuttle up to the spacedock. Condoms for a one-month mission probably aren't the highest priority, and the shuttles usually don't go more than twice a day, so that's...two days, at least, just there. "How long are we talking?"

"A week," says Bones. "Maybe more. Manual inspection of every lot – "

"We're not waiting a week for condoms!" says Jim. "I mean, I love sex as much as the next guy – hell, probably more – "

"Pretty definitely," says Bones. "Still, my official advice on this is to wait for a shipment if it's feasible."

"A week! That's a quarter of mission-time!"

"That's why I said 'if feasible,' which is your decision, not mine," says Bones.

Jim lets out a frustrated groan. "Okay. How are we doing on other methods of contraception?"

"We've got enough hormonal and injectable contraception to be covered, but I'm more concerned about the spread of diseases."

"Of course you are," says Jim. "And there's no way to get anything faster?"

Bones shakes his head. "Condoms aren't considered essential supplies."

"Seriously? If condoms aren't essential, what is?"

"Antibiotics and antivirals," says Bones. "Analgesics. Food, for that matter. Water. Toilet paper."

"It was a rhetorical question," says Jim. "Although seriously, toilet paper?"

"Take it up with Starfleet Command if you've got an issue with it," says Bones.

"Right," says Jim, leaning on the crate of condoms. "Well, we're still not waiting a week for condoms."

"Fine," says Bones.

Jim's eyes narrow. "It's a quarter of the mission-time, as in one-fourth," he says. "Just because this mission isn't, you know, interesting doesn't mean – "

"I'm not arguing with you," says Bones.

"You're not?"

Bones rolls his eyes. "You're Captain, which means you get to make the decision. And in this case, I can't say I disagree. Of course, we may find ourselves knee-deep in patients suffering from space-clap by the end of the mission, but – "

"It's really great that I can count on your support in times like these," says Jim. "Really. I appreciate it."

"Of course, as Captain, you're also the one who gets to tell the crew that it's hands-off as much as possible for the duration of the mission," says Bones.

So that’s why Pike is so keen on delegation.

"I'll make sure it gets taken care of," says Jim. "In the meantime, Sayavong's shuttle should be here any minute."

"Wouldn't want to miss your chance to sit in your chair and say 'go,'" says Bones.

"Oh, not for anything," says Jim, and flashes Bones a shit-eating grin on his way out.

He's halfway back to the bridge when he catches sight of three people ahead of him, and calls, "Mr. Spock!"

Spock and Chekov turn immediately, and after a moment of confusion, so does their guest. Jim catches up to them, and holds out a hand.

"You must be Dr. Sayavong," he says. "I'm Captain Jim Kirk."

Sayavong blinks at him, then takes the offered hand. "I – yes, I am. Deodara Sayavong. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"We were taking Dr. Sayavong to Astrometrics," says Spock. "She wished to learn more about the positioning equipment we will be using to calibrate her readings."

Chekov, standing beside Sayavong, stares at the wall of the corridor with vacant unhappiness. His posture is tight and correct in the way only truly miserable people hold themselves.

"I'd love to come with you," Jim lies, "but unfortunately, I'm going to have to steal our navigator back so we can get on our way."

Sayavong brightens. "Absolutely!" she says, and then adds, with more forced politeness, "It was wonderful to meet you, Captain. And Ensign."

Chekov gives a quick nod and tries at a smile. "And you, Dr. Sayavong."

Sayavong only blinks at Chekov's pronunciation of her name, and Jim puts a hand on Chekov's shoulder to physically move him along.

"Don't worry, Doctor, you're in only the best hands," says Jim. "Mr. Spock."

"Captain," says Spock. "I will report to the bridge once the tour is complete."

"Sure," says Jim, and keeps pushing Chekov forward until he's walking on his own. Jim watches the tension ease out of Chekov the further away they get from Spock and Sayavong.

"So, Ensign," says Jim, once they're well out of earshot. "Enjoy your duties as tour guide?"

Chekov looks at Jim, a little helplessly. "Aye, sir."

"You're a terrible liar, Chekov," says Jim. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," says Chekov, too fast.

"You're still a bad liar. Seriously, what is it?"

"I – did not expect to be giving a tour," says Chekov.

"Okay, let's start this conversation over again, with the understanding that you're not going to magically learn how to lie to my face over the course of it," says Jim. "What's going on? Is it Sayavong?"

"No!" says Chekov, and at least this time he's animated. "Deodara is very, very smart."

"Then what?" says Jim. "Is it Spock?"

"I," says Chekov, but no lie is forthcoming.

"What, seriously? Spock?" Jim shakes his head, speeding up to walk backwards in front of Chekov so they can at least do this face-to-face, even if it is awkward as hell. "Look, I know he can be intimidating, but once you get to know him, he's – " Jim rethinks the 'really a teddy bear' analogy that he was going to go with. " – a giant asshole. But he's probably got a heart of gold, or something."

"He is very intimidating," Chekov mutters, not meeting Jim's eyes.

They're almost at the bridge, so Jim pulls out the big guns. "Look at it this way – you saved his life, during the Nero incident, and more than once. So the next time he gives you that glare of his, just remind yourself that he wouldn't even be around to glare if it weren't for you."

"If it weren't for – " Chekov repeats. It doesn't seem to help – he draws his shoulders down and closer together, almost folding in on himself. "Aye, Captain. I will try to remember that."

Jim considers harping on the point, but it seems like overkill. "Mr. Sulu," he says, as they enter the bridge, "keeping my chair warm for me?"

"Only metaphorically, sir," says Sulu. "Thrusters are on standby, ready to engage at your command."

Jim settles himself in his chair as Chekov relieves Irodikromo. "Lieutenant Uhura?"

"Dock control reports ready, Captain," says Uhura.

"Excellent. Mr. Sulu," says Jim, gesturing vaguely at the viewscreen, "second star to the right and straight on 'til morning."

Someone behind him and on his left gives a low groan, and he hears a muttered, "Oh, please," coming from Uhura's vicinity.

He clears his throat. "Little cliché?"

"More than a little, sir," Sulu confirms. "Engaging thrusters."

Close enough, Jim thinks.

The recreation hall on Deck Five has only scatterings of people when Jim goes to get dinner after his shift a few days later. After retrieving his chicken sandwich, Jim finds himself reliving the high school scenario of trying to decide where to sit to eat. His answer when he had actually been in high school was to spend that time behind the school, either smoking or making out with someone; in the Academy, he'd gotten around the issue by studying and eating at the same time, or haranguing Bones.

As Bones is nowhere to be seen, Jim sets his PADD next to his plate and stares at the list of senior personnel, trying to decide who'll get to write the condom-message to the crew. He's half tempted to do it himself. Technically, it's a duty that's probably best suited to Uhura, but she'd take it seriously and that's not fun at all.

"May I join you, Captain?"

Jim looks up – the speaker is familiar, in the same way that most of the crew is, although the angle of his cheekbones below his sub-Saharan-dark skin and his Betazoid-black eyes ring a bell. They probably had a class or two together. Luckily, his rank is displayed on his uniform.

"Of course, Ensign...?"

The ensign smiles, with a softened edge of uncertainty. "Adrian Nkrumah, sir. We had History of Spaceflight together, sir, but I went by Adriana then."

Jim grins as the pieces fall into place. "You argued with Professor Hratzflad about the privatization of spaceflight in the early twenty-first century. I thought zhe was going to fail you for that."

"So did I," says Nkrumah, sitting down across from Jim, "and zhe almost did."

"What changed zher mind?"

"I still have no idea," admits Nkrumah. "I think eventually zhe started to like arguing just for the sake of arguing."

Jim snorts. "Sounds like Hratzflad. I went to zher office hours once. Never again." Jim nods at Nkrumah's uniform, science-blue. "What division did you end up in?"

"Botany," says Nkrumah. "If I can't see the sky, I might as well see plants all the time."

"There's plenty of sky in the observation decks," says Jim. "Granted, it's not blue..."

Nkrumah's fork scrapes lightly against the plate. "This is actually my first time past Low-Earth Orbit," Nkrumah says. "There are things I know I should expect, but it's one thing to know them and to know them, if that makes sense."

Jim hums, contemplatively. "Like what?"

"That the constellations will all be different," says Nkrumah. "That it's going to be at least a month before I see rain, or sunlight, or a horizon."

"Jeeze, Adrian, are you already getting homesick? That's a record." Another ensign slides in next to Nkrumah, dragging a tray with a salad on it with her. Then she sticks her hand out over it towards Jim. "Ensign Li."

Jim wipes his hand on a napkin as quickly as possible and takes it. "Jim Kirk."

Li's grip tightens on his hand. "As in Captain?"

Jim grins at her. "And here I thought everyone knew who I was."

"Sorry, sir, I'm one of the few that only heard stories about you in the Academy," says Li.

"Xiao was my roommate freshman year," Nkrumah tells Jim.

"Well, Ensign Nkrumah was just saying that – he?" Jim asks Nkrumah, and continues after a nod of affirmation – "had never been past LEO before."

"Li was born on Deep Space Station E-2," Nkrumah adds. "She thinks we're all – what was it, Xiao?"

"Dirt-kissers," says Li.

"I hadn't heard that one," says Jim. "Earthfuckers, though, that's my favorite."

Li lets out a delighted laugh, and even Nkrumah smiles as he plants his face against his hand.

"You spent time in deep-space?" Li asks.

"I was a Starfleet brat," says Jim. "It comes with the territory."

Nkrumah perks up with curiosity. "How many planets have you been to?"

Jim shrugs. "Ten, maybe fifteen if we're including layovers. And Delta Vega."

"Delta Vega?" says Nkrumah. "Isn't that near Vul – near where Vulcan used to be?"

"Well, yeah, it's – " says Jim, then, "wait. You didn't hear about Delta Vega?"

"Isn't that where Commander Scott was, before he was assigned to the Enterprise?" says Li.

"Nobody told you guys about Delta Vega?" Jim tries to hold back his indignation, but it doesn't work. "I outran two giant snow monsters on Delta Vega! One of them ate the other for an appetizer – it must've been three stories tall, at least!"

Li and Nkrumah trade a glance. "All due respect, sir," says Li, "I think if anything was going to be an appetizer for a three-story snow monster, it would be you."

"Is Delta Vega even colonized?" says Nkrumah. "Starfleet has an outpost there, right, since Commander Scott was there, but why would they send kids there?"

"Oh, no, this was when Spock had me kicked off the ship during the Narada incident," says Jim, and launches into the story.

He's gone from Delta Vega to the Kobayashi Maru to getting in a fight with Sergeant Cupcake - who, now that he's technically Sergeant Cupcake's commanding officer, he makes sure to frame in much more flattering, or at least imposing, terms than his usual rendition of this story - before he decides he's buttered them up enough.

"So," he says, as Li wipes a tear from the corner of her eye at Jim's impression of himself talking to Pike with bar napkins shoved up his nose, "how about you guys? How are you enjoying active duty so far?"

Li's smile disappears almost immediately, and Nkrumah stares pointedly down at his plate.

"What do you mean, sir?" Li says in a perfectly polite, detached tone that means that Jim's completely squandered the camaraderie of two seconds ago.

"Just trying to get a feel for things," Jim says with a shrug. "I mean, in the Academy, the professors were always the last to know about the important stuff and half the time it was because they didn't give a shit, and I do."

"Oh," Nkrumah says.

Li clears her throat and meets Jim's eyes. "All due respect, sir, my roommate and I had promised to try to get assignments together, but one of the junior helmsmen on the Antares went into labor unexpectedly and Mackenzie got pulled to fill in. They gave up on recovering bodies at Vulcan, so she's never going to come home. So it's been rough."

"I'm so sorry for your loss," Jim says, because what else could he say?

Nkrumah pushes a fried plantain halfway across his plate, then takes a breath loud enough to break up the silence. "I heard that there's a petition to get the kitchens to make chocolate chip pancakes?" he says.

Li points her fork at Nkrumah. "That's way more fun to talk about. Let's talk about that instead."

So they talk about chocolate chip pancakes, and it almost makes them feel better.

Jim's bedroom is, unsurprisingly, just as underwhelming as every other bedroom he's had. The walls are unforgivably beige, the mattress entirely too comfortable, and the empty space between the bed and the desk nags at him.

Being a Starfleet brat and a brother meant that Jim didn't grow up with anything resembling traditional living arrangements. Often he and George shared a bedroom, depending on what their accommodations were. Sometimes they shared a bunk bed in Starfleet childcare facilities. Sometimes they just plain shared a bed. They'd been split up a few times, when Jim's test scores opened doors to lonely and useless semesters in space or educational trips to new colonies or areas of scientific interest. Some of them had been fine. One of them had been Tarsus IV, which was an education Jim could have done without.

And everywhere he went, even when traveling more or less on his own, he was preceded by stories about his father.

The Academy had been familiar both in that respect and in the roommate system. Before that, there had been lackluster apartments and the far more appealing string of semi-anonymous beds or, occasionally, benches outside bars.

After a solid half-hour of lying in bed trying to take slow, deep breaths or whatever, Jim decides that what he really needs is the next best thing to a barfight, so he pulls on the plain black uniform undershirt and some shoes.

The gym - technically named the 'physical recreation area' because why would Starfleet ever use one syllable when it could use ten? - is open constantly to accommodate use from all crew, regardless of duty schedule. The assumption is that all Starfleet personnel, being responsible and competent beings, don't require any supervision and that the gym can remain unstaffed. Having been to the gyms at the Academy, Jim thinks that's a bit optimistic, but it does mean that the gym is at least open even though it's ass-o'clock Starfleet standard time (a timekeeping system designed to be indiscriminately horrible to circadian rhythms of all Starfleet member species).

What Jim had not quite thought through was that the gym might not be empty. Spock runs on the treadmill closest to the weight set exactly the way Jim would have guessed he runs: perfect form, perfect focus, and absolutely no signs of exhilaration or enjoyment. Uhura, as Jim watches in unstunned half-astonishment, deadlifts what must be easily a hundred and fifty pounds, straightening from a squat with perfect form and then letting the bar fall back behind her. It doesn't even get caught in her hair.

"Sorry, Captain," she says, barely breathless. "Did you need the weights, sir?"

"No, thank you, Lieutenant," Jim says automatically. Uhura's look conveys something between 'I didn't think so' and 'I wasn't going to give them up for you anyway.' Jim looks back at Spock, who gives him the briefest of nods before returning his attention to the middle-distance of a truly focused athlete.

Jim goes further back into the gym and finds what he's looking for: a punching bag. It's not quite a random guy at a bar, but it'll do for now, and it's fully equipped with gloves and tape. Jim foregoes the gloves, but applies the tape. Wearing the gloves barely feels like hitting at all, since they diffuse the force of each blow in a way that never occurs in an actual fight. Jim wants a fight more than a workout - this is just what he's settling for.

He wishes, briefly, that the punching bag could punch back.

He works the bag anyway, letting the impact jar its way up his arm. Once he's leaving slivers of sweat-marks on the bag from the corners of skin peeking out between the lines of tape, he feels vaguely better.

Then he realizes he's got an audience.

He turns around to see that Spock and Uhura are gone, but five Security personnel stand watching him. Somehow, they all have matching Operations-red tank tops that definitely aren't standard issue. Two have their arms crossed, but two more have an interested glint in their eye. The fifth is Lieutenant Hendorff, better known to Jim as Cupcake.

None of them are standing at attention or anything close to it, but Jim gives them a breezy nod and says "As you were," anyway and turns back to the bag.

"Do you spar, sir?" one of them says, a human woman that Jim recognizes as an ensign. She has at least four inches on Jim, maybe a full half a foot, and she's got so much muscle definition her arms could probably be used as a rock-climbing wall in a pinch. She looks, in short, like she could seriously fuck Jim up.

Jim grins. "On one condition," he says. "No holding back because of rank."

"Agreed," the ensign says.

Three minutes later, she's giving Jim a hand up off the mat, and he takes it gratefully. A two-inch patch over his cheekbone burns with the reassuring heat of an impending bruise, the outsides of his arms feel downright battered, and there's a numb spot just below the back of his knee that will probably bruise even more spectacularly than his face. And his lip is bleeding, but so is the ensign's.

It's the calmest he's felt in months.

"You gotta show me how to do that kick," Jim tells her fervently. "Did you hook it around and back, or - "

"Yeah," says the ensign, shaking her head to dislodge a few stray hairs stuck to the sweat on her forehead. "It doesn't have that much power, but it doesn't need it if you land it right."

Jim lets out a sharp laugh. "I can tell!" He rests his hands on his knees for a moment, feeling the burn of exertion in the back of his throat like whiskey, and then stands up straight. "So who's next?"

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Alternatives to Condoms

Bones -

Since you're in charge of the health safety of this crew, I thought you could look over this list of suggestions that I put together for all of the crew members who might be disappointed about the lack of condoms. What do you think? Comprehensive enough?

Attention, all crew members of the Enterprise:

Due to a manufacturing error affecting our supplies, we are lower on condoms than a ship of this size on a mission of this duration should be. Our supplies of other kinds of prophylaxis, including hormonal treatments, dental dams, diaphragms, and outpatient surgical procedures, are unaffected, and Dr. McCoy, our Chief Medical Officer, will be happy to personally consult with you and demonstrate any of these methods. In the meantime, here is a list of ways you can help us deal with this supply shortage and your own sexual frustration:

• Use your sudden extra free time to catch up on the scholarly journals of your field.
• Redirect any pent-up sexual energy that you no longer wish to use for actual sex into physical activity, such as using the ship's gyms or brushing up on your hand-to-hand combat with Security officers.
• Learn to use a new form of prophylaxis.
• Consider a position or form of sex that is more amenable to one of the new forms of prophylaxis or has a lower risk of transmitting disease. Dental dams are great for performing oral sex on vaginas!
• Masturbation.
• Have a conversation with Mr. Spock. His charm is sure to kill your libido.

Bones, what do you think?

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: You're an ass.

I think you're an ass.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: You're an ass.

What, you think it's a bit too much?

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: YES

YES. It sounds like a frathouse email.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: YES

Uh, no, it would've been way funnier if it was a frathouse email. I get that we're talking about delicate stuff here, so it pays to be frank, right?

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: You call that frank?

That's not frank, Jim, that's sexual harassment.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: You call that frank?

I did not! I told them to consider masturbation if they were feeling sexually frustrated due to the lack of condoms.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: That's NOT BETTER

For the love of God, at least take out the line about Spock.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: That's NOT BETTER

The line about Spock was never going to go in there. That was just to try to make you laugh.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Well, stop it!

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Well, stop it!

Wow, not even putting anything in the body of the message now? Fine.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: At least put an 'if' in there

If you insist on talking about sexual frustration, there's a chance you could argue that you're not sexually harassing the crew by saying "IF you feel sexually frustrated."

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: At least put an 'if' in there

See? That's the kind of advice I was looking for. And you seriously think I would sexually harass people? How long were we roommates? You should know how much of a turnoff that is for me.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: I hate you.

I hate you.

From: [email protected]
To: [ALLCREW]
Subject: Alternatives to Condoms

Attention, all crew members of the Enterprise:

Due to a manufacturing error affecting our supplies, we are lower on condoms than a ship of this size on a mission of this duration should be. Our supplies of other kinds of prophylaxis, including hormonal treatments, dental dams, diaphragms, and outpatient surgical procedures are unaffected, and we anticipate being able to resupply after the end of this mission. In the meantime, here is a list of ways you can help us deal with this supply shortage:

• Use your sudden extra free time to catch up on the scholarly journals of your field.
• Redirect any pent-up sexual energy that you no longer wish to use for actual sex into physical activity, such as using the ship's gyms or brushing up on your hand-to-hand combat with Security officers.
• Learn to use a new form of prophylaxis.
• Consider a position or form of sex that is more amenable to one of the new forms of prophylaxis or has a lower risk of transmitting disease. Dental dams are great for performing oral sex on vaginas!

We appreciate your cooperation and apologize for the inconvenience. It's not an ideal way to break in a new ship, but just remember to be as safe as possible and if you can't be safe, don't risk it.

- Captain James T. Kirk

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Alternatives to Condoms

Well, at least I know how much worse it could've been.

Jim walks into Dr. Sayavong's lab two days later, and, just as reported, the lights don't turn on.

"Huh," he says.

"It's been doing that since I got here," Sayavong says, her arms crossed and her PADD tucked under one elbow.

"And by 'doing that' you mean..."

"Nothing," Sayavong confirms. "At least, not as far as I can tell, although they do turn on. When they do seems to have little to nothing to do with when there are people in the lab."

"That's...exciting," Jim says, and steps back out of the lab. He tries going in and out a couple more times for good measure, but nothing happens. "Has anyone contacted Engineering?"

Sayavong shrugs. "I wouldn't know who to contact in Engineering. I thought you might."

Jim tries not to grit his teeth. Instead, he reminds himself: delegation. "Well, you're right. I'll get Commander Scott to get someone on it right away. It might just be a problem with the motion sensor - "

The light comes on in the lab, and Jim and Sayavong, both standing - and standing still - outside the lab take a moment to contemplate the now-lit room. Then Sayavong turns back to Jim. "It does that sometimes. I haven't been able to find any sort of pattern in when it turns out, but..." She holds up the PADD. "I've been keeping track. If there's a pattern, I will certainly find it."

"I believe you," Jim says. "How about we get you set up in another lab for now?"

He pulls Chekov away from whatever he was doing - clearly it was less important because Jim wasn't the one who had ordered him to do it - and they're halfway through the setup when the computer chimes for him and Uhura's voice comes through.

"Sir, there's a request from Botany. They want to talk to you."

Jim shares a brief puzzled look with Chekov, but says, "I'm on my way. Oh, actually - can you send Lieutenant Sulu to meet me? He knows the people in Botany."

"Yes, sir."

The connection chimes to mean it's disconnected, and Jim glances over to make sure that Sayavong is on the other side of the lab before leaning in towards Chekov. "It's weird that she doesn't sound like she hates me when she's on comms, right?"

Chekov shrugs helplessly. "I wouldn't know, sir. She likes me. We practice Russian together on Wednesdays."

Jim considers this for a moment. "Any chance you would teach me Russian?"

"I do not think that would make her like you, sir."

"Damn." Jim turns towards Sayavong, on the other end of the lab, and says with his voice raised so she can hear him, "Doctor, Ensign Chekov is going to finish up the details with you. Let him know if there's anything else he can do for you."

Sayavong nods distractedly, not even looking at Jim, so Jim takes that as a good enough sign and heads for Botany.

He runs into Sulu in the turbolift, and Sulu gives him a respectful nod.

"Sir."

"Lieutenant," Jim says back. "God, that sounds weird, doesn't it? It still feels like we were just classmates."

"All due respect sir, I'm fairly certain that I'm younger than you anyway."

Jim frowns at him. "What?"

"Oh, by six years at least, sir."

Sulu has an unbelievable poker face, so Jim just turns back to the turbolift door. "Well, I'm sure that's just my superior wisdom and charm coming through."

Sulu ignores that comment entirely. "Sir, can I ask why you selected me to accompany you?"

"Well, you know all of them, right? You were double-majoring in navigation and botany until last year, when switched to a botany minor so you could go for Lieutenant in the Command track."

Sulu glances at Jim, looking singularly discomfited. "You know a lot about me, sir."

"I'm captain," Jim says with a shrug. "It's my job to know things about my crew." It also helps that he's been gossiping like a motherfucker, but he doesn't share that with Sulu. "Also because you're on the bridge crew, your personnel file was towards the top of my pile."

"Are you trying to read the personnel file of every member of the crew?"

Jim sighs heavily. "'Trying' being the operative word at this point."

"Do you expect to memorize all of them?"

"Of course not! That'd be ridiculous. As long as I can get enough to kind of remember what they're talking about when I meet them, that's all I'm going for." Sulu stares at him. "What? You're all my crew. I should at least be able to remember something about you. In the meantime, that's why you're here. Backup."

"Right." Sulu shakes his head, and then steels himself. "Sir, I just wanted to say thank you for what you did on the drilling platform on Vulcan."

"Don't mention it," Jim says. "I was just doing my job."

"No, sir, technically you were on the ship illegally and your job description, if you had even had one because, again, you were on the ship illegally, wouldn't have included jumping off a drilling platform to a moving target that you may well have missed with a chute that wouldn't hold the two of us. That wasn't your job. That was you. I won't forget it, sir, and the Enterprise is lucky to have you as a captain."

Jim is touched, but he also laughs a little because he can't help it. "Man, you should give that speech to everyone on the ship who hates me."

Sulu's eyes narrow. "Anyone in particular, sir?"

"What? No, I was just...joking..."

Sulu's shoulders set back, like a cat about to pounce. "Understood, sir."

Jim kind of doubts that, but the turbolift doors open so he doesn't get a chance to discuss it further.

Lieutenant Patabendige Manura stands waiting for them by the entrance to Botany's suite of labs, his shoulders tight and his arms crossed. Jim takes a quick glance around the labs - they're in the main lab space, which is wide and open, but environmentally-controlled secondary labs split off all around the room - but doesn't see Adrian anywhere.

"Captain!" Lieutenant Patabendige says, straightening a little as Jim and Sulu enter. "Sir! And - Hikaru."

Sulu gives him a friendly smile and quick nod. "Manura."

"I asked Lieutenant Sulu along since I figured you might know each other," Jim says. "Lieutenant Uhura didn't tell me what this was about."

"Oh," Patabendige says, "uh. Well, it's...a little delicate. Have the engineers talked to you yet?"

Jim frowns. "If they're going to talk to me, they haven't told me about it." He angles his head towards the nearest computer terminal. "Kirk to Engineering."

Patabendige winces a little, and Scotty's voice comes back harried. "Here, Captain."

"Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?"

Scotty makes an equivocating noise, a long, drawn-out 'eeeeeh.' "Not in particular. Why?"

"I just heard that some engineers might want to talk to me."

"Oh, bloody hell, I know what it's about," Scotty says, suddenly vicious. "It's about the bloody toilets."

Jim lifts his eyebrows and looks at Patabendige, who tugs his lips together into a resigned line.

"Is there something wrong with the toilets, Scotty?"

"Oh, it's not the toilets, it's the crew. When they refitted the ship after the Narada incident - you know what, you'd better just come down to Engineering and I can show you the diagrams."

Jim looks back at Patabendige. "Congratulations, Lieutenant," he says. "You just volunteered for a field trip."

Patabendige winces.

Scotty's waiting for them in Engineering with a PADD holding a set of blueprints. "Who's that one?" he says, jerking his chin towards Patabendige.

"Just a concerned botanist," Jim says.

"Aye, well, we're not the only ones getting screwed over here." Scotty sighs, leaning against a coolant tube twice his height and holding out the PADD to Jim. "It's the new toilets. More efficient in terms of water use, but the thing is, you can't flush the toilet paper. That's why all the bathrooms have the little bins for it."

"I noticed that, actually," Jim says, taking the PADD. "I thought that was just a suggestion."

"No, it's really not. They won't flush, everything'll clog, and then my engineers get to spend three-quarters of each shift pulling used toilet paper out of pipes."

Jim grimaces. "Yikes."

"And it's supposed to be our toilet paper!" Patabendige interrupts, and Jim looks away from the PADD to stare at him.

"You want the toilet paper?"

"We compost it to produce fertilizer for the arboretum," Patabendige says. "This is the first Federation ship to have an arboretum, and since all of the biomass that a ship like this would be outfitted with is designated for the food synthesizers, we had to find some way to reinject nutrients back into the ecosystem."

"So you decided to use toilet paper."

"We had to use something! The plumbing system on the ship already recycles waste back into the protein stock for the food replicators."

Sulu makes a soft, disgusted noise, and Jim has to agree with him.

Patabendige continues, "The toilet paper was the obvious option, and with the redesigns to the plumbing system meaning that it would be easier than ever to separate it out, we submitted an experimental process proposal to Starfleet and got approval. This is the prototype arboretum for the new class of starships, and if we can't even get our compost supply worked out - "

"To say nothing of the havoc it's wreaking on my duty rosters," Scotty interjects. "Not when they're spending so much time working on plumbing problems."

"Okay, but hang on," Jim says, holding his hands up. "Scotty, I don't have a solution for you, but Lieutenant, if the engineers are dealing with the clogged pipes anyway, can't they - and I can't believe I'm going to say this - just pull out the toilet paper and give it to you?"

"Can't," Scotty says immediately. "Any organic material that comes out of the wastewater pipes is considered potentially biohazardous and has to go through the same treatment process as any other waste."

"See? That's our biomass!" Patabendige wails.

"Yes," Jim says. "I can see how this is very...uncomfortable. For everyone. I'll send - I'll have someone send around a reminder to the crew about how they're supposed to...deal with their toilet paper."

"We'd greatly appreciate it, Captain," Patabendige says, visibly relieved.

"Good luck and godspeed," Scotty says, looking considerably less relieved and considerably more skeptical.

"Captain," Uhura says, "we're receiving a transmission from Starfleet Command. It's a personal line from Admiral Ester Alcalde, sir."

Jim puts aside his PADD - he's almost halfway through the Ds in his quest to read every personnel file - and stands up. "Onscreen," he says.

Ester Alcalde was at Jim's commissioning ceremony, so he's met her before. She's wearing the same glare on her face now as she did at the ceremony, making her look even more familiar. The wrinkles really enhance the effect; when Spock moves an eyebrow, only his eyebrows move, but when Admiral Alcalde frowns, her entire face rearranges itself in her displeasure.

"Admiral," Jim says, in his most respectful voice. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"To the shipwide message you sent out about condoms," Alcalde says immediately.

"...oh," Jim says.

"If you're going to forward this conversation to your ready-room, Captain, this would be a good time."

Jim takes a quick glance around the bridge to see if anyone else has a better idea about this deviation from etiquette, but even Uhura looks confused and surprised, so he turns back to the viewscreen. "I don't think there's anything that I'm not comfortable discussing in front of my crew, sir."

"Well, then, by all means, let's talk about those condoms," Alcalde says, and sits back in her chair with her fingers interlaced across her stomach. "Start at the beginning, Captain."

"Uh, well, I was advised a few days ago by my CMO that there had been a manufacturing error with the ship's supply of - " He hesitates briefly. On one hand, Admiral Alcalde appears to be old enough to have been present at the formation of the planet, despite it being medically impossible for a human; on the other hand, she's been rather frank so far -

"You can say 'condoms,' Kirk, I'm not a giggling teenage boy," Alcalde says sharply, and that settles that. One of the Security guys snickers.

Jim subconsciously stands up straighter. "Understood, sir. The ship's supply of condoms was improperly manufactured, leading to potential contamination of three-quarters of the supply. After consulting with Dr. McCoy, I drafted a message to the crew to alert them of this and advise them to seek alternate methods of contraception and disease prevention."

"Yes, I have a copy of that message here," Alcalde says, and Jim, for the first time, starts to feel not confused, but nervous. "You suggest that they catch up on scholarly journals, redirect sexual energy into physical activity, investigate new forms of prophylaxis - "

"I was just trying to - "

" - and using dental dams for oral sex on vaginas," Alcalde finishes, with an icy stare at Kirk. "Is this correct?"

Jim opens his mouth, rethinks his use of personal anecdotes, and settles for, "Yes."

"Let me guess. Urzni's R&S class? The krventra outbreak at Regix V?"

Jim stares for a moment. "Uh, yes, sir."

"Do you know the difference between a port and a starship on a monthlong mission with no stops, shore leaves, or other contact with the rest of the universe, Captain?"

"Uh..."

"This isn't a rhetorical question."

The asshole from Security snickers again, and Jim makes a mental note to figure out who it is and make them pay.

"The Enterprise is a closed system, sir."

"Correct," Alcalde says, condescension dripping from her words. "And when you're dealing with an infectious outbreak in a closed system, do you treat it the same way you would, say, a port like Regix V?"

Jim assumes that this one isn't rhetorical either. "No, sir."

"And how is it different?"

Jim clears his throat. He can feel the heat on the back of his neck, as if the entire bridge crew is staring at him. Which they probably are. "Identify the infected, treat them, provide them with any existing materials to prevent them from infecting others, provide the uninfected with any existing materials to prevent them from contracting the disease, quarantine if necessary."

"So just to clarify, Captain Kirk, instead of ordering pregnancy and sexually-transmitted infection screenings for the entire crew, providing any crewmembers with STIs priority claims on the remaining stock of condoms, and making sure that crewmembers had access to pregnancy prevention methods, you...sent out a shipwide message suggesting they read their journals instead of having sex."

"I was trying to maintain some humor in a situation that, frankly, is less than ideal!"

"Of course it's less than ideal. It's a threat to the health and safety of your crew and you bungled it."

Jim bristles. "It was an honest mistake - "

"An honest mistake that could have led to crewmembers contracting STIs or becoming pregnant!"

"I have enough faith in my crew to think that that wouldn't happen, and that they could be responsible - "

"We supply our starships with prophylaxis in the first place because all of our centuries conducting the business of Starfleet have taught us that crewmembers are people and therefore subject to lapses of rationality and responsibility."

"Well, I don't exactly have centuries of experience!"

Alcalde's eyes narrow, icy even at this distance. "I am well aware of that, Captain." She lets that sink in for a moment - and to great effect, since the hairs on the back of Jim's neck stand up with foreboding - and then says, "Fix this. Send out whatever messages you have to. And I want weekly reports for the duration of the mission to make sure that if something like this happens again, it can at least be fixed in a timely fashion."

"Weekly?" Jim repeats. Any reporting back to Command on top of the mission reports are highly unusual, and tend to be considered an informal disciplinary measure. "Is that really necessary?"

"Ask me that one more time and it'll be twice a week."

The screen goes blank, and Jim whips around to look at Uhura, who checks her readout and then turns back to Jim. "She disconnected, sir."

"Oh," Jim says, looking briefly back at the blank screen. "Right. Well..." He looks around the bridge. Chekov stares down at his console, his eyebrows up near his headline and a pointed expression of uninvolvement on his face. Sulu glares at the blank screen in a show of solidarity that, frankly, Jim really appreciates right about now. Spock isn't here, thank god, but Uhura looks disturbingly intent and impressed, like she's about to take notes on the Admiral's performance any minute. "Lieutenant Sulu," Jim says, retreating to formality, "you have the conn. Apparently I have a new message to send out to the crew."

He calls Pike on subspace the second he gets to his ready room, and paces back and forth in front of his desk for the long seconds until Pike answers.

"Captain," Pike says from his cushy office wearing his cushy Admiral's uniform.

"I just had a very interesting conversation with Admiral Alcalde," Jim says, still pacing.

"Oh boy," Pike says, leaning back in his chair. "Already? I thought she'd wait at least until the mission report."

"You knew this was coming?" Jim demands.

Pike shrugs. "I knew that Ester was opposed to you being appointed Captain. I knew that she was keeping an eye on you, and I knew that since you're technically in her fleet, she'd get any all-crew messages sent out."

"Is that how she found out?" Jim whips his head to one side in a movement too abrupt to be a shake of the head. "God damn it."

"Was it about the condom thing?" Pike asks.

Jim stops his pacing to stare. "What, are you on the all-crew list, too?"

"As a matter of fact, yes," Pike says. "It's not uncommon for former captains to ask to remain on the lists of their old ships, particularly when they've moved on to office jobs. It's like going off-planet vicariously, in a way."

"Who else is reading those messages?"

"Well, all official Starfleet correspondence is a matter of public record, particularly when requested by other Starfleet personnel."

"I know that, but there's a difference between it going directly to two admirals and it being available in case there's a - an inquiry or something!"

Pike raises his eyebrows. "Is there? There shouldn't be. Either implies the other, really, so if you're prepared for one..."

"So, what, am I going to have to keep justifying every message I send out?"

"Obviously I didn't hear the conversation that you and Ester had, but did she question the message itself, or the fact that you were clearly reacting to Urzni's practice contagion scenario instead of a closed system?"

Jim opens his mouth, but no angry retort comes to mind.

"You're not the first command officer to react to the specific scenarios you've been trained for instead of the scenario in front of you," Pike says with a shrug. "Don't forget, I was a captain even before the Enterprise. I've trained up my fair share of officers. This is the kind of thing that happens. I wouldn't worry about it."

"Really? Because Alcalde basically chewed my ass out in front of my entire crew in there, and it seemed like something to worry about then!"

Pike inclines his head in concession. "Let me rephrase that: I wouldn't worry that you're making new and different mistakes. Your mistakes are entirely conventional."

"That's not better!"

"I hate to break it to you, Jim, but if you called me so that I could make it better, you're just going to be disappointed. This isn't the Kobayashi Maru. You can't retake it until you get the outcome you're hoping for. You can only learn from it and make sure you don't do the same thing next time."

Jim looks away from the screen, and stares sullenly at one of his walls.

"Look, it's unreasonable to expect you to know everything," Pike continues. "There are things that you don't find out until your boots are on the ground."

"I know that," Jim says. "I did a semester on the Farragut, remember?"

"There's light-years between a semester on a ship in the Academy, where everyone's well aware that you're there to learn the ropes and can put you somewhere where you can't do too much damage, and skipping all the ranks where you usually work your way up in terms of the damage you can do and being a captain."

"Well, why the hell did you guys commission me as a captain if you knew I was just going to screw it up?"

"Because everyone screws it up. It just happens. There's no way to get around it or skip it. You just have to soldier through it. And I know that might be difficult for you, since you're not a 'soldier through it' kind of person - you're more of a 'punch it if you disagree with it' kind of person - but I backed you for the Enterprise because I thought you could do it. And you can't captain a starship unless you can learn to adapt."

Challenge accepted, Jim thinks, but stays quiet.

"This is your first mission out. All eyes are on you, but any mistakes you make will just be a flash in the pan if you keep your eye on what's really important."

"Proving Admiral Alcalde wrong?"

Pike narrows his eyes. "No, keeping your crew safe and fulfilling your mission."

"Right. That was my second guess."

"I know this might be hard to believe, but in a lot of very important ways, Jim, this just isn't about you."

"Yeah, Alcalde hates me and thinks I'm wrong for the ship, but it's not about me. Got it."

Pike gives Jim a flat-lipped look. "Just think about it," he says, and closes the connection.

"All right, I officially call this senior staff meeting to order," Jim says, and looks around the conference room, seeing Spock, Uhura, Bones, and Scotty, but not what he's actually looking for. "I feel like I should have a gavel. Is there a gavel on this ship?"

"I presume that is a rhetorical question," Spock says.

"Okay, right to business, then," Jim says. "So. First week. Spock. How's Science?"

"The Department is functioning adequately. Most subsections that are not directly involved with Dr. Sayavong's experiment and have no active research sites have been preparing organizationally for later exploratory missions, conducting background research for scientific proposals, and so on. Astrometrics has been working closely with Dr. Sayavong in her new lab space to conduct quality assurance on the results as they come in, and I have no disturbances of note to report, with one exception. Botany seems quite concerned about the state of their arboretum project."

Scotty groans. "They bothered you with that, too, did they? Is there anyone on this ship that they haven't harassed about it? How about my engineers that are supposed to be doing safety checks on the retrofitted parts and equipment and instead are fishing toilet paper out of the pipes day and night?"

"Commander Scott, the scientific benefits of an on-ship arboretum are considerable, to say nothing of the potential nutritive value of freshly grown produce or the strain that the oxygen production takes off of the environmental controls."

"What's this toilet paper thing?" Bones asks.

Uhura says, "You're not supposed to flush the toilet paper and the botanists and engineers are angry people are doing it anyway."

Bones stares at Uhura, then looks at Jim. "We're not supposed to flush the damn toilet paper?"

"Well, at least we know Medical isn't actively pissed off about it," Jim says. "Toilet paper's still an issue. Got it. I'll be sure to include it in my next all-crew message."

"About that, sir," Uhura says, and crosses her arms on the table, leaning onto them. "Is there a reason you didn't delegate that to Communications?"

Jim hesitates. "Honestly, I assumed you had better things to do with your time than send out an angry message about condoms, Lieutenant."

"I would, sir," Uhura says, "if the message that had gone out hadn't made my department look bad."

"Why? You obviously didn't send it."

"You're right - obviously nobody from Communications sent it, even though it's the kind of thing that could have easily gone through us. We're a resource, Captain. We want you to use us. Especially if the alternative is messages like that."

Jim groans and scrubs his face with his hand. "Point taken. What else has Comms been up to, then?"

"Aside from managing the usual chatter, we fixed a programming fault in the subspace processor that was interfering with our ability to receive messages."

"What fault?" Jim says blankly.

Uhura smiles. "Exactly."

Scotty clears his throat. "As it so happens, that fault was one of mine, too - an ensign down in Engineering was fiddling with the subspace antenna settings and accidentally changed the frequency input to kilohertz instead of gigahertz so all of a sudden the decoding programs were getting gibberish. But credit where credit is due, it was Comms that figured it out."

"Thanks for volunteering to go next, Scotty," Jim says. "How's Engineering, other than pressing buttons that shouldn't be pressed?"

"Bored," Scotty replies immediately. "The redshift readings on Sayavong's data will be useful as hell for calibrating the engines when we compare it to the engine stats we've been taking, but they've got to finish collecting it and processing it before we can get our hands on that, and maintaining a constant speed of warp precisely one and a bit isn't exactly difficult. It's a lot of plumbing because of the toilet paper, to be honest, and it really is digging into the scheduled safety-checks."

"How much are we talking?"

"It's a big ship with a lot of toilets and a lot of forgetful crewmembers. Between the precautionary biohazard procedures for each fix - "

Jim interrupts. "Okay, on a scale from one to ten, how necessary are those procedures?"

"Seven," Spock says immediately.

"It's a one nine times out of ten, and ten the last time," Bones chimes in.

"That is not a proper answer, Doctor."

"Well, the man asked me my opinion, and nine times out of ten there's no potential contaminant, but that tenth time - "

"It's procedure and there are reasons we can't just decide to ignore it," Scotty says loudly. "As Captain, you can override, but - "

Jim thinks about Alcalde's reaction if he waived the biohazard procedures for dealing with crew waste. "No. Well - I mean, the Enterprise is a closed system, right? And we're doing additional screenings on the crew, right, Bones?"

"Yes, and we're all so thrilled about it in Sickbay," Bones drawls. "We're seeing more asses than a donkey farm."

Jim points at him. "Stop being bitter that you fell for the scenario too. What kind of contaminants could there be in the waste?"

"The STIs we're screening for are being-to-being contact," Bones says. "The waste system wasn't meant to be in contact with the crew except after a hell of a lot of treatment, which is in its own section of the ship with biohazard containment. As for what's in those pipes..." He shakes his head. "I've heard horror stories. Shit doesn't clean itself, particularly not shit from all the different species working here on the ship."

Scotty shakes his head. "He's right. The pipes have chemicals that pre-treat the waste. As much of a pain as it is, I wouldn't recommend skipping the precautions."

"Fine. So how much time, then?"

"At the moment, we've only done two-thirds of the checks that we were scheduled to."

"Two-thirds?" Jim demands. "This is eating up a third of your entire department's time?"

"A lot of these checks require continuous stretches of time, especially the ones on the exterior of the ship."

Bones's eyebrows fly up. "We left spacedock with safety checks on the goddamn hull still pending?"

"Not for containment, obviously, but for things like sharp panel edges, proper markings and indications, making sure all the exterior lights are working..."

Bones turns to Jim, and doesn't have to say a word: his disbelieving fury is clear on his face.

"Hey, you know as well as I do how understaffed Starfleet is right now," Jim says.

"We're going in circles around a star! They couldn't hold off on sending us out into nothingness for three days to make sure the outside of the ship was bolted on right?"

"The attacks on Federation Council planets constituted a significant attack on Starfleet itself as an institution capable of maintaining the peace," Spock says. "To say nothing of the defeat of the majority of the fleet. Sending another ship into active duty, even on a purely scientific mission - particularly the flagship of the fleet, captained by the hero of the recent encounters and the crew that supported him - sends a clear message of strength and continued military and political superiority."

Everyone turns to stare at Spock.

"Spock," Jim says slowly. "When did you get so good at politics?"

Spock raises an eyebrow. "Although politics may seem irrational on a large scale, seen on an individual level of balancing competing interests, it becomes almost childishly simple. For example, take the Captain's assignment."

Jim shoves his forehead into his palm. "Oh, sure, yes, let's. Why not."

"All rational decisionmaking processes would exclude him as a candidate for the position almost immediately," Spock continues.

"Of course," Bones says immediately. Jim doesn't deign him with a response, and ignores the way Uhura rolls her lips together to hide her smile.

"Yet clearly it was necessary to publicly show appreciation for him and the crew after our actions during the Narada incident, and highlighting the fact that a ship filled with cadets were able to defeat such a formidable enemy with such advanced technology sends a clear message. In addition, the time necessary to decide among the remaining officers up for promotion to Captain is considerable, particularly in an environment where both candidates and positions are so rare - and rarer than they were until recently. As a stopgap measure, Captain Kirk is the clear choice."

Jim frowns. "Stopgap? My appointment doesn't have a limit."

Spock inclines his head in what Jim is learning is the Vulcan version of a shrug. "And yet, as you have literally no experience whatsoever, your errors will be numerous. A large, public appointment to your current post followed by a quieter demotion after several low-stakes missions have proven that you are incapable of fulfilling your duties keeps the crew largely out of harm's way while still celebrating you as a hero until the fervor has died down."

Jim realizes that he's staring, and looks at Bones instead, but he's staring too. So is Scotty. Neither look disbelieving, only horrified, and that's not a great sign.

Uhura just looks down at the table, her mouth set in a grim line, and it occurs to Jim that this probably isn't the first time she's heard this theory.

"That...makes a disturbing amount of sense," Scotty says eventually.

"Starfleet wouldn't put someone in the captain's chair that they didn't think deserved it, though," Jim says. "I mean, for one thing, it puts the crew at risk. For another, that's just a shitty thing to do!"

"And yet, to put the Enterprise back on active duty quickly enough to show that Starfleet is still a force to be reckoned with would have required an overly hasty appointment no matter who they chose," Spock says. "By choosing you, they've created a problem that is self-limiting, a move so illogical it's...almost logical."

Jim slaps the table. "Well, fuck that! I'm not giving them the chance! They can only fire me if I mess up badly enough, and I'm just not going to. So there!"

Spock taps the power button of his PADD. "I can see that the productivity of this meeting is at an end. Perhaps we should adjourn until you are more capable of actually getting anything done."

Jim bites back his kneejerk response, which is 'I can get punching you in the face done, how's that for productivity?', and instead says, "Fine. Unless there's anything else urgent...?" He looks pointedly at Uhura, Scotty and Bones. Uhura meets Jim's gaze steadily, while Scotty examines the surface of the table, eyes wide, and Bones's mouth is tucked into the discontented line that Jim associates with the phrase 'Okay, how many shots this time?'

"Meeting adjourned."

Scotty leaves immediately, so quickly, in fact, that he walks into the doors because they haven't finished opening for him. Uhura stands up at a more sedate pace, catches Spock's eye for a moment and gives him a brief nod, and leaves as well. Bones tries to linger, but Spock sits in his chair, his fingers interlaced on the table in front of him, and eventually Bones rolls his eyes and leaves.

"What is it, Spock?" Jim says. "Do you want to tell me more about how I only got this job because they plan to fire me?"

"No," Spock says. "Although I should add that I do believe at least Admiral Pike genuinely supports you, and I find it difficult to believe that the entire Council could have been swayed solely on that argument, practical though it may be."

"Thanks, I guess," Jim mutters, rubbing his eyes with his elbows planted on the table. "So, what?"

"Ensign Chekov has been acting as Dr. Sayavong's ship liaison while I attend to my other duties, and yet I have received news of several issues that he should have informed me about directly through third parties. I believe he may be reluctant to approach me."

"Of course he is. You're intimidating as hell. Just talk to him."

"As this is a personnel issue and Ensign Chekov is not in the Science Division, it seems clear that it is, in fact, your duty to speak to him on this matter."

Jim narrows his eyes. "Do you see the irony of you wanting me to talk to Chekov about Chekov not directly talking to you?"

"There is no irony," Spock says, with a completely straight face. "Ensign Chekov is not in my division."

"Well, I'm the Captain and you're my First Officer. That makes personnel issues yours just as much as mine. Or I could just delegate the issue to you like Pike keeps telling me to."

"Yes," Spock says, "but then I, the - to borrow your own words - intimidating as hell First Officer, would be directly confronting a seventeen-year-old ensign about no longer being intimidated by me. A word from someone Chekov sees more as a peer - "

"I outrank you! I should intimidate him even more!"

"And yet you go out of your way to speak informally to the crew. Your efforts in the commissary have not gone unnoticed, nor unremarked-upon. I, on the other hand, am a former instructor to many of you, an authority figure, and, as I have been reliably informed, I have a reputation for being aloof. A reputation which, I should add, has its uses - which is no doubt the reason Doctor McCoy chooses to socialize in a similar manner."

Jim nearly takes the openings given to him by the understated 'aloof' or the mentions of Bones, but it's just too easy. "So you want to keep being the bad cop and you want me to be the good cop."

Spock's eyebrows furrow ever-so-slightly, the world's tiniest dimple appearing between them. "A rather straightforward analogy, but accurate."

Jim sighs. "Fine. I'll talk to Chekov."

Spock finally stands up to leave, and Jim says, "Wait - do you think that I should be Captain of the Enterprise?"

Spock pauses and considers it. "So far I have only observed your command during intertemporal acts of war and for a single week of a mission that, even by Starfleet Science Division standards, is breathtakingly mundane. There is insufficient evidence to argue either case."

He moves to leave again, and Jim says, "Hang on - "

Spock turns back, one eyebrow slightly cocked with impatience.

"From the Science Division standpoint, what's the deal with the toilet paper thing?"

"Although I, personally, am in favor, an arboretum is unnecessary for a starship, particularly one designed with an exploratory mission in mind. There are those within Starfleet who see no need for Botany and Exobiology to be separate subdivisions at all, and the arboretum is a pilot project intended to justify their continued separation. To the best of my knowledge, there are no formal plans for a merger, but - "

Jim groans and nods at the same time. "If the subdivisions are merged, there are going to be a lot of extra personnel..."

"And while there is no doubt that Starfleet will find a suitable assignment for any personnel rendered redundant, there is also no doubt that those posts will be...less desirable."

"Like not on the Enterprise."

"Precisely. The redesigned waste system was a happy accident that the botanists were all too happy to fold into their proposal, as it reduced the resources that would be necessary for the project, but, as we can now see, it came with its own risks."

Jim rubs his forehead with one hand. "Okay, but - putting aside all the politics of botany and exobiology or whatever, is the arboretum even worth it?"

"As I said, I am personally in favor of it, although I hope that future modifications to the plans will accommodate more than only Earthly plantlife. It would require modifications to the distribution of certain resources across the ship, but overall I believe the benefits will outweigh the drawbacks."

Jim motions with a hand for him to continue. "Such as...?"

Spock considers for a moment. "Additional oxygen and food production are always valuable. However, I find the most important benefit to be...a reminder. The Enterprise is not floating alone in the vastness of space for no reason, nor for pure curiosity. Now, more than ever, I understand the importance of having at least some tangible connection to the planets which we protect and represent."

The words hang in the air for a long moment, until Spock adds, "I also understand that there are some who find tending to plantlife to be comforting, and perhaps an arboretum could be beneficial to the morale of the crew."

"Right," Jim says.

"If you have nothing else, Captain...?" Spock says, and Jim waves a hand towards the door.

"No. Dismissed."

Jim stakes out the mess hall for three consecutive meals. There's more than one mess hall in the ship, and particularly devoted crewmembers are always known to take their food back to their posts (the bridge, sadly, being the only exception as the only post required to be combat-ready at all times), but breakfast of day two Jim strikes gold and puts his plate of bacon and eggs down across from Ensign Adrian Nkrumah's plate of banana fritters.

"Ensign Nkrumah! Fancy seeing you here. Is this seat taken?"

Nkrumah, his mouth full of fritter, nods and gestures for Jim to sit.

"Great. How are things going?"

Nkrumah swallows, and says, "Fine...?"

Jim waits, but Nkrumah doesn't say anything else.

"Adjusting to life on a starship okay?" Jim prods. "Any homesickness?"

Nkrumah shrugs. "It's been kind of busy, to be honest, since we keep having to move labs - "

"What?"

"It's the lights," Nkrumah says. "Or, well, some of the lights in some of the labs. The motion sensors aren't working, but it can't be the motion sensors because half of them are working, and the indicator light is indicating correctly when there's motion, but it just doesn't seem to correspond to when the lights go on or off."

Jim frowns. "Which labs?"

Nkrumah frowns too. "Now that you mention it, they're all the ones on the starboard side of the ship. I didn't notice, since sometimes they work just fine, and then all of a sudden they just...stop. Delta shift in particular's been getting it the worst."

"Huh," Jim says. "I'll talk to Scotty about it. Anyway, how's the arboretum?"

Nkrumah winces. "Did you sit down with me to ask me about the toilet paper thing?"

"Ensign, I respect you enough to be honest with you: as much as I'm enjoying this conversation and genuinely care about your homesickness, yes, I absolutely came to ask you about the toilet paper thing."

"I'm really trying to stay out of that as much as possible - "

"Look, I'm just trying to get an insider's perspective," Jim says, "because all I hear is from the division managers and sometimes they don't have the same view of these kinds of things. I want to make sure I'm not getting anything skewed."

Nkrumah looks around, checking the mess hall for other botanists, and then leans closer to Jim. "Okay. Lieutenant Patabendige heard from someone at Starfleet Command that Starfleet's thinking of merging Botany into Exobiology for all ships that don't have an explicitly science-oriented mission."

Jim tries to hold back his grimace - he had hoped the rumor hadn't spread that far. "While I can neither confirm nor deny anything because, frankly, I'm just as in the dark about it as you - how'd you hear?"

"Another Botany head on the - on another ship that will remain nameless got his hands on a copy of the drafts of the new organizational charts. The idea is to free up the exploratory ships to do more work with new biological forms instead of wasting the space with life forms that have already been investigated."

Jim once again keeps his reaction in check - he's here to take the department's temperature, not to poison the well. "And the arboretum..."

"If the arboretum is a success, then that's something Botany can do that Exobiology can't," Nkrumah says. "There are lots of compelling reasons - oxygen reserves in case of emergency, nutritive value if we can figure out how to grow edible plants, relaxation - "

"Homesickness?" Jim suggests.

Nkrumah shrugs. "I'm from the city, but for some people, I guess. There are valid scientific reasons to try to make this arboretum succeed, and those are the same reasons that Botany needs to stay separate from Exobiology. Those guys wouldn't be able to grow a pea plant for a high school science fair, and they'd only want to in the first place if they were peas from a previously-undiscovered moon of Arcturus!"

Jim sighs heavily, scrunching up his nose in a wince. "And you guys need that toilet paper for the arboretum."

"This is a proof-of-concept. The idea was that we could implement it with minimal drain on the ship's resources, but biomass is biomass. Do you know how much toilet paper a ship this size uses?"

"Actually, yes, I personally placed the orders before the ship left space dock so I can say I am much more familiar with how much toilet paper we use than I feel comfortable with."

"It may not seem like a lot - "

"No, it definitely does."

" - but it all used to be trees, and with the additional nutrients and composting value of the traces of human waste - "

Jim winces. "More than I wanted to know."

Nkrumah shakes his head. "We need that toilet paper, sir."

Not what Jim wanted to hear. But he sucks it up, because he's a damn good captain, and says, "Then we will get you that toilet paper."

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Toilet Paper

This feels completely ridiculous, but it's not nearly as bad as the condom email, right? (The last line is for the Security goons. I figured they could use a nice, easy translation.)

Attention, all crew members of the Enterprise:

Please remember to deposit your waste paper in the designated receptacles provided next to each toilet. The plumbing system for the Enterprise is not designed to handle waste paper, causing the Engineering crew to spend valuable time fixing clogs, and the waste paper is used as compost for the Arboretum.

In light of this, don't flush the toilet paper.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Last line's a little much...

...but Security's Security. I can't see anything wrong with it, although should it really come from you?

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Last line's a little much...

God, I have no idea. I figured that doing it personally will show that I actually can send shipwide messages without talking about oral sex, but what if it just shows that I'm unwilling to delegate day-to-day unimportant chores? Who even knows how admirals think?

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: How the hell should I know?

If you need some stitches put in I can help you there, but there's a reason I didn't go into Intersentient Relations.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: How the hell should I know?

Well why did you bring it up if you didn't want to talk about it?

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: It was just a thought!

That's basically the full extent of my expertise and opinion on this subject.

From: [email protected]
To: [ALLCREW]
Subject: Waste Paper Procedures

Attention, all crew members of the Enterprise:

Please remember to deposit your waste paper in the designated receptacles provided next to each toilet. The plumbing system for the Enterprise is not designed to handle toilet paper, causing the Engineering crew to spend valuable time fixing clogs, and the toilet paper is used as compost for the Arboretum.

In light of this, don't flush the toilet paper.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Not even going to respond?

That's real mature, Jim.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Not even going to respond?

Sorry, I thought that was the "full extent of your expertise and opinion on this subject."

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: That's not more mature, you know.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: That's not more mature, you know.

Get some of that bourbon out of your bottom drawer and share it with me and we'll call it even.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Deal.

This time the message goes to Uhura, who bounces a revision back in ten seconds that only changes "toilet paper" to the official Starfleet designation of "waste paper." Jim turns around in the chair to see her already turned towards him; she purses her lips in approval and gives him a nod.

He sends the message out.

Jim writes up the best goddamn weekly report that anyone has ever seen. It's detailed, meticulous, with figures and references and appendices of the contributions he solicited from the department heads. It's in the third person, past tense, and liberally uses both the passive voice and words with five syllables swapped in for words with two. And the best part is, it paints a picture of a beautifully functioning ship with only minimal problems, thanks to some strategic deflation and omission.

As far as Jim sees it, there are two potential outcomes: either Admiral Alcalde will see this beautiful, handcrafted shit sandwich that Jim is presenting to her on a silver plate and eat it up until she leaves him alone, or it'll piss her off but she won't be able to complain because, after all, he's giving her what she asked for. Either way, Jim sends the report with the smug confidence of someone sure he's beaten his enemy at her own game.

"Sir," Uhura says the next day on the bridge, "there's a transmission coming to you from Starfleet Command. Personal line from Admiral Alcalde again, sir."

Jim stands up, straightens his shirt, and -

"Transferring it through to your ready room, sir," Uhura says, and Jim turns to look at her.

"What?"

Uhura meets his eyes, her expression pointedly bland. "I said I'm transferring the transmission through to your ready room, sir."

"I didn't ask you to do that, Lieutenant," Jim says, frowning at her.

"Do you want me to transfer it back here, sir?" Uhura's voice holds the slight edge of a challenge, even as she reaches towards her console, but her expression is still that mask - except for her eyes, which are wide and practically screaming don't do this here, you're only going to embarrass yourself.

For once, Jim decides to err on the side of caution. "That's not necessary. I'll take it in my ready room."

As he goes from the bridge to his ready room, he thinks he can hear Uhura's murmured, "Thought so," but when he turns to look at her again, she's focused on her station.

"Computer," he says as he enters his ready room, "display transmission."

Alcalde's face pops up on his screen, as forbidding and cantankerous as last time.

"Captain," she says. "I see you decided to take this one in private. Good call. Tell me about the plumbing."

Jim bites his tongue - metaphorically - to keep from snapping at her, and settles for a deep breath. He'd been hoping he'd successfully buried the plumbing issue in the rest of the report, but apparently not. "Well, sir, the waste system of the Enterprise was replaced with an experimental, more efficient system the last time we were in spacedock. We're...still working out the kinks, but so far water usage has decreased even more than the designers projected - "

"And the toilet paper?"

Jim grits his teeth, but only for a second. "The toilet paper's been one of the kinks. We're actively working on strategies to get more crewmembers to dispose of their toilet paper properly."

"Because you want the arboretum to succeed."

"Uh, because the arboretum looks like it has a lot of promise, but also because Engineering's been spending way too much of their time unclogging pipes - "

"How much time?"

"I - well - Commander Scott gave an estimate, but I don't think it's really solid enough to - "

"What did he say?"

"About a third of their time, but I'm sure he was just being hyperbolic - "

"And why wasn't that information in your report?"

"Well, like I said, he was probably just being hyperbolic - I mean, have you ever met the man?"

"I can't say I've had the pleasure," Alcalde says, so cold that ice practically drips off her tone. "Captain, you gave me a report filled with your successes. Frankly, I don't care about your successes. I care about your failures, because those are what need fixing. And if your engineers are spending thirty-three percent of their time unclogging pipes, then that's a problem. What are you going to do about it?"

Jim squares his shoulders. "Well, like I said, we're working on ways to get people to dispose of their toilet paper the way that they're supposed to."

Alcalde waits, and it occurs to Jim that maybe that's not really enough.

"Honestly, the toilet paper hasn't been at the top of my priority list," Jim says, trying to tamp down his frustration. "There are other things going on that - "

"You're circling a star going at steady Warp 1 and taking scientific readings. What else could be so urgent?"

"The lights in the science labs, for one thing!"

"Ah, yes. Would that be the..." Alcalde looks down for a moment, focusing on something out of the frame of the transmission. "The 'investigation and evaluation of the laboratory luminescence system' that you mention? At least, I'm assuming so, because that's the only thing in here that could refer to lights."

Jim hesitates.

"Captain," Alcalde says, leaning forward onto her desk and crossing her arms, "stop telling me what you think I want to hear, and start telling me what I need to know. Do I need to make that an order?"

"No, sir." Jim somehow manages to keep his tone even, but boy is he glad now that he's not on the bridge. "The motion sensors and the lights on the starboard science labs seem to be having communication issues, sir. We're investigating potential causes."

"Who's investigating, specifically?"

"Because Ensign Chekov has been working closely with Dr. Sayavong, who first reported the outages - "

"Outages," Alcalde repeats. "So when you say that the lights are having communication issues, you mean that they aren't turning on."

"They are!" Jim protests. "Just...not always when there are people in the room."

One of Alcalde's index fingers taps against the opposite arm, still crossed on her desk. "And you assigned your navigator to be Dr. Sayavong's personal assistant because...?"

"Because as the primary navigator for this mission, Ensign Chekov will be working closely with Dr. Sayavong for any modifications or adjustments to the ship's course," Jim says, watching Alcalde carefully to try to gauge her reaction.

Her expression remains as stony as ever. "And how do you justify keeping your primary navigator away from his post for so much of each shift?"

Jim opens his mouth, desperately trying to figure out which answer Alcalde's looking for, and her eyes narrow even further.

"Captain, do you think this is a test?"

The first thing that comes to Jim's mind pops out of his mouth: "Maybe. Am I passing?"

Alcalde looks flatly at him, and after a long, painful moment, says, "I want your next update in three days, and the next four after that."

Before Jim can protest the upgrade to biweekly reports, Alcalde cuts the transmission.

Chekov goes from harried to enthusiastic in about two seconds flat when he sees Jim enter Sayavong's otherwise empty lab, in a way that actually really reminds Jim of a cranky puppy seeing a treat. The light, for once, is on, and Jim dares to feel hopeful for a moment.

"Captain! Thank you for coming!"

"If you can figure out this light thing, then you can make me go wherever you want," Jim says fervently. "What's up?"

"You told me that some other crew members had noticed that the indicator lights were functioning correctly on the motion sensors, correct?"

"Yeah, that came from some of the Botany labs. Why? Did that help?"

"It did, sir! As you can see, the indicator light for the motion sensor for this lab is on and the lights are on. And yet, if we wait..." Chekov checks his PADD and finishes, "thirty-two seconds, even if we keep moving, the lights will turn off."

"That's oddly precise," Jim says, but strolls casually around the lab. "You figured it all out?"

"Yes, sir!" Chekov says, almost incandescent with pride. "And you will know why in..." He checks the PADD again. "Four, three, two, one!"

Nothing happens. Chekov frowns and squints at the PADD, and then the lights go out.

"Okay," Jim says to the darkness, "point taken. Now what's going on?"

"Captain, look at the motion sensor!"

Jim squints around, and eventually locates the small indicator light on the sensor, glowing faintly in the darkness. "Yeah, it's on, but the lights are off, just like Nkrumah said."

"And I predict that the lights will turn on precisely one minute after they went off!"

"Well, have you been timing it?"

"Ah...no, sir..."

The lights come back on.

"Okay, I still don't know why," Jim says.

"Because I asked Doctor Sayavong's assistant to leave the lab four doors aft down the hallway precisely every five minutes for a period of precisely one minute!" Chekov says, grinning. "And your timing was perfect!"

Jim frowns, putting it together. "The motion sensors are wired to the wrong labs?"

"Yes, sir!"

Jim looks around, his arms lifting slightly from his sides in incredulity. "How can that even - why aren't they just wired directly?"

"They are all connected to one of several main junction circuits," Chekov says. "The main junctions are used for security purposes, for the motion detectors. We are the first ship to have a comprehensive motion-detection security system for the laboratories..."

"Oh my god," Jim says, and puts his head in his hands. "They fucked up the wiring."

"Aye, sir!" Chekov sounds entirely too cheerful for someone who just discovered such a monumental problem. "The problem seems to be that the motion sensors are directing to the wrong lights."

Jim rubs his face, and then removes his hands. "Okay. Okay, that's fine. Where's the main junction circuit?"

Chekov beams. "I have no idea, sir!"

Jim stares at him for a second. "What?"

"I don't know, sir! The system was one of the retrofitted experimental systems installed during the repairs after..." Chekov falters, then straightens his shoulders. "After the Nero incident."

"Ugh, those." Jim's first act as captain had been to sign off on a sudden influx of requests to field-test new equipment to be incorporated into the fleet if successful on the Enterprise; Jim had, of course, scoured each one and memorized each detail, but the repairs and retrofits themselves had taken six months - six months that Jim had spent assembling the crew and taking crash-courses in command, logistics, and supplies. Now that Chekov's brought it up, the gist of it seems familiar, but beyond that, Jim's lost the specifics. "All right. Come on, we're talking to Scotty."

They're in the turbolift when something occurs to Jim, first as a vague thought and then as a more impassioned one, and Jim kicks himself for not realizing it sooner.

"Mister Chekov," Jim says, keeping his voice cordial, "is there any reason you came to me with this directly, instead of Commander Spock? The science labs are, after all, his jurisdiction."

Chekov's eyes go wide, although he keeps his gaze firmly on the closed doors of the turbolift as Jim talks. "Um," he says.

Jim sighs, and hits the emergency stop. Then he crosses his arms and turns to Chekov. "Chekov, you're a good kid and you're good at your job. I know Spock can be kind of harsh, and pompous, and a massive dick, but you can't just go around him, no matter how intimidating he is. He's my First Officer and my Science Officer, and if there's something that needs to go to either one of those ranks, then that's where it has to go, not to me."

Chekov looks down at his shoes, his wide eyes softening into something more morose. "Yes, sir," he says quietly, and Jim frowns.

"Look, I've already tried giving him the be-nicer-to-the-crew talk and it didn't do much good, but if you don't think you can work past it I can give it another try - obviously I don't want a First Officer that nobody feels comfortable talking to - "

Chekov shakes his head. "No, sir, it's not that. Commander Spock is a good commander and a good Science Officer."

Jim tilts his head around to get it closer to Chekov's line of sight. "Then you're going to have to spell it out for me, man, because I'm at a loss about what the problem is."

For all the emergencies and bureaucratic messes they've been wading through since all of this started, Jim doesn't think Chekov has ever looked quite this young - the rims of his eyes are turning red, and Jim realizes with a start - and a rush of terror - that Chekov's on the brink of tears.

"Sir...how can I report to him when I'm the reason his mother is dead?"

Jim stares blankly at Chekov for a long moment, and then manages to say, "What?"

Chekov starts crying. Not big, theatrical tears, but a slow leak of liquid from his eyes that he rubs away immediately with furious, resentful swipes. "I saved the other members of the Vulcan High Council," he says, his voice somehow clogged and creaky at the same time, "except for his mother. She died because I could not save her. I can barely look him in the eye without thinking of him standing there with his hand out, reaching for her - " He stutters a shaky inhale. "He must hate me for it. How could he not? She was his mother, and she is dead, and it's my fault."

He lowers his head, curling in on himself and crossing his arms over his chest, and Jim blinks. He tries to think - if he'd failed to save someone when he was seventeen, how fucked up would he be? Well, he doesn't have to think that hard - he was the one to survive the day his dad died, and look how fucked up he is now. And Chekov, Jesus, to be carrying all this around for over six months without saying anything...

Jim has two tried-and-true approaches to his problems: get the shit beat out of him at a bar until the problem doesn't seem that bad anymore, or beat the shit out of the problem until it doesn't seem that bad anymore. Right now, his problem is that Chekov is crying in front of him, and is probably messed up in the head, and probably really needs to see a therapist for all the trauma that seeing combat has obviously left on him.

That's probably a little bigger than Jim can solve in one go. Time for baby-step solutions.

"Okay," he says, and turns directly to face Chekov, putting his hands on Chekov's shoulders and turning him so that they're both facing each other. "First of all, it's not your fault. Basically the entire Narada incident was more intense than anyone's first mission had any right to be, and it's okay to be messed up about it, but in the meantime I'm going to ask you to talk to Dr. Tal. She's trained to help people, and my advice is usually to punch something, so she's got to be better at giving advice, right?"

Chekov gives a hiccup that's somewhere between a laugh and a regular inhale. Jim decides to take it as the former.

"Now that all the stuff with Sayavong's been worked out, I'm going to take you off babysitting duty, too, so you don't have to report to Spock anymore, at least until some of this has gotten sorted out. How does that sound?"

Chekov nods and sniffles, impatiently wiping his face again. "Sorry, sir," he mutters.

"Hey, no, no need to apologize. I can't even imagine how much of a wreck I'd be if I'd seen combat like that when I was seventeen." It's a bit of a white lie - Jim's checkered past has more black squares than white, to strain the metaphor - but Chekov rolls his eyes at the hint of condescension and at least that's irritation and not more crying. "I'll go talk to Scotty by myself, and you go get cleaned up. I can make it an order," he adds, when Chekov opens his mouth with the clear intent to object.

"Yes, sir," Chekov says, and Jim hits the emergency stop again to release the turbolift.

Jim finds Scotty crouched in a corner of the engine room, pulling a disconcerting amount of equipment out of the walls.

"Scotty, is that - you're not taking out anything important, right?"

Scotty looks over his shoulder with a ready glare. "Oh, I'm taking out everything important, all right. I've decided that there's nothing I want more than to strand us out here and make this bloody boring mission take even longer than it already is, because I'm a masochist."

"Right. Dumb question. What are you doing?"

"Quality control checks on the tertiary systems. Some of this equipment is new, with new contractors and new designs, and it never hurts to take another look at it."

"Funny you should mention that. Chekov managed to figure out what's causing the lights issues in the science labs."

Scotty abandons his equipment, standing up like a dog sitting at attention. "Well? Do tell."

"The main junctions of the motion sensors are miswired, so the sensors are turning on the wrong lights."

"Oh," Scotty says, and then, darkly, "oh. That's going to be a pain in the arse to fix."

Jim winces. "When you say pain in the ass, do you mean, like, plumbing-level time-consuming but not ultimately that difficult pain in the ass, or...?"

"It's a spacewalk."

"What? How the hell could it take a spacewalk?"

"Because when they were installing the junction boxes, they wanted the experimental design team to have easy access and they thought they'd only need to get to it while the ship was in spacedock, where it's easy enough. Frankly, it's also where the space was available, at least for it to be meddled with every now and again. There's about four meters of wiring, supports, systems, subsystems, and basically just stuff between the top deck and the outside of the hull. Anything that's going to be tweaked on the regular can't be put somewhere that you can only get to it using Jeffreys Tubes, especially if you're lugging big equipment - like, say, a new iteration of a junction prototype. So they just put it on the outside."

Jim rubs his forehead, wrinkling his nose. "Shit. Okay. Well, now that we know, we can just...we can pair up the labs, so that the duty shifts put someone in the right lab to keep the light on in another lab that's got someone in it."

"That'll work beautifully, as long as nobody ever works alone and steps out for coffee, or to go to the loo and flush their bloody toilet paper - "

"Oh god, not the toilet paper, not right now, please - "

" - and as long as the swaps were one-for-one and the motion sensor lights up the lab whose motion sensor would light them up too. That'd be nice."

Jim winces. "You don't think...?"

"Frankly, Captain, if they knew the wires well enough to wire them in any sort of order, they'd be wired correctly and we wouldn't be having this conversation."

"Right. Fine. Okay. So a spacewalk is...doable? Risky? Out of the question? What are we dealing with here?"

Scotty pushes past Jim and goes to one of the computer displays. "Spacewalk at warp is always risky, but we're barely at warp. The labs that are affected are these ones, right?"

Jim looks at the display, now showing the Enterprise's schematics with the relevant labs highlighted, and nods. "Yeah. As far as we know, it's only the ones in that area."

"Good. That means it's only the one junction box." Scotty jabs at the screen, and the schematics shift to a diagram of the outside hull of the ship. "There's an airlock right here, and the junction box is here. The good news is it's right under a hull plate, so it won't be an excessively long-duration spacewalk. We can leave the walker tethered to the ship's oxygen and keep them clipped in - there are carabiners on the hull just for walks like this, and they won't have to go that far. They'll be out of the ship's artificial gravity, of course, but there's nothing we can do about that."

"Can we magnetize their boots? The danger's if they get detached from the ship, right?"

"Right. If they come off the hull, eventually they'll hit the bow shock of the warp bubble, which would have the same effect as a severe gravitational distortion."

Jim grimaces. It's a fairly frequent topic of conversation in Starfleet in general, if only for its gruesomeness. "Spaghettification," he says.

"That's the one. We can't magnetize the boots, though, not unless we want to risk frying all the programming in the junction box. Once the hull plate over it's lifted up, it's no longer shielded by the Faraday cage."

"Okay, but how bad would it be if we did fry all the programming in the junction box? While we've got someone up there, can we just bypass the box entirely?"

"Oh, definitely," Scotty says. "If you want to get Starfleet Command's knickers in a twist. They don't take kindly to anyone messing about with their experiments. Or unauthorized experiments, for that matter..."

"Yeah, yeah, Admiral Archer's beagle, got it." Jim sighs. "Okay. How quickly can we get a spacewalk scheduled?"

"We're still running quality control checks on secondary equipment - "

"What if we push back the QA?"

"Well, we can't - the equipment for a walk like this is classified as secondary. We're gonna have to inspect it all, or at least everything we want to use."

Jim groans. "How long?"

"Two weeks at least."

"Two weeks? There's a two week delay on spacewalks? What if we have to do an emergency spacewalk?"

Scotty lifts up a hand and starts ticking off equipment. "Safety tether, oxygen tether, external QA for the hull sections including hull plating and carabiners - that's all waiting for inspection. In an actual emergency, the kind where all the schedules are shot to hell anyway because there's a red alert, we could get someone out there in a quarter of an hour, give or take a few minutes, but this isn't that."

Jim looks at the schematic on the screen, contemplating. "What about the QA spacewalks?"

"Well, it's inspecting the oxygen tether that takes time because of how many different components there are. With the duty roster the way it is and with the plumbing being what it is - "

"How is that still a problem? I sent the message out about it!"

"Yeah, shocking, that the crew of a Federation starship wouldn't pay close attention to a message sent by its captain about toilet paper."

Jim takes a breath to keep from cursing, but his mouth twitches with all the four-letter words that want to escape.

Scotty continues, "A week and a half of those two weeks are just for that. 'Course, you could just put the spacewalker on an external oxygen tank, maybe double the safety tethers just in case and have them QA as they go. Bit of a longer spacewalk, but two birds, one stone and all that."

"How long would that take?"

Scotty tilts his head from side to side. "Could be ready to go in, say, five days. Maybe six."

That's already almost to the end of the mission. "Rearrange the QA schedule to prioritize it in case the situation changes, but if it's going to take that long, we may as well wait." He turns away from the computer screen, then turns back. "But couldn't we just run a new cable from the motion sensors to the lights...? Or would that piss Command off, too?"

Scotty gives an apathetic shrug. "Doesn't matter what Command would think, we're talking about manually bypassing all of the lights in an eighth of all the lab space for the ship. It'd just take forever."

"Right. Well, screw that. We can deal with some malfunctioning lights until we get back to spacedock and I have a chance to rip that experiment team a new one. Thanks anyway, Scotty."

Scotty snaps off a uniquely terrible salute. "Aye aye, Captain!"

It's astonishing how much time Jim spends just running around the ship. Sure, he gets stuff done when he's just sitting in the captain's chair, but it only takes a couple hours for his feet to start itching to move. Even reading personnel files, he finds himself distracted and intrigued by someone's publication or award or choice of extracurriculars, and since the mission doesn't exactly require a whole lot of input from him, it's not hard to find an excuse to go interrogate crewmembers. In a friendly way.

But when he asks the computer to locate Crewwoman Fraser to ask her about her comparison of gendered declensions in trigender species, Uhura stands up when he does and walks with him to the turbolift.

"Lieutenant?" Jim asks, frowning at her.

"Crewwoman Fraser's one of mine," Uhura says, her ponytail swishing as she turns to meet his eyes with a thin, unimpressed smile. "If you're going to do one of your little crew spot-checks, I want to be there."

Jim screws up his face in confusion. "What are you afraid I'm going to do?"

Uhura precedes him into the turbolift and holds out an arm to keep the door open. "I shudder to think."

Jim joins her, rolling his eyes, and the doors close. He realizes that he hasn't checked on Engineering in the past two days to check the status of the spacewalk, although by now they should be decently into their checks for it. Of course, if they're still getting distracted by the goddamn toilet paper, then who knows how long it's going to take to -

"Permission to speak freely, Captain?"

He looks at her, surprised; her eyes are firmly on the turbolift doors, her face arranged in the blank professionalism that he's come to know so well.

"Frankly, Uhura, I'd be offended if you thought you couldn't," he says.

Uhura takes a breath, steeling herself, and asks the turbolift doors, "How bad is the situation?"

"Oh no," Jim says, his shoulders rising in preparation for dropping his head into his hands. "Please tell me that Communications isn't suddenly affected by the toilet paper thing, too."

"What? Of course not. Well," Uhura adds, "not anymore than proofreading the all-crew messages."

"Oh thank god," Jim says, his shoulders relaxing. "Then what situation are you talking about?"

Uhura finally looks at him, her eyebrows scrunched together and up with skepticism. "You. Alcalde. Spock's theory."

Jim sighs and hits the emergency stop on the turbolift. At least he's reasonably sure that Uhura, unlike Chekov, won't start crying.

"Alcalde's not happy," Jim admits, "but I'm working on it. Besides, I'm pretty sure she just hates me, not the rest of you."

"Sir, with all due respect, anyone on this ship who isn't Spock, Doctor McCoy, or Commander Scott should be doing grunt work in weed-out assignments, and I'm including the crewmen doing grunt-work here," Uhura says fervently. "The only reason we aren't is because of you. If a new captain gets assigned, they're going to bring with them crewmembers with actual seniority, and not only are the rest of us going to get pushed out, but we're going to have a reputation."

"The only reputation that matters," Jim says, turning to face her directly, "is that this crew saved the Earth and is damn good at their jobs!"

"Does Starfleet Command see it that way?" Uhura shoots back. In her heels, she's about as tall as Jim, and not afraid to get in his face, but Jim can see genuine worry in her eyes.

That pulls him up short. "You really think your career's in danger?"

Uhura steps back, rebuilding her composure and returning her attention to the turbolift doors. "I don't think you're the only one Starfleet Command assigned as a seatwarmer."

Jim rubs the back of his neck, and then laughs, hollowly. "You know, the funny thing is, I avoided Starfleet for years because I thought it was too holier-than-thou. Turns out they're just as big assholes as anyone else."

"I didn't join Starfleet so that I could be used in whatever kind of political tiff this is," Uhura says. "I joined to make a difference."

"You deserve better," Jim agrees. "The whole crew does." They really do, Jim realizes: the certainty sinks into him like a piece of driftwood succumbing to waves. Jim and Pike may be the only people in Starfleet looking out for the crew of the Enterprise right now, and if the opposition is admirals like Alcalde, then that's...not great.

And there's not anything Jim can do about it, other than try to get Alcalde and the other admirals to like him.

"Do we even stand a chance?" Uhura asks softly, looking over at Jim again. "You're the one who's talked to her."

"I'm...doing my best," Jim says, lacking any other, more reassuring answer. "I just hope it's enough," he adds in a mutter.

"That's what worries me," Uhura says with a sigh.

"Lieutenant," Jim says, feeling unusually serious, "can I ask you something?"

Uhura gives him a look. "That phrase is either meaningless or recursive, depending on how you look at it."

"You know what I mean. Just - do you think I'm a good captain?"

Uhura shifts her stance, looking at Jim more consideringly. One arm dips just behind her, while the other hooks around her back to grasp her opposite elbow. After a moment, she says, "As flattered as I am, Captain, by your assumption that I have any more idea what I'm doing than you do, I can't answer that." After another moment, she says, "Pike was a good captain."

"Well, he left me in charge, so his judgment's obviously a little suspect," Jim says automatically.

"Pike convinced me to stay in Starfleet," Uhura continues. "I joined up with a different recruiter, obviously, but Pike was the orientation leader that year and he gave a speech. Up to then, it had been all rules and regulations - none of what made me actually want to join Starfleet in the first place."

"Which was?

"Exploration. Excitement. New challenges." Uhura gets a faraway look in her eye, and it occurs to Jim that he may not be the only one on the ship with a compulsive need for higher, further, faster, more. "Doing some good. The rules and regulations help that, obviously, but going out and making a difference in a way that nobody else ever had - that brought me to Starfleet, and by the time Pike's talk came around, all the rest of the sessions had me half-convinced that all there was out here was the same ground to be retread."

"And that was really enough to almost make you quit? You...really don't strike me as the quitting type."

Uhura gives him a sideways look. "I want to break new ground, Captain. Starfleet hasn't been doing much of that since…" She hesitates, and Jim can see it in her eyes.

"Since the Kelvin," he says quietly.

After a moment, Uhura nods. "The focus has been on defense, not exploration. But when Pike talked - he didn't talk about going out there to change the universe. He talked about going out there to change us. To change Starfleet itself."

Jim dimly remembers the speech; mainly, he remembers staring at Pike intently and thinking, dare me to do something else, just try it, you asshole over and over again. Pike had gotten to a part about the cadets being the next generation of universal citizens and had looked particularly smug, while Bones had muttered to Jim, "What a crock of shit. It just means he's too lazy to change anything himself."

Jim had agreed at the time, but putting Jim in charge of the Enterprise was certainly an effective way for Pike to put his money where his mouth was.

"So I don't know if you're a good Captain, or even what kind of Captain you are, or what kind of Captain I want," Uhura continues. "But I know what I want Starfleet to be, and it isn't the kind of organization that would screw us all over like this."

Jim nods slowly, thoughtfully. "So we just have to outlive the bastards." He straightens up and takes a breath. "I promise I'm doing everything I can."

"Well," Uhura says, "so am I."

She reaches forward and hits the emergency stop again, setting the turbolift into motion.

"Deck 12," she says.

"Crewwoman Fraser's on Deck 17," Jim reminds her.

The turbolift stops at Deck 12, and Uhura pauses in the doorway.

"I already had the conversation I wanted," she says, and leaves.

"Sir, we're receiving a transmission from Starfleet Command, high-priority."

Jim looks up from his draft report, currently undergoing a final round of edits to find the best balance between sounding good and being obvious bullshit. He turns to look at Uhura, who looks expectantly back at him.

"Any more details than that?"

Uhura shakes her head. "Only that if it's from an Admiral, they're not using their private line."

Jim lets out a heavy breath. Less likely to be an early tongue-lashing from Alcalde, then. "Okay. I'll go ahead and take it here." He sits up, tucking his PADD next to him in the chair.

An Andorian woman appears on the screen ahead of him, with a Starfleet engineering lab in the background so stereotypical it almost seems fake: a table scattered with spare parts, blueprints pinned to the wall with small magnets, a whiteboard for ideas. Scotty's idea of paradise, no doubt, but Jim's been stuck in enough of those labs for Command-track's required courses that the appeal has worn off.

"Captain Kirk, I am Shera with Starfleet's Experimental Technologies Testing group. We received your bug report about the motion security system."

Jim briefly glances to Chekov, at the helm this shift, but Chekov just shrugs back. "I wasn't aware," Jim says, pulling his gaze back to Shera, "that a bug report had been filed."

Shera looks down at something off-screen, then back up. "It says it was filed by your Chief Engineer, Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott. He filed the status update yesterday."

"Oh, that," Jim says. "That wasn't a bug report. We don't plan on trying to troubleshoot a quarter of the ship's lab space from thousands of lightyears away. We just wanted to tell you about the problem so that once we got back to spacedock, you could fix it."

Shera's lips thin together. "All due respect, Captain, there must be some mistake. The junction box was installed correctly the first time and all simulations based on the schematics of the Enterprise have shown a 100% success rate."

Jim's brows tighten in the ghost of a frown. "Okay, well, obviously something went wrong. Once we get to spacedock, you can stare at it all you want, as long as we get functioning lab lights once you're done."

"There shouldn't be anything to fix," Shera snaps, or at least, as much as an Andorian can snap; the sensitivity of their antennae led to a planet of soft-spoken creatures. "Has your Commander Scott logged every modification he's made to the ship's schematics? If he forgot anything, it could be causing the problems instead of our device."

Jim has no idea if Scotty has or not, not that he'll say that. "Like what? What could possibly cause what we've been seeing, other than a wiring problem?"

"A wiring problem is impossible, Captain," Shera says. "The Jeffries tubes in your ship are nearly impossible to work with, and we spent months plotting the courses that each cable would take to get to the junction box. If they were miswired, the cables simply wouldn't have reached, or would have had slack. Neither of those problems were noted at installation, so the wiring must have been correct. No, this must have been your crew's problem."

Jim stands up, taking a step closer to the screen. "What, exactly, is that supposed to mean?"

"Everyone knows who Commander Scott is and what he did to Admiral Archer's beagle. He has a reputation for playing fast and loose with experimental technology procedures, and our group isn't going to clean up his mess or let him ruin one of our experiments!"

"With all due respect," Jim says, injecting the words with as much sarcasm as he can and glancing down at her rank insignia, "Commander, I'm not convinced that Scotty did anything at all. You never said what else could cause what we're seeing other than a wiring issue."

Shera flings up a hand. "Insufficiently protected generators of electromagnetic interference could cause the signals from the motion detectors to register false positives or negatives, for one."

"At exactly the same time that another motion detector in a completely different lab registers the opposite?" Jim demands. "Look, Commander, it's bad enough that I'm stuck having to make sure there's at least one person in every room at all times for an eighth of my lab space, but I'm not going to stand here and just listen while you insult my crew for your team's screwup!"

Shera crosses her arms. "Do whatever you like. Until Commander Scott can prove that he isn't the cause of this problem, my team won't provide any service for your unit."

"So you're not even going to fix your own problem?"

"It's not our problem, Captain! It's your Chief Engineer's! You might have plucked him off of Delta Vega for whatever reason you had, ahead of countless more qualified personnel who would have been overjoyed to be the Enterprise's Chief Engineer and who would've done it by the book, but that doesn't mean that the rest of us have to bend over backwards to make sure his little flights of fancy don't interfere with our work!"

"Flights of - one of Scotty's flights of fancy saved the lives of everyone on this ship during the Nero incident and kept us from getting sucked into a black hole!"

"Well, then," Shera says, with a humorless smile, "no doubt he'll be able to fix whatever problem he's caused this time."

The transmission goes dark, leaving Jim gaping at the screen for a moment before turning to Uhura. "Did she just hang up on me?"

Uhura turns to look at her readout, and then looks back at Jim, her lips pressed together. "Yes, sir, she did."

"Are Commanders allowed to do that to Captains?" Jim demands.

"Technically, sir," Chekov pipes in from the helm, "once the ship is in spacedock, the Experimental Technologies Team will be obligated to either fix the problem or remove the experimental system altogether. Either way, our problem is fixed. We could just leave it alone..."

"Oh, no," Jim says, snatching his PADD off his chair. "No, we're not going to do that. We're going to get proof that they were the ones who screwed it up in the first place. Uhura, tell Mister Scott to get to Engineering ASAP. We've got a spacewalk to plan."

"Tell me what happened with the lights in the last three days that suddenly merits a spacewalk," Alcalde says on Jim's screen as she flicks a finger across the PADD barely visible at the bottom of the frame.

Jim came prepared this time. Unlike Alcalde, who, if Jim's any judge, is actually reading his report while grilling him on it. The excuse rolls off his tongue. "Under the circumstances, the Experimental Technologies Team that's in charge of the project expressed uncertainty about the cause of the malfunction, so we're taking data to verify the problem."

Alcalde glances up from beneath stern brows. "All communications to and from active-mission starships with Starfleet Command are recorded and available to the Admiralty, Captain. Would you care to revise your statement?"

"No, sir." Jim squares his shoulders. "We're outfitting the spacewalker with visual and audio transmitters so that whatever she sees will be recorded, and the data will be transmitted back to the Experimental Technologies Team to better assist them in formulating a plan of action to fix the problem. The fact that the Experimental Technologies Team doesn't think that a problem exists is and will stay irrelevant until the cause of the malfunction has been identified."

Spock had helped Jim with the wording, and, as bureaucratic Vulcan technobabble goes, it's a work of art. Any more use of the passive voice and Jim would have to slap it in a grant application or an academic paper.

Judging by her lack of expression, Admiral Alcalde is less impressed. "What does Mister Scott think about their alternate hypothesis?"

"He disagrees with them, sir." Technically, he hadn't used the word 'disagree.' He had used the words 'lies,' 'vicious slander,' and 'calumny,' and then said that the Experimental Technologies Team 'wouldn't know a Bussard ramscoop from a teakettle.'

Alcalde keeps her gaze on the screen rather than returning it to the PADD. "So tell me about the spacewalk."

"Lieutenant Tayyibe Kumçu will conduct the EVA. She'll be tethered to the Enterprise and conducting quality-control checks on the tether equipment as she goes, but she'll be hooked up to an external oxygen tank rather than an oxygen tether." Jim pauses to give Alcalde a chance to disagree, since he's rehearsed his responses for this, too.

"Magnetized boots?"

"Magnetic fields around the junction box would likely interfere with the electrical systems, but she'll be tethered to the ship for the duration. Lieutenant Kumçu has extensive training in zero-gravity operations and grew up on a Federation outpost station with null-gee areas." He pauses again, but Alcalde just gives him a look until he resumes. "Kumçu will remove the hull plate above the junction box and conduct a visual examination of the unit based on the schematics we were given by the Experimental Technologies Team. Her helmet will be fitted with both a video and audio feed, and if the visual examination doesn't reveal the source of the problem, she will proceed to manually test it."

"Manual testing? What does that mean?"

Jim briefly presses his lips together. "It means she's going to unplug each cable and then plug it back in, and our personnel in the labs will tell us if their lights went out. Both the motion sensors and the lights are wired out to the junction box, but we have the schematic of which lights are meant to be plugged in where. If the problem is that the lights are miswired, we'll find out this way. If the problem is that the motion sensors are miswired, we'll get that in phase two."

"Phase two?" Alcalde says, raising an eyebrow.

"Swapping the light cables and seeing which lights go out, sir." Jim shakes his head. "It's not fancy, but it should do the job."

"And if Lieutenant Kumçu's experiments show no faults with the junction box?"

"Then I'll owe the Experimental Technologies Team a heartfelt apology, and my Chief Engineer a strict talking-to."

A glint appears in Alcalde's eye that looks entirely foreign to Jim, and it takes him a moment to place it: it looks almost like...approval? Impossible.

Alcalde sets aside the PADD entirely. "Did you know, Captain, that I was an engineer before I came to the command track?"

Jim says truthfully, "No, sir."

"I did my doctoral work under Commander Farooqi. Have you ever heard the phrase 'fail fast, fail often?'"

Jim frowns. "I can't say I have."

"It was her watchword, although she added one last step: 'fix the damn problem.' In a complex system, components fail all the time. The trick is that they fail in a way that they can be fixed. Starfleet is a system, in its own way." Alcalde gets a distant look in her eye, less like a grandmother telling a story and more like a politician trying to find just the right combination of words to destroy their enemies. "And of course, so is every ship. When you have a faulty component, the faster it fails, the faster it can get fixed, or replaced with a component that will actually do the job. It's the late-failing components that you can't trust. Those are always the ones that fail when you need them the most. So there it is: fail fast. Fail often. And fix the damn problem."

She blinks a few times, then looks back at Jim. "I look forward to seeing the report from the spacewalk, Captain."

The screen goes blank, and Jim is left with the disconcerted, hollow feeling that he's the faulty component.

Jim manages to go the entire rest of the day without a crisis, which of course mean the next one comes in the middle of his sleep-cycle.

He groans and pulls his pillow over his head, then takes a deep breath and lets it out. The computer chimes that he has an incoming message again, and he lets the pillow fall off his head. "Fine, what?"

"Jim," Bones's voice comes through loud, clear, and annoyed. "Can you come down to sickbay?"

"Depends. Are you trying to get me to come down there because you're really annoyed, or because it's something that actually needs to be dealt with quickly?"

"Both. Someone set up a still."

Jim groans, throwing the pillow back over his head. "Seriously, Bones? I'd be more surprised if we were somehow the only ship without a still."

"Well, whoever set this one up, they have no idea what they're doing. I've seen three engineers in the past twenty-four hours with methanol poisoning."

"Oh, Jesus." Jim reaches under the pillow to scrub his face with his hand, then pushes the pillow away entirely. "All right, I'll be right there."

It takes him less than twenty minutes to get dressed and down to sickbay, where, true to Bones's word, three miserable-looking engineers are curled up on their beds. Bones meets him at the door.

"Blurred vision, quick breathing, and positive tests for formate," he says, walking with Jim across sickbay to his private office. "Second-stage wood alcohol poisoning. They're not going to be in any shape to tell us where they got the booze for a while."

"What's the treatment?" Jim asks, as the door slides shut behind them.

"There are a variety of potential treatments, but in this case, since we're not due for a medical resupply for a while, I figured I'd stick with the one that's easiest to get our hands on: ethanol."

Jim raises his eyebrows. "Booze to fight booze?"

"Binds with the methanol to get it filtered out of their system. Like I said, they're not going to be able to tell us anything for a while."

Jim looks at Bones. Bones has that thin-lipped, corners-tucked expression that means that he's knows what kind of reception what he's going to say will get and already doesn't like it. "But you have an idea?"

Bones shrugs. "It's all engineers so far and we happen to know an engineer who spent a lot of quality time far away from any other source of ethanol."

"And that makes you think it is Scotty? Come on, Bones. Scotty knows how to build a still. He wouldn't mess it up like this."

"Look, all I know is if there's anyone else who drank any of this stuff and is trying to hide or mask their symptoms, this could get worse before it gets better. For them, at least."

Jim sighs, then taps his communicator. "Scotty."

There's a long silence, and then Scotty's muzzy voice - he's on the same duty shift as Jim this week, Jim remembers - comes through. "What," he says, "could possibly justify getting me out of bed at this hour?"

"Someone in Engineering made a still and they did it wrong," Bones says immediately.

After a brief moment, Scotty says, "I'm on my way."

Which is how Jim finds out that Scotty can be not just irritated, not just annoyed, not just animated in kind of a waspish way, but he can, in fact, be angry.

"Who was it? Was it Thomson? He seems like the kind who'd bugger it up. Honestly, have I taught them nothing?"

Jim looks at him, alarmed. "You haven't been teaching them how to make stills, have you?"

"Of course not! And I'm offended by the idea that if I did, one of my students would do it wrong! I'm a much more thorough teacher than that, lad."

"Did you just call me 'lad'?"

"Of course I did, look at you, you're tiny."

Jim glares at Bones, who, sure enough, has an annoying little smirk on his face.

"Is there any way we can use the ship's internal sensors to find the still?" Jim asks, turning back to Scotty.

"Oh," Scotty says, his voice dark, "I've got a better way to do it, Captain."

Which is how they end up in one of the Engineering meeting rooms at oh-four-hundred hours with the entire department dragged either out of bed or away from their posts and looking very upset. The engineers seem evenly mixed between those who are confused and eying Jim and Bones warily, and those who are nervous and also eying Jim and Bones warily. There are, of course, also those who just look exhausted. Scotty paces in front of them, looking thunderous: shoulders set back like a panther about to pounce, mouth set in a hard line, and brows pulled down in an expression of pure Scottish fury.

"Which of you," he says, "built a still and then bollocksed it up?"

There's a deafening silence, and then someone in the back whispers, "Bollocks? What does that mean?"

"It means," Scotty says immediately, "that someone made a still and some of the rest of you have been drinking what's coming out of it and risking wood alcohol poisoning!"

Bones coughs something, and Jim glances over towards him. Bones raises his eyebrows and tilts his head towards the crowd, and Jim frowns, uncomprehending.

"It's the first rule of life on a ship, lads: don't build a still if you're not sure you know exactly what you're doing! You don't risk the lives of the people you work with, and you sure as bloody hell don't risk the psychological well-being of everyone who's relying on that hooch by getting caught!" Scotty continues, his voice getting steadily louder.

Bones mutters something this time out of one corner of his mouth, leaning slightly closer to Jim, but Jim doesn't catch it. He widens his eyes at Bones, and Bones says again, slightly louder, "Play good cop."

"Oh," Jim says, softly enough that only Bones can hear it, and steps forward. "You might be wondering why Dr. McCoy and I are here," he says, louder, cutting Scotty off mid-rant. "We're not here to punish anyone. We just want to make sure that the still gets taken care of and nobody else gets sick, because three people already have."

"In the past twenty-four hours," Bones adds over Jim's shoulder.

"Right. And they've all been engineers," Jim continues, "so even if it was someone else in another department who made the still or who's been running it, we know one of you guys is going to know where to find it. And if anyone here can tell us where it is, we're not going to ask any more questions about who made it. We're just going to take care of it and if it doesn't happen again, then nobody's going to have any kind of problem."

Someone coughs loudly, and it sounds a lot like they're coughing the word "condescending."

Jim frowns. "Or," he says, "if you want, we can open an official investigation pursuant to Starfleet regulations 53.24, 430.7, and 824.6A that deal with the misappropriation of ship resources, the conduct of crew members in official duty areas, and the creation and consumption of ethanol of crew members not on leave. Then we can see how many of you, including the people, I should add, who are currently in sickbay until they get their eyesight back, get stripped of your rank or reassigned off the Enterprise altogether. Would anyone rather do that?"

Another deafening silence.

"The moral of that story, kids," Bones says loudly, letting his drawl be particularly slow, "is if you don't want to be condescended to, don't pull dumb fratboy stunts like that one. Now is someone gonna take us to the still or does the Captain have to make good on that threat?"

"Captain," Scotty says, gesturing off to one side with his head, "if I could have a word?"

Jim obliges, walking away from the crowd of engineers with Scotty. "What is it?"

"Obviously I understand the importance of getting to the still and dismantling it both in terms of your authority as Captain and as a public health issue on the ship, of course I understand that," Scotty says, and then holds up his hands in front of him imploringly. "But the thing is, sir, I was really looking forward to tearing whoever made a mockery of this department and of engine moonshine a new arsehole, if you don't mind my saying. We engineers have a reputation to uphold for making terrible, paint-stripping, liver-destroying hooch, but it's always supposed to be the kind of hooch that's at least ethanol and not methanol. Frankly, it's just sloppy work, and I'm not sure I want someone who can't be bothered to run a chemical analysis on their illegally-made moonshine in my department at all."

Jim looks at Scotty for a long moment, and Scotty, very earnestly, looks back.

"Scotty," Jim says finally, "I understand your concerns. But you're really focusing on the wrong things here."

"Am I?" Scotty says, with a rhetorical quirk to one eyebrow. "Or are you?"

"Yes, you are, and I'm not," Jim says with finality. "We've got to find this still, and if you can find out who made it, then that's fine and great, but right now our top priority is making sure nobody else gets literally poisoned, okay?"

"Fine," Scotty says, speaking in a jerky hiss that shows a disconcerting amount of his teeth, "but if whoever built the still ends up doing a halfhearted calibration of the warp drive that gets us all killed, don't say I didn't warn you."

"I can absolutely promise that if the miscalibrated warp drive kills us all, I won't say you didn't warn me," Jim promises, clapping one hand on Scotty's shoulder. He neglects to mention that, reduced to a smear across spacetime by a warp core breach, he would be physically incapable of doing so. He lets that part go unsaid.

He goes back to his place in front of the crowd. "So," he calls out, "who's going to show us where the still is?"

There's a silence that's just long enough for the assembled engineers to start finding it awkward, but also just long enough for Jim to enjoy the one-sided discomfort, before an engineer wearing an Ops-red headscarf about halfway back and to the right in the crowd makes a loud noise of exasperation.

"Oh, for - it's in the supply closet behind the dedicated modeling processors," she says.

"Lieutenant Kumçu, I'm shocked at you," Scotty begins, and then stops. He then continues, sounding genuinely puzzled, "I actually really am. I would have guessed it was someone who actually...drank ethanol."

Lieutenant Kumçu rolls her eyes and resettles the corner of her hijab hanging over her shoulder. "Obviously it's not mine, but apparently that means I'm the only one willing to give it up. Can we go back to sleep now, please? My duty shift starts in three hours."

Jim turns to Scotty. "Would you like to do the honors of dismantling it, Commander?"

"Sir," Scotty says fervently, "it would be my honor."

And of course, on top of all of this, Jim has his goddamn biweekly report to write up.

The bridge is too distracting for this kind of work. There's only so long he can try to mind-read a hostile admiral from several thousand light-years away while Lieutenant 0718 absentmindedly hums different beats at the exact same frequency as the ship before he breaks, so the next morning Jim retreats to his ready room and stares at his blank PADD for twenty minutes trying to think up a silver lining for the still situation.

All he can come up with is "at least it's not the fucking toilet paper."

Instead, he writes up everything he can about the upcoming spacewalk, tentatively scheduled for four days from now due to unavoidable delays caused by pulling the entire Engineering department out of their beds to yell at them about a still, to say nothing of Scotty's lingering bad mood. Jim is impressed enough with Lieutenant Kumçu's willingness to see the bigger picture and rat out the still - without, he noted, ratting out her actual colleagues - that he's swapped shifts so that he can observe the spacewalk personally. Spock can deal with Gamma shift that day; Jim will be spending it watching one of his problems finally get solved. Possibly with popcorn. He hasn't decided yet.

He's just describing in gruesome detail all of the steps required to perform QA on the oxygen tether, and thus why Lieutenant Kumcçu will not be using it in the interests of a timely spacewalk, when his door chimes.

"Come."

Ensign Madeline pops her green, scaly head in. "Sir? Do you have a moment?"

"Yeah, come on in," Jim says, waving her in, too. Madeline isn't one of the crewmembers he's had a chance to really talk to, despite her regular presence on the bridge. Despite their multiple classes together in the Academy, they've never quite seemed to manage an actual conversation, so Jim smiles at her and says, "What can I do for you, Ensign?"

Madeline visibly braces herself, baring blue teeth in a grimace. "Sir...I was asked to speak to you by multiple personnel in the Exobiology department."

Jim closes his eyes. "Please," he says, "please tell me this isn't about what I think it is."

"There've been concerns," Madeline says, the corners of her carapace tinging purple with discomfort, "that official intervention in the arboretum project by, say, sending shipwide reminders about the use of toilet paper - "

"Who asked you to do this again?" Jim asks, opening his eyes. "I'm happy to talk directly to them. I've got some pretty strong words."

The purple flush moves inward, leaving only a receding stripe of green on Madeline's face. She rallies, taking a deep breath, and says, "Sir, they think, and I agree, that such intervention is itself a sign that the arboretum project is not self-sufficient."

Jim throws his hands out to gesture to the entire ship at once. "None of the systems on the ship are self-sufficient. They're all supposed to rely on each other."

"Respectfully, sir," Madeline says, marking the first time Jim's heard those words said to a superior officer unironically, "the point of the arboretum's presence on the Enterprise is to test whether it will succeed with minimal intervention outside of Botany. The fact that..." She stumbles the sentence, and Jim wonders if her native language is one of the many that considers direct second-person to be rude. It doesn't matter, because after a breath and a straightening of her spine, she continues. "The fact that you've had to remind the crew about the proper allocation of resources with respect to the arboretum is a sign that the experiment is no longer useful. It was meant to be a control."

Jim sits back in his chair, cocking his head. "Wouldn't a true control be having no arboretum?"

"A control to see what problems arise and whether they can be resolved internal to Botany," Madeline corrects herself. "Since they haven't been, clearly the experiment itself is no longer valid. It's not doing what it's supposed to do."

"Or, alternatively, it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do! Just...faster."

There is no more green remaining on Madeline's face. "Sir, there are experimental protocols in place that have clearly been violated!"

After a moment of looking at her carefully, Jim says, "Is there something else that's going on that's making you upset about this, Ensign?"

The edges of her carapace darken even further, turning almost black. Madeline bursts out, "It's cheating, sir!"

"Ah," Jim says, finding himself at something of a loss for words. Madeline was in his year at the Academy; no doubt she had been in the tribunal when Jim had been called up on Spock's charges; and judging by the way that the tip of her nose has circled the entire color spectrum and is now turning a sickly, anxious yellow, she's also aware of the awkwardness of this situation.

"Exobiology agrees with me," Madeline adds, retaining remarkable composure for the sheer variety of colors currently displayed on her scales. "Even some of the botanists."

"You're talking to the exobiologists and the botanists?"

"I'm a Science Officer, sir. I don't pick and choose which divisions I work with. And, well, we're all scientists. Just because we disagree doesn't mean we have to be nasty about it."

Jim decides not to mention that the last time he had a disagreement with a science officer, it had involved strangulation.

"I'll take your input into consideration, Ensign," Jim says in his best busy-captain voice - which is to say, his best impression of Pike. "Thank you for letting me know."

Madeline hesitates, then turns towards the door.

"And Ensign?" Madeline pauses in the doorway. "Not all cheating is necessarily bad. Sometimes it can get results. Think about that, would you?"

After a slow, thoughtful blink, Madeline nods. "Yes, sir."

"And anything you can do to get the botanists and exobiologists talking about this in a reasonable way would be greatly appreciated, because I don't know which ones you've been talking to that haven't been nasty about it, but they're obviously not the ones I'm talking to," Jim adds.

"Understood, sir."

Once she's gone, there's no more procrastinating: he needs to write the still into the report. For one thing, he'd probably have to write a report about it anyway - there's no getting out of it for this sort of thing. For another, Alcalde just seems to know things in a way that Jim finds highly disconcerting. The theories he's shared with Bones - that Alcalde is a long-range telepath or secretly a psychohistorian capable of statistically predicting outcomes with alarming accuracy - were both shot down, leaving Jim with the only reasonable alternative theory: a pact made with higher, possibly malign, powers for omniscience.

So he writes up the goddamn still in between the latest toilet-paper-usage numbers and the projections on when the lights will work again, and sends it off. He's not happy with it. It edges under his skin, a restless prickling that makes him want to fight someone or get drunk or drive another car off a cliff, all of which are his typical responses to other people's expectations. But it's better than nothing and it might even be closer to whateverthefuck Alcalde's actually looking for, so he sends it.

Predictably, the transmission comes in in the middle of beta shift, as Jim's reading up on Lieutenant Kumçu's preliminary report and plan for the spacewalk.

"Sir," Uhura says and turns around to face him. "I'm patching through a personal transmission from Admiral Alcalde to your ready room."

Jim barely restrains the urge to groan out loud. Instead, he allows himself a moment of pointed, resigned silence before sighing. "Understood, Lieutenant."

Admiral Alcalde looks no happier to see him than ever. Jim notices for the first time how much her eyebrows, combined with the sharp widow's peak of her hairline, look like the plumage of a bird of prey, making her look like a hawk. Or possibly an eagle. Jim can't quite remember his mythology well enough to recall which was the one that ate Prometheus's liver everyday, but there's something about the shape of Alcalde's face that brings that to mind.

"Captain Kirk," Alcalde says, and for a second Jim thinks she might go for some pleasantries today. "Someone made a still?"

Or not. "Yes, sir, but it's been dismantled."

"And you don't know who made it."

"No, sir. I thought that that was secondary to finding out where it was. And frankly, I think the wood alcohol poisoning is probably enough of a lesson for everyone. There were no permanent injuries," he adds hurriedly.

Alcalde raises an eyebrow, vaguely reminiscent of Spock's favorite skeptical expression except with less-thinly-veiled judgment behind it. "And you find that an acceptable outcome?"

This gets a half-suppressed bristle of irritation out of Jim, and when he answers, it comes out with an edge that he can't make himself suppress. "Yes, sir, I do. The well-being of my crew doesn't depend on the person who made the still getting punished, but on no more flawed stills getting made and nobody else getting methanol poisoning. Scotty and I made a big enough fuss that nobody's going to be trying it again anytime soon."

Alcalde looks at him for a long moment, and then says, "Fine."

She doesn't say anything else for a long moment, so Jim says, certain he's misheard, "I'm sorry?"

"I said fine, Captain." Alcalde interlaces her fingers and leans her arms on her desk. "Under the circumstances, I can't say I disagree."

"I," Jim begins, and realizes he doesn't know how to end that sentence. "Really?"

Alcalde looks at him with an expression so blank it's almost Vulcan, but not even a Vulcan could convey this much underwhelmed disbelief with so little facial movement. "Really. Despite what you seem to think, I wasn't put into existence in this universe just to make your life difficult, Captain Kirk."

This strikes Jim as vaguely insulting, but he can't quite figure out why - he's had his fair share of potshots leveled at him before. "I never thought you were, sir."

Alcalde keeps looking at him. "What do you think Starfleet is, Captain?"

Jim licks his lips to hide his confusion. "A peacekeeping and humanitarian armada - "

"I'm not looking for a dictionary definition, Kirk, I'm asking for your opinion."

Jim keeps his eyes steadily on Alcalde, thinking. "It's important - "

"Your own words, please, I already knew you'd gotten Chris's standard recruitment speech."

Jim's head jerks back just a little, stung, although part of him wants to protest that he didn't get a standard recruitment speech - at the very least, he's pretty sure nobody else Pike recruited earned the label of "only genius-level repeat offender in the Midwest." But then something else strikes him. "Did you call him Chris?"

Alcalde's eyes narrow not with malice but with condescension. "You know, my son and I once ran into one of his teachers at the grocery store when he was in kindergarten, and I could see the look on his face when he realized that his teacher did, in fact, exist outside of the classroom. It looked a lot like the one you're wearing right now."

Jim forcibly smooths his expression. Alcalde continues.

"Yes, we know each other, and yes, we talk to each other. We're even friendly, if not friends."

Jim can't hold back a snort. "So do you just agree to disagree about me, or what?"

"First of all," Alcalde says coolly, "you are not the be-all and end-all of our conversations. Second, I'll admit it. I don't think you're qualified to captain the ship that you were assigned."

It hits him like the sudden loss of gravity, his stomach seizing with unhappiness, and he clenches his jaw to keep from showing any other reaction.

"I don't think any recent graduate ever could be," Alcalde continues, "and I don't think you're the magical exception Chris thinks you are. You're going to make mistakes, Kirk, more than you already have. We can lob you all the softball assignments we can until you learn the ropes, but just being out there is dangerous and I believe your entire crew is at risk as long as you're in that chair."

Jim swallows, although it's hard to get the saliva down past the tightness in his throat. The longer the lump stays there, though, the more it feels like anger than sadness. "So you're just waiting for me to resign like the rest of them."

"I'm trying to keep your crew alive," Alcalde says, leaning in towards the monitor. "Are you?"

"Of course I am!"

"Then start acting like it." One of Alcalde's arms pushes forward on her desk, and she leans on it. "I'm willing to be pleasantly surprised, but so far I haven't seen anything that merits it. Chris thinks that you're going to change Starfleet itself, get it back the spirit of adventure or whatever it is that he thinks has been lost."

For a moment, Jim finds a comfortable place for Alcalde in his head labeled 'stodgy Starfleet old guard.' "And you disagree."

"Starfleet's problems run a hell of a lot deeper than any one person can fix," Alcalde says, and there goes that categorization.

Jim gives a tight, humorless smile. "Right. So now I'm everything that's wrong with Starfleet."

"Your appointment is all the proof anyone could need that nepotism and favoritism are alive and well in Starfleet. Who else but George Kirk's son with Christopher Pike's blessing could get a ship straight out of the Academy?"

The smile is hardening on Jim's face now, stretched into something more like a grimace, the corners of his mouth sinking down. "All due respect, Admiral, you don't sound like someone who sounds willing to be pleasantly surprised at all."

Alcalde sits back in her chair, one unimpressed eyebrow raised. "That's why it would be a surprise. Word of advice, Captain. Stop thinking about your pride and start thinking about what's best for your ship." She leans forward to end the transmission, but pauses. "And start thinking about your answer to my other question. Until you know what you're trying to do here, you're just going to be keeping that chair warm for the next Captain."

The screen goes blank, and Jim kicks his desk so hard he hears a toe snap.

He limps his way to Sickbay. It's not very dignified.

"What," Bones says when he shows up at his office, "in God's name did you do to yourself this time?"

"I got in a fight with my desk," Jim says, and shuffles over to a bed to sit. "It came out of nowhere, so I thought it might be a Klingon spy, but nope - just a desk. A very solid desk."

Bones very, very carefully pulls Jim's shoe off. It hurts like hell anyway, but something in Jim calms down. He can feel his heartbeat in the throb of his foot, and it evens out his breathing.

"There's gotta be a story behind this," Bones mutters, and pulls off Jim's sock. His big toe is at a noticeable angle to the other toes. "Jesus, Jim!"

"Is it broken?" Jim asks, leaning in closer to look.

Bones stares up at him with an expression so incredulous it edges into outright anger. "Yes, Jim. Yes, your toe is broken. There might even be some damage to the metatarsals - what the hell happened?"

When Bones pulls out the medical tricorder, Jim finally looks away. "I had another little chat with Admiral Alcalde. Turns out we really don't agree on a lot of - ow!"

Bones looks up to meet Jim's gaze but doesn't move the business end of the bone-knitting laser from off Jim's foot. Jim didn't even see him grab the thing, the nimble bastard. "So you had a disagreement and then - what? Kicked the monitor?"

"Of course not! The monitor's delicate. I kicked the desk."

"Of course you did," Bones says.

"Well, there wasn't exactly a bar I could go to and start a fight, so - "

"I think it's frowned-on for starship captains to deliberately start bar fights."

Jim flashes Bones a grin. "You can take the captain out of Iowa, but you can't take the Iowa out of the captain."

"Right, so it's Iowa's fault now." The bone-knitting laser beeps to indicate that its work is done, and Bones replaces it on a nearby tray. "Go easy on that foot for a while - no kicking, no stepping on sharp objects, no starting fights in bars, in Iowa or wherever else. Come on."

Jim follows Bones into his office, stepping tenderly on his now-unbroken foot. As soon as the door closes behind him, Bones turns.

"So what's the deal with Alcalde, anyway? She's got it out for you, or what?"

Jim throws himself into one of the chairs in front of Bones's desk. They're the swivelly kind, which is Jim's favorite kind. It's astounding, really, how much better he feels now that he's broken something, even if it did get fixed again.

"Spock's conspiracy theory about me being a placeholder captain is apparently spot-on, and she's one of the ones who doesn't think I deserve to be Captain." Jim turns his chair to watch Bones get in his own seat. "Also, she thinks I'm going to get everyone killed."

Bones raises his eyebrows but doesn't say anything.

Jim clarifies, "Not on this mission, presumably." He turns his chair around so he's facing away from Bones, and then tilts his head over the back so he's looking at Bones upside-down. "You think I'm a good captain, don't you, Bones?"

Bones sighs. "Are you asking Leonard McCoy, reluctant partner-in-crime to Jim Kirk at the Academy, or Doctor McCoy, Chief Medical Officer of your ship - Captain?"

Jim blinks at him, thrown. "Is there a difference?"

"You've been captain of the Enterprise for all of three weeks, so, in all honesty, I have no idea whether you're a good one."

Jim gives up on the whole upside-down thing, pulling his head up and turning around in the chair. "Yeah, but you know me – better than anyone else, practically – so you can, you know, figure it out."

"It sounds like you've already got it all figured out, so what's the point?" says Bones, rolling his eyes.

"I'm just asking you if you think I make a good captain or not," says Jim. "It's not a trick question, here – "

"Three weeks," says Bones. "Nobody's a good captain in their first year, let alone – "

"Oh, so you think I'm a bad captain?"

Bones crosses his arms. "What did you want out of this conversation, Jim? Did you want me to say you're doing great, that nobody's ever been as good a captain as you are, and the entire admiralty just has it out for you because you're the great Jim Kirk?"

"Only if you think it's true!" says Jim, and realizes that he's gripping the arms of his chair very tight and makes himself let go. "God knows you've always told me exactly what you think of my ideas before – "

"Damn it, Jim, we're not in the Academy any more – you're the goddamn captain and I'm your Chief Medical Officer! This isn't some sleepover on a starship!"

"Well, thanks for making that clear," says Jim. "No, really, I was about to go ask Uhura if I could borrow her nail polish and some pillows to make a fort, but if we're not in the Academy any more – "

Jim should keep a catalog of Bones's exasperated expressions, seeing as he's pretty sure he's the universe's foremost expert in them by now. "Now you're just being childish."

Something in Jim – possibly the same thing in Jim that also has a catalog of everything he has ever done to irritate his older brother, rated by effectiveness – snaps, and Jim stands up. "You're right, Doctor," he says, channeling Spock as best he can. "That was childish. I apologize, and it won't happen again."

He storms out of Bones's office, ignoring Bones's yelled, "You know that's not less childish, right?" He would turn around and respond to it if it weren't so accurate.

"You have got," Jim says the next day, surveying the empty storage closet where the ship's entire month supply of toilet paper is supposed to be, "to be kidding me."

"I really, really wish I were, sir," Ensign Nkrumah says, standing next to him. The space in the storage compartment is big. In retrospect, it makes sense that an entire month's - well, now down to a week's - supply of toilet paper would take up a significant amount of volume, but neither Jim nor Nkrumah can stop staring at it. Sulu, presumably, is too, but he's standing behind Jim and Jim can't make himself turn away to look.

"Who," Jim begins, and then words temporarily fail him. He clears his throat and tries again. "I appreciate you alerting me to this, Ensign. Do you have any idea who's responsible?"

"I know who knows about it, sir, and I know who's laughing about it," Nkrumah says grimly. "More importantly, I know the people who fall into both those categories and aren't worrying about wiping their own asses. I want to make it clear, sir, that not everybody in the relevant departments - "

Jim looks at Nkrumah, eyes narrowed. "Departments? Plural?"

Nkrumah tucks his lips into a grimace and nods. "Botany and Engineering. But it wasn't everybody in them - I had no idea, and I told Lieutenant Sulu as soon as I figured it out."

"Well, Sulu was right to advance it straight to me," Jim says, looking back at the patch of gray floor that's supposed to hold a fuckload of toilet paper. "Complaining is one thing, but stealing - "

"Ah," Nkrumah interjects, glancing to one side. "All due respect, sir, I'm not sure they're really stealing it, per se. I mean, I don't think they plan on keeping it indefinitely."

Jim stares blankly at him. "They took all of the ship's toilet paper and then they're planning to just give it back?"

Nkrumah's nose wrinkles with distaste. "I believe they have certain...demands."

It takes a moment for it to click. "Are you saying they're trying to blackmail us by taking the toilet paper away until we learn to use it correctly?"

"Yes."

Sulu clears his throat, and Jim and Nkrumah both turn to look at him. "I don't think it's technically blackmail since they aren't holding specific information over our heads. I think it's just a straightforward hostage situation."

"At the very least, it's the misappropriation of the ship's toilet paper and, frankly, it's just annoying," Jim says. "Ensign, who did you say were the culprits again?"

"I can do better than that, sir," Nkrumah says. "I know where the toilet paper is."

Of course it's in the arboretum, because where else would it be? Although honestly, Jim wouldn't have been surprised if the engineers had just stuffed it in the walls as insulation for their beloved pipes. That would fit pretty well with the engineers' sense of humor.

Despite all the debates over it, Jim has never actually been in the arboretum before. It's nice, for what basically amounts to an indoor garden. Low walls curve through the space, holding in the soil holding trees, shrubs, flowers, and other plants that Jim can't be bothered to classify in varying amounts. It smells like earth - not necessarily Earth, but the soft smell of grass that Jim hadn't even realized was missing until he smelled it again. The rest of the ship, he realizes, smells like metal, ozone, and the background smell of human inhabitance, like a clean bed that remembers the people who have slept there before. The lighting in the arboretum, for some reason, is purple.

All of the fucking toilet paper is stacked between two patches of cacti.

There's a whole group of engineers in Ops red and botanists in science blue waiting in the arboretum, led by none other than Lieutenant Patabendige. Well, not so much "led by" as "containing," since they show no signs of organization or even really purpose. They're just milling around and staring at the gigantic pile of toilet paper sitting in the middle of the arboretum, with their backs towards the door Jim entered through.

Jim bites back an "Et tu, Patabendige?" in favor of standing in the doorway and waiting to get noticed - the arboretum isn't small, and it's about half a minute before someone - an engineer whose name Jim can't remember - catches sight of him.

"Captain!" she says, and takes a step backwards in surprise. Unfortunately, she's standing in front of the pile of toilet paper, so she almost trips over a roll; luckily, a nearby botanist catches her.

Everyone else turns to look at Jim. Jim notes that Scotty isn't present, and based on the fiasco with the still, he'd guess Scotty is unaware of this little plan. If Scotty were aware of it, he would've come up with a different plan - one more likely to have results other than pissing Jim off.

"So," Jim says slowly, crossing his arms. "Did someone change where the toilet paper is stored, or is there something you all want to tell me before I call Security, have them stun your asses, and throw you all in the brig for sheer stupidity?"

Patabendige steps forward, his back straight and his chest out. "Captain, members of our divisions, which have been the ones most affected by the continuing inability of the crew of this ship to use the waste-disposal systems correctly, banded together and decided that if the crew can't use it correctly, they shouldn't have access to it."

"Yeah!" chimes in an engineer behind him. "Let's see how willing they are to just throw it away when they don't have any anymore!"

Nkrumah edges partially past Jim to stick his head in the door and yell, "The problem is that they aren't throwing it away, dumbass!"

Sulu apparently takes this as his opportunity to come in as well, slipping past Jim's other side and turning back around so that his back is mostly to the gathered crowd.

"Do you want me to take care of them, sir?" he asks, and removes something from his phaser holster - not his phaser, Jim realizes, but his sword. "We don't need to call Security. I can wave this around and put the fear of - well, the fear of you into them if you want, sir."

"Tempting, Lieutenant," Jim says, "but that won't be necessary." He turns back to the assembled toilet-paper thieves. "Look, just give us the toilet paper."

"No!" a botanist shouts from the back. "Not until we know we'll get it back eventually!"

"And not until we can stop fishing it out of the pipes!" an engineer adds.

"Captain," Patabendige says, standing up straighter, "I speak for all of us when I say that the situation as it is now is untenable. We can't do our jobs like this, and we shouldn't have to, just because the rest of the crew is incapable of following simple instructions!"

"Well, what do you want me to do about that?" Jim demands.

"Make them do it right!" Patabendige says, his voice edging on a wail.

An idea washes over Jim like a shock of cold water. It's low. It's low but it's perfect. He can feel his shoulders, previously held tight with tension, relax. "You're right," he says smoothly. "I'm the captain and it's my responsibility to make sure that people are taking this seriously - to plan and accommodate these eventualities. Make sure there are strategies to deal with them." Then he smiles. He lets it be smug. "Which is why I'm going to delegate the creation of a mandatory educational training program about the proper use of the waste systems to all of you."

Patabendige stares at him for a long, uncomprehending moment. "What? No, that's not - "

"I'm delegating," Jim says. "To you. To all of you," he adds to the room at large. "I'll inform your superiors and add it to your duty rosters immediately. I'll expect supplementary educational materials, of course - handouts to go on everyone's PADDs, lecture notes. We all had to take that Starfleet Official Materials Writing course, so you know exactly what I'm talking about. And of course," his smile grows, "you'll be in charge of getting everyone to attend. Everyone. Because you want to get the word out, right? So do it."

"Oh, come on," someone says in the back of the room, in the tone of a mutter but at the volume of a heckle.

Jim jabs one finger in the direction the complaint came from. The satisfaction of coming up with a suitably ironic punishment vanishes, replaced by sheer irritation. "You are all getting off goddamn easy and you know it! You're demanding a ransom for the ship's toilet paper, for crying out loud! I could send each and every one of you back to the Academy, and I know at least the engineers know it, since I'm sure you all looked up the regulations about the misappropriation of ship resources after that stunt you all pulled with the still! Hell, this is less punishment than you would've gotten if you were still cadets, so count yourselves lucky and grow up!"

A shocked silence resounds through the arboretum, cut somewhat by the trickling of an ornamental pond somewhere in the room. Even Patabendige looks chastened, and Nkrumah puts a hand to his mouth to cover it, though whether in secondhand embarrassment or schadenfreude, Jim can't tell. Jim realizes that he's breathing hard, and he lowers his hand.

"I," he says as slowly and levelly as he can manage, "don't want to hear another thing about toilet paper unless it directly affects your immediate duties. And it had better not affect anyone else's duties, or their quality of life - am I clear?"

The engineers and botanists respond in a mumble.

"Am I clear?" Jim repeats, enunciating carefully.

A nonspecific, halfhearted "Yeah..." emerges from the crowd, and Jim decides to take it as a win.

"Good. Now put the toilet paper back where it belongs. Ensign Nkrumah?"

Nkrumah's head whips towards Jim, and the look in his eyes is a mix of terror and awe. "Yes, sir?"

"Make sure they do it. You have my full authority to call as many Security officers as you need, if it becomes necessary." Jim turns back to the crowd with a pointed look. "I really hope it doesn't become necessary."

Then he turns around and stalks back towards the turbolift. He can hear Sulu demand of the assembled botanists and engineers, "Seriously, guys? Seriously?" before catching up with Jim down the hallway.

In the turbolift, and once Jim's breathing has evened out a bit, he turns to Sulu and says, "Was I too hard on them, Mr. Sulu?"

"Not at all," Sulu says firmly. "If anything, you went easy on them." He inclines his head in concession. "Although assigning them to do the training sessions was pretty inspired, sir, if you don't mind my saying."

"Well, Pike told me to delegate the shit work."

After a moment, Sulu says, "With all due respect, that was terrible, sir."

"What?" Jim says, and then closes his eyes. "Oh." Then, "Never tell anyone I said that, Mr. Sulu."

"Yes, sir."

With the toilet paper finally restored to its proper location and, hopefully, both the engineers and the botanists finally shut up about it, Jim is fully prepared to dig into some actual work.

But there is none.

Scotty's banned him from micromanaging the quality-checks leading up to the spacewalk, Sayavong has no time for anything that isn't preliminary data-cleaning, the botanists and engineers only send him meek progress reports and draft slide sets for the training (he laughs for about ten minutes at the tentative title of "Bin It To Win It!" before vetoing it just to be a jerk), he still isn't ready to forgive Bones, and overall, the mission seems to settle into the cakewalk Jim had threatened it would be to Pike. Except minus one best friend.

One best friend that Jim keeps seeing scowling at his PADD in the dining halls, with a two-seat zone of avoidance around him as if Southern irascibility is contagious. Not that that bothers Jim, because it's Bones's own fault, and the fact that's he's also kind of endearingly pathetic doesn't change that.

But Jim's not particularly good at cakewalks because Jim is excellent at getting bored easily, so he spends some quality time in the Captain's chair reading through all of the departmental reports, division reports, progress reports, and basically any paperwork he can get his hands on, which turns out to be all of it. For the most part, everything seems to be business as usual. Every issue that's come up so far is either resolved or in the process of being resolved.

Or at least it seems that way until something jumps out at Jim on the duty rosters. They're coming up on the end of their third week of this mission, and Spock has switched up his own schedule seven times. Since Spock, as First Officer, is in charge of making the duty rosters and previously expressed to Jim a desire to become acquainted with as many crew members as possible, this isn't odd.

What is odd is that while Spock and Chekov sometimes work the same shift, they never work the same shift in the same place. When Spock's assigned to be the Bridge Science Officer of the shift, Chekov's off-duty. When Chekov's on the bridge, Spock's either off-duty or in the labs. The ship has a big crew, but the chances of this happening by chance are slim - and get even slimmer when Jim checks the preliminary roster for the following week and sees more of the same. Even now, Chekov's on the bridge and Spock is in the labs.

Jim taps a finger against the back of the PADD, then flips on the ship's communication. "Commander Spock."

After a moment, Spock's voice comes back. "Yes, Captain?"

"Meet me in my ready room."

Spock beats him there and has prearranged his face into a blank yet oh-so-slightly quizzical expression. "Is there a problem, Captain?"

"After you, Mister Spock." Jim ushers him into the ready room. "Take a seat."

One of Spock's eyebrows tugs down while the other goes up in a clear expression of suspicion. "I would prefer to remain standing until I better understand the nature of this conversation."

Sitting behind his desk while calling Spock out feels entirely too parochial and is also not at all Jim's style, so instead he leans back against the edge of his desk and crosses one ankle over the other. "The nature of this conversation is why you're avoiding Ensign Chekov."

Spock's expression doesn't even flicker. "I am merely facilitating Ensign Chekov's avoiding me, as we have previously established that I make him uncomfortable."

"Since when do you care about making people uncomfortable?"

"I am attempting to adjust to the necessities of working with humans."

Jim narrows his eyes slightly. "Since when do you - "

"Since now, obviously."

After a long moment of watching Spock's nonexpression, Jim says, "No. I don't think you'd just come up with something like that. Was it Uhura? No, don't tell me, I don't think she'd - "

"Why would I defer to Lieutenant Uhura on matters of my own professional performance?" Spock says.

"I don't think you would, but I could see you asking her, since she's about the only person I could see you asking for advice on something like this. But I don't think she'd give you bad advice."

"I am merely attempting to be respectful - "

There it is - a glint in his eye, or maybe a twitch just below it, but something in his expression shifts and Jim suddenly knows he's lying.

"Bullshit."

Spock turns his head barely an inch, keeping his eyes on Jim. "I beg your pardon?"

"You don't want to see Chekov because - what? Because you don't want to deal with the awkwardness? This is more than awkwardness, he - " Jim falters, presses his lips together. Then he forges ahead anyway. "He blames himself for not being able to save your mother on Vulcan."

Spock's expression doesn't change, but his shoulders draw down just slightly.

"Spock," Jim says, realization suddenly snapping into place. "You don't blame him, do you?"

"The responsibility for what occurred on Vulcan lies with Nero." Spock's voice is rough but, for the most part, controlled. "It would be illogical to assign blame anywhere else."

And that, Jim thinks, isn't the same thing as not assigning blame anywhere else. "Spock, if you ever...want to talk - "

"There is no need."

"I just mean - it can't be good to keep everything bottled up - "

"I am not 'bottling' anything. Logic, not emotion, is the Vulcan way."

"Well, I know that, obviously, but I don't think avoiding subordinates is the Vulcan way either, but here we are. I'm just saying that if you decide you want to talk, you know, it might help with the grief - "

The muscles around Spock's eyes shift slightly and suddenly Jim recognizes the look: it's the same look Spock had at Jim's tribunal. Spock says, his voice a mixture of cold and force that Jim hasn't heard before, "And what do you know of grief?"

The kneejerk instinct to punch Spock rises so fast that Jim's hands are curled into fists before he even realizes it, and his entire body thrums with tension. He's felt this in bars, in fights, on long country roads and standing in his stepdad's garage, the no no no, the irresistible oppositional force to any immovable object, every moment of his life living in a town where even the goddamn salt-shakers are the ship that let his dad kill himself.

This is what he knows of grief. Logic has nothing to do with it. Jim can look at the list of names of the people his father saved, can see his own name and his mother's on there, can look at all the honors and memorials and still want to trade every last one of them for just a taste of what his life might have been. Maybe it would have even been the life everyone expected of him, the son of a dead hero.

That, Jim suddenly realizes, is fucked up. And more to the point, it's useless, at least to the matter at hand.

So he takes a breath, uncurls his fists, and slouches back against his desk. "Nothing helpful," he says, and then, "I'm sorry."

Some of the cold seeps out of Spock's eyes - not a warming by any means, but at least a relenting.

Jim decides to take it as a win, and looks away. "Look, I just. I'm not asking to be a dick or anything, but - are you okay?"

Spock's lips tighten slightly. "I am not a child in need of reassurance," he says stiffly.

"No, I know you aren't," Jim says, and then sees an opening. "I know you aren't."

Spock looks at Jim for a long moment, gaze intense but steady. "You do Ensign Chekov a disservice if you think of him as a child."

"Of course he's not a child. He's eighteen."

Spock frowns, as much as he ever does - which is to say that a small line appears between his eyebrows. "I understood that the Ensign was seventeen."

"He turned eighteen while we were in for repairs."

Spock raises an eyebrow. "All the more reason not to treat him as somehow lesser than the capable crew member he is."

"I'm not treating him as lesser, I'm treating him as a complex and vulnerable person who's been through a traumatic experience," Jim says. "And yeah, one who happens to be younger than everyone else on the ship. In this case, I think it's relevant. I mean, Jesus, nobody's not fucked up as a teenager, right? Well," he adds, "except maybe you."

Spock's nostrils flare, and Jim feels a sudden flare of curiosity for how much of an exception Spock wasn't. With a small shake of his head, he sets the feeling aside. "Look," he continues, "obviously what Chekov's feeling isn't logical. The crewman that was actually manning the teleporter that day wouldn't have been able to save anyone. But he's fixated on you, and you seem to be equally fixated on him - shut up, don't even give me any of the shit you're about to try, I'm not an idiot - so something's gotta give. He happens to be my favorite navigator-slash-wunderkind, and you happen to be my favorite science officer and, coincidentally, my favorite First Officer, too. There are going to be times when I want you both on the bridge without the elephant in the room."

"Pachyderms are not authorized life-forms aboard - "

Jim holds up a hand. "No, Spock, you're not getting out of this with obtuse literalism. I know you know what I mean."

Spock holds off another moment, and then says, "I was merely impressed by your deployment of a polysyllabic vocabulary."

"Yeah, and you're not gonna distract me with insults, either."

Spock raises an eyebrow. "I did not insult you for the purpose of distracting you." Then he reaches past Jim for the communicator button on Jim's desk. "Ensign Chekov, report to the Captain's ready room immediately."

"What are you doing?" Jim asks after Spock has disengaged the comms.

"You believe that the current situation with Ensign Chekov requires action, so I am acting," Spock says.

"That doesn't answer my question."

"Although I am confident that, given time, logic will prevail for both myself and Ensign Chekov - "

The ready room's door chimes, interrupting Spock. Jim glances at Spock, who gives him a slight nod.

"Enter," Jim calls.

Chekov does, already pale. His shoulders hunch over, making him look somehow even younger. Jim wonders, briefly, who allowed this kid on a spaceship. Then he realizes that, as Captain, it was technically him.

"Ensign," Spock says, turning halfway towards Chekov's position at the door. It puts him halfway between Jim and Chekov, and facing them equally, at a ninety-degree angle to them both, although his head is turned more towards Chekov. "The Captain and I were discussing edits to the transporter guidebook. Your technique for calculating coordinates quickly in anisotropic gravitational environments would be a welcome and valuable addition, and one which both the Captain and I are eager to see included."

Chekov stares at Spock, and so does Jim. Spock's expression is effortlessly blank, and his tone is as casual as if they were discussing the weather.

"It," Chekov says after a moment, and his voice fails. He looks down and clears his throat, then tries again. "Sir, anyone could have done those calculations, and better than I did - "

"I believe you are underestimating your own abilities, Ensign," Spock says swiftly. "Had the situation been left in the computer's purview, all of the Elders of Vulcan, including my father, and of course myself would all be dead. I have not forgotten that, Ensign, nor have any of the others whose lives you saved that day."

Chekov takes a deep breath, looking down at Spock's feet, and says, "I will write the section."

"Good," Spock says. "Dismissed."

Chekov doesn't move, though. He just takes another deep breath, and then says, "Commander, I - I am sorry for your loss."

Spock's stillness shifts from casual to controlled almost immediately. After a moment, he says, "I am...thankful for your accomplishments, Ensign."

Chekov blinks. His eyes, Jim notices, are glittering as he continues to stare with intent at Spock's feet. "Still," he says. "I - I grieve with thee." The phrase sounds clumsy on his tongue, but Jim recognizes it as the ceremonial expression of sympathy in Vulcan.

The silence reigns long enough for Jim to start to wonder if he needs to step in, but Spock finally says, "Thank you," so quietly that Jim almost doesn't hear it.

Chekov seems to have no such difficulties, since he immediately gives a vague nod, still without looking up, and flees. The doors slide shut behind him. Spock looks after him, his face turned away from Jim.

"Well," Jim says after a minute, "that could've gone a lot worse, don't you - "

"If that's all, Captain," Spock says, and doesn't wait for Jim's dismissal to leave.

Jim doctors the schedule so that he's off-duty for the spacewalk and shows up in the room just off the airlock that everyone informally calls the EVA command room even though it technically only has a room number. The walk is scheduled for gamma shift for minimal disruption to the lab-space schedule; the labs in question need to be cleared of all personnel not participating in the checks by watching to see if the lights go off. Scotty and Kumçu have already beaten him there, and Kumçu's already halfway suited up in the compression undersuit. Her hijab hangs neatly over one shoulder, pinned to the undersuit with enough slack to give her head freedom of movement.

"Glad you could join us, Captain," Scotty says, and taps at one of the consoles. Extra pressure suits hang against one of the walls and miscellaneous equipment covers the other, hanging off a grid of hooks that somehow gives the impression of butterflies pinned to paper. The wall furthest from the door is wall-to-wall consoles on the bottom and displays taking up the rest of the wall's real estate, the split screen currently showing the schematics of the junction box on one side and a wireframe diagram of the ship's hull on the other.

Kumçu inclines her head briefly. "Captain," she says.

"Lieutenant," Jim replies, his eyes on the display. "You nervous?"

"Only that Li Xiao will never let me hear the end of it," Kumçu says, and Jim shifts his gaze to her. She grins at him. "Xiao's jealous. She wanted the spacewalk for herself."

"Well, she should've logged more training hours off of an oxygen tether, then," Scotty says. "Now, look here - the carabiners you'll want to clip into should take you more or less where you want to go, but when you get to this hull marker, you'll need to hang a left and go three more plates. There won't be carabiners to hook into, so you'll need to rely on the maintenance handles for leverage. The tether will automatically belay, but we can override if there are any problems - "

Meaning the computer will automatically feed the tether out as Kumçu progresses. Jim frowns and says, "So we can pull her in if there's an emergency? Using the tether?"

Scotty points to a switch on the console. "Automatically releases all caribiners so we can do just that. Assuming they work correctly, of course. The quality-control was done in drydock, but then, so was it for the junction box."

"I'm just doing enough to make sure the spacewalk doesn't have to be scrubbed," Kumçu says quickly. "We don't have the equipment for the kind of QA they can do in drydock."

Jim raises his eyebrows. "Such as?"

"The electronics have all been checked, but the parts haven't been," Kumçu says. "For microfractures or manufacturing errors, that kind of thing, but problems with those are rare."

The condom wrappers come to Jim's mind, and he joins Scotty at the console, leaning onto it. "Yeah," he says. "Rare. Great."

"I've walked through the plan at least twenty times and I've logged over a hundred hours in formal zero-gee training scenarios," Kumçu continues. "I've memorized the schematics for the junction box and the protocol for testing it, and with the video and audio feeds from the suit, we'll be in constant communication."

Jim turns to look at her. "You really, really want to do this spacewalk, don't you, Lieutenant?"

Kumçu grins. "Technically, it's the Enterprise's first EVA."

"Really? Because I'm pretty sure - "

"Because you jumped onto the Vulcan drill from a shuttle, it doesn't count. Sir," Kumçu adds quickly.

"Huh," Jim says, glancing at the suits. "You know, nobody actually pays attention to records like that."

Scotty scoffs. "Maybe not in the Command track, they don't!"

"It's the first spacewalk on the Federation's flagship vessel, sir." A rosy blush of excitement fills Kumçu's cheeks. "There are engineers who would wait their entire careers for an opportunity like this!"

Jim wonders viciously how many of them are stuck instead in the Experimental Technologies Team, and grins.

The door hisses open, and a dark-haired, strong-nosed woman comes in, wearing Command gold.

"Shuttle 32 is ready and waiting at a moment's notice," she says, but hesitates when she sees Jim. "Captain! I didn't realize you were going to supervise the spacewalk."

"Not in any official capacity - just curious," Jim says. "I'm off the clock." He glances at her rank insignia - there just plain aren't that many Command personnel, and he finally places her: Josefina Suresh, goes by 'Pepa,' crosstrained in the Academy as a helmsman and tactical officer and former captain of the Starfleet Academy Mock Maneuvers Club. "At ease, Ensign Suresh."

She stares at him. "I - aye, sir. But how did you...?"

"It's a bit creepy, isn't it?" Scotty says. "He just knows people's names. He's done it to my engineers about ten times already. Downright unnerving." He claps his hands and rubs them together. "Well, now that everybody's here, we can go ahead and get started. Lieutenant Kumçu, would you like any assistance getting into your suit?"

"I'll give you a hand," Suresh says, and flees behind Kumçu out the door.

Jim turns to Scotty, frowning. "Does it really creep people out? That I know who they are?"

"It might just be the engineers," Scotty says, tapping away at the console. "Not all of them are the best with people, you know. Some of them can be a wee bit eccentric."

After a long moment, Jim says, "You don't say."

Scotty taps on the communicator button. "Science labs, check-in. Are we fully staffed and ready to go once we get to the junction box?"

Jim tunes out the labs checking in, watching instead the rotating wireframe of the hull on the display. Kumçu's enthusiasm aside, this doesn't feel momentous. It just feels like another day, and a chance to prove the Experimental Technologies Team wrong.

"Did you really have to run this one yourself, Scotty?" Jim wonders aloud once the check-ins are complete.

"Oh, sure, there are other personnel who are qualified to do it, but where's the fun in that?" Scotty flashes Jim a quick grin. "Besides, it's like Kumçu said. Just because the people in command don't pay attention to all the firsts doesn't mean the engineers don't."

Suresh returns as Scotty fiddles with the controls on the console. "Lieutenant Kumçu is fully prepped and the airlock is at vacuum."

"Well, all right, then!" Scotty says. "Opening the airlock...now. Lieutenant Kumçu, how does it feel to officially be the first EVA technician on the Enterprise?"

"Are these suits hand-me-downs, Commander?" Kumçu replies. "'Cause it smells like it."

"Take it up with Ensign Yrvas. They did the quality check on it in the airlock." Scotty slides a finger across the console, and the schematic of the junction box disappears, replaced with a sprawling, flat blackness, picked out only occasionally with pixels of light. "High definition my arse," Scotty mutters, and then says louder, "We're seeing what you're seeing, Lieutenant, and you're being recorded for posterity."

"Say 'hi' to posterity, Tayyibe," Suresh says.

"Hi, posterity." The camera aims down and to the side, swinging the hull of the Enterprise into frame. "Hooking the tether into the first carabiner." The hull comes closer, and sure enough, a metal loop with a catch juts out from the hull plating. A red-gloved hand guides a stretch of thick tether through the spring-loaded gate, then pinches off the captured section of tether and tugs it against the gate. Then it pokes at the gate, depressing it and releasing it. "First carabiner, check."

"Only twenty more to go," Scotty says, focusing on the console.

"Is that - hmm," Kumçu says.

"What?" Jim perks up. "What was that, Lieutenant?"

"Nothing," Kumçu says. "I just - hang on, I'm going to try to get a better look." The hull plating comes alarmingly close to the camera, then falls to the side to show the carabiner in clumsy profile. The angle isn't quite right to see the entire underside of the gate, but the reverberating bong through the audio feed suggests that it's as close as the helmet can come. "Is that a shadow, or a deformation, there? Just on the very inside."

Scotty frowns, furiously working the console, and the image goes still and then big. A sharpening algorithm runs over it a few times, but it's not enough to distinguish the inside of the gate. "Can't tell. What makes you think it?"

"The tether feels like it's catching on something, just a little bit," Kumçu says, the hull once again reorienting. "Like it's dragging. It could be friction against the hull, or even the automatic belay function - I've never spacewalked with this model autobelay."

Scotty's hands go still, and in Jim's peripheral vision, Suresh frowns at him. Scotty, on the other hand, looks at Jim.

"We don't have the equipment to check for those kinds of defects," he says. "That's enough justification to scrub the spacewalk until they can check all the carabiners manually at drydock."

Jim pushes his tongue against the inside edge of his teeth. He's not stupid enough to say something like, "But we put so much time into it!" Instead he repeats, "Enough justification."

Scotty shrugs. "It's also minor enough to keep going."

Jim lets out a breath, leaning against the edge of the console. "If it were you out there," he says to Scotty, "what would you do?"

"Are you kidding? I'd keep going, obviously."

"Okay, maybe that was the wrong question to ask. If it were me out there and if something went wrong you'd be personally explaining it to Starfleet Command, what would you do?"

"Captain," Scotty says seriously, "the very first day I met you, you'd jumped out a shuttle from orbit, fought two ice monsters, and goaded a Vulcan into attempted murder and defeated a time-traveling Romulan terrorist. I'm flattered, really I am, but let's not pretend for a moment that I'd be able to get you back inside even if I tried."

Jim clears his throat. "You make a fair point, Mister Scott."

"Do I get a say in this?" Kumçu says through the audio feed. "Because I want to keep going. I could very well be feeling the automatic belay or, really, it could even just be that this tether's sticky or something."

Scotty winces. "That wouldn't be better for safety, Lieutenant."

"I mean compared to the ones I've used before," Kumçu says. "I think I'm good to go."

"And besides," Suresh adds, "that's why I'm here, right? In case something happens and she needs to be retrieved by shuttle."

Scotty lets out a breath slowly, through his teeth. His foot taps against the floor. He looks at Jim, who suddenly realizes that this is his call. His call. He can scrub the mission if he wants and nobody would second-guess him - well, except maybe Alcalde. Of course, the same could just as easily happen if he chooses not to scrub the mission, and it could depend a lot on what their results are.

"We go ahead," Jim says, and immediately hears the rush of a relieved laugh crackle through the audio feed.

"Thank you, sir," Kumçu says. "Proceeding to the next carabiner."

The next nineteen go faster and easier than the first one did, and if Kumçu still feels the tugging, she doesn't mention it. After that, she pulls herself from handle to handle along the hull without clipping into anything.

"Is the Experimental Technologies Team responsible for the automatic belay, too?" Kumçu grumbles after a third reach is suddenly tugged short by a delay in the tether feeding out.

Scotty laughs. "No, sorry, Lieutenant. You'll have to chalk that one up to general Starfleet incompetence."

Jim opens his mouth to object, then closes it.

The video feed stills as Kumçu arrives at the right hull panel. "Removing the panel now..."

It comes off easily, and Jim frowns, leaning in towards Scotty to murmur, "If she doesn't have leverage from the tether or magnetized boots, how is she maneuvering?"

"She's got her boots hooked around one of the handles - they're designed so people can do this sort of thing in an emergency," Scotty replies.

"That and core strength," Suresh agrees, watching the video feed. "Everything's torque using the handle as a fulcrum."

"The security folks aren't the only ones who get to use the gym." Kumçu's voice comes through the audio feed a little breathless. "Hull panel removed. Okay, here we go - here's the junction box. Let me just hook in..."

"Wait, so there's another carabiner here?" Jim says.

"Of course - she can't do the entire testing sequence hanging off that handle," Scotty says. "Did I not mention that?"

"No! You could at least mention these things to me, Mister Scott."

"Okay, here we are," Kumçu says, and the video feed centers on a small, nondescript metal rectangle sitting above an orderly mass of cables. Kumçu gets closer, and the four separate faceplates of the junction box come into view, presumably for easier access to the electronics inside. Each plate has the same number of labeled cables plugged into it, neat rows of jacks except for -

"Is that faceplate on upside down?" Scotty says. He takes a step closer to the display, into the console, and his knee audibly thumps against the side. "Damn thing," Scotty mutters, stepping back, and after a few jabs at the console, the schematics of the junction box replace the wireframe of the Enterprise's hull. "Lieutenant, can you get in closer to the box?"

"Yeah, but I don't have to - you're right, Commander," Kumçu says. The junction box enlarges on the screen and a gloved hand reaches out to point to the faceplate in question, whose labels are on the right side of the jack compared to Kumçu, rather than at the bottom like the others. "The labels are off. It looks like someone put this faceplate on at ninety degrees."

"Would that mean that the connections are off by ninety degrees, too?" Suresh asks, and Jim looks at Scotty for an answer.

The schematics twist on the display, and Scotty points. "Not necessarily. The boxes are all modular, networked together - probably to make them easier to repair. If only the faceplate was installed at a ninety-degree angle, it wouldn't affect how the cables were routed. If that entire component was installed at ninety degrees, then..." Scotty stares at the display, frowning. "It's an adaptive network. A smart system. If it started getting nonsense signals, it may have tried to adapt to them, which would muddle up the rest of the junction box as well."

"Giving us exactly what we've been seeing," Jim says.

"But the same thing would happen if the cables were routed according to the faceplate," Scotty says. At Jim's questioning look, he continues, "It's not just a system for motion-sensing. It monitors position, biometric signatures, all sorts of things that suddenly look like impossible readings if, say, the signal is telling you the room is larger than your system says it is. But it's a smart system. Adaptive. Not as much as the ship's computer, obviously - the security implications of separating them were probably what were behind this project in the first place - but when it sees a problem that it thinks it can fix itself, it does it."

"And fixes it wrong," Kumçu says. "Gibberish in, gibberish out, no matter how much it tries to fix itself. Great."

"This might be easier to deal with than we thought," Scotty says. "Lieutenant, try unplugging the cable in the top-left corner."

Kumçu does, and then the camera jerks away to the left.

"Lieutenant?" Scotty says. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Kumçu says. "I thought I saw a bubble of some kind, but it must have been glare."

"Must've been? Or was?"

"I don't see or feel anything, and I've been getting glare the whole time - if it reflected off my helmet - "

"Commander Scott, this is Ensign Yates - our lab just lost power."

Scotty's mouth purses in a way Jim doesn't quite understand, but he shakes it off. "Understood, Ensign. Lieutenant, if you wouldn't mind plugging that cable in to the bottom-right corner...?"

Ensign Yates calls in again. "Power's back, sir!"

"Our lights are out now - this is Bellowes."

"Copy that. Hold tight, Bellowes. Yates, if you wouldn't mind leaving the lab for about fifteen seconds and then coming back in..."

Jim shifts his stance to lean closer to Scotty. "What's the concern about the water?"

"Water and cooling systems in EVA suits have been a problem since the early days of human spaceflight," Scotty says. "With spacewalks lasting potentially hours, humans need access to water, but in zero gravity - "

Jim hisses in a breath. Most Starfleet personnel have at least some zero-gee experience, and it inevitably involves someone squirting a liquid out of its pouch to watch the bubble float peacefully in the air, and often someone else flying over to swallow it. Sometimes they miss, and discover just how dangerous a liquid bubble can be when there's nothing to make it spill downward rather than, say, into someone's airway. And in a helmet, without the ability to physically swat it away -

"If there's water, we have to scrub the spacewalk," Scotty says.

"I don't think there's water, sir," Kumçu says stubbornly. "I think it was glare."

"Don't get cocky, Lieutenant! If you're in danger - "

"Commander, if I genuinely thought there was a leak in my suit, let me assure you, no force in the universe could keep me from getting inside as fast as physically possible. The entire Science Division could work their rest of their careers in the dark, for all I care."

"They warn you a lot about water in the suits, because it happened so frequently in the twenty-first century," Suresh pipes in, drumming her fingers along the console's edge. "You worry about bubbles, you keep an eye out for bubbles, and suddenly everything looks like a bubble. You're primed for it."

Jim looks at Scotty. "What do you think?"

Scotty takes a step back from the console, hooking his hands on the side and folding over towards it, a motion halfway between bowing and staving off vomiting. Then he straightens. "Hell, there's risk in any spacewalk. It doesn't mean everything's going to go pear-shaped, and even if we didn't see any of them, it wouldn't mean everything would go fine. I'd say we're at a slightly higher risk level than we were when we started the spacewalk, but, sir, anything could happen at any time. Ever. Anywhere."

Jim nods slowly. "Understood. Then we go ahead. Is that okay with you, Lieutenant?"

"Fine with me, sir!"

Yates calls in again. "Whatever you did, sir, it looks like it worked! The lights went out when I left and came back on when I came back in."

"Well, the good news is this is the easy fix," Scotty tells Jim. "The bad news is, the Experimental Technologies Team is at best bloody inattentive and at worst complete morons."

Jim leans forward onto the console, trying to hide his grin. "Understood, Commander. Lieutenant, go ahead and keep swapping those cables."

"Aye, aye, Captain," Kumçu says. The video feed tilts and slides as she readjusts her posture. "Whoever decided to install these things without shielding so we can't use magnetized boots is going to get an earful from me."

"Good," Scotty says.

The ensigns scattered across the different labs chime in at the appropriate times as Kumçu fixes their wiring, and all in all it takes much less time than Jim thinks it deserves, based on how much of a pain in his ass it's been.

Kumçu plugs in the last cable and then pats her hands theatrically against each other in clear view of the video feed, the motion clumsy through the bulk of the gloves. "And that's that!"

"Excellent work, Lieutenant," Jim says.

"Now put that hull plate back on," Scotty says. "Once you don't need the leverage anymore, we'll release the carabiners and reel you in."

"Sounds like fun - "

The video feed pans up as Kumçu pushes against the hull, then jerks and spins vertically, showing the open gap in the hull where the plate is meant to go, the junction box nestled inside, and then the far end of the Enterprise's hull on the top of the screen as the video spins past it -

"Shit!" Kumçu says fervently, and her arms appear reaching out. "Shit! The tether snapped!"

"What?" Jim leans off the console, watching the display.

"Tell me you managed to grab the handle," Scotty says, head down and concentration firmly on the console in front of him. The schematic of the junction box disappears, and the wireframe of the hull replaces it. After a moment, a small red dot labeled "Kumçu" appears, moving slowly but surely away from the hull. Even so, it's unnecessary: the display clearly shows the Enterprise receding, even as it rotates in and out of view.

"No," Kumçu says, her voice tight. "No, I didn't."

"I'll get to the shuttle bay immediately." Suresh turns to go.

"Wait," Jim says.

"No, Suresh, don't wait," Scotty says. "Go, and go now."

Suresh looks between Scotty and Jim, wavering, until Jim jerks his head towards the door. Suresh goes.

Jim looks back at Scotty and says, quietly, "Okay. How long does she have?"

Scotty meets Jim's eyes, and doesn't deny that there's a 'how long.' He jabs down at a button without looking at the console - the mute, Jim assumes. "The bow shock of the warp bubble is proportional to the ship's speed. We're just not going that fast, but Kumçu's going at a decent clip. She's at a place on the hull that's fairly close, too - if she'd been further back at a nacelle, or on the underside of the hull, we'd have a bit more time, but as it is, they're going to be feeling the effects."

"They?" Jim repeats.

Scotty lets out a breath. "It's not going to be easy flying. The gravitational effects are going to be hard to predict, both on the shuttle and on Kumçu. It's a tricky retrieval, at best, and every minute of delay makes it trickier."

After a moment, Jim brings himself to say, "And at worst?"

"At worst, we're sending Suresh to her death, too."

The silence lingers long enough for Kumçu to come back on the comm, saying, "Is anyone there? What's the plan?"

Both Jim and Scotty turn back to the console. "Lieutenant, Suresh is on her way to the shuttle bay," Scotty says.

"I don't have a good sense of my velocity or position with the spinning," Kumçu says, her voice coming out strained. "How does it look?"

"Suresh to Captain Kirk and Commander Scott, I'm on the turbolift heading to the shuttle bay - ETA is four minutes, maybe three, and I'll have the shuttle out in just a minute or two after that."

"Did you hear that, Lieutenant Kumçu?" Scotty says.

"You're stalling, Commander," Kumçu says. "Is it that bad?"

"I'm on my way, and you're going to be fine, Kumçu," Suresh says firmly. "Turbolift just got to my floor."

"Hang on, Suresh," Jim says.

"Jim - " Scotty begins.

"No, Mister Scott," Jim says sharply. "If this is as difficult an operation as you say, then I know just the pilot. Bridge, this is Kirk – get Sulu down to the Shuttle Bay – "

"Captain," Suresh says over the comm.

"Repeat that last?" says the Communications Officer on duty, and then seems to abruptly remember who he's talking to and adds, "Captain?"

"It'll take too long," Suresh continues. "It's the middle of the night – he'll be asleep, and even after all the time he'll need to get down to the Shuttle Bay, do you think he'll be firing on all cylinders after getting pulled from his bed? Do you think anyone would?"

"He's our best pilot," says Jim. "He flew us out of the black hole when Nero - "

"But I'm the pilot in front of you," says Suresh, her voice shaking. "I wouldn't offer to do it if I didn't think I could. Not with someone's life in the balance. Captain, I can be at her position within ten minutes and every minute counts. This isn't pride, I swear - I'm just closer to the shuttle bay and better prepared."

Jim considers again, jitters suffusing his muscles, his blood, and he just wants to fix it himself, has the sudden need to go pilot the damn shuttle himself -

"She's right," Scotty says quietly, and Jim tamps down on the feeling.

"Okay. Bridge, ignore what I just said. Lieutenant Suresh, you're good for the retrieval." Jim blows out a breath, and then hits the same mute button that Scotty had used earlier. "Can they hear us?"

"No, sir," Scotty says.

"Don't 'sir' me, Scotty." Jim steps away from the console and rubs his forehead, crinkling his nose, doing anything he can to rub the uselessness from his skin. "How do you do it? How do you just go down to Engineering and look at the big picture and stay out of the fray when there's just so damn much going on?"

"Hey!" Scotty stares at him, affronted. "I don't recall you ejecting the warp cores and getting us out of that black hole Nero left as a parting gift. I don't recall Sulu doing it, either, not that he didn't play his part but honestly let's give credit where credit is due - "

"Yes, point taken, you're a genius," Jim says. "But how do you do it?"

Scotty sighs. "It's not hard for me, Captain. I don't particularly want to be on the front lines." After a moment he adds, "And I'm sorry that your unprecedented promotion robbed you of the chance to die nobly as the extra Command officer on an away mission."

Jim looks back at the display, watching Kumçu's dot drift further away. "Not funny, Scotty."

"Commander? Captain?" It's hard to tell over the comms, particularly since they can only see Kumçu's field of view rather than her actual face, but her voice almost sounds like it's shaking.

Jim hits the mute button again to turn the mike back on. "Suresh is on her way, Lieutenant," Jim says, and tries to think of other comforting things to say. "She'll let us know as soon as she's down in the shuttle bay."

"That's nice, sir," Kumçu says with manufactured evenness. "Remember that bubble I thought I saw?"

Jim goes cold. He thought that was an expression, but no: instead of the fire of adrenalin he's used to in moments like these, that he felt facing Nero or jumping out of the shuttle onto the platform, that saw him through barfights and schoolyard-fights and sometimes just plain fight-fights - instead of any of that, all of his blood just loses any heat it had.

"I definitely saw it," Kumçu continues, once it becomes clear that neither Jim nor Scotty will speak.

The horror snaps out of existence almost as quickly as it came on, and Jim leans towards the console. "Okay. What's the situation?"

He ignores Scotty's wide eyes, tense eyebrows, and the way he's brought his hand to his mouth.

Kumçu answers, "I think the spinning brought it into my field of view. Right now it's against my visor, but it's moving."

"Moving? Why?"

"I'm spinning on more than one axis - I think it's the centripetal force."

Scotty finally rouses, his hand dropping away from his mouth. "Can you use that? Do you have any leverage at all to control the spin and keep it away from you?"

"No, sir - but believe me, I'm trying! I have my arms and legs out to increase my moment of inertia, but there's nothing to hold onto."

"Captain, Commander, this is Lieutenant Suresh - I'm at the shuttle initiating flight systems. My ETA to Lieutenant Kumçu's position is five minutes."

"Good," Jim says. "Get there as soon as you can."

"Aye, sir!"

"Lieutenant," Scotty says, "can you tell me anything about the bubble? Can you tell where it's coming from, or whether it's getting bigger?"

"I can deduce that it's coming from somewhere in my helmet," Kumçu says dryly. "Probably near where the visor and the helmet meet, since I don't feel any in my hair or on my hijab."

"Is it getting bigger?" Scotty repeats.

"I think it might be."

Scotty rubs his mouth with his hand again, looking at Jim. He shakes his head minutely: not good.

"Lieutenant, try to stay calm - Suresh is on her way to your position and should be there soon," Jim says, and jabs at the mute button yet again. "Don't give me that look," he says as soon as his finger draws away from the console. "Suresh is on her way and the water bubble might not even be that big of a deal and they could both still be fine."

"I know," Scotty says, and Jim bristles at the pity in his voice because he knows it's directed at him.

"There was no way to know that any of this was going to happen and they said every step of the way that they wanted to continue!"

"I know."

"God, there has to be something else we can do - Scotty, is there another pressure suit?"

Scotty's expression of grim acceptance evaporates. "You can't be serious."

"I absolutely am serious. We have to do something - "

"We are doing something, Captain! We sent Suresh out there to get her."

"Something that actually stands a chance in hell of working, then!" Jim keeps himself from kicking the console - he has no desire to go visit Bones, not now of all times - but it's close. "I don't believe in no-win scenarios!"

"They're not fairies, Captain - you don't have to believe in them for them to exist."

Jim glares at Scotty. "Fine. What if - can we beam her back on board?"

Scotty shakes his head. "Warp field distortions. Too dangerous."

"More dangerous than doing nothing while she drowns and spaghettifies at the same time?"

"That depends," Scotty says, narrowing his eyes at Jim. "Do you want to bring all of her back on board in the same proportions she's in now?"

"Captain, Commander, I'm approaching Lieutenant Kumçu's location."

Scotty unmutes the line. "Good. Do you have a fix on her position?"

"Aye, Commander. Both she and the shuttle are experiencing minor gravitational turbulence, but I'm matching our velocities now. And worst, she might bump the side while I scoop her up, maybe get a bruise."

"ETA?" Jim says.

Despite the evenness of her tone, Suresh's voice has a strained quality to it. "Matching our velocities is going to be finicky, but I'll bet a week's worth of night shifts that I'll have her inside in under a minute."

"Dangerous words, Pepa," Kumçu says, and then makes a small noise of distress.

"Lieutenant?" Jim clutches the edge of the console. "Talk to us, Lieutenant!"

"The spinning," she says, clipped. "I'm getting nauseous."

Scotty leans forward viciously. "Do not vomit, Lieutenant, I repeat, you cannot vomit and that is a direct order from your commanding officer, do you understand me? The last thing we need is anything else sloshing around in that helmet!"

"Then don't use words like 'sloshing' and 'vomit' so much!"

"Engaging the airlock to the cargo section," Suresh breaks in. "Opening shuttle cargo doors."

Jim looks at Scotty. "Do we have video of that?"

Scotty shakes his head. "We don't actually have video feeds everywhere, Captain."

Jim makes a mental note to put video feeds everywhere, literally everywhere, as soon as possible.

"Cargo doors open. Pressure is normalized. I have a visual on Lieutenant Kumçu."

"Kumçu? Do you have a visual on Suresh?"

"Yes," Kumçu says tightly. "The bubble's getting bigger."

"I'm still matching velocities," Suresh says. "The turbulence is worse here - "

"Cap - " A distinct gurgling sound overtakes Kumçu's words.

Jim shouts, "Now, get her now, Lieutenant, that's an order - "

Suresh snaps back, "Aye, sir, but it's going to be bumpy!"

After a few seconds of terrifying silence, Jim demands, "What's your status, what's going - "

"Damn it, will you give me a minute!" Suresh shouts, and then a clean thud reverberates through the comm, followed by a hiss of air and wet coughing.

"Aboard," Kumçu croaks through the coughs, and then, unmistakably, vomits.

"Returning to Enterprise," Suresh says. "Requesting medical team - "

"They'll be there," Jim promises. "Captain Kirk to sickbay, we need a medical team in the shuttle bay ASAP to meet an incoming shuttle. Possible drowning, nausea - "

"Broke something," Kumçu says hoarsely.

" - trauma, apparently," Jim finishes.

"Sending a team now, Captain," the reply comes, and Jim puzzles over his momentarily relief before he realizes: it was Dr. M'Benga, not Bones. Bones must be off-duty.

Scotty hits the mute button again. "All in all," he says, with grim cheer, "that could've gone much worse."

Jim stares at him. "How? How in any way, shape, or form could that have gone worse?"

"Nobody died," Scotty says simply. "And really, the only casualty was the hull plate that Kumçu didn't manage to get back on. I say we take the win."

"Yeah," Jim says. "The win." He steps back from the console. Then he realizes that he's not actually on-duty: he doesn't have to be relieved, he doesn't have to turn over the conn, and in fact there was no official reason for him to have been present at all. And that, for all the good he did, he may as well not have been.

So he turns around and walks to the door.

"Hey! Where do you think you're going?" Scotty demands. "Just because it could've been worse doesn't mean there isn't paperwork!"

"Tomorrow," Jim says, and keeps walking.

Jim knows he should really go to sleep.

Instead he goes to the gym.

It's abandoned, for once, and that rankles him. The one time he actually wants a Security officer to beat him up and the gym is empty of them. Jim's shift starts in a little under five hours.

He goes to the punching bag and goes to work.

It's not what he really wants. What he wants is someone who'll fight back, a pair of fists in front of him and maybe a knee digging into his stomach. The overwhelming rush of fight-or-flight and the thud of his knuckles against someone's jaw. The rushing blood and feel-alive burn of watching someone bend over gasping because of a perfectly-landed blow to the solar plexus. Anything to keep him from thinking about water creeping across Lieutenant Kumçu's face towards her nose and mouth, floating in nothingness towards the gravitational currents that will stretch her like a rack until she snaps in half. To keep from thinking of Lieutenant Suresh's shuttle, buffeted by the eddies of the bow shock, doomed to the same fate.

To keep from thinking of standing in that goddamn control room in front of that goddamn console watching that goddamn display, unable to do a single goddamn thing.

The skin over the muddle knuckle of his right hand cracks, leaving a bloody smudge on the surface of the bag. He hits it again, harder, and leaves another one on top of it.

What's the point of a captain anyway? Someone to stand there and watch everybody else die? To order everyone under his command to their deaths? To watch it happen on a screen? Or to do it just until he fucks up enough for Starfleet to justify replacing him with someone who might actually keep the crew alive through milk-run missions. He almost wishes he could see the disappointment on Alcalde's face when she finds out that Kumçu survived - what a missed opportunity.

Part of him knows from the classes and the required talks from former captains and the constant rants from Bones that space is just dangerous, no getting around it. The rest of him wants to order that he's the only one allowed to go on spacewalks now, the only one allowed to pilot shuttles, the only one allowed to be near the warp core or one of the top decks most susceptible to hull breaches or any of the other jobs that can get someone killed in space, which is all of them.

It would be so much easier if he could take in all the danger for everyone else. He's always played fast and loose with his own life, and as far as he's concerned, it's better him than anyone else on this ship.

How could he have ever been angry at his dad? Captain of a starship for twelve minutes and saved eight hundred lives, at the cost of only his own. That's hitting the jackpot of being captain, really.

His dad was fucking lucky.

His punch lands wrong and this time it's a bone in his hand that breaks.

He stops, staring at the punching bag, now mottled with blood from torn knuckles on both hands. At least he knows it's Dr. M'Benga in Sickbay.

When he gets there, Nurse Sansar is the one on duty, standing by Lieutenant Kumçu's bed with her chart in his eight-tentacled hands. Kumçu herself is asleep, peacefully enough that Jim feels a wave of relief, and Sansar whispers at Jim.

"Come to check on her, sir?"

Jim surreptitiously tucks his hands behind his back. He had, in fact, been trying hard not to think about her at all - and succeeded just enough not to put together that she still might be in Sickbay.

"How's she doing?" Jim asks instead, keeping his voice low too.

"We're just keeping her overnight for observation," Sansar says, the coral sprouting from his shoulders fluttering. "Spinning the way she did could have adverse effects on her inner ears, and we got most of the fluid in her lungs out, but there might be some lingering."

Fluid in her lungs. So she had been drowning after all.

Sansar says quickly, "She's going to make a full recovery," and Jim realizes that his expression must have betrayed his thoughts.

"Good," Jim says, and nods once, decisively. "That's - good. Is Doctor M'Benga around?"

Sansar opens his mouth to speak, but another voice cuts him off.

"He tapped me in ten minutes ago. C'mon, let me take a look at your hands."

Jim sighs, and turns to look at Bones standing in the doorway to his office, one arm beckoning him inside as though he's holding the door open.

"Hands...?" Sansar says.

Jim walks past Bones and sits stiffly in the chair in front of Bones's desk, keeping his eyes off of Bones as he does. His hands throb with his heartbeat, sharp-hot pain and trickling blood across his skin. He may have dripped all the way here, now that he thinks about it. And he definitely forgot to clean off the punching bag.

Security's going to get a hell of a surprise in the morning.

Bones is silent as he fetches his medical tricorder off his desk, and even more strangely stays that way as he examines Jim's hands. "Fracture of the fourth metacarpal," he says after a moment. "Transverse, near the top. Know what they call that?"

"What?" Jim says, without enthusiasm.

"A bar-room fracture." Bones replaces the medical tricorder with a bone-knitting laser. "Take a second to process that."

The bone begins to shift and grow under Jim's skin, and he grimaces against the sensation.

"You been sparring with Security again?" Bones asks.

"It was a punching bag."

"Yeah? What'd it do to you? Give you a shifty look? Make a disparaging remark?"

Jim grits his teeth. "It was a punching bag. I punched it."

"Yes, I can see that." After a while of both of them listening to the buzz of the laser, Bones says, "Can I give you some advice?"

"As my CMO, or as my friend?" Jim asks, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

"As your CMO, you should tape your knuckles. As your friend, you should still tape your damn knuckles."

Jim can recognize the beat where, at another time, he might have smiled. He doesn't now.

"She's going to be fine, Jim."

"I know that! I know, okay?"

"You know, she wants to go back out."

"What?"

"Apparently she never closed up the hull plating or something. Said she's a perfectionist and it's bothering her."

"Nobody is going back out there until all the equipment's been checked, and double-checked, and triple-checked, and whoever made that damn tether's been keelhauled! Along with those assholes in the Experimental Technologies Team and, hell, everyone who's ever said a single word about the toilet paper for good measure."

Bones raises a speculative eyebrow. "Things seem to have been pretty quiet on the toilet paper front, from what I've heard."

"Yeah, now that the engineers and botanists have to put together a comprehensive training module for how to use the new toilets. I wish I'd thought of it three weeks ago. Would've saved us all a lot of bitching."

Bones gives a low, impressed whistle. "You put them in charge of potty-training the crew?"

"I guess I technically did. Although I thought of it more as empowering them to solve their own problems."

A chuckle this time. "They're probably not gonna thank you for it."

"Yeah, well, they don't have to." Jim turns his head just far enough to glance back at the door to the main room of Sickbay. "She's really going to be okay?"

The whir of the bone-knitting laser cuts out, and Bones puts it behind him as he sits himself on the edge of the desk. "She will. And so will you. Your hand's all fixed up. Seriously, though, Jim, wrap 'em next time."

Jim makes himself meet Bones's eyes. "Give it to me straight, Bones. How many of them am I going to get killed?"

Without hesitation, Bones says, "More than zero. Unless you plan to quit before actually doing anything."

Jim flexes his now-unbroken hand, watching the tendons shift under his skin. "Might be for the best."

"Bullshit."

Jim glares up at him. "You're the one who said I was a shitty captain!"

"Three weeks, Jim. We're up to three weeks on active duty and none of us have any idea what we're doing. None of us have any experience."

"You have experience!"

"As a surgeon in a hospital, which apparently ain't the same thing."

"According to who?"

"M'Benga." The corners of Bones's mouth pulled into a frown, creating perverse dimples. "He told me I don't know how to socialize with my crewmates. I said I'm used to socializing with grown-ass adults. And you," Bones adds with a quirk of his eyebrow, "so apparently it's just one extreme or the other."

The distraction doesn't work. Jim says, "But I'm the Captain. I'm supposed to be able to keep my crew safe. I couldn't even keep Kumçu safe when she was doing a low-risk mission while tied to the ship!"

"Nothing's safe out here," Bones says, and Jim cuts him off before he can elaborate. Jim's already heard every single variation Bones could possibly have on this speech anyway.

"There's unsafe, and then there's just plain stupid. I thought I'd be able to go at least the full month without nearly getting someone killed!"

Bones crosses his arms. "Did I ever tell you about the first patient I had die on me?"

After a moment, Jim says, "No. I guess you never did."

"That's because I can't even remember it anymore," Bones says. "That's how many patients I've lost. That's how many I haven't been able to save. And some of 'em - some of 'em damn near took me with them." He looks down and clears his throat before continuing. "And if you think I'm gonna let you abandon me on this tiny little metal-wrapped pocket of life support with a bunch of toddlers, you really are just plain stupid."

Jim looks down at his hands. The veins push his skin up in blue mounds, like fortifications crawling their way under his flesh. "What if I'm not good enough?"

"Nobody's ever good enough for everything," Bones says, with a softness to his voice that's almost gentle. "And even if you were, it'd only make you even more insufferable than you already are. Nobody wants that." He stands up off the desk and takes the bone-knitting laser around to the other side, depositing it in a drawer. "You know, I think that's supposed to be the point of the Kobayashi Maru. When Spock isn't running it, anyway. For a Vulcan, he sure fixated on the emotional aspect of it, I gotta say."

Jim looks up, his expression tightening with defiance. "I still don't believe in no-win scenarios."

"Doesn't have to be a no-win scenario for you to fail." Bones leans onto his hands on the other side of his desk, bringing his head down to the same height as Jim's. "Thing is: failure ain't the end of the world, even for George Kirk's son."

Jim lets out his breath in almost a sigh, and he can almost believe it.

"Now," Bones says, standing back up straight, "you look like you need a square meal and a nap."

"I'm on-duty in four hours," Jim says, "so maybe the other way around."

"Well, then, get going. Doctor's orders."

Jim hauls himself out of the chair and hesitates. "Bones, I…" There's only one word that encapsulates everything he wants to say, so he says it: "Sorry."

Bones avoids Jim's eyes, rearranging a stack of PADDs on his desk. "Yeah, well, you ask for my opinion again when you don't want it and I'll finally order that full allergy screening panel I've been threatening you with."

Jim winces, but it's fair. "Deal." He turns around and heads towards the door, but calls over his shoulder casually, "You know, sometimes I don't know why you put up with me."

"It's cause you give a damn," Bones replies, his voice dead serious. At least until he adds, "When you're not being a monumental dumbass."

Jim grins to himself at that, feeling a surprising warmth blossom in his chest. He resolves to stay quiet as he leaves and let Bones have the last word.

That humility lasts until just before the door closes, when Jim sticks his head back in.

"Okay, but if you had to say proportionally, the giving-a-damn-to-monumental-dumbass ratio is in my favor, right?"

"Go to sleep."

Jim grins even harder and snaps off a salute. "Yes, Doctor."

The decent mood doesn't survive his nap, which only multiplies his grogginess when his alarm goes off three hours later. He seriously contemplates calling Spock up and getting the duty roster rearranged last-minute, but he knows he's had worse days. Hell, he's not even hungover: a few years ago, that would've been downright auspicious. And possibly a miracle.

Somehow he manages to be partly prepared for the day, mostly awake, fully groomed, and on-time for the shift change. He's on an odd rotation today, since he changed his schedule to see the spacewalk, which puts him on the bridge with a bridge crew that's not his favorite. There's nothing wrong with them, but he just doesn't know them well enough for hanging out on the bridge to be entertaining in and of itself.

That's probably a good thing, though, since he still has one of his biweekly reports to write up, and he has every anticipation that this one is going to be a doozy. The good news is that Alcalde probably won't even think twice about the toilet-paper-hijacking, what with the monumental shitshow of a spacewalk covered in the same report. The bad news is…well, everything else.

Jim writes a draft of the report that deflates the whole incident, then erases it in its entirety since past experience suggests that will just make Alcalde angry. He writes a draft of the report entirely in the passive voice, avoiding all subjects to go with the verbs - particularly the ones involving decision-making - and then erases that, too. No doubt the pattern-recognition software on the ship will bounce it to the Communications Officer on duty, who'll send it back to him with a pointed note about the flagrant disregard for Starfleet's Official Communications Style Guide, Standard Edition.

He spends a decent amount of time staring at the PADD trying to think of what to write. Eventually he types in "The" and then stops, watching the blinking cursor for a solid half-hour before adding "EVA." Then he erases that too.

Spock is off-duty and probably asleep. So is Bones. Scotty does not seem like a good person to ask for advice about how not to make Admirals angry. Uhura probably is, but a quick check of the duty roster shows that she's off-duty too. Sulu and Chekov are both Command, so Jim briefly considers spinning the assignment into a career development exercise, and then decides that that would be a level of sadism he's not quite comfortable with.

He finally decides he'll just write it poorly and maybe after editing it, it will magically turn into a good report, so he just writes it like a Captain's Log entry. It's a little stream-of-consciousness, but it gets the points across, and after only a little bit of editing, it actually looks like something Jim thinks Alcalde's looking for: it lays out the basics of what happened, notes every decision point where Jim made the "go" decision (which he preemptively regrets, but figures he can't leave out), and spends an entire paragraph analyzing the outcomes and what he would've done differently, which basically boils down to: he would've thought more about making it the Experimental Technology Team's problem, but overall, he's not sure he would've done anything differently.

It feels like a revelation even as he writes it, but having gone back over everything and knowing the outcome, the fact of the matter was that a lot of what happened was bad luck, compounded by this being the ship's first mission. The water system on the suit likely would have failed its first use no matter what; the Experimental Technologies Team wouldn't have done anything about the tether snapping (although Jim does put in a suggestion that they be assigned to manually check each of the carabiners on the hull, just out of spite); the low warp velocity provided enough clearance between the ship and the warp bow shock to allow for Kumçu's retrieval; and overall, the spacewalk achieved its objective, minus a hull plate.

He adds a paragraph at the beginning about the toilet paper thing, just for the sake of completion, and sends it to Alcalde, copying Spock as his First Officer and Uhura as his Chief of Communications for good measure.

If he'd had more than three hours of terrible sleep, he probably would've thought to send it to his subordinates first.

Within ten minutes, Spock arrives on the bridge with an expression as blank as ever. He's trailed slightly by Uhura, who looks much more rumpled; her ponytail has strands of hair looping loosely out of it, and there are visible bags under her eyes, which are wide with concern - that's not good.

Spock speaks first. "Captain, may we have a word? In your ready room?"

As far as Jim can tell, Spock doesn't get terse or tense in any way beyond his normal clipped speech, but there's a force behind his voice that isn't usually there. Jim lets him lead the way to the ready room.

"Everything okay, Spock?" he asks as they walk. "God, please tell me it isn't about toilet paper somehow."

Spock's lips thin, and Jim groans.

"How? How can it possibly be about toilet paper?"

"I have a suggestion," Uhura says, her voice hot with a mixture of anxiety and frustration. "How about you send all of your reports through literally anyone before sending them directly to Admirals from now on, how about that?"

Jim fights the urge to snap at her that he does what he wants. It doesn't seem constructive at the moment.

They reach the ready room and Jim steps ahead of Spock and Uhura to open the door.

Once they're all inside, Spock immediately says, "The report was sent directly to Admiral Alcade, correct? And it is therefore already in her possession?"

"Yeah, but if you want to talk about the report, the spacewalk is probably going to be a bigger issue - "

Spock cocks his head to one side. "More than a mutiny?"

Jim stares at him, trying to figure out if sleep deprivation is messing with his ability to hear. "Mutiny?"

"That," Uhura says, "is what it's called when crewmembers appropriate an essential resource against regulations and use it to demand that certain shipboard conditions are met, yes, Captain."

Jim looks from her back to Spock. Now Jim can see all his tells of stress: the layers of lines at the corners of his eyes from his eyebrows pushed down just a tiny bit at the outer corners, the tension in his lips from keeping himself under control, the stiffer-than-usual posture.

"That," Jim says, "would make this the dumbest mutiny in history. Are you serious?"

"The regulations are clear," Spock says, "and waste paper is considered to be an essential resource. According to the letter of regulation - "

"Well, the letter of regulation is wrong!" Jim says. "This was a dumb prank gone wrong - "

"It was Starfleet officers and crewmembers in their capacities as Starfleet officers and crewmembers deliberately misappropriating Starfleet supplies to manipulate their captain, and if you cannot acknowledge that, then you will be completely unprepared when you are questioned on the matter, as you most certainly will be."

That brings Jim up short as it begins to sink in. He, the youngest captain in Starfleet history, the hero of the Federation for however long that goodwill keeps lasting, the one person that almost the entire admiralty can agree needs to be thrown out on his ass as soon as a convenient excuse presents itself, had a situation that regulations would identify as a mutiny and the punishment he assigned was barely a slap on the wrist.

"Now do you understand why we're worried?" Uhura says.

Jim's mouth is on autopilot as he replies, "I didn't realize Vulcans were allowed to feel worried."

Spock says, "Under these circumstances, to do otherwise would be illogical."

Jim focuses on Spock. "If I so much as sneezed the word 'mutiny' anywhere near anyone involved in the toilet paper thing, their careers would be over."

"Not just yours," Uhura says, her voice tight.

"And yet it is not an inaccurate description," Spock says. "As Captain, your responsibilities do not include shielding your crew from the repercussions of their own poor decisions. Every being aboard this ship is expected to fulfill their duties and behave within the parameters provided by Starfleet."

"Are you suggesting that I, what, retroactively recommend them for courtmartial? All the botanists and half of the engineers?" Jim crosses around his ready room's desk and grips the back of his chair, leaning on it rather than sitting in it.

"If I learned nothing else in my years at the Academy as an instructor, I learned that all beings make their own choices and, in doing so, bear responsibility for the consequences of those choices. Although it primarily applied then to the academic success or failure of the students, it applies equally here. Each botanist and engineer that participated in the - "

"Don't say mutiny."

" - that participated in the situation," Spock finishes, with a testy narrowing of his eyes, "had equal opportunity to refer to regulations and to think through their own actions. By refusing them accountability for those actions, you do not do them any favors. If anything, you rob them of an opportunity to learn."

Jim laughs with a bitter edge. "Yeah? And what are they going to learn if they've washed out of Starfleet?"

"I guarantee the remaining crew would find the lesson quite valuable."

"And," Uhura breaks in, "there would at least be some of us remaining."

"So, what, I should just make an example of them? They're members of my crew, too!"

"They should know better!" Uhura says, her voice getting louder. "We're out here on this ship because we're adults who should be able to be trusted to do our jobs. And speaking of trust, how am I supposed to trust anyone who was involved in this now, just as a fellow member of the crew? What if they had taken food, or water, or something else that they thought we'd all just call a prank - "

"But they didn't," Jim says. "It was toilet paper, for the love of God!"

Uhura's lips thin together and she looks at Jim for a long moment. Then she says, "Being part of a crew means being responsible for each other - and more than that, being accountable to each other. They didn't just let us down, they're potentially taking us down with them. I don't care how much of a prank it was when we're all going to have to deal with the consequences. They might not value their place here on this ship enough to respect that, but - but I want to be here, on this ship, in this role, more than anything. If you're going to protect people who don't feel the same way enough to not steal toilet paper, I hope you think about how much they deserve it." She takes a breath, and then says, "Permission to be dismissed?"

Jim opens his mouth, but no good argument fills it. Instead he says, "Yes. Dismissed."

The open-and-close of the door sucks in a puff of fresh air from the corridor as Uhura leaves, but even it smells stale.

"Lieutenant Uhura is correct," Spock says, filling the silence in Uhura's wake. "The crew members stopped functioning as members of the crew when they - "

"Don't! I'm serious, Spock. They fucked up, okay? We've all fucked up. We don't know how not to yet. But I'm not about to send them all out on their asses when they were just the unlucky ones to reach a critical mass of - of fuckuppery. Well, the second ones, I guess, if you count the engineers' still."

Spock steps forward, clasping his hands behind his back. "If they felt their concerns were not being adequately addressed, their responsibility would have been to go higher up in your chain of command, not to deliberately act against you."

Jim points at Spock. "They thought their issues with the toilet paper weren't being heard - that's exactly right. So this is on me, not on them."

Spock looks steadily at Jim. "I am aware, Captain. That's why I brought this issue to your attention."

After a long moment, Jim says, with feeling, "Shit!" He lets go of the back of his chair, crossing to the wall and punching it. The unforgiving metal doesn't even scratch. One punch isn't enough to break the skin, but his knuckles redden as he watches, and that's something, at least.

Spock, behind him, says nothing. Maybe Spock, of all people, can understand this for what it is.

"They're going to fire me," Jim says eventually. "Alcalde's been out for blood since day one. If it's not this, or the next thing, it'll be the thing after that, and - and there'll keep being more. Then they'll bring in someone who deserves it, someone who's been waiting for a ship probably for years, who…" Who would likely demote or reassign almost every current crew member. Jim barely had a chance to start getting used to his life here and he won't just be removed from it - it's going to be disassembled, piece by piece, crewmembers shipped off to lesser assignments and put under the command of captains with no idea what they're capable of. It would be bad enough, to have almost had something that was his, but for it to be dissolved entirely because of him -

He says, "If there's no avoiding it, maybe I should just beat them to the punch and quit."

Spock looks slightly down for a moment. "Due to the highly subjective nature of the decision, I cannot determine the best course of action for you."

Jim turns back to Spock, shaking his head. "I'm not asking you to. I'm just - thinking out loud, at this point."

"There are only two pertinent variables," Spock continues, as if Jim hadn't said anything. "The cost, and the reward. What will you sacrifice, and to what gain?"

"Despite what everyone seems to think, I'm not in this for my ego - "

"You misunderstand me." Spock takes a slight step forward. "When I declined to join the Vulcan Science Council in favor of Starfleet, I relinquished a deeper connection with my Vulcan heritage in favor of an atmosphere where my human heritage would not be considered a disadvantage. In the moment that I made my decision, the Vulcan Science Council was simply not worth what it would have demanded of me: the acceptance of their rejection of my mother." Jim watches the careful play of composure over Spock's face until Spock continues. "Logically, there is only one question: What is the Enterprise worth to you?"

Jim sighs, leaning himself on the back of his chair again and staring at the desk as Spock's words nag at him. "No," he says slowly. "The Enterprise and her crew. What is the Enterprise and her crew worth…" He stands up straight. "Thanks, Spock. I think that was…surprisingly helpful."

Spock raises an eyebrow. "I am always helpful."

Alcalde calls five minutes after Jim's next bridge shift starts. It's a normal shift with his favorite bridge crew. Jim knows better than to think it's a coincidence, or even as-of-yet-undiscovered physical laws of dramatic timing - Alcalde has access to the Enterprise's duty rosters, after all, and she would've needed time to actually read the damn report. He's grateful for the delay anyway. It means that he's running on eight hours of peaceful, resolute sleep instead of the three hours he got after the spacewalk, and he had a chance to check on Kumç in Sickbay on his way to the bridge.

But he knows the call is coming, and it's surprisingly easy to keep the knowledge from writhing in his stomach until Uhura's console finally chirps.

"Sir, we're receiving a transmission from Admiral Alcalde. Transferring through to - "

"No, thank you, Lieutenant," Jim says, standing up and straightening his shirt. "I'll take it here."

There's a long pause from Uhura. "Are you sure about that, Captain?"

Jim turns to meet her eyes. "I really am. But thanks for double-checking. On-screen, please, Lieutenant."

Uhura's lips pinch together, but she turns back to her console and a few seconds later, Admiral Alcalde appears on the bridge screen.

"Captain," she says, and then raises an eyebrow so precisely that Jim can't help but be reminded of Spock. "You may prefer to have this conversation in your ready room."

Jim straightens his spine. "I appreciate the concern, Admiral, but anything you have to say can be said in front of my crew."

Alcalde's lips thin. "Then tell me about the situation with the engineers and the botanists."

From his seat, Jim can see Chekov look over at Sulu with a curious frown. If it hasn't made the ship's rumor mill before, it certainly will now.

"Several botanists and engineers - not the entire divisions, but not an insubstantial number, either - removed all the ship's toilet paper from storage and relocated it to the arboretum," Jim says. Every inch of habit is demanding that he shift into attention rather than his current polite variation on parade rest, but protocol doesn't technically demand it of a captain on his own ship unless the ranking officer is physically present. Jim may not be captain for much longer, but hell if he's going to start acting like he's already fired. "They were quickly discovered and the toilet paper was recovered. Those crew who were involved have been given the duties to design and implement a mandatory training program for the use of all the resources involved for the entire ship."

"And are you aware of Starfleet Regulation 17.1, Captain?"

Behind Jim, Uhura sucks in a breath.

"Yes, sir," Jim says, his voice steady. "Regulation 17.1 defines and suggests punishments for mutiny aboard a ship on active duty."

There's a moment of perfect silence, punctuated, finally, by a whisper from in front of Jim, either Sulu or Chekov. It's quiet enough that Alcalde can't hear it - all Jim hears is the "sh" and the pop of the "t," but he can fill in the blanks.

"Is there a reason that you didn't invoke that regulation when handling this situation, Captain?" Alcalde says.

Jim licks his lips. "To be perfectly honest, Admiral, it didn't occur to me."

This time the whispered curse is a drawn-out "ffffff."

"It didn't occur to you?" Alcalde repeats.

"No, sir, it didn't. The actions of the engineers and botanists struck me as a poor decision and a prank, and I saw no sign of mutinous intent. Commander Spock reminded me of the relevant regulations as soon as he became aware of the situation, and I have to admit, even being aware of them…" Jim hesitates, staring at the edge of the viewscreen as though it will give him the words he's looking for. "The situation falls within the letter of the regulation, sir, but in my judgment it does not fall within the spirit."

Alcalde looks at him with a still, inscrutable expression. "Judgment," she repeats.

"Yes, sir. As Captain, I consider it my duty to exercise my judgment in the day-to-day management of my crew." Jim takes a deep breath. Now or never. "That's the purpose of captains, sir, and I'm damn well doing my best to be the captain this crew deserves. But the crew also deserves a captain that has the good faith of the admiralty behind them. The whole crew, all of whom have shown nothing but the ability to do an admiral and frankly remarkable job in the face of difficulty. If that captain - the captain that this crew deserves - is never going to be me, then…then you have a moral responsibility to my crew to replace me with a captain who can serve both this crew and the admiralty fully."

There's a soft intake of breath somewhere behind him. Jim keeps his eyes on the viewscreen, even as the thumb of his right hand compulsively rubs over the knuckle of his index finger. The pressure isn't quite pain, but it's enough to ground him, and the motion, however slight, helps bleed off the anxiety as Alcalde looks back at him with disconcerting placidity.

"And you?" she asks. "Do you have a responsibility to resign?"

"No," Jim says immediately. "No, because whatever else a new captain might have to recommend them - and I know that basically any candidate would have more experience, more qualifications, more whatever - they weren't there fighting Nero. They haven't been on this ship with the crew since then. The problems that this crew has faced aren't the same as any other ship, and while a lot of the problems that we're facing now are ones that I'm not equipped to handle, nobody is. Nothing about our situation isn't unprecedented, and I honestly believe that bringing in another captain, one who's used to rank-and-file business as usual in Starfleet, wouldn't fix anything. This crew has earned a captain that will work with them, and I - " His voice falters. "If you're not going to fire me, then I'm going to do everything I can to earn being that captain."

"Many of the candidates for captaincy are fast learners, Captain," Alcalde says, her voice flat, but there are no obvious signs of anger or irritation on her face which is - which is frankly a lot more than Jim would've expected.

Jim nods. "I know, sir." Then he says, "May I ask you a question, Admiral?"

Alcalde gestures a hand. "By all means."

"What would you have done? With the botanists and engineers, I mean?"

She looks at him for a long moment, and then half of her mouth curls into what Jim eventually recognizes as a smile. "I would've brought up Regulation 17.1 immediately," she says, "and I would've watched their faces as I said 'mutiny'…and then I would've told them how easy they were getting off by only getting extra janitorial shifts. Which, I suppose, is what you gave your crew. In a way. I'm not sure I would've included the rest of the crew in the punishment, though, as ironic as the mandatory training sessions are."

"Oh, I must have been unclear," Jim says. "The sessions aren't mandatory for attendees. The organizers just aren't done with their punishment until the entire crew has gone through a training session. On their own time. Until then - or, more likely, until such time as the need for the training sessions has resolved itself - recruitment is on the organizers."

"Oh," Alcalde says, her eyes glimmering with approval. "Oh, that's good."

"I'm - I'm sorry, Admiral?"

"That," and Alcalde points to him, "is the best indication I've seen so far that you're actually thinking like a captain."

"…it is?"

"Correcting inappropriate unilateral action by assigning work that relies on collective action and, even better, the goodwill of the fellow crewmembers who would have been most disadvantaged by their actions?" Alcalde sits back in her chair, clasping her hands in front of her. "Congratulations, Captain. Regulation 17.1 or no, you're finally failing better. And coming from an engineer, that's not faint praise."

"I - thank you, sir?" Jim says. He wonders if the artificial gravity and inertial dampeners are working properly, because all of a sudden up is down, black is white, and Admiral Alcalde just complimented him.

"If anything like this comes up again in the rest of your mission," Alcalde continues, "your orders are to consult your fellow senior officers - don't think I didn't notice that you said Spock knew about the regs before you did, that was a conversation you should have had earlier - and if you have any more questions, contact one of us. We have experience. Leverage it. That's an order."

"Aye, sir?" Jim says.

Alcalde looks down off the screen, presumably at a PADD, and then says, "Unless something comes up in the meantime, I won't expect your next report until the end of the mission."

It takes a moment for Jim to process that, at the very least, if he's being fired it isn't immediately. "Aye, sir," he says, and it manages not to come out like a question.

"Keep failing better, Captain," Alcalde says, and the screen goes dark.

Jim stares at it for a long moment, and then says thoughtfully, "Mister Spock, did I just not get fired?"

"It certainly seems that way, Captain," Spock says after a moment.

"Okay. Great. Just wanted to double-check," Jim says, and falls back into the captain's chair.

"Docking reports ready for us, Captain," Sulu says as the interior of the Starbase One docks fill the viewscreen. "Clamps at the ready; docking complete in three, two…" A dulled clang of metal on metal and a slight shudder through the ship. "Docking is complete."

Jim lets out a breath. "Excellent, Mr. Sulu - "

Chekov coughs loudly. It sounds a lot like the word "dampeners."

Sulu quickly whacks a button on his console and adds, "External inertial dampeners engaged."

Jim looks up and to his right just in time to see Spock's eyebrow raise, and Bones, on Jim's other side, gives a cough of his own that sounds suspiciously like a laugh.

"Thank you, Mr. Sulu," Jim repeats. "Lieutenant Uhura, open a shipwide comm channel, if you will."

"Channel open, sir."

Jim hits the appropriate switches on his chair, and the familiar whine of an opening comm channel pipes through the bridge. "Attention, crew of the Enterprise. We have completed docking at Starbase One. Our first mission is officially complete - welcome back to Earth." Even through the doors to the bridge, he can hear the crew in the hallway outside break into applause, and he leaves an appropriate pause.

Bones takes advantage of his momentary silence by muttering, "Thank God."

Jim's smile inflects his voice as he continues, "We have a week's leave for maintenance of certain essential systems - " and won't the Experimental Technologies Team love that - "and re-outfitting certain other essential equipment."

Bones coughs, and Jim notices that the silence this time is almost questioning.

"Including condoms," Jim adds, and someone on the bridge audibly sighs with relief. Jim does his crew the courtesy of not trying to figure out who it is. "All crew are expected to report back to Starbase One in seven days for a next-day departure. Details of our next mission will be provided as they become available." Jim looks down at the switch to turn off the comms channel, and smiles. "Enjoy yourselves, everyone, and see you in a week. You are officially off-duty."

He switches it off, and the bridge crew immediately begins to move around him: Sulu stretches his arms behind his back, Chekov slumps down in his chair and grins at Sulu, and Bones gives Jim's shoulder a friendly whack.

"Congratulations, Captain - you seem to still have a job."

Jim pulls himself out of the chair with a grin. "Eh, give it time." He turns to his other side. "Mr. Spock! You sure I can't delegate the meeting with Admiral Pike to you?"

Spock turns back from his screen. "Protocol dictates that your attendance is mandatory, and while you may require my attendance with you, I cannot go in your place."

"Besides, Captain," Uhura says, passing by Spock but looking right at Jim, "he's got plans."

"Indeed," Spock says.

"Fun plans?" Jim says hopefully.

"Very fun plans that you aren't invited to," Uhura agrees. Her attention turns to Spock and she briefly lays a hand on his arm. "See you planetside?"

Spock nods, and Uhura keeps walking. Once she's in the turbolift, Spock says to Jim, "We will be attending a performance of a twenty-first-century opera. This staging reimagines the American Revolution as the transitional period between the Coalition of Planets and the Federation, and is the first production of it to incorporate instrumentation and choreography from all four founding Federation species."

"That sounds…gripping," Jim says.

"It's also got dueling and sex scandals," Sulu says from behind his console.

"Now that does sound gripping," Bones says. "What's it called again?"

"Don't bother," Sulu says. "It's impossible to get tickets - it's been sold out for months."

"I will, however, be in attendance at the meeting with the Experimental Technologies Team tomorrow," Spock says to Jim.

"Right - well, go enjoy your show, and I'll see you then," Jim says. Spock nods, and heads for the door, Sulu and Chekov right behind him. Jim looks around and realizes that only he and Bones are left on the bridge.

"You coming?" Bones asks. "There's a barstool down in San Francisco with my name on it, even if it doesn't know it yet."

Jim sits back down in the captain's chair. "You know what," he says, "you go ahead. I think I'm going to stick around a bit longer."