Chapter Text
“Congratulations, Una,” I said.
Number One had made the announcement that she’d been offered her own ship before even sitting down in my Ready Room. She was a pretty woman, if severe, with milk white skin, dark brown hair, darker brows, brown eyes that could smelt lead. She wore bright red lipstick and ate ghost peppers. Her mind was like lightning and her presence left thunder in its wake.
She smirked at me. “I didn’t say I was going to accept, Captain.”
“Of course you will,” I said, folding my hands on my desk. “You’ve been gunning for the Captain's chair since you set foot on this ship.”
She nodded with agreement and satisfaction. “No hard feelings, then?”
“Not in the slightest. Send Spock in on your way out, huh?”
She smiled wider, then turned on heel and left. And a moment later, Spock walked in, stood at attention, his hands folded behind his back, and waited.
“At ease, Commander.”
Of course, ‘at ease’ was relative for my Vulcan Science Officer. He acknowledged the order by putting his hands at his sides with conscious effort, but otherwise, he was still straight and stiff as a board.
“Would you like to sit down, Spock?” I asked.
He looked briefly to the right, then the left, and then sat in the chair across from me.
“They offered Number One the Hood,” I told him.
“Ah,” Spock replied. “Then congratulations are doubtlessly in order.”
“What do you think about being my First Officer?” I asked.
He tilted his head to one side. “I do not believe that I would be a suitable choice, Sir.”
“Nonsense, of course you would!” I protested.
“I do not believe that I possess sufficient social graces, nor the understanding of human social dynamics to effectively lead the crew in your absence,” he said.
I smiled very slightly. “I think you’d learn pretty fast if we threw you in the deep end.”
His brow furrowed in one of those rare and brief expressions of emotion. “Chris…” And he tapped the meld points near his temple with two fingers.
I knew what he meant. Number One described me as utterly, almost pathologically unsentimental. She’d add, ‘except for horses.’ I’d add ‘except for Spock.’
His life hadn’t been an easy one. When he was twelve, he’d lost contact with his brother, Sybok, over something Vulcans actually deemed heresy. Didn’t understand it, but there it was. A few years ago, he’d lost his sister, when she’d gone to the future, never to be mentioned again. And when his father, Sarek, had begged him to leave Starfleet and come home, because he was the only child Sarek and Amanda had left, Spock refused, because Vulcan society had so soundly and thoroughly rejected him that just the mention of his native star system made him vaguely uncomfortable. As a result of choosing to stay, his parents had stopped speaking to him.
After all that, I decided to make Spock my own personal problem. We shared a kind of telepathic bond generally reserved for family. I was more than his mentor. I was more than his Captain. More than a friend, even. And for that reason, he was arguing, without saying anything at all, that he was a weakness, and I couldn’t afford to have him as my second in command.
“I can’t make you accept the offer,” I said, “But let the record show that it’s been made.”
“Thank you, sir,” he said. “I will politely decline.”
I nodded. “The fleet’s loss, Mr. Spock.”
--
If I had to choose a First Officer by pictures alone, James Kirk’s service record would have gone straight into the waste bin. Every other applicant managed to have a picture of themselves with an expression that read as some combination of stern, professional, serious, and approachable. This bastard seemed to be mugging at the camera like he was waiting to ask whoever was taking the picture out for a drink. How a man managed to communicate ‘slyly lascivious’ in a headshot was fully beyond me, but I absolutely assure you, he did.
His accomplishments spoke for themselves. He’d graduated at the top of his class in the Academy, was cross-trained in command, navigation, and engineering. He’d beaten the Kobayashi Maru scenario -- not just beaten it, but broken it. He was the reason they didn’t use the test anymore. He’d distinguished himself in combat on numerous occasions, and had a list of commendations and rave reviews as long as my arm. Words like ‘hard working,’ and ‘clever,’ littered the comments. One Captain said he was, ‘arguably the smartest officer I’ve ever served with.’ His ‘personal philosophy’ section was short, but profound: I don’t believe in no-win scenarios.
In terms of aptitude and achievement, none of the other applicants even came close. If I went with logic rather than my gut , the decision was a no-brainer. I’d always thought of ‘intuition’ as our private biases and bigotries in a wig and lipstick, so I commed the Farragut, where he was serving, to talk to the Captain.
“Captain Spencer,” I greeted her when she picked up. She was pleasant looking, a woman in her early sixties with steely gray eyes and white hair.
“Captain Pike,” she returned with a smile. “To what do I owe the honor?”
“Well,” I began, “My First Officer, Una Chin-Riley, has been offered her own ship. My second officer declined the promotion. I’m looking at James Kirk for the position. I want more than a dry service record. What’s he like?”
She grinned and rolled her eyes, before shaking her head with dismay. “He’s very competent.”
“But?” I asked.
“Very,” she repeated. “Very competent.”
“But?” I asked again.
“He just has a big personality, I suppose,” she explained. I could tell she was trying to be diplomatic. She held up a hand at the screen. “Not in a bad way.”
“In what way, specifically?” I asked.
“Brash. Cocky. Flirtatious.” She took a minute to think. “He has something of a reputation, I know, but he’s actually extremely hard working, and very dutiful to the ship and her crew.”
I frowned at her. “What sort of reputation?”
“As something of a ladies’ man, I suppose,” Spencer elaborated. “But, you know, he’s also been in a relationship with our ship’s doctor since the Academy, and the two of them are actually incredibly sweet together.”
“You think Kirk’s going to be willing to spend a few years apart from her?” I asked. “I mean, until he becomes Captain.”
“Him,” she corrected me. “Our ship’s doctor is Leonard McCoy.”
“I’ve heard of him.” I said. “Steadiest hands in the fleet. Arguably Starfleet’s best surgeon.” Although, of course, I had my own private opinions about my own CMO, Doctor M'Benga.
She nodded with vehement agreement. “He would have been CMO on your ship already, I think, if it hadn’t been for Jim.”
“I was honestly surprised he didn’t apply when we had an opening," I replied. "I guess I understand.”
“Shall I put Kirk on?” Spencer asked.
“Sure,” I said.
She nodded and got up. A moment later, this blond haired, blue-eyed kid sits down in front of the screen, tugs on his jacket, and flashes me a stupid, shit-eating grin. “Cap’n Pike! It’s an honor, Sir!”
“Lt. Commander Kirk.” I said simply. “I was just looking over your service record. I have to say, I’m impressed.”
An even bigger grin, if you can imagine it. “Thank you, Sir.”
“I have some questions for you, if you don’t mind,” I began.
“Yep!” He leaned back in his chair --excuse me, his Captain’s chair-- and threw his hands behind his head.
Personal biases in a wig and lipstick, I reminded myself. “What do you think makes you stand out as a Commander?”
He sat forward, his air shifting very abruptly, his eyes suddenly full of focus, gleaming with powerful intellect. “Remembering everything.” He paused. “ Everything . Names, first and last. Birthdates. Personal anecdotes. Off-hand comments. Glimmers of aptitude and talent. Who they get along with and who they don’t. Phobias. Allergies. Blind-spots and biases. And I don’t just mean the senior staff. I mean everyone. The Farragut has a complement of 402 people. A hundred and forty six women, two hundred and four men, and fifty-two non-binary people. I’d know every last one of them on sight.”
I smiled a little. “How is that even possible?”
He shook his head at me, looking a little annoyed. “My boyfriend is a doctor. There are 600 muscles in the human body, and he knows the name, appearance, and location of each one. Their insertion points, where they intersect with other muscles, how they function in the context of kinetic chains. It’s possible,” he paused, to turn his hand sideways and chop the table with it, emphasizing his next few words. “Because. I put. In. The effort.” He gestured with that same hand as if throwing the point to one side. “I decided, at some point, that if people weren’t a priority for me, I had no business in command track.”
Damn.
He went on. “A crew has an anatomy of its own. If you don’t understand how everyone fits into it, there’s no way to build culture, or to keep your finger on the ship’s pulse, to know when things might go wrong. Bones-- Doctor McCoy-- got a dossier a while back about increased frequency for medical exams, because a Klingon had been surgically altered to look like a Starfleet officer. He took his face, his name, his service record? Nothing like that would ever get by me.” He added, with a note of fire in his voice. “Not ever.”
“I’m going to be really honest with you, Lieutenant Commander Kirk,” I started again. “On a personal level? I don’t like you. You come off as cavalier and intensely full of yourself. But I’m not much given to making decisions based on personal sentiments. On a professional level, I think you’re absolutely the right man for this posting.”
He chewed on that for a minute. “I can respect that, on both counts. I’m not everyone’s flavor.” He smiled brightly, with a glint of mischief in his eyes. “Most people’s, but not everyone’s. Let me ask you a question, though. What’s your previous track record with leading people you don’t like?”
“Can’t say I’ve ever met someone who rubbed me the wrong way quite like you do,” I admitted.
“What strategies do you use for emotional self-regulation?” he asked.
“Meditation,” I answered.
“Howabout this,” he said. “You take three days. You meditate on the decision. Then you talk to me again. And if you find being on the com with me to still be unmanageably annoying, let me know, and I’ll stay aboard the Farragut.”
“You’d turn down a posting as First Officer of the flagship just because I don’t like you?” I asked.
“ Especially aboard the flagship. I don’t think my personal career ambitions are important enough to risk the entire fleet. If a First Officer and Captain have tension, it’s a flight risk. I need to feel completely comfortable telling you when you’re full of shit. And you’ve got to trust me enough to hear that. Because without that banter, then what? Your blindspots become a serious liability.”
“What do you think my blindspots are?” I asked.
He leaned sideways in the chair, suddenly seeming more relaxed and casual. He picked something like a stylus off of his Captain’s desk, twirling it in his fingers. “I dunno Pike. I just met you. But I assure you, you have ‘em. We all do.” He put the pen down. “Gonna tell you what, though. People tend to like people with the same blindspots as them. People who think like them. If you instinctively dislike me, then I probably represent a perspective that’s pretty alien to you. Get over that gut reaction, and I think we could be powerful together.” He grinned. “Three days.”
--
Una Chin-Riley left without much fanfare. Only some private goodbyes.
I took the three days, and then, over dinner in my quarters, I handed Spock a PADD with Kirk’s service record. He’d freshly clipped his black hair into something just shy of a buzz cut. Short enough that he could wash it and not have to comb it. Very practical, of course.
“Tell me what you think,” I said.
Spock dutifully read the contents before putting the PADD down. “He seems adequate.”
Secretly, I hoped Spock would just change his mind. But of course, Mr. Immovable Object rarely changed his mind about anything, once he’d made it up.
“Elaborate,” I requested.
“I believe your task was to find the best possible candidate,” Spock said blandly. Then he tilted his head to one side and nodded, arching his eyebrows slightly. “He would appear to be the best candidate.”
“You didn’t even look at the others,” I said with a huff.
“Whatever recommends the other candidates, I presume that they did not win the unwinnable Kobayashi Maru scenario,” Spock said.
“Yeah, and he’s hyper competent with social details,” I added.
“Then what is your hesitation?” Spock asked.
“I’m concerned that it’s going to be challenging for me to treat him fairly,” I admitted. “You know I’m not really prone to having opinions about people’s personalities.”
“Indeed,” Spock agreed. “It is one of your finer qualities.”
“Kirk’s an exception. Not an opinion so much as a knee-jerk reaction, but that’s even more unusual for me. It’s in his tone of voice. His body language. The way he smiles. What he says is fine. He’s obviously very smart.”
“Indeed. His test scores indicate that he is, in point of fact, a genius,” Spock commented.
I smirked. “You gonna add ‘for a human’?”
“No,” Spock said. “While many Vulcans proudly believe that Vulcans are more intelligent than humans, and the trends do bear that out, the discrepancy is so small as to be functionally meaningless, and there is more variation within sets than between sets.” He frowned very slightly. “Moreover, that would be quite a racist thing to say.”
I looked down at my plate. “Sorry, Spock.”
He offered me his fingertips, and I touched them with mine just briefly. A Vulcan familial greeting. The rough meaning is, ‘our relationship is undamaged.’
Spock studied my face, his expression open and serenely welcoming. “I trust in your ability to make the correct decisions, and to defeat your primitive impulses.”
“Thanks, Spock.”
--
A few weeks later, when we pulled up alongside the USS Farragut, Spock got to see what I was talking about, first hand. He and I stood and watched as the silvery shimmer resolved into the form of a sunny blond man, trim and densely muscled, maybe six feet tall or so, who bounced off the transporter pad with such energy that I half expected finger-guns, and for him to exclaim something like ‘ayyyyyy!'
“Commander Kirk reporting for duty, Sir!” he exclaimed with a grin, then ran his fingers through his short blond hair. Then he stretched, just as I was about to offer him my hand. He stopped what he was doing, abruptly, to shake.
“Welcome aboard, James Kirk. I'm looking forward to working with you.” I wasn’t. But I’d get over it. If I didn’t think I would, he wouldn’t be here.
“Likewise. Thank you, Sir.”
I gestured to Spock. “This is my third in command, Chief Science Officer, Mr. Spock.”
Kirk’s gaze swept over the dark-haired Vulcan, making careful inventory of his face and features. If I didn’t explicitly know that Kirk was committing his appearance and bearing to memory, I’d have mistaken that look for sexual interest in a heartbeat. He smartly avoided offering a handshake, and lifted up his hand to greet Spock with the ta’al instead. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Spock.”
Alright, I decided. I was going to start counting his smart moves. I’d count how many smart moves it took before he stopped irking me. It would refocus my perception to something constructive and meaningful.
“No bags?” I asked.
Kirk shook his head. “No reason. I can replicate anything I need here.”
Two.
“It is often customary for humans to bring items of sentimental value,” Spock observed.
Kirk smiled slyly at Spock. “I decided to travel light.”
He’d left all that with McCoy, and he had his reasons. Spock was his subordinate and didn’t need to know them. Three.
Then, my new First Officer turned to me. “I take it you weren’t expecting me to hit the ground running.”
“I wasn’t,” I admitted.
He nodded. “I’m going to show myself around the ship. Get to know her. Introduce myself to the crew, if you don’t mind. Just let me know when you want me up on the bridge.”
“Tomorrow at 0800,” I said.
He gave me a firm nod. “Perfect. I’ll be there with bells on.”
--
He’d been there a week, and I was starting to decide that Kirk wasn’t all bad. He’d hit 47 in my mental count. He was self-directed, needed zero hand holding, wielded influence rather than authority, and told me that he’d already memorized the crew’s names and faces. The skeletal structure, he told me. To that, he was already adding personal details as he learned them. On several occasions, he’d pointed out officers I didn’t recognize, told me their names and what they were especially good at, or at least what their service records had to say on that matter. It was a point of personal pride for him.
And then, we had to run a mission to evacuate a small science colony. It’d been a matter of shifting borders. A territory dispute we’d lost with the Klingons, and if we weren’t quick about it, they’d do the honorable thing, and grant our scientists down on the planet a glorious death in hand to hand combat.
“Status report,” I requested.
For some reason, it was Spock who answered. “We have evacuated roughly eighty percent of the personel, and most of the equipment, Sir. We should be finished in roughly ten minutes.”
“Excellent, Mr. Spock,” I said.
Now of course there was a seat for the First Officer, but James Kirk wasn’t sitting in it. He was sort of hovering behind me, on the other side of the banister, pacing. It was his way. The man couldn’t seem to be still for more than a few minutes. Irritating, but harmless, I reminded myself.
Five minutes into the last ten, a Klingon ship dropped out of warp.
“Sir, they’re hailing us,” the communications officer announced.
“Put them off,” I said. “I just need another five minutes.”
“Unwise, Sir,” Spock advised. “If we appear to be ignoring them, they are likely to take hostile action.”
“I got this,” said Kirk. “Put ‘em on screen.”
I turned to look at him and raised an eyebrow, then turned back around to look at the Bird of Prey. Honestly, it seemed like I didn’t have very much to lose. “Make it so.”
A male Klingon appeared on screen, longhaired and young, which wasn’t usually a good sign. He probably had a lot to prove.
“Federation Starship,” he said, “This is Captain Koloth. You are in Klingon space--”
He had more to say. Probably, he was going to boast about how badly he was going to beat us. But he stopped talking --out of sheer distraction-- when Kirk planted his hands on the banister and jumped right over it, running at the screen. The hell?
“Oh my god, a Klingon!” Kirk exclaimed. “I never met a Klingon before! Is it true you guys LOVE strong alcohol?”
Koloth laughed. “Your weak swill is nothing in comparison to Klingon bloodwine, human!”
“No way!” Kirk said with energy. “I bet rum is way stronger! Nevermind that.” He pointed to himself. “I have personally consumed pure ethanol. Humans do it all the time.” He gestured like he was knocking a line of empty glasses off of a bar. “You just drank with the wrong humans. Probably some dusty old diplomat with an over-starched uniform.”
If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the Klingon looked delighted. “Yes, it was a diplomat. What is your name, warrior?”
“Kirk!” he practically shouted. “Too bad you only drink with diplomats! You probably didn’t even get to hear the human drinking song about the warriors who drank around the corpse of their fallen comrade!”
“Klingons also have such a song.” Koloth said with an approving nod.
“I’d like to know which of us has the stronger stomach, Koloth!” Kirk said with a rising note of challenge in his voice. “Bet I could drink you under the table!”
Koloth laughed again. “You could not!”
“I once beat a Naussican in a drinking contest,” he boasted. “I’d like to add a Klingon to the list!”
“It is more likely that we will cross blades in combat, and that I will kill you,” Koloth threatened.
Kirk let out a particularly loud belly laugh. “I like your spirit, Koloth! But I don’t think you’d win that fight. I once single-handedly defeated a Ravian Gormon -- terrible creature with claws like broadswords, the size of a building, swallows its prey whole. ”
“How were you victorious?” Koloth demanded.
“I rushed past it’s claws toward its mouth and let it swallow me.” Kirk said dramatically, then followed it up with an equally dramatic pause. “ Then I shot my way out from the inside.” Kirk laughed. “A man can do anything if he doesn’t give up his will to fight!”
“Yes,” Koloth agreed. “It is the spirit of a warrior that decides between victory and defeat, more than any weapon. I once fought my way single handedly past ten armed Romulans with nothing but my bat’leth. I was surrounded by disruptor fire on every side that would have instantly vaporized my body, but they expected me to flee, and instead I rushed toward them, screaming. They were so surprised that they nearly dropped their weapons! Then, I beheaded their commander, and fought my way to their transporter room, leaving a trail of blood and terror in my wake! To live without fear is to live gloriously, and die gloriously!”
“I agree!” Kirk declared.
Spock indicated to me, psychically, that the evacuation was complete. Sort of the feeling of a nod. I stood up.
“That’s enough Kirk!” I snapped. “This is a starship, not a Risian bar. What do you want, Koloth?”
“You will remove your ship from Klingon space, or we will destroy you,” Koloth snarled.
“I don’t have time to waste on you right now,” I said calmly. “Martinez? Take us out of here.”
And the officer behind me closed the com.
“Hit it,” I said. And we went to warp.
I turned to Kirk. “Ok, what the hell was that, and why did it work?”
Kirk smiled. He looked calm. The exchange had obviously been a much-needed release of his physical energy. “Simple, Sir. Klingons have a weakness for two things: boasting contests and ridiculously exaggerated stories of their past battles.”
“How much of that was true?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Most of it. I’d obviously seen a Klingon before.”
“You told him humans have a song about drinking around a corpse,” I said with disbelief.
“We do,” said Kirk. “I believe it’s entitled ‘The Night That Paddy Murphy Died’.” He looked at me wonderingly. “Seriously, you’ve never heard it?”
“You drank pure ethanol?” I asked.
“What, you never had Everclear?” he asked.
“You let a Gormon swallow you?” I pressed.
“‘Let’ is a strong word, Sir,” he said with a chuckle. “But I suppose that’s where the exaggeration part comes in. I had mild chemical burns on seventy percent of my body, and man Doctor McCoy was pissed.”
“You shot your way out?”
He nodded and grinned. “I was kind of out of options.”
He’d leveraged his knowledge of Klingon culture, pulled off a monumental feat of code-switching, kept that Klingon talking, and used his powers of being way too friendly to buy us valuable time, saving the lives of dozens of people.
I stopped counting. That was the moment that I knew that James Kirk was my Number One.