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“What do you make of it, Commander?”
Enterprise has circled the planet for six standard hours. The first security teams report a general attitude of compliance from local government. The captain seems somewhat pleased at this. It has been a long tour about the Taurus nebula, at the far reaches of UTE space.
Information travels slowly here, among the uncivilized and unincorporated worlds of the galaxy. As a result, Enterprise has been required to make exhaustive practical demonstrations of the Empire’s strength. Old world smoke still coils from her phaser-turrets. Even Captain Kirk has perhaps strained himself, over-baring his teeth.
“I believe you will handle the situation quite expediently, Captain.”
Kirk rises from the chair with a practiced ease of movement. A slight tension lingers in the captain’s shoulders as he relinquishes the seat of command. “Pretty safe bet,” he says quietly. “You have the conn.”
Spock salutes. As the captain and his guards move away in the turbolift, the remaining bridge officers yield the slightest exhalation of breath.
Time passes. Commander Spock sits at attention and watches the yellow planet spin. The captain’s return is announced by a flash of light at the command console. Shortly thereafter, all eight primary transporter couplings go down.
Protocol is blessedly rigid in cases of mechanical failure. Spock and his entourage easily cut through an Engineering deck already teeming with diverted repair crews. In an auxiliary corridor, voices snake in from a maintenance shaft, just above a whisper. Spock orders his men to halt.
“…got himself all sliced up on the survey planetside. Then you know what happened? He beamed up and shot the transporters. Took out the whole system.” This is Chekov.
“He’s getting the booth?” Ensign Zhang – recently removed from bridge crew.
“Dunno. It’ll be sickbay first.”
“God help him. Maybe the captain will call that torture enough.”
“Yes,” Chekov laughs. “Maybe sweet merciful keptin will use him for target practice and end it quickly.”
Spock detours slightly and settles just outside the entrance of the Jefferies tube. Neither crewmember alerts at his presence.
“Ensigns,” he warns.
The Russian frenzies to attention, slamming his head twice on the inside of the duct in his attempt. His companion follows rather more cautiously, with a trepidation both entirely justified and deeply unbecoming.
Spock allows them to linger in discomfort as he considers his options. The best punishments for insubordination are swift and public, but Commander Spock does prefer to take his time.
Both junior officers are swiftly and inadvertently rescued as the captain hurtles down the center of the corridor. Spock averts their collision by a slim margin.
“Commander,” he begins, disregarding the Ensigns, “a moment of your time. Privately.”
He leads Spock into a nearby briefing room with undue urgency. Spock directs his retinue to wait outside. The captain, he notes, is without his men.
Kirk’s palms are flat against the conference table. A slight twitch moves sporadically through his splayed fingers. Neither of them bothers to sit down.
“Are you going down to oversee the transporter repairs?”
“Yes. I anticipate that they will take some time.”
“How long?”
“I have yet to examine the extent of the damage, but a full system reboot will require four hours at minimum.” The captain’s questioning is not unwarranted, but that he has offered no report of what transpired on his away mission is strange. “Do you intend to return to the planet’s surface personally?”
Kirk’s eyes slip out of reach. “I’m not about to load up the shuttles. But an oversight like this is unacceptable.”
“Then you must have seen significant unrest among the locals.”
At this, a shadow passes over the captain’s form. Spock watches him, transfixed, as he is shunted into another time, the shores of another world. The hiss of boots in hot sand. The death knell. Huddled aliens pleading in alien tongues. Bodies half-buried in molten glass. Amorphous organic matter — the inevitable consequence of disorder.
The captain has made his career in this chaos, in the gruesome downswing of the disciplinary hammer. The man before him now appears unready to take such actions.
“No… but there will be. I don’t doubt that there will be.”
“And technician Fischer?”
Here, something seizes in the muscles of Kirk’s face. The memory dissipates.
“I’ll leave it to you, Commander. If—” The unformed command resounds falteringly in open air.
“If, Captain?”
“If he seems liable to commit further errors…” The captain shrugs— a re-assertion of the self. It is not sufficient. “You know what to do.”
—
Enterprise’s medical bay is scarcely occupied. It is therefore unavoidable that Spock takes note of the dark-eyed woman in the bed by the door — a badly injured Marlena Moreau.
Moreau is not like the other women the captain has taken. She is reclusive, refusing to parade her status. This is a likely source of her longevity. She is a minor target, and clearly intends to remain so.
Spock dutifully ignores the woman and looks over technician Fischer, who is prone on a surgical table, face pale and shining with sweat. Doctor McCoy is in attendance, lazily re-ordering various instruments. By his standards, he is quite sober.
“Your assessment.”
“She’ll be alright. Might take a bit for me to get that pretty face of hers back in order, but it’s nothing too serious.”
“I was inquiring as to the status of geological technician Fischer.”
“Oh, that one. I gave him to a couple of my new surgical residents. Pretty low pain tolerance, by the sound of him.”
Moreau is still sulking in the bio-bed, feigning boredom and poorly hiding her simmering anger. Around her, machines whir softly, hovering about her face and torso. They smooth over her skin, deep purple splotches fading into green.
The captain has never hit Spock. Spock believes this to be perfectly rational. There is no cause to abuse someone who does not react to pain. But now, watching the blood leach out of Lieutenant Moreau’s bruises, he cannot help but wonder after a more psychological component to this behavior.
“With regards to Lieutenant Moreau – what was the reported cause of her injuries?”
“Says here,” McCoy waves a data pad without looking at it, “’racquetball accident.’ So that’s all.” His face darkens. “And just between the two of us? Don’t play professional with me, Commander. You and I both know you’re sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong.”
Spock inclines his head, speaking at a low murmur. “I require information – at what time precisely did the incident occur?”
The doctor regards him a moment, passing silent judgement. Apparently, the scales shift in Spock’s favor. McCoy sighs and waves him into a small back room— his ‘administrative office,’ littered with empty bottles and data tapes. “Alright – what’re you offering?”
Spock bites back his own distaste. As first officer, he generally finds it unbefitting of his station to barter. Nonetheless, he has a number of available bargaining chips.
“A tin of Denebian snuff powder.”
McCoy’s blue eye lights up. “Alright, she came in at 1300 hours. Bruises just starting to show – I figure she must’ve taken the hits about 20 minutes before that.” The words skitter from his mouth like electric current. “You want a cellular analysis? I can get ya’ down to the second, a real blow by blow.”
“That will not be necessary.”
“Well, hey Commander since you’re bein’ such a good sport I’ll tell you what else – it wasn’t just her face. He punched a rib right through her left lung.” He raises a fist, as though to jab Spock on the arm, before apparently thinking better of it. “Must have been one hell of a fiasco down there, huh?”
“Indeed. I will return shortly with your payment.”
The doctor smiles uncannily and Spock exits without delay. Fischer gets the booth.
—
Aboard the ISS Enterprise, it is vital to keep perfect time.
Commander Spock knows, therefore, that returning to his living quarters to retrieve the doctor’s payment will cost him only four and a half minutes of oversight on the transporter repairs. That every hour the planetside crewmen spend without adequate leadership increases the chances of a violent local incident by approximately 7.6%. That twenty minutes before Marlena Moreau reported to sickbay for treatment of her injuries, Captain James T. Kirk was not with the young Lieutenant. He was in briefing room three, holding conference with his first officer.
Spock conceals a vial of glimmering white powder in his breast pocket. He is for a moment totally alone in the wide corridor.
There is no cause to approach the captain in his quarters. The duty roster places Spock in engineering to survey general maintenance and progress on the transporter repairs. But he has more responsibilities as first officer than those listed on official documents.
The door is sealed when he approaches. Spock directs his eyes to the most logical location for a hidden camera. He waits a beat and the door slides open with a gentle hiss.
“Commander,” he says. The captain is not waiting for him inside the door. Spock enters slowly, stepping through a haze of low colored lights and hanging curtains; Lieutenant Moreau’s influence is certainly at its strongest here. “I assume you haven’t come by to tell me you’ve fixed the transporters.”
Spock enters to find Kirk tucked away in a low-lit corner. “Not as such, Captain.” The captain’s hands are occupied. Spock moves closer.
“Then what?” Kirk asks harshly, “A social call?” He is hunched before a wide dressing mirror. Spock cannot see his face.
“Your consort is… unwell.”
Closer. The captain’s hands are bloodied. He loops strips of gauze over red, raw knuckles.
The captain laughs. “I accept your condolences.” His eyes flash up to the mirror. His pupils are dilated and his voice is dark.
“And would you happen to know anything about Lieutenant Moreau’s injuries?”
“What did she say to you?” The question is a courtesy. A warning.
“She declined to speak on the matter.”
“Then I believe that’s all you need to know, Mr. Spock.”
“Indeed.” The captain is looking at him now, truly. Spock’s face is stone. “And Captain,” he says coolly, "I’m certain the doctor would lend you a dermal regenerator, should you request it.”
“That’s quite enough from you,” Kirk spits. The captain whirls to face him at last. His gaze is bright and caustic. His muscles appear taut, as though ready to spring from the darkened corner of the room and strike.
Spock waits at the precipice. Spock’s features are worn flat by sand and desert wind.
Kirk looks away, apparently now quite focused on dressing his wounds. Spock leaves without being dismissed.
—
The transporter repairs proceed slowly. The damage is extensive and its nature increasingly difficult to ascertain. Spock lets the engineers needle at their circuits and moves on to the wet labs, where his underlings have obtained biological specimens for study— or rather, one specimen, which subsequently became two.
“I’ve never seen anything like it.” The attendant science officer, a recent recruit, leads him down a small corridor. “Transporter duplication happens from time to time, of course, but I’ve only ever heard of it producing identical copies.”
The labs provide a brief respite from Enterprise’s usual tumult. It is the one place aboard the ship of which Spock has indisputable command.
“This one’s been mostly catatonic since we separated them. Sometimes it sniffs around a little, but…” The lab tech gestures vaguely at the animal, which stands at around 0.7 meters in height, on six long, wiry legs. Outwardly, its physiology brings to mind a juvenile le-matya, or perhaps an Earth coyote.
Spock reaches for a medical tricorder, although he does not require its assistance to detect the creature’s ragged breathing and slow, wavering movements about the enclosure. On Vulcan, such behavior is common among animals suffering the long decline of dehydration. This one would not be out of place there, in the shadow of a mesa, seeking refuge from the sun.
He examines its vitals, cross-referencing with control data transmitted from the planet’s surface. Its blood is flowing at a deathly adagio. Neural patterns are more difficult to parse, but the readings suggest a higher-than-average concentration of inhibitory neurotransmitters.
Spock sets his equipment aside and leans down to place a hand over the creature’s small, pointed skull. Psychic impressions seep out of its muted consciousness, as it makes no move to resist either Spock’s touch or his mental intrusion. Its signature is hollow, aimless. The spirit wanders unmoored by the sensorimotor influence of the body.
“Show me the other one,” he orders, releasing the animal and returning to himself.
The science officer taps a console and illuminates the interior of the other enclosure.
The creature bristles at his approach. Spines protrude from its face. Its eyes are black. It does not appear to be aware of its cage.
Spock kneels slowly and reaches a tentative hand towards the containment field. Snarling, the creature lunges forward. It meets the searing current of the energy barrier and subsequently, in a jolt of burning flesh, bites again.
Both specimens are dead within the hour. Their bodies are disintegrated and the ashes vented into space.
—
Ship’s night is fast approaching. The medbay is quiet now and its foremost room holds only a single occupant. Lieutenant Moreau is almost herself again. She is draped in a loose mauve fabric and staring intently at a data pad. At Spock’s entry she looks up at him accusingly. With just the two of them in this room, Spock is reminded that although she is not a high-ranking officer, her status often encroaches on his own.
“I have business with the doctor,” he says.
“He’s out.”
Spock moves to the back office. McCoy is unconscious at his desk. Spock places the vial of snuff silently on the table and prepares to wake him.
There is movement outside, near the bio-beds. A low voice, like the captain’s in every manner save its tone — tentative, mild. Spock listens, rapt and unsettled in equal measure.
“…did this to you?”
The Lieutenant’s response is too quiet to make out. Spock hears only the sharp click of her dissatisfied consonants and the slow, labored breaths of the unconscious doctor before him.
The man – the Kirk who is not his captain – speaks again. “Are you alright, now? …will you be?” The questions hold no trace of demand.
Moreau raises her voice a little and says, “James,” and the name rings unpleasantly, unsuited for this place.
Spock permits his gaze to drift out through the open doorway. Spying in earnest now, he watches Kirk reach out to her face with an unblemished hand. He does not touch her.
When Kirk finally leaves her to her brooding and moves away down the corridor, Spock follows.
—
The calculations for the transporter configuration are nontrivial. Even so, Spock has completed them before the turbolift is halfway to its destination. He devotes the remainder of his journey to a thorough analysis of the captain's condition.
Spock had thought the duality simple. Human and Vulcan evolution are not dissimilar. Ecologically, both species possessed predatory tendencies, as well as a prey instinct. These dual roles were then integrated into individual self-concepts and more complex group dynamics. The transporter duplication, then, is not a true duplication at all, but a split along divergent evolutionary lines of a single genome.
This hypothesis provides him little of the information he requires now.
Spock has by now been traversing the ship’s halls for hours without his guards. Crewmen watch him from all sides. In their furtive glances Spock sees that they are torn — wary of his status as an extant threat, aching with their own ambition, desperate to find him vulnerable.
The observation deck is cool and quiet. The captain’s duplicate appears pinned to the window, command gold vanishing into the planet’s ochre surface, wreathed by void and stars.
It occurs to Spock that he might undertake a silent ambush and be rid of the problem without incident. The duplicate, however, has apparently retained the captain’s uncanny ability to detect Spock’s approach. He turns at the precise moment of the commander’s entry.
“Have you come to join my stargazing, Mr. Spock?”
“No.”
“But here you are, all the same.” He continues without waiting for a response. “I’ve been contemplating some old academy lectures.” Here he shifts his eyes away from the observation window and looks to Spock expectantly. “Why do you believe we live in an orderly universe?”
Spock is unable to categorize the expression on the duplicate’s face. The ambiguity troubles him, as does this half-creature’s chosen topic of discussion.
The captain is a pragmatist, a destructive force. Predictable, in the sense that one might anticipate a hurricane from the shift of an inland breeze. He is certainly not a cosmologist. Spock calculates his response carefully.
“In a physical sense, order is imposed by fundamental forces. More colloquially, however, we might refer to a high entropy state, which appears totally uniform, to be maximally orderly.”
Kirk’s eyes go wild. “Then you mean to say, Mr. Spock, that the universe is well-ordered because we declare it to be.”
“Is there another answer you were hoping to receive?”
“No. No that’s not it…” His voice is rough, as though he has just awoken from a long night of sleep. “For you, Mr. Spock, I’ll speak plainly. Maybe you’ll prefer it that way.” He speaks with unfettered grandiosity. “I am considering the nature of our glorious empire. I am considering the fate of that planet down there, its belly full of ore. Once we’ve gutted it and had our fill, what then? We find another and another and another. How long until there’s nothing left to eat?”
“It is unlikely that either of us should survive long enough to witness such an occasion.”
Kirk looks almost pleased at this. He stands. “Then perhaps you do understand my meaning, Spock. We’ll both be eaten, too.”
Kirk kills often, with fervor. He kills men and women and children and diplomats. He puts down members of his own crew like dogs. In their two years of service together, he and Commander Spock have bombarded forty-seven planets from orbit. Spock has counted. In this moment, he suspects that the captain has not.
“Captain,” he begins, although this man is not quite worthy of the term, “are you aware of your present condition?”
“I don't …” he seems to search the commander's face and come up empty. “Maybe you'd better come right out and say it.”
Spock explains in the briefest terms. As he does so, he feels the motion of the captain through the decks of his ship like a phantom limb. He will by now have found Fischer in the booth without his orders, heard Marlena's testimony of his conflicting behavior, or encountered some other contradictory evidence which points him to the truth of what has happened here. If he is acting in accordance with any logic at all, he will seek out his double's soft underbelly and attempt to rend the weakness from himself.
That, or he will conclude the existence of an imposter and follow the same course of action.
Kirk absorbs this information without objection.
Spock considers him wholly, this man now drained of vigor, left somber and unsure.
All weakness present in this Kirk must have always belonged to the captain. Must indeed be rightfully his. The introspection and the pretense. All buried, all real.
“Your counterpart intends to kill you, now. I intend to prevent him from doing so.” Spock does not fully understand this until he voices it as such. The realization startles him. It is unacceptable to act on impulse. The captain would demand an explanation for this behavior.
“As you like, Mr. Spock.”
Of course, this man is not the captain.
In the space of their silence, the door hisses open. The captain stands rigid in its frame, phaser already leveled at his double.
“Commander.” He steps forward slowly. “I want that thing dead.”
“You are in no state to give orders.”
When he looks at his double, the captain appears flush with anger. So when he finally meets Spock’s eyes, it takes a moment to identify what he sees.
Embarrassment. The captain is embarrassed. In fact, he looks as though he might vomit. This is troubling. The captain does not respond well to humiliation. For the first time since entering the observation deck, it occurs to Spock that he may die here—killed in an outburst of Kirk’s own self-consciousness. He would not be the first.
Kirk is starting to burn out. His breathing is erratic. It is clear that his body will fail him. He knows it. “Why—you could let me die now, at no cost to yourself. Wouldn’t that be the logical thing to do, Commander?”
Spock stares at Kirk’s still-bloodied knuckles. He wonders how it must feel to be physically overpowered. At his mercy, he thinks. But the captain is not merciful. Why is Spock so insistent that he lives?
“It is not an acceptable outcome,” he says at last. By all metrics, this should be the wrong answer. But it does the job. Kirk hesitates.
“Commander…” he begins, but this quickly becomes immaterial. Spock fires his phaser once from the hip and the captain drops. At least one of them has not forgotten how the game is played.
“Efficient as always.” The voice behind him is unsettlingly quiet. “You take no indulgences. You know, I’ve always admired that about you.”
Spock lets these aimless ramblings go unanswered. With the captain at his feet, and his duplicate again staring wistfully out the observation window, Spock finds himself once again in command, in the face of absurdity.
“You will have to clear the transporter room. You must behave as though nothing is wrong—as though you are the captain. To show any weakness will be certain death.” Spock’s hands have returned to their natural position behind his back. He silently asserts that the edge in his own voice is a product of urgency, not fear. “Do you understand?”
Kirk places a hand on his shoulder. The contact is foreign and dangerous. The captain does not hit Spock, but he does not touch anyone like this.
“It’s alright, Spock.” He appears focused now, as though he has just become lucid. And the next words he says will haunt the commander relentlessly. They will follow him from the observation deck and down into his meditation chambers—until he begins to hear their echo in the captain’s every word, see their shadow in every move he makes.
“It’s alright, Spock,” he says gravely. “I trust you.”
The captain’s double must proceed alone. As for Spock, he hefts his commanding officer over one shoulder with as much dignity as he is able. He and his cargo must take back channels — Spock carries the captain through maintenance ducts and unoccupied corridors, taking care that the weight on his back remains steady. By the time he emerges from a Jefferies tube several decks below, the captain's heartbeat is severely arrhythmic. His breath falls intermittently on the back of Spock's neck.
On his arrival, the transporter room is empty save for three men, who will subsequently become two.
Spock sets the captain down, begins the transporter configurations, and directs the other Kirk to stand on the platform.
“I don’t want to go back,” Kirk murmurs.
Spock looks up from the transporter circuits to find that he is being watched intently.
“Kaiidth, Captain.” Spock finds his own voice low and soft.
Upon re-integration, the captain is, blissfully, unconscious. Far below, the yellow planet still spins. Soldiers wait, restless on its surface.
Spock leaves his captain to wake alone, to do what he will.