The Way Home, by Jane Seaton

Part 2/4

The doctor just stood by the bed. Chekov pulled his robe tighter around himself and said calmly, "I'm quite all right, Doctor McCoy. I was just having a nightmare. I'll get back to sleep in a minute."

"Fine," McCoy responded crisply and turned to leave the room. Martha looked from the ensign to the disappearing doctor and decided to tackle McCoy first. "I'll be back," she promised and strode after McCoy so quickly that she almost collided with him outside the door.

"Doctor McCoy, what..." Her indignation overcame her respect for rank. "What the hell are you doing? How can you..."

"He doesn't want me in there. That's his privilege. It won't hurt him to wait until someone else is free." McCoy's voice was crisp with something Martha interpreted as anger.

"Sir, I know they questioned him and he... talked. But he was drugged. You can't just turn your back on him. He needs you to..."

"He doesn't need any treatment, and I'm not going to force it on him." His mask cracked and Martha could see the pain underneath. "I know what he went through. Really. He needs your support, not mine. I'm no damn use at all."

%%%

She watched him walk away, then turned back into the room. Chekov was lying down again, staring at the ceiling. She sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled the cover up around him. "Tell me what happened, please. I... I want to know. How can I help you if I don't know? I do want to help you."

"I'm okay. I just need a good night's sleep."

"Problems?" M'Benga asked from the doorway. Martha nodded fiercely, even as Chekov said, "I don't think whatever you gave me was strong enough. I had a bad dream and woke up."

"Well, I don't want to give you anything stronger, not while you've got other things lingering in there. Why don't I ask Martha to fetch you something, some hot milk, or whatever you usually have last thing at night." He pointed out the door and Martha got to her feet.

"Some tea? With raspberry syrup?"

Chekov frowned. "All right."

Once she'd gone, M'Benga pulled out a scanner from his kit. "How long since you've slept properly? Since before you went missing, presumably?"

"No, I slept all right the last few nights. I don't know why I can't sleep now."

"Well, I've got some preliminary results on whatever they dosed you up with: not the normal 'truth drugs': something a bit more sophisticated. Without actually trying them out on someone, I'd say they'd enable an interrogator to conduct a sensible discussion with you, rather than just getting a flood of information. It's the difference between just opening a file and reading everything, and using a logical search."

"How long until I will be fit to go back on duty?"

"It isn't so much the traces of the drugs, as the damage they may have done. I'll do some scans tomorrow, see if we can actually pinpoint anything. And... Look... I don't want to push you on this, but... You have to tell me what happened. I can't treat you on the basis of what I can see now, not effectively. You're forcing me to work in the dark. Did they..."

Chekov screwed his eyes shut. "Probably. Whatever you're going to say, the answer is probably yes."

"Electric shocks..."

The ensign nodded dumbly, quickly, to shut the doctor up.

"There are scars from what look like second degree burns..."

"Yes. But they treated it. Once they finished, there were doctors. Do we have to go through this?"

"Sometime. Not necessarily now." M'Benga sighed. He'd been gentle with his instruments but his words seemed knife-edged. He shook his head. "No. That's enough for now."

Chekov shut off all his desperation, outwardly as calm as he'd been in sick bay earlier. And suddenly, once M'Benga stopped asking, he found he could begin to answer. "They did all the obvious things. And they didn't really care whether I said anything or not. It was just to put me in my place, to make sure I knew who was in control of every little thing that happened to me. They didn't even need to do it, did they? They could have just used the drugs from the start. Later I heard them... I heard other people screaming. I can't stop hearing it. And the smell of blood, and the smoke, and the cold, and drowning, or burning, or the... helplessness. I felt so helpless."

M'Benga knelt down and wrapped the cover round the shivering ensign. "Okay, okay now. Is that enough? D'you want to tell me anything else? Can you..."

"I'm fine. I mean, I want to be fine. If you'd only let me."

M'Benga didn't have an answer to that. Ultimately, whether Chekov pulled through this was up to the ensign himself. "I'm worried about Leonard McCoy, too," he said suddenly. "What happened to him?"

Chekov sighed and stared grimly at the wall opposite. "When they first drugged me, I think they thought they'd killed me. They fetched Doctor McCoy, or at least he was there when I came round. He must have done something, to revive me. I was... mixed up. I felt so angry, so... betrayed. I know why he did it. I can't really be sorry that I'm still alive, even knowing that if I wasn't the Enterprise and the Federation would be very much safer. But I feel I should be more angry than I am. I'm wrong to be pleased to be alive, as if I have no right to ever enjoy anything again. And also I just felt... I'd been through so much, I'd paid... not to tell them anything. He just threw it away... as if my decision didn't count for anything."

M'Benga stood up. "These people put you and Leonard in an impossible situation, one where whichever way he moved, he did it at your expense. He's very hurt, Pavel, just as much hurt as you. I don't mean to belittle what you've been through, but at least you had no choice. He made a choice and doesn't know if it was the right one. If the Tien do attack this ship, imagine how he's going to feel. Have you spoken to him?"

"No. I'm not sure I want to..."

"Then don't think of what you want, just do it. I guarantee, it will be the best medicine I prescribe today."

"If the right moment..."

"I don't think there will be a right moment. You'll have to make one. Well, here's your tea. Don't try to sleep if you don't want to. You can catch up later."

The doctor pocketed the scanner and moved aside to let Martha set the glass of tea down by the bed. "Come and see me first thing in the morning. Call if you want me before then."

"Yes, sir."

Martha waited for M'Benga to go. "Do you feel better now?"

"Yes. Thank you for the tea. I'm okay now."

"If you want me to go, I will. I'll tell the captain he can come and babysit you himself."

Chekov almost smiled. For a person of strong views and no reluctance to express them, Martha was usually remarkably quiet around Captain Kirk. "I'd like you to stay."

She crossed her arms and pulled her uniform off over her head. When she could see him again, he was definitely smiling, although the expression didn't look very robust. "I'm wearing a medical monitor."

She sucked her breath in through her perfect white teeth. "Oh, that's a bitch. We don't want half a dozen paramedics bursting in. Can you wait till tomorrow night?"

"If you still want to, I can wait forever." Something odd was happening to his face. The smile vanished and he turned over and buried himself in his pillow.

"Pavel, baby... It's all right. It's all right..."

As she held him, he reached out with his left hand, caught hers and pulled it convulsively against his mouth. She felt his teeth against her knuckles. "They broke my hands..."

"What?"

"My hands..."

She started crying too, as he told her how bones and tendons felt, crunching under the heel of someone's boot, remembered the cold professional skill of the Tien doctor who had spent hours laboriously rebuilding his hands without saying a single word to his patient. Then he told her about coming round from the first dose of drugs, his heart hammering like an engine and McCoy kneeling on the floor beside him, his uniform spattered with blood, pleading with him to respond, wrestling him back to life with hands made clumsy by desperation, against every instinct that the ensign possessed. It was difficult to believe that McCoy belonged in the same universe as the Tien.

As they clung together, she couldn't imagine the tears were ever going to stop.

%%%

Kirk finished up his breakfast, thinking ruefully that eight hours sleep would have done a lot more good than black coffee now. As he rose from his seat, his Yeoman appeared. The man was new to the job and wearingly nervous. Now, he looked decidedly apprehensive. "Captain, the department heads' meeting at oh eight hundred hours..."

"Yes?"

"I wasn't quite sure, that is, should I have informed Doctor McCoy and Ensign Chekov?"

"Of course not," Kirk snapped, resenting him bringing up the question. "Neither of them is back on duty yet and Mister Chekov is only an observer at these meetings as his duties permit. You shouldn't circulate the agenda to him routinely."

The yeoman tightened his mouth on an objection. "Yes, sir. I have informed Doctor M'Benga of the change in timing."

"Thank you, Yeoman. I'll see you in the briefing room in five minutes. And..."

"Yes, sir?"

"Make sure there's plenty of coffee."

Kirk allowed the man to depart and wondered whether to go and see Bones before the day's routine started. And he'd said he'd talk to Chekov today - he'd have to fit that in sometime. He straightened his shoulders in search of the psychological lift that went with the gesture. Today it eluded him.

"Bridge to Captain Kirk."

He knocked the intercom switch irritably. "Kirk here."

"Captain, we have an urgent message from Starfleet. Will you take it there?"

"I'll be in the briefing room. Put it through."

%%%

"Well, that's torn it," Kirk remarked sourly to Spock as he finished hearing his orders to return with all haste to Starbase 19 for reassignment to the Neutral Zone. "The talent the Romulans have for turning up when they can cause the most trouble..."

"Statistically it is not significant, Captain. It is simply the case that we are more often than not engaged in business of some delicacy or urgency."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"No, it is merely an accurate statement of..."

"Forget it. How soon can we be back at the Starbase?"

"In seven days, if we avoid territory claimed by the Tien. In two days if we cut through that region. We would actually be within their space for only thirteen hours in total."

"Even if we pussy-foot around the edge, we don't know for sure they won't attack us. The shuttle craft wasn't within their boundaries when they captured it."

"That is true, Captain, but I do not believe they are unconditionally hostile. They returned our personnel. If they were planning to attack us, it would have been to their advantage to conceal the amount of information they had obtained about our weapons and defences."

How neutrally Spock expressed it. Yes, maybe the Tien would have been wiser to kill Chekov and McCoy but that didn't mean they wouldn't kill anyone else.

"If we take the shorter route, how soon do we enter the region they claim as theirs?"

"In four hours."

"Then we'd better get on with deciding how we're going to deal with any trouble they cause." Kirk sat down and Spock palmed the door open to admit the waiting officers. Sulu, Scott, M'Benga, Uhura and Tomson took their places around the oval table without any of the usual chatter that prefaced such meetings. Their subdued mood, so sharply contrasted with yesterday's euphoria, perfectly matched Kirk's, but it struck him suddenly that there was no reason for it. He and Spock alone of those present knew that they were about to venture into enemy territory. He cursed silently. The last thing they needed at the moment was anything to distract the crew from the immediate problem. Whatever it was would have to be put on hold.

"Gentlemen, we have been ordered to return immediately to Starbase 19. As a result we will have to cut across the space which the Tien have unilaterally declared to be their territory. When I spoke to their leader yesterday, she expressed their intention to coexist peacefully with the Federation, with the single proviso that the boundary between us should be regarded as inviolable."

He paused to allow this to sink in. Uhura opened her mouth as if to comment, then closed it again.

"Do you expect them to regard our intrusion as hostile and react accordingly, Captain?" Tomson asked.

"Frankly, yes, I do."

Sulu looked up at Kirk, calmly confident. "From the ships we've seen, unless we move slowly enough to allow them to gather three or four of their destroyers, we should be able to outgun them, if not outrun them."

"I'd agree but we believe they have detailed technical intelligence that would enable them to hit us where it hurts. It's possible they may have an edge."

"Intelligence from where?" Tomson demanded, as if the very idea was an insult.

"They used drugs on Chekov and, from what he remembers, he told them what they wanted to know." Kirk found that he couldn't meet Tomson's eyes.

"Given the drugs that Doctor M'Benga believes they used, there is no reason to suppose that his memory is inaccurate," Spock added. "The interrogation appears to have been thorough."

"The only areas of the ship's systems that Mister Chekov never took much interest in were the food processors and waste disposal," Scott said sombrely. "He knows his way around better than some of my engineers."

Kirk nodded. "And the Tien now have the same knowledge." He looked around his department heads one by one. "What we have to worry about now is how we beat an enemy who knows every weak point in our shields, every location where vital services are close to the hull, weapons capabilities, manoeuvrability, even past tactics. Add to that the innate abilities of the Tien themselves. We've learned very little about those."

"We cross into Tien territory in just under four hours, sir," Sulu said. His face was pale but he was plainly concentrating on the immediate problem, as Kirk had intended. "How much of the basic systems of the ship can we re-engineer, rerouting power, diverting control links, reinforcing the hull and so forth?"

Kirk deferred to Scott's expertise. "Precious little," the chief responded grimly. "The shield design is dictated by the geometry of the ship and the field structure. The hull, well, we can do a little internal reinforcement, at the obvious problem areas. The trouble with a design as well tried as this one is we've done everything we can do already. As time is so short, Captain, perhaps I should..."

"Yes, Scotty, get to it. We'll keep you informed of any other decisions."

The engineer walked briskly over to the door and paused as it opened. "How is Mister Chekov?"

Kirk looked at M'Benga, who straightened up abruptly, not used to being actively involved at briefings beyond the merely routine in McCoy's absence.

"They were brutal," he said, in the ensign's defence. "Physically, he's looking okay, although he's as thin as a rake. I'd like to run a few more checks but the best thing he can do is get back to work. Tomorrow, maybe..."

"There's no hurry," Kirk cut him off, rather too quickly. "Let him take his time."

If M'Benga was annoyed at being overridden he hid it, merely nodding dutifully. The door slid shut on the departing Scotsman and Kirk turned back to Sulu.

"We need a course that takes us straight through, but identify the shortest route out at every point, in case it comes to a chase. And make sure you know where they may appear from without warning. Given their known maximum speed, we should be able to get some notice of an attack. The problem is, we can't afford to go in with all guns blazing. While we don't recognise their claim to this part of space, we certainly don't want to force a confrontation."

"Captain," Uhura broke in softly, "have we considered requesting permission to traverse the region, in view of the urgency of our mission?"

Kirk shook his head. "It might be the right answer but it would also forewarn them of our intentions and imply that we acknowledged their claim. That could be disastrous in more ways than one. I want you to prepare a message drone, to take the long route round, avoiding the Tien. Doctor M'Benga, I hope it won't come to this, but sickbay may be busy. And Tomson, standard battle alert. Anything else? Then let's get to work, gentlemen."

%%%

In sick bay, there was an atmosphere of grim purpose about the nurses and technicians as they cleared the decks for action. M'Benga, back from the meeting, was pacing up and down, getting under their feet. In the end, Chapel took him by the elbow and led him firmly into McCoy's office. "Sit down and keep out of our way."

"Okay, send Chekov in when he gets here. I'm going to brush up on neural scanning procedures."

He'd no sooner found the files he wanted than McCoy appeared. "Who let me oversleep?"

"You're not back on duty, Len. You can oversleep all you want."

"My God, you're getting ready for a battle and you just let me..."

"I'd have called you if we needed you, but since you're here, why don't I go through the formalities of clearing you for duty. Come and see if you can dodge nurses long enough for me to get a diagnostic scan."

McCoy submitted in bad-tempered silence to the medical check.

"Exactly the same as yesterday. You're stable and within norms. Welcome back to duty, Doctor."

McCoy swung his legs down off the bed. "What's going on?"

"Starfleet want us back in a hurry, so we're cutting through Tien space. The captain anticipates trouble."

For a moment, the old McCoy looked out of the tired blue eyes and M'Benga thought that he might be about to go and shout at the captain, but the doctor seemed to decide that he had forfeited all right to complain and subsided into his former melancholy. "Any idea when?"

"We enter what they think is their back yard in about three hours. Any time thereafter."

"Oh." McCoy disappeared into his office, leaving M'Benga without a refuge from the bustling nurses. He sat down at a work station and tried to block out the flurry of activity around him.

%%%

"Doctor?" Chekov interrupted him hesitantly a few minutes later.

"Mister Chekov! Have you had some breakfast?"

"Yes. I wanted to know, if I'm going to get back on duty. I heard we're expecting to engage the Tien..."

"There's no hurry..." M'Benga started, unconsciously echoing the captain's words.

"But am I fit to go back on duty, if I'm needed?"

M'Benga looked at Chekov and wondered at what point the ensign would decide he'd had enough. "You've had a hard time. Why are you so impatient?"

"Because we're heading back into Tien space, and if anything goes wrong..."

"Let someone else worry about that."

"But what if the Tien use what I told them to attack the Enterprise?"

"Not your fault. Now, the drugs are out of your system. The levels fell overnight to where I can't pick them up any more. Let's do some brain scans to see if there's any of the damage I was talking about yesterday." He nodded at the nearest diagnostic bed. Chekov lay down obediently, eager to let M'Benga get on and pronounce him fit. "Christine, can you stop flapping for five minutes and give me a hand?"

M'Benga worked in silence, not sure whether he wanted to find anything wrong or not. Kirk clearly didn't want Chekov back on the bridge, for whatever reason. It would be far easier if he could give the ensign a physical reason for his continued banishment.

In the end, having found a couple of readings at the high end of normal, M'Benga called it a day. "Well," he said, trying to sound as if he didn't already know what the answer had to be. "It's not absolutely right..."

"So, what should I do?"

"Do? Well, rest, try to eat a little more, put back some of that weight, and maybe a little exercise, nothing too strenuous..."

Chekov stared at him incredulously. "We're going into battle and..."

"You shouldn't be on duty unless you're one hundred percent, or everyone else is out of action. I'm not open to argument on this."

"Captain Kirk doesn't want me back on duty, does he?"

Chekov sounded so sure of that that M'Benga wondered if he'd somehow got wind of Kirk's reaction at the briefing. "I can only give my medical opinion. There are other people on board who can do the job and are in better physical condition than you. I'm not doing this to punish you..."

"So I can just sit around..."

"You can follow my advice and get back on duty all the sooner. What else can I say?"

Chekov clearly wasn't listening. "Is Doctor McCoy back on duty?"

"What has that got to do with anything?" M'Benga cursed himself for his sharp tone but in the tense atmosphere of battle readiness it was difficult to keep his temper with the ensign.

"You said you wanted me to talk to him," Chekov said with sudden innocence, but M'Benga caught a whiff of blackmail.

"Chekov, I thought we were getting somewhere with all this. I know how badly you feel but it makes no sense for you to turn round and blame us. It was the Tien who..."

"Probably they think they were just doing their duty."

"Yes, I'm sure you're right. They're probably a bunch of nice young men just like yourself, who write home to their families and are polite and respectful to their elders and kind to children. There's nothing I can say to make this any easier..."

"Except that I'm fit to go back on duty."

"I'm becoming less and less convinced of that by the moment."

Chekov turned to walk out of sick bay just as Lieutenant Sulu entered. Concern and embarrassment at having overheard the heated consultation had driven out the helmsman's normal smile. He waited for a moment, expecting M'Benga to tell him to come back later but the doctor seemed to have run out of steam.

"What's wrong?"

"I can't clear Mister Chekov for duty yet. Naturally he's disappointed."

"I thought you..." Sulu paused, aware of his foot hovering somewhere near his mouth. "Well, it takes time, to get over something like that."

"There is nothing wrong with me. Captain Kirk doesn't want me on duty. That's all. Maybe he's right. Maybe I shouldn't be..."

"It isn't your fault..."

"I know! So everyone keeps telling me. It's not my fault I let everyone down... But the Captain would be negligent if he didn't prefer to have someone else on the bridge. I understand that."

"You didn't let anyone down."

"No, I did and in the next few hours everyone on this ship is going to die for it."

Sulu cast a despairing look at M'Benga, then took the Russian by the shoulders and gave him an irritated shake. "Pavel, if we die I'm just glad you were here with us, not alone, being brave while some stranger took you to pieces. I wouldn't want to survive at that price. I am thankful that you survived, and that you're here now, whatever the cost. Besides, we're not beaten yet."

%%%

Personal Log: Stardate 4753.5

In less than four hours, we may face an enemy who knows this ship almost as well as we do ourselves. Mister Scott is doing what he can to defend our weak points, but since Chekov presumably knew what they were also, it is only logical to assume that the Tien have already taken into account any additional measures that we can employ...

Kirk turned off the recorder as his door chimed. "Come in."

Chekov took only one reluctant step inside the door. "You said you wanted to see me sometime today, Captain."

Kirk started to say that this wasn't the time, then reflected that there was unlikely to be a better opportunity. If things went badly, there might not be an opportunity at all.

"Sit down, Ensign." He gestured to a chair and considered again what to say. He decided to start out with the facts. "We've just received orders to return to Starbase 19 as quickly as possible. That means we have to pass through the space which the Tien have claimed as theirs. Of course, I'm hoping that we simply won't encounter anyone on the way through but obviously there's a risk that we will."

"If we do face an attack, I'd like to be back on duty."

"Doctor M'Benga..."

"I'm not ill. I'm perfectly fit. I can't just sit in my cabin while..."

"I don't run this ship on the basis of what you want, Mister Chekov." The words came out more harshly than he intended and he tried to soften them. "I realise that you have more reason than most of us to dislike the Tien..."

"I don't want revenge. I just want to do my job."

"You can do your duty by following M'Benga's instructions and returning to work when he says you're ready. And that's my final word on the subject."

"Then what did you want to talk to me about?"

Kirk pushed aside his irritation at Chekov's aggressive persistence. "I wanted to reassure you that no one is going to blame you for what happened..."

"Thank you. But you don't want me back on duty."

"Ensign, no one other than you gives a damn whether you are navigating this ship or not. Under other circumstances, I might admire your eagerness to do everyone else's job as well as your own, but at the moment, I can only feel that if you'd been content to be simply a navigator, this ship would be in far less danger."

Chekov stared at him in shocked silence then looked away, the flush of anger in his face bright against the pallor of his skin.

"I'm sorry." Kirk said, aghast at his own words. "That was entirely out of order. You haven't done anything, in the whole of this wretched affair, that I would criticise in any way." The ensign's face was still set in angry disbelief. Kirk hastily tried another tack. "Look, Doctor McCoy told me what happened and I have to concede that he broke regulations by helping you..."

"In what way, exactly, was he helping me?"

"Chekov..."

"No, let me finish. He broke the rules, you concede, and now he's back on duty. I've done nothing wrong and I'm not fit to be on the bridge. Am I supposed to think that's fair?"

"I'm not interested in whether you think it's fair or not. Being on duty isn't a good conduct prize. I have to act in the best interests of the ship and her entire crew."

Chekov got to his feet. "Thank you, Captain. I'm sure you have more important things to do..."

"Sit down!"

The ensign obeyed with a guilty start.

"For the next..." Kirk glanced across at his chronometer. "...thirty minutes, I don't have anything more important to do than talk to you but whatever you say, I'm not going to pull Lieutenant Harvey off the bridge half way through a shift and tell him I'd feel happier with you on navigation. Understood?"

"Yes, sir."

"Really?"

Chekov nodded devoutly.

"Now, tell me what the hell I can say to you."

"I don't know," Chekov said desperately. "I suppose I just want to know that it doesn't make any difference. I want to be sure that there wasn't anything else I could have done..."

"Surely M'Benga..."

"Yes, he told me I couldn't fight those sorts of drugs."

"And Spock?"

"Mister Spock just accepted it."

"And Uhura? Did you tell her what happened? Or Sulu?"

"They all said it wasn't my fault."

"So what can I say? I don't know any more about it than they do. I've never been in that position. You should be telling me."

Chekov shifted awkwardly in his chair. "I think... I think I want you to forgive me." Kirk opened his eyes wide with surprise at being cast in this priestly role but Chekov had already moved on. "I don't want everyone on this ship to die..."

"...blaming you?"

"No, I just don't want anyone to die. And I want to be able to do something to stop it..." He halted, sensing that he was approaching forbidden territory again.

Kirk got up out of his chair, to avoid having to react to what Chekov had just said, and wandered over to the servitor in the corner of his cabin. "Tea? Coffee?"

"Tea, please."

"This isn't like you. I know you don't always agree with the way I do things, but you don't usually make a fight of it."

"I don't usually feel that you are being totally unjust."

"Oh." Kirk handed Chekov a glass of lemon tea. "I can see why you're angry, about what Doctor McCoy did..."

"He always treats me as if I'm an idiot, as if my opinion isn't worth listening to. When the shuttle was shot down, and I knew that I was responsible for our safety, and that he wasn't going to pay any attention to anything I said..."

"I do know how that feels."

"And the harder I work, to try to deserve to be an officer, to get some respect from him, the more he laughs at me, and now..."

"Why didn't you tell me what happened between you and McCoy?"

"I was too angry. I wasn't sure I could be fair."

"You knew that if I report what happened, he could lose his medical license..."

"You don't have to do that..." Chekov protested.

"Was that why you didn't mention it?" Kirk pushed stubbornly. "You must be aware of the Modified Geneva Code."

"I don't care that he broke the rules. It was the fact that he came in and took that decision for me. If I wanted to be alive at any cost, I could have told them what they wanted to know at the start. When I came round, and I knew it was all going to start again, I couldn't believe he'd been so cruel. But it might have been the right decision for someone else. It's just him and me. There's no reason why he has to stop being a doctor. That's ridiculous." There was genuine anguish in Chekov's eyes. Kirk stirred his coffee thoughtfully and decided reluctantly that, as complicated as matters between McCoy and Chekov appeared to have become, now wasn't the time to straighten them out. "This must seem a stupid question, but did the Tien seem aggressive, or are they just fighting their corner?"

Chekov followed the change of subject with difficulty. "You mean, were they enjoying what they did to me?" The young man shivered. "It's what they do. They take whole planets and break them from individuals upwards. Then they put them back together to suit their vision of the galaxy. I was just one more. What do you think they did? Shone bright lights in my face? They hurt me every way they could think of."

"Their leader, the Samjisdat, seemed just fractionally apologetic about the whole thing."

"I don't know. She terrified me. She said the Confederation had been expanding for thousands of years, as if it would collapse if it didn't keep growing, and we had no right to try to stop it. By stopping it we were attacking it. It sounded like pre-space flight Terran Imperialism. They just can't afford to stop. And now I've told them everything they need to know to keep growing."

"You only told them what any other officer they'd got hold of would have told them," his captain reassured him wearily, wondering how often he'd have to say that before either of them would believe it. The intercom peeped for attention and Kirk leaned across to put it on hold. "We didn't get our half hour. I'm sorry." He felt guilty for seizing the excuse but this wasn't getting anywhere.

Chekov accepted the dismissal and got to his feet for the second time. Kirk stood as well, laying a hand on Chekov's arm as the ensign turned to go. "We'll get through this problem somehow, and if I need you for any reason, I know you'll give me your best."

"Yes, sir." Chekov let the door close behind him before he said aloud to the empty corridor, "Only now you know that isn't good enough."

%%%