Chapter One
Shall we give the Enterprise a proper shakedown, Mr. Scott? -- James T. Kirk
Jim Kirk was lost in the Enterprise.
Not the way he'd been two weeks ago, when his unfamiliarity with the redesigned starship had forced him to ask a yeoman the way to the turboshaft, embarrassing himself in front of Will Decker. No, as soon as the V'Ger mission had ended, Kirk had launched into an intensive study of the upgraded vessel's every feature. It was something he'd always meant to do, since it made sense for a Chief of Starfleet Operations to know these things, but somehow the business of managing the deployments, personnel, and maintenance of an entire fleet had always managed to keep him from concentrating on the particulars of a single redesign. Or, perhaps, he had subconsciously shied away from it, since it would have hurt too much to watch from afar, knowing that the Enterprise was no longer his.
Kirk had thought his crash course in the new Enterprise's technical particulars had cured him of the romanticized reaction he'd had upon first seeing her in drydock, when Scotty had taken the long way around in the travel pod to show off his baby. But now, as he gazed out the large picture windows of Starbase 22's officers' lounge, which overlooked the base's dock facility and the gleaming starship moored therein, he was lost in her beauty once again. The old Enterprise had always reminded Kirk of Pegasus in flight, her skin gleaming white, her dorsal connector evoking the neck of a horse with head held high, her nacelle struts angled like wings poised for a forceful downstroke. Yet to an observer of a less poetical bent, it had been a utilitarian design, all functional straight lines and circles. Now, with her more forward-thrusting neck, her backswept pylons, her Art Deco nacelles, her subtly sleeker hull contours, and her constellation of self-illuminating lights, she was a sculpture evoking speed and energy. It was as though she'd emerged from her cocoon looking the way she'd always been meant to look.
Arguably there was little left of the original ship beyond the bare skeletal framework of the saucer and forward secondary hull. It certainly wasn't the first ship in naval history to be so thoroughly rebuilt, and as much as possible of the original material had been recycled into the new structural members and bulkheads. Still, every propulsion and power system, every computer, every piece of equipment, every meter of piping and optical cable, every last console and chair and lighting panel had been replaced with a new, improved model. Yet none of that mattered to Kirk. After all, most of the cells in his body at the time he'd first taken command of the starship had been replaced by now (though regrettably not with improved versions), but the gestalt remained the same; the body held the same soul. And Kirk had known as soon as he'd seen her that the same was true of Enterprise. The only difference was that her soul was more visible now.
"Don't you ever get bored?" came a cheerful voice. Kirk noted Commodore Fein's florid reflection in the window as the base commander entered the lounge. "Just staring at your ship? I mean, it's just...sitting there. It's not doing anything."
Kirk smiled. "Neither is the Mona Lisa. But people seem to like looking at her."
"Not my type," the big, dark-bearded commodore said with a shrug. "And I don't see what the big mystery is about the smile. I mean, aren't you supposed to smile when you get your picture taken?"
Kirk opened his mouth, but couldn't find a response to that. So he just went back to looking at the Enterprise. Fein joined him for a moment, but then yawned conspicuously, earning a glare from Kirk. "Sorry. Don't get me wrong, she is a pretty ship, no question. Even more so now that my guys are done with her."
"No argument there. Please extend my thanks to Commander Mattesino and his teams." Since the Enterprise had been launched prematurely, there hadn't been much time to install creature comforts. Kirk's impulsive decision to head "out there, thataway" on a shakedown cruise, rather than returning to Spacedock for debriefing, re-crewing, and final outfitting, had led to grumbling among the crew. So Kirk had arranged to have their personal effects delivered to Starbase 22, which had happened to be in the general direction of "thataway." Fein and his staff had done a superb job of fixing up the ship, making it less austere and more comfortable. More importantly, they'd helped Spock and the engineering staff purge the last of the Trojan-horse code with which Romulan spies had infected the computers during the refit, and which Decker had discovered literally the night before Kirk had booted him from command. It was only after the V'Ger mission, when Scott and Dr. Chapel had had time to brief him about the incident, that Kirk had learned just how much they all owed the late Will Decker. No, not late, just...missing? Departed? Ascended? What, exactly?
Fein spoke up again, interrupting his reverie. "Are you sure you don't want us to paint the hull, though? You just want to leave it like that?"
Kirk's eyes swept across Enterprise's skin once more. He knew that what he saw was twenty thousand crystal-tritanium plates phase-transition bonded into a single, nearly seamless whole, each plate with its grain aligned differently so no crack in the hull could propagate too far. But to his eyes it was a mosaic of pearlescent, luminous grays, making the ship shimmer like a many-faceted jewel. "I prefer her this way," he said, but stopped himself from adding "naked," realizing how that would sound -- especially if it got back to McCoy, who was still watching him for signs of obsession with the Enterprise.
But if I'm not obsessed, Kirk thought, then why am I standing here gawking out the window at every chance, instead of mingling with my crew, getting to know them? Particularly the new ones just coming on board here at the starbase. Enterprise had left port with a minimum standard crew of 431, many of them temporary personnel who had other assignments waiting now that the emergency was past. They had disembarked and just over a hundred new people had boarded here at the starbase, bringing the crew to its full five-hundred-person capacity. Kirk had formally welcomed them all aboard and gone through the proper motions, but he hadn't yet made any serious effort to get to know them, to connect with his crew and begin forging them into a team, a family, like the old crew had been. Why was that?
Kirk mentally shook himself from his reverie. "You're right, David," he said. "Enough rubbernecking. It's time I got back aboard." With Fein following, he left the officers' lounge with a deliberate stride.
The corridor leading to the docking gangway had its own windows, and Kirk was not surprised to see that he was far from the only person looking at the Enterprise. Certainly he could understand the base personnel's curiosity -- for most, this was their first look at the cutting edge of Starfleet technology. But soon he realized that many of them were staring at him, with expressions ranging from curiosity to awe. He fidgeted. "What's wrong?" Fein asked.
Kirk hid behind a wry smirk. "Contrary to popular belief...I'm not that comfortable in the limelight."
"You can't blame them, Jim. That was a pretty spectacular mission you were on. A giant cloud cutting a warp-nine swath through Klingon and Federation space, spitting out a ship the size of Maui that almost wipes out the Earth, but somehow ends up putting on the mother of all fireworks displays instead, apparently in the course of evolving to a higher plane of existence. On top of which it turns out to be the long-lost Voyager 6, all grown up and looking for its mommy. Not only epic stuff, but with great visuals to boot."
"Visuals?"
"Of course. V'Ger's...eruption...has been all over the news feeds for a week and a half now, shot from every conceivable angle. Not to mention the sensor records from your flyby of the thing, which the feeds have been replaying ad nauseam. Pundits are coming out of the woodwork to explain what V'Ger was, what it became, and how it proves their pet theories about cosmology, cybernetics, evolution, God, whatever. I hear some people are making pilgrimages to Earth, declaring it a holy site." Fein frowned. "Haven't you heard any of this?"
"I've been busy! Besides, you know me, I'm more of a reader."
"Anyway, the point is, it's only natural that people would be interested in the ship that was in the middle of it all, and its captain."
"But Starfleet people? We encounter...strange cosmic phenomena all the time."
"But this is a special case. Face it, Jim, you literally saved the Earth. That's going to get a guy a fair amount of publicity, especially if that guy happens to be James T. Kirk."
Kirk sighed. "I'm not James T. Kirk," he said, echoing Fein's dramatic delivery. "I'm just Jim Kirk. I'm no more special than any other captain. It's just...publicity."
"Yeah, I know. The Pelos thing. Hard enough trying to live that down, and now this gets dumped on you. Face it, Jim, from now on you're a cosmic hero, larger than life, like it or not." Fein chuckled. "If it were me, I'd capitalize a little. A promotion, a book deal...But then, that's not the way of the cosmic hero, is it?"
"Keep it up, David, and I'll stop coming here for repairs," Kirk said with more good humor than he felt.
"And miss out on the food? That'll be the day." The commodore slapped Kirk on the back and made his farewells, leaving the captain alone with his thoughts as he strode along the gangway.
Cosmic hero. Where did they get that? But then, maybe Kirk had started to believe it himself. He'd been so sure that only his years of experience could let him save the world. But how much had he really contributed to the V'Ger mission? It had been Spock whose mind-meld with V'Ger ...
