Fractured Unity

Chapter 10

Kirk set his glass down on the small table and listed to the low hiss of the air vent while he reflected on how some moments in his career had been very strange. More than a few of them in the past five years. This one, sharing drinks with his first officer, a Federation ambassador, and an alien captain who had done his level best to kill him under staged primitive conditions the first time they'd met, might not be in the top ten for strangeness, but it was up there, and it was definitely making him very introspective at the moment.

Spock, drinking a flavoured water rather than the brandy Kirk had offered his other guests, lowered his glass and directed his frequently impenetrable gaze at said captain. "There is something I would like to understand, S'Kresh-Captain." Kirk had a flashback to the moments just before battle on the bridge. Vulcan curiosity, never satisfied.

S'Kresh turned his glittering eyes on the Vulcan, hesitating only a moment before responding. "Ask. I may not answer." Kirk wondered what kind of questions the Gorn might be anticipating. There were plenty he'd like to ask he knew wouldn't be answered, but what would scratch Spock's itch to know at the moment?

"Understood." His head tilted a little as he worked his way towards the question without asking it directly. "When we engaged the A'kess vessels, your pilots had no difficulty attacking ships which under any other circumstances would obviously be friendly, allies, in fact, members of the same service. You yourself appeared to have no difficulty in giving the order."

"I have to admit to wondering about that, too, Captain." Ambassador Nguyen's light, almost Vulcan-swept eyebrows tilted together. "It seemed very quick to me in the moment."

The pause before S'Kresh answered stretched far into uncomfortable territory, far longer than any perceived hesitation might have been before the battle, and Kirk didn't remember any. He thought he might be better to change the subject just as the answer finally came. "I had great difficulty, Commander, Ambassador, and I suspect Keliss and her wing-mates did as well. Allies, members of the same service, yes. Possibly even friends or distant kin, which was not and is not known."

Spock pressed the point. "Yet there was no hesitation."

"No." S'Kresh set his own glass down, the brandy two-thirds gone. "No, there was not. Each of the fatalities from that battle weighs heavily on my conscience, but hesitation was not, and cannot be, an option. Not ever."

Head tilting back to normal, Spock raised an eyebrow. "Are you able to explain?"

The eyes turned away, and it seemed to Kirk they fixed on the philodendron in his sleeping area, but when S'Kresh spoke, Kirk realized that wasn't remotely what he was seeing. "Twenty-two years ago, the Gorn Hegemony nearly broke apart. We experienced internal armed conflict for first time in nearly four centuries. More than an insurrection but still less than a true civil war. It remains fresh in many hearts and many veterans of the conflict still serve in both the Fleet and the Marines."

"Including you." Kirk nodded. That, somehow, made a little sense and gave him some significant insights into Gorn psychology plus lots of thinking to do later.

S'Kresh nodded without looking back. "It was my first tour." He breathed deep and let a long rush of air out through dilated nostrils. "Junior Weapons Officer on the Carrier Steadfast. Over the months of conflict, I participated in half a dozen engagements and two boarding actions. It was a... difficult time."

Finally setting his glass down on the small table, Spock allowed the frown to crease his brow, a sign he was struggling with the Vulcan form of embarrassment. "I will ask your pardon then, Captain. I did not mean to disturb the past."

"So I accept."

The Ambassador couldn't let things go so easily. "But you seem so unified." Nguyen shook her head several times. "We—I never suspected."