When Kirk had taken formal command of the Belle Reve, the first thing he had done was reconfigure the bridge. Or, to be accurate, he had had Scotty reconfigure it.
As part of the Calypso, the ship’s bridge had been a tightly constrained control room, with the captain’s office on the aft bulkhead, separated from the crew by a transparent wall. Information flowed in only one direction, from a particular crew station to the captain. Somewhere, sometime, for some other captain, that command structure had been acceptable for the merchant fleet or a private yacht. But Kirk believed in Starfleet’s original ideal of sharing critical information among all senior personnel. So now his bridge was almost circular-a drawn-out ellipse, at least-with the captain’s chair elevated just back of the center point. There, Kirk was properly surrounded by duty stations, with all other bridge personnel able to see all displays at all times.
About the only key component left over from the old design was the three-panel main viewscreen. On it now were three different magnifications of Vulcan terrain as the Belle Reve orbited that world. Kirk had come to appreciate having three different sets of critical information available to him, and had asked Scotty to retain that system as it was.
Everything else on the bridge, though, had changed. Most of it had been custom-built by a private shipyard under confidential contract to Starfleet. The result was that all of the ship’s brand-new, state-of-the-art, cutting- edge equipment was encased in artistically dented, distressed, and discolored console housings. Kirk smiled, remembering how much Joseph, his child, had been fascinated by that last stage of Scott’s installation, when a team of specialists had come aboard with their paints and tools to be sure the Belle Reve looked as old and unthreatening on the inside as she did on the outside.
“I see you’ve added your own special touches,” Janeway said as she stepped from the ladder alcove onto the bridge. She hadn’t been aboard the Belle Reve since the refit.
“You signed off on all of them,” Kirk reminded her. Somehow, almost everything Janeway said to him felt as if it was the prelude to an argument.
But the admiral didn’t seem concerned about the extent of the modifications. Nor did she bring up its cost, which was considerable. Even in an era without money, Starfleet’s time and resources were measured and apportioned according to need, and there was never enough of either to accomplish everything required. She was more interested in the duty stations. “You actually have a crew of eight?” That was the number of chairs ringing the new bridge.
“The ship’s fully automated for standard operations,” Kirk said.
“So there’re only the four of you on board right now?”
Kirk nodded. Most of the time, he was happy to take on passengers, especially researchers needing transportation from one system to another for their work. He enjoyed the company of knowledgeable people, especially those in fields he didn’t know about or had never even known existed. The more he learned, the more he realized how little he knew, and how much he wanted to know it all. The researchers’ presence was also a valuable experience for Joseph, opening the child’s eyes to all the possibilities that life held for him.
“Are you going to call them?” Janeway asked.
Kirk complied with her indirect request. Within minutes, ship’s engineer Montgomery Scott, ship’s physician Leonard McCoy, and Kirk’s child, Joseph, were assembled by the tactical console with Janeway and Kirk.
McCoy sat down heavily in the console operator’s chair. He claimed his leg implants were troubling him. Though Kirk had never really known a time when McCoy wasn’t complaining about something, given that his friend was one hundred and fifty-six years old, Kirk was inclined to believe him.
Kirk was also beginning to suspect that Starfleet Medical researchers were correct when they suggested that something McCoy had experienced during his early service in Starfleet might have had a bearing on his near- record age. In all the worlds of the Federation, there were only ten other humans known to be biologically older. Medical’s search for this fact hadn’t included Kirk or Scott, since they had arrived in this age through other than natural means.
Personally, Kirk suspected that McCoy’s encounter with the teaching device of Sigma Draconis VI could have triggered his longevity. Certainly McCoy had appeared rejuvenated after that event. Though the immediately apparent intellectual aftereffects had rapidly diminished, their final stages had subtly lingered for months afterward. Perhaps his body had been affected as well as his mind.
Scott, in contrast to McCoy, stood by the console, uncharacteristically motionless. More usually, he was to be found immersed in at least twenty tasks at once. Though not a week went by that the veteran engineer didn’t talk about finally following through on his plans to retire, there was always something else on the Belle Reve that needed his expertise, another test that he felt he should run.
Privately, Kirk doubted that his old friend would ever retire. For most Starfleet personnel he’d known through the years, retirement was something other people did. Montgomery Scott, he believed, would prove no exception. As long as starships flew, Scotty would be flying with them.
The wild card in Kirk’s skeleton crew was his own flesh and blood, his young son, Joseph. “Wild” because Joseph was also the son of his beloved Teilani, who within her had combined the heritage of humans, Romulans, and Klingons. With an all-too-human father, Joseph truly was more than the sum of his parts.
Further complicating his relationship with his child, Kirk couldn’t be sure that Joseph was his son. According to McCoy’s genetic analysis, it was equally likely that Joseph might be his daughter. Joseph’s uniquely derived physiology was such that when he matured, his body might develop in either form, or neither. But for now, at a chronological age of almost six and a physiological age almost twice that, Kirk’s child was precocious, growing alarmingly fast, and a constant source of amazement to his father.
Joseph was also one of the most striking-looking beings Kirk had ever seen, parental pride notwithstanding.
When Joseph had stepped onto the bridge, even Janeway’s first reaction to his appearance was of unconcealed surprise, and Kirk guessed that the admiral had seen almost as many different aliens in her career as he had.
Joseph today was slightly taller than a meter and a half. The details of his musculature, which varied slightly from standard human or Romulan patterns, could not be easily discerned through clothing.
Joseph’s face, however, was another matter. The startling red skin of his early years had faded to a more natural-for humans-brown. He remained hairless, though his Klingon head ridges had grown slightly more pronounced, his Romulan ears more pointed, and his Trill-like dappling darker.
But rather than amounting to a hodgepodge mixture of disparate parts that didn’t appear to fit together, the overall effect was somehow beautiful and right. Kirk often had the impression that the way his child appeared was the way all humanoids were supposed to look. He sometimes wondered if somehow over the aeons, Joseph’s pattern had been fractured among many worlds, to create the mutually distinct appearances of different species. Certainly the genetic information McCoy had been given by Beverly Crusher, regarding Doctor Richard Galen’s postulated “progenitor” race, bore many resemblances to Joseph’s genetic profile.
But Kirk had not encouraged McCoy’s efforts to look into that inexplicable connection too closely. Sometimes, he knew, it was best simply to take things at face value. And to himself, if to no one else, he was wise enough to admit that he was concerned about what McCoy might discover. For now, Joseph was simply his mother’s and his father’s child. Kirk was not in favor of any research or findings that might change that.
Fortunately or unfortunately, other than his compelling appearance, Joseph was no different from any other human child entering his teenage years.
“Hey, Dad” were Joseph’s first words of greeting as he arrived on the bridge.
Kirk gave his son a gentle reminder of etiquette. “You remember Admiral Janeway.”
Joseph looked at the admiral for a few moments, as if comparing her image with a vast store of identification pictures in some distant databank, then brightened and held out his long-fingered hand. “Sure. When we went to Remus. Hi, Admiral.”
Janeway shook Joseph’s hand and, despite years of Starfleet’s best instruction in protocol, could only say, “Joseph, you’ve grown.”
“Not surprising, considering he can pack away food like a targ,” McCoy said.
Joseph rolled his eyes. “Hey, Uncle Bones, Uncle Scotty.”
McCoy patted Joseph on his arm, Scott nodded.
Joseph gave his father a questioning look. “Is this a staff meeting?”
“The admiral has something to tell us about Spock,” Kirk said. “I thought we should all hear it.” Even absent,
