Background Notes: T'Rela is Spock's wife, T'Sileh is their youngest daughter.

The back story on those two is still being written…sorry. Chronologically,

the framing story takes place about a year before Generations (which I

would like to pretend never happened, but…)

Summary: Kirk and Pike converse over drinks, on the eve of the latter's

promotion off the Enterprise.

Rating: G, TOS, K&S 1/3

Disclaimer: Paramount/Viacom owns 'em, I just took 'em out for a walk.

This story owes a tremendous debt to Vonda McIntyre's "Enterprise:

The First Adventure", with my grateful thanks. Thanks also to my

faithful beta readers, Islaofhope and PernFancy. Without them

and PernFancy's astonishing supply of unedited TOS episodes,

this story would have been a far different work. But all errors are mine.

All original content, as well as Spock's assorted relatives (T'Rela and T'Sileh,)

are © 1999 Roisin Fraser. Okay to post on ASC or archive. Please do not post or distribute elsewhere without my consent. Constructive comments welcome, no flaming please. Email to [email protected]

It's hot here. I thought I could forget the heat after so many years, but I was wrong.

I am staying with Spock and his family for a time. T'Rela is on Migration with the Akaren, and it's just us and his youngest daughter in the house. It's strange, but hot Vulcan has become the refuge that Earth no longer is. Earth is endless Starfleet requests for appearances, reporters, and a dizzying lack of privacy. I've spend nearly all my life, the part that matters, anyway, in Starfleet. I have given them enough of my time. Somebody else can go save the universe, I just want to be left alone.

That probably sounds bitter. Being in Starfleet was once of the best experiences I ever had. Being Starfleet's resident hero…that's something I can do without. If it's not Nogura calling to request a personal appearance, it's some news service wanting an interview. So when I finally had enough, I came here.

Starfleet will not approach me on Vulcan; relations between Vulcan and Starfleet have not been good since Starfleet refused me permission to return Spock's katra. If it's one thing Vulcans can't stand, it's not being taken seriously. And Morrow and Starfleet, in their infinite wisdom, did exactly that. I don't know quite what the Vulcans have done, but I haven't been called once since I came here. Maybe it's just the old Earth saying: "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

So here I am, looking out over Amanda's garden. Two of Spock's children have chosen Akaren and are with their mother, and I watch the youngest as she tends the roses. It is this child that reminds me of all I was, all those long years ago.

T'Sileh is fearless, young enough to believe the universe can still be ordered around, and strong enough to wrestle it into submission if it doesn't agree. She has frequently been a trial to her mother and father, but I understand. Her eyes, the deep black of her father, are never really fixed on any planetary thing, but only on the stars. Vulcan, it is clear, will never truly contain her.

Spock has said that T'Sileh will follow him into Starfleet. I can well believe it; she has that thirst for knowledge and the enduring restlessness that I saw in Spock as a young man. But the Vulcan reserve is missing in her. T'Sileh chooses her own path, and Spock, unlike his father before him, is content to let her do so.

I wonder now how I could ever have thought Spock reserved. Certainly he seemed that way when I beamed aboard the Enterprise for the first time, a cool Vulcan statue crafted out of reserve and logic, but then, I was young and ignorant of Vulcans. And maybe just a little bit, I was threatened by him, by the expressionless mask that gave me no clue what he was thinking.

What I didn't know then, and didn't know for a good many years, was that Spock was wrestling with a unique experience: the loss of Chris Pike as a mentor and as a friend. They had served together for thirteen years, almost as long as Spock and I served together. Pike had taken Spock from an uncertain ensign to the self-assured officer he was when I took command. Their relationship had deepened into a sort of tentative friendship, one that might have gone deeper had it not been for the circumstances of Chris Pike's promotion.

I never told him, or anyone, what happened between Chris Pike and I the night I beamed aboard. I couldn’t, for by Starfleet tradition, the captains' drink sessions are both confidential and off the record. But Chris Pike is long dead, and so, I think I can finally tell the story now. So for T'Sileh and all the ones like her that will follow, I begin.

***

I hadn't expected the message. Although it was tradition for the new captain of a ship and his predecessor to have drinks, I had not expected Chris Pike to continue the tradition. His opposition to his promotion was well known, and I knew through the rumor mill that he regarded me as an interloper, a child in command of a starship

I knew of Pike, of course. His explorations aboard the Enterprise were well-known, but no one really knew the man himself. He had the reputation of being a tough, but fair, captain. But the man himself was a mystery.

I didn't really know what to expect when I beamed aboard. The change of command ceremony was tomorrow, and I had never been aboard except in an official capacity. To my surprise, a Vulcan face greeted me when the transporter beam released me.

I knew it was Pike's science officer, the only Vulcan in Starfleet. I couldn't remember his name. It seems irresponsible to me now, to say nothing of rude, but I hadn't bothered to learn the names of many of Pike's officers. I thought that many of them would be leaving, so what was the point?

As I looked at the Vulcan, he seemed young, too young to have that position, but when he spoke I realized that he was not, after all, that young. There was a quality in his voice that spoke of the disdain an adult feels for a precocious child. I disliked it immediately. "Captain Kirk, Captain Pike awaits." It was said with no emotion, of course, but I knew, or thought I knew, what he thought of me. He was young for a Vulcan, but for a Vulcan, I was barely an adult.

I asked Spock once, some years later, what he really had been thinking when he saw me that first time. His mouth twitched in amusement. "That you were amazingly short for a captain." I launched a pillow at him, and that was the end of the conversation.

But I digress. I hadn't gotten to be captain of a starship by letting things like the Vulcan's disdain bother me. The Vulcan would either adjust, or he would be transferred. I followed him down the corridors, noting how they had been widened since the refit. She was beautiful, this ship of mine, and I loved her then like I have loved no other ship. The Lydia Sutherland was just a hunk of bolts and metal. The Enterprise was something completely different.

Abruptly, the Vulcan stopped outside Pike's quarters. Before I could say anything, he turned and left. I buzzed, and the door opened.

The room was covered in boxes; not surprising since Pike was going to be promoted to Starbase 13 tomorrow night. Pike stepped forward, and before the mask closed off his features, I saw his anguish. He had not wanted to be promoted, but had spent too much time angering the wrong people. As punishment for his independence, Captain Pike would become Commodore Pike. Captain of a starship becomes captain of a desk.

I swore right then and there that I would never allow myself to be transferred off this ship. It never occurred to me to wonder if Pike had promised the same thing when Robert April left. Lots of things didn't occur to me then; I was young.

Chris Pike stepped towards me and handed me a glass. Pike was going to uphold the tradition then; the decanter he held was full of an iridescent liquid I knew had to be Vulcan brandy. I'd heard of the stuff, an alcoholic beverage made by temperate Vulcans, it was at least as powerful as Romulan Ale. And just as hard on the throat. "Sit," he said, "there should be a box around here for that." I could see the spaces on the floor where the furniture had been removed. How empty the place looked.

There was a box, stacked near the mesh screen, and as I sipped my drink I thought of all the questions I wanted to ask, that I could ask tonight because it was the Captains' Drinks. It was an informal briefing, really, the chance for the exiting captain to let his successor know about the crew he would be commanding, the ship, or any other matter that would come up. By long-standing tradition, it was both confidential and off the record. I'd always thought it one of the more useful Starfleet traditions.

He watched me, and I wondered what he saw. A child? A captain? I didn't know. "You're young, " he finally said.

I nodded, of course. What could I do, deny it? I was barely thirty, and in command of a starship, the best ship in the Fleet. Even to my own ears it was strange. Nogura had pushed the promotion through, but his reasons remained his own. I knew I could handle the job, but how he'd gotten the promotion pushed through ahead of other, more experienced captains remained a mystery to me.

Pike set his glass on a box. The liquid shifted inside it as he said, "I don't mean to be rude, but do you know what you have here, Captain? The best ship in the fleet. The best crew, bar none. A crew that'll follow you to hell and back." I didn't have to hear the second part of the statement: if you earn their trust. It was clear enough from Pike's expression what he meant.

This was what I'd heard, that Pike's crew was extremely loyal to him. It worried some powerful officers in Starfleet, especially since Garth's mutiny. The brass at Starfleet called it a "cult of personality" and wondered how to stop it. For myself I didn't think it could be done, or should. If the captain wasn't worthy of a crew's loyalty, then he shouldn't be there.

Pike's slate blue eyes regard me steadily. I meet his gaze with my own. "You'll be wanting to know about the crew, then," he says, as though the last outburst had not happened. "My first officer, Number One, has accepted the command of the Cheyenne, which leaves that position vacant. Philip Boyce, the doctor, is retiring this Friday."

I notice that a number of the senior officers are either retiring or being promoted off the Enterprise. Is it part of Starfleet's efforts to break up Pike's too-loyal crew? I know that Number One is long overdue for a command of her own, and Philip Boyce is, by his own admission, overdue for retirement. But still, there are a number of gaps to be filled. And the Cheyenne, though it is at least a ship, is not the sort of command an officer of Number One's calibre should have been given. She was, in fact, one of the officers I beat out for command of the Enterprise. I didn't question the decision; I was not yet at the point where second-guessing Starfleet Command was second nature. But I was learning.

At the same time, I notice the name that hasn't come up: the name of the Vulcan science officer. "Is your science officer staying?" I ask. I was beginning to wonder if the mass of transfers had anything to do with me. Not that I would have admitted it to Pike, of course.

Chris Pike smiles slightly. "Spock? He's staying." Pike takes a swallow of his drink. "Only because I didn't tell him about the promotion in time for him to request a transfer."

"I'm not sure I understand," I say, which is true enough. It seems slightly mean for Pike to inform all of his bridge officers but one. Mean, and inconsistent with what I know of Pike's character.

Pike sets his glass down. "Spock's my friend. Do you know what that means for a Vulcan?" I don't know what I was expecting him to say, but it wasn't that. The standard Starfleet line of "So-and-so's an excellent officer, and I expect you to take good care of him" would have been more in keeping with Pike's reputation. But then, this was the Captains' Drinks, and here, Pike wasn't limited by Starfleet conventions.

Hell, I barely know what friendship means for humans. Gary and I have been friends since the Academy, but I know now how little I knew about the nature of true friendship. Gary was my friend, but as it would take me years to realize, he was also a cruel and vindictive personality. "It means," Pike says slowly, "that he'd kill to protect me or this ship, that he would sacrifice his own career to make a point. It means he would do any or all of these things without thinking of what he needs. And what he doesn't need is to follow his captain into exile." The last words are said with a tinge of bitterness, and I know the Starfleet rumor mill was correct.

Pike gives me another of those hard stares, but I can tell what made this man's crew follow him to hell and back. Chris Pike, the "ice man" of captains, is just as loyal to his crew as they are to him. It's an example to emulate, and I wonder if this is the real purpose of Captains' Drinks, to teach, to inspire, to pass on the real lessons of command, the type that aren't learned in the simulator.

Just how sacred this trust is to Pike becomes more apparent as he continues. "I'm not asking you to look after this ship as I would. You will, I can see that in your eyes. But I can't watch out for her crew anymore, and I do need you to do that." He blinks rapidly, and looks away. I pretend to study the color shift in my drink.

"At some point, Spock will come to you, in his Vulcan way, to be your friend. He'll say it's logical or that it's his duty, but he'll make your battle to keep the crew safe easier. Spock will fight for them as he fights for you, but he's not an easy man to understand." I smile then, slightly. Another similarity between Pike and his Vulcan science officer. "He'll push you away in the name of Vulcan propriety, but if you can get past that, you'll never lack for a truer friend."

I am startled by what he's said. Pike, open and unguarded, is something I hadn't expected. It didn't occur to me until years later that Pike told me these things because I was the only one he could tell. Rank hath its privileges, and one of them is the privilege of isolation. As commodore, he was entering into a world which was essentially foreign. The night of Captains' Drinks was his last chance to be open.

I know now what I didn't know then, the sadness behind Pike's words. Knowing that Pike, as a career officer, could not resign, Starfleet had "promoted" or retired the most loyal of his command crew. Fearing another recurrence of Garth's mutinty, they had scattered the command crew. Spock was left behind, but Pike knew the rules of the game even as he railed against them. Had he tried to maintain any but the most superficial contact with Spock, there would have been consequences. And Pike, the commodore, was much more accessible than Pike, the starship captain. Chris Pike could not protect Spock any longer, so he asked me, the adolescent in the captain's seat, to do what he couldn't.

I know all this, because they tried it after the second five-year mission, when it became all too obvious that my crew's loyalty was to me and the Enterprise first. Starfleet and its internal bickering came a distant second. Spock, by then only too aware of Starfleet's unofficial policies, had kept the crew together by means I can now only guess at. Spock was responsible for getting the Enterprise reassigned as a training ship when she would have been decommissioned, responsible also for getting Uhura, Chekov, Scotty and Sulu reassigned to the bridge.

Such a man is Spock. My friend.

   ***

How the evening of Captains' Drinks ended, I do not remember. With the passage of years, it has become rather dim. Chris Pike was, needless to say, never again as open as he was that night. At the change of command ceremony, he was not the same man. The smile, the professional captain's smile, was ever at the ready, but something within the man died with the promotion.

I never saw him, whole and intact, again. Some years later, Chris Pike was critically injured trying to save crewmen from a coolant leak. Remembering the loyalty Pike had toward his Vulcan friend, I should not have been surprised that Spock risked the death penalty to take his former captain to Talos, where there was some chance at healing. And I have had the benefit myself of that loyalty, over the years.

I have had time to consider the effects of one man's words. By opening my eyes to the possibility that Spock could be my friend, Pike had at least insured my friend's very survival. We have saved each other's lives over the years; he has followed me to hell and back several times, and I have followed him to death's door to see him resurrected. Pike ensured my own survival, and that of the Enterprise as well, for there were numerous times Spock risked himself on my behalf.

I owe much to Chris Pike that I can never repay. The friendship of a man who has been the other half of my soul for over twenty-five years, who even now gives me a place to heal. Chris, if you're listening, thank you.

This is the legacy I leave to T'Sileh and all those who may follow her: ships die, stars change, but friendship alone endures.

***

The desert cools. I close the journal, thinking that I shall have to give this to T'Sileh before she is too old to appreciate what it says. She is fourteen now; in a few short years, she will leave for the Academy, on her own path as her father and mother intended.

Spock enters the room, so still he seems carved from the night. It may be a trick of starlight, but I see in his shadow the Vulcan statue I saw on the meeting of Captains' Drinks. I wonder if he sees me as I was then, barely out of childhood, barely into adulthood?

The link we have been fortunate to share because we are friends jumps into life with his amusement. *You forget, Jim, on Vulcan, you are still barely an adult. *

I laugh then, a laugh that's much easier than it might have been even a few days ago. Spock was right, when he told me after Edith's death that the desert can heal. I have been healed here, reminded of what is still so important. Someday, I know I can go back to Earth and face Starfleet's demands and the lack of privacy. I can do all of these things, because I have Spock as my friend.

THE END.