Postmortem
(Kirk/Spock slash)


1.

Two Months Earlier


Kirk had called Spock aside only half an hour before they were due to beam down to Malker on what was known in informal terms on the ship as a ‘second contact’. Malker, a Class M planet orbiting a yellow star similar to Sol, did at least possess space travel, and had already held communication with a number of local star systems. They had progressed beyond local government, and the planet was under one rule. They accepted the existence of aliens, and were growing used to peoples of different species visiting their planet. They had achieved Warp One, invented replicators and force fields, and were beginning experiments with transporter technology. The planet had never, however, had contact with the Federation. The delicate business of introducing the Malkerians to the vast network of planets that made up the Federation had been left to Starfleet’s flagship, the starship Enterprise.

Spock was refamiliarising himself with those facts when Kirk mounted the upper level of the bridge and came to stand next to him at his station. He straightened from his viewer and raised an enquiring eyebrow, waiting for his captain to speak.

‘Spock, before we beam down, I’d like to have a word with you,’ Kirk began. ‘In five minutes, in your quarters?’

Spock looked momentarily startled, perhaps as much at the fact that Kirk had made a request rather than an order as at the simple fact that Jim felt it necessary to take time out of the beam-down preparations for a private discussion.

‘Of course, Captain,’ he nodded. ‘I will see you there at – eleven thirty seven.’

Jim smiled, the expression momentarily effacing the look of mild concern that had been on his face.

‘Eleven thirty seven,’ he repeated in a tone of muted amusement, then nodded briefly, and returned to the command chair to complete his final checks before handing over the bridge to Mr Scott.

******

It was, in fact, eleven forty before Kirk pressed the buzzer at Spock’s cabin door. Spock raised his eyes from the computer screen and called, ‘Come.’ He waited in silence as Kirk entered the room, curious as to what it was the captain required of him. He would ordinarily have spent this time in absorbing as much information as possible about the culture they were about to beam into, just as Kirk would have, and it was abnormal to say the least for Kirk to cut into that time with personal concerns.

‘Captain?’ he prompted after a moment of silence.

Kirk came across the room and sat down in the chair opposite his first officer, regarding him steadily, but still saying nothing.

‘Captain, you wished to speak with me,’ Spock reminded him. ‘We do not have a great deal of time before we are scheduled to beam down.’

‘No, I know,’ Kirk said finally. ‘Spock – ’ He inhaled deeply, then began again, ‘Spock, call me illogical, call me an emotional, superstitious human – but I have a bad feeling about this mission.’

Spock raised an eyebrow. ‘Such ‘feelings’ often are the result of superstition, or of certain unresolved emotions,’ he pointed out. ‘And they are certainly illogical.’

Kirk smiled wryly. ‘That may be so,’ he nodded, ‘but this feeling does at least have some basis in fact. Wouldn’t you agree that a successful mission is often dependent on every member of the team being in top condition – being perfectly focussed on the task at hand?’

Spock inclined his head in a brief nod. ‘Invariably.’

‘And if a member of that team doesn’t seem to be at his best?’ Kirk continued.

‘If you have reason to suspect that Dr McCoy – ’ Spock began, but his captain shook his head.

‘Not Dr McCoy. *You*, Spock. You’ve seemed introverted and distracted for days,’ he said gently. ‘I’m worried about you. There isn’t trouble with your family, is there? Your parents?’

Spock shook his head mutely, then looked up, managing a lightness in his eyes that was approaching the Vulcan version of a smile. ‘No, Captain,’ he said steadily. ‘There is nothing of that kind troubling me.’

‘Then there *is* something troubling you?’ Kirk asked. He had learnt to read between the lines with the Vulcan long ago. ‘Spock, it’s too early for – well, for pon farr, isn’t it?’

Spock’s face twitched as if the captain had hit a nerve, then said, ‘It is, almost precisely, three point five years since my last pon farr.’

Kirk ran a finger pensively along the edge of the desk, realising that that amount of time, exactly halfway through the average Vulcan’s mating cycle, was far *too* precise to be a coincidence.

‘Then you’ve got three and a half years to – find a mate,’ he speculated.

Spock’s head dropped again. ‘If my cycle, affected by human genetics as it is, is the same as the rest of my species. If it is not affected by my living away from the circadian rhythms of Vulcan. If it is not altered by being removed from the influence of millions of other Vulcan bodies. If the severing of my bond with T’Pring does not affect the call.’

Kirk smiled gently, reaching out to touch the Vulcan’s slim blue-clad shoulder. ‘In short, Spock, you’re worrying if you’re normal. We all worry about that, you know.’

Spock looked up, briefly meeting the captain’s gaze. For a moment there seemed to be unspoken books in his eyes, but then he dropped his head again.

‘I, at least, am absolutely certain that I am not normal,’ he said, with a very slight edge of irony in his voice.

Again Kirk got the sense that there were deeper reams of words that he wanted to utter, but could not. He tightened his hand on Spock’s shoulder, relieved at least that the Vulcan was not in any immediate trouble, despite the fact that there were obviously more layers to his tension than he could speak of in the short time available.

‘Spock, we’ve got about two minutes before we need to be in the transporter room,’ he said carefully. ‘But when this mission’s over, we can talk about this.’

Spock nodded. He seemed relieved that the discussion was over for now, and Kirk wondered if he would make excuses to avoid opening it up again after they had finished on Malker. Jim did intend to continue to discuss it, however. Spock was far too important an officer to lose him to perverse Vulcan biology, whether that biology asserted itself in three months, or three years or thirty years from now.

There was an odd part of him that felt a curious jealousy at the idea of Spock becoming joined to another anonymous Vulcan woman. Perhaps it was because they shared so much of their lives with each other as a consequence of their positions on the ship, or just at the thought of a woman inserting herself into a friendship that was deeper than any Kirk had ever experienced with another man. But still, he would go as far as starships would take him to ensure that when the time came, Spock had a partner who could ease him through it without the pain and anguish that his first pon farr had caused.

******

Captain Kirk beamed down to Malker with his first officer at his right, and Chief Medical Officer McCoy at his left, precisely on schedule. Spock acted characteristically as if the conversation in his quarters had never happened, and if McCoy noticed any lingering tension in the air he certainly did not mention it.

They were met on beamdown by a party of Malkerian officials, led to a chamber in a large municipal building, and sat for over two hours, talking through the details of the Federation, and how a connection with it would benefit Malker. Spock showed no sign of boredom at any point, but Kirk found it almost impossible to sit patiently through the protracted conversations with various officials. He had not signed up to Starfleet to act the part of a diplomat.

After two hours they were cordially invited to leave the building and spend some time, without a chaperone, exploring the city streets and introducing themselves to Malkerian life. Kirk silently blessed whichever anonymous person it was who had inserted this small spell of freedom into the schedule. Later they were due to return to the building for an official dinner with representatives of the local monarch, who, although answerable to the planetwide government, was the most senior official in this province. The meal promised to be just as formal and stuffy as the meetings had been, and Kirk was determined to make the most of these few hours outside, exploring new surroundings and a new culture.

They stood momentarily on the steps of the building, regarding the vista before them. The city was large and sprawling, but this area at least was spacious, with courtyards and formally planted borders separating the cluster of official buildings. The place seemed to be almost obsessively neat, tidy and quiet, with no hint of any civilian disorder to ruffle the peaceful surroundings.

‘Well, gentlemen,’ Kirk said, looking to the left and right. ‘Any ideas?’

‘I was told of a museum of science and technology to the north of our location,’ Spock suggested. ‘It was warmly recommended by one of the officials as worthy of perusal.’

‘If you think I’m gonna spend four hours staring at early examples of electric light bulbs and computers, you must be crazy,’ McCoy said vehemently. ‘Jim, apparently there’s a certain bar further on down this street that’s got a reputation as one of the city’s best. I know we can’t exactly partake, but it’d give us a more *relevant* look at these people’s culture,’ he said, looking pointedly at Spock. ‘Besides, I hear the woman there are – ’

‘I’m sure the woman there are…’ Kirk smiled, patting the doctor’s arm. ‘All right, Bones – you’ve sold me. I’m sorry, Spock, but I think on this occasion the habits of the living outweigh the relics of the dead and gone.’

Spock was silent for a moment, then nodded his head once. ‘I quite understand, Captain,’ he told him. He took his communicator from his hip, checking briefly that it was in good working order. ‘I will call you to rendezvous when I am finished,’ he said. ‘Enjoy your – cultural outing, Doctor,’ he said crisply, before turning and stalking away down a side street in the direction of the museum.

‘Think we offended him, Jim?’ McCoy asked, leaning close to Kirk’s ear as the blue clad back disappeared around a corner. Even at this distance, a Vulcan’s hearing was startlingly acute.

‘Oh, I don’t think so, Bones,’ Kirk smiled. ‘Spock’s well used to the differences between Vulcans and humans by now. He’s just giving as good as he got.’

‘What’s he given me, exactly?’ McCoy asked dubiously.

‘A sense of guilt,’ Kirk replied with a grin. ‘Come on, Bones. Let’s go find this bar.’

******

Spock had been found not long after kneeling over the savagely beaten body of a woman, with blood on his hands and no explanation as to how she had come to die. The first Kirk had known of the incident was when he was approached in the bar he and McCoy had found by two grave Malkerian officials. He was taken aside, and told in muted terms of what had happened, and the thudding music and chatter in the background seemed to fade into silence at their words. By that time Spock was securely locked away in the custody of the local police, with no right to receive either visitors or communication with his friends.

‘Goddammit, Jim, *you* know he couldn’t have done it, *I* know he couldn’t’ve done it,’ McCoy raged helplessly on their return to the ship.

‘Yes, of course I know that,’ Kirk said snappishly as they stepped down from the transporter.

‘Then why aren’t we down there helping him?’ McCoy pushed, his voice approaching a growl.

‘Bones, in case you didn’t notice, we were forcibly ejected from the planet,’ Kirk said tersely, moving swiftly over to the transporter console. He pressed the button on the intercom as if it had done him a personal wrong, ignoring the startled transporter officer. ‘Bridge. Uhura, get me the nearest Federation consul,’ he snapped. ‘I’ll be up there in two minutes to take the call.’

He flicked the intercom off without waiting for an answer, and turned back to McCoy.

‘If we’d stayed there arguing we’d be in police cells now too,’ he continued. ‘They don’t want any representatives of Starfleet on their soil right now. We had no choice but to beam up.’

‘Jim, have you looked over their record on crime and punishment? Are you aware that they still support the death penalty down there?’ McCoy asked him with deadly seriousness. ‘Hell, they execute people for crimes as petty as theft. For a murder like that – ’

‘Which is why I am going to do nothing – *nothing* – to prejudice Spock’s case,’ Kirk nodded, sweeping through the door and into the corridor. ‘Sometimes barging in like a rabid Klingon isn’t the best method, Bones. I have absolutely no intention of letting this even get as far as a trial, let alone a sentence – but we have to at least try to do it by the book.’

‘By the book,’ McCoy muttered. ‘If you want my advice – ’

‘Right at this moment, Doctor, I don’t,’ Kirk said harshly. ‘I’m going to the bridge to *try* to sort out this mess through diplomatic channels. You’d do best by taking the scant evidence we have to the sick bay and doing what you can there.’

‘Jim, we have no evidence,’ McCoy protested.

‘You have Spock’s last psychological report, don’t you? You have an idea of how the crime was committed, and what type of person might do that? Just – do what you can. Do *anything*, as long as that doesn’t include beaming back down to Malker and jeopardising Spock’s chances of anything approaching a fair hearing by insulting the authorities and getting yourself arrested too!’

******

Forty-eight hours later, Kirk was forced to acknowledge that, with the might of phasers, photon torpedoes and four hundred and thirty willing crew members behind him, there was very little that he could do. Starfleet diplomatic services, while sympathetic, were reluctant to put the entire nascent relationship with Malker in jeopardy for the sake of one person, even if that one person was a valued Starfleet officer. Malker had rich veins of both dilithium and pergium beneath its surface, and the presence of those substances not only promised benefit to the Federation if the planet came under its influence, but conversely would promise harm to both Malker and the Federation if it fell into Klingon or Romulan hands.

He had a few facts in his grasp, mostly gained through the persuasive skills of Lieutenant Uhura. As far as he could tell, passers-by had been alerted to the murder by the brief noise of screaming in a rarely frequented alley. The first person on the scene had reported seeing a woman, face down, obviously dead, and the pointed-eared alien kneeling beside her, his hands on her arms, in the process of turning her over. The witness speculated motives of sexual assault rather than theft – the woman seemed to have no bag or jewellery, and the alien seemed to be attempting to rip her top apart.

‘To assess her injuries, I’m guessing,’ McCoy muttered at that point in the report. ‘What’s the first thing Spock would do on seeing an injured person? First aid procedures, assessing the damage…’

‘It’s what any of us would’ve done,’ Kirk replied, waving a hand dismissively at the statement. It went without saying that neither of them believed in Spock’s guilt.

On being challenged, the report continued, the alien had turned around to the witness and asked, plainly and blatantly, if the police had been called. When the witness had said something about summoning medical help, the alien had said, impassively, that since the woman was quite dead there was little need for medical aid.

The facts, or so called facts, in the report seemed to blur into a condemnatory whole in front of Kirk’s eyes. Spock’s rational, logical approach to questioning was taken as the cold-hearted stance of a psychotic murderer. The blood on him, his DNA scattered about the scene, and his fingerprints on the murder weapon, were taken as evidence of his guilt. His statement that he had lost consciousness briefly and inexplicably was taken as a blatant lie, since he had no marks on him and no drugs in his system.

‘They’ve got no idea of Vulcan psychology,’ McCoy sighed, his eyes slipping over fragments of sentences.

Cold-blooded … unnaturally calm … complete lack of empathy.

The report described a Vulcan as seen through completely uneducated eyes. On first view Spock would seem aspergic, autistic even. It did not take long to see beneath the logical, unemotional surface of Spock’s personality, but his accusers were more concerned with explaining why he may have committed the crime than why he may be innocent.

‘I’d just beam him up and warp out of here if I had any idea where they were holding him,’ Kirk muttered, his mind slipping away from the report that seemed to give him very little hope.

Despite what he had said to McCoy two days ago, direct action was his preferred method. If he could he would have beamed down with a phaser in each hand and fought his way to Spock like a hero from an old fashion movie. Lawyers and diplomats could go to hell. They had been given their chance, and failed. He couldn’t stand the thought of Spock sitting helpless in a Malkerian cell, completely at the mercy of an alien system of justice.

‘Jim, what were you saying to me about rabid Klingons?’ McCoy asked pointedly. ‘You can’t just – ’

‘Oh, I can’t anyway,’ Kirk said tiredly.

He pushed his cup away restlessly, then pulled it back and took a deep mouthful of the strong coffee. He had drunk far too much coffee in the last few days – but it was better than drinking Saurian brandy, which would have been his first choice if he hadn’t had to keep his mind clear.

‘We’ve got no idea where they’re keeping him,’ he continued, pulling up a map of the main continent of Malker onto his computer screen, gazing at it uselessly, then shutting the image down again. ‘No one’ll tell me a damn thing, and we can’t find him on scans – at least not on scans that they won’t pick up. They might not have invented beaming shields yet, but I bet they’ve learnt how to disguise life-signs from sensors.’

‘If Starfleet got hold of him they’d probably send him right back there anyway,’ McCoy said darkly. ‘What price a human life in the face of a good chunk of dilithium?’

‘Human life,’ Kirk repeated, with a faint laugh. ‘Spock would be insulted, Bones.’

‘He shouldn’t be,’ McCoy muttered, turning his attention back to the closely printed words in the report. ‘I just paid him a compliment.’

******

Four weeks later, the swiftness of Malkerian justice had run its course. No plea or entreaty from either Kirk himself or ranks of Federation diplomats had swayed their decision. The Malkerians, it seemed, were fiercely proud of their ability to dispense absolute justice, swiftly, neatly, and irrevocably.

The verdict was guilty, and the sentence was death. The condemned had a month in which to consider both his past and his future, and any petitions against the sentence had to be lodged within that month, by registered Malkerian lawyers.

Kirk managed, at least, to gain permission from Starfleet to stay in orbit around Malker right until the bitter end. He fought tirelessly, hour after hour, trying to find a Malkerian lawyer who would lodge a petition, trying to find or even invent new evidence that would crack the seemingly impenetrable case that the prosecutors had put together. It was like working blind, with his hands tied behind his back. He could not gain permission from the planet’s officials to beam down in order to carry out any kind of investigation or to speak to people in person. He could not find out any more details of the case, he had not been allowed to attend the trial, he was not allowed to visit Spock or communicate with him in any way. Every time he thought he had found a way to turn a barrier rose before him.

His one solace, if it could be called a solace, was that a week before the scheduled time for the execution he had finally, *finally*, been granted a visit with Spock, since every condemned prisoner was allowed one visit in which to tie up loose ends or say final words. That visit had been agony for him, and, he suspected, it had been agony for Spock too. He had seemed healthy enough, and calm, and accepting of his fate, but accepting that something would happen was far from desiring what would happen. Spock wanted to die no more than any other person.

And then the time allotted for the visit had slipped away, and he beamed back to the ship. And then the days slipped away until it was a week until that final date, half a week, a day, an hour…

He sat now on the bridge, staring at the chronometer between the navigator and helmsman’s consoles. McCoy had tried to persuade him to change his duty hours – to have this moment privately instead of in the public arena of the bridge – but he could not stand the idea of sitting in his quarters, alone, listening to every tick of the reconstructed antique clock on the wall. He had forgotten about the clock here, directly in front of his chair, directly in front of his eyes. Accurate measurement of time was of paramount importance in the navigating and running of a starship. He wished for black holes, for extreme gravity, for previously unknown stellar phenomena – anything that might distort that relentless, mindless movement of the clock before him.

McCoy stood behind him, one hand on the back of the captain’s chair, his eyes magnetised to the clock with the same reluctant compulsion. Everyone’s eyes seemed to be directed to something that showed them ship time, or Malkerian time, or both.

He felt the chair shake, as if McCoy’s grip had momentarily tightened.

‘That’s it,’ Kirk said dully, watching the number tick over on the clock. ‘It’s over. Spock’s – ’

Words failed him. Something hard seemed to be growing in his throat, trying to force its way up and out of his mouth like a nightmare creature. His chest *hurt*. He stood up abruptly and moved blindly to the lift, not even trusting himself to call someone to take the conn.

The doors slid closed behind him, and he collapsed backwards against the cool, solid wall, having the presence of mind to take hold of the control handle so as to keep the doors from opening again, but unable to speak to direct the lift to another deck. The hardness in his throat exploded, giving birth to a rough, choking sob that he bit back into his mouth even as it rose. Wetness spilt over from his eyes, and he stared as a single drop burst on the floor, astonished at the force of this grief that wanted to shatter his body, crumple his fragile ribs and limbs and lungs down to a hunk of insignificant matter, peel all façade away from him until he was nothing more than a kneeling, weeping, defenceless child.

His mind dragged itself relentlessly back to the way he had last seen Spock. Hands bound by slim metal cuffs, wearing a one-piece overall of pale blue, he had still looked meticulously neat, clean, and astonishingly sanguine. The idea had been mooted that the last visit, with a condemned murderer, should be through a viewscreen rather than in person – but Kirk had used every power of persuasion in his arsenal to have it that they were there, together, in the same room.

Here he could smell the faintest scent of the Vulcan’s body rising from his inhumanly hot skin, mottled over by the odour of unfamiliar, utilitarian soap that held hints of disinfectant in its chemical scent. He could almost feel the heat from Spock’s body, sitting just two feet away from him across a low table. He could hear every long, controlled, calm breath, every movement of fabric on skin, even the occasional murmur from his digestive tract. He could see the faint flutter of his pulse in his neck, the dark greenish tint of veins beneath his skin – every single irrefutable sign of bounteous, healthy, determined life. It was almost too painful to bear, but he would not have swapped this physical meeting with an electronic one for the entire galaxy.

He could barely remember what they had spoken of, and he would have hated himself for that failure had it not been for the slim datachip that a prison official had handed him as he left – an audio-visual recording, a bizarre souvenir of this last meeting. As it was, he could only be grateful for the lapse in memory since in seemed to allow him to remember those things that a simple video recording could not give him – those scents and tiny sounds that could not be picked up by a machine.

He had not yet brought himself to watch the tape. He had locked it in his safe as if it was a sliver of radioactive material, and had not even let his eyes fall on the box it was in since. It was not so much the words he was afraid of, or of seeing the image of his warm, vital friend after he must in reality be dead. He was terrified of reliving that one moment, just before he had been compelled to leave, when Spock’s sanguine, intelligent gaze had flickered, and his eyes had become translucent with an honest, bone-deep fear.