Chapter Text
To Spock’s displeasure and complete lack of surprise, the doctor caught up to him in Science lab three, while he attempted to review reports of the damage caused by the Romulan attack. There was, after all, nothing left to do in sickbay. The odds of any of the members of the survey crew surviving had been infinitesimally low, and an exhaustive sweep of the area of the attack had revealed no organic debris. The fire within the shuttle had only gone out when the hull was breached, explosive decompression spreading the remaining oxygen, briefly still burning, throughout the just-surveyed rings of the class T planet that the Enterprise had been investigating.
“Doctor, I would prefer not to engage in conversation with you at this time.”
McCoy bounced on his heels and looked thoughtful. “Don’t know why I’m surprised at your typical warm welcome. The microscanner in medbay is out of alignment, figured I’d just stop by and ask if I can borrow yours until engineering gets around to it.”
As distracting as the doctor’s presence in the labs will be, it is not logical to deny the Enterprise’s chief medical officer the use of a potentially vital piece of equipment. The microscanner in Lab three is undamaged, and it is unlikely that it will be required by his department in the near future. Neither the ring samples that were scheduled to be analyzed by it today, nor the three scientists who had taken them, would be returning to the enterprise.
“You may, Doctor,” he said, “But I must ask that you endeavor to not distract my department.”
Thankfully, the doctor did not comment on the absence of the other members of the department. He had dismissed Ensign Arnovas, who had been crying so hard as she insisted on securing her girlfriend, Ensign Bin Ali’s workstation, that she had to wipe the moisture off the scanner with laboratory tissues. Upon further reflection, he had also dismissed her roommate, Ensign Sh’vanin, from the botany labs to care for her. The rest of his teams had worked diligently to secure their workspaces and salvage ruined experiments, and when Lieutenant Madhi had informed him that the stellar geology team had planned to repair to a recreation room to hold a wake for their fallen comrades, Ensign Bin Ali, Dr. Sarnovas, and Lieutenant Chun, following the Terran tradition, he had replied that as no scientific work could be continued at this time, there was no need for them to wait until the end of their duty shift.
Spock tallied the quantifiable losses to his department. Much of the ruined equipment could either be repaired onboard or at the next starbase, replacement parts replicated at a relatively low cost. The loss of Ensign Arroyo’s experimental colony of protein producing bacteria represented a more significant setback, which would likely cause frustration to the young man, but given time Spock was confident that he could replicate the experiment from his meticulous notes. Three to five months was not a long time to delay the publication of a discovery, but humans were often impatient.
There was a string of curses as McCoy disturbed the calibration and programming of the microscanner to meet his specifications.
“Whoever programmed this machine needs a good, swift boot to the backside,” McCoy grumbled. “Five seconds to choose your wavelength setting? That’s not enough time to read which one you’ve just selected.”
Despite his control, and the fact that it never appeared to make a difference, Spock could seldom resist pointing out the doctor’s logical inconsistencies. “As the wavelength ranges increase at uniform intervals, and are ordered sequentially, simple arithmetic should be sufficient to determine how often you must depress the selection button.”
“Yeah, well the one we’ve got in the sickbay labs is a different model,” the doctor said. “I’m too old to go re-learning all the ins and outs of these machines.”
Spock shut his mouth on his first reply, which was that in that case the doctor should simply wait until his own machine was repaired, and signed and closed the last damage report. “If resistance to adaptation is how age is measured on Terra, then you are certainly the oldest human of my acquaintance.”
“Well, aren’t your Vulcan boxers in a twist,” snapped McCoy. “Why the hell are you still in here? Your shift ended hours ago. For that matter, why do I have to find out from M’Benga that your department is grieving alone in rec room four while you’re holed up in here with supply reports? It isn’t good for you, Spock, hiding away like this.”
The sudden change in the conversation surprised and unsettled Spock. “It was logical to take over their remaining duties so that they could seek the necessary emotional release,” he said. Unfortunately, it triggered the doctor’s constant need for emotionalism.
“Logical? How’s that any help to them or you, I’d like to know! I would’ve said you were too scared to deal with their grief, if you weren’t such a cold, emotionless robot. It ain’t just your species either – did you even tell those poor children that you grieved with them? I know Vulcans have got words for that.”
Spock was momentarily trapped between the responses that all his technicians, researchers, and ensigns had passed the age of majority on their respective home planets, or they would not have been eligible to enroll in starfleet or join the Enterprise as civilian scientists, and that he did not experience any fear of human, or andorian, emotionalism. “I do not believe that my interactions with my department are any of your concern,” he said.
McCoy, momentarily lost for words, threw up his hands and stormed out. In twelve point seven minues, he did not return.
Clearly his need to use the microscanner had not been extraordinarily urgent.
Spock continued his survey uninterrupted, then amended his daily departmental report to include a list of the damages. He had already filed a very short log of the day’s events as he had stood on the bridge. The Romulan firefight had been brief, unexpected, and devastating, though relatively undamaging to the Enterprise. The scout ship had fled immediately after a stray shot had impacted the Petrov, and the Enterprise, more concerned with the potential existence of survivors, had declined to pursue.
In addition, the department has suffered the unquantifiable loss of Ensign Bin Ali, Dr. Sarnovas, and Lieutenant Chun, the absence of whose work and presence has already produced a profound negative impact on the Enterprise.
Spock exhaled for a count of three, and decided that his departed subordinates and their surviving relatives would be best served if he delayed his official commentary on the utterly wasteful manner of their deaths until his mental equilibrium had recovered. He began to file and tag the sensor array readings received throughout the day, a routine, meditative task that provided little in the way of complex analysis, yet was engrossing enough to prevent extraneous thought. It should take him approximately seventeen and a half minutes. Data spikes were flagged by algorithm, but must be noted and interpreted by hand. He worked forward from the night shift technician’s last notes, though three hours rich with preliminary data as the Enterprise had scanned and charted the Petrov’s most efficient route to the interior of the rings. At 1137 hundred, there was a sudden spectrography spike, as what appeared to be a data transmission wavelength opened up between the Petrov and the Enterprise. The transmission was automatically relegated to background for the remainder of the record, which had ended when the Petrov had been ordered to lie low due to the Romulan ship's sighting, but it had been stored as a separate, labeled data packet on the long range scanner.
Spock opened it and then sat, frozen, at the console for two hundred and seventy five seconds. It was the entirety of the Petrov’s sensor records, beginning at their descent into the rings. It was not the unexpected data, which he had believed to be lost with those who had been tasked with collecting it, that caused him to fold his hands in his lap to prevent them from shaking. It was the improperly annotated data transmission description that accompanied them.
Instant, complete data backups as requested by the Commander. Like my methods, Raj?
Months ago when she had first come to the Enterprise and frustratedly blamed an episode of data loss on a glitch in her equipment, he had informed Ensign Bin Ali that she should make instant, complete data backups her habit rather than allowing multiple work sessions of scientific endeavor to remain on a single machine. As her methodology had improved, he was logically assured that she had remembered the instruction, but he had been unaware that it had become a joke between her and her direct superior, Lieutenant Raj Madhi. Madhi did not tolerate sloppy work in astrometrics, but was not particularly insistent on formality, and the note had been calculated to make the Lieutenant laugh, since he would have been the one conducting preliminary data collection today if all had gone as planned. It was also very characteristic of Ensign Bin Ali to test improvements on protocol in secret before suggesting them, to ascertain that they worked. Standard protocol would have kept all of this data stored on the Petrov’s equipment, with the secondary backup on a removable data chip.
Not a smidgen of data on the Petrov’s journey was lost, and yet it was no longer possible to determine which atoms slowly being dragged into the disc of the planetary rings had belonged to Ensign Bin Ali.
Spock was forced to attempt meditation where he sat, breathing in and out.
The air you breathe, his mother had once said when he was small, has flowed through the lungs of each of your ancestors, and every creature on this planet that came before you.
He had informed her that oxygen and carbon dioxide were destroyed by respiration and photosynthesis, respectively, and that therefore the air was not the same.
But the nitrogen and all the other inert gases of the air stay mostly the same, his mother had replied. You hardly notice them, but they persist.
It was not until he was older, and fully understood the concept of Katras and the fact that humans as a psi-null species had no method of preserving them, that he had understood it to have been a philosophical comment.
“Here.”
Spock’s eyes flickered open as a covered container of tea landed at his elbow, borne by one contrite-looking Dr. McCoy. He had been meditating for twenty seven point three minutes, more than enough time for the doctor to return to the lab, driven by either regret or esprit de escalier, read over Spock’s shoulder, and replicate a beverage. Two beverages – the doctor dragged over an adjacent chair and took a sip of his own coffee.
“It’s a cryin’ shame and a damn waste, is what it is,” the doctor said decisively. “They all had long careers ahead of ‘em.”
“There is no logic to their loss,” Spock found himself saying softly. It would also be illogical to dwell on the fact that, had they chosen to lie low in a slightly different spot relative to the Enterprise, the shuttle, the two scientists, and the pilot would be alive and well. Kaadith. He could not have known enough at the time to change it, and he could not travel back into the past to save them.
“I’ll drink to that,” said McCoy, and downed the last of his coffee, before settling in to read something on his padd.
He stayed, silent except for vague mutterings under his breath as he read journal articles, until Spock had written the last letter of condolence.