Ennemi, mon frère

"Nothing to report but still more hydrogen ion-flux measurements in the phi Trianguli corridor. Entirely too many ion-flux measurements, according to Mr. Chekov, who has declared to the Bridge at large that his mother didn't raise him to compile weather reports. (Must remember to ask him why not, since meteorology has to have been invented in Russia, like everything else.)

"Mr. Spock is 'fascinated' (so what else is new?) by the gradual increase in the number and severity of ion storms in this part of the Galaxy.

[....]

However, even Spock has admitted to me privately that he looks forward to solving this problem and moving on to something a little more challenging. His Captain agrees with him. His Captain is bored stiff. My mother didn't raise me to compile weather reports, either.

" Captain," the calm voice came back, " our new patrol-information dispatches just received from Star-fleet this past hour include news of two armed rebellions, a plague, and a mail strike; various natural disasters attributed to acts of Deity, and unnatural ones attributed to inflation, accident and the breakdown of diplomacy; seventeen mysterious disappearances of persons, places or things; both with and without associated distress calls; eight newly discovered species of humanity, three of which have declared their intention to annex Starfleet and the Federation, and one of which has announced that it will let us alone if we pay it tribute. And probably most serious of all, a tribble predator has gotten loose from the zoo in a major city on Arcturus VI, and for lack of its natural prey has started eating peoples' cats."

Jim paused. "Well, Mr. Spock," he said, very seriously, it's going to take us at least a week to get all that cleared up. I think we'd better get out there and get started, don't you?"

Jim spent about half a second simply being astonished at how many different kinds of Vulcans there were. On some level he had become conditioned to their being dark, and usually tall. But here were gigantic seven-foot Vulcans and little delicate ones, Vulcans slimmer even than Spock and Vulcans much burlier[ ....] . And there were fair Vulcans, blond and ash blond and very light brunette, and, good Lord, several redheads—

Most important, there were four hundred and eight of them. Jim could think of a lot of worse things than having four hundred Vulcans, all coolly furious over the loss of their Captain, at his back in a charge down that corridor.

"You should have said something in the briefing, Mr. Scott," Uhura said softly from her station.
"Aye," Scotty said, letting out a long breath, "but what good would it ha' done, lass? You know how the Captain is when his mind's made up. After that, it's the Universe that'd best bend, for it won't be himsel' that's doing it."

"Liking. Well. Brothers may certainly develop it. It may make living with one another easier. But it's hardly necessary to brotherhood proper. Say my brother and I quarrel; then he falls in danger of his life.
Do I let him lie there, because I no longer 'like' him? Or do I save him—simply because he is my brother, because I have said that he is forever someone important to me—and I'm bound by what I have said?"

"I'm not sure that's what I meant."

"Neither am I. But in any case it is mnhei'sahe . The bondage beyond reason, beyond hope or pain or escape. The bond that not even betrayal can break—only snarl around the heart until the betrayer's heart scars. The bond of word, of choice. Unbreakable."

"Death—"

"Death avails nothing against it. Your parents, your own brother who is dead—oh, yes, we know. What use is intelligence but for the knowing of one's enemies? Have you come to love your relatives any less for their being dead? Or perhaps more?"

The Captain said nothing.

That war had been won on another front, at Organia. But Suvuk, even after being physically tortured, and then subjected to the Klingon mind-sifter, had still, in rapid succession, broken free of his captors on the Klingon flagship Hakask at Regulus; disabled the ship's warp-drive and melted down its impulse engines, strewing unconscious, injured, and occasionally dead Klingons liberally along the way as he went; made solid-logic copies of everything of interest in the Klingons' library computers, then dumped the computers themselves; and had finally made it back aboard the newly-built Intrepid in a stolen Klingon shuttlecraft, well before the Organians' ban fell and both Klingons and Federation suddenly found their weapons too hot to handle.

Jim heard Rihaul sit down with the usual bizarre noise in her bowl chair, and had to repress a laugh again. Deirr weren't really wet—their smooth, slick skin just looked that way, and in contact with some surfaces, acted that way. Rihaul had been complaining since the long-ago days at the Academy, where Jim was her math tutor, that the Fleet-issue plastic bowl-chairs were the bane of her existence; sitting down in one invariably produced noises that almost every species considered embarrassing, and getting up against the resultant suction required mechanical assistance, or a lot of friends. Nowadays Nhauris and Jim had a running joke that the only reason she had become a Captain was to have a command bowl-chair that was upholstered in cloth.

Meantime, Spock apparently found it illogical to waste his talents, and had been calling him up to the Bridge for consultations now and then. Jim didn't mind this at all; he had long since confessed to himself that he never got tired of being earnestly "Yes, Captain"ed by someone who looked like a giant pan pizza (sausage, extra cheese).