Chapter Text
Silver scales, gleaming horns. Jim sat in front of the huge sheet of polished metal, admiring his puffed up peacock reflection.
“Dragon AO1 to storage bay.” The order blared over the speakers, its tone just as bored and listless as its speaker.
“Come on ghoster.” Someone closer prodded at him. His sensors registered the pressure, but something so tiny had little chance of moving his massive metallic bulk unless he decided to humour it. Jim swung away from the reflective metal to look at the speaker, his head of a similar size as the human’s entire body. “Yeah. Get going now, we need to finish repairs.”
“Don’t humanize it. It’s a machine,” the mechanic’s companion huffed irritably.
“Doesn’t mean it doesn’t have personality.” Jim’s friend tapped his nose, smearing it with the general grime humans carried on their skin. “The A.Is in there are really something.”
“They mimic the pilots. That’s all it is, a backup system so that the dragon’ll go dock itself in storage while the pilot delinks, and it’s not even working right.” The grumpy Andorian gestured to Jim, antennae raised in the signal for distress and sorrow. “Massive fucking metal robot clanking around the cargo bay completely unsupervised. Bad enough that the Scott is descending from on high to look at maintenance; I don’t need a piece of outdated weaponry cooing at itself in the wall I’m trying to install.”
“Outdated! The dragons have-“ But the human maintenance technician stopped scratching at his nose. Jim wandered off.
For lack of anything better to do, he really did go into his storage bay. It wasn’t much. Thirty square meters wide, twenty high, slightly bigger than the norm. He’d chosen it when the flight had arrived; claimed it for himself with the seniority of his position. The blank metal walls were shielded and thick, efficient but not homely. It didn’t even have a door, a stupid three sided cubicle where he was expected to spend all his time. And the support staff wondered why he wandered out occasionally.
Deprived of the miracle of his own perfection, Jim went to standby. His huge eyes slide shut under rotating alloy eyelids as his internal systems complied with the command, programming flicking a coded switch that sent him to stasis while auxiliary systems continued to monitor the world around him. It was a long time before anything disturbed his rest, long enough for the engineers to stop talking and their voices to fade entirely out of range.
When it came, it was a flashing alert. Technically having Bones come within range of his sensors shouldn’t have merited a priority one alarm, but the doctor came down to the dragon deck so rarely. The Enterprise was moored, docked to Thalerious Central Space Station where his best friend should have been eating and drinking and trying to make leave last as long as possible. Jim was out of his storage unit before his eyelids had finished retracting, trying to find a way to make eager whining noises without a voice box, ignoring the yelp of a maintenance technician and zeroing in on the corridor the gruff voice approached from.
“-don’t know how you’re supposed to help.” Bones grumbled sullenly. “It’s not a problem with the robot. The dragon works fine, we’ve checked that.”
“Doctor McCoy, our engineers aren’t experts.” Pike’s voice, the Captain-tones as he tried to smooth Bones over. Jim’s tail began twitching as the concept of having two favourite humans with him at once became clear, the spiked protrusions on his head flaring happily. “You know we could have missed something; something that caused-“ He stopped. “We’re very lucky that Commander Spock accepted the transfer here.”
They were talking about a new person. There were three steps of footsteps getting more and more audible. Jim swayed forward, magnetically drawn to the conversation in a corridor he couldn’t even fit in, wishing there wasn’t an unusual amount of cargo blocking his way closer.
“Accepting your request was logical.” The voice didn’t match any in his databank. Jim began recording, temporarily designating the sound as a ‘Commander Spock’. “I will assist if I can. It is possible I am uniquely positioned to assist with this matter, as I was involved in the construction of the Active Response Unit’s core programming.”
“Is that what those letters in their names mean?” Bones said.
“That is the weaponry’s designation.” It was difficult to tell if the Spock person was agreeing or not. “The pilots have since added the additional and unnecessary title of ‘Dragon’.”
“You made a gigantic flying metal monster with bat wings for forelimbs and you didn’t think anyone would name them dragons?” Bones was blatantly incredulous. Jim stood as close to the entrance’s door as possible, but the footsteps slowed down even more. He sighed, the closest thing he could do to voicing a protest.
“I understand the resemblance to a creature of Terran myth. However I was not involved with the aesthetics of the units, only their programming.” Spock replied evenly.
“Do those programs really count as AI?” Pike successfully interrupted before Bones could find another protest.
“No.” The new Spock answered. “It what is referred to as soft-Artificial Intelligence. ARUs give the impression of intelligence, but are in fact following a combination of core commands and actions copied from the crewmen that pilot them.”
“Which is why they ghost?” Jim moved back a little so he could stretch out his neck, flopping limply on the ground to get his head as close as possible to the door. His favourite humans were so close.
“I do not understand that term.” Spock admitted.
“They ghost.” Pike repeated. “They move about even after the link with the piloting officer is disconnected.”
“The correct method of referring to-“
The door opened, Bones yelped, Pike swore, and Jim went cross-eyed trying to keep the unknown person in view as Commander Spock fell over the waist high metal snout in front of the entrance.
Jim blinked. No one else did, but Bones moved into accompanying profanity with Pike. The being splayed unceremoniously on top of his face was not human-organic, pointed ears, hair length, greenish skin tone and slanted eyebrows all matching the parameters for both Romulan and Vulcan species. The Federation was not welcoming to Romulans, which made it far more likely that the unknown organic was Vulcan, but Jim couldn’t be sure. It was probably wise to keep an eye on him, just in case.
Further examination revealed a male-presenting body type as Commander Spock straightened. Captain Pike’s words began to shift towards apology, but he dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “I am not harmed. Fascinating.”
“What, you think the dragon’d harm you?” Bones said in his defence. Jim tried to bring an arm forward to cuddle him for it. The limb couldn’t fit into the small corner.
“Is it struck?” Pike asked.
“Unknown.” Commander Spock straightened his shirt. “ARU01 to storage bay.”
The Commander’s identification flashed up in response, a string of letters and numbers bestowing upon him the authority to order Jim about. He sighed again, not that anyone would be able to tell between different classes of sigh, and backed up. Grumbling his way back to his cell and dropping his shoulder blades, he let wingtips trail across the floor and sweep up the collective tools of an entire team of maintenance engineers. The debris followed him into storage, ending up pushed against the back wall as he squirmed around to glare back out.
“Fascinating.”
“I don’t think that’s the right word.” Bones edged backwards. Just a little, but Jim noticed it. “It’s glaring. It ain’t happy.”
“Emotional responses have not been programmed into any ARU model. That behaviour is a mimicry of its pilot-“
“I can see that,” Pike twitched with a confusing jumble of emotions.
“-and provides information for my investigation.” Spock finished as though no interruption had taken place. Pretty impressive considering who he’d been interrupted by. “Chief Medical Officer McCoy, I am given to understand that you have the pilot in your care.”
Bones’ entire posture softened, which was completely unfair. “Jim Kirk. He is –was, I don’t know, the Captain of the dragon flight.”
“I have been given Starfleet’s file on James Tiberius Kirk. I am aware of his role on board the ship.” Spock hesitated, visibly hesitated. Jim had already inferred enough to focus on the discrepancy. “There was a record of… substance abuse.”
“Pain meds.” A step beyond Bones’ normal surliness, his eyes went flinty. Pike positioned himself to slightly block the line of sight between the doctor and Commander Spock, body language suggesting an intervention was imminent. “Listen to me, Jim is an idiot, but that happened when he was a child. He can’t be blamed for it, and he kicked that damn habit years ago. You shut your mouth. He did not overdose.”
“All medical avenues of investigation have been accounted for.” Spock commented without reaction, and Jim glared harder. “The incidents occurring before the documented addiction are classified. You would need to be at admiral rank or higher to view them. Please explain your knowledge.”
“You need justification?!” Bones spat, and Pike caught on to his arm, restricting the range of gestures he could make. “I’m his best friend. Of course I know what he did after the shitstorm he had to get through. He swore he was off it, never touched the stuff when he got knocked about, but of course I tried looking in to that, I’ve tried everything! I stopped the brain swelling, I’ve kept his body alive through months of inactivity, I tried pluripotency on his cells, telepathic reconstruction, blood transfusion, neuron regeneration, electrical stimulation like we’re in the fucking dark ages, and there. Is. Nothing. No higher function, no consciousness, just the damn signals from his brain to his heart to keep beating. You fix him. You fix him, because Pike told me a fucking computer coder could fix him, and you do it now.”
“I am here to evaluate the programming of Commander Kirk’s Active Response Unit and determine whether it played a part in his condition.” There was something on Commander Spock’s face that might once, conceivably, in an alternate universe, have been compassion. That was the only reason Jim didn’t eat him. As it was his fangs slipped out of the sockets in his mouth, visible and bared. “Kirk is comatose, and despite your care… possibly brain dead. I can make no promises. But I will try. I apologise for my misstep.”
Bones didn’t look like he cared. Standing in the no man’s land between them, Pike discreetly shooed the Vulcan off. The doctor’s tense frame held while the compliant stiff back disappeared through a side corridor. With the hiss of the automated door it drained from him like a plug had been pulled, anger and frustration swirling out form him until his shoulders almost sagged under Pike’s hand. “Shit.”
“You’ll need to work with him eventually.” Captain Pike warned, sparing no punches.
“I… yeah. I’ll be fine. I can be professional, but… Jim didn’t hit any drugs, Chris. You know he didn’t.”
“I know. I get it.” Pike said.
“It’s just… hard, s’all. Not knowing how t’heal him.” The doctor’s voice dropped lower. Jim crept out carefully, listening. “Not knowing whether to mourn him.”
“He’s still alive, Leonard.”
“Technically. Only technically.” Exhaustion dripped out of his tone, replaced by an accented drawl that got steadily heavier. Jim came closer still, flattening himself to the ground. They didn’t like him being too big, but he could be smaller, he could try. “His muscles, his brain cells, his everything… they’re all okay. Healed. But he ain’t waking. There’s nothing in that body. I kept him going when his head was rushed about, I even risked putting that blood in him so he’d heal faster, but he ain’t waking up.”
“I know. You’re the best CMO in the fleet, and you’ve done everything you can. Time to see if something was wrong on the other end, right?” It was a bleak statement that attempted to be comforting. “Spock owes me this favour. I’m the closest thing I’ve ever seen him have to a friend. He’ll do his work right, and we can’t say there isn’t something here. That dragon is ghosting pretty hard.”
“I’ll say.” Bones stared Jim down, detaching from Pike’s grip. “You’re the size of a double decker bus.” Jim wagged his tail, crawling forward on his belly. “Sneaking toward me ain’t going to work, no matter how low you get.”
Pike turned around. “Why is it…”
“Trying to sneak toward us? Got no idea.”
Jim widened his eyes pleadingly, shuffling forward on the great flat floor. It was the first direct thing Bones had said to him in months, and he wanted to cuddle his human, to wrap himself around the fragile flesh and protect him, had wanted that when waiting at the doorway, would want that when Bones left him again. But Bones wasn’t friendly.
His head nudged as the human’s chest, gently, ever so gently.
“Ghosting pretty hard.” Bones echoed, and put his hand over Jim’s snout.
Pike looked on. “So. Saving Kirk.”
“A country doctor, a robotic robot maker, and a deranged machine.” Jim could almost feel the warmth of his hand. Bones sighed, and met Pike’s eyes. “What could go wrong?”