Free Star Trek by Glenn Hauman Page B

flesh instead of clockworks.
G: So, wrong that makes him? Doctor, you know he’s right. You finagled your way onto a ship that didn’t have a counselor. I can’t prove it, but you know it and I know it. I can only assume that’s because you don’t want to deal with your problems, and I can respect that up until the point where they become my problems. And a nonfunctional CMO is my problem.
L: So what are you going to do about it?
G: Well, that’s another problem. Standard operating procedure would probably be to have you taken off active duty and sent for a psych workup. But that would require us getting you to a counselor who could do that, and probably would entail leaving you at the nearest starbase for a month. Either our scheduled maintenance visit to Sherman’s Planet would have to be delayed or I’d have to give you a shuttlecraft, and we only have the two. Either way, I’d be without a chief medical officer for who knows how long, and you’d almost certainly be reassigned, with a nasty mark on your service record. Your career might never recover. I don’t want to do that and neither, I suppose, do you. So we’re going to try and avoid the whole magilla.
L: Sir?
G: Instead, we’re going to have our own little counseling sessions right here. You and me, at least once a week for the foreseeable future, in this office, with all conversations kept out of the official record as long as things go well. And we’re going to talk and try to get to the bottom of this.
L: You’re no doctor, and you’re not a counselor either.
G: No, I’m not. But I’m your commanding officer. And I’m the one you have to convince that you’re not just going through the motions, that you really are in shape to serve on board my ship.
L: Fine. Whatever.
G: You’re resenting this.
L: I don’t have to talk to you.
G: Actually, yes, you do. Complain all you want, this is what we’re going to do.
L: I could invoke my Seventh Guarantee rights.
G: You do that and I’ll make all this official, and have you transferred off this ship, downchecked for active duty, and sent for an immediate psych exam. Playing this by the book is not the way you want to go, believe me.
L: You realize that I could have you removed from command for medical reasons.
G: You’d have to show cause eventually, Doctor, or face charges of mutiny. And before that, you’d still have to deal with Gomez—I guess you’d have to throw Gomez into the brig too. And then Duffy. And so on. But you know, it doesn’t even matter. You’d never even go as far as relieving me of command. I know it and you know it. But I don’t think you know why, do you? [Pause.] It’s because you don’t want to take the responsibility for making the decision.
L: Maybe I’ll just be happy getting rid of you.
G: Our first session will be tomorrow at 0800. Dismissed.
L: I—
G: You’re dismissed, Doctor.
    TRANSCRIPT ENDS
Well … that was fun. I can just imagine how our sessions are going to go.

CHAPTER
2
    S herman’s Planet (so named, according to conflicting stories in the Memory Alpha databanks, either to repay a staggeringly large bar tab, to serve as a warning that a particularly obnoxious individual lived there, or to impress a woman) was in an area of space first mapped by Terrans in 2067 by John Burke, the chief astronomer of the Royal Academy of England. There had been a battle in orbit around nearby Donatu V in 2242 between the Federation and the Klingons over settlements in the sector, with inconclusive results which didn’t really become clarified until the Organians came along and imposed a sort of unilateral peace between the two sides twenty years later. It was colonized by the Federation under the dictates of the Organian Peace Treaty. There had been a bit of unpleasantness with the Klingon Empire involving espionage, a famine, and a poisoned grain