Title: Poppies

Author: Jungle Kitty

Contact: kittyjungle@earthlink.net

Series: TOS (Star Trek: The Original Series)

Posted: 5/23/2003

Codes: Kirk, Brandt, challenge

Rating: G

Feedback: Yes, please. If you post comments to ASC, please cc: me at kittyjungle@earthlink.net.

Archive: ASC, BLTS, and WWOMB yes, all others please ask

Summary: A response to the challenge to write a story about what happened to the doomsday machine after it was disabled. An FYI: In the Kirk/Brandt stories, Brandt was Matt Decker's first officer around the same time Kirk had command of the Lydia Sutherland.

Thanks to Rob for issuing the challenge and to all the writers who have responded to it. Truly inspiring! And of course, thanks to Wildcat for the beta, the critique, and the encouragement.

Notes: This is one in a series of stories about the relationship between James Kirk and Suzanne Brandt. The others are available at my website: http://www.invisibleplanets.com/

The Star Trek characters and universe are the property of Paramount and Viacom. This not-for-profit piece of fan fiction is not intended to infringe upon that. The copyright applies only to

the author's original characters and creative content.

POPPIES

(c) 2003 Jungle Kitty

Brandt had promised herself that she'd withhold judgment until she'd seen everything. After all, Jim had gone to a lot of trouble to arrange a private preview for her. Which in addition to being

very thoughtful was probably wise. If she had had to wait until tomorrow's "ground-breaking" and sit through the sanctimonious pledges to "learn from others' mistakes," the politicians' self-

serving condolences to the families of the dead, and finally the inevitable moment of silence in honor of the man who had ended the mindless killing--

Stop it, she told herself. You wanted to do this before the political circus begins so don't drag it in now.

Standing in front of the shuttle's viewscreen, she gazed out at the monstrosity that had emptied this sector of space. There was an honesty in its ugliness that she could almost respect. Its

builders had seen no need to glamorize a device that had surely been meant to deter, to intimidate. Beauty would have been out of place, even misleading. It was simple and terrifying, like death itself, and its very existence should have been enough to ensure that it would never be put to use. But weapons were meant to be used--somehow those who believed that always ended up manning the hot button. It was a universal truth--when the going gets beyond tough, sentient beings will revert to their primitive roots and grab the nearest club.

How many victories had its creators celebrated before that endlessly hungry mouth had turned on them?

Even now, staring at the empty hulk and knowing it was powerless, she found it easy, too easy to imagine the beast waking from its cold slumber, turning slowly, scanning the shuttle, and reaching into its soulless depths to find a small killing spark of energy.

No!

The destruction of the Constellation had removed any possibility of that. She knew how close Jim had come to being the machine's final victim, but he always credited victory to Matt Decker. Matt, who had pulled himself out of a morass of grief and given all in an act of sacrifice and redemption.

And how does the Federation respond?

By turning the murder weapon into a museum.

A goddamn multibillion-credit government-approved obscenity of a museum. The planet-killer, the "doomsday machine," soon to be all tidy, safe, and suitable for family viewing.

*Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, spacers and groundlings, see the horrible THING that gobbled up planet after planet while on its way to the most densely populated portion of our galaxy! The unstoppable mega-weapon that was stopped by the Federation's mighty Starfleet! That's right, folks, you'll see it all from the safety and comfort of a state-of-the-art shuttle. Please notice--*

"Turn us around. I've seen enough."

Jim looked up from the controls and she returned his gaze, certain that he interpreted her demand as a sign of panic. Perhaps he was right.

She turned away from the screen and folded her arms against an inner chill. She heard his voice, reassuring in its composure.

"Engage auto-pilot and hold this position."

*Holding.*

Then he was standing beside her and the urge to feel the comfort of his embrace was nearly overwhelming. But a deeper need asserted itself and she felt the tight band of control snap as she spun to once again face the monstrosity outside.

"It's horrible!"

The venom in her voice surprised even herself. She tried to pull back but her anger had taken on a life of its own.

"How could they! Will there be a gift shop? A holographic reproduction of the battle? A souvenir recording of Matt's last log?"

"Suzanne--"

"Don't! Just don't. I can't believe they're planning to do this! It's--obscene! It's worse than obscene. It's--"

"It's the positive spin."

The weariness in his voice stopped her in mid-tirade and when she went to him, the raw sorrow in his eyes drained her of all feeling except helplessness.

"You hate it, too," she whispered.

He went to the pilot's console and his hands clutched the back of the chair as he stared out the viewscreen.

"Of course I hate it. I was there. I know what that thing was capable of. And I know that the only reason we were able to stop it was because we were fortunate enough to have a madman on our

side. It's hardly a reason to celebrate."

"Then why did you bring me here if you knew I'd hate it?"

"I didn't know how you'd react, but I know that the last time you saw Matt, things between you were..."

"'Less than cordial'?" She applied a thick layer of sarcasm as she finished his sentence. "He could hardly bring himself to speak to me. And who could blame him? He pulled me out of a dead-end

assignment and turned me into someone worthy of a command. And then I paid him back by raiding his crew for Special Ops. He could have pushed me out an airlock and no one would have blamed him, me least of all."

"Don't be so melodramatic. Matt wouldn't have held a grudge forever. Anyway, I thought seeing this might give you..."

"...what I needed."

"Yes."

"What makes you such an expert on what I need?"

"I had to wait eleven years before confronting the creature that killed Captain Garrovick. That's a long time to feel guilty but it finally ended."

"When you killed it."

"No. When I realized there was no way in hell I could have killed it eleven years earlier."

"There's a difference. I had a choice about what I did to Matt."

"But you're handling the aftermath of that choice the same way I did." He grasped her shoulders and challenged her with the truth he hadn't seen until young Garrovick had started down the same

path. "Brandt, you're still alive, you can still make choices, but it's over for Matt. And that's what you should be mourning, not your own tarnished self-image."

His words scored a direct hit and she pulled away, turning her back on him. She pressed her hand to her mouth, as if trying to stop the onslaught of unexpected grief. She succeeded in swallowing the painful sobs but couldn't stop the memories of the brave, generous soul under Matt's gruff exterior. He would never again rally his nearly defeated crew as he had at Ghioghe, teach a young officer to be both friend and leader to those she commanded, or quietly boast of how quickly his son was moving up through the ranks. There was more, so much more to remember, to cherish, to

mourn...

Jim was right. It was over for Matt, but not for her. And if the only way she could commemorate him was to live up to the standard he set, she wasn't going to betray him a second time.

She cleared her throat and spoke carefully. "I'm only going to say this once. You're smarter than I am."

"Well..."

"You were right. This is what I needed. I look at that thing and I'm still angry--very angry--but there's more to it than that." She gave him a brief smile. "Thank you." Settling into the pilot's chair, she began plotting a course back to the station. "Are we through here?"

"Yes. There's nothing here."

"Disengage auto-pilot."

*Disengaged.*

"Just a big lie," he added quietly.

His voice carried an even deeper sadness than before and she stopped checking the panel readings.

"Jim?"

Silent and distant, he took the co-pilot's position. She saw his mouth draw tight as he gazed at the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.

"I hate this for a different reason than you do," he said at last. "If there was anything to be learned from this, it was the folly of building such weapons. The only thing more stunning than its creators' arrogance is our failure to realize how lucky we are to have escaped the same fate."

"So far."

"Yes, exactly. I know they mean well with the museum but I'm afraid it will make us remember the wrong things. Instead of vowing to never create our own doomsday weapon, we celebrate our

victory over this one. We should be humbled and terrified by what happened here. A museum--well-managed, accessible, civilized--puts a positive spin on the horror."

"Do you think it's deliberate? Is Starfleet polishing its image at the expense of the truth? Or is it in our nature to try to find the silver lining in even the darkest cloud?"

"I think it's in nature's nature."

"What do you mean?"

"Have you ever been to Flanders Field?"

"No. It's in France, isn't it?"

"Belgium. There was a battle fought there in World War I. The carnage and destruction was the worst ever seen, at least in 1915. They buried their dead and moved on. Then spring came and so did the poppies. They were everywhere. It's still like that today. Rows of stone crosses in a field of poppies. And when the gravestones finally wear down to nothing, the poppies will still be there and the ugliness of what we did there will be forgotten."

"Isn't there a poem about that cemetery?"

"Yes. And unfortunately, it's beautiful. It helps people forget what war is really like. They read that poem and they think of red flowers and white crosses."

"It's probably meant to be comforting."

"Yes. But maybe it makes us a little too comfortable. Mass destruction shouldn't be that easy to think about. I wonder if we'd learn more from history if Flanders Field still looked as it did at the end of the battle." He raised his hand to the viewscreen, a weary acknowledgement of what was to come. "This is just the Federation's way of doing what Mother Nature hasn't gotten around to yet. The twentieth century had poppies and we'll have a museum."

Brandt looked out once more, glad she was seeing the doomsday machine now, while it still had the power to terrify.

[End]