“Give it time, comrade,” she told him. “Better to start with the familiar, then expand from there. You want them to accept us, yes? Let’s impress them with what we can do. Maybe we can teach them a few things about combat.”

Horatio clasped her arm. “We wish them to accept us, not fear us. They question the rightness of our being here, when we were made only for war. We must prove to them that we will not fight, except to defend Arcturus.”

Portia was growing weary of his self-righteousness. “It’s only unarmed combat, Horatio. Barely more than exercise. You worry too much about how others will view us.”

“And you don’t? To many of these people—especially our own people—we are a mistake that should never have happened. We do not want to convince them they are right.”

She pulled away from his grip. “Maybe I’m tired of worrying how others define me. If it was wrong to create us to serve others… then maybe we should start thinking about how to serve ourselves.”

Starfleet Medical Center

San Francisco

Leonard McCoy pulled up short in the doorway to his office. In his absence, the desk had been converted into a makeshift picnic table, the traditional checkered cloth covered with a luxuriant spread of sandwich fixings, baked beans, cornbread, fresh fruit, and the like. “What the hell is this?”

As he spoke, he spotted Jim Kirk standing at the window to his right. It came as no surprise; he’d concluded already that Kirk must have been behind this. Spreading his hands, the admiral answered, “We’ve been having trouble scheduling lunch lately, so I thought this would save you some time.”

McCoy peered at him. “How much time did it take you?”

“Only as much as it took to order a yeoman to do it.” He winked. “Rank hath its privileges.”

“Speaking of rank, if the Head hears about this—”

“Oh, she encouraged it. Says you’ve been working too hard and forgetting to eat.”

“Tell that to the Icorians who’ll die of Synthococcus novae if we don’t find a vaccine for this new strain!”

Kirk chuckled, then affected a gruff voice. “ ‘Jim, you’ll be of no use to anyone if you collapse from hunger in the middle of a crisis!’ Sound familiar?”

McCoy grumbled, but he was already helping himself to some sandwich fixings. That smoked turkey smelled really good. “So what is it you want from me?”

“What makes you think—”

“Now, you know that wide-eyed innocent act doesn’t work on me, Jim. You wouldn’t have gone to this trouble if you didn’t have something important to talk about.” He furrowed his brow at his old friend. “But not something official where you can just haul me in and issue an order. You want my help with something else—or you want to talk me into something.”