T*R*E*K: "Mr. Spock, you have command", "Vulcans never bluff", and "Welcome aboard, sir"

[scarfman]

Summary: Decades before I started asking myself questions like, What if King Arthur were a starship captain, or a MASH surgeon?, I asked, What if James T. Kirk never existed but Hawkeye Pierce was born 300 years late? The title of a T*R*E*K piece is a line from the original scene which doesn't appear in the T*R*E*K version. (Here's an overview of the T*R*E*K chronology.)

Setting/spoilers: These are three scenes from Doomsday Machine. Crossposted to scarfman mash_fic trek_fanfiction trekfics

"Mr. Spock, you have command", "Vulcans never bluff", and "Welcome aboard, sir" with commentary

---

"All hands, go to yellow alert." Henry announced to the shipwide intercom. "Radar -"

"Dr. Houlihan to the transporter room," Radar said on shipwide. "Engineer McIntyre and a damage control party to the transporter room. Communications relief to the bridge."

"- and call your relief to the bridge," Henry finished, stepping to the turbolift doors as Radar stood to join him. "We're going to board her. Pierce, you have the conn."

"Wow, thanks, Dad!" said Hawkeye. "I'll fill the tank and everything."

"Captain!" Srank objected. "I outrank him!"

"I outrank you," said Henry in a mock whine, stepping onto the lift with Radar as Radar's relief arrived.

---

"I told you," Brighton shouted into the ship-to-ship comm, banging his ring on the opposite arm of the command chair, "I am in command here, according to every rule in the book, Captain. If you have anything at all to say you will say it to me."

Henry rarely refused to be intimidated by superior rank, but this was a life-and-death situation. "Commodore, that's my ship and Pierce is my conn officer! Hawkeye, ship's status."

Hawkeye stepped to the command comm from the helm just barely after Brighton waved him over. "Warp drive's out, deflector shields are down, transporter's under repair, and we're on emergency impulse power."

"How long to repair warp drive?"

"At least a day, and the impulse power'll run out long before then."

Klinger called from navigation, "It's gaining on us, sir."

"Hawkeye," came the signal from the Constellation, "get the Enterprise out of here."

"I told you I am in command here and I will give the orders, Captain!" Brighton interrupted. "We are going to turn and attack."

"Over Pierce's dead body," Henry muttered. It carried across the signal.

"Is that an order, Henry?" Hawkeye asked.

"Yeah!"

"Commodore," Hawkeye said, "by the authority of the captain of this ship you are relieved of command."

"You can't do that," Brighton objected, too taken aback to be angry.

"You can file all the complaints you like," Hawkeye said, "later. But you are relieved."

Brighton banged his ring a couple of times. "I don't recognise your authority to relieve me." He pivoted away from Hawkeye in the command chair.

Hawkeye leaned on the chair arm, smiling and batting his eyes. "Commodore. I would enjoy placing you under arrest."

Brighton turned back to him slowly. "You wouldn't dare. You're bluffing."

Hawkeye dropped his grin and snapped his fingers at the security guards posted for red alert at the turbolift doors, who each stepped forward a pace. "Call and raise."

Brighton eyed Hawkeye a moment, and surrendered the command chair.

---

"You know, it's ironic," said Hawkeye suddenly.

Trapper John looked at him. He still looked as numb as Hawkeye felt. Srank didn't look up from the science station.

"Back in the twentieth century," Hawkeye continued, "the atom bomb was thought of as the ultimate weapon. And that's kind of what we used to destroy this 'doomsday weapon'."

"Yeah," said Trapper John. "Ironic."

Then silence hung on the bridge again.

Kellye was still at Hawkeye's post at the helm. He and Trapper John were still over here by Srank's station after reporting ... events to the first officer. Srank had received the report wordlessly, confirmed that the doomsday machine was dead, and started on the red tape. Radar's relief was still at communications - he'd been sent to his quarters sedated.

The command chair was still empty. Hawkeye couldn't understand why the command chair was still empty. "Well, Srank," he said, biting the bullet, finally at a loss for any more small talk, "I guess she's all yours."

Srank got very still. Then he turned to face Hawkeye and Trapper John. For once he was displaying all the Vulcan passionlessness he'd ever aspired to. "No one may relieve the conn officer except the captain or his superiors," he said. Then he turned back to his console.

Hawkeye took several seconds to comprehend this. Then he looked at Trapper John, where he found only helpless sorrow and compassion. He looked back at the command chair; suddenly he seemed to have developed tunnel-vision whereby it was all he could see.

He stepped down to the command module level and toward the chair, Trapper John's step right behind, certain every eye was on him. He stopped just to starboard of it.

"I never wanted it this way," he said.

"I know," said Trapper John, before Hawkeye had finished.

Hawkeye sat in the command chair. "Helm, warp one," he ordered. "Let's get the hell out of here."

---

Commentary
"Radar -" It's a lot harder to render Radar-overtalking in prose than it is in cartoon form.
"Pierce, you have the conn." This sets up the next bit ...
Brighton shouted into the ship-to-ship comm, banging his ring on the opposite arm of the command chair Colonel Buzz Brighton was played by Leslie Neilsen as the titular character in the M*A*S*H episode The Ringbanger. I was going to say we have M*A*S*H to thank for the body of Neilsen's work ever since because as far as I know this was his first comic role, but then I looked at IMDb.
"Call and raise." When I first drafted this scene I included a bit in which, after Brighton is escorted off the bridge, Hawkeye says something like, "Glad that worked out. I was bluffing." I removed that, because I don't think he was.
"Welcome aboard, sir." As I say above in the canned intro for T*R*E*K posts, the title of a T*R*E*K piece is a line of dialog from the sourcework that doesn't appear in the T*R*E*K version. "Welcome aboard, sir," is what Spock says to Kirk when he sees Kirk has been beamed off the Constellation.
"No one may relieve the conn officer except the captain or his superiors." This point of military procedure is the basic hook for Diane Duane's wonderful Star Trek novel Doctor's Orders, and I feel no shame for appropriating it here.
"Let's get the hell out of here." I'm sure we all remember when Kirk said this.