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"Are
you really trying to tell me that the Rigellian High Council demanded that you take part in the race, as part of the negotiations?"
"Yes." The admiral didn't
look impressed. The Enterprise winning the Rigellian Sun Festival race in the impulse speed class hadn't caused a diplomatic
incident, and indeed the Rigellians looked to be quite happy in the video that Kirk had attached with the report he'd sent,
but it was more that Kirk had once again gone off doing something wild without checking if it was a reasonable thing to do.
"Listen Kirk, I don't
believe you, because I have met you, and I have met your Chief Engineer, and I recognise the dread technological hand of Montgomery
Scott when I see it writ large in a report. However," and this appeared to be Kirk's speciality, "it all seems to have worked
out for the best. I'm not even going to bother telling you not to do it again, because you'll somehow find a situation where
it's vital, all I ask, is that you make your final report to Starfleet more convincing. Getting something from the Rigellians
to the effect of them encouraging your participation would be a start. Hawkins out."
That had gone better than Kirk was expecting. He was
pleased that Starfleet seemed to be willing to go with 'the aliens made us do it' as an excuse for the Enterprise taking part
in the race. It had been a toss-up between going with that as the reason in the report, or that it was a team building exercise.
He'd decided, on balance, to blame diplomacy, as it was very early on in the communication process between the Federation
and the Rigellians.
It wasn't exactly a lie, no matter what McCoy said about there being a special Starfleet file for his mission logs
called 'The Greatest Lies James Kirk Ever Told'. Yes, they'd finished the negotiations when Sariva, the leader of the Rigellian
council tasked with alien matters, had said that as they were here, they really ought to stay for the Festival. Then someone
else had said something and word got round and Scotty heard about the race, so Scotty had asked the Rigellians's permission
for the Enterprise to enter. Sariva had said 'go for it'.
Jim was pleased that the Enterprise had won, she really was the best
ship Starfleet had and it made a good impression on people (also, and he knew this to be truer than true, she was the best
ship in the whole quadrant, no matter what). Honest competition brought out the best in people; they'd had far more useful
talks with the representatives of lots of different planets after the race than they'd had before.
He thinks that's why Spock isn't
too concerned with him bending the truth about why they did it. They'd got letters of introduction to three warp capable planets
previously entirely unknown to Starfleet, and access to some interesting new cosmological data.
It had been very successful all
in all, if Kirk had gone down the team building path, he could have pointed out that everyone had been cheering on the engineering
and operations crew as they got the Enterprise round the tricky, twisting course in twelve minutes less than their nearest
rival. Scotty was presently passing around the fruits of their victory (really, it had been fruit, great purple things that
looked like melons and tasted not quite like pears) with a few glasses of his best home brew.
The comms team, Uhura especially,
were over the moon with some of the new information they'd got about the region and the Rigellians had been happy enough to
upload some of their national library onto the data banks. Comms were happily twittering away to each other using more technical
jargon that the engineers normally did.
The entire crew were happy and healthy and together, his ship had just won a major race, and he
now had an official reason to beam back down and visit Sariva, who had said they both might enjoy it if he went to see her
afterwards.
It had been a very good week indeed.
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