Assignment: Eternity

by Greg Cox

  She shook her head inside the heavy gray hood. “I acquire secrets. I seldom share them. Besides, I thought you already knew . . . ?” Bending over, she lifted the hem of her robe to check on the contents of one boot. Kirk saw a glint of silver as she lifted Seven’s servo from the boot, then replaced it. “I was intending to use a concealed disruptor to accomplish my aims, but perhaps it would be more ironic to use your sleeping friend’s intriguing little device. It’s small, discreet, and easily set to kill. Perfect for my purposes.”

  “Tell me more,” Kirk said, flashing his most ingratiating smile. “Maybe I can find the flaw in your plan.”

  Dellas easily resisted his charm. She straightened and let the hem of the robe fall over her boots. “What was that Terran expression you quoted to me earlier? Oh yes, that’s for me to know and for you to find out.” She turned a knob on the control panel and Kirk heard a hum commence behind him. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw the transporter pad at the opposite end of the room come to life. A faint blue mist began to form above the pad; it looked distressingly like the haze Dellas had unexpectedly emerged from to kill Seven’s fellow agent. “Do not deviate from the plan, Doctor,” she informed Vithrok. “After I have departed, adjust the transporter to return me to this time from a point sixty minutes after my arrival in the future. That should be all the time I require to complete my mission.”

  “I understand, Commander,” the scientist answered. “I will begin the procedure as soon as the initial transport is completed.” He nodded toward Kirk. “What shall I do with this one? Perhaps I should summon a centurion?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” she insisted. “The fewer who witness this operation, the better.” Dellas obviously wasn’t the trusting type, Kirk noted. “Captain Kirk is not going anywhere. Let him watch as I transform the future of the galaxy forever.” She smirked beneath her hood, her eyes hidden within its umbra, and began walking toward the transporter. “If all goes as scheduled, I will be back in this chamber in a matter of moments.”

  The original wisps of glowing blue mist had swollen to a dense column of fog that coiled about itself atop the transporter platform. Kirk desperately wanted to know what was waiting on the other side of that fog, but how could he find out while Vithrok’s disruptor was pointed at him? He resisted the temptation to sneak a peek at Gary Seven, still presumedly playing possum on the tile floor. If the man was waiting for the right moment to intervene, it would have to be soon.

  Over on the counter, Dellas’s discarded communicator emitted a harsh buzz. She paused in her path, appearing unsure how to proceed. Her head swung from the communicator to the glowing mist and back again. Would she ignore the incoming message and get on with her mysterious mission, Kirk wondered, or would she be more anxious to receive news from her subordinates? Given that Chekov and Sulu were still unaccounted for, he knew what he’d do if he were Dellas: get as much information as possible.

  Kirk pegged it exactly. With an impatient snarl, Dellas spun around and stalked back to the control panel. “What is it?” she demanded, snatching up the communicator and throwing back her hood. Her short black hair was charred around the edges. Disturbed by the movement of the hood, bits of burnt hair flaked off and fell upon her shoulders.

  “Commander,” a voice emerged from the communicator. Kirk strained his ears to catch every word. “The Federation starship has returned. Sensors confirm it is the Enterprise. And, Commander,” the voice added, “they’re hailing us.”

  Dellas squinted at Kirk as though he held the key to this new development. In fact, he was even more surprised than the Romulan commander, although he endeavored not to show it. What was Spock doing back here? Kirk had specifically ordered him to get the Enterprise to safety if he lost contact with the landing party for over an hour, which surely must have passed by now. Spock must have a very good reason for disobeying my orders, he guessed. He usually does.

  “Put them through,” she said decisively. “Use an encrypted mode. I don’t want anyone listening to this, including yourself.”

  “Acknowledged,” the voice reported. An instant later, Spock’s face appeared on the large screen above the control panel. Kirk noted that the image was an unusually tight close-up, blocking out any view of the ship’s interior. That has to be deliberate, he deduced; there must be something on the bridge he doesn’t want the Romulans to see, assuming that he was even transmitting from the bridge. Kirk mulled over the possibilities, frustrated by his lack of clear knowledge of what Spock was up to. What the devil is happening up on my ship?

  Spock’s eyes widened slightly at the sight of Dellas in her robes. “This is the U.S.S. Enterprise. Can I assume that you are in control on the installation on the planet’s surface?”

  “You needn’t be so formal, Mr. Spock,” Dellas replied. “I know your life story even better than you do, although I confess I am more than a little curious as to what brings you here at this particular time and place.”

  Spock raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Is this not where and when you intend to launch your attempt to assassinate me in the year 2293?”

  Kirk could not conceal his shock at Spock’s words. Was that what this was all about? A plot to murder Spock? He threw an anguished look at Seven’s inert form. Why didn’t you tell me?

  He knew why, of course. The sanctity of the time line and the inherent dangers in learning one’s own destiny, but it still came as a shock. He felt an icy chill run through his entire body.

  Dellas appeared just as dumbfounded by Spock’s casual revelation. She leaned toward the screen, her fists squeezed tightly at her sides. “How . . . do . . . you . . . know . . . that?” she demanded, her voice quivering with fury. Taken aback by his superior’s wild-eyed intensity, Vithrok backed a few steps away from her.

  “That is irrelevant,” Spock stated. “The fact remains that Starfleet is familiar with the particulars of your scheme and cannot allow you to succeed.”

  His implacable manner only served to enrage Dellas further. “Irrelevant!” she snapped. “Everything is irrelevant to you Vulcan eunuchs. Strength. Passion. The courage to survive, the will to conquer.” She stepped back from the screen, her chin held high. “My father was like you, a devotee to the heretical teachings of Surak. They did not shield him from the harsh realities of the world; they only made him weaker and unable to protect himself and his family.” She raised a clenched fist to the screen. “Your fanatical worship of soulless logic disgusts me. I will have you killed a hundred times if that is what is needed to keep your pallid, pacifistic ways from contaminating the Empire.”

  “Logic is not a shield,” Spock replied, “but a means of discovering the truth. Nor does it necessarily impair one’s potential for self-defense.” He eyed Dellas dispassionately. “Your father’s fate may have been beyond his control, or perhaps there were other factors to consider. Contrary to what you profess to believe, weakness is not synonymous with reason.”

  “We shall see, Vulcan,” she declared. “You cannot threaten me with your starship. This outpost’s shields are more than enough to withstand your phasers and transporter beams.” Without asking, she seized the disruptor pistol from Vithrok’s hand and advanced toward Kirk. “Can you see your captain, Mr. Spock? Do you know what I can do with him?” She grabbed Kirk by the arm and dragged him closer to the monitor, then stepped behind him and pressed the muzzle of the disruptor against his temple. “I want to know who informed you of my plans and I want to know now. Tell who your source is, or I will reduce your captain’s brains to ionized particles.”

  Roberta, Kirk realized. Gary Seven’s young companion had to have filled Spock in on the true nature of his mission, not that this answer was likely to satisfy Commander Dellas, even if Spock felt inclined to share that information, which Kirk sincerely doubted. That would only serve to expose and further endanger Seven. Kirk assumed Seven was listening to all this as well; no doubt he was equally curious to find out how much Spock had learned.

  B
y the counter, Vithrok looked on with a distinctly queasy expression. He was probably more at home puttering around in a lab, Kirk guessed, than watching the interrogation and execution of hostages. It’s up to me, he thought. He knew he was only heartbeats away from dying.

  For the moment, though, Dellas was focused on Spock’s unreadable features. Taking advantage of her distraction, he suddenly, savagely jabbed his elbow into her midsection, then threw himself to one side. He tore away from Dellas’s grasp and felt his elbow connect with solid flesh beneath the voluminous robe. Dellas gasped explosively and fired her weapon, but the beam missed its target, instead etching another scar on the turbolift doors. She did not release the weapon, however, and swung the disruptor in search of Kirk. Hunched over in order to make a smaller target, he scrambled toward the control panel, hoping that Dellas would be reluctant to fire wildly in the direction of Supervisor 146’s advanced equipment. Beyond that his plans were fairly sketchy; he was saving his life one second at a time. If I can just figure out how to bring down the shields . . . !

  “Captain, look out!” Spock shouted from the screen.

  “Commander, behind you!” Vithrok yelled. He slammed his palm down on an alarm button and a blaring siren filled the room. Great, Kirk thought. We’re going to have company.

  Dellas froze, but it was too late. Moving faster than Kirk would have thought possible, Gary Seven rose to his feet and barrelled into the Romulan commander from behind. Her disruptor flew from her hand and skidded across the floor toward the lift entrance. Vithrok ran for the weapon, but Kirk tackled him before he got too far. The scientist hit the ground hard, his flabby bulk cushioning Kirk’s own fall. Vithrok’s breath smelled slightly of Romulan ale. Tsk tsk, Doctor, Kirk thought. Drinking on the job? Vithrok attempted to roll over and strike back at Kirk, yet, even with the benefit of a Romulan’s greater than human strength, the reputedly brilliant researcher was no match for a trained Starfleet officer. Kirk smashed his fist into Vithrok’s bearded chin. The scientist’s eyes snapped shut and his head dropped backwards onto the floor tiles. Kirk massaged his aching knuckles; he’d forgotten how hard Romulan skulls could be.

  An angry cry drew his attention to the back of the control room. Kirk looked up to see Dellas wrestling with Gary Seven in front of the transporter pad. The luminescent fog continued to billow above the platform as, with another ferocious snarl, the would-be assassin shoved Seven away from her. She glanced quickly at Kirk and Seven, at the unclaimed disruptor lying on the floor out of reach and at the defeated lump of her chief scientist. Then she made her decision, spun around, and leaped headlong into the mist.

  “Stop!” Seven shouted, reaching for her, but his hand closed on nothing but a bright blue haze. Ribbons of glowing vapor slipped between his fingers.

  She was gone.

  Seven’s shoulders slumped for a moment, then he took a deep breath and turned around to face Kirk. “I have to go after her, Captain. It’s the only way.”

  Kirk nodded and stood up beside Vithrok’s sleeping body. The scientist’s white lab jacket covered him like a morgue blanket. “Understood,” Kirk said. “I don’t suppose you want me to come along.”

  “It’s your future, Captain. Think about it.”

  I am, Kirk thought solemnly. How could he not? Part of him was acutely interested in knowing what the galaxy would be like twenty, thirty years from today. What would become of James T. Kirk in the decades to come. Another five-year mission? An admiralty? Marriage and a family? My son David will be a grown man. What will he think of his father then? Then again, how did he even know that he was still going to be alive ten minutes from now, let alone twenty-some years from now? After all, Dellas had offered no cryptic hints as to his long-term fate, only Spock’s, and Kirk could all too easily imagine himself reenacting Ebenezer Scrooge’s ultimate nightmare: staring at a weathered gravestone with his own name on it.

  “Maybe it’s better if you go after all,” he told Seven.

  Spock’s oversized image towered above them on the viewscreen. “Captain, are you quite all right?” he asked.

  Kirk looked around. The emergency siren shrieked on, hurting his ears, but he did not yet hear the bootsteps of approaching Romulan guards. Hopefully, the fused tracks in the turbolift shaft would slow any reinforcements down for at least a few more minutes. Would that be enough time to do what had to be done?

  Seven crossed over to the control panel and rapidly manipulated the buttons and switches beneath the viewer. The blaring alarm ceased immediately, much to Kirk’s relief. “Activate Self-Destruct Program Omega-Prime,” he addressed the computer. He glanced back at the transporter platform where the swirling blue fog awaited him. His brow furrowed in concentration. “Commence program in twenty standard minutes.”

  “Affirmative,” the computer replied. Kirk wondered why the Romulans had never used voice commands to control 146’s apparatus. Perhaps, he speculated, they had disabled the system’s artificial intelligence to prevent it from interfering with their unauthorized takeover of the base. Twenty minutes, Kirk thought. That’s not a lot of time to get out of here before everything blows up.

  Seven retrieved the fallen disruptor from the floor where it had landed. He set it on stun and tossed it to Kirk, who caught it easily. He checked the weapon’s weight and balance. It was slightly heavier than a type-2 phaser pistol. “You’ll have to hold off any Romulan soldiers until I get back,” Seven informed him. “We can’t permit them to disable the self-destruct sequence.”

  “What about the shields?” Kirk asked. If they could just lower the shields protecting the installation, then Spock could beam one or both of them to safety at the last minute.

  Seven shook his head grimly. “I can’t lower them from here. Those functions were damaged by Commander Dellas’s initial disruptor blast and there isn’t time to repair them.” He gave Kirk a probing look. “I understand exactly what I’m asking of you, Captain.”

  He wants me to hold down the fort until the whole place goes up in flames, Kirk translated. It was a sobering thought; he had never expected to go down fighting in the sub-basement of an alien stronghold in the middle of the Romulan Empire. “Spock,” he said, addressing the screen. “Are there any other options?”

  “None I can see, Captain,” he answered. “The shields are quite formidable.” But not formidable enough, Kirk thought, to stop Commander Dellas from beaming to the future. Time travel, apparently, followed its own rules. “We can send down a rescue party on a shuttle,” Spock suggested.

  “No,” Kirk said. The base was too well-guarded. There was no point risking further lives. He hefted the disruptor in his grip and looked at Gary Seven. He cocked his head toward the luminescent fog. “Go,” he told Seven.

  “Thank you, Captain.” The turbulent azure mist was beginning to fade. Kirk examined the churning, energized mass of vapor, struck by how different it looked from the transporter effect he was familiar with. Dellas was on the other side of that mist somewhere, intent on ending the life of a man whom at this very moment commanded the starship in orbit above this very planet. Had she already succeeded? There was no way to know until Spock lived or died over two decades from now. Would he ever know if Gary Seven put an end to her murderous ambitions? The human mind, he felt convinced, was never designed to cope with the tortured causality of temporal paradoxes. By contrast, the menace of hostile Romulan soldiers was reassuringly concrete. Bring on the troopers, he thought. Let Seven worry about tomorrow’s tomorrows.

  Without a backwards glance, Seven launched himself into the mist. Kirk saw him receding into the fog for a second, glimpsed the man’s back as the glowing vapors enveloped him. Then the mist dissolved into nothingness, taking Seven with it. Kirk found himself alone in the now-silent control room, aside from the dormant body of Doctor Vithrok. Somewhere above him, he heard the hiss of disruptors cutting through solid steel. Dellas’s guards were burning their way to him, summoned by the alarm Seven had extinguished. Kirk positioned
himself in front of the turbolift entrance, disruptor in hand. Just like the Alamo, he thought. Too bad Spock had a front row seat. It had to be hard on him, standing by helplessly while Kirk defended a ticking bomb.

  “Fifteen minutes to self-destruct,” the computer announced.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Camp Khitomer, Khitomer Outpost

  United Federation of Planets

  Stardate 9521.6

  A.D. 2293

  THE TRAITOR’S BLOOD still pooled on the tile floor.

  Gary Seven gave little attention to the momentous drama unfolding around the podium where Kirk, Spock, and the others conferred with Azetbur, the Klingon chancellor, only minutes after the attempted assassination of the president of the Federation. These incarnations of the Enterprise crew, so many years older than the individuals he had just left behind in 2269, were perfectly capable of coping with the aftermath of that near tragedy. He was there to stop an even greater disaster from occurring—if he could.

  The air was cooler here than on the cloaked planet, the gravity a degree stronger. After spending a little over a year in the relatively provincial environment of twentieth century Earth, it felt odd to be surrounded by such a wide variety of alien races. Edging along the rear of the crowd, beneath hanging pennants of various hues and designs, Seven desperately scanned the vast assembly hall for any sign of Dellas in her nondescript robe. His own borrowed Starfleet uniform was a couple decades out of date, he realized, but there was no time to try to appropriate something more contemporary. He would have to hope that, with everyone transfixed by the dramatic tableau at the other end of the hall, no one would notice his fashion lapse.

  A pair of willowy Xela diplomats, their faces concealed behind veils of golden webbing, shifted to the left, obscuring his view of the several rows of seats. Seven clenched his teeth in frustration, then began to work his way up one of the aisles dividing one wing of spectators from another. His gaze swept back and forth over the densely populated chamber, hoping to catch a glimpse of the murderous Romulan from the past. Intent upon his search, he accidently stepped on the hoof of a snout-faced Tellarite, who snorted at him indignantly before returning his attention to Kirk and his valiant compatriots.