Kirk nodded. And silently sent his thanks out through time itself to the someone who had broken regulations to send that small acknowledgment, that tiny confirmation that the future was secure.
And on Picard’s Enterprise, Picard himself nonchalantly moved away from a communications control panel where he had just happened to find himself with his uninjured hand resting by the automatic hailing frequencies controls, unaffected by the coded lockouts. He returned to his chair. Troi smiled at him. She knew. She understood.
The years once again grew between Kirk and Picard but in the grand scale of things, there was little that separated them.
Each to their own time, both servants of the Federation, they reached the upper event horizon, and together yet apart they made their way back to their separate times and the destiny they served …
… the United Federation of Planets.
The stars burst like fireworks before Cochrane’s eyes and he blinked in surprise and excitement
“We’re free!” the Companion exclaimed. “Oh, Zefram, we can go home!”
Cochrane could still not believe what had happened. He had seen two starships, the Enterprise and one twice its size, fly in formation to either side of the shuttlecraft. He had seen the Enterprise veer off and disappear in the murk of the environment beyond the event horizon. He guessed that some rescue had been organized. Perhaps the larger ship that kept the shuttlecraft safe was the Excalibur or the Lexington, both of which Kirk had said were on their way to help.
There was no sense of movement as the gas disk of the black hole fell away from beneath them. They were in warp space, heading away from the tidal forces of the singularity. It had all worked out.
Then, in the moment of his rejoicing, Cochrane saw a shimmering of green light through the forward windows, and as he watched in utter astonishment, a green starship materialized out of the vacuum, and flew at him, weapons firing.
The stars burst like fireworks before Kirk’s eyes and he knew they were free from the event horizon.
An instant later, the bridge lights dimmed and damage alarms sounded.
“Och,” Scotty said from engineering, “there go the crystals. And after what we’ve been through, we’ve only got a minute of power left.”
“Shut down every system!” Kirk commanded. “ Communications, environmental, everything! Put it all into propulsion, Mr. Sulu.” Kirk knew they had to get as far away from the region of the black hole’s crushing tidal forces as they could, before his ship’s structural integrity field failed and the Enterprise was torn apart.
Spock was to Kirk’s right. “I regret to point out that we do not have sufficient reserves to escape the Roche limit,” he said flatly. “These efforts are useless.”
McCoy was on Kirk’s left. “ You regret it?”
“Scotty will get us out of here,” Kirk said. Scotty always did.
But Scotty said, “Not this time, Captain. With no matter-antimatter reactor, I’ve got nothing more t’ draw from. I’m sorry, sir.”
Kirk straightened in his chair. There were no more options. No more rules to change. The odds could only be beaten so many times before the law of averages made itself known. The journey was over. As simple as that.
“You warned me, Scotty,” Kirk said, uncharacteristically quiet, the fire gone from him in this moment, accepting that even he had limits. “We took this ship into a black hole and we brought her out again. Maybe this is the way we’re supposed to go out.”
“Being the first,” Spock said.
“And the best,” McCoy said.
Scott started the countdown from engineering. “Thirty seconds, Captain.”
“I’m proud of you, Scotty. You kept her going when no one else could.”
“Glad to have been aboard, sir,” the chief engineer replied softly. “Twenty-five seconds. The lights will go first. The SIF will fail a moment later. Just so ye know.”
Kirk touched the intercom control on the arm of his chair. He spoke to his crew, to his ship, telling them of his pride in all of them. He spoke to the passengers he had rescued from the Planitia, telling them of his sorrow. He ended the broadcast and in the privacy of the bridge said his farewells to Uhura, to Chekov, to Sulu.
He was surprised that in the end there were no real regrets.
“Ten seconds,” Scott said.
“I never thought it would end this way,” McCoy said.
Kirk forced a smile as he stared at the screen, wondering what he might see the instant before it happened, and the instant after. “I never thought it would end, period,” he said,
“Five seconds,” Scott announced. “I’ll see you in Valhalla, gentlemen.”
Beside him, Kirk heard Spock sigh. “At least it can be said that it was f—”
A blinding blue flash flared from the viewscreen. A second flash followed, and with that all systems failed—the lights, the displays, the engine roar. Only battery lights remained, offering dim illumination for the final second.
Which became the final two seconds.
The final five seconds.
“Why are we still here?” McCoy asked.
“She didn’t go!” Chekov exclaimed.
“Obviously,” Spock commented.
And instantly Kirk realized what had happened. The flight recorder he had launched! The twin flashes of blue light!
He turned in his chair. “Uhura! Full battery power to communications! And get that screen going!”
A moment later, Captain Harris of the U.S.S. Excalibur was grinning from that screen. “Welcome back, Enterprise.”
Kirk felt like laughing, felt like crying, both together. “Tom. Hello. Glad you could make it.”
“I’ll bet you are,” Harris laughed.
Another voice came over the speakers. “Jim, you old spacedog. Am I reading my sensors right? You’ve got no power, no crystals, no nothing?”
The screen image changed. Commodore Robert Wesley appeared, front and center on the bridge of the Lexington.
“Hello, Bob,” Kirk said to his old friend. “Thanks for the lift, and the tractor beams, and the shields.”
Wesley shook his head in admiration. “Hold on tight, Jim. We’ll be taking you to warp as soon as we calibrate with the Excalibur.” Wesley looked off to the side, grinned back at Kirk. “I tell you, Jim, from the damage statistics we’re getting from your ship, you’d better hope Starfleet doesn’t decide to deduct the damages from your salary. You could be flying these things for the next thousand years.”
Kirk leaned back in his chair. “I’d settle for a hundred,” he said. “That would be just about right.”
Then, like a wounded warrior carried victoriously from the field, the Enterprise rested in the shields of her companions. Flanking her, supporting her, but adjusting their beams so she had the honor of leading the way, the Excalibur and the Lexington delivered the Enterprise from the gravity of TNC 65813, and returned her to the stars where she belonged.
The stars burst like fireworks before Picard’s eyes.
They had succeeded.
“Congratulations,” Riker said to Picard.
“To us all, Number One.” Picard turned to his engineer. “Mr. La Forge, can we handle warp speed long enough to get us away from here?”
“We should be able to manage a few light-hours, Captain.”
“Mr. O’Brien,” Picard continued. “What is the status of the shuttlecraft?”
“Two strong life signs,” O’Brien answered. “One human, one …” He shrugged. “Not human, I guess.”
“Two? The captain of the Garneau was aware of only one passenger,” Picard said. “Will the tractor beam hold them till we get away from here?”
“Yes, sir. For an hour or so at least.”
“Very good,” Picard said. Already the next course of events was becoming clear to him. A briefwarp flight to empty space. Then, a complete shutdown of the Enterprise’s computer system so they could bring it back on-line without the lockout codes the Thor
sen personality had somehow programmed into it. To begin, work crews could get around the sealed doors and security screens by using the personnel transporters in the several shuttlecraft the ship carried. Those transporters could also be used to bring aboard their mysterious passengers from the past. “A day or two and we should be able to get underway for Betazed,” Picard said. There was no sense in delivering a counterfeit Borg artifact to Admiral Hanson. “In time for the trade conference. And then we can see what we can do about restoring Mr. Data.”
Riker carefully touched the splint on his leg. “And the rest of us,” he said.
“Ensign McKnight, plot a general heading toward Betazed, warp factor three.”
“Course plotted, sir.”
“Engage.”
With only a slight hesitation, the Enterprise came to life around them. The gas disk of the Kabreigny Object began to shrink in the viewscreen.
“I wonder if that black hole was named after Admiral Quarlo Kabreigny?” Picard asked. “I have always found her essays about the dual nature of Starfleet most compelling.”
“We’ll know as soon as we get our computer back,” Riker said.
A collision alarm sounded.
“Warbird decloaking!” Worf called out.
There could be only one explanation. “Tarl!” Riker said.
The viewscreen flickered as a phaser burst hit the ship.
“Shields at forty percent!” Worf announced.
“Captain,” La Forge said, “without a crew, we’re not going to be able to maintain even that strength for long.”
“Maybe we should have brought Kirk into our time,” Picard said. “Mr. Worf, ready on phasers! Ready on photon torpedoes!”
“The Warbird is coming around,” Worf said. “Our phasers are at fifty percent.”
“Prepare for evasive maneuvers,” Picard warned his crew.
The Romulan Warbird filled the screen. The Enterprise shook from the fury of its attack.
“I’m all out of tricks,” Picard said. “The only thing we can do is—”
The Warbird’s port side flared with a phaser hit. The ship twisted with the sudden vaporization of its hull plates. Two streaks that could only be photon torpedoes swept in through the shield opening and slipped between the double hulls. Then golden light flared within those hulls and the Warbird split in half, top and bottom, with her bridge tumbling forward until it, too, disintegrated in a fireball.
“Good shooting, Mr. Worf,” the captain said, impressed.
“I did not fire,” Worf answered, perplexed.
Picard and Riker looked at each other with startled glances, a single name on their lips. Had he come back with them? Could it be—
“Sir, we are being hailed by Captain Bondar of the Garneau,” Worf announced.
Picard sighed. It had been too much to hope for that he would ever have a chance to meet Kirk in the flesh. “Onscreen, Mr. Worf.”
The captain of the Garneau was far different from her first appearance on the screen. She was forbidding, implacable. “Who’s in charge of your vessel now?” she said bluntly.
“Jean-Luc Picard,” the captain answered. “We have regained control.”
“Good,” Bondar said. “Otherwise, after what you did to my ship, you would have been next. Any idea what that Romulan wanted?”
“It’s a long story,” Picard replied.
“What about that shuttlecraft you’re carrying in your tractor beam?” she asked. “Did you bring that out from the event horizon?”
“Yes, we did,” Picard confirmed. “I believe it is the science package you were supposed to retrieve.”
Bondar frowned. “I hope not. It looks like the Romulan shot it up pretty bad.”
The next few minutes were confusion compounded by frustration. With the entire Enterprise at his disposal, Picard was unable to have the ship do anything.
The Garneau beamed aboard the two passengers from the damaged shuttlecraft. The Garneau beamed Dr. Crusher to its own sickbay to examine the passengers. The Garneau then beamed La Forge to the Enterprise’s engineering section and a team of computer technicians from the areas in which they were trapped to the Enterprise’s computer cores.
Dr. Crusher reported back to Picard twenty minutes after boarding the Garneau. Both passengers were seriously injured.
“Severe radiation burns,” Dr. Crusher said from the main viewscreen. “The male will require major organ replacement. And the female, well, she seems human but I’m getting strange double readings. To the naked eye, she’s in just as bad shape as the male, but on my tricorder, she doesn’t seem as badly off for some reason.”
“Will they survive until we can take them to a starbase?” Picard asked.
“That’s just it, Jean-Luc. The female says they can’t go to a starbase. She has to go home, or she’ll die. She says home is where Captain Kirk was taking them.”
“Where is her home?”
“A planetoid in the Gamma Canaris region. Designation five two seven.”
Picard nodded. “We’re very near. Will there be medical treatment available for her there?”
“That’s the impression I get,” Dr. Crusher said. “I’ve got her sedated. She was quite upset when she was beamed aboard.”
“Do you know who she is?” Picard asked.
“She gave the name Nancy Hedford. The computer over here lists a few humans with that name from her time period and we’re running a picture match. But Jean-Luc, I don’t think she’s the passenger Starfleet was so concerned about.”
Picard was intrigued. “Do you know who the male is?” he asked.
Dr. Crusher looked out from the screen as if apologizing in advance for what she had to say next. “She says the man’s name is Zefram Cochrane.”
Picard felt a chill lift the fine hairs on his neck. “The Zefram Cochrane?”
“His features are very close to the portrait in one of the engine manuals they have over here. Much younger, but he would have been well over two hundred years old in Kirk’s time period, so there might be something at work here we don’t know about.”
“That, Dr. Crusher, is an understatement if I have ever heard one.” Picard shifted in his chair. His broken wrist was beginning to regain feeling. But there would be time enough to deal with that later.
“Ensign McKnight,” Picard said, “lay in a course for the Gamma Canaris region, planetoid designation five two seven. Mr. Worf, get me Captain Bondar.”
“We’re not taking them to a starbase for medical treatment?” Riker asked.
Picard shook his head. “Captain Kirk was taking them home, Number One. After what he did for us, the least we can do is complete his mission.”
SIX
U.S.S. ENTERPRISE NCC-1701-D APPROACHING THE GAMMA CANARIS REGION
Stardate 43923.8
Earth Standard: ≈ May 2366
Cochrane remembered the light and the pain of the Romulan’s attack and he thought he was on the Bonaventure II again, life ebbing, the light enveloping him, bringing him peace, bringing him—
He awoke.
On the Enterprise again.
But not the Enterprise.
Kirk’s ship he had felt he could almost understand. He had glanced at some of the technical manuals Kirk had left with him on the Companion’s planetoid. He had seen the ship’s design on the plaque, seen it in space from the shuttlecraft. The lines made sense. There was a logic to its construction that clearly derived from his work.
But this Enterprise … it made him think of Clarke’s law, that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
That’s what this Enterprise was.
Magic, pure and simple.
The first night, he had sat up late in his bed in sickbay, scanning the manuals La Forge had flagged for him. More than a thousand crew. Matter replicators. A top speed beyond what his most optimistic projections had ever predicted would ever be possible.
And there was still no end in sight.
Three hundred and thirty-six years he had seen. Three hundred and thirty-six! He wondered what his friend Micah Brack would have said to that. If he would have been jealous.
What wonders he had seen. What wonders he knew were still ahead.
The second morning he awoke smiling, thinking of those wonders, cradling the Companion in his arms.
She had slipped into her coma shortly after. The ship’s doctor had been concerned, but Cochrane had convinced her not to worry. When they returned to the planetoid, all would be well. The Companion drew her life from that place. She would do so again.
Picard came for him that morning as the Companion slept in Cochrane’s arms.
They had been moved from sickbay and given an ordinary stateroom. One of unthinkable luxury to someone used to the twenty-first century.
To Cochrane, Picard seemed a serious man. Almost too controlled, as if he had a touch of Vulcan blood inside him.
“We have arrived,” the captain said.
Cochrane nodded his thanks. It was difficult to talk. The doctor said that he had been badly irradiated. That he would need drastic medical treatment. But Cochrane had not been worried. Once the Companion was well, there would be time enough for him.
“And I have some rather bad news,” the captain continued.
Cochrane tightened his embrace of the Companion. She didn’t stir, though he could hear her, feel her breathe.
“The planetoid is no longer there,” the captain said. “Instead, at its coordinates, we’re reading rubble, almost a century old. With a high degree of some unusual energy matrix our scientists have been unable to identify.”
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