They had barely emerged into the open when they were greeted by a sight none could have envisioned in their wildest dreams or worst nightmares. In all directions, as far as any of them could see, mountains and bluffs and ridges and desert were breaking apart and falling inward. Vulcan was folding in upon itself.
Spock knew that paralysis, whether mental or physical, was not a luxury he could afford. Whipping out his communicator he spoke into the open channel.
“Spock to Enterprise. Emergency transport for seven additional in my immediate vicinity together with large object they are carrying—now.”
On the bridge of the orbiting starship Chekov strained to simultaneously and accurately lock in a transport room full of strangers along with their cargo. He needed more time. On the other side of the bridge a junior helmsman was staring fixedly at his instrumentation.
“Thirty seconds before we must leave—or we never will.”
“Locking signatures,” Chekov announced. “Transport in five, four, three…”
As her world—their world—crumbled around them, Amanda Grayson looked at her son and almost smiled.
“It’s okay,” she told him quietly, “to be scared.”
Behind the assembled Elders the wall of the sanctuary ripped free from the stabilizing pylons that had been driven into solid rock. The latter had become an oxymoron: there no longer was any solid rock on Vulcan. It was all crumbling, contracting, collapsing in upon itself. As the first stages of transport coalesced around them and they began to dematerialize, the ground beneath Amanda Grayson’s feet vanished and she began to fall, to drop away. A few meters was all that separated her from the last transporter signature lock—all that separated her from her son.
“MOTHER!”
The eight vanished, their signatures to reappear elsewhere. Seven rematerialized on board the Starship Enterprise. The eighth…
The eighth had become one with the compacted body of Vulcan.
In the main transporter bay technicians worked furiously to finalize the progression. Seven shapes began to take form. One of them emerged in an awkward, ungainly position, body bent forward with an arm extended as if reaching for something. Sarek and the other Elders gazed around them and took stock of their new surroundings. Only Spock continued to stare into the distance, searching for something that was not there. A moment ago she had been barely an arm’s length away, directly in front of him. Now—she was gone. Forever. There was no Restore control for a human being.
On the bridge an agonized Chekov spun around to bellow at the acting helmsman. He had tried, desperately, to bring eight signatures on board. “Transport complete!”
He knew he had managed only seven.
It was the report the junior officer had been waiting to hear. Without pausing for confirmation—there was no more time for confirmation, or anything else—he swept a hand over glowing controls.
“Maximum warp—engaging emergency power!” Engineering would scream in protest at that, he knew. He was not worried. At least they would be able to scream.
As the starship bolted in the general direction of the center of the Milky Way, its rear-facing sensors recorded a disruption that was insignificant on the galactic scale but terrifying in human terms. Soundlessly, crumpling in upon itself like a candy wrapper in a child’s hand, Vulcan imploded. Deserts, atmosphere, oceans—all the familiar geological features that combined to give the surface of a world its character—vanished, along with cities and infrastructure and the people who had built them. In their place a brief blaze of intense light lingered on the retinas of those looking on—the last glow of the planet’s molten core. Then it, too, was gone. Only a very small black hole remained at the interstellar coordinates where once a high civilization had thrived. Despite having swallowed an entire world, the perpetrator was visible only to those astronomical instruments capable of recording its occultation of a few background stars.
The incredible gravitational strength of the indiscernible monster that was the singularity reached out in all directions. It licked at the fleeing Enterprise, but the range of its all-consuming grasp extended only to a zone from which the starship had already fled. Behind lay the rest of the Vulcan system—and memories of a world that was no more.
While the other Elders murmured among themselves, father and son embraced. From the expression on their faces, it was impossible to tell what Sarek and Spock were thinking. Impossible to tell, but easy enough to imagine.
Kirk found himself moving toward them. One small part of Academy training dealt with the ways in which a senior officer could personally comfort family members on the loss of a loved one in battle or on general duty. There was nothing in the manuals that he could recall that dealt with how to console survivors on the loss of their entire world. Spock had just lost both. In lieu of precedent, Kirk spoke as he would have if he had been trying to comfort a neighbor back in Iowa.
“Spock—I’m sorry.”
The ship’s chief science officer did not respond. Perhaps, Kirk thought, he was finding comfort in his own thoughts. Or more likely, in the Vulcan way of responding to tragedy—by retreating into logic. Spock’s first comment on being brought back aboard more or less confirmed Kirk’s supposition as the science officer removed his recorder and spoke into it.
“Acting captain’s log, stardate twenty-two fifty-eight—point forty-three. In the absence of Captain Christopher Pike, and pursuant to the relevant Starfleet regulations, I have assumed command of the Enterprise. We’ve received no word from Captain Pike since he was taken aboard the atypical Romulan vessel known as the Narada. I have therefore classified him as a hostage of the war criminal known as Nero.
“Based on readings taken as the enemy vessel departed and in consultation with the Enterprise’s computational facilities, it is hypothesized that its next destination may be the Sol system—and, presumably, Earth. Further updates will be forthcoming as new information becomes available.”
Clicking off the recorder, he stepped down from the transporter platform. He did not look in Kirk’s direction as he departed, nor did Kirk try to intercept him.
For one of the very few times in his life, the younger officer could think of nothing to say.
Every sickbay including medical central was full to overflowing. In addition to the Elders a number of other citizens of Vulcan had managed to survive the catastrophe that had eradicated their homeworld. Most had been working in bases on T’Khul, the Vulcan system’s third world, and had been beamed aboard the Enterprise subsequent to Vulcan’s destruction. Bewildered and ignorant of the details that had orphaned them, many were traumatized in ways that humans could not understand. It was left to the Elders to mind-meld where possible and see to their treatment with appropriate medications when mind-to-mind contact proved insufficient.
Many had been brought aboard in haste and had suffered injuries as a consequence. In addition to the new arrivals most sickbays were already crowded with injured crew members who had survived the Narada’s original devastating attack. As more and more patients were treated and discharged, living quarters on the ship became crowded and her life-support facilities increasingly strained. No one complained. When a request was put out for those willing to share their living space with survivors, every member of the crew promptly volunteered. Where possible, healthy crew members moved in with friends and turned their private quarters over to dazed Vulcans. While it was clear to everyone that the Vulcans were handling the tragedy far better than would a comparable group of humans, there were still far too many cases of mind-shock.
As he wandered through the main sickbay, Spock tried to take stock of the survivors. Their total number was pitiful. There were Vulcans elsewhere, of course. In missions and embassies on other worlds, operating by themselves within distant scientific outposts or in conjunction with humans and other sentient species, traveling on other starships. His people would go on, albeit enormously reduced in number and influence. He delineated as much as he murmured into
his recorder.
“While the essence of our culture has been preserved in, among other aspects, the Elders, including my father, who now reside upon this ship, Nero has destroyed my home planet. Of its six billion inhabitants, I estimate that no more than ten thousand survived. An additional number yet to be determined are safely scattered elsewhere throughout the Federation and its allied systems.” Without a hint of irony in his voice he concluded, “I am now a member of an endangered species.”
As he continued to inspect the progress that was being made by the ship’s medical teams, he happened upon the stowaway Kirk. Having disabled the Romulan plasma drill, albeit too late to save Vulcan, the junior officer would have been more than within his rights to have retired to quarters. Instead he was here in the bay. At the moment he was tending to a Vulcan girl, murmuring to her sweetly and smiling as he wrapped a slender arm stained with green blood in a self-sealing bandage. Noticing Spock standing nearby and watching, Kirk sent a look of regret toward the science officer. Regret, and sympathy. Their eyes met.
Turning without speaking or responding in any fashion to the junior officer’s expression of empathy, the acting captain exited the sickbay.
Uhura was heading down the main corridor when she saw him prepare to enter a lift. She managed to slip in before the doors closed and the internal transport headed for the bridge.
They were alone in the lift. As had everyone else on board, she tried to think of something to say. And as happened to everyone else on board, she could not find words to express how she felt. Surely any words, she thought, no matter how well-meaning, would constitute an intrusion. Yet as the lift continued on its way she felt—she knew—that she had to say something.
“I only wish I’d listened to that distress call more closely and sooner.”
How banal, she thought angrily as soon as she had spoken. How utterly, utterly inadequate. And stupid. Seeing her expression twist and deducing the reason, he peered down at her sympathetically. He, who had just lost his homeworld and the vast majority of his kind, had room enough within himself to feel compassion for her.
“Without you, none of us would have survived. What has happened is hardly your fault. Based on what knowledge and information is available I do not see how it could have been prevented.” He sounded almost wistful. “Perhaps in another universe, another chain of cosmic links, a small change in this or that sequence of events might have made a difference. But not in the here and now. You must not blame yourself. What happens to us, how our lives and that of all around us progresses, hinges on very small decisions.”
They stood like that for a moment, until Uhura did something any other member of the crew would have found odd—but not out of character. Reaching out, she thumbed the Stop on the lift. It immediately came to a halt between decks. Then she leaned forward, put both arms around him, and pressed her lips against his. Though mixed with sorrow and regret, no one would have mistaken it for a platonic kiss. In a manner plainly half-human, half-Vulcan, Spock responded. In a fashion sufficiently straightforward to indicate that he had done so before.
Eventually she pulled back. “I’m so sorry. I can’t do anything about what’s happened, about your world and your people. All I can do is try to do something for you.”
He looked away, bewildered, lost, uncertain. Nothing he had learned in his long course of education prepared him to reply. Nothing except what lay within him could conceivably conjure an appropriate response.
“What can I do?” she pressed him. “Tell me what you need.”
What I need? How to respond logically and rationally to the human woman so close to him? How to respond logically and rationally to such a question from anyone?
“I—need.”
Almost, he responded emotionally. Almost, he let himself go. But the time he had spent on Earth and among humans did not begin to equal the time he had spent maturing on Vulcan. He was his father’s son and his mother’s son, but in the end he could only be him.
Whatever that might turn out to be. With a start, he realized that despite all his certainty about himself, despite all the knowledge he had so assiduously cultivated, that was one question to which he still had no resolution.
In lieu of an answer he could only continue to be what he had become thus far. Reaching toward the control panel, he restarted the turbolift.
“I need for us all to continue performing admirably in the face of the terrible calamity that now confronts my people, our fellow Starfleet personnel, and the entire Federation.”
The doors parted and he stepped out. Uhura’s gaze followed him until they closed once more.
XII
It was easier when she was on station. Not because she didn’t think of him or of what had passed between them but because attending to ship’s communications required nearly all of her attention. No matter what happened, she told herself firmly, she was not going to overlook another potentially critical signal or transmission regardless of its nature or its content, or where it happened to be directed.
As Uhura listened to the ether, searching among the background hiss of stars and nebulae for anything of potential import, a conference laden with grim significance was taking place elsewhere on the bridge.
“As it stands,” Spock was saying, “we’ve not yet received any kind of orders or recommendations from Starfleet on how to respond to what has happened here, which suggests that even our emergency transmissions are still being jammed, deflected, or otherwise prevented from reaching the nearest relay.”
Kirk nodded in agreement. “We have to assume that every Federation planet’s a target. Since we still have no idea what’s motivating this Nero and his crew, we have no way of predicting for certain where or how he’ll strike next, other than a best-guess estimate that he may be heading for Earth.” His gaze met Spock’s. “If only we knew the ‘why’ of the carnage he’s causing.”
“Agreed,” added Chekov, “but why didn’t they destroy us? Why all the other ships and not the Enterprise? They have demonstrated without a doubt that they have the capability to do so.”
Sulu shrugged. “Why waste a weapon? We were seriously damaged and no longer a threat. Especially if they have greater goals in mind.”
“That’s not it. He said he wanted me to see something. The destruction of my homeworld.” The ship’s acting captain turned toward communications. “If, insofar as we have been able to determine, they are indeed heading for Earth, then their ambition and intent suggests the destruction of a single remaining starship is no longer high on their agenda.”
Standing, as usual, slightly off to one side, Leonard McCoy was, as usual, finally unable to contain himself. “And how the hell did they do that, by the way? When did they jump so far ahead in the arms race? While my specialty doesn’t require me to be familiar with the technological details of alien arms and armaments, I do have to have some knowledge of the damage they can inflict because I’m expected to repair it, at least on the personal level. I’ve never heard or read anything about a Romulan vessel the size of this Narada or the kind of destructive abilities it just displayed.”
Spock nodded imperceptibly. “It is a question, Doctor, that I have been mulling over with deep concern ever since our initial encounter. It is self-evident that such a technological leap as we have recently witnessed does not take place overnight, nor even over a period of several years. The exact time frame required to accomplish such feats can at this time only be speculated upon. The engineering and technological knowledge necessary to artificially generate a black hole such as was utilized to destroy my homeworld may point toward a possible answer.
“Such technology could, in theory, be manipulated for a purpose other than destruction. It could hypothetically be manipulated to create a tunnel through space-time, though from what we know of the possibilities, such a voyage would be extraordinarily risky for anyone attempting it.” He did not quite smile. “Of course, such conjecture is based on models that rely on current physical and m
athematical knowledge. We know nothing of future possibilities.”
“Dammit, man—I’m a doctor, not a physicist,” McCoy snapped. “Are you suggesting they’re from the future?”
Kirk stared at the acting captain. “That is what he’s suggesting, and I don’t buy it.”
Spock eyed him evenly. “If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains—however improbable—must be the truth. Process of elimination does not automatically disregard what has not yet been mathematically proven. Recall the words of Saint Clarke: ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’”
“How poetic,” McCoy commented sardonically.
“For some, Doctor, the possibility of time travel is nothing less than magic. Or poetry, if you prefer. For the enemy we now find ourselves facing, it may simply be a matter of sufficiently advanced technology.”
“If their technology is so advanced,” Kirk wondered aloud, “then what would an angry future Romulan want with Captain Pike?”
“Simply because their technology is exceptionally advanced in one or several areas does not mean they are dominant in all,” Spock pointed out. “Perversely, it is a good sign.”
McCoy’s gaze narrowed. “How can their taking Captain Pike as a captive be a ‘good sign’?”
“It suggests,” Spock explained calmly, “that while their technology is superior to us in many ways, they are not omnipotent.”
Sulu was nodding vigorously. “Captain Pike knows as much as any admiral about Starfleet’s defenses. If their next target is Earth and they felt certain of being able to penetrate its defenses, why else would they want him except to extort information?”
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