Star Trek

by Alan Dean Foster

  “Let ’em fight.”

  Spock snapped.

  Kirk did his best to fight back, but no human could have moved as fast as the acting captain of the Enterprise did at that moment. Spock became a blur, a whirlwind of striking hands and darting fingers. Every blow Kirk struck was blocked, every attempt at defense repulsed as Spock tore into him. Blood—considerably more than a trickle—began to appear on the taunter’s face as the Vulcan pounded him relentlessly. A couple of crew members hesitantly tried to intervene. Spock threw them aside as if they were weightless. Bedlam reigned on the bridge as other officers yelled and shouted in an attempt to stop the fight.

  Lifting Kirk off the ground, Spock threw him against a far wall. One of the security team charged with guarding the intruder tried to step between the two, only to find himself thrown to the deck. Eyes blazing, Spock caught Kirk before he could spin clear and clamped a hand over the tormenting human’s throat. Now even an alarmed Uhura was yelling at the Vulcan to stop. But all the acting captain heard was the uncontrolled raging in his own mind. Nothing could penetrate the white heat that was driving him, no one could make themselves heard above…

  “SPOCK.”

  From where he had remained standing near a far wall, Sarek had finally stepped forward.

  Spock maintained the death grip for an instant longer. Kirk’s eyes fluttered and started to roll back into his head. Then, with the sound of his father’s voice echoing throughout his entire being, Spock abruptly released the younger human. His attitude now that of the defeated instead of the victor, he stepped back, stunned by what had transpired. Clutching at his throat and gasping for air, Kirk barely managed to remain on his feet. Though his face was bloody and bruised, there was no hatred there. Only compassion.

  No one gave much notice to the visage of the battered lieutenant, however. Their attention was focused solely on their commanding officer. After a moment Spock gathered himself, straightening, and wiped at his eyes as he struggled to regain some semblance of his natural dignity. A condition now fled, he knew. Thoughts elsewhere, his attitude uncharacteristically hesitant, he walked calmly over to where McCoy was standing and staring back at him wide-eyed…

  “Doctor. By order of Starfleet Regulation Six-nineteen I hereby relinquish my command on the grounds that I have been—emotionally compromised. Please note the time and date in the ship’s log.” He pushed past the staring physician and exited the bridge.

  “I like this ship,” Scott declared into the ensuing silence. “It’s exciting!”

  McCoy turned to Kirk. “Congratulations, Jim. Now we’ve got no captain—and no goddamn first officer to replace him.”

  Kirk didn’t hesitate. “Yeah we do.”

  If he didn’t hesitate, the same could not be said for his shipmates. It was left to Sulu to point—in his direction. That was when it hit them. That was when they remembered.

  Pike had made Kirk first officer before leaving the ship.

  “What!?” McCoy blurted in disbelief as the same realization struck him.

  Kirk offered him a lopsided smile. “Thanks for the support, Doc.” As he moved purposefully toward the command chair, he passed Uhura.

  “There’s a lot I’d like to say—Captain.” She all but hissed the title. “But I’ll save it for another time. Meanwhile, I sure as hell hope you know what you’re doing.”

  Under the circumstances, he thought, her comment practically amounted to a vote of confidence. He nodded slowly.

  “So do I.”

  Spitting blood that was decidedly not green, he moved painfully toward the command chair. When McCoy stepped forward as if to examine the injuries the younger man had just suffered, Kirk waved him off. There would be time for that later, he knew. If they did not move swiftly and decisively now, there would be no time for anything. Slumping into the chair, he directed his voice to the communication pickup.

  “Attention, crew of the Enterprise. This is James Kirk. Captain Spock has resigned his commission and advanced me to acting captain.” Throughout the ship stunned crew and officers stopped what they were doing to listen to the announcement. Those who knew Spock could not imagine a scenario under which the Vulcan would have resigned as commanding officer.

  They had not been witness to the clash on the bridge.

  “I know you were all expecting to regroup with the rest of the fleet,” Kirk continued, “but I’m ordering a pursuit course of the enemy ship that we believe to be headed for Earth. I want all departments at battle stations and ready for combat in ten minutes. Either we’re going down or they are.” Ending the transmission, he looked around to regard the bridge crew. Some of them were still in shock. It had all happened so quickly.

  Not unexpectedly, it was Uhura who finally broke the stunned silence.

  “I want some answers. Where the hell did you get transwarp technology?” She jerked her head in the direction of the still silent and unmistakably damp figure who had remained standing inconspicuously off to one side of the lift doors. “Surely not from that vagrant you brought on board with you?”

  That drew a response from the subject, who looked wounded. “’Ere now, lassie, I think that’s uncalled for.”

  Kirk smiled, winced at the pain this induced, and tried to answer. “Lieutenant Uhura, that ‘vagrant’ is Montgomery Scott, an experienced Starfleet engineer of unexpected mental and technical gifts, if possibly dubious character. As to the definitive source of the actual physics that were employed to get us on board, trust me—it’s complicated.”

  Sulu looked over from his position at the helm. “How about you trust me? I have a doctorate in astrophysics and a master’s certificate in interstellar navigation—not to mention having completed a wide assortment of advanced seminars in subspace theory and related disciplines. Whatever explanation you care to propose, I think I can handle it.”

  “And I also,” declared Chekov. “Between Mister Sulu and myself I doubt there’s any account you can provide, Mir…Kir—Keptin Kirk—that we will be incapable of dissecting. Or is it that you want us to trust you but you won’t trust us?”

  The expressions and attitudes of the rest of the bridge complement indicated that not only did they agree wholeheartedly with the two officers but that Kirk was going to have a hard time getting them to listen to him if he was not soon more forthcoming on this particular subject. Still, he hesitated before replying. When he finally did so it was because he knew that when the time came to confront Nero and the Narada, the one thing they could not afford was uncertainty regarding the top of the chain of command. It would be critical that everyone respond promptly and to the best of their ability to whatever orders he might have to issue. The battlefield was not the place to question the competency—or the honesty—of one’s commanding officer. He had no choice but to respond to Sulu’s and Chekov’s and Uhura’s probing.

  Even if it was likely they wouldn’t believe a word he said.

  “Okay, you want answers? The necessary equations to program a transporter for transwarp beaming came from Spock.” Looks of bewilderment were exchanged among the bridge crew. They only grew deeper as Kirk continued.

  “Not the Spock who just resigned his command of this ship. Not the Spock who just nearly killed me. They came from an older Spock. A much older Spock. One from the future who traveled through a wormhole and is currently residing in our present.”

  Seated at the helm, Sulu was staring back at him. “Okay—I find myself having to amend my previous statement: I’m not sure I can handle it.”

  “Do you think we’re all crazy, Captain?” Chekov challenged him.

  “No.” Kirk found himself growing in confidence the more he explained. “I am asking you to think. Consider our opponent, the great Romulan starship, the Narada. Bigger by far than any Romulan warship in the catalog. Utilizing weaponry whose basics are familiar but that are far more powerful than anything previously encountered. The unremittingly hostile, even vengeful attitude of its commander and crew. An attitu
de that to us has no basis in reality. In this reality.”

  Sulu looked at Chekov, who looked back at Uhura. The change in attitude on the bridge was perceptible. Or maybe, Kirk thought, he was just fooling himself. But at least they were listening to him. At least they were thinking.

  Logic was not the exclusive preserve of Vulcans. Humans too, on those occasions when they calmed down, were capable of rational thought. And when all possible reasonable explanations for a sequence of events had been exhausted, they were frequently willing to consider the impossible. He continued to present it.

  “This Nero followed the older Spock back in time because he blames Vulcan and all Vulcans for the destruction in the future of Romulus. He thinks the Federation, and Vulcan in particular as exemplified by a future mission headed by Spock, could have saved his homeworld. He doesn’t trust the Federation, Vulcan, or Spock to do it in this time frame. So now he thinks the only way to save Romulus in the future is to destroy the Federation in our present. That’s the truth. As for transwarp beaming capability…” Turning, he nodded in the engineer’s direction. “Ask him. He’s the one who invented it. Spock—the older Spock, the one from the future—just supplied a reminder.”

  This time it was not just Uhura but everyone on the bridge who looked penetratingly in Scott’s direction.

  “Is what he says true, Mister—Scott?”

  The engineer nodded, his attitude a mixture of pride and embarrassment. “Aye—and me friends call me ‘Scotty.’”

  The astonishment and uncertainty that had heretofore dominated the bridge now dissolved into excited debate.

  “So this changes all our histories, or what?” McCoy began. “Does it change the general thread of history and not personal pasts, or does everything change?” He looked down at himself. “Do we change physically, too? I kind of like the way I am.” His gaze narrowed as he regarded the new captain. “If we alter the future so that everyone has to do transwarp beaming, I’m not sure I want to go there.”

  “Our history is only altered,” Sulu was saying, “if you think of time as a single thread.”

  “Then possibly it’s more like we’re living out a parallel strand than an alternate one,” Uhura speculated aloud. “If you believe that the future is immutable and that it already exists, what we’re doing is only changing the past. That same future, or if you prefer, parallel one, will continue on whatever plane it exists. Only ours, only this one here and now, will be altered.”

  “Parallel?” McCoy stared at her. “How many damn universes are there?”

  “If this one is changed,” Sulu continued, “does it only affect this one, or are all the others affected as well?”

  “A ripple effect across the entire continuum.” Chekov was clearly excited by the possibilities, however theoretical they might remain. “But can such a ripple affect only parallel existences, or, if it is strong enough, can it also affect a future that has already happened?”

  Turning away from the animated and slightly chaotic discussion, McCoy put his hands over his ears. “Kentucky,” he told himself solemnly. “Think bluegrass. Quiet caves. Real food. Not parallel food.”

  Kirk eventually called for silence. “Look,” he told them, “I’m not sure what it means or if we can even make things go back to the way they were—the way they’re supposed to be. Our task right now is to try and save Earth and the Federation from someone who doesn’t care about the future of either. We have enough to worry about trying to save the present, without tying ourselves in mental knots wondering if we can save the future. One thing I do know for certain—if we don’t save the present then there’ll be no future. At least, not for the Federation.” He tried to meet each of their stares in turn.

  “Maybe if this ship was crewed by Einstein, Rutherford, Bohr, Planck, Hawking, Ashford, T’mer, and Lal-kang instead of us they’d be able to come up with some answers to questions that we can barely formulate. But it isn’t. There’s just us. And if we want our descendants to have any kind of future, then it’s up to us to see that it comes to pass. All I know is, we can’t tell Spock—our Spock, the present-day Spock—any of this.”

  Evidently, McCoy’s hands were not pressed tightly enough over his ears, because he turned to frown at the command chair. “Why the hell not?”

  “Because I promised him,” Kirk explained.

  Uhura looked baffled. “Promised who?”

  “Spock.” Kirk struggled for clarity—and feared he was losing the fight. “The other one—the other Spock. The one from the future. I promised him that I wouldn’t tell him in the present about him from the future because him from the future made me promise.” His voice rose. “Dammit, are you gonna trust me or not?”

  In response to his manifestly frustrated appeal, silence once more settled over the bridge. But not comprehension.

  No one bothered him as he stood in the transporter room, staring at the pad where his mother should have rematerialized. He was unspeakably grateful for the privacy. No one intruded on his personal space to try and comfort him, or to sympathize, or to offer insipid uplifting homilies. He was not in the mood for any such well-meaning platitudes. All he required, all he wished for, was to be left alone. Had anyone come and tried to access his solitude he would have turned them away, politely but firmly. Upon resigning command he had clearly and unequivocally stipulated that he should be left alone. It was a demand no one would rebuff. Save one.

  His father.

  Sarek, child of Skon, child of Solkar, entered the main transporter room and stared at his son in silence. On the Council of the Vulcan Academy of Sciences he had always known what to say. Acting as an ambassador for his people he had rarely been at a loss for the necessary words to make Vulcan’s case before the Federation. As a husband wed to a woman of another species he had never…he had never…

  That was one place too painful now for even Sarek to go. Instead, he concentrated on a destination still within reach. It finally caused him to break the respectful silence that had been in place between them for over an hour now. It had taken that long to settle on the right words.

  “You must not punish yourself.”

  Hands folded in front of him, Spock looked over at his remaining parent. “I require seclusion. I ask that you respect my wishes and leave.”

  At least, Sarek thought to himself, he has not retreated permanently into silence. It was a hopeful sign. “How many times since you were born have I heard those same words, albeit voiced by a child and subsequently an adolescent in command of far less gravity? I remain because I wish you to speak your mind, Spock.”

  The younger man looked away. “That would be unwise.”

  “What is necessary is always wise, my son. If I did not feel it necessary for you to speak of what is inside you, then I would not wish for it. It is true that logic is often its own reward—but it is a reward best shared with others. That which is beautiful is magnified by being shared with others. That which is painful is often moderated by being shared. Both approaches are equally logical.”

  Spock hesitated, then let out a little of what was clearly seething inside him. “I feel as conflicted as I once was. Like a child. Have I made so little progress that I cannot contain myself even when entrusted with the position of starship captain? If that is so, then I am truly not fit for such duty.”

  “You will always be a child of two worlds, Spock,” Sarek replied gently. “As such, you will forever be forced to make decisions that partake of both. You must not castigate yourself for failing to be wholly Vulcan because you cannot be so. Instead of viewing your heritage as potentially embracing the worst of one world or the other, try to extrapolate the best of both. Even if ultimately only made possible by biological manipulation, your birthright, Spock, should be as much a wonderment to you as it is to me. I am grateful for it. And for you.” He found himself pausing once more. “And not only because you are all I have left of—her.”

  As the science officer turned to his father he did not become
emotional—but he came undeniably close.

  “I feel such—anger. For the one who took her life. Illogical as it may be, I cannot escape it. It troubles me every moment I am awake, like an equation whose components are all present but that still cannot be solved. It is an anger I cannot stop.”

  Sarek nodded understandingly. “It is not how I would react, of course, but I believe she would say—do not try to.”

  Their eyes met—and this time, held.

  “You asked me once,” Sarek continued, “why I married your mother. I married her—because I loved her.”

  Nothing more was said, but for Spock, child of Sarek, child of Grayson, something important had clearly been resolved.

  XVI

  On the bridge a strategy session was in full swing. Having no particular plan of his own other than to catch up to the homicidal Romulan called Nero and somehow stop him, Kirk was willing to listen to suggestions no matter how outrageous or who their source. Had a coterie of the Enterprise’s maintenance crew come before him with an idea, he would have listened to it with as much respect as he gave the thoughts of Chekov and the rest of the ship’s tactical team.

  But first they had to find some way to resolve the small matter of the distance separating them from the Narada.

  “Can we catch up?” Kirk finally asked the question that could not be avoided.

  Sulu had already run the simulation half a dozen times, each time factoring in different options that represented wishful thinking more than they did solid physics. His response this time was identical to the previous six.

  “Not a chance. I’ve run every option, Captain. They’re going to be in geosynchronous orbit around Earth in eight minutes. We’ll never make it.”

  “Even if we could,” McCoy pointed out, “you can’t go in with guns blazing.”