Trek It!

by Robert T. Jeschonek

  Sure enough, Redjac strikes at the festival. As the death toll rises, T'Pol shows up with a trio of Vulcan katrasu...masters of telepathy who specialize in banishing unwanted katras, or souls. Though mind-melding is frowned upon, the katrasu are revered; if a katra won't leave someone's body, they're the only ones who can dislodge it. T'Pol has guessed they'll be as effective in dealing with Redjac, who is similarly a disembodied intelligence.

  The katrasu are able to latch onto Redjac and trap him in the body of one of their own. They pledge to keep him imprisoned in their monastery on Mount Seleya until they can figure out a way to exorcise and destroy Redjac.

  Veka tells T'Pol that his respect for her has been restored after the way she dealt with the threat. Cleared of the murders, Aristotle says he will return to his studies of Vulcan logic and emotional discipline.

  The katrasu, unfortunately, cannot hold Redjac forever, and Vulcan turns out to be just the first stop on his bloody tour of the galaxy.

  FLINT – BETAZED, 2288 A.D.

  After Flint's announcement that Redjac is responsible for the murders, Kirk says it's not possible because Redjac was destroyed after the events of "Wolf in the Fold." His disembodied consciousness was dispersed by the transporter.

  Flint says he had thought Redjac was gone after that, too. In fact, after hearing about Redjac's destruction, he had thought his long-running battle with the evil entity was finally over; it was then that Flint had retired to his estate on Holberg 917G, which was where Kirk eventually encountered him. Unfortunately, Flint's hopes were dashed when he heard about the killings on Betazed, all done in the style of Redjac.

  Spock points out that Redjac has found the perfect feeding ground. On Betazed, where most of the residents are highly sensitive to emotion and possess some degree of telepathic ability, murders not only generate unusually strong fear responses from the victims, but trigger chain reactions of terror cascading through the populace – like the terror shockwaves experienced by Flint and the Enterprise team after the latest killings. Spock says the waves of terror must be increasing Redjac's power exponentially.

  Complaining that Kirk, Spock, and McCoy ruined his best chance at stopping the killer, Flint says he'll stop Redjac on his own. Kirk, however, insists that Flint work with him, because Flint has had more extensive experience battling Redjac. This time, Kirk wants to destroy the murderous entity for good.

  Flint argues with Kirk and tells him to stay out of it. He says that Kirk wrecked his life enough the last time they met, and he has no desire to deal with him again. Thanks to Spock's memory erasure, Kirk has no idea what Flint's talking about.

  Rayna intervenes. She tells Flint it makes sense to join forces with the Enterprise group, in spite of their differences. She says they should use every available resource and ally to fight Redjac.

  Immediately, Flint suspects that Rayna admires Kirk...and perhaps feels something more for him. History seems to be repeating itself.

  Fearing a replay of the disaster that happened twenty years ago, Flint doesn't want to expose Rayna to Kirk any more than he already has. He threatens Kirk, but Kirk won't back down. The impasse is interrupted when Scotty calls from the Enterprise.

  Scotty says the killer is offering to surrender...but will only give himself up to Kirk and Flint. According to the authorities, the killer is holed up in a hospital for Betazoid "hypersensitives" and promises to kill a hostage every five minutes until Kirk and Flint show up to accept his surrender.

  Confirming the threat, a terror shockwave blasts through the group, the result of another Betazoid murder. Everyone but Rayna is staggered by the impact. When the wave passes, Kirk asks Scotty if he can beam the killer out of the hospital and disperse him in space like they did the last time they fought Redjac. Scotty says he can't get a lock on the killer because of a bizarre field of interference around him.

  Finally, Flint agrees to work with Kirk...only because he has no other choice. Kirk orders Scotty to beam the whole group to the Betazoid hospital.

  When they arrive outside the hospital, Spock and McCoy advise Kirk not to go in after Redjac. McCoy insists on at least medicating Kirk so he won't be able to generate the kind of fear that Redjac feeds on. Kirk refuses because he doesn't want to lose his edge in such a critical confrontation. He's going in armed, though; Redjac said nothing about not carrying weapons.

  Spock takes Flint aside and tells him he wiped away Kirk's memory of Rayna after their encounter on Holberg 917G. "Why do I have the feeling that won't make any difference?" says Flint, watching as Rayna wishes Kirk good luck with an admiring smile.

  Suddenly, another wave of terror rushes through. Realizing it means Redjac's killed another victim, Flint and Kirk hurry into the building.

  As they walk down the hospital corridor, Flint and Kirk discuss the situation. They both know it's a trap; Redjac either intends to kill them or possess them. Flint says he's probably the one Redjac wants, since he has an immortal body...and the two of them have been in conflict for centuries.

  Kirk asks if Flint has any ideas on how to defeat the evil entity. Flint says they'll have to make it up as they go along.

  Just before they get to the common area where Bard and the hostages are located, another terror shockwave surges past. Flint and Kirk stagger into the room just in time to see Bard toss the latest bloody victim onto a pile of corpses.

  Kirk reaches for his phaser...only to discover it's gone. He looks at Flint, who shrugs and says, "I got rid of it. I won't let you harm him."

  "Why?" Kirk whispers angrily.

  "The entity's host," says Flint, "is my son."

  Kirk is surprised. Flint and Bard appear to be the same age; if anything, Bard looks older than Flint.

  "Well done, Father!" says Redjac/Bard. He taunts Flint and Kirk, telling them how great it is to see them again and how much he's looking forward to carrying out his revenge against them.

  "Enough of this," says Flint. "Here." He tears off his armored breastplate and throws it on the floor, casting aside the only thing that was protecting him from being possessed by Redjac. "I am no longer shielded by the aegis. Take me over, and you'll have an immortal body from which to terrorize the galaxy. Isn't this what you want? Just release Bard. Let my son go."

  Redjac/Bard howls with laughter. "Stupid old man!" he shouts, and then Bard crumples to the floor as the entity leaves his body.

  For a moment, the room is silent except for the whimpers of the terrified Betazoid patients. Flint and Kirk look at each other.

  Then, Kirk pulls out his communicator and tells Scotty to beam him up. As he disappears, he smirks cruelly at Flint. Redjac is in possession of his body; the entity was after Kirk all along.

  Flint slumps, realizing he has failed to stop his enemy...who now is in command of one of the most powerful starships in the fleet. In this moment of defeat, Flint remembers another incident involving Redjac and a man named Kirk...

  WYATT EARP – INDIAN TERRITORY, OKLAHOMA, 1876 A.D.

  Two lawmen are pinned down by gunfire at night on a street in Muskogee: Frank Kirk and Noah Sisko of the Lighthorsemen, an Indian police force patrolling the Territory. (Frank is an ancestor of James Kirk, and Noah is an ancestor of Benjamin Sisko.) Though they aren't full-blooded Indians, Kirk and Sisko qualified for the Lighthorsemen because Kirk is part Cherokee and Sisko is a Freedman, once a slave owned by the Choctaw.

  Kirk and Sisko are trying to apprehend a suspect in a rash of murders of women of the Five Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma: Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole. Kirk and Sisko's pursuit of the suspect went bad, and it's starting to look like they're in serious danger.

  They've been fighting an uphill battle trying to stop the Indian murders because the U.S. government won't pay any attention to the crimes. Kirk, the younger of the two, is also the angrier one. One of the victims was his intended bride, and he's furious that more isn't being done to apprehend the killer.

  The suspect, Scratch Wilks, advances on
Kirk and Sisko...but just as things look grim, two men ride down the street on horses, firing on Wilks. He gives up on killing Kirk and Sisko and bolts.

  One of the riders stops and renders aid to Kirk and Sisko. The man introduces himself as Bass Reeves, a friend and cousin of Sisko's; he's a legendary African-American marshal, and he came to Muskogee after a telegraphed request for help from Sisko.

  Reeves brought along extra help in the form of the other rider: Wyatt Earp, chief deputy marshal of Dodge City, Kansas (and the latest identity of Flint). Earp was visiting Dodge City when Reeves got the message; Earp showed special interest in the case and insisted on coming along.

  While Reeves assists Kirk and Sisko, Earp charges down the street after Wilks, only to return empty-handed. Wilks managed to disappear in the shadows of lawless Muskogee.

  From the start, Earp and Kirk don't get along. They rub each other the wrong way.

  The next morning, after searching Muskogee in vain for Wilks, Kirk, Sisko, Reeves, and Earp ride out to a Cherokee town where another murder has taken place. The Cherokee, brought to Oklahoma in the late 1830s along the infamous "Trail of Tears," have mostly adopted the culture of the European settlers, though discontent festers among them.

  Earp's group gets a look at the latest victim, a young Indian woman who has been cut apart in a surgical fashion, her organs removed and arranged around the body. Kirk and Sisko confirm it's the same way the others were killed...and Earp says he's seen it before, too, though he cryptically won't say where. Reeves says it looks like the work of a surgeon, which doesn't fit with what they know of Wilks. Reeves wonders how an uneducated outlaw could gain such skill with a knife; Earp says this particular outlaw's the devil himself.

  After Earp and the others have examined the body, the town mayor, Joseph Horn, confronts them. He's an old-timer who was once a chief and came from Georgia along the Trail of Tears.

  Horn demands to know why they haven't stopped the killings. Sisko tells him he hopes to end them soon now that they've got Earp and Reeves on the case. Horn says he's heard it all before; he says the killer is probably working for the government, and white men like Earp want him to go on killing Indians for them. Earp says he might be right about the government...but not about Earp. He says he won't rest until the killer is brought to justice, whatever it takes.

  Horn still isn't satisfied, but he gives them a lead on Wilks. He says a witness saw a man riding out of town before dawn, headed in the direction of Three Forks. Earp, Reeves, Sisko, and Kirk set out immediately for Three Forks.

  That evening, after sundown, the four men ride into Three Forks...only to find the town in a state of chaos. Indians are rioting in the streets, smashing windows and setting buildings ablaze; from one of the rioters, Sisko learns two more murders have taken place, and the Indians are rioting in protest of the government's failure to intervene.

  As the men watch the riot, Kirk says he understands how the Indians feel, especially after what happened to his fiancée. He says they're angry, frustrated, and want revenge. "No," says Earp. "They're just afraid, like you...and fear is that monster's bread and butter."

  Angry, Kirk tells Earp to take back what he said. (Kirk seems to be charged up in parallel with the rioters.) The other men try to calm him down, but he won't back off. Kirk makes a hostile move...and Earp takes him down with a fancy martial arts move from who-knows-what Far East land. Reeves says he's never seen a move like that one.

  Just then, U.S. soldiers thunder into Three Forks on horseback, a cavalry detachment dispatched from Fort Gibson to quell the riots. As the soldiers fire guns in the air and round up the Indians, Earp releases Kirk and suggests they all get to the murder scene.

  Earp and his group ride to a cabin on the outskirts of town to see the murder victims. A middle-aged man lets them in; he isn't an Indian, and he says his name is Bill Dupree. He cries as he points them to the two bodies on the floor, both dissected like the other victims. One is a woman in her twenties, and the other is a little girl.

  As the men examine the bodies, Earp and Reeves question Dupree. Dupree says that when he came home from the saloon that evening, he saw a white man riding away from the house on horseback. When he went inside, he saw his wife and daughter had been murdered.

  When Earp and Reeves ask him detailed questions about his wife and daughter, Dupree fumbles around once or twice. Earp and Reeves draw their guns and tell him they know he's lying. They've been angling around him during the questioning, and now he's cornered.

  Kirk says the man isn't Wilks, but Earp assures him the man is definitely the killer. (This actually is a different person than Wilks; Redjac has transferred into another host body.) Though Dupree initially claims to be innocent, he eventually gives up the charade and ends up laughing in Kirk's face, describing how he killed Kirk's fiancée.

  Furious, Kirk attacks Dupree, knocking him to the floor. Earp shouts at Kirk to get off Dupree and get the hell out of the way, but Kirk won't listen. He keeps pounding Dupree with his fists; Dupree fights back, but Kirk is in a frenzy and beats him unconscious. In fact, Kirk is so out of control that he keeps hammering Dupree even after he loses consciousness. Sisko finally has to step in and pull Kirk off Dupree.

  When Kirk separates from Dupree, however, he turns on Sisko, grabbing his gun and pistol-whipping him. Sisko drops to the floor, stunned. During Kirk's struggle with Dupree, Redjac shifted into Kirk's body.

  Firing the gun in the direction of Earp and Reeves, Kirk runs out the cabin door into the night. As Earp and Reeves follow, Earp tells Reeves not to kill Kirk; he says Kirk's been possessed by a demon...and the same demon possessed Wilks and Dupree. Reeves is skeptical but agrees to try not to kill Kirk.

  When Earp and Reeves get outside, they see Kirk riding away as fast as he can on one of the horses. Earp and Reeves leap onto their own horses and give chase.

  Earp and Reeves draw up close from either side to head him off, and Redjac/Kirk raises his gun...but instead of firing at them, he puts the barrel against his head. "I'll kill him if you don't back off!" he says. "It won't matter to me! I'll just find another body!"

  As Earp and Reeves pull back, Redjac/Kirk charges up a rise...but falters when a long line of Indians on horseback tops the rise from the other side, blocking his path. Some are dressed in old-style warrior garb instead of settler clothes, holding aloft spears and shields.

  Redjac/Kirk comes to a stop, pacing his horse back and forth along the line of Indians. Earp and Reeves sit nearby, waiting to see what happens; Sisko rides up from the cabin to join them.

  The Indians explain that they've come to stop the killings according to the old ways, since no one else will do it. They tell Redjac/Kirk that they've been watching him and know what he is...that like Coyote, he is a trickster spirit of great power, able to move from body to body.

  They tell Redjac that he has done great evil...but they offer him a bargain. They ask him to come to work for them, striking fear in the hearts of the whites who try to encroach on Indian Territory. Maybe, by working together, they can even take back some of their ancestral lands. In return, Redjac can do whatever he wants to the whites and can have the chief himself to use as a host body.

  Redjac likes the idea. Earp tries to talk the Indians out of it, warning them that they're dealing with something more evil and powerful than they can imagine. The Indians tell him to stay out of it; they don't care what Redjac has done, as long as he offers them the slightest hope against the whites.

  Redjac/Kirk and the chief ride toward one another and ease up side-by-side. The chief and Redjac/Kirk reach out, gripping each other's forearms...and the transfer is made. Kirk slumps in the saddle and the chief howls with wicked delight at the sky.

  "Let's go, my new friends!" he shouts. "We've got a lot of work to do! So little time, so many whites to kill!" Then, he charges through the line of Indians and down the other side of the rise, and the Indians follow him.

  Kirk almost falls out of his saddle, but Earp
rides up alongside and supports him. Kirk asks what happened, and Earp tells him the bad guy got away.

  Kirk is disappointed. "I need to pay him back for what he did," he says.

  "We could've done that tonight, if you'd kept your head," says Earp. "Instead, you gave him the chance to do a million times worse."

  "Let's go get him, then," says Kirk. "Let's make it right."

  "I've got no time for hotheads," says Earp. "You can go straight to hell for all I care." Then, he and Reeves ride off, leaving Sisko to tend to Kirk.

  *******

  REDJAC – U.S.S. ENTERPRISE-A, 2288 A.D.

  After beaming back to the Enterprise, Kirk rushes onto the bridge. When asked why Spock and McCoy didn't accompany him, he says they stayed behind to wrap things up on Betazed...but Kirk received emergency instructions from Starfleet to handle a dire situation elsewhere.

  Scotty asks Kirk how he could have received orders from Starfleet if they weren't received by the crew onboard the Enterprise first, but Kirk brushes his questions aside. He says Starfleet reached him directly on the surface of Betazed, and he isn't at liberty to explain further.

  Though Scotty still seems uneasy, Kirk snaps out orders to Sulu to lay in a set of coordinates. Sulu recognizes the coordinates and expresses surprise. "Sir," he says. "We've been there before."

  "That's right," says Kirk. "And we're going back. Set course for Gothos. Warp nine."

  FLINT – BETAZED, 2288 A.D.

  Meanwhile, back on Betazed, Flint rushes over to tend to Bard, who collapsed when Redjac left his body. Bard's eyes flutter open...and he isn't happy to see Flint.

  Bard starts asking questions about where he is and how he got there. The last thing he remembers is being on a transport bound for the Zerid system, where he was going to start his latest project. Bard is a sunsmith, a pioneer in the field of extending the lifespan of solar bodies; he leads a team that rejuvenates suns, keeping them alive for millions of years longer than they would be expected to survive otherwise.