And he knew that, until he did have that answer, he would never see his son again.
26
S.S. BELLE RÊVE, MERCURY
STARDATE 58569.2
When it had to, Starfleet moved quickly.
The provisional Starfleet Command agreed with Kirk’s reasoning and did not transmit any information concerning the Totality’s newly discovered weakness. The presumption was that every Starfleet vessel had at least one agent of the Totality on board as a spy, so Command would do nothing to warn them of what was to come.
Instead, just as in the days of Cochrane and the first great wave of human exploration, decades before the discovery of subspace radio, word went out by messenger.
One by one, starship commanders stationed in Earth’s home system were visited by three representatives from Command and given verbal orders. One by one, the commanders issued orders for their crews to brace for increased gravity. By the dozens, crew on each vessel broke into black cubes and sand as the gravity load reached four hundred percent Earth normal.
On the ships that had been cleared of Totality projections, warp cores were brought back online, and once again starships set off at factors far beyond the speed of light.
Their first objectives were those vessels stranded between the stars. Ships that had managed to shut down and retain their warp cores were told to increase their gravity, then resume their warp travel for Earth.
Those that had ejected their cores were also instructed to increase their gravity settings, then wait for a refit team from the Starfleet Corps of Engineers. In the meantime, any urgent supply needs were noted, and any passengers with critical skills required for the fight against the Totality were allowed to transfer to warp vessels—Janeway’s holographic doctor among them, checking that key personnel were able to function adequately under the gravitational strain.
The Spock Defense, as it came to be called, spread out from Sector 001 at warp nine. Special diplomatic envoys carried the information to the Klingon and Romulan Empires.
But even as the Federation’s competitors were given help, one world of the Federation remained out-of-bounds.
Just as the Totality had first focused on the twin worlds of Romulus and Remus to establish a beachhead in this galaxy, another world appeared to have been chosen for their second attempt.
So it was decided to give the Totality one safe harbor to which they might withdraw. One planet on which they might feel protected. One planet that Starfleet could attack in force when the time came.
Thus, no Starfleet vessels traveled to Vulcan.
The strategy was cold, calculating, and endorsed by those senior Vulcan diplomats in Earth’s home system.
Spock had given Starfleet a strategy for exposing Totality spies and keeping Starfleet facilities free of infiltration.
Kirk had given Starfleet the Monitor transmission, and in its secrets Starfleet scientists and engineers were convinced they had found the secret to creating weapons to drive the Totality from Federation space, and then the galaxy.
Vulcan would be the first battleground and, if all worked as planned, the last.
All it would take was time.
And that was the one thing Kirk didn’t have.
Alone in his cabin, Kirk believed the only thing keeping him sane was the continual exposure to four gravities. Every movement required thought and planning. Exhaustion was a constant. The mere struggle to breathe and eat and make his plans with Spock, McCoy, and Scott left him little time for worry. Even less time for despair.
He was certain Norinda didn’t want to harm his son.
But her means and motives, her actions and goals, all seemed to shift over time, as if the Totality wasn’t constant.
That meant Joseph might be safe for now.
But he wouldn’t be safe forever.
Which was why, in less than twenty hours, the Belle Rêve would set off for Vulcan with the newest weapon in Starfleet’s arsenal—a localized gravity projector.
A team of Starfleet engineers had created the device in less than a day, with Scott telling Kirk they’d done so simply by modifying two portable antigrav carriers to operate out of phase—the same technique Kirk had had Scott use to generate an artificial-gravity field outside the hull of the Belle Rêve during its battle with the Enterprise. The significance of mismatching the phase of the antigravs was that doing so caused their gravitational distortions to manifest at a distance, instead of on the surface of their contact plates.
The science of the device had been known since Kirk first joined Starfleet. He still had fond memories of the late-night gravity races he had excelled in at the Academy, when teams of midshipmen would compete to see who could toss a classmate strapped to antigravs the farthest and fastest around the main grounds late at night—without being caught.
But antigravs had given way to tractor beams. Because tractor beams were able to move objects by means of directed gravitons more efficiently than gravity-field generators, the technology had never been pursued.
Now, however, it was possible to use the jury-rigged device, just slightly larger than a standard phaser rifle, to create a meter-wide region of four gravities at a range of between three to twenty meters.
Kirk looked forward to using it on Norinda the next time their paths crossed. It wouldn’t kill her. It wouldn’t even harm her, Spock had confirmed. It would simply drive her away.
Away from him, and away from his child.
And when he had accomplished that, Kirk told himself, maybe then he could concern himself about the fate of the Federation.
All that mattered to him now was Joseph.
Joseph was what kept him from sleeping this night.
Kirk lay stretched out on his bunk in his cabin. He wore a small medical oxygen mask at McCoy’s insistence to ease the effort of breathing during the night. But eyes open or closed, he saw only nightmarish images of Joseph decaying into black sand, slipping away from him and into Norinda’s false embrace.
He knew he’d do anything to prevent that from happening.
His door chime sounded, startling him from his dark thoughts. He and Spock were to meet at 0600, still hours away.
“Lights,” Kirk said to the computer, and his cabin brightened. “Identify.”
A familiar voice came over the hidden cabin speakers.
“Jean-Luc. I trust I’m not disturbing you.”
Kirk felt laughter bubble up in him that never reached the surface. The effort was too great. When hadn’t Jean-Luc disturbed him in one way or another?
It wasn’t that they didn’t get along, he’d realized long ago. It was because they were so much alike.
“Give me a minute,” Kirk said. Then he wrenched himself onto his side, placing his arm for a shove into a sitting position. He inhaled deeply three times, tugged off his oxygen mask, and with a grunt of exertion swung his legs off the bunk, pushed forward, and sat up.
He instantly slumped, catching his breath, supporting himself with both arms on the bunk’s edge. His feet ached where they’d slammed into the deck.
“I’m disturbed now,” Kirk said. He straightened his shirt; in four gravities, undressing for bed was a waste of effort. “Come in.”
The door to the corridor slid open and Kirk was surprised to see Picard standing there as if four gravities was completely normal.
“Are you wearing an exoskeleton?” Kirk asked, annoyed that somehow Picard wasn’t suffering as much as he was.
Picard waved Kirk over. “Step into the corridor.”
Kirk gritted his teeth, but stood up and moved as smoothly as he could to the open door, willing his legs not to buckle under him.
Then he stepped through the doorway and experienced a sudden, intense wave of vertigo, as if the deck had given way beneath him.
And then he was light. His arms, lifted, buoyant. His knees no longer grinding and complaining. The sensation was almost as if he were floating.
“What’s wrong with the gravity?” Ki
rk asked, though he felt like rejoicing at the release of tension in his body.
“Starfleet’s been experimenting,” Picard answered with a grin, which disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared. “We’ve been spreading word to the ships in the system about Spock’s discovery. There’ve been cases of duplicated crew disappearing on every vessel whenever gravity’s been increased. With the surveillance recordings the ships have been making, we’ve been able to go back and see where some of the substitutions have taken place.”
“Engineering,” Kirk said as he realized why gravity in the corridor was back to normal.
“Exactly,” Picard confirmed. “Warp cores, powered up, are the Totality’s pathway into our ships and facilities. As long as we keep four gravities set in every engineering department, we’re safe from infiltration.”
For a moment, Kirk was impressed. Then he remembered the effort he’d expended just to walk out to the corridor. “Then why was my cabin still set for four g’s?”
“Starfleet orders—all command staff have to be placed in a four-gravity environment four times each day and before each strategic meeting. Just to be sure.”
Now Kirk grinned, gestured to his cabin.
Picard clearly realized what Kirk wanted, frowned, but didn’t argue. He braced himself in the doorframe, carefully stepped into the cabin. His shoulders sagged, the color draining from his face.
Kirk stayed in the corridor. Misery did love company.
“How long does Starfleet recommend command staff remain in a four-gravity environment?” he asked innocently, adding, “I could go get some coffee, be back in an hour.”
“The effect is apparently instantaneous,” Picard said tightly. “So a minute is considered adequate.”
Kirk decided he had had enough fun. “I’m convinced,” he said, relenting. “Come out.”
Picard stepped out of Kirk’s cabin and rocked for a moment in the corridor, regaining his balance.
Kirk refrained from smiling. It was time to get down to business. “Since it’s two hundred hours, I’ll take a wild guess and say that Starfleet’s come up with something critical that you’ve been asked to tell me.”
Picard nodded. “Let’s get that coffee.”
27
S.S. BELLE RÊVE, MERCURY
STARDATE 58569.3
“Earl Grey, hot,” Picard said to the replicator in the Belle Rêve small galley.
“Actually,” Kirk said behind him, “you don’t want to do that.”
“Yes, I do.”
A steaming cup of tea appeared in the dispenser slot.
Kirk gave Picard a look of commiseration as if daring him to give it a try.
Picard sipped the tea. Cringed.
Kirk pointed to a wall locker. “I have real teabags in stasis pouches.”
With relief, Picard put his teacup into the recycler and ordered boiling water. A few minutes later, he tried the fresh-brewed tea and smiled. “Much better.”
Kirk sipped his own Vulcan espresso. “So?” It was all the shorthand the two captains needed to start their conversation.
Picard began. “Starfleet Intelligence put their best analysts on the Monitor transmission. They’ve extracted a wealth of data already, and believe there’s a great deal more.”
“What kind of data?”
“The Monitor recorded the energy signature of a major projection of the Totality. Larger than a starship. A phenomenon they called ‘the Distortion.’ At the time, the Monitor was in intergalactic space, hundreds of thousands of light-years from the nearest star.”
Kirk saw why those sensor readings might be valuable. “A perfect environment for the Totality. Local gravitational effects in that region would be insubstantial at best.”
Picard nodded. “The projection is so large, we can actually see the dimensional interface between the Totality’s realm of dark matter and our own normal space-time.”
Kirk could see that Picard was building to a moment of truth. “And that’s valuable because…?”
“The dimensional energy signature is unique, and…it’s been seen before.”
Kirk waited.
“The Monitor’s deflector systems automatically went to full power as the Distortion closed in,” Picard said.
“Which means the Distortion registered as having a physical presence.”
Picard agreed, then added, “But the main sensors made no sense of what was before them. In fact, the bulk of the data we’ve recovered comes from analysis of the Distortion’s optical properties only—how it appeared to ripple the light of galaxies behind it, how it appeared visually on the viewscreen…. At first, the crew thought they were seeing a cloaking device in action.”
Kirk looked down at his espresso, trying to understand why what Picard was saying sounded familiar.
Picard continued as if prompting Kirk. “Other than the deflectors being triggered and recordings of the Distortion’s visual appearance, every sensor scan reported density negative, radiation negative, and energy negative.”
Kirk looked up with those words playing back in his mind, so tantalizingly familiar. “It’s been a long time…but I’m sure I’ve heard those readings before.” But he couldn’t place the memory.
“I actually looked them up,” Picard said, “almost three years ago.”
Now Kirk was truly confused. “That’s before any of this happened.”
“But after you told me about your first run-in with Norinda.”
Kirk nodded. “I remember. When we were in the desert on Bajor.”
Picard nodded. “On vacation.”
“What’s the connection?”
“You told me how Starfleet had ordered you to locate Norinda’s ship after they’d tracked it traveling at an impossible velocity.”
“That’s right. It was off the warp scale we used back then. Factor fifteen, I think.”
“At that factor, where did they think it had come from?”
Kirk shrugged. This was all so long ago. “They were afraid to say it at the time, but it seems they were right. It was extragalactic. From—” And then as if he had been hit by a phaser beam, Kirk remembered where he had heard those readings for the first time.
“The galactic barrier.”
In the early days of faster-than-light exploration, a handful of ships had tried to penetrate the mysterious energy barrier that surrounded the galaxy, and they had failed.
But after Starfleet had confirmed that Norinda’s ship had indeed arrived on a trajectory from outside the galaxy, Kirk had been ordered to retrace her route. So it was that in the first year of his original five-year mission on the Enterprise, Kirk had reached the barrier and attempted to pass through it.
The effort had cost him the lives of three crew, including his best friend, Gary Mitchell.
And yet, in subsequent years and subsequent attempts, the Enterprise had managed to penetrate the barrier and survive without ill effects.
In debriefings, one theory raised by Starfleet Command suggested that the barrier had somehow “recognized” the Enterprise from its first attempt, and so had allowed it to pass.
Another theory held that the galactic barrier was weakening. Though at the time, since no mechanism had ever been found to explain its existence, whatever might be causing it to fade away also defied analysis.
Kirk saw the puzzle pieces fall into place, even though the picture they formed wasn’t yet complete. “Starfleet thinks there’s a connection between the Totality and the galactic barrier?”
Again Picard nodded. “From the ongoing research into the phenomenon, there’ve been several compelling theories advanced that suggest the barrier is an artificial construct, perhaps put in place as much as four billion years ago.”
Four billion, Kirk thought. That span of time was also something he had heard before.
Picard continued. “About six years ago, my crew took part in an experiment to penetrate the barrier by means of an artificial wormhole.”
Kirk wasn
’t aware of that attempt. “Did you succeed?”
Picard’s reply was enigmatic. “It’s a long story, and by order of Command, off the record.”
Kirk knew better than to try to get Picard to defy orders. “Where does that leave us?”
Picard took a sip of his tea, as if trying to put off what he had to say next as long as possible.
But time was up.
“Jim, this is extremely difficult for me.”
Kirk went on alert. Nothing good ever came from a conversation that began with those words.
“Go on,” he said.
“Starfleet Intelligence has identified a pattern which concerns them.”
Kirk pushed ahead. “I take it I’m part of the pattern.”
Picard nodded. “You were the first to make contact with Norinda. A few months later, you passed through the galactic barrier, something that had been impossible up to that time. Then you made contact with Norinda on Remus.”
“I stopped a civil war between Romulus and Remus that could’ve spread to two quadrants. And it wasn’t all my doing, Jean-Luc. You were part of it, too.”
Picard didn’t respond to Kirk’s interruption. He continued as if what he was saying had been rehearsed.
“And now, you’ve had contact with Norinda again, this time on Vulcan—a planet which Command believes is as you described it: under Totality control.”
Kirk didn’t like where this was going, and he could see Picard didn’t either. “What’s the final conclusion, Jean-Luc?”
“The Totality has demonstrated the ability to kidnap and absorb whoever they want, whenever they want. What seems to connect their victims is a victim’s perceived ability to counteract the Totality’s actions—as if they set out to eliminate potential enemies before launching their main attack.
“They’ve also demonstrated their ability to replace virtually anyone with a precise duplicate, again to undercut our ability to fight back.”
Kirk didn’t understand what Picard was trying to say. “What’s your point?”
“Jim,” Picard said bluntly, “this is what concerns Command: Why haven’t they taken you?”
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