Kirk climbed the sleek, static stairs.
As he reached the upper level, a single turbolift chimed.
Its open door was an invitation.
Kirk accepted, entered. The lift dropped.
The swift ride lasted thirty seconds, long enough to take him five hundred meters underground. Time enough for Kirk to recall that the Vulcans had been insulted when humans had insisted on burying Starfleet’s regional command center beneath half a kilometer of dispersal shielding. Where was the logic, Vulcans had protested, in thinking that an enemy could penetrate far enough into the Federation, and then far enough into the Vulcan home system, to be a threat to this center?
But after V’Ger had come within seconds of obliterating Earth, and the Vulcans had done a quick check of how many space probes they had lost mysteriously over the centuries, their objections quickly faded.
There was logic in being prudent, after all, they decided.
The turbolift door opened.
Kirk stepped into a small entrance foyer, saw a series of three varicolored emblems worked into the polished white floor.
One was a stylized IDIC showing Mount Selaya, marked with Vulcan script. Another was the Starfleet emblem. The last was a variation of the Federation seal, ringed in English and Vulcan script.
Kirk walked across them, heading for the sliding translucent partitions that shielded the command center beyond.
He had been here before, several times, and even as an active Starfleet captain, then admiral, he had been challenged by armed guards on this level.
Tonight, it was as deserted as the city above.
For a moment as he paused before the partitions, Kirk wondered if there were any Vulcans left at all on this world. Could it be possible that they had all been absorbed into the Totality?
The silhouette of a hand appeared on the partition directly in front of him, glowing green—the color of Vulcan blood and thus a sign of warning.
He placed his hand against the silhouette.
The partition slid open.
He stepped into the command center for Vulcan Space Central—a dark, domed room constructed like a stadium-size version of a starship’s bridge.
Kirk scanned the multiple display screens on the far side of the curved wall. Each screen—ten meters tall, fifteen wide—showed complex moving graphs and charts related to orbital space around Vulcan and her planetary system. Banks of silver-gray workstations rose in graduated tiers, ringing the outer wall, looking in to the center and to the main screens. And there, in the center, he counted nine chairs on a raised dais. Each of the chairs was balanced on a single pointed stalk instead of multiple legs—a rare case of Vulcan technology employed strictly for aesthetic effect. Each also had small display screens and input pads angled out from its arms.
Kirk knew that more than a hundred technicians, and Starfleet and Vulcan Planetary Defense personnel, should be working here at any given time.
But even this facility was deserted.
He stepped up on the dais.
On each of the nine chairs, the small display screens rolled with static, as if they had all been taken offline.
As if this center no longer served a purpose.
It took Kirk only a moment to decide that that was the message Norinda wanted to send him: According to the Totality, nothing here was necessary anymore.
That last thought had just settled in his mind when Norinda spoke quietly behind him.
“You’re right, James.”
Kirk jumped forward, spun around, swinging his gravity weapon from his back to aim it at—
Norinda wasn’t there.
He slowly turned on the dais. No sign of anyone.
Her voice fluttered in his ear again. “Why do you resist?”
Kirk snapped around.
No one. Nothing.
He was being toyed with. Taught a lesson.
“I’m not resisting,” he called out, and his words echoed in the empty room. “I’m here.”
“With a weapon?” He couldn’t tell where Norinda’s voice came from. It was as if she were invisible.
“We need to talk,” Kirk said. He pointed the weapon to the ceiling, keeping it ready, but not threatening.
“That’s all I’ve ever wanted,” Norinda said.
“Show yourself,” Kirk demanded.
Norinda’s light laughter echoed through the empty center. “Say what you truly mean, James.”
“Show me my son.”
“I’ll show you Joseph,” Norinda’s voice whispered. “But he’s not your son anymore….”
Those words constricted Kirk’s heart, even as the hiss of a sliding door spurred him to instant action.
He turned again, weapon held ready, to see light from a corridor flood into the room, capturing someone in silhouette and shadow before it.
The figure walked forward, familiar, but different.
The door slid shut, the glare of the outside light was ended.
“Joseph…?” Kirk said, in recognition, in doubt.
The dark skin was right, the dappling, the ridges…his mother’s gently upswept pointed ears.
But his son was taller, broader in the shoulders, no longer a child of twelve…older, a teenager, almost a man.
“Joseph,” Kirk said again as his son stepped up on the dais. “What’s happened to you?”
The boy—the youth—looked down at his hands as if seeing them for the first time and noticing that he had changed. “Nothing that isn’t supposed to,” he said.
His voice was deeper. His eyes dark, so like his mother’s.
“Father,” he said.
Somewhere in his being, Kirk registered the word as a form of address, not a term of endearment. Not the breathless shout of “Dad!” or the happy, childish cry of “Daddy!”
He had been apart from his son for less than a week, but it might as well have been five years.
Kirk quickly glanced around the command center again, saw no sign of Norinda. “It’s time to go,” he said.
But Teilani’s child, Kirk’s son, the sum total of their life and love and legacy, was no longer theirs. No longer Kirk’s.
“No,” Joseph said. “My place is here…”
Kirk could not drive the next words from existence.
“…with Norinda.”
And like a shadow becoming real, a shifting patch of darkness rose up from the dais and floated into a column that became the creature Kirk had met so long ago, in the Mandylion Rift.
Absolutely beguiling, enchanting, desirable, and deadly.
She laughed as she embraced Kirk’s son, and claimed him.
Kirk knew it was the sound of victory.
31
U.S.S. ENTERPRISE
STARDATE 58571.4
Having is not so pleasing a thing as wanting.
It was an old Vulcan saying, and it was foremost in Riker’s thoughts as he sat in the captain’s chair on the bridge of the Enterprise. It was the command Riker had always wanted, but now that it was his, he felt he was an interloper.
Because the Enterprise was more than a ship. Indeed, he had served on two vessels to bear the name. But the crew had remained the same, as had the captain.
The first time Riker had declined a command of his own, he had done so for no other reason than to advance his career. Far better to be the executive officer on any of the Galaxy-class starships than commander of a smaller ship that would never be given a mission to push out beyond the edges of the Federation’s frontier.
But twice more during his posting on the Enterprise, command had been offered and Riker had declined. Both times, he knew, it was because his career path had been redefined. He didn’t want to be commander of just any starship—he wanted to live up to the ideals and the tradition of the U.S.S. Enterprise.
Then came the day when he finally realized that Picard and his Enterprise should never be separated.
When Jonathan Archer had retired from Starfleet, his Enterprise had been
given a place of honor in orbit of Pluto, and millions had walked its corridors since, awed by the history that ship had seen and made. Kirk’s last Enterprise had likewise been retired with no thought of giving it to another commander.
With that realization, Riker had sought and been given command of the Titan.
Yet scarcely a year later, Picard’s Enterprise was his.
Sitting in Picard’s command chair, reflecting on the ironies of his own desire, watching the bridge staff work efficiently, he became aware of Troi watching him.
She smiled, and he knew she understood exactly what he was feeling. “You’re only borrowing the ship, Will. You did it before. And you gave her back.”
Riker accepted her encouragement. When Picard had been assimilated by the Borg, Riker had been temporarily promoted to captain of the Enterprise. At the time, no one had thought it would be possible to reclaim a drone from the collective, but Picard had returned to them. Riker hoped the same miracle might be accomplished when it came to recovering someone from the Totality. Certainly, the return of Spock suggested it was possible.
But everything would depend on what it was the Totality truly wanted. And for now, Riker couldn’t be sure.
Long-range sensors had revealed that the Belle Rêve had passed through the Vulcan embargo without slowing, and even now was in orbit of that world.
Riker had no doubt that Kirk was intent on confronting the Totality, and he feared that in some way the Totality was intent on confronting Kirk. Riker had no way of knowing what drove the Totality, though he could understand why a father would be driven to the act of desperation Kirk had embarked upon. But what was inexcusable was that Kirk had either kidnapped Picard, or convinced him to assist in the foolish, hopeless endeavor.
Riker looked around the dark bridge of the Enterprise, already feeling the grief of loss.
Who would command her now?
“Captain,” Worf growled from the tactical station. “We are receiving an emergency subspace transmission.”
Riker sat forward in his chair. All Starfleet vessels and allied ships were operating under subspace-radio blackout in order to keep the secret of gravity adjustment away from the Totality as long as possible. But an emergency subspace message from Command could mean that something new had been discovered—a tactic, perhaps, that couldn’t wait.
“From Admiral Janeway?” Riker asked.
Worf, as always, was gruff and to the point. “No. It is from Captain Picard. He is under attack.”
Twenty seconds after Kirk had beamed down, the Belle Rêve had gone to warp directly from orbit of Vulcan.
It was a maneuver forbidden because of the havoc it played on the planet’s sensor and communications networks. The two vessels that had escorted the ship to a geosynchronous orbit within range of Shi’Kahr were taken by surprise.
Spock had no wish to warn them of his plans, so, unlike Kirk in his confrontation with Picard, he had ordered the Belle Rêve to warp without any detectable initialization period.
But in less than a minute, the escorts had apparently received their orders and gave chase.
In the command chair on the Belle Rêve’s bridge, Spock watched the two Vulcan vessels closing relentlessly on the center viewscreen. He knew his ship could outrun them, given time.
But for what Kirk had asked him to do next, time was not a variable.
In his locked cabin, Picard was a caged animal.
He had felt the Belle Rêve drop into normal space and seen Vulcan through his viewport. Then, only a minute after settling into orbit, the ship had slammed back into warp.
Now he heard phaser volleys impinging on the shields.
Kirk, he decided, either had gone crazy or was dead.
His door chime sounded.
Picard turned from the viewport and the streaking stars, folded his arms in disdain and defiance. “What is it?”
The door slid open to reveal Doctor McCoy, the frail physician with an attitude at least as tough as the Belle Rêve.
“Time to abandon ship?” Picard asked.
“I already asked that question,” McCoy said with the barest flicker of a smile. “But Spock says that wouldn’t be logical.”
“Spock?”
“He’s keeping your seat warm, Captain.” McCoy nodded to the open door. “You’re wanted on the bridge.”
Chief Engineer Scott lacked the piloting expertise of Captain Sulu, but finesse and precise maneuvers weren’t needed to break through the Vulcan embargo the second time around.
Between the Belle Rêve’s original design specifications and Scott’s year’s worth of tinkering and improvement, the ship had no need to evade Vulcan fire; it had only to keep flying, shields shedding phaser energy and quantum-torpedo disruptions like sea spray from the back of a breaching whale.
“Well done, Mister Scott,” Spock said.
“I wish I could take all the credit for it,” the engineer replied, not looking up from the flight controls. “But that’s the sorriest attempt at an embargo I’ve ever seen.”
Spock understood. According to the sensor readings displayed on the right-hand screen, only the original two escort ships remained in pursuit of the Belle Rêve. None of the picket ships on embargo duty appeared to have warp capability. From their delayed responses, none appeared to have realized that the Belle Rêve was attempting to leave the system.
To Spock, the logic of the situation was clear. “I believe that means not every ship in the system is under Totality control. The vessels ordered to enforce the embargo evidently were not warned of our approach, and I suspect one reason for their lackluster attempt to stop us is that their commanders are questioning their orders.”
Scott glanced back at Spock. “I’m still takin’ some credit for gettin’ us through that mess.”
“As well you should, Mister Scott.”
The turbolift opened and Picard stormed onto the bridge. He quickly took in the images on the three viewscreens. “What’s our status?”
“Shields at ninety-five percent,” Scott answered crisply. “Holding at warp eight point five. Our two Vulcan friends in pursuit are closing at eight point six.”
Picard turned to Spock. “Why aren’t we outrunning them?”
“They’re to be the subject of an experiment,” Spock said, “for which we will need the assistance of the Enterprise.”
Spock could see Picard working to control his frustration. “And the Enterprise is where?”
“Rendezvous in thirty-eight minutes at our present heading,” Scott said. “Provided we can break subspace radio silence t’ let them know that’s what we’re planning.”
Spock got up from the command chair, gestured to it.
Now Picard seemed more confused than angry. “Why do you need me for any of this?”
“Captain Kirk described his last encounter with you on his approach to Earth. We have no time for the same distrust to impede what we must do now.”
“Which is?” Picard asked.
“Destroy the Totality. Preferably in time to save Captain Kirk.”
Picard’s confusion escalated. “Doctor McCoy said Jim’s on Vulcan.”
“And Vulcan, for now, is the maw of the beast. Please, Captain, contact the Enterprise. There is a way to fight the Totality, but we must act quickly and definitively, before they have time to develop a countermeasure.”
Picard took the center chair, though Spock could see he was still skeptical of what he’d been told.
“Mister Scott,” Picard said, “open a channel to the Enterprise.”
McCoy coughed from his console. “On this ship, that’s my job.”
Picard waved his hands in dismissal. “Then…carry on, please.” He stared pointedly at Spock. “And I want to know everything that Jim has planned.”
Spock gave a small Vulcan shrug. “I am prepared to tell you. But Jim has warned me, you’re not going to like it.”
Picard sighed. “Of that I have no doubt.”
Spock bega
n his briefing.
32
VULCAN SPACE CENTRAL
STARDATE 58571.5
All things ended, Kirk knew.
Nothing made that more clear than holding a newborn baby. The promise of a new life by definition meant the end of the old.
With love, James T. Kirk and Teilani of Chal had joined their lives to create Joseph, their vanguard to the future, their declaration of faith that there would be a future and that those would be the days worth living for, better even than the present.
So Kirk had known there would come a day when Joseph would stand apart from him, a child no longer, but a participant in the great chain of humanity that stretched from the chaos of the unknowable past to the wonder of an inconceivable future.
But he had never imagined the day would come like this, with his child taken from him.
A thousand pleas and warnings raced through Kirk’s mind as he saw his son embraced by a monster so beguiling, no child could be expected to see through her disguise.
But all Kirk could say in the emptiness of the command center was “Joseph, no…not like this.”
Joseph smiled at Kirk as if in pity, the future looking down at the past. “You know I don’t belong with you,” he said.
“That’s not true.”
Joseph traced the ridges of his forehead, his finger trailing to a pointed ear. “Look at me. I’m not like you. I’m not like Mother.”
“No child is,” Kirk pleaded.
Joseph’s smile vanished, his face became hard. “I’m not a child.”
Kirk closed his eyes as he struggled to think of a response. And when he opened them again, he knew there was nothing more he could say.
Norinda had changed.
In the past, she had taken on the form of the female most attractive to the male she communicated with. Kirk now realized the reason for the tactic: sex was a driving force of biological life, and so that was the one overpowering attribute the Totality had sought to command.
In the past, when Norinda had appeared before Joseph on the Belle Rêve and on Remus, she had appeared as Teilani, breaking Kirk’s heart, but calling up lost memories of comfort and maternal love no child could resist.
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