The two starships closed on Vulcan, and this close to the Totality’s base, they took fire.
Picard was getting used to the smaller ship’s capabilities, though, and he guided it through twisting dives and maneuvers to draw the worst of the phaser blasts coming from the Vulcan ships, flipping back or spinning into hundred-and-eighty-degree turns to catch an attacking ship as it passed between his craft and the Enterprise.
In each encounter, success took only seconds. Together, the two ships created a focused field of increased gravity that instantly drove the Totality projections back to their dark-matter realm.
Ship after ship fell before them, some emptied entirely of their crews, others staffed only by puzzled Vulcans who had seen their commanders dissolve into black and vanish.
As the Belle Reve and the Enterprise flew on, closing relentlessly on their target, McCoy and Scott relayed critical information to the Vulcan vessels now free of Totality control: Increase the local gravity around their warp cores to the equivalent of four times Earth normal, and the dark-matter projections would be locked out forever.
The nightside disk of Vulcan filled the center viewscreen.
Picard picked out the glittering web of lights that identified Shi’Kahr.
Entering orbit was not an option.
He transmitted to Riker to brace the Enterprise for atmospheric entry.
They were going in.
Kirk grimaced as he pushed himself up to sit on the hard floor of the command center. He was cold, shaking. Grimly, he diagnosed himself: His symptoms were those of internal bleeding. It would be only a matter of minutes before he succumbed to shock.
But even in that precarious condition he felt safe, because his son stood beside him, facing down their common enemy.
Norinda.
She stood five meters away, naked, as if trying one last time to reach deep within the most primitive parts of her adversaries’ brains to enthrall them.
Her features shifted like a living sculpture, from the young humanoid woman Kirk had first met, to the female version of Joseph’s own appearance. But the perfection of both guises was marred by troubled frowns of nervous indecision.
“You promised me you wouldn’t hurt him,” Joseph said. Kirk was pleased to hear something new in his son’s voice; this form of Norinda’s appearance, so close to his own, had lost its power over him.
“I wasn’t hurting him,” Norinda said plaintively. “I was giving him the ultimate gift.”
“He doesn’t want it,” Joseph insisted. “You said you’d leave him alone-like me.”
Norinda took a step forward, arms outspread, offering herself as if she couldn’t comprehend how Joseph-how anyone-could refuse her.
“I have to leave you alone. But no one else. Not even James.”
At that, as if suddenly sensing danger, Joseph moved to shield Kirk.
“Then you lied to me,” Joseph said.
“Only because I love you most,” Norinda confessed. She extended a hand to Joseph, as if wanting to draw him closer. “Let me show you how much.”
“Dad…” Joseph said, and that tentative appeal from his child broke through Kirk’s exhaustion and injuries. He lurched to his feet as a narrow tendril of black writhed from Norinda’s outstretched hand and within seconds took on a separate form.
Teilani, young, vibrant, unscarred, as she’d been when Kirk had followed her to Chal.
Now Teilani faced Kirk as Norinda faced Joseph, both apparitions reflecting the pain of rejection, both reaching out in supplication and hope.
Their voices blended in an eerie harmonic.
“I bring you love,” they promised.
Then their arms uncoiled like pillars of smoke, and without thought Kirk pushed Joseph to one side and threw himself to the other as the tendrils swirled into the empty space where father and son had been.
Breathing hard, dizzy to the point of nausea, Kirk knew he couldn’t evade another attack. He was certain that Norinda knew the same.
But still he watched in apprehension as each of the projections produced a slender tendril that uncoiled from their hands. The tendrils met and merged to grow again, and another Teilani took shape, her face fuller, stomach swollen, just as she had appeared when she had been pregnant with Joseph.
The younger Teilani, the older, and Norinda, they advanced on Kirk in precise and unnatural lockstep.
“Embrace…” they said together.
Before entering the Vulcan atmosphere, the Enterprise and the Belle Reve neutralized eight additional sentinel ships. But past that point, no other vessel challenged them.
Picard smiled in grim triumph as he pictured hundreds of Vulcan vessels suddenly and inexplicably having their gravity jump to four g’s, no doubt startling even the Vulcan crews as they watched the duplicates among them dissolve away. Scott and McCoy had been successful in relaying their critical information to the Vulcan fleet.
Ionized trails of superheated plasma marked the trajectories of the Belle Reve and the Enterprise as they continued unimpeded.
Shi’Kahr grew on the horizon.
Kirk moved back as the thing that was young Teilani extended her formless arms to wrap around him. The instant one of them solidified against his back and began to urge him forward, he shifted and twisted, and threw his attacker against the other two.
Seizing his moment of freedom, Kirk scrambled back and rolled behind a bank of workstations on the first tier, shouting for his son to run.
The moment he reached cover, Kirk stole a glimpse across the open floor, checking the disposition of his enemy, searching for Joseph…
… and where there’d been three versions of humanoid females, Kirk now saw six.
Teilani, young and beautiful. Teilani, pregnant, older, scarred, but full of beauty within. Norinda as he had first encountered her. Norinda as a Reman. Teilani in the clinging black flightsuit she had worn the day they had first met. And most cruelly, Teilani in her wedding gown.
“Be loved…” the shadows of lost loves pleaded. “Be loved,” they entreated, one voice in many bodies, no longer an invitation but a near-deafening command.
The air in the command center changed as the rustle of tendrils and the shifting of bodies grew louder. Kirk stayed hidden, unwilling to risk betraying his position to see how many more beings Norinda would become in her relentless quest to have him accept her.
But the sound of footsteps approaching told Kirk he hadn’t managed to hide at all.
Shadows fell upon him. Dozens of them now.
Kirk used the last of his strength to stand, to face them.
But then the creatures cried out as one in anguish, turned away from him, back toward the platform at the center of the chamber.
Kirk stared after them in wonder.
Joseph had waded into the mass of projections, all different forms and guises of Teilani and Norinda, some even an intermingling of the two.
Instantly, the supplicants converged on his son, and as if a ripple of heat or an atmospheric distortion had roiled through the command center, one after another they shifted and changed into reflections of the female of Joseph’s species.
“Be loved!” they begged, demanded.
At the same time, more and more of them arose, as in the ancient tales of dragon’s teeth spawning invincible armies, compelled by the primal emotion that drove the life-force of their reality.
Kirk knew he was witness to the smothering power of love frustrated, passion denied, and that logic and force of arms could hold no sway over either.
But somehow, his son could.
Kirk edged out from cover, preparing to go to Joseph’s side. Despite his son’s apparent resistance to the Totality, Kirk didn’t know how either he or Joseph would or could escape this confrontation and if they would survive, together.
Then a familiar golden light played over another curved bank of workstations. A familiar musical note chimed.
As quickly as that, the game changed once again.
Jean-Luc Picard had beamed in.
36
VULCAN SPACE CENTRAL
STARDATE 58571.6
Picard took only seconds to assess the situation, and he was appalled.
He was also startled to hear Kirk call for him.
Picard ran for the workstations where Kirk crouched. He glanced over his shoulder to see scores of creatures resembling Norinda tear apart other workstation tiers with the terrible focus of the Borg. They were clearly searching for something, or someone.
Picard ducked down beside Kirk, took in his condition, knew it was bad. “You look awful.”
Kirk smiled as if nothing were out of the ordinary. “Good to see you, too.”
Picard had no time for pleasantries or sparring. He estimated that the mass of beings disassembling on the far side of the command center would reach their position in only minutes. “What are those creatures?”
“Norinda,” Kirk said. He coughed suddenly, winced, and pressed a hand to his side.
“All of them?”
“She’s desperate,” Kirk said. “She’s so convinced that we have to love her, that she’s trying to become a version of herself that we can’t resist.” Kirk gave Picard a wry smile. “But that’s not how it works, is it?”
“This is hardly the time for a philosophical discussion of love.”
“Then what are you doing down here?”
Picard shook his head. Trust Kirk to try to find humor in the most dire of situations. “The gravity projectors are working, but the dispersal shielding protecting this place…” Picard shrugged.
“I’m surprised you could even beam in,” Kirk said. Picard could see he was becoming paler, struggling to keep his eyes open.
“Beaming in we can do-the Enterprise is hovering two hundred meters over the operations center.”
“The Belle Reve…?” Kirk asked with effort.
“Standing by.” Picard and Kirk both started as a horrendous crash of metal echoed in the center. “What’re they doing?”
“Looking for Joseph,” Kirk said, coughed again. “But he’ll be safe… I know he will be….”
Picard didn’t understand where Kirk’s assurance came from, didn’t want to argue with him. He pulled a tricorder from his belt, spoke urgently. “Look, Jim, we can’t beam anyone out past the shielding.” He held up the tricorder. “So I need to set this on a target, to be a beacon for the Enterprise and the Belle Reve to use to focus their gravity weapons.”
“Then you’re going to have to get it as close as you can to the original Norinda.”
Picard frowned. “How can I tell which one’s the original?”
“All the others have grown from her,” Kirk said. “She’ll be somewhere in the center.” He tugged at the combat tricorder strapped to his own wrist. “Use this one-it has a strap.”
Picard took it. “I’ll be right back.”
Kirk forced a grin. “I’ll be here.”
Picard peered over the edge of the workstation, saw more than a hundred Norindas, all resembling Joseph to varying degrees, half of them ripping apart the center in their search for the youth, half wandering without purpose, as though they’d been abandoned.
But there, in the center of the room, looking back and forth frantically as if lost, Picard saw one Norinda who was more familiar, more human than the others.
He had his target.
Dozens of Norindas turned to meet his charge.
“Yes!” they called out to him with chilling conviction. “Be loved!”
Even as Picard sprinted toward them he could see the danger he faced-a living barrier of hands raised to grasp, to tear… some of them already beginning to lose definition, dissolving into the black formless substance that could somehow extract people from this reality and absorb them into the Totality’s realm.
But Picard didn’t falter.
The brave crews of two ships waited above for his signal.
A galaxy waited to know if it would live or die.
He kept running.
The hungry, driven throng engulfed him.
“Accept! Be loved! Embrace!”
Picard dove forward, over one, past another, slid across the hard floor, then fought his way to the center of the maelstrom and leapt to his feet in front of the Norinda he recognized.
For a moment, the encircling, swaying vortex of creatures kept their distance while the first Norinda reached out to Picard as if to caress him with relief and adoration.
“Yes, Jean-Luc! You understand! You’ll tell James and Joseph and all of them!”
She touched his face and Picard shrank back as Norinda slowly and subtly began to shift her appearance to resemble Beverly Crusher.
“I love you so much,” Norinda crooned as her fingertips made electric contact with his skin. “I want to give you so much.”
The shock of gazing into familiar eyes that could not be Beverly’s was enough to catapult Picard into action, and at once he slapped the combat tricorder to the creature’s slender wrist.
An instant later, the creature’s touch burned against his face as Norinda’s arm rippled into a column of swirling dust and the tricorder, with nothing physical to support it, dropped to the floor, lost in the shadows.
“Why?!” she cried, inconsolable. “Why do you beings deny all that you love?”
Picard began to move back as Norinda sobbed before him, wrapping her arms around herself, racked by grief.
For a moment, as he saw her pain, understood her anguish, his heart went out to her, and then-
– more hands than he could count took hold of him, forcing him to the floor, holding his legs and arms immobile.
Picard cried out in surprise more than pain. He tried to tear himself away but there were too many of them.
He could only look up to see the original Norinda, no longer Beverly, moving toward him, eyes soft with tears.
“Embrace… ” all the Norindas murmured at once, their voices resonating like prayers in a temple. “Be loved….”
The hands that gripped Picard tightened, riveting him in place.
Norinda loomed over him.
“Why don’t you understand?” she asked, full of sorrow and incomprehension.
Picard prepared himself for what would come next-dissolution into her realm, into nothing.
His last thought was of Beverly.
Until a familiar voice broke through the moment of defeat.
“Norinda!”
Kirk’s voice echoed above the others.
Picard peered past the forest of Norindas to see Kirk staggering closer, each step a struggle.
“Let him go!” Kirk shouted. “You only want me! You’ve always wanted me!”
Picard struggled uselessly, helpless to aid his friend as black tendrils snapped from the multitude to snare Kirk and drag him forward.
The Norindas deposited Kirk on the floor beside Picard. There was no need to hold the new captive down. Kirk’s strength was exhausted. Where he sprawled now was where he would die.
“Brave attempt…” Picard said through clenched teeth, fighting the pain of the hands that imprisoned him. “Incredibly stupid… but brave nonetheless.”
“You would’ve done the same for me,” Kirk said hoarsely.
“Oh, probably not,” Picard said.
The two captains looked at each other, began to laugh through their pain.
“I do want you, James…” all the Norindas said.
“Then take me,” Kirk said. “I give myself to you.”
Picard watched in amazement as Norinda’s desolate expression changed to one of transcendent joy, and she became the only Norinda to speak.
“James… do you love me?”
“I understand you,” Kirk said. “I understand what’s driving you. I can’t hate that. I can’t hate you.”
Norinda held out her arms to him. “Will you be embraced in love?”
“I have loved and been loved. And that’s why I’m giving myself to you, so you�
��ll leave all the others I love unharmed.”
Norinda hesitated, uncertain. “But I want them, too.”
“Love carries a price,” Kirk said. “If you truly want to make all the others happy– “
“Yes! I do!” Norinda interrupted.
“– then take me,” Kirk continued, “and give the others their freedom.”
“No,” the Norindas sighed in unison . “They will be alone….”
The one Norinda stepped closer to Kirk and Picard. “I will be alone.”
“You’ll have me,” Kirk said, roughly, urgently. Picard knew his friend was fading.
“Not enough,” Norinda said. Picard heard Kirk sigh as the one Norinda began to lose form. “Never enough,” the Norindas sadly chanted.
A slow cloud of darkness moved toward Picard and Kirk. The negotiation was over. Norinda’s reversion was complete and they were in the presence of the basic, primal, all-encompassing Totality, all-encompassing desire.
Picard glanced at Kirk. “Well, I never wanted to die in bed….”
Kirk grinned weakly. “I never wanted to die….”
STOP.
Picard didn’t understand where that command had come from. It wasn’t spoken, but somehow he had sensed it.
LET THEM GO.
The one Norinda coalesced into her humanoid form, stepped back.
FACE ME.
All the Norindas turned from their captives as one.
Picard raised his head as he was released.
There was someone else in the command center now.
It was Joseph.
And once more he had changed.
37
VULCAN SPACE CENTRAL
STARDATE 58571.6
Kirk heard the voice that was not a voice, and he recognized it.
It brought him from the darkness that was poised to claim him. He had to know, he had to see his son one last time.
“Jim, look…” Picard said in awe.
He helped Kirk sit up. He helped Kirk see what was before them.
Joseph and the one Norinda.
Surrounded by her duplicates, she was a transformed creature, solid once again, human once again, collapsed on her knees before Kirk’s son, consumed and defeated by the unyielding need she had tried to force on all life.
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