Kirk opened his eyes and was surprised at how bright the world was. His eyes stung at the sight of it all. The room he was in was sterile and white, as if everything was carved from ivory and marble, but he knew it couldn’t be made out of any substance found on Earth because everything was alight with an inner glow.
It’s like an artist’s conception of heaven, Kirk thought, his heart sinking.
Maybe I am dead.
Kirk tried to sit up, and felt vertigo sweep over him, with a vague sense of nausea. He lay back down, figuring that in the afterlife vomiting wasn’t a factor. After all, how did you throw up if you lacked a stomach?
Kirk sat there, waiting for his strength to return and trying to plan ahead. Where was he?
A man dressed in medical garb walked into the room. He was an alien, a Denobulan judging by the look of him. He smiled broadly as if nothing at all was wrong with the world.
“Good morning, Captain Kirk!” the cheery physician said. “I heard you had quite a spill, but we’ve patched you all up. Yes, we have. You’re as good as new.”
“Where—” Kirk croaked. His mouth was dry and his voice trembled from disuse but he was determined to get some answers. “Where am I?”
“Why, you’re in a hospital, of course,” the doctor responded. “What a funny question.”
“What planet?” Kirk demanded. “How did I get here? And where the hell is Captain Picard?”
The doctor looked perturbed for a moment but seemed to wave that perturbation away as if it was anathema to his nature.
“All your questions will be answered in time, Captain Kirk. In the meantime please enjoy our hospitality.” He put a finger to his touch-pad and a small viewer popped out of Kirk’s bed.
“You now have access to our library computer which will give you up-to-date information on what you have missed in the last seventy-nine years being MIA, as you were.”
When it came to getting information he needed, Kirk found that the grinning physician was even more frustrating than Bones was when the good doctor determined it against his best interests to give it up. But then Kirk had always been his own judge as to where his best interests lay.
“Doctor, please,” Kirk said in his most affable tone, “I’ve been tossed around so much that I’m getting dizzy. All I’d like are some answers right now.”
The doctor looked at Kirk, a flicker of compassion (or was it familiarity?) spreading across his face.
“I’d like very much to answer your questions,” the Denobulan said, “but it’s not my place to answer them. However, if I know my Enterprise captains, and trust me I do, you won’t rest until you get answers, so…”
The doctor touched a pip on his collar.
“Phlox to Manager one-ninety-four,” the doctor said. “Priority patient requests your assistance.”
“Coming,” a flat monotone responded.
Phlox turned to Kirk, grinning. “Coming,” he chirped. “If you’ll excuse me, I have rounds to make.”
Kirk waved him away, smiling. “Thank you, Doctor.”
“Service with a smile, as they say,” Phlox responded, walking away.
Where have I seen him before?
Kirk waited for what seemed like hours, though he realized it might have been his own impatience. Finally a tall stone-faced man entered the room. He had a head full of white hair and a demeanor that suggested the weight of the world rested on his shoulders. Kirk knew that feeling all too well. There was also something familiar about him. Where had he seen this man before?
“Welcome back, Captain Kirk,” the man said.
Kirk suddenly realized who the man was and why he seemed so familiar. He wasn’t in a Starfleet facility. He was…
Somewhere else.
“Gary Seven,” Kirk said. “What the hell is going on?”
“We have one final mission for you,” Seven said.
Agent K lurched, narrowly avoiding having his head taken off by a cross section of his freighter. He took a quick look, just to make sure that no more debris headed his way. Satisfied, he continued his task.
K clung to the side of the Klingon vessel, attempting to gain access to the ship by way of a service hatch. The tools he had with him proved useless; the hatch was fused from the explosion. Still, he had one more trick up his sleeve.
K reached into his utility belt and detached a photon charge and placed it on the hatch. He had a very limited supply and he intended to put it to good use. K set the charge on a ten-second timer before hauling ass out of the way. The charge exploded silently, though in K’s mind, it was as if he heard an awesome blast. Perhaps it was just the echo of memories long past.
The debris clearing, K stepped into the corridor of the enemy vessel. He ducked into a utility closet as a pair of Klingon technicians in spacesuits came down the corridor to repair the damage done to the ship.
Minutes turned into hours but sure enough, gravity and air returned to normal. K deactivated the life-support belt, removing his phaser.
Never leave home without one.
He stepped out of the closet and scrutinized his surroundings. It wasn’t so much a spaceship as it was a war zone. He’d been fighting Klingons for most of his life and found no surprises. Blood from numerous honor duels stained the decks. The bulkheads bore scars from bat’leth slicing through them. The smell in the air was pungent, a cross between smoke and vomit. K found himself glad he had blown the hatch. It would do the Klingons good to air the place out.
Seventy-nine years and they haven’t changed, he thought sadly. Gary Seven had told him otherwise but K found that very hard to believe. All he knew was that he had helped usher in an age of peace between the Klingons and the Federation and these bastards wanted to shatter it.
Not on my shift.
K removed another device from his belt. It had been disguised to resemble a twenty-fourth-century tricorder, but K knew it was only a disguise. This “tricorder” had ten trillion times the capabilities of a normal tricorder. It was equal to the databanks of a starship. When he had been a starship captain, K had always relied on the data provided by a certain brilliant Vulcan science officer. He had always believed the old adage that knowledge was power. With this device, knowledge was never far from hand.
Next best thing to Spock, he thought, missing his friend terribly. Lacking Spock, the device was proving to be yet another invaluable gift given to him by the enigmatic Mister Seven. His “tricorder” confirmed that his mission objective was being kept on deck four , one level down. K slipped the tricorder back on his belt and resumed his mission.
“Our benefactors go by many names,” Seven said enigmatically. “I could spend weeks naming them all but I think the one you’re most familiar with is The Preservers.”
“The Preservers,” Kirk repeated.
“Yes,” Seven said with a smile. “They still exist and they’ve taken a vested interest in preserving you.”
“Me?” Kirk asked. “Why me?”
Seven looked shocked at Kirk’s question.
“Who better than you? How many worlds have you saved? How many times have you stepped in and saved species from themselves or from outsiders? You have fulfilled the Preservers’ prime directive: ‘Above all else, life.’”
Kirk felt a glow of pride in his chest. He’d had many critics within the Federation for stretching their Prime Directive as far as he could and then a little more. To think that he had caught the eye of the legendary Preservers.
“After our first meeting, the Preservers kept you on their proverbial radars. They were all very pleased with your progress. After your retirement, the decision was made to recruit you. Unfortunately, it was made immediately before your voyage aboard the Enterprise- B . So you see, it was all a case of bad timing.”
Seven rethought his statement.
“Bad for you but good for the inhabitants of Veridian Four,” Seven amended. “And it was your death on Veridian Three that convinced us more than ever that you were the man we need
ed.”
In his delirium, Kirk had been placed into stasis for later revival, thus his apparent death. He had laughed when told that Picard had actually buried him. It had been close. He looked down at himself for the thousandth time, feeling shaken by what he saw. It wasn’t his familiar timeworn body, but rather the body of a young man.
Seven explained that using a series of nanite mechanisms, his body had been rebuilt from within and was good as new. They weren’t just able to heal wounds but reverse the aging process for as long as an agent worked in the field. A productive agent could live damn near forever.
As he looked at Seven’s aged form, it was clear that he didn’t give a damn about living forever. Too many years in the trenches could do that to a man, Kirk knew.
In the end, he was grateful to Seven and the Preservers for this second chance at life and for putting him back in fighting shape.
They say that youth is wasted on the young. We’ll see if that’s true.
“Needed?” Kirk asked. “Needed for what?”
“To complete your final mission. The mission that brought you to Veridian Three and your untimely end. I need you to help me save a star.”
Here we go again, Kirk thought.
Agent K slid down a service ladder, gaining access to deck four, the detention deck. K grimaced because he knew what that really meant; it was a euphemism for torture chamber.
A long darkened corridor lay ahead of him, not even a light flickering. Light was good for prisoner morale. Better to break the prisoners quickly.
Abandon hope all ye who enter here.
Placing his back to the wall, he slid slowly down the corridor. He breathed gradually, reducing all extraneous sound so that he could hear if a Klingon warrior came up behind him to cut his throat.
His tricorder indicated that four Klingons were milling about in the main chamber, dead ahead. This retrieval wasn’t going to be easy for him to pull off but then, there wasn’t much fun in easy.
K crept slowly up to the hatchway; he touched the release stud, hoping it wasn’t sealed. It was, so he reached into his belt for a code-picker.
K’s tricorder beeped, signaled that a fifth Klingon had just entered deck four.
K’s pulse quickened; there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. He turned and found himself face to face with a Klingon disruptor. K looked up into the craggy face of a Klingon warrior.
I’ve seen worse.
The warrior backhanded K, sending him flying against the bulkhead. K reached for his phaser and felt the Klingon’s foot crunch down on his hand.
The Klingon grabbed the phaser from K’s belt and tossed it away. Pulling K close, the Klingon reared his head back and slammed it into K’s face.
K felt the sting of cranial ridges rending flesh. He staggered back, seeing little birdies flying around his head. The Klingon sneered at the human’s pain. K remembered the one thing Klingons respected.
Bravado.
“That didn’t hurt,” K said, causing the Klingon to chortle.
“You make me laugh, Earther. I will see to it that you die with honor,” he said, keeping K within arm’s length.
“That’s very generous of you,” K said. “But I have another idea.”
“What?” the Klingon asked.
“I live,” K responded. His hand slashed out, slapping something to the Klingon’s chest. Before he could react, K grabbed him and hurled him into the hatchway.
The Klingon slumped over wide-eyed with surprise, a photon charge planted to his armor. K ran, throwing himself to the deck as the door was blasted apart and the Klingon was blown into eternity.
Not waiting for the smoke to clear, K made a dead run and leapt through the smoking door, phaser in hand. K rolled and hit the deck firing. A Klingon burst into a trillion atoms as he was struck by K’s beam.
K looked around for the Klingon’s companions and was surprised as his phaser was knocked from his hands. Strong arms gripped him firmly around his waist. He found himself flying through the air and a bulkhead awaiting him.
K’s teeth mashed against his lips as he hit the wall. He tasted his own blood and remembered swallowing worse things while on a mission. He saw the titanic Klingon bearing down on him.
K rolled as the titan brought his foot down, stomping the deck with an echoing thump. He thrust his open palm into the center of K’s chest, grabbing his tunic and pulling K to his knees. He lifted K into the air, shaking him back and forth like a child’s plaything.
“Humans have no honor,” Titan growled.
K’s feet flew over his head as the titan tossed him on the interrogation table. Shackles came down around his arms.
Titan’s compatriots, a short tubby Klingon and a tall gangly one that somewhat resembled a Klingon version of Ichabod Crane, came running to his side.
“Notify the commander,” Titan said. “More meat for the machine.”
“The House of Duras has long been a thorn in the side of the Klingon Empire,” Seven said. “They believe themselves descended directly from Kahless and claim to be the only true heirs to the Empire.”
Kirk knew full well how costly Klingon hubris could be, having been on their most wanted list many times over the last few decades of his life.
“The High Council disagrees,” Kirk said.
“Wholeheartedly,” Seven responded. “The House of Duras now lies in a state of dishonor. They intend to reclaim power through any means necessary.”
“Hence, the trilithium torpedo,” Kirk said.
“Exactly. Should that weapon come into the hands of the House of Duras it will become the most devastating weapon of mass destruction invented by mortal man,” Seven said. “Doctor Tolian Soran developed the weapon for the House of Duras in the hopes of using it to reenter—”
“Yes, I know about the Nexus,” Kirk said brusquely. He didn’t want to dwell on the heaven he had abandoned for certain death on Veridian III.
“When Soran was killed, it was thought that the data needed to re-create trilithium torpedoes was lost forever. We thought wrong,” Seven said sadly.
Kirk found the idea of renegade Klingons with a doomsday weapon in their hands beyond terrifying. In his time, Klingons conquered worlds through brute force or manipulation. He thought of the population of Neural thrown into decades of civil war because of the Klingons. He thought of the attempted holocaust on Sherman’s Planet because of the Klingons. His son, David, dead because of the goddamned Klingons.
And yet, after the Khitomer conferences he had felt his attitude toward them soften. People like Gorkon and Azetbur had shown him that it takes all kinds to make up an empire. But for every Gorkon, there was a Chang or a Duras. Seven had assured Kirk that the Klingons had been staunch allies of the Federation for decades now.
And Kirk believed him. He had helped forge a peace that had stood the test of time, and now these renegades wanted to destroy that peace. And billions of Klingons, as well as the Federation, would suffer for it.
Toral, the son of Duras, had learned of his treacherous aunts’ plan to take back the Empire and he had dispatched agents to learn of the details of that plan following their deaths.
Lursa and B’Etor had thought they had covered their tracks thoroughly and tied up all the loose ends. They were wrong. During the development of the trilithium torpedo Soran’s assistant, Doctor Hannah Bosworth, had abandoned the project. She had learned what Soran had intended to use the torpedo for and had been terrified at the extent of his madness. Doctor Bosworth carried the information to re-create the terror weapon. It was locked in her head, the unfortunate result of having a photographic memory.
Toral had sent a Klingon ship, a crew of criminals and traitors, to the Empire to locate and retrieve Doctor Bosworth. Once in his hands, the data would be extracted from her mind, no matter the cost.
With the trilithium torpedoes in hand, Toral would again demand complete control of the Klingon Empire. If he were denied he would take the Empire apart, star by sta
r. If House Duras couldn’t have the Empire then no one could.
“Doctor Bosworth was found and abducted on Rigel Four. The bird-of-prey Executor is in transit to Toral’s stronghold as we speak. I ask of you, Captain Kirk, in the name of the Federation that you fought to protect for so long, will you help us rescue her and help prevent a holocaust of galactic proportions?”
This was something he could do, had been doing for most of his life now, but he couldn’t ignore the nagging doubt at the back of his mind that he needed to bring to Seven’s attention before he made his decision.
“Why me?” Kirk asked. “Why ask a man seventy-nine years out of his depth?”
Seven almost smiled, as he had been anticipating Kirk’s question.
“Because you’re the only man who can do it. No human has fought Klingons the likes of these for nearly a century. Your experience is invaluable to the success of this mission.”
“Was that the only reason?” Kirk asked.
“No,” Seven responded. “We’re also sending you because you need it. Whether you’re retired in the twenty-third century or lost in the twenty-fourth you need a purpose. You need—”
“To make a difference,” Kirk replied, recalling a treasured memory. “Yes, my first, best destiny.”
Seven smiled. “Exactly. Captain Kirk, will you help us?”
“When do we start?” Kirk asked with a grin.
“Momentarily, Captain Kirk, momentarily.”
Agent K felt the shackles cutting into his arms and he embraced the pain. It hurt because he was alive and he was determined to stay that way.
He looked up at the mirror that the Klingons had placed strategically over the bed. The Klingons liked their prisoners to watch themselves being cut up piece by bloody piece. It was bad for their morale.
The Klingon commander was easily ten feet tall and had a face full of scars. Commander Kling had been demanding answers from him.
Who was he? Who sent him? What was he after?
The damned Klingon had actually thought him a bounty hunter, sent to claim a price on the commander’s head.
Strange New Worlds IX Page 29