But then Neelix destroyed Picard's careful chain of logic.
"Excuse me, Captain, but I don't think that's possible. According to what I've heard, Voyager is less than a year old. I mean, I was captured on her maiden flight and . . . that was only a few months ago."
"Where, exactly, were you captured?"
Neelix seemed to struggle with a painful memory. "You'd call it the Delta Quadrant."
Picard struggled to fit all the pieces together. "Which is where Voyager was lost, tens of thousands of light-years distant."
"Seventy thousand where I'm from," Neelix agreed. "I was a trader, you see. Poking through some old Kazon-Ogla ships—I don't suppose you know about the Kazon-Ogla?"
"The Kazon? Yes. There was something about them in the Voyager report."
"Well, there I was, and out of nowhere, literally, Voyager made contact with me. The Gul said she was lost."
"The Gul?"
"Gul Rutal. She's Voyager's commander. She said they were lost and they needed a guide and . . . well . . ." Neelix's eyes filled with tears. "I'm sorry. It's just such a terrible tale. They . . . Voyager was brought to my region of space by a displacement wave, generated by a venerable alien life-form." Neelix smiled wistfully. "The Caretaker, they called him. He was only attempting to provide for the Ocampa—a beautiful, peaceful race. Something could have been worked out. I'm just certain of it."
Picard listened carefully. Everything the alien told him was familiar, as if he were hearing a slightly different version of the Voyager report.
"But, in the end," Neelix continued, "Gul Rutal lied to me, betrayed the Ocampa, and allowed the Kazon-Ogla to destroy the alien's array, all so she could return Voyager to her own quadrant."
Picard had no idea what any of this had to do with the matter at hand. It was clear the Talaxian was confused. This vessel was Voyager— the history of the two universes had diverged so significantly since Kirk's experience there that no Starfleet existed on the other side, to design and build a duplicate of this ship. Somehow Captain Janeway had crossed over to the mirror universe, her ship been captured by the Alliance, and now had returned to this universe in order to—
Picard felt his breath grow short as he realized what Gul Rutal's mission must be.
"Gul Rutal wants to capture the Enterprise."
"I already have," the Gul said.
Neelix jumped away from the treatment bed with a whimper of fear. But even in his injured state, Picard had enough self-control not to betray his own surprise. He turned his head toward the doctor's office built in to the side of the sickbay.
Gul Rutal, a tall, imposing Cardassian, stood there. She had been there from the beginning, Picard realized. She was the Cardassian who had claimed his bridge.
"You don't belong in this universe," Picard said, as if his restraints did not exist, as if he were not a prisoner.
Rutal smiled coldly at him, her dual, lateral spines giving her wide shoulders and thick neck the look of a cobra about to strike. "We are not doing anything here which you have not already done to us," she hissed.
"Your universe has been declared off-limits," Picard said. "Our Prime Directive prevents us from taking action there."
The Cardassian walked around Picard, appearing to judge him as if he were no more than a food animal tied down for sacrifice. "You Terrans can be so sanctimonious. The damage has already been done. So many of you crossed over into our universe that we established strict protocols to execute all such intruders at once."
Picard was sickened at the thought. "How many?"
The Cardassian shrugged. "Since your Kirk opened the doorway, at least twenty. But those deaths served to keep you under control like the vermin you are. Until you reached Terok Nor."
"Julian Bashir," Picard said.
A strange expression came to the Cardassian. "And Kira Nerys. We know everything about those 'visitors' from . . . this false reflection of reality where Terrans still rule. Those two were the first intruders since your Kirk to escape us. But before they left our world, they planted a seed." She leaned closer to Picard, so close Picard could smell the alien scent of her sweat. "Resistance. Rebellion. They left the Terrans of my universe with the ludicrous hope that they might actually succeed in overthrowing the Alliance. That's not quite in keeping with your famed Prime Directive, now, is it, Captain Picard?"
"Any oppressed people will fight for freedom." Picard glanced at Neelix, but Neelix remained with his head bowed at the foot of the diagnostic bed, refusing to meet Picard's gaze. "That idea did not originate with us."
"But the Defiant did." The Cardassian's gloved hand shot out and smashed against Picard's face in a painful blow.
Picard saw flashes of colors before his eyes. He tasted blood in his mouth.
"One of our Terran rebels downloaded your Starfleet's plans for an entire starship, Captain. And not just a starship—a warship. The Defiant. That's what they're using against us now. The weaponry of your universe. In ours."
Mouth bloodied, Picard stared at the Cardassian, waiting for more explanation.
"You weren't aware of that?" Rutal said, suspicious of Picard's puzzled reaction. "That your peace-loving Federation has become a provider of weapons to our Terran Resistance?"
Picard shook his head. "The Defiant's plans were stolen from us. To deliberately provide such technology would go against everything we believe in. You have my sympathy."
The Gul raised her fist again, but relented. Instead, she laughed, harshly. "Sympathy. From a Terran. How droll. But even the peace-loving Cardassian people can learn from human perfidy. Your interference left us no choice. As the Terran rebels had done, we— a group of Cardassian patriots—also penetrated your universe. Earth Station McKinley, to be precise."
Suddenly Picard understood the true origins of the ship he was in. Neelix was right. "That's where Voyager was built. And where you stole her plans."
Gul Rutal raised her hands to indicate the ship around her. "Not an exact duplicate of the craft in your universe, but . . . close enough to lure in an even bigger catch, wouldn't you say?"
Proudly, Picard stated the simple truth. "You can't have the Enterprise."
"Come now, Captain. Fair is fair. Even to a Terran male. Your universe provided the rebels of my universe with a starship to use against the Alliance. It is only fitting that now you provide us a starship to take back to our universe, for the Alliance to use against the rebels."
"The Enterprise is my ship. And I've locked out all her controls. Without my command codes, she's useless to you."
The Cardassian drew a single finger along Picard's temple. "Believe me, Captain. Your command codes will be mine before a day has passed."
Picard clenched his fists. "I have been tortured by Cardassians before."
Gul Rutal's smile was unconcerned. "Correction. You have been tortured by your universe's weak and ineffectual version of Cardassians. Not real Cardassians, who have had almost a century to refine the art of extracting information from Terrans. When it comes to torture, you don't know the meaning of the word."
Picard did not avert his eyes from Gul Rutal's. He knew exactly what was in store for him. He had suffered terribly at the hands of another Cardassian Gul—Madred—and knew better than most beings what his true breaking point might be. But Starfleet was comprehensive in its tactics, and one of the command codes Picard possessed was specially developed to be given up under duress. The challenge would be to resist long enough that his captor would accept the false code as a legitimate one, and not suspect it had been extracted too easily.
Once that false code had been entered into the Enterprise's computer, Picard's ship would know she had been taken over by a hostile force.
The computer would then set the ship on a course to the nearest starbase, transmit distress calls, and lock out all helm controls by explosively severing key ODN circuits.
Picard knew he might never reach home again. But his ship would. That was still all that mattered.
"Do your worst," Picard said defiantly, already preparing himself for the ordeal to come.
But Gul Rutal stepped back, raising her hands as if to distance herself from Picard's suggestion. "Oh, no, Captain. You misunderstand. A Cardassian would not stoop to . . . soiling her hands with the blood of a soulless Terran. In any event, I find it far more fitting that Cardassian expertise in these matters should be expressed by a hallmark of your own Terran technology—with some useful variations, of course."
Picard didn't understand.
The Cardassian glanced up at the ceiling. "Computer. Activate the EMH."
A third figure suddenly formed to Picard's side, and he recognized the familiar features of Dr. Lewis Zimmerman, the Starfleet physician who had used his own form as the template for the first of a series of artificially intelligent, holographic doctors designed to assist Starfleet medical crews during emergencies.
The holographic doctor wore an old-style Starfleet uniform, so Picard guessed its program had been stolen along with the plans for this duplicate Voyager.
In its typical brusque manner, the holographic doctor glanced at Gul Rutal, then down at Picard.
"Please state the nature of the interrogation requirements," the doctor said. With a bland expression, he held up a small device that looked as if a red triangle with rounded corners had been affixed to a dull silver box with two tiny wings at the top edge.
Gul Rutal gazed down at Picard. "As I said, Captain, this ship isn't an exact duplicate of your Voyager . . . but I'm sure you'll find our version has a unique nature all its own. To say nothing of its own supply of Terran-designed agonizers." She nodded at the doctor. "Carry on."
"Thank you," the doctor said dismissively.
Then the agonizer descended.
The last thing Picard saw was Neelix, as the trembling Talaxian covered his ears.
The last thing he knew was pain.
SEVEN
Millennia ago, a vast comet had struck the moon, setting off the titanic upheaval that had led to the creation of the Sea of Serenity, one of the oldest of the dark lunar maria. Had there been any life on Earth to witness that stupendous impact, it would have seen fountains of incandescent liquid rock erupt into space, as if a quarter of the moon had been transformed into fire, blazing so brightly it outshone even the sun.
In the course of hours, as the immense crater formed by the comet fell in on itself, the scarred surface of the moon had healed in an outpouring of smooth lava. In the next few months, billions of tonnes of lunar ejecta would blaze through Earth's still-forming atmosphere. And in the next few centuries, a ring of debris would encircle the moon, slowly dissipating under the rhythmic tug of Earth's gravity. But in that instant of impact, when the ancient body of the comet had come to rest at last, its heart—one hundred million tonnes of interstellar ice older than the sun itself— had been forever captured by lunar rock.
That ice absorbed the heat of the comet's fiery death and was transformed into superheated steam in only minutes. But as the long centuries passed and the moon slowly radiated that heat away, the steam became water, and in time the ice re-formed.
Protected from the vacuum of space by the chambers of rock which had solidified around it, the ice remained undisturbed until humanity's first wave of expansion from the planet of its birth. The lunar pioneers had found the ice and mined it—first to support their fragile, pressurized habitats, then to manufacture the antimatter used to fuel the new warp ships that would carry their species even farther from home.
Eventually, inevitably, easier methods of creating antimatter were discovered. More efficient means of obtaining water on the moon were engineered.
So the ice mines of Serenity closed, becoming as archaic and unnecessary as the abandoned oil fields of Earth, the need for their contents long ago supplanted by less disruptive forms of energy. Now the Serenity mines were simply remnants of a bygone age, old, and cold, and useless. And James T. Kirk walked through them as if they were the fitting home for his heart and for his soul.
The history that the other Spock related to him was that chilling.
At the branching of two rough-walled tunnels, in the dim blue light cast by flickering fusion globes that had burned for more than two hundred years, Kirk found he could go no farther. Not right now.
Janeway and the other Spock respected his request— though Janeway remained nervous, and kept checking a small tricorder.
Kirk reached out to a wall of rock to brace himself, to catch his breath, to try to comprehend the events he had set in motion so long ago.
The rock was textured with the melted cylindrical gouges created by a primitive drilling laser. The undulating surface was cold and made his fingers ache. But Kirk would not take his hand away, as if the pain could serve as penance for what he had done.
"You were supposed to be . . . invincible," Kirk said to the mirror Spock. His words escaped from him in clouds of vapor. His voice echoed in the lunar mines. "You were supposed to use the Tantalus Field."
That device had been an alien invention which had belonged to Kirk's counterpart on the other Enterprise. Hidden behind a wall panel in the mirror in Kirk's quarters was a display screen that could focus on any section of the starship. And any person or object at the center of that focus could be made to disappear, with only the touch of a finger on a button.
After the Tantalus Field had been used, there was no trace of an energy discharge that could be detected by investigators, no molecular residue from a corpse to linger in the air for a tricorder to sense. All that was left was a total absence of whatever had existed only an instant before.
The other Kirk had used the Tantalus Field to consolidate his power and maintain his command of the Enterprise. That Kirk's enemies had simply vanished. Kirk had told the mirror Spock to use the device for the same purpose.
"Did you?" Kirk asked.
"I did."
Kirk closed his eyes. Even in the weak gravity of the moon, he felt weighed down by the years, "Then what happened, Spock?"
"As you suggested, I found a way to spare the Halkans."
Kirk felt a momentary respite from his burden, thankful for that one small victory, at least.
The Halkans were a peaceful, ethically advanced race who, in Kirk's universe, had declined to allow the Federation to mine their dilithium. Despite the Federation's assurances, the Halkans feared their valuable crystals would one day be used to support acts of destruction.
Kirk had never been able to convince the Halkans to change their position, and so their dilithium had remained their own, yet the Federation and the Halkan people enjoyed a friendly and beneficial association to this day.
In the mirror universe, though, Starfleet Command had ordered the other Kirk to destroy the Halkan civilization as an example to any other race that might possibly consider refusing the Empire.
When Kirk had replaced his mirror-universe counterpart for those few hours, he had delayed implementing that deadly order, even though his defiance put him at risk of being killed by the mirror Sulu. Then, as Kirk had prepared to return to his own universe, he had told the other Spock to find some way to spare the Halkans from their fate.
"How did you manage it?" Kirk asked.
"I did not," the other Spock said. He explained that Kirk's counterpart had convinced Starfleet that the reports of the Halkans' dilithium reserves were a fabrication. A secret treaty supposedly existed between the Halkans and the Klingon Confederacy, so that if the Empire moved against that one planet, it would give the Klingons the excuse they needed to declare war. In the end, Kirk's counterpart received additional honors from the Empire for eluding such a devious trap.
But after all this time, the details of the Halkans' survival weren't important to Kirk. Another part of that story was. "I had always assumed . . . always thought it would be inevitable ... that your first act would be to kill . . . my counterpart."
The flicker of a sad smile played over the other Spock, as if, lik
e the Spock of this universe, he had found peace with his human heritage and occasionally allowed himself the freedom to express his emotions. "You forget the nature of my universe at that time. Had I killed my Captain Kirk upon his return to the Enterprise, my estimated lifetime would have been measured in days, if not hours. He was an extremely powerful and influential officer. The vendetta that would have ensued from his assassination would have been bloody and swift. I would not have survived it."
Kirk took his hand away from the wall of icy rock. He flexed his frozen fingers, discovering in them a vestige of warmth. "Then . . . how did you take over your Enterprise?"
The other Spock seemed surprised by the question. "I did not do that, either."
"But I assumed . . ."
"Mere assumption does not make it so," the mirror Spock said. "As I told you at the time, I did not seek command. My captain did. Logic dictated that he be assisted in his endeavors, while I remain out of harm's way."
Kirk blew on his hand, rubbed it back to life. "You became the power behind the throne."
"Quite literally. Within five years, my Captain Kirk was commander in chief, Starfleet."
Janeway suddenly erupted at the mirror Spock, as if after a long struggle she had finally escaped from a gag. "Intendant Spock, how can you go on like this? As if this were some type of . . . of polite history lecture?" She wheeled to face Kirk, face suffused with anger, voice quavering. "Five years after becoming commander in chief, you—Captain Kirk— assassinated Androvar Drake and became emperor! Tiberius the First. The bloodiest, vilest, most depraved dictator in human history!"
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