by Diane Carey
Embarrassed, Keller hooked his thumbs into his pockets and scuffed at the ground with the toe of his cowboy boot. “Oh . . . we just did what we had to, sir.”
“But your choice of crew is questionable. A woman with talons on her feet, for instance.”
“Ah—Zoa.”
“And another one suggested I take a rest period of hanging upside down . . . like a bat.”
“Ah,” Keller resigned. “Then you’ve met the whole coven.”
Kirk nodded and watched a second crew as they affixed an enormous UFP standard onto the mismatched khaki-colored neck of the frigate. “Your idea?”
“Hm? Oh, yes, sir. I don’t want anybody making any mistakes about who we are. At least, as long as I’m here.”
“You’ll be here a while. There’s no one else to effect law enforcement once the Enterprise leaves. I’ll be executing a field order. You’ll be promoted to post captain until Starfleet makes a decision regarding your extenuating circumstances.”
A big rock landed in Keller’s stomach and sat there, laughing at him. “Sir, I’m perfectly content to be OTC. You might not want that promotion . . . reflecting on you.”
Temperately, Kirk blinked his eyes and rubbed them, then stopped watching the work up above. He paced around to Keller’s other side.
“I’ve taken a look at your report,” he said. “Tavola methane. Very serious mistake.”
Keller stiffened, then owned up. “Wasn’t a mistake, sir. It was a calculated bad decision. It was only my first error. I don’t know if it was the worst one.”
“You know the regulations regarding Tavola exposure.”
“Yes, sir. Starfleet personnel are on their honor to report exposure. You can’t run a scanner over somebody and prove he was exposed. It causes changes, but you can’t prove that it has. That’s why it’s a court-martial offense not to report exposure. Loyalty or not, you report it. Changes normally show up within three months, but with Roger they didn’t. Not until he was under stress . . . halfway to Belle Terre.”
“What does Captain Lake have to say about all this?”
“He doesn’t think he’s changed at all. He thinks I’m just grabbing his command. He’s under surveillance and analysis at the hospital across town.”
“Hurts,” Kirk sympathized, “when your idol thinks you’ve betrayed him.”
Weakened now that everything was out in the open, Keller felt as if he were physically sagging. “I broke one of the most important regulations around, sir. I don’t want to complicate things by trying to powder over it or have it dirty up your record too. I’ll take whatever decision Command brings down, without contest.”
With a little shrug, Kirk clasped his hands behind his back. “Regulations also say you don’t risk the ship for one person, but occasionally you do. Usually they’re right, but not always. You make your hard choice, and accept that you might be court-martialed, but it’s worth that price. You made the choice. It didn’t turn out right. Sometimes that’s the only difference between glory and the grave.”
They were silent for a few moments, together watching the final touches on the new coded call letters and numbers for local communications buoys. D.I.T 405.
“Who’s code is that? Yours?”
“Yes, sir,” Keller said. “Delta India Tango.”
“I’ll remember,” Kirk promised. “I’ll follow your wishes and file a report with the admiralty. It’ll be a black mark on your record. Fortunately, as long as you’re on duty at Belle Terre, nobody’ll be reading the record. The value to the Service now is that you stay, not that you go. You still have a while to catch up to me and my black marks.” Kirk’s sharkish eyes flashed at him. “Dare you to try.”
Keller smiled uneasily. “Any advice?”
“None. You’ll figure it out. Peleliu had a two-year mission here. You’re taking it over. If it’s good, you’d be surprised what the admiralty can forget to read. Besides, chances are you won’t survive two years out here.”
“Oh, bless you, sir . . . At least the Kauld have lined up with us now. The Cluster might settle down and be a pleasant place to live after all.”
Kirk smirked at him without pity. “Trust me—it’s big out there. We’ve got plenty yet to discover. You’ll have your hands full.”
“Again, bless you.”
With a star in his eye, the captain jauntily finished, “I could throw you in irons, but what a waste of iron. Fair weather, Nick . . . I’m afraid you’re the sheriff in these parts now. Protect your turf.”
Without waiting for an answer, he stepped back and snapped out his communicator.
“Kirk to Enterprise. Beam me up.”
Epilogue Two
Enterprise, the next morning
“I DON’T LIKE MYSTERIES. When I left, Billy Maidenshore was a syndicalistic, charismatic prancer without a conscience. When I come back, he’s absolutely subdued. He almost seems ashamed of himself. What happened over there?”
“Oh, nothing significant, Captain. He thought he was one ape in a million because he was devilish and savvy and had no conscience. Once I understood him, handling him was a minor matter.”
James Kirk pressed his thigh to the communications console and peered suspiciously at Uhura, who sat in her familiar position with her lovely legs crossed, flicking a stylus through the crown of hair over one ear.
“Minor?” he repeated. “Billy almost wrested economic control of the olivium supply. Now he’s sitting in triple security, and he’s not even arguing. His spirit’s gone.” Leaning forward a little, arms crossed, Kirk queried, “What’ve you done with it?”
Uhura’s exotic Nubian features took on a queenly presence. “Why, Captain,” she said, “it’s in my top left dresser drawer.”
She swiveled a shoulder to him, enjoying her victory.
Who ever said a woman couldn’t keep a secret?
He was about to pursue the interrogation when the turbolift door opened with what sounded like a sigh of relief, and Spock’s voice broke the peace on the bridge.
“You’re being emotional, Doctor. Any advancement throughout history, from fire to warp drive, on balance, despite problems, has been a change to the good.”
“The problem with you, Spock, is you’ve never sat on a front porch and watched the kids play and the corn grow.”
Kirk turned to see McCoy and Spock, literally arm to arm, arguing in the vestibule.
“Review the delay in personal mobility had Thomas Edison never encouraged Henry Ford to pursue developing the automobile. The entire progress of the most productive single century in mankind’s history may have been set back by decades.”
“The bloody twentieth?”
“Yes, including the bloody vaccines, the bloody sanitation, the bloody personal computer—”
“It used to be a problem when your family moved into the next county,” McCoy protested. “Then we start leaping whole sectors, and now we have something that’ll help us go even farther away, even faster. How is this good?”
“Doctor, had you been in charge, humankind would still be conducting business from the counter of Maw and Paw’s corner feed store.”
“You never look at the other side, do you? There’s something to be said for slow advancement. That’s how wisdom comes. How often have men taken one of these great leaps and almost ended up at the bottom of the canyon?”
“Had Copernicus embraced your attitude, doctor, we would indeed be having this conversation with the corn stalks in the holler.”
“There! You see? Rapid advancement doesn’t necessarily bring wisdom. Nobody grows corn in a holler!”
“Perhaps,” Spock skewered, “we shall use the olivium to develop advanced programming and eventually replace doctors. At least a programmable physician will keep his mind on business.”
“Oh!” McCoy pivoted to Kirk and Uhura. “Can you just see that? You’re lying there and some machine with a head painted on it is hovering over you deciding whether to remove your brain or clean
under your fingernails! Maybe it’ll hold your hand at the same time!”
Sharing a brief glance with Sulu, who was smiling at the helm, Spock folded his arms casually. “Doctor, I sense no threat in such a probability.”
“Of course not, Mr. Spock,” McCoy parried. “We could replace you with a machine this afternoon and nobody would notice. You already have an asbestos personality.”
The Vulcan nodded and swaggered in place. “A mechanical doctor would have at least one distinct advantage . . . an ‘off’ switch.”
“Gentlemen, good morning.” Kirk pushed off the comm console and stopped their conversation with his approach.
“A very good morning, Captain.”
“Hi, Jim.”
“I see you two have both recovered from our respective adventures,” Kirk commented. “What’s your prognosis for the Kauld soldiers’ disease, Bones?”
“We don’t know, yet, Jim. They made a mess during their antimatter experiments. It could be radiation, but it’s been complicated by their physiology.”
“Can they be saved?”
“Some of them are beyond help. Vellyngaith himself may be too far gone, but we’ve set up a clinic at the medical center on Belle Terre. I’ve handed over the research problem to Dr. M’Benga. He’s worked on more aliens than anyone else down there. Who knows? If they can cure the Kauld, maybe they’ll make Sagittarius Cluster history because the Kauld will be forever grateful. No more conflicts here.”
“Again, Doctor,” Spock commented, “your shortsightedness reveals itself. History is full of convenient friendships. We shall see if the Kauld remain friends once they no longer need our help.”
McCoy confronted him again. “You don’t have any faith in simple goodwill!”
“ ‘Faith,’ sir, is what a weak mind clings to when it possesses no evidence.”
“Pagan.”
“Thank you. Captain, should I transfer the report to Starfleet about Captain Lake?”
Kirk perked up, realizing he was once again involved. “No, Mr. Spock. I’ll deliver the report in person when we get back. I want to add a few comments.”
“In six months?”
“Is there a rush?”
Spock’s dark eyes shined. Back to his incombustible self, he didn’t mind showing his pleasure in Kirk’s decision. With great meaning and even sentiment, he sanctioned, “No, sir. No rush at all.”
“Very well. All hands, take your posts and prepare to leave orbit.”
He stepped down and slid into his command chair, charged with the adventure of going home, back through the dark empty tracts of space between here and the Federation, reaches full of mysterious and uncharted tributaries. Even the trail home promised sparkling chances. His starship, his familiar crew—Uhura at her post, Sulu’s hands on the helm, Scotty at engineering where he belonged, Spock at his right and McCoy at his left.
“Ready to leave orbit, Captain,” Spock reported, sounding almost jaunty.
“Thank you, Mr. Spock. Doctor, is the crew settled and ready to depart?”
“They are, Captain,” McCoy merrily confirmed.
Kirk smiled. He looked at the main screen, with its picture of the planet Belle Terre, a struggling but hopeful place, patched by tiny agricultural centers and growing factories, a frontier gold-rush town, determined to make good for itself and everybody back home.
“Mission accomplished,” he said. “The colony is secure. The Blood and Kauld are speaking to each other. It’s time to pass the torch. Mr. Sulu, move us into the spacelane.”
“Aye aye, sir. Point zero two impulse speed.”
The starship slowly broke from orbit, her swan-shape gleaming proudly in the sunlight as she soared into the first established departure lane in this new solar system.
Kirk smiled again at the half-built spacedock flickering like a Christmas tree hanging over the planet. In the boxdock, just now being pulled up to the umbilical mooring, floated the half-breed ship Nick Keller had conjured from scraps.
A composite frigate, Scott had called it.
And a repository, Kirk thought, for composite aspirations. He wouldn’t know for months upon months whether that ship and her young master could keep a grip on the tiger he had by the tail.
But for today, for Kirk and his own crew, the future was somewhere else. With Spock and McCoy on either side of him and Belle Terre pulling itself up by the bootstraps in front of him, James Kirk felt supremely complete.
“Mission accomplished, gentlemen,” he said. “A very long mission. My compliments to the crew.”
“We’ll pass them along, Jim,” McCoy accepted.
“Thank you, Doctor. Mr. Sulu, bear us off. All running lights, signals and pennants render honors to starboard . . . the United Federation Frigate Challenger. May she hold the fort, crack the frontier, and live to tell the tale.”
Look for STAR TREK fiction from Pocket Books
Star Trek®: The Original Series
Enterprise: The First Adventure • Vonda N. McIntyre
Final Frontier • Diane Carey
Strangers From the Sky • Margaret Wander Bonanno
Spock's World • Diane Duane
The Lost Years • J.M. Dillard
Probe • Margaret Wander Bonanno
Prime Directive • Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens
Best Destiny • Diane Carey
Shadows on the Sun • Michael Jan Friedman
Sarek • A.C. Crispin
Federation • Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens
Vulcan's Forge • Josepha Sherman & Susan Shwartz
Mission to Horatius • Mack Reynolds
Vulcan's Heart • Josepha Sherman & Susan Shwartz
Novelizations
Star Trek: The Motion Picture • Gene Roddenberry
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan • Vonda N. McIntyre
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock • Vonda N. McIntyre
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home • Vonda N. McIntyre
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier • J.M. Dillard
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country • J.M. Dillard
Star Trek Generations • J.M. Dillard
Starfleet Academy • Diane Carey
Star Trek books by William Shatner with Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens
The Ashes of Eden
The Return
Avenger
Star Trek: Odyssey (contains The Ashes of Eden, The Return, and Avenger)
Spectre
Dark Victory
Preserver
#1 • Star Trek: The Motion Picture • Gene Roddenberry
#2 • The Entropy Effect • Vonda N. McIntyre
#3 • The Klingon Gambit • Robert E. Vardeman
#4 • The Covenant of the Crown • Howard Weinstein
#5 • The Prometheus Design • Sondra Marshak & Myrna Culbreath
#6 • The Abode of Life • Lee Correy
#7 • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan • Vonda N. McIntyre
#8 • Black Fire • Sonni Cooper
#9 • Triangle • Sondra Marshak & Myrna Culbreath
#10 • Web of the Romulans • M.S. Murdock
#11 • Yesterday's Son • A.C. Crispin
#12 • Mutiny on the Enterprise • Robert E. Vardeman
#13 • The Wounded Sky • Diane Duane
#14 • The Trellisane Confrontation • David Dvorkin
#15 • Corona • Greg Bear
#16 • The Final Reflection • John M. Ford
#17 • Star Trek III: The Search For Spock • Vonda N. McIntyre
#18 • My Enemy, My Ally • Diane Duane
#19 • The Tears of the Singers • Melinda Snodgrass
#20 • The Vulcan Academy Murders • Jean Lorrah
#21 • Uhura's Song • Janet Kagan
#22 • Shadow Lord • Laurence Yep
#23 • Ishmael • Barbara Hambly
#24 • Killing Time • Della Van Hise
#25 • Dwellers in the Crucib
le • Margaret Wander Bonanno
#26 • Pawns and Symbols • Majliss Larson
#27 • Mindshadow • J.M. Dillard
#28 • Crisis on Centaurus • Brad Ferguson
#29 • Dreadnought! • Diane Carey
#30 • Demons • J.M. Dillard
#31 • Battlestations! • Diane Carey
#32 • Chain of Attack • Gene DeWeese
#33 • Deep Domain • Howard Weinstein
#34 • Dreams of the Raven • Carmen Carter
#35 • The Romulan Way • Diane Duane & Peter Morwood
#36 • How Much For Just the Planet? • John M. Ford
#37 • Bloodthirst • J.M. Dillard
#38 • The IDIC Epidemic • Jean Lorrah
#39 • Time For Yesterday • A.C. Crispin
#40 • Timetrap • David Dvorkin
#41 • The Three-Minute Universe • Barbara Paul
#42 • Memory Prime • Gar and Judith Reeves-Stevens
#43 • The Final Nexus • Gene DeWeese
#44 • Vulcan's Glory • D.C. Fontana
#45 • Double, Double • Michael Jan Friedman
#46 • The Cry of the Onlies • Judy Klass
#47 • The Kobayashi Maru • Julia Ecklar
#48 • Rules of Engagement • Peter Morwood
#49 • The Pandora Principle • Carolyn Clowes
#50 • Doctor's Orders • Diane Duane
#51 • Enemy Unseen • V.E. Mitchell
#52 • Home is the Hunter • Dana Kramer Rolls
#53 • Ghost-Walker • Barbara Hambly
#54 • A Flag Full of Stars • Brad Ferguson
#55 • Renegade • Gene DeWeese
#56 • Legacy • Michael Jan Friedman
#57 • The Rift • Peter David
#58 • Faces of Fire • Michael Jan Friedman
#59 • The Disinherited • Peter David
#60 • Ice Trap • L.A. Graf
#61 • Sanctuary • John Vornholt
#62 • Death Count • L.A. Graf
#63 • Shell Game • Melissa Crandall
#64 • The Starship Trap • Mel Gilden
#65 • Windows on a Lost World • V.E. Mitchell
#66 • From the Depths • Victor Milan
#67 • The Great Starship Race • Diane Carey