Collision Course

by William Shatner

  “So is fasting for twelve days, but that does not mean one should fast for a year.”

  “My enlistment term is two years. I expect that time to be enlightening, and educational.”

  “It will be a waste of your time.”

  Spock had never heard his father speak so harshly.

  “Father, by virtually all standards, I am an adult. I have the right to choose the direction of my education.”

  Sarek turned his attention from Spock to the alien blue sky above. Except for that glaring anomaly, because of the garden’s design, only Vulcan vegetation and Vulcan buildings could be seen surrounding it. This was a place of refuge for those too long from their homeworld. Even the air here was scented with the dust and dried grasses of Vulcan’s deserts.

  “You have been confused by this world,” Sarek said.

  “I assure you, I have not.”

  Sarek cleared his throat. Spock often heard him do that when delivering a speech he did not entirely agree with. “Very well. If you wish to be treated as an adult, then I will arrange for you to receive a diplomatic security clearance. That will allow you to be told the details of what you believe to be a criminal enterprise operating within these walls.”

  “I know all the details.”

  Sarek gave him a skeptical look.

  “The artifacts,” Spock began, “that are being sold to a criminal organization run by a human known as Abel Griffyn are forgeries equipped with devices that return false sensor readings. In this manner, our embassy is cooperating with Earth authorities to learn the secrets of the organization, with emphasis on determining the reason for the unusual items it apparently is stealing.”

  Sarek looked at Spock as if he couldn’t be certain it really was his son before him.

  “You deduced this?” Sarek asked. “Through logic?”

  “And investigation.”

  “Impressive.”

  Spock tried not to blush. Now he couldn’t remember his father ever praising him so unreservedly. “Thank you.”

  “Do you wish to know the rest?” Sarek asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you will need a security clearance.”

  Spock sensed his father was setting a logic trap. “Have I not already demonstrated that I deserve one?”

  “Not by the little you managed to uncover on your own.”

  Spock knew he was stepping into the trap, but he had to know what his father was up to. “Very well. How will I obtain the clearance?”

  “Resign from Starfleet. Accept your admission to the Science Academy.” Sarek fixed his unblinking gaze on his son. “Then I will know you are an adult.”

  “And if I do not do as you suggest?”

  “Spock, it would be illogical of you not to do as I suggest.”

  Spock was unable to control the flush of shame those cruel words sparked in him.

  “I regret the need to be so blunt,” Sarek said, though it was too late to cushion the shock of his insult. “But it is true.”

  Spock had never been so furious with his father. Calmly, he escalated their confrontation. “The consular agents, Strad and Kest, have been murdered by Abel Griffyn.”

  Sarek was so startled he took a step back from Spock before recovering. “We thought that might be a possibility. How do you know it to be true?”

  “From an eyewitness.”

  “Who? The human boy who embroiled you in this?”

  “No,” Spock said. “And I involved myself when I discovered you did not trust me enough to tell me the truth.”

  “Spock, use your logic. Two of our consular agents have been murdered. Do you not understand the danger you face by your actions? My decision was not based on any measurement of my trust in you. It was based on my desire to protect you from harm.”

  “Why would you not tell me that at the time?”

  Sarek gave Spock a look of subtle amusement. “Imagine the questions that admission would have unleashed from you. In that, you are much like your mother. Against all logic, it sometimes seems as if she is drawn to danger and…excitement.”

  “Interesting,” Spock said. He had never considered that aspect of his mother’s personality before, but he suddenly saw the logic in it. From a human perspective, how else to account for the desire to wed an alien and spend one’s life on an alien world, if not, in at least some small part, for the excitement?

  “ ‘Interesting’ is not an answer,” Sarek said.

  “I will not resign from Starfleet at this time.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “The fact that you requested my resignation as a condition of telling me more about the theft ring suggests that the theft ring and Starfleet are connected. That confirms my assessment of what it is the theft ring wants.”

  Sarek was intrigued. “And what is your assessment?”

  But Spock saw no reason for answering. If his own father, perhaps one of the most brilliant minds on Earth at this time, had not been able to deduce that Griffyn was intent on stealing the material needed to build a Starfleet shuttlecraft, then it could only mean that vital information had been withheld from him. And since the Vulcan Embassy was merely assisting the investigation, that implied that the vital information was being withheld by Starfleet itself.

  Spock was suddenly struck by the realization that Jim Kirk might be right, and that at some level of command, Starfleet itself could not be trusted.

  “Spock?” Sarek asked again. “Will you tell me your assessment?”

  Spock followed through the likely chain of events that would be set in motion if his father was given data that the conspirators did not want him to have. None of the outcomes was acceptable.

  “No,” Spock said, because it was the only answer he could give.

  Sarek lifted his head in affront. “For what reason?”

  Because I wish to keep you from harm, Spock thought. But he could not voice that concern to his father. It would only inspire Sarek to redouble his efforts and bring him closer to the truth the conspirators did not want him to have.

  “I regret that I cannot tell you at this time,” Spock said. He checked the angle of the sun, calculated the time. There was still a great deal more for him to do. “I must go now.”

  “Where?”

  “I have things to do.”

  “Related to this investigation of yours?”

  “I would rather not say.” Spock held up his hand, moved his fingers apart in the ancient gesture. “Peace and long life.” Then he turned away.

  But Sarek followed, almost as if he intended to block his son’s way.

  “Spock, you are an alien on an alien world. What can you do?”

  Spock turned to face his father, so many things becoming clear to him. “You are mistaken, Father. On Earth, you are an alien. But like my mother, I am not.”

  41

  Kirk could understand being shunned by his fellow members of Gold Team. They all had stars in their eyes, convinced they were part of some elite club of right-thinking do-gooders, none of them capable of accepting reality: that Starfleet was just another imperfect organization, imperfectly run by imperfect humans. History was littered with similar attempts at well-meaning grandeur, all of them praised at the beginning, then sent to the scrap heap in disgrace.

  But what Kirk didn’t understand was his being shunned by his four fellow prisoners.

  They were all of them, him included, in the same position: each of them STC recruits in the STC brig, wearing the same garish Starfleet PRISONER jumpsuit. As they’d set out for their morning work detail, he’d expected a certain level of camaraderie. After all, they were all “bad boys” who had fought back against the bureaucracy.

  But apparently, that’s not how the other four looked at it.

  For some reason unknown to him, the other four were accepting of their incarceration and their punishment. Yet Kirk couldn’t figure out why they were even being punished.

  Paisley, a communications specialist from West Virginia,
had committed the unspeakable offense of returning late from liberty, though he had missed no duty time. The soft-spoken Hamilton, within a month of shipping out as a security noncom on the Enterprise, had been caught “liberating” the flag of the visiting UESPA hockey team after the Starfleet hockey team he coached had beaten the visitors 18 to 2. Horne, a communications engineer, had apparently fallen behind his fellow conspirators during the commission of a prank and was the only recruit found in the commandant’s office with a dozen squawking black chickens from the Colonial Agricultural Support Hall. And Rollins, covered with intricate Maori tattoos, had supposedly broken the chain of command by complaining about a lack of safety equipment in the engine lab to someone other than his direct superior—despite the fact that the safety equipment had been deficient.

  Kirk had been stunned to hear how trivial the offenses had been, all of them resulting in one or two weekends of lost liberty and hard labor.

  And yet, none of these hardened criminals—the most hardened Starfleet could come up with, it seemed—wanted anything to do with Kirk. When the others found out that he was the recruit caught tampering with the dilithium vault, they all kept their distance.

  For his part, Kirk couldn’t understand how people so dedicated to the system could ever survive at the cutting edge of exploration. Starfleet, as always, remained a mystery to him, and one he saw no way to solve.

  By 0200 hours, Kirk’s team had dredged away enough backed-up waste that a team of engineers could deploy a robotic probe to check the rest of the waste pipe leading to the main sewer system. For their efforts, the crew boss awarded them a fifteen-minute rest break before they’d have to move on to the next trouble spot on a lower level. His crewmates made quick work of their ration packs and water pouches, but Kirk did not. The smell of the place made the thought of food and drink impossible. But not the thought of escape.

  So, while the other prisoners sat together and laughed and planned their next weekend liberty, Kirk sat to one side on a raised conduit pipe, tossing flecks of fallen insulation into the few pools of dark standing water that remained.

  Fortunately, he knew, he would not be burdened by the necessity of having to take the other prisoners with him. All he had to do was choose a time when the crew boss had left the work area, then he’d…

  He looked up as a swath of light fell over him from the opening door of a utility closet in the stained, plasticrete block wall. A silhouette stood in the doorway—someone in the gray uniform of an Academy plebe. A very scrawny plebe with big ears.

  Kirk eased off the conduit. As his boots hit ground, they splashed in a small puddle. But the other prisoners didn’t look over or show they heard—the less they had to do with him, the better.

  The silhouette held his finger to his lips, motioned Kirk forward.

  Kirk called out that he had to use the head. His work crew kept talking, still not acknowledging him. So Kirk stepped through the door Spock had opened, and the door clicked shut behind him.

  A few moments later, if Kirk’s four fellow workmates had been looking, they’d have seen the thin band of flickering golden light that momentarily shone out from beneath the door, played over the wet surfaces, then faded from sight.

  It was almost an hour before anyone realized Kirk was gone.

  “Where are we?” Kirk asked. He was on a transporter pad somewhere, he knew. That much was obvious. But it wasn’t at all like the one he’d glimpsed when Mallory had beamed him from the Sloane Complex to the plaza outside Starfleet Headquarters.

  “The Vulcan diplomatic compound.”

  Spock jumped down from the raised platform—large enough to transport ten people at a time, Kirk counted—and ran over to a control console.

  “They just let anyone use this thing?”

  “There is an elusive radiation leak that is defying the technicians’ ability to detect.” Spock was at the console, rapidly swapping data cards in and out of the input slots. “You will find your uniform and transporter pass over there.” He nodded to a neatly folded pile of clothing on the floor by some kind of engineering display board covered with Vulcan script and flashing lights. “Leave your boots and coveralls on the pad.”

  Kirk kicked off his ruined workclothes. “No sonic shower?”

  “I have set the transporter to exclude those aromatics.”

  Kirk sniffed the air as he climbed into his new uniform. Spock was right. He couldn’t smell any of the sludge. “Nice trick.”

  “There is no trick. Vulcan transporter systems contain a database of the molecular frequencies of offensive odors.”

  Kirk tugged on his new boots. “Really? Then I’m surprised humans can use them.”

  “Vulcan transporter circuits did require considerable modification after first con—” Spock stopped and looked up, as if he had been caught revealing top-secret Vulcan intelligence.

  “Are you ready?” he asked Kirk.

  “Always. For what?”

  Spock left the console, ran over to Kirk with two ID wafers. “These are Academy liberty passes. They will gain us access to Spacedock.”

  Kirk looked at Spock with surprise. “You have been busy.”

  A pounding noise suddenly came from a pair of sliding doors that remained closed.

  “Unfortunately,” Spock said, “I have also been forced to work quickly, with little time to ‘cover my tracks,’ I believe the colloquialism goes.”

  Now voices, calm but loud, called out from behind the doors. Kirk guessed they were speaking a Vulcan dialect—he didn’t understand a word.

  “What’re they saying?”

  Spock handed Kirk one of the IDs, then ran back to the transporter platform. “They are attempting to offer support to the technicians they believe are trapped in here, being subjected to deadly radiation.”

  Kirk took his position on the transporter lens Spock indicated. Beside him, he noticed that Spock had donned an environmental modulator headband that covered his eyes with dark amber lenses, and his ears with acoustic baffles. Kirk was aware they were the type of device worn by colonists who had acclimated to, or had been genetically modified for, worlds with thin atmospheres. Since a few Academy mids might reasonably wear them, they were a good choice to cover up Spock’s more prominent Vulcan features, without looking like a disguise.

  “Should we say something to the guys at the door?” Kirk asked.

  “That would only encourage their efforts to enter. According to the readings they’re picking up, any Vulcan in here at this time would already be beyond saving.”

  A series of electronic tones came from the unattended control console.

  “Is that right?” Kirk asked. “Are you beyond saving?”

  “I believe that is likely,” Spock answered. “But it shall be an interesting hypothesis to put to the test.”

  “I like your style, Stretch.”

  Spock flipped up his modulator lenses to see Kirk more clearly. “Indeed,” was all he said.

  “Indeed,” Kirk replied with a smile.

  Spock tapped his headband, and the lenses snapped down.

  And then the transporter took them.

  Elissa Corso stared at her empty closet, unwilling to close it yet. Reflexively, she untangled two hangers so even in its emptiness, the closet would reflect Starfleet standards of order. Only then did she close the door and turn for one last look at her dorm room.

  Zee’s padds and study guides and computer screen were neatly arranged on her desk. Elissa’s desk was empty.

  Her mattress was rolled up, linens folded neatly. Beside them, a laundry services bag and a Starfleet duffel contained her uniforms, exercise clothes, class supplies…anything and everything that would ever remind her of this place where her childhood dream had come true, and then had been crushed.

  Her personal communicator chirped. The identifier display told her who it was.

  Why not? Elissa thought. At least she was leaving Archer Hall with one good friend.

  She flipped t
he communicator open. “Hi, Zee.”

  “You still there?”

  “Just leaving. Are you around?”

  “No, I…look, I’m so sorry, but I’ve got an engineering seminar to help out with. I won’t be able to get back for a couple of hours at least.”

  Elissa didn’t question Zee, didn’t ask for details. She understood completely. She was being separated for an honors violation—no sane mid would dare to have anything to do with her.

  “It’s okay. I gotta go.”

  “But it’s so fast, Corso. I mean, they gave you a couple of days to prepare last time. They were going to hold an honor board. You had a chance to fight back.”

  Elissa didn’t want to revisit the events of the last twenty-four hours. There was nothing more to think or feel. She was dead inside.

  “They gave me a deal,” she said flatly. “I signed a confession and agreed to accept separation for an honors violation, and Starfleet agreed not to come after me with criminal charges. As long as I go now, and go fast, that’s the end of it.”

  “Criminal?” Zee sounded truly surprised. “Your boyfriend tried to steal the dilithium, not you!”

  “Jim used my codes again. I was so stupid. And he knew it. He was only using me. And if I’m that easy to get to, I don’t belong here. It’s as simple as that.”

  “I wish you could fight it. I wish I was there and I wish you could go to the Commandant and tell him who really deserves to pay for this, and it isn’t you.”

  “No. It’s over. I’ll go back to Risa. You…you go be an admiral or something.”

  “I’ll come visit you on break.”

  Elissa knew Zee wouldn’t, but appreciated the lie. “I’ll see you then. Hot jets, huh?”

  Zee didn’t laugh at the old spaceman’s greeting. “You, too. Happy landings.” Then the circuit clicked off.

  Elissa was finally alone with all that she’d lost. She hadn’t told Zee, but she agreed with her on something.

  Jim Kirk deserved to pay for what he’d done to her.

  Zee snapped her communicator shut and cheered. “It worked!” She hugged Griffyn, pleased that Dala was down on the cargo deck with the boys. “You’re brilliant.”