“In what way?”
“Just listen. Starfleet was convinced you were murdered by agents of the Tal Shiar.”
Spock blinked, another sign of intense reaction. “That is not logical.”
“I don’t care what’s logical. I’m telling you what Starfleet believes. They sent Bones and me here to investigate your death, to find your murderers, and then Picard came with us so he could make an offer to those same people.”
“What is the nature of the offer?”
Norinda began walking toward the transporter platform and the fourth Romulan was at her side. Kirk spoke quickly in the few private moments that he and Spock had left to them.
“In addition to being responsible for your death, the Tal Shiar are also supposed to be the ones who are going to stage a series of attacks that will lead to an outbreak of war between Romulus and Remus. But if the Tal Shiar didn’t murder you—”
This time, Spock completed the conclusion for Kirk. “—then logic suggests they are also not responsible for whatever staged events are intended to start the war.”
“But there is one person who’s tied to both events.”
“Then logically, that person is the one responsible.”
Kirk turned to face Norinda as she stepped up behind him.
“It’s you,” he said. “There is no Tal Shiar. It’s the Jolan Movement that’s going to start the war.”
For a moment, Kirk thought Norinda might deny his accusation. But she didn’t. “This war is how peace will come to you.”
“Insane,” Kirk said.
“Illogical,” Spock added.
“You’re a bad guy,” Joseph told her.
Kirk did not admonish him for breaking silence. His son was right.
But Norinda didn’t respond to any of those pronouncements. “I offer you love and peace and—”
“Understanding, I know,” Kirk said. “We’ve all heard it. And we’ll all keep rejecting it because you’re not offering love at all. All you want is for us to accept you. But you’re not willing to accept us. You don’t want to be loved—you want to be worshipped.”
Norinda seemed to grow taller, her shoulders broader. “When the Hour of Opposition comes and the bombs go off and the war begins, you will see your worlds and your people consumed by hate and war and confusion. And when you have seen worlds die because you would not accept the true reality of existence, then you will understand. And then, you will accept the Peace of the Totality.”
Kirk stepped back from Norinda as her features continued to change, becoming Reman.
“When we met,” Kirk said, “you told me you were running from the Totality. But you’re part of it, aren’t you?”
“So are you, Kirk. You just don’t know it yet!”
Norinda loomed over Kirk now. Ears and face and fangs carved from gray stone, eyes disappearing behind the impenetrably dark visor that grew and formed across them, she pointed a jagged claw at Joseph. “Zol,” she growled, “take the boy!”
Those three words freed Kirk.
Without thought he slapped his hand to his back beneath his jacket and in one swift arc had drawn his mek’leth and slashed at Zol.
The Romulan stumbled to the grass with a cry of pain, green blood spurting from the deep cut on his forearm.
Kirk kept in front of Joseph as Norinda backed away.
“Spock—there’s a communicator in Joseph’s pouch. Hail the Calypso.”
Norinda shouted to the three Romulans cowering by the transporter console. “Raise transport shields! Activate subspace jammers!”
Kirk didn’t care that he was too late to stop those orders. He just wanted to stop Norinda.
So he ran at her, mek’leth held high, and even as she shrank before him, he spun the weapon in a gleaming arc to deliver a k’rel tagh stroke that angled down through her shoulder and into her chest and—
—Norinda’s torso exploded into a spray of black powder and all resistance to the mek’leth vanished, throwing Kirk completely off balance and sending him tumbling to the ground.
Kirk twisted to avoid landing on his own blade, then looked back at Norinda to see her torso re-form out of a swirling black cloud, as if he were watching a fire in reverse, with the smoke billowing back to its point of origin.
Then she was whole again, but in a patchwork confusion of different aspects. Her face rippled from Klingon to Andorian to Romulan, while her chest heaved out, becoming Tellarite, then collapsed inward, human.
But like ripples in still water, the confusion slowed and she settled into a single form—Romulan. But she fell to her knees without awareness, unconscious.
“Spock! The transporter!”
Kirk sprinted for the transporter console, hoping that Virron and Sen and Nran were all so terrified by what they had witnessed that they had neglected to follow Norinda’s orders. To keep them terrified, he slashed his mek’leth back and forth while shouting a Klingon battle cry.
They scattered like panicked antelope bounding away from a lion.
Kirk swiftly checked the transporter controls as Spock and Joseph hurried to join him. “Everything seems functional. Did you raise the Calypso?”
“No response,” Spock said.
Kirk turned the transporter controls over to Spock, took the communicator. It was functioning properly. “Kirk to Calypso!”
Still nothing.
“Captain, the transporter is operational. But I will need coordinates for our destination.”
“Understood, Spock.”
Why wasn’t the communicator working? It didn’t make sense. Unless there was something wrong on the Calypso.
Kirk tried again, and as if his Enterprise herself had suddenly entered orbit, he had his answer. The right one.
“Scott here, Captain.”
28
S.S. CALYPSO, STARDATE 57488.3
Picard entered the bridge on the run, brought by Scott’s urgent summons.
“It’s Captain Kirk,” the engineer said as he stepped back from the communications console. “He needs to talk to you right away. And he’s with Mister Spock!”
Picard didn’t even stop to consider the startling news. He sat down in Scott’s place and hit the transmit control.
“Picard here, Jim. And did I hear correctly. Is Ambassador Spock with you?”
“He’s here, Jean-Luc, and it’s quite a story. But what we’ve found out is that there is no Tal Shiar involvement in the attacks that are planned to start the civil war. It’s the Jolan Movement! They’re the ones responsible.”
“Norinda’s people.” Picard suddenly realized that Norinda had not been talking about war in the abstract. “Did you find out anything else about the attacks? We need to know how they plan to destroy the workers’ communes.”
“All she said was that the bombs will go off at the Hour of Opposition.”
“You’re sure of that? She said bombs will go off?”
“Her words exactly.”
Picard decided he might as well wish for the impossible. “I don’t suppose she told you where the bombs are hidden?”
“No,” Kirk replied. “But there seems to be a pattern to the type of environment she likes, and it’s not one that many Remans would ever enter. Check for greenhouse domes, anyplace hot and too bright for Remans.”
Picard agreed with Kirk’s logic. “That’s a good place to start. Now what is your situation with those people? Any idea when they’ll permit you to come back?”
“Right now, everything seems under control. All we need are some transport coordinates and a friendly starship.”
Picard heard the ease in his friend’s voice and was curious to know what had happened. When Kirk and his son had beamed off the Calypso, Picard had even wondered if he might never see Kirk again. Evidently, things had taken a turn for the better, especially with the miraculous return of Spock.
“I’d be happy to oblige,” Picard transmitted. “Let me check our position.” Picard looked over to find La Forge at navigation. “Ge
ordi—how long until Kirk will be within range of the Calypso’s transporter?”
La Forge checked the numbers. “On this orbit, thirty-two minutes.” He exhaled noisily. “I sure miss the Enterprise.”
Picard agreed wholeheartedly. The transporters on that starship had enough range and power to beam people from the opposite side of an Earth-sized planet. For most transporter operations, he rarely, if ever, had to take into account the ship’s orbit.
Picard hit the transmit control. “We’ll be by in half an hour, Jim. Can you hold out till then?”
Picard got his answer when he released the control.
Joseph was screaming in fear.
Kirk whirled around and dropped the communicator the instant his child cried out.
It was impossible, but Norinda had him, one arm clutching his chest, the other squeezing his neck in the V of her elbow.
How had she moved so quickly? While he was using the communicator to talk with Picard, he’d kept watch on her unmoving, kneeling form at least fifty meters away.
Kirk shot a glance back to where she’d been only seconds ago and—
—she was still there! Unraveling strand by strand as a long black cord snaked from her kneeling figure to the Norinda who held his struggling child.
The kneeling Norinda was nothing more than a paper-thin shell, used to create a duplicate Norinda. Somehow the shell’s interior volume had become a tendril that could reach out unseen, behind his child.
But Kirk was immune to awe or fear of alien life-forms, no matter how incomprehensible. The safety of his son was at stake. Remembering Norinda’s reaction to his first mek’leth attack, Kirk rushed for the black cord, the weapon already in his hands.
Spock was doing his best to keep Norinda distracted, by circling around her to keep her back to Kirk.
Kirk swung the blade down to sever the cord of what he guessed was some type of nanotechnology. That was one way to explain Norinda’s particular abilities.
But when the mek’leth sliced through the cord, the section of it leading to what was left of the kneeling Norinda shell suddenly puffed into a cloud of black dust. The side leading to the second Norinda snapped like an elastic cord and hissed through the grass and was instantly absorbed by the duplicate’s body.
With Spock on one side of her and Kirk on the other, Norinda began to back toward the transporter console, as if seeking its shelter.
Joseph screamed again and kicked his legs violently against Norinda’s side. Norinda’s hand clamped over his mouth, and Joseph’s screams faded.
“Put him down,” Kirk called out, tortured by his son’s cries. “He’s a child. There’s nothing he needs that you can give him.”
Norinda did not answer. She had not spoken since she had captured Joseph. Kirk worried that meant she had no further interest in bargaining.
He was now within two meters of her, but knew he wouldn’t dare take a chance at swinging his mek’leth so close to his son.
“Tell me what you want, Norinda.”
But Norinda merely stepped back from him with jerky, metronome precision, her movements like that of a machine.
Spock took his chance. Kirk saw him stretch across the console from behind Norinda to slam his hand down on her shoulder and pinch whatever analogues of nerves and muscles she must have there.
But Spock’s fingers plunged into Norinda, as if her body were no more substantial than froth on an ocean wave, and before he could pull his hand back, her flesh became solid again and trapped him.
“Let go of them both!” Kirk shouted to her. “Let go of them and you can have me!”
“I already do.” Norinda’s whisper was soft in Kirk’s ear.
The Norinda that held his son and Spock abruptly imploded and a cloud of black sand rained down to the ground, freeing both of them as Kirk felt a new Norinda’s arms wrap around him from behind. He shouted for Joseph and Spock to run, to wait for Picard to arrive.
Kirk tried to pull away, but the new Norinda merged with the fabric of his jacket and held him in place. He twisted from side to side, seeking any chance to drive the razor-edged mek’leth into his captor.
But suddenly he was yanked high in the air, then thrown down so violently that the mek’leth flew from his grasp.
Kirk lay flat on his back on the grass, gasping, eyes blinded by crimson fire, the Romulan sun blazing down through the overhead dome.
A shadow fell over him.
Norinda. A solid black silhouette against the sun.
Her hand reached down, lifted him to his feet. He looked past her, searching for Joseph…Spock.
“Don’t look for them,” Norinda said. “Look at me.”
Kirk complied, hoping at least that with her focus on him, Joseph and Spock might escape her.
“I’m going to show you the true reality of existence.”
Norinda tightened her grip on his hand.
“Now you’ll understand,” she said. “Now you’ll know forever….”
Kirk felt a jolt of electric pain singe his hand as Norinda’s hand first lost focus, then softened, then broke up into tiny black cubes that broke again and again into smaller and smaller cubes.
Then his hand softened and broke into darkness.
Pain flashed through Kirk’s dissolving arm.
But then Norinda gasped in surprise—as a d’k tahg blade punched through her chest from behind. An instant later, her grip on Kirk dissolved.
Kirk fell away from her, his arm on fire as it resolidified, to see Joseph, his Klingon d’k tahg in upraised hand, standing in a swirling cloud of smoke.
Kirk rushed forward and scooped his son up and out of the cloud of fine dark particles that had been Norinda. Joseph wriggled in his father’s arms.
“Did ya see that, Uncle Spock?” the child asked excitedly.
“Indeed, I did,” Spock said.
“Me and my dad, we got the bad guy!”
“Indeed, you did.”
Kirk and Spock faced each other then, and without a word Spock looked to the side, and Kirk followed his gaze to see a dark column of smoke beginning to gather by a bank of flowers.
“Theories, Spock?” Kirk asked, still shaken by what might have been. And still might be.
“Several. But they can wait until we’re safely away.”
As Spock retrieved the dropped communicator to set the transporter controls for beam-out, Kirk kept a wary eye on the cloud. It was taking on a vaguely humanoid shape, and if it followed the same pattern as before, in a few minutes there could be another Norinda in the chamber. He wasn’t sure they could hold their positions until the Calypso was back in range.
But as soon as Spock activated the communicator, Picard made contact. When he and his crew had heard Joseph’s cries, the Calypso had changed orbits, coming in lower and faster to arrive more quickly, then climbing a higher and slower orbit to increase her time over the beam-up coordinates.
Kirk carried Joseph to the transporter platform and the child sat cross-legged in the center of it, still excited by his adventure, but exhausted.
Kirk gathered the mek’leth and the d’k tahg blade and stepped onto the pad beside his son.
Spock locked carrier waves with the Calypso and prepared to set a ten-second timer on the transporter console.
It was then Kirk saw that the cloud was gone.
It took only a second for the meaning of that to register.
“Spock! Run!”
Spock didn’t look up. He rapidly entered the commands for the timer.
“Spock! The cloud is gone! She’s coming back!”
Spock hit the activation control, then ran around the console, picking up speed as he neared the platform.
And then, for just a moment, it seemed as if Spock had stepped into a hole. His foot sank into the ground past his ankle.
“Spock?” Kirk started to take a half-step from the platform to go to Spock’s aid.
But Spock waved him back. “No, Jim! Stay on the platform!”
Joseph stood up beside his father. “Uncle Spock?”
Spock dropped down another few centimeters, almost as if he were sinking in quicksand. But the grass was solid around his legs.
And then Kirk saw what was hidden in that grass.
Not a cloud of black particles, not a cord, but a mat.
And then the mat rose up and engulfed Spock in randomly crisscrossed webs of black, and where each strand touched him, his flesh dissolved into darkness, just as Kirk’s arm had in Norinda’s grasp. Spock did not cry out to protest the pain, but Kirk knew what he felt.
But Joseph did. And as the greenhouse chamber dissolved into light, his cries echoed in the transporter bay of the Calypso.
Less than two minutes later, Kirk and Worf and Picard beamed back into the chamber, and at first Kirk thought they had been transported to the wrong coordinates.
Then he recognized the transporter platform and console.
They were in the right place.
But Spock and the cloud were gone.
As was each blade of grass, each flower, each tree, each growing thriving life-form that had been in this chamber only minutes before.
All that remained was dirt and bare metal.
Kirk turned slowly in that chamber, in the heat of the Romulan sun, struggling to comprehend what had happened here, fearing Spock was finally lost forever….
Because there was a war to stop and a galaxy to save.
And what was the fate of one man compared with billions?
29
U.S.S. TITAN, REMUS, STARDATE 57489.6
At the Hour of Opposition, the three Jolan nuclear-isomer bombs detonated simultaneously, as they had been programmed.
But they did not detonate where they had been programmed.
The Titan had found them in the places Kirk had predicted, buried in greenhouse domes in the three miners’ communes, where native Remans never ventured and the crops were tended by the followers of the Jolara. From there, the Titan had beamed those destructive weapons into deep space.
Kirk stood on the bridge of the Titan now, to watch those silent explosions, like three small stars burning too brightly, rushing madly to their end.
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