Best Destiny

by Diane Carey

  Suddenly the Federation ship ducked straight down and vanished from the screen at point-blank range. And in its place—

  Pitchforks, jagged metal, jars, buttons, cans, broken glass, cracked parts—

  “Turn!” Big Rex bellowed. “Evasive! Turn!” He plunged and got Caskie by the back of the neck. “Turn, goddamn you!”

  “I’m trying!” Caskie howled. “Can’t do it! Can’t do it fast enough!”

  Dazzo shoved away from his console and bellowed, “Debris! Still moving at their speed!”

  “Lasers! Fire the lasers! Fire! Fire!”

  “At what!” Dazzo demanded.

  Crrrraaackckclatatatatat—

  Big Rex’s unintelligible bellow was sore accompaniment as their ship was turned into a dartboard.

  Bits of junk moving at thirty thousand miles per second slammed into their hull like buckshot, puncturing it in dozens of places. Chemical fountains spewed and hot sparks erupted all over the forward portions of the ship, coughing smoke until they could barely breathe or see.

  “Fire!” Big Rex kept choking. “Fire at those bastards!”

  The ship tilted upward as though it had taken a punch under the chin, and started to spin. The crew shouted and blamed each other while desperately trying to get control back. Somehow, in the middle of chaos, Roy Moss dragged himself from the deflector access to the weapons panel and did what his father had instructed.

  His hand came down on the targeting preset, twisted the beam-width to maximum, and slammed the firing mechanism.

  Even as he went down on the deck hard on his side, as the ship buckled beneath him, he knew what he’d done.

  He knew he’d made a hit.

  If he lived . . . both ships were his . . .

  SIXTEEN

  “Spock, step down here.”

  When the captain called, the other captain—who was acting as first officer, science officer in his old, most familiar, most comfortable capacity—turned fluidly and stepped down to the center of the bridge as though expecting the call.

  The two of them had been like that for a long, long time. Decades, now. Fluid together. Been like that through promotions and medals and commendations, even promotions that had put them up too high for a time, to positions neither wanted nor enjoyed. Flattering, but just not right.

  Not right? How could anyone not want to go from commander to captain and take on the glory of commanding a ship? How could anyone not want to give up the day-to-day drudgery of ship command to be admitted to the Admiralty of Starfleet?

  As the two men came side by side now, James Kirk silently reviewed all the reasons, and the fact that so few of those reasons could be effectively voiced. They’d both been asked, plenty of times, and both had stood blinking, looking for words that would make sense.

  But this didn’t make sense to any who hadn’t been on a ship, in a trench, in a lifeboat, or clinging to a mountainside when flags were down and instincts were on line. Command through the ages had been tinctured by a tiny fact that some people were under- or overpromoted, and other than in the field itself . . . there was no way to know. How many sergeants had been followed by gasping lieutenants, frantic when the moment came down to decisions? How many resentful glances had he himself gotten when given not only a captaincy at the age of thirty, but command of the first Enterprise? How many experienced and deserving forty- and fifty-year-olds had wondered what connections he had—and whispered in dark corners about his father’s friendship with Robert April? Why else would Starfleet hand over one of only twelve fabulous new ships to a thirty-year-old? Couldn’t be any other reason. April’s hand in the pie.

  Oh, well, those were past whispers. He had gone past the I showed ’em stage, and into the Who could blame them? stage. Even the echoes were dead, killed by James Kirk’s time-after-time survival, discovery upon discovery, and his bearlike parentage of anyone within the realm of his command. April may have pulled a string or two, may have steered the path to a particular ship because Robert April was a sentimental man as well as a wise one, but Jim Kirk had pulled mountains down in the course of proving himself, and April had been standing by for a long time. Nobody had whispered for years.

  Through it all, even before they’d known each other well, Spock was the only one who had never questioned him, never pushed or pulled him, had stood silent behind his shoulder, right where Kirk needed him—in spite of the fact that Spock might indeed have made a more sensible and stable captain many, many times.

  Spock had never wanted it. Still didn’t. Some people just didn’t.

  And there had to be a little bit of arrogant want . . . Kirk knew the taste of it. There had to be a bit of grated jealously from somebody else’s shelf on top of his Captain Cake, that was part of the recipe.

  Captain April had told him something like that, way back then, hadn’t he? The echoes started turning in his head.

  He shifted from leaning on one elbow to leaning on the other, and looked at Spock.

  “I’ve got a file,” he said. “It’s a technical file, high science section, half-century old. I need you to investigate it, analyze it, and get familiar with the science and the theories it’s built upon. We may need you to recognize and extrapolate. I’ll punch the recognition words right into my chairside, but you might have to do some hunting.”

  Spock, standing there as he had a thousand times, his hands casually clasped behind him, simply nodded, but also closed his eyes and opened them again as though in some kind of mellow salute.

  “I shall do my best,” he said.

  Jim Kirk nodded back at him. Permission to step back updeck. Permission to go up there and back me up.

  Spock turned to the quarterdeck again, then nested himself in the science cubicle and accepted the punch-in from the captain’s chair computer access.

  Just that simple. Ask, get. Spock knew there was something deeply significant to the captain about what he was doing, yet he would do it as though in a cloak, as though striding along the brick down a dark street after a rain at night. Why? Because he knew it was important and he knew it was private.

  Spock and instinct.

  “Logic, hell,” Kirk grumbled. He twisted to the other side. “Commander Uhura?”

  She turned and responded, “Sir?”

  “Tie me directly into Starfleet’s computer banks, historical section. Then notify Dr. McCoy that I’m going to want him to review something in a moment. Tell him it’s private.”

  “Aye, sir . . . tied in . . . and . . . ” Bleep, blip, knock, knock, mutter, mutter. “Dr. McCoy is standing by.”

  Then he punched the comm on the other armrest. “Dr. McCoy?”

  “I’m here, Jim, in my office. Privacy assured.”

  “I’ve got a psychological file I want you to review and analyze.”

  “Go ahead. Whose is it?”

  “You’ll find out.”

  “Oh—you want me to do the identifying.”

  “Could say that. I want your unadulterated opinion, Bones.”

  “Send it down, Jim. I’ll do everything I can for you.”

  “Uhura will send it as soon as we get it from the historical archives. Commander?”

  “Aye, Captain,” Uhura anticipated. “Receiving . . . relaying to sickbay. Completed, sir. Starfleet acknowledges.”

  “Acknowledge receipt.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Jim? This is a half a century old!”

  “Darn near,” Kirk said, leaning and lowering his voice a little more. “It was in the archives almost that long. Some of it is personal.”

  “Oh . . . yes, I see. I’ll keep it that way, Captain. Be right back to you. McCoy out.”

  Kirk jabbed the comm off line, then looked forward at the helm of his ship, a ship that was highballing through open space at unthinkable, inhuman velocity, just because he told it to.

  SEVENTEEN

  Forty-five years earlier . . .

  USS Enterprise, orbiting Vega 9 as Federation presence to de
flate a planet-possession dispute

  “Commander Simon, message coming in over subspace. Priority two.”

  “Hmm? What?”

  “Message, ma’am,” Isaac Soulian repeated from his navigation console. He got out of his seat, went around her, stepped updeck to the unmanned communications station, and tapped into the signal. “Recorded message, sent via long-distance subspace.”

  “Oh, put it on, put it right on. Ought to retire here and now, go down to garden deck, put me up a little Mexican hammock, get a nice nap—”

  “Enterprise, this is Faramond Archaeological Sub-base, date April 27 on Earth-standard calendar . . . Requesting location of Captain Robert April and party . . . We expected the cutter to arrive twenty hours ago . . . Our Starfleet intrasystem cruiser has been unable to find them anywhere near our star system. Signal buoys have been posted, but we thought you should know. Please notify us if you have information and tell us what we should do. Thank you. Faramond out.”

  Lorna Simon shook off her doze and sat bolt upright—well, as upright as old bones would bolt.

  “Verify that!”

  Soulian tampered quickly with the console, then said, “Federation channel . . . an authorized signature numbers as required . . . and . . . the encoded identification checks out.” He turned and added, “It’s definitely them.”

  Simon pressed down a puff of her white hair. “Twenty hours—is that what they said? I didn’t hear that wrong?”

  “They said twenty hours, Commander,” he confirmed. There was clear worry in his voice as he turned to face the command arena. “What could’ve stopped them from getting there? There’s nothing hostile in that area . . . all they were doing was observation of the trinary—how could anything go wrong with something that simple?”

  “Get Lieutenant Jamaica up here.”

  “Ma’am?” Soulian looked at her, puzzled, then said, “Oh! You mean Lieutenant Trinidad. I mean Lieutenant Reed.”

  “Whichever. Bring him up here.”

  “Lieutenant Reed, report to the bridge immediately. Lieutenant Reed, report to the bridge.”

  Simon stretched her short legs and got out of the command chair. She didn’t like to sit down while she was trying to think.

  “Dang arthritis,” she complained. “Wide-range scan of space in the direction of the Rosette. Look for SOS signals . . . or residue of explosion . . . and send emergency calls to all bases and colonies in this quadrant to do the same. Hard telling how far a little ship like that can go off course. Don’t want to take chances. Yeoman—I’m sorry, I forgot your name—”

  On the upper deck, a very young science intern stepped forward to face the woman half his height and three times his age. He had a very high voice and hadn’t yet learned not to stand at attention on the bridge. “Jones, ma’am!”

  “Jones—seems like I could remember that. You don’t look like a Jones. Duck down to my quarters and get the arthritis pills on my bed stand. Deck Nine, Cabin Four. And a glass of water.”

  “Aye-aye, Commander!”

  “With a slice of lime in it.”

  He nodded, shouted, “Lime, yes, ma’am!” just before the lift doors opened, then he stepped aside to let Drake Reed onto the bridge. They changed places, then the lift doors hissed shut again.

  “Lieutenant Francis Drake Reed reporting as howled at, madam.”

  “You always talk like that?” Simon asked. “Like you’re directing a band while you talk?”

  “There is reggae in my blood, madam. Not my fault.”

  “You men in Security, you spend too much time standing guard, I think. Step down here.”

  Drake’s tawny face expressed surprise and confusion, and he paused up there. The walkway light overhead flickered on his curly black hair and made him look like a puppet about to dance.

  Simon noticed the pause and didn’t like it. “Well?”

  “Oh—coming,” he said as he stepped down to her. “Have I done something naughty?”

  “No, no. You were assigned to watch the Delta-Vegans, weren’t you? Where are they?”

  “On the observation deck, in their eighth or ninth hour of spitting at the mayor of the settlement over the Federation adjudicator’s head.”

  She waved her hand. “Kick them all off the ship.”

  Drake put a hand to his heart and grimaced. “Kick them? You did say ‘kick them’? I don’t think we are authorized for diplomat-kicking, madam.”

  “We’re leaving orbit. If they can’t solve their problem in the next five minutes, they’ll have to find somebody else to transport them back to Starbase One.”

  “Eh, pardon me, but . . . is this a Starfleet Command order, madam?”

  “No, it’s my order. This ship isn’t just a taxicab, you know. The starship program isn’t meant for carting diplomatic baggage around. Today we’re going to make sure that becomes a good solid precedent.”

  With a shrug Drake started to turn. “As you wish. I shall commence kicking.”

  “That’s not all I called you up here for.”

  He turned again. “Sorry. My brain is soft from standing guard.”

  “I need you to tell me something.”

  “And that is?”

  “How well do you know this George character?”

  “George? My George?” Drake pursed his lips in thought, then something else came into his mind and he let go of any remarks that were about to pop out. He stared at her, buzzers going off in his head. “Why . . . do you ask?”

  The old woman hesitated, but knew all along that there were some things that couldn’t be eased into or made to sound nice. He was looking at her, so she went ahead and let some of the natural worry show up in her face. Human nature would take over—he would see the worry, and that would be the segue.

  As his brows knitted slightly, she knew he was getting the sense of events.

  “They never arrived on Faramond,” she said. “They’re twenty hours late.”

  The animation dropped from Drake’s dark face.

  She looked past him to the communications station and ordered, “Ike, tell the flight deck to warm up a transport. And tell those diplomats that they’re having dinner on the planet instead of here.”

  Soulian nodded and sat down at the comm station to do all that. “Aye, Commander.”

  “And get somebody up here to man the communications. Just get the whole bridge crew. We need the duty engineer and helmsman back up here on the double.”

  Simon could tell she was making Drake nervous, ringing the chords no one wants to hear. Decades of Starfleet experience sent her instincts in a dozen directions at once. She wanted to protect Reed from what she was seeing in his eyes, but she also needed the raw truth on her side.

  “I know Robert April,” she said as she contemplated the cocky Security officer. “He’s not given to bad judgment, or even bad luck. And now he’s missing. That leaves something for you to tell me . . . what do you know about the luck and judgment of this George of yours?”

  Swept by momentary flashes about what could have gone wrong, how the utility cutter could be stuck somewhere with a malfunction, or just off course, or trapped in a storm, or so caught up in viewing the trinary that they lost track of time, Drake found himself in a tornado of fears and imaginings and wishes.

  His throat tightened up. He had to clear it and swallow a couple of times before he could speak.

  “If there is a hornet’s nest anywhere on the sugar plantation,” he admitted, “George Kirk will step in it.”

  Lorna Simon’s fifty-plus years of experience didn’t like that answer, but she did understand it. She’d seen plenty of that type of person in Starfleet since the beginning—in fact, that was the very type Starfleet attracted with its thousand pretty flickers in the night sky.

  “How is he,” she asked, “at fielding a disaster?”

  The choice of words wasn’t exactly reassuring to anyone on the bridge.

  Least of all, Drake Reed. Suddenly the lieutenant loo
ked very young to her.

  His expression crumpled with worry. “Usually he has me at hand, with whom he beats off the hornets . . . ”

  She distilled that comment, along with a sense that Drake really wasn’t meaning to joke, but that some inner guard had clicked on to keep him from panicking.

  She’d seen that before too.

  She poked the comm panel on the captain’s chair with a finger that hadn’t always been so crooked.

  “Transporter room, this is First Officer Simon. Tell the flight deck to forget about using the transport. We’re in a hurry. Beam those diplomats directly off this ship and tell them they’re on their own. Then advise Starfleet that we’re warping out.”

  The bridge came to life as people and systems jumped to comply and calls for officers to report to the bridge thrummed through the huge white ship.

  These were always the worst moments—between discovering a problem and being able to move on it. The moments of tidying up bothersome details that had to be swept off the bridge before action could take over.

  It was during these tight few moments that Simon allowed herself to look again at Drake Reed.

  She watched him for a long time, because he didn’t notice her. He was staring at space beyond the planet, on the big forward viewscreen. His dark eyes had no glint in them now, and even failed to reflect the distant stars.

  His whisper barely surfaced over the bridge noise.

  “George . . . ”

  EIGHTEEN

  “Lock it down!”

  “They did the same thing! They hit our coolants!”

  “Are the failsafes coming on?”

  “Where are they down here?”

  “Port aft control access!”

  “Stay out of the stream! Carlos, get your head down!”

  “I’ll get the environmental support—”

  “Why aren’t the emergency lights coming on?”

  “Cryogenic environmental—backups—”

  “Just do it!”

  “Stay down, Jimmy, stay out of the way.”

  “Failsafes coming on!”