by Diane Carey
Spock rolled to the deck and opened a smoking access trunk, waving the smoke, batting out the tiny flame in there. He surveyed the damage. “It’ll take time to correct, sir,” he called over the crackle.
“Captain, are they surrendering?” Sulu blurted suddenly.
Everyone turned to the forward screen. The mystery ship was appearing out of the night, heading directly at them in exactly the same manner as it has come toward Outpost 4 during those last horrid moments.
Abruptly tense, Kirk angled back and leaned one thigh on his command chair and pressed the shipwide comm with his wrist. “Full astern!” he ordered. “Emergency warp speed!”
The ship hummed with response, trying to go to warp speed faster than was comfortable. A flower of energy bloomed from the enemy ship; then the ship disappeared and there was only the widening floret of destructive energy. Sick-pink and rolling, the discharge raced toward them, just as the same sight had come at Outpost 4, seconds before unthinkable devastation wiped the outpost from the face of space.
“Do we have emergency warp?” Kirk demanded.
“Full power, sir,” Sulu confirmed. “It’s still overtaking us.”
They worked for more speed, but warp engines could only do so much, so suddenly.
“If we can get one phaser working, sir,” Sulu wished. “One shot would detonate it.”
Kirk stood between them. “Navigation?”
“Estimate it’ll overtake us in two minutes, sir,” the navigator responded.
“Phasers, Mr. Spock.”
From the deck, Spock’s sharp answer left no doubts. “Impossible, Captain.”
“How did he know you were here?” Picard asked.
“See that comet?” Kirk said, pointing at a hazy streak in the night. “When he went through its tail, we thought we’d pick up a residual trail and be able to pinpoint his location. But he guessed my move and countered it. I had to give up my hiding place and lay down a blind firing pattern and hope to knock him down.”
“There’s your act of war,” Picard said, holding out a hand. “You took the first shot. Now he can claim he’s defending himself.”
“I don’t care what he claims. The Romulans have never offered so much as a finger of friendship. No hope for the future. No remorse for the past. Until they offer that, or at least start making noises about it, they don’t deserve the benefits of ours.”
“Ten seconds to impact,” Sulu said.
On the screen, the pink rolling nosegay began to thin in the middle, becoming like a ring of smoke puffed from the lips of a cigar aficionado. Picard noticed it instantly and muttered, “It’s losing integrity. Sacrificing for its own speed.”
“Captain,” Sulu called then, “dissipating, sir!”
The navigator hopefully agreed, “It must have a range limit!”
Sulu divided his attention between the screen and his readouts. “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . impact!”
The deadly pink blob filled the screen, and suddenly the ship was rocked hard. Luckily, they were already full astern and the impact drove them farther along their own path, so that helped absorb some of the force. Had they been heading forward, into the cloud—
Kirk and the female yeoman standing with him were pitched starboard into the rail, but already Kirk was assessing what had just happened.
A tenor of victory rang in his voice. “Limited range . . .”
Glossy light from the dissipating energy lay harshly upon his face. Now he knew something concrete about his enemy. Picard smiled at Kirk’s quiet appreciation. Kirk had begun the process of gathering bits of information about his enemy for which he would later become so famous.
“How are you going to use that knowledge?” Picard asked.
“I don’t know yet.” Kirk pushed off the rail and moved back to his command chair. After a glance around at his crew to make sure everyone was all right, he settled into the seat. “But it’s a lesson. If the phasers hadn’t overloaded, we’d have detonated it before it hit us, but also before we could see that it had limited range. Even out of our bad luck I learned something.”
“Phasers operational, Captain.” Spock shut the access trunk, got to his feet, and clicked into his sensor readouts. He bent forward and gazed into a small desktop monitor hood. “Intruder bearing . . . one-eleven mark fourteen.”
As Kirk sat in his command chair, the soft red lights from the ceiling casting a deceptively warm glow upon his shoulders and his sandy hair. “Back to his old course.”
“He may think we’re destroyed, Captain.”
“I wouldn’t make that assumption. I don’t think their captain will either.”
“So something’s changed,” Picard noted. “You’re thinking differently about him than you were before.”
“I underestimated him. Then he outmaneuvered me by doing something I’d have done. I won’t make that mistake again.”
Picard leaned back on the ship’s rail and smiled warmly. “You know, I can’t get over how soft your voice is at times. That’s simply not the image of you that we generally have. Legend has given you rather a Lord Nelsonish bearing, as if you were that way at every moment. You’re rather a quiet fellow in reality, aren’t you?”
Kirk shrugged. “If you’re always speaking up, you can’t hear yourself think.”
Picard stepped aside as another science-division officer of command rank appeared from the turbolift and came down to the captain’s side.
“Medical report, Captain,” the man said. “Damage caused a radiation leak on two decks, both under control. Casualties are minimal, but there are some serious burns.”
“Thank you, Doctor.” Kirk was obviously distracted and didn’t seem to give that another thought. The matter was being taken care of.
Doctor McCoy, of course. Leonard McCoy. Picard nodded at himself. He’d even met Doctor McCoy once, many years later than this particular moment. How charming it was to see him and Kirk together like this!
Yet—there was some kind of tension between them, Picard realized. The way they looked at each other. Or rather, the way McCoy looked at Kirk and the way Kirk wouldn’t look back. Kirk’s eyes were fixed again on the forward screen. It seemed he was determined not to be surprised again, as if he could see something faster than the ship’s long-range sensors could.
The Romulan ship was once again cloaked, and now the enemy knew there was definitely another ship out here.
“We’ll enter the Neutral Zone in one minute, sir,” the navigator spoke up.
“Do we violate the treaty, Captain?” McCoy instantly asked.
“They did, Doctor,” Spock declared as he came up behind Kirk and McCoy. He seemed unashamedly hostile.
And nobody seemed surprised, either. Did this instant electricity go on all the time?
Picard was suddenly aware of a power play of physical positioning. The captain in his chair, looking forward, thinking about a dozen things at once, the doctor at his side, both hands on the command chair’s arm, and Spock behind them like a haunting conscience.
How poignant, the crackling energy among these three men. The captain let his officers do the arguing, yet he was still the center of attention.
“Once inside, they can claim we did,” McCoy said. “A setup. They want war, we furnish the provocation.”
“We’re still on our side, Captain,” Spock stated.
Kirk didn’t like what he was about to say, but there was no hesitation when he said it.
“Let’s get them while we are. Before we enter the Neutral Zone. Full ahead, Mr. Stiles, maximum warp.”
McCoy now left the captain’s side, and Spock stepped down to replace him. The body language was clear—Spock had prevailed in his relentless belief that aggression was today’s way. Clearly that hadn’t been what McCoy wanted. Spock had prevailed, and now took the coveted place at the captain’s side.
Somehow they all silently just did that, and Picard got the feeling the conversation was still goi
ng on in McCoy’s and Spock’s minds. There was lots of dialogue happening on this bridge, most of it without words.
“Phasers stand by,” Kirk said as the warp engines thrummed through the ship.
“Sir, at this distance?” the navigator asked without turning.
“We know their Achilles’s heel, Mr. Stiles. Their weapon takes all their energy. They must become visible in order to launch it.”
“A phaser hit at this distance would be the wildest stroke of luck!”
“I’m aware of that, Mr. Stiles. Are phasers ready?”
“Phasers show ready, sir.”
“Fire.”
Picard stepped forward. “You’re shooting at them? Wouldn’t it be better to attempt heading them off? Notify Starfleet to send assistance?”
“A starship has to assume it won’t have assistance,” Kirk said. “We are the assistance. Besides, contact with the nearest command base requires three hours of communication time. We don’t have it.”
“Oh, yes,” Picard chided himself. “You don’t have warp communications yet, do you?”
“Not until twelve years from now,” Kirk tossed off, just for an instant showing that the holodeck computer wasn’t entirely perfect in its representation of the past.
The little bit of computer intrusion made Picard grin briefly. “There might be more advantage to restraint at this point, don’t you think?”
Stabbing him with a glare, Kirk seemed to take that as a challenge—which, actually, it was. “Rather than risking a definitive action, you want me to show ourselves to be weak? Risking millions of lives instead of hundreds?”
“I’m asking a much more simple question, Captain,” Picard persisted. “Who are you to start a war with the Romulans?”
Blistered by that, Kirk squinted at him without the slightest bit of shame. His lips purposefully tightened. “I’m the captain of the flagship of Starfleet. The line must be drawn here. This ship is here not only as an instrument of defense, but as a symbol of strength. And determination, and integrity. It’s a symbol that we’ll stand that line.”
Picard was at once impressed and amused by Captain Kirk’s unshakable sense of identity. For Picard himself, in life there had been many uncertainties about his own destiny, about how best to spend the small click of years allotted to each human being. Should he be a scientist? Should he go into archaeology? Might he pursue music . . . the plague of a man with a bit of talent in each of many areas. Everyone who had known him in his life, he recalled, had expected him to do something different than had the others who knew him. Command had been the ironic culmination of a bunch of little accidents and unexpected turns.
Kirk’s next question jolted him out of his self-involvement. “What do you think are the chances the Federation might launch an unprovoked attack on the Romulan Star Empire?”
Picard shook his head. “None.”
“Zero,” Kirk confirmed. “Never happen. Can the same be said for the Romulans?”
Looking at the forward screen, Picard sighed. “Obviously not.”
Satisfied, Kirk kept his eyes on the screen. He seemed always to be prowling his enemy, always thinking, always anticipating, always trying to figure out what maneuver that other captain might make.
“Twenty seconds to Neutral Zone, sir,” Stiles reported.
“It’s not that I disagree,” Picard offered, forgetting for an instant that this was something other than real. “I’d like to know your thought processes . . . why and when you made up your mind to do what you did. Are you like me? Did you ever wonder whether you were risking your ship for nothing? Should you turn tail and warn the Federation? As alone as you were in deep space in those days, how did you know when to take risks?”
“There is no risk-free maneuver,” Kirk said, as if that were some kind of answer. “I don’t get to choose between a right and a wrong. I have to choose between a wrong and a wrong. That’s my job?
“Yes,” Picard agreed, “but your approach has a certain ruggedness. How are you going to do it?”
“I’ll show you.” Sad resolve spirited the captain’s eyes as he said, “Lieutenant Uhura, inform command base, in my opinion no option . . . on my responsibility, we are proceeding into the Neutral Zone.”
Chapter 16
Well, there it was.
Picard held back any comment and simply watched. He hadn’t remembered that part of the tale—that Kirk had actually broached the Neutral Zone without authority, without sixteen different possible plans, without mapping out every other option. He’d chosen, he’d acted on that choice.
“Steady as we go, Mr. Sulu,” Kirk quietly said. “Continue firing.”
On the screen, phaser bolts flashed through space on a blanketing pattern. Were they slashing the invisible enemy? Was he being rocked by those bolts? Was he faltering, or was he slightly beyond range? There was no way to tell.
Picard watched James Kirk, empathizing with those questions, those doubts.
“You seem so young to shoulder such burdens,” Picard granted, and was slightly put back by the regret in his voice. In fact, he hadn’t meant to speak aloud at all.
“Motion sensor signal’s stopped,” Spock reported, bent over his sensor hood.
“Cease fire.”
“Debris scattering ahead, sir!” Sulu called. “We’ve hit him!”
“Mr. Spock?”
Spock squinted into the hood. “Vessel wreckage . . . metal molds, conduit, plastiform . . . and a body, Captain . . . however—”
“One body?” Picard spoke up. “Then it’s a trick.”
Kirk stood up abruptly at this sudden humanization of their acts. “However?”
“Insufficient mass, sir,” Spock said.
“What?”
“Simple debris. Not a vessel. A trick.”
“Go to sensor probes.”
“Nothing, sir. No motion out there at all.” Spock twisted to gaze at Kirk in that way they had. “We’ve lost them, Captain.”
The terrible fact sunk in. They knew the enemy wasn’t destroyed, wasn’t even gone, but was hiding.
“All stop, quickly,” Kirk snapped. “Shut down all systems. Rig for silence, all stations. Tell everyone on the lower decks to shut down and sit down. Avoid movement. Don’t touch anything. Nothing’s as important as silence. Go ahead.”
“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Uhura acknowledged, and turned to relay the odd order.
“Everyone take a deep breath,” Kirk said. “This could take hours.”
“Captain’s log, stardate 1709.6. We are at the Neutral Zone. Have lost contact with the intruder. No reaction on our motion sensors, but believe the Romulan vessel to be somewhere close by, with all engines and systems shut down. The Enterprise is also playing the silent waiting game in hope of regaining contact. Now motionless for nine hours, forty-seven minutes . . .”
James Kirk sat in his quarters, alone, recording his log entry. His voice was heavy, murmuring, overburdened.
Jean-Luc Picard sat on the opposite side of the compact area, much smaller than his own captain’s quarters had ever been, and watched the young Kirk shift on the edge of his dilemma.
“You doubt your own actions, don’t you?” Picard asked when the captain paused in his log entry. “Here we sit, on the edge of the Neutral Zone, as if you can bend a treaty without breaking it. What were you thinking?”
Before Kirk could answer, if he was even going to, the door slid open and Leonard McCoy strode boldly in, without beeping for permission. Kirk didn’t seem to mind.
“I thought you’d be down here, Captain,” McCoy said. “When they told me you’d left the bridge under these conditions, I didn’t believe it.”
“It’s better for the crew,” Kirk told him. “They already feel as if they’re wearing anchors. Nine hours . . . why doesn’t he move?”
“Maybe he’s not out there at all,” the doctor offered, leaning back against the doorframe. “Maybe you’ve destroyed him without even knowing it. Or he might’ve
gotten away. In which case, Captain, we’re sitting here in violation of the treaty.”
James T. Kirk, the legendary rakehell of Starfleet, the man most revered and also most mocked by cadets, the shipmaster’s shipmaster, now sat here in a puddle of sorrow, looking about as spirited as a wet rug. Anyone who thought James Kirk could not be wearied, would never be parried by turbulence, had never seen him like this. For Picard this was a kind of revelation. The man was simply completely different than he had been on the bridge.
Kirk’s airbrushed brows were flat now, drawn. His eyes were rounded with hurt, not at all like the slim weapons they had been on the bridge. As Picard watched, he saw before him a man who was his own tragic flaw.
“Why me . . .” the young captain murmured. He looked up beseechingly at Doctor McCoy. “I look around that bridge . . . and I see the men are waiting for me to make the next move . . . and, Bones . . . what if I’m wrong?”
Silence dropped instantly over those words like a muffler, for there was no good answer, certainly no right one.
Boxed in, McCoy licked his lips and began, “Captain, I—”
Kirk stood up abruptly. “No—I don’t really expect an answer.”
But the doctor caught him by the shoulder as Kirk tried to slip past. “Well, I’ve got one. Something I rarely say to a ‘customer,’ Jim. In this galaxy, there’s a mathematical probability of three million Earth-type planets. In all the universe, three million million galaxies like this. And in all of that, and perhaps more, only one of each of us.”
Now the doctor turned his head but didn’t quite look directly at his captain.
“Don’t destroy the one named ‘Kirk,’ ” he added solemnly.
In silent appreciation, Kirk did not answer. He gave a small grin of thanks, slipped out from under the doctor’s hand, and disappeared into the corridor.
Even though Kirk had gone, Picard remained here in the captain’s quarters, and found himself gazing thoughtfully at McCoy. The ship’s surgeon didn’t leave right away, but instead leaned on the doorframe another few moments, seeming to wish there’d been a better thing to say. His expression was still troubled, though he’d done all he could be expected to do under the circumstances. There really wasn’t an answer.