by Diane Carey
“I wonder what you meant by that,” Picard said, stepping to the doctor’s side, in almost the same spot Kirk had stood. “Did you mean ‘destroy’ as in not letting himself be killed? No, there must be more to it. You must mean destroying his inner resolve with those doubts. That’s what I would’ve meant if I’d said that to him at this moment . . .”
Leonard McCoy made no response, no acknowledgement that Picard was here. He merely gazed at nothing, his eyes full of regret that he had no bandages for the soul. Of course, Leonard McCoy hadn’t participated in the creation of these holodeck programs, so no one knew his particular thoughts. That was just as well—something had to be left to the imagination, didn’t it?
McCoy sighed, almost as though agreeing, blinked sadly, looked at the deck carpet, then pushed off the wall and turned out of the quarters.
Picard almost sat down, almost stayed here, as if he instead of Kirk were the captain today. Strange how at home he felt here. Very strange. Was there another universe somewhere? Were there Cardassians and MIA’s and Rikers and Datas? Somewhere, but not just here, not just now.
“Computer,” he said, “take me to the bridge.”
“Power on. Reverse course. He’ll try to slip under us.”
“Lateral power, sir.”
“Coming around, sir.”
“Phasers . . . fire!”
Silent standby was over. Systems were back on, once again cooking. The bridge was electric with tension. The whine of phasers surging through the starship’s shaken body made a wincing kind of noise. Were they hitting anything?
Kirk was betting they were. Picard was making the same bet. Blanketed phasers like that were much the same as dropping depth charges. The very fabric of space would communicate a jolt, even if the hits were not direct ones.
“Debris on our scanners.” Spock’s voice cut through the phaser backwhine.
“Analysis, quickly.”
“Same type as before, sir . . . except . . . one metal-cased object?”
“Helm, hard over! Phasers, fire pointblank!”
A phaser whined, and at almost the same instant there was a ghastly eruption dead ahead, point-blank range. The reaction was so instant, so gut-level that Picard was momentarily surprised. Kirk obviously knew something about sneakiness, or at least he was making good on his collection of data about his enemy’s methods.
The ship lurched hard over, throwing Picard hip-first against the starboard rail. Holodeck or not, that hurt. The whole ship rocked and shuddered, then hung at an angle against her own artificial gravity. Kirk was thrown back from the forward rail onto the helm console, and both helm officers were pitched from their seats. Spock disappeared entirely into a shadow, and two engineers ended up on the command deck.
Picard found himself suddenly trying to push off the rail onto a tilted deck. He felt the tug of pressure as the graviton chambers struggled to compensate against the damage. Nausea boiled up in his stomach—well, it’d been a while since he’d felt that—
“They dropped a concussion device into the debris,” he observed, watching Kirk and his crew try to collect themselves. “How utterly primitive! Obviously effective, though . . .” He looked at Kirk, who was pulling the navigator to his feet. “I’m surprised you didn’t think of it.”
“I did,” Kirk muttered. “Right after it happened.”
Half the lights were out on the bridge, leaving large areas in shadow. Mr. Spock came slowly to his feet, favoring one knee, and his face was bracketed with pain he probably would’ve denied. “Main junction shutdown, Captain. Compensators coming on line.”
In fact, the whole crew was crawling back to their posts and instantly rushing to put everything back in some order, but that would take a while. Picard could actually smell what was wrong—detect little burnouts here and there, with distinct scents of different grades of lubricant and circuitry. He did an automatic scent-diagnostic in his own mind and suddenly it was no surprise that the bridge was half in darkness.
In deference to his bad knee, Spock sat down and touched his controls.
“Captain to sickbay.”
“McCoy here.”
“Casualties?”
“Twenty-two so far. Mainly radiation burns, mostly from the ship’s outer areas. Could’ve been much, much worse, Captain.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
Click—and most of the bridge lights came back on. Not all of them, and some that came on were red emergency maintenance lights instead of the regular lights of day work. But they certainly helped.
Other systems hummed to life too, evidence of an unseen but hardworking crew below decks.
Glancing around, Picard sympathized with the shaken crew and their young overburdened captain. And he was glad that McCoy had offered that little gift of telling Kirk things could be worse, after needling him that he should turn back and not face the Romulans down.
Sitting there in a leftover panel of shadow, Kirk tensely looked up at the starboard science console. “Report, Mr. Spock?”
Spock turned. “Nuclear device of some kind, sir. Our phasers detonated it fewer than one hundred meters away.”
“Ship damage?”
“Mainly overloads and circuit burnouts.”
Kirk tapped the controls on his chair arm. “Weapons status?”
“We’ve only the forward phaser room, Captain.”
“Fully operative, Scotty?”
“Yes, sir. But specialist Tomlinson is manning it alone.”
“Scotty,” Picard murmured, smiling. “Captain Scott . . .”
Stiles swiveled around. “Sir, my first assignment was in weapons control.”
“Go,” Kirk said. “Lieutenant Uhura, take over navigation.”
Spock left his controls and came down from the upper decks, then gripped the command chair as Kirk leaned toward him to hear what he had to say. “We have engine power now, Captain, if you’d like to move off and make repairs.”
“No, no.” Kirk looked weary. “Maybe we can pull him back to our side of the Neutral Zone. Hold our position . . . play dead.”
As Spock moved off without response, in fact leaving the bridge entirely to go belowdecks, Kirk took the moment to wipe a hand across his sweat-glazed face. He was probably exhausted, Picard realized. They all were. They hadn’t had a change of watch, evidently, in those nine hours. Not unusual, under emergency conditions. It was usually preferable to leave officers at the controls they were handling when trouble popped up, but this seemed a bit of an extreme.
Kirk sat at his command, a shadow lying passively across his right shoulder, his eyes in a band of light.
“Enemy vessel becoming visible, sir!” Sulu said then.
As quickly as that, everyone came back to life.
Kirk gripped his chair, ticking off seconds as the Romulan ship faded into clarity on the screen. “Forward phasers . . . stand by . . . fire.”
But there was no response, no shots fired. Nothing—
“Fire!”
“What happened?” Picard asked. “Why don’t your weapons fire?”
“Coolant-seal malfunction.” Kirk shoved out of his seat. “Stiles, can you hear me? Fire! Fire! Stiles, can you hear me? Fire!”
“Phaser controls not on the bridge,” Picard said “—I’d no idea it had been such damnable trouble! Haven’t you got men in there?”
“Yes!” Kirk snapped. “Stiles and Tomlinson.”
“They’ll be poisoned.”
“They were. One died. Spock’s on his way there—Stiles! Do you hear me? Fire!”
Fweeee—the whine of phasers finally broke out. A flash in the darkness blew toward the enemy ship, and this time the Enterprise was first to score a hit. The other ship never had the chance to fire its plasma weapon.
Even at this distance they could see the Romulan ship quaking bodily as if someone had struck it with a big hammer.
The forward screen flickered, blurred, then sharpened. Picard found himself looking into the bridge of
the mysterious enemy ship. It was a gray and pared-down place, spare and simple, with a control kiosk in the center of a completely shattered compartment. There, bent in agony over the kiosk, was a man in an old-style Romulan uniform. Huddled in obvious pain, he gradually pushed himself up, now allowing Picard to notice the rank insignia. A full commander.
The Romulan commander was clearly injured and struggling just to breathe in the smoke-clouded bridge. His dead crew lay around him or hung over their sparking, snapping controls, dying in the poisoned smoke. One of the bodies twitched, and the sight was disturbing.
Only the commander moved now. Picard felt his own chest tighten in empathy for the destroyed man over there who was trying to breathe in that poisoned compartment.
For a moment Picard watched Kirk, expecting him to say something, but Kirk didn’t. He simply sat in his chair, his legs crossed, still cowled by a stripe of shadow, and gave his enemy the time he needed to see what was going on.
Gasping, the Romulan struggled across his demolished bridge, hardly a step or two, grasped a support beam just above the viewing mechanism, then paused—he could see them now. He knew they could see him.
For the first time, the two commanders gazed into each other’s eyes, each seeing the other. Kirk must’ve been something to gaze at for the first time.
Picard took a moment to appreciate that. Like George Washington’s face, James Kirk’s was known to everyone. Not so for this Romulan who had been so tightly engaged with Kirk for the past many hours, and had watched his important mission crushed by this unseen captain. Probably years upon years of preparation had been snuffed today.
And among those here, only Picard knew how very long it had taken the Romulan Star Empire to recover from this hard slap.
“Captain,” Kirk said politely now. There wasn’t a hint of gloating in his manner. If anything, he seemed nearly apologetic.
But he did not apologize, and that was important. Did not even voice his regret that this had to happen.
Whether he actually regretted it—Picard couldn’t really tell.
“Standing by to beam your survivors on board our ship,” Kirk said. “Prepare to abandon your vessel.”
“He won’t,” Picard grumbled.
“No, it’s not our way.” Squeezed by the grip of pain, the Romulan’s body flinched, but his eyes did not. He surveyed Kirk with disclosed warmth. “I regret that we meet in this way. You and I are of a kind . . . In a different reality, I could’ve called you friend.”
With clear sorrow Kirk attempted to persuade the Romulan. “What purpose will it serve to die?”
“We are creatures of duty, Captain . . . I have lived my life by it. Just one more . . . duty to perform.”
The Romulan took one more look at the man he wished he could call friend, then pushed away from the viewer and stumbled across the smashed deck.
Jim Kirk took a breath to argue, perhaps order a tractor beam or an emergency beam-out, perhaps to talk his enemy out of a useless end.
Then he held back. He closed his lips. Precious seconds drained away as the injured Romulan on the screen staggered to a control panel, made a small adjustment, and twisted a partially jammed handle.
A flash of energy wash, a grimace of pain, the crackle of overload—and the screen faded back to the mindless void of open space. Stars twinkled in the distance, as if nothing had happened here at all.
At first Picard almost spoke up—transporters could snatch those survivors off that ship . . . useless sacrifice . . .
And then, in an instant, he knew better. As if he’d been delivered a message by intravenous injection, he completely absorbed the depth of James Kirk’s understanding of being a soldier. Anything Kirk might’ve said would have taken away that Romulan’s last shred of pride.
Despite what Kirk had just done, he gave his enemy that little bit of advantage, a chance to control his last moments. Kirk had let him lose his life, but keep his pride. This Romulan, who had murdered hundreds of Federation citizens, was being offered a civilized hand as a final gesture.
Strange—that hadn’t been the image of James Kirk which had filtered forward in time. The tender side had never been given much due in history.
But Kirk remained silent, choosing not to diminish his enemy’s last act.
“That was elegant of you,” Picard mentioned, thinking aloud. “We hear about the valor, nobility, fighting talent, your ability to map a space battle in your head and always know where your ship and the other ships are . . . we know about your deeds of strength and your tricks, but until I stood here and watched you, I never knew about your mercy. You could have saved his life—”
“And wrecked his dignity.” Kirk’s tone was clear sadness, as if indeed he had lost something, someone. He wasn’t proud of himself. He was genuinely sorrowful at what he had been forced to do.
Amazing, really. Had Kirk and that Romulan actually come to be some kind of friends in these tense hours while hunting each other through the empty tracts of space?
Could that happen?
Picard searched through his past to see if he’d ever had such an encounter, but couldn’t think of one.
“Thank you, Captain,” he said. “Thank you very much for this. I’ve seen things I never imagined. You don’t have all the answers at all, and somehow, I suppose like many others, I had let myself become convinced that you did. While I was a little confused before, I can say that, now, I’m completely confused. At least now . . . I know I’m in good company. Computer . . . end the program.”
Chapter 17
“Here is the plan. Bateson is coming to the Typhon Expanse with the new Enterprise for war games with a single Starfleet ship called the Nora Andrew. On both ships, shields and weapons will be reduced to bare minimum. That means we can take both ships.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because I am still a commander in the Klingon fleet and I still have my resources.”
“You are a dishonored liar.”
“I am dishonored, but I am no liar. And while you stand aboard my vessel, I am your commander, not your father. You will treat me with respect while you are on my ship.”
Until this moment, Gaylon had been trying to avoid eye contact with either Kozara or Zaidan, but now he turned to look. Zaidan had clamped his lips, obviously surprised by the calmness with which his father had made those statements.
Kozara was acting like another man from those minutes when Zaidan had come aboard. The commander now seemed to radiate confidence and planning. This change was mystifying even to Gaylon, who knew Kozara as well as anyone ever could.
The commander folded his hands before his chest and ran one thumb along the knuckles of the other hand. “The Klingon Empire has not lain idle during the ill-advised ‘peace’ with those people. We know how to take that ship.”
“How will you and one miserable ship destroy the new Enterprise?”
“I do not mean to destroy it. I mean to possess it.”
“Possess?”
Trying desperately to keep sense in this escapade, Gaylon stepped toward Kozara and asked, “But what if he will not engage you?”
“He will engage. He is an impatient youth.” Kozara leaned forward and narrowed his eyes at the screen. “You cannot teach a young dog an old dog’s tricks. But there are obstacles . . . there is an android assigned to that ship. Captain Picard’s tin doll. We must be ready to incapacitate him, or he will single-handedly pull our heads off. I have researched this—the android runs on a positronic brain and neural network. We can neutralize that if we prepare.”
“How do you know,” Zaidan asked, “what he has in his head?”
“Because Starfleet is a friendly child. They keep no secrets. I accessed their library net, and there he was, with full diagnostics. They are too proud of him. That is one step of many. Plan . . . plan . . . we must have a plan for each step. We must hold back our advantage as long as possible. Listen to me, Gaylon.”
Kozara broke his
commune with the screen and grasped Gaylon by the sleeve so hard that it pinched his skin under the fabric.
“I have been in contact with the spy,” Kozara said. “He is still with us.”
Baffled, Gaylon came suddenly to life and demanded, “How could you contact him?”
“With my connections in the High Council. Though they would not meet my eyes, they had to listen to me. I was right—the contact was reactivated after Bateson came from the past. And here we are today, with advantages.”
Kozara’s son, who teetered on the brink of not being his son anymore, scowled with dripping contempt. “We have one great disadvantage. We have you. Something will go wrong. You will blunder somehow.”
“I may blunder,” Kozara spat back, “but at least I have made my own mark upon the empire and not clung to pity as my crutch. I worked ninety years in hard servility, I and all these around you. Shame can be struck away, or it can be worked away. Which have you done, Zaidan? Many have overcome worse obstacles than a gloryless father. There are other kinds of warriors than those with weapons. What have you done to deserve anything other than pity . . . my son? If nothing, then stand back, and watch real warriors work.”
“Captain, you don’t take a brand-new ship into a demilitarized zone near hostile space with reduced shields and weapons. You just don’t. I’m sure you won’t.”
“The Nora Nicholas is already in position, waiting to trapdoor us. The arrangements have all been made. It’s all been worked out, on recommendations by Admiral Farrow and Admiral Hayes. They think, and I agree, that war games near the Neutral Zone will demonstrate to the Klingons that the Federation is not intimidated by their recent martial prancing.”
“Taking a brand-new starship out is a complicated venture,” Riker forcefully insisted. “Neither Admiral Farrow nor Hayes have ever done it. Respectfully remind the captain that you, sir, also have never done this.”
“Neither have you.”
As quickly as that the fragile truce between Riker and Bateson dissolved, and Riker felt suddenly cold on the inside.