She resisted the impulse to kiss him, to stroke his hair. That option was far behind them. And it didn’t matter. What mattered was the older, deeper bond that their passion had grown from. The bond that had enabled them to pierce the veil of time and make a childhood dream into reality, against all odds and obstacles.
“Jen,” she sighed, hugging him tighter. “I remember you now, my dear friend.”
He pulled back, eyes goggling. “You—you remember? How much?”
She winced, chiding herself for giving him false hope. “Not much. Moments, emotions, sensations. But I remember how it felt to be here with—to be in the lab with you on Argelius. I’m finally there. No technical details yet… but I think the channel’s open now. We just need to tease out the signal.”
His smile was still reserved, but warmer and more genuine than before. “Then we should get back to work… old friend.”
Chapter Eighteen
San Francisco
On hearing the news about the hostage situation, Sulu rushed to Admiral Kirk’s Academy office, where he found the admiral on the way out alongside a worried-looking Doctor McCoy. “Oh, good, I didn’t miss you.”
“You’ve heard, Commander?” Kirk moved past without slowing down, and Sulu fell in behind him.
“About the hostages, yes, sir. I wanted to ask if I could come with you to the scene.”
McCoy looked at him with mixed feelings. “I’m grateful for your support, Mister Sulu, but what’s your interest? You don’t know Ashley.”
“But I know Portia. She’s one of my best students. I like her. She reminds me of Demora.” He lowered his head. “And I found the eyewitnesses who identified her. I feel responsible for what’s happened. I’m hoping if I can talk to her, build on our connection—such as it is—maybe I can stop her from making a huge mistake.”
“Huger than murdering her own sponsor?”
“That’s for the courts to decide. Until then, I’m willing to believe her.”
“Very well, Mister Sulu,” Kirk said. “You’re with us.”
On reaching the scene, they found Captain sh’Deslar coordinating with the SFPD’s tactical team, although both groups seemed understaffed. “They chose an ideal time for this, from their point of view,” sh’Deslar reported to the admiral once they’d touched base. “Emergency responders are already spread thin preparing for vacuum flares, and the subspace interference is hampering comms, security systems, and transporters. That must be how they got past security in the Academy armory to steal those phasers.”
“I take it beaming the hostages out isn’t an option, then?” Kirk asked.
“It’d be risky enough just from the flare interference, but they’ve sprayed the walls and windows with a refractory coating of some kind. Keeps us from seeing inside with eyes or sensors.”
“Have you made contact with the hostage-takers?”
She held up a communicator. “I spoke briefly to Portia. She said I was ‘in on it,’ that she had nothing to say to me.”
Sulu took a step forward to get her attention. “Let me try talking to her, Captain. She’s one of my students. I think I can get her to trust me.”
The security captain sighed. “Well, you convinced me not to kick you out of my office. If you can pull that off, anything’s possible. But it’s up to her whether you get anywhere.”
She handed Sulu her communicator. “Frequency’s already open. Still works at short range, but it’s best if you speak up.”
He flipped up the lid and took a breath to compose himself. “Portia? This is Commander Sulu. I’d like to come up and speak with you, if that’s okay.”
It was several moments before she responded. “You’re unarmed?”
He took off his maroon jacket, exposing the gold turtleneck underneath—not so different, he sometimes thought, from the uniform he’d worn when he first served aboard the Enterprise nearly a decade and a half before. He stepped forward a few paces, slowly, and spread his arms, turning around. The cadets may have opaqued the windows, but he assumed they had some way to see out.
He raised the communicator again. “I just want to hear your side of all this, Cadet. Just have a conversation, like we did in the cockpit.”
This time, the silence was longer. “Just you. Come to the door and wait.”
He complied, and soon one of the Arcturian cadets—he believed it was Titus—swiftly opened the door and pulled him inside, then scanned him and patted him down for weapons. Satisfied, the cadet gestured with his phaser for Sulu to climb the stairs ahead of him.
Portia met him in the hallway outside the office. Sulu met her gaze evenly. “I’d like to see the hostages, if that’s all right.”
After a moment, she opened the office door and nodded to someone inside. A moment later, that someone—Bertram—appeared with Ashley Janith-Lau in tow. She looked healthy but distraught. “Are you and the hostages all right?”
“We’re intact, Commander, but frightened. They haven’t hurt us, but they’ve threatened us, interrogated us. They believe we—”
“Enough!” Portia cried. “It’s my grievance to air.” She nodded to Bertram again, and he none too gently guided Janith-Lau back inside.
Portia closed the door. “Satisfied?”
“I’m concerned, Portia. What led you to this?”
She spelled out her case in terse sentences—how she believed the peace activists had somehow framed her for murdering Commander Rakatheema. Sulu took it in and thought carefully about how to respond.
“How do you think they could have done that?” he asked. “Falsified your appearance, your DNA at the scene?”
“We’ve been under constant media scrutiny since we arrived. Anyone could study my appearance and body language, collect some shed skin cells from where I’ve been. And creating prosthetic disguises isn’t that hard.”
“Even if someone in there did what you say, how does holding them hostage help? No court in the Federation will accept a confession made under duress.”
“You think I care about courts? About laws and institutions and systems? It was the system that created us to die in others’ wars. The hell with the system. I want to know. I want to look my betrayer in the eye and hear them say they did it.”
“And what if it’s not anybody in that room? You can’t know for certain that it was.”
“But as long as we hold them, you have a motivation to reexamine the evidence.” She shrugged. “I’m willing to play fair. If you review the case properly this time, if you find proof that I was framed and identify who did it—and if you can prove to me that it’s genuine and not a ploy—then I’ll let the hostages go. If not, then I’ll keep questioning them until the guilty one breaks, or one of the others exposes them to save themselves.”
“And then what? How can you or any of the others hope to get back into the Academy after doing this?”
Portia sighed. “Look. Nothing against you. You were good to me, and I liked flying with you. But I don’t care about the Academy. None of us felt at home there. Rakatheema didn’t deserve to die, but he was wrong to make us go there. It would never have worked.”
“Then what is it that you hope for?”
She let out a tired laugh. “I don’t really know, Mister Sulu. I just want the freedom to search for it. To find my own purpose to fight for, instead of someone else’s agenda.”
Sulu gestured toward the room. “How do you expect this to lead to that, Portia? Think about it. Remember what I taught you. Consider the path ahead of you carefully. See the best way to reach your destination.” He shook his head. “Can you see any way this path you’re on will end up with you anywhere but in a penal colony? Or worse?”
“Maybe not,” she admitted. “But this is all I have left, thanks to the ones who framed me. No one will ever trust the Warborn now. So if we have nothing left to lose, then at least we can choose to fall on our own terms, fighting our own battle. I would be happy with that.”
* * *
&nb
sp; When Sulu reported back to Kirk and sh’Deslar, he finished by saying, “Admiral, I don’t think Portia killed Commander Rakatheema. Doing this… it doesn’t make sense if she’s trying to cover up her guilt. It just makes things worse for her and the others.”
The admiral nodded. “I’m inclined to agree. This isn’t the action of a guilty woman.”
“Unless she’s just psychotic,” sh’Deslar pointed out.
“She isn’t,” Sulu insisted. “I’ve seen madness—more times than I care to think about. Portia’s totally lucid. And she sincerely believes she’s the wronged party.”
“It’s possible that someone disguised themselves as her,” McCoy observed. “Hell, it could even have been one of the other Warborn. They are hard to tell apart at a distance, and one of them could’ve faked her ID colors.”
Kirk didn’t seem pleased by McCoy’s suggestion. “One Warborn or another—it’s just as bad for the program either way.”
“With all due respect, sir,” Sulu said, “I’m not as concerned for the program as I am for Portia—and for the hostages. If she really was framed—”
The admiral nodded. “Then proving who really did it would be the best way to resolve the situation without violence.”
Kirk took in Sulu and McCoy with his gaze. “I want you both to go over all the evidence again. Look for signs that Portia was framed, and if so, who could have done it.”
McCoy stared at him. “Jim, Ashley’s up there! I should be here for her.”
“Bones, you can do the most for her by solving this case. I’ve seen you crack tougher mysteries.”
“I’m hardly an unbiased researcher in this case. How do I know I can trust my own findings? I’ll grasp at any straw if I think it’ll satisfy Portia and save Ashley.”
Kirk smiled, amazed at his friend’s humility and wisdom. Spock often accused the doctor of being blinded by his emotions, but McCoy had just demonstrated that he was keenly aware of their potential impact on his work as a scientist. But the very fact that he asked the question—as his first impulse, no less—provided its answer.
“Doctor, I have complete faith in your medical judgment. You were a scientist long before you met her. That’s what brought you together.” Kirk clasped his shoulders. “So be a scientist now. Find the truth. Let your personal stakes be a motivator rather than an impediment.”
McCoy set his jaw and nodded. Captain sh’Deslar looked skeptical, but let out a resigned sigh. “Report to Security HQ. I’ll have my people give you access to the case files.”
Sulu nodded to her. “Thank you, Captain.”
McCoy paused to give Kirk one last intense look. “You make damn sure Ashley stays safe, you hear?”
“I promise, Bones. You and Sulu do the same.”
Starfleet Headquarters
Major Missions Room
“This is it,” Lieutenant Kexas said as she, Admiral Cartwright, and President Lorg watched the newest vacuum flare grow on the central wall screen—less than half an astronomical unit ahead of Earth in its orbit. The screens were already suffused with static and data dropouts as the interference mounted.
“Given its projected size and duration,” Kexas went on, “it will grow large enough to engulf Earth in approximately three hours, forty-one minutes. Our orbital path will be close to the periphery of the flare zone, but still, expected duration of passage is… probably as long as the flare lasts. At least another two to three hours.” She turned her elongated, skull-like head toward the admiral and the president. “The concentration of microflares should be lower toward the periphery, but over that long a time, they will add up.”
Cartwright grimaced. “And we’ll have no more than five working verteron arrays and maybe fourteen ships ready to pour Mister Scott’s ‘oil’ on the water by the time it hits. Estimated coverage?”
Kexas shook her head. “No more than twenty, twenty-five percent, planetwide.”
“And that will only reduce the number and size of the wormholes, not stop them,” the admiral grated. “We’ll still have microflares forming inside buildings, people, power plants… subspace disruptions affecting safety force fields and warp reactors… how many could we lose? How much of our infrastructure could be ruined?”
Kexas tilted her head. “And that’s assuming there’s no subspace rupture this time. The erosion is already accelerating.”
Lorg sighed heavily. “I should go.”
The admiral peered at him. “You’re finally taking my advice? Evacuating?”
The president snorted and gestured at the flickering screens. “Would it even be safe to attempt now, with all this subspace disruption? No, Lance. I need to go address the people of Earth. Prepare them however I can for… what’s to come.”
Cartwright briefly touched his sleeve. “There’s still the Enterprise. They’ve come through for us again and again.”
Lorg threw him a skeptical look. He may have been Martian-born, but he still had a Tellarite’s love of argument. “That was with James Kirk in command. Oh, I know how vital Captain Spock was to those successes. But take it from someone who knows—your perspective changes a great deal once you’re the one on top. And it can take a while to adjust to that change. You don’t want to know the blunders I almost made in my first year in office.”
He shook his head. “I wonder if sticking Kirk in the Academy is really the best use of his talents. Oh, I know, I know, he has his flagship and his occasional ‘special missions.’ But you folks chose a hell of a time to keep him on the bench.”
U.S.S. Enterprise
Entering Sol system
The Enterprise dropped out of warp just inside the Main Asteroid Belt. The subspace instability would let it come no closer to the raging vacuum-energy storm—a storm that the bridge viewscreen’s tactical display showed expanding directly in Earth’s orbital path. “It’s no more than two hours from intercept,” Jason Nadel reported from the science station.
“Unable to reach Starfleet Command,” Cadet Ferat reported from communications, worry in her voice. “Even at this range!”
“Not unexpected, Cadet. Continue monitoring.” Spock kept his tone calm and matter-of-fact, in hopes of encouraging the same response from the cadet crew. “Helm, proceed toward the flare zone at full impulse.”
“Aye, sir,” T’Lara replied, maintaining her calm more successfully than the others.
Spock worked the intercom control on his chair arm to contact main engineering. “Mister Scott, how quickly can you rig the main reactor to generate the verteron field?”
“I began the reprogramming the moment we dropped out of warp, sir,” Scott reported a few moments later, the unevenness in his voice suggesting he was pacing briskly around the engineering complex as he spoke. “But the circuit reconfiguration, the emitter realignments… at least twenty minutes to do the physical work, up to half an hour for testing and calibration.”
“We shall need to bypass full testing, Mister Scott, as we do not have adequate time.”
“Aye, when do we ever?” A hint of reluctance entered the engineer’s voice as he continued in a more hushed tone, his vocal timbre altering as though he were leaning in close to the audio pickup. “Sir… this is a cadet crew. We didn’t expect to demand this much from them when we set out. If it were a seasoned team…”
“Mister Scott. On any Starfleet mission, one must anticipate that unforeseen difficulties could arise. I would not have taken the Enterprise out with this crew aboard if my confidence in the cadets’ abilities had not been equal to my confidence in their instructors’ abilities.”
Again, Scott’s vocal timbre changed, this time commensurately with a straightened spine and a proud smile. “Aye, Captain. We’ll prove ourselves worthy of your faith, sir. Scott out.”
Spock noted similar sentiments on the faces of the bridge personnel as they glanced over their shoulders toward him. T’Lara was the exception, but even her hands had briefly slowed in their movements across the helm controls. “Atten
d to your posts,” he instructed.
As they complied, he opened a new channel on the command chair’s comm panel. “Bridge to communications lab. We are in-system, and a sizable vacuum flare is underway and less than two hours from engulfing Earth. I recommend alacrity.”
Uhura’s voice as she replied was calm and professional, but not without fatigue. “Acknowledged, Captain. We’re making progress. Shastri and I have reconstructed much of our work on Argelius, but even there, it took more than a day to perfect the calibrations.”
“Understood, but my ability to affect the pace of events is negligible.”
A pause. “Is Scotty’s verteron field ready to go?”
“Preparations are underway. I expect it to be in operation once we reach the field perimeter.”
“Sir, I think we need to get much closer than that. Jen was right about one thing: our chances of making contact are best if we’re as close as possible to the heart of the storm.”
Spock raised a brow, weighing the ramifications. “You understand the risks that would entail. The field would only diminish the microflares’ frequency and intensity within the ship. The interference to ship systems would also be considerable.”
“I understand, sir, but the closer our alignment with their transmission vector, the better the chance that they’ll read our reply.”
“Acknowledged, Commander. We shall proceed as you advise.”
“And we’ll redouble our efforts here. We’ll have something for you by the time we get there.”
“I trust that you shall. Spock out.”
The captain turned back to the viewscreen, observing the growing volume of microflare activity depicted along Earth’s orbital path. This situation—the Enterprise preparing to fly into a vast cloud of energy in hopes of communicating with the intelligence generating it, in order to protect Earth—contained elements that created a certain sense of familiarity. Doctor McCoy would most likely refer to it, inaccurately, as déjà vu.
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