“Understood, sir,” the young Vulcan said. “However, the gravimetric distortion is making it difficult.”
“Same here, Captain Spock,” Terrell reported from Reliant. Even with laser transmission, his voice was growing difficult to discern through the rising interference. “This kind of gravitational turbulence with no mass… we might be on the verge of a subspace rift. Whatever your people are doing, they’d better make it fast.”
“They are aware of the urgency, Captain Terrell.”
The ship shook briefly, and the damage control display showed a new microflare breach in the starboard nacelle. Spock reflected that it was fortunate the warp drive was useless under these conditions in any case. However, the turbulence was making it difficult for the two ships to remain in perfect formation—and the microflare impact rate was rising again as the growing subspace instability began to exceed even two verteron fields’ damping ability.
Through the digital flicker and dropouts on the screen, the EV-suited Terrell met Spock’s eyes solemnly. “I trust you also know that if a rift forms while we’re this close, we’ll never get clear in time.”
“That has always been a given, Captain Terrell. You are under no obligation to remain if you wish to save your crew.”
“Are you kidding, Spock? They’d never forgive me if I forced them to miss out on the final play.” He chuckled. “You can rely on us, Captain. It’s right there in the name of the ship.”
U.S.S. Amazon
Earth orbit
Captain Jangura stared at the vast field of flickering light that filled the main viewscreen entirely now. “Time to intercept?”
Chekov answered heavily. “Approximately six minutes, sir.” It was difficult to be more precise. Earth’s own orbital motion hurtled it inexorably closer to the fringe of the field at thirty kilometers per second, but the field continued to expand at an increasing rate, and there was no way to define an exact boundary for it as new microflare clusters erupted on its fringes unpredictably.
“Status of the verteron beams?”
“All functioning beams at maximum spread,” Joel Randolph reported, touching the earpiece receiver he was using to monitor reports from the other ships and stations participating in Earth’s orbital defense. “But the coverage is no more than twenty-eight percent.”
Jangura let out a short, hissing breath, blinking his bulbous eyes. “Nobody’s thought of a last-minute miracle for improving that?”
“This is as good as it gets, sir.”
“Then make sure we maintain it, Commander.”
“Aye, sir.”
Randolph circled the bridge, checking the stations and giving nods and words of support to the crew. When he reached the science station, Chekov spoke to him softly. “Too bad we can’t make an inboard verteron field and an outboard verteron beam at the same time. We may protect people down on Earth, but it’ll be rough up here.”
The first officer sighed. “You haven’t changed, Pavel. Always the pessimistic Russian. How do you live with so little faith in the universe?”
Chekov thought about Uhura, Scotty, and Spock, and what they were attempting right now at the heart of the storm. “By having faith in my comrades.”
U.S.S. Enterprise
“I’m getting something!” Shastri called. “Compiling now… They’re pinging back, trying to confirm, but it’s hard to lock on through the interference! Keep going! Aahh!”
His cry was in response to the deafening crack of a microflare passage, the second in as many minutes. The console sparked and a display screen blinked out, but for now all the vital status lights remained green. Uhura knew that wouldn’t last long, though. At this rate, either the equipment would be struck or one of them would.
So she did her best to ignore it, like a true performer, and focus only on finishing the song.
Oh, we can defeat our fear.
All we need is with us right here.
No panic withstands if we just join our hands,
Yes, my dear…
Drawing near…
A-and we’re…
Finally here!
Shastri ducked another microflare, then grinned and gave her a thumbs-up as she belted out the final refrain:
Two moons racing for the stars;
If we chase them long enough they could be ours.
No more fear or panic, just the force of our love.
The sky belongs to us—we are the two moons up above!
Even as she sang, the screens lit up with new data streams and subspace spectrographs. Finally, they had connected!
As soon as she finished, Shastri checked his board and crowed in confirmation. “This is it! A two-way channel, just like we had on Argelius! Signal is pouring through from their end!”
He leaped from his seat and they fell into each other’s arms, laughing and pounding each other on the back. After a few moments, concern penetrated Uhura’s euphoria. “But is it enough?” she asked, a bit hoarsely. “Now that they’ve connected, will they stop trying to force the signal through? Or will they ramp it up even more?”
They stared at each other wide-eyed. But in moments, the screens provided the answer. “Subspace interference subsiding,” Shastri reported. “Vacuum energy levels too. Signal’s still coming through, but tighter, clearer.” He grinned at her. “They’ve stopped shouting—now they’re just talking.”
“At last.”
“Bridge to communications lab,” came Spock’s voice. “The flare has begun to dissipate. Subspace erosion has leveled off. Have you made contact?”
Uhura grinned and opened the return channel. “Affirmative, Captain! We’re now receiving them loud and clear.”
She clasped Shastri’s hand and smiled at him. “And this time, we won’t lose the connection.”
Starfleet Academy
As soon as the interference cleared and Kirk got the report that the Enterprise had succeeded in stopping the vacuum flares, the admiral contacted Academy Security and ordered them to detain Horatio at once. The reply he soon received made it clear that that might be unnecessary.
He arrived at Horatio’s dorm room with McCoy, Janith-Lau, and Portia in tow, as they were no longer needed for flare relief. Perhaps that task would have been easier for them to endure than what they found within, once Kirk nodded at the guards outside and led his party through the door.
All seven of the Warborn who had not gone with Portia were here, sprawled on the floor. From their orientation, they had been seated together, arrayed around Horatio, who was cross-legged and slumped against the wall at their head. The only other occupant of the room was Zirani Kayros, who sat with Benedick’s head cradled in her lap. The Tiburonian cadet looked up at Kirk and the others, weeping freely. “Sir… I found them like this. Most of them were already… But Benedick…”
McCoy checked several of them for life signs by hand, then used his medical scanner on the rest to confirm it. He looked up grimly at the admiral. “Dead, Jim. All but Horatio, and he’s slipping fast. Some kind of poison.” He moved to the ringleader’s side to do what he could, while Portia and Janith-Lau looked on in dumb shock.
“Benedick said…” Kayros gulped and gathered her breath before continuing. “He seemed so content. Said he finally got to sacrifice for Arcturus… that he was sorry he had to leave us, b-but Horatio said it was the only way. He said… Horatio let him hand out the poison!” She sobbed, and Janith-Lau moved to comfort her.
“Jim!” McCoy waved him closer to Horatio, who was moving slowly, moaning and cracking his eyes open.
Portia reached her brother’s side before Kirk did, but there was nothing sororal in her as she confronted Horatio. “Why?! To kill your own comrades! Frame your sister! You knew, didn’t you?”
Horatio gave her a faint smile that seemed absolving, as backward as that was. “You… always said I was nosy. But… didn’t… matter. Only… defending Arcturus. Our sacred purpose.”
“We can be more than that! More than what they
made us!”
His gaze became pitying. “Most beings… go their whole lives… not knowing their purpose. We are blessed to know from birth. We exist… to protect Arcturus. From ourselves if necessary.”
Kirk knelt before him. “Horatio. How does any of this protect Arcturus?”
“Our mission… our purpose must remain pure. To fight for our world and no other. Rakatheema threatened that. Wanted us to fight for others.” He refocused on Portia. “You threatened that. Wanted to fight for yourselves.” He sighed. “I am sorry, sister… but it seemed an elegant strategy. To remove both threats in one act. It was… blessed fortune… that my DNA could be so easily mistaken for yours.
“I gave him a chance. Went to him… tried to convince him. Wouldn’t bend. Insisted… dogma had to adapt to change. I… disagreed.”
He let out a shuddering sigh. “Thought my plan… so elegant. But no plan… survives contact with the enemy.” A faint laugh. “Should’ve known… not to go against you… sister. You are… a superior enemy.
“Once framing you failed… only one option left. Ensure we would not be exploited… for unholy purpose.”
McCoy looked up at Kirk and shook his head, wearing an expression Kirk had seen far too often over the years. There was nothing he could do to save Horatio.
But the cadet—the murderer—smiled beatifically. “They all understood. All… good soldiers. We were created… to die for the good of Arcturus. We… succeeded in our mission. I gave them that. Please, sister… comrade… make sure the rest of us… die too. All of us. For… Arcturus.”
Portia’s face was stony as she gently took Horatio’s head in her hands and lowered him onto her lap, paralleling Kayros with Benedick. Kirk peered past the heavy folds of skin into her piercing eyes, trying to understand what was going on behind them.
With a heavy sigh, Portia looked down at the brother she had grown up with but never known. “Good night, sweet prince,” she said…
… then snapped his neck.
Her face remained just as stony as the security guards led her away moments later. Kirk doubted he would ever know whether she had acted out of mercy or revenge.
Epilogue
Starfleet Academy
After a brief hearing, Starfleet decided not to pursue homicide charges against Portia, for Horatio had been moments from death in any case. As for her actions against the peace activists, Janith-Lau had convinced her people not to press charges, and the city’s authorities agreed to place the surviving Warborn’s discipline in Starfleet hands, so that they could focus on repairing the damage caused by the flares’ interference. Kirk wondered if, perhaps, they had also felt the five survivors had been punished enough.
Even so, there had to be consequences, as Admiral Chandra spelled out in a meeting in his office with Kirk, Professor Blune, and the five surviving Warborn. “Commander Rakatheema’s dream was that Starfleet Academy could offer you a path to build full and rewarding lives for yourselves in roles beyond combat,” the superintendent told them. “It is clear now that we failed in that effort.
“After what the five of you have done, you would have been expelled from the Academy in any case. There is no coming back from the line you crossed. Yet it may be that this is for the best. Perhaps Starfleet simply cannot offer you what you need to build the lives you deserve.”
Portia appeared guardedly appreciative of his words. “I think you’re right about that, sir. The commander felt your balance of military discipline and peaceful goals would be a transitional path for us. But I think the military side of Starfleet only reinforced our conditioning.
“Doctor Janith-Lau has offered to take us to a monastery on Vulcan, to help us explore a path of peace and self-discipline. I’ve… come to the conclusion that it may be the best thing for us. The others agree.” Next to her, Bertram shifted in his chair, looking reluctant, but said nothing. “If it works out, the other Warborn will follow us there.”
Kirk stared at Portia, surprised by her uncharacteristic words. “I thought that what you wanted was the freedom to embrace your warrior side. To find a cause to fight for.”
She lowered her eyes. “I do, Admiral. But after the last few days… I think we have seen enough death. Enough loss. It has no appeal.” She fidgeted in her seat. “I am Horatio’s genetic twin. We share the same potentials—the same basic nature. And what he became…” She shuddered. “I don’t want to lose myself to that. To become a threat to others—maybe even to my own comrades. That was never what I wanted to fight for.
“And you and Doctor Janith-Lau have helped me to see… that there are other ways to fight. That perhaps the worthiest battle is the one we wage with ourselves.” On the table before her, her fists clenched. “Horatio… lost that battle. He surrendered too easily to blind faith… to a narrow definition of what we were allowed to be. I don’t want to make that same mistake, sir. I don’t want to surrender to my own assumptions.”
Kirk smiled at her. “I respect your choice, Portia, and I wish you well. But I still feel it’s Starfleet’s loss. You are far more than most people expected of you.”
She nodded. “Most… except Rakatheema. I may not have trusted his intentions… but he saw that we could be more. He fought to give us that chance… and he died for it. We owe it to him to achieve the spirit of what he sought for us, if not the specifics.”
“I’m sure he would be proud to see that.”
Bertram looked unsure of himself. “That play Horatio loved… that he took his name from… there was that man who said, ‘This above all—to thine own self be true.’ ” He shook his head. “That’s all I ever wanted to do. Just be what I was born to be. But now I think… maybe Shakespeare was wrong?”
Kirk smiled. “Shakespeare wrote that man, Polonius, as a fool. That speech showed his shallowness, his obliviousness in giving advice that he didn’t understand or follow.” He chuckled. “A friend of mine, Rhenas Sherev, once told me that she thought Polonius’s fatal mistake was that he was a character in a tragedy who believed he was in a comedy. He thought Hamlet was mad with unrequited love rather than grief and vengeance, and so he died because he failed to understand his world and his role within it.”
Bertram was still confused. “So… what does that mean?”
“It means that… you should strive to be true to yourself… but you shouldn’t assume you already know who you really are, or how you fit into the world around you. It’s through the striving that you discover your true self.”
Portia turned to take in Kirk and Chandra. “That goes for you too, you know. Starfleet. You need to figure some things out about what you truly are—peacemakers, warriors, or something in between.”
Kirk returned her gaze, acknowledging her insight. “I’ve been seeking that answer for most of my life. I still haven’t found the answer. I think maybe it has to change as the galaxy we live in changes.”
She considered that for a moment. “Maybe. But maybe it’s by making the right or wrong choices that we change the galaxy.”
He smiled at Portia. “It just may be at that.”
Starfleet Headquarters
Three days following the last vacuum flare, the stream of data flowing through the cross-temporal wormhole link with the primordial plasma remained unabated. Uhura had needed to dump it to Starfleet’s central science database as quickly as possible to avoid using up all the memory in the Enterprise’s library computer. And still the transmissions continued.
“But what have we really gained from it?” Admiral Cartwright asked. He sat at the head of the table in Headquarters’ conference room, accompanied by Admiral Kirk, Captain Spock, Commanders Scott and Uhura, and Rajendra Shastri. “Our translators haven’t been able to make heads or tails of it, aside from the common mathematics and physics. The rest is too alien to even begin to comprehend.”
“For now, perhaps, Admiral,” Spock replied. “But in the attempt, we may make other unanticipated discoveries about physics and the nature of the univ
erse. Eventually we will find a basis for interpreting the knowledge the primordial civilization has sent us. It may be the work of generations to decipher the sheer volume of information. But that is true of many scientific endeavors. There is still much we do not know about the prehistory of Earth or Vulcan. There remain many gaps and unanswered questions. But every answer we do find is valued.
“This contact is an extraordinary discovery in itself: proof that intelligent life existed in the primordial minutes of the universe, a time when we had hitherto assumed no life or complexity could exist. That knowledge alone will refine our understanding of physics in ways that may lead to new technologies in the decades or centuries to come.”
“But was it worth the cost, Captain Spock?” Cartwright asked. “In their attempts to be heard, these plasma beings caused hundreds of deaths. They almost devastated the Earth, the whole Solar system.”
“There have been many disasters resulting from botched first contacts,” Admiral Kirk put in. “The Xindi, the Partnership, the Sagara, the Horta, the Gorn. That risk of fatal misunderstanding is always there, Lance. That’s why it’s so important to embrace understanding going forward, so that the same mistakes don’t happen again.
“It’s not about whether it was worth it. It happened. We have to live with it—and try to profit from its lessons. That’s all we can do.” Kirk’s somber tone suggested that he was contemplating his own recent failure with the Warborn.
Seeking to ease the dark mood, Uhura leaned forward. “There’s no point in trying to lay blame here, Admiral Cartwright. This was a tragic misfortune for everyone involved. A chain of accidents that grew out of all predictable control.” She traded a look with Scott. “I can’t even bring myself to blame Nomad for setting all this in motion. Even it was created in an accident, from two probes sent out on benevolent, scientific missions. In its own way, it suffered from a loss of memory just as much as I did.”
She looked around the table. “If I’ve learned anything lately, it’s the importance of memory. Without knowing our history, our context, we’re incomplete. Adrift. We lose the connections that guide us, that keep us on the right path. We’re blinded to the consequences of our actions…” Her gaze landed on Shastri. “And our inaction.
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