Captain's Blood

21

S.S. CALYPSO, STARDATE 57487.7

Picard stepped from Norinda’s orbital transport into the Calypso’s cargo bay, and resisted the impulse to shout Kirk’s name. He knew that to make the most of this opportunity, he had to let events unfold slowly. Somehow, he had to make certain that whatever happened, he ended up with at least ten minutes alone at the communications console on the bridge. He had to report to Janeway over a secure subspace channel, and then get word to Will Riker to have the Titan standing by to show support for the Tal Shiar.

Picard had had only a few minutes to discuss this in private with La Forge, and his engineer understood the need to report, and that a distraction would be in order.

La Forge stepped into the cargo bay, then rocked back and forth from one foot to the other. “The gravity alignment feels off,” he said with a tone of professional concern. “We should probably run an emergency diagnostic in engineering to be sure all systems are stable.” He turned to the young Romulan who had accompanied them. “Nran, I could use your help.”

Nran hesitated, looked to Norinda.

She shook her head with a smile. “Stay with me.”

With those three words, Nran was enthralled, and Picard knew the young man wouldn’t stray more than a few steps from Norinda for the duration of this visit.

“And I’ll stay with you,” Norinda said to Picard.

He nodded, already thinking of how he might arrange to be isolated on the bridge. Perhaps a decompression event?

“And you will stay with us,” Norinda told La Forge.

“This ship could lose power at any second,” La Forge said earnestly. “And if a propulsion system goes, we could drop out of orbit quick as that.” He snapped his fingers.

“If that should happen at this altitude, it won’t happen quickly. We’ll have more than enough time to return to my transport.” Norinda pointed ahead. “Considering what happened here yesterday, it is safer for us all to remain together. The bridge is that way.”

Picard thought it was most interesting that she knew the way. But then, he had also been surprised when she’d led them to the airlock chamber in which her transport was stored.

It was an Assessor’s vehicle, strictly limited to orbital flight and a passenger load no greater than nine. Yet Norinda had piloted it smoothly, and as far as Picard had been able to determine from his passenger seat, had not had to request clearance of any kind. He didn’t know if that was a sign of Assessor privilege, or a breakdown of Reman security. Then again, if all transgressions against the Romulan authorities were as strictly punished as Norinda had intimated, then perhaps strict oversight of Reman operations was not required.

With any luck, Picard tried to console himself, if an arrangement could be made to cooperate with the Tal Shiar, then perhaps the Federation could begin to have some influence in Reman affairs, and someday the Remans truly would be free.

The thought was a sobering one. After all that Shinzon—his clone—had gone through in an attempt to free his Reman brothers, it had come to the original Picard to try again.

Thinking about fate and destiny, Picard followed Norinda to the bridge.

In the aft of the bridge, in the office beyond the transparent wall, behind the desk, Kirk was sitting where he had sworn he would never sit, doing what he had sworn he would never do. But he had chosen a position of control, which might be necessary depending on the intent of the new boarding party.

Whoever they were, at least the holographic doctor had decided to remain hidden, still protecting Joseph. Kirk was ready for, and expected the worst. At any moment he would be faced with the prospect of battling a team of Romulan Assessors or Reman salvagers. Without weapons, the only advantage he had was McCoy.

Strapped in at the environmental and life-support duty station, McCoy was ready to switch off the artificial gravity, then hold on as Kirk pushed the ship into a series of spins guaranteed to have the boarding party bouncing off the walls. Wherever Joseph was hiding on this ship, Kirk hoped his son was tucked in tightly.

The turbolift began to operate.

Kirk’s gaze whipped to one of the many screens that faced his desk and found the right display. The car was rising to the bridge.

He waved through the transparent wall at McCoy.

McCoy waved back, standing by.

The lift doors opened.

Four figures were crowded inside.

Two were known to him—Picard, La Forge.

Kirk’s relief was momentary. The other two wore the dull gray uniforms of Romulan Assessors.

The young male he recognized as Nran and instantly dismissed him as a possible threat. The other, female, was—

The shock was overwhelming.

“Norinda…” he whispered in the silence of his sealed office.

Their encounter in the Mandylion Rift still baffled him—everything this woman was, everything she had done, no matter all the years that had since passed.

And to see her now, at a time when all of his life seemed to be measured by loss and longing, Kirk wondered if he could withstand her again.

But Norinda shared none of his apprehension. Her face was transformed by a welcoming smile—the terrible smile he’d feared and craved.

And with that smile, Kirk had his answer.

After what Mister Scott had reported about the state of the Calypso, Picard was surprised to find it in such relatively good condition. Even the air smelled fresher, as if the recirculators had been repaired. If he hadn’t known that Kirk and McCoy had just escaped from their Reman captors within the past few hours, he might have thought that Kirk had been aboard for days, toiling incessantly to bring the ship up to Starfleet standards.

Then Picard had stepped onto the bridge from the lift to see Kirk in the captain’s office, and was appalled by what he witnessed next.

The moment Kirk glimpsed Norinda, Picard saw the flash of recognition quickly turn to shock, and shock to horror.

Picard knew the reason and pitied Kirk.

With each step Norinda took toward that glass wall, she changed.

Her reflection in the glass wall showed her Assessor’s uniform shrinking round her, molding into a glossy black jumpsuit that was a second layer of skin, until…she became the image overlaying Kirk’s stricken face: Kirk’s love, his life, his greatest joy and deepest sorrow.

Teilani. Kirk’s lost wife, mother to his son. Cruelly returned to him.

Picard felt almost mesmerized as he saw Kirk press his hand against the clear wall.

As on the other side, Norinda/Teilani raised her hand to—

“Stop it!” McCoy shouted, startling Picard out of his near-trance state. The doctor stood on the lower level of the bridge. “For the love of God, man, make her stop!”

McCoy was right! Picard rushed at Norinda, grabbed her by the shoulder, pulled her away from the clear wall and the tortured man behind it.

“Change back!”

“Jean-Luc, you’re hurting me!” Teilani gazed up at Picard in hurt appeal, her beauty captured to the last frightening detail, from her delicate Klingon forehead ridges to the Romulan sweep of her ears. But she was younger than she had been when Picard had met her, with no trace of the virogen scar that had marked her later in life. Picard realized he was looking at Kirk’s idealized memory of his beloved wife, pulled from his mind, his heart, his soul.

“Let him go!” Picard commanded.

“I can’t,” the apparition said. “He loves me, and I must love him.” She held up her hands in supplication to Picard, and the black jumpsuit she wore, its plunging neckline reaching almost to her navel, began melting from her.

Picard forced himself to slap her, hard across her face. He winced. Siren she might be, but she still felt all too real.

She gasped, and for an instant, her face seemed to flicker into shadow. But then Teilani looked up at him again in defiance, and she snarled at him in Klingon, “I must love him!”

Picard seized hold of her again, determined to break whatever telepathic bond this alien creature had forged with Kirk. Remember she’s an alien shapeshifter, he told himself. He pictured her as the Reman female who had towered over him, with the strength to throw him across the bridge. He readied himself to strike again.

“Let her go or I’ll kill you!” It was Nran who shouted at him, sobbing.

Picard heard the scuffle that told him how La Forge was keeping the Romulan youth from interfering.

“Can’t you see what you’re doing to him, woman!” McCoy stomped up the steps to the upper level of the bridge.

But Teilani shook her head back and forth like a child having a tantrum. “No, no—he’s doing it to me!”

Picard raised his hand, then stopped hearing the whisper of the transparent wall opening, as Kirk emerged from his sealed office.

“No, Jean-Luc,” he said. “That’s not necessary…”

Picard stepped back and Teilani turned to face the man whose memories had somehow brought her into being.

Slowly she spread her arms wide to him.

“James,” she said, and her voice was Teilani’s. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“Your name is Norinda,” Kirk said, his voice unsteady. “Not Teilani. Never Teilani.”

But Picard heard the last traces of uncertainty still in his voice. And so did she.

“But I am Teilani for you.” She stepped closer to him, within reach of his embrace, and Picard knew the struggle Kirk endured not to simply give in and hold her close once more.

“No,” Kirk told her, “you can’t be. Because I won’t let you.”

She touched his face, his tears.

“It’s what you want,” she said. “I know what you feel.”

Kirk nodded. “It’s what I wanted,” he agreed, and took her hand from his face, pushed it gently away. “But now there’s something else, someone else, I need even more.”

Pain, Picard thought suddenly. It was what had freed him and La Forge from Norinda’s influence. It was the one force stronger than love. And just like love, there were many forms of it. The pain of Teilani’s loss had at last freed Kirk, as well.

Teilani’s perfect skin became the drab gray cloth of an Assessor’s uniform once more. Then Norinda, as a Romulan, looked back at Picard, eyes dark with pain of her own.

“I understand none of you,” she said. “When all I offer is love, and peace, and understanding….”

“We need other things as well,” Picard explained. He decided he’d try to take advantage of her undisguised distress. “Why don’t you take Nran back to the galley. I think some tea would help—”

Norinda slipped her arm through Nran’s, and with that simple movement, her figure became fuller, her face younger, her uniform snugger. For the first time, Picard found himself wondering if she was as vulnerable to others’ influence as others were to hers.

“It is you who refuse to accept the gift I offer, who need my help,” she said with a touch of petulance. She looked over at Kirk in pity. “Where is this thing you want more than your own happiness? Where is your son?”

Kirk looked at Picard, as if expecting Picard to say something.

But Picard said nothing, not certain what Kirk wanted.

“Jean-Luc,” Kirk said at last. “You know.”

Picard shook his head. “I’m sorry, Jim. I don’t.”

“But he’s here with—”

A new voice burst out across the bridge, sweeping Kirk’s confusion aside.

“Daa-ad!”

It was Joseph.