Captain's Blood

27

JOLAN SEGMENT, STARDATE 57488.3

Kirk stared at a ghost.

He told himself that what he saw stepping down from the transporter pad in the center of the greenhouse chamber was just another of Norinda’s cruel illusions.

Spock was dead. Three thousand Romulans had witnessed his murder. Kirk had seen the visual sensor recordings. Felt the agony of loss.

“Captain,” Spock said.

He stood before Kirk in a version of a Romulan assessor’s uniform. He looked more gaunt than the last time Kirk had seen him, somehow frailer, as if he had succumbed to an illness or—

“Spock?” Kirk said. “Is it you?”

“Given that we are both acquainted with Norinda’s skill as a shapeshifter, your hesitation in accepting the evidence of your eyes is understandable. However, logic suggests that—”

“It is you!” Kirk just managed to refrain from embracing Spock, but Joseph felt no such constraints.

“Uncle Spock? Are you all right?”

“As well as can be expected,” Spock said as he gently extricated himself from a hearty hug around his legs.

Kirk shot a glance back at Norinda and the Romulans. They were huddled together, discussing something of greater importance than Spock’s return from the dead.

Kirk looked down at his son, who now stood between him and Spock. “Joseph, this is a time to be quiet and stay close, okay?”

“Okay.” Joseph looked up wide-eyed, but unafraid.

“I need to know,” Kirk said to Spock. “How is this possible?”

Spock raised an eyebrow, as if Kirk had asked a question to which he should already know the answer. “Captain, ‘when you have eliminated all which is impossible’—”

Kirk finished it. “—’then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ You didn’t die.”

“Not this time.”

“The assassination was staged?”

“I believed a dramatic event was necessary to appeal to the emotionalism of the Romulans, in order to call attention to reunification of our people.”

“You believed?” Kirk said. “You staged your own murder?”

“I was unwilling to risk anyone’s life but my own. And my time in the public eye is over.”

Kirk looked again at Norinda, this time saw her watching him, or, more probably, Joseph. “You can tell me more later.”

He dropped his voice. “Spock, how did you get here? Why are you with her?”

Spock shrugged. “I am her prisoner, for reasons which I do not entirely fathom.”

Kirk saw Norinda smile at the fourth Romulan whom he had never met.

“Spock, this is important. These people think that Joseph is the new Shinzon.”

Kirk could tell Spock was startled by that fact by the quiet way he said, “Indeed.”

“But right now there’s a civil war about to start, between Romulus and Remus.”

“Tensions have been high since the coup, but—”

“No,” Kirk urgently interrupted. “The situation’s being manipulated. Staged. Spock, I have to know. Was your staged death completely your idea? Or did you have help?”

“I had help, of course. It required considerable logistical support.”

“Then tell me if any of this sounds familiar,” Kirk said.

“In what way?”

“Just listen. Starfleet was convinced you were murdered by agents of the Tal Shiar.”

Spock blinked, another sign of intense reaction. “That is not logical.”

“I don’t care what’s logical. I’m telling you what Starfleet believes. They sent Bones and me here to investigate your death, to find your murderers, and then Picard came with us so he could make an offer to those same people.”

“What is the nature of the offer?”

Norinda began walking toward the transporter platform and the fourth Romulan was at her side. Kirk spoke quickly in the few private moments that he and Spock had left to them.

“In addition to being responsible for your death, the Tal Shiar are also supposed to be the ones who are going to stage a series of attacks that will lead to an outbreak of war between Romulus and Remus. But if the Tal Shiar didn’t murder you—”

This time, Spock completed the conclusion for Kirk. “—then logic suggests they are also not responsible for whatever staged events are intended to start the war.”

“But there is one person who’s tied to both events.”

“Then logically, that person is the one responsible.”

Kirk turned to face Norinda as she stepped up behind him.

“It’s you,” he said. “There is no Tal Shiar. It’s the Jolan Movement that’s going to start the war.”

For a moment, Kirk thought Norinda might deny his accusation. But she didn’t. “This war is how peace will come to you.”

“Insane,” Kirk said.

“Illogical,” Spock added.

“You’re a bad guy,” Joseph told her.

Kirk did not admonish him for breaking silence. His son was right.

But Norinda didn’t respond to any of those pronouncements. “I offer you love and peace and—”

“Understanding, I know,” Kirk said. “We’ve all heard it. And we’ll all keep rejecting it because you’re not offering love at all. All you want is for us to accept you. But you’re not willing to accept us. You don’t want to be loved—you want to be worshipped.”

Norinda seemed to grow taller, her shoulders broader. “When the Hour of Opposition comes and the bombs go off and the war begins, you will see your worlds and your people consumed by hate and war and confusion. And when you have seen worlds die because you would not accept the true reality of existence, then you will understand. And then, you will accept the Peace of the Totality.”

Kirk stepped back from Norinda as her features continued to change, becoming Reman.

“When we met,” Kirk said, “you told me you were running from the Totality. But you’re part of it, aren’t you?”

“So are you, Kirk. You just don’t know it yet!”

Norinda loomed over Kirk now. Ears and face and fangs carved from gray stone, eyes disappearing behind the impenetrably dark visor that grew and formed across them, she pointed a jagged claw at Joseph. “Zol,” she growled, “take the boy!”

Those three words freed Kirk.

Without thought he slapped his hand to his back beneath his jacket and in one swift arc had drawn his mek’leth and slashed at Zol.

The Romulan stumbled to the grass with a cry of pain, green blood spurting from the deep cut on his forearm.

Kirk kept in front of Joseph as Norinda backed away.

“Spock—there’s a communicator in Joseph’s pouch. Hail the Calypso.”

Norinda shouted to the three Romulans cowering by the transporter console. “Raise transport shields! Activate subspace jammers!”

Kirk didn’t care that he was too late to stop those orders. He just wanted to stop Norinda.

So he ran at her, mek’leth held high, and even as she shrank before him, he spun the weapon in a gleaming arc to deliver a k’rel tagh stroke that angled down through her shoulder and into her chest and—

—Norinda’s torso exploded into a spray of black powder and all resistance to the mek’leth vanished, throwing Kirk completely off balance and sending him tumbling to the ground.

Kirk twisted to avoid landing on his own blade, then looked back at Norinda to see her torso re-form out of a swirling black cloud, as if he were watching a fire in reverse, with the smoke billowing back to its point of origin.

Then she was whole again, but in a patchwork confusion of different aspects. Her face rippled from Klingon to Andorian to Romulan, while her chest heaved out, becoming Tellarite, then collapsed inward, human.

But like ripples in still water, the confusion slowed and she settled into a single form—Romulan. But she fell to her knees without awareness, unconscious.

“Spock! The transporter!”

Kirk sprinted for the transporter console, hoping that Virron and Sen and Nran were all so terrified by what they had witnessed that they had neglected to follow Norinda’s orders. To keep them terrified, he slashed his mek’leth back and forth while shouting a Klingon battle cry.

They scattered like panicked antelope bounding away from a lion.

Kirk swiftly checked the transporter controls as Spock and Joseph hurried to join him. “Everything seems functional. Did you raise the Calypso?”

“No response,” Spock said.

Kirk turned the transporter controls over to Spock, took the communicator. It was functioning properly. “Kirk to Calypso!”

Still nothing.

“Captain, the transporter is operational. But I will need coordinates for our destination.”

“Understood, Spock.”

Why wasn’t the communicator working? It didn’t make sense. Unless there was something wrong on the Calypso.

Kirk tried again, and as if his Enterprise herself had suddenly entered orbit, he had his answer. The right one.

“Scott here, Captain.”