Captain's Glory

22

THE OORT CLOUD, SECTOR 001

STARDATE 58567.4

Worf, forehead glistening with newly regenerated skin, reported from his console. “Captain-the enemy vessel is powering up its warp engines.”

Worf had identified Kirk as “the enemy.” How has it come to this? Picard thought.

“Mister Scott’s on that ship,” he said. “He knows what going to warp inside our shields would do to us.”

Troi leaned forward from the chair to his left, spoke urgently. “Captain, I’m certain you were speaking with the real James Kirk. I sensed no duplicity, no indication that he might’ve been an impostor. But I can’t be certain about Scott.”

Picard fought succumbing to paranoia. But what choice did any of them have?

“How soon until the Tucker’s within range?”

Kadohata spoke from her ops station; she had arrived on the bridge just a few minutes earlier, along with the rest of the senior crew.

“Nine minutes.”

“When will the Belle Reve be ready for warp?”

Worf answered. “Less than a minute.”

“Captain…” Troi began, and Picard could hear from the counselor’s plaintive tone that she sensed what decision he’d made-the only decision he could. He didn’t let her finish.

“Number One, reduce our shield perimeter to hold the Belle Reve as close to us as possible. Divert all additional power to our structural integrity field. Have all nonessential crew move to the escape pods.”

Worf growled in approval. “Understood, sir. She won’t get away.”

Picard sat back in his chair as once again his restraints folded into position. “She won’t get away because Jim Kirk won’t go to warp,” he said firmly.

He wished he could believe that.

Kirk didn’t need Scott’s expertise to interpret the basic data readouts on the left-hand viewscreen. Picard was preparing for the worst.

“I don’t think he’s bluffing,” Scott said.

“Neither do I,” Kirk agreed. “Are we going to be able to get through his shields when we go to warp?”

“Aye. But our warp bubble will take most of th’ Enterprise’s lower decks with us. And that extra mass will put our field so far out of balance, we won’t get far before our overload safeties shut us down. Maybe five, ten AUs. After that, we’ll be on impulse like every other ship in the system.”

Kirk knew Picard was sending him a message. He could read it in the steps Picard was taking to protect the Enterprise as best he could. The message was blunt: If you’re bluffing, I’m calling.

Kirk decided to raise the stakes.

“Scotty, tune our warp bubble to the smallest possible volume so we’ll cause the least damage to the Enterprise.”

McCoy looked at Kirk in horror. “Jim… you can’t.”

“Bones, Jean-Luc’s not giving me a choice. All he has to do to save his ship and his crew is drop his shields.”

Kirk felt as if he were about to step out of a shuttle to start an orbital skydive without a ceramic suit. His fingers tightened on the arms of his chair. He took a breath, gave his orders.

“Mister Scott, we need to let the Enterprise know what’s coming. Begin a thirty-second countdown to warp initialization.”

The engineer frowned, but he had no other strategy to offer. “Aye, Captain… tuning the field… minimum volume… and the countdown starts… now.”

“They’ve started a thirty-second countdown to warp initialization,” Worf announced. “They’ve also reduced their warp-field volume.”

“He’s trying to minimize the damage he’s going to cause,” Troi said. “He’s going to go through with it.”

Picard watched the time display on a console screen mark the seconds remaining. “Mister Worf, will we be able to stop him?”

“No. But the damage we inflict will prevent him from traveling at warp for more than a few seconds. That will put him within range of the other ships before he reaches the outer planets.” Worf paused, then added proudly, “We will be making an honorable sacrifice.”

Picard’s mind spun as he weighed the odds… twenty-two seconds… No matter what he did now, Kirk was going to escape… twenty seconds… But the Belle Reve would be compromised… eighteen seconds… In that situation, could he count on Kirk being stopped before reaching the inner solar system? sixteen seconds… Was he about to risk his ship and his crew for nothing? fourteen seconds…

Picard came to the hardest decision of his career, prepared to give his orders to his crew. And then-

“Captain… sensors have detected an anomalous surge in his warp generator.”

Picard felt electrified. “A malfunction?” Could it be that simple?

“His warp core is building toward a breach,” Worf added. Without waiting for further orders, the Klingon sounded the collision alarm.

“Sir, we must drop shields to allow him to eject his core, otherwise the explosion will destroy both ships.”

Picard knew that-but was the breach real? Or was this another of Kirk’s tricks? Tortured by possibilities, uncertainties, Picard stared at the time display.

Ten seconds…

“Scotty…?” Kirk stood from his chair as he saw the warp readings go off the scale. “Is that a breach?”

“No… it’s somethin’ else, but what, I can’t tell ye…” Scott worked feverishly at his console, called up a visual sensor image of engineering. “Och…”

Kirk stared at the screen with alarm. The compact warp core of his ship was half-enveloped in winding tendrils of black sand.

As he watched, they moved, like time-speeded vines. The same black tendrils he had seen claim Spock. The same black tendrils that had grown from Norinda’s outstretched arms.

“Shut it down!” Kirk ordered.

“I’m tryin’,” Scott answered. “But it’s drawin’ power from another source!”

“Then shut down every power source on the ship!”

“If we drop our shields,” Scott warned, “the Enterprise’ll beam us out in nothin’ flat.”

It was one thing to risk his life for a chance at victory, Kirk knew. But it was folly to invite outright disaster.

“We’ve lost, Scotty-shut it down!”

The lights flared once, went out. An instant later, the battery-powered emergency fixtures flashed on. In the low light, the bridge was oppressively dark. The color of defeat.

The viewscreen image of engineering also faltered, but stayed onscreen.

Kirk turned to his engineer, surprised; there was no backup power source for the screen.

“Scotty, shut down every system.”

“Captain, I have….”

McCoy and the Emergency Medical Hologram stood on either side of Kirk, sharing his confusion. According to the data readouts on the screen, the Belle Reve’s power output was zero. Yet her shields were still up and her warp core remained energized.

Then, on the screen, the dark tendrils peeled off the warp core and wove together into an undulating column like a Martian dust devil that shifted in form and color until it became—

Norinda. In a Starfleet admiral’s uniform.

Kirk slammed his fist against the com controls on his chair, opening the channel to engineering.

Norinda smiled warmly into the visual sensor. “James, there’s no need for this.”

“Get off my ship.”

Norinda shook her head, her smile unchanged. “I don’t want you to die. I don’t want Jean-Luc to die. I don’t want anyone to die. There’s been too much of death, don’t you think?”

“I don’t believe you,” Kirk said. He moved quickly to Scott’s console. “On Remus, you told me you wanted to engulf the galaxy in war, so we’d know what it was to reject ‘love’ and ‘peace’ and ‘understanding.’”

Kirk touched Scott’s arm and pointed to the control set for the warp-generator baffles, indicating that he wanted them opened so the engineering compartment would be flooded with delta radiation.

“Don’t do it, James. I’m the only one protecting you.”

Kirk gestured to Scott to stand by.

“From whom?” Kirk asked. But almost as the words left his lips, he knew the answer. “From the Totality….”

Norinda nodded, her friendly expression unchanged.

“I thought you were the Totality,” Kirk said.

“We’re all the Totality. It’s just that you won’t accept it.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“Answer mine instead,” Norinda countered. “What do you want, James? What do any of you… creatures want to open yourselves to the ultimate truth of existence?”

Kirk studied her carefully, remembering her in all her deceitful and dangerous incarnations through the years. She had the power to completely cloud his attention through a form of telepathy that could kindle unthinking and inescapable desire-the first manifestation of love she had attempted to offer him when they had first encountered each other. Yet for now, she had chosen not to use that ability. Why?

Kirk had just spent the past hour trying to think like Picard. Now he gave himself a more difficult test: thinking like Norinda.

He didn’t like where those thoughts took him.

Though he still had no way of knowing what the Totality’s ultimate goal was, what if Norinda wasn’t a monster? What if she wasn’t driven by conquest and the hunger for victory like the Romulans and the Borg? What if she were genuinely driven to understand the “creatures” she was in conflict with?

What if she truly wanted-needed– an answer from him, one that might lead to a peaceful resolution of their conflict?

If that were so, then Kirk saw a possible advantage, took it.

“Return Spock,” he said suddenly, gambling that Norinda’s need might spur her to make a gesture.

Norinda stared at him from the viewscreen, perplexed. “Return him? From where?”

Kirk spoke calmly. “You took him on Remus, dissolved him into black sand just like you tried to do with me.”

Norinda looked even more confused. “James, I gave Spock a gift-the gift. I didn’t take him. He’s not gone.”

“The gift…” Kirk repeated, puzzled by those words, trying to understand her meaning. And then he saw it. There was a pattern in what Norinda had been saying-now, and a year ago on Remus. “Did you give Spock… peace?”

Norinda’s confusion evaporated and her smile returned, beatific. “Yes, James, yes! The Peace of the Totality! Your friend knows, now. He knows the ultimate truth of existence!”

Spock’s words came back to Kirk then, and he knew that they held-had always held-the secret to all that had happened.

“We’re life, Jim. But not as they know it.”

They, Kirk thought. The Totality.

A form of sentience so alien that it shared nothing in common with biological life.

“If Spock knows that truth,” Kirk began carefully, “if he knows the Peace of the Totality, then let him come back to tell us about it.”

“But, James, I’ve told you about it.”

Kirk tried again.

“We’re different from you, Norinda. It’s… difficult for us to understand each other. But Spock… he’s experienced both sides. He’ll be able to tell us what you need us to know in a way that our form of life will understand.”

Norinda remained motionless. Kirk could almost believe that her consciousness had shifted to another realm.

Then her blissful smile broadened. “I understand,” she announced. “Ambassador Spock. Unification. But on a larger scale. A universal scale. You are right, James. We do want the same thing.”

Kirk persisted. “Will you return him?”

Norinda shook her head. “You know better than that.” Then her form melted into wisps of smoke and the last tendrils of utter blackness on the warp core untwisted swiftly into nothingness, until there was no trace of her left in engineering. Only her voice drifted out from the void.

“He has always been with you.”

Something new lay on the deck. A body, sprawled, unconscious, wrapped in the jeweled robes of a Vulcan ambassador.

Spock.